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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74,
+December, 1863, 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. 12, No. 74, December, 1863
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2005 [EBook #15913]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+VOL. XII.--DECEMBER, 1863.--NO. LXXIV.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863 by TICKNOR AND
+FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
+
+
+I suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald" of
+August 13th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the
+announcement,
+
+    "NOLAN. DIED, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11' S., Long.
+    131° W., on the 11th of May: Philip Nolan."
+
+I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old
+Mission-House in Mackinac, waiting for a Lake-Superior steamer which did
+not choose to come, and I was devouring, to the very stubble, all the
+current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and
+marriages in the "Herald." My memory for names and people is good, and
+the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember
+Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at
+that announcement, if the officer of the Levant who reported it had
+chosen to make it thus:--"Died, May 11th, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY."
+For it was as "The Man without a Country" that poor Philip Nolan had
+generally been known by the officers who had him in charge during some
+fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who sailed under them. I dare
+say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in
+a three years' cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or
+whether the poor wretch had any name at all.
+
+There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story.
+Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's
+Administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of
+honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in
+successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the _esprit de
+corps_ of the profession and the personal honor of its members, that to
+the press this man's story has been wholly unknown,--and, I think, to
+the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some
+investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the
+Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was
+burned when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the
+Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end
+of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at
+Washington to one of the Crowninshields,--who was in the Navy Department
+when he came home,--he found that the Department ignored the whole
+business. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether it was a
+"_Non mi ricordo_," determined on as a piece of policy, I do not know.
+But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no naval
+officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.
+
+But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor
+creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his
+story, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to be
+
+    A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
+
+Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of
+the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When
+Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in
+1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the
+Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some
+dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him,
+took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short,
+fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor
+Nolan. He occasionally availed of the permission the great man had given
+him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the poor boy
+wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in reply from
+the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at him, because
+he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a politician the time
+which they devoted to Monongahela, sledge, and high-low-jack. Bourbon,
+euchre, and poker were still unknown. But one day Nolan had his revenge.
+This time Burr came down the river, not as an attorney seeking a place
+for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. He had defeated I know not
+how many district-attorneys; he had dined at I know not how many public
+dinners; he had been heralded in I know not how many Weekly Arguses; and
+it was rumored that he had an army behind him and an empire before him.
+It was a great day--his arrival--to poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the
+fort an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked Nolan to take
+him out in his skiff, to show him a canebrake or a cotton-wood tree, as
+he said,--really to seduce him; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan
+was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though he did not yet know
+it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
+
+What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none
+of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and
+Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on
+the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the
+great treason-trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant
+Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is
+to-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage, and, to
+while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for
+_spectacles_, a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and
+another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the
+list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence
+enough,--that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false
+to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any one
+who would follow him, had the order only been signed, "By command of His
+Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped,--rightly
+for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I
+would never have heard of him, reader, but that, when the president of
+the court asked him at the close, whether he wished to say anything to
+show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried
+out, in a fit of frenzy,--
+
+"D----n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States
+again!"
+
+I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who
+was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served
+through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had
+been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his
+madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the
+midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had been
+educated on a plantation, where the finest company was a Spanish officer
+or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, had
+been perfected in commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I think he
+told me his father once hired an Englishman to be a private tutor for a
+winter on the plantation. He had spent half his youth with an older
+brother, hunting horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him "United States"
+was scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by "United States" for all
+the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a
+Christian to be true to "United States." It was "United States" which
+gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. Nay, my poor
+Nolan, it was only because "United States" had picked you out first as
+one of her own confidential men of honor, that "A. Burr" cared for you a
+straw more than for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for him. I do
+not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he damned his
+country, and wished he might never hear her name again.
+
+He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September
+23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name
+again. For that half century and more he was a man without a country.
+
+Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. If Nolan had compared
+George Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, "God save King
+George," Morgan would not have felt worse. He called the court into his
+private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a sheet,
+to say,--
+
+"Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court. The Court decides, subject to
+the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the
+United States again."
+
+Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and
+the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost
+his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added,--
+
+"Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver
+him to the naval commander there."
+
+The marshal gave his orders, and the prisoner was taken out of court.
+
+"Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the
+United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to
+Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one
+shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board
+ship. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty here
+this evening. The court is adjourned without day."
+
+I have always supposed that Colonel Morgan himself took the proceedings
+of the court to Washington City, and explained them to Mr. Jefferson.
+Certain it is that the President approved them,--certain, that is, if I
+may believe the men who say they have seen his signature. Before the
+Nautilus got round from New Orleans to the Northern Atlantic coast with
+the prisoner on board, the sentence had been approved, and he was a man
+without a country.
+
+The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily
+followed ever after. Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of
+sending him by water from Fort Adams and Orleans. The Secretary of the
+Navy--it must have been the first Crowninshield, though he is a man I do
+not remember--was requested to put Nolan on board a Government vessel
+bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so far
+confined there as to make it certain that he never saw or heard of the
+country. We had few long cruises then, and the navy was very much out of
+favor; and as almost all of this story is traditional, as I have
+explained, I do not know certainly what his first cruise was. But the
+commander to whom he was intrusted--perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw,
+though I think it was one of the younger men,--we are all old enough
+now--regulated the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, and
+according to his scheme they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan
+died.
+
+When I was second officer of the Intrepid, some thirty years after, I
+saw the original paper of instructions. I have been sorry ever since
+that I did not copy the whole of it. It ran, however, much in this
+way:--
+
+"_Washington_," (with the date, which must have been late in 1807.)
+
+"Sir,--You will receive from Lt. Neale the person of Philip Nolan, late
+a Lieutenant in the United States Army.
+
+"This person on his trial by court-martial expressed with an oath the
+wish that he might 'never hear of the United States again.'
+
+"The Court sentenced him to have his wish fulfilled.
+
+"For the present, the execution of the order is intrusted by the
+President to this department.
+
+"You will take the prisoner on board your ship, and keep him there with
+such precautions as shall prevent his escape.
+
+"You will provide him with such quarters, rations, and clothing as would
+be proper for an officer of his late rank, if he were a passenger on
+your vessel on the business of his Government.
+
+"The gentlemen on board will make any arrangements agreeable to
+themselves regarding his society. He is to be exposed to no indignity of
+any kind, nor is he ever unnecessarily to be reminded that he is a
+prisoner.
+
+"But under no circumstances is he ever to hear of his country or to see
+any information regarding it; and you will specially caution all the
+officers under your command to take care, that, in the various
+indulgences which may be granted, this rule, in which his punishment is
+involved, shall not be broken.
+
+"It is the intention of the Government that he shall never again see the
+country which he has disowned. Before the end of your cruise you will
+receive orders which will give effect to this intention.
+
+    "Resp'y yours,
+
+    "W. SOUTHARD, for the
+    Sec'y of the Navy."
+
+If I had only preserved the whole of this paper, there would be no break
+in the beginning of my sketch of this story. For Captain Shaw, if it was
+he, handed it to his successor in the charge, and he to his, and I
+suppose the commander of the Levant has it to-day as his authority for
+keeping this man in this mild custody.
+
+The rule adopted on board the ships on which I have met "the man without
+a country" was, I think, transmitted from the beginning. No mess liked
+to have him permanently, because his presence cut off all talk of home
+or of the prospect of return, of politics or letters, of peace or of
+war,--cut off more than half the talk men like to have at sea. But it
+was always thought too hard that he should never meet the rest of us,
+except to touch hats, and we finally sank into one system. He was not
+permitted to talk with the men, unless an officer was by. With officers
+he had unrestrained intercourse, as far as they and he chose. But he
+grew shy, though he had favorites: I was one. Then the captain always
+asked him to dinner on Monday. Every mess in succession took up the
+invitation in its turn. According to the size of the ship, you had him
+at your mess more or less often at dinner. His breakfast he ate in his
+own state-room,--he always had a state-room,--which was where a
+sentinel, or somebody on the watch, could see the door. And whatever
+else he ate or drank he ate or drank alone. Sometimes, when the marines
+or sailors had any special jollification, they were permitted to invite
+"Plain-Buttons," as they called him. Then Nolan was sent with some
+officer, and the men were forbidden to speak of home while he was there.
+I believe the theory was, that the sight of his punishment did them
+good. They called him "Plain-Buttons," because, while he always chose to
+wear a regulation army-uniform, he was not permitted to wear the
+army-button, for the reason that it bore either the initials or the
+insignia of the country he had disowned.
+
+I remember, soon after I joined the navy, I was on shore with some of
+the older officers from our ship and from the Brandywine, which we had
+met at Alexandria. We had leave to make a party and go up to Cairo and
+the Pyramids. As we jogged along, (you went on donkeys then,) some of
+the gentlemen (we boys called them "Dons," but the phrase was long since
+changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and some one told the system which
+was adopted from the first about his books and other reading. As he was
+almost never permitted to go on shore, even though the vessel lay in
+port for months, his time, at the best, hung heavy; and everybody was
+permitted to lend him books, if they were not published in America and
+made no allusion to it. These were common enough in the old days, when
+people in the other hemisphere talked of the United States as little as
+we do of Paraguay. He had almost all the foreign papers that came into
+the ship, sooner or later; only somebody must go over them first, and
+cut out any advertisement or stray paragraph that alluded to America.
+This was a little cruel sometimes, when the back of what was cut out
+might be as innocent as Hesiod. Right in the midst of one of Napoleon's
+battles, or one of Canning's speeches, poor Nolan would find a great
+hole, because on the back of the page of that paper there had been an
+advertisement of a packet for New York, or a scrap from the President's
+message. I say this was the first time I ever heard of this plan, which
+afterwards I had enough, and more than enough, to do with. I remember
+it, because poor Phillips, who was of the party, as soon as the allusion
+to reading was made, told a story of something which happened at the
+Cape of Good Hope on Nolan's first voyage; and it is the only thing I
+ever knew of that voyage. They had touched at the Cape, and had done the
+civil thing with the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, leaving
+for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of
+English books from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed in these,
+was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was the "Lay
+of the Last Minstrel," which they had all of them heard of, but which
+most of them had never seen. I think it could not have been published
+long. Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of anything national
+in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out the "Tempest" from
+Shakspeare before he let Nolan have it, because he, said "the Bermudas
+ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one day." So Nolan was
+permitted to join the circle one afternoon when a lot of them sat on
+deck smoking and reading aloud. People do not do such things so often
+now; but when I was young we got rid of a great deal of time so. Well,
+so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the
+others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in the circle knew a
+line of the poem, only it was all magic and Border chivalry, and was ten
+thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto,
+stopped a minute and drank something, and then began, without a thought
+of what was coming,--
+
+    "Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
+    Who never to himself hath said,"--
+
+It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first
+time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on,
+still unconsciously or mechanically,--
+
+    "This is my own, my native land!"
+
+Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through,
+I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on,--
+
+    "Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
+    As home his footsteps he hath turned
+       From wandering on a foreign strand?--
+    If such there breathe, go, mark him well."
+
+By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was any
+way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of
+mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on,--
+
+    "For him no minstrel raptures swell;
+    High though his titles, proud his name,
+    Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
+    Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
+    The wretch, concentred all in self,"--
+
+and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung
+the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room, "and by Jove," said
+Phillips, "we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make up
+some beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did not return his
+Walter Scott to him."
+
+That story shows about the time when Nolan's braggadocio must have
+broken down. At first, they said, he took a very high tone, considered
+his imprisonment a mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and all
+that; but Phillips said that after he came out of his state-room he
+never was the same man again. He never read aloud again, unless it was
+the Bible or Shakespeare, or something else he was sure of. But it was
+not that merely. He never entered in with the other young men exactly as
+a companion again. He was always shy afterwards, when I knew him,--very
+seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to, except to a very few friends. He
+lighted up occasionally,--I remember late in his life hearing him fairly
+eloquent on something which had been suggested to him by one of
+Fléchier's sermons,--but generally he had the nervous, tired look of a
+heart-wounded man.
+
+When Captain Shaw was coming home,--if, as I say, it was Shaw,--rather
+to the surprise of everybody they made one of the Windward Islands, and
+lay off and on for nearly a week. The boys said the officers were sick
+of salt-junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before they came home. But
+after several days the Warren came to the same rendezvous; they
+exchanged signals; she sent to Phillips and these homeward-bound men
+letters and papers, and told them she was outward-bound, perhaps to the
+Mediterranean, and took poor Nolan and his traps on the boat back to try
+his second cruise. He looked very blank when he was told to get ready to
+join her. He had known enough of the signs of the sky to know that till
+that moment he was going "home." But this was a distinct evidence of
+something he had not thought of, perhaps,--that there was no going home
+for him, even to a prison. And this was the first of some twenty such
+transfers, which brought him sooner or later into half our best vessels,
+but which kept him all his life at least some hundred miles from the
+country he had hoped he might never hear of again.
+
+It may have been on that second cruise,--it was once when he was up the
+Mediterranean,--that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated Southern beauty of those
+days, danced with him. They had been lying a long time in the Bay of
+Naples, and the officers were very intimate in the English fleet, and
+there had been great festivities, and our men thought they must give a
+great ball on board the ship. How they ever did it on board the Warren I
+am sure I do not know. Perhaps it was not the Warren, or perhaps ladies
+did not take up so much room as they do now. They wanted to use Nolan's
+state-room for something, and they hated to do it without asking him to
+the ball; so the captain said they might ask him, if they would be
+responsible that he did not talk with the wrong people, "who would give
+him intelligence." So the dance went on, the finest party that had ever
+been known, I dare say; for I never heard of a man-of-war ball that was
+not. For ladies they had the family of the American consul, one or two
+travellers who had adventured so far, and a nice bevy of English girls
+and matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton herself.
+
+Well, different officers relieved each other in standing and talking
+with Nolan in a friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke to
+him. The dancing went on with spirit, and after a while even the fellows
+who took this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear any _contre-temps_.
+Only when some English lady--Lady Hamilton, as I said, perhaps--called
+for a set of "American dances," an odd thing happened. Everybody then
+danced contra-dances. The black band, nothing loath, conferred as to
+what "American dances" were, and started off with "Virginia Reel," which
+they followed with "Money-Musk," which, in its turn in those days,
+should have been followed by "The Old Thirteen." But just as Dick, the
+leader, tapped for his fiddles to begin, and bent forward, about to say,
+in true negro state, "'The Old Thirteen,' gentlemen and ladies!" as he
+had said, "'Virginny Reel,' if you please!" and "'Money-Musk,' if you
+please!" the captain's boy tapped him on the shoulder, whispered to him,
+and he did not announce the name of the dance; he merely bowed, began on
+the air, and they all fell to,--the officers teaching the English girls
+the figure, but not telling them why it had no name.
+
+But that is not the story I started to tell.--As the dancing went on,
+Nolan and our fellows all got at ease, as I said,--so much so, that it
+seemed quite natural for him to bow to that splendid Mrs. Graff, and
+say,--
+
+"I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss Rutledge. Shall I have the honor
+of dancing?"
+
+He did it so quickly, that Shubrick, who was by him, could not hinder
+him. She laughed, and said,--
+
+"I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. Nolan; but I will dance all the
+same," just nodded to Shubrick, as if to say he must leave Mr. Nolan to
+her, and led him off to the place where the dance was forming.
+
+Nolan thought he had got his chance. He had known her at Philadelphia,
+and at other places had met her, and this was a Godsend. You could not
+talk in contra-dances, as you do in cotillons, or even in the pauses of
+waltzing; but there were chances for tongues and sounds, as well as for
+eyes and blushes. He began with her travels, and Europe, and Vesuvius,
+and the French; and then, when they had worked down, and had that long
+talking-time at the bottom of the set, he said, boldly,--a little pale,
+she said, as she told me the story, years after,--
+
+"And what do you hear from home, Mrs. Graff?"
+
+And that splendid creature looked through him. Jove! how she must have
+looked through him!
+
+"Home!! Mr. Nolan!!! I thought you were the man who never wanted to hear
+of home again!"--and she walked directly up the deck to her husband, and
+left poor Nolan alone, as he always was.--He did not dance again.
+
+I cannot give any history of him in order: nobody can now: and, indeed,
+I am not trying to. These are the traditions, which I sort out, as I
+believe them, from the myths which have been told about this man for
+forty years. The lies that have been told about him are legion. The
+fellows used to say he was the "Iron Mask"; and poor George Pons went to
+his grave in the belief that this was the author of "Junius," who was
+being punished for his celebrated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was
+not very strong in the historical line. A happier story than either of
+these I have told is of the War. That came along soon after. I have
+heard this affair told in three or four ways,--and, indeed, it may have
+happened more than once. But which ship it was on I cannot tell.
+However, in one, at least, of the great frigate-duels with the English,
+in which the navy was really baptized, it happened that a round shot
+from the enemy entered one of our ports square, and took right down the
+officer of the gun himself, and almost every man of the gun's crew. Now
+you may say what you choose about courage, but that is not a nice thing
+to see. But, as the men who were not killed picked themselves up, and as
+they and the surgeon's people were carrying off the bodies, there
+appeared Nolan, in his shirt-sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, and,
+just as if he had been the officer, told them off with authority,--who
+should go to the cockpit with the wounded men, who should stay with
+him,--perfectly cheery, and with that way which makes men feel sure all
+is right and is going to be right. And he finished loading the gun with
+his own hands, aimed it, and bade the men fire. And there he stayed,
+captain of that gun, keeping those fellows in spirits, till the enemy
+struck,--sitting on the carriage while the gun was cooling, though he
+was exposed all the time,--showing them easier ways to handle heavy
+shot,--making the raw hands laugh at their own blunders,--and when the
+gun cooled again, getting it loaded and fired twice as often as any
+other gun on the ship. The captain walked forward, by way of encouraging
+the men, and Nolan touched his hat and said,--
+
+"I am showing them how we do this in the artillery, Sir."
+
+And this is the part of the story where all the legends agree: that the
+Commodore said,--
+
+"I see you do, and I thank you, Sir; and I shall never forget this day,
+Sir, and you never shall, Sir."
+
+And after the whole thing was over, and he had the Englishman's sword,
+in the midst of the state and ceremony of the quarter-deck, he said,--
+
+"Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to come here."
+
+And when Nolan came, the captain, said,--
+
+"Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to you to-day; you are one of us
+to-day; you will be named in the despatches."
+
+And then the old man took off his own sword of ceremony, and gave it to
+Nolan, and made him put it on. The man told me this who saw it. Nolan
+cried like a baby, and well he might. He had not worn a sword since that
+infernal day at Fort Adams. But always afterwards, on occasions of
+ceremony, he wore that quaint old French sword of the Commodore's.
+
+The captain did mention him in the despatches. It was always said he
+asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the
+Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As I said, that was about
+the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at Washington,
+and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry itself on because there was
+nobody to stop it without any new orders from home.
+
+I have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession of
+the Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter, his
+father, Essex Porter,--that is, the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As
+an artillery officer, who had seen service in the West, Nolan knew more
+about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades, and all that,
+than any of them did; and he worked with a right good will in fixing
+that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did
+not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all
+the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and
+at this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our
+French friends, too, when they wanted this little watering-place, would
+have found it was preoccupied. But Madison and the Virginians, of
+course, flung all that away.
+
+All that was near fifty years ago. If Nolan was thirty then, he must
+have been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty.
+But he never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards. As I imagine his
+life, from what I have seen and heard of it, he must have been in every
+sea, and yet almost never on land. He must have known, in a formal way,
+more officers in our service than any man living knows. He told me
+once, with a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so methodical a
+life as he. "You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you know how
+busy he was." He said it did not do for any one to try to read all the
+time, more than to do any thing else all the time; but that he read just
+five hours a day. "Then," he said, "I keep up my note-books, writing in
+them at such and such hours from what I have been reading; and I include
+in these my scrap-books." These were very curious indeed. He had six or
+eight, of different subjects. There was one of History, one of Natural
+Science, one which he, called "Odds and Ends." But they were not merely
+books of extract from newspapers. They had bits of plants and ribbons,
+shells tied on, and carved scraps of bone and wood, which he had taught
+the men to cut for him, and they were beautifully illustrated. He drew
+admirably. He had some of the funniest drawings there, and some of the
+most pathetic, that I have ever seen in my life. I wonder who will have
+Nolan's scrap-books.
+
+Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that
+they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. "Then,"
+said he, "every man should have a diversion as well as a profession. My
+Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more. The
+men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to
+satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He
+was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about the habits of
+the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether
+they are _Lepidoptera_ _Steptopotera_; but as for telling how you can
+get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike
+them,--why, Linnæus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did.
+These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of
+the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a
+great deal. He always kept up with his exercise; and I never heard that
+he was ill. If any other man was ill, he was the kindest nurse in the
+world; and he knew more than half the surgeons do. Then if anybody was
+sick or died, or if the captain wanted him to on any other occasion, he
+was always ready to read prayers. I have remarked that he read
+beautifully.
+
+My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after the
+War, on my first voyage after I was appointed a midshipman. It was in
+the first days after our Slave-Trade treaty, while the Reigning House,
+which was still the House of Virginia, had still a sort of
+sentimentalism about the suppression of the horrors of the Middle
+Passage, and something was sometimes done that way. We were in the South
+Atlantic on that business. From the time I joined, I believe I thought
+Nolan was a sort of lay chaplain--a chaplain with a blue coat. I never
+asked about him. Everything in the ship was strange to me. I knew it was
+green to ask questions, and I suppose I thought there was a
+"Plain-Buttons" on every ship. We had him to dine in our mess once a
+week, and the caution was given that on that day nothing was to be said
+about home. But if they had told us not to say anything about the planet
+Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I should not have asked why; there
+were, a great many things which seemed to me to have as little reason. I
+first came to understand anything about "the man without a country" one
+day when we overhauled a dirty little schooner which had slaves on
+board. An officer was sent to take charge of her, and, after a few
+minutes, he sent back his boat to ask that some one might be sent him
+who could speak Portuguese. We were all looking over the rail when the
+message came, and we all wished we could interpret, when the captain
+asked who spoke Portuguese. But none of the officers did; and just as
+the captain was sending forward to ask if any of the people could, Nolan
+stepped out and said he should be glad to interpret, if the captain
+wished, as he understood the language. The captain thanked him, fitted
+out another boat with him, and in this boat it was my luck to go.
+
+When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never want
+to. Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of the
+nastiness. There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way of
+making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had had
+their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience'
+sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the schooner's crew. The
+negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the
+dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him
+in every dialect and _patois_ of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to
+the Parisian of Beledeljereed.
+
+As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had
+mounted in desperation, and said,--
+
+"For God's love, is there anybody who can make these wretches understand
+something? The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet them. I knocked
+that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him. And then I
+talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I'll be hanged if they
+understood that as well as they understood the English."
+
+Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking
+Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked
+for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.
+
+"Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; "and tell them that these
+rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough."
+
+Nolan "put that into Spanish,"[A]--that is, he explained it in such
+Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of
+the negroes as could understand them. Then there was such a yell of
+delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's
+feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous
+worship of Vaughan, as the _deus ex machina_ of the occasion.
+
+"Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, "that I will take them all to
+Cape Palmas."
+
+This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practically as far from the
+homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is, they
+would be eternally separated from home there. And their interpreters, as
+we could understand, instantly said, "_Ah, non Palmas_," and began to
+propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan was
+rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan
+eagerly what they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan's white forehead,
+as he hushed the men down, and said,--
+
+"He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us home, take us to our own
+country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and
+our own women.' He says he has an old father and mother, who will die,
+if they do not see him. And this one says he left his people all sick,
+and paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help
+them, and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home,
+and that he has never seen anybody from home since then. And this one
+says," choked out Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from his home in
+six months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon."
+
+Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan struggled through
+this interpretation. I, who did not understand anything of the passion
+involved in it, saw that the very elements were melting with fervent
+heat, and that something was to pay somewhere. Even the negroes
+themselves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan's agony, and Vaughan's
+almost equal agony of sympathy. As quick as he could get words, he
+said,--
+
+"Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they shall go to the Mountains of
+the Moon, if they will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White
+Desert, they shall go home!"
+
+And after some fashion Nolan said so. And then they all fell to kissing
+him again, and wanted to rub his nose with theirs.
+
+But he could not stand it long; and getting Vaughan to say he might go
+back, he beckoned me down into our boat. As we lay back in the
+stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to me,--"Youngster, let that
+show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and without
+a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a thing
+that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, and your
+country, pray God in His mercy to take you that instant home to His own
+heaven. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self, while you do
+everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write and send, and talk
+about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the farther you
+have to travel from it; and rush back to it, when you are free, as that
+poor black slave is doing now. And for your country, boy," and the words
+rattled in his throat, "and for that flag," and he pointed to the ship,
+"never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the
+service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to
+you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another
+flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag.
+Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind
+officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself,
+your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own
+mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, if those
+devils there had got hold of her to-day!"
+
+I was frightened to death by his calm, hard passion; but I blundered
+out, that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought of
+doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did, almost in
+a whisper, say,--"Oh, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your
+age!"
+
+I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abused, for I
+never told this story till now, which afterward made us great friends.
+He was very kind to me. Often he sat up, or even got up, at night to
+walk the deck with me, when it was my watch. He explained to me a great
+deal of my mathematics, and I owe to him my taste for mathematics. He
+lent me books, and helped me about my reading. He never alluded so
+directly to his story again; but from one and another officer I have
+learned, in thirty years, what I am telling. When we parted from him in
+St. Thomas harbor, at the end of our cruise, I was more sorry than I can
+tell. I was very glad to meet him again in 1830; and later in life, when
+I thought I had some influence in Washington, I moved heaven and earth
+to have him discharged. But it was like getting a ghost out of prison.
+They pretended there was no such man, and never was such a man. They
+will say so at the Department now! Perhaps they do not know. It will not
+be the first thing in the service of which the Department appears to
+know nothing!
+
+There is a story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when a
+party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. But this I
+believe to be a lie; or rather, it is a myth, _ben trovato_, involving a
+tremendous blowing-up with which he sunk Burr,--asking him how he liked
+to be "without a country." But it is clear, from Burr's life, that
+nothing of the sort could have happened; and I mention this only as an
+illustration of the stories which get a-going where there is the least
+mystery at bottom.
+
+So poor Philip Nolan had his wish fulfilled. I know but one fate more
+dreadful: it is the fate reserved for those men who shall have one day
+to exile themselves from their country because they have attempted her
+ruin, and shall have at the same time to see the prosperity and honor to
+which she rises when she has rid herself of them and their iniquities.
+The wish of poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not because his
+punishment was too great, but because his repentance was so clear, was
+precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who broke a soldier's
+oath two years ago, and of every Maury and Barron who broke a sailor's.
+I do not know how often they have repented. I do know that they have
+done all that in them lay that they might have no country,--that all the
+honors, associations, memories, and hopes which belong to "country"
+might be broken up into little shreds and distributed to the winds. I
+know, too, that their punishment, as they vegetate through what is left
+of life to them in wretched Boulognes and Leicester Squares, where they
+are destined to upbraid each other till they die, will have all the
+agony of Nolan's, with the added pang that every one who sees them will
+see them to despise and to execrate them. They will have their wish,
+like him.
+
+For him, poor fellow, he repented of his folly, and then, like a man,
+submitted to the fate he had asked for. He never intentionally added to
+the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him in hold.
+Accidents would happen; but they never happened from his fault.
+Lieutenant Truxton told me, that, when Texas was annexed, there was a
+careful discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of
+Nolan's handsome set of maps, and cut Texas out of it,--from the map of
+the world and the map of Mexico. The United States had been cut out when
+the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that to
+do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as
+Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was
+from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own table,
+when, for a short time, I was in command of the George Washington
+corvette, on the South-American station. We were lying in the La Plata,
+and some of the officers, who had been on shore, and had just joined
+again, were entertaining us with accounts of their misadventures in
+riding the half-wild horses of Buenos Ayres. Nolan was at table, and was
+in an unusually bright and talkative mood. Some story of a tumble
+reminded him of an adventure of his own, when he was catching wild
+horses in Texas with his brother Stephen, at a time when he must have
+been quite a boy. He told the story with a good deal of spirit,--so much
+so, that the silence which often follows a good story hung over the
+table for an instant, to be broken by Nolan himself. For he asked,
+perfectly unconsciously,--
+
+"Pray, what has become of Texas? After the Mexicans got their
+independence, I thought that province of Texas would come forward very
+fast. It is really one of the finest regions on earth; it is the Italy
+of this continent. But I have not seen or heard a word of Texas for near
+twenty years."
+
+There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never
+heard of Texas was that Texas and her affairs had been painfully cut out
+of his newspapers since Austin began his settlements; so that, while he
+read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of California,
+this virgin province, in which his brother had travelled so far, and, I
+believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and Williams, the two
+Texas men, looked grimly at each other, and tried not to laugh. Edward
+Morris had his attention attracted by the third link in the chain of the
+captain's chandelier. Watrous was seized with a convulsion of sneezing.
+Nolan himself saw that something was to pay, he did not know what. And
+I, as master of the feast, had to say,--
+
+"Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. Have you seen Captain Back's
+curious account of Sir Thomas Hoe's Welcome?"
+
+After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I wrote to him at least twice
+a year, for in that voyage we became even confidentially intimate; but
+he never wrote to me. The other men tell me that in those fifteen years
+he _aged_ very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he was still the
+same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that he ever was, bearing as
+best he could his self-appointed punishment,--rather less social,
+perhaps, with new men whom he did not know, but more anxious,
+apparently, than ever to serve and befriend and teach the boys, some of
+whom fairly seemed to worship him. And now it seems the dear old fellow
+is dead. He has found a home at last, and a country.
+
+Since writing this, and while considering whether or no I would print
+it, as a warning to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tatnalls of
+to-day of what it is to throw away a country, I have received from
+Danforth, who is on board the Levant, a letter which gives an account of
+Nolan's last hours. It removes all my doubts about telling this story.
+
+To understand the first words of the letter, the non-professional reader
+should remember that after 1817 the position of every officer who had
+Nolan in charge was one of the greatest delicacy. The Government had
+failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a man to do?
+Should he let him go? What, then, if he were called to account by the
+Department for violating the order of 1807? Should he keep him? What,
+then, if Nolan should be liberated some day, and should bring an action
+for false imprisonment or kidnapping against every man who had had him
+in charge? I urged and pressed this upon Southard, and I have reason to
+think that other officers did the same thing. But the Secretary always
+said, as they so often do at Washington, that there were no special
+orders to give, and that we must act on our own judgment. That means,
+"If you succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, you will be
+disavowed." Well, as Danforth says, all that is over now, though I do
+not know but I expose myself to a criminal prosecution on the evidence
+of the very revelation I am making.
+
+Here is the letter:--
+
+"_Levant_, 2° 2' S. @ 131° W.
+
+"DEAR FRED,--I try to find heart and life to tell you that it is all
+over with dear old Nolan. I have been with him on this voyage more than
+I ever was, and I can understand wholly now the way in which you used to
+speak of the dear old fellow. I could see that he was not strong, but I
+had no idea the end was so near. The doctor had been watching him very
+carefully, and yesterday morning came to me and told me that Nolan was
+not so well, and had not left his state-room,--a thing I never remember
+before. He had let the doctor come and see him as he lay there,--the
+first time the doctor had been in the state-room,--and he said he should
+like to see me. Oh, dear! do you remember the mysteries we boys used to
+invent about his room, in the old Intrepid days? Well, I went in, and
+there, to be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly
+as he gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help a
+glance round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the
+box he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and
+around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic eagle,
+with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just clasping the
+whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. The dear old boy saw my
+glance, and said, with a sad smile, 'Here, you see, I have a country!'
+And then he pointed to the foot of his bed, where I had not seen before
+a great map of the United Stales, as he had drawn it from memory, and
+which he had there to look upon as he lay. Quaint, queer old names were
+on it, in large letters: 'Indiana Territory,' 'Mississippi Territory,'
+and 'Louisiana Territory,' as I suppose our fathers learned such
+things: but the old fellow had patched in Texas, too; he had carried his
+western boundary all the way to the Pacific, but on that shore he had
+defined nothing.
+
+"'Oh, Danforth,' he said, 'I know I am dying. I cannot get home. Surely
+you will tell me something now?--Stop! stop! Do not speak till I say
+what I am sure you know, that there is not in this ship, that there is
+not in America,--God bless her!--a more loyal man than I. There cannot
+be a man who loves the old flag as I do, or prays for it as I do, or
+hopes for it as I do. There are thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I
+thank God for that, though I do not know what their names are. There has
+never been one taken away: I thank God for that. I know by that, that
+there has never been any successful Burr. Oh, Danforth, Danforth,' he
+sighed out, 'how like a wretched night's dream a boy's idea of personal
+fame or of separate sovereignty seems, when one looks back on it after
+such a life as mine! But tell me,--tell me something,--tell me
+everything, Danforth, before I die!'"
+
+"Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a monster that I had not told
+him everything before. Danger or no danger, delicacy or no delicacy, who
+was I, that I should have been acting the tyrant all this time over this
+dear, sainted old man, who had years ago expiated, in his whole
+manhood's life, the madness of a boy's treason? 'Mr. Nolan,' said I, 'I
+will tell you everything you ask about. Only, where shall I begin?'
+
+"Oh, the blessed smile that crept over his white face! and he pressed my
+hand and said, 'God bless you!' 'Tell me their names,' he said, and he
+pointed to the stars on the flag. 'The last I know is Ohio. My father
+lived in Kentucky. But I have guessed Michigan and Indiana and
+Mississippi,--that was where Fort Adams is,--they make twenty. But where
+are your other fourteen? You have not cut up any of the old ones, I
+hope?'
+
+"Well, that was not a bad text, and I told him the names, in as good
+order as I could, and he bade me take down his beautiful map and draw
+them in as I best could with my pencil. He was wild with delight about
+Texas, told me how his brother died there; he had marked a gold cross
+where he supposed his brother's grave was; and he had guessed at Texas.
+Then he was delighted as he saw California and Oregon;--that, he said,
+he had suspected partly, because he had never been permitted to land on
+that shore, though the ships were there so much. 'And the men,' said he,
+laughing, 'brought off a good deal besides furs.' Then he went
+back--heavens, how far!--to ask about the Chesapeake, and what was done
+to Barron for surrendering her to the Leopard, and whether Burr ever
+tried again,--and he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed.
+But in a moment that was over, and he said, 'God forgive me, for I am
+sure I forgive him.' Then he asked about the old war,--told me the true
+story of his serving the gun the day we took the Java,--asked about dear
+old David Porter, as he called him. Then he settled down more quietly,
+and very happily, to hear me tell in an hour the history of fifty years.
+
+"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as well
+as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about Fulton and
+the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; told
+him all I could think about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and Texas,
+and his own old Kentucky. And do you think he asked who was in command
+of the "Legion of the West." I told him it was a very gallant officer,
+named Grant, and that, by our last news, he was about to establish his
+head-quarters at Vicksburg. Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I worked that
+out on the map; it was about a hundred miles, more or less, above his
+old Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. 'It must be
+at old Vicks's plantation,' said he; 'well, that is a change!'
+
+"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of half
+a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now know what I
+told him,--of emigration, and the means of it,--of steamboats and
+railroads and telegraphs,--of inventions and books and literature,--of
+the colleges and West Point and the Naval School,--but with the queerest
+interruptions that ever you heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking
+all the accumulated questions of fifty-six years:
+
+"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and when I
+told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's son. He
+said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy himself, at
+some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a Kentuckian like
+himself, but I could not tell him of what family; he had worked up from
+the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am glad of that. As I have
+brooded and wondered, I have thought our danger was in keeping up those
+regular successions in the first families.' Then I got talking about my
+visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman,
+Harding; I told him about the Smithsonian and the Exploring Expedition;
+I told him about the Capitol,--and the statues for the pediment,--and
+Crawford's Liberty,--and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told him
+everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of his country
+and its prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a word
+about this infernal Rebellion!
+
+"And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He grew more
+and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I gave him a
+glass of water, but he just wet his lips, and told me not to go away.
+Then he asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of Public Prayer,'
+which lay there, and said, with a smile, that it would open at the
+right, place,--and so it did. There was his double red mark down the
+page; and I knelt down and read, and he repeated with me,--'For
+ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that,
+notwithstanding our manifold transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thou hast
+continued to us Thy marvellous kindness,'--and so to the end of that
+thanksgiving. Then he turned to the end of the same book, and I read the
+words more familiar to me,--'Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy
+favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the United
+States, and all others in authority,'--and the rest of the Episcopal
+collect. 'Danforth,' said he, 'I have repeated those prayers night and
+morning, it is now fifty-five years.' And then he said he would go to
+sleep. He bent me down over him and kissed me; and he said, 'Look in my
+Bible, Danforth, when I am gone.' And I went away.
+
+"But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired and would
+sleep. I knew he was happy, and I wanted him to be alone.
+
+"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had
+breathed his life away with a smile. He had something pressed close to
+his lips. It was his father's badge of the Order of Cincinnati.
+
+"We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper, at the place
+where he had marked the text,--
+
+"'They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed
+to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.'
+
+"On this slip of paper he had written,--
+
+"'Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not
+some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that
+my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it,--
+
+"'_In Memory of_
+
+"'PHILIP NOLAN,
+
+"'_Lieutenant in the Army of the United States._
+
+"'He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man
+deserved less at her hands.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.
+
+    It was the season when through all the land
+      The merle and mavis build, and building sing
+    Those lovely lyrics written by His hand
+      Whom Saxon Cædmon calls the Blithe-Heart King,--
+    When on the boughs the purple buds expand,
+      The banners of the vanguard of the Spring,
+    And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap,
+      And wave their fluttering signals from the steep.
+
+    The robin and the bluebird, piping loud,
+      Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee;
+    The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud
+      Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;
+    And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd,
+      Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,
+    Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said,
+      "Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bread!"
+
+    Across the Sound the birds of passage sailed,
+      Speaking some unknown language strange and sweet
+    Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed
+      The village with the cheers of all their fleet,--
+    Or, quarrelling together, laughed and railed
+      Like foreign sailors landed in the street
+    Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise
+      Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and boys.
+
+    Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth,
+      In fabulous days, some hundred years ago;
+    And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth,
+      Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow,
+    That mingled with the universal mirth,
+      Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe:
+    They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words
+      To swift destruction the whole race of birds.
+
+    And a town-meeting was convened straightway
+      To set a price upon the guilty heads
+    Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay,
+      Levied black-mail upon the garden-beds
+    And cornfields, and beheld without dismay
+      The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds,--
+    The skeleton that waited at their feast,
+      Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased.
+
+    Then from his house, a temple painted white,
+      With fluted columns, and a roof of red,
+    The Squire came forth,--august and splendid sight!--
+      Slowly descending, with majestic tread,
+    Three flights of steps, nor looking left nor right;
+      Down the long street he walked, as one who said,
+    "A town that boasts inhabitants like me
+      Can have no lack of good society!"
+
+    The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere,
+      The instinct of whose nature was to kill;
+    The wrath of God he preached from year to year,
+      And read with fervor Edwards on the Will;
+    His favorite pastime was to slay the deer
+      In Summer on some Adirondack hill;
+    E'en now, while walking down the rural lane,
+      He lopped the way-side lilies with his cane.
+
+    From the Academy, whose belfry crowned
+      The hill of Science with its vane of brass,
+    Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round,
+      Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass,
+    And all absorbed in reveries profound
+      Of fair Almira in the upper class,
+    Who was, as in a sonnet he had said,
+      As pure as water, and as good as bread.
+
+    And next the Deacon issued from his door,
+      In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as snow;
+    A suit of sable bombazine he wore;
+      His form was ponderous, and his step was slow;
+    There never was so wise a man before;
+      He seemed the incarnate "Well, I told you so!"
+    And to perpetuate his great renown,
+      There was a street named after him in town.
+
+    These came together in the new town-hall,
+      With sundry farmers from the region round;
+    The Squire presided, dignified and tall,
+      His air impressive and his reasoning sound.
+    Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small;
+      Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found,
+    But enemies enough, who every one
+      Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun.
+
+    When they had ended, from his place apart,
+      Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong,
+    And, trembling like a steed before the start,
+      Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng;
+    Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart
+      To speak out what was in him, clear and strong,
+    Alike regardless of their smile or frown,
+      And quite determined not to be laughed down.
+
+    "Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,
+      From his Republic banished without pity
+    The Poets; in this little town of yours,
+      You put to death, by means of a Committee,
+    The ballad-singers and the Troubadours,
+      The street-musicians of the heavenly city,
+    The birds, who make sweet music for us all
+      In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.
+
+    "The thrush, that carols at the dawn of day
+      From the green steeples of the piny wood;
+    The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay,
+      Jargoning like a foreigner at his food;
+    The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray,
+      Flooding with melody the neighborhood;
+    Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng
+      That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song.
+
+    "You slay them all! and wherefore? For the gain
+      Of a scant handful more or less of wheat,
+    Or rye, or barley, or some other grain,
+      Scratched up at random by industrious feet
+    Searching for worm or weevil after rain,
+      Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet
+    As are the songs these uninvited guests
+      Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts.
+
+    "Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?
+      Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught
+    The dialect they speak, where melodies
+      Alone are the interpreters of thought?
+    Whose household words are songs in many keys,
+      Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!
+    Whose habitations in the tree-tops even
+      Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!
+
+    "Think, every morning when the sun peeps through
+      The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove,
+    How jubilant the happy birds renew
+      Their old melodious madrigals of love!
+    And when you think of this, remember, too,
+      'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
+    The awakening continents, from shore to shore,
+      Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.
+
+    "Think of your woods and orchards without birds!
+      Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams,
+    As in an idiot's brain remembered words
+      Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!
+    Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds
+      Make up for the lost music, when your teams
+    Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more
+      The feathered gleaners follow to your door?
+
+    "What! would you rather see the incessant stir
+      Of insects in the windrows of the hay,
+    And hear the locust and the grasshopper
+      Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play?
+    Is this more pleasant to you than the whirr
+      Of meadow-lark, and its sweet roundelay,
+    Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take
+      Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake?
+
+    "You call them thieves and pillagers; but know
+      They are the winged wardens of your farms,
+    Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,
+      And from your harvests keep a hundred harms;
+    Even the blackest of them all, the crow,
+      Renders good service as your man-at-arms,
+    Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
+      And crying havoc on the slug and snail.
+
+    "How can I teach your children gentleness,
+      And mercy to the weak, and reverence
+    For Life, which, in its weakness or excess,
+      Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence,
+    Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less
+      The self-same light, although averted hence,
+    When by your laws, your actions, and your speech,
+      You contradict the very things I teach?"
+
+    With this he closed; and through the audience went
+      A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves;
+    The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent
+      Their yellow heads together like their sheaves:
+    Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment
+      Who put their trust in bullocks and in beeves.
+    The birds were doomed; and, as the record shows,
+      A bounty offered for the heads of crows.
+
+    There was another audience out of reach,
+      Who had no voice nor vote in making laws,
+    But in the papers read his little speech,
+      And crowned his modest temples with applause;
+    They made him conscious, each one more than each,
+      He still was victor, vanquished in their cause:
+    Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee,
+      O fair Almira at the Academy!
+
+    And so the dreadful massacre began;
+      O'er fields and orchards, and o'er woodland crests,
+    The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran.
+      Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts,
+    Or wounded crept away from sight of man,
+      While the young died of famine in their nests:
+    A slaughter to be told in groans, not words,
+      The very St. Bartholomew of Birds!
+
+    The Summer came, and all the birds were dead;
+      The days were like hot coals; the very ground
+    Was burned to ashes; in the orchards fed
+      Myriads of caterpillars, and around
+    The cultivated fields and garden-beds
+      Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found
+    No foe to check their march, till they had made
+      The land a desert without leaf or shade.
+
+    Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town,
+      Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly
+    Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down
+      The canker-worms upon the passers-by,--
+    Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown,
+      Who shook them off with just a little cry;
+    They were the terror of each favorite walk,
+      The endless theme of all the village-talk.
+
+    The farmers grew impatient, but a few
+      Confessed their error, and would not complain;
+    For, after all, the best thing one can do,
+      When it is raining, is to let it rain.
+    Then they repealed the law, although they knew
+      It would not call the dead to life again;
+    As school-boys, finding their mistake too late,
+      Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate.
+
+    That year in Killingworth the Autumn came
+      Without the light of his majestic look,
+    The wonder of the falling tongues of flame,
+      The illumined pages of his Doom's-Day Book.
+    A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame,
+      And drowned themselves despairing in the brook,
+    While the wild wind went moaning everywhere,
+      Lamenting the dead children of the air.
+
+    But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen,
+      A sight that never yet by bard was sung,--
+    As great a wonder as it would have been,
+      If some dumb animal had found a tongue:
+    A wagon, overarched with evergreen,
+      Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung,
+    All full of singing-birds, came down the street,
+      Filling the air with music wild and sweet.
+
+    From all the country round these birds were brought,
+      By order of the town, with anxious quest,
+    And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought
+      In woods and fields the places they loved best,
+    Singing loud canticles, which many thought
+      Were satires to the authorities addressed,
+    While others, listening in green lanes, averred
+      Such lovely music never had been heard.
+
+    But blither still and louder carolled they
+      Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know
+    It was the fair Almira's wedding-day,
+      And everywhere, around, above, below,
+    When the Preceptor bore his bride away,
+      Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow,
+    And a new heaven bent over a new earth
+      Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS.
+
+THE GARRET.
+
+
+Would you know something of the way in which men live in Paris? Would
+you penetrate a little beneath the brilliant, glossy epidermis of the
+French capital? Would you know other shadows and other sights than those
+you find in "Galignani's Messenger" under the rubric, "Stranger's
+Diary"? Listen to us. We hope to be brief. We hope to succeed in
+tangling your interest. We don't hope to make you merry,--oh, no, no,
+no! we don't hope that! Life isn't a merry thing anywhere,--least of all
+in Paris; for, look you, in modern Babylon there are so many calls for
+money, (which Southey called "a huge evil" everywhere,) there are so
+many temptations to expense, one has to keep a most cool head and a most
+silent heart to live in Paris and to avoid debt. Few are able
+successfully to achieve this charmed life. The Duke of Wellington, who
+was in debt but twice in his life,--first, when he became of age, and,
+like all young men, _felt_ his name by indorsing it on negotiable paper,
+and placing it in a tradesman's book; secondly, when he lived in Paris,
+master of all France by consent of Europe,--the Duke of Wellington
+involved himself in debt in Paris to the amount of a million of dollars.
+Blücher actually ruined himself in the city he conquered. The last heir
+to the glorious name and princely estates of Von Kaunitz lost everything
+he possessed, even his dignity, in a few years of life in Paris. Judge
+of the resistless force and fury of the great maelström!
+
+And I hope, after you have measured some degree of its force and of its
+fury by these illustrious examples, that you may be softened into
+something like pity and terror, when I tell you how a poor fellow, who
+had no name but that he made with his pen, who commanded no money save
+only that he obtained by transmuting ink and paper into gold, strove
+against it with various success, and often was vanquished. You will not
+judge him too harshly, will you? You will not be the first to throw a
+stone at him, neither will you add your stone, to those that may be
+thrown at him: hands enough are raised against him! We do not
+altogether absolve him for many a shortcoming; but we crave permission
+to keep our censure and our sighs for our study. Permit us to forbear
+arraigning him at the public bar. He is dead,--and everybody respects
+the dead, except profligate editors, prostitutes, and political
+clergymen. Besides, his life was such a hard one,--so full of clouds,
+with so few gleams of sunshine,--so agitated by storm,--so bereaved of
+halcyon days,--'twould be most cruel to deny him the grave's dearest
+privilege, peace and quiet. Amen! Amen! with all my heart to thy
+benediction and prayer, O priest! as, aspersing his lifeless remains
+with holy-water, thou sayest, _Requiescat!_ So mote it be! _Requiescat!
+Requiescat! Requiescat in pace!_
+
+Approach, then, reader, with softest step, and we will, in lowest
+whispers, pour into your ear the story of the battle of life as 'tis
+fought in Paris. We will show you the fever and the heartache, the
+corroding care and the panting labor which oppress life in Paris. Then
+will you say, No wonder they all die of a shattered heart or consumed
+brain at Paris! No wonder De Balzac died of heart-disease! No wonder
+Frederic Souliè's heart burst! No wonder Bruffault went crazy, and
+Eugene Sue's heart collapsed, and Malitourne lives at the mad-house! It
+is killing!
+
+We will show you this life, not by didactic description, but by example,
+by telling you the story of one who lived this life. He was born in the
+lowest social station, he battled against every disadvantage, the
+hospital was his sick-chamber, his funeral was at the Government's
+expense, and everybody eminent in literature and art followed his
+remains to the grave, over which, after a proper interval of time, a
+monument was erected by public subscription to his memory. His father
+was a porter at the door of one of the houses in the Rue des Trois
+Frères. He added the tailor's trade to his poorly paid occupation. A
+native of Savoy, he possessed the mountaineer's taciturnity and love of
+home. War carried him to Paris. The rigors of conscription threw him
+into the ranks of the army; and when the first Empire fell, the child of
+Savoy made Paris his home, married a young seamstress, and obtained the
+lodge of house No. 5 Rue des Trois Frères. This marriage gave to French
+letters Henry Murger. It had no other issue.
+
+Henry Murger was born March 24th, 1822. His earlier years seemed likely
+to be his last; he was never well; his mother gave many a tear and many
+a vigil to the sickly child she thought every week she must lose. To
+guard his days, she placed him, to gratify a Romish superstition, under
+the special protection of the Blessed Virgin, and in accordance with
+custom clad him in the Madonna's livery of blue. His costume of a blue
+smock, blue pantaloons, and a blue cap procured for him the name of
+_Bleuet_, or, as we should perhaps say, Blueling, if indeed we may coin
+for the occasion one of those familiar, affectionate diminutives, so
+common in the Italian, rarer in the French, and almost unknown in our
+masculine tongue. An only child, and an invalid, poor Bleuet was of
+course a spoiled child, his mother's darling and pet. His wishes, his
+sick-child's caprices were her law, and she gratified them at the cost
+of many a secret privation. She seemed to know--maternal love hath often
+the faculty of second-sight--that her poor boy, though only the child of
+the humblest parentage, was destined to rise one day far above the
+station in which he was born. She attired him better than children of
+his class commonly dressed. She polished his manners as much as she
+could,--and 'twas much, for women, even of the lowest classes, have
+gentle tastes and delicacy. She could not bear to think that her darling
+should one day sit cross-legged on the paternal bench, and ply needle
+and scissors. She breathed her own aspirations into the boy's ears, and
+filled his mind with them. O mothers, ye do make us what ye please! Your
+tears and caresses are the rain and the sun that mature the seed which
+time and the accidents of life sow in our tender minds! She filled him
+with pride,--which is a cardinal virtue, let theologians say what they
+will,--and kept him aloof from the little blackguards who toss and
+tumble over the curb-stones, losing that dignity which is man's
+chastity, and removing one barrier between them and crime.
+
+He was, even in his earlier years, exquisitely sensitive. La Blache, the
+famous singer, occupied a suite of rooms in the house of which his
+father was porter. One day La Blache's daughter, (now Madame Thalberg,)
+who was confined to her rooms by a fall which had dislocated her ankle,
+sent for the sprightly lad. He was in love with her, just as boys will
+adore a pretty face without counting years or differences of position
+(at that happy age a statesman and a stage-driver seem equal,--if,
+indeed, the latter does not appear to occupy the more enviable position
+in life). He dressed himself with all the elegance he could command, and
+obeyed Mademoiselle La Blache's summons, building all sorts of castles
+in the air as he arranged his toilet and while he was climbing the
+staircase. His affected airs were so laughable, she told him in a
+mock-heroic manner what she wished of him, and probably with something
+of that paternal talent which had shaken so many opera-houses with
+applause:--"I have sent for you to teach me the song I hear you sing
+every day." This downfall from his castles in the air, and her manner,
+brought blushes to his cheek and flames to his eyes, which amused her
+all the more; so she went on,--"Oh, don't be afraid! I will pay--two
+ginger-cakes a lesson." So sensitive was the child's nature, this
+innocent pleasantry wounded him with such pain, that he fell on the
+carpet sobbing and with nerves all jangled. How the pangs poverty
+attracts must have wrung him!--But let us not anticipate the course of
+events.
+
+As he advanced in life he outgrew his disease, and became a
+chubby-cheeked boy, health's own picture. He was the favorite of the
+neighborhood, his mother's pride, and the source of many a heartache to
+her; for, as he grew towards manhood, his father insisted every day more
+strenuously that he should learn some trade. His poor mother obstinately
+opposed this scheme. Many were the boisterous quarrels on this subject
+the boy witnessed, sobbing between his parents; for his father was a
+rough, ill-bred mountaineer, who had reached Paris through the barrack
+and the battle-field, neither of which tends to smooth the asperities of
+character. The woman was tenacious; for what will not a mother's heart
+brave? what will it not endure? Those natures which are gentle as water
+are yet deep and changeless as the ocean. Of course the wife carried her
+point. Who can resist a mother struggling for her son? The boy was
+placed as copying-clerk in an attorney's office. All the world over, the
+law is the highway to literature. The lad, however, was uneducated; he
+wrote well, and this was enough to enable him to copy the law-papers of
+the office, but he was ignorant of the first elements of grammar, and
+his language, although far better than that of the lads of his class in
+life, was shocking to polite ears. It could not well be otherwise, as
+his only school was a petty public primary school, and he was but
+fourteen years old when his father ordered him to begin to earn his
+daily bread. But he was not only endowed with a literary instinct, he
+had, too, that obstinate perseverance which would, as one of his friends
+said of him, "have enabled him to learn to read by looking at the signs
+in the streets, and to cipher by glancing at the numbers on the houses."
+
+Murger always attributed a great deal of influence upon his life to the
+accident which had given his father artists for tenants. Not only La
+Blache, but Garcia and his incomparable daughters, Marie Malibran and
+Pauline Viardot, and, after they left, Baroilhet, the opera-singer, had
+rooms in the house. The handsome boy was constantly with them, and this
+early and long and intimate association with Art gave him elegance and
+grace and vivacity. The seeds sown during such intercourse may for years
+lie buried beneath the cares and thoughts of a laborious life, and yet
+grow and bring forth fruit as soon as a more propitious atmosphere
+environs them. Comrades in the office where he wrote likewise had
+influence upon his career. He found among the clerks two brothers,
+Pierre and Emile Bisson, gentlemen who have now attained reputation by
+their admirable photographic landscapes, especially of Alpine scenery.
+They were then as poor and as uneducated as Henry Murger. They lived in
+a house inhabited by several painters, from whom they caught a love and
+some knowledge of Art. They communicated the contagion to their new
+comrade, and the moment office-hours were over all three hastened, as
+fast as they could go, to the nearest public drawing-school. All three
+aspired to the fame of Rubens and of Paul Veronese. Murger had no talent
+for painting. One day, after he had been guilty of some pictures which
+are said to be--for they are still in existence--enough to make the hair
+of a connoisseur of painting stand on end, Pierre Bisson said to him,
+"Throw away the pencil, Murger; you will never make a painter." Murger
+accepted the decree without appeal. He felt that painting was not _in
+him_.[B] He took up the pen and wrote poetry. There is nothing equal to
+the foolhardiness of youth. It grapples with the most difficult
+subjects, and _knows_ it can master them. As all of Murger's friends
+were painters, except his father and mother, and they were illiterate,
+his insane prose seemed as fine poetry as was ever written, because it
+turned somersets on feet. Nobody noticed whether it was on five or six
+or fifteen feet. His father, however, had heard what a dangerous disease
+of the purse poetry was, and forbade his son from trying to catch
+it,--vowing, that, if he heard again of its continued pursuit, he would
+immediately make a tailor of him. Of course, the threat did not deter
+Murger from the chase; but instead of pursuing it openly, he pursued it
+by stealth. The sportsman became a poacher. Pierre and Émile Bisson
+quitted the attorney's office and opened a studio: they were painters
+now. Henry Murger managed to filch an hour every day from the time
+allotted to the errands of the office about Paris to spend in the studio
+of his friends, where he would write his poetry and hide his
+manuscripts. Here he made the acquaintance of artists and literary young
+men as unfledged as himself, but who possessed the advantages of a
+regular scholastic education. They taught him the rules of prosody and
+the exercises proper to overcome the mere mechanical difficulties of
+versification. This society made Murger more than ever ambitious; a
+secret instinct told him that the pen was the arm with which he would
+win fame and fortune. He determined to abandon the law-office.
+
+His father was furious enough at this resolution, and more than one
+painful scene took place between them. The boy was within an ace of
+bring kicked out of doors, when his troubles reached the ears of a
+literary tenant of the house: this was no other than Monsieur de Jouy, a
+member of the French Academy, and quite famous in his day for "L'Ermite
+de la Chaussée d'Antin," and a tragedy, "Sylla," which Talma's genius
+threw such beams upon as made it radiant, and for an imprisonment for
+political offences, a condiment without which French reputations seem to
+lack savor. Heaven knows what would have become of the poor boy but for
+this intervention, as his mother was dead and he was all friendless.
+Monsieur de Jouy procured him the place of private secretary to Count
+Tolstoy, a Russian nobleman established by the Czar in Paris as his
+political correspondent. The salary given was meagre enough, but in this
+world all things have a relative as well as an intrinsic value, and
+eight dollars a month seemed to the poor lad, who had never yet earned
+a cent, a fragment of El Dorado or of Peru. It gave him independence.
+His contemporaries have described him as gay, free, easy, and happy at
+this period. He had ceased to be dependent upon anybody; he lived upon
+his own earnings; he was in the full bloom of health and youth; and the
+horizon before him, even though clouded, wore all the colors of the
+rainbow. His father gave him a garret in the house, and continued to
+allow him a seat at the table, but he made young Murger give him six of
+the eight dollars earned. The rest of his salary was spent among the
+boxes of books which line the parapet of the Paris quays,--a sort of
+literary Morgue or dead-house, where the still-born and deceased
+children of the press are exhibited, to challenge the pity of
+passers-by, and so escape the corner grocer and the neighboring
+trunk-maker. Here Murger purchased all the volumes of new poems he could
+discover. When his friends jested him upon his wasteful extravagance in
+buying verse good for nothing but to cheapen the value of the paper on
+which it was printed, he replied, that a poet should keep himself
+informed of the progress of Art. He has since confessed that his object
+in buying this trash was simply to compare his efforts with those which
+had been deemed worthy to see print. His ambition then was to be pale,
+consumptive, to drink the dregs of poverty's poisoned chalice, and to
+toss on a hospital-bed. He found it hard work to gratify these desires.
+His plethoric person, his rubicund cheeks and high health, gave him much
+more the appearance of a jovial monk of Bolton Abbey than of a Werther
+or a Chatterton or a Lara. But as he was determined to look the poet of
+the Byron school, for a fortnight he followed a regimen "which would
+have given phthisis to Mount Atlas"; he studied in some medical treatise
+the symptoms of the consumption, and, after wading through thirty miles
+of the mud and mire to be found in the environs of Paris, drenched to
+the skin by an autumnal rain, he went to the hospital and was admitted.
+He was delighted. He instantly wrote an ode to "Hallowed Misery," dated
+from the "House of Woe," sent it off to the Atlantic Monthly of Paris,
+and lay in bed dreaming he should find himself famous next morning, and
+receive the visits of all Paris, from Monsieur Guizot, then
+Prime-Minister, to the most callous poetaster of the Latin Quarter, and
+be besieged by every publisher, armed with bags full of money. He woke
+the next morning to find himself in perfect health, and to hear the
+physician order him to clear out of the hospital. He had no news from
+the magazine nor from Monsieur Guizot.
+
+'Tis ill playing with edge-tools! The hospital is not to be coquetted
+with. There is no such thing as romping with misery. One might as well
+amuse himself toying with the rattlesnake or playing with fluoric acid.
+Wait a moment, and the hospital will reappear in the story of his life,
+sombre, pitiless, fatal, as it is in reality. A little patience, and
+misery will come, in its gaunt, wolf-like shape, to harry and to harass.
+Play not with fire!
+
+Distress soon came. The young poet fell into bad company. He came home
+late one night. His father scolded: 'tis a porter's infirmity to fret at
+late-comers. Another night he came home later. The scolding became a
+philippic. Again he did not come home at all. His father ordered him
+never more to darken his doors. Murger took him at his word, and went to
+share a friend's bed in another garret. The friend was little better off
+in worldly goods; he lived in a chamber for which he paid twenty dollars
+a year, and which was furnished "with one of those lots of furniture
+which are the terror of landlords, especially when quarter-day comes."
+Murger now began to know what it was to be poor, to go to bed without
+having tasted a morsel of food the whole day, to be dressed ludicrously
+shabby. He had never before known these horrors of poverty; for under
+his father's roof the meals, though humble, were always regularly
+served, and quarter-day never came. As eight dollars,--less by a great
+deal than an ordinary servant earns by sweeping rooms and washing
+dishes, besides being fed and lodged,--which Count Tolstoy gave his
+secretary, was not enough to enable Murger to live, he tried to add
+something to his income by his pen. He wrote petty tales for children's
+magazines, and exerted himself to gain admission into other and more
+profitable periodicals, but for a long time without success. Many and
+many a sheet must be blotted before the apprentice-writer can merit even
+the lowest honors of print: can it be called an honor to see printed
+lines forgotten before the book is closed? Yet even this dubious honor
+cannot be won until after days and nights have been given to literary
+composition.
+
+Murger was for some time uncertain what course to adopt. His father sent
+him word that the best thing he could do would be to get the place of
+body-servant to some gentleman or of waiter in some _café_! He himself
+half determined, in his hours of depression, when despair was his only
+hope, to ship as a sailor on board some man-of-war. He would at other
+times return to his first love, and vow he would be a painter; then
+music would solicit him; medicine next, and then surgery would tangle
+his eyes. These excursions, which commonly lasted three months each,
+were not fruitless; they increased his stock of information, and
+supplied him with some of his most striking images. He became joyous
+about this period, and his hilarity _broke out_ all at once. One night
+Count Tolstoy had ordered Murger to color several thousand strategic
+maps, and, after he had postponed the labor repeatedly, he asked several
+of his friends to aid him. They sat up all night. He suddenly became
+very gay, and told story after story in a most vivid and humorous
+manner. His friends roared with laughter, and one of them begged him to
+abandon poetry and become a prose-writer, predicting for him a most
+brilliant career. But poetry has its peculiar fascinations, and is not
+relinquished without painful throes. Murger refused to cease versifying.
+
+He had pernicious habits of labor. He never rose until three o'clock in
+the afternoon, and never began to write until after the lamp was
+lighted. He wrote until daybreak. If sleep came, if inspiration lagged,
+he would resort to coffee, and drink it in enormous quantities. One may
+turn night into day without great danger, upon condition of leading a
+temperate and regular life; for Nature has wonderful power of adapting
+herself to all circumstances, upon condition that irregularity itself he
+regular in its irregularity. He fell into this habit from poverty. He
+was too poor to buy fuel and comfortable clothes, so he lay in bed to
+keep warm; he worked in bed,--reading, writing, correcting, buried under
+the comfortable bedclothes. He would sometimes drink "as many as six
+ounces of coffee." "I am literally killing myself," he said. "You must
+care me of drinking coffee; I reckon upon you." His room-mate suggested
+to him that they should close the windows, draw the curtains, and light
+the lamp in the daytime, to deceive habit by counterfeiting night. They
+made the attempt in vain. The roar of a great city penetrates through
+wall and curtain. They could not work. Inspiration ceased to flow.
+Murger returned to his protracted vigils, and to the stimulus of coffee,
+and never more attempted to break away from them. This sort of life, his
+frequent privations, his innumerable disappointments, drove him in good
+earnest to the hospital. He announces it in this way to a friend:--
+
+    "_Hospital Saint Louis, 23 May, 1842_.
+
+    "MY DEAR FRIEND,--Here I am again at the hospital. Two days after
+    I sent you my last letter I woke up feeling as if my whole body
+    were on fire. I felt as if I were enveloped in flames. I was
+    literally burning. I lighted my candle, and was alarmed by the
+    spectacle my poor self presented. I was red from my feet to my
+    head,--as red as a boiled lobster, neither more nor less. So I
+    went to the hospital this morning, as early as I could go, and
+    here I am,--Henry IV.'s ward, bed No. 10. The doctors were
+    astonished at my case; they say it is _purpura_. I should say it
+    was! The purple of the Roman emperors was not, I am very sure, as
+    purple as my envelope.... My disease is now in a stage of
+    reaction, and the doctors do not know what to do, I cannot walk
+    thirty paces without stumbling. I have thousands of trumpets
+    blowing flourishes in my ears. I have been bled, re-bled,
+    mustard-plastered, all in vain. I have swallowed down my poor
+    throat more arsenic than any three melodramatists of the
+    Boulevards. I do not know how all this is going to end. The
+    physician tells me that he will cure me, but that it will take
+    time. To-day they are going to put all sorts of things on my body,
+    and among them leeches to remove my giddiness.... I am greatly
+    fatigued by my life here, and I pass some; very gloomy days,--and
+    they are the gloomier, because there is not a single day but I see
+    in the ward next to mine men die thick as flies. A hospital may be
+    very poetical, but it is, too, a sad, sad place."
+
+Many and many a time afterwards did he return to the hospital, all sad
+as it was. His garret was sadder in _purpura's_ hour. Want had taken up
+its abode with him. He wanted bread often. His clothes went and came
+with painful regularity from his back to the pawnbroker's. His father
+refused to do anything for him. "He saw me without bread to put in my
+mouth, and offered me not a crumb, although he had money belonging to me
+in his hands. He saw me in boots full of holes, and gave me to
+understand that I was not to come to see him in such plight." Such was
+the poor fellow's distress, that he was almost glad when the _purpura_,
+with its intolerable pains, returned, that he might crawl to the
+hospital, where he could say, that, "bad as the hospital-fare is, it is
+at least certain, and is, after all, ten times better than that I am
+able to earn. I can eat as many as two or three plates of soup, but then
+I am obliged to change my costume to do so, for it is only by cheating
+that one can get it." But all the time he was in the hospital he was
+tormented by the fear that he would lose during his absence his wretched
+place as Count Tolstoy's secretary, and which, wretched as it was,
+nevertheless was something,--was as a plank in the great ocean to one
+who, it gone, saw nothing but water around him, and he no swimmer. He
+did lose the situation, because one day he stayed at home to finish a
+poem, instead of appearing at his desk. The misfortune came at the worst
+possible time. It came when he owed two quarters' rent, fifteen dollars,
+to his landlord, and ten dollars to other people. "I am half dead of
+hunger. I am at the end of the rope. I must get a place somewhere, or
+blow my brains out." The mental anguish and physical privation brought
+back the _purpura_. He went to the hospital,--for the fifth time in
+eleven months and seven days,--all his furniture was sold for rent, and
+he knew not where he was to go when he quitted the hospital. Yet he did
+not give up in despair. "Notwithstanding all this, I declare to you, my
+dear friend," he wrote, "that, when I feel somewhat satisfied with what
+I have written, I am ready to clap my hands at life.... Everything is
+against me, and yet I shall none the less remain in the arena. The wild
+beasts may devour me: so be it!"
+
+After leaving the hospital, he formed the acquaintance of Monsieur Jules
+Fleury, or, as he is better known to the world of letters, Monsieur
+Champfleury,--for, with that license the French take with their names,
+so this rising novelist styles himself. This acquaintance was of great
+advantage to Henry Murger. Monsieur Champfleury was a young man of
+energy and will, who took a practical view of life, and believed that a
+pen could in good hands earn bread as well as a yardstick, and command,
+what the latter cannot hope, fame. He believed that independence was
+the first duty of a literary man, and that true dignity consists in
+diligent labor rather than in indolent railing at fate and the scoffings
+of "uncomprehended" genius. Monsieur Champfleury was no poet. He
+detested poetry, and his accurate perception of the world showed him
+that poetry is a good deal like paper money, which depends for its
+current value rather upon the credit possessed by the issuer than upon
+its own intrinsic value. He pressed Murger to abandon poetry and take to
+prose. He was successful, and Murger labored to acquire bread and
+reputation by his prose-compositions. He practised his hand in writing
+vaudevilles, dramas, tales, and novels, and abandoned poetry until
+better days, when his life should have a little more silk and a little
+more gold woven into its woof. But the hours of literary apprenticeship
+even of prose-writers are long and arduous, especially to those whose
+only patrimony is their shadow in the sun. Monsieur Champfleury has
+given in one of his works an interesting picture of their life in
+common. We translate the painful narration:--
+
+    "T'other evening I was sitting in my chimney-corner looking over a
+    mountain of papers, notes, unfinished articles, and fine novels
+    begun, but which will never have an end. I discovered amid my
+    landlords' receipts for house-rent (all of which I keep with great
+    care, just to prove to myself that they are really and truly paid)
+    a little copy-book, which was narrow and long, like some mediæval
+    piece of sculpture. I opened this little blue-backed copy-book; it
+    bore the title, ACCOUNT-BOOK. How many memories were contained in
+    this little copy-book! What a happy life is literary life, seen
+    after a lapse of five or six years! I could not sleep for thinking
+    of that little copy-book, so I rose and sat down at my table to
+    discharge on these sheets all the delightful blue-backed copy-book
+    memories which haunted my head. Were any stranger to pick up this
+    little copy-book in the street, he would think it belonged to some
+    poor, honest family. I dare say you have forgotten the little
+    copy-book, although three-fourths of its manuscript is in your
+    hand-writing. I am going to recall its origin to you.
+
+    "Nine years ago we lived together, and we possessed between us
+    fourteen dollars a month. Full of confidence in the future, we
+    rented two rooms in the Rue de Vaugirard for sixty dollars a year.
+    Youth reckons not. You spoke to the porter's wife of such a
+    sumptuous set of furniture that she let the rooms to you on your
+    honest face without asking references. Poor woman, what thrills of
+    horror ran through her when she saw our furniture set down before
+    her door! You had six plates, three of which were of porcelain, a
+    Shakspeare, the works of Victor Hugo, a chest of drawers in its
+    dotage, and a Phrygian cap. By some extraordinary chance, I had
+    two mattresses, a hundred and fifty volumes, an arm-chair, two
+    plain chairs, a table, and a skull. The idea of making a grand
+    sofa belongs to you, I confess; but it was a deplorable idea. We
+    sawed off the four feet of a cot-bedstead and made it rest on the
+    floor; the consequence of which was, that the cot-bedstead proved
+    to be utterly worthless. The porter's wife took pity upon us, and
+    lent us a second cot-bedstead, which 'furnished' your chamber,
+    which was likewise adorned with several dusty souvenirs you hung
+    on the wall, such as a woman's glove, a velvet mask, and various
+    other objects which love had hallowed.
+
+    "The first week passed away in the most delightful manner. We
+    stayed at home, we worked hard, we smoked a great deal. I have
+    found among this mountain of papers a blank sheet on which is
+    written,--
+
+          Beatrix,
+          A Drama in Five Acts,
+          By Henry Murger,
+          Played at the ---- Theatre on the ---- day of 18--.
+
+    This sheet was torn out of an enormous blank copy-book; for you
+    were guilty of the execrable habit of using all our paper to write
+    nothing else but titles of dramas; you wrote 'Played' as seriously
+    as could be, just to see what effect the title-page would produce.
+    Our paper disappeared too fast in this way. Luckily, when all of
+    it had disappeared, you discovered, Heaven knows where or how,
+    some old atlas of geography whose alternate leaves were blank,--a
+    discovery which enabled us to do without the stationer.
+
+    "Hard times began to press after the first week flew away. We had
+    a long discussion, in which each hurled at the other reproaches on
+    the spendthrift prodigality with which we threw away our money.
+    The discussion ended in our agreeing, that, the moment the next
+    instalment of our income should be received, I should keep a
+    severe account of our expenses, in order that no more quarrels
+    should disturb the harmony of our household, each of us taking
+    care every day to examine the accounts. This is the little book I
+    have found. How simple, how touching, how laconic, how full of
+    souvenirs it is!
+
+    "We were wonderfully honest on the first of every month. I read at
+    the date of November 1st, 1843, 'Paid Madame Bastien forty cents
+    for tobacco due.' We paid, too, the grocer, the restaurant, (I
+    declare there is 'restaurant' on the book!) the coal-dealer, etc.
+    The first day of this month was a merry day, I see: 'Spent at the
+    _café_ seven cents'; a piece of extravagance for which I am sure
+    you must have scolded me that evening. The same day you bought
+    (the sight still makes me tremble!) thirteen cents' worth of
+    pipes. The second of November we bought twenty-two cents' worth of
+    ribbon: this enormous quantity of ribbon was purchased to give the
+    last touches to our famous sofa. Our sofa's history would fill
+    volumes. It did us yeoman's service. My pallet on the floor,
+    formed of one single mattress and sheets without counterpane, made
+    a poor show in our 'drawing-room,' especially as a
+    restaurant-keeper lived in our house, and you pretended, that, if
+    we made him bring our meals up to our 'drawing-room,' he would be
+    so dazzled by our splendor he could not refuse us credit. I
+    demurred, that the odd appearance of my pallet had nothing capable
+    of fascinating a tradesman's eye; whereupon we agreed that we
+    would spread over it a piece of violet silk which came, Heaven
+    knows where from; but, unfortunately, the silk was not large
+    enough by one-third. After long reflection we thought the library
+    might be turned to some account: the quarto volumes of Shakspeare,
+    thrown with cunning negligence on the pallet, hid the narrowness
+    of the silk, and concealed the sheets from every eye. We managed
+    in this way to contrive a sofa. I may add, that the keeper of the
+    restaurant dedicated to the 'Guardian Angel,' who had no customers
+    except hack-drivers and bricklayers, was caught by our innocent
+    intrigues. On this same second of November we paid an immense sum
+    of money to the laundress,--one whole dollar. I crossed the Pont
+    des Arts, proud as a member of the Institute, and entered with a
+    stiff upper-lip the Café Momus. You remember this beneficent
+    establishment, which we discovered, gave half a cup of coffee for
+    five cents, until bread rose, when the price went up to six cents,
+    a measure which so discontented many of the frequenters that they
+    carried their custom elsewhere. I passed the evening at Laurent's
+    room. I must have been seized with vertigo,--for I actually lost
+    ten cents at _écarté_, ten cents which we had appropriated to the
+    purchase of roasted chestnuts. Poor Laurent, who was such a
+    democrat, who used to go 'at the head of the schools' to see
+    Béranger, is dead and gone now! His poems were too revolutionary
+    for this world.
+
+    "You resolved on the third of November that we would cook our own
+    victuals as long as the fourteen dollars lasted; so you bought a
+    soup-pot which cost fifteen cents, some thyme and some laurel:
+    being a poet, you had such a marked weakness for laurel, you used
+    to poison all the soup with it. We laid in a supply of potatoes,
+    and constantly bought tobacco, coffee, and sugar. There was
+    gnashing of teeth and curses when the expenses of the fourth of
+    November were written. Why did you let me go out with my pockets
+    so full of money? And you went to Dagneaux's and spent five cents.
+    What in the name of Heaven could you have gotten at Dagneaux's for
+    five cents?[C] Good me! how expensive are the least pleasures!
+    Upon pretext of going with a free-ticket to see a drama by an
+    inhabitant of Belleville, I bought two omnibus-tickets, one to go
+    and the other to return. Two omnibus-tickets! I was severely
+    punished for this prodigality. Seventy-four cents ran away from
+    me, making their escape through a hole in my pocket. How could I
+    dare to return home and confront your wrath? Two omnibus-tickets
+    alone would have brought a severe admonition on my head; but
+    seventy-four cents with them--! If I had not begun to disarm you
+    by telling you the Belleville drama, I should have been a doomed
+    man. Nevertheless, the next day, without thinking of these
+    terrible losses, we lent G---- money; he really seemed to look
+    upon us as Messrs. Murger and Co., his bankers. I wonder by what
+    insidious means this G---- contrived to captivate our confidence,
+    and the only solution I can discover is the inexperience of giddy
+    youth; for two days afterwards G---- was audacious enough to
+    reappear and to ask for another loan. Nothing new appears on the
+    pages of the book, except fifteen cents for wine: this must have
+    been one of your ideas: I do not mean to say that you were ever a
+    wine-bibber, but we were so accustomed to water, we drank so much
+    water without getting tired of it, that this item, 'wine,' seems
+    very extraordinary to me. We added up every page until the eighth
+    of November, when the sum total reached eight dollars and twelve
+    cents; here the additions ceased. We doubtless were averse to
+    trembling at the sight of the total. The tenth of November, you
+    purchased a thimble: some men have skill enough to mend their
+    clothes at their leisure moments. A few days ago I paid a visit to
+    a charming literary man, who writes articles full of life and wit
+    for the newspapers. I opened the door so suddenly, he blushed as
+    he threw a pair of pantaloons into the corner. He had a thimble on
+    his finger. Ah! wretched cits, who refuse to give your daughters
+    in marriage to literary men, you would be full of admiration for
+    them, could you see them mending their clothes! Smoking-tobacco
+    absorbed more than one-third of our money; we received too many
+    friends, and then there was a celebrated artisan-poet who used to
+    be brought to our rooms, and who used to bawl so many stanzas I
+    would go to bed.
+
+    "Monsieur Credit made his reappearance on the fourteenth of
+    November. He went to the grocer, to the tobacco-shop, to the
+    fuel-dealer, and was received tolerably well; he was especially
+    successful with the grocer's daughter when he appeared in your
+    likeness. Did Monsieur Credit die on the seventeenth of November?
+    I ask, because I see on the 'credit' side of our account-book,
+    'Frock-coat, sixty cents.' These sixty cents came from the
+    pawnbroker's. How his clerks humiliated us! I could make a long
+    and terrible history of our dealings with the pawnbroker; I shall
+    make a short and simple story of it. When money failed us, you
+    pointed out to me an old cashmere shawl which we used as a
+    table-cover. I told you, 'They will give us nothing on that.' You
+    replied, 'Oh, yes, they will, if we add pantaloons and waistcoats
+    to it.' I added pantaloons and waistcoats to it, and you took the
+    bundle and started for the den in Place de la Croix Rouge. You
+    soon came back with the huge package, and you were sad enough as
+    you said, 'They are disagreeable _yonder_; try in the Rue de
+    Condé; the clerks, who are accustomed to deal with students, are
+    not so hard-hearted as they are in the Place de la Croix Rouge.'
+    I went to the Rue de Condé. The two pair of pantaloons, the famous
+    shawl, and the waistcoats were closely examined; even their
+    pockets were searched. 'We cannot lend anything on that,' said the
+    pawnbroker's clerk, disdainfully pushing the things away from him.
+    You had the excellent habit of never despairing. You said, 'We
+    must wait until this evening; at night all clothes are new; and to
+    take every precaution, I shall go to the pawnbroker's shop in the
+    Rue du Fouare, where all the poor go; as they are accustomed there
+    to see nothing pledged but rags and tatters, our clothes will
+    glitter like barbaric pearl and gold.' Alas! the pawnbroker in the
+    Rue du Fouare was as cruel as his brethren. So the next morning in
+    sheer despair I went to pledge my only frock-coat, and I did this
+    to lend half the sum to that incessant borrower, G----. Lastly, on
+    the nineteenth of November, we sold some books. Fortune smiled on
+    us; we had a chicken-soup with a superabundance of laurel. Do you
+    remember an excellent shopkeeper of the Rue du Faubourg Saint
+    Jacques, near the city-gate, who, we were told, not only sold
+    thread, but kept a circulating library? What a circulating library
+    it was! Plays, three odd volumes of Anne Radcliffe's novels,--and
+    if the old lady had never made our acquaintance, the inhabitants
+    of the Faubourg Saint Jacques would never have known of the
+    existence of 'Letters upon Mythology' and 'De Profundis,' two
+    books I was heartless enough to sell, notwithstanding all their
+    titles to my respect. The authors were born in the same
+    neighborhood which gave me birth: one is Desmoustiers, the other
+    Alfred Mousse. Maybe Arsène Houssaye would not be pleased, were I
+    to remind him of one of the _crimes_ of his youth, where one sees
+    for a frontispiece skeletons--'twas the heyday of the Romantic
+    School--playing tenpins with skulls for balls! The sale of 'De
+    Profundis' enabled us to visit Café Tabourey that evening. You
+    sold soon afterwards eighty cents' worth of books. Allow me to
+    record that they came from your library; my library remained
+    constantly upon the shelves; notwithstanding all your appeals, I
+    never sold any books, except the lamentable history of Alfred
+    Mousse. Monsieur Credit contrived to go to the tradesmen's with
+    imperturbable coolness; he went everywhere until the first of
+    December, when he paid every cent of debt. I have but one regret,
+    and this is, that the little account-book suddenly ceases after a
+    month; it contains only the month of November. This is not enough!
+    Had I continued it, Its pages would have been so many mementos to
+    recall my past life to me."
+
+Monsieur Champfleury introduced Henry Murger to Monsieur Arsène
+Houssaye, who was then chief editor of "L'Artiste," and it happened
+oddly enough that Murger wrote nothing but poetry for this journal.
+Monsieur Houssaye took a great fancy to Murger, and persuaded him, for
+the sake of "effect" on the title-pages of books and on the backs of
+magazines, to change Henri to Henry, and give Murger a German
+physiognomy by writing it Mürger. As Frenchmen treat their names with as
+much freedom as we use towards old gloves, Murger instantly adopted
+Monsieur Houssaye's suggestion, and clung as long as he lived to the new
+orthography of his name. He began to find it less difficult to procure
+each day his daily bread, but still the gaunt wolf, Poverty, continued
+to glare on him. "Our existence," he said, "is like a ballad which has
+several couplets; sometimes all goes well, at other times all goes
+badly, then worse, next worst, and so on; but the burden never changes;
+'tis always the same,--Misery! Misery! Misery!" One day he became so
+absolutely and hopelessly poor, that he was undecided whether to enlist
+as a sailor or take a clerk's place in the Messrs. de Rothschilds'
+banking-house. He actually did make application to Madame de Rothschild.
+Here is the letter in which he records this application:--
+
+"_15th August, 1844._
+
+"I am delighted to be at last able to write you without being obliged to
+describe wretchedness. Ill-fortune seems to begin to tire of pursuing
+me, and good-fortune appears about to make advances to me. Madame
+Rothschild, to whom I wrote begging her to get her husband to give me a
+situation, informed her correspondent of it, and told him to send for
+and talk with me. I could not obtain a place, but I was offered ten
+dollars rather delicately, and I took it. As soon as I received it, I
+went as fast as I could to put myself in condition to be able to go out
+in broad daylight."
+
+We scarcely know which is the saddest to see: Henry Murger accepting ten
+dollars from Madame de Rothschild's generous privy purse,--for it is
+alms, soften it as you may,--or to observe the happiness this paltry sum
+gives him. How deeply he must have been steeped in poverty!
+
+But now the very worst was over. In 1848 he sent a contribution to "Le
+Corsaire," a petty newspaper of odds and ends, of literature and of
+gossip. The contribution was published. He became attached to the paper.
+In 1849 he began the publication in "Le Corsaire" of the story which was
+to make him famous, "La Vie de Bohême," which was, like all his works,
+something in the nature of an autobiographical sketch. Its wit, its
+sprightly style, its odd images, its odd scenes, its strange mixture of
+gayety and sadness, attracted attention immediately. But who pays
+attention to newspaper-articles? However brilliant and profound they may
+be, they are forgotten quite as soon as read. The best newspaper-writer
+on his most successful day can only hope to be remembered from one
+morning to another; if he commands attention for so long a period, his
+utmost ambition should consider itself satisfied.
+
+It was not until Murger had rescued his book from the columns of the
+newspaper that he obtained reputation. He was indebted to Monsieur Jules
+Janin, the eminent theatrical reporter of the "Journal des Débats," for
+great assistance at this critical hour of his life. One morning Henry
+Murger entered Monsieur Jules Janin's study, carrying under his arm an
+immense bundle of old newspapers, secured by a piece of old twine. He
+asked Monsieur Jules Janin to read the story contained in the old
+newspapers, and to advise him if it was worth republication, and what
+form of publication was best suited to it. As soon as Murger retired,
+Monsieur Jules Janin took up the newspapers. Few bibliopoles in Paris
+are more delicate than Monsieur Janin; it is positive pain to him to
+peruse any volume, unless the margin be broad, the type excellent, the
+printing executed by a famous printer, and the binding redolent of the
+rich perfume of Russian leather. These newspapers were torn and
+tattered, stained with wine and coffee and tobacco. They were not so
+much as in consecutive order. Conceive the irritation they must have
+produced on Monsieur Janin! But when he once got fairly into the story
+he forgot all his delicacy, and when Henry Murger returned, two days
+afterwards, he said to him,--"Sir, go home and write us a comedy with
+Rodolphe and Schaunard and Nini and Musette.[D] It shall be played as
+soon as you have written it; in four-and-twenty hours it will be
+celebrated, and the dramatic reporters will see to the rest." The
+magnificent promises to the poverty-racked man fevered him almost to
+madness; he took up the packet, (which Monsieur Janin had elegantly
+bound with a rose-colored ribbon,) and off he went, without even
+thinking to thank Monsieur Janin for his kindness, or to close the door.
+Murger carried his story to a friend, Theodore Barrière, (since famous
+as a play-writer,) and in three months' time the piece was ready for the
+stage, was soon brought out at the "Variétés," and the names of Murger
+and Barrière were on every lip in Paris.
+
+We have nothing like the French stage in the suddenness and
+extensiveness of the popularity it gives men. We have no means by which
+a gifted man can suddenly acquire universal fame,--can "go to bed
+unknown and wake famous." The most brilliant speech at the bar is heard
+within a narrow horizon. The most brilliant novel is slow in making its
+way; and before its author is famous beyond the shadow of the
+publisher's house, a later new novel pales the lustre of the rising
+star. The French stage occupies the position our Congress once held,
+when its halls were adorned by the great men, the Clays, Calhouns,
+Websters, of our fathers' days, or the Supreme Court occupied, when
+Marshall sat in the chief seat on its bench, and William Pinckney
+brought to its bar his elaborate eloquence, and William Wirt his ornate
+and touching oratory. The stage is to France what Parliament is to
+England. It is more: it is the mirror and the fool; it glasses society's
+form and pressure; it criticizes folly. Murger's success on the stage
+opened every door of publicity to him. His name was current, it had a
+known market-value. The success of the piece assured the success of the
+book. The "Revue des Deux Mondes" begged Murger to write for its pages.
+Murger's fortune seemed assured.
+
+There was but one croak heard in all the applause. It came from Murger's
+father. He could not believe his eyes and his ears, when they avouched
+to him that his son's name and praises filled every paper and every
+mouth. It utterly confounded him. The day of the second performance of
+the piece Murger went to see his father.
+
+"If you would like to see my piece again to-day, you may take these
+tickets."
+
+His father replied,--
+
+"Your piece? What! you don't mean to say that they are still playing
+it?"
+
+He could not conceive it possible that his "vagabond" son should
+interest anybody's attention.
+
+The very first use Murger made of his increased income was to fly Paris
+and to seek the country,--that rural life which Frenchmen abhor.
+Marlotte, a little village in the Forest of Fontainebleau, became his
+home; there he spent eight months of every year. Too poor, at first, to
+rent a cottage for himself, he lodged at the miserable village-inn,
+which, with its eccentric drunken landlord, he has sketched in one of
+his novels; and when fortune proved less unkind to him, he took a
+cottage which lay between the highway and the forest, and there the
+first happy years of his life were spent. They were few, and they were
+checkered. His chief petty annoyance was his want of skill as a
+sportsman. He could never bring down game with his gun, and he was
+passionately fond of shooting. On taking up his abode in the country,
+the first thing he had made was a full hunting-suit in the most approved
+fashion, and this costume he would wear upon all occasions, even when he
+came up to Paris. He never attained any nearer approximation to a
+sportsman's character. One day he went out shooting with a friend. A
+flock of partridges rose at their feet.
+
+"Fire, Murger! fire!" exclaimed his friend.
+
+"Why, great heavens, man, I can't shoot so! Wait until they _light_ on
+yon fence, and then I'll take a crack at them."
+
+He could no better shoot at stationary objects, however, than at game on
+the wing. Hard by his cottage a hare had burrowed in a potato-field.
+Every morning and every evening Murger fired at the hare, but with such
+little effect, that the hare soon took no notice either of Murger or his
+gun, and gambolled before them both as if they were simply a scarecrow.
+Murger bagged but one piece of game in the whole course of his life, and
+the way this was done happened in this wise. One day he was asleep at
+the foot of a tree in the Forest of Fontainebleau,--his gun by his side.
+He was suddenly awakened by the barking of a dog which he knew belonged
+to the most adroit poacher that levied illicit tribute on the imperial
+domain. The dog continued to bark and to look steadily up into the tree.
+Murger followed the dog's eyes, but could discover nothing. The poacher
+ran up, saying,--"Quick, Monsieur Murger! quick! Give me your gun. Don't
+you see it?"
+
+Murger replied,--"See it? See what?"
+
+"Why, a pheasant! a splendid cock! There he is on the top limb!"
+
+The poacher aimed and fired; the pheasant fell at Murger's feet. "Take
+the bird and put it in your game-bag, Monsieur Murger, and tell
+everybody you killed it."
+
+Murger gratefully accepted the present; and this was the first and only
+time that Murger ever bagged a bird.
+
+But the cloud which darkened his sky now was the cloud which had lowered
+on all his life,--poverty. He was always fevered by the care and anxiety
+of procuring money. Life is expensive to a man occupying such a position
+as Murger filled, and French authors are ill paid. A French publisher
+thinks he has done wonders, if he sells all the copies of an edition of
+three thousand volumes; and if any work reaches a sale of sixteen or
+seventeen thousand volumes, the publisher is ready to cry, "Miracle!"
+Further, men who lead intellectual lives are almost necessarily
+extravagant of money. They know not its value. They know, indeed, that
+ten mills make one cent, and that ten cents make one dime, and that ten
+dimes make one dollar; but they are ignorant of the practical value of
+these denominations of the great medium of exchange. They cannot "jew,"
+and know not that the slight percentage they would take off the price
+asked is a prize worth contending for. Again, the physical exhaustion or
+reaction which almost invariably follows mental exertion requires
+stimulants of some kind or other to remove the pain--it is an acute
+pain--which reaction brings upon the whole system. These stimulants,
+whether they be good dinners, or brilliant company, or generous wines,
+or parties of pleasure, are always costly. Besides, life in Paris is
+such an expensive mode of existence, the simplest pleasures there are so
+very costly, and there are so many microscopic issues through which
+money pours away in that undomestic life, in that career passed almost
+continually in public, that one must have a considerable fortune, or
+lead an extremely retired life. A fashionable author, whose books are in
+every book-shop window, and whose plays are posted for performance on
+every wall, cannot lead a secluded life; and all the circumstances we
+have hinted at conspire to make his life expensive. In vain Murger fled
+the great city. It pursued him even in the country. Admirers and
+parasites sought him out even in his retreat, and forced their way to
+his table. There is another reason for Murger's life-long poverty: he
+worked slowly, and this natural difficulty of intellectual travail was
+increased by his exquisite taste and desire of perfection. The novel was
+written and re-written time and again. The plot was changed; the
+characters were altered; each phrase was polished and repolished. Where
+ordinary writers threw off half a dozen volumes, Murger found it hard to
+fit a single volume for the press. Ordinary writers grew rich in writing
+speedily forgotten novels; he continued poor in writing novels which
+will live for many years. Then, Murger's vein of talent made him work
+for theatres which gave more reputation than ready money. He was too
+delicate a writer to construct those profitable dramas which run a
+hundred or a hundred and fifty nights and place ten or twenty thousand
+dollars in the writer's purse. His original poverty kept him poor. He
+could not afford to wait until the seed he had sown had grown and
+ripened for the sickle; so he fell into the hands of usurers, who
+purchased the crop while it was yet green, and made the harvest yield
+them profits of fifty or seventy-five per centum.
+
+His distress during the last years of his life was as great as the
+distress of his youth. His published letters tell a sorrowful tale.
+They are filled with apprehensions of notes maturing only to be
+protested, or complaints of inability to go up to Paris one day because
+he has not a shirt to wear, another day because he cannot procure the
+seventy-five cents which are the railway-fare from Fontainebleau to
+Paris. Here is one of his letters, one of the gayest of them It is
+charming, but sad:--
+
+    "I send you my little stock. Carry it instantly to Monsieur
+    Heugel, the music-publisher in the Rue Vivienne, next door to
+    Michel Levy's. Go the day afterwards to Michel Levy's for the
+    answer. Read it, and if it shows that Monsieur Heugel buys my
+    songs, go to him with the blank receipt, herein inclosed, which
+    you will fill up as he will point out, according to the usual
+    conditions. It is ten dollars a song; but as there is a poor song
+    among them, and money I must have, take whatever he gives you; but
+    you must pretend as if you expected ten dollars for each song.
+    This money must be used to take up Saccault's note, which is due
+    the fifteenth. Take the address of the holder, and pay it before
+    it is protested. You will be allowed till the next day to pay it.
+    Be active in this matter, and let me hear how things turn out. I
+    cannot, in reason, in my present situation, take a room at a rent
+    of a hundred and twenty dollars a year.[E] We have cares enough
+    for the present; therefore let us not sow that seed of
+    embarrassment which flowers every three months in the shape of
+    quarterly rent. Do not give at the outside more than eighty
+    dollars for the room, even though we be embarrassed by its
+    smallness. I hope we may have means before long of being more
+    delicate in our selection; but at present put a leaf to your
+    patience, for the horizon is black enough to make ink withal.
+    However, the little dialogue (which has been quite successful) I
+    have just had with the muses has given me better spirits. I have a
+    fever of working which is high enough to give me a real fever. I
+    have shaken the box, and see that it is not empty. But I stood in
+    need of this evidence, for in my own eyes I had fallen as low as
+    the Public Funds in 1848. Return here before the money Michel Levy
+    gave you is exhausted, for I cannot get any more for you. I am
+    working half the day and half the night. I feel that the great
+    flood-tide of 'copy' is at hand. My laundress and my pantaloons
+    have both deserted me. I am obliged to use grape-vine leaves for
+    my pocket-handkerchief.... There is nothing new here. The dogs are
+    in good health, but they do not look fat; I am afraid they have
+    fasted sometimes. Our chimney is again inhabited by a family of
+    swallows; they say that is a good sign: maybe it means that we
+    shall have fire all the winter long."
+
+To this letter was added a postscript which one of the dogs was supposed
+to have written:--
+
+    "My dear lady,--They say here we are going to see mighty hard
+    times. My master talks of suppressing my breakfast, and he wants
+    to hire me to a shepherd in order that I may earn some money for a
+    living. But as I have the reputation of loving mutton-chops,
+    nobody will hire me to keep sheep. If you see anywhere in Paris a
+    pretty diamond collar which does not cost more than
+    five-and-twenty cents, bring it to
+
+    "DOG MIRZA.
+
+    "_14th March, 1855_."
+
+Hope dawned upon him in 1856. He was promised a pension of three hundred
+dollars from the Government out of the literary fund of the Minister of
+Public Instruction's budget. It would have been, from its regularity of
+payment, a fortune to him. It would have saved him from the anxiety of
+quarter-day when rent fell due. But the pension never came. The
+Government gave him the decoration of the Legion of Honor, which
+certainly gratified him. But money for bread would have been of more
+service. When Rachel lay upon that invalid's chair which she was never
+to quit except for her coffin, she gazed one morning upon the breakfast
+of delicacies spread before her to tempt the return of absent appetite.
+After some moments of silence, she took up a piece of bread as white as
+the driven snow, and, sighing, said in that whisper which was all that
+remained to her of voice,--"Ay, me! Had the world given me a little more
+of _this_, and earlier in my life, I had not been here at
+three-and-thirty." Those early years of want which sapped Rachel's life
+undermined Murger's constitution. His rustic life repaired some of the
+damage wrought, and would probably have entirely retrieved it, had his
+life then been freer from care, less visited by privation. Had the money
+the Government and his friends lavished on his corpse been bestowed on
+him living, he had probably still been numbered among the writers
+militant of France. Some obscure parasite got the pension. He continued
+to work on still hounded by debt. "Five times a week," he wrote in 1858,
+"I dine at twelve or one o'clock at night. One thing is certain: if I am
+not forced to stop writing for three or four days, I shall fall sick."
+In 1860 we find him complaining that he is "sick in soul, and _maybe in
+body too_. I am, of a truth, fatigued, and a great deal more fatigued
+than people think me." Death's shadow was upon him. The world thought
+him in firmer health and in gayer spirits than ever. He knew better. He
+felt as the traveller feels towards the close of the day and the end of
+the journey. It was not strange that the world was deceived, for
+Murger's gayety had always been factitious. He often turned off grief
+with a smile, where other men relieve it with a tear. Sensitive natures
+shrink from letting the world see their exquisite sensibility. Besides,
+Murger's gayety was intellectual rather than physical. It consisted
+almost entirely in bright gleams of repartee. It was quickness, 'twas
+not mirth. No wonder, then, that the world was deceived; the mind
+retained its old activity amid all its fatigue; and besides, the world
+sees men only in their hours of full-dress, when the will lights up the
+leaden eyes and wreathes the drawn countenance in smiles. Tears are for
+our midnight pillow,--the hand-buried face for our solitary study.
+
+So when the rumor flew over Paris, Murger is sick!--Murger is
+dying!--Murger is dead! it raised the greatest surprise. Everybody
+wondered how the stalwart man they saw yesterday could be brought low so
+soon. Where was his youth, that it came not to the rescue? The reader
+can answer the question. Of a truth, the last act of the drama we have
+sketched in these pages moved rapidly to the catastrophe. He awoke in
+the middle of one night with a violent pain in the thigh, which ached as
+if a red-hot ball had passed through it. The pain momentarily increased
+in violence, and became intolerable. The nearest physician was summoned.
+After diagnosis, he declared the case too grave for action until after
+consultation. Another medical attendant was called in. After
+consultation they decided that the most eminent surgeons of Paris must
+be consulted. It was a decomposition of the whole body, attended with
+symptoms rarely observed. The princes of medical science in Paris met at
+the bedside. They all confessed that their art was impotent to
+alleviate, much less to cure this dreadful disease. Murger's hours were
+numbered. The doctors insisted upon his being transported to the
+hospital. To the hospital he went: 'twas not for the first,--'twas for
+the last time. His agonies were distressing. They wrung from him screams
+which could be heard from the fifth floor, where he lay, to the street.
+Death made his approaches like some skilful engineer against some
+impregnable fortress: fibre by fibre, vein by vein, atom by atom, was
+mastered and destroyed.
+
+During one of the rare intervals of freedom from torture, he turned to
+the sick-nurse who kept watch by his pillow, and, after vacantly gazing
+on her buxom form and ruddy cheek, he significantly asked,--"Mammy, do
+you find this world a happy place, and life an easy burden?" The
+well-fed woman understood not the bitterness of soul which prompted this
+question. "Keep quiet, and sleep," was her reply. He fell back upon his
+pillow, murmuring, "_I_ haven't! _I_ haven't!" Yet he was only
+eight-and-thirty years old, and men's sorrows commonly commence later in
+life. A friend came to see him. As the physicians had forbidden him all
+conversation, he wrote on a card this explanation of his
+situation:--"Ricord and the other doctors were of opinion that I should
+come to Dubois's Hospital. I should have preferred St. Louis's Hospital.
+I feel more _at home_ there. _Enfin_!..." Is there in the martyrology of
+poets any passage sadder than these lines? Just think of a man so bereft
+of home and family, so accustomed to the common cot of the hospital, so
+familiar to hospital sights and sounds and odors, that he can associate
+home with the public ward! Poor Murger!
+
+So lived and so died the poet of youth, and of ambitious, struggling,
+hopeful poverty. We describe not his funeral, nor the monument reared
+over his grave. Our heart fails us at sight of these sterile honors.
+They are ill-timed. What boot they, when he on whom they are bestowed is
+beyond the reach of earthly voices? The ancients crowned the live animal
+they selected as the sacrifice for their altars; it saw the garlands of
+flowers which were laid on its head, and the stately procession which
+accompanied it, and heard the music which discoursed of its happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE GREAT AIR-ENGINE.
+
+
+There is an odd collection of houses, and a stretch of green, with half
+a dozen old elms, raspberry-bushes, and pruned oaks growing on it,
+opening out from this window where I work; this morning, they blended
+curiously with this old story that I want to tell you, helping me to
+understand it better. And the story, too, explained to me one reason why
+people always choose to look at those trees rather than the houses: at
+any trees before any houses. Because, you see, whatever grows out of
+Nature is itself, and says so: has its own especial little soul-sap, and
+leafs that out intact, borrows no trait or trick or habit from its
+neighbor. The sunshine is sunshine, and the pine-burr a pine-burr,
+obstinately, through and through. So Nature rests us. But whatever grows
+out of a man's brain is like the brain, patched, uncertain: a perverse
+streak in it somewhere, to spoil its thorough good or ill meaning.
+
+There is a little Grecian temple yonder, back of the evergreens, with a
+triangular stove-funnel revolving at its top; and next door a
+Dutch-built stable, with a Turk's turban for a cupola; and just beyond
+that, a _châlet_-roof, sprouting without any provocation whatever out of
+an engine-house. I do not think they are caricatures of some characters.
+I knew a politician once, very low down in even that scale; Quilp they
+nicknamed him; the cruelest husband; quarter-dollarish in his views and
+principles, and greedy for bribes even as low as that: yet I have seen
+that man work with a rose-bush as long and tenderly as a mother with her
+baby, and his eyes glow and grow wet at the sight of a new and delicate
+plant. Near him lived a woman,--a relative of his, I believe: one of
+those women who absorb so much of the world's room and air, and have a
+right to do it: a nature made up of grand, good pieces, with no mean
+bits mortared in: fresh and child-like, too, with heat or tears ready
+for any tale of wrong, or strongly spoken, true word. But strike against
+one prejudice that woman had, her religious sect-feeling, and she was
+hard and cruel as Nero. It was the stove-funnel in that temple.
+
+Human nature is full of such unaccountable warts and birth-marks and
+sixth fingers; and the best reason that I know of why all practical
+schemes for a perfect social system have failed is, that they are so
+perfect, so compact, that they ignore all these excrescences, these
+untied ends, in making up their whole. Yet it is a wonderful bit of
+mosaic, this Communist system: a place for every man, and every man in
+his place; "to insure to each human being the freest development of his
+faculties": there is a grand fragment of absolute truth in that, a going
+back to primal Nature, to a like life with that of sunshine and pines, a
+Utopia more Christ-like than the heaven (which Christ never taught) of
+eternal harp-playing and golden streets. But as for making it real,
+every man's life should have the integrity of meaning of that of a tree.
+A. statesman, B. seer, C. scavenger: pines, raspberries, oaks.
+Impossible, as we know. And then, a thistle at the beginning knows it is
+a thistle, and cannot be anything else, so there is the end of it; but
+when Pratt, by nature _né_ knife-grinder, asserts himself poet, what
+then? How many men know their vocation? Who is going about to tie on the
+labels? Who would you be willing should tie on yours? Then, again, there
+is your neighbor Brownson, with a yeasty brain, fermenting too fast
+through every phase of creed or party to accept a healthful "settling";
+so it is left to work itself out, and it will settle itself by-and-by,
+in a life or two it may be. You know other brains which, if you will but
+consider, prove this life to be only one stage of a many-yeared era:
+they are lying fallow from birth until death; they have powers latent in
+them, that next time, perhaps, will bear golden grain or fruit. Now they
+are resting, they lie fallow. Communism allows no time for fermentation,
+or lying fallow; God does: for brains, I mean, not souls. But what are
+we going to do with this blindness of human beings as to what they are
+fit for,--when they go, or are forced to go, stumbling along the wrong
+path all their lives? Why, the bitterest prayers that God bears are from
+men who think they have lost time in the world. The lowest matter alive,
+the sponges, _fungi_, know what they have to do, and are blessed in the
+doing, while we--Did you think the Socialist helped the matter? Men
+needed thousand years' education to make their schemes practicable; they
+ignored all this blindness, all selfishness, and overgrowth of the
+passions: no wonder these facts knobbed themselves up against their
+system, and so, in every instance it crumbled to pieces. The things are
+facts, and here; there is no use in denying that; and it is a fact, too,
+that almost every life seems a wasted failure, compared with what it
+might have been. Such hard, grimy problems there are in life! They
+weaken the eyes that look long at them: stories hard to understand, like
+that of this old machinist, Joe Starke.
+
+But over yonder, how cool and shady it is on that sweep of green! that
+rests one so thoroughly, in eyes and brain! The quiet shadows ebb and
+flow over the uncut grass; every hazy form or color is beyond art, true
+and beautiful, being fresh from God; there are countless purpled vines
+creeping out from the earth under that grass; the air trembles with the
+pure spring healing and light; the gray-barked old elms wrestle, and
+knot their roots underground, clutching down at the very thews and
+sinews of the earth, and overhead unfold their shivering delicate leaves
+fresh in the sunlight to catch the patter of the summer rain when it
+comes. It is sure to come. Winter and summer, spring and autumn, shall
+not fail. God always stays there, in the great Fatherland of Nature. One
+knows now why Jesus went back there when these hard riddles of the world
+made his soul sorrowful even unto death, and he needed a word from Home
+to refresh him.
+
+Do you know the meaning to-day of the beds of rock and pregnant loam, of
+the woods, and water-courses, and live growths and colors on these
+thousand hills near us? Is it that God has room for all things in this
+Life of His? for all these problems, all Evil as it seems to us? that
+nothing in any man's life is wasted? every hunger, loss, effort, held
+underneath and above in some infinite Order, suffered to live out its
+purpose, give up its uttermost uses? If, after all, the end of science,
+of fact and fiction, of watching those raspberry-bushes growing, or of
+watching the phases of these terrible years in which we live, were only
+to give us glimpses of that eternal Order, so that we could lie down in
+it, grow out of it, like that ground-ivy in the earth and sunshine
+yonder, sure, as it is, that there is no chance nor waste in our own
+lives? It would be something to know that sentence in which all the
+world's words are ordered, and to find that the war, and the Devil, and
+even your own life's pain, had its use, and was an accord there,--would
+it not? Thinking of that, even this bit of a history of Joe Starke might
+have its meaning, the more if there should be trouble and a cold wind
+blowing in it; because any idiot can know what God means by happy lives,
+but to find His thought behind the hunger and intolerable loss that
+wring the world's heart is a harder thing to do,--a better, a great,
+healthful thing. And one may be sure that the man, be he Christian or
+Pagan, who does believe in this under Order and Love, and tries to see
+and clear his way down to it, through every day's circumstance, will
+have come very near to the real soul of good and humanity,--to the
+Christ,--before the time comes for him to rest, and stand in his lot, at
+the end of the days.
+
+But to our story. It was in Philadelphia the old machinist lived; he had
+been born and had grown old there; but there are only one or two days in
+his life you would care to hear about: August days, in the summer of
+'59, the culmination and end of all the years gone before for him. You
+know what a quiet place Philadelphia is? One might fancy that the first
+old Quaker, sitting down among its low, flattish hills, had left a spell
+of thoughtful reticence behind him. The hills never dare to rise into
+abrupt earnestness; the two broad, bright-faced rivers that hold it in
+lapse with a calm consciousness into the sleepy, oyster-bedded bay; even
+the accretion of human life there never has been able to utter itself in
+the myriad rebellious phases of a great city, but falls gravely into the
+drilled monotony of its streets. Brick and mortar will not yield
+themselves there to express any whim in the mind of their owner: the
+house-fronts turn the same impassive, show-hating faces on the sidewalks
+from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. Give the busiest street a moment's
+chance and it broods down into a solitary reverie, saying,--"You may
+force me into hotels and market-places, if you will, but I know the
+business of this town is to hold its tongue." Even the curiously
+beautiful women wrap themselves in the uniform of gray, silent color;
+the cast of thought of the people is critical, attentive,
+self-controlled. When a covered, leaden day shuts the sun out, and the
+meaning of the place in, hills and city and human life, one might fancy,
+utter the old answer of the woman accused of witchcraft:--"While I hold
+my thought, it is my own; when I speak it, it is my master." Out in the
+near hills the quietude deepens, loosening and falling back out of the
+rigid reserve of the city into the unconscious silence of a fresh
+Nature: no solitudes near a large town are so solitary as these. There
+is one little river in especial, that empties into the Schuylkill, which
+comes from some water-bed under the shady hills in Montgomery
+County,--some pool far underground, which never in all these ages has
+heard a sound, or seen the sun, nor ever shall; therefore the water
+flowing from it carries to the upper air a deeper silence than the spell
+left by the old Quaker on the hills, or even the ghostly memory of the
+Indian tribes, who, ages long ago, hunted and slowly faded away in these
+forests on its shores.
+
+When they came to the New World, at a time so far gone from us that no
+dead nation even has left of it any record, they found the river flowing
+as strangely silent and pure as now, and the name they gave it,
+Wissahickon, it bears to-day. The hills are there as when they first saw
+them, wrapping themselves every year in heavier mantles of hemlocks and
+cedars; but a shaded road winds now gravely by the river-side, and along
+it the city sends out those who are tired, worn out, and need to hear
+that message of the river. No matter how dull their heads or hearts may
+be, they never fail to catch something of its meaning. So quiet it is
+there, so pure, it is like being born again, they say. So, all the time,
+in the cool autumn-mornings, in the heavy lull of noon, or with the low
+harvest-moon slanting blue and white shadows, sharp and uncanny, across
+its surface, the water flows steadily from its dark birthplace, clear,
+cheerful, bright. The hills crouch attentive on its edge, shaggy with
+shadows; from the grim rocks ferns and mosses sleep out delicate color
+unmolested, the red-bearded grass drops its seed unshaken. The
+sweetbrier trails its pink fingers through the water. They know what the
+bright little river means, as well as the mill-boy fishing by the bank:
+how He sent it near the city, just as He brought that child into the
+midst of the hackneyed, doubting old tax-gatherers and publicans long
+ago, with the same message. Such a curious calm and clearness rest in
+it, one is almost persuaded, that, in some day gone by, some sick,
+thirsty soul has in truth gone into its dewy solitude in a gray summer
+dawn, and, finding there the fabled fountain of eternal life, has left
+behind a blessing from all those stronger redeemed years to come.
+
+There is a narrow road which leaves the main one, and penetrates behind
+the river-hills, only to find others, lower and more heavily wooded,
+with now and then odd-shaped bits of pasture-land wedged in between
+their sides, or else low brick farm-houses set in a field of corn and
+potatoes, with a dripping pump-trough at the door. It is a thorough
+country-road, lazy, choking itself up with mud even in summer, to keep
+city-carriages out, bordering itself with slow-growing maples and banks
+of lush maiden's-hair, blood-red partridge-berries, and thistles. You
+can find dandelions growing in the very middle of it, there is so little
+travel out there.
+
+One August morning, in one of its quietest curves among the hills, there
+was a fat old horse, standing on it, sniffing up the cool air: pure air,
+it is there, so cool and rare that you can detect even the faint scent
+of the wild-grape blossoms or the buttercups in it in spring. The wagon
+to which the horse was fastened had no business there in the cedar-hills
+or slow-going road; it belonged to town, every inch, from hub to
+cover,--was square-built, shiningly clean, clear-lettered as
+Philadelphia itself.
+
+"That completes the practical whole," said Andy Fawcett, polishing a tin
+measure, and putting it on the front seat of the wagon, and then
+surveying the final effect.
+
+Andy was part-owner of it: the yellow letters on the sides were, "_A.
+Fawcett & Co. Milk_." It was very early,--gray, soggy clouds keeping
+back the dawn,--but light enough for Andy to see that his shoes, which
+he had blacked late last night, were bright, and his waistcoat, etc.,
+"all taut."
+
+"I like the sailor lingo," he said, curling his moustache, and turning
+over his pink shirt-collar. "They've a loose dash about 'em. It must go
+far with the girls."
+
+Then he looked at the wagon again, and at a pinchbeck watch he carried.
+
+"Five. No matter how neat an' easy a fellow's dress is, it's wasted this
+time in the mornin'. Them street-car conductors hev a chance for it all
+day, dang 'em!"
+
+He went back to the house as softly as possible, and brought out a
+lantern, which was silver-mounted and of cut glass. He hung it carefully
+in the wagon.
+
+"There's no knowin' what use I may have for it,"--shaking his head, and
+rubbing it tenderly.
+
+Andy had owned that lantern for several years, and carried it with him
+always. "You cannot know, Jane," he used to say to the woman whom he
+worked for, "what a comfort I find in it. It"--He always stopped there,
+and she never replied, but immediately talked of something else. Their
+customers (for they kept half a dozen cows on the place, and Andy took
+the milk into town)--their customers, when they found out about the
+lantern, used to look oddly at Andy, and one or two of them had tried in
+consequence to overreach him in the bills. But no thimble-rigger had a
+keener eye for the cents than Fawcett. So their milk-speculation had
+prospered, until, this spring, they had added to their stock of cows. It
+was the only business in which Andy was partner; after he brought the
+wagon back at noon, he put on his flannel shirt, and worked as a hired
+hand for the woman; the other produce she sold herself.
+
+The house was low, built of lichen-covered stone, an old buttonwood-tree
+tenting it over; in the sunny back-yard you could see fat pullets and
+glossy-backed Muscovy ducks wabbling in and out through the
+lilac-bushes. Comfortable and quaint the old place looked, with no bald
+white paint about it, no unseemly trig new fences to jar against the
+ashen and green tones of color in house and woods. The gate by which you
+passed through the stone wall was made of twisted boughs; and wherever a
+tree had been cut down, the stump still stood, covered with
+crimson-leaved ivy. "I'd like things nattier," Andy used to say; "but
+it's Jane's way."
+
+The Quaker woman herself, as she stood in the gateway in her gray
+clothes, the hair pushed back from her sallow face, her brown, muscular
+arms bare, suited the quiet, earnest look of the place.
+
+"Thee'll take neighbor Wart into town, Andrew?" she said.
+
+"More noosances?" he growled.
+
+"Thee'd best take her in, Andrew. It costs thee nothing," with a dry,
+quizzical smile.
+
+Andy's face grew redder than his shirt, as he climbed up on the
+wagon-wheel.
+
+"H'ist me up her basket here, then. A'n't I kind to her? I drink my
+coffee every noon at her stall, though 't's the worst in the market. If
+'twas a man had sech a bamboozlin' phiz as hers, I'd bat him over th'
+head, that 's all."
+
+"She's a widow, and thee's afraid of thy weak point," said Jane.
+
+"Take yer joke, Jane." The lad looked down on the woman's bony face
+kindly. "They don't hurt, yer words. It's different when some folks
+pokes fun at me, askin' for the lantern, an'"--
+
+"What odds?" said the woman hurriedly, a quick change coming over her
+face. "They mean well. Haven't I told thee since the night thee comed
+here first for a meal's victuals, an' all the years since, how as all
+the world meaned well to thee, Andrew? Not only sun an' air an' growth,
+an' God behind; but folks, ef thee takes them by the palm of the hand
+first, an' not raps them with the knuckles, or go about seekin' to make
+summat off of each."
+
+Andy was in no mood for moralizing.
+
+"Ye'r' hard on old Wart in that last remark, I'm thinkin',"--glancing at
+the dumpy bunch of a woman seated at their breakfast-table within, her
+greedy blue eyes and snub-nose close to her plate.
+
+The Quaker turned away, trying to hide a smile, and began tugging at
+some dock-weeds. Her arms were tougher and stronger than Fawcett's. He
+used to say Jane was a better worker than he, though she did it by fits
+and starts, going at it sometimes as if every limb was iron and was
+moved by a steam-engine, and then for days doing nothing, playing with a
+neighbor's baby, sitting by the window, humming some old tune to
+herself, in a way that even Andy thought idle and childish. For the
+rest, he had thought little about her, except that she was a strangely
+clean and silent woman, and kind, even to tenderness,--to him; but to
+the very bats in the barn, or old Wart, or any other vermin, as well.
+
+Perhaps an artist would have found more record in the brawny frame and
+the tanned, chronicled face of the woman, as she bent over her work in
+her gray dress in the fresh morning light. Forty years of hard, healthy
+labor,--you could read that in the knotted muscles and burnt skin: and
+no lack of strength in the face, with its high Indian cheek-bones and
+firm-set jaws. But there was a curious flickering shadow of grace and
+beauty over all this coarse hardness. The eyes were large, like the
+cow's under yonder tree, slow-moving, absorbing, a soft brown in color,
+and unreasoning; if pain came to this woman, she would not struggle, nor
+try to understand it: bear it dumbly, that was all. The nervous lips
+were not heavy, but delicately, even archly cut, with dimples waiting
+the slightest moving of the mouth; you would be sure that naturally the
+laughter and fun and cheery warmth of the world lay as close to her as
+to a child. But something--some loss or uncertainty in her life--had
+given to her smile a quick, pitiful meaning, like that of a mother
+watching her baby at her breast.
+
+Andy climbed into the wagon, and cracked his whip impatiently.
+
+"Time!" he shouted.
+
+Neighbor Wart scuffed down the path, wiping her mouth.
+
+"I'm glad I dropped in to breakfast, an' for company to friend Andrew
+here. Does thee frequent the prize-fighters' ring, that thee's got their
+slang so pat, lad?" as she scrambled in behind him. "Don't jerk at thy
+gallowses so fiercely. It's only my way. 'Sarah has a playful way with
+her': my father used to say that, an' it's kept by me. I don't feel a
+day older than when--Andrew!" sharply, "did thee bring thy lunch, to eat
+at my stall? The coffee'll be strong as lye this morning."
+
+The Quaker, Jane, had a small white basket in her hand, into which she
+was looking.
+
+"It's here," she said, putting it by the young man's feet. "There's ham
+an' bread an' pie,--plum,--enough for two. Thee'll not want to eat
+alone?" anxiously.
+
+"I never do," he said, gruffly. "The old buster's savage on
+pie,--gettin' fat on it, I tell you, Jane, though his jaws are like
+nut-crackers yet."
+
+Andy had dropped into one of the few ruts of talk in which his brain
+could jog easily along; he began, as usual, to rub the knees of his
+trousers smooth, and to turn the quid of tobacco in his mouth.
+
+Jane, oddly enough, did not remind him that it was time to go, but
+stood, not heeding him, leaning on the wheel, drawing a buckle in the
+harness tighter.
+
+"He! he!" giggled Andy, "if you'd seen him munch the pastry an' biscuit,
+an' our biggest cuts of tenderloin, an' then plank down his pennies to
+Mis' Wart here, thinkin' he'd paid for all! Innocent as a staggerin'
+calf, that old chap! Says I to him last week, when we were leavin' the
+market, havin' my joke, says I,--
+
+"'Pervisions is goin' down, Mr. Starke.'
+
+"'It hadn't occurred to me, Andrew,' he says, in his dazed way. 'But you
+know, doubtless,' says he, with one of his queer bows, touchin' the
+banged old felt he sticks on the back of his head.
+
+"'Yes, I know,' says I. An' I took his hand an' pulled it through my
+arm, an' we walked down to Arch. Dunno what the girls thought, seein' me
+in sech ragged company. Don't care. He's a brick, old Joe.
+
+"Says he, 'Ef I hed hed your practical knowledge, at your age, Andrew,
+it might hev been better for the cause of science this day,' an'
+buttons up his coat.
+
+"'Pears as if he wasn't used to wearin' shirts, an' so hed got that
+trick o' buttonin' up. But he has a appreciatin' eye, he has,--more than
+th' common,--much more." And Andy crossed his legs, and looked down, and
+coughed in a modest, deprecating way.
+
+"Well," finding no one spoke, "I've found that meal, sure enough, is his
+breakfast, dinner, an' supper. I calls it luncheon to him, in a easy,
+gentlemanly sort of way. I believe I never mentioned to you," looking at
+Jane, "how I smuggled him into the pants you made, you thinkin' him a
+friend of mine? As he is."
+
+"No," said the woman.
+
+"As with the pants, so with coat, an' shirt; likewise boots,"--checking
+off each with a rub on his trousers.
+
+Andy's tongue was oiled, and ran glibly.
+
+Mrs. Wart, on the back seat, shuffled her feet and hemmed in vain.
+
+Jane pulled away at the dock and mullein, in one of her old fits of
+silent musing.
+
+"Says I, 'See my ducks an' sack, Mr. Starke? Latest cut,' says I. 'Wish
+you knew my tailor. Man of enterprise, an' science, Sir. Knows
+mechanics, an' acoustics, an' the rest,--at his finger-ends,--well as
+his needle,' said I.
+
+"The old chap's watery eyes began to open at that.
+
+"'Heard of yer engine, by George!' I goes on.
+
+"'What's he think of the chances?' he says. 'Hes _he_ influence?'
+
+"'No,--but he's pants an' sech, which is more to the purpose,' I says.
+'An' without a decent suit to yer back, how kin you carry the thing
+before Congress?' says I. Put it to him strong, that way. 'How kin ye?'
+I says. 'Now look here, Mr. Starke. Ye 'r' no runner in debt, I know:
+not willin' to let other people fill yer stomach an' cover yer back,
+because you've got genius into ye, which they haven't. All right!' says
+I. 'American pluck. But ye see, facts is facts, an' yer coat, not to
+mince matters, is nothin' but rags. An' yer shirt'--
+
+"His old wizened phiz got quite red at that, an' he caught his breath a
+minute.
+
+"'Go on, Andrew,' says he, puttin' his hand on my arm, 'you mean well.
+_I_ don't mind it. Indeed, no.' Smilin' kind, to let me see as he wasn't
+hurt. However, I dropped the shirt.
+
+"'It can't be otherwise,' says I, soothin', you know, 'so long's you've
+to sleep in the markets, an' so forth,' meanin' Hayes's stable. 'Now
+look o' here. My tailor, wishin' to help on the cause of science, as you
+say, wants to advance you a suit of clothes. On the engine. Of course,
+on the engine. You to pay when the thing's through. Congress or patents
+or what not. What d'ye say?' An' so"--
+
+"He wears them. You told me that," said the Quaker, in a dry, mechanical
+tone.
+
+"You don't care to hear the ins an' outs of it? Well, there's one thing
+I'll mention," sulkily gathering up the reins; "to-morrow it'll be all
+up with the old chap, one way or t'other: him an' his engine's goin' on
+trial. Come up, Jerry!" jerking the horse's head; "ye ought to be in
+Broad Street this minute. An' if it's worsted he is, it'll be a case of
+manslaughter agin the judges. That old fellow's built his soul into them
+wheels an' pipes. An' his skin an' bone too, for that matter. There's
+little enough of 'em left, God knows! Come up, Jerry!"
+
+But Jane was leaning on the shafts again. Perhaps the story of the
+starving old machinist had touched her; even Andy guessed how big and
+childish the heart was in her woman's body, and how she always choked it
+down. She had taken out the basket now that held the old man's lunch,
+and was rearranging the slices of bread and ham, her fingers trembling,
+and lingering curiously over each. Her lips moved, but she said nothing.
+
+"Thy bread _is_ amazin' soft-crusted," said Mrs. Wart. "Thee scalds the
+raisin', don't thee, now?"
+
+"To-morrow, thee said, Andrew?"
+
+"Yes, that'll be the end of the engine, for good or bad. Ten years he's
+been at it, he says."
+
+"Ten years, last spring," to herself.
+
+She had put the basket down, and was stooping over the weeds.
+
+"Did I tell ye that? I forgot. Well, Mis' Wart, we'll be off. Don't
+fret, it's not late. Jerry's blooded. He'll not let the grass grow under
+his feet."
+
+And the milk-wagon, with its yellow letters, went trundling down the
+road, the sun beginning to shine pleasantly in on the cool tin vessels
+within, and the crisp red curls and blue eyes of the driver,--on the
+lantern, too, swinging from the roof inside, as Andy glanced back. He
+chuckled; even Mrs. Wart looked tidy and clean in the morning air; his
+lunch smelt savory in the basket. Then suddenly recalling the old
+machinist, and the history in which he was himself part actor, he
+abruptly altered his expression, drawing down his red eyebrows to a
+tragic scowl, and glaring out into the pleasant light as one who insults
+fate.
+
+"Whatever is thee glowerin' thataway about?" snapped his companion.
+
+Andy took out his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead deliberately.
+
+"Men see passages in human life that women suspect nothing about, Mem.
+Darn this wagon, how it jolts! There's lots of genius trampled underfoot
+by yer purse-proud tyrants, Mem."
+
+"Theeself, for instance. Thee'd best mind thy horse, boy."
+
+But she patted her basket comfortably. It is so easy to think people
+cruel and coarse who have more money than ourselves! Not for Andy,
+however. His agrarian proclivities were shallow and transient enough. So
+presently, as they bowled along the level road, he forgot Joe Starke,
+and began drumming on the foot-board and humming a tune,--touching now
+and then the stuffed breast-pocket of his coat with an inward chuckle of
+mystery. And when little Ann Mipps, at the toll-gate, came out with her
+chubby cheeks burning, and her shy eyes down, he took no notice at all.
+Nice little midge of a thing; but what did she know of the thrilling
+"Personals" of the "Ledger" and their mysterious meaning, beginning at
+the matrimonial advertisements last May? or of these letters in his
+breast-pocket from the widow of an affectionate and generous disposition
+and easy income on Callowhill, or from the confiding Estelle, whose
+maiden aunt dragonized her on Ridge Road above Parrish? When he saw them
+once, fate would speak out. Something in him was made for better things
+than this flat life: "instincts of chivalry and kindred souls,"--quoting
+Estelle's last letter. Poor Ann! he wondered if they had toffy-pullings
+at Mipps's now. He hadn't been there since April. Such a dog-trot sort
+of love-making that used to be! And Andy stopped to give a quart of milk
+to a seamstress who came out of Poole's cheap boarding-house, and who,
+by the bye, had just been imbibing the fashion-book literature on which
+he had been living lately. A sort of weak wine-whey, that gives to the
+brains of that class a perpetual tipsiness.
+
+Ann Mipps, meanwhile, who had been at her scrubbing since four o'clock,
+so that she should be through and have on her pink calico before the
+milk-cart rolled by, went in and cried herself sick: tasting the tears
+now and then to see how bitter they were,--what a hard time she had in
+the world; and then remembering she had not said her prayers last night,
+and so comprehending this judgment on her. For the Mippses were
+Calvinists, and pain was punishment and not a test. So Ann got up
+comforted; said her prayers twice with a will, and went out to milk. It
+might be different to-morrow. So as she had always thought how he needed
+somebody to make him happy, poor Andy! And she thought _she_ understood
+him. She knew how brave and noble he was! And she always thought, if he
+could get the toll-gate, now that her father was so old, how snug that
+would be!
+
+"Oh, if that should happen, and--there wouldn't be a house in the world
+so happy, if"--
+
+And then her checks began to burn again, and the light came back in her
+eyes, until, by the time the day had grown into the hot August noon, she
+went laughing and buzzing in and out of the shady little toll-house as
+contented as any bee in the clover yonder. Andy would call again
+soon,--maybe to-night! While Andy, in the hot streets, was looking at
+every closed shutter, wondering if Estelle was behind it.
+
+"Poor little Ann! she"--
+
+No! not even to himself would he say, "She likes me"; but his face grew
+suddenly fiery red, and he lashed Jerry spitefully.
+
+A damp, sharp air was blowing up from the bay that evening, when the
+milk-wagon rumbled up the lane towards home. Only on the high tree-tops
+the sun lingered; beneath were broad sweeps of brown shadows cooling
+into night. The lindens shook out fresh perfume into the dew and quiet.
+The few half-tamed goats that browse on the hills hunted some dark
+corner under the pines to dampen out in the wet grass the remembrance of
+the scorching day. Here and there passed some laborer going home in his
+shirt-sleeves, fanning off the hot dust with his straw hat, glad of the
+chance to stop at the cart-wheel and gossip with Andy.
+
+"Ye 'r' late, Fawcett. What news from town?"
+
+So that it was nearly dark before he came under the shadow of the great
+oak by his own gate. The Quaker was walking backwards and forwards along
+the lane. Andy stopped to look at her, therefore; for she was usually so
+quiet and reticent in her motion.
+
+"What kept thee all day, Andrew?" catching the shaft. "Was summat wrong?
+One ill, maybe?"--her lips parched and stiff.
+
+"What ails ye, Jane?"--holding out his hand, as was their custom when
+they met. "No. No one ailin'; only near baked with th' heat. I was wi'
+old Joe,"--lowering his voice. "He took me home,--to his hole, that is;
+I stayed there, ye see. Well, God help us all! Come up, Jerry! D' ye
+smell yer oats? Eh! the basket ye've got? No, he'd touch none of it.
+It's not victual he's livin' on, this day. I wish 'n this matter was
+done with."
+
+He drove on slowly: something had sobered the Will-o'-the-wisp in Andy's
+brain, and all that was manly in him looked out, solemn and pitying. The
+woman was standing by the barn-door when he reached it, watching his
+lips for a stray word as a dog might, but not speaking. He unhitched the
+horse, put him in his stall, and pushed the wagon under cover,--then
+stopped, looking at her uncertainly.
+
+"I--I don't like to talk of this, I hardly know why. But I'm goin' to
+stay with him to-morrow,--till th' trial's done with."
+
+"Yes, Andrew."
+
+"I wish 'n he hed a friend," he said, after a pause, breaking off bits
+of the sunken wall. "Not like me, Jane," raising his voice, and trying
+to speak carelessly. "Like himself. I'm so poor learned, I can't do
+anything for sech as them. Like him. Jane," after another silence, "I've
+seen IT."
+
+She looked at him.
+
+"The engine. Jane"--
+
+"I know."
+
+She turned sharply and walked away, the bluish light of the first
+moonbeams lighting up her face and shoulders suddenly as she went off
+down the wall. Was it that which brought out from the face of the
+middle-aged working woman such a strange meaning of latent youth,
+beauty, and passion? God only knows when the real childhood comes into a
+life, how early or late; but one might fancy this woman had waited long
+for hers, and it was coming to-night, the coarse hardness of look was
+swept away so suddenly. The great thought and hope of her life surged up
+quick, uncontrollably; her limbs shook, the big, mournful animal eyes
+were wet with tears, her very horny hands worked together uncertainly
+and helpless as a child's. On the face, too, especially about the mouth,
+such a terror of pain, such a hungry wish to smile, to be tender, that I
+think a baby would have liked to put up its lips then to be kissed, and
+have hid its face on her neck.
+
+"Summat ails her, sure," said Andy, stupidly watching her a moment or
+two, and then going in to kick off his boots and eat his supper, warm on
+the range.
+
+The moonlight was cold; he shut it out, and sat meditating over his
+cigar for an hour or two before the Quaker came in. When she did, he
+went to light her night-lamp for her,--for he had an odd, old-fashioned
+courtesy about him to women or the aged. He noticed, as he did it, that
+her hair had fallen from the close, thin cap, and how singularly soft
+and fine it was. She stood by the window, drawing her fingers through
+the long, damp folds, in a silly, childish way.
+
+"Good night, Andrew," as he gave it to her.
+
+"Good night."
+
+She looked at him gravely.
+
+"I wish, lad--Would thee say, 'God bless thee, Jane'? It's long since as
+I've heard that, an' there's no one but thee t' 'll say it."
+
+The boy was touched.
+
+"Often I thinks it, Jane,--often. Ye've been good to me these six years.
+I was nothin' but a beggar's brat when ye took me in. I mind that,
+though ye think I forget, when I'm newly rigged out sometimes. God bless
+ye! yes, I'll say it: God knows I will."
+
+She went out into the little passage. He heard her hesitate there a
+minute. It was a double house: the kitchen and sitting-room at one side
+of the narrow hall; at the other, Jane's chamber, and a room which she
+usually kept locked. He had heard her there at night sometimes, for he
+slept above it, and once or twice had seen the door open in the daytime,
+and looked in. It held, he saw, better furniture than the rest of the
+house: a homespun carpet of soft, grave colors, thick drab curtains, a
+bedstead, one or two bookcases, filled and locked, of which Jane made as
+little use, he was sure, as she could of the fowling-piece and patent
+fishing-rod which he saw in one corner. There were no shams, no cheap
+makeshifts in the Quaker's little house, in any part of it; but this
+room was the essence of cleanness and comfort, Andy thought. He never
+asked questions, however: some ingredient in his poor hodge-podge of a
+brain keeping him always true to this hard test of good breeding. So
+to-night, though he heard her until near eleven o'clock moving
+restlessly about in this room, he hesitated until then, before he went
+to speak to her.
+
+"She's surely sick," he said, with a worried look, lighting his candle.
+"Women are the Devil for nerves."
+
+Coming to the open door, however, he found her only busy in rubbing the
+furniture with a bit of chamois-skin. She looked up at him, her face
+very red, and the look in her face that children have when going out for
+a holiday.
+
+"How does thee think it looks, Andy?" her voice strangely low and rapid.
+
+He looked at her curiously.
+
+"I'm makin' it ready, thee knows. Pull to this shutter for me, lad. A
+good many years I've been makin' it ready"--
+
+"You shiver so, ye'd better go to bed, Jane."
+
+"Yes. Only the white valance is to put to the bed; I'm done
+then,"--going on silently for a while.
+
+"I've been so long at it,"--catching her breath. "Hard scrapin', the
+first years. We'd only a lease on the place at first. It's ours now, an'
+it's stocked, an'--Don't thee think the house is snug itself, Andrew?
+Thee sees other houses. Is't home-like lookin'? Good for rest"--
+
+"Yes, surely. What are you so anxious an' wild about, Jane? It's yer own
+house."
+
+"I'm not anxious,"--trying to calm herself. "Mine, is it, lad? All mine;
+nobody sharin' in it."
+
+She laughed. In all these years he had never heard her laugh before; it
+was low and full-hearted,--a live, real laugh. Somehow, all comfort,
+home, and frolic in the coming years were promised in it.
+
+"Mine?" folding up her duster. "Well, lad, thee says so. Daily savin' of
+the cents got it. Maybe thee thought me a hard woman?"--with an anxious
+look. "I kept all the accounts of it in that blue book I burned
+to-night. Nobody must know what it cost. No. Thee'd best go to sleep,
+lad. I've an hour's more work, I think. There'll be no time for it
+to-morrow, bein' the last day."
+
+He did not like to leave her so feverish and unlike herself.
+
+"Well, good night, then."
+
+"Good night, Andrew. Mine, eh?"--her face flushing. "Thee'll know
+to-morrow. Thee thinks it looks comfortable?"--holding his hand
+anxiously. "Heartsome? Mis' Hale called the place that the other day. I
+was so glad to hear that! Well, good night. _I_ think it does."
+
+And she went back to her work, while Andy made his way up-stairs,
+puzzled and sleepy.
+
+The next day was cool and grave for intemperate August. Very seldom a
+stream of fresh sunshine broke through the gray, mottling the pavements
+with uncertain lights. Summer was evidently tired of its own lusty life,
+and had a mind to put on a cowl of hodden-gray, and call itself
+November. The pale, pleasant light toned in precisely, however, to the
+meaning of Arch and Walnut Streets, where the old Quaker family-life has
+rooted itself into the city, and looks out on the passers-by in such a
+sober, cheerful fashion. There was one house, low down in Arch, that
+would have impressed you as having grown more sincerely than the others
+out of the character of its owner. There was nothing bigoted or
+purse-proud or bawbling in the habit of the man who built it; from the
+massive blocks in the foundation, to the great horse-chestnuts in front,
+and the creeping ivy over pictures and bookshelves, there was the same
+constant hint of a life liberal, solid, graceful. It had its whim of
+expression, too, in the man himself,--a small man, lean,
+stoop-shouldered, with gray hair and whiskers, wearing a clergyman's
+black suit and white cravat: his every motion was quiet, self-poised,
+intelligent; a quizzical, kind smile on the mouth, listening eyes, a
+grave forehead; a man who had heard other stories than any in your
+life,--of different range, yet who waited, helpful, for yours, knowing
+it to be something new and full of an eternal meaning. It was Dr.
+Bowdler, rector of an Episcopal church, a man of more influence out of
+the Church than any in it. He was in the breakfast-room now, trimming
+the hanging-baskets in the window, while his niece finished her coffee:
+he "usually saved his appetite for dinner, English fashion; cigars until
+then,"--poohing at all preaching of hygiene, as usual, as "stuff."
+
+There were several other gentlemen in the room,--waiting, apparently,
+for something,--reading the morning papers, playing with the
+Newfoundland dog that had curled himself up in the patch of sunshine by
+the window, or chatting with Miss Defourchet. None of them, she saw,
+were men of cultured leisure: one or two millionnaires, burly,
+stubby-nosed fellows, with practised eyes and Port-hinting faces: the
+class of men whose money was made thirty years back, who wear slouched
+clothes, and wield the coarser power in the States. They came out to the
+talk fit for a lady, on the open general field, in a lumbering, soggy
+way, the bank-note smell on every thought. The others, more unused to
+society, caught its habit better, she thought, belonging as they did to
+a higher order: they were practical mechanicians, and their profession
+called, she knew, for tolerably powerful and facile faculties of brain.
+The young lady, who was waiting too, though not so patiently as the
+others, amused herself in drawing them out and foiling them against each
+other, with a good deal of youthful tact, and want of charity, for a
+while. She grew tired at last.
+
+"They are long coming, uncle," she said, rising from her chair.
+
+"They are here, Mary: putting up the model in the back lobby for the
+last hour. Did you think it would be brought in here?"
+
+"I don't know. Mr. Aikens is not here,"--glancing at the timepiece
+uneasily.
+
+"He's always slow," said one of the machinists, patting the dog's head.
+"But I will rely more on his judgment of the engine than on my own.
+He'll not risk a dollar on it, either, if there's a chance of its
+proving a failure."
+
+"It cannot be a failure," she said, impatiently, her peremptory brown
+eyes lighting.
+
+"It has been tried before," said her uncle, cautiously,--"or the same
+basis of experiment,--substitution of compressed air for steam,--and it
+did not succeed. But it is the man you reason from, Mary, not the
+machine."
+
+"I don't understand anything about the machine," in a lower voice,
+addressing the man she knew to possess most influence in the party. "But
+this Starke has given his life to it, and a life worth living, too. All
+the strength of soul and body that God gave him has gone into that model
+out yonder. He has been dragging it from place to place for years, half
+starving, to get it a chance of trial"--
+
+"All which says nothing for the wheels and pulleys," dryly interrupted
+the man, with a critical look at her flushing and paling face.
+
+People of standfast habit were always shy of this young person, because,
+having an acute brain and generous impulses, and being a New-Englander
+by birth, she had believed herself called to be a reformer, and had
+lectured in public last winter. Her lightest remarks had, somehow, an
+oratorical twang. The man might have seen what a true, grand face hers
+would be, when time had taken off the acrid, aggressive heat which the,
+to her, novel wrongs in the world provoked in it.
+
+"When you see the man," interposed her uncle, "you will understand why
+Miss Defourchet espouses his cause so hotly. Nobody is proof against his
+intense, fierce belief in this thing he has made. It reminds me of the
+old cases of possession by a demon."
+
+The young girl looked up quickly.
+
+"Demon? It was the spirit of God, the Bible says, that filled Bezaleel
+and that other, I forget his name, with wisdom to work in gold and
+silver and fine linen. It's the spirit of God that you call
+genius,--anything that reveals truth: in pictures, or actions,
+_or_--machines."
+
+Friend Turner, who was there, took her fingers in his wrinkled hand.
+
+"Thee feels strongly, Mary."
+
+"I wish you could see the man," in a lower voice. "Your old favorite,
+Fichte," with a smile, "says that 'thorough integrity of purpose is our
+nearest approach to the Divine idea.' There never was such integrity of
+purpose as his, I believe. Men don't often fight through hunger and want
+like death, for a pure aim. And I tell you, if fate thwarts him at this
+last chance, it is unjust and cruel."
+
+"Thee means _God_, thee knows?"
+
+She was silent, then looked up.
+
+"I do know."
+
+The old Quaker put his hand kindly on her hair.
+
+"He will find His own teachers for thee, dear," was all the reproof he
+gave.
+
+There was a noise in the hall, and a servant, opening the door, ushered
+in Andy, and behind him the machinist, Starke. A younger man than Friend
+Turner had expected to see,--about fifty, his hair prematurely white, in
+coarse, but decent brown clothes, bearing in his emaciated limbs and
+face marks of privation, it was true, but with none of the fierce
+enthusiasm of expression or nervousness he had looked for. A quiet,
+grave, preoccupied manner. While Dr. Bowdler and some of the others
+crowded about him, he stood, speaking seldom, his hands clasped behind
+him and his head bent forward, the gray hair brushed straight up from
+his forehead. Miss Defourchet was disappointed a little: the best of
+women like to patronize, and she had meant to meet him as an equal,
+recognize him in this new atmosphere of refinement into which he was
+brought, set him at his ease, as she did Andy, by a few quiet words. But
+he was her equal: more master of this or any occasion than she, because
+so thoroughly unconscious, standing on something higher. She suspected,
+too, he had been used to a life as cultivated as this, long ago, by the
+low, instructed voice, the intangible simplicity of look and word
+belonging to the bred gentleman.
+
+"They may fuss as they please about him now," chuckled Andy to himself,
+"but darn a one of 'em would have smuggled him into them clothes. Spruce
+they look, too; baggy about the knees, maybe. No, thank you, Miss; I've
+had sufficient," putting down the wine he had barely sipped,--groaning
+inwardly; but he knew what was genteel, I hope, and that comforted him
+afterwards.
+
+"The model is ready," said Starke to Dr. Bowdler. "We are keeping your
+friends waiting."
+
+"No. It is Aikens who is not here. You know him? If the thing satisfies
+him, he'll bring it into his factories over the Delaware, and make Johns
+push it through at Washington. He's a thorough-goer, Aikens. Then it
+will be a success. That's Johns,--that burly fellow in the frock-coat.
+You have had the model at Washington, I think you told me, Mr. Starke?"
+
+"Three years ago. I exhibited it before a committee. On the Capitol
+grounds it was."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, with success, certainly. They brought in a bill to introduce it
+into the public works, but it fell through. Woods brought it in. He was
+a young man: not strong, maybe. That was the reason they laughed, I
+suppose. He tried it for two or three sessions, until it got to be a
+sort of joke. I had no influence. That has been the cause of its
+failure, always."
+
+His eyes dropped; then he suddenly lifted his hand to his mouth, putting
+it behind him again, to turn with a smile when Miss Defourchet addressed
+him. Dr. Bowdler started.
+
+"Look at the blood," he whispered to Friend Turner. "He bit his finger
+to the bone."
+
+"I know," said the old Quaker. "The man is quiet from inanition and
+nervous tension. This trial means more to him than we guess. Get him out
+of this crowd."
+
+"Come, Mr. Starke," and the Doctor touched his arm, "into my library.
+There are some curious plates there which"--
+
+Andy had been gulping for courage to speak for some time.
+
+"Don't let him go without a glass of wine," he muttered to the young
+lady. "I give you my honor I haven't got food across his lips for"--
+
+She started away from him, and made the machinist drink to the success
+of "our engine," as she called it; but he only touched the glass to his
+lips and smiled at her faintly: then left the room with her uncle.
+
+The dog followed him: he had kept by Starke since the moment he came
+into the breakfast-room, cuddling down across his feet when he was
+called away. The man had only patted him absently, saying that all dogs
+did so with him, he didn't know why. Thor followed him now. Friend
+Turner beckoned the clergyman back a moment.
+
+"Make him talk, Richard. Be rough, hurt him, if thee chooses; it will be
+a safety-valve. Look in his eyes! I tell thee we have no idea of all
+that has brought this poor creature into this state,--such rigid strain.
+But if it is broken in on first by the failure of his pump, if it be a
+pump, I will not answer for the result, Richard."
+
+Dr. Bowdler nodded abruptly, and hurried after Starke. When he entered
+the cozy south room which he called the library, he found Starke
+standing before an oil-painting of a baby, one the Doctor had lost years
+ago.
+
+"Such a bright little thing!" the man said, patting the chubby bare foot
+as if it were alive.
+
+"You have children?" Dr. Bowdler asked eagerly.
+
+"No, but I know almost all I meet in the street, or they know me. 'Uncle
+Joe' they call me,"--with a boyish laugh.
+
+It was gone in a moment.
+
+"Are they ready?"
+
+"No."
+
+The Doctor hesitated. The man beside him was gray-haired as himself, a
+man of power, with a high, sincere purpose looking out of the haggard
+scraggy face and mild blue eyes,--how could he presume to advise him?
+Yet this Starke, he saw, had narrowed his life down to a point beyond
+which lay madness; and that baby had not been in life more helpless or
+solitary or unable than he was now, when the trial had come. The Doctor
+caught the bony hands in his own fat healthy ones.
+
+"I wish I could help you," he said impetuously.
+
+Starke looked in his face keenly.
+
+"For what? How?"
+
+"This engine--have you nothing to care for in life but that?"
+
+"Nothing,--nothing but that and what it will gain me."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"If it fails?"
+
+The dark blood dyed the man's face and throat; he choked, waited a
+moment before he spoke.
+
+"It would not hurt me. No. I'm nearly tired out, Sir. I hardly look for
+success."
+
+"Will you try again?"
+
+"No, I'll not try again."
+
+He had drawn away and stood by the window, his face hidden by the
+curtain. The Doctor was baffled.
+
+"You have yourself lost faith in your invention?"
+
+Something of the old fierceness flashed into the man's eye, but died
+out.
+
+"No matter," he said under his breath, shaking his head, and putting his
+hand in a feeble way to his mouth.
+
+"Inanition of soul as well as body," thought the Doctor. "I'll rouse
+him, cruel or not."
+
+"Have you anything to which to turn, if this disappoints you? Home or
+friends?"
+
+He waited for an answer. When it came, he felt like an intruder, the man
+was so quiet, far-off.
+
+"I have nothing,--no friends,--unless I count that boy in the next room.
+Eh? He has fragments of the old knightly spirit, if his brain be
+cracked. No others."
+
+"Well, well! You'll forgive me?" said the Doctor. "I did not mean to be
+coarse. Only I--The matter will succeed, I know. You will find happiness
+in that. Money and fame will come after."
+
+The old man looked up and came towards him with a certain impressive
+dignity, though the snuff-colored clothes were bagging about his limbs,
+and his eyes were heavy and unsteady.
+
+"You're not coarse. No. I'm glad you spoke to me in that way. It is as
+if you stopped my life short, and made me look before and behind. But
+you don't understand. I"--
+
+He put his hand to his head, then began buttoning his coat uncertainly,
+with a deprecating, weak smile.
+
+"I don't know what the matter is. I'm not strong as I used to be."
+
+"You need success."
+
+How strong and breezy the Doctor's voice sounded!
+
+"Cheer up, Mr. Starke. You're a stronger-brained man than I, and twenty
+years younger. It's something to have lived for a single high purpose
+like yours, if you succeed. And if not, God's life is broad, and needs
+other things than air-engines. Perhaps you've been 'in training,' as the
+street-talk goes, getting your muscles and nerves well grown, and your
+real work and fight are yet to come."
+
+"I don't know," said the man, dully.
+
+Dr. Bowdler, perhaps, with well-breathed body and soul, did not quite
+comprehend how vacant and well worn out both heart and lungs were under
+poor Starke's bony chest.
+
+"You don't seem to comprehend what this engine is to me.--You said the
+world was broad. I had a mind, even when I was a boy, to do something in
+it. My father was a small farmer over there in the Jerseys. Well, I used
+to sit thinking there, after the day's work was done, until my head
+ached, of how I might do something,--to help, you understand?"
+
+"I understand."
+
+"To make people glad I had lived. I was lazy, too. I'd have liked to
+settle down and grub like the rest, but this notion kept driving me
+like, a sting. I can understand why missionaries cross the seas when
+their hearts stay behind. It grew with me, kept me restless, like a
+devil inside of me. I'm not strong-brained, as you said. I had only one
+talent,--for mechanism. They bred me a lawyer, but I was a machinist
+born. Well,--it's the old story. What's the use of telling it?"
+
+He stopped abruptly, his eyes on the floor.
+
+"Go on. It will be good for both of us. Aikens has not come."
+
+"There's nothing to tell. If it was God or the Devil that led me on to
+this thing I don't know. I sold myself to it, soul and body. The idea of
+this invention was not new, but my application was. So it got possession
+of me. Whatever I made by the law went into it. I tried experiments in a
+costly way then, had laboratories there, and workshops in the city. My
+father left me a fortune; _that_ was swallowed up. I worked on with hard
+struggle then. I was forty years old. I thought success lay just within
+my reach. God! You don't know how I had fought for it, day by day, all
+that long life! I was near mad, I think. And then"--
+
+He stopped again, biting his under lip, standing motionless. The Doctor
+waited until he was controlled.
+
+"Never mind," gently. "Don't go on."
+
+"Yes, I'll tell you all. I was married. A little Quaker girl she was,
+uneducated, but the gentlest, truest woman God ever made, I think. It
+rested one to look at her. There were two children. They died. Maybe, if
+they had lived, it would have been different with me,--I'm so fond of
+children. I was of her,--God knows I was! But after the children were
+gone, and the property sunk, and the experiments all topped just short
+of success, for want of means, I grew irritable and cross,--used to her.
+It's the way with husbands and wives, sometimes. Well"--
+
+He swallowed some choking in his throat, and hurried on.
+
+"She had some money,--not much, but her own. I wanted it. Then I stopped
+to think. This engine seemed like a greedy devil swallowing everything.
+Another step, and she was penniless, ruined: common sense told me that.
+And I loved her,--well enough to see how my work came between us every
+hour, made me cruel to her, kept her wretched. If I were gone, she would
+be better off. I said that to myself day after day. I used to finger the
+bonds of that money, thinking how it would enable me to finish all I had
+to do. She wanted me to take it. I knew some day I should do it."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"No,"--his face clearing. "I was not altogether lost, I think. I left
+her, settling it on herself. Then I was out of temptation. But I
+deceived her: I said I was tired of married life, wished to give myself
+to my work. Then I left her."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She? Nothing that I remember. 'As thee will, Joseph,' that was all, if
+anything. She had suspected it a long time. If I had stayed with her, I
+should have used that money,"--his fingers working with his white
+whiskers. "I've been near starving sometimes since. So I saved her from
+that,"--looking steadily at the Doctor, when he had finished speaking,
+but as if he did not see him.
+
+"But your wife? Have you never seen her since?"
+
+"Once." He spoke with difficulty now, but the clergyman suffered him to
+go on. "I don't know where she is now. I saw her once in the Fulton
+ferry-boat at New York; she had grown suddenly old and hard. She did not
+see me. I never thought she could grow so old as that. But I did what I
+could. I saved her from my life."
+
+Dr. Bowdler looked into the man's eyes as a physician might look at a
+cancer.
+
+"Since then you have not seen her, I understand you? Not wished to see
+her?"
+
+There was a moment's pause.
+
+"I have told you the facts of my life, Sir," said the old machinist,
+with a bow, his stubbly gray hair seeming to stand more erect; "the rest
+is of trifling interest."
+
+Dr. Bowdler colored.
+
+"Don't be unjust to me, my friend," he said, kindly. "I meant well."
+
+There had been some shuffling noises in the next room in the half-hour
+just past, which the Doctor had heard uneasily, raising his voice each
+time to stifle the sound. A servant came to the door now, beckoning him
+out. As he went, Starke watched him from under his bushy brows, smiling,
+when he turned and apologized for leaving him.
+
+That man was a thorough man, of good steel. What an infinite patience
+there was in his voice! He was glad he had told him so much; he breathed
+freer himself for it. But he was not going to whine. Whatever pain had
+been in his life he had left out of that account. What right had any man
+to know what his wife was to him? Other men had given up home and
+friends and wife for the truth's sake, and not whimpered over it.
+
+What a long time they were waiting to examine the engine! He began his
+walk up and down the room, with the habitual stoop of the shoulders, and
+an occasional feeble wandering of the hand to his mouth, wondering a
+little at himself, at his coolness. For this was the last throw of the
+dice. After to-day, no second chance. If it succeeded--Well, he washed
+his hands of the world's work then. _His_ share was finished, surely.
+Then for happiness! What would she say when he came back? He had earned
+his reward in life by this time; his work was done, well
+done,--repeating that to himself again and again. But _would_ she care?
+His long-jawed, gaunt face was all aglow now, and he rubbed his hands
+softly together, his thought sliding back evidently into some accustomed
+track, one that gave him fresh pleasure, though it had been the same
+these many years, through days of hammering and moulding and nights of
+sleeping in cheap taverns or under market-stalls. When they were first
+married, he used to bring her a peculiar sort of white shawl,--quite
+outside of the Quaker dress, to be sure, but he liked it. She used to
+look like a bride, freshly, every time she put one on. One of those
+should be the first thing he bought her. Dr. Bowdler was not wrong: he
+was a young man yet; they could enjoy life strongly and heartily, both
+of them. But no more work: with a dull perception of the fact that his
+strength was sapped out beyond the power of recuperation. That baby
+(stopping before the picture) was like Rob, about the forehead. But Rob
+was fairer, and had brown eyes and a snub-nose, like his mother.
+Remembering how, down in the farm-house, she used to sit on the
+front-porch step nursing the baby, while he smoked or read, in the
+evenings: where they could see the salt marshes. Jane liked them, for
+their color: a dead flat of brown salt grass with patches of brilliant
+emerald, and the black, snaky lines up which the tide crept, the
+white-sailed boats looking as if they were wedged in the grass. She
+liked that. Her tastes were all good.
+
+How long _did_ they mean to wait? He went to the window and looked out.
+Just then a horse neighed, and the sound oddly recalled the country-town
+where they had lived after they came into this State. On market-days it
+was one perpetual whinny along the streets from the colts trotting
+along-side of the wagons. He and Jane used to keep open table for their
+country-friends then, and on court- or fair-days. What a hard-fisted,
+shrewd people they were! talking bad English (like Jane herself); but
+there was more refinement and softness of feeling among them than among
+city-bred men. He should relish that life again; it suited him. To die
+like a grub? But he _had_ done his work. Thank God!
+
+He opened the window to catch the damp air, as Dr. Bowdler came in and
+touched him on the arm.
+
+"Shall we stay here? Mr. Aikens has come, and they have been testing the
+machine for some time, I find. Go? Certainly, but--You're a little
+nervous, Mr. Starke, and--Wouldn't it be better if you were not present?
+They would be freer in deciding, and--suppose you and I stay here?"
+
+"Eh? How? At it for some time?" hurrying out. "At it?" as the Doctor
+tried to keep pace with him. "Why, God bless my soul, Sir, what can
+_they_ do? Nobody understands the valves but myself. A set of
+ignoramuses, Sir. I saw that at a glance. But it's my last
+chance,"--panting and wheezing before he reached the back lobby, and
+holding his hand to his side.
+
+Dr. Bowdler stopped outside.
+
+"What are you waiting here for, Mary?"
+
+"I want to hear. What chance has it? I think I'd give something off my
+own life, if that man had succeeded in doing a great thing."
+
+"Not much of a chance, Aikens says. The theory is good, but they are
+afraid the expense will make it of no practical use. However, they have
+not decided. It is well it is his last chance, though, as he says. I
+never saw a man who had dragged himself so near to insanity in pursuit
+of a hobby. Nothing but a great reaction can save him."
+
+"Success, you mean? I think that man's life is worth a thousand aimless
+ones, Sir. If it fails, where's your 'justice on earth'? I"--
+
+She pushed her curls back hotly. The Doctor did not answer.
+
+The trial lasted until late in the afternoon. One or two of the
+gentlemen came out at odd times to luncheon, which was spread in the
+adjoining room. They looked grave, and talked earnestly in low tones:
+the man had infected them with his own feeling in a measure.
+
+"I don't know when I was more concerned for the success of anything not
+my own," said Mr. Aikens to Miss Defourchet, as he rose to go back to
+the lobby, putting down his glass. "It is such a daring innovation; it
+would be worth thousands per annum to me, if I could make it
+practicable. And then that poor devil himself,--I feel as if we were
+trying him for his life to-day. It's pitiful."
+
+She went in herself once, when the door was open, and saw Starke: he was
+in his shirt-sleeves, driving in a wedge that had come out; his face was
+parched, looked contracted, his eyes glazed. She spoke to him, but he
+made no answer, went from side to side of the engine, working with it,
+glancing furtively at the men, who stood gravely talking. The girl was
+nervous, and felt she should cry, if she stayed there. She called the
+dog, but he would not come; he was crouched with his head on his
+fore-paws, watching Starke.
+
+"It is curious how the dog follows him," she said, after she had gone
+out, to Andy, who was in the back porch, watching the rain come up.
+
+"I've noticed animals did it to him. My Jerry knows him as well as me.
+What chances has he, Miss?"
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"You heard Dr. Bowdler say he was married. Do you know his wife?" she
+asked.
+
+Some strange doubts had been in Andy's brain for the last hour, but he
+never told a secret.
+
+"It was in the market I come, to know Mr. Starke," he said, confusedly.
+"At the eatin'-stalls. He never said to me as he hed a wife."
+
+The rain was heavy and constant when it came, a muddy murkiness in the
+air that bade fair to last for a day or more. Evening closed in rapidly.
+Andy sat still on the porch; he could shuffle his heels as he pleased
+there, and take a sly bit of tobacco, watching, through a crack between
+the houses, the drip, drip, of rain on the umbrellas going by, the lamps
+beginning to glow here and there in the darkness, listening to the soggy
+footfalls and the rumble of the streetcars.
+
+"This is tiresome,"--putting one finger carefully under the rungs of his
+chair, where he had the lantern. "I wonder ef Jane is waiting for
+me,--an' for any one else."
+
+He trotted one foot, and chewed more vehemently. On the verge of some
+mystery, it seemed to him.
+
+"Ef it is--What ef he misses, an' won't go back with me? God help the
+woman! What kin _I_ do?"
+
+After a while, taking out the lantern, and rubbing it where the damp had
+dimmed it,--
+
+"I'll need it to-night, that's sure!"
+
+Now and then he bent his head, trying to catch a sound from the lobby,
+but to no purpose. About five o'clock, however, there was a sudden
+sound, shoving of chairs, treading, half-laughs, as of people departing.
+The door opened, and the gentlemen came out into the lighted hall, in
+groups of two or three,--some who were to dine with the Doctor passing
+up the staircase, the others chatting by the door. The Doctor was not
+with them, nor Starke. Andy stood up, trying to hear, holding his felt
+hat over his mouth. "If he's hed a chance!" But he could catch only
+broken sentences.
+
+"A long session."
+
+"I knew it from the first."
+
+"I asked Starke to call on me to-morrow," etc.
+
+And so they put on their hats, and went out, leaving the hall vacant.
+
+"I can't stand this," said Andy, after a pause.
+
+He wiped his wet feet, and went into the hall. The door out of which the
+men came opened into a reception-room; beyond that was the lobby. It was
+dimly lighted as yet, when he entered it; the engine-model, a mass of
+miniature wheels and cylinders, was in the middle of the bare floor; the
+Doctor and Starke at the other end of the apartment. The Doctor was
+talking,--a few words now and then, earnestly spoken. Andy could not
+hear them; but Starke sat, saying nothing. Miss Defourchet took a pair
+of India-rubber boots from the servant in the hall, and went to him.
+
+"You must wear them, and take an umbrella, if you will not stay," she
+said, stooping down, as if she would like to have put them on his feet,
+her voice a little unsteady. "It rains very heavily, and your shoes are
+not strong. Indeed, you must."
+
+"Shoes, eh?" said the old machinist, lifting one foot end then the other
+on his knee, and looking vacantly at the holes through which the bare
+skin showed. "Oh, yes, yes,"--rising and going past her, as if he did
+not see her.
+
+"But you'll take them?"
+
+"Hush, Mary! Mr. Starke, I may come and see you to-morrow, you said?
+We'll arrange matters,"--with a hearty tone.
+
+Starke touched his hat with the air of an old-school gentleman.
+
+"I shall be happy to see you, Sir,--very happy. You will allow me to
+wish you good evening?"--smiling. "I am not well,"--with the same
+meaningless look.
+
+"Certainly,"--shaking hands earnestly. "I wish I could induce you to
+stay and have a talk over your future prospects, eh? But to-morrow--I
+will be down early to-morrow. Your young friend gave me the address. The
+model--we'll have that sent down to-morrow, too."
+
+Starke stopped.
+
+"The model," without, however, looking at it. "Yes. It can go to-night.
+I should prefer that. Andrew will bring an express-wagon for
+it,"--fumbling in his pocket.
+
+"I have the exact change," said Miss Defourchet, eagerly; "let me pay
+the express."
+
+Starke's face colored and grew pale again.
+
+"You mistake me," he said, smiling.
+
+"He's no beggar. You hurt him," Andy had whispered, pushing back her
+hand. Some women had no sense, if they were ladies. Ann Mipps would
+never have done that!
+
+Starke drew out a tattered leather purse: there was a dime in it, which
+Andy took. He lighted his lantern, and followed Starke out of the house,
+noticing how the Doctor hesitated before he closed the door after them.
+They stood a moment on the pavement; the rain was dark and drenching,
+with sudden gusts of wind coming down the street. The machinist stood,
+his old cap stuck on the back of his head, his arms fallen nerveless at
+his sides, hair and coat and trousers flapping and wet: the very picture
+of a man whom the world had tried, and in whom it had found no possible
+savor of use but to be trodden under foot of men.
+
+"God help him!" thought Andy, "he's far gone! He don't even button an'
+unbutton his coat as allus."
+
+But he asked no questions, excepting where should he take _it_. Some
+young men came up, three abreast; Starke drew humbly out of their way
+before he replied.
+
+"I--I do not know, Andrew. But I'd rather not see it again. You"--
+
+His voice went down into a low mumbling, and he turned and went slowly
+off up the street. Andy stood puzzled a moment, then hurried after him.
+
+"Let me go home with you."
+
+"What use, boy?"
+
+"To-morrow, then?"
+
+Starke said nothing, thrust his hands into his pockets, his head falling
+on his breast with an unchanged vacancy of expression. Andy looked after
+him, coughing, gazing about him uncertainly.
+
+"He's clean given up! What kin _I_ do?"
+
+Then overtook him again, forcing the lantern into his hand,--not without
+a gulp for breath.
+
+"Here! take this! I like to. It's yours now, Mr. Starke, d' y'
+understand? Yours. But you'll take care of it, won't you?"
+
+"I do not need anything, my good boy. Let me go."
+
+But Andy held on desperately to his coat.
+
+"Come home. _She's_ there. Maybe I ought not to say it. It's Jane. For
+God's sake, come to Jane!"
+
+It was so dark that Andy could not see the expression of the man's face
+when he heard this. Starke did not speak for some minutes; when he did,
+his voice was firm and conscious, as it had not been before to-night.
+
+"Let go my coat, Andrew; I feel choking. You know my wife, then?"
+
+"Yes, this many a year. She's waited for you. Come home. Come!"
+
+But Starke drew his arm away.
+
+"Tell her I would have gone, if I had succeeded. But not now. I'm tired,
+I'm going to rest."
+
+With both hands he pushed the lank, wet hair off his face. Somehow, all
+his tired life showed itself in the gesture.
+
+"I don't think I ever did care as much for her as I do to-night. Is she
+always well, Andrew?"
+
+"Yes, well. Come!"
+
+"No; good night. Bid her good night."
+
+As he turned away, he stopped and looked back.
+
+"Ask her if she ever thinks of our Rob. I do." And so was gone.
+
+As he went down the street, turning into an alley, something black
+jumped over the low gate beside Andy and followed him.
+
+"It's the dog! Well, dumb creatures _are_ curious, beyond me. Now for
+Jane"; and with his head muddled and aching, he went to find an
+express-stand.
+
+The examination of the model took place on Tuesday. On the Saturday
+following, Dr. Bowdler was summoned to his back parlor to see a man and
+woman who had called. Going in, he found Andy, clad as before in his
+dress-suit of blue coat and marvellously plaid trousers, balancing
+himself uneasily on the edge of his chair, and a woman in Quaker dress
+beside him. Her face and presence attracted the Doctor at once,
+strongly, though they were evidently those of an uneducated
+working-woman. The quietude in her motions and expression, the repressed
+power, the delicacy, had worked out, from within, to carve her sad face
+into those fine lines he saw. No outside culture could do that. She
+spoke, too, with that simple directness that belongs to people who are
+sure of what they have to do in the world.
+
+"I came to see if thee knew anything of my husband: thee was so kind to
+him some days ago. I am Jane Starke."
+
+The Doctor comprehended in a moment. He watched the deserted wife
+curiously, as he answered her.
+
+"No, my dear Madam. Is it possible he is not with you? I went to his
+lodging twice with my niece, and, finding it vacant, concluded that he
+had returned to you, or gone with our young friend Andrew here."
+
+"He is not with me."
+
+She rose, her fingers twitching nervously at her bonnet-strings.
+
+"She was so dead sure you would know," said Andy, rising also. "We've
+been on the search for four days. We thought you would know. Where will
+you go now, Jane?"
+
+The woman lost every trace of color when Dr. Bowdler answered her, but
+she showed no other sign of her disappointment.
+
+"We will find him somewhere, Andrew."
+
+"Stop, stop," interrupted the Doctor. "Tell me what you have done. You
+must not go in this way."
+
+The woman began to answer, but Andy took the word from her.
+
+"You keep yerself quiet, Jane. She's dreadful worn out, Sir. There's not
+much to tell. Jane had come into town that night to meet him,--gone to
+his lodgins--she was so sure he'd come home. She's been waitin' these
+ten years,"--in a whisper. "But he didn't come. Nor the next day, nor
+any day since. An' the last I saw of him was goin' down the street in
+the rain, with the dog followin'. We've been lookin' every way we could,
+but I don't know the town much, out of my streets for milk, an' Jane
+knows nothin' of it at all, so"--
+
+"It is as I told you!" broke in Miss Defourchet, who had entered,
+unperceived, with a blaze of enthusiasm that made Jane start,
+bewildered. "He is at work,--some new effort. Madam, you have reason to
+thank God for making you the wife of such a man. It makes my blood
+glow," turning to her uncle, "to find this dauntless heroism in the rank
+and file of the people."
+
+She was sincere in her own heroic sympathy for the rank and file: her
+slender form dilated, her eyes flashed, and there was a rich color
+mounting to her fine aquiline features.
+
+"I like a man to fight fate to the death as this one,--never to give
+up,--to sacrifice life to his idea."
+
+"If thee means the engine by the idea," said Jane, dully, "we've given
+up a good deal to it. He has. It don't matter for me."
+
+Miss Defourchet glanced indignantly at the lumbering figure, the big
+slow eyes, following her with a puzzled pain in them. For all mischances
+or sinister fates in the world she had compassion, except for
+one,--stupidity.
+
+"I knew," to Dr. Bowdler, "he would not be content with the decision the
+other day. It is his destiny to help the world. And if this woman will
+come between him and his work, I hope she may never find him."
+
+Jane put a coarse hand up to her breast as if something hurt her; after
+a moment, she said, with her heavy, sad face looking full down on the
+young girl,--
+
+"Thee is young yet. It may be God meant my old man to do this work: it
+may be not. He knows. Myself, I do not think He keeps the world waitin'
+for this air-engine. Others'll be found to do it when it's needed; what
+matter if he fails? An' when a man gives up all little works for
+himself, an' his child, or--his wife," with a gasp, "for some great
+work"--
+
+She stopped.
+
+"It's more likely that the Devil is driving him than God leading," said
+the Doctor, hastily.
+
+"Come, Andrew," said Jane, gravely. "We have no time to lose."
+
+She moved to the door,--unsteadily, however.
+
+"_She_'s fagged out," said Andy, lingering behind her. "Since Tuesday
+night I've followed her through streets an' alleys, night an' day. Jest
+as prim an' sober as you see. Cryin' softly to herself at times. It's a
+sore heart-break, Sir. Waitin' these ten years"--
+
+Dr. Bowdler offered his help, earnestly, as did his niece, with a
+certain reserve. The dog Thor had disappeared with Starke, and they
+hoped that would afford some clue.
+
+"But the woman is a mere clog," said Miss Defourchet, impatiently, after
+they were gone. "Her eyes are as sad, unreasonable as Thor's. Nothing in
+them but instinct. But it is so with most women,"--with a sigh.
+
+"But somehow, Mary, those women never mistake their errand in the world
+any more than Thor, and do it as unconsciously and completely as he,"
+said the Doctor, with a quizzical smile. "If Starke had followed, his
+'instincts,' he would have been a snug farmer to-day in the Jerseys."
+
+Miss Defourchet vouchsafed no answer.
+
+Dr. Bowdler gave his help, as he had promised, but to no purpose. A week
+passed in the search without success, until at last Thor brought it. The
+dog was discovered one night in the kitchen, waiting for his supper, as
+he had been used to do: his affection for his new master, I suppose, not
+having overcome his recollection of the flesh-pots of Egypt. They
+followed him (Jane, the Doctor, and Andy) out to that maze of narrow
+streets, near Fairmount, called, I think, Francisville. He stopped at a
+low house, used in front as a cake-shop, the usual young girl with high
+cheek-bones and oily curls waiting within.
+
+"The dog's owner?" the trading look going out of her eyes suddenly, "Oh,
+are you his friends? He's low to-night: mother's up with him since
+supper; mother's kept him since last Tuesday,"--fussing out from behind
+the counter. "Take chairs, Ma'am. I'll call her. Go out, you
+Stevy,"--driving out two or three urchins in their bed-gowns who were
+jamming up the door-way.
+
+Miserably poor the whole place was; the woman, when she came down, a
+hard skinflint--in Andy's phrase--in the face: just home from her day's
+washing, her gown pinned up, her arms flabby and red.
+
+"Good evenin', Sir! evenin', Ma'am! See the man? Of course, Ma'am; but
+you'd best be keerful,"--standing between Jane and the door. "He's very
+poorly."
+
+"What ails him?"
+
+"Well, I'll say it out,--if you're his friends, as you say," stammering.
+"I'd not like to accuse any one rashly, but--I think he'd a notion of
+starvin' to death, an' got himself so low. Come to me las' week, an'
+pawned his coat for my back room to sleep in. He eat nothin' then: I
+seen that. An' he used to go out an' look at the dam for hours: but he
+never throwed himself in. Since he took to bed, we keep him up with
+broth and sech as we have,--Sally an' me. Sir? Afford it? Hum! We're not
+as well off as we have been," dryly; "but I'm not a beast to see a man
+starvin' under my roof. Oh, certingly, Ma'am; go up."
+
+And while Jane mounted the rickety back-stairs, she turned to the door
+to meet two or three women with shawls pinned about their heads.
+
+"He's very poorly, Mis' Crawford, thank ye, Mem. No, you can't do
+nothing'," in a sepulchral whisper, which continued in a lower tone,
+with a nod back to the Doctor and Andy.
+
+Starke's affair was a godsend to the neighborhood, Dr. Bowdler saw.
+Untrained people enjoy a sickness with more keenness and hearty
+good-feeling than you do the opera. The Doctor had providently brought a
+flask of brandy in his pocket. He went on tiptoe up the creaking stairs
+and gave it to Jane. She was standing, holding the handle of the door,
+not turning it.
+
+"What is it, Jane?" cheerfully. "What do you tremble for, eh?"
+
+"Nothin'",--chewing her lips and opening the door. "It's ten years
+since,"--to herself, as she went in.
+
+Not when she was a shy girl had he been to her what these ten years of
+desertion had made him.
+
+It was half an hour before the Doctor and Andy went up softly into the
+upper room and sat quietly down out of sight in the corner. Jane was
+sitting on the low cot-bed, holding Starke's head on her breast. They
+could not see her face in the feeble light. She had some brandy and
+water in a glass, and gave him a spoonful of it now and then; and when
+she had done that, smoothed the yellow face incessantly with her hard
+fingers. The Doctor fancied that such dumb pain and affection as there
+was in even that little action ought to bring him to life, if he were
+dead. There was some color on his cheeks, and occasionally he opened his
+eyes and tried to speak, but closed them wearily. They watched by him
+until midnight; his pulse grew stronger by that time, and he lay
+wistfully looking at his wife like one who had wakened out of a long
+death, and tried to collect his thought. She did not speak nor stir,
+knowing on how slight a thread his sense hung.
+
+"Jane!" he said, at last.
+
+They bent forward eagerly.
+
+"Jane, I wish thee'd take me home."'
+
+"To be sure, Joseph," cheerfully. "In the morning. It is too chilly
+to-night. Is thee comfortable?" drawing his head closer to her breast.
+"O God! He'll live!" silently clutching at the bed-rail until her hand
+ached. "Go to sleep, dear."
+
+Whatever sobs or tears choked her voice just then, she forced them back:
+they might disturb him. He closed his eyes a moment.
+
+"I have something to say to thee, Jane."
+
+"No. Thee must rest."
+
+"I'd sleep better, if I tell thee first."
+
+There was a moment's silence. The woman's face was pale, her eyes
+burning, but she only smiled softly, holding him steadily.
+
+"It has been so long!"--passing his hand over his forehead vaguely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She could not command a smile now.
+
+"It was all wasted. I've been worth nothing."
+
+How close she held him then to her breast! How tender the touches grew
+on his face!
+
+"I was not strong enough to kill myself even, the other day, when I was
+so tired. So cowardly! Not worth much, Jane!"
+
+She bent forward over him, to keep the others from hearing this.
+
+"Thee's tired too, Jane?" looking up dully.
+
+"A little, Joseph."
+
+Another silence.
+
+"To-morrow, did thee say, we would go home?"
+
+"Yes, to-morrow."
+
+He shut his eyes to sleep.
+
+"Kiss him," said the Doctor to her. "It will make him more certain."
+
+Her face grew crimson.
+
+"He has not asked me yet," she said.
+
+Sometime early in the summer, nearly four years after, Miss Defourchet
+came down to make her uncle another visit,--a little thinned and jaded
+with her winter's work, and glad of the daily ride into the fresh
+country-air. One morning, the Doctor, jumping into the barouche beside
+her, said,--
+
+"We'll make a day of it, Mary,--spend it with some old friends of ours.
+They are such wholesome, natural people, it refreshes me to be with them
+when I am tired."
+
+"Starke and his wife?" she asked, arranging her scarf. "I never desire
+to be with him, or with any man recreant to his work."
+
+"Recreant, eh? Starke? Well, no; he works hard, digs and ditches, and is
+happy. I think he takes his work more humbly and healthily than any man
+I know."
+
+Miss Defourchet looked absently out at the gleaming river. Her interest
+had always been languid in the man since he had declined either to fight
+fate or drown himself. The Doctor jerked his hat down into the bottom of
+the carriage and pulled open his cravat.
+
+"Hah! do you catch that river-breeze? Don't that expand your lungs? And
+the whiff of the fresh clover-blossoms? I come out here to study my
+sermons, did you know? Nature is so simple and grand here, a man could
+not well say a mean or unbrotherly thing while he stays. It forces you
+to be 'a faithful witness' to the eternal truth. There is good fishing
+hereabouts, eh, Jim?"--calling to the driver. "Do you see that black
+pool under the sycamore?"
+
+"_I_ could not call it 'faithful witnessing' to delight in taking even a
+fish's life," dryly said his niece.
+
+The Doctor winced.
+
+"It's the old Adam in me, I suppose. You'll have to be charitable to the
+different making-up of people, Mary."
+
+However, he was silent for a while after that, with rather an
+extinguished feeling, bursting out again when they reached the gate of a
+little snug place by the road-side.
+
+"Here is where my little friend Ann lives. There's a wife for you! 'And
+though she rules him, never shows she rules.' They've a dairy-farm, you
+know, back of the hills; but they live here because it was her father's
+toll-house then, and they won't give up the old place. I like such
+notions. Andy's full of them. There he is! Hillo, Fawcett!"
+
+Andy came out from the kitchen-garden, his freckled face redder than his
+hair, his eyes showing his welcome. Dr. Bowdler was an old tried friend
+now of his and Ann's. "He took a heap of nonsense out of me," he used to
+say.
+
+"No, no, we'll not stop now," said the Doctor; "we are going on to
+Starke's, and Ann is not in, I see. I will stop in the evening for my
+glass of buttermilk, though, and a bunch of country-grown flowers."
+
+But they waited long enough to discuss the price of poultry, etc., in
+market, before they drove on. Miss Defourchet looked wearied.
+
+"Such things seem so paltry while the country is in the state it is,"
+she said.
+
+"Well, my dear, so it is. But it's 'the work by which Andy thrives,' you
+know. And I like it, somehow."
+
+The lady had worked nobly in the hospitals last winter, and naturally
+she wanted to see every head and hand at work on some noble scheme or
+task for the world's good. The hearty, comfortable quiet of the Starkes'
+little farm-house tired her. It was such a sluggish life of nothings,
+she thought,--even when Jane had brought her chair close to the window
+where the sunshine came in broadest and clearest through the
+buttonwood-leaves. Jane saw the look, and it troubled her. She was not
+much of a talker, only when with her husband, so there was no use of
+trying that. She put a little table beside the window and a white cloth
+on it, and then brought a saucer of crimson strawberries and yellow
+cream; but the lady was no eater, she was sorry to see. She stood a
+moment timidly, but Miss Defourchet did not put her at her ease. It was
+the hungry poor she cared for, with stifled brains and souring feeling.
+This woman was at ease, stupidly at peace with God and herself.
+
+"Perhaps thee'd be amused to look over Joseph's case of books?" handing
+her the key, and then sitting down with her knitting, contented in
+having finished her duty. "After a while thee'll have a pleasant
+time,"--smiling consciously. "Richard'll be awake. Richard's our boy,
+thee knows? I wish he was awake, but it is his mornin' nap, an' I never
+disturb him in his mornin' nap."
+
+"You lead a very quiet life, apparently," said Miss Defourchet; for she
+meant to see what was in all these dull trifles.
+
+"Yes, thee might call it so. My old man farms; he has more skill that
+way than me. He bought land in Iowa, an' has been out seein' it, an'
+that freshened him up this spring. But we'll never leave the old place."
+
+"So he farms, and you"--
+
+"Well, I oversee the house," glancing at the word into the kitchen to
+see how Bessy was getting on with the state dinner in progress. "It
+keeps me busy, an' Bessy, (she's an orphan we've taken to raise,) an'
+the dairy, an' Richard most of all. I let nobody touch Richard but
+myself. That's my work."
+
+"You have little time for reading?"
+
+Jane colored.
+
+"I'm not fond of it. A book always put me to sleep quicker than a hop
+pillow. But lately I read some things," hesitating,--"the first books
+Richard'll have to know. I want to keep him with ourselves as long as I
+can. I'd like,"--her eyes with a new outlook in them, as she raised
+them, something beyond Miss Defourchet's experience,--"I'd like to make
+my boy a good, healthy, honest boy before _I_'m done with him. I wish I
+could teach him his Latin an' th' others. But there's no use to try for
+that."
+
+"How goes it, Mary?" said the Doctor heartily, coming in, all in a heat,
+and sun-burnt, with Starke.
+
+Both men were past the prime of life, thin, and stooped, but Starke's
+frame was tough and weather-cured. He was good for ten years longer in
+the world than Dr. Bowdler.
+
+"I've just been looking at the stock. Full and plenty, in every corner,
+as I say to Joseph. It warms me up to come here, Starke. I don't know a
+healthier, more cheerful farm on these hills than just this one."
+
+Starke's face brightened.
+
+"The ground's not overly rich, Sir. Tough work, tough work; but I like
+it. I'm saving off it, too. We put by a hundred or two last year; same
+next, God willing. For Richard, Dr. Bowdler. We want enough to give him
+a thorough education, and then let him rough it with the others. That
+will be the best way to bring out the stuff that's in him. It's good
+stuff," in an under-tone.
+
+"How old is he?" said Miss Defourchet.
+
+"Two years last February," said Jane, eagerly.
+
+"Two years; yes. He's my namesake, Mary, did you know? Where is the
+young lion?"
+
+"Why, yes, mother. Why isn't Richard down? Morning nap? Hoot, toot!
+bring the boy down!"
+
+Miss Defourchet, while Jane went for the boy, noticed how heavy the
+scent of the syringas grew, how the bees droned down into a luxurious
+delight in the hot noon. One might dream out life very pleasantly there,
+she thought. The two men talked politics, but glanced constantly at the
+stairs. She did not wonder that Starke's worn, yellow face should grow
+so curiously bright at the sight of his boy; but her uncle did not care
+for children,--unless, indeed, there was something in them. Jane came
+down and put the boy on the floor.
+
+"He has pulled all my hair down," she said, trying to look grave, to
+hide the proud smile in her face.
+
+Miss Defourchet had taken Richard up with an involuntary kiss, which he
+resisted, looking her full in the face. There _was_ something in this
+child.
+
+"He won't kiss you, unless he likes you," said Starke, chafing his hands
+delightedly.
+
+"What do you think of that fellow, Mary?" said the Doctor, coming over.
+"He's my young lion, Richard is. Look at this square forehead. You don't
+believe in Phrenology, eh? Well, I do. Feel his jaws. Look at that lady,
+Sir! Do you see the big, brave eyes of him?"
+
+"His mouth is like his mother's," said Starke, jealously.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes! So. You think that is the best part of his face, I know.
+It is; as tender as a woman's."
+
+"It is a real hero-face," said the young lady, frankly; "not a mean line
+in it."
+
+Starke had drawn the boy between his knees, and was playing roughly with
+him.
+
+"There never shall be one, with God's help," he thought, but said
+nothing.
+
+Richard was "a hobby" of Dr. Bowdler's, his niece perceived.
+
+"His very hair is like a mane," he said; "he's as uncouth as a young
+giant that don't feel his strength. I say this, Mary: that the boy will
+never be goodish and weak: he'll be greatly good or greatly bad."
+
+The young lady noticed how intently Starke listened; she wondered if he
+had forgotten entirely his own God-sent mission, and turned baby-tender
+altogether.
+
+"What has become of your model, Mr. Starke?" she asked.
+
+Dr. Bowdler looked up uneasily; it was a subject he never had dared to
+touch.
+
+"Andrew keeps it," said Starke, with a smile, "for the sake of old
+times, side by side with his lantern, I believe."
+
+"You never work with it?"
+
+"No; why should I? The principle has since been made practical, as you
+know, better than I could have done it. My idea was too crude, I can see
+now. So I just grazed success, as one may say."
+
+"Have you given up all hope of serving your fellows?" persisted the
+lady. "You seemed to me to be the very man to lead a forlorn hope
+against ignorance: are you quite content to settle down here and do
+nothing?"
+
+His color changed, but he said quietly,--
+
+"I've learned to be humbler, maybe. It was hard learning. But," trying
+to speak lightly, "when I found I was not fit to be an officer, I tried
+to be as good a private as I could. Your uncle will tell you the cause
+is the same."
+
+There was a painful silence.
+
+"I think sometimes, though," said Starke, "that God meant Jane and I
+should not be useless in the world."
+
+He put his hand almost reverently on the boy's head.
+
+"Richard is ours, you know, to make what we will of. He will do a
+different work in life from any engine. I try to think we have strength
+enough saved out of our life to make him what we ought."
+
+"You're right, Starke," said the Doctor, emphatically. "Some day, when
+you and I have done with this long fight, we shall find that as many
+privates as captains will have earned the cross of the Legion of Honor."
+
+Miss Defourchet said nothing; the day did not please her. Jane, she
+noticed, when evening came on, slipped up-stairs to brush her hair, and
+put on a soft white shawl.
+
+"Joseph likes to see me dress a little for the evenings," she said, with
+quite a flush in her cheek.
+
+And the young lady noticed that Starke smiled tenderly as his wife
+passed him. It was so weak! in ugly, large-boned people, too.
+
+"It does one good to go there," said the Doctor, drawing a long breath
+as they drove off in the cool evening, the shadowed red of the sun
+lighting up the little porch where the machinist stood with his wife and
+child. "The unity among them is so healthy and beautiful."
+
+"I did not feel it as you do," said Miss Defourchet, drawing her shawl
+closer, and shivering.
+
+Starke came down on the grass to play with the boy, throwing him down on
+the heaps of hay there to see him jump and rush back undaunted. Yet in
+all his rude romps the solemn quiet of the hour was creeping over him.
+He sat down by Jane on the wooden steps at last, while, the boy, after
+an impetuous kiss or two, curled up at their feet and went to sleep The
+question about the model had stirred an old doubt in Jane's heart. She
+watched her husband keenly. Was he thinking of that old dream? _Would_
+he go back to it? the long dull pain of those dead years creeping
+through her brain. He looked up from the boy, stroking his gray
+beard,--his eyes, she saw, full of tears.
+
+"I was thinking, Jane, how much of our lives was lost before we found
+our true work."
+
+"Yes, Joseph."
+
+He gathered up the boy, holding him close to his bony chest.
+
+"I'd like to think," he said. "I could atone for that waste, Jane. It
+was my fault. I'd like to think I'd earn up yonder that cross of the
+Legion of Honor--through him."
+
+"God knows," she said.
+
+After that they were silent a long while, They were thinking of Him who
+had brought the little child to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO.
+
+
+    No! is my answer from this cold, bleak ridge
+      Down to your valley: you may rest you there:
+    The gulf is wide, and none can build a bridge
+      That your gross weight would safely hither bear.
+
+    Pity me, if you will. I look at you
+      With something that is kinder far than scorn,
+    And think, "Ah, well! I might have grovelled, too;
+      I might have walked there, fettered and forsworn."
+
+    I am of nature weak as others are;
+      I might have chosen comfortable ways;
+    Once from these heights I shrank, beheld afar,
+      In the soft lap of quiet, easy days.
+
+    I might--(I will not hide it)--once I might
+      Have lost, in the warm whirlpools of your voice,
+    The sense of Evil, the stern cry of Right;
+      But Truth has steered me free, and I rejoice:
+
+    Not with the triumph that looks back to jeer
+      At the poor herd that call their misery bliss;
+    But as a mortal speaks when God is near,
+      I drop you down my answer; it is this:--
+
+    I am not yours, because you seek in me
+      What is the lowest in my own esteem:
+    Only my flowery levels can you see,
+      Nor of my heaven-smit summits do you dream.
+
+    I am not yours, because you love yourself:
+      Your heart has scarcely room for me beside.
+    I could not be shut in with name and pelf;
+      I spurn the shelter of your narrow pride!
+
+    Not yours,--because you are not man enough
+      To grasp your country's measure of a man!
+    If such as you, when Freedom's ways are rough,
+      Cannot walk in them, learn that women can!
+
+    Not yours, because, in this the nation's need,
+      You stoop to bend her losses to your gain,
+    And do not feel the meanness of your deed:
+      I touch no palm defiled with such a stain!
+
+    Whether man's thought can find too lofty steeps
+      For woman's scaling, care not I to know;
+    But when he falters by her side, or creeps,
+      She must not clog her soul with him to go.
+
+    Who weds me must at least with equal pace
+      Sometimes move with me at my being's height:
+    To follow him to his more glorious place,
+      His purer atmosphere, were keen delight.
+
+    You lure me to the valley: men should call
+      Up to the mountains, where the air is clear.
+    Win me and help me climbing, if at all!
+      Beyond these peaks rich harmonies I hear,--
+
+    The morning chant of Liberty and Law!
+      The dawn pours in, to wash out Slavery's blot:
+    Fairer than aught the bright sun ever saw
+      Rises a nation without stain or spot.
+
+    The men and women mated for that time
+      Tread not the soothing mosses of the plain;
+    Their hands are joined in sacrifice sublime;
+      Their feet firm set in upward paths of pain.
+
+    Sleep your thick sleep, and go your drowsy way!
+      You cannot hear the voices in the air!
+    Ignoble souls will shrivel in that day:
+      The brightness of its coming can you bear?
+
+    For me, I do not walk these hills alone:
+      Heroes who poured their blood out for the Truth,
+    Women whose hearts bled, martyrs all unknown,
+      Here catch the sunrise of immortal youth
+
+    On their pale cheeks and consecrated brows!
+      It charms me not,--your call to rest below:
+    I press their hands, my lips pronounce their vows
+      Take my life's silence for your answer: No!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EUGENE DELACROIX.
+
+
+The death of Eugene Delacroix cuts the last bond between the great
+artistic epoch which commenced with the Bellini and that which had its
+beginning with the nineteenth century, epochs as diverse in character as
+the Venice of 1400 and the Paris of 1800. In him died the last great
+painter whose art was moulded by the instincts and traditions that made
+Titian and Veronese, and the greatest artist whose eyes have opened on
+the, to him, uncongenial and freezing life of the nineteenth century. In
+our time we have a new ideal, a new and maybe a higher development of
+intellectual art, and as great a soul as Titian's might to-day reach
+farther towards the reconciled perfections of graphic art: but what he
+did no one can now do; the glory of that time has passed away,--its
+unreasoning faith, its wanton instinct, revelling in Art like children
+in the sunshine, and rejoicing in childlike perception of the pomp and
+glory which overlay creation, unconscious of effort, indifferent to
+science,--all gone with the fairies, the saints, the ecstatic visions
+which framed their poor lives in gold. Only, still reflecting the glory,
+as eastern mountains the sunken sun, came a few sympathetic souls
+kindling into like glow, with faint perception of what had passed from
+the whole world beside. Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, Reynolds,
+Gainsborough, Turner, and Delacroix, kept the line of color, now at last
+utterly extinguished. Now we reason, now we see facts; sentiment is out
+of joint, and appearances are known to be liars; we have found the
+greater substance; we kindle with the utilities, and worship with the
+aspiring spirit of a common humanity; we banish the saints from our
+souls and the gewgaws from our garments, and walk clothed and in our
+right minds in what we believe to be the noonday light of reason and
+science. We are humanitarian, enlightened. We begin to comprehend the
+great problems of human existence and development; our science touches
+the infinitely removed, and apprehends the mysteries of macrocosmic
+organism: but we have lost the art of painting; for, when Eugene
+Delacroix died, the last painter (visible above the man) who understood
+Art as Titian understood it, and painted with such eyes as Veronese's,
+passed away, leaving no pupil or successor. It is as when the last scion
+of a kingly race dies in some alien land. Greater artists than he we may
+have in scores; but he was of the Venetians, and, with his _nearly_
+rival, Turner, lived to testify that it was not from a degeneracy of the
+kind that we have no more Tintorets and Veroneses; for both these, if
+they had lived in the days of those, had been their peers.
+
+Painting, as the Venetians understood it, is a lost art, because the
+mental conditions which made it possible exist no longer. The race is
+getting to that mannish stature in which every childlike quality is a
+shame to it; and the Venetian feeling for and cultivation of color are
+essentially childlike traits. No shadows of optics, no spectra of the
+prism clouded their passionate enjoyment of color as it was or as it
+might be, no uplifted finger of cold decorum frightened them into gray
+or sable gloom; they garbed themselves in rainbows, and painted with the
+sunset. Color was to them a rapture and one of the great pursuits of
+their lives; it was music visible, and they cultivated it as such,--not
+by rule and measure, by scales and opposites, through theories and
+canons, with petrific chill of intellect or entangling subtilty of
+analysis. Their lives developed their instincts, and their instincts
+their art. They loved color more than everything else; and therefore
+color made herself known to them in her rarest and noblest beauty. They
+went to Nature as children, and Nature met them as a loving mother
+meets her child, with her happiest smile and the richest of her gifts. I
+do not believe that to any Venetian painter the thought of whether a
+given tint was true ever came; if only his fine instinct told him it was
+lovely, he asked no question further,--and if he took a tint from
+Nature, it was because it was lovely, and not because he found it in
+Nature. _Our_ painter must see,--_their_ painter could feel; and in this
+antithesis is told the whole difference between the times, so far as
+color is concerned.
+
+But while Delacroix worked in the same spirit and must be ranked in the
+same school, there were differences produced by the action of the so
+different social and intellectual influences under which he grew up. His
+nature was intensely imaginative, and so was preserved from the dwarfing
+effect of French rationalism and materialism: their clay could not hide
+his light or close his eyes, for imagination sees at all points and
+through all disguises, and so his spiritual and intellectual nature was
+kept alive when all Art around him was sinking into mere shapely clay.
+Classic taste and rationalistic pride had left in his contemporaries
+little else than cold propriety of form and color, studied negations of
+spontaneity and imaginative abandon; yet such was the force of his
+imagination, that these qualities, almost more than any other,
+characterize his conceptions: but the perpetual contact and presence of
+elements so uncongenial to his good genius produced their effects in a
+morbid sadness, in his feeling for subject, and in a gloomy tone of
+coloring, sometimes only plaintive, but at other times as melancholy as
+the voice of a lost soul. When healthiest, as in his Harem picture in
+the Luxembourg Gallery, it is still in the minor key of that lovely
+Eastern color-work, such as we see in the Persian carpets, and to me
+always something weird and mysterious and touching, like the tones of an
+Aeolian harp, or the greetings of certain sad-voiced children touched by
+the shadow of death before their babyhood is gone. No color has ever
+affected me like that of Delacroix,--his Dante pictures are the
+"Commedia" set in color, and palpitating with the woe of the damned.
+
+His intellect was of that nobler kind which cannot leave the questions
+of the Realities; and conscious kindred with great souls passed away
+must have given a terrible reality to the great question of the future,
+the terror of which French philosophy was poorly able to dispel or lead
+to anything else than this hopeless gloom. His great picture of the
+_plafond_ of the Salon d'Apollon, in the Louvre, seems like a great ode
+to light, in the singing of which he felt the gloom break and saw the
+tones of healthy life lighten in his day for a prophetic moment; but
+_dispelled_ the gloom _never_ was. What he might have been, bred in the
+cheerful, unquestioning, and healthy, if unprogressive faith of Venice,
+we can only conjecture, seeing how great he grew in the cold of Gallic
+life.
+
+His health was, through his later life, bad; and for my own part, I
+believe that the same morbid feeling manifested in his art affected
+injuriously his physical life, aided doubtless by the excessive work
+which occupied all his available hours. For many years previous to his
+death he alternated between periods of almost unbroken labor, taking
+time only to eat and sleep, and intervals of absolute rest for days
+together. In his working fits, so deranged had his digestion become, he
+could take only one meal, a late dinner, each day, and saw no visitors
+except in the hour preceding his dinner.
+
+Having gone to Paris to spend a winter in professional studies, I made
+an earnest application by letter to Delacroix to be admitted as a pupil
+to his _atelier_. In reply, he invited me to visit him at his rooms the
+next day at four, to talk with him about my studies, proffering any
+counsel in his gift, but assuring me that it was impossible for him to
+receive me into his studio, as he could not work in the room with
+another, and his strength and occupations did not permit him to have a
+school apart, as he once had.
+
+At the appointed time I presented myself, and was received very
+pleasantly in a little drawing-room at his house in the Latin Quarter.
+His appearance, to me, was prepossessing; and though I had heard French
+artists speak of him as morose and bearish, I must say that his whole
+manner was most kindly and sympathetic, though not demonstrative. He was
+small, spare, and nervous-looking, with evident ill-health in his face
+and bearing, and under slight provocation, I should think, might have
+been disagreeable, but had nothing egoistic in his manner, and, unlike
+most celebrated artists, didn't seem to care to talk about his own
+pictures. After personal inquiries of my studies and the masters whom I
+knew and had studied, and most kindly, but appreciative criticism on all
+whom we spoke of, "Ah," said he, "I could not have an _atelier_ (i.e.
+school-_atelier_) now, the spirit in which the young artists approach
+their work now is so different from that of the time when I was in the
+school. Then they were earnest, resolute men: there were Delaroche and
+Vernet," and others he mentioned, whose names I cannot remember, "men
+who went into their painting with their whole souls and in seriousness;
+but now the students come into the _atelier_ to laugh and joke and
+frolic, as if Art were a game; there is an utter want of seriousness in
+the young men now which would make it impossible for me to teach them. I
+should be glad to direct your studies, but the work on which I am
+engaged leaves me no time to dispose of." I asked if I could not
+sometime see him working; but he replied that it was quite impossible
+for him to work with any one looking on.
+
+I asked him where, to his mind, was the principal want of the modern
+schools. He replied, "In execution; there is intellect enough, intention
+enough, and sometimes great conception, but everywhere a want of
+executive ability, which enfeebles all they do. They work too much with
+the crayon, instead of studying with the brush. If they want to be
+engravers, it is all well enough to work in charcoal; but the execution
+of an engraver is not that of a painter. I remember an English artist,
+who was in Paris when I was a young man, who had a wonderful power in
+using masses of black and white, but he was never able to do anything in
+painting, much to my surprise at that time; but later I came to know,
+that, if a man wants to be a painter, he must learn to draw with the
+brush."
+
+I asked him for advice in my own studies; to which he replied, "You
+ought to copy a great deal,--copy passages of all the great painters. I
+have copied a great deal, and of the works of almost everybody"; and as
+he spoke, he pointed to a line of studies of heads and parts of pictures
+from various old masters which hung around the room.
+
+I am inclined to think that he carried copying too far; for the
+principal defect of his later pictures is a kind of hardness and want of
+thought in the touch, a verging on the mechanical, as if his hand and
+feeling did not keep perfectly together.
+
+I regret much that I did not immediately after my interview take notes
+of the conversation, as he said many things which I cannot now recall,
+and which, as mainly critical of the works of other artists, would have
+been of interest to the world. I only remember that he spoke in great
+praise of Turner and Sir Joshua Reynolds. As his dinner-hour drew near,
+I took my leave, asking for some directions to see pictures of his which
+I had not seen; in reply to which, he offered to send me notes securing
+me admission to all the places where were pictures of his not easily
+accessible,--a promise he fulfilled a day or two after. I left him with
+as pleasant a personal impression as I have ever received from any great
+artist, and I have met many.
+
+The works of Delacroix, like those of all geniuses, are very unequal;
+but those who, not having studied them, attempt to estimate them by any
+ordinary standard will be far from the truth in their estimate, and will
+most certainly fail to be impressed by their true excellence. The
+public has a mistaken habit of measuring greatness by the capacity to
+give _it_ pleasure; but the public has no more ignorant habit than this.
+That is no great work which the popular taste can fully appreciate, and
+no thoroughly educated man can at once grasp the full calibre of a work
+of great power differing from his own standard. It took Penelope's
+nights to unweave the web of her days' weaving, and no sudden shears of
+untaught comprehension will serve to analyze those finer fabrics of a
+genius like Delacroix. Perhaps, owing to many peculiarities of his
+nature, showing themselves in unsympathetic forms in his pictures, he
+may always fall short of complete appreciation by the educated taste
+even,--and, indeed, to me he seems, of all the great colorists, the one
+least likely ever to win general favor, but not from want of greatness.
+
+I have often heard his drawing spoken of as bad. It was not the drawing
+of a _dessinateur_, but there was method in its badness. I remember
+hearing a friend say, that, going into his studio one day, he found him
+just in the act of finishing a hand. He said, "It looks very badly
+drawn, but I have painted it three times before I could get it right
+Once I had it well drawn, and then it looked very badly; and now it
+suits me better than when it was well drawn." A neatly drawn figure
+would have made as bad an appearance in one of his pictures as a dandy
+in the heat and turmoil of a battle-field; yet, as they came, all the
+parts were consistent with the whole, reminding one of what Ruskin says
+of Turner's figures.
+
+For vigor and dash in execution, and the trooping energy of some of his
+competitions, he reminds me more of Rubens than of any other; but his
+composition has a more purely imaginative cast than that of Rubens, a
+purer melody, a far more refined spiritualism. Nothing was coarse or
+gross, much less sensual. His was the true imaginative fusion from which
+pictures spring complete, subject to no revision. Between him and Turner
+there were many points of resemblance, of which the greatest was in a
+common defect,--an impulsive, unschooled, unsubstantial method of
+execution, contrasting strongly with the exact, deliberate, and yet,
+beyond description, masterly touch of Titian and most of his school.
+Tintoret alone shows something of the same tendency,--attributable, no
+doubt, to the late time at which he came into the method of his master.
+If Delacroix has none of the great serenity and cheerfulness of Titian,
+or the large and manly way of seeing of Veronese, he has an imaginative
+fervor and intensity we do not see in them, and of which Tintoret and
+Tiepolo only among the Venetians show any trace. Generations hence,
+Eugene Delacroix will loom larger above his contemporaries, now hiding
+him by proximity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SYMPATHETIC LYING.
+
+
+If "all men are liars," and everybody deceives us a little sometimes, so
+that David's _dictum_ hardly needs his apology of _haste_, it is a
+comfort to remember that many lies are not downright, but sympathetic;
+and an understanding of their nature, if it does not palliate them, may
+put us on our guard. _Sympathetic_ we think a better name than the
+unfortunate title of _white_, which was given them by Mrs. Opie, because
+that designation carries a meaning of innocence, if not even of virtue;
+and instead of protecting our virtue, may even expose us to practise
+them without remorse. Of laughing over them and making light of them,
+and calling them by various ludicrous synonymes, as _fibs_, and _telling
+the thing that is not_, there has been enough. We have a purpose in our
+essay, than which no preaching could be more sober. Our aim is to give
+for them no opiate, but to quicken the sense of their guilt, and their
+exceeding mischief, too; for, if Francis Bacon be right in declaring the
+lie we swallow down more dangerous than that which only passes through
+our mind, how seriously the wine-bibbing of this sweet poison of kindly
+misrepresentation must have weakened the constitution of mankind! Lying
+for selfish gain or glory, for sensual pleasure, or for exculpation from
+a criminal charge, is more gross, but it involves at once such
+condemnation in society, and such inward reproach, as to be far less
+insidious than lying out of amiable consideration for others, to shield
+or further kinsfolk or friends, which may pass unrebuked, or stand for
+an actual merit. Yet, be the motive what it may, there is a certain
+invariable quantity of essential baseness in all violation of the truth;
+and it may be feared our affectionate falsehoods often work more evil
+than our malignant ones, by having free course and meeting with little
+objection. "Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for
+Him?" severely asks the old prophet of those who thought to cheat for
+their own set, as though it were in the cause of religion; and no godly
+soul can accept as a grateful tribute the least prevarication, however
+disinterested or devoted in its behalf. Indeed, no smart antithesis has
+been so hurtful as the overstated distinction between _black_ lies and
+_white_. They are of different species, but have no generic difference.
+Charles Reade's novel, of "White Lies," in which the deceptions of love
+are so glorified, charming story as it is, will sap the character of
+whoever does not, with a mental protest, countermine its main idea. The
+very theory of our integrity is gone, if we do not insist on this. God
+has not so made the world that any perjury or cover of the facts is
+necessary to serve the cause of goodness. Commend it though English or
+German critics do, can we not conceive of a speech grander than the
+untruth which Shakspeare has put into the dying Desdemona's mouth?
+
+Let us, then, examine some of the forms of sympathetic lying.
+
+One of them is that of over-liberal praise. That a person is always
+ready to extol others, and was never heard to speak ill of anybody under
+the sun, appears to some the very crown of excellence. But what is the
+panegyric worth that has no discrimination, that finds any mortal
+faultless, or bestows on the varying and contradictory behaviors of men
+an equal meed? To what does universal commendation amount more than
+universal indifference? What value do we put on the lavish regard which
+is not _individual_, or founded on any intelligent appreciation of its
+object, but scattered blindly abroad on all flesh, as once thousands
+were vaguely baptized in the open air by a general sprinkling, and which
+any one can appropriate only as he may own a certain indeterminate
+section of an undivided township or unfenced common? To have a good
+word for everybody, and take exception to nothing, is to incapacitate
+one's self for the exquisite delight of real fellowship. We all know
+persons who seem a sort of social favorites on account of this gracious
+manner which they afford with such mechanical plenty. But what a
+dilution and deterioration their external quality of half-artificial
+courtesy becomes! It is handing round sweetened water, instead of
+tasting the juice of the grape. It is pouring from a pail, instead of
+opening a vial of sweet odors. This broadcast and easy approval lacks
+that very honesty which, in the absence of fineness, is the single grace
+by which it could be sanctified.
+
+The same vice affects more public concerns. Of what sheer hypocrisy
+eulogistic resolutions upon officers leaving their posts in Church or
+State are too frequently composed! The men who are tired and want to get
+rid of their Representative or minister are so overjoyed at losing sight
+of him, that they can set no bounds to their thankful exaltation of his
+name! Truly they speed the parting guest, wish well to the traveller
+from their latitude, and launch with shouts the ship of his fortunes
+from their _ways_! They recommend him as a paragon of genius and
+learning to all communities or societies who want a service in his kind.
+How happy both sides to this transaction are expected to feel, and how
+willing people are sometimes to add to the soft words a solid
+testimonial of gold, if only thus a dismissal can be effected! But are
+not the reports of the committees and the votes of the meetings false
+coin, nowhere current in the kingdom of God, circulate as they may in
+this realm of earth? Nay, does not everybody, save the one that receives
+the somewhat insincere and left-handed blessing, read the formal and
+solemn record with a disposition to ridicule or a pitying smile?
+
+How well it is understood that we are not to speak the truth, but only
+good, of the dead! How melancholy it is, that _lying_ has come to be so
+common an epithet for the gravestones we set over their dust! How few
+obituaries characterize those for whom they are written, or are
+distinguishable from each other in the terms of their funeral
+celebrations of departed virtue! How refreshing, as rare, is any of the
+veritable description which implies real lamentation! But what a
+suspicion falls on the mourning in whose loquacity we cannot detect one
+natural tone! As if that last messenger, who strips off all delusions
+and appearances, should be pursued and affronted with the mockery of our
+pretence, and we could circumvent the angel of judgment with the
+sentence of our fond wishes and the affectation of our groundless
+claims! As if the disembodied, in the light of truth, by which they are
+surrounded and pierced, could be pleased with our make-believe, or
+tolerate the folly of our factitious phrase! With what sadness their
+purged eyes must follow the pens inditing their epitaphs, and the
+sculptors' chisels making the commonplaces of fulsome commendation
+permanent on their tombs! What vanity to their nicer ears must be the
+sonorous and declamatory orator's breath! Let us not offend them so.
+They will take it for the insult of perfunctory honor, not for the
+sympathy it assumes to be. _Nothing but good of the dead_, do you say?
+_Nothing but truth of the dead_, we answer. _Do not disturb their bones;
+let them rest easy at last_, is the commentary on all keen criticism of
+those who have played important parts in life, and whose influence has
+perhaps been a curse. No, we reply, their bones will rest easier, and
+their benedictions come to us surer, for our unaffected plain-dealing.
+The trick of flattery may succeed with the living. Those still in this
+world of shadows, cross-lights, and glaring reflections may be caught by
+the images we flash upon them from the mirrors of admiration we swing in
+our hands. But they who have laid down all the shows of things with
+their own superficial countenances and mortal frames cannot be imposed
+upon by the faces of adulation we make up. They who listen to that other
+speech, whose tones are the literally translated truth, cannot be
+patient with the gloss and varnish of our, at best, imperfect language.
+Let their awful presences shame and transfigure, terrify and transport
+us, into reality of communication akin to their own! "I will express
+myself in music to you," said a great composer to a bereft woman, as he
+took his seat at the piano. He felt that he could not manifest otherwise
+the feeling in him that was so deep. By sound or by silence, let it be
+only the conviction of our heart we venture to offer to spirits before
+whom the meaning of all things is unveiled!
+
+But _private conversation_ is the great sphere of sympathetic lying. Our
+antipathies doubtless often tempt to falsify. We stretch the truth,
+trying, in private quarrels, to make out our case, or holding up our end
+in party-controversies. Anger, malice, envy, and revenge make us often
+break the ninth commandment. But concession, compromise, yielding to
+others' influence, and indisposition to contradict those whom we love or
+the world respects, generate more deceit than comes from all the evil
+passions, which, as Sterne said of lust, are too serious to be
+successful in cunning play. How it would mortify most persons to have
+brought back to them at night exact accounts of the divers opinions they
+have expressed to different persons, with facile conformity to the mood
+of each one during the course of a single day! How the members of any
+pleasant evening-company might astonish or amuse each other by narrating
+together the contradictory views the same voluble discourser has
+unfolded to them successively during the passage of one hour! so easily
+we bend and conform, and deny God and ourselves, to gratify the guest we
+converse with. On account of a few variations, scholars have composed
+what they call Harmonies of the Gospels; but how much harder it would be
+for any one of us to harmonize his talk on any subject moving the minds
+of men! Where strong self-interest acts, we can explain changes and
+inconsistencies in the great organs set up to operate on public
+sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher
+than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous
+centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world,
+splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other
+stupid chanticleers, crowing at false signals of the dawn, and well
+called the "Times," as in its columns nothing eternal was ever evinced.
+Everywhere exist these agents of custom and convention, wielded by a
+power behind them, and holding long no one direction, but varying in
+every wind. Some breeze of general policy, however, prescribes the law
+of these alterations, while only a weak and brainless sensibility,
+blowing from every source, commonly occasions the continual veering of
+our private word. Through what manifold phases _a good conversationist_
+has dexterity to pass! Quarterings of the uncertain moon, the lights
+that glance blue, silver, yellow, and green from the shifting angles of
+the gems that move with their wearers, or the confused motions of some
+of our inferior fellow-creatures that flutter from side to side of the
+road as intimidating objects fail on the eyes planted on opposite sides
+of their heads, feebly symbolize these human displays of unstable
+equilibrium. We must adapt our method to circumstances; but the
+apostolic rule, of "All things to all men," should not touch, as in Paul
+it never did, the fundamental consistency of principle which is the
+chief sign of spiritual life. The degree of elevation in the scale of
+being is marked by the approximation of the sight to a focus of unity.
+But, judging from the pictures they give us of their interior states, we
+might think many of our rational companions as myriad-eyed as
+naturalists tell us are some insects. Behold the wondrous transformation
+undergone by those very looks and features that give the natural
+language, as sentiments contrary to each other are successively
+presented, and Republican or Democrat, Pro-Slavery man or Abolitionist,
+walks up! In truth, a man at once kindly and ingenuous can hardly help
+in most assemblies coming continually to grief. He knows not what to do,
+to be at once frank and polite. The transverse beams of the cross on
+which he is crucified are made of the sincerity and amiability which in
+no company can he quite reconcile. Happy is he who has discovered
+beneath all pleasant humors the unity at bottom of candor with goodness,
+in an Apostle's clause, "speaking the truth in love"! No rare and
+beautiful monster could stir more surprise and curiosity. It is but
+shifting the scene from a domestic dwelling to a concert-hall to notice
+how much sympathetic lying is in all applause. We saw a young man
+vigorously clap the performance to which he had not listened, and, when
+the _encore_ took effect, return immediately to his noisy and disturbing
+engrossment in the young ladies' society from whose impertinent
+whispering he had only rested for the moment, troubling all who sat near
+him both with his talk and his sympathetic lie. A true man will not move
+a finger or lisp a syllable to echo what he does not apprehend and
+approve. A true man never assents anywise to what is error to him. In
+the delicious letters of Mendelssohn we read of an application by a
+distinguished lady made to him to write a piece of music to accompany
+the somewhat famous lines known as "Napoleon's Midnight Review." The
+great artist, feeling the untruth to his genius of any such attempt at
+description in sound, with gentle energy declines the request. He
+affirms that music is a most sober thing in his thoughts, that notes
+have their veracity as well as words, and even a deeper relation to
+reality than any other tongue or dialect of province or people, and that
+acquiescence in her wishes would be for him an unrighteous abuse of his
+function. We know a conscientious artist on the organ who would no more
+perjure his instrument than his lips, but go to the stake sooner than
+turn his keys into tongues to captivate a meretricious taste or
+transform one breath of the air under his fingers into sympathetic
+lying, though thousands should be ready to resound their delight. So was
+it with the noble Christian Jew, an Israelite of harmony indeed. The
+most sympathetic of vocations, whose appeal more than any other is
+direct to the feelings, could not induce him to tell a sympathetic lie.
+Would that the writers and speakers of plain English, and of their
+mother-tongue in every vernacular, might take example from the
+conscientious creator, who would not put a particle of cant into the
+crooked marks and ruled bars which are such a mystery to the
+uninitiated, blot with one demi-semi-quaver of falsehood his papers, or
+leave aught but truth of the heavenly sphere at a single point on any
+line! Then our sternest utterance with each other would be concord, our
+common questions and answers more melodiously responsive than chants in
+great cathedrals, and our lowest whispers like tones caught from angelic
+harps. For truth and tenderness are not, after all, incompatible; but
+whoever is falsely fond alone proves himself in the end harsh and rough.
+The sympathetic lie is of all things most unsympathetic, smoothing and
+stroking the surface to haunt and kill at the very centre and core. The
+proclamation from the house-top of what is told in the ear in closets
+will give more pain than if it were fairly published at first. There is
+a distinction here to be noted. All truth, or rather all matter of fact,
+does not, of course, belong to everybody. There are private and domestic
+secrets, whose promulgation, by no law of duty required, would make the
+streets of every city and village run with blood. There is a style of
+speaking, miscalled sincerity, which in mere tattling and tale-bearing,
+minding others' business, interfering with their relations,
+impertinently meddling with cases we can neither settle nor understand,
+and eating over again the forbidden fruit of that tree of knowledge of
+good and evil planted in the Garden of Eden, whose seed has been
+scattered through the earth, though having less to do with truth than
+with the falsehood, to promulgate which artful and malicious combination
+of facts is one of the Devil's most skilful means, while truth is always
+no mere fact or circumstance, but a spirit. Sincerity consists in
+dealing openly with every one in things that concern himself, reserving
+concerns useless to him, and purely our neighbors' or our own. Husbands
+and wives, parents and children, fellow-citizens and friends, or
+strangers, owning but the bond of humanity, let such _discrete_
+sentences--if we may use rhetorically a musical word--from your lips
+afford a sweeter consonance than can vibrate and flow from all the pipes
+and strings of orchestra or organ. So sympathy and verity shall be at
+one: mercy and truth shall meet together, righteousness and peace shall
+kiss each other.
+
+Another form of sympathetic lying appears in a part of the social
+machinery whose morality has somehow been more strangely and unhappily
+overlooked,--we mean in _letters of introduction_. But the falsehood is
+only by perversion. The letter of introduction is an affair of noble
+design, to bring together parties really related, to give room for the
+elective affinities of friendship, to furnish occasion for the
+comparison of notes to the votaries of science, to extend the privilege
+of all liberal arts, and promote the offices of a common brotherhood.
+How much we owe to these little paper messengers for the new treasures
+of love and learning they have brought! It is hard to tell whose debt to
+them is greatest, that of the giver, the bearer, or the receiver, or
+whether, beyond all private benefit and pleasure, their chief result has
+not been the improvement and refinement of the human race. But, it must
+be confessed, the letter of introduction is too much fallen and
+degenerate. Convenience, depredation, the compassing of by-ends, rather
+than any loving communion, is too often its intent. It savors less of
+the paradise of affection than of the vulgar wilderness of the world. We
+are a little afraid of it, when it comes. A worthy man told me he knew
+not whether to be sorry or glad, when he found a letter addressed to him
+at the post-office. How does the balance incline, when a man or woman
+stands before us with a letter of introduction in hand? We eye it with a
+mistrust that it may turn out to be a tool of torture, serving us only
+for a sort of mental surgery. Frequently, it has been simply procured,
+and is but an impudent falsehood on its very face. The writer of it
+professes an admiration he does not feel for the person introduced, to
+whose own reading he leaves it magnificently open before its terms of
+exaggerated compliment can reach him to whom it is sent. What is the
+reason of this deceit? there is a ground for it, no doubt. "This effect
+defective comes by cause." The inditer has certainly some sympathy with
+the bearer he so amply commissions and wordily exalts. This bearer has
+some distress to be relieved, some faculty to exercise, some institution
+to recommend, or some ware to dispose of. He that forwards him to us
+very likely has first had him introduced to himself, has bestowed
+attention and hospitable fellowship upon him, and now, growing weary of
+the care and trouble and expense, is very happy to be rid of him at so
+small a cost as that of passing him on to a distant acquaintance by a
+letter of introduction, which the holder's business in life is to carry
+round from place to place through the world! Sometimes dear companions
+call on us to pay this tax; sometimes those who themselves have no claim
+on us. But, be it one class or the other, how little they may consider
+what they demand! Upon what a neglect or misappreciation of values the
+proceed! Verily we need a new Political Economy written, deeper than
+that of Malthus or Smith, to inform them. Our precious time, our cordial
+regards, the diversion of our mind from our regular duties, the neglect
+of already engrossing relations in our business or profession, the
+surrender of body and soul, they require for the prey of idlers and
+strangers! Had our correspondents drawn upon us for a sum of money, had
+a highwayman bid us stand and deliver our purse, we should not have been
+so much out of pocket. But we cannot help yielding; there is no excuse
+or escape. We are under the operation of that most delicate and
+resistless of powers no successor of Euclid ever explained the principle
+of, which may be called the _social screw_. We submit patiently, because
+we cannot endure to deny to the new-comer the assumed right of him who
+cruelly turns it, out of reach and out of sight. We know some men, of
+extraordinary strength of countenance themselves, who have been able to
+defend their door-stone against an impostor's brazen face. A good
+householder, when a stage-full of country-cousins came to his door, bade
+the driver take them to the hotel, and he would willingly pay the bills.
+But few have the courage thus to board out those who have a staff in
+their hands to knock at the very gate of their hearts. There would be
+satisfaction in the utmost amount of this labor and sacrifice, could we
+have any truth for its condition. But the falsehood has been written
+down by one whom we can nowise accuse. Alas! there is often as little
+truth in the entertainer. All together in the matter are walking in a
+vain show. We are at the mercy of a diviner's wand and a conjurer's
+spell. We have put on a foolish look of consent and compromise. We join
+with our new mate in extolling the wrong-doer who has inflicted him upon
+us. We dare not analyze the base alloy of the composition he conveys,
+which pretends to be pure gold. We must either act falsely ourselves, or
+charge falsehood upon others. We prefer the guilt to seeming unkindness;
+when, if we were perfectly good and wise, we should shake off the coil
+of deception, refuse insincere favors, and, however infinite and
+overflowing our benevolence, insist on doing, in any case, only willing
+and authentic good,--for affection is too noble to be feigned. "If,"
+said Ole Bull, "I kiss my enemy, what have I left for my friend?" We
+must forgive and love our enemies and all men, and show our love by
+treating them without dissimulation, but a sublime openness, according
+to their needs and deserts.
+
+The male or female adventurers, launching with their bag of letters for
+all their merchandise on the social sea, understand well the potent
+value, beyond bills of exchange, of the sheets they bear. They may have
+taken them as an equivalent for some service they have rendered, in
+discharge of some actual or apparent obligation in the great market
+limited to no quarter of our towns and no description of articles, but
+running through every section of human life. Our _acceptance_ of these
+notes is a commercial transaction, not of the fairest sort. It belongs
+to a species of trade in which we are made to pay other people's debts,
+and our dear friends and intimate relations sell us for some song or
+other which has been melodiously chanted into their own ears. "A new way
+to pay old debts," indeed! Every part of the bargain or trick of the
+game is by the main operators well known and availed of for their own
+behoof. By letter, persons have been introduced into circles where they
+had no footing, posts for whose responsibilities they were utterly
+unfit, and trusts whose funds they showed more faculty to embezzle than
+apply. Such licentious proceedings have good-natured concessions to
+wrong requests multiplied to the hurt of the commonweal. Let us beware
+of this kind of sympathetic lie, which ends in robbery, and swindles
+thousands out of what is more important than material property, for the
+support of pretenders that are worse than thieves, who are bold enough,
+like drones, to break into the hive of the busy and eat the honey they
+never gathered, absorbing to themselves, as far as they can, the
+courtesy of the useful members of the community by the worst monopoly in
+the world.
+
+Our treatment of the subject would be partial, if we did not emphasize
+the advantage of a right use, of this _introductory_ prerogative. What
+more delightful to remember than that we brought together those who were
+each other's counterparts? What more beautiful than to have put the
+deserving in the way of the philanthropic, and illustrated the old law,
+that, grateful as it is to have our wants supplied, a lofty soul always
+finds it more blessed to give than to receive, and a boon infinitely
+greater to exercise beneficent affection than even to be its object? It
+ill becomes us who write on this theme to put down one unfair or
+churlish period. We too well remember our own experience in
+circumstances wherein our only merit was to be innocent recipients of
+abundant tokens of good-will; and perhaps the familiar instance may have
+pardon for its recital, in illustration of the mercy which the
+letter-bearer may not seldom find. An epistle from a mutual acquaintance
+was our opportunity of intercourse with a venerable bachelor residing in
+the city of Antwerp. It was so urged upon us, that the least we could do
+was to present it, expecting only a few minutes' agreeable conversation.
+Shall we ever forget the instant welcome that beamed from his benignant
+face, or how he honored the draft upon him by immediately calling upon
+all the members of our travelling-party? how literally, against all our
+expostulations, he gave himself up to us, attending us to
+picture-galleries and zoological gardens, insisting on disbursing the
+entrance-fee for us all, with our unavoidable allowance at the moment,
+and, on our exaction of a just reckoning with him at last, declining to
+name the sum, on the unanswerable plea of an old man's poor and failing
+memory! "Does the old man still live?" Surely he does the better life in
+heaven, if his gray locks on earth are under the sod, and it is too late
+for these poor lines to reach his eyes, for our sole repayment. Without
+note, but only chance introduction, a similar case of disinterested
+bounty in Liverpool from one of goodness undiscriminating as the Divine,
+which gives the sun and rain to all, stood in strange contrast with the
+reception of a Manchester manufacturer, almost whose only manifestation
+in reply to the document we tendered was a sort of growl that _we could
+see mills in Lowell like those under his own control_. Perhaps, from his
+shrewd old head, as he kept his seat at his desk, like a sharp-shooter
+on the watch and wary for the foe, he only covered us with the surly
+weapon of his tongue in the equitable way for which we have here been
+contending ourselves! Certainly we were quite satisfied, if the
+Englishman was.
+
+But printed lies, as well as written, are largely sympathetic. We are
+bitter against the press; and surely it needs a greater Luther for its
+reformer. But its follies are ours; its corruptions belong to its
+patrons. The editor of a paper edits the mind of those that take it. He
+cannot help being in a sort of close communion. Perhaps he mainly
+borrows the very indignation, not so very pure and independent, with
+which he reproves some ingenuous satirist of what may appear indecent in
+our fashions of amusement, or unbecoming in the relations of the sexes
+or the habits of the young. "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the
+hands are the hands of Esau." He is two and more, as we all are, while
+he is one, and must not be blamed on his own score alone. The London
+"Times," already mentioned, is called the _Thunderer_; but, like the man
+behind the scenes at the theatre with his machinery, it thunders as it
+is told. How sympathetic are the countless brood of falsehoods
+respecting our country in foreign publications is evident from the
+cases, too few, of periodicals which, with the same means of
+information, rise to a noble accuracy and justice. While the more
+virulent, like the "Saturday Review," servile to its peculiar customers,
+make a show of holding out against the ever more manifest truth, others,
+among which is even the "Times" itself, learn the prudence of an altered
+style. When the wind is about to change, an uncertain fluttering and
+swinging to and fro may be observed in the vanes. So do many organs
+prove what pure indicators they are, as they shake in the breeze of
+public opinion. "Stop my paper" is a cry whose real meaning is for the
+constituency which the paper represents.
+
+It is a more shameful illustration of the same weakness, when the pens
+of literary men, not dependent on local support, are subsidized by the
+prejudice or sold to the pride and wealth of the society in which they
+live. "I believe in testifying," once said a great man; and we have,
+among the philosophic and learned, noble witnesses for the equity of our
+national case. But what a spectacle of degraded functions, when poets,
+historians, and religious thinkers bow the knee to an aristocracy so
+vilely proud to stretch forth its hand of fellowship to a slaveholding
+brotherhood beyond the sea! We need not denounce them. The ideas they
+pretend to stand for hold them in scorn. The imagination whose pictures
+they drew will quench all her lustre for the deserters that devote
+themselves to the slavish passions of the hour. The history whose tales
+of glory and ignominy they related will rear a gibbet for their own
+reputation in the future time. As for us, at the present, we mention not
+their names, but, like the injured ghost in the poet's picture of the
+world of spirits, turn from them silently and pass on. We remember there
+was a grand old republican in the realm of letters, John Milton by name,
+whose shade must be terrible to their thoughts. Let them beware of
+making of themselves a public shame. The great revenge of years will
+turn into a mere trick of literature the prose and verse of all not
+inspired by devotion to humanity, zeal for the cause of the oppressed,
+and a hearty love of truth, while every covering of lies shall be torn
+away. They who have despised our free institutions, and prophesied our
+downfall, and gloated by anticipation over the destruction of our
+country, to get the lease of a hundred years more to their own lordship
+of Church and State, and have put their faith in the oppressive Rebels
+trying to build an empire on the ruins of the Ten Commandments, are as
+blind to discern the laws of human nature as they are awkward to raise
+the horoscope of events. This Western Continent, under God, may it
+please the despots, is not going to barbarism and desolation. That good
+missionary of freedom as well as religion, whom New England sent to
+California in the person of Thomas Starr King, writes us that Mount
+Shasta is ascertained to be higher than Mont Blanc. Some other
+elevations than of the surface of the globe, in this hemisphere, the
+Transatlantics may yet behold.
+
+The pulpit is but a sympathetic deceiver, when it violates the truth it
+is set to defend. All its lies are echoes of the avarice and inhumanity
+sitting in the pews; and when, in the rough old figure, it is a dumb dog
+that will not bark at the robber or warn us of danger, the real mutes,
+whom its silence but copies, are those demure men below who seem to
+listen to its instructions.
+
+We are astonished to find a liar in the lightning of heaven over the
+telegraphic wires. Let us get over our surprise. The lie is human
+altogether, not elemental at all. The operator has his private object to
+carry, the partisan his political end to serve, the government itself
+flatters the people it fears with incorrect accounts of military
+movements and fortified posts and the numbers of dead and wounded on
+either side. Kinglake calls the telegraph a device by which a clerk
+dictates to a nation. Who but the nation, or some part of it, dictates
+to the clerk? He does not control, but records, the sentiment of the
+community in all his invented facts; and when we hear the click or read
+the strange dots, we want some trustworthy voucher or responsible human
+auditor even of these electric accounts.
+
+But, creatures of sympathy, needy dependants on approbation, as we are,
+shall we surrender to all or any of these lies? No,--there is a sympathy
+of truth, to whose higher court and supreme verdict we must appeal.
+Before it let us stand ourselves, perpetual witnesses of the very truth
+of God in our breast. Said the lion-hearted Andrew Jackson, "When I
+decide on my course, I do not ask what people will think, but look into
+my own heart for guidance, believing that all brave men will agree with
+me."
+
+"As the minister began on the subject of Slavery, I left the church,"
+said a respectable citizen to a modest woman, of whose consent with him
+he felt sure.
+
+"And did the minister go on?" she gently inquired.
+
+"Yes, he went on," the mistaken citizen replied.
+
+So, in this land, let us go on in the way of justice and truth we have
+at last begun. Let us have no more sympathetic, however once legal, lies
+for oppression and wrong. We shall be as good as a thousand years old,
+when we are through our struggle. For the respect of Europe let us have
+no anxiety. It will come cordially or by constraint, upon the victory of
+the right and the reinstating of our manhood by the divine law, to the
+discouragement of all iniquity at home or abroad. Our success will be a
+signal for all the tyrannies, in which the proud and strong have been
+falsely banded together to crush the ignorant and lowly, to come down.
+The domineering political and ecclesiastical usurpers of exclusive
+privilege will no longer give and take reciprocal support against the
+rising of mankind than the Roman augurs could at last keep one another
+in countenance. Let us go on, through dark omens as well as bright, and
+suffer ourselves to have no doubting day. Let us show that something
+besides a monarchy in this world can stand. On disbelievers and
+obstructers let us have companion. They cannot live contented, and it is
+not quite safe for them to die. The path of our progress opens clear.
+Let us not admit the idea of failure. To think of failing is to fail. As
+it was with the sick before their Saviour of old, only our faith can
+make us whole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SOMETHING ABOUT BRIDGES.
+
+
+Instinctively, Treason, in this vast land, aimed its first blow at the
+Genius of Communication,--the benign and potent means and method of
+American civilization and nationality. The great problem Watt and
+Fulton, Clinton and Morse so gloriously solved, a barbaric necessity
+thus reduces back to chaos; and not the least sad and significant of the
+bulletins whereby the most base of civic mutinies finds current record
+is that entitled, "Destruction of the Bridges"; and (melancholy
+contrast!) simultaneously we hear of constructive energy in the same
+direction, on the Italian peninsula,--an engineer having submitted to
+Victor Emmanuel proposals for throwing a bridge across the Straits of
+Messina, "binding Scylla to Charybdis, and thus clinching Italian unity
+with bonds of iron." Bonds of nationality, in more than a physical
+sense, indeed, are bridges: even cynical Heine found an endeared outlook
+to his native Rhine on the bastion of a familiar bridge; Tennyson makes
+one an essential feature of his English summer picture, wherein forever
+glows the sweet image of the "Gardener's Daughter"; and Bunyan found no
+better similitude for Christian's passage from Time to Eternity than the
+"river where there is no bridge."
+
+The primitive need, the possible genius, the science, and the sentiment
+of a bridge endear its aspect and associations beyond those of any other
+economical structure. There is, indeed, something genially picturesque
+about a mill, as Constable's pencil and Tennyson's muse have aptly
+demonstrated; there is an artistic miracle possible in a sculptured
+gate, as those of Ghiberti so elaborately evidence; science, poetry, and
+human enterprise consecrate a light-house; sacred feelings hallow a
+spire; and mediæval towers stand forth in noble relief against the
+sunset sky: but around none of these familiar objects cluster the same
+thoroughly human associations which make a bridge attractive to the
+sight and memory. In its most remote suggestion it typifies man's primal
+relation to Nature, his first instinctive effort to circumvent or avail
+himself of her resources; indeed, he might take his hint of a bridge
+from Nature herself,--her fallen monarchs of the forest athwart a
+stream, "the testimony of the rocks," the curving shores, cavern roofs,
+and pendent branches, and the prismatic bow in the heavens, which a poet
+well calls "a bridge to tempt the angels down."
+
+A bridge of the simplest kind is often charmingly effective as a
+landscape-accessory: there is a short plank one in a glen of the White
+Mountains, which, seen through a vista of woodland, makes out the
+picture so aptly that it is sketched by every artist who haunts the
+region. What lines of grace are added to the night view of a great city
+by the lights on the bridges! what subtile principles enter into the
+building of such a bridge as the Britannia, where even the metallic
+contraction of the enormous tubes is provided for by supporting them on
+cannon-balls! how venerable seems the most graceful of Tuscan bridges,
+when we remember it was erected in the fifteenth century,--and the
+Rialto, when we think that it was designed by Michel Angelo! and how
+signal an instance is it of the progressive application of a true
+principle in science, that the contrivance whereby the South-Americans
+bridge the gorges of their mountains, by a pendulous causeway of twisted
+osiers and bamboo,--one of which, crossed by Humboldt, was a hundred and
+twenty feet long,--is identical with that which sustains the magnificent
+structure over the Niagara River! In a bridge the arch is triumphal,
+both for practical and commemorative ends: unknown to the Greeks and
+Egyptians, even the ancient Romans, it is said by modern architects, did
+not appreciate its true mechanical principle, but ascribed the
+marvellous strength thereof to the cement which kept intact their
+semicircle. In Cæsar's "Commentaries," the bridge transit and vigilance
+form no small part of military tactics,--boats and baskets serving the
+same purpose in ancient and modern warfare. The Church of old originated
+and consecrated bridges; religion, royalty, and art celebrate their
+advent; the opening of Waterloo Bridge is the subject of one of the best
+pictures of a modern English painter; and Cockney visitors to the
+peerless Bridge of Telford still ask the guide where the Queen stood at
+its inauguration. But it is when we turn from the historical and
+scientific to the familiar and personal that we realize the spontaneous
+interest attached to a bridge. It is as a feature of our native
+landscape, the goal of habitual excursions, the rendezvous, the
+observatory, the favorite haunt or transit, that it wins the gaze and
+the heart. There the musing angler sits content; there the echoes of the
+horse's hoofs rouse to expectancy the dozing traveller; there the glad
+lover dreams, and the despairing wretch seeks a watery grave, and the
+song of the poet finds a response in the universal heart,--
+
+    "How often, oh, how often,
+    In the days that have gone by,
+    Have I stood on that bridge at midnight,
+    And gazed on the wave and sky!"
+
+One of the most primitive tokens of civilization is a bridge; and yet no
+artificial object is more picturesquely associated with its ultimate
+symbols: the fallen tree whereon the pioneer crosses a stream in the
+wilderness is not more significant of human isolation than the
+fragmentary arch in an ancient city of the vanished homo of thousands.
+Thus, by its necessity and its survival, a bridge suggests the first
+exigency and the last relic of civilized life. The old explorers of our
+Western Continent record the savage expedients whereby water-courses
+were passed,--coils of grape-vine carried between the teeth of an
+aboriginal swimmer and attached to the opposite bank, a floating log,
+or, in shallow streams, a series of stepping-stones; and the most
+popular historian of England, when delineating to the eye of fancy the
+hour of her capital's venerable decay, can find no more impressive
+illustration than to make a broken arch of London Bridge the observatory
+of the speculative reminiscent.
+
+The bridge is, accordingly, of all economical inventions, that which is
+most inevitable to humanity, signalizing the first steps of man amid the
+solitude of Nature, and accompanying his progress through every stage of
+civic life: its crude form makes the wanderer's heart beat in the lonely
+forest, as a sign of the vicinity or the track of his kind; and its
+massive remains excite the reverent curiosity of the archæologist, who
+seeks among the ruins of Art for trophies of a by-gone race. Few
+indications of Roman supremacy are more striking than the unexpected
+sight of one of those bridges of solid and symmetrical masonry which the
+traveller in Italy encounters, when emerging from a mountain-pass or a
+squalid town upon the ancient highway. The permanent method herein
+apparent suggests an energetic and pervasive race whose constructive
+instinct was imperial; such an evidence of their pathway over water is
+as suggestive of national power as the evanescent trail of the savage is
+of his casual domain. In the bridge, as in no other structure, use
+combines with beauty by an instinctive law; and the stone arch, more or
+less elaborate in detail, is as essential now to the function and the
+grace of a bridge as when it was first thrown, invincible and
+harmonious, athwart the rivers Cæsar's legions crossed.
+
+As I stood on the scattered planks which afford a precarious foothold
+amid the rapids of St. Anthony, methought these frail bridges of hewn
+timber accorded with the reminiscence of the missionary pioneer who
+discovered and named the picturesque waters more than an elaborate and
+ancient causeway. Even those long, inelegant structures which lead the
+pedestrian over our own Charles River, or the broad inlets of the
+adjacent bay, have their peculiar charm as the scene of many a gorgeous
+autumnal sunset and many a patient "constitutional" walk. It is a
+homely, but significant proverb, "Never find fault with the bridge that
+carries you safe over." What beautiful shadows graceful bridges cast,
+when the twilight deepens and the waves are calm! how mysteriously sleep
+the moonbeams there! what a suggestive vocation is a toll-keeper's'
+patriarchs in this calling will tell of methodical and eccentric
+characters known for years.
+
+Bridges have their legends. There is one in Lombardy whence a jilted
+lover sprang with his faithless bride as she passed to church with her
+new lover; it is yet called the "Bridge of the Betrothed." An old
+traveller, describing New-York amusements, tells us of a favorite ride
+from the city to the suburban country, and says,--"In the way there is a
+bridge about three miles distant, which you always pass as you return,
+called the 'Kissing Bridge,' where it is part of the etiquette to salute
+the lady who has put herself under your protection."[F] A curious
+lawsuit was lately instituted by the proprietor of a menagerie who lost
+an elephant by a bridge giving way beneath his unaccustomed weight; the
+authorities protested against damages, as they never undertook to give
+safe passage to so large an animal.
+
+The office of a bridge is prolific of metaphor, whereof an amusing
+instance is Boswell's comparison of himself, when translating Paoli's
+talk to Dr. Johnson, to a "narrow isthmus connecting two continents." It
+has been aptly said of Dante's great poem, that, in the world of
+letters, it is a mediæval bridge over that vast chasm which divides
+classical from modern times. All concliating authors bridge select
+severed intelligences, and even national feeling: as Irving's writings
+brought more near to each other the alienated sympathies of England and
+America, and Carlyle made a trysting-place for British and German
+thought; as Sydney Smith's talk threw a suspension-bridge from
+Conservative to Reformer, and Lord Bacon's (in the hour of bitter
+alienation between Crown and Commons) "reconciling genius spanned the
+dividing stream of party."
+
+How isolated and bewildered are villagers, when, after a tempest, the
+news spreads that a freshet has carried away the bridge! Every time we
+shake hands, we make a human bridge of courtesy or love; and that was a
+graceful fancy of one of our ingenious writers to give expression to his
+thoughts in "Letters from under a Bridge." With an eye and an ear for
+Nature's poetry, the gleam of lamps from a bridge, the figures that pass
+and repass thereon, the rush and the lull of waters beneath, the
+perspective of the arch, the weather-stains on the parapet, the sunshine
+and the cloud-shadows around, are phases and sounds fraught with meaning
+and mystery.
+
+It is an acknowledged truth in the philosophy of Art, that Beauty is the
+handmaid of Use; and as the grace of the swan and the horse results from
+a conformation whose _rationale_ is movement, so the pillar that
+supports the roof, and the arch that spans the current, by their
+serviceable fitness, wed grace of form to wise utility. The laws of
+architecture illustrate this principle copiously; but in no single and
+familiar product of human skill is it more striking than in bridges; if
+lightness, symmetry, elegance, proportion charm the ideal sense, not
+less are the economy and adaptation of the structure impressive to the
+eye of science. Perhaps the ideas of use and beauty, of convenience and
+taste, in no instance, coalesce more obviously; and therefore, of all
+human inventions, the bridge lends the most undisputed charm to the
+landscape. It is one of those symbols of humanity which spring from and
+are not grafted upon Nature; it proclaims her affinity with man, and
+links her spontaneous benefits with his invention and his needs; it
+seems to celebrate the stream over which it rises, and to wed the
+wayward waters to the order and the mystery of life. There is no hint of
+superfluity or impertinence in a bridge; it blends with the wildest and
+the most cultivated scene with singular aptitude, and is a feature of
+both rural and metropolitan landscape that strikes the mind as
+essential. The most usual form has its counterpart in those rocky arches
+which flood and fire have excavated or penned up in many picturesque
+regions,--the segments of caverns, or the ribs of strata,--so that,
+without the instinctive suggestion of the mind itself, Nature furnishes
+complete models of a bridge whereon neither Art nor Science can improve.
+Herein the most advanced and the most rude peoples own a common skill;
+bridges, of some kind, and all adapted to their respective countries,
+being the familiar invention of savage necessity and architectural
+genius. The explorer finds them in Africa as well as the artist in Rome;
+swung, like huge hammocks of ox-hide, over the rapid streams of South
+America; spanning in fragile cane-platforms the gorges of the Andes;
+crossing vast chasms of the Alleghanies with the slender iron viaduct of
+the American railways; and jutting, a crumbling segment of the ancient
+world, over the yellow Tiber: as familiar on the Chinese tea-caddy as on
+Canaletto's canvas; as traditional a local feature of London as of
+Florence; as significant of the onward march of civilization in Wales
+to-day as in Liguria during the Middle Ages. Where men dwell and wander,
+and water flows, these beautiful and enduring, or curious and casual
+expedients are found, as memorable triumphs of architecture, crowned
+with historical associations, or as primitive inventions that
+unconsciously mark the first faltering steps of humanity in the course
+of empire: for, on this continent, where the French missionary crossed
+the narrow log supported by his Indian convert in the midst of a
+wilderness, massive stone arches shadow broad streams that flow through
+populous cities; and the history of civilization may be traced from the
+loose stones whereon the lone settler fords the water-course, to such
+grand, graceful, and permanent monuments of human prosperity as the
+elaborate and ancient stone bridges of European capitals.
+
+When we look forth upon a grand or lovely scene of Nature,--mountain,
+river, meadow, and forest,--what a fine central object, what an
+harmonious artificial feature of the picture, is a bridge, whether
+rustic and simple, a mere rude passage-way over a brook, or a curve of
+gray stone throwing broad shadows upon the bright surface of a river!
+Nor less effective is the same object amid the crowded walls, spires,
+streets, and chimney-stacks of a city. There the bridge is the least
+conventional structure, the suggestive point, the favorite locality; it
+seems to reunite the working-day world with the freedom of Nature; it is
+perhaps the one spot in the dense array of edifices and thoroughfares
+which "gives us pause." There, if anywhere, our gaze and our feet
+linger; people have a relief against the sky, as they pass over it;
+artists look patiently thither; lovers, the sad, the humorous, and the
+meditative, stop there to observe and to muse; they lean over the
+parapet and watch the flowing tide; they look thence around as from a
+pleasant vantage-ground. The bridge, in populous old towns, is the
+rendezvous, the familiar landmark, the traditional nucleus of the place,
+and perhaps the only picturesque framework in all those marts and homes,
+more free, open, and suggestive of a common lot than temple, square, or
+palace; for there pass and repass noble and peasant, regal equipage and
+humble caravan; children plead to stay, and veterans moralize there; the
+privileged beggar finds a standing-place for charity to bless; a shrine
+hallows or a sentry guards, history consecrates or Art glorifies, and
+trade, pleasure, or battle, perchance, lends to it the spell of fame.
+Let any one recall his sojourn in a foreign city, and conjure to his
+mind's eye the scenes, and prominent to his fancy, distinct to his
+memory, will be the bridge. He will think of Florence as intersected by
+the Arno, and with the very name of that river reappears the peerless
+grace of the Ponte Santa Trinità with its moss-grown escutcheons and
+aërial curves; the Pont Neuf, at Paris, with its soldiers and priests,
+its boot-blacks and grisettes, the gay streets on one side and the
+studious quarter on the other, typifies and concentrates for him the
+associations of the French capital; and what a complete symbol of
+Venice--its canals, its marbles, its mysterious polity, its romance of
+glory and woe--is a good photograph of the Bridge of Sighs!
+
+The history of Rome is written on her bridges. The Ponte Rotto is Art's
+favorite trophy of her decay; two-thirds of it has disappeared; and the
+last Pope has ineffectively repaired it, by a platform sustained by iron
+wire: yet who that has stood thereon in the sunset, and looked from the
+dome of St. Peter's to the islands projected at that hour so distinctly
+from the river's surface, glanced along the flushed dwellings upon its
+bank, with their intervals of green terraces, or gazed, in the other
+direction, upon the Cloaca of Tarquin, Vesta's dome, and the Aventine
+Hill, with its palaces, convents, vineyards, and gardens, has not felt
+that the Ponte Rotto was the most suggestive servatory in the Eternal
+City? The Ponte Molle brings back Constantine and his vision of the
+Cross; and the statues on Sant' Angelo mutely attest the vicissitudes of
+ecclesiastical eras.
+
+England boasts no monument of her modern victories so impressive as the
+bridge named for the most memorable of them. The best view of Prague and
+its people is from the long series of stone arches which span the
+Moldau. The solitude and serenity of genius are rarely better realized
+than by musing of Klopstock and Gessner, Lavator and Zimmermann, on the
+Bridge of Rapperschwyl on the Lake of Zurich, where they dwelt and
+wrote or died. From the Bridge of St. Martin we have the first view of
+Mont Blanc. The Suspension Bridge at Niagara is an artificial wonder as
+great, in its degree, as the natural miracle of the mighty cataract
+which thunders forever at its side; while no triumph of inventive
+economy could more aptly lead the imaginative stranger into the
+picturesque beauties of Wales than the extraordinary tubular bridge
+across the Menai Strait. The aqueduct-bridge at Lisbon, the long
+causeway over Cayuga Lake in our own country, and the bridge over the
+Loire at Orléans are memorable in every traveller's retrospect.
+
+But the economical and the artistic interest of bridges is often
+surpassed by their historical suggestions; almost every vocation and
+sentiment of humanity being intimately associated therewith. The Rialto
+at Venice and the Ponte Vecchio at Florence are identified with the
+financial enterprise of the one city and the goldsmith's skill of the
+other: one was long the Exchange of the "City of the Sea," and still
+revives the image of Shylock and the rendezvous of Antonio; while the
+other continues to represent mediæval trade in the quaint little shops
+of jewellers and lapidaries. One of the characteristic religious orders
+of that era is identified with the ancient bridge which crosses the
+Rhone at Avignon, erected by the "Brethren of the Bridge," a fraternity
+instituted in an age of anarchy expressly to protect travellers from the
+bandits, whose favorite place of attack was at the passage of rivers.
+The builder of the old London Bridge, Peter Colechurch, is believed to
+have been attached to this same order; he died in 1176, and was buried
+in a crypt of the little chapel on the second pier, according to the
+habit of the fraternity. For many years a market was held on this
+bridge; it was often the scene of war; it stayed the progress of
+Canute's fleet; at one time destroyed by fire, and at another carried
+away by ice; half ruined in one era by the bastard Faulconbridge, and,
+at another, the watchword of civil war, when the cry resounded, "Cade
+hath gotten Londonbridge," and Wat Tyler's rebels convened there;
+Elizabeth and her peerless courtiers have floated, in luxurious barges
+and splendid attire, by its old piers, and the heads of traitors rotted
+in the sun upon its venerable battlements. Only sixty years ago a
+portion of the original structure remained; it was once covered with
+houses; Peter the Dutchman's famous water-wheels plashed at its side;
+from the dark street and projecting gables noted tavern-signs vibrated
+in the wind. The exclusive thoroughfare from the city to Kent and
+Surrey, what ceremonial and scenes has it not witnessed,--royal
+entrances and greetings, rites under the low brown arches of the old
+chapel, revelry in the convenient hostels, traffic in the crowded mart,
+chimes from the quaint belfry, the tragic triumph of vindictive law in
+the gory heads upon spikes! The veritable and minute history of London
+Bridge would illustrate the civic and social annals of England; and
+romance could scarce invent a more effective background for the varied
+scenes and personages such a chronicle would exhibit than the dim local
+perspective, when, ere any bridge stood there, the ferryman's daughter
+founded with the tolls a House of Sisters, subsequently transformed into
+a college of priests. By a law of Nature, thus do the elements of
+civilization cluster around the place of transit; thus do the courses of
+the water indicate the direction and nucleus of emigration,--from the
+vast lakes and mighty rivers of America, whereby an immense continent is
+made available to human intercourse, and therefore to material unity, to
+the point where the Thames was earliest crossed and spanned. More
+special historical and social facts may be found attached to every old
+bridge. In war, especially, heroic achievement and desperate valor have
+often consecrated these narrow defiles and exclusive means of advance
+and retreat:--
+
+    "When the goodman mends his armor
+      And trims his helmet's plume,
+    When the good-wife's shuttle merrily
+      Goes flashing through the loom,
+    With weeping and with laughter
+      Still is the story told
+    How well Horatius kept the bridge
+      In the good old days of old."
+
+The bridge of Darius spanned the Bosphorus,--of Xerxes, the
+Hellespont,--of Cæsar, the Rhine,--and of Trajan, the Danube; while the
+victorious march of Napoleon has left few traces so unexceptionably
+memorable as the massive causeways of the Simplon. Cicero arrested the
+bearer of letters to Catiline on the Pons Milonis, built in the time of
+Sylla on the ancient Via Flaminia; and by virtue of the blazing cross
+which he saw in the sky from the Ponte Molle the Christian emperor
+Constantine conquered Maxentius. The Pont du Gard near Nismes and the
+St. Esprit near Lyons were originally of Roman construction. During the
+war of freedom, so admirably described by our countryman, whereby rose
+the Dutch Republic, the Huguenots, at the siege of Valenciennes, we are
+told, "made forays upon the monasteries for the purpose of procuring
+supplies, and the broken statues of the dismantled churches were used to
+build a bridge across an arm of the river, which was called, in
+derision, the Bridge of Idols."
+
+But a more memorable historical bridge is admirably described in another
+military episode of this favorite historian,--that which Alexander of
+Parma built across the Scheldt, whereby Antwerp was finally won for
+Philip of Spain. Its construction was a miracle of science and courage;
+and it became the scene of one of the most terrible tragedies and the
+most fantastic festivals which signalize the history of that age, and
+illustrate the extraordinary and momentous struggle for religious
+liberty in the Netherlands. Its piers extended five hundred feet into
+the stream,--connected with the shore by boats, defended by palisades,
+fortified parapets, and spiked rafts; cleft and partially destroyed by
+the volcanic fireship of Gianebelli, a Mantuan chemist and engineer,
+whereby a thousand of the best troops of the Spanish army were instantly
+killed, and their brave chief stunned,--when the hour of victory came to
+the besiegers, it was the scene of a floral procession and Arcadian
+banquet, and "the whole extent of its surface from the Flemish to the
+Brabant shore" was alive with "war-bronzed figures crowned with
+flowers." "This magnificent undertaking has been favorably compared with
+the celebrated Rhine bridge of Julius Cæsar. When it is remembered,
+however, that the Roman work was performed in summer, across a river
+only half as broad as the Scheldt, free from the disturbing action of
+the tides, and flowing through an unresisting country, while the whole
+character of the structure, intended only to serve for the single
+passage of an army, was far inferior to the massive solidity of Parma's
+bridge, it seems not unreasonable to assign the superiority to the
+general who had surmounted all the obstacles of a northern winter,
+vehement ebb and flow from the sea, and enterprising and desperate
+enemies at every point."[G]
+
+Even the fragile bridges of our own country, during the Revolution, have
+an historical importance in the story of war: the "Great Bridge" across
+the Elizabeth River, nine miles from Norfolk in Virginia, the floating
+bridge at Ticonderoga, that which spanned Stony Brook in New Jersey, and
+many others, are identified with strife or stratagem: King's Bridge was
+a formidable barrier to the invasion of New York by land. Indeed, from
+Trenton to Lodi, military annals have few more fierce conflicts than
+those wherein the bridge of the battle-ground is disputed; to cross one
+is often a declaration of war, and Rubicons abound in history.
+
+There is probably no single problem, wherein the laws of science and
+mechanical skill combine, which has so won the attention and challenged
+the powers of inventive minds as the construction of bridges. The
+various exigencies to be met, the possible triumphs to be achieved, the
+experiments as to form, material, security, and grace, have been
+prolific causes of inspiration and disappointment. In this branch of
+economy, the mechanic and the mathematician fairly meet; and it requires
+a rare union of ability in both vocations to arrive at original results
+in this sphere. To invent a bridge, through the application of a
+scientific principle by a novel method, is one of those projects which
+seem to fascinate philosophical minds; in few have theory and practice
+been more completely tested; and the history of bridges, scientifically
+written, would exhibit as remarkable conflicts of opinion, trials of
+inventive skill, decision of character, genius, folly, and fame, as any
+other chapter in the annals of progress. How to unite security with the
+least inconvenience, permanence with availability, strength with
+beauty,--how to adapt the structure to the location, climate, use, and
+risks,--are questions which often invoke all the science and skill of
+the architect, and which have increased in difficulty with the advance
+of other resources and requisitions of civilization. Whether a bridge is
+to cross a brook, a river, a strait, an inlet, an arm of the sea, a
+canal, or a valley, are so many diverse contingencies which modify the
+calculations and plans of the engineer. Here liability to sudden
+freshets, there to overwhelming tides, now to the enormous weight of
+railway-trains, and again to the corrosive influence of the elements,
+must be taken into consideration; the navigation of waters, the
+exigencies of war, the needs of a population, the respective uses of
+viaduct, aqueduct, and roadway, have often to be included in the
+problem. These considerations influence not only the method of
+construction, but the form adopted and the material, and have given
+birth to bridges of wood, brick, stone, iron, wire, and chain,--to
+bridges supported by piers, to floating, suspension, and tubular
+structures, many of which are among the remarkable trophies of modern
+science and the noblest fruits of the arts of peace. Railways have
+created an entirely new species of bridge, to enable a train to
+intersect a road, to cross canals in slanting directions, to turn amid
+jagged precipices, and to cross arms of the sea at a sufficient
+elevation not to interfere with the passage of ships,--objects not to be
+accomplished by suspension-bridges because of their oscillation, nor
+girder for lack of support, the desiderata being extensive span with
+rigid strength, so triumphantly realized in the tubular bridge. The day
+when the great Holyrood train passed over the Strait of Menai by this
+grand expedient established the superiority of this principle of
+construction, and became a memorable occasion in the annals of
+mechanical science, and immortalized the name of Stephenson.
+
+We find great national significance in the history of bridges in
+different countries. Their costly and substantial grandeur in Britain
+accords with the solid qualities of the race, and their elegance on the
+Continent with the pervasive influence of Art in Europe. It is a curious
+illustration of the inferior economical and high intellectual
+development of Greece, that the "Athenians waded, when their temples
+were the most perfect models of architecture"; and equally an evidence
+of the practical energy of the old Romans, that their stone bridges
+often remain to this hour intact. Our own incomplete civilization is
+manifest in the marvellous number of bridges that annually break down,
+from negligent or unscientific construction; while the indomitable
+enterprise of the people is no less apparent in some of the longest,
+loftiest, most wonderfully constructed and sustained bridges in the
+world. We have only to cross the Suspension Bridge at Niagara, or gaze
+up to its aërial tracery from the river, or look forth upon wooded
+ravines and down precipitous and umbrageous glens from the Erie Railway,
+to feel that in this, as in all other branches of mechanical enterprise,
+our nation is as boldly dexterous as culpably reckless. As an instance
+of ingenuity in this sphere, the bridge which crosses the Potomac
+Creek, near Washington, deserves notice. The hollow iron arches which
+support this bridge also serve as conduits to the aqueduct which
+supplies the city with water.
+
+Amid the mass of prosaic structures in London, what a grand exception to
+the architectural monotony are her bridges! how effectually they have
+promoted her suburban growth! Canova thought the Waterloo Bridge the
+finest in Europe, and, by a strangely tragic coincidence, this noble and
+costly structure is the favorite scene of suicidal despair, wherewith
+the catastrophes of modern novels and the most pathetic of city lyrics
+are indissolably associated. Westminster Bridge is as truly the Swiss
+Laboyle's monument of architectural genius, fortitude, and patience, as
+St. Paul's is that of Wren; and our own Remington's bridge-enthusiasm
+involves a pathetic story. At Cordova, the bridge over the Guadalquivir
+is a grand relic of Moorish supremacy. The oldest bridge in England is
+that of Croyland in Lincolnshire; the largest crosses the Trent in
+Staffordshire. Tom Paine designed a cast-iron bridge, but the
+speculation failed, and the materials were subsequently used in the
+beautiful bridge over the River Wear in Durham County. There is a
+segment of a circle six hundred feet in diameter in Palmer's bridge
+which spans our own Piscataqua. It is said that the first edifice of the
+kind which the Romans built of stone was the Ponte Rotto, begun by the
+Censor Fulvius and finished by Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius.
+Popes Julius III. and Gregory XIV. repaired it; so that the fragment now
+so valued as a picturesque ruin symbolizes both Imperial and
+Ecclesiastical rule. In striking contrast with the reminiscences of
+valor, hinted by ancient Roman bridges, are the ostentatious Papal
+inscriptions which everywhere in the States of the Church, in elaborate
+Latin, announce that this Pontiff built or that Pontiff repaired these
+structures.
+
+The mediæval castle moat and drawbridge have, indeed, been transferred
+from the actual world to that of fiction, history, and art, except where
+preserved as memorials of antiquity; but the civil importance which from
+the dawn of civilization attached to the bridge is as patent to-day as
+when a Roman emperor, a feudal lord, or a monastic procession went forth
+to celebrate or consecrate its advent or completion; in evidence
+whereof, we have the appropriate function which made permanently
+memorable the late visit of Victoria's son to her American realms, in
+his inauguration of the magnificent bridge bearing her name, which is
+thrown across the St. Lawrence for a distance of only sixty yards less
+than two English miles,--the greatest tubular bridge in the world. When
+Prince Albert, amid the cheers of a multitude and the grand cadence of
+the national anthem, finished the Victoria Bridge by giving three blows
+with a mallet to the last rivet in the central tube, he celebrated one
+of the oldest, though vastly advanced, triumphs of the arts of peace,
+which ally the rights of the people and the good of human society to the
+representatives of law and polity.
+
+One may recoil with a painful sense of material incongruity, as did
+Hawthorne, when contemplating the noisome suburban street where Burns
+lived; but all the humane and poetical associations connected with the
+long struggle sustained by him, of "the highest in man's soul against
+the lowest in man's destiny," recur in sight of the Bridge of Doon, and
+the two "briggs of Ayr," whose "imaginary conversations" he caught and
+recorded, or that other bridge which spans a glen on the Auchinleck
+estate, where the rustic bard first saw the Lass of Ballochmyle. The
+tender admiration which embalms the name of Keats is also blent with the
+idea of a bridge. The poem which commences his earliest published volume
+was suggested, according to Milnes, as he "loitered by the gate that
+leads from the battery on Hampstead Heath to the field by Camwood"; and
+the young poet told his friend Clarke that the sweet passage, "Awhile
+upon some bending planks," came to him as he hung "over the rail of a
+foot-bridge that spanned a little brook in the last field upon entering
+Edmonton." To the meditative pedestrian, indeed, such places lure to
+quietude; the genial Country Parson, whose "Recreations" we have
+recently shared, unconsciously illustrates this, when he speaks of the
+privilege men like him enjoy, when free "to saunter forth with a
+delightful sense of leisure, and know that nothing will go wrong,
+although he should sit down on the mossy parapet of the little
+one-arched bridge that spans the brawling mountain-stream." On that
+Indian-summer day when Irving was buried, no object of the familiar
+landscape, through which, without formality, and in quiet grief, so many
+of the renowned and the humble followed his remains from the
+village-church to the rural graveyard, wore so pensive a fitness to the
+eye as the simple bridge over Sleepy-Hollow Creek, near to which Ichabod
+Crane encountered the headless horseman,--not only as typical of his
+genius, which thus gave a local charm to the scene, but because the
+country-people, in their heartfelt wish to do him honor, had hung
+wreaths of laurel upon the rude planks.
+
+Fragments, as well as entire roadways and arches of natural bridges, are
+more numerous in rocky, mountainous, and volcanic regions than is
+generally supposed; the action of the water in excavating cliffs, the
+segments of caverns, the, accidental shapes of geological formations,
+often result in structures so adapted for the use and like the shape of
+bridges as to appear of artificial origin. In the States of Alabama and
+Kentucky, especially, we have notable instances of these remarkable
+freaks of Nature: there is one in Walker County, of the former State,
+which, as a local curiosity, is unsurpassed; and one in the romantic
+County of Christian, in the latter State, makes a span of seventy feet
+with an altitude of thirty; while the vicinity of the famous Alabaster
+Mountain of Arkansas boasts a very curious and interesting formation of
+this species. Two of these natural bridges are of such vast proportions
+and symmetrical structure that they rank among the wonders of the world,
+and have long been the goals of pilgrimage, the shrines of travel. Their
+structure would hint the requisites, and their forms the lines of
+beauty, desirable in architectural prototypes. Across Cedar Creek, in
+Rockbridge County, Virginia, a beautiful and gigantic arch, thrown by
+elemental forces and shaped by time, extends. It is a stratified arch,
+whence you gaze down two hundred feet upon the flowing water; its sides
+are rock, nearly perpendicular. Popular conjecture reasonably deems it
+the fragmentary arch of an immense limestone cave; its loftiness imparts
+an aspect of lightness, although at the centre it is nearly fifty feet
+thick, and so massive is the whole that over it passes a public road, so
+that by keeping in the middle one might cross unaware of the marvel. To
+realize its height it must be viewed from beneath; from the side of the
+creek it has a Gothic aspect; its immense walls, clad with forest-trees,
+its dizzy elevation, buttress-like masses, and aërial symmetry make this
+sublime arch one of those objects which impress the imagination with
+grace and grandeur all the more impressive because the mysterious work
+of Nature,--eloquent of the ages, and instinct with the latent forces of
+the universe. Equally remarkable, but in a diverse style, is the Giant's
+Causeway, whose innumerable black stone columns rise from two to four
+hundred feet above the water's edge in the County of Antrim, on the
+north coast of Ireland. These basaltic pillars are for the most part
+pentagonal, whose five sides are closely united, not in one conglomerate
+mass, but, articulated so aptly that to be traced the ball and socket
+must be disjointed.
+
+The effect of statuary upon bridges is memorable: the Imperial statues
+which line that of Berlin form an impressive array; and whoever has seen
+the figures on the Bridge of Sant' Angelo at Home, when illuminated on
+a Carnival night, or the statues upon Santa Trinità at Florence, bathed
+in moonlight, and their outline distinctly revealed against sky and
+water, cannot but realize how harmoniously sculpture may illustrate and
+heighten the architecture of the bridge. More quaint than appropriate is
+pictorial embellishment; a beautiful Madonna or local saint placed
+midway or at either end of a bridge, especially one of mediæval form and
+fashion, seems appropriate; but elaborate painting, such as one sees at
+Lucerne, strikes us as more curious than desirable. The bridge which
+divides the town and crosses the Reuss is covered, yet most of the
+pictures are weather-stained; as no vehicles are allowed,
+foot-passengers can examine them at ease. They are in triangular frames,
+ten feet apart, but few have any technical merit. One series illustrates
+Swiss history; and the Kapellbrücke has the pictorial life of the Saint
+of the town; while the Mile Bridge exhibits a quaint and rough copy of
+the famous "Dance of Death."
+
+In Switzerland what fearful ravines and foaming cascades do bridges
+cross! sometimes so aërial, and overhanging such precipices, as to
+justify to the imagination the name superstitiously bestowed on more
+than one, of the Devil's Bridge; while from few is a more lovely effect
+of near water seen than the "arrowy Rhone," as we gaze down upon its
+"blue rushing" beneath the bridge at Geneva. Perhaps the varied
+pictorial effects of bridges, at least in a city, are nowhere more
+striking than at Venice, whose five hundred, with their mellow tint and
+association with palatial architecture and streets of water, especially
+when revealed by the soft and radiant hues of an Italian sunset, present
+outlines, shapes, colors, and contrasts so harmonious and beautiful as
+to warm and haunt the imagination while they charm the eye. It is
+remarkable, as an artistic fact, how graciously these structures adapt
+themselves to such diverse scenes,--equally, though variously,
+picturesque amid the sturdy foliage and wild gorges of the Alps, the
+bustle, fog, and mast-forest of the Thames, and the crystal atmosphere,
+Byzantine edifices, and silent canals of Venice.
+
+Whoever has truly felt the aërial perspective of Turner has attained a
+delicate sense of the pictorial significance of the bridge; for, as we
+look through his floating mists, we descry, amid Nature's most
+evanescent phenomena, the span, the arch, the connecting lines or masses
+whereby this familiar image seems to identify itself not less with
+Nature than with Art. Among the drawings which Arctic voyagers have
+brought home, many a bridge of ice, enormous and symmetrical, seems to
+tempt adventurous feet and to reflect a like form of fleecy cloud-land;
+daguerreotyped by the frost in miniature, the same structures may be
+traced on the window-pane; printed on the fossil and the strata of rock,
+in the veins of bark and the lips of shells, or floating in sunbeams, an
+identical design appears; and, on a summer morning, as the eye carefully
+roams over a lawn, how often do the most perfect little
+suspension-bridges hang from spear to spear of herbage, their filmy span
+embossed with glittering dew-drops!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+INTERNAL STRUCTURE AND PROGRESSION OF THE GLACIER.
+
+
+It is not my intention, in these articles, to discuss a general theory
+of the glaciers upon physical and mechanical principles. My special
+studies, always limited to Natural History, have but indifferently
+fitted me for such a task, and quite recently the subject has been
+admirably treated from this point of view by Dr. Tyndall, in his
+charming volume entitled "Glaciers of the Alps." I have worked upon the
+glaciers as an amateur, devoting my summer vacations, with friends
+desirous of sharing my leisure, to excursions in the Alps, for the sake
+of relaxation from the closer application of my professional studies,
+and have considered them especially in their connection with geological
+phenomena, with a view of obtaining, by means of a thorough acquaintance
+with glaciers as they exist now, some insight into the glacial phenomena
+of past times, the distribution of drift, the transportation of
+boulders, etc. It was, however, impossible to treat one series of facts
+without some reference to the other; but such explanations as I have
+given of the mechanism of the glacier, in connection with its structure,
+are presented in the language of the unprofessional observer, without
+any attempt at the technicalities of the physicist. I do not wonder,
+therefore, that those who have looked upon the glacier chiefly with
+reference to the physical and mechanical principles involved in its
+structure and movement should have found my Natural Philosophy
+defective. I am satisfied with their agreement as to my correct
+observation of the facts, and am the less inclined to quarrel with the
+doubts thrown on my theory since I see that the most eminent physicists
+of the day do not differ from me more sharply than they do from each
+other. The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form,
+after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal. In the mean
+while, I am not sorry that just at this moment, when recent
+investigations and publications have aroused new interest in the
+glaciers, the course of these articles brings me naturally to a
+discussion of the subject in its bearing upon geological questions. I
+shall, however, address myself especially, as I have done throughout
+these papers, to my unprofessional readers, who, while they admire the
+glaciers, may also wish to form a general idea of their structure and
+mode of action, as well as to know something of the important part they
+have played in the later geological history of our earth. It would,
+indeed, be out of place, were I to undertake here a discussion of the
+different views entertained by the various students who have
+investigated the glacier itself, among whom Dr. Tyndall is especially
+distinguished, or those of the more theoretical writers, among whom Mr.
+Hopkins occupies a prominent position.
+
+Removed, as I am, from all possibility of renewing my own observations,
+begun in 1836 and ended in 1845, I will take this opportunity to call
+the attention of those particularly interested in the matter to one
+essential point with reference to which all other observers differ from
+me. I mean the stratification of the glacier, which I do not believe to
+be rightly understood, even at this moment. It may seem presumptuous to
+dissent absolutely from the statements of one who has seen so much and
+so well as Dr. Tyndall, on a question for the solution of which, from
+the physicist's point of view, his special studies have been a far
+better preparation than mine; and yet I feel confident that I was
+correct in describing the stratification of the glacier as a fundamental
+feature of its structure, and the so-called dirt-bands as the margins of
+the snow-strata successively deposited, and in no way originating in the
+ice-cascades. I shall endeavor to make this plain to my readers in the
+course of the present article. I believe, also, that renewed
+observations will satisfy dissenting observers that there really exists
+a net-work of capillary fissures extending throughout the whole glacier,
+constantly closing and reopening, and constituting the channels by means
+of which water filtrates into its mass. This infiltration, also, has
+been denied, in consequence of the failure of some experiments in which
+an attempt was made to introduce colored fluids into the glacier. To
+this I can only answer, that I succeeded completely, myself, in the
+self-same experiments which a later investigator found impracticable,
+and that I see no reason why the failure of the latter attempt should
+cast a doubt upon the former. The explanation of the difference in the
+result may, perhaps, be found in the fact, that, as a sponge gorged with
+water can admit no more fluid than it already contains, so the glacier,
+under certain circumstances, and especially at noonday in summer, may be
+so soaked with water that all attempts to pour colored fluids into it
+would necessarily fail. I have stated, in my work upon glaciers, that my
+infiltration-experiments were chiefly made at night; and I chose that
+time, because I knew the glacier would most readily admit an additional
+supply of liquid from without when the water formed during the day at
+its surface and rushing over it in myriad rills had ceased to flow.
+
+While we admit a number of causes as affecting the motion of a glacier,
+namely, the natural tendency of heavy bodies to slide down a sloping
+surface, the pressure to which the mass is subjected forcing it onward,
+the infiltration of moisture, its freezing and consequent expansion,--we
+must also remember that these various causes, by which the accumulated
+masses of snow and ice are brought down from higher to lower levels, are
+not all acting at all times with the same intensity, nor is their action
+always the same at every point of the moving mass. While the bulk of
+snow and ice moves from higher to lower levels, the whole mass of the
+snow, in consequence of its own downward tendency, is also under a
+strong vertical pressure, arising from its own incumbent weight, and
+that pressure is, of course, greater at its bottom than at its centre or
+surface. It is therefore plain, that, inasmuch as the snow can be
+compressed by its own weight, it will be more compact at the bottom of
+such an accumulation than at its surface, this cause acting most
+powerfully at the upper part of a glacier, where the snow has not yet
+been transformed into a more solid icy mass. To these two agencies, the
+downward tendency and the vertical pressure, must be added the pressure
+from behind, which is most-effective where the mass is largest and the
+amount of motion in a given time greatest. In the glacier, the mass is,
+of course, largest in the centre, where the trough which holds it is
+deepest, and least on the margins, where the trough slopes upward and
+becomes more shallow. Consequently, the middle of a glacier always
+advances more rapidly than the sides. Were the slope of the ground over
+which it passes, combined with the pressure to which the mass is
+subjected, the whole secret of the onward progress of a glacier, it is
+evident that the rate of advance would be gradually accelerated,
+reaching its maximum at its lower extremity, and losing its impetus by
+degrees on the higher levels nearer the point where the descent begins.
+This, however, is not the case. The glacier of the Aar, for instance, is
+about ten miles in length; its rate of annual motion is greatest near
+the point of junction of the two great branches by which it is formed,
+diminishing farther down, and reaching a minimum at its lower extremity.
+But in the upper regions, near their origin, the progress of these
+branches is again gradually less. Let us see whether the next cause of
+displacement, the infiltration of moisture, may not in some measure
+explain this retardation, at least of the lower part of the glacier.
+This agency, like that of the compression of the snow by its own weight
+and the pressure from behind, is most effective where the accumulation
+is largest. In the centre, where the body of the mass is greatest, it
+will imbibe the most moisture. But here a modifying influence comes in,
+not sufficiently considered by the investigators of glacial structure.
+We have already seen that snow and ice at different degrees of
+compactness are not equally permeable to moisture. Above the line at
+which the annual winter snow melts, there is, of course, little
+moisture; but below that point, as soon as the temperature rises in
+summer sufficiently to melt the surface, the water easily penetrates the
+mass, passing through it more readily where the snow is lightest and
+least compact,--in short, where it has not begun its transformation into
+ice. A summer's day sends countless rills of water trickling through
+such a mass of snow. If the snow be loose and porous throughout, the
+water will pass through its whole thickness, accumulating at the bottom,
+so that the lower portion of the mass will be damper, more completely
+soaked with water, than the upper part; if, on the contrary, in
+consequence of the process previously described, alternate melting and
+freezing combined with pressure, the mass has assumed the character of
+icy snow, it does not admit moisture so readily, and still farther down,
+where the snow is actually transformed into pure compact ice, the amount
+of surface-water admitted into its structure will, of course, be greatly
+diminished. There may, however, be conditions under which even the
+looser snow is comparatively impervious to water; as, for instance, when
+rain falls upon a snow-field which has been long under a low
+temperature, and an ice-crust is formed upon its surface, preventing the
+water from penetrating below. Admitting, as I believe we must, that the
+water thus introduced into the snow and ice is one of the most powerful
+agents to which its motion is due, we must suppose that it has a twofold
+influence, since its action when fluid and when frozen would be
+different. When fluid, it would contribute to the advance of the mass in
+proportion to its quantity; but when frozen, its expansion would produce
+a displacement corresponding to the greater volume of ice as compared
+with water; add to this that while trickling through the mass it will
+loosen and displace the particles of already consolidated ice. I have
+already said that I did not intend to trespass on the ground of the
+physicist, and I will not enter here upon any discussion as to the
+probable action of the laws of hydrostatic pressure and dilatation in
+this connection. I will only state, that, so far as my own observation
+goes, the movement of the glacier is most rapid where the greatest
+amount of moisture is introduced into the mass, and that I believe there
+must be a direct relation between these two facts. If I am right in
+this, then the motion, so far as it is connected with infiltrated
+moisture or with the dilatation caused by the freezing of that moisture,
+will, of course, be most rapid where the glacier is most easily
+penetrated by water, namely, in the region of the _névé_ and in the
+upper portion of the glacier-troughs, where the _névé_ begins to be
+transformed into more or less porous ice. This cause also accounts, in
+part at least, for another singular fact in the motion of the glacier:
+that, in its higher levels, where its character is more porous and the
+water entering at the surface sinks readily to the bottom, there the
+bottom seems to move more rapidly than the superficial parts of the
+mass, whereas at the lower end of the glacier, in the region of the
+compact ice, where the infiltration of the water at the bottom is at its
+minimum, while the disintegrating influences at the surface admit of
+infiltration to a certain limited depth, there the motion is greater
+near the surface than toward the bottom. But, under all circumstances,
+it is plain that the various causes producing motion, gravitation,
+pressure, infiltration of water, frost, will combine to propel the mass
+at a greater rate along its axis than near its margins. For details
+concerning the facts of the case, I would refer to my work entitled
+"Système Glaciaire."
+
+We will next consider the stratification of the glacier. I have stated
+in my introductory remarks, that I consider this to be one of its
+primary and fundamental features, and I confess, that, after a careful
+examination of the results obtained by my successors in the field of
+glacial phenomena, I still believe that the original stratification of
+the mass of snow from which the glacier arises gives us the key to many
+facts of its internal structure. The ultimate features resulting from
+this connection are so exceedingly intricate and entangled that their
+relation is not easily explained. Nevertheless, I trust my readers will
+follow me in this Alpine excursion, where I shall try to smooth the
+asperities of the road for them as much as possible.
+
+Imparted to it, at the very beginning of its formation, by the manner in
+which snow accumulates, and retained through all its transformations,
+the stratification of a glacier, however distorted, and at times almost
+obliterated, remains, notwithstanding, as distinct to one who is
+acquainted with all its phases, as is the stratified character of
+metamorphic rocks to the skilful geologist, even though they may be
+readily mistaken for plutonic masses by the common observer. Indeed,
+even those secondary features, as the dirt-bands, for instance, which we
+shall see to be intimately connected with snow-strata, and which
+eventually become so prominent as to be mistaken for the cause of the
+lines of stratification, do nevertheless tend, when properly understood,
+to make the evidence of stratification more permanent, and to point out
+its primitive lines.
+
+On the plains, in our latitude, we rarely have the accumulated layers of
+several successive snow-storms preserved one above another. We can,
+therefore, hardly imagine with what distinctness the sequence of such
+beds is marked in the upper Alpine regions. The first cause of this
+distinction between the layers is the quality of the snow when it falls,
+then the immediate changes it undergoes after its deposit, then the
+falling of mist or rain upon it, and lastly and most efficient of all,
+the accumulation of dust upon its surface. One who has not felt the
+violence of a storm in the high mountains, and seen the clouds of dust
+and sand carried along with the gusts of wind passing over a
+mountain-ridge and sweeping through the valley beyond, can hardly
+conceive that not only the superficial aspect of a glacier, but its
+internal structure also, can be materially affected by such a cause. Not
+only are dust and sand thus transported in large quantities to the
+higher mountain-regions, but leaves are frequently found strewn upon the
+upper glacier, and even pine-cones, and maple-seeds flying upward on
+their spread wings, are scattered thousands of feet above and many miles
+beyond the forests where they grew.
+
+This accumulation of sand and dust goes on all the year round, but the
+amount accumulated over one and the same surface is greatest during the
+summer, when the largest expanse of rocky wall is bare of snow and its
+loose soil dried by the heat so as to be easily dislodged. This summer
+deposit of loose inorganic materials, light enough to be transported by
+the wind, forms the main line of division between the snow of one year
+and the next, though only that of the last year is visible for its whole
+extent. Those of the preceding years, as we shall see hereafter, exhibit
+only their edges cropping out lower down one beyond another, being
+brought successively to lower levels by the onward motion of the
+glacier.
+
+Other observers of the glacier, Professor Forbes and Dr. Tyndall, have
+noticed only the edges of these seams, and called them dirt-bands.
+Looking upon them as merely superficial phenomena, they have given
+explanations of their appearance which I hold to be quite untenable.
+Indeed, to consider these successive lines of dirt on the glacier as
+limited only to its surface, and to explain them from that point of
+view, is much as if a geologist were to consider the lines presented by
+the strata on a cut through a sedimentary mass of rock as representing
+their whole extent, and to explain them as a superficial deposit due to
+external causes.
+
+A few more details may help to make this statement clearer to my
+readers. Let us imagine that a fresh layer of snow has fallen in these
+mountain-regions, and that a deposit of dirt has been scattered over its
+surface, which, if any moisture arises from the melting of the snow or
+from the falling of rain or mist, will become more closely compacted
+with it. The next snow-storm deposits a fresh bed of snow, separated
+from the one below it by the sheet of dust just described, and this bed
+may, in its turn, receive a like deposit. For greater ease and
+simplicity of explanation, I speak here as if each successive snow-layer
+were thus indicated; of course this is not literally true, because
+snow-storms in the winter may follow each other so fast that there is no
+time for such a collection of foreign materials upon each newly formed
+surface. But whenever such a fresh snow-bed, or accumulation of beds,
+remains with its surface exposed for some time, such a deposit of dirt
+will inevitably be found upon it. This process may go on till we have a
+number of successive snow-layers divided from each other by thin sheets
+of dust. Of course, such seams, marking the stratification of snow, are
+as permanent and indelible as the seams of coarser materials alternating
+with the finest mud in a sedimentary rock.
+
+The gradual progress of a glacier, which, though more rapid in summer
+than in winter, is never intermitted, must, of course, change the
+relation of these beds to each other. Their lower edge is annually cut
+off at a certain level, because the snow deposited every winter melts
+with the coming summer, up to a certain line, determined by the local
+climate of the place. But although the snow does not melt above this
+line, we have seen, in the preceding article, that it is prevented from
+accumulating indefinitely in the higher regions by its own tendency to
+move down to the lower valleys, and crowding itself between their walls,
+thus to force its way toward the outlet below. Now, as this movement is
+very gradual, it is evident that there must be a perceptible difference
+in the progress of the successive layers, the lower and older ones
+getting the advance of the upper and more recent ones: that is, when the
+snow that has covered the face of the country during one winter melts
+away from the glacier up to the so-called snow-line, there will be seen
+cropping out below and beyond that line the layers of the preceding
+years, which are already partially transformed into ice, and have become
+a part of the frozen mass of the glacier with which they are moving
+onward and downward. In the autumn, when the dust of a whole season has
+been accumulated upon the surface of the preceding winter's snow, the
+extent of the layer which year after year will henceforth crop out lower
+down, as a dirt-band, may best be appreciated.
+
+Beside the snow-layers and the sheets of dust alternating with them,
+there is still another feature of the horizontal and parallel structure
+of the mass in immediate connection with those above considered. I
+allude to the layers of pure compact ice occurring at different
+intervals between the snow-layers. In July, when the snow of the
+preceding winter melts up to the line of perpetual snow, the masses
+above, which are to withstand the summer heat and become part of the
+glacier forever, or at least until they melt away at the lower end,
+begin to undergo the changes through which all snow passes before it
+acquires the character of glacial ice. It thaws at the surface, is
+rained upon, or condenses moisture, thus becoming gradually soaked, and
+after assuming the granular character of _névé_-ice, it ends in being
+transformed into pure compact ice. Toward the end of August, or early
+in September, when the nights are already very cold in the Alps, but
+prior to the first permanent autumnal snow-falls, the surface of these
+masses becomes frozen to a greater or less depth, varying, of course,
+according to temperature. These layers of ice become numerous and are
+parallel to each other, like the layers of ice formed from slosh. Such
+crusts of ice I have myself observed again and again upon the glacier.
+This stratified snowy ice is now the bottom on which the first autumnal
+snow-falls accumulate. These sheets of ice may be formed not only
+annually before the winter snows set in, but may recur at intervals
+whenever water accumulating upon an extensive snow-surface, either in
+consequence of melting or of rain, is frozen under a sharp frost before
+another deposit of snow takes place. Or suppose a fresh layer of light
+porous snow to have accumulated above one the surface of which has
+already been slightly glazed with frost; rain or dew, falling upon the
+upper one, will easily penetrate it; but when it reaches the lower one,
+it will be stopped by the film of ice already formed, and under a
+sufficiently low temperature, it will be frozen between the two. This
+result may be frequently noticed in winter, on the plains, where sudden
+changes of temperature take place.
+
+There is still a third cause, to which the same result may possibly be
+due, and to which I shall refer at greater length hereafter; but as it
+has not, like the preceding ones, been the subject of direct
+observation, it must be considered as hypothetical. The admirable
+experiments of Dr. Tyndall have shown that water may be generated in ice
+by pressure, and it is therefore possible that at a lower depth in the
+glacier, where the incumbent weight of the mass above is sufficient to
+produce water, the water thus accumulated may be frozen into ice-layers.
+But this depends so much upon the internal temperature of the glacier,
+about which we know little beyond a comparatively superficial depth,
+that it cannot at present afford a sound basis even for conjecture.
+
+There are, then, in the upper snow-fields three kinds of horizontal
+deposits: the beds of snow, the sheets of dust, and the layers of ice,
+alternating with each other. If, now, there were no modifying
+circumstances to change the outline and surface of the glacier,--if it
+moved on uninterruptedly through an open valley, the lower layers,
+forming the mass, getting by degrees the advance of the upper ones, our
+problem would be simple enough. We should then have a longitudinal mass
+of snow, inclosed between rocky walls, its surface crossed by straight
+transverse lines marking the annual additions to the glacier, as in the
+adjoining figure.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But that mass of snow, before it reaches the outlet of the valley, is to
+be compressed, contorted, folded, rent in a thousand directions. The
+beds of snow, which in the upper ranges of the mountain were spread out
+over broad, open surfaces, are to be crowded into comparatively
+circumscribed valleys, to force and press themselves through narrow
+passes, alternately melting and freezing, till they pass from the
+condition of snow into that of ice, to undergo, in short, constant
+transformations, by which the primitive stratification will be
+extensively modified. In the first place, the more rapid motion of the
+centre of the glacier, as compared with the margins, will draw the lines
+of stratification downward toward the middle faster than at the sides.
+Accurate measurements have shown that the axis of a glacier may move
+ten- or twenty-fold more rapidly than its margins. This is not the place
+to introduce a detailed account of the experiments made to ascertain
+this result; but I would refer those who are interested in the matter to
+the measurements given in my "Système Glaciaire," where it will be seen
+that the middle may move at a rate of two hundred feet a year, while the
+margins may not advance more than ten or fifteen or twenty feet. These
+observations of mine have the advantage over those of other observers,
+that, while they embrace the whole extent of the glacier, transversely
+as well as in its length, they cover a period of several successive
+years, instead of being limited to summer campaigns and a few winter
+observations. The consequence of this mode of progressing will be that
+the straight lines drawn transversely across the surface of the glacier
+above will be gradually changed to curved ones below. After a few years,
+such a line will appear on the surface of the glacier like a crescent,
+with the bow turned downward, within which, above, are other crescents,
+less and less sharply arched up to the last year's line, which may be
+again straight across the snow-field. (See the subjoined figure, which
+represents a part of the glacier of the Lauter-Aar.)
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Thus the glacier records upon its surface its annual growth and
+progress, and registers also the inequality in the rate of advance
+between the axis and the sides.
+
+But these are only surface-phenomena. Let us see what will be the effect
+upon the internal structure. We must not forget, in considering the
+changes taking place within glaciers, the shape of the valleys which
+contain them. A glacier lies in a deep trough, and the tendency of the
+mass will be to sink toward its deeper part, and to fold inward and
+downward, if subjected to a strong lateral pressure,--that is, to dip
+toward the centre and slope upward along the sides, following the scoop
+of the trough. If, now, we examine the face of a transverse cut in the
+glacier, we find it traversed by a number of lines, vertical in some
+places, more or less oblique in others, and frequently these lines are
+joined together at the lower ends, forming loops, some of which are
+close and vertical, while others are quite open. These lines are due to
+the folding of the strata in consequence of the lateral pressure they
+are subjected to, when crowded into the lower course of the valleys, and
+the difference in their dip is due to the greater or less force of that
+pressure. The wood-cut on the next page represents a transverse cut
+across the Lauter-Aar and the Finster-Aar, the two principal tributaries
+to the great Aar glacier, and includes also a number of small lateral
+glaciers which join them. The beds on the left, which dip least, and are
+only folded gently downward, forming very open loops, are those of the
+Lauter-Aar, where the lateral pressure is comparatively slight. Those
+which are almost vertical belong in part to the several small tributary
+glaciers, which have been crowded together and very strongly compressed,
+and partly to the Finster-Aar. The close uniform vertical lines in this
+wood-cut represent a different feature in the structure of the glacier,
+called blue bands, to which I shall refer presently. These loops or
+lines dipping into the internal mass of the glacier have been the
+subject of much discussion, and various theories have been recently
+proposed respecting them. I believe them to be caused, as I have said,
+by the snow-layers, originally deposited horizontally, but afterward
+folded into a more or less vertical position, in consequence of the
+lateral pressure brought to bear upon them. The sheets of dust and of
+ice alternating with the snow-strata are of course subjected to the same
+action, and are contorted, bent, and folded by the same lateral
+pressure.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Dr. Tyndall has advanced the view that the lines of apparent
+stratification, and especially the dirt-bands across the surface of the
+glacier, are due to ice-cascades: that is, the glacier, passing over a
+sharp angle, is cracked across transversely in consequence of the
+tension, and these rents, where the back of the glacier has been
+successively broken, when recompacted, cause the transverse lines, the
+dirt being collected in the furrow formed between the successive ridges.
+Unfortunately for his theory, the lines of stratification constantly
+occur in glaciers where no such ice-falls are found. His principal
+observations upon this subject were made on the Glacier du Géant, where
+the ice-cascade is very remarkable. The lines may perhaps be rendered
+more distinct on the Glacier du Géant by the cascade, and necessarily
+must be so, if the rents coincide with the limit at which the annual
+snow-line is nearly straight across the glacier. In the region of the
+Aar glacier, however, where my own investigations were made, all the
+tributaries entering into the larger glacier are ribbed across in this
+way, and most of them join the main trunk over uniform slopes, without
+the slightest cascade.
+
+It must be remembered that these surface-phenomena of the glacier are
+not to be seen at all times, nor under all conditions. During the first
+year of my sojourn on the glacier of the Aar, I was not aware that the
+stratification of its tributaries was so universal as I afterward found
+it to be; the primitive lines of the strata are often so far erased that
+they are not perceptible, except under the most favorable circumstances.
+But when the glacier has been washed clean by rain, and the light
+strikes upon it in the right direction, these lines become perfectly
+distinct, where, under different conditions, they could not be discerned
+at all. After passing many summers on the same glacier, renewing my
+observations year after year over the same localities, I can confidently
+state that not only do the lines of stratification exist throughout the
+great glacier of the Aar, but in all its tributaries also. Of course,
+they are greatly modified in the lower part of the glacier by the
+intimate fusion of its tributaries, and by the circumstance that their
+movement, primarily independent, is merged in the movement of the main
+glacier embracing them all. We have seen that not only does the centre
+of a glacier move more rapidly than its sides, but that the deeper mass
+of the glacier also moves at a different rate from its more superficial
+portion. My own observations (for the details of which I would again
+refer the reader to my "Système Glaciaire ") show that in the higher
+part of the glacier, especially in the region of the _névé_, the bottom
+of the mass seems to move more rapidly than the surface, while lower
+down, toward the terminus of the glacier, the surface, on the contrary,
+moves faster than the bottom. The annexed wood-cut exhibits a
+longitudinal section of the glacier, in which this difference in the
+motion of the upper and lower portions of the mass is represented, the
+beds being almost horizontal in the upper snow-fields, while their lower
+portion slopes move rapidly downward in the _névé_ region, and toward
+the lower end the upper portion takes the lead, and advances more
+rapidly than the lower.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I presented these results for the first time in two letters, dated
+October 9th, 1842, which were published in a German periodical, the
+Jahrbuch of Leonhard and Bronn. The last three wood-cuts introduced
+above, the transverse and longitudinal sections of the glacier as well
+as that representing the concentric lines of stratification on the
+surface, are the identical ones contained in those communications. These
+papers seem to have been overlooked by contemporary investigators, and I
+may be permitted to translate here a passage from one of them, since it
+sums up the results of the inequality of motion throughout the glacier
+and its influence on the primitive stratification of the mass in as few
+words and as correctly as I could give them to-day, twenty years
+later:--"Combining these views, it appears that the glacier may be
+represented as composed of concentric shells which arise from the
+parallel strata of the upper region by the following process. The
+primitively regular strata advance into gradually narrower and deeper
+valleys, in consequence of which the margins are raised, while the
+middle is bent not only downward, but, from its more rapid motion,
+forward also, so that they assume a trough-like form in the interior of
+the mass. Lower down, the glacier is worn by the surrounding air, and
+assumes the peculiar form characteristic of its lower course." The last
+clause alludes to another series of facts, which we shall examine in a
+future article, when we shall see that the heat of the walls in the
+lower part of its course melts the sides of the glacier, so that,
+instead of following the trough-like shape of the valley, it becomes
+convex, arching upward in the centre and sinking at the margins.
+
+I have dwelt thus long, and perhaps my readers may think tediously, upon
+this part of my subject, because the stratification of the glacier has
+been constantly questioned by the more recent investigators of glacial
+phenomena, and has indeed been set aside as an exploded theory. They
+consider the lines of stratification, the dirt-bands, and the seams of
+ice alternating with the more porous snow, as disconnected
+surface-phenomena, while I believe them all to be intimately connected
+together as primary essential features of the original mass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is another feature of glacial structure, intimately connected, by
+similarity of position and aspect, with the stratification, which has
+greatly perplexed the students of glacial phenomena. I allude to the
+so-called blue bands, or bands of infiltration, also designated as
+veined structure, ribboned or laminated structure, marginal structure,
+and longitudinal structure. The difficulty lies, I believe, in the fact
+that two very distinct structures, that of the stratification and the
+blue bands, are frequently blended together in certain parts of the
+glacier in such a manner as to seem identical, while elsewhere the one
+is prominent and the other subordinate, and _vice versâ_. According to
+their various opportunities of investigation, observers have either
+confounded the two, believing them to be the same, or some have
+overlooked the one and insisted upon the other as the prevailing
+feature, while that very feature has been absolutely denied again by
+others who have seen its fellow only, and taken that to be the only
+prominent and important fact in this peculiar structural character of
+the ice.
+
+We have already seen how the stratification of the glacier arises,
+accompanied by layers of dust and other material foreign to the glacier,
+and how blue bands of compact ice may be formed parallel to the surface
+of these strata. We have also seen how the horizontality of these strata
+may be modified by pressure till they assume a position within the mass
+of the glacier, varying from a slightly oblique inclination to a
+vertical one. Now, while the position of the strata becomes thus altered
+under pressure, other changes take place in the constitution of the ice
+itself.
+
+Before attempting to explain how these changes take place, let us
+consider the facts themselves. The mass of the glacial ice is traversed
+by thin bands of compact blue ice, these bands being very numerous along
+the margins of the glacier, where they constitute what Dr. Tyndall calls
+marginal structure, and still more crowded along the line upon which two
+glaciers unite, where he has called it longitudinal structure. In the
+latter case, where the extreme pressure resulting from the junction of
+two glaciers has rendered the strata nearly vertical, these blue bands
+follow their trend so closely that it is difficult to distinguish one
+from the other. It will be seen, on referring to the wood-cut on page
+758, where the close, uniform, vertical lines represent the true veined
+structure, that at several points of that section the lines of
+stratification run so nearly parallel with them, that, were the former
+not drawn more strongly, they could not be easily distinguished from the
+latter. Along the margins, also, in consequence of the retarded motion,
+the blue bands and the lines of stratification run nearly parallel with
+each other, both following the sides of the trough in which they move.
+
+Undoubtedly, in both these instances, we have two kinds of blue bands,
+namely: those formed primitively in a horizontal position, indicating
+seams of stratification, and those which have arisen subsequently in
+connection with the movement of the whole mass, which I have
+occasionally called bands of infiltration, as they appeared to me to be
+formed by the infiltration and freezing of water. The fact that these
+blue bands are most numerous where two glaciers are crowded together
+into a common bed naturally suggests pressure as their cause. And since
+the beautiful experiments of Dr. Tyndall have illustrated the internal
+liquefaction of ice by pressure, it becomes highly probable that his
+theory of the origin of these secondary blue bands is the true one. He
+suggests that layers of water may be formed in the glacier at right
+angles with the pressure, and pass into a state of solid ice upon the
+removal of that pressure, the pressure being of course relieved in
+proportion to the diminution in the body of the ice by compression. The
+number of blue bands diminishes as we recede from the source of the
+pressure,--few only being formed, usually at right angles with the
+surfaces of stratification, in the middle of a glacier, half-way between
+its sides. If they are caused by pressure, this diminution of their
+number toward the middle of the glacier would be inevitable, since the
+intensity of the pressure naturally fades as we recede from the motive
+power.
+
+Dr. Tyndall also alludes to another structure of the same kind, which he
+calls transverse structure, where the blue bands extend in
+crescent-shaped curves, more or less arched, across the surface of the
+glacier. Where these do not coincide with the stratification, they are
+probably formed by vertical pressure in connection with the unequal
+movement of the mass.
+
+With these facts before us, it seems to me plain that the primitive blue
+bands arise with the stratification of the snow in the very first
+formation of the glacier, while the secondary blue bands are formed
+subsequently, in consequence of the onward progress of the glacier and
+the pressure to which it is subjected. The secondary blue bands
+intersect the planes of stratification at every possible angle, and may
+therefore seem identical with the stratification in some places, while
+in others they cut it at right angles. It has been objected to my theory
+of glacial structure, that I have considered the so-called blue bands as
+a superficial feature when compared with the stratification. And in a
+certain sense this is true; since, if my views are correct, the glacier
+exists and is in full life and activity before the secondary blue bands
+arise in it, whereas the stratification is a feature of its embryo
+condition, already established in the accumulated snow before it begins
+its transformation into glacier-ice. In other words, the veined
+structure of the glacier is not a primary structural feature of its
+whole mass, but the result of various local influences acting upon the
+constitution of the ice: the marginal structure resulting from the
+resistance of the sides of the valley to the onward movement of the
+glacier, the longitudinal structure arising from the pressure caused by
+two glaciers uniting in one common bed, the transverse structure being
+produced by vertical pressure in consequence of the weight of the mass
+itself and the increased rate of motion at the centre.
+
+In the _névé_ fields, where the strata are still horizontal, the few
+blue bands observed are perpendicular to the strata of snow, and
+therefore also perpendicular to the blue seams of ice and the sheets of
+dust alternating with them. Upon the sides of the glacier they are more
+or less parallel to the slopes of the valley; along the line of junction
+of two glaciers they follow the vertical trend of the axis of the mass;
+while at intermediate positions they are more or less oblique. Along the
+outcropping edges of the strata, on the surface of the glacier, they
+follow more or less the dip of the strata themselves; that is to say,
+they are more or less parallel with the dirt-bands. In conclusion, I
+would recommend future investigators to examine the glaciers, with
+reference to the distribution of the blue bands, after heavy rains and
+during foggy days, when the surface is freed from the loose materials
+and decomposed fragments of ice resulting from the prolonged action of
+the sun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most important facts, then, to be considered with reference to the
+motion of the glacier are as follows. First that the rate of advance
+between the axis and the margins of a glacier differs in the ratio of
+about ten to one and even less; that is to say; when the centre is
+advancing at a rate of two hundred and fifty feet a year, the motion
+toward the sides may be gradually diminished to two hundred, one hundred
+and fifty, one hundred, fifty feet, and so on, till nearest the margin
+it becomes almost inappreciable. Secondly, the rate of motion is not the
+same throughout the length of the glacier, the advance being greatest
+about half-way down in the region of the _névé_, and diminishing in
+rapidity both above and below; thus the onward motion in the higher
+portion of a glacier may not exceed twenty to fifty feet a year, while
+it reaches its maximum of some two hundred and fifty feet annually in
+the _névé_ region, and is retarded again toward the lower extremity,
+where it is reduced to about one-fourth of its maximum rate. Thirdly,
+the glacier moves at different rates throughout the thickness of its
+mass; toward the lower extremity of the glacier the bottom is retarded,
+and the surface portion moves faster, while in the upper region the
+bottom seems to advance more rapidly. I say _seems_, because upon this
+latter point there are no positive measurements, and it is only
+inferred from general appearances, while the former statement has been
+demonstrated by accurate experiments. Remembering the form of the
+troughs in which the glaciers arise, that they have their source in
+expansive, open fields of snow and _névé_, and that these immense
+accumulations move gradually down into ever narrowing channels, though
+at times widening again to contract anew, their surface wasting so
+little from external influences that they advance far below the line of
+perpetual snow without any sensible diminution in size, it is evident
+that an enormous pressure must have been brought to bear upon them
+before they could have been packed into the lower valleys through which
+they descend.
+
+Physicists seem now to agree that pressure is the chief agency in the
+motion of glaciers. No doubt, all the facts point that way; but it now
+becomes a matter of philosophical interest to determine in what
+direction it acts most powerfully, and upon this point glacialists are
+by no means agreed. The latest conclusion seems to be, that the weight
+of the advancing mass is itself the efficient cause of the motion. But
+while this is probably true in the main, other elements tending to the
+same result, and generally overlooked by investigators, ought to be
+taken into consideration; and before leaving the subject, I would add a
+few words upon infiltration in this connection.
+
+The weight of the glacier, as a whole, is about the same all the year
+round. If, therefore, pressure, resulting from that weight, be the
+all-controlling agency, its progress should be uniform daring the whole
+year, or even greatest in winter, which is by no means the case. By a
+series of experiments, I have ascertained that the onward movement,
+whatever be its annual average, is accelerated in spring and early
+summer. The average annual advance of the glacier being, at a given
+point, at the rate of about two hundred feet, its average summer
+advance, at the same point, will be at a rate of two hundred and fifty
+feet, while its average rate of movement in winter will be about one
+hundred and fifty feet. This can be accounted for only by the increased
+pressure due to the large accession of water trickling in spring and
+early summer into the interior through the net-work of capillary
+fissures pervading the whole mass. The unusually large infiltration of
+water at that season is owing to the melting of the winter snow. Careful
+experiments made on the glacier of the Aar, respecting the water thus
+accumulating on the surface, penetrating its mass, and finally
+discharged in part at its lower extremity, fully confirm this view.
+Here, then, is a powerful cause of pressure and consequent motion, quite
+distinct from the permanent weight of the mass itself, since it operates
+only at certain seasons of the year. In midwinter, when the infiltration
+is reduced to a minimum, the motion is least. The water thus introduced
+into the glacier acts, as we have seen above, in various ways: by its
+weight, by loosening the particles of snow through which it trickles,
+and by freezing and consequent expansion, at least within the limits and
+during the season at which the temperature of the glacier sinks below
+32° Fahrenheit. The simple fact, that in the spring the glacier swells
+on an average to about five feet more than its usual level, shows how
+important this infiltration must be. I can therefore only wonder that
+other glacialists have given so little weight to this fact. It is
+admitted by all, that the waste of a glacier at its surface, in
+consequence of evaporation and melting, amounts to about nine or ten
+feet in a year. At this rate of diminution, a glacier, even one thousand
+feet in thickness, could not advance during a single century without
+being exhausted. The water supplied by infiltration no doubt repairs the
+loss to a great degree. Indeed, the lower part of the glacier must be
+chiefly maintained from this source, since the annual increase from the
+fresh accumulations of snow is felt only above the snow-line, below
+which the yearly snow melts away and disappears. In a complete theory
+of the glaciers, the effect of so great an accession of plastic material
+cannot be overlooked.
+
+I now come to some points in the structure of the glacier, the
+consideration of which is likely to have a decided influence in settling
+the conflicting views respecting their motion. The experiments of
+Faraday concerning regelation, and the application of the facts made
+known by the great English physicist to the theory of the glaciers, as
+first presented by Dr. Tyndall in his admirable work, show that
+fragments of ice with most surfaces are readily reunited under pressure
+into a solid mass. It follows from these experiments, that glacier-ice,
+at a temperature of 32° Fahrenheit, may change its form and preserve its
+continuity during its motion, in virtue of the pressure to which it is
+subjected. The statement is, that, when two pieces of ice with moistened
+surfaces are placed in contact, they become cemented together by the
+freezing of a film of water between them, while, when the ice is below
+32° Fahrenheit, and therefore _dry_, no effect of the kind can be
+produced. The freezing was also found to take place under water; and the
+result was the same, even when the water into which the ice was plunged
+was as hot as the hand can bear.
+
+The fact that ice becomes cemented under these circumstances is fully
+established, and my own experiments have confirmed it to the fullest
+extent. I question, however, the statement, that regelation takes place
+_by the freezing of a film of water between the fragments_. I never have
+been able to detect any indication of the presence of such a film, and
+am, therefore, inclined to consider this result as akin to what takes
+place when fragments of moist clay or marl are pressed together and thus
+reunited. When examining beds of clay and marl, or even of compact
+limestone, especially in large mountain-masses, I have frequently
+observed that the rock presents a net-work of minute fissures pervading
+the whole, without producing a distinct solution of continuity, though
+generally determining the lines according to which it breaks under
+sudden shocks. The net-work of capillary fissures pervading the glacier
+may fairly be compared to these rents in hard rocks,--with this
+difference, however, that in ice they are more permeable to water than
+in stone.
+
+How this net-work of capillary fissures is formed has not been
+ascertained by direct observation. Following, however, the
+transformation of the snow and _névé_ into compact ice, it is easily
+conceived that the porous mass of snow, as it falls in the upper regions
+of the Alps, and in the broad caldrons in which the glaciers properly
+originate, cannot pass into solid ice, by the process described in a
+former article, without retaining within itself larger or smaller
+quantities of air. This air is finally surrounded from all sides by the
+cementation of the granules of _névé_, through the freezing of the water
+that penetrates it. So inclosed, the bubbles of air are subject to the
+same compression as the ice itself, and become more flattened in
+proportion as the snow has been more fully transformed into compact ice.
+As long as the transformation of snow into ice is not complete, a rise
+of its temperature to 32° Fahrenheit, accompanied with thawing, reduces
+it at once again to the condition of loose grains of _névé_; but when
+more compact, it always presents the aspect of a mass composed of
+angular fragments, wedged and dove-tailed together, and separated by
+capillary fissures, the flattened air-bubbles trending in the same
+direction in each fragment, but varying in their trend from one fragment
+to another. There is, moreover, this important point to notice,--that,
+the older the _névé_, the larger are its composing granules; and where
+_névé_ passes into porous ice, small angular fragments are mixed with
+rounded _névé_-granules, the angular fragments appearing larger and more
+numerous, and the _névé_-granules fewer, in proportion as the _névé_-ice
+has undergone most completely its transformation into compact
+glacier-ice. These facts show conclusively that the dimensions and form
+of the _névé_-granules, the size and shape of the angular fragments, the
+porosity of the ice, the arrangement of its capillary fissures, and the
+distribution and compression of the air-bubbles it contains, are all
+connected features, mutually dependent. Whether the transformation of
+snow into ice be the result of pressure only, or, as I believe, quite as
+much the result of successive thawings and freezings, these structural
+features can equally be produced, and exhibit these relations to one
+another. It may be, moreover, that, when the glacier is at a temperature
+below 32°, its motion produces extensive fissuration throughout the
+mass.
+
+Now that water pervades this net-work of fissures in the glacier to a
+depth not yet ascertained, my experiments upon the glacier of the Aar
+have abundantly proved; and that the fissures themselves exist at a
+depth of two hundred and fifty feet I also know, from actual
+observation. All this can, of course, take place, even if the internal
+temperature of the glacier never should fall below 32° Fahrenheit; and
+it has actually been assumed that the temperature within the glacier
+does not fall below this point, and that, therefore, no phenomena,
+dependent upon a greater degree of cold, can take place beyond a very
+superficial depth, to which the cold outside may be supposed to
+penetrate. I have, however, observed facts which seem to me
+irreconcilable with this assumption. In the first place, a
+thermometrograph indicating -2° Centigrade, (about 28° Fahrenheit,) at a
+depth of a little over two metres, that is, about six feet and a half,
+has been recovered from the interior of the glacier of the Aar, while
+all my attempts to thaw out other instruments placed in the ice at a
+greater depth utterly failed, owing to the circumstance, that, after
+being left for some time in the glacier, they were invariably frozen up
+in newly formed water-ice, entirely different in its structure from the
+surrounding glacier-ice. This freezing could not have taken place, did
+the mass of the glacier never fall below 32° Fahrenheit. And this is not
+the only evidence of hard frost in the interior of the glaciers. The
+innumerable large walls of water-ice, which may be seen intersecting
+their mass in every direction and to any depth thus far reached, show
+that water freezes in their interior. It cannot be objected, that this
+is merely the result of pressure; since the thin fluid seams, exhibited
+under pressure in the interesting experiments of Dr. Tyndall, and
+described in his work under the head of Crystallization and Internal
+Liquefaction, cannot be compared to the large, irregular masses of
+water-ice found in the interior of the glacier, to which I here allude.
+
+In the absence of direct thermometric observations, from which the
+lowest internal temperature of the glacier could be determined with
+precision in all its parts, we are certainly justified in assuming that
+every particle of water-ice found in the glacier, the formation of which
+cannot be ascribed to the mere fact of pressure, is due to the influence
+of a temperature inferior to 32° Fahrenheit at the time of its
+consolidation. The fact that the temperature in winter has been proved
+by actual experimentation to fall as low as 28° Fahrenheit, that is,
+four degrees below the freezing-point at a depth of six feet below a
+thick covering of snow, though not absolutely conclusive as to the
+temperature at a greater depth, is certainly very significant.
+
+Under these circumstances, it is not out of place to consider through
+what channels the low temperature of the air surrounding the glacier may
+penetrate into the interior. The heavy cold air may of course sink from
+the surface into every large open space, such as the crevasses, large
+fissures, and _moulins_ or mill like holes to be described in a future
+article; it may also penetrate with the currents which ingulf themselves
+under the glacier, or it may enter through its terminal vault, or
+through the lateral openings between the walls of the valley and the
+ice. Indeed, if all the spaces in the mass of the glacier, not occupied
+by continuous ice, could be graphically represented, I believe it would
+be seen that cold air surrounds the glacier-ice itself in every
+direction, so that probably no masses of a greater thickness than that
+already known to be permeable to cold at the surface would escape this
+contact with the external temperature. If this be the case, it is
+evident that water may freeze in any part of the glacier.
+
+To substantiate this position, which, if sustained, would prove that the
+dilatation of the mass of the glacier is an essential element of its
+motion, I may allude to several other well-known facts. The loose snow
+of the upper regions is gradually transformed into compact ice. The
+experiments of Dr. Tyndall prove that this may be the result of
+pressure; but in the region of the _névé_ it is evidently owing to the
+transformation of the snow-flakes into ice by repeated melting and
+freezing, for it takes place in the uppermost layers of the snow, where
+pressure can have no such effect, as well as in its deeper beds. I take
+it for granted, also, that no one, familiar with the presence of the
+numerous ice-seams parallel to the layers of snow in these upper regions
+of the glacier, can doubt that they, as well as the _névé_, are the
+result of frost. But be this as it may, the difference between the
+porous ice of the upper region of the glacier and the compact blue ice
+of its lower track seems to me evidence direct that at times the whole
+mass must assume the rigidity imparted to it by a temperature inferior
+to the freezing-point. We know that at 32° Fahrenheit, regelation
+renders the mass continuous, and that it becomes brittle only at a
+temperature below this. In other words, the ice can break up into a mass
+of disconnected fragments, such as the capillary fissures and the
+infiltration-experiments described in my "Système Glaciaire," show to
+exist, only when it is below 32° Fahrenheit. If it be contended that ice
+at 32° does break, and that therefore the whole mass of the glacier may
+break at that temperature, setting aside the contradiction to the facts
+of regelation which such an assumption involves, I would refer to Dr.
+Tyndall's experiments concerning the vacuous spots in the ice.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Those who have read his startling investigations will remember that by
+sending a beam of sunlight through ice he brought to view the primitive
+crystalline forms to which it owes its solidity, and that he insisted
+that these star-shaped figures are always in the plane of
+crystallization. Without knowing what might be their origin, I had
+myself noticed these figures, and represented them in a diagram, part of
+which is reproduced in the annexed wood-cut. I had considered them to be
+compressed air-bubbles; and though I cannot, under my present
+circumstances, repeat the experiment of Dr. Tyndall upon glacier-ice, I
+conceive that the star-shaped figures represented upon Pl. VII. figs. 8
+and 9, in my "Système Glaciaire," may refer to the same phenomenon as
+that observed by him in pond-ice. Yet while I make this concession, I
+still maintain, that besides these crystalline figures there exist
+compressed air-bubbles in the angular fragments of the glacier-ice, as
+shown in the above wood-cut; and that these bubbles are grouped in sets,
+trending in the same direction in one and the same fragment, and
+diverging under various angles in the different fragments. I have
+explained this fact concerning the position of the compressed
+air-bubbles, by assuming that ice, under various pressure, may take the
+appearance it presents in each fragment with every compressed air-bubble
+trending in the same direction, while their divergence in the different
+fragments is owing to a change in the respective position of the
+fragments resulting from the movement of the whole glacier. I have
+further assumed, that throughout the glacier the change of the snow and
+porous ice into compact ice is the result of successive freezing,
+alternating with melting, or at least with the resumption of a
+temperature of 32° Fahrenheit in consequence of the infiltration of
+liquid water, to which the effects of pressure must be added, the
+importance of which in this connection no one could have anticipated
+prior to the experiments of Dr. Tyndall. Of course, if the interior
+temperature of the glacier never falls below 32°, the changes here
+alluded to could not take place. But if the _vacuous spaces_ observed by
+Dr. Tyndall are really identical with the spaces I have described as
+_extremely flattened air-bubbles_, I think the arrangement of these
+spaces as above described proves that it freezes in the interior of the
+glacier to the depth at which these crosswise fragments have been
+observed: that is, at a depth of two hundred feet. For, since the
+experiments of Dr. Tyndall show that the vacuous spaces are parallel to
+the surface of crystallization, and as no crystallization of water can
+take place unless the surrounding temperature fall below 32°, it follows
+that these vacuous spaces could not exist in such large continuous
+fragments, presenting throughout the fragments the same trend, if there
+had been no frost within the mass, affecting the whole of such a
+fragment while it remained in the same position.
+
+The most striking evidence, in my opinion, that at times the whole mass
+of the glacier actually freezes, is drawn from the fact, already alluded
+to, that, while the surface of the glacier loses annually from nine to
+ten feet of its thickness by evaporation and melting, it swells, on the
+other hand, in the spring, to the amount of about five feet. Such a
+dilatation can hardly be the result of pressure and the packing of the
+snow and ice, since the difference in the bulk of the ice brought down,
+during one year, from a point above to that under observation, would not
+account for the swelling. It is more readily explained by the freezing
+of the water of infiltration during spring and early summer, when the
+infiltration is most copious and the winter cold has been accumulating
+for the longest time. This view of the case is sustained by Élie de
+Beaumont, who states his opinion upon this point as follows:--
+
+"Pendant l'hiver, la température de la surface du glacier s'abaisse à un
+grand nombre de degrés au-dessous de zéro, et cette basse température
+pénètre, quoique avec un affaiblissement graduel, dans l'interieur de la
+masse. Le glacier se fendille par l'effet de la contraction résultant de
+ce refroidissement. Les fentes restent d'abord vides, et concourent an
+refroidissement des glaciers en favorisant l'introduction de l'air froid
+extérieur; mais an printemps, lorsque les rayons du soleil échaffent la
+surface de la neige qui couvre le glacier, ils la remènent d'abord à
+zéro, et ils produisent ensuite de l'eau à zéro qui tombe dans le
+glacier refroidi et fendillé. Cette eau s'y congèle à l'instant, en
+laissant dégager de la chaleur qui tend à ramener le glacier à zéro; et
+la phénomène se continue jusqu'à ce que la masse entière du glacier
+refroidi soit ramené à la température de zéro."[H]
+
+But where direct observations are still so scanty, and the
+interpretations of the facts so conflicting, it is the part of wisdom to
+be circumspect in forming opinions. This much, however, I believe to be
+already settled: that any theory which ascribes the very complicated
+phenomena of the glacier to one cause must be defective and one-sided.
+It seems to me most probable, that, while pressure has the larger share
+in producing the onward movement of the glacier, as well as in the
+transformation of the snow into ice, a careful analysis of all the facts
+will show that this pressure is owing partly to the weight of the mass
+itself, partly to the pushing on of the accumulated snow from behind,
+partly to its sliding along the surface upon which it rests, partly to
+the weight of water pervading the whole, partly to the softening of the
+rigid ice by the infiltration of water, and partly, also, to the
+dilatation of the mass, requiting from the freezing of this water. These
+causes, of course, modify the ice itself, while they contribute to the
+motion. Further investigations are required to ascertain in what
+proportion these different influences contribute to the general result,
+and at what time and under what circumstances they modify most directly
+the motion of the glacier.
+
+That a glacier cannot be altogether compared to a river, although there
+is an unmistakable analogy between the flow of the one and the onward
+movement of the other, seems to me plain,--since the river, by the
+combination of its tributaries, goes on increasing in bulk in
+consequence of the incompressibility of water, while a glacier gradually
+thins out in consequence of the packing of its mass, however large and
+numerous may be its accessions. The analogy fails also in one important
+point, that of the acceleration of speed with the steepness of the
+slope. The motion of the glacier bears no such direct relation to the
+inclination of its bed. And though in a glacier, as in a river, the axis
+of swiftest motion is thrown alternately on one or the other side of the
+valley, according to its shape and slope, the very nature of ice makes
+it impossible that eddies should be formed in the glacier, and the
+impressive feature of whirlpools is altogether wanting in them. What
+have been called glacier-cascades bear only a remote resemblance to
+river-cascades, as in the former the surface only is thrown into
+confusion by breaking, without affecting the primitive structure;[I] and
+I reiterate my formerly expressed opinion that even the stratification
+of the upper regions is still recognizable at the lower end of the
+glacier of the Rhone.
+
+The internal structure of the glacier has already led me beyond the
+limits I had proposed to myself in the present article. But I trust my
+readers will not be discouraged by this dry discussion of various
+theories concerning it, and will meet me again on the glacier, when we
+will examine together some of its more picturesque features, its
+crevasses, its rivulets and cascades, its moraines, its boulders, etc.,
+and endeavor also to track its ancient course and boundaries in earlier
+geological times.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IN AN ATTIC.
+
+
+    This is my attic-room. Sit down, my friend;
+      My swallow's-nest is high and hard to gain;
+    The stairs are long and steep, but at the end
+              The rest repays the pain.
+
+    For here are peace and freedom; room for speech
+      Or silence, as may suit a changeful mood;--
+    Society's hard by-laws do not reach
+              This lofty altitude.
+
+    You hapless dwellers in the lower rooms
+      See only bricks and sand and windowed walls;
+    But here, above the dust and smoky glooms,
+              Heaven's light unhindered falls.
+
+    So early in the street the shadows creep,
+      Your night begins while yet my eyes behold
+    The purpling hills, the wide horizon's sweep,
+              Flooded with sunset gold.
+
+    The day comes earlier here. At morn I see
+      Along the roofs the eldest sunbeam peep,--
+    I live in daylight, limitless and free,
+              While you are lost in sleep.
+
+    I catch the rustle of the maple-leaves,
+      I see their breathing branches rise and fall,
+    And hear, from their high perch along the eaves,
+              The bright-necked pigeons call.
+
+    Far from the parlors with their garrulous crowds
+      I dwell alone, with little need of words;
+    I have mute friendships with the stars and clouds,
+              And love-trysts with the birds.
+
+    So all who walk steep ways, in grief and night,
+      Where every step is full of toil and pain,
+    May see, when they have gained the sharpest height,
+              It has not been in vain:
+
+    Since they have left behind the noise and heat,--
+      And, though their eyes drop tears, their sight is clear;
+    The air is purer, and the breeze is sweet,
+              And the blue heaven more near.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+The preface of "Outre-Mer," Longfellow's first book, is dated 1833. The
+last poem in his last volume is published in 1863. In those thirty years
+what wide renown, what literary achievement, what love of friends in
+many lands, what abounding success and triumph, what profound sorrow,
+mark the poet's career! The young scholar, returning from that European
+tour which to the imaginative and educated American is the great
+romance, sits down in Bowdoin College in Maine, where he is Professor,
+and writes the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "worthy and gentle reader."
+Those two phrases tell the tale. The instinct of genius and literary
+power stirring in the heart of the young man naturally takes the quaint,
+dainty expression of an experience fed, thus far, only upon good old
+books and his own imagination. The frolicking tone of mock humility,
+deprecating the intrusion upon the time of a busy world, does not
+conceal the conviction that the welcome so airily asked by the tyro will
+at last be commanded by the master.
+
+Like the "Sketch-Book" of the other most popular of our authors, Irving,
+the "Outre-Mer" of Longfellow is a series of tales, reveries,
+descriptions, reminiscences, and character-pieces, suggested by European
+travel. But his beat lies in France, Spain, and Italy. It is the romance
+of the Continent, and not that of England, which inspires him. It is the
+ruddy light upon the vines and the scraps of old _chansons_ which
+enliven and decorate his pilgrimage, and through all his literary life
+they have not lost their fascination. While Irving sketches "Rural Life
+in England," Longfellow paints "The Village of Auteuil"; Irving gives us
+"The Boar's Head Tavern," and Longfellow "The Golden Lion Inn" at Rouen;
+Irving draws "A Royal Poet," Longfellow discusses "The Trouvères," or
+"The Devotional Poetry of Spain." It is delightful to trace the charming
+resemblance between the books and the writers, widely different as they
+are. There is the same geniality, the same tender pathos, the same
+lambent humor, the same delicate observation of details, the same
+overpowering instinct of literary art. But Geoffrey Crayon is a
+humorist, while the Pilgrim beyond the Sea is a poet. The one looks at
+the broad aspects of English life with the shrewd, twinkling eye of a
+man of the world; the other haunts the valley of the Loire, the German
+street, the Spanish inn, with the kindling fancy of the scholar and
+poet. The moral and emotional elements are quite wanting in Irving; they
+are characteristic of Longfellow. But the sweetness of soul, the freedom
+from cynicism or stinging satire, which is most unusual in American, or
+in any humorous or descriptive literature, is remarkable in both. "I
+have no wife, nor children, good or bad, to provide for," begins
+Geoffrey Crayon, quoting from old Burton. But neither had he an enemy
+against whom to defend himself. It was true of Geoffrey Crayon, down to
+the soft autumn day on which he died, leaving a people to mourn for him.
+It is true of the Pilgrim of Outre-Mer, in all the thirty years since
+first he launched forth "into the uncertain current of public favor."
+
+In this earliest book of Longfellow's the notable points are not power
+of invention, or vigorous creation, or profound thought, but a
+mellowness of observation, instinctively selecting the picturesque and
+characteristic details, a copious and rich scholarship, and that
+indefinable grace of the imagination which announces genius. The work,
+like the "Sketch-Book," was originally issued in parts, and it was
+hardly possible for any observer thirty years ago not to see that its
+peculiar character revealed a new strain in our literature. Longfellow's
+poems as yet were very few, printed in literary journals, and not yet
+signalizing his genius. It was the day when Percival Halleck, Sprague,
+Dana, Willis, Bryant, were the undisputed lords of the American
+Parnassus. But the school reading-books already contained "An April Day"
+and "Woods in Winter," and all the verses of the young author had a
+recognition in volumes of elegant extracts and commonplace-books. But
+the universal popularity of Longfellow was not established until the
+publication of "Hyperion" in 1839, followed by "The Voices of the Night"
+in the next year. With these two works his name arose to the highest
+popularity, both in America and England; and no living author has been
+more perpetually reproduced in all forms and with every decoration.
+
+If now we care to explain the eager and affectionate welcome which
+always hails his writings, it is easy to see to what general quality
+that greeting must be ascribed. As with Walter Scott, or Victor Hugo, or
+Béranger, or Dickens, or Addison in the "Spectator," or Washington
+Irving, it is a genial humanity. It is a quality, in all these
+instances, independent of literary art and of genius, but which is made
+known to others, and therefore becomes possible to be recognized, only
+through literary forms. The creative imagination, the airy fancy, the
+exquisite grace, harmony, and simplicity, the rhetorical brilliancy, the
+incisive force, all the intellectual powers and charms of style with
+which that feeling may be expressed, are informed and vitalized by the
+sympathy itself. But whether a man who writes verses has
+genius,--whether he be a poet according to arbitrary canons,--whether
+some of his lines resemble the lines of other writers,--and whether he
+be original, are questions which may be answered in every way of every
+poet in history. Who is a poet but he whom the heart of man permanently
+accepts as a singer of its own hopes, emotions, and thoughts? And what
+is poetry but that song? If words have a uniform meaning, it is useless
+to declare that Pope cannot be a poet, if Lord Byron is, or that Moore
+is counterfeit, if Wordsworth be genuine. For the art of poetry is like
+all other arts. The casket that Cellini worked is not less genuine and
+excellent than the dome of Michel Angelo. Is nobody but Shakspeare a
+poet? Is there no music but Beethoven's? Is there no mountain-peak but
+Dhawalaghiri? no cataract but Niagara?
+
+Thirty years ago almost every critic in England exploded with laughter
+over the poetry of Tennyson. Yet his poetry has exactly the same
+characteristics now that it had then; and Tennyson has gone up to his
+place among English poets. It is not "Blackwood," nor any quarterly
+review or monthly magazine, (except, of course, the "North American" and
+the "Atlantic,") which can decree or deny fame. While the critics are
+busily proving that an author is a plagiarist or a pretender, the world
+is crowning him,--as the first ocean-steamer from England brought Dr.
+Lardner's essay to prove that steamers could not cross the ocean.
+Literary criticism, indeed, is a lost art, if it ever were an art. For
+there are no permanent acknowledged canons of literary excellence; and
+if there were any, there are none who can apply them. What critic shall
+decide if the song of a new singer be poetry, or the bard himself a
+poet? Consequently, modern criticism wisely contents itself with
+pointing out errors of fact or of inference, or the difference between
+the critic's and the author's philosophic or æsthetic view, and bitterly
+assaults or foolishly praises him. When Horace Binney Wallace, one of
+the most accomplished and subtile-minded of our writers, says of General
+Morris that he is "a great poet," and that "he who can understand Mr.
+Emerson may value Mr. Bancroft," we can feel only the more profoundly
+persuaded that fame is not the judgment of individuals, but of the mass
+of men, and that he whose song men love to hear is a poet.
+
+But while the magnetism of Longfellow's touch lies in the broad humanity
+of his sympathy, which leads him neither to mysticism nor cynicism, and
+which commends his poetry to the universal heart, his artistic sense is
+so exquisite that each of his poems is a valuable literary study. In
+this he has now reached a perfection quite unrivalled among living
+poets, except sometimes by Tennyson. His literary career has been
+contemporary with the sensational school, but he has been entirely
+untainted by it, and in the present volume, "Tales of a Wayside Inn,"
+his style has a tranquil lucidity which recalls Chaucer. The literary
+style of an intellectually introverted age or author will always be
+somewhat obscure, however gorgeous; but Longfellow's mind takes a
+simple, child-like hold of life, and his style never betrays the
+inadequate effort to describe thoughts or emotions that are but vaguely
+perceived, which is the characteristic of the best sensational writing.
+Indeed, there is little poetry by the eminent contemporary masters which
+is so ripe and racy as his. He does not make rhetoric stand for passion,
+nor vagueness for profundity; nor, on the other hand, is he such a
+voluntary and malicious "Bohemian" as to conceive that either in life or
+letters a man is released from the plain rules of morality. Indeed, he
+used to be accused of preaching in his poetry by gentle critics who held
+that Elysium was to be found in an oyster-cellar, and that intemperance
+was the royal prerogative of genius.
+
+His literary scholarship, also, his delightful familiarity with the pure
+literature of all languages and times, must rank Longfellow among the
+learned poets. Yet he wears this various knowledge like a shining suit
+of chain-mail, to adorn and strengthen his gait, like Milton, instead of
+tripping and clumsily stumbling in it, as Ben Jonson sometimes did. He
+whips out an exquisitely pointed allusion that flashes like a Damascus
+rapier and strikes nimbly home, or he recounts some weird tradition, or
+enriches his line with some gorgeous illustration from hidden stores, or
+merely unrolls, as Milton loved to do, the vast perspective of romantic
+association by recounting in measured order names which themselves make
+music in the mind,--names not musical only, but fragrant:--
+
+    "Sabean odors from the spicy shore
+    Of Araby the blest."
+
+In the prelude to the "Wayside Inn," with how consummate a skill the
+poet graces his modern line with the shadowy charm of ancient verse, by
+the mere mention of the names!
+
+    "The chronicles of Charlemagne,
+    Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure,
+    Mingled together in his brain
+    With talcs of Flores and Blanchefleur,
+    Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour,
+    Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain."
+
+A most felicitous illustration of this trait is in "The Evening Star,"
+an earlier poem. Chrysaor, in the old mythology, sprang from the blood
+of Medusa, armed with a golden sword, and married Callirrhoë, one of the
+Oceanides. The poet, looking at evening upon the sea, muses upon the
+long-drawn, quivering reflection of the evening star, and sings. How the
+verses oscillate like the swaying calm of the sea, while the image
+inevitably floats into the scholar's imagination:--
+
+    "Just above yon sandy bar,
+    As the day grows fainter and dimmer,
+    Lonely and lovely a single star
+    Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.
+
+    "Into the ocean faint and far
+    Falls the trail of its golden splendor,
+    And the gleam of that single star
+    Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.
+
+    "Chrysaor rising out of the sea
+    Showed tints glorious and thus emulous,
+    Leaving the arms of Callirrhoë,
+    Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.
+
+    "Thus o'er the ocean faint and far
+    Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly:
+    Is it a god, or is it a star,
+    That, entranced, I gaze on nightly?"
+
+The blending of the poetical faculty and scholarly taste is seen, also,
+in his translations; and would not a translation of Dante's great poem
+be the crowning work of Longfellow's literary life?
+
+But while we chat along the road, and pause to repeat these simple and
+musical poems, each so elegant, so finished, as the monk finished his
+ivory crucifix, or the lapidary his choicest gem, we have reached the
+Wayside Inn. It is the title of Longfellow's new volume, "Tales of a
+Wayside Inn." They are New-England "Canterbury Tales." Those of old
+London town were told at the Tabard at Southwark; these at the Red Horse
+in Sudbury town. And although it is but the form of the poem, peculiar
+neither to Chaucer nor to Longfellow, which recalls the earlier work,
+yet they have a further likeness in the sources of some of the tales,
+and in the limpid blitheness of the style and the pure objectivity of
+the poems.
+
+The melodious, picturesque simplicity of the opening, in which the place
+and the persons are introduced, is inexpressibly graceful and
+masterly:--
+
+    "One autumn night in Sudbury town,
+    Across the meadows bare and brown,
+    The windows of the wayside inn
+    Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
+    Of woodbine hanging from the eaves,
+    Their crimson curtains rent and thin.
+    As ancient is this hostelry
+    As any in the land may be,
+    Built in the old colonial day,
+    When men lived in a grander way,
+    With ampler hospitality:
+    A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
+    Now somewhat fallen to decay,
+    With weather-stains upon the wall,
+    And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
+    And creaking and uneven floors,
+    And chimneys huge, and tiled, and tall."
+
+The autumn wind moans without, and dashes in gusts against the windows;
+but there is a pleasant murmur from the parlor, with the music of a
+violin. In this comfortable tavern-parlor, ruddy with the fire-light, a
+rapt musician stands erect before the chimney and bends his ear to his
+instrument,--
+
+    "And seemed to listen, till he caught
+    Confessions of its secret thought,"
+
+--a figure and a picture, as he is afterward painted,--
+
+    "Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe,
+    His figure tall and straight and lithe,"--
+
+which recall the Norwegian magician, Ole Bull. He plays to the listening
+group of friends. Of these there is the landlord,--a youth of quiet
+ways, "a student of old books and days,"--a young Sicilian,--"a Spanish
+Jew from Alieant,"--
+
+    "A theologian, from the school
+    Of Cambridge on the Charles,"--
+
+then a poet, whose portrait, exquisitely sketched and meant for quite
+another, will yet be prized by the reader, as the spectator prizes, in
+the Uffizi at Florence, the portraits of the painters by themselves:--
+
+    "A poet, too, was there, whose verse
+    Was tender, musical, and terse:
+    The inspiration, the delight,
+    The gleam, the glory, the swift flight
+    Of thoughts so sudden that they seem
+    The revelations of a dream,
+    All these were his: but with them came
+    No envy of another's fame;
+    He did not find his sleep less sweet
+    For music in some neighboring street,
+    Nor rustling hear in every breeze
+    The laurels of Miltiades.
+    Honor and blessings on his head
+    While living, good report when dead,
+    Who, not too eager for renown,
+    Accepts, but does not clutch, the crown."
+
+The musician completes the group.
+
+When he stops playing, they call upon the landlord for his tale, which
+he, "although a bashful man," begins. It is "Paul Revere's Ride,"
+already known to many readers as a ballad of the famous incident in the
+Revolution which has, in American hearts, immortalized a name which this
+war has but the more closely endeared to them. It is one of the most
+stirring, ringing, and graphic ballads in the language,--a proper
+pendant to Browning's "How they brought the good news from Ghent to
+Aix."
+
+The poet, listening with eager delight, seizes the sword of the
+landlord's ancestor which was drawn at Concord fight, and tells him that
+his grandfather was a grander shape than any old Sir William,
+
+    "Clinking about in foreign lands,
+    With iron gauntlets on his hands,
+    And on his head an iron pot."
+
+All laughed but the landlord,--
+
+    "For those who had been longest dead
+    Were always greatest in his eyes."
+
+Did honest and dull "Conservatism" have ever a happier description? But
+lest the immortal foes of Conservatism and Progress should come to
+loggerheads in the conversation, the student opens his lips and breathes
+Italy upon the New-England autumn night. He tells the tale of "The
+Falcon of Sir Federigo," from the "Decameron." It is an exquisite poem.
+So charming is the manner, that the "Decameron," so rendered into
+English, would acquire a new renown, and the public of to-day would
+understand the fame of Boccaccio.
+
+But the theologian hears with other ears, and declares that the old
+Italian tales
+
+    "Are either trifling, dull, or lewd."
+
+The student will not argue. He says only,--
+
+    "Nor were it grateful to forget
+    That from these reservoirs and tanks
+    Even imperial Shakespeare drew
+    His Moor of Venice and the Jew,
+    And Romeo and Juliet,
+    And many a famous comedy."
+
+After a longer pause, the Spanish Jew from Alieant begins "a story in
+the Talmud old," "The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi." This is followed after
+the interlude by the Sicilian's tale, "King Robert of Sicily," a noble
+legend of the Church, whose moral is humility. It is told in a broad,
+stately measure, and with consummate simplicity and skill. The attention
+is not distracted for a moment from the story, which monks might tell in
+the still cloisters of a Sicilian convent, and every American child hear
+with interest and delight.
+
+    "And then the blue-eyed Norseman told.
+    A Saga of the days of old."
+
+It is the Saga of King Olaf, and is much the longest tale in the volume,
+recounting the effort to plant Christianity in Norway by the sword of
+the King. In every variety of measure, heroic, elegiac, lyrical, the
+wild old Scandinavian tradition is told. Even readers who may be at
+first repelled by legends almost beyond modern human sympathy cannot
+escape the most musical persuasion of the poem which wafts them along
+those icy seas.
+
+    "And King Olaf heard the cry,
+    Saw the red light in the sky,
+    Laid his hand upon his sword,
+    As he leaned upon the railing,
+    And his ships went sailing, sailing
+    Northward into Drontheim fiord.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Trained for either camp or court,
+    Skilful in each manly sport,
+    Young and beautiful and tall;
+    Art of warfare, craft of chases,
+    Swimming, stating, snow-shoe races,
+    Excellent alike at all."
+
+There is no continuous thread of story in the Saga, but each fragment of
+the whole is complete in itself, a separate poem. The traditions are
+fierce and wild. The waves dash in them, the winds moan and shriek.
+There are evanescent glimpses of green meadows, and a swift gleam of
+summer; but the cold salt sea and winter close round all. The tides rise
+and fall; they eddy in the sand; they float off and afar the huge
+dragon-ships. But the queens pine for revenge and slaughter; the kings
+drink and swear and fight, and sail away to their doom.
+
+    "Louder the war-horses growl and snarl,
+    Sharper the dragons bite and sting!
+    Eric the son of Hakon Yarl
+    A death-drink salt as the sea
+      Pledges to thee,
+    Olaf the King!"
+
+Whoever has heard Ole Bull play, or Jenny Lind sing, the weird minor
+melodies of the North, will comprehend the kind of spell which these
+legends weave around the mind. Nor is their character lost in the
+skilful and symmetrical rendering of Longfellow. The reader has not the
+feeling, as in Sir William Jones's translations, that he is reading Sir
+William, and not the Persian.
+
+    "'What was that?' said Olaf, standing
+      On the quarter-deck;
+    Something heard I like the stranding
+      Of a shattered wreck.'
+    Einar, then, the arrow taking
+      From the loosened string,
+    Answered, 'That was Norway breaking
+      From thy hand, O King!'"
+
+But the battle which Thor had defied was not to end by the weapons of
+war. In the fierce sea-fight,
+
+    "There is told a wonderful tale,
+    How the King stripped off his mail,
+    Like leaves of the brown sea-kale,
+      As he swam beneath the main;
+
+    "But the young grew old and gray,
+    And never by night or day
+    In his kingdom of Norroway
+      Was King Olaf seen again."
+
+The victory must be won by other weapons. In the convent of Drontheim,
+Astrid, the abbess, hears a voice in the darkness:--
+
+    "Cross against corslet,
+    Love against hatred.
+    Peace-cry for war-cry!"
+
+The voice continues in peaceful music, forecasting heavenly rest:--
+
+    "As torrents in summer,
+    Half dried in their channels,
+    Suddenly rise, though the
+    Sky is still cloudless,
+    For rain has been falling
+    Far off at their fountains;
+
+    "So hearts that are fainting
+    Grow full to o'erflowing,
+    And they that behold it
+    Marvel, and know not
+    That God at their fountains
+    Far off has been raining."
+
+With this exquisitely beautiful strain of the abbess the Saga ends.
+
+The theologian muses aloud upon creeds and churches, then tells a
+fearful tragedy of Spain,--the story of a father who betrays his
+daughter to the fires of Torquemada. It chills the heart to think that
+such unspeakable ruin of a human soul was ever wrought by any system
+that even professed to be Christian. Moloch was truly divine, compared
+with the God of the Spanish Inquisition. But the gloom of the tragedy is
+not allowed to linger. The poet scatters it by the story of the merry
+"Birds of Killingworth," which appears elsewhere in the pages of this
+number of the "Atlantic." The blithe beauty of the verses is
+captivating, and the argument of the shy preceptor is the most poetic
+plea that ever wooed a world to justice. What an airy felicity in the
+lines,--
+
+    "'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
+    The awakening continents from shore to shore
+    Somewhere the birds are singing evermore."
+
+And so, amid sunshine and the carolling of birds, the legendary rural
+romance of the Yankee shore, we turn the page, and find, with real
+sorrow, that the last tale is told in the Wayside Inn. The finale is
+brief. The guests arose and said good night. The drowsy squire remains
+to rake the embers of the fire. The scattered lamps gleam a moment at
+the windows. The Red Horse inn seems, in the misty night, the sinking
+constellation of the Bear,--and then,
+
+    "Far off the village-clock struck one."
+
+So ends this ripe and mellow work, leaving the reader like one who
+listens still for pleasant music i' the air which sounds no more. Those
+who will may compare it with the rippling strangeness of "Hiawatha," the
+mournfully rolling cadence of "Evangeline," the mediæval romance of "The
+Golden Legend." For ourselves, its beauty does not clash with theirs.
+The simple old form of the group of guests telling stories, the thread
+of so many precious rosaries, has a new charm from this poem. The Tabard
+inn is gone; but who, henceforth, will ride through Sudbury town without
+seeing the purple light shining around the Red Horse tavern?
+
+The volume closes with a few poems, classed as "Birds of Passage." It is
+the "second flight,"--the first being those at the end of the "Miles
+Standish" volume. Some of these have a pathos and interest which all
+will perceive, but the depth and tenderness of which not all can know.
+"The Children's Hour" is a strain of parental love, which haunts the
+memory with its melody, its sportive, affectionate, and yearning lay.
+
+    "They almost devour me with kisses,
+      Their arms about me entwine,
+    Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
+      In his mouse-tower on the Rhine.
+
+    "Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
+      Because you have scaled the wall,
+    Such an old moustache as I am
+      Is not a match for you all?"
+
+Here, too, is the grand ballad of "The Cumberland," and the delicate
+fancy of "The Snow-Flakes," expressing what every sensitive observer has
+so often felt,--that the dull leaden trouble of the winter sky finds the
+relief in snow that the suffering human heart finds in expression. Then
+there is "A Day of June," an outburst of the fulness of life and love in
+the beautiful sunny weather of blossoms on the earth and soft clouds in
+the sky.
+
+    "O life and love! O happy throng
+    Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
+    O heart of man! canst thou not be
+    Blithe as the air is, and as free?"
+
+To this poem the date is added, June, 1860.
+
+And here, at length, is the last poem. We pause as we reach it, and turn
+back to the first page of "Outre-Mer." "'Lystenyth, ye godely gentylmen,
+and all that ben hereyn!' I am a pilgrim benighted on my way, and crave
+a shelter till the storm is over, and a seat by the fireside in this
+honorable company. As a stranger I claim this courtesy at your hands,
+and will repay your hospitable welcome with tales of the countries I
+have passed through in my pilgrimage." It is the gay confidence of
+youth. It is the bright prelude of the happy traveller and scholar, to
+whom the very quaint conceits and antiquated language of romance are
+themselves romantic, and who makes himself a bard and troubadour. Hope
+allures him; ambition spurs him; conscious power assures him. His eager
+step dances along the ground. His words are an outburst of youth and
+joy. Thirty years pass by. What sober step pauses at the Wayside Inn? Is
+this the jocund Pilgrim of Outre-Mer? The harp is still in his strong
+hand. It sounds yet with the old tenderness and grace and sweetness. But
+this is the man, not the boy. This is the doubtful tyro no longer, but
+the wise master, honored and beloved. To how many hearts has his song
+brought peace! How like a benediction in all our homes his music falls!
+Ah! not more surely, when the stretched string of the full-tuned harp
+snaps in the silence, the cords of every neighboring instrument respond,
+than the hearts which love the singer and his song thrill with the
+heart-break of this last poem:--
+
+    "O little feet, that such long years
+    Must wander on through doubts and fears,
+      Must ache and bleed beneath your load!
+    I, nearer to the wayside inn
+    Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
+      Am weary, thinking of your road."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER TO A PEACE DEMOCRAT.
+
+ADDRESSED TO ANDREW JACKSON BROWN.
+
+
+MY DEAR ANDREW,--You can hardly have forgotten that our last
+conversation on the national questions of the day had an abrupt, if not
+angry, termination. I very much fear that we both lost temper, and that
+our discussion degenerated into a species of political sparring. You
+will certainly agree with me that the great issues now agitating the
+country are too grave to be treated in the flippant style of bar-room
+debate. When the stake for which we are contending with immense armies
+in the field and powerful navies on the ocean is nothing less than the
+existence of our Union and the life of our nation, it ill becomes
+intelligent and thoughtful men to descend to personal abuse, or to be
+blinded for one moment by prejudice or passion to the cardinal principle
+on which the whole controversy turns.
+
+In view of these considerations, therefore, as our previous discussions
+have left some vital questions untouched, and as our past experience
+seems to have proved that we cannot, with mutual profit, compare our
+opinions upon these subjects orally, I have decided to embody my
+sentiments on the general points of difference between us in the form of
+a letter. Knowing my personal regard for you, I am sure that you will
+not believe me guilty of intentional discourtesy in anything I may say,
+while you certainly will not be surprised, if I occasionally express
+myself with a degree of warmth which finds its full justification in the
+urgent importance of the questions to be considered.
+
+I have not the vanity to believe that anything I can say on subjects
+that have so long engrossed the attention of thoughtful Americans will
+have the charm of novelty. And yet, in view of the unwelcome fact, that
+there exists to some extent a decided difference at the North about
+questions in regard to which it is essential that there should be a
+community of feeling, it certainly can do no harm to make an attempt,
+however feeble, to enlist in the cause of constitutional liberty and
+good government at least one man who may have been led astray by a too
+zealous obedience to the dictates of his party. As the success of our
+republican institutions must depend on the morality and intelligence of
+the citizens composing the nation, no honest appeal to that morality and
+that intelligence can be productive of serious evil.
+
+Permit me, then, at the outset, to remind you of what, from first to
+last, has formed the key-note of all your opposition to the war-policy
+of the Administration. You say that you have no heart in this struggle,
+because Abolitionists have caused the war,--always adding, that
+Abolitionists may carry it on, if they please: at any rate, they shall
+have no support, direct or indirect, from you. I have carefully
+considered all the arguments which you have employed to convince me that
+the solemn responsibility of involving the nation in this sanguinary
+conflict rests upon Abolitionists, and these arguments seem to me to be
+summed up in the following proposition: Before Abolitionists began to
+disseminate their dangerous doctrines, we had no war; therefore
+Abolitionists caused the war. I might, perhaps, disarm you with your own
+weapons, by saying that before Slavery existed in this country we had no
+Abolitionists; but I prefer to meet your argument in another manner.
+
+Not to spend time in considering any aspect of the question about which
+we do not substantially differ, let us at once ascertain how far we can
+agree. I presume you will not deny that this nation is, and since the
+twelfth of April, 1861, has been, in a state of civil war; that the
+actively contending parties are the North and the South; and that on the
+part of the South the war was commenced and is still waged in the
+interest of Slavery. We should probably differ _toto coelo_ as to the
+causes which led to the conflict; but, my excellent Andrew, I think
+there are certain facts which after more than two years' hard fighting
+may be considered fairly established. Whatever may be your own
+conclusions, as you read our recent history in the light of your ancient
+and I had almost said absurd prejudices, I believe that the vast
+majority of thinking men at the North have made up their minds that a
+deliberate conspiracy to overturn this government has existed in the
+South for at least a quarter of a century; that the proofs of such a
+conspiracy have been daily growing more and move palpable, until any
+additional evidence has become simply cumulative; that the election of
+Abraham Lincoln was not the cause, but only marked the culmination of
+the treason, and furnished the shallow pretext for its first overt acts.
+That you are not prepared to admit all this is, I am forced to believe,
+mainly because you dislike the conclusions which must inevitably follow
+from such an admission. I say this, because, passing over for the
+present the undoubted fact, that this nation would have elected a
+Democratic President in 1860 but for the division of the Democratic
+party, and the further fact, equally indisputable, that Southern
+politicians wilfully created this division, I think you will hardly
+venture to deny that even after the election of Abraham Lincoln the
+South controlled the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the House of
+Representatives. And to come down to a still later period, you can have
+no treasonable doubt that the passage of the Corwin Amendment disarmed
+the South of any cause for hostilities, based on the danger of
+Congressional interference with Slavery wherever existing by force of
+State laws. There remains, then, only one conceivable excuse for the
+aggressive policy of the South, and that is found in the alleged
+apprehension that the slaves would be incited to open rebellion against
+their masters. But, I ask, can any intelligent and fair-minded man
+believe, to-day, that slaveholders were forced into this war by the fear
+that the anti-slavery sentiment of the North would lead to a general
+slave-insurrection? Nine-tenths of the able-bodied Southern population
+have been in arms for more than two years, far away from their
+plantations, and unable to render any assistance to the old men, women,
+and children remaining at home. The President's Emancipation
+Proclamation was made public nearly a year ago, and subsequent
+circumstances have conspired to give it a very wide circulation through
+the South. And yet there has not been a single slave-insurrection of any
+magnitude, and not one that has not been speedily suppressed and
+promptly punished. This fact would seem to be a tolerably conclusive
+answer to all apologies for the wicked authors of this Rebellion, drawn
+from their alarm for their own safety and the safety of their families.
+But the persistent Peace Democrat has infinite resources at command in
+defence of the conduct of his Southern allies.
+
+    "Destroy his web of sophistry in vain,
+    The creature's at his dirty work again."
+
+We are now told that the obedient and unresisting submission of the
+slaves proves that they are satisfied with their condition, and have no
+desire to be free. And we are asked to admit, therefore, that Slavery is
+not a curse, but an absolute blessing, to those whom it affects most
+nearly! Or we are pointed to the multitude of slaves daily seeking the
+protection of the United States flag, and are informed that slaveholders
+are contending for the right to retain their property. As if the
+Fugitive-Slave Law--of which Mr. Douglas said, in one of his latest
+speeches, that not one of the Federal statutes had ever been more
+implicitly obeyed--did not afford the South most ample protection, so
+long as it remained in the Union!
+
+Another grievance of which you bitterly complain, another count in the
+long indictment which you have drawn up against the Administration, is
+what you denominate its anti-slavery policy. You disapprove of the
+Emancipation Proclamation, you denounce the employment of armed negroes;
+and therefore you have no stomach for the fight.
+
+But has not the President published to the world that the Proclamation
+was a measure of military necessity? and has he not also said that its
+constitutionality is to be decided and the extent and duration of its
+privileges and penalties are to be defined by the Supreme Court of the
+United States? If, as you are accustomed to assert, the Proclamation is
+a dead letter, it certainly need not give you very serious discomfort.
+If it exercises a powerful influence in crippling the energies of the
+South, it surely is not among Northern men that we should look for its
+opponents. As to its future efficacy and binding force, shall we not do
+well to leave this question, and all similar and at present purely
+speculative inquiries, till that time--which may Heaven hasten!--when
+this war shall terminate in the restoration of the Union and the
+acknowledged supremacy of the Constitution?
+
+And now a word about that formidable bugbear, the enlistment of negro
+soldiers. For my own part, I candidly confess that I am utterly unable
+to comprehend your unmeasured abuse of this expedient. If slaves are
+chattels, I can conceive of no good reason why we may not confiscate
+them as Rebel property, useful to the Rebels in their armed resistance
+to Federal authority, precisely as we appropriate their corn and cattle.
+And when once confiscated, why should they not be employed in whatever
+manner will make them most serviceable to us? But you insist that they
+shall not be armed. You might with equal show of reason contend that the
+mules which we have taken from the Rebels may be rightfully used in
+ambulances, but must not be used in ammunition-wagons.
+
+But if slaves are not chattels, they are human beings, with brains and
+muscles,--brains at least intelligent enough to comprehend the stake
+they have in this controversy, and muscles strong enough to do good
+service in the cause of constitutional liberty and republican
+institutions. Is it wise to reject their offered assistance. Will not
+our foes have good cause to despise our folly, if we leave in their
+hands this most efficient element of their power? You have friends and
+relatives fighting in the Union armies. If you give the subject a
+moment's reflection, you must see that all slaves labouring on the
+plantations of their masters not only are feeding the traitors who are
+doing their utmost to destroy our country, but by relieving thousands
+upon thousands of Southern men from the necessity of remaining at home
+and cultivating the soil, are, to all practical purposes, as directly
+imperilling the lives of our Union soldiers as if these same slaves with
+sword or musket were serving in the Rebel ranks. And again, while you
+object to the enlistment of negroes, you are unwilling that any member
+of your family should leave your household and expose himself to the
+many hazards of war. Now is it not too plain for argument, that every
+negro who is enrolled in our army prevents, by just that unit, the
+necessity of sending one Northern soldier into the field?
+
+But will the slaves consent to enlist? Let the thousands who have forced
+their way to Union camps,
+
+    "Over hill, over dale,
+      Thorough bush, thorough brier,
+    Over park, over pale,
+     Thorough flood, thorough fire,"
+
+tracked by blood-hounds, and by their inhuman oppressors more savage
+than blood-hounds, answer the insulting inquiry. Are they brave? Will
+they fight for the cause which they have dared so many dangers to
+espouse? I point you to the bloody records of Vicksburg, Million's
+Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner; I appeal to the testimony of every
+Union officer under whom black soldiers have fought, as the most fitting
+reply to such questions. Shame on the miserable sneer, that we are
+spending the money and shedding the blood of white men to fight the
+battles of the negro! Blush for your own unmanly and ungenerous
+prejudices, and ask yourself whether future history will not pronounce
+the black man, morally, not only your equal, but your superior, when it
+is found recorded, that, denied the rights of citizenship, long
+proscribed, persecuted, and enslaved, he was yet willing, and even
+eager, to save the life of your brother on the battle-field, and to
+preserve you in the peaceable enjoyment of your property at home. Is the
+efficient aid of such men to be rejected? Is their noble self-sacrifice
+to be slighted? Shall we, under the contemptible pretext, that this war
+must be waged--if waged at all--for the benefit of the white race,
+deprive negroes of an opportunity to risk their lives to maintain a
+government which has never protected them, and a Constitution which has
+been practically interpreted in such a manner as to recognize and
+sanction their servitude? Do not, I implore you, answer these inquiries
+by that easy, but infamous taunt, so constantly on the lips of
+unscrupulous politicians in your party,--"Here comes the inevitable
+nigger again!" It is precisely because the awful and too long unavenged
+sufferings of the slave must be inevitable, while Slavery exists, that
+these questions must sooner or later be asked and answered, and that
+your political upholding of such a system becomes a monstrous crime
+against humanity.
+
+After all, my dear Andrew, why are you so sensitive on the subject of
+Slavery? You certainly can have no personal interest in the peculiar and
+patriarchal institution. You are too skilful a financier ever to have
+invested a single dollar in that fugacious wealth which so often takes
+to its legs and runs away. Nor does your unwillingness to listen to any
+expression of anti-slavery sentiment arise from affection for or real
+sympathy with Slavery, on moral grounds. Indeed, I have more than once
+been exceedingly refreshed in spirit at observing the sincere and hearty
+contempt with which you have treated what is blasphemously called the
+Biblical argument in favor of human bondage. The pleading precedent of
+Abraham has not seduced you, nor has the happy lot of the more modern
+Onesimus quieted all your conscientious scruples. You have never failed,
+in private conversation, to condemn the advocates of Slavery on whatever
+grounds they have rested its defence, nor have you ever ceased to
+deplore its existence in our country.
+
+At the same time I must admit that you have invariably resisted all
+attempts to apply any practical check or remedy to the great and growing
+evil, stoutly maintaining that it was a local institution, and that we
+of the North had no right to meddle with it. I am well aware that you
+have stigmatized every effort to awaken public attention to its nature
+and tendency, or to point out methods, more or less available, of
+abolishing the system, as unconstitutional, incendiary, and quixotic. I
+concede that your indignation has always been in the abstract, and your
+zeal eminently conservative. Yet, as a moral man, with a New-England
+training, and a general disposition to indorse those principles which
+have made New England what she is, you will not deny, that, in a
+harmless and inoffensive way, you have been anti-slavery in your
+opinions.
+
+But, once more, my friend, have you any reason to be attached to Slavery
+on political grounds? You have always been an earnest and uncompromising
+Democrat. You have always professed to believe in the omnipotence of
+political conventions and the sacred obligation of political platforms.
+You have never failed to repudiate any effort to influence party action
+by moral considerations. Indeed, I have sometimes thought that you must
+have selected as your model that sturdy old Democratic deacon in New
+Hampshire, who said that "politics was one thing, and religion was
+another." You have never hesitated to support any candidate, or to
+uphold any measure, dictated by the wisdom or the wickedness of your
+party. Although you must have observed, that, with occasional and
+infrequent eddies of opinion, the current of its political progress has
+been steadily carrying the Northern Democracy farther and farther away
+from the example and the doctrines of Jefferson, you have surrendered
+yourself to the evil influence without a twinge of remorse or a sigh of
+regret. You have submitted to the insolent demands of Southern
+politicians with such prompt and easy acquiescence, that many of your
+oldest friends have mourned over your lost manhood, and sadly abandoned
+you to the worship of your ugly and obscene idol. A Northern man,
+descended from the best Puritan stock, surrounded from childhood by
+institutions really free, breathing the atmosphere of free thought,
+enjoying the luxury of free speech, you have deliberately allied
+yourself to a party which has owed its long-continued political
+supremacy to the practical denial of these inestimable privileges. Yet,
+on the whole, Andrew, what have you gained by it? Undoubtedly, the seed
+thus sown in dishonor soon ripened into an abundant harvest of fat
+offices and rapid promotions. But winter--the winter of your
+discontent--has followed this harvest. Circumstances quite beyond your
+control have utterly demolished the political combination which was once
+your peculiar pride. You have lived to see the Dagon before which you
+and your friends have for so many years cheerfully prostrated yourselves
+fall to the ground, and lie a helpless, hopeless ruin on the very
+threshold of the temple where it lately stood defiant and dominant.
+
+Have you ever had the curiosity to investigate the causes of this
+disaster? It is a curiosity which can be easily gratified. The
+Democratic party was killed in cold blood by Southern traitors. There
+never was a more causeless, malicious, or malignant murder. The fool in
+the fable who gained an unenviable notoriety by killing the goose which
+laid golden eggs, Balaam, who, but for angelic interposition, would have
+slain his faithful ass, were praiseworthy in comparison. Well might any
+one of the Northern victims of this cruel outrage have exclaimed, in the
+language of Balaam's long-eared servant, "Am not I thine ass, upon which
+thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto to this day? was I ever
+wont to do so unto thee?" And the modern, like the ancient Balaam, must
+have answered, "Nay."
+
+But, alas for Northern manhood, alas for human nature corrupted by long
+possession of political power, after a short-lived, though, let us hope,
+sincere outburst of indignation, followed by protests and remonstrances,
+growing daily milder and more moderate, the Northern Democracy now begs
+permission to return once more to its former servitude, and would gladly
+peril the permanence of the Union, to hug again the fetters which it has
+so patiently and so profitably worn.
+
+Lay aside party prejudice, for one moment, my dear Andrew, and tell me
+if the world ever saw a more humiliating spectacle. Slighted, spurned,
+spit upon by their ancient allies, compelled to bear the odium of an
+aggressive and offensive pro-slavery policy, tamely consenting to a
+denial of the dearest human rights and the plainest principles of
+natural justice, rewarded only by a share in the Federal offices, and
+punished by the contempt of all who, at home or abroad, intelligently
+and unselfishly studied the problem of our republican institutions, the
+Northern Democracy found themselves, at the most critical period of our
+national history, abandoned by the masters whom they had faithfully
+served, and whom many were willing to follow to a depth of degradation
+which could have no lower deep. And yet, when thus freed from their long
+slavery by the voluntary act of their oppressors, we hear them to-day
+clamoring for the privilege of wearing anew the accustomed yoke, and
+feeling again the familiar lash! Are these white men, with Anglo-Saxon
+blood in their veins, and the fair fame of this country in their
+keeping? Why, if the most abject slave that ever toiled on a Southern
+plantation, cast off by his master and compelled to claim the rights of
+a freeman, should, of his own deliberate choice, elect to return to his
+miserable vassalage, who would not pronounce him unfit to enjoy the
+priceless boon of liberty? who would hesitate to say that natural
+stupidity, or the acquired imbecility of long enslavement, had doomed
+him to remain, to the day of his death, a hewer of wood and a drawer of
+water?
+
+But, as if to render the humiliation of these Democratic leaders still
+more fruitless and gratuitous, mark how their overtures are received by
+their Southern brethren. Having sold their birthright, let us see what
+prospect our Northern Esaus have of gaining their mess of pottage.
+Perhaps no better illustration can be given of the state of feeling
+among the chiefs of the Southern Rebellion than is found in a letter
+from Colonel R.C. Hill to the Richmond "Sentinel," dated September 13th,
+1863. It had been stated by a correspondent of the New York "Tribune,"
+that, during a recent interview between General Custer (Union) and
+Colonel Hill (Confederate), at Fredericksburg, Virginia, Colonel Hill
+had assured General Custer that "there would soon be peace." After
+giving an explicit and emphatic denial to this statement, Colonel Hill
+(who, it would seem, commands the Forty-Eighth North-Carolina
+Volunteers) closes by saying, "I am opposed to any terms short of a
+submission of the Federals to such terms as we may dictate, which, in my
+opinion, should be, Mason and Dixon's line a boundary; the exclusive
+navigation of the Mississippi below Cairo; full indemnification for all
+the negroes stolen and destroyed; and the restoration of Fortress
+Monroe, Jefferson, Key West, and all other strongholds which may have
+fallen into their possession during the war. If they are unwilling to
+accede to these terms, I propose an indefinite continuance of the war
+until the now existing fragment of the old Union breaks to pieces from
+mere rottenness and want of cohesion, when we will step in, as the only
+first-class power on the Western Hemisphere, and take possession of the
+pieces as subjugated and conquered provinces."
+
+To the same effect is a letter from Robert Toombs, who had been charged
+with a leaning towards a reconstruction of the Union. A short extract
+will suffice to show the spirit of the whole communication. "I can
+conceive of no extremity to which my country can be reduced in which I
+would, for a single moment, entertain any proposition for any union with
+the North on any terms whatever. When all else is lost, I prefer to
+unite with the thousands of our own countrymen who have found honorable
+deaths, if not graves, on the battle-field." And the recently elected
+Governor of Alabama puts to rest all doubts as to his desire for
+Southern independence, by saying, "If I had the power, I would build up
+a wall of fire between Yankeedom and the Confederate States, there to
+burn for ages."
+
+The tone and temper of these extracts--and similar quotations might be
+made indefinitely--are exactly in keeping with everything that comes
+from the pens or the lips of the leaders of this Rebellion. And even
+those Southern statesmen who at the outset were opposed to Secession,
+and have never ceased to deplore the fruitless civil war into which the
+South has plunged the nation, are compelled to admit, with a
+distinguished citizen of Georgia, that "the war, with all its afflictive
+train of suffering, privation, and death, has served to eradicate all
+idea of reconstruction, even with those who made it the basis of their
+arguments in favor of disunion."
+
+Rely upon it, this tone and temper will never be changed so long as the
+Rebels have any considerable armed force in the field ready for
+service. Unless we are willing to consent to a divided country, a
+dissevered Union, and the recognition of a Southern Confederacy,--in a
+word, unless we are prepared to acquiesce in all the demands of our
+enemies, we have no alternative but a vigorous prosecution of the war.
+
+Fernando Wood and his followers ask for an armistice. An armistice to
+whom, and for what purpose? The Rebels, represented by their Government,
+ask for no armistice, except upon their own terms, and what those terms
+are we have already seen. It is idle to say that there are men at the
+South who crave peace and a restoration of the Union. Assume the
+statement to be true, and you have made no progress towards a
+satisfactory result. Such men are powerless in the hands of the guiding
+and governing minds of the conspiracy. The treason is of such magnitude,
+its leaders so completely control the active forces of the whole
+community, that the passive strength of Union sentiment cannot now be
+taken into the account. It would be a farce too absurd to be gravely
+considered, to treat with men who, whatever their disposition or numbers
+may be, are utterly helpless, unable to make any promise which they can
+fulfil, or to give any pledge which can bind any but themselves.
+
+We must deal with an armed and powerful rebellion; and so long as it is
+effectively armed, and powerful enough to hold in subjection the whole
+Southern population, it is moral, if not legal, treason for a Northern
+man to talk of peace. What avails it to talk of the blessings of peace
+and the horrors of war? It is a fearful thing to take the life of a
+human being; but we can easily conceive of circumstances when homicide
+is not only justifiable, but highly commendable.
+
+Permit me here to quote, as most pertinent to this view of the subject,
+an extract from a speech of Mr. Pitt in 1797, defending his refusal to
+offer terms of peace to the Directory of France. Alluding to some
+remarks of Sir John Sinclair, in the House of Commons, deprecating war
+as a great evil, and calling on ministers to propose an immediate peace,
+Mr. Pitt says,--"He began with deploring the calamities of war, on the
+general topic that all war is calamitous. Do I object to that sentiment?
+No. But is it our business, at a moment when we feel that the
+continuance of that war is owing to the animosity, the implacable
+animosity, of our enemy, to the inveterate and insatiable ambition of
+the present frantic government of France,--not of the _people_ of
+France, as the honorable baronet unjustly stated,--is it our business,
+at that moment, to content ourselves with merely lamenting, in
+commonplace terms, the calamities of war, and forgetting that it is part
+of the duty which, as representatives of the people, we owe to our
+government and our country, to state that the continuance of those evils
+upon ourselves, and upon France, too, is the fruit only of the conduct
+of the enemy, that it is to be imputed to them and not to us?" Now does
+not this correctly describe our position? We make no question about the
+calamities of war; but how are these calamities to be avoided? This war
+has been forced upon us, and we must wage it to the end, or submit to
+the dismemberment of the Union, and acknowledge, in flat contradiction
+of the letter and spirit of the Constitution, the right of Secession.
+The true motto for the Government is precisely and preeminently the
+motto of the State of Massachusetts, "_Ense petit placidam sub libertate
+quietem_," which, freely, but faithfully, translated, means, "We must
+conquer a just and abiding peace."
+
+And now, my dear Andrew, I am curious to know what answer you will make
+to the general views which I have advanced on these vital questions.
+Will you say that I have misrepresented the record of the Northern
+Democratic party? that I have charged them with a submission and
+subserviency to the dictates of their Southern allies, which truthful
+history will not confirm? You surely remember the uncontradicted
+assertion of Mr. Hammond, Senator from South Carolina, made on the floor
+of the Senate in 1856, at a time when fears were entertained by the
+Democracy that Mr. Fremont might be elected:--"The South has now ruled
+the country for sixty years." Do you believe that this rule could have
+been maintained for so many years without the connivance and coöperation
+of Northern Democrats? Will you venture to say that Texas could have
+been annexed, the Fugitive-Slave Law passed, the Missouri Compromise
+Bill repealed, without the consent and active assistance of Northern
+Democrats? In fact, my friend, when, in our frequent conversations, you
+have repeatedly charged Southern Democrats with ingratitude and want of
+good faith, have you not intended to assert, that, having complied with
+all the demands of the South, you looked upon their deliberate
+destruction of the Democratic party as a wanton act of political
+treachery?
+
+Do you deny that I have presented a truthful picture of the present
+position of your party? Can there be any doubt about the issue now
+offered to the North by Peace Democrats? I say _Peace_ Democrats,
+because all War Democrats are acting heartily and zealously with the
+Administration. Is not the policy which the Peace Democracy support in
+their papers, platforms, and public addresses, an immediate cessation of
+hostilities on the part of the North? And do they not select, as the
+exponents of this policy, men who have, from the commencement of the
+war, sympathized with the South, and denounced the military measures of
+the Government as unjustifiable, oppressive, and iniquitous? Open any
+newspaper of "Copperhead" complexion, and tell me, candidly, if you can
+approve of the manner in which the all-engrossing questions of the day
+are discussed.
+
+You know, in advance, as well as I know, that you will find both open
+and insidious attacks upon whatever feature of the war-policy of the
+Administration chances at the moment to be uppermost in the public mind,
+a liberal collection of incidents illustrating the horrors of war,
+abundant abuse of army-contractors, appalling estimates of our probable
+national debt, enthusiastic commendation of the skill of Southern
+officers and the bravery of Southern soldiers, extravagant laudation of
+some Federal commander who has disobeyed the orders of his superior and
+conducted a campaign in such a manner as not to annoy or alarm the
+enemy, eloquent denunciation of all attempts to fetter free speech or
+limit the liberty of the press, indignant complaint that the rights of
+the citizen are disregarded, an ostentatious parade of historical
+parallels to prove that an earnest and united people fighting for
+independence has never been subjugated, a bitter paragraph attributing
+to Abolitionists all the evils of the existing controversy, the
+inevitable sneer at negro soldiers in spite of the bloody baptism which
+they have so heroically borne,--all this, but (mark the significant
+circumstance!) not one word in condemnation of Southern treason, not a
+single sentiment that can by possibility alienate old friends, or can
+ever be quoted as evidence that the editor had dared to assert his
+manhood. Is this loyalty to the Constitution and the Union? Is this the
+allegiance which a citizen owes to his country? Away with the
+mischievous sophistry, that the Government is not the country, and does
+not represent the people! Can any sane man doubt that an Administration
+legally chosen, and rightfully in power, and receiving the emphatic
+indorsement of decisive majorities in Congress, does, during its
+constitutional term of office, and while so supported, speak the mind
+and embody the will of the nation? Is there any show of reason for
+saying that such an Administration is an irresponsible despotism,
+governing the country without the moral countenance of its citizens, and
+in defiance of their declared sentiments?
+
+But the views of Peace Democrats are not to be ascertained alone by
+consulting the newspapers which are their acknowledged organs. Listen to
+the speeches of their prominent leaders. I will not stop to call your
+attention to their bold treason after a Union reverse, or their
+non-committal platitudes after a Union victory. Let me rather ask you to
+consider the prevailing tone of their public addresses. Remember,
+meanwhile, that our Government is grappling with an active and resolute
+enemy, whose avowed and persistent purpose is to divide the Union, and
+by means unconstitutional and treasonable to erect on the ruins of our
+once happy Republic an independent and necessarily hostile power. Bear
+in mind that this enemy, with an intense and inflexible determination
+which would be most commendable in a better cause, is summoning all its
+strength to accomplish its wicked designs, and tell me if it does not
+find among Peace Democrats most efficient allies and adherents.
+
+Can you discover in the speeches of your political friends one sentence
+that would give a future student of the history of this struggle a
+correct idea of the principles for which we are contending? Would not
+such a student, accepting these speeches as authentic, reasonably infer
+that the Central Government, invested by a sad accident with supreme
+power, was using its accidental authority for the sole and sinister
+purpose of abridging the constitutional rights of the citizen, by
+withholding the privilege of free speech, and preventing the expression
+of popular sentiment at the polls? And yet, methinks, an intelligent
+posterity will somewhat wonder how such speeches could be made with
+impunity, and such candidates receive unchallenged votes, in the face of
+such unscrupulous tyranny. In fact, was there ever so wicked a farce as
+this "Copperhead" complaint about the denial of the right of free speech
+and free votes, from the lips of men whose daily exemption from
+punishment proves the falsity of their appeals to popular prejudice? Do
+they not say what they please, and vote as they choose, without
+molestation or hindrance? Why, a many-wived Mormon, surrounded by the
+beauties of his harem, inveighing against the laws of the United States
+which prohibit polygamy,--a Roman Catholic priest, openly and safely
+carnivorous during Lent, denouncing that regulation of his church which
+denies him the luxury of meat during the forty days immediately
+preceding Easter,--a cannibal, with a tender morsel of young missionary
+in his mouth, complaining that he cannot gratify his appetite for human
+flesh,--these would be models of reason and common sense, compared with
+the factious demagogues whose conduct we are considering.
+
+In point of fact, their real unhappiness arises from their impunity.
+They are gasping for a substantial grievance. Their highest ambition is
+to become political martyrs. Now and then one of them, like
+Vallandigham, deliberately transcends the bounds of a wise forbearance,
+and receives from the Government a very mild rebuke. Straightway he is
+placed on the bad eminence to which he has so long aspired. Already dead
+to all feeling of patriotism, he is canonized for his crimes, with rites
+and ceremonies appropriate to such a priesthood. And, unhappily, he
+finds but too many followers weak enough or wicked enough to recognize
+his saintship and accept his creed. To all true and loyal men, he
+resembles rather the veiled prophet of Khorassan, concealing behind the
+fair mask of a zealous regard for free speech and a free press the
+hideous features of Secession and civil war, despising the dupes whom he
+is leading to certain and swift destruction, and clinging fondly to the
+hope of involving in a common ruin, not only the party which he
+represents, but the country which he has dishonored.
+
+That such political monsters are possible in the Free States, at such a
+time as this, sufficiently demonstrates towards what an abyss of
+degradation we were drifting when this war began. They are the
+legitimate and necessary fruits of the numerous compromises by which
+well-meaning men have sought to avert a crisis which could only be
+postponed. The North has been diligently educated to connive at
+injustice and wink at oppression for the sake of peace, until there was
+good reason to fear that the public sense of right was blunted, and the
+public conscience seared as with a hot iron. While the South kept always
+clearly in view the single object on which it had staked everything, the
+North was daily growing more and more absorbed in the accumulation of
+wealth, and more and more callous to all considerations of humanity and
+all claims of natural justice. The feeblest remonstrance against the
+increasing insolence of Southern demands was rudely dismissed as
+fanatical, and any attempt to awaken attention to the disloyal
+sentiments of Southern politicians was believed to be fully met
+and conclusively answered by the cry of "Abolitionist" and
+"Negro-Worshipper."
+
+It must be confessed that for a time these expedients were successful.
+Like another Cassandra predicting the coming disasters of another Troy,
+the statesman who foresaw and foretold the perils which threatened the
+nation addressed a careless or contemptuous public. It was in vain to
+say that the South was determined to rule or ruin the country, in vain
+to point out the constantly recurring illustrations of the aggressive
+spirit of Slavery, in vain to urge that every year of delay was but
+adding to the difficulty of dealing with the gigantic evil. The merchant
+feared a financial crisis, the repudiation of Southern debts and his own
+consequent inability to maintain the social position which his easily
+earned wealth had secured; the politician, who, at the great
+auction-sales of Northern pride and principle held every four years, had
+so often sought to outbid his rivals in baseness, that his party or
+faction might win the Presidential prize, turned pale at the prospect of
+losing Southern support; the divine could see no danger threatening his
+country except from the alleged infidelity of a few leading radicals;
+the timid citizen, with no fixed political opinions, was overawed by the
+bluster of Southern bullies, shuddered at the sight of pistol and
+dirk-knife, and only asked "to be let alone"; while the thoughtless
+votary of fashion, readily accepting the lordly bearing and imperious
+air of the planter as the highest evidence of genuine aristocracy,
+reasoned, with the sort of logic which we should look for in such a
+mind, that slaveholding was the normal condition of an American
+gentleman.
+
+I will not allude to the views entertained by those men whose ignorance
+disqualified them from forming an intelligent opinion about our national
+affairs, and whose votes were always at the service of the highest
+bidders. You know perfectly well where they were sure to be found, and
+they exercised no inconsiderable influence on our public policy from
+year to year. Leaving this class out of the question, our peril arose
+largely from the fact, that too many men, sensible on other subjects,
+were fast settling into the conviction, that their wisest course was to
+be conservative, and that to be conservative was to act with the party
+which had longest held the reins of power. Their reasoning, practically,
+but perhaps unconsciously, was this:--The object of a government is to
+make a country prosperous and rich; this country has grown prosperous
+and rich under the rule of the Democratic party; therefore why should we
+not give it our support, and more especially as all sorts of dreadful
+results are predicted, if the opposition party comes into power? Why
+part with a present good, with the risk of incurring a future evil?
+Above all things, let us discountenance the agitation of exciting
+topics.--Profound philosophy! deserving to be compared with that of the
+modern Cockney who does not want his after-dinner rest to be disturbed
+by even a lively discussion. "I say, look here, why have row?
+Excessively unpleasant to have row, when a fellow wants to be quiet! I
+say, don't!"
+
+In fact, this "conservatism" was only another and convenient name for a
+most dangerous type of moral and political paralysis. Its immediate
+effect was to discourage discussion, and to induce an alarming apathy as
+to all the vital questions of the day among men whose abilities
+qualified them to be of essential service to their country. Their
+adhesion to the ranks of the Democratic party, while increasing the
+average intelligence of that organisation, without improving its public
+virtue or private morals, served simply to give it greater numerical
+strength. It was still in the hands of unscrupulous leaders, who,
+intoxicated with their previous triumphs, believed that the nation would
+submit to any measure which they saw fit to recommend. And who shall say
+that their confidence was unreasonable? Did not all their past
+experience justify such confidence? When had any one of their schemes,
+no matter how monstrous it might at first have appeared, ever failed of
+final accomplishment? Had they not repeatedly tested the temper and
+measured the _morale_ of the people? Had they not learned to anticipate
+with absolute certainty the regular sequence of national emotions,--the
+prompt recoil as from impending dishonor, the excited public meetings,
+the indignant remonstrance embodied in eloquent resolutions, then the
+sober, selfish second-thought, followed by the question, What if the
+South should carry out its threats and dissolve the Union? then the
+alarm of the mercantile and commercial interest, then a growing
+indifference to the very features of the project which had caused the
+early apprehension, and lastly the meek and cowardly acquiescence in the
+enacted outrage? Would not these arch-conspirators North and South have
+been wilfully blind, if they had not seen not only that the nation was
+sinking in the scale of public virtue, but that it had acquired "a
+strange alacrity in sinking"?
+
+Meanwhile they had learned a lesson, the value and significance of which
+they fully appreciated. He must have been an inattentive student of our
+political history, who has not observed that the successful prosecution
+of any political enterprise has too often dignified its author in the
+eyes of the people, in spite of its intrinsic iniquity. The party
+reaping the benefit of the measure has not withheld the expected reward,
+and the originator and abettors of the accomplished wrong have found
+that exalted official position covers a multitude of sins.
+
+Wisely availing themselves of this national weakness, and most adroitly
+using all the elements of political power with which long practice had
+made them familiar, the leaders of the Democratic party had every reason
+to believe that the duration of their political supremacy would be
+coeval with the life of the Republic. In fact, the peril predicted more
+than twenty years ago, by one of the purest and wisest men whom this
+country has ever seen, with a sagacity which, in the light of subsequent
+events, seems almost inspired, had wellnigh become an historical fact.
+"The great danger to our institutions," said Dr. Channing, writing to a
+friend in 1841, "is of a party organization so subtle and strong as to
+make the Government the monopoly of a few leaders, and to insure the
+transmission of the executive power from hand to hand almost as
+regularly as in a monarchy."
+
+But an overruling Providence, building better than we knew, had decreed
+that the sway of this powerful party should be broken by means of the
+very element of supposed strength on which it so confidently relied for
+unlimited supremacy. Losing sight of those cardinal principles which the
+far-reaching sagacity of Jefferson had enunciated, and faithfully
+following which the Democracy had, during its early history, so
+completely controlled the country, the modern leaders, intent only on
+present success, had based all their political hopes on an intimate
+alliance, offensive and defensive, with that institution which Jefferson
+so eloquently denounced, and the existence of which awakened his most
+lively fears for the future of his country. And what has been the
+result of this ill-omened alliance? Precisely what might sooner or later
+have been expected. Precisely what might have been predicted from the
+attempt to unite the essentially incongruous ideas of Aristocracy and
+Democracy. For the system of Slavery is confessedly the very essence of
+an Aristocracy, while the genuine idea of a Democracy is the submission
+of all to the expressed will of the majority. Take as one of the latest
+illustrations of the irreconcilable difference between Aristocracy and
+Democracy, the manner in which the South received the doctrine of
+"Squatter Sovereignty." This doctrine, whatever its ultimate purpose
+might have been, certainly embodied the idea of a democracy, pure and
+simple, resting on the right of a people to enact their own laws and
+adopt their own institutions. It was believed by many to be a movement
+in the interest of Slavery, and on that ground met with fierce
+opposition. Was it welcomed by slaveholders? Far from it. The Southern
+Aristocracy, clear-sighted on every question affecting their peculiar
+institution, applied their remorseless logic to the existing dilemma,
+and promptly decided that to admit the correctness of the principle was
+to endanger the existence of the system which was the corner-stone of
+their faith. They looked beyond the result of the immediate election.
+They foresaw the crisis which must ultimately arise. Indeed, they had
+long appreciated the fact, that the "irrepressible conflict" in which we
+are now involved was impending, and had been mustering all their forces
+to meet the inevitable issue. The crisis came. But how? In an evil hour
+for its own success, but a most-fortunate one for the welfare of the
+Republic, Slavery, overestimating its inherent power, and underrating
+the resources and virtue of the nation, committed the fatal error of
+measuring its strength with a free North. From that moment it lost
+forever all that it had ever gained by united action, by skilful
+diplomacy, by dexterously playing upon the "fears of the wise and
+follies of the brave," and by ingeniously masking its dark designs.
+
+The new policy once inaugurated, however, the career of treason once
+commenced, its authors can never recede. Their only safety lies in
+complete success. They must conquer or die. They may in secret confess
+to themselves that they have been guilty of a stupendous blunder, but
+that they clearly comprehend and sternly accept their position is
+abundantly evident. For, if anything is proved in the history of this
+war, it is, that the chiefs in the Rebellion believe in no middle ground
+between peace on their own terms and the utter annihilation of their
+political power and military resources.
+
+Thus, then, my dear Andrew, the insane ambition and wanton treachery of
+the Southern wing of your party have delivered the North from the danger
+of white slavery, and, by breaking up the Democratic party, have
+delivered the nation from the despotism of an organization which had
+become too powerful for its own good and for the best interests of the
+country. Do you dare to complain of this deliverance? You ought rather
+to go on your knees every day of your life, and devoutly thank the kind
+Providence which gave you such an unexpected opportunity to escape from
+so demoralizing a servitude.
+
+Do not allow your attachment to party names and party associations to
+warp your judgment or limit your patriotism. You need have no fear that
+any one of the sound and beneficent ideas which the Democratic party has
+ever impressed upon the mind of the nation will perish or be forgotten.
+Whatever features of the organization, whatever principles which it has
+labored to inculcate, are essential to the just development of our
+intellectual activity or our material resources, will survive the
+present struggle, perhaps to reappear in the creed and be promulgated by
+the statesmen of some future party; or who shall say that the Democratic
+party, freed from its corrupting associations, rejecting the leaders who
+have been its worst enemies, and the political heresies which have
+wrought its temporary ruin, may not again wield its former power, and
+once more direct the destinies of the country?
+
+But, returning to considerations of more immediate importance, what, I
+ask, is the obvious duty of every true and loyal citizen in such a
+crisis as this? You resent, as insulting, any imputation of disloyalty,
+and therefore I have a right to infer that you are unwilling to be
+ranked among the enemies of your country. But who are those enemies?
+Clearly, those whose avowed intention or whose thinly disguised design
+is, to divide the Union and to rend the Republic in twain. How are those
+enemies to be overcome? Only by a hearty and earnest coöperation with
+the measures devised by our legally constituted Government for the
+suppression of the Rebellion. I can easily understand that you may not
+be willing to give your cordial assent to all the measures and all the
+appointments of the Administration. It is not the Administration which
+you would have selected, or for which you voted. But, nevertheless, it
+is our rightful government, and nothing else can save the nation from
+absolute anarchy. Postpone, therefore, I beseech you, all merely
+partisan prejudices, and remember only that the Union is in danger. You
+are a Democrat. Adopt, then, during the continuance of this war, the
+noble sentiments of a distinguished Western Democrat:[J]--"The whole
+object of the Rebellion is to destroy the principle of Democracy. The
+party which stands by the Government is the true Democracy. Every
+soldier in the army is a true Democrat. Every man who lifts his head
+above party trammels is a Democrat. And every man who permits old issues
+to stand in the way of a vigorous prosecution of the war cannot, in my
+opinion, have any claims on the party." By such men and such utterances
+will the Democratic party secure the respect and admiration of mankind;
+while those spurious Democrats, whose hearts are with the South while
+their homes are in the North, whose voice is the voice of Jacob while
+their hands are the hands of Esau, whose first slavish impulse is to
+kiss the rod which smites them, and who long for nothing so much as the
+triumph of their Southern masters, have earned, and will surely receive,
+the contempt and detestation of all honest men, now and forever.
+
+God forbid that I should suspect you of sympathizing with these
+miscreants! But, my friend, there is still another class of Democrats
+with whom I should exceedingly regret to see you associated. I mean
+those who, without any love for Rebels or their cause, are yet so
+fearful of being called Republicans that they refuse to support the
+Government. Can you justify yourself in standing upon such a platform?
+Is this a time in which to permit your old party animosities to render
+you indifferent to the honor and welfare of the nation? Are you simply
+in the position of a violent partisan out of office, eager to embarrass
+the Administration, and keenly on the watch to discover how best to
+inflame the prejudices of the populace against the Government? Is there
+nothing more important just now than to devise means of reinstating your
+party in power at the next Presidential election? Will it not be well
+first to settle the question, whether, in the month of November, 1864,
+we shall still be a free people, competent to elect the candidates of
+any party? May you not be, nay, are you not sure to be, giving
+substantial aid and comfort to the enemies of your country, while
+seeking only to cripple the power of your political opponents? Are not
+the dearest interests, and, indeed, the very life of the nation, of
+necessity, so dependent upon a cordial and constant support of the
+Government, that active hostility to its principal measures, or even
+absolute neutrality, strengthens the hands and increases the confidence
+of Rebels in arms?
+
+Notwithstanding the notorious virulence of party feeling in this
+country, it certainly would not seem to require a very large amount of
+manly principle to rise superior to such a sordid sentiment in view of
+our common peril. Patriotism, my friend, is an admirable and most
+praiseworthy virtue. It is correctly classed among the noblest instincts
+of human nature. It has in all ages been a fruitful theme of poetic
+fervor; it has sustained the orator in his loftiest flights of
+eloquence; it has nerved the arm of the warrior to perform deeds of
+signal valor; it has transformed the timid matron and the shrinking
+maiden into heroines whom history has delighted to honor. But when
+patriotism is really synonymous with self-preservation, when small
+sacrifices are demanded and overwhelming disasters are to be averted,
+the love of country, although still highly commendable, does not,
+perhaps, deserve very enthusiastic praise, while the want of it will be
+sure to excite universal condemnation and scorn. I cannot believe that
+you will consent to fasten upon yourself, and upon all who are dear to
+you, the lasting stigma which will inevitably attach to the man who,
+whether from a mean partisan jealousy or an ignoble indifference to the
+honor of his country, has failed in an hour of sorest need to defend the
+land which gave him birth, and the institutions which his fathers
+suffered and sacrificed so much to establish.
+
+Hoping that the vital importance of the subject which I have so
+imperfectly considered will induce you to pardon the length of this
+communication, I remain, as ever,
+
+Very sincerely yours,
+
+---- ----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_The History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy._ By JOHN FOSTER
+KIRK. Two Volumes. 8vo. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co.
+
+There is probably no period of European history which has been so
+thoroughly explored and so richly illustrated as the sixteenth
+century,--that century of great men, lofty ideas, and gigantic
+enterprise, of intellectual activity, and of tremendous political and
+religious struggles. The numerous scholars of Continental Europe who
+have made this era the subject of their researches have generally been
+content to dig that others might plant and reap, sending forth in
+abundance the raw material of history to be woven into forms adapted to
+popular appreciation. In England, also, but only within a very recent
+period, much solid labor of the same kind has been performed. But the
+Anglo-Saxon mind, on some sides comparatively deficient in plastic and
+inventive power, as well as in that of abstract thought, seems to
+possess in a peculiar degree the faculty of comprehending, representing,
+and idealizing the varied phases and incessant motion of human life and
+character. In science it excels less in the discovery than in the
+application of laws. In what may be termed "pure art," music, sculpture,
+painting, except where the representation of the Beautiful is
+subservient to that of the Real, lyrical and idyllic poetry, and all
+departments of literature in which fancy predominates over reason, it
+must yield the palm to the genius of Italy, of Germany, of Spain. But in
+the drama, in the novel, in history, and in works partaking more or less
+of the character of these, its supremacy is established. Shakespeare and
+Chaucer are at once the greatest and the most characteristic of English
+poets; Hogarth and Wilkie, of English painters; Fielding, Scott, Miss
+Austen, Thackeray, and others whose names will at once suggest
+themselves, of English writers of fiction; Gibbon, Macaulay, and
+Hallam, of English historians. The drama, in its highest forms, belongs
+to the past, and that past which was at once too earnest in its spirit
+and too narrow in its development to allow of a less vivid or a more
+expansive delineation. Fiction, to judge from a multitude of recent
+specimens, seems at present on the decline, with some threatenings of a
+precipitate descent into the inane. History, on the other hand, is only
+at the outset of its career. Its highest achievements are in all
+probability reserved for a still distant future, when loftier points of
+view shall have been attained, and the haze that now hangs over even the
+nearest and most conspicuous objects in some measure dissipated. Its
+endeavors hitherto have only shown how much is still to be
+accomplished,--how little, indeed, comparatively speaking, it will ever
+be possible to accomplish. Not the less, on this account, are the
+laborers deserving of the honors bestowed upon them. Every fresh
+contribution is a permanent gain. Even in the same field the results of
+one exploration do not interfere with or supersede those of another.
+Robertson has, in many respects, been surpassed, but he has not been
+supplanted, by Prescott; Froude and Motley may traverse the same ground
+without impairing our interest in the researches of either.
+
+These four distinguished writers have all devoted their efforts to the
+illustration of the period of which we have before spoken,--the grand
+and fruitful sixteenth century. With the men and with the events of that
+age we have thus become singularly familiar. We have been made
+acquainted, not only with the deeds, but with the thoughts, of Charles
+V., Philip II., Elizabeth Tudor, Cortés, Alva, Farnese, William the
+Silent, and a host of other actors in some of the most striking scenes
+of history. But we have also been tempted into forgetting that those
+were not isolated scenes, that they belonged to a drama which had long
+been in progress, and that the very energy they displayed, the power put
+forth, the conquests won, were indicative of previous struggles and a
+long accumulation of resources. Of what are called the Middle Ages the
+general notion might, perhaps, be comprised in the statement that they
+were ages of barbarism and ignorance, of picturesque customs and aimless
+adventure. "I desire to know nothing of those who knew nothing," was the
+saying, in reference to them, of the French _philosophe_. "Classical
+antiquity is nearer to us than the intervening darkness," said Hazlitt.
+And Hume and Robertson both consider that the interest of European
+history begins with the revival of letters, the invention of printing,
+the colonization of America, and the great contests between consolidated
+monarchies and between antagonistic principles and creeds.
+
+It must be admitted that the greater portion of mediæval history,
+whatever its true character, is shrouded in an obscurity which it would
+be difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate. But the same cannot be
+said of the close of that period,--the transitional era that preceded
+what we are accustomed to consider as the dawn of modern civilization.
+For Continental Europe, at least, the fifteenth century is hardly less
+susceptible of a thorough revelation than the sixteenth. The chroniclers
+and memoir-writers are more communicative than those of the succeeding
+age. The documentary evidence, if still deficient, is rapidly
+accumulating. The conspicuous personages of the time are daily becoming
+more palpable and familiar to us. Joan of Arc has glided from the
+luminous haze of legend and romance into the clearer light of history.
+Philippe de Comines has a higher fame than any eye-witness and narrator
+of later events. Louis XI. discloses to posterity those features which
+he would fain have concealed from his contemporaries. And confronting
+Louis stands another figure, not less prominent in their own day, not
+less striking when viewed from our day,--that of Charles the Bold, of
+Burgundy.
+
+The career of this latter prince has generally been regarded as merely a
+romantic episode in European history. Scott has painted it in vivid
+colors in two of his most brilliant fictions,--"Quentin Durward," and
+"Anne of Geierstein." But, perhaps from this very notion in regard to
+its lack of historical importance, the reality has never been depicted
+in fulness or with detail, except in M. de Barante's elegant
+_rifacimento_ of the French chroniclers of the fifteenth century. That
+the subject was, however, one of a very different character has been
+apparent to the scholars in France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland,
+who during the last twenty years have made it a special object of their
+researches. A stronger light has been thrown upon every part of it, and
+an entirely new light upon many portions. Charles has assumed his
+rightful position, as the "Napoleon of the Middle Ages," whose ambition
+and whose fall exercised, a powerful influence on the destinies of the
+principal European states.
+
+But the labors through which this has been accomplished are as yet
+unknown to the general mass of readers. The results lie scattered in
+quarters difficult of access, and in forms that repel rather than
+attract the glance. Chronicles written in tough French and tougher
+German have been published in provincial towns, and have scarcely found
+their way beyond those localities. Various learned societies and
+commissions have edited documents which would be nearly unintelligible
+without a wide comparison and complete elucidation. Single, isolated
+points have been treated and discussed by those who took for granted a
+familiarity on the part of the reader with the general facts of the
+case. To combine this mass of evidence, to sift and establish it, and to
+weave it into a symmetrical narrative, is the aim of the work before us.
+The idea was conceived while the author was engaged in assisting the
+late Mr. Prescott in cognate branches of study. That great and generous
+writer entered heartily into the project, and made use of the ample
+facilities which he is well known to have possessed for the collection
+of the necessary materials. The correspondence which he opened for this
+purpose led to the belief that he had himself undertaken the task; and
+great satisfaction was expressed by the eminent Belgian archivist, M.
+Gachard, that a pen which had already given so much delight and
+instruction to the world was about to be engaged on so attractive a
+theme. But Prescott was not more ardent in the prosecution of his own
+inquiries than in furthering those of others; and he displayed in this,
+as in many like instances, the same noble spirit which, since his death,
+has been so gracefully acknowledged by Mr. Motley.
+
+Of the manner in which the work is executed it would be, perhaps,
+premature to speak. We have no hesitation, however, in assigning to Mr.
+Kirk's most fascinating narrative a place with the great achievements of
+genius in the department he has chosen to fill. His advent among the
+historians will be welcomed the world over. A glance at the copy placed
+in our hands has enabled us to indicate its nature. The two volumes
+about to appear bring the story down to the crisis of Charles's fate,
+the moment when he became involved in a war with the Swiss. A third
+volume, now in course of preparation, will complete the eventful tale.
+
+We think it not unlikely that to the American reader the first half of
+the history will seem, at the present time, to possess a peculiar
+interest. For this part of the work contains the last great struggle
+between the French crown and the feudal princes,--a struggle involving
+the question whether France was to form one nation or to be divided into
+a number of petty states. Such a struggle is now going on in our own
+country. The question we are debating is whether the nation is to be
+disintegrated or consolidated. The theory of "State sovereignty" is
+nothing more than the old theory of feudal independence. "I love France
+so well," said Charles of Burgundy, "that I would fain see it ruled over
+by six kings instead of one." "I love the republic founded by our
+fathers so well," says Jefferson Davis, "that I would fain see it split
+up into several hostile confederacies." When we see that France, under
+the direction of a Louis XI., came out of that struggle triumphant, we
+shall not despair of our own future, trusting rather to the guidance of
+that Providence which is working out its own great designs than to
+instruments little cognizant of its plans and too often unconscious of
+its influence.
+
+
+_Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and Other Papers._ By THOMAS FULLER, D.D.
+Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
+
+There certainly never was a greater piece of publishing felicity, in its
+seasonableness, than this entire reprint. The "Thoughts" are as good,
+for whatever is bad or trying in our times, as they were hundreds of
+years ago; so that one might almost suspect the title of the book for an
+invention, and consider many a passage in it to be new matter,
+only--after the fashion of some who, in essay or story, try to
+reproduce the ancients--skilfully put in the manner of the old
+preacher. To all who would have religious comfort in the distractions of
+present events we especially recommend this incomparable divine's truly
+devout and thoughtful pages. None of our authors have succeeded so well
+in providing for our own wants. The sea of our political agitations
+might become smooth under the well-beaten oil which he pours out. The
+divisions made by the sword to-day would heal with the use of his
+prescriptions. Human nature never grows old; and America, in her Civil
+War, is the former England over again now.
+
+Sticklers for a style of conventional dignity and smooth decorum may
+think to despatch Fuller's claims by denominating him a quaint writer.
+This would be what is vulgarly called a snap-judgment indeed. His
+quaintness never runs into superficial conceit, but embodies always a
+deep and comprehensive wisdom. He insinuates truth with a friendly
+indirectness, and banters us out of our folly with a foreign instance.
+Plutarch or Montaigne is not more happy in historical parallels, for
+personal reflection and sober application to actual duty. Never was
+fancy more alert in the service of piety. His imagination is as luminous
+as Sir Thomas Browne's, and, if less peculiar and original in its
+combinations, rises into identity with more child-like and lofty
+worship. Ever ready to fall on his knees, there is in his adoration no
+touch of cant, or of that _other-worldliness_ which Coleridge complains
+of as interfering with the pressing affairs and obligations of the
+present. No pen ever drew a firmer boundary between sentiment and
+sentimentality. But never was shrewd knowledge of this world so humane,
+keen observation so kind, wit so tender, and humor so sanctified, united
+with resolution by all means to teach and save mankind so invariably
+strong.
+
+While so much of our religious literature is a weak appeal to shallow
+feeling and a gross affront to reason, it is refreshing to meet with an
+author who helps us to obey the great precept of the Master, and put
+_mind_ and _strength_, as well as heart and soul, into our love of God.
+Indeed, this precious treatise, or assemblage of little treatises, so
+rational without form of logic, so convenient to be read for a moment or
+all day long, and so harmonious in its diverse headings, should be
+everywhere circulated as a larger sort of religious tract. We hear of
+exhortations impressed in letters on little loaves for the soldiers to
+eat. We wish every military man or civilian, intelligent enough for the
+relish, could have Fuller's sentences to feed on, as, beyond all
+rhetoric, bread of life.
+
+So let a welcome go to the old worthy, our hearts' brother, as he seems
+to rise out of his two-centuries' grave. At a time when Satan appears
+again to have been let loose for a season, and we know the power of
+evil, described in the Apocalypse, in the fearful headway made by the
+rebellious conspiracy of his servants, carried to such a point of
+success, that statesmen, and scholars, and preachers, even of so-called
+liberal views, on the farther shore, bow to it the knee, while the
+frowning cannon at every point shows how remote the Millennium still
+is,--thanks for the counsels, fit to our need, of a writer still fresh,
+while the main host of his contemporaries are long since obsolete, with
+dead volumes for their tombs. How many precious quotations from his
+leaves we might make, but that we prefer to invite a perusal of the
+whole!
+
+We add to our criticism no drawbacks, as we like to give to transcendent
+merit unstinted praise, and have really no exceptions in mind, could we
+presume in such a case to express any. Looking on the features of
+Fuller's portrait, which makes the frontispiece of his work as here
+reproduced for us, we note a weight of prudence strangely blending with
+a buoyancy of prayer, well corresponding to the inseparable sagacity and
+ecstasy of his words, teaching us the consistency of immortal aspiration
+with an infallible good-sense,--a lesson never more important to be
+learned than now. To be an executive mystic, an energetic saint, is the
+very ideal of human excellence; and to go forward in the name of the
+Divinity is the meaning of the book we have here passed in review.
+
+
+_Speeches, Lectures, and Letters._ By WENDELL PHILLIPS. Boston: James
+Redpath.
+
+In vigor, in point, in command of language and felicity of phrase, in
+affluence and aptness of illustration, in barbed keenness and _cling_
+of sarcasm, in terror of invective, in moral weight and momentum, in
+copiousness and quality of thought, in aggressive boldness of statement,
+finally in equality to all audiences and readiness for all occasions,
+Wendell Phillips is certainly the first orator in America,--and that we
+esteem much the same as saying that he is first among those whose
+vernacular is the English tongue. That no speeches are made of equal
+_value_ with his, that he has an intellectual superiority to all
+competitors in the forum, we do not assert; but his preeminence in pure
+oratorical genius may now be considered as established and
+unquestionable. Ajax has the strength, perhaps more than the strength,
+of Achilles; but Achilles adds to vigor of arm incomparable swiftness of
+foot. The mastiff is stout, brave, trusty, intelligent, but the hound
+outruns him; and this greyhound of modern oratory, deep-chested,
+light-limbed, supple, elastic, elegant, powerful, must be accredited
+with his own special superiorities. Or taking a cue from the tales of
+chivalry, we might say that he is the Sir Launcelot of the platform, in
+all but Sir Launcelot's sin; and woe to the knight against whom in full
+career he levels his lance!
+
+And yet one is half ashamed to praise his gifts, so superbly does he
+himself cast those gifts behind him. He is not trying to be eloquent: he
+is trying to get a grand piece of justice done in the world. No engineer
+building a bridge, no ship-master in a storm at sea, was ever more
+simply intent on substantive results. It is not any "Oration for the
+Crown" that he stands here pronouncing: it is service, not distinction,
+at which he aims, and he will be crowned only in the gladness of a
+redeemed race. The story of his life is a tale of romance; he makes real
+the legends of chivalry. He might have sat at meat with Arthur and the
+knights of the Round Table, and looked with equal unabashed eyes into
+theirs; and a thousand years hence, some skeptic, reading the history of
+these days, will smile a light disdain, and say, "Very well for fiction;
+but _real_ men are selfish beings, and serve themselves always to the
+sweetest and biggest loaf they can find."
+
+We praise his gifts and his nobility, not always his opinions. He was
+once the apostle of a doctrine of disunion; he fervently believes in
+enforcing "total abstinence" by statute; he is the strenuous advocate of
+woman-suffrage. We have stood by the Union always; we have some faith in
+pure wine, notwithstanding the Maine Law; and believing that women have
+a right to vote, we believe also that they have a higher right to be
+excused from voting. We are unwilling to consume their delicate
+fitnesses in this rude labor. It is not economical. We do not believe in
+using silk for ships' top-sails, or China porcelain for wash-tubs. There
+are tasks for American women--tasks, we mean, of a social and public,
+not alone of a domestic nature--which only women _can_ rightly perform,
+while their accomplishment was never more needed than here.
+
+Mr. Phillips is no "faultless painter." He is given to snap-judgments.
+The minor element of _considerateness_ should be more liberally present.
+He forgets that fast driving is not suitable to crowded streets; and
+through the densest thoroughfares the hoofs of his flying charger go
+ringing over the pavements, to the alarm of many and the damage of some.
+Softly, Bucephalus! A little gentle ambling through these social
+complications might sometimes be well.
+
+Again, while he has the utmost of moral stability and constancy, and
+also great firmness of intellectual adhesion to main principles, there
+is in him a certain minor changefulness. He pours out a powerful light,
+but it flickers. Momentary partialities sway him,--to be balanced,
+indeed, by subsequent partialities, for his broad nature will not be
+permanently one-sided; but meantime his authority suffers. Mood,
+occasion, the latest event, govern overmuch the color of his statement;
+so that an unsympathetic auditor--and every partiality, by the law of
+the world, must push _some one_ out of the ring of sympathy--may
+honestly deem him unfair, even wilfully unfair.
+
+Finally, he relies too much upon sarcasm and personal invective as
+agents. He has a theory on this matter; and we feel _sure_ that it is
+erroneous. Not that invective is to be forbidden. Not that personal
+criticism is always out of place, or always useless. We are among the
+"all men" whom Thoreau declared to be "enamored of the beauty of plain
+speech." We ask no man in public or private life to wear a satin glove
+upon his tongue. We believe, too, in the "noble wrath" of Tasso's
+heroes, When the heart _must_ burn, let the words be fire. It is just
+where personal invective begins to be used as matter of _theory and
+system_ that it begins to be used amiss. Let the rule be to spare it, if
+it _can_ be spared, and to use it only under the strictest compelling of
+moral indignation. And were not Mr. Phillips among the most genial and
+sunny of human beings, really incapable of any malign passion, he would
+fool the reactive sting of this invective in his own bosom, and so
+become fearful of indulging it.
+
+Still it must be said that he has the genius and function of a critic.
+He is the censor of our statesmanship. He is the pruner of our politics.
+Let his censure be broad and deliberate, that it may be weighty; let his
+pruning be with care and kindness, that it may be with benefit.
+
+
+_Systems of Military Bridges in Use by the United States Army, those
+adopted by the Great European Powers, and such as are employed in
+British India._ With Directions for the Preservation, Destruction, and
+Reestablishment of Bridges. By Brigadier-General GEORGE W. CULLUM,
+Lieutenant-Colonel, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, Chief of Staff of the
+General-in-Chief, etc., etc. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
+
+A nation can hardly achieve military success without paying special heed
+to its _material_ of war. It is the explicit duty of a nation's
+constituted guardians assiduously to apply all the resources of science
+and art, of theory and practice, of experience and invention, of
+judgment and genius, to the systematic production of the best military
+apparatus. Ordnance and ordnance stores, arms and equipments, commissary
+and quartermaster supplies, the means of transportation, fortifications
+and engineer-trains, navies and naval appliances,--these are the
+material elements of military strength, which decide the fate of
+nations. If in these we are behind the age, our delinquency must be
+atoned by disaster and wasted lives. Civilization conquers barbarism
+chiefly by its superior skill in the construction and use of the
+material instruments of warfare. Courage and conduct are certainly
+important factors in all legitimate successes; but they must work
+through material means, and are emphasized or nullified by the skill or
+rudeness exhibited in the device and fabrication of those means. The
+great contest now in progress has taught us afresh the potency of those
+material agencies through which patriotic zeal must act, and we shall
+hereafter lack all good excuse for _not_ having the very best attainable
+system of producing, preserving, providing, and using whatever
+implements, supplies, and muniments our future may demand.
+
+As an aid in this direction, we welcome the truly valuable book which
+General Cullum has now supplied on one of the Special brandies of
+military _matériel_. We owe him thanks for his treatise on military
+bridges, which was nearly as much needed as though we had not already
+the works of Sir Howard Douglas, Drien, Haillot, and Meurdra, and the
+chapters on bridges by Laisné and Duane. General Cullum's work has more
+precision and is more available for practical guidance than any other.
+The absolute thoroughness with which the India-rubber pontoon system is
+described by him gives a basis for appreciating the other systems
+described in outline.
+
+It is hardly too much to say that we owe to General Cullum more than to
+any other person the development in our service of systematic
+instruction in pontoniering. Before the Mexican War, Cullum and Halleck
+had ably argued the necessity of organizing engineer troops to be
+specially instructed as sappers, miners, and pontoniers. In an article
+on "Army Organization," in the "Democratic Review," were cited a
+striking series of instances in which bridge-trains or their lack had
+decided the issue of grand operations. The history of Napoleon's
+campaigns abounds in proofs of their necessity, and the testimony of the
+Great Captain was most emphatic on this point. His Placentia and
+Beresina crossings are specially instructive. The well-sustained
+argument of the article on "Army Organization" was a most effective aid
+to General Totten's efforts as Chief Engineer to secure the organization
+of our first engineer company. This company proved to be the well-timed
+and successful school in which our pontoon-drill grew up and became
+available for use in the present war. There are now four regular
+companies and several volunteer regiments of engineer troops, whose
+services are too highly valued to be hereafter ignored.
+
+In 1846, General Taylor reported, that, after the victories of Palo Alto
+and Resaca de la Palma, a pontoon-train would have enabled him to cross
+the Rio Grande "on the evening of the battle," take Matamoras "with all
+the artillery and stores of the enemy and a great number of
+prisoners,--in short, to destroy entirely the Mexican army." This
+striking evidence of the necessity of bridge-equipages as part of the
+material of army-trains coincided with the organization of the first
+engineer company, and led to the preparation of pontoon-trains for
+General Taylor and General Scott. General (then Captain) Cullum "had the
+almost exclusive supervision, devising, building, and preparing for
+service" of these trains, and of that used for instruction at West
+Point. To him is chiefly due the formation of the system of military
+bridges with India-rubber pontoons, which was most fully described and
+illustrated in the original memoir from which the volume now just
+published has grown. He subsequently, as Professor of Practical
+Engineering at the Military Academy, aided in developing and perfecting
+the pontoon-drill,--a department in which G.W. Smith, McClellan, and
+Duane ably and successfully labored.
+
+We suppose that all profound and sincere students of military operations
+are agreed in accepting bridge-trains and skilled pontoniers as among
+the necessities of grand armies. In proportion as the campaigns which an
+army is to make are to be conducted on theatres intersected by rivers
+will be the importance of its bridge-service. Our own country, abounding
+in rivers of the grandest proportions, will need to be always ready for
+applying the highest skill and the best bridge-equipage in facilitating
+such movements as may prove necessary. We accept this as an
+indispensable part of our organized system of war-_matériel_. Were other
+evidences lacking, the experiences of the Chickahominy, Rappahannock,
+Potomac, and Tennessee will perpetually enforce the argument. The
+generation which has fought the Battle of Fredericksburg, and which has
+witnessed Lee's narrow escape near Williamsport, is sufficiently
+instructed not to question the saving virtues and mobilizing influences
+of bridge-trains.
+
+The chief essentials in a military bridge-system are lightness, facility
+of transportation, ease of manoeuvre in bridge-formation, stability,
+security, and economy. It necessarily makes heavy demands for
+transportation; and on this account bridge-trains have frequently been
+left behind, when their retention would have proved of the utmost
+importance. Their true use is to facilitate campaign-movements; and
+while they should be taken only when there is a reasonable prospect of
+their being real facilites, they should not be left behind when any such
+prospect exists. It was in response to the demand for easy
+transportation that the system for India-rubber pontoons was elaborated.
+Single supporting cylinders of rubber-coated canvas were first
+experimentally used in 1836 by Captain John F. Lane, United States army,
+on the Tallapoosa and Chattahoochee Rivers in Alabama. The
+service-pontoon, as arranged by General Cullum, is composed of three
+connected cylinders of rubber-coated canvas, each having three
+compartments. On these pontoons, when inflated, the bridge-table is
+built, lashed, and anchored. This bridge has remarkable portability, but
+it has also serious defects. The oxidation of the sulphur in vulcanized
+rubber produces sulphuric acid in sufficient amount to impair the
+strength of the canvas-fibres, thus causing eventual decay, rendering it
+prudent to renew the pontoons after a year's campaigning. The pontoons
+are required to be air-tight, and are temporarily made partially useless
+by punctures, bullet-holes, rents and chafings, although they are easily
+repaired. Hence this bridge, despite its portability, is hardly equal to
+all the requirements of service, though it was the main dependence in
+Banks's operations in Louisiana, and was successfully used in Grant's
+Mississippi campaign.
+
+General Cullum briefly describes the various bridge-systems employed in
+the different services of the world, including the galvanized iron boat
+system, the Blanchard metal cylinder system, the Russian and Fowke's
+systems of canvas stretched over frames, the Birigo system, the French
+_bateau_ system, the various trestle systems, and many others. The
+French wooden _bateau_ is the pontoon chiefly used in our service, and
+it is specially commended by its thoroughly proved efficiency, and by
+its utility as an independent boat. Its great weight and the consequent
+difficulty of its transportation are the great drawbacks, and to this
+cause may well be ascribed much of the fatal delay before the
+Fredericksburg crossing.
+
+It is a hopeless problem to devise any bridge-equipage which shall
+overcome all serious objections. All that should be expected is to
+reduce the faults to a practical minimum, while meeting the general
+wants of the service in a satisfactory manner. The lack of mobility in
+any bridge-train which can be pronounced always trustworthy may,
+perhaps, compel the adoption, in addition to the _bateau_-train, of a
+light equipage for use in quick movements. This will, however, create
+complication, which is nearly as objectionable here as in the calibre of
+guns. Thus it is that any solution may prove not exactly the best one
+for the particular cases which may arise under it. All that should be
+demanded is, that, by the application of sound judgment to the data
+which experience and invention afford, our probable wants may be as well
+met as practicable. Some system we must have; and, on the one hand, zeal
+for mobility, commendable as it is, must not be permitted to invite
+grand disasters through failures of the pontoons to do their allotted
+work; while, on the other hand, a morbid desire to insure absolutely
+trustworthy solidity of construction must be restrained from imposing
+needless burdens, which may habitually make our crossings Fredericksburg
+affairs. Between these extremes lies the right road. American skill has
+hardly exhausted its resources on this problem. The suspension-bridge
+train, a description of which General Meigs has published, is deserving
+of consideration for many cases in campaigns. General Haupt's remarkable
+railroad-bridges thrown over the Rappahannock River and Potomac Creek,
+the latter in nine working-days, were structures of such striking and
+judicious boldness as to justify most hopeful anticipations from the
+designer's expected treatise on bridge-building. Our national eminence
+in the art of building wooden trussed and suspension bridges is proof
+enough that whatever can be done to improve on the military
+bridge-trains of Europe may be expected at our hands. We shall not lack
+inventiveness; let us be as careful not to lack judgment, and by all
+means to be fair and honest in seeking for the best system. When the
+experience of this war can be generalized, a more positive
+pontoon-system will be exacted for our service. It is fortunate that
+this matter is in good hands. While hoping that the close of the present
+war may, for a long time, end the reign of Mars, it behooves us never
+again to be caught napping when the Republic is assailed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS
+
+RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+
+The Natural Laws of Husbandry. By Justus von Liebig. Edited by John
+Blyth, M.D., Professor of Chemistry in Queen's College, Cork. New York.
+D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 388. $1.50.
+
+The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George
+Third, 1760-1860. By Thomas Erskine May, C.B. In Two Volumes. Vol. II.
+Boston. Crosby & Nichols. 12mo. pp. 596. $1.50.
+
+The Holy Word in its own Defence: addressed to Bishop Colenso and all
+other Earnest Seekers after Truth. By Rev. Abiel Silver, Author of
+"Lectures on the Symbolic Character of the Sacred Scriptures." New York.
+D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 305. $1.25.
+
+"Who Breaks Pays." By the Author of "Cousin Stella," etc. Philadelphia.
+F. Leypoldt. 16mo. paper, pp. 302. 50 cts.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote A: The phrase is General Taylor's. When Santa Aña brought up
+his immense army at Buena Vista, he sent a flag of truce to invite
+Taylor to surrender. "Tell him to go to hell," said old Rough-and-Ready.
+"Bliss, put that into Spanish." "Perfect Bliss," as this accomplished
+officer, too early lost, was called, interpreted liberally, replying to
+the flag, in exquisite Castilian, "Say to General Santa Aña, that, if he
+wants us, he must come and take us." And this is the answer which has
+gone into history.]
+
+[Footnote B: After Sheridan had made his maiden speech in the House, of
+Commons, he went to the gallery where Whitbread was sitting and asked
+the latter's opinion of his effort.
+
+"It will never do, Sheridan; you had better give it up."
+
+"Never, by G----d!" replied Sheridan; "it is in me, and it shall come
+out."]
+
+[Footnote C: Dagneaux's is the most expensive restaurant of the Latin
+Quarter.]
+
+[Footnote D: These are characters in the novel, portraits from real
+life. Murger drew himself, and told his own history, when he sketched
+Rodolphe.]
+
+[Footnote E: He was urged to rent a room in Paris as his lodgings when
+he came to town.]
+
+[Footnote F: _Travels through the Middle Settlements of North America
+in_ 1759-60. By Rev. Andrew Burnaby.]
+
+[Footnote G: _History of the Netherlands_, Vol. I. p. 182.]
+
+[Footnote H: "During the winter, the temperature at the surface of the
+glacier sinks a great many degrees below 32° Fahrenheit, and this low
+temperature penetrates, though at a gradually decreasing rate, into the
+interior of the mass. The glacier becomes fissured in consequence of the
+contraction resulting from this cooling process. The cracks remain open
+at first, and contribute to lower the temperature of the glacier by
+favoring the introduction of the cold air from without; but in the
+spring, when the rays of the sun raise the temperature of the snow
+covering the glacier, they first bring it back to 32° Fahrenheit, and
+presently produce water at 32°, which falls into the chilled and
+fissured mass of the glacier. There this water is instantly frozen,
+releasing heat which tends to bring back the glacier to the temperature
+of 32°; and this process continues till the entire mass of the cooled
+glacier returns to the temperature of 32°."]
+
+[Footnote I: For the evidence of this statement I must, however, refer
+to my work on Glaciers, already so often quoted in this article, where
+it may be found with all the necessary details.]
+
+[Footnote J: Hon. H.M. Rice, Ex-Senator from Minnesota.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74,
+December, 1863, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. ***
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74,
+December, 1863, 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. 12, No. 74, December, 1863
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2005 [EBook #15913]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_671" id="Page_671"></a></p>
+<h1>THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</h1>
+
+<h2>A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.</h2>
+
+<h3>VOL. XII.&mdash;DECEMBER, 1863.&mdash;NO. LXXIV.</h3>
+
+<p>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863 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="#THE_MAN_WITHOUT_A_COUNTRY"><b>THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_BIRDS_OF_KILLINGWORTH"><b>THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LITERARY_LIFE_IN_PARIS"><b>LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_GREAT_AIR-ENGINE"><b>THE GREAT AIR-ENGINE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#A_LOYAL_WOMANS_NO"><b>A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#EUGENE_DELACROIX"><b>EUGENE DELACROIX.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#SYMPATHETIC_LYING"><b>SYMPATHETIC LYING.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#SOMETHING_ABOUT_BRIDGES"><b>SOMETHING ABOUT BRIDGES.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#INTERNAL_STRUCTURE_AND_PROGRESSION_OF_THE_GLACIER"><b>INTERNAL STRUCTURE AND PROGRESSION OF THE GLACIER.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#IN_AN_ATTIC"><b>IN AN ATTIC.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LONGFELLOW"><b>LONGFELLOW.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LETTER_TO_A_PEACE_DEMOCRAT"><b>LETTER TO A PEACE DEMOCRAT.</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="THE_MAN_WITHOUT_A_COUNTRY" id="THE_MAN_WITHOUT_A_COUNTRY"></a>THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald" of
+August 13th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the
+announcement,</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"NOLAN. DIED, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2&deg; 11' S., Long.
+131&deg; W., on the 11th of May: Philip Nolan."</p></div>
+
+<p>I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old
+Mission-House in Mackinac, waiting for a Lake-Superior steamer which did
+not choose to come, and I was devouring, to the very stubble, all the
+current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and
+marriages in the "Herald." My memory for names and people is good, and
+the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember
+Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at
+that announcement, if the officer of the Levant who reported it had
+chosen to make it thus:&mdash;"Died, May 11th, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY."
+For it was as "The Man without a Country" that poor Philip Nolan had
+generally been known by the officers who had him in charge during some
+fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who sailed under them. I dare
+say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in
+a three years' cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or
+whether the poor wretch had any name at all.</p>
+
+<p>There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story.
+Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's
+Administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of
+honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in
+successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the <i>esprit de
+corps</i> of the profession and the personal honor of its members, that to
+the press this man's story has been wholly unknown,&mdash;and, I think, to
+the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some
+investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the
+Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was
+burned when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the
+Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end<a name="Page_672" id="Page_672"></a>
+of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at
+Washington to one of the Crowninshields,&mdash;who was in the Navy Department
+when he came home,&mdash;he found that the Department ignored the whole
+business. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether it was a
+"<i>Non mi ricordo</i>," determined on as a piece of policy, I do not know.
+But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no naval
+officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.</p>
+
+<p>But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor
+creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his
+story, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to be</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of
+the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When
+Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in
+1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the
+Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some
+dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him,
+took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short,
+fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor
+Nolan. He occasionally availed of the permission the great man had given
+him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the poor boy
+wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in reply from
+the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at him, because
+he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a politician the time
+which they devoted to Monongahela, sledge, and high-low-jack. Bourbon,
+euchre, and poker were still unknown. But one day Nolan had his revenge.
+This time Burr came down the river, not as an attorney seeking a place
+for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. He had defeated I know not
+how many district-attorneys; he had dined at I know not how many public
+dinners; he had been heralded in I know not how many Weekly Arguses; and
+it was rumored that he had an army behind him and an empire before him.
+It was a great day&mdash;his arrival&mdash;to poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the
+fort an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked Nolan to take
+him out in his skiff, to show him a canebrake or a cotton-wood tree, as
+he said,&mdash;really to seduce him; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan
+was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though he did not yet know
+it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.</p>
+
+<p>What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none
+of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and
+Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on
+the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the
+great treason-trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant
+Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is
+to-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage, and, to
+while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for
+<i>spectacles</i>, a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and
+another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the
+list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence
+enough,&mdash;that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false
+to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any one
+who would follow him, had the order only been signed, "By command of His
+Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped,&mdash;rightly
+for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I
+would never have heard of him, reader, but that, when the president of
+the court asked him at the close, whether he wished to say anything to
+show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried
+out, in a fit of frenzy,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_673" id="Page_673"></a>"D&mdash;&mdash;n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States
+again!"</p>
+
+<p>I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who
+was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served
+through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had
+been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his
+madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the
+midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had been
+educated on a plantation, where the finest company was a Spanish officer
+or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, had
+been perfected in commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I think he
+told me his father once hired an Englishman to be a private tutor for a
+winter on the plantation. He had spent half his youth with an older
+brother, hunting horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him "United States"
+was scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by "United States" for all
+the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a
+Christian to be true to "United States." It was "United States" which
+gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. Nay, my poor
+Nolan, it was only because "United States" had picked you out first as
+one of her own confidential men of honor, that "A. Burr" cared for you a
+straw more than for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for him. I do
+not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he damned his
+country, and wished he might never hear her name again.</p>
+
+<p>He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September
+23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name
+again. For that half century and more he was a man without a country.</p>
+
+<p>Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. If Nolan had compared
+George Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, "God save King
+George," Morgan would not have felt worse. He called the court into his
+private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a sheet,
+to say,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court. The Court decides, subject to
+the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the
+United States again."</p>
+
+<p>Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and
+the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost
+his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver
+him to the naval commander there."</p>
+
+<p>The marshal gave his orders, and the prisoner was taken out of court.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the
+United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to
+Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one
+shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board
+ship. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty here
+this evening. The court is adjourned without day."</p>
+
+<p>I have always supposed that Colonel Morgan himself took the proceedings
+of the court to Washington City, and explained them to Mr. Jefferson.
+Certain it is that the President approved them,&mdash;certain, that is, if I
+may believe the men who say they have seen his signature. Before the
+Nautilus got round from New Orleans to the Northern Atlantic coast with
+the prisoner on board, the sentence had been approved, and he was a man
+without a country.</p>
+
+<p>The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily
+followed ever after. Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of
+sending him by water from Fort Adams and Orleans. The Secretary of the
+Navy&mdash;it must have been the first Crowninshield, though he is a man I do
+not remember&mdash;was requested to put Nolan on board a Government vessel
+bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so far
+confined there as to make it certain <a name="Page_674" id="Page_674"></a>that he never saw or heard of the
+country. We had few long cruises then, and the navy was very much out of
+favor; and as almost all of this story is traditional, as I have
+explained, I do not know certainly what his first cruise was. But the
+commander to whom he was intrusted&mdash;perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw,
+though I think it was one of the younger men,&mdash;we are all old enough
+now&mdash;regulated the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, and
+according to his scheme they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan
+died.</p>
+
+<p>When I was second officer of the Intrepid, some thirty years after, I
+saw the original paper of instructions. I have been sorry ever since
+that I did not copy the whole of it. It ran, however, much in this
+way:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Washington</i>," (with the date, which must have been late in 1807.)</p>
+
+<p>"Sir,&mdash;You will receive from Lt. Neale the person of Philip Nolan, late
+a Lieutenant in the United States Army.</p>
+
+<p>"This person on his trial by court-martial expressed with an oath the
+wish that he might 'never hear of the United States again.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Court sentenced him to have his wish fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>"For the present, the execution of the order is intrusted by the
+President to this department.</p>
+
+<p>"You will take the prisoner on board your ship, and keep him there with
+such precautions as shall prevent his escape.</p>
+
+<p>"You will provide him with such quarters, rations, and clothing as would
+be proper for an officer of his late rank, if he were a passenger on
+your vessel on the business of his Government.</p>
+
+<p>"The gentlemen on board will make any arrangements agreeable to
+themselves regarding his society. He is to be exposed to no indignity of
+any kind, nor is he ever unnecessarily to be reminded that he is a
+prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"But under no circumstances is he ever to hear of his country or to see
+any information regarding it; and you will specially caution all the
+officers under your command to take care, that, in the various
+indulgences which may be granted, this rule, in which his punishment is
+involved, shall not be broken.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the intention of the Government that he shall never again see the
+country which he has disowned. Before the end of your cruise you will
+receive orders which will give effect to this intention.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Resp'y yours,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"W. SOUTHARD, for the<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sec'y of the Navy."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If I had only preserved the whole of this paper, there would be no break
+in the beginning of my sketch of this story. For Captain Shaw, if it was
+he, handed it to his successor in the charge, and he to his, and I
+suppose the commander of the Levant has it to-day as his authority for
+keeping this man in this mild custody.</p>
+
+<p>The rule adopted on board the ships on which I have met "the man without
+a country" was, I think, transmitted from the beginning. No mess liked
+to have him permanently, because his presence cut off all talk of home
+or of the prospect of return, of politics or letters, of peace or of
+war,&mdash;cut off more than half the talk men like to have at sea. But it
+was always thought too hard that he should never meet the rest of us,
+except to touch hats, and we finally sank into one system. He was not
+permitted to talk with the men, unless an officer was by. With officers
+he had unrestrained intercourse, as far as they and he chose. But he
+grew shy, though he had favorites: I was one. Then the captain always
+asked him to dinner on Monday. Every mess in succession took up the
+invitation in its turn. According to the size of the ship, you had him
+at your mess more or less often at dinner. His breakfast he ate in his
+own state-room,&mdash;he always had a state-room,&mdash;which was where a
+sentinel, or somebody on the watch, could see the door. And whatever
+else he ate or <a name="Page_675" id="Page_675"></a>drank he ate or drank alone. Sometimes, when the marines
+or sailors had any special jollification, they were permitted to invite
+"Plain-Buttons," as they called him. Then Nolan was sent with some
+officer, and the men were forbidden to speak of home while he was there.
+I believe the theory was, that the sight of his punishment did them
+good. They called him "Plain-Buttons," because, while he always chose to
+wear a regulation army-uniform, he was not permitted to wear the
+army-button, for the reason that it bore either the initials or the
+insignia of the country he had disowned.</p>
+
+<p>I remember, soon after I joined the navy, I was on shore with some of
+the older officers from our ship and from the Brandywine, which we had
+met at Alexandria. We had leave to make a party and go up to Cairo and
+the Pyramids. As we jogged along, (you went on donkeys then,) some of
+the gentlemen (we boys called them "Dons," but the phrase was long since
+changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and some one told the system which
+was adopted from the first about his books and other reading. As he was
+almost never permitted to go on shore, even though the vessel lay in
+port for months, his time, at the best, hung heavy; and everybody was
+permitted to lend him books, if they were not published in America and
+made no allusion to it. These were common enough in the old days, when
+people in the other hemisphere talked of the United States as little as
+we do of Paraguay. He had almost all the foreign papers that came into
+the ship, sooner or later; only somebody must go over them first, and
+cut out any advertisement or stray paragraph that alluded to America.
+This was a little cruel sometimes, when the back of what was cut out
+might be as innocent as Hesiod. Right in the midst of one of Napoleon's
+battles, or one of Canning's speeches, poor Nolan would find a great
+hole, because on the back of the page of that paper there had been an
+advertisement of a packet for New York, or a scrap from the President's
+message. I say this was the first time I ever heard of this plan, which
+afterwards I had enough, and more than enough, to do with. I remember
+it, because poor Phillips, who was of the party, as soon as the allusion
+to reading was made, told a story of something which happened at the
+Cape of Good Hope on Nolan's first voyage; and it is the only thing I
+ever knew of that voyage. They had touched at the Cape, and had done the
+civil thing with the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, leaving
+for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of
+English books from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed in these,
+was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was the "Lay
+of the Last Minstrel," which they had all of them heard of, but which
+most of them had never seen. I think it could not have been published
+long. Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of anything national
+in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out the "Tempest" from
+Shakspeare before he let Nolan have it, because he, said "the Bermudas
+ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one day." So Nolan was
+permitted to join the circle one afternoon when a lot of them sat on
+deck smoking and reading aloud. People do not do such things so often
+now; but when I was young we got rid of a great deal of time so. Well,
+so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the
+others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in the circle knew a
+line of the poem, only it was all magic and Border chivalry, and was ten
+thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto,
+stopped a minute and drank something, and then began, without a thought
+of what was coming,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who never to himself hath said,"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first
+time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on,
+still unconsciously or mechanically,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"This is my own, my native land!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_676" id="Page_676"></a>Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through,
+I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As home his footsteps he hath turned<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">From wandering on a foreign strand?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If such there breathe, go, mark him well."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was any
+way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of
+mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For him no minstrel raptures swell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High though his titles, proud his name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Despite these titles, power, and pelf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wretch, concentred all in self,"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung
+the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room, "and by Jove," said
+Phillips, "we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make up
+some beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did not return his
+Walter Scott to him."</p>
+
+<p>That story shows about the time when Nolan's braggadocio must have
+broken down. At first, they said, he took a very high tone, considered
+his imprisonment a mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and all
+that; but Phillips said that after he came out of his state-room he
+never was the same man again. He never read aloud again, unless it was
+the Bible or Shakespeare, or something else he was sure of. But it was
+not that merely. He never entered in with the other young men exactly as
+a companion again. He was always shy afterwards, when I knew him,&mdash;very
+seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to, except to a very few friends. He
+lighted up occasionally,&mdash;I remember late in his life hearing him fairly
+eloquent on something which had been suggested to him by one of
+Fl&eacute;chier's sermons,&mdash;but generally he had the nervous, tired look of a
+heart-wounded man.</p>
+
+<p>When Captain Shaw was coming home,&mdash;if, as I say, it was Shaw,&mdash;rather
+to the surprise of everybody they made one of the Windward Islands, and
+lay off and on for nearly a week. The boys said the officers were sick
+of salt-junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before they came home. But
+after several days the Warren came to the same rendezvous; they
+exchanged signals; she sent to Phillips and these homeward-bound men
+letters and papers, and told them she was outward-bound, perhaps to the
+Mediterranean, and took poor Nolan and his traps on the boat back to try
+his second cruise. He looked very blank when he was told to get ready to
+join her. He had known enough of the signs of the sky to know that till
+that moment he was going "home." But this was a distinct evidence of
+something he had not thought of, perhaps,&mdash;that there was no going home
+for him, even to a prison. And this was the first of some twenty such
+transfers, which brought him sooner or later into half our best vessels,
+but which kept him all his life at least some hundred miles from the
+country he had hoped he might never hear of again.</p>
+
+<p>It may have been on that second cruise,&mdash;it was once when he was up the
+Mediterranean,&mdash;that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated Southern beauty of those
+days, danced with him. They had been lying a long time in the Bay of
+Naples, and the officers were very intimate in the English fleet, and
+there had been great festivities, and our men thought they must give a
+great ball on board the ship. How they ever did it on board the Warren I
+am sure I do not know. Perhaps it was not the Warren, or perhaps ladies
+did not take up so much room as they do now. They wanted to use Nolan's
+state-room for something, and they hated to do it without asking him to
+the ball; so the captain said they might ask him, if they would be
+responsible that he did not talk with the wrong people, "who would give
+him intelligence." So the dance went on, the finest party that had ever
+been known, I dare say; for I never heard of a man-of-war ball that was
+not. For ladies <a name="Page_677" id="Page_677"></a>they had the family of the American consul, one or two
+travellers who had adventured so far, and a nice bevy of English girls
+and matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton herself.</p>
+
+<p>Well, different officers relieved each other in standing and talking
+with Nolan in a friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke to
+him. The dancing went on with spirit, and after a while even the fellows
+who took this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear any <i>contre-temps</i>.
+Only when some English lady&mdash;Lady Hamilton, as I said, perhaps&mdash;called
+for a set of "American dances," an odd thing happened. Everybody then
+danced contra-dances. The black band, nothing loath, conferred as to
+what "American dances" were, and started off with "Virginia Reel," which
+they followed with "Money-Musk," which, in its turn in those days,
+should have been followed by "The Old Thirteen." But just as Dick, the
+leader, tapped for his fiddles to begin, and bent forward, about to say,
+in true negro state, "'The Old Thirteen,' gentlemen and ladies!" as he
+had said, "'Virginny Reel,' if you please!" and "'Money-Musk,' if you
+please!" the captain's boy tapped him on the shoulder, whispered to him,
+and he did not announce the name of the dance; he merely bowed, began on
+the air, and they all fell to,&mdash;the officers teaching the English girls
+the figure, but not telling them why it had no name.</p>
+
+<p>But that is not the story I started to tell.&mdash;As the dancing went on,
+Nolan and our fellows all got at ease, as I said,&mdash;so much so, that it
+seemed quite natural for him to bow to that splendid Mrs. Graff, and
+say,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss Rutledge. Shall I have the honor
+of dancing?"</p>
+
+<p>He did it so quickly, that Shubrick, who was by him, could not hinder
+him. She laughed, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. Nolan; but I will dance all the
+same," just nodded to Shubrick, as if to say he must leave Mr. Nolan to
+her, and led him off to the place where the dance was forming.</p>
+
+<p>Nolan thought he had got his chance. He had known her at Philadelphia,
+and at other places had met her, and this was a Godsend. You could not
+talk in contra-dances, as you do in cotillons, or even in the pauses of
+waltzing; but there were chances for tongues and sounds, as well as for
+eyes and blushes. He began with her travels, and Europe, and Vesuvius,
+and the French; and then, when they had worked down, and had that long
+talking-time at the bottom of the set, he said, boldly,&mdash;a little pale,
+she said, as she told me the story, years after,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you hear from home, Mrs. Graff?"</p>
+
+<p>And that splendid creature looked through him. Jove! how she must have
+looked through him!</p>
+
+<p>"Home!! Mr. Nolan!!! I thought you were the man who never wanted to hear
+of home again!"&mdash;and she walked directly up the deck to her husband, and
+left poor Nolan alone, as he always was.&mdash;He did not dance again.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot give any history of him in order: nobody can now: and, indeed,
+I am not trying to. These are the traditions, which I sort out, as I
+believe them, from the myths which have been told about this man for
+forty years. The lies that have been told about him are legion. The
+fellows used to say he was the "Iron Mask"; and poor George Pons went to
+his grave in the belief that this was the author of "Junius," who was
+being punished for his celebrated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was
+not very strong in the historical line. A happier story than either of
+these I have told is of the War. That came along soon after. I have
+heard this affair told in three or four ways,&mdash;and, indeed, it may have
+happened more than once. But which ship it was on I cannot tell.
+However, in one, at least, of the great frigate-duels with the English,
+in which the navy was really baptized, it happened that a round shot
+from the enemy entered one of our ports square, and took right down <a name="Page_678" id="Page_678"></a>the
+officer of the gun himself, and almost every man of the gun's crew. Now
+you may say what you choose about courage, but that is not a nice thing
+to see. But, as the men who were not killed picked themselves up, and as
+they and the surgeon's people were carrying off the bodies, there
+appeared Nolan, in his shirt-sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, and,
+just as if he had been the officer, told them off with authority,&mdash;who
+should go to the cockpit with the wounded men, who should stay with
+him,&mdash;perfectly cheery, and with that way which makes men feel sure all
+is right and is going to be right. And he finished loading the gun with
+his own hands, aimed it, and bade the men fire. And there he stayed,
+captain of that gun, keeping those fellows in spirits, till the enemy
+struck,&mdash;sitting on the carriage while the gun was cooling, though he
+was exposed all the time,&mdash;showing them easier ways to handle heavy
+shot,&mdash;making the raw hands laugh at their own blunders,&mdash;and when the
+gun cooled again, getting it loaded and fired twice as often as any
+other gun on the ship. The captain walked forward, by way of encouraging
+the men, and Nolan touched his hat and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am showing them how we do this in the artillery, Sir."</p>
+
+<p>And this is the part of the story where all the legends agree: that the
+Commodore said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I see you do, and I thank you, Sir; and I shall never forget this day,
+Sir, and you never shall, Sir."</p>
+
+<p>And after the whole thing was over, and he had the Englishman's sword,
+in the midst of the state and ceremony of the quarter-deck, he said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to come here."</p>
+
+<p>And when Nolan came, the captain, said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to you to-day; you are one of us
+to-day; you will be named in the despatches."</p>
+
+<p>And then the old man took off his own sword of ceremony, and gave it to
+Nolan, and made him put it on. The man told me this who saw it. Nolan
+cried like a baby, and well he might. He had not worn a sword since that
+infernal day at Fort Adams. But always afterwards, on occasions of
+ceremony, he wore that quaint old French sword of the Commodore's.</p>
+
+<p>The captain did mention him in the despatches. It was always said he
+asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the
+Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As I said, that was about
+the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at Washington,
+and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry itself on because there was
+nobody to stop it without any new orders from home.</p>
+
+<p>I have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession of
+the Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter, his
+father, Essex Porter,&mdash;that is, the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As
+an artillery officer, who had seen service in the West, Nolan knew more
+about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades, and all that,
+than any of them did; and he worked with a right good will in fixing
+that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did
+not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all
+the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and
+at this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our
+French friends, too, when they wanted this little watering-place, would
+have found it was preoccupied. But Madison and the Virginians, of
+course, flung all that away.</p>
+
+<p>All that was near fifty years ago. If Nolan was thirty then, he must
+have been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty.
+But he never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards. As I imagine his
+life, from what I have seen and heard of it, he must have been in every
+sea, and yet almost never on land. He must have known, in a formal way,
+more officers in our service than any <a name="Page_679" id="Page_679"></a>man living knows. He told me
+once, with a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so methodical a
+life as he. "You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you know how
+busy he was." He said it did not do for any one to try to read all the
+time, more than to do any thing else all the time; but that he read just
+five hours a day. "Then," he said, "I keep up my note-books, writing in
+them at such and such hours from what I have been reading; and I include
+in these my scrap-books." These were very curious indeed. He had six or
+eight, of different subjects. There was one of History, one of Natural
+Science, one which he, called "Odds and Ends." But they were not merely
+books of extract from newspapers. They had bits of plants and ribbons,
+shells tied on, and carved scraps of bone and wood, which he had taught
+the men to cut for him, and they were beautifully illustrated. He drew
+admirably. He had some of the funniest drawings there, and some of the
+most pathetic, that I have ever seen in my life. I wonder who will have
+Nolan's scrap-books.</p>
+
+<p>Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that
+they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. "Then,"
+said he, "every man should have a diversion as well as a profession. My
+Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more. The
+men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to
+satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He
+was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about the habits of
+the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether
+they are <i>Lepidoptera</i> <i>Steptopotera</i>; but as for telling how you can
+get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike
+them,&mdash;why, Linn&aelig;us knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did.
+These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of
+the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a
+great deal. He always kept up with his exercise; and I never heard that
+he was ill. If any other man was ill, he was the kindest nurse in the
+world; and he knew more than half the surgeons do. Then if anybody was
+sick or died, or if the captain wanted him to on any other occasion, he
+was always ready to read prayers. I have remarked that he read
+beautifully.</p>
+
+<p>My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after the
+War, on my first voyage after I was appointed a midshipman. It was in
+the first days after our Slave-Trade treaty, while the Reigning House,
+which was still the House of Virginia, had still a sort of
+sentimentalism about the suppression of the horrors of the Middle
+Passage, and something was sometimes done that way. We were in the South
+Atlantic on that business. From the time I joined, I believe I thought
+Nolan was a sort of lay chaplain&mdash;a chaplain with a blue coat. I never
+asked about him. Everything in the ship was strange to me. I knew it was
+green to ask questions, and I suppose I thought there was a
+"Plain-Buttons" on every ship. We had him to dine in our mess once a
+week, and the caution was given that on that day nothing was to be said
+about home. But if they had told us not to say anything about the planet
+Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I should not have asked why; there
+were, a great many things which seemed to me to have as little reason. I
+first came to understand anything about "the man without a country" one
+day when we overhauled a dirty little schooner which had slaves on
+board. An officer was sent to take charge of her, and, after a few
+minutes, he sent back his boat to ask that some one might be sent him
+who could speak Portuguese. We were all looking over the rail when the
+message came, and we all wished we could interpret, when the captain
+asked who spoke Portuguese. But none of the officers did; and just as
+the captain was sending forward to ask if any of the people could, Nolan
+stepped out and said he should be glad to interpret, if the <a name="Page_680" id="Page_680"></a>captain
+wished, as he understood the language. The captain thanked him, fitted
+out another boat with him, and in this boat it was my luck to go.</p>
+
+<p>When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never want
+to. Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of the
+nastiness. There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way of
+making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had had
+their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience'
+sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the schooner's crew. The
+negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the
+dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him
+in every dialect and <i>patois</i> of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to
+the Parisian of Beledeljereed.</p>
+
+<p>As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had
+mounted in desperation, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"For God's love, is there anybody who can make these wretches understand
+something? The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet them. I knocked
+that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him. And then I
+talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I'll be hanged if they
+understood that as well as they understood the English."</p>
+
+<p>Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking
+Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked
+for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; "and tell them that these
+rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough."</p>
+
+<p>Nolan "put that into Spanish,"<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a>&mdash;that is, he explained it in such
+Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of
+the negroes as could understand them. Then there was such a yell of
+delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's
+feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous
+worship of Vaughan, as the <i>deus ex machina</i> of the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, "that I will take them all to
+Cape Palmas."</p>
+
+<p>This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practically as far from the
+homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is, they
+would be eternally separated from home there. And their interpreters, as
+we could understand, instantly said, "<i>Ah, non Palmas</i>," and began to
+propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan was
+rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan
+eagerly what they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan's white forehead,
+as he hushed the men down, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us home, take us to our own
+country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and
+our own women.' He says he has an old father and mother, who will die,
+if they do not see him. And this one says he left his people all sick,
+and paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help
+them, and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home,
+and that he has never seen anybody from home since then. And this one
+says," choked out Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from his home in
+six months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon."</p>
+
+<p>Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan struggled through
+this interpretation. I, who did not understand anything of the passion
+involved <a name="Page_681" id="Page_681"></a>in it, saw that the very elements were melting with fervent
+heat, and that something was to pay somewhere. Even the negroes
+themselves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan's agony, and Vaughan's
+almost equal agony of sympathy. As quick as he could get words, he
+said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they shall go to the Mountains of
+the Moon, if they will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White
+Desert, they shall go home!"</p>
+
+<p>And after some fashion Nolan said so. And then they all fell to kissing
+him again, and wanted to rub his nose with theirs.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not stand it long; and getting Vaughan to say he might go
+back, he beckoned me down into our boat. As we lay back in the
+stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to me,&mdash;"Youngster, let that
+show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and without
+a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a thing
+that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, and your
+country, pray God in His mercy to take you that instant home to His own
+heaven. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self, while you do
+everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write and send, and talk
+about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the farther you
+have to travel from it; and rush back to it, when you are free, as that
+poor black slave is doing now. And for your country, boy," and the words
+rattled in his throat, "and for that flag," and he pointed to the ship,
+"never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the
+service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to
+you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another
+flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag.
+Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind
+officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself,
+your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own
+mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, if those
+devils there had got hold of her to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>I was frightened to death by his calm, hard passion; but I blundered
+out, that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought of
+doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did, almost in
+a whisper, say,&mdash;"Oh, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your
+age!"</p>
+
+<p>I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abused, for I
+never told this story till now, which afterward made us great friends.
+He was very kind to me. Often he sat up, or even got up, at night to
+walk the deck with me, when it was my watch. He explained to me a great
+deal of my mathematics, and I owe to him my taste for mathematics. He
+lent me books, and helped me about my reading. He never alluded so
+directly to his story again; but from one and another officer I have
+learned, in thirty years, what I am telling. When we parted from him in
+St. Thomas harbor, at the end of our cruise, I was more sorry than I can
+tell. I was very glad to meet him again in 1830; and later in life, when
+I thought I had some influence in Washington, I moved heaven and earth
+to have him discharged. But it was like getting a ghost out of prison.
+They pretended there was no such man, and never was such a man. They
+will say so at the Department now! Perhaps they do not know. It will not
+be the first thing in the service of which the Department appears to
+know nothing!</p>
+
+<p>There is a story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when a
+party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. But this I
+believe to be a lie; or rather, it is a myth, <i>ben trovato</i>, involving a
+tremendous blowing-up with which he sunk Burr,&mdash;asking him how he liked
+to be "without a country." But it is clear, from Burr's life, that
+nothing of the sort could have happened; and I mention this only as an
+illustration of the stories which get a-going where there is the least
+mystery at bottom.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_682" id="Page_682"></a>So poor Philip Nolan had his wish fulfilled. I know but one fate more
+dreadful: it is the fate reserved for those men who shall have one day
+to exile themselves from their country because they have attempted her
+ruin, and shall have at the same time to see the prosperity and honor to
+which she rises when she has rid herself of them and their iniquities.
+The wish of poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not because his
+punishment was too great, but because his repentance was so clear, was
+precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who broke a soldier's
+oath two years ago, and of every Maury and Barron who broke a sailor's.
+I do not know how often they have repented. I do know that they have
+done all that in them lay that they might have no country,&mdash;that all the
+honors, associations, memories, and hopes which belong to "country"
+might be broken up into little shreds and distributed to the winds. I
+know, too, that their punishment, as they vegetate through what is left
+of life to them in wretched Boulognes and Leicester Squares, where they
+are destined to upbraid each other till they die, will have all the
+agony of Nolan's, with the added pang that every one who sees them will
+see them to despise and to execrate them. They will have their wish,
+like him.</p>
+
+<p>For him, poor fellow, he repented of his folly, and then, like a man,
+submitted to the fate he had asked for. He never intentionally added to
+the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him in hold.
+Accidents would happen; but they never happened from his fault.
+Lieutenant Truxton told me, that, when Texas was annexed, there was a
+careful discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of
+Nolan's handsome set of maps, and cut Texas out of it,&mdash;from the map of
+the world and the map of Mexico. The United States had been cut out when
+the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that to
+do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as
+Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was
+from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own table,
+when, for a short time, I was in command of the George Washington
+corvette, on the South-American station. We were lying in the La Plata,
+and some of the officers, who had been on shore, and had just joined
+again, were entertaining us with accounts of their misadventures in
+riding the half-wild horses of Buenos Ayres. Nolan was at table, and was
+in an unusually bright and talkative mood. Some story of a tumble
+reminded him of an adventure of his own, when he was catching wild
+horses in Texas with his brother Stephen, at a time when he must have
+been quite a boy. He told the story with a good deal of spirit,&mdash;so much
+so, that the silence which often follows a good story hung over the
+table for an instant, to be broken by Nolan himself. For he asked,
+perfectly unconsciously,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, what has become of Texas? After the Mexicans got their
+independence, I thought that province of Texas would come forward very
+fast. It is really one of the finest regions on earth; it is the Italy
+of this continent. But I have not seen or heard a word of Texas for near
+twenty years."</p>
+
+<p>There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never
+heard of Texas was that Texas and her affairs had been painfully cut out
+of his newspapers since Austin began his settlements; so that, while he
+read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of California,
+this virgin province, in which his brother had travelled so far, and, I
+believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and Williams, the two
+Texas men, looked grimly at each other, and tried not to laugh. Edward
+Morris had his attention attracted by the third link in the chain of the
+captain's chandelier. Watrous was seized with a convulsion of sneezing.
+Nolan himself saw that something was to pay, he did not know what. And
+I, as master of the feast, had to say,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan.<a name="Page_683" id="Page_683"></a> Have you seen Captain Back's
+curious account of Sir Thomas Hoe's Welcome?"</p>
+
+<p>After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I wrote to him at least twice
+a year, for in that voyage we became even confidentially intimate; but
+he never wrote to me. The other men tell me that in those fifteen years
+he <i>aged</i> very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he was still the
+same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that he ever was, bearing as
+best he could his self-appointed punishment,&mdash;rather less social,
+perhaps, with new men whom he did not know, but more anxious,
+apparently, than ever to serve and befriend and teach the boys, some of
+whom fairly seemed to worship him. And now it seems the dear old fellow
+is dead. He has found a home at last, and a country.</p>
+
+<p>Since writing this, and while considering whether or no I would print
+it, as a warning to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tatnalls of
+to-day of what it is to throw away a country, I have received from
+Danforth, who is on board the Levant, a letter which gives an account of
+Nolan's last hours. It removes all my doubts about telling this story.</p>
+
+<p>To understand the first words of the letter, the non-professional reader
+should remember that after 1817 the position of every officer who had
+Nolan in charge was one of the greatest delicacy. The Government had
+failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a man to do?
+Should he let him go? What, then, if he were called to account by the
+Department for violating the order of 1807? Should he keep him? What,
+then, if Nolan should be liberated some day, and should bring an action
+for false imprisonment or kidnapping against every man who had had him
+in charge? I urged and pressed this upon Southard, and I have reason to
+think that other officers did the same thing. But the Secretary always
+said, as they so often do at Washington, that there were no special
+orders to give, and that we must act on our own judgment. That means,
+"If you succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, you will be
+disavowed." Well, as Danforth says, all that is over now, though I do
+not know but I expose myself to a criminal prosecution on the evidence
+of the very revelation I am making.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the letter:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Levant</i>, 2&deg; 2' S. @ 131&deg; W.</p>
+
+<p>"DEAR FRED,&mdash;I try to find heart and life to tell you that it is all
+over with dear old Nolan. I have been with him on this voyage more than
+I ever was, and I can understand wholly now the way in which you used to
+speak of the dear old fellow. I could see that he was not strong, but I
+had no idea the end was so near. The doctor had been watching him very
+carefully, and yesterday morning came to me and told me that Nolan was
+not so well, and had not left his state-room,&mdash;a thing I never remember
+before. He had let the doctor come and see him as he lay there,&mdash;the
+first time the doctor had been in the state-room,&mdash;and he said he should
+like to see me. Oh, dear! do you remember the mysteries we boys used to
+invent about his room, in the old Intrepid days? Well, I went in, and
+there, to be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly
+as he gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help a
+glance round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the
+box he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and
+around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic eagle,
+with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just clasping the
+whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. The dear old boy saw my
+glance, and said, with a sad smile, 'Here, you see, I have a country!'
+And then he pointed to the foot of his bed, where I had not seen before
+a great map of the United Stales, as he had drawn it from memory, and
+which he had there to look upon as he lay. Quaint, queer old names were
+on it, in large letters: 'Indiana Territory,' 'Mississippi Territory,'
+and 'Louisiana<a name="Page_684" id="Page_684"></a> Territory,' as I suppose our fathers learned such
+things: but the old fellow had patched in Texas, too; he had carried his
+western boundary all the way to the Pacific, but on that shore he had
+defined nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Danforth,' he said, 'I know I am dying. I cannot get home. Surely
+you will tell me something now?&mdash;Stop! stop! Do not speak till I say
+what I am sure you know, that there is not in this ship, that there is
+not in America,&mdash;God bless her!&mdash;a more loyal man than I. There cannot
+be a man who loves the old flag as I do, or prays for it as I do, or
+hopes for it as I do. There are thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I
+thank God for that, though I do not know what their names are. There has
+never been one taken away: I thank God for that. I know by that, that
+there has never been any successful Burr. Oh, Danforth, Danforth,' he
+sighed out, 'how like a wretched night's dream a boy's idea of personal
+fame or of separate sovereignty seems, when one looks back on it after
+such a life as mine! But tell me,&mdash;tell me something,&mdash;tell me
+everything, Danforth, before I die!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a monster that I had not told
+him everything before. Danger or no danger, delicacy or no delicacy, who
+was I, that I should have been acting the tyrant all this time over this
+dear, sainted old man, who had years ago expiated, in his whole
+manhood's life, the madness of a boy's treason? 'Mr. Nolan,' said I, 'I
+will tell you everything you ask about. Only, where shall I begin?'</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the blessed smile that crept over his white face! and he pressed my
+hand and said, 'God bless you!' 'Tell me their names,' he said, and he
+pointed to the stars on the flag. 'The last I know is Ohio. My father
+lived in Kentucky. But I have guessed Michigan and Indiana and
+Mississippi,&mdash;that was where Fort Adams is,&mdash;they make twenty. But where
+are your other fourteen? You have not cut up any of the old ones, I
+hope?'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that was not a bad text, and I told him the names, in as good
+order as I could, and he bade me take down his beautiful map and draw
+them in as I best could with my pencil. He was wild with delight about
+Texas, told me how his brother died there; he had marked a gold cross
+where he supposed his brother's grave was; and he had guessed at Texas.
+Then he was delighted as he saw California and Oregon;&mdash;that, he said,
+he had suspected partly, because he had never been permitted to land on
+that shore, though the ships were there so much. 'And the men,' said he,
+laughing, 'brought off a good deal besides furs.' Then he went
+back&mdash;heavens, how far!&mdash;to ask about the Chesapeake, and what was done
+to Barron for surrendering her to the Leopard, and whether Burr ever
+tried again,&mdash;and he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed.
+But in a moment that was over, and he said, 'God forgive me, for I am
+sure I forgive him.' Then he asked about the old war,&mdash;told me the true
+story of his serving the gun the day we took the Java,&mdash;asked about dear
+old David Porter, as he called him. Then he settled down more quietly,
+and very happily, to hear me tell in an hour the history of fifty years.</p>
+
+<p>"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as well
+as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about Fulton and
+the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; told
+him all I could think about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and Texas,
+and his own old Kentucky. And do you think he asked who was in command
+of the "Legion of the West." I told him it was a very gallant officer,
+named Grant, and that, by our last news, he was about to establish his
+head-quarters at Vicksburg. Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I worked that
+out on the map; it was about a hundred miles, more or less, above his
+old Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. 'It must be
+at old Vicks's plantation,' said he; 'well, that is a change!'</p><p><a name="Page_685" id="Page_685"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of half
+a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now know what I
+told him,&mdash;of emigration, and the means of it,&mdash;of steamboats and
+railroads and telegraphs,&mdash;of inventions and books and literature,&mdash;of
+the colleges and West Point and the Naval School,&mdash;but with the queerest
+interruptions that ever you heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking
+all the accumulated questions of fifty-six years:</p>
+
+<p>"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and when I
+told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's son. He
+said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy himself, at
+some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a Kentuckian like
+himself, but I could not tell him of what family; he had worked up from
+the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am glad of that. As I have
+brooded and wondered, I have thought our danger was in keeping up those
+regular successions in the first families.' Then I got talking about my
+visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman,
+Harding; I told him about the Smithsonian and the Exploring Expedition;
+I told him about the Capitol,&mdash;and the statues for the pediment,&mdash;and
+Crawford's Liberty,&mdash;and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told him
+everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of his country
+and its prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a word
+about this infernal Rebellion!</p>
+
+<p>"And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He grew more
+and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I gave him a
+glass of water, but he just wet his lips, and told me not to go away.
+Then he asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of Public Prayer,'
+which lay there, and said, with a smile, that it would open at the
+right, place,&mdash;and so it did. There was his double red mark down the
+page; and I knelt down and read, and he repeated with me,&mdash;'For
+ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that,
+notwithstanding our manifold transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thou hast
+continued to us Thy marvellous kindness,'&mdash;and so to the end of that
+thanksgiving. Then he turned to the end of the same book, and I read the
+words more familiar to me,&mdash;'Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy
+favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the United
+States, and all others in authority,'&mdash;and the rest of the Episcopal
+collect. 'Danforth,' said he, 'I have repeated those prayers night and
+morning, it is now fifty-five years.' And then he said he would go to
+sleep. He bent me down over him and kissed me; and he said, 'Look in my
+Bible, Danforth, when I am gone.' And I went away.</p>
+
+<p>"But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired and would
+sleep. I knew he was happy, and I wanted him to be alone.</p>
+
+<p>"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had
+breathed his life away with a smile. He had something pressed close to
+his lips. It was his father's badge of the Order of Cincinnati.</p>
+
+<p>"We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper, at the place
+where he had marked the text,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed
+to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.'</p>
+
+<p>"On this slip of paper he had written,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not
+some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that
+my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>In Memory of</i></p>
+
+<p>"'PHILIP NOLAN,</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Lieutenant in the Army of the United States.</i></p>
+
+<p>"'He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man
+deserved less at her hands.'"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_BIRDS_OF_KILLINGWORTH" id="THE_BIRDS_OF_KILLINGWORTH"></a>THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It was the season when through all the land<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The merle and mavis build, and building sing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those lovely lyrics written by His hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whom Saxon C&aelig;dmon calls the Blithe-Heart King,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When on the boughs the purple buds expand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The banners of the vanguard of the Spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And wave their fluttering signals from the steep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The robin and the bluebird, piping loud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bread!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Across the Sound the birds of passage sailed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Speaking some unknown language strange and sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The village with the cheers of all their fleet,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, quarrelling together, laughed and railed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like foreign sailors landed in the street<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and boys.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In fabulous days, some hundred years ago;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That mingled with the universal mirth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To swift destruction the whole race of birds.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And a town-meeting was convened straightway<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To set a price upon the guilty heads<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Levied black-mail upon the garden-beds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cornfields, and beheld without dismay<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The skeleton that waited at their feast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then from his house, a temple painted white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With fluted columns, and a roof of red,<br /></span><p><a name="Page_687" id="Page_687"></a></p>
+<span class="i0">The Squire came forth,&mdash;august and splendid sight!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Slowly descending, with majestic tread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three flights of steps, nor looking left nor right;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Down the long street he walked, as one who said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"A town that boasts inhabitants like me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Can have no lack of good society!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The instinct of whose nature was to kill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wrath of God he preached from year to year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And read with fervor Edwards on the Will;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His favorite pastime was to slay the deer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In Summer on some Adirondack hill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E'en now, while walking down the rural lane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He lopped the way-side lilies with his cane.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From the Academy, whose belfry crowned<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hill of Science with its vane of brass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all absorbed in reveries profound<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of fair Almira in the upper class,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who was, as in a sonnet he had said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As pure as water, and as good as bread.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And next the Deacon issued from his door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as snow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A suit of sable bombazine he wore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His form was ponderous, and his step was slow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There never was so wise a man before;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He seemed the incarnate "Well, I told you so!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to perpetuate his great renown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There was a street named after him in town.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">These came together in the new town-hall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With sundry farmers from the region round;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Squire presided, dignified and tall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His air impressive and his reasoning sound.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But enemies enough, who every one<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When they had ended, from his place apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, trembling like a steed before the start,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To speak out what was in him, clear and strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alike regardless of their smile or frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And quite determined not to be laughed down.<br /></span><p><a name="Page_688" id="Page_688"></a></p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From his Republic banished without pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Poets; in this little town of yours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You put to death, by means of a Committee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ballad-singers and the Troubadours,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The street-musicians of the heavenly city,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The birds, who make sweet music for us all<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The thrush, that carols at the dawn of day<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the green steeples of the piny wood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Jargoning like a foreigner at his food;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flooding with melody the neighborhood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"You slay them all! and wherefore? For the gain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of a scant handful more or less of wheat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or rye, or barley, or some other grain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Scratched up at random by industrious feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Searching for worm or weevil after rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As are the songs these uninvited guests<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dialect they speak, where melodies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Alone are the interpreters of thought?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose household words are songs in many keys,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose habitations in the tree-tops even<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Think, every morning when the sun peeps through<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How jubilant the happy birds renew<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their old melodious madrigals of love!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when you think of this, remember, too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Tis always morning somewhere, and above<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The awakening continents, from shore to shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Think of your woods and orchards without birds!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As in an idiot's brain remembered words<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Make up for the lost music, when your teams<br /></span><p><a name="Page_689" id="Page_689"></a></p>
+<span class="i0">Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The feathered gleaners follow to your door?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What! would you rather see the incessant stir<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of insects in the windrows of the hay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hear the locust and the grasshopper<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is this more pleasant to you than the whirr<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of meadow-lark, and its sweet roundelay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"You call them thieves and pillagers; but know<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They are the winged wardens of your farms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And from your harvests keep a hundred harms;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even the blackest of them all, the crow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Renders good service as your man-at-arms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And crying havoc on the slug and snail.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"How can I teach your children gentleness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And mercy to the weak, and reverence<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Life, which, in its weakness or excess,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The self-same light, although averted hence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When by your laws, your actions, and your speech,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You contradict the very things I teach?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With this he closed; and through the audience went<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their yellow heads together like their sheaves:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who put their trust in bullocks and in beeves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The birds were doomed; and, as the record shows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A bounty offered for the heads of crows.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There was another audience out of reach,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who had no voice nor vote in making laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But in the papers read his little speech,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And crowned his modest temples with applause;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They made him conscious, each one more than each,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He still was victor, vanquished in their cause:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O fair Almira at the Academy!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And so the dreadful massacre began;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O'er fields and orchards, and o'er woodland crests,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts,<br /></span><p><a name="Page_690" id="Page_690"></a></p>
+<span class="i0">Or wounded crept away from sight of man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While the young died of famine in their nests:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A slaughter to be told in groans, not words,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The very St. Bartholomew of Birds!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Summer came, and all the birds were dead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The days were like hot coals; the very ground<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was burned to ashes; in the orchards fed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Myriads of caterpillars, and around<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cultivated fields and garden-beds<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No foe to check their march, till they had made<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The land a desert without leaf or shade.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The canker-worms upon the passers-by,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who shook them off with just a little cry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They were the terror of each favorite walk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The endless theme of all the village-talk.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The farmers grew impatient, but a few<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Confessed their error, and would not complain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, after all, the best thing one can do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When it is raining, is to let it rain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then they repealed the law, although they knew<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It would not call the dead to life again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As school-boys, finding their mistake too late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That year in Killingworth the Autumn came<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Without the light of his majestic look,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wonder of the falling tongues of flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The illumined pages of his Doom's-Day Book.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And drowned themselves despairing in the brook,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the wild wind went moaning everywhere,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lamenting the dead children of the air.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A sight that never yet by bard was sung,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As great a wonder as it would have been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If some dumb animal had found a tongue:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A wagon, overarched with evergreen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All full of singing-birds, came down the street,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Filling the air with music wild and sweet.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From all the country round these birds were brought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By order of the town, with anxious quest,<br /></span><p><a name="Page_691" id="Page_691"></a></p>
+<span class="i0">And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In woods and fields the places they loved best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing loud canticles, which many thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Were satires to the authorities addressed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While others, listening in green lanes, averred<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Such lovely music never had been heard.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But blither still and louder carolled they<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was the fair Almira's wedding-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And everywhere, around, above, below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the Preceptor bore his bride away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And a new heaven bent over a new earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LITERARY_LIFE_IN_PARIS" id="LITERARY_LIFE_IN_PARIS"></a>LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS.</h2>
+
+<p>THE GARRET.</p>
+
+
+<p>Would you know something of the way in which men live in Paris? Would
+you penetrate a little beneath the brilliant, glossy epidermis of the
+French capital? Would you know other shadows and other sights than those
+you find in "Galignani's Messenger" under the rubric, "Stranger's
+Diary"? Listen to us. We hope to be brief. We hope to succeed in
+tangling your interest. We don't hope to make you merry,&mdash;oh, no, no,
+no! we don't hope that! Life isn't a merry thing anywhere,&mdash;least of all
+in Paris; for, look you, in modern Babylon there are so many calls for
+money, (which Southey called "a huge evil" everywhere,) there are so
+many temptations to expense, one has to keep a most cool head and a most
+silent heart to live in Paris and to avoid debt. Few are able
+successfully to achieve this charmed life. The Duke of Wellington, who
+was in debt but twice in his life,&mdash;first, when he became of age, and,
+like all young men, <i>felt</i> his name by indorsing it on negotiable paper,
+and placing it in a tradesman's book; secondly, when he lived in Paris,
+master of all France by consent of Europe,&mdash;the Duke of Wellington
+involved himself in debt in Paris to the amount of a million of dollars.
+Bl&uuml;cher actually ruined himself in the city he conquered. The last heir
+to the glorious name and princely estates of Von Kaunitz lost everything
+he possessed, even his dignity, in a few years of life in Paris. Judge
+of the resistless force and fury of the great maelstr&ouml;m!</p>
+
+<p>And I hope, after you have measured some degree of its force and of its
+fury by these illustrious examples, that you may be softened into
+something like pity and terror, when I tell you how a poor fellow, who
+had no name but that he made with his pen, who commanded no money save
+only that he obtained by transmuting ink and paper into gold, strove
+against it with various success, and often was vanquished. You will not
+judge him too harshly, will you? You will not be the first to throw a
+stone at him, neither will you add your stone, to those that may be
+thrown at him: hands enough are raised against him! We do <a name="Page_692" id="Page_692"></a>not
+altogether absolve him for many a shortcoming; but we crave permission
+to keep our censure and our sighs for our study. Permit us to forbear
+arraigning him at the public bar. He is dead,&mdash;and everybody respects
+the dead, except profligate editors, prostitutes, and political
+clergymen. Besides, his life was such a hard one,&mdash;so full of clouds,
+with so few gleams of sunshine,&mdash;so agitated by storm,&mdash;so bereaved of
+halcyon days,&mdash;'twould be most cruel to deny him the grave's dearest
+privilege, peace and quiet. Amen! Amen! with all my heart to thy
+benediction and prayer, O priest! as, aspersing his lifeless remains
+with holy-water, thou sayest, <i>Requiescat!</i> So mote it be! <i>Requiescat!
+Requiescat! Requiescat in pace!</i></p>
+
+<p>Approach, then, reader, with softest step, and we will, in lowest
+whispers, pour into your ear the story of the battle of life as 'tis
+fought in Paris. We will show you the fever and the heartache, the
+corroding care and the panting labor which oppress life in Paris. Then
+will you say, No wonder they all die of a shattered heart or consumed
+brain at Paris! No wonder De Balzac died of heart-disease! No wonder
+Frederic Souli&egrave;'s heart burst! No wonder Bruffault went crazy, and
+Eugene Sue's heart collapsed, and Malitourne lives at the mad-house! It
+is killing!</p>
+
+<p>We will show you this life, not by didactic description, but by example,
+by telling you the story of one who lived this life. He was born in the
+lowest social station, he battled against every disadvantage, the
+hospital was his sick-chamber, his funeral was at the Government's
+expense, and everybody eminent in literature and art followed his
+remains to the grave, over which, after a proper interval of time, a
+monument was erected by public subscription to his memory. His father
+was a porter at the door of one of the houses in the Rue des Trois
+Fr&egrave;res. He added the tailor's trade to his poorly paid occupation. A
+native of Savoy, he possessed the mountaineer's taciturnity and love of
+home. War carried him to Paris. The rigors of conscription threw him
+into the ranks of the army; and when the first Empire fell, the child of
+Savoy made Paris his home, married a young seamstress, and obtained the
+lodge of house No. 5 Rue des Trois Fr&egrave;res. This marriage gave to French
+letters Henry Murger. It had no other issue.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Murger was born March 24th, 1822. His earlier years seemed likely
+to be his last; he was never well; his mother gave many a tear and many
+a vigil to the sickly child she thought every week she must lose. To
+guard his days, she placed him, to gratify a Romish superstition, under
+the special protection of the Blessed Virgin, and in accordance with
+custom clad him in the Madonna's livery of blue. His costume of a blue
+smock, blue pantaloons, and a blue cap procured for him the name of
+<i>Bleuet</i>, or, as we should perhaps say, Blueling, if indeed we may coin
+for the occasion one of those familiar, affectionate diminutives, so
+common in the Italian, rarer in the French, and almost unknown in our
+masculine tongue. An only child, and an invalid, poor Bleuet was of
+course a spoiled child, his mother's darling and pet. His wishes, his
+sick-child's caprices were her law, and she gratified them at the cost
+of many a secret privation. She seemed to know&mdash;maternal love hath often
+the faculty of second-sight&mdash;that her poor boy, though only the child of
+the humblest parentage, was destined to rise one day far above the
+station in which he was born. She attired him better than children of
+his class commonly dressed. She polished his manners as much as she
+could,&mdash;and 'twas much, for women, even of the lowest classes, have
+gentle tastes and delicacy. She could not bear to think that her darling
+should one day sit cross-legged on the paternal bench, and ply needle
+and scissors. She breathed her own aspirations into the boy's ears, and
+filled his mind with them. O mothers, ye do make us what ye please! Your
+tears and caresses are the rain and the sun that mature the seed which
+time and the accidents of life sow in our tender <a name="Page_693" id="Page_693"></a>minds! She filled him
+with pride,&mdash;which is a cardinal virtue, let theologians say what they
+will,&mdash;and kept him aloof from the little blackguards who toss and
+tumble over the curb-stones, losing that dignity which is man's
+chastity, and removing one barrier between them and crime.</p>
+
+<p>He was, even in his earlier years, exquisitely sensitive. La Blache, the
+famous singer, occupied a suite of rooms in the house of which his
+father was porter. One day La Blache's daughter, (now Madame Thalberg,)
+who was confined to her rooms by a fall which had dislocated her ankle,
+sent for the sprightly lad. He was in love with her, just as boys will
+adore a pretty face without counting years or differences of position
+(at that happy age a statesman and a stage-driver seem equal,&mdash;if,
+indeed, the latter does not appear to occupy the more enviable position
+in life). He dressed himself with all the elegance he could command, and
+obeyed Mademoiselle La Blache's summons, building all sorts of castles
+in the air as he arranged his toilet and while he was climbing the
+staircase. His affected airs were so laughable, she told him in a
+mock-heroic manner what she wished of him, and probably with something
+of that paternal talent which had shaken so many opera-houses with
+applause:&mdash;"I have sent for you to teach me the song I hear you sing
+every day." This downfall from his castles in the air, and her manner,
+brought blushes to his cheek and flames to his eyes, which amused her
+all the more; so she went on,&mdash;"Oh, don't be afraid! I will pay&mdash;two
+ginger-cakes a lesson." So sensitive was the child's nature, this
+innocent pleasantry wounded him with such pain, that he fell on the
+carpet sobbing and with nerves all jangled. How the pangs poverty
+attracts must have wrung him!&mdash;But let us not anticipate the course of
+events.</p>
+
+<p>As he advanced in life he outgrew his disease, and became a
+chubby-cheeked boy, health's own picture. He was the favorite of the
+neighborhood, his mother's pride, and the source of many a heartache to
+her; for, as he grew towards manhood, his father insisted every day more
+strenuously that he should learn some trade. His poor mother obstinately
+opposed this scheme. Many were the boisterous quarrels on this subject
+the boy witnessed, sobbing between his parents; for his father was a
+rough, ill-bred mountaineer, who had reached Paris through the barrack
+and the battle-field, neither of which tends to smooth the asperities of
+character. The woman was tenacious; for what will not a mother's heart
+brave? what will it not endure? Those natures which are gentle as water
+are yet deep and changeless as the ocean. Of course the wife carried her
+point. Who can resist a mother struggling for her son? The boy was
+placed as copying-clerk in an attorney's office. All the world over, the
+law is the highway to literature. The lad, however, was uneducated; he
+wrote well, and this was enough to enable him to copy the law-papers of
+the office, but he was ignorant of the first elements of grammar, and
+his language, although far better than that of the lads of his class in
+life, was shocking to polite ears. It could not well be otherwise, as
+his only school was a petty public primary school, and he was but
+fourteen years old when his father ordered him to begin to earn his
+daily bread. But he was not only endowed with a literary instinct, he
+had, too, that obstinate perseverance which would, as one of his friends
+said of him, "have enabled him to learn to read by looking at the signs
+in the streets, and to cipher by glancing at the numbers on the houses."</p>
+
+<p>Murger always attributed a great deal of influence upon his life to the
+accident which had given his father artists for tenants. Not only La
+Blache, but Garcia and his incomparable daughters, Marie Malibran and
+Pauline Viardot, and, after they left, Baroilhet, the opera-singer, had
+rooms in the house. The handsome boy was constantly with them, and this
+early and long and intimate association with Art gave him elegance and
+grace and vivacity. The seeds sown during such intercourse may for years
+lie <a name="Page_694" id="Page_694"></a>buried beneath the cares and thoughts of a laborious life, and yet
+grow and bring forth fruit as soon as a more propitious atmosphere
+environs them. Comrades in the office where he wrote likewise had
+influence upon his career. He found among the clerks two brothers,
+Pierre and Emile Bisson, gentlemen who have now attained reputation by
+their admirable photographic landscapes, especially of Alpine scenery.
+They were then as poor and as uneducated as Henry Murger. They lived in
+a house inhabited by several painters, from whom they caught a love and
+some knowledge of Art. They communicated the contagion to their new
+comrade, and the moment office-hours were over all three hastened, as
+fast as they could go, to the nearest public drawing-school. All three
+aspired to the fame of Rubens and of Paul Veronese. Murger had no talent
+for painting. One day, after he had been guilty of some pictures which
+are said to be&mdash;for they are still in existence&mdash;enough to make the hair
+of a connoisseur of painting stand on end, Pierre Bisson said to him,
+"Throw away the pencil, Murger; you will never make a painter." Murger
+accepted the decree without appeal. He felt that painting was not <i>in
+him</i>.<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> He took up the pen and wrote poetry. There is nothing equal to
+the foolhardiness of youth. It grapples with the most difficult
+subjects, and <i>knows</i> it can master them. As all of Murger's friends
+were painters, except his father and mother, and they were illiterate,
+his insane prose seemed as fine poetry as was ever written, because it
+turned somersets on feet. Nobody noticed whether it was on five or six
+or fifteen feet. His father, however, had heard what a dangerous disease
+of the purse poetry was, and forbade his son from trying to catch
+it,&mdash;vowing, that, if he heard again of its continued pursuit, he would
+immediately make a tailor of him. Of course, the threat did not deter
+Murger from the chase; but instead of pursuing it openly, he pursued it
+by stealth. The sportsman became a poacher. Pierre and &Eacute;mile Bisson
+quitted the attorney's office and opened a studio: they were painters
+now. Henry Murger managed to filch an hour every day from the time
+allotted to the errands of the office about Paris to spend in the studio
+of his friends, where he would write his poetry and hide his
+manuscripts. Here he made the acquaintance of artists and literary young
+men as unfledged as himself, but who possessed the advantages of a
+regular scholastic education. They taught him the rules of prosody and
+the exercises proper to overcome the mere mechanical difficulties of
+versification. This society made Murger more than ever ambitious; a
+secret instinct told him that the pen was the arm with which he would
+win fame and fortune. He determined to abandon the law-office.</p>
+
+<p>His father was furious enough at this resolution, and more than one
+painful scene took place between them. The boy was within an ace of
+bring kicked out of doors, when his troubles reached the ears of a
+literary tenant of the house: this was no other than Monsieur de Jouy, a
+member of the French Academy, and quite famous in his day for "L'Ermite
+de la Chauss&eacute;e d'Antin," and a tragedy, "Sylla," which Talma's genius
+threw such beams upon as made it radiant, and for an imprisonment for
+political offences, a condiment without which French reputations seem to
+lack savor. Heaven knows what would have become of the poor boy but for
+this intervention, as his mother was dead and he was all friendless.
+Monsieur de Jouy procured him the place of private secretary to Count
+Tolstoy, a Russian nobleman established by the Czar in Paris as his
+political correspondent. The salary given was meagre enough, but in this
+world all things have a relative as well as an intrinsic value, and
+eight dollars a <a name="Page_695" id="Page_695"></a>month seemed to the poor lad, who had never yet earned
+a cent, a fragment of El Dorado or of Peru. It gave him independence.
+His contemporaries have described him as gay, free, easy, and happy at
+this period. He had ceased to be dependent upon anybody; he lived upon
+his own earnings; he was in the full bloom of health and youth; and the
+horizon before him, even though clouded, wore all the colors of the
+rainbow. His father gave him a garret in the house, and continued to
+allow him a seat at the table, but he made young Murger give him six of
+the eight dollars earned. The rest of his salary was spent among the
+boxes of books which line the parapet of the Paris quays,&mdash;a sort of
+literary Morgue or dead-house, where the still-born and deceased
+children of the press are exhibited, to challenge the pity of
+passers-by, and so escape the corner grocer and the neighboring
+trunk-maker. Here Murger purchased all the volumes of new poems he could
+discover. When his friends jested him upon his wasteful extravagance in
+buying verse good for nothing but to cheapen the value of the paper on
+which it was printed, he replied, that a poet should keep himself
+informed of the progress of Art. He has since confessed that his object
+in buying this trash was simply to compare his efforts with those which
+had been deemed worthy to see print. His ambition then was to be pale,
+consumptive, to drink the dregs of poverty's poisoned chalice, and to
+toss on a hospital-bed. He found it hard work to gratify these desires.
+His plethoric person, his rubicund cheeks and high health, gave him much
+more the appearance of a jovial monk of Bolton Abbey than of a Werther
+or a Chatterton or a Lara. But as he was determined to look the poet of
+the Byron school, for a fortnight he followed a regimen "which would
+have given phthisis to Mount Atlas"; he studied in some medical treatise
+the symptoms of the consumption, and, after wading through thirty miles
+of the mud and mire to be found in the environs of Paris, drenched to
+the skin by an autumnal rain, he went to the hospital and was admitted.
+He was delighted. He instantly wrote an ode to "Hallowed Misery," dated
+from the "House of Woe," sent it off to the Atlantic Monthly of Paris,
+and lay in bed dreaming he should find himself famous next morning, and
+receive the visits of all Paris, from Monsieur Guizot, then
+Prime-Minister, to the most callous poetaster of the Latin Quarter, and
+be besieged by every publisher, armed with bags full of money. He woke
+the next morning to find himself in perfect health, and to hear the
+physician order him to clear out of the hospital. He had no news from
+the magazine nor from Monsieur Guizot.</p>
+
+<p>'Tis ill playing with edge-tools! The hospital is not to be coquetted
+with. There is no such thing as romping with misery. One might as well
+amuse himself toying with the rattlesnake or playing with fluoric acid.
+Wait a moment, and the hospital will reappear in the story of his life,
+sombre, pitiless, fatal, as it is in reality. A little patience, and
+misery will come, in its gaunt, wolf-like shape, to harry and to harass.
+Play not with fire!</p>
+
+<p>Distress soon came. The young poet fell into bad company. He came home
+late one night. His father scolded: 'tis a porter's infirmity to fret at
+late-comers. Another night he came home later. The scolding became a
+philippic. Again he did not come home at all. His father ordered him
+never more to darken his doors. Murger took him at his word, and went to
+share a friend's bed in another garret. The friend was little better off
+in worldly goods; he lived in a chamber for which he paid twenty dollars
+a year, and which was furnished "with one of those lots of furniture
+which are the terror of landlords, especially when quarter-day comes."
+Murger now began to know what it was to be poor, to go to bed without
+having tasted a morsel of food the whole day, to be dressed ludicrously
+shabby. He had never before known these horrors of poverty; for under
+his father's roof the meals, though <a name="Page_696" id="Page_696"></a>humble, were always regularly
+served, and quarter-day never came. As eight dollars,&mdash;less by a great
+deal than an ordinary servant earns by sweeping rooms and washing
+dishes, besides being fed and lodged,&mdash;which Count Tolstoy gave his
+secretary, was not enough to enable Murger to live, he tried to add
+something to his income by his pen. He wrote petty tales for children's
+magazines, and exerted himself to gain admission into other and more
+profitable periodicals, but for a long time without success. Many and
+many a sheet must be blotted before the apprentice-writer can merit even
+the lowest honors of print: can it be called an honor to see printed
+lines forgotten before the book is closed? Yet even this dubious honor
+cannot be won until after days and nights have been given to literary
+composition.</p>
+
+<p>Murger was for some time uncertain what course to adopt. His father sent
+him word that the best thing he could do would be to get the place of
+body-servant to some gentleman or of waiter in some <i>caf&eacute;</i>! He himself
+half determined, in his hours of depression, when despair was his only
+hope, to ship as a sailor on board some man-of-war. He would at other
+times return to his first love, and vow he would be a painter; then
+music would solicit him; medicine next, and then surgery would tangle
+his eyes. These excursions, which commonly lasted three months each,
+were not fruitless; they increased his stock of information, and
+supplied him with some of his most striking images. He became joyous
+about this period, and his hilarity <i>broke out</i> all at once. One night
+Count Tolstoy had ordered Murger to color several thousand strategic
+maps, and, after he had postponed the labor repeatedly, he asked several
+of his friends to aid him. They sat up all night. He suddenly became
+very gay, and told story after story in a most vivid and humorous
+manner. His friends roared with laughter, and one of them begged him to
+abandon poetry and become a prose-writer, predicting for him a most
+brilliant career. But poetry has its peculiar fascinations, and is not
+relinquished without painful throes. Murger refused to cease versifying.</p>
+
+<p>He had pernicious habits of labor. He never rose until three o'clock in
+the afternoon, and never began to write until after the lamp was
+lighted. He wrote until daybreak. If sleep came, if inspiration lagged,
+he would resort to coffee, and drink it in enormous quantities. One may
+turn night into day without great danger, upon condition of leading a
+temperate and regular life; for Nature has wonderful power of adapting
+herself to all circumstances, upon condition that irregularity itself he
+regular in its irregularity. He fell into this habit from poverty. He
+was too poor to buy fuel and comfortable clothes, so he lay in bed to
+keep warm; he worked in bed,&mdash;reading, writing, correcting, buried under
+the comfortable bedclothes. He would sometimes drink "as many as six
+ounces of coffee." "I am literally killing myself," he said. "You must
+care me of drinking coffee; I reckon upon you." His room-mate suggested
+to him that they should close the windows, draw the curtains, and light
+the lamp in the daytime, to deceive habit by counterfeiting night. They
+made the attempt in vain. The roar of a great city penetrates through
+wall and curtain. They could not work. Inspiration ceased to flow.
+Murger returned to his protracted vigils, and to the stimulus of coffee,
+and never more attempted to break away from them. This sort of life, his
+frequent privations, his innumerable disappointments, drove him in good
+earnest to the hospital. He announces it in this way to a friend:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Hospital Saint Louis, 23 May, 1842</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"MY DEAR FRIEND,&mdash;Here I am again at the hospital. Two days after
+I sent you my last letter I woke up feeling as if my whole body
+were on fire. I felt as if I were enveloped in flames. I was
+literally burning. I lighted my candle, and was alarmed by the
+spectacle my poor self presented. I was red from my <a name="Page_697" id="Page_697"></a>feet to my
+head,&mdash;as red as a boiled lobster, neither more nor less. So I
+went to the hospital this morning, as early as I could go, and
+here I am,&mdash;Henry IV.'s ward, bed No. 10. The doctors were
+astonished at my case; they say it is <i>purpura</i>. I should say it
+was! The purple of the Roman emperors was not, I am very sure, as
+purple as my envelope.... My disease is now in a stage of
+reaction, and the doctors do not know what to do, I cannot walk
+thirty paces without stumbling. I have thousands of trumpets
+blowing flourishes in my ears. I have been bled, re-bled,
+mustard-plastered, all in vain. I have swallowed down my poor
+throat more arsenic than any three melodramatists of the
+Boulevards. I do not know how all this is going to end. The
+physician tells me that he will cure me, but that it will take
+time. To-day they are going to put all sorts of things on my body,
+and among them leeches to remove my giddiness.... I am greatly
+fatigued by my life here, and I pass some; very gloomy days,&mdash;and
+they are the gloomier, because there is not a single day but I see
+in the ward next to mine men die thick as flies. A hospital may be
+very poetical, but it is, too, a sad, sad place."</p></div>
+
+<p>Many and many a time afterwards did he return to the hospital, all sad
+as it was. His garret was sadder in <i>purpura's</i> hour. Want had taken up
+its abode with him. He wanted bread often. His clothes went and came
+with painful regularity from his back to the pawnbroker's. His father
+refused to do anything for him. "He saw me without bread to put in my
+mouth, and offered me not a crumb, although he had money belonging to me
+in his hands. He saw me in boots full of holes, and gave me to
+understand that I was not to come to see him in such plight." Such was
+the poor fellow's distress, that he was almost glad when the <i>purpura</i>,
+with its intolerable pains, returned, that he might crawl to the
+hospital, where he could say, that, "bad as the hospital-fare is, it is
+at least certain, and is, after all, ten times better than that I am
+able to earn. I can eat as many as two or three plates of soup, but then
+I am obliged to change my costume to do so, for it is only by cheating
+that one can get it." But all the time he was in the hospital he was
+tormented by the fear that he would lose during his absence his wretched
+place as Count Tolstoy's secretary, and which, wretched as it was,
+nevertheless was something,&mdash;was as a plank in the great ocean to one
+who, it gone, saw nothing but water around him, and he no swimmer. He
+did lose the situation, because one day he stayed at home to finish a
+poem, instead of appearing at his desk. The misfortune came at the worst
+possible time. It came when he owed two quarters' rent, fifteen dollars,
+to his landlord, and ten dollars to other people. "I am half dead of
+hunger. I am at the end of the rope. I must get a place somewhere, or
+blow my brains out." The mental anguish and physical privation brought
+back the <i>purpura</i>. He went to the hospital,&mdash;for the fifth time in
+eleven months and seven days,&mdash;all his furniture was sold for rent, and
+he knew not where he was to go when he quitted the hospital. Yet he did
+not give up in despair. "Notwithstanding all this, I declare to you, my
+dear friend," he wrote, "that, when I feel somewhat satisfied with what
+I have written, I am ready to clap my hands at life.... Everything is
+against me, and yet I shall none the less remain in the arena. The wild
+beasts may devour me: so be it!"</p>
+
+<p>After leaving the hospital, he formed the acquaintance of Monsieur Jules
+Fleury, or, as he is better known to the world of letters, Monsieur
+Champfleury,&mdash;for, with that license the French take with their names,
+so this rising novelist styles himself. This acquaintance was of great
+advantage to Henry Murger. Monsieur Champfleury was a young man of
+energy and will, who took a practical view of life, and believed that a
+pen could in good hands earn bread as well as a yardstick, and command,
+what the latter cannot hope, fame.<a name="Page_698" id="Page_698"></a> He believed that independence was
+the first duty of a literary man, and that true dignity consists in
+diligent labor rather than in indolent railing at fate and the scoffings
+of "uncomprehended" genius. Monsieur Champfleury was no poet. He
+detested poetry, and his accurate perception of the world showed him
+that poetry is a good deal like paper money, which depends for its
+current value rather upon the credit possessed by the issuer than upon
+its own intrinsic value. He pressed Murger to abandon poetry and take to
+prose. He was successful, and Murger labored to acquire bread and
+reputation by his prose-compositions. He practised his hand in writing
+vaudevilles, dramas, tales, and novels, and abandoned poetry until
+better days, when his life should have a little more silk and a little
+more gold woven into its woof. But the hours of literary apprenticeship
+even of prose-writers are long and arduous, especially to those whose
+only patrimony is their shadow in the sun. Monsieur Champfleury has
+given in one of his works an interesting picture of their life in
+common. We translate the painful narration:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"T'other evening I was sitting in my chimney-corner looking over a
+mountain of papers, notes, unfinished articles, and fine novels
+begun, but which will never have an end. I discovered amid my
+landlords' receipts for house-rent (all of which I keep with great
+care, just to prove to myself that they are really and truly paid)
+a little copy-book, which was narrow and long, like some medi&aelig;val
+piece of sculpture. I opened this little blue-backed copy-book; it
+bore the title, ACCOUNT-BOOK. How many memories were contained in
+this little copy-book! What a happy life is literary life, seen
+after a lapse of five or six years! I could not sleep for thinking
+of that little copy-book, so I rose and sat down at my table to
+discharge on these sheets all the delightful blue-backed copy-book
+memories which haunted my head. Were any stranger to pick up this
+little copy-book in the street, he would think it belonged to some
+poor, honest family. I dare say you have forgotten the little
+copy-book, although three-fourths of its manuscript is in your
+hand-writing. I am going to recall its origin to you.</p>
+
+<p>"Nine years ago we lived together, and we possessed between us
+fourteen dollars a month. Full of confidence in the future, we
+rented two rooms in the Rue de Vaugirard for sixty dollars a year.
+Youth reckons not. You spoke to the porter's wife of such a
+sumptuous set of furniture that she let the rooms to you on your
+honest face without asking references. Poor woman, what thrills of
+horror ran through her when she saw our furniture set down before
+her door! You had six plates, three of which were of porcelain, a
+Shakspeare, the works of Victor Hugo, a chest of drawers in its
+dotage, and a Phrygian cap. By some extraordinary chance, I had
+two mattresses, a hundred and fifty volumes, an arm-chair, two
+plain chairs, a table, and a skull. The idea of making a grand
+sofa belongs to you, I confess; but it was a deplorable idea. We
+sawed off the four feet of a cot-bedstead and made it rest on the
+floor; the consequence of which was, that the cot-bedstead proved
+to be utterly worthless. The porter's wife took pity upon us, and
+lent us a second cot-bedstead, which 'furnished' your chamber,
+which was likewise adorned with several dusty souvenirs you hung
+on the wall, such as a woman's glove, a velvet mask, and various
+other objects which love had hallowed.</p>
+
+<p>"The first week passed away in the most delightful manner. We
+stayed at home, we worked hard, we smoked a great deal. I have
+found among this mountain of papers a blank sheet on which is
+written,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Beatrix,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A Drama in Five Acts,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By Henry Murger,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Played at the &mdash;&mdash; Theatre on the &mdash;&mdash; day of 18&mdash;.<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><a name="Page_699" id="Page_699"></a></p>
+
+<p>This sheet was torn out of an enormous blank copy-book; for you
+were guilty of the execrable habit of using all our paper to write
+nothing else but titles of dramas; you wrote 'Played' as seriously
+as could be, just to see what effect the title-page would produce.
+Our paper disappeared too fast in this way. Luckily, when all of
+it had disappeared, you discovered, Heaven knows where or how,
+some old atlas of geography whose alternate leaves were blank,&mdash;a
+discovery which enabled us to do without the stationer.</p>
+
+<p>"Hard times began to press after the first week flew away. We had
+a long discussion, in which each hurled at the other reproaches on
+the spendthrift prodigality with which we threw away our money.
+The discussion ended in our agreeing, that, the moment the next
+instalment of our income should be received, I should keep a
+severe account of our expenses, in order that no more quarrels
+should disturb the harmony of our household, each of us taking
+care every day to examine the accounts. This is the little book I
+have found. How simple, how touching, how laconic, how full of
+souvenirs it is!</p>
+
+<p>"We were wonderfully honest on the first of every month. I read at
+the date of November 1st, 1843, 'Paid Madame Bastien forty cents
+for tobacco due.' We paid, too, the grocer, the restaurant, (I
+declare there is 'restaurant' on the book!) the coal-dealer, etc.
+The first day of this month was a merry day, I see: 'Spent at the
+<i>caf&eacute;</i> seven cents'; a piece of extravagance for which I am sure
+you must have scolded me that evening. The same day you bought
+(the sight still makes me tremble!) thirteen cents' worth of
+pipes. The second of November we bought twenty-two cents' worth of
+ribbon: this enormous quantity of ribbon was purchased to give the
+last touches to our famous sofa. Our sofa's history would fill
+volumes. It did us yeoman's service. My pallet on the floor,
+formed of one single mattress and sheets without counterpane, made
+a poor show in our 'drawing-room,' especially as a
+restaurant-keeper lived in our house, and you pretended, that, if
+we made him bring our meals up to our 'drawing-room,' he would be
+so dazzled by our splendor he could not refuse us credit. I
+demurred, that the odd appearance of my pallet had nothing capable
+of fascinating a tradesman's eye; whereupon we agreed that we
+would spread over it a piece of violet silk which came, Heaven
+knows where from; but, unfortunately, the silk was not large
+enough by one-third. After long reflection we thought the library
+might be turned to some account: the quarto volumes of Shakspeare,
+thrown with cunning negligence on the pallet, hid the narrowness
+of the silk, and concealed the sheets from every eye. We managed
+in this way to contrive a sofa. I may add, that the keeper of the
+restaurant dedicated to the 'Guardian Angel,' who had no customers
+except hack-drivers and bricklayers, was caught by our innocent
+intrigues. On this same second of November we paid an immense sum
+of money to the laundress,&mdash;one whole dollar. I crossed the Pont
+des Arts, proud as a member of the Institute, and entered with a
+stiff upper-lip the Caf&eacute; Momus. You remember this beneficent
+establishment, which we discovered, gave half a cup of coffee for
+five cents, until bread rose, when the price went up to six cents,
+a measure which so discontented many of the frequenters that they
+carried their custom elsewhere. I passed the evening at Laurent's
+room. I must have been seized with vertigo,&mdash;for I actually lost
+ten cents at <i>&eacute;cart&eacute;</i>, ten cents which we had appropriated to the
+purchase of roasted chestnuts. Poor Laurent, who was such a
+democrat, who used to go 'at the head of the schools' to see
+B&eacute;ranger, is dead and gone now! His poems were too revolutionary
+for this world.</p>
+
+<p>"You resolved on the third of November that we would cook our own
+victuals as long as the fourteen dollars lasted; so you bought a
+soup-pot which cost fifteen cents, some thyme and some laurel:
+being a poet, you had such a marked weakness <a name="Page_700" id="Page_700"></a>for laurel, you used
+to poison all the soup with it. We laid in a supply of potatoes,
+and constantly bought tobacco, coffee, and sugar. There was
+gnashing of teeth and curses when the expenses of the fourth of
+November were written. Why did you let me go out with my pockets
+so full of money? And you went to Dagneaux's and spent five cents.
+What in the name of Heaven could you have gotten at Dagneaux's for
+five cents?<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> Good me! how expensive are the least pleasures!
+Upon pretext of going with a free-ticket to see a drama by an
+inhabitant of Belleville, I bought two omnibus-tickets, one to go
+and the other to return. Two omnibus-tickets! I was severely
+punished for this prodigality. Seventy-four cents ran away from
+me, making their escape through a hole in my pocket. How could I
+dare to return home and confront your wrath? Two omnibus-tickets
+alone would have brought a severe admonition on my head; but
+seventy-four cents with them&mdash;! If I had not begun to disarm you
+by telling you the Belleville drama, I should have been a doomed
+man. Nevertheless, the next day, without thinking of these
+terrible losses, we lent G&mdash;&mdash; money; he really seemed to look
+upon us as Messrs. Murger and Co., his bankers. I wonder by what
+insidious means this G&mdash;&mdash;contrived to captivate our confidence,
+and the only solution I can discover is the inexperience of giddy
+youth; for two days afterwards G&mdash;&mdash; was audacious enough to
+reappear and to ask for another loan. Nothing new appears on the
+pages of the book, except fifteen cents for wine: this must have
+been one of your ideas: I do not mean to say that you were ever a
+wine-bibber, but we were so accustomed to water, we drank so much
+water without getting tired of it, that this item, 'wine,' seems
+very extraordinary to me. We added up every page until the eighth
+of November, when the sum total reached eight dollars and twelve
+cents; here the additions ceased. We doubtless were averse to
+trembling at the sight of the total. The tenth of November, you
+purchased a thimble: some men have skill enough to mend their
+clothes at their leisure moments. A few days ago I paid a visit to
+a charming literary man, who writes articles full of life and wit
+for the newspapers. I opened the door so suddenly, he blushed as
+he threw a pair of pantaloons into the corner. He had a thimble on
+his finger. Ah! wretched cits, who refuse to give your daughters
+in marriage to literary men, you would be full of admiration for
+them, could you see them mending their clothes! Smoking-tobacco
+absorbed more than one-third of our money; we received too many
+friends, and then there was a celebrated artisan-poet who used to
+be brought to our rooms, and who used to bawl so many stanzas I
+would go to bed.</p>
+
+
+<p>"Monsieur Credit made his reappearance on the fourteenth of
+November. He went to the grocer, to the tobacco-shop, to the
+fuel-dealer, and was received tolerably well; he was especially
+successful with the grocer's daughter when he appeared in your
+likeness. Did Monsieur Credit die on the seventeenth of November?
+I ask, because I see on the 'credit' side of our account-book,
+'Frock-coat, sixty cents.' These sixty cents came from the
+pawnbroker's. How his clerks humiliated us! I could make a long
+and terrible history of our dealings with the pawnbroker; I shall
+make a short and simple story of it. When money failed us, you
+pointed out to me an old cashmere shawl which we used as a
+table-cover. I told you, 'They will give us nothing on that.' You
+replied, 'Oh, yes, they will, if we add pantaloons and waistcoats
+to it.' I added pantaloons and waistcoats to it, and you took the
+bundle and started for the den in Place de la Croix Rouge. You
+soon came back with the huge package, and you were sad enough as
+you said, 'They are disagreeable <i>yonder</i>; try in the Rue de
+Cond&eacute;; the clerks, who are accustomed to deal with students, are
+not so hard-hearted <a name="Page_701" id="Page_701"></a>as they are in the Place de la Croix Rouge.'
+I went to the Rue de Cond&eacute;. The two pair of pantaloons, the famous
+shawl, and the waistcoats were closely examined; even their
+pockets were searched. 'We cannot lend anything on that,' said the
+pawnbroker's clerk, disdainfully pushing the things away from him.
+You had the excellent habit of never despairing. You said, 'We
+must wait until this evening; at night all clothes are new; and to
+take every precaution, I shall go to the pawnbroker's shop in the
+Rue du Fouare, where all the poor go; as they are accustomed there
+to see nothing pledged but rags and tatters, our clothes will
+glitter like barbaric pearl and gold.' Alas! the pawnbroker in the
+Rue du Fouare was as cruel as his brethren. So the next morning in
+sheer despair I went to pledge my only frock-coat, and I did this
+to lend half the sum to that incessant borrower, G&mdash;&mdash;. Lastly, on
+the nineteenth of November, we sold some books. Fortune smiled on
+us; we had a chicken-soup with a superabundance of laurel. Do you
+remember an excellent shopkeeper of the Rue du Faubourg Saint
+Jacques, near the city-gate, who, we were told, not only sold
+thread, but kept a circulating library? What a circulating library
+it was! Plays, three odd volumes of Anne Radcliffe's novels,&mdash;and
+if the old lady had never made our acquaintance, the inhabitants
+of the Faubourg Saint Jacques would never have known of the
+existence of 'Letters upon Mythology' and 'De Profundis,' two
+books I was heartless enough to sell, notwithstanding all their
+titles to my respect. The authors were born in the same
+neighborhood which gave me birth: one is Desmoustiers, the other
+Alfred Mousse. Maybe Ars&egrave;ne Houssaye would not be pleased, were I
+to remind him of one of the <i>crimes</i> of his youth, where one sees
+for a frontispiece skeletons&mdash;'twas the heyday of the Romantic
+School&mdash;playing tenpins with skulls for balls! The sale of 'De
+Profundis' enabled us to visit Caf&eacute; Tabourey that evening. You
+sold soon afterwards eighty cents' worth of books. Allow me to
+record that they came from your library; my library remained
+constantly upon the shelves; notwithstanding all your appeals, I
+never sold any books, except the lamentable history of Alfred
+Mousse. Monsieur Credit contrived to go to the tradesmen's with
+imperturbable coolness; he went everywhere until the first of
+December, when he paid every cent of debt. I have but one regret,
+and this is, that the little account-book suddenly ceases after a
+month; it contains only the month of November. This is not enough!
+Had I continued it, Its pages would have been so many mementos to
+recall my past life to me."</p></div>
+
+<p>Monsieur Champfleury introduced Henry Murger to Monsieur Ars&egrave;ne
+Houssaye, who was then chief editor of "L'Artiste," and it happened
+oddly enough that Murger wrote nothing but poetry for this journal.
+Monsieur Houssaye took a great fancy to Murger, and persuaded him, for
+the sake of "effect" on the title-pages of books and on the backs of
+magazines, to change Henri to Henry, and give Murger a German
+physiognomy by writing it M&uuml;rger. As Frenchmen treat their names with as
+much freedom as we use towards old gloves, Murger instantly adopted
+Monsieur Houssaye's suggestion, and clung as long as he lived to the new
+orthography of his name. He began to find it less difficult to procure
+each day his daily bread, but still the gaunt wolf, Poverty, continued
+to glare on him. "Our existence," he said, "is like a ballad which has
+several couplets; sometimes all goes well, at other times all goes
+badly, then worse, next worst, and so on; but the burden never changes;
+'tis always the same,&mdash;Misery! Misery! Misery!" One day he became so
+absolutely and hopelessly poor, that he was undecided whether to enlist
+as a sailor or take a clerk's place in the Messrs. de Rothschilds'
+banking-house. He actually did make application to Madame de Rothschild.
+Here is the letter in which he records this application:&mdash;</p><p><a name="Page_702" id="Page_702"></a></p>
+
+<p>"<i>15th August, 1844.</i></p>
+
+<p>"I am delighted to be at last able to write you without being obliged to
+describe wretchedness. Ill-fortune seems to begin to tire of pursuing
+me, and good-fortune appears about to make advances to me. Madame
+Rothschild, to whom I wrote begging her to get her husband to give me a
+situation, informed her correspondent of it, and told him to send for
+and talk with me. I could not obtain a place, but I was offered ten
+dollars rather delicately, and I took it. As soon as I received it, I
+went as fast as I could to put myself in condition to be able to go out
+in broad daylight."</p>
+
+<p>We scarcely know which is the saddest to see: Henry Murger accepting ten
+dollars from Madame de Rothschild's generous privy purse,&mdash;for it is
+alms, soften it as you may,&mdash;or to observe the happiness this paltry sum
+gives him. How deeply he must have been steeped in poverty!</p>
+
+<p>But now the very worst was over. In 1848 he sent a contribution to "Le
+Corsaire," a petty newspaper of odds and ends, of literature and of
+gossip. The contribution was published. He became attached to the paper.
+In 1849 he began the publication in "Le Corsaire" of the story which was
+to make him famous, "La Vie de Boh&ecirc;me," which was, like all his works,
+something in the nature of an autobiographical sketch. Its wit, its
+sprightly style, its odd images, its odd scenes, its strange mixture of
+gayety and sadness, attracted attention immediately. But who pays
+attention to newspaper-articles? However brilliant and profound they may
+be, they are forgotten quite as soon as read. The best newspaper-writer
+on his most successful day can only hope to be remembered from one
+morning to another; if he commands attention for so long a period, his
+utmost ambition should consider itself satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until Murger had rescued his book from the columns of the
+newspaper that he obtained reputation. He was indebted to Monsieur Jules
+Janin, the eminent theatrical reporter of the "Journal des D&eacute;bats," for
+great assistance at this critical hour of his life. One morning Henry
+Murger entered Monsieur Jules Janin's study, carrying under his arm an
+immense bundle of old newspapers, secured by a piece of old twine. He
+asked Monsieur Jules Janin to read the story contained in the old
+newspapers, and to advise him if it was worth republication, and what
+form of publication was best suited to it. As soon as Murger retired,
+Monsieur Jules Janin took up the newspapers. Few bibliopoles in Paris
+are more delicate than Monsieur Janin; it is positive pain to him to
+peruse any volume, unless the margin be broad, the type excellent, the
+printing executed by a famous printer, and the binding redolent of the
+rich perfume of Russian leather. These newspapers were torn and
+tattered, stained with wine and coffee and tobacco. They were not so
+much as in consecutive order. Conceive the irritation they must have
+produced on Monsieur Janin! But when he once got fairly into the story
+he forgot all his delicacy, and when Henry Murger returned, two days
+afterwards, he said to him,&mdash;"Sir, go home and write us a comedy with
+Rodolphe and Schaunard and Nini and Musette.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> It shall be played as
+soon as you have written it; in four-and-twenty hours it will be
+celebrated, and the dramatic reporters will see to the rest." The
+magnificent promises to the poverty-racked man fevered him almost to
+madness; he took up the packet, (which Monsieur Janin had elegantly
+bound with a rose-colored ribbon,) and off he went, without even
+thinking to thank Monsieur Janin for his kindness, or to close the door.
+Murger carried his story to a friend, Theodore Barri&egrave;re, (since famous
+as a play-writer,) and in three months' time the piece was ready for the
+stage, was soon brought out at the "Vari&eacute;t&eacute;s," and the names of Murger
+and Barri&egrave;re were on every lip in Paris.</p>
+<p><a name="Page_703" id="Page_703"></a></p>
+<p>We have nothing like the French stage in the suddenness and
+extensiveness of the popularity it gives men. We have no means by which
+a gifted man can suddenly acquire universal fame,&mdash;can "go to bed
+unknown and wake famous." The most brilliant speech at the bar is heard
+within a narrow horizon. The most brilliant novel is slow in making its
+way; and before its author is famous beyond the shadow of the
+publisher's house, a later new novel pales the lustre of the rising
+star. The French stage occupies the position our Congress once held,
+when its halls were adorned by the great men, the Clays, Calhouns,
+Websters, of our fathers' days, or the Supreme Court occupied, when
+Marshall sat in the chief seat on its bench, and William Pinckney
+brought to its bar his elaborate eloquence, and William Wirt his ornate
+and touching oratory. The stage is to France what Parliament is to
+England. It is more: it is the mirror and the fool; it glasses society's
+form and pressure; it criticizes folly. Murger's success on the stage
+opened every door of publicity to him. His name was current, it had a
+known market-value. The success of the piece assured the success of the
+book. The "Revue des Deux Mondes" begged Murger to write for its pages.
+Murger's fortune seemed assured.</p>
+
+<p>There was but one croak heard in all the applause. It came from Murger's
+father. He could not believe his eyes and his ears, when they avouched
+to him that his son's name and praises filled every paper and every
+mouth. It utterly confounded him. The day of the second performance of
+the piece Murger went to see his father.</p>
+
+<p>"If you would like to see my piece again to-day, you may take these
+tickets."</p>
+
+<p>His father replied,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Your piece? What! you don't mean to say that they are still playing
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>He could not conceive it possible that his "vagabond" son should
+interest anybody's attention.</p>
+
+<p>The very first use Murger made of his increased income was to fly Paris
+and to seek the country,&mdash;that rural life which Frenchmen abhor.
+Marlotte, a little village in the Forest of Fontainebleau, became his
+home; there he spent eight months of every year. Too poor, at first, to
+rent a cottage for himself, he lodged at the miserable village-inn,
+which, with its eccentric drunken landlord, he has sketched in one of
+his novels; and when fortune proved less unkind to him, he took a
+cottage which lay between the highway and the forest, and there the
+first happy years of his life were spent. They were few, and they were
+checkered. His chief petty annoyance was his want of skill as a
+sportsman. He could never bring down game with his gun, and he was
+passionately fond of shooting. On taking up his abode in the country,
+the first thing he had made was a full hunting-suit in the most approved
+fashion, and this costume he would wear upon all occasions, even when he
+came up to Paris. He never attained any nearer approximation to a
+sportsman's character. One day he went out shooting with a friend. A
+flock of partridges rose at their feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Fire, Murger! fire!" exclaimed his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, great heavens, man, I can't shoot so! Wait until they <i>light</i> on
+yon fence, and then I'll take a crack at them."</p>
+
+<p>He could no better shoot at stationary objects, however, than at game on
+the wing. Hard by his cottage a hare had burrowed in a potato-field.
+Every morning and every evening Murger fired at the hare, but with such
+little effect, that the hare soon took no notice either of Murger or his
+gun, and gambolled before them both as if they were simply a scarecrow.
+Murger bagged but one piece of game in the whole course of his life, and
+the way this was done happened in this wise. One day he was asleep at
+the foot of a tree in the Forest of Fontainebleau,&mdash;his gun by his side.
+He was suddenly awakened by the barking of a dog which he knew belonged
+to the most adroit poacher that levied illicit tribute <a name="Page_704" id="Page_704"></a>on the imperial
+domain. The dog continued to bark and to look steadily up into the tree.
+Murger followed the dog's eyes, but could discover nothing. The poacher
+ran up, saying,&mdash;"Quick, Monsieur Murger! quick! Give me your gun. Don't
+you see it?"</p>
+
+<p>Murger replied,&mdash;"See it? See what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, a pheasant! a splendid cock! There he is on the top limb!"</p>
+
+<p>The poacher aimed and fired; the pheasant fell at Murger's feet. "Take
+the bird and put it in your game-bag, Monsieur Murger, and tell
+everybody you killed it."</p>
+
+<p>Murger gratefully accepted the present; and this was the first and only
+time that Murger ever bagged a bird.</p>
+
+<p>But the cloud which darkened his sky now was the cloud which had lowered
+on all his life,&mdash;poverty. He was always fevered by the care and anxiety
+of procuring money. Life is expensive to a man occupying such a position
+as Murger filled, and French authors are ill paid. A French publisher
+thinks he has done wonders, if he sells all the copies of an edition of
+three thousand volumes; and if any work reaches a sale of sixteen or
+seventeen thousand volumes, the publisher is ready to cry, "Miracle!"
+Further, men who lead intellectual lives are almost necessarily
+extravagant of money. They know not its value. They know, indeed, that
+ten mills make one cent, and that ten cents make one dime, and that ten
+dimes make one dollar; but they are ignorant of the practical value of
+these denominations of the great medium of exchange. They cannot "jew,"
+and know not that the slight percentage they would take off the price
+asked is a prize worth contending for. Again, the physical exhaustion or
+reaction which almost invariably follows mental exertion requires
+stimulants of some kind or other to remove the pain&mdash;it is an acute
+pain&mdash;which reaction brings upon the whole system. These stimulants,
+whether they be good dinners, or brilliant company, or generous wines,
+or parties of pleasure, are always costly. Besides, life in Paris is
+such an expensive mode of existence, the simplest pleasures there are so
+very costly, and there are so many microscopic issues through which
+money pours away in that undomestic life, in that career passed almost
+continually in public, that one must have a considerable fortune, or
+lead an extremely retired life. A fashionable author, whose books are in
+every book-shop window, and whose plays are posted for performance on
+every wall, cannot lead a secluded life; and all the circumstances we
+have hinted at conspire to make his life expensive. In vain Murger fled
+the great city. It pursued him even in the country. Admirers and
+parasites sought him out even in his retreat, and forced their way to
+his table. There is another reason for Murger's life-long poverty: he
+worked slowly, and this natural difficulty of intellectual travail was
+increased by his exquisite taste and desire of perfection. The novel was
+written and re-written time and again. The plot was changed; the
+characters were altered; each phrase was polished and repolished. Where
+ordinary writers threw off half a dozen volumes, Murger found it hard to
+fit a single volume for the press. Ordinary writers grew rich in writing
+speedily forgotten novels; he continued poor in writing novels which
+will live for many years. Then, Murger's vein of talent made him work
+for theatres which gave more reputation than ready money. He was too
+delicate a writer to construct those profitable dramas which run a
+hundred or a hundred and fifty nights and place ten or twenty thousand
+dollars in the writer's purse. His original poverty kept him poor. He
+could not afford to wait until the seed he had sown had grown and
+ripened for the sickle; so he fell into the hands of usurers, who
+purchased the crop while it was yet green, and made the harvest yield
+them profits of fifty or seventy-five per centum.</p>
+
+<p>His distress during the last years of his life was as great as the
+distress of his youth. His published letters tell a sorrowful <a name="Page_705" id="Page_705"></a>tale.
+They are filled with apprehensions of notes maturing only to be
+protested, or complaints of inability to go up to Paris one day because
+he has not a shirt to wear, another day because he cannot procure the
+seventy-five cents which are the railway-fare from Fontainebleau to
+Paris. Here is one of his letters, one of the gayest of them It is
+charming, but sad:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I send you my little stock. Carry it instantly to Monsieur
+Heugel, the music-publisher in the Rue Vivienne, next door to
+Michel Levy's. Go the day afterwards to Michel Levy's for the
+answer. Read it, and if it shows that Monsieur Heugel buys my
+songs, go to him with the blank receipt, herein inclosed, which
+you will fill up as he will point out, according to the usual
+conditions. It is ten dollars a song; but as there is a poor song
+among them, and money I must have, take whatever he gives you; but
+you must pretend as if you expected ten dollars for each song.
+This money must be used to take up Saccault's note, which is due
+the fifteenth. Take the address of the holder, and pay it before
+it is protested. You will be allowed till the next day to pay it.
+Be active in this matter, and let me hear how things turn out. I
+cannot, in reason, in my present situation, take a room at a rent
+of a hundred and twenty dollars a year.<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> We have cares enough
+for the present; therefore let us not sow that seed of
+embarrassment which flowers every three months in the shape of
+quarterly rent. Do not give at the outside more than eighty
+dollars for the room, even though we be embarrassed by its
+smallness. I hope we may have means before long of being more
+delicate in our selection; but at present put a leaf to your
+patience, for the horizon is black enough to make ink withal.
+However, the little dialogue (which has been quite successful) I
+have just had with the muses has given me better spirits. I have a
+fever of working which is high enough to give me a real fever. I
+have shaken the box, and see that it is not empty. But I stood in
+need of this evidence, for in my own eyes I had fallen as low as
+the Public Funds in 1848. Return here before the money Michel Levy
+gave you is exhausted, for I cannot get any more for you. I am
+working half the day and half the night. I feel that the great
+flood-tide of 'copy' is at hand. My laundress and my pantaloons
+have both deserted me. I am obliged to use grape-vine leaves for
+my pocket-handkerchief.... There is nothing new here. The dogs are
+in good health, but they do not look fat; I am afraid they have
+fasted sometimes. Our chimney is again inhabited by a family of
+swallows; they say that is a good sign: maybe it means that we
+shall have fire all the winter long."</p></div>
+
+<p>To this letter was added a postscript which one of the dogs was supposed
+to have written:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"My dear lady,&mdash;They say here we are going to see mighty hard
+times. My master talks of suppressing my breakfast, and he wants
+to hire me to a shepherd in order that I may earn some money for a
+living. But as I have the reputation of loving mutton-chops,
+nobody will hire me to keep sheep. If you see anywhere in Paris a
+pretty diamond collar which does not cost more than
+five-and-twenty cents, bring it to</p>
+
+<p>"DOG MIRZA.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>14th March, 1855</i>."</p></div>
+
+<p>Hope dawned upon him in 1856. He was promised a pension of three hundred
+dollars from the Government out of the literary fund of the Minister of
+Public Instruction's budget. It would have been, from its regularity of
+payment, a fortune to him. It would have saved him from the anxiety of
+quarter-day when rent fell due. But the pension never came. The
+Government gave him the decoration of the Legion of Honor, which
+certainly gratified him. But money <a name="Page_706" id="Page_706"></a>for bread would have been of more
+service. When Rachel lay upon that invalid's chair which she was never
+to quit except for her coffin, she gazed one morning upon the breakfast
+of delicacies spread before her to tempt the return of absent appetite.
+After some moments of silence, she took up a piece of bread as white as
+the driven snow, and, sighing, said in that whisper which was all that
+remained to her of voice,&mdash;"Ay, me! Had the world given me a little more
+of <i>this</i>, and earlier in my life, I had not been here at
+three-and-thirty." Those early years of want which sapped Rachel's life
+undermined Murger's constitution. His rustic life repaired some of the
+damage wrought, and would probably have entirely retrieved it, had his
+life then been freer from care, less visited by privation. Had the money
+the Government and his friends lavished on his corpse been bestowed on
+him living, he had probably still been numbered among the writers
+militant of France. Some obscure parasite got the pension. He continued
+to work on still hounded by debt. "Five times a week," he wrote in 1858,
+"I dine at twelve or one o'clock at night. One thing is certain: if I am
+not forced to stop writing for three or four days, I shall fall sick."
+In 1860 we find him complaining that he is "sick in soul, and <i>maybe in
+body too</i>. I am, of a truth, fatigued, and a great deal more fatigued
+than people think me." Death's shadow was upon him. The world thought
+him in firmer health and in gayer spirits than ever. He knew better. He
+felt as the traveller feels towards the close of the day and the end of
+the journey. It was not strange that the world was deceived, for
+Murger's gayety had always been factitious. He often turned off grief
+with a smile, where other men relieve it with a tear. Sensitive natures
+shrink from letting the world see their exquisite sensibility. Besides,
+Murger's gayety was intellectual rather than physical. It consisted
+almost entirely in bright gleams of repartee. It was quickness, 'twas
+not mirth. No wonder, then, that the world was deceived; the mind
+retained its old activity amid all its fatigue; and besides, the world
+sees men only in their hours of full-dress, when the will lights up the
+leaden eyes and wreathes the drawn countenance in smiles. Tears are for
+our midnight pillow,&mdash;the hand-buried face for our solitary study.</p>
+
+<p>So when the rumor flew over Paris, Murger is sick!&mdash;Murger is
+dying!&mdash;Murger is dead! it raised the greatest surprise. Everybody
+wondered how the stalwart man they saw yesterday could be brought low so
+soon. Where was his youth, that it came not to the rescue? The reader
+can answer the question. Of a truth, the last act of the drama we have
+sketched in these pages moved rapidly to the catastrophe. He awoke in
+the middle of one night with a violent pain in the thigh, which ached as
+if a red-hot ball had passed through it. The pain momentarily increased
+in violence, and became intolerable. The nearest physician was summoned.
+After diagnosis, he declared the case too grave for action until after
+consultation. Another medical attendant was called in. After
+consultation they decided that the most eminent surgeons of Paris must
+be consulted. It was a decomposition of the whole body, attended with
+symptoms rarely observed. The princes of medical science in Paris met at
+the bedside. They all confessed that their art was impotent to
+alleviate, much less to cure this dreadful disease. Murger's hours were
+numbered. The doctors insisted upon his being transported to the
+hospital. To the hospital he went: 'twas not for the first,&mdash;'twas for
+the last time. His agonies were distressing. They wrung from him screams
+which could be heard from the fifth floor, where he lay, to the street.
+Death made his approaches like some skilful engineer against some
+impregnable fortress: fibre by fibre, vein by vein, atom by atom, was
+mastered and destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>During one of the rare intervals of freedom from torture, he turned to
+the <a name="Page_707" id="Page_707"></a>sick-nurse who kept watch by his pillow, and, after vacantly gazing
+on her buxom form and ruddy cheek, he significantly asked,&mdash;"Mammy, do
+you find this world a happy place, and life an easy burden?" The
+well-fed woman understood not the bitterness of soul which prompted this
+question. "Keep quiet, and sleep," was her reply. He fell back upon his
+pillow, murmuring, "<i>I</i> haven't! <i>I</i> haven't!" Yet he was only
+eight-and-thirty years old, and men's sorrows commonly commence later in
+life. A friend came to see him. As the physicians had forbidden him all
+conversation, he wrote on a card this explanation of his
+situation:&mdash;"Ricord and the other doctors were of opinion that I should
+come to Dubois's Hospital. I should have preferred St. Louis's Hospital.
+I feel more <i>at home</i> there. <i>Enfin</i>!..." Is there in the martyrology of
+poets any passage sadder than these lines? Just think of a man so bereft
+of home and family, so accustomed to the common cot of the hospital, so
+familiar to hospital sights and sounds and odors, that he can associate
+home with the public ward! Poor Murger!</p>
+
+<p>So lived and so died the poet of youth, and of ambitious, struggling,
+hopeful poverty. We describe not his funeral, nor the monument reared
+over his grave. Our heart fails us at sight of these sterile honors.
+They are ill-timed. What boot they, when he on whom they are bestowed is
+beyond the reach of earthly voices? The ancients crowned the live animal
+they selected as the sacrifice for their altars; it saw the garlands of
+flowers which were laid on its head, and the stately procession which
+accompanied it, and heard the music which discoursed of its happiness.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_GREAT_AIR-ENGINE" id="THE_GREAT_AIR-ENGINE"></a>THE GREAT AIR-ENGINE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There is an odd collection of houses, and a stretch of green, with half
+a dozen old elms, raspberry-bushes, and pruned oaks growing on it,
+opening out from this window where I work; this morning, they blended
+curiously with this old story that I want to tell you, helping me to
+understand it better. And the story, too, explained to me one reason why
+people always choose to look at those trees rather than the houses: at
+any trees before any houses. Because, you see, whatever grows out of
+Nature is itself, and says so: has its own especial little soul-sap, and
+leafs that out intact, borrows no trait or trick or habit from its
+neighbor. The sunshine is sunshine, and the pine-burr a pine-burr,
+obstinately, through and through. So Nature rests us. But whatever grows
+out of a man's brain is like the brain, patched, uncertain: a perverse
+streak in it somewhere, to spoil its thorough good or ill meaning.</p>
+
+<p>There is a little Grecian temple yonder, back of the evergreens, with a
+triangular stove-funnel revolving at its top; and next door a
+Dutch-built stable, with a Turk's turban for a cupola; and just beyond
+that, a <i>ch&acirc;let</i>-roof, sprouting without any provocation whatever out of
+an engine-house. I do not think they are caricatures of some characters.
+I knew a politician once, very low down in even that scale; Quilp they
+nicknamed him; the cruelest husband; quarter-dollarish in his views and
+principles, and greedy for bribes even as low as that: yet I have seen
+that man work with a rose-bush as long and tenderly as a mother with her
+baby, and his eyes glow and grow wet at the sight of a new and delicate
+plant. Near him lived a woman,&mdash;a relative of his, I believe: one <a name="Page_708" id="Page_708"></a>of
+those women who absorb so much of the world's room and air, and have a
+right to do it: a nature made up of grand, good pieces, with no mean
+bits mortared in: fresh and child-like, too, with heat or tears ready
+for any tale of wrong, or strongly spoken, true word. But strike against
+one prejudice that woman had, her religious sect-feeling, and she was
+hard and cruel as Nero. It was the stove-funnel in that temple.</p>
+
+<p>Human nature is full of such unaccountable warts and birth-marks and
+sixth fingers; and the best reason that I know of why all practical
+schemes for a perfect social system have failed is, that they are so
+perfect, so compact, that they ignore all these excrescences, these
+untied ends, in making up their whole. Yet it is a wonderful bit of
+mosaic, this Communist system: a place for every man, and every man in
+his place; "to insure to each human being the freest development of his
+faculties": there is a grand fragment of absolute truth in that, a going
+back to primal Nature, to a like life with that of sunshine and pines, a
+Utopia more Christ-like than the heaven (which Christ never taught) of
+eternal harp-playing and golden streets. But as for making it real,
+every man's life should have the integrity of meaning of that of a tree.
+A. statesman, B. seer, C. scavenger: pines, raspberries, oaks.
+Impossible, as we know. And then, a thistle at the beginning knows it is
+a thistle, and cannot be anything else, so there is the end of it; but
+when Pratt, by nature <i>n&eacute;</i> knife-grinder, asserts himself poet, what
+then? How many men know their vocation? Who is going about to tie on the
+labels? Who would you be willing should tie on yours? Then, again, there
+is your neighbor Brownson, with a yeasty brain, fermenting too fast
+through every phase of creed or party to accept a healthful "settling";
+so it is left to work itself out, and it will settle itself by-and-by,
+in a life or two it may be. You know other brains which, if you will but
+consider, prove this life to be only one stage of a many-yeared era:
+they are lying fallow from birth until death; they have powers latent in
+them, that next time, perhaps, will bear golden grain or fruit. Now they
+are resting, they lie fallow. Communism allows no time for fermentation,
+or lying fallow; God does: for brains, I mean, not souls. But what are
+we going to do with this blindness of human beings as to what they are
+fit for,&mdash;when they go, or are forced to go, stumbling along the wrong
+path all their lives? Why, the bitterest prayers that God bears are from
+men who think they have lost time in the world. The lowest matter alive,
+the sponges, <i>fungi</i>, know what they have to do, and are blessed in the
+doing, while we&mdash;Did you think the Socialist helped the matter? Men
+needed thousand years' education to make their schemes practicable; they
+ignored all this blindness, all selfishness, and overgrowth of the
+passions: no wonder these facts knobbed themselves up against their
+system, and so, in every instance it crumbled to pieces. The things are
+facts, and here; there is no use in denying that; and it is a fact, too,
+that almost every life seems a wasted failure, compared with what it
+might have been. Such hard, grimy problems there are in life! They
+weaken the eyes that look long at them: stories hard to understand, like
+that of this old machinist, Joe Starke.</p>
+
+<p>But over yonder, how cool and shady it is on that sweep of green! that
+rests one so thoroughly, in eyes and brain! The quiet shadows ebb and
+flow over the uncut grass; every hazy form or color is beyond art, true
+and beautiful, being fresh from God; there are countless purpled vines
+creeping out from the earth under that grass; the air trembles with the
+pure spring healing and light; the gray-barked old elms wrestle, and
+knot their roots underground, clutching down at the very thews and
+sinews of the earth, and overhead unfold their shivering delicate leaves
+fresh in the sunlight to catch the patter of the summer rain when it
+comes. It is sure to come. Winter and summer, spring <a name="Page_709" id="Page_709"></a>and autumn, shall
+not fail. God always stays there, in the great Fatherland of Nature. One
+knows now why Jesus went back there when these hard riddles of the world
+made his soul sorrowful even unto death, and he needed a word from Home
+to refresh him.</p>
+
+<p>Do you know the meaning to-day of the beds of rock and pregnant loam, of
+the woods, and water-courses, and live growths and colors on these
+thousand hills near us? Is it that God has room for all things in this
+Life of His? for all these problems, all Evil as it seems to us? that
+nothing in any man's life is wasted? every hunger, loss, effort, held
+underneath and above in some infinite Order, suffered to live out its
+purpose, give up its uttermost uses? If, after all, the end of science,
+of fact and fiction, of watching those raspberry-bushes growing, or of
+watching the phases of these terrible years in which we live, were only
+to give us glimpses of that eternal Order, so that we could lie down in
+it, grow out of it, like that ground-ivy in the earth and sunshine
+yonder, sure, as it is, that there is no chance nor waste in our own
+lives? It would be something to know that sentence in which all the
+world's words are ordered, and to find that the war, and the Devil, and
+even your own life's pain, had its use, and was an accord there,&mdash;would
+it not? Thinking of that, even this bit of a history of Joe Starke might
+have its meaning, the more if there should be trouble and a cold wind
+blowing in it; because any idiot can know what God means by happy lives,
+but to find His thought behind the hunger and intolerable loss that
+wring the world's heart is a harder thing to do,&mdash;a better, a great,
+healthful thing. And one may be sure that the man, be he Christian or
+Pagan, who does believe in this under Order and Love, and tries to see
+and clear his way down to it, through every day's circumstance, will
+have come very near to the real soul of good and humanity,&mdash;to the
+Christ,&mdash;before the time comes for him to rest, and stand in his lot, at
+the end of the days.</p>
+
+<p>But to our story. It was in Philadelphia the old machinist lived; he had
+been born and had grown old there; but there are only one or two days in
+his life you would care to hear about: August days, in the summer of
+'59, the culmination and end of all the years gone before for him. You
+know what a quiet place Philadelphia is? One might fancy that the first
+old Quaker, sitting down among its low, flattish hills, had left a spell
+of thoughtful reticence behind him. The hills never dare to rise into
+abrupt earnestness; the two broad, bright-faced rivers that hold it in
+lapse with a calm consciousness into the sleepy, oyster-bedded bay; even
+the accretion of human life there never has been able to utter itself in
+the myriad rebellious phases of a great city, but falls gravely into the
+drilled monotony of its streets. Brick and mortar will not yield
+themselves there to express any whim in the mind of their owner: the
+house-fronts turn the same impassive, show-hating faces on the sidewalks
+from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. Give the busiest street a moment's
+chance and it broods down into a solitary reverie, saying,&mdash;"You may
+force me into hotels and market-places, if you will, but I know the
+business of this town is to hold its tongue." Even the curiously
+beautiful women wrap themselves in the uniform of gray, silent color;
+the cast of thought of the people is critical, attentive,
+self-controlled. When a covered, leaden day shuts the sun out, and the
+meaning of the place in, hills and city and human life, one might fancy,
+utter the old answer of the woman accused of witchcraft:&mdash;"While I hold
+my thought, it is my own; when I speak it, it is my master." Out in the
+near hills the quietude deepens, loosening and falling back out of the
+rigid reserve of the city into the unconscious silence of a fresh
+Nature: no solitudes near a large town are so solitary as these. There
+is one little river in especial, that empties into the Schuylkill, which
+comes from some water-bed under the shady hills in Montgomery
+County,&mdash;some pool far underground, <a name="Page_710" id="Page_710"></a>which never in all these ages has
+heard a sound, or seen the sun, nor ever shall; therefore the water
+flowing from it carries to the upper air a deeper silence than the spell
+left by the old Quaker on the hills, or even the ghostly memory of the
+Indian tribes, who, ages long ago, hunted and slowly faded away in these
+forests on its shores.</p>
+
+<p>When they came to the New World, at a time so far gone from us that no
+dead nation even has left of it any record, they found the river flowing
+as strangely silent and pure as now, and the name they gave it,
+Wissahickon, it bears to-day. The hills are there as when they first saw
+them, wrapping themselves every year in heavier mantles of hemlocks and
+cedars; but a shaded road winds now gravely by the river-side, and along
+it the city sends out those who are tired, worn out, and need to hear
+that message of the river. No matter how dull their heads or hearts may
+be, they never fail to catch something of its meaning. So quiet it is
+there, so pure, it is like being born again, they say. So, all the time,
+in the cool autumn-mornings, in the heavy lull of noon, or with the low
+harvest-moon slanting blue and white shadows, sharp and uncanny, across
+its surface, the water flows steadily from its dark birthplace, clear,
+cheerful, bright. The hills crouch attentive on its edge, shaggy with
+shadows; from the grim rocks ferns and mosses sleep out delicate color
+unmolested, the red-bearded grass drops its seed unshaken. The
+sweetbrier trails its pink fingers through the water. They know what the
+bright little river means, as well as the mill-boy fishing by the bank:
+how He sent it near the city, just as He brought that child into the
+midst of the hackneyed, doubting old tax-gatherers and publicans long
+ago, with the same message. Such a curious calm and clearness rest in
+it, one is almost persuaded, that, in some day gone by, some sick,
+thirsty soul has in truth gone into its dewy solitude in a gray summer
+dawn, and, finding there the fabled fountain of eternal life, has left
+behind a blessing from all those stronger redeemed years to come.</p>
+
+<p>There is a narrow road which leaves the main one, and penetrates behind
+the river-hills, only to find others, lower and more heavily wooded,
+with now and then odd-shaped bits of pasture-land wedged in between
+their sides, or else low brick farm-houses set in a field of corn and
+potatoes, with a dripping pump-trough at the door. It is a thorough
+country-road, lazy, choking itself up with mud even in summer, to keep
+city-carriages out, bordering itself with slow-growing maples and banks
+of lush maiden's-hair, blood-red partridge-berries, and thistles. You
+can find dandelions growing in the very middle of it, there is so little
+travel out there.</p>
+
+<p>One August morning, in one of its quietest curves among the hills, there
+was a fat old horse, standing on it, sniffing up the cool air: pure air,
+it is there, so cool and rare that you can detect even the faint scent
+of the wild-grape blossoms or the buttercups in it in spring. The wagon
+to which the horse was fastened had no business there in the cedar-hills
+or slow-going road; it belonged to town, every inch, from hub to
+cover,&mdash;was square-built, shiningly clean, clear-lettered as
+Philadelphia itself.</p>
+
+<p>"That completes the practical whole," said Andy Fawcett, polishing a tin
+measure, and putting it on the front seat of the wagon, and then
+surveying the final effect.</p>
+
+<p>Andy was part-owner of it: the yellow letters on the sides were, "<i>A.
+Fawcett &amp; Co. Milk</i>." It was very early,&mdash;gray, soggy clouds keeping
+back the dawn,&mdash;but light enough for Andy to see that his shoes, which
+he had blacked late last night, were bright, and his waistcoat, etc.,
+"all taut."</p>
+
+<p>"I like the sailor lingo," he said, curling his moustache, and turning
+over his pink shirt-collar. "They've a loose dash about 'em. It must go
+far with the girls."</p>
+
+<p>Then he looked at the wagon again, and at a pinchbeck watch he carried.</p><p><a name="Page_711" id="Page_711"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Five. No matter how neat an' easy a fellow's dress is, it's wasted this
+time in the mornin'. Them street-car conductors hev a chance for it all
+day, dang 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>He went back to the house as softly as possible, and brought out a
+lantern, which was silver-mounted and of cut glass. He hung it carefully
+in the wagon.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no knowin' what use I may have for it,"&mdash;shaking his head, and
+rubbing it tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>Andy had owned that lantern for several years, and carried it with him
+always. "You cannot know, Jane," he used to say to the woman whom he
+worked for, "what a comfort I find in it. It"&mdash;He always stopped there,
+and she never replied, but immediately talked of something else. Their
+customers (for they kept half a dozen cows on the place, and Andy took
+the milk into town)&mdash;their customers, when they found out about the
+lantern, used to look oddly at Andy, and one or two of them had tried in
+consequence to overreach him in the bills. But no thimble-rigger had a
+keener eye for the cents than Fawcett. So their milk-speculation had
+prospered, until, this spring, they had added to their stock of cows. It
+was the only business in which Andy was partner; after he brought the
+wagon back at noon, he put on his flannel shirt, and worked as a hired
+hand for the woman; the other produce she sold herself.</p>
+
+<p>The house was low, built of lichen-covered stone, an old buttonwood-tree
+tenting it over; in the sunny back-yard you could see fat pullets and
+glossy-backed Muscovy ducks wabbling in and out through the
+lilac-bushes. Comfortable and quaint the old place looked, with no bald
+white paint about it, no unseemly trig new fences to jar against the
+ashen and green tones of color in house and woods. The gate by which you
+passed through the stone wall was made of twisted boughs; and wherever a
+tree had been cut down, the stump still stood, covered with
+crimson-leaved ivy. "I'd like things nattier," Andy used to say; "but
+it's Jane's way."</p>
+
+<p>The Quaker woman herself, as she stood in the gateway in her gray
+clothes, the hair pushed back from her sallow face, her brown, muscular
+arms bare, suited the quiet, earnest look of the place.</p>
+
+<p>"Thee'll take neighbor Wart into town, Andrew?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"More noosances?" he growled.</p>
+
+<p>"Thee'd best take her in, Andrew. It costs thee nothing," with a dry,
+quizzical smile.</p>
+
+<p>Andy's face grew redder than his shirt, as he climbed up on the
+wagon-wheel.</p>
+
+<p>"H'ist me up her basket here, then. A'n't I kind to her? I drink my
+coffee every noon at her stall, though 't's the worst in the market. If
+'twas a man had sech a bamboozlin' phiz as hers, I'd bat him over th'
+head, that 's all."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a widow, and thee's afraid of thy weak point," said Jane.</p>
+
+<p>"Take yer joke, Jane." The lad looked down on the woman's bony face
+kindly. "They don't hurt, yer words. It's different when some folks
+pokes fun at me, askin' for the lantern, an'"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What odds?" said the woman hurriedly, a quick change coming over her
+face. "They mean well. Haven't I told thee since the night thee comed
+here first for a meal's victuals, an' all the years since, how as all
+the world meaned well to thee, Andrew? Not only sun an' air an' growth,
+an' God behind; but folks, ef thee takes them by the palm of the hand
+first, an' not raps them with the knuckles, or go about seekin' to make
+summat off of each."</p>
+
+<p>Andy was in no mood for moralizing.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye'r' hard on old Wart in that last remark, I'm thinkin',"&mdash;glancing at
+the dumpy bunch of a woman seated at their breakfast-table within, her
+greedy blue eyes and snub-nose close to her plate.</p>
+
+<p>The Quaker turned away, trying to hide a smile, and began tugging at
+some dock-weeds. Her arms were tougher and stronger than Fawcett's. He
+used to say Jane was a better worker than he, though she did it by fits
+and starts, going at it sometimes as if every limb was iron <a name="Page_712" id="Page_712"></a>and was
+moved by a steam-engine, and then for days doing nothing, playing with a
+neighbor's baby, sitting by the window, humming some old tune to
+herself, in a way that even Andy thought idle and childish. For the
+rest, he had thought little about her, except that she was a strangely
+clean and silent woman, and kind, even to tenderness,&mdash;to him; but to
+the very bats in the barn, or old Wart, or any other vermin, as well.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps an artist would have found more record in the brawny frame and
+the tanned, chronicled face of the woman, as she bent over her work in
+her gray dress in the fresh morning light. Forty years of hard, healthy
+labor,&mdash;you could read that in the knotted muscles and burnt skin: and
+no lack of strength in the face, with its high Indian cheek-bones and
+firm-set jaws. But there was a curious flickering shadow of grace and
+beauty over all this coarse hardness. The eyes were large, like the
+cow's under yonder tree, slow-moving, absorbing, a soft brown in color,
+and unreasoning; if pain came to this woman, she would not struggle, nor
+try to understand it: bear it dumbly, that was all. The nervous lips
+were not heavy, but delicately, even archly cut, with dimples waiting
+the slightest moving of the mouth; you would be sure that naturally the
+laughter and fun and cheery warmth of the world lay as close to her as
+to a child. But something&mdash;some loss or uncertainty in her life&mdash;had
+given to her smile a quick, pitiful meaning, like that of a mother
+watching her baby at her breast.</p>
+
+<p>Andy climbed into the wagon, and cracked his whip impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Time!" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>Neighbor Wart scuffed down the path, wiping her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad I dropped in to breakfast, an' for company to friend Andrew
+here. Does thee frequent the prize-fighters' ring, that thee's got their
+slang so pat, lad?" as she scrambled in behind him. "Don't jerk at thy
+gallowses so fiercely. It's only my way. 'Sarah has a playful way with
+her': my father used to say that, an' it's kept by me. I don't feel a
+day older than when&mdash;Andrew!" sharply, "did thee bring thy lunch, to eat
+at my stall? The coffee'll be strong as lye this morning."</p>
+
+<p>The Quaker, Jane, had a small white basket in her hand, into which she
+was looking.</p>
+
+<p>"It's here," she said, putting it by the young man's feet. "There's ham
+an' bread an' pie,&mdash;plum,&mdash;enough for two. Thee'll not want to eat
+alone?" anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I never do," he said, gruffly. "The old buster's savage on
+pie,&mdash;gettin' fat on it, I tell you, Jane, though his jaws are like
+nut-crackers yet."</p>
+
+<p>Andy had dropped into one of the few ruts of talk in which his brain
+could jog easily along; he began, as usual, to rub the knees of his
+trousers smooth, and to turn the quid of tobacco in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Jane, oddly enough, did not remind him that it was time to go, but
+stood, not heeding him, leaning on the wheel, drawing a buckle in the
+harness tighter.</p>
+
+<p>"He! he!" giggled Andy, "if you'd seen him munch the pastry an' biscuit,
+an' our biggest cuts of tenderloin, an' then plank down his pennies to
+Mis' Wart here, thinkin' he'd paid for all! Innocent as a staggerin'
+calf, that old chap! Says I to him last week, when we were leavin' the
+market, havin' my joke, says I,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Pervisions is goin' down, Mr. Starke.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It hadn't occurred to me, Andrew,' he says, in his dazed way. 'But you
+know, doubtless,' says he, with one of his queer bows, touchin' the
+banged old felt he sticks on the back of his head.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, I know,' says I. An' I took his hand an' pulled it through my
+arm, an' we walked down to Arch. Dunno what the girls thought, seein' me
+in sech ragged company. Don't care. He's a brick, old Joe.</p>
+
+<p>"Says he, 'Ef I hed hed your practical knowledge, at your age, Andrew,
+it <a name="Page_713" id="Page_713"></a>might hev been better for the cause of science this day,' an'
+buttons up his coat.</p>
+
+<p>"'Pears as if he wasn't used to wearin' shirts, an' so hed got that
+trick o' buttonin' up. But he has a appreciatin' eye, he has,&mdash;more than
+th' common,&mdash;much more." And Andy crossed his legs, and looked down, and
+coughed in a modest, deprecating way.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," finding no one spoke, "I've found that meal, sure enough, is his
+breakfast, dinner, an' supper. I calls it luncheon to him, in a easy,
+gentlemanly sort of way. I believe I never mentioned to you," looking at
+Jane, "how I smuggled him into the pants you made, you thinkin' him a
+friend of mine? As he is."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"As with the pants, so with coat, an' shirt; likewise boots,"&mdash;checking
+off each with a rub on his trousers.</p>
+
+<p>Andy's tongue was oiled, and ran glibly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wart, on the back seat, shuffled her feet and hemmed in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Jane pulled away at the dock and mullein, in one of her old fits of
+silent musing.</p>
+
+<p>"Says I, 'See my ducks an' sack, Mr. Starke? Latest cut,' says I. 'Wish
+you knew my tailor. Man of enterprise, an' science, Sir. Knows
+mechanics, an' acoustics, an' the rest,&mdash;at his finger-ends,&mdash;well as
+his needle,' said I.</p>
+
+<p>"The old chap's watery eyes began to open at that.</p>
+
+<p>"'Heard of yer engine, by George!' I goes on.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's he think of the chances?' he says. 'Hes <i>he</i> influence?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,&mdash;but he's pants an' sech, which is more to the purpose,' I says.
+'An' without a decent suit to yer back, how kin you carry the thing
+before Congress?' says I. Put it to him strong, that way. 'How kin ye?'
+I says. 'Now look here, Mr. Starke. Ye 'r' no runner in debt, I know:
+not willin' to let other people fill yer stomach an' cover yer back,
+because you've got genius into ye, which they haven't. All right!' says
+I. 'American pluck. But ye see, facts is facts, an' yer coat, not to
+mince matters, is nothin' but rags. An' yer shirt'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"His old wizened phiz got quite red at that, an' he caught his breath a
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go on, Andrew,' says he, puttin' his hand on my arm, 'you mean well.
+<i>I</i> don't mind it. Indeed, no.' Smilin' kind, to let me see as he wasn't
+hurt. However, I dropped the shirt.</p>
+
+<p>"'It can't be otherwise,' says I, soothin', you know, 'so long's you've
+to sleep in the markets, an' so forth,' meanin' Hayes's stable. 'Now
+look o' here. My tailor, wishin' to help on the cause of science, as you
+say, wants to advance you a suit of clothes. On the engine. Of course,
+on the engine. You to pay when the thing's through. Congress or patents
+or what not. What d'ye say?' An' so"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He wears them. You told me that," said the Quaker, in a dry, mechanical
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't care to hear the ins an' outs of it? Well, there's one thing
+I'll mention," sulkily gathering up the reins; "to-morrow it'll be all
+up with the old chap, one way or t'other: him an' his engine's goin' on
+trial. Come up, Jerry!" jerking the horse's head; "ye ought to be in
+Broad Street this minute. An' if it's worsted he is, it'll be a case of
+manslaughter agin the judges. That old fellow's built his soul into them
+wheels an' pipes. An' his skin an' bone too, for that matter. There's
+little enough of 'em left, God knows! Come up, Jerry!"</p>
+
+<p>But Jane was leaning on the shafts again. Perhaps the story of the
+starving old machinist had touched her; even Andy guessed how big and
+childish the heart was in her woman's body, and how she always choked it
+down. She had taken out the basket now that held the old man's lunch,
+and was rearranging the slices of bread and ham, her fingers trembling,
+and lingering curiously over each. Her lips moved, but she said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Thy bread <i>is</i> amazin' soft-crusted," said Mrs. Wart. "Thee scalds the
+raisin', don't thee, now?"</p><p><a name="Page_714" id="Page_714"></a></p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow, thee said, Andrew?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that'll be the end of the engine, for good or bad. Ten years he's
+been at it, he says."</p>
+
+<p>"Ten years, last spring," to herself.</p>
+
+<p>She had put the basket down, and was stooping over the weeds.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I tell ye that? I forgot. Well, Mis' Wart, we'll be off. Don't
+fret, it's not late. Jerry's blooded. He'll not let the grass grow under
+his feet."</p>
+
+<p>And the milk-wagon, with its yellow letters, went trundling down the
+road, the sun beginning to shine pleasantly in on the cool tin vessels
+within, and the crisp red curls and blue eyes of the driver,&mdash;on the
+lantern, too, swinging from the roof inside, as Andy glanced back. He
+chuckled; even Mrs. Wart looked tidy and clean in the morning air; his
+lunch smelt savory in the basket. Then suddenly recalling the old
+machinist, and the history in which he was himself part actor, he
+abruptly altered his expression, drawing down his red eyebrows to a
+tragic scowl, and glaring out into the pleasant light as one who insults
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever is thee glowerin' thataway about?" snapped his companion.</p>
+
+<p>Andy took out his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>"Men see passages in human life that women suspect nothing about, Mem.
+Darn this wagon, how it jolts! There's lots of genius trampled underfoot
+by yer purse-proud tyrants, Mem."</p>
+
+<p>"Theeself, for instance. Thee'd best mind thy horse, boy."</p>
+
+<p>But she patted her basket comfortably. It is so easy to think people
+cruel and coarse who have more money than ourselves! Not for Andy,
+however. His agrarian proclivities were shallow and transient enough. So
+presently, as they bowled along the level road, he forgot Joe Starke,
+and began drumming on the foot-board and humming a tune,&mdash;touching now
+and then the stuffed breast-pocket of his coat with an inward chuckle of
+mystery. And when little Ann Mipps, at the toll-gate, came out with her
+chubby cheeks burning, and her shy eyes down, he took no notice at all.
+Nice little midge of a thing; but what did she know of the thrilling
+"Personals" of the "Ledger" and their mysterious meaning, beginning at
+the matrimonial advertisements last May? or of these letters in his
+breast-pocket from the widow of an affectionate and generous disposition
+and easy income on Callowhill, or from the confiding Estelle, whose
+maiden aunt dragonized her on Ridge Road above Parrish? When he saw them
+once, fate would speak out. Something in him was made for better things
+than this flat life: "instincts of chivalry and kindred souls,"&mdash;quoting
+Estelle's last letter. Poor Ann! he wondered if they had toffy-pullings
+at Mipps's now. He hadn't been there since April. Such a dog-trot sort
+of love-making that used to be! And Andy stopped to give a quart of milk
+to a seamstress who came out of Poole's cheap boarding-house, and who,
+by the bye, had just been imbibing the fashion-book literature on which
+he had been living lately. A sort of weak wine-whey, that gives to the
+brains of that class a perpetual tipsiness.</p>
+
+<p>Ann Mipps, meanwhile, who had been at her scrubbing since four o'clock,
+so that she should be through and have on her pink calico before the
+milk-cart rolled by, went in and cried herself sick: tasting the tears
+now and then to see how bitter they were,&mdash;what a hard time she had in
+the world; and then remembering she had not said her prayers last night,
+and so comprehending this judgment on her. For the Mippses were
+Calvinists, and pain was punishment and not a test. So Ann got up
+comforted; said her prayers twice with a will, and went out to milk. It
+might be different to-morrow. So as she had always thought how he needed
+somebody to make him happy, poor Andy! And she thought <i>she</i> understood
+him. She knew how brave and noble he was! And she always thought, if he
+could get the toll-gate, now that her father was so old, how snug that
+would be!</p><p><a name="Page_715" id="Page_715"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if that should happen, and&mdash;there wouldn't be a house in the world
+so happy, if"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And then her checks began to burn again, and the light came back in her
+eyes, until, by the time the day had grown into the hot August noon, she
+went laughing and buzzing in and out of the shady little toll-house as
+contented as any bee in the clover yonder. Andy would call again
+soon,&mdash;maybe to-night! While Andy, in the hot streets, was looking at
+every closed shutter, wondering if Estelle was behind it.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little Ann! she"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>No! not even to himself would he say, "She likes me"; but his face grew
+suddenly fiery red, and he lashed Jerry spitefully.</p>
+
+<p>A damp, sharp air was blowing up from the bay that evening, when the
+milk-wagon rumbled up the lane towards home. Only on the high tree-tops
+the sun lingered; beneath were broad sweeps of brown shadows cooling
+into night. The lindens shook out fresh perfume into the dew and quiet.
+The few half-tamed goats that browse on the hills hunted some dark
+corner under the pines to dampen out in the wet grass the remembrance of
+the scorching day. Here and there passed some laborer going home in his
+shirt-sleeves, fanning off the hot dust with his straw hat, glad of the
+chance to stop at the cart-wheel and gossip with Andy.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye 'r' late, Fawcett. What news from town?"</p>
+
+<p>So that it was nearly dark before he came under the shadow of the great
+oak by his own gate. The Quaker was walking backwards and forwards along
+the lane. Andy stopped to look at her, therefore; for she was usually so
+quiet and reticent in her motion.</p>
+
+<p>"What kept thee all day, Andrew?" catching the shaft. "Was summat wrong?
+One ill, maybe?"&mdash;her lips parched and stiff.</p>
+
+<p>"What ails ye, Jane?"&mdash;holding out his hand, as was their custom when
+they met. "No. No one ailin'; only near baked with th' heat. I was wi'
+old Joe,"&mdash;lowering his voice. "He took me home,&mdash;to his hole, that is;
+I stayed there, ye see. Well, God help us all! Come up, Jerry! D' ye
+smell yer oats? Eh! the basket ye've got? No, he'd touch none of it.
+It's not victual he's livin' on, this day. I wish 'n this matter was
+done with."</p>
+
+<p>He drove on slowly: something had sobered the Will-o'-the-wisp in Andy's
+brain, and all that was manly in him looked out, solemn and pitying. The
+woman was standing by the barn-door when he reached it, watching his
+lips for a stray word as a dog might, but not speaking. He unhitched the
+horse, put him in his stall, and pushed the wagon under cover,&mdash;then
+stopped, looking at her uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't like to talk of this, I hardly know why. But I'm goin' to
+stay with him to-morrow,&mdash;till th' trial's done with."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Andrew."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish 'n he hed a friend," he said, after a pause, breaking off bits
+of the sunken wall. "Not like me, Jane," raising his voice, and trying
+to speak carelessly. "Like himself. I'm so poor learned, I can't do
+anything for sech as them. Like him. Jane," after another silence, "I've
+seen IT."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"The engine. Jane"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I know."</p>
+
+<p>She turned sharply and walked away, the bluish light of the first
+moonbeams lighting up her face and shoulders suddenly as she went off
+down the wall. Was it that which brought out from the face of the
+middle-aged working woman such a strange meaning of latent youth,
+beauty, and passion? God only knows when the real childhood comes into a
+life, how early or late; but one might fancy this woman had waited long
+for hers, and it was coming to-night, the coarse hardness of look was
+swept away so suddenly. The great thought and hope of her life surged up
+quick, uncontrollably; her limbs shook, the big, mournful animal <a name="Page_716" id="Page_716"></a>eyes
+were wet with tears, her very horny hands worked together uncertainly
+and helpless as a child's. On the face, too, especially about the mouth,
+such a terror of pain, such a hungry wish to smile, to be tender, that I
+think a baby would have liked to put up its lips then to be kissed, and
+have hid its face on her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Summat ails her, sure," said Andy, stupidly watching her a moment or
+two, and then going in to kick off his boots and eat his supper, warm on
+the range.</p>
+
+<p>The moonlight was cold; he shut it out, and sat meditating over his
+cigar for an hour or two before the Quaker came in. When she did, he
+went to light her night-lamp for her,&mdash;for he had an odd, old-fashioned
+courtesy about him to women or the aged. He noticed, as he did it, that
+her hair had fallen from the close, thin cap, and how singularly soft
+and fine it was. She stood by the window, drawing her fingers through
+the long, damp folds, in a silly, childish way.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Andrew," as he gave it to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish, lad&mdash;Would thee say, 'God bless thee, Jane'? It's long since as
+I've heard that, an' there's no one but thee t' 'll say it."</p>
+
+<p>The boy was touched.</p>
+
+<p>"Often I thinks it, Jane,&mdash;often. Ye've been good to me these six years.
+I was nothin' but a beggar's brat when ye took me in. I mind that,
+though ye think I forget, when I'm newly rigged out sometimes. God bless
+ye! yes, I'll say it: God knows I will."</p>
+
+<p>She went out into the little passage. He heard her hesitate there a
+minute. It was a double house: the kitchen and sitting-room at one side
+of the narrow hall; at the other, Jane's chamber, and a room which she
+usually kept locked. He had heard her there at night sometimes, for he
+slept above it, and once or twice had seen the door open in the daytime,
+and looked in. It held, he saw, better furniture than the rest of the
+house: a homespun carpet of soft, grave colors, thick drab curtains, a
+bedstead, one or two bookcases, filled and locked, of which Jane made as
+little use, he was sure, as she could of the fowling-piece and patent
+fishing-rod which he saw in one corner. There were no shams, no cheap
+makeshifts in the Quaker's little house, in any part of it; but this
+room was the essence of cleanness and comfort, Andy thought. He never
+asked questions, however: some ingredient in his poor hodge-podge of a
+brain keeping him always true to this hard test of good breeding. So
+to-night, though he heard her until near eleven o'clock moving
+restlessly about in this room, he hesitated until then, before he went
+to speak to her.</p>
+
+<p>"She's surely sick," he said, with a worried look, lighting his candle.
+"Women are the Devil for nerves."</p>
+
+<p>Coming to the open door, however, he found her only busy in rubbing the
+furniture with a bit of chamois-skin. She looked up at him, her face
+very red, and the look in her face that children have when going out for
+a holiday.</p>
+
+<p>"How does thee think it looks, Andy?" her voice strangely low and rapid.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm makin' it ready, thee knows. Pull to this shutter for me, lad. A
+good many years I've been makin' it ready"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You shiver so, ye'd better go to bed, Jane."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Only the white valance is to put to the bed; I'm done
+then,"&mdash;going on silently for a while.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been so long at it,"&mdash;catching her breath. "Hard scrapin', the
+first years. We'd only a lease on the place at first. It's ours now, an'
+it's stocked, an'&mdash;Don't thee think the house is snug itself, Andrew?
+Thee sees other houses. Is't home-like lookin'? Good for rest"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, surely. What are you so anxious an' wild about, Jane? It's yer own
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not anxious,"&mdash;trying to calm herself. "Mine, is it, lad? All mine;
+nobody sharin' in it."</p><p><a name="Page_717" id="Page_717"></a></p>
+
+<p>She laughed. In all these years he had never heard her laugh before; it
+was low and full-hearted,&mdash;a live, real laugh. Somehow, all comfort,
+home, and frolic in the coming years were promised in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Mine?" folding up her duster. "Well, lad, thee says so. Daily savin' of
+the cents got it. Maybe thee thought me a hard woman?"&mdash;with an anxious
+look. "I kept all the accounts of it in that blue book I burned
+to-night. Nobody must know what it cost. No. Thee'd best go to sleep,
+lad. I've an hour's more work, I think. There'll be no time for it
+to-morrow, bein' the last day."</p>
+
+<p>He did not like to leave her so feverish and unlike herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good night, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Andrew. Mine, eh?"&mdash;her face flushing. "Thee'll know
+to-morrow. Thee thinks it looks comfortable?"&mdash;holding his hand
+anxiously. "Heartsome? Mis' Hale called the place that the other day. I
+was so glad to hear that! Well, good night. <i>I</i> think it does."</p>
+
+<p>And she went back to her work, while Andy made his way up-stairs,
+puzzled and sleepy.</p>
+
+<p>The next day was cool and grave for intemperate August. Very seldom a
+stream of fresh sunshine broke through the gray, mottling the pavements
+with uncertain lights. Summer was evidently tired of its own lusty life,
+and had a mind to put on a cowl of hodden-gray, and call itself
+November. The pale, pleasant light toned in precisely, however, to the
+meaning of Arch and Walnut Streets, where the old Quaker family-life has
+rooted itself into the city, and looks out on the passers-by in such a
+sober, cheerful fashion. There was one house, low down in Arch, that
+would have impressed you as having grown more sincerely than the others
+out of the character of its owner. There was nothing bigoted or
+purse-proud or bawbling in the habit of the man who built it; from the
+massive blocks in the foundation, to the great horse-chestnuts in front,
+and the creeping ivy over pictures and bookshelves, there was the same
+constant hint of a life liberal, solid, graceful. It had its whim of
+expression, too, in the man himself,&mdash;a small man, lean,
+stoop-shouldered, with gray hair and whiskers, wearing a clergyman's
+black suit and white cravat: his every motion was quiet, self-poised,
+intelligent; a quizzical, kind smile on the mouth, listening eyes, a
+grave forehead; a man who had heard other stories than any in your
+life,&mdash;of different range, yet who waited, helpful, for yours, knowing
+it to be something new and full of an eternal meaning. It was Dr.
+Bowdler, rector of an Episcopal church, a man of more influence out of
+the Church than any in it. He was in the breakfast-room now, trimming
+the hanging-baskets in the window, while his niece finished her coffee:
+he "usually saved his appetite for dinner, English fashion; cigars until
+then,"&mdash;poohing at all preaching of hygiene, as usual, as "stuff."</p>
+
+<p>There were several other gentlemen in the room,&mdash;waiting, apparently,
+for something,&mdash;reading the morning papers, playing with the
+Newfoundland dog that had curled himself up in the patch of sunshine by
+the window, or chatting with Miss Defourchet. None of them, she saw,
+were men of cultured leisure: one or two millionnaires, burly,
+stubby-nosed fellows, with practised eyes and Port-hinting faces: the
+class of men whose money was made thirty years back, who wear slouched
+clothes, and wield the coarser power in the States. They came out to the
+talk fit for a lady, on the open general field, in a lumbering, soggy
+way, the bank-note smell on every thought. The others, more unused to
+society, caught its habit better, she thought, belonging as they did to
+a higher order: they were practical mechanicians, and their profession
+called, she knew, for tolerably powerful and facile faculties of brain.
+The young lady, who was waiting too, though not so patiently as the
+others, amused herself in drawing them out and foiling them against each
+<a name="Page_718" id="Page_718"></a>other, with a good deal of youthful tact, and want of charity, for a
+while. She grew tired at last.</p>
+
+<p>"They are long coming, uncle," she said, rising from her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"They are here, Mary: putting up the model in the back lobby for the
+last hour. Did you think it would be brought in here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Mr. Aikens is not here,"&mdash;glancing at the timepiece
+uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"He's always slow," said one of the machinists, patting the dog's head.
+"But I will rely more on his judgment of the engine than on my own.
+He'll not risk a dollar on it, either, if there's a chance of its
+proving a failure."</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be a failure," she said, impatiently, her peremptory brown
+eyes lighting.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been tried before," said her uncle, cautiously,&mdash;"or the same
+basis of experiment,&mdash;substitution of compressed air for steam,&mdash;and it
+did not succeed. But it is the man you reason from, Mary, not the
+machine."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand anything about the machine," in a lower voice,
+addressing the man she knew to possess most influence in the party. "But
+this Starke has given his life to it, and a life worth living, too. All
+the strength of soul and body that God gave him has gone into that model
+out yonder. He has been dragging it from place to place for years, half
+starving, to get it a chance of trial"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"All which says nothing for the wheels and pulleys," dryly interrupted
+the man, with a critical look at her flushing and paling face.</p>
+
+<p>People of standfast habit were always shy of this young person, because,
+having an acute brain and generous impulses, and being a New-Englander
+by birth, she had believed herself called to be a reformer, and had
+lectured in public last winter. Her lightest remarks had, somehow, an
+oratorical twang. The man might have seen what a true, grand face hers
+would be, when time had taken off the acrid, aggressive heat which the,
+to her, novel wrongs in the world provoked in it.</p>
+
+<p>"When you see the man," interposed her uncle, "you will understand why
+Miss Defourchet espouses his cause so hotly. Nobody is proof against his
+intense, fierce belief in this thing he has made. It reminds me of the
+old cases of possession by a demon."</p>
+
+<p>The young girl looked up quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Demon? It was the spirit of God, the Bible says, that filled Bezaleel
+and that other, I forget his name, with wisdom to work in gold and
+silver and fine linen. It's the spirit of God that you call
+genius,&mdash;anything that reveals truth: in pictures, or actions,
+<i>or</i>&mdash;machines."</p>
+
+<p>Friend Turner, who was there, took her fingers in his wrinkled hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Thee feels strongly, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could see the man," in a lower voice. "Your old favorite,
+Fichte," with a smile, "says that 'thorough integrity of purpose is our
+nearest approach to the Divine idea.' There never was such integrity of
+purpose as his, I believe. Men don't often fight through hunger and want
+like death, for a pure aim. And I tell you, if fate thwarts him at this
+last chance, it is unjust and cruel."</p>
+
+<p>"Thee means <i>God</i>, thee knows?"</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, then looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"I do know."</p>
+
+<p>The old Quaker put his hand kindly on her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"He will find His own teachers for thee, dear," was all the reproof he
+gave.</p>
+
+<p>There was a noise in the hall, and a servant, opening the door, ushered
+in Andy, and behind him the machinist, Starke. A younger man than Friend
+Turner had expected to see,&mdash;about fifty, his hair prematurely white, in
+coarse, but decent brown clothes, bearing in his emaciated limbs and
+face marks of privation, it was true, but with none of the fierce
+enthusiasm of expression or nervousness he had looked for. A quiet,
+grave, preoccupied manner. While Dr. Bowdler and some of the others
+crowded about him, he stood, speaking seldom, his <a name="Page_719" id="Page_719"></a>hands clasped behind
+him and his head bent forward, the gray hair brushed straight up from
+his forehead. Miss Defourchet was disappointed a little: the best of
+women like to patronize, and she had meant to meet him as an equal,
+recognize him in this new atmosphere of refinement into which he was
+brought, set him at his ease, as she did Andy, by a few quiet words. But
+he was her equal: more master of this or any occasion than she, because
+so thoroughly unconscious, standing on something higher. She suspected,
+too, he had been used to a life as cultivated as this, long ago, by the
+low, instructed voice, the intangible simplicity of look and word
+belonging to the bred gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"They may fuss as they please about him now," chuckled Andy to himself,
+"but darn a one of 'em would have smuggled him into them clothes. Spruce
+they look, too; baggy about the knees, maybe. No, thank you, Miss; I've
+had sufficient," putting down the wine he had barely sipped,&mdash;groaning
+inwardly; but he knew what was genteel, I hope, and that comforted him
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>"The model is ready," said Starke to Dr. Bowdler. "We are keeping your
+friends waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"No. It is Aikens who is not here. You know him? If the thing satisfies
+him, he'll bring it into his factories over the Delaware, and make Johns
+push it through at Washington. He's a thorough-goer, Aikens. Then it
+will be a success. That's Johns,&mdash;that burly fellow in the frock-coat.
+You have had the model at Washington, I think you told me, Mr. Starke?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three years ago. I exhibited it before a committee. On the Capitol
+grounds it was."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, with success, certainly. They brought in a bill to introduce it
+into the public works, but it fell through. Woods brought it in. He was
+a young man: not strong, maybe. That was the reason they laughed, I
+suppose. He tried it for two or three sessions, until it got to be a
+sort of joke. I had no influence. That has been the cause of its
+failure, always."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes dropped; then he suddenly lifted his hand to his mouth, putting
+it behind him again, to turn with a smile when Miss Defourchet addressed
+him. Dr. Bowdler started.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the blood," he whispered to Friend Turner. "He bit his finger
+to the bone."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said the old Quaker. "The man is quiet from inanition and
+nervous tension. This trial means more to him than we guess. Get him out
+of this crowd."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mr. Starke," and the Doctor touched his arm, "into my library.
+There are some curious plates there which"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Andy had been gulping for courage to speak for some time.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let him go without a glass of wine," he muttered to the young
+lady. "I give you my honor I haven't got food across his lips for"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She started away from him, and made the machinist drink to the success
+of "our engine," as she called it; but he only touched the glass to his
+lips and smiled at her faintly: then left the room with her uncle.</p>
+
+<p>The dog followed him: he had kept by Starke since the moment he came
+into the breakfast-room, cuddling down across his feet when he was
+called away. The man had only patted him absently, saying that all dogs
+did so with him, he didn't know why. Thor followed him now. Friend
+Turner beckoned the clergyman back a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Make him talk, Richard. Be rough, hurt him, if thee chooses; it will be
+a safety-valve. Look in his eyes! I tell thee we have no idea of all
+that has brought this poor creature into this state,&mdash;such rigid strain.
+But if it is broken in on first by the failure of his pump, if it be a
+pump, I will not answer for the result, Richard."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bowdler nodded abruptly, and hurried after Starke. When he entered
+the cozy south room which he called the library, <a name="Page_720" id="Page_720"></a>he found Starke
+standing before an oil-painting of a baby, one the Doctor had lost years
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>"Such a bright little thing!" the man said, patting the chubby bare foot
+as if it were alive.</p>
+
+<p>"You have children?" Dr. Bowdler asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I know almost all I meet in the street, or they know me. 'Uncle
+Joe' they call me,"&mdash;with a boyish laugh.</p>
+
+<p>It was gone in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Are they ready?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor hesitated. The man beside him was gray-haired as himself, a
+man of power, with a high, sincere purpose looking out of the haggard
+scraggy face and mild blue eyes,&mdash;how could he presume to advise him?
+Yet this Starke, he saw, had narrowed his life down to a point beyond
+which lay madness; and that baby had not been in life more helpless or
+solitary or unable than he was now, when the trial had come. The Doctor
+caught the bony hands in his own fat healthy ones.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could help you," he said impetuously.</p>
+
+<p>Starke looked in his face keenly.</p>
+
+<p>"For what? How?"</p>
+
+<p>"This engine&mdash;have you nothing to care for in life but that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing,&mdash;nothing but that and what it will gain me."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"If it fails?"</p>
+
+<p>The dark blood dyed the man's face and throat; he choked, waited a
+moment before he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"It would not hurt me. No. I'm nearly tired out, Sir. I hardly look for
+success."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you try again?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll not try again."</p>
+
+<p>He had drawn away and stood by the window, his face hidden by the
+curtain. The Doctor was baffled.</p>
+
+<p>"You have yourself lost faith in your invention?"</p>
+
+<p>Something of the old fierceness flashed into the man's eye, but died
+out.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," he said under his breath, shaking his head, and putting his
+hand in a feeble way to his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Inanition of soul as well as body," thought the Doctor. "I'll rouse
+him, cruel or not."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you anything to which to turn, if this disappoints you? Home or
+friends?"</p>
+
+<p>He waited for an answer. When it came, he felt like an intruder, the man
+was so quiet, far-off.</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing,&mdash;no friends,&mdash;unless I count that boy in the next room.
+Eh? He has fragments of the old knightly spirit, if his brain be
+cracked. No others."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! You'll forgive me?" said the Doctor. "I did not mean to be
+coarse. Only I&mdash;The matter will succeed, I know. You will find happiness
+in that. Money and fame will come after."</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked up and came towards him with a certain impressive
+dignity, though the snuff-colored clothes were bagging about his limbs,
+and his eyes were heavy and unsteady.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not coarse. No. I'm glad you spoke to me in that way. It is as
+if you stopped my life short, and made me look before and behind. But
+you don't understand. I"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand to his head, then began buttoning his coat uncertainly,
+with a deprecating, weak smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what the matter is. I'm not strong as I used to be."</p>
+
+<p>"You need success."</p>
+
+<p>How strong and breezy the Doctor's voice sounded!</p>
+
+<p>"Cheer up, Mr. Starke. You're a stronger-brained man than I, and twenty
+years younger. It's something to have lived for a single high purpose
+like yours, if you succeed. And if not, God's life is broad, and needs
+other things than air-engines. Perhaps you've been 'in training,' as the
+street-talk goes, getting your muscles and nerves well grown, and your
+real work and fight are yet to come."</p><p><a name="Page_721" id="Page_721"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said the man, dully.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bowdler, perhaps, with well-breathed body and soul, did not quite
+comprehend how vacant and well worn out both heart and lungs were under
+poor Starke's bony chest.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't seem to comprehend what this engine is to me.&mdash;You said the
+world was broad. I had a mind, even when I was a boy, to do something in
+it. My father was a small farmer over there in the Jerseys. Well, I used
+to sit thinking there, after the day's work was done, until my head
+ached, of how I might do something,&mdash;to help, you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"To make people glad I had lived. I was lazy, too. I'd have liked to
+settle down and grub like the rest, but this notion kept driving me
+like, a sting. I can understand why missionaries cross the seas when
+their hearts stay behind. It grew with me, kept me restless, like a
+devil inside of me. I'm not strong-brained, as you said. I had only one
+talent,&mdash;for mechanism. They bred me a lawyer, but I was a machinist
+born. Well,&mdash;it's the old story. What's the use of telling it?"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped abruptly, his eyes on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on. It will be good for both of us. Aikens has not come."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing to tell. If it was God or the Devil that led me on to
+this thing I don't know. I sold myself to it, soul and body. The idea of
+this invention was not new, but my application was. So it got possession
+of me. Whatever I made by the law went into it. I tried experiments in a
+costly way then, had laboratories there, and workshops in the city. My
+father left me a fortune; <i>that</i> was swallowed up. I worked on with hard
+struggle then. I was forty years old. I thought success lay just within
+my reach. God! You don't know how I had fought for it, day by day, all
+that long life! I was near mad, I think. And then"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped again, biting his under lip, standing motionless. The Doctor
+waited until he was controlled.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," gently. "Don't go on."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll tell you all. I was married. A little Quaker girl she was,
+uneducated, but the gentlest, truest woman God ever made, I think. It
+rested one to look at her. There were two children. They died. Maybe, if
+they had lived, it would have been different with me,&mdash;I'm so fond of
+children. I was of her,&mdash;God knows I was! But after the children were
+gone, and the property sunk, and the experiments all topped just short
+of success, for want of means, I grew irritable and cross,&mdash;used to her.
+It's the way with husbands and wives, sometimes. Well"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He swallowed some choking in his throat, and hurried on.</p>
+
+<p>"She had some money,&mdash;not much, but her own. I wanted it. Then I stopped
+to think. This engine seemed like a greedy devil swallowing everything.
+Another step, and she was penniless, ruined: common sense told me that.
+And I loved her,&mdash;well enough to see how my work came between us every
+hour, made me cruel to her, kept her wretched. If I were gone, she would
+be better off. I said that to myself day after day. I used to finger the
+bonds of that money, thinking how it would enable me to finish all I had
+to do. She wanted me to take it. I knew some day I should do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No,"&mdash;his face clearing. "I was not altogether lost, I think. I left
+her, settling it on herself. Then I was out of temptation. But I
+deceived her: I said I was tired of married life, wished to give myself
+to my work. Then I left her."</p>
+
+<p>"What did she say?"</p>
+
+<p>"She? Nothing that I remember. 'As thee will, Joseph,' that was all, if
+anything. She had suspected it a long time. If I had stayed with her, I
+should have used that money,"&mdash;his fingers working with his white
+whiskers. "I've been near starving sometimes since.<a name="Page_722" id="Page_722"></a> So I saved her from
+that,"&mdash;looking steadily at the Doctor, when he had finished speaking,
+but as if he did not see him.</p>
+
+<p>"But your wife? Have you never seen her since?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once." He spoke with difficulty now, but the clergyman suffered him to
+go on. "I don't know where she is now. I saw her once in the Fulton
+ferry-boat at New York; she had grown suddenly old and hard. She did not
+see me. I never thought she could grow so old as that. But I did what I
+could. I saved her from my life."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bowdler looked into the man's eyes as a physician might look at a
+cancer.</p>
+
+<p>"Since then you have not seen her, I understand you? Not wished to see
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you the facts of my life, Sir," said the old machinist,
+with a bow, his stubbly gray hair seeming to stand more erect; "the rest
+is of trifling interest."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bowdler colored.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be unjust to me, my friend," he said, kindly. "I meant well."</p>
+
+<p>There had been some shuffling noises in the next room in the half-hour
+just past, which the Doctor had heard uneasily, raising his voice each
+time to stifle the sound. A servant came to the door now, beckoning him
+out. As he went, Starke watched him from under his bushy brows, smiling,
+when he turned and apologized for leaving him.</p>
+
+<p>That man was a thorough man, of good steel. What an infinite patience
+there was in his voice! He was glad he had told him so much; he breathed
+freer himself for it. But he was not going to whine. Whatever pain had
+been in his life he had left out of that account. What right had any man
+to know what his wife was to him? Other men had given up home and
+friends and wife for the truth's sake, and not whimpered over it.</p>
+
+<p>What a long time they were waiting to examine the engine! He began his
+walk up and down the room, with the habitual stoop of the shoulders, and
+an occasional feeble wandering of the hand to his mouth, wondering a
+little at himself, at his coolness. For this was the last throw of the
+dice. After to-day, no second chance. If it succeeded&mdash;Well, he washed
+his hands of the world's work then. <i>His</i> share was finished, surely.
+Then for happiness! What would she say when he came back? He had earned
+his reward in life by this time; his work was done, well
+done,&mdash;repeating that to himself again and again. But <i>would</i> she care?
+His long-jawed, gaunt face was all aglow now, and he rubbed his hands
+softly together, his thought sliding back evidently into some accustomed
+track, one that gave him fresh pleasure, though it had been the same
+these many years, through days of hammering and moulding and nights of
+sleeping in cheap taverns or under market-stalls. When they were first
+married, he used to bring her a peculiar sort of white shawl,&mdash;quite
+outside of the Quaker dress, to be sure, but he liked it. She used to
+look like a bride, freshly, every time she put one on. One of those
+should be the first thing he bought her. Dr. Bowdler was not wrong: he
+was a young man yet; they could enjoy life strongly and heartily, both
+of them. But no more work: with a dull perception of the fact that his
+strength was sapped out beyond the power of recuperation. That baby
+(stopping before the picture) was like Rob, about the forehead. But Rob
+was fairer, and had brown eyes and a snub-nose, like his mother.
+Remembering how, down in the farm-house, she used to sit on the
+front-porch step nursing the baby, while he smoked or read, in the
+evenings: where they could see the salt marshes. Jane liked them, for
+their color: a dead flat of brown salt grass with patches of brilliant
+emerald, and the black, snaky lines up which the tide crept, the
+white-sailed boats looking as if they were wedged in the grass. She
+liked that. Her tastes were all good.</p><p><a name="Page_723" id="Page_723"></a></p>
+
+<p>How long <i>did</i> they mean to wait? He went to the window and looked out.
+Just then a horse neighed, and the sound oddly recalled the country-town
+where they had lived after they came into this State. On market-days it
+was one perpetual whinny along the streets from the colts trotting
+along-side of the wagons. He and Jane used to keep open table for their
+country-friends then, and on court- or fair-days. What a hard-fisted,
+shrewd people they were! talking bad English (like Jane herself); but
+there was more refinement and softness of feeling among them than among
+city-bred men. He should relish that life again; it suited him. To die
+like a grub? But he <i>had</i> done his work. Thank God!</p>
+
+<p>He opened the window to catch the damp air, as Dr. Bowdler came in and
+touched him on the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we stay here? Mr. Aikens has come, and they have been testing the
+machine for some time, I find. Go? Certainly, but&mdash;You're a little
+nervous, Mr. Starke, and&mdash;Wouldn't it be better if you were not present?
+They would be freer in deciding, and&mdash;suppose you and I stay here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? How? At it for some time?" hurrying out. "At it?" as the Doctor
+tried to keep pace with him. "Why, God bless my soul, Sir, what can
+<i>they</i> do? Nobody understands the valves but myself. A set of
+ignoramuses, Sir. I saw that at a glance. But it's my last
+chance,"&mdash;panting and wheezing before he reached the back lobby, and
+holding his hand to his side.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bowdler stopped outside.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you waiting here for, Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to hear. What chance has it? I think I'd give something off my
+own life, if that man had succeeded in doing a great thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Not much of a chance, Aikens says. The theory is good, but they are
+afraid the expense will make it of no practical use. However, they have
+not decided. It is well it is his last chance, though, as he says. I
+never saw a man who had dragged himself so near to insanity in pursuit
+of a hobby. Nothing but a great reaction can save him."</p>
+
+<p>"Success, you mean? I think that man's life is worth a thousand aimless
+ones, Sir. If it fails, where's your 'justice on earth'? I"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She pushed her curls back hotly. The Doctor did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>The trial lasted until late in the afternoon. One or two of the
+gentlemen came out at odd times to luncheon, which was spread in the
+adjoining room. They looked grave, and talked earnestly in low tones:
+the man had infected them with his own feeling in a measure.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know when I was more concerned for the success of anything not
+my own," said Mr. Aikens to Miss Defourchet, as he rose to go back to
+the lobby, putting down his glass. "It is such a daring innovation; it
+would be worth thousands per annum to me, if I could make it
+practicable. And then that poor devil himself,&mdash;I feel as if we were
+trying him for his life to-day. It's pitiful."</p>
+
+<p>She went in herself once, when the door was open, and saw Starke: he was
+in his shirt-sleeves, driving in a wedge that had come out; his face was
+parched, looked contracted, his eyes glazed. She spoke to him, but he
+made no answer, went from side to side of the engine, working with it,
+glancing furtively at the men, who stood gravely talking. The girl was
+nervous, and felt she should cry, if she stayed there. She called the
+dog, but he would not come; he was crouched with his head on his
+fore-paws, watching Starke.</p>
+
+<p>"It is curious how the dog follows him," she said, after she had gone
+out, to Andy, who was in the back porch, watching the rain come up.</p>
+
+<p>"I've noticed animals did it to him. My Jerry knows him as well as me.
+What chances has he, Miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"You heard Dr. Bowdler say he was married. Do you know his wife?" she
+asked.</p><p><a name="Page_724" id="Page_724"></a></p>
+
+<p>Some strange doubts had been in Andy's brain for the last hour, but he
+never told a secret.</p>
+
+<p>"It was in the market I come, to know Mr. Starke," he said, confusedly.
+"At the eatin'-stalls. He never said to me as he hed a wife."</p>
+
+<p>The rain was heavy and constant when it came, a muddy murkiness in the
+air that bade fair to last for a day or more. Evening closed in rapidly.
+Andy sat still on the porch; he could shuffle his heels as he pleased
+there, and take a sly bit of tobacco, watching, through a crack between
+the houses, the drip, drip, of rain on the umbrellas going by, the lamps
+beginning to glow here and there in the darkness, listening to the soggy
+footfalls and the rumble of the streetcars.</p>
+
+<p>"This is tiresome,"&mdash;putting one finger carefully under the rungs of his
+chair, where he had the lantern. "I wonder ef Jane is waiting for
+me,&mdash;an' for any one else."</p>
+
+<p>He trotted one foot, and chewed more vehemently. On the verge of some
+mystery, it seemed to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Ef it is&mdash;What ef he misses, an' won't go back with me? God help the
+woman! What kin <i>I</i> do?"</p>
+
+<p>After a while, taking out the lantern, and rubbing it where the damp had
+dimmed it,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'll need it to-night, that's sure!"</p>
+
+<p>Now and then he bent his head, trying to catch a sound from the lobby,
+but to no purpose. About five o'clock, however, there was a sudden
+sound, shoving of chairs, treading, half-laughs, as of people departing.
+The door opened, and the gentlemen came out into the lighted hall, in
+groups of two or three,&mdash;some who were to dine with the Doctor passing
+up the staircase, the others chatting by the door. The Doctor was not
+with them, nor Starke. Andy stood up, trying to hear, holding his felt
+hat over his mouth. "If he's hed a chance!" But he could catch only
+broken sentences.</p>
+
+<p>"A long session."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it from the first."</p>
+
+<p>"I asked Starke to call on me to-morrow," etc.</p>
+
+<p>And so they put on their hats, and went out, leaving the hall vacant.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't stand this," said Andy, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>He wiped his wet feet, and went into the hall. The door out of which the
+men came opened into a reception-room; beyond that was the lobby. It was
+dimly lighted as yet, when he entered it; the engine-model, a mass of
+miniature wheels and cylinders, was in the middle of the bare floor; the
+Doctor and Starke at the other end of the apartment. The Doctor was
+talking,&mdash;a few words now and then, earnestly spoken. Andy could not
+hear them; but Starke sat, saying nothing. Miss Defourchet took a pair
+of India-rubber boots from the servant in the hall, and went to him.</p>
+
+<p>"You must wear them, and take an umbrella, if you will not stay," she
+said, stooping down, as if she would like to have put them on his feet,
+her voice a little unsteady. "It rains very heavily, and your shoes are
+not strong. Indeed, you must."</p>
+
+<p>"Shoes, eh?" said the old machinist, lifting one foot end then the other
+on his knee, and looking vacantly at the holes through which the bare
+skin showed. "Oh, yes, yes,"&mdash;rising and going past her, as if he did
+not see her.</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll take them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, Mary! Mr. Starke, I may come and see you to-morrow, you said?
+We'll arrange matters,"&mdash;with a hearty tone.</p>
+
+<p>Starke touched his hat with the air of an old-school gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be happy to see you, Sir,&mdash;very happy. You will allow me to
+wish you good evening?"&mdash;smiling. "I am not well,"&mdash;with the same
+meaningless look.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly,"&mdash;shaking hands earnestly. "I wish I could induce you to
+stay and have a talk over your future prospects, eh? But to-morrow&mdash;I
+will be down early to-morrow. Your young friend gave me the address. The
+model&mdash;we'll <a name="Page_725" id="Page_725"></a>have that sent down to-morrow, too."</p>
+
+<p>Starke stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"The model," without, however, looking at it. "Yes. It can go to-night.
+I should prefer that. Andrew will bring an express-wagon for
+it,"&mdash;fumbling in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"I have the exact change," said Miss Defourchet, eagerly; "let me pay
+the express."</p>
+
+<p>Starke's face colored and grew pale again.</p>
+
+<p>"You mistake me," he said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"He's no beggar. You hurt him," Andy had whispered, pushing back her
+hand. Some women had no sense, if they were ladies. Ann Mipps would
+never have done that!</p>
+
+<p>Starke drew out a tattered leather purse: there was a dime in it, which
+Andy took. He lighted his lantern, and followed Starke out of the house,
+noticing how the Doctor hesitated before he closed the door after them.
+They stood a moment on the pavement; the rain was dark and drenching,
+with sudden gusts of wind coming down the street. The machinist stood,
+his old cap stuck on the back of his head, his arms fallen nerveless at
+his sides, hair and coat and trousers flapping and wet: the very picture
+of a man whom the world had tried, and in whom it had found no possible
+savor of use but to be trodden under foot of men.</p>
+
+<p>"God help him!" thought Andy, "he's far gone! He don't even button an'
+unbutton his coat as allus."</p>
+
+<p>But he asked no questions, excepting where should he take <i>it</i>. Some
+young men came up, three abreast; Starke drew humbly out of their way
+before he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I do not know, Andrew. But I'd rather not see it again. You"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>His voice went down into a low mumbling, and he turned and went slowly
+off up the street. Andy stood puzzled a moment, then hurried after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go home with you."</p>
+
+<p>"What use, boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow, then?"</p>
+
+<p>Starke said nothing, thrust his hands into his pockets, his head falling
+on his breast with an unchanged vacancy of expression. Andy looked after
+him, coughing, gazing about him uncertainly.</p>
+
+<p>"He's clean given up! What kin <i>I</i> do?"</p>
+
+<p>Then overtook him again, forcing the lantern into his hand,&mdash;not without
+a gulp for breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Here! take this! I like to. It's yours now, Mr. Starke, d' y'
+understand? Yours. But you'll take care of it, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not need anything, my good boy. Let me go."</p>
+
+<p>But Andy held on desperately to his coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Come home. <i>She's</i> there. Maybe I ought not to say it. It's Jane. For
+God's sake, come to Jane!"</p>
+
+<p>It was so dark that Andy could not see the expression of the man's face
+when he heard this. Starke did not speak for some minutes; when he did,
+his voice was firm and conscious, as it had not been before to-night.</p>
+
+<p>"Let go my coat, Andrew; I feel choking. You know my wife, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, this many a year. She's waited for you. Come home. Come!"</p>
+
+<p>But Starke drew his arm away.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her I would have gone, if I had succeeded. But not now. I'm tired,
+I'm going to rest."</p>
+
+<p>With both hands he pushed the lank, wet hair off his face. Somehow, all
+his tired life showed itself in the gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I ever did care as much for her as I do to-night. Is she
+always well, Andrew?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, well. Come!"</p>
+
+<p>"No; good night. Bid her good night."</p>
+
+<p>As he turned away, he stopped and looked back.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask her if she ever thinks of our Rob. I do." And so was gone.</p>
+
+<p>As he went down the street, turning into an alley, something black
+jumped over the low gate beside Andy and followed him.</p><p><a name="Page_726" id="Page_726"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It's the dog! Well, dumb creatures <i>are</i> curious, beyond me. Now for
+Jane"; and with his head muddled and aching, he went to find an
+express-stand.</p>
+
+<p>The examination of the model took place on Tuesday. On the Saturday
+following, Dr. Bowdler was summoned to his back parlor to see a man and
+woman who had called. Going in, he found Andy, clad as before in his
+dress-suit of blue coat and marvellously plaid trousers, balancing
+himself uneasily on the edge of his chair, and a woman in Quaker dress
+beside him. Her face and presence attracted the Doctor at once,
+strongly, though they were evidently those of an uneducated
+working-woman. The quietude in her motions and expression, the repressed
+power, the delicacy, had worked out, from within, to carve her sad face
+into those fine lines he saw. No outside culture could do that. She
+spoke, too, with that simple directness that belongs to people who are
+sure of what they have to do in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to see if thee knew anything of my husband: thee was so kind to
+him some days ago. I am Jane Starke."</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor comprehended in a moment. He watched the deserted wife
+curiously, as he answered her.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear Madam. Is it possible he is not with you? I went to his
+lodging twice with my niece, and, finding it vacant, concluded that he
+had returned to you, or gone with our young friend Andrew here."</p>
+
+<p>"He is not with me."</p>
+
+<p>She rose, her fingers twitching nervously at her bonnet-strings.</p>
+
+<p>"She was so dead sure you would know," said Andy, rising also. "We've
+been on the search for four days. We thought you would know. Where will
+you go now, Jane?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman lost every trace of color when Dr. Bowdler answered her, but
+she showed no other sign of her disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"We will find him somewhere, Andrew."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, stop," interrupted the Doctor. "Tell me what you have done. You
+must not go in this way."</p>
+
+<p>The woman began to answer, but Andy took the word from her.</p>
+
+<p>"You keep yerself quiet, Jane. She's dreadful worn out, Sir. There's not
+much to tell. Jane had come into town that night to meet him,&mdash;gone to
+his lodgins&mdash;she was so sure he'd come home. She's been waitin' these
+ten years,"&mdash;in a whisper. "But he didn't come. Nor the next day, nor
+any day since. An' the last I saw of him was goin' down the street in
+the rain, with the dog followin'. We've been lookin' every way we could,
+but I don't know the town much, out of my streets for milk, an' Jane
+knows nothin' of it at all, so"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is as I told you!" broke in Miss Defourchet, who had entered,
+unperceived, with a blaze of enthusiasm that made Jane start,
+bewildered. "He is at work,&mdash;some new effort. Madam, you have reason to
+thank God for making you the wife of such a man. It makes my blood
+glow," turning to her uncle, "to find this dauntless heroism in the rank
+and file of the people."</p>
+
+<p>She was sincere in her own heroic sympathy for the rank and file: her
+slender form dilated, her eyes flashed, and there was a rich color
+mounting to her fine aquiline features.</p>
+
+<p>"I like a man to fight fate to the death as this one,&mdash;never to give
+up,&mdash;to sacrifice life to his idea."</p>
+
+<p>"If thee means the engine by the idea," said Jane, dully, "we've given
+up a good deal to it. He has. It don't matter for me."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Defourchet glanced indignantly at the lumbering figure, the big
+slow eyes, following her with a puzzled pain in them. For all mischances
+or sinister fates in the world she had compassion, except for
+one,&mdash;stupidity.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew," to Dr. Bowdler, "he would not be content with the decision the
+other day. It is his destiny to help the world. And if this woman will
+come between him and his work, I hope she may never find him."</p><p><a name="Page_727" id="Page_727"></a></p>
+
+<p>Jane put a coarse hand up to her breast as if something hurt her; after
+a moment, she said, with her heavy, sad face looking full down on the
+young girl,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Thee is young yet. It may be God meant my old man to do this work: it
+may be not. He knows. Myself, I do not think He keeps the world waitin'
+for this air-engine. Others'll be found to do it when it's needed; what
+matter if he fails? An' when a man gives up all little works for
+himself, an' his child, or&mdash;his wife," with a gasp, "for some great
+work"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"It's more likely that the Devil is driving him than God leading," said
+the Doctor, hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Andrew," said Jane, gravely. "We have no time to lose."</p>
+
+<p>She moved to the door,&mdash;unsteadily, however.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>She</i>'s fagged out," said Andy, lingering behind her. "Since Tuesday
+night I've followed her through streets an' alleys, night an' day. Jest
+as prim an' sober as you see. Cryin' softly to herself at times. It's a
+sore heart-break, Sir. Waitin' these ten years"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bowdler offered his help, earnestly, as did his niece, with a
+certain reserve. The dog Thor had disappeared with Starke, and they
+hoped that would afford some clue.</p>
+
+<p>"But the woman is a mere clog," said Miss Defourchet, impatiently, after
+they were gone. "Her eyes are as sad, unreasonable as Thor's. Nothing in
+them but instinct. But it is so with most women,"&mdash;with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"But somehow, Mary, those women never mistake their errand in the world
+any more than Thor, and do it as unconsciously and completely as he,"
+said the Doctor, with a quizzical smile. "If Starke had followed, his
+'instincts,' he would have been a snug farmer to-day in the Jerseys."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Defourchet vouchsafed no answer.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bowdler gave his help, as he had promised, but to no purpose. A week
+passed in the search without success, until at last Thor brought it. The
+dog was discovered one night in the kitchen, waiting for his supper, as
+he had been used to do: his affection for his new master, I suppose, not
+having overcome his recollection of the flesh-pots of Egypt. They
+followed him (Jane, the Doctor, and Andy) out to that maze of narrow
+streets, near Fairmount, called, I think, Francisville. He stopped at a
+low house, used in front as a cake-shop, the usual young girl with high
+cheek-bones and oily curls waiting within.</p>
+
+<p>"The dog's owner?" the trading look going out of her eyes suddenly, "Oh,
+are you his friends? He's low to-night: mother's up with him since
+supper; mother's kept him since last Tuesday,"&mdash;fussing out from behind
+the counter. "Take chairs, Ma'am. I'll call her. Go out, you
+Stevy,"&mdash;driving out two or three urchins in their bed-gowns who were
+jamming up the door-way.</p>
+
+<p>Miserably poor the whole place was; the woman, when she came down, a
+hard skinflint&mdash;in Andy's phrase&mdash;in the face: just home from her day's
+washing, her gown pinned up, her arms flabby and red.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evenin', Sir! evenin', Ma'am! See the man? Of course, Ma'am; but
+you'd best be keerful,"&mdash;standing between Jane and the door. "He's very
+poorly."</p>
+
+<p>"What ails him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll say it out,&mdash;if you're his friends, as you say," stammering.
+"I'd not like to accuse any one rashly, but&mdash;I think he'd a notion of
+starvin' to death, an' got himself so low. Come to me las' week, an'
+pawned his coat for my back room to sleep in. He eat nothin' then: I
+seen that. An' he used to go out an' look at the dam for hours: but he
+never throwed himself in. Since he took to bed, we keep him up with
+broth and sech as we have,&mdash;Sally an' me. Sir? Afford it? Hum! We're not
+as well off as we have been," dryly; "but I'm not a beast to see a man
+starvin' under my roof. Oh, certingly, Ma'am; go up."</p>
+
+<p>And while Jane mounted the rickety <a name="Page_728" id="Page_728"></a>back-stairs, she turned to the door
+to meet two or three women with shawls pinned about their heads.</p>
+
+<p>"He's very poorly, Mis' Crawford, thank ye, Mem. No, you can't do
+nothing'," in a sepulchral whisper, which continued in a lower tone,
+with a nod back to the Doctor and Andy.</p>
+
+<p>Starke's affair was a godsend to the neighborhood, Dr. Bowdler saw.
+Untrained people enjoy a sickness with more keenness and hearty
+good-feeling than you do the opera. The Doctor had providently brought a
+flask of brandy in his pocket. He went on tiptoe up the creaking stairs
+and gave it to Jane. She was standing, holding the handle of the door,
+not turning it.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Jane?" cheerfully. "What do you tremble for, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothin'",&mdash;chewing her lips and opening the door. "It's ten years
+since,"&mdash;to herself, as she went in.</p>
+
+<p>Not when she was a shy girl had he been to her what these ten years of
+desertion had made him.</p>
+
+<p>It was half an hour before the Doctor and Andy went up softly into the
+upper room and sat quietly down out of sight in the corner. Jane was
+sitting on the low cot-bed, holding Starke's head on her breast. They
+could not see her face in the feeble light. She had some brandy and
+water in a glass, and gave him a spoonful of it now and then; and when
+she had done that, smoothed the yellow face incessantly with her hard
+fingers. The Doctor fancied that such dumb pain and affection as there
+was in even that little action ought to bring him to life, if he were
+dead. There was some color on his cheeks, and occasionally he opened his
+eyes and tried to speak, but closed them wearily. They watched by him
+until midnight; his pulse grew stronger by that time, and he lay
+wistfully looking at his wife like one who had wakened out of a long
+death, and tried to collect his thought. She did not speak nor stir,
+knowing on how slight a thread his sense hung.</p>
+
+<p>"Jane!" he said, at last.</p>
+
+<p>They bent forward eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Jane, I wish thee'd take me home."'</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, Joseph," cheerfully. "In the morning. It is too chilly
+to-night. Is thee comfortable?" drawing his head closer to her breast.
+"O God! He'll live!" silently clutching at the bed-rail until her hand
+ached. "Go to sleep, dear."</p>
+
+<p>Whatever sobs or tears choked her voice just then, she forced them back:
+they might disturb him. He closed his eyes a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I have something to say to thee, Jane."</p>
+
+<p>"No. Thee must rest."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd sleep better, if I tell thee first."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence. The woman's face was pale, her eyes
+burning, but she only smiled softly, holding him steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been so long!"&mdash;passing his hand over his forehead vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>She could not command a smile now.</p>
+
+<p>"It was all wasted. I've been worth nothing."</p>
+
+<p>How close she held him then to her breast! How tender the touches grew
+on his face!</p>
+
+<p>"I was not strong enough to kill myself even, the other day, when I was
+so tired. So cowardly! Not worth much, Jane!"</p>
+
+<p>She bent forward over him, to keep the others from hearing this.</p>
+
+<p>"Thee's tired too, Jane?" looking up dully.</p>
+
+<p>"A little, Joseph."</p>
+
+<p>Another silence.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow, did thee say, we would go home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>He shut his eyes to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss him," said the Doctor to her. "It will make him more certain."</p>
+
+<p>Her face grew crimson.</p>
+
+<p>"He has not asked me yet," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Sometime early in the summer, nearly four years after, Miss Defourchet
+came down to make her uncle another visit,&mdash;a little thinned and jaded
+with her winter's <a name="Page_729" id="Page_729"></a>work, and glad of the daily ride into the fresh
+country-air. One morning, the Doctor, jumping into the barouche beside
+her, said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We'll make a day of it, Mary,&mdash;spend it with some old friends of ours.
+They are such wholesome, natural people, it refreshes me to be with them
+when I am tired."</p>
+
+<p>"Starke and his wife?" she asked, arranging her scarf. "I never desire
+to be with him, or with any man recreant to his work."</p>
+
+<p>"Recreant, eh? Starke? Well, no; he works hard, digs and ditches, and is
+happy. I think he takes his work more humbly and healthily than any man
+I know."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Defourchet looked absently out at the gleaming river. Her interest
+had always been languid in the man since he had declined either to fight
+fate or drown himself. The Doctor jerked his hat down into the bottom of
+the carriage and pulled open his cravat.</p>
+
+<p>"Hah! do you catch that river-breeze? Don't that expand your lungs? And
+the whiff of the fresh clover-blossoms? I come out here to study my
+sermons, did you know? Nature is so simple and grand here, a man could
+not well say a mean or unbrotherly thing while he stays. It forces you
+to be 'a faithful witness' to the eternal truth. There is good fishing
+hereabouts, eh, Jim?"&mdash;calling to the driver. "Do you see that black
+pool under the sycamore?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> could not call it 'faithful witnessing' to delight in taking even a
+fish's life," dryly said his niece.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor winced.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the old Adam in me, I suppose. You'll have to be charitable to the
+different making-up of people, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>However, he was silent for a while after that, with rather an
+extinguished feeling, bursting out again when they reached the gate of a
+little snug place by the road-side.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is where my little friend Ann lives. There's a wife for you! 'And
+though she rules him, never shows she rules.' They've a dairy-farm, you
+know, back of the hills; but they live here because it was her father's
+toll-house then, and they won't give up the old place. I like such
+notions. Andy's full of them. There he is! Hillo, Fawcett!"</p>
+
+<p>Andy came out from the kitchen-garden, his freckled face redder than his
+hair, his eyes showing his welcome. Dr. Bowdler was an old tried friend
+now of his and Ann's. "He took a heap of nonsense out of me," he used to
+say.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, we'll not stop now," said the Doctor; "we are going on to
+Starke's, and Ann is not in, I see. I will stop in the evening for my
+glass of buttermilk, though, and a bunch of country-grown flowers."</p>
+
+<p>But they waited long enough to discuss the price of poultry, etc., in
+market, before they drove on. Miss Defourchet looked wearied.</p>
+
+<p>"Such things seem so paltry while the country is in the state it is,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my dear, so it is. But it's 'the work by which Andy thrives,' you
+know. And I like it, somehow."</p>
+
+<p>The lady had worked nobly in the hospitals last winter, and naturally
+she wanted to see every head and hand at work on some noble scheme or
+task for the world's good. The hearty, comfortable quiet of the Starkes'
+little farm-house tired her. It was such a sluggish life of nothings,
+she thought,&mdash;even when Jane had brought her chair close to the window
+where the sunshine came in broadest and clearest through the
+buttonwood-leaves. Jane saw the look, and it troubled her. She was not
+much of a talker, only when with her husband, so there was no use of
+trying that. She put a little table beside the window and a white cloth
+on it, and then brought a saucer of crimson strawberries and yellow
+cream; but the lady was no eater, she was sorry to see. She stood a
+moment timidly, but Miss Defourchet did not put her at her ease. It was
+the hungry poor she cared for, with stifled brains and souring feeling.
+This woman was at ease, stupidly at peace with God and herself.</p><p><a name="Page_730" id="Page_730"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps thee'd be amused to look over Joseph's case of books?" handing
+her the key, and then sitting down with her knitting, contented in
+having finished her duty. "After a while thee'll have a pleasant
+time,"&mdash;smiling consciously. "Richard'll be awake. Richard's our boy,
+thee knows? I wish he was awake, but it is his mornin' nap, an' I never
+disturb him in his mornin' nap."</p>
+
+<p>"You lead a very quiet life, apparently," said Miss Defourchet; for she
+meant to see what was in all these dull trifles.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thee might call it so. My old man farms; he has more skill that
+way than me. He bought land in Iowa, an' has been out seein' it, an'
+that freshened him up this spring. But we'll never leave the old place."</p>
+
+<p>"So he farms, and you"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I oversee the house," glancing at the word into the kitchen to
+see how Bessy was getting on with the state dinner in progress. "It
+keeps me busy, an' Bessy, (she's an orphan we've taken to raise,) an'
+the dairy, an' Richard most of all. I let nobody touch Richard but
+myself. That's my work."</p>
+
+<p>"You have little time for reading?"</p>
+
+<p>Jane colored.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not fond of it. A book always put me to sleep quicker than a hop
+pillow. But lately I read some things," hesitating,&mdash;"the first books
+Richard'll have to know. I want to keep him with ourselves as long as I
+can. I'd like,"&mdash;her eyes with a new outlook in them, as she raised
+them, something beyond Miss Defourchet's experience,&mdash;"I'd like to make
+my boy a good, healthy, honest boy before <i>I</i>'m done with him. I wish I
+could teach him his Latin an' th' others. But there's no use to try for
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"How goes it, Mary?" said the Doctor heartily, coming in, all in a heat,
+and sun-burnt, with Starke.</p>
+
+<p>Both men were past the prime of life, thin, and stooped, but Starke's
+frame was tough and weather-cured. He was good for ten years longer in
+the world than Dr. Bowdler.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been looking at the stock. Full and plenty, in every corner,
+as I say to Joseph. It warms me up to come here, Starke. I don't know a
+healthier, more cheerful farm on these hills than just this one."</p>
+
+<p>Starke's face brightened.</p>
+
+<p>"The ground's not overly rich, Sir. Tough work, tough work; but I like
+it. I'm saving off it, too. We put by a hundred or two last year; same
+next, God willing. For Richard, Dr. Bowdler. We want enough to give him
+a thorough education, and then let him rough it with the others. That
+will be the best way to bring out the stuff that's in him. It's good
+stuff," in an under-tone.</p>
+
+<p>"How old is he?" said Miss Defourchet.</p>
+
+<p>"Two years last February," said Jane, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Two years; yes. He's my namesake, Mary, did you know? Where is the
+young lion?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, mother. Why isn't Richard down? Morning nap? Hoot, toot!
+bring the boy down!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Defourchet, while Jane went for the boy, noticed how heavy the
+scent of the syringas grew, how the bees droned down into a luxurious
+delight in the hot noon. One might dream out life very pleasantly there,
+she thought. The two men talked politics, but glanced constantly at the
+stairs. She did not wonder that Starke's worn, yellow face should grow
+so curiously bright at the sight of his boy; but her uncle did not care
+for children,&mdash;unless, indeed, there was something in them. Jane came
+down and put the boy on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"He has pulled all my hair down," she said, trying to look grave, to
+hide the proud smile in her face.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Defourchet had taken Richard up with an involuntary kiss, which he
+resisted, looking her full in the face. There <i>was</i> something in this
+child.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't kiss you, unless he likes you," said Starke, chafing his hands
+delightedly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of that fellow, Mary?" said the Doctor, coming over.<a name="Page_731" id="Page_731"></a>
+"He's my young lion, Richard is. Look at this square forehead. You don't
+believe in Phrenology, eh? Well, I do. Feel his jaws. Look at that lady,
+Sir! Do you see the big, brave eyes of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"His mouth is like his mother's," said Starke, jealously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, yes! So. You think that is the best part of his face, I know.
+It is; as tender as a woman's."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a real hero-face," said the young lady, frankly; "not a mean line
+in it."</p>
+
+<p>Starke had drawn the boy between his knees, and was playing roughly with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"There never shall be one, with God's help," he thought, but said
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Richard was "a hobby" of Dr. Bowdler's, his niece perceived.</p>
+
+<p>"His very hair is like a mane," he said; "he's as uncouth as a young
+giant that don't feel his strength. I say this, Mary: that the boy will
+never be goodish and weak: he'll be greatly good or greatly bad."</p>
+
+<p>The young lady noticed how intently Starke listened; she wondered if he
+had forgotten entirely his own God-sent mission, and turned baby-tender
+altogether.</p>
+
+<p>"What has become of your model, Mr. Starke?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bowdler looked up uneasily; it was a subject he never had dared to
+touch.</p>
+
+<p>"Andrew keeps it," said Starke, with a smile, "for the sake of old
+times, side by side with his lantern, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"You never work with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; why should I? The principle has since been made practical, as you
+know, better than I could have done it. My idea was too crude, I can see
+now. So I just grazed success, as one may say."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you given up all hope of serving your fellows?" persisted the
+lady. "You seemed to me to be the very man to lead a forlorn hope
+against ignorance: are you quite content to settle down here and do
+nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>His color changed, but he said quietly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I've learned to be humbler, maybe. It was hard learning. But," trying
+to speak lightly, "when I found I was not fit to be an officer, I tried
+to be as good a private as I could. Your uncle will tell you the cause
+is the same."</p>
+
+<p>There was a painful silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I think sometimes, though," said Starke, "that God meant Jane and I
+should not be useless in the world."</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand almost reverently on the boy's head.</p>
+
+<p>"Richard is ours, you know, to make what we will of. He will do a
+different work in life from any engine. I try to think we have strength
+enough saved out of our life to make him what we ought."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, Starke," said the Doctor, emphatically. "Some day, when
+you and I have done with this long fight, we shall find that as many
+privates as captains will have earned the cross of the Legion of Honor."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Defourchet said nothing; the day did not please her. Jane, she
+noticed, when evening came on, slipped up-stairs to brush her hair, and
+put on a soft white shawl.</p>
+
+<p>"Joseph likes to see me dress a little for the evenings," she said, with
+quite a flush in her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>And the young lady noticed that Starke smiled tenderly as his wife
+passed him. It was so weak! in ugly, large-boned people, too.</p>
+
+<p>"It does one good to go there," said the Doctor, drawing a long breath
+as they drove off in the cool evening, the shadowed red of the sun
+lighting up the little porch where the machinist stood with his wife and
+child. "The unity among them is so healthy and beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not feel it as you do," said Miss Defourchet, drawing her shawl
+closer, and shivering.</p>
+
+<p>Starke came down on the grass to play with the boy, throwing him down on
+the heaps of hay there to see him jump and rush back undaunted. Yet in
+all his rude romps the solemn quiet of the hour was creeping over him.
+He sat down by Jane on the wooden steps at last, while, the boy, after
+an impetuous kiss or two, curled up at their feet and went to sleep<a name="Page_732" id="Page_732"></a> The
+question about the model had stirred an old doubt in Jane's heart. She
+watched her husband keenly. Was he thinking of that old dream? <i>Would</i>
+he go back to it? the long dull pain of those dead years creeping
+through her brain. He looked up from the boy, stroking his gray
+beard,&mdash;his eyes, she saw, full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking, Jane, how much of our lives was lost before we found
+our true work."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Joseph."</p>
+
+<p>He gathered up the boy, holding him close to his bony chest.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to think," he said. "I could atone for that waste, Jane. It
+was my fault. I'd like to think I'd earn up yonder that cross of the
+Legion of Honor&mdash;through him."</p>
+
+<p>"God knows," she said.</p>
+
+<p>After that they were silent a long while, They were thinking of Him who
+had brought the little child to them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_LOYAL_WOMANS_NO" id="A_LOYAL_WOMANS_NO"></a>A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No! is my answer from this cold, bleak ridge<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Down to your valley: you may rest you there:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gulf is wide, and none can build a bridge<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That your gross weight would safely hither bear.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pity me, if you will. I look at you<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With something that is kinder far than scorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And think, "Ah, well! I might have grovelled, too;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I might have walked there, fettered and forsworn."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am of nature weak as others are;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I might have chosen comfortable ways;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Once from these heights I shrank, beheld afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the soft lap of quiet, easy days.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I might&mdash;(I will not hide it)&mdash;once I might<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Have lost, in the warm whirlpools of your voice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sense of Evil, the stern cry of Right;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But Truth has steered me free, and I rejoice:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not with the triumph that looks back to jeer<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At the poor herd that call their misery bliss;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But as a mortal speaks when God is near,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I drop you down my answer; it is this:&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am not yours, because you seek in me<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What is the lowest in my own esteem:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only my flowery levels can you see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor of my heaven-smit summits do you dream.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I am not yours, because you love yourself:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your heart has scarcely room for me beside.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I could not be shut in with name and pelf;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I spurn the shelter of your narrow pride!<br /></span><p><a name="Page_733" id="Page_733"></a></p>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not yours,&mdash;because you are not man enough<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To grasp your country's measure of a man!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If such as you, when Freedom's ways are rough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cannot walk in them, learn that women can!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not yours, because, in this the nation's need,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You stoop to bend her losses to your gain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And do not feel the meanness of your deed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I touch no palm defiled with such a stain!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whether man's thought can find too lofty steeps<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For woman's scaling, care not I to know;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when he falters by her side, or creeps,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She must not clog her soul with him to go.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who weds me must at least with equal pace<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sometimes move with me at my being's height:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To follow him to his more glorious place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His purer atmosphere, were keen delight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You lure me to the valley: men should call<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Up to the mountains, where the air is clear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Win me and help me climbing, if at all!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beyond these peaks rich harmonies I hear,&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The morning chant of Liberty and Law!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The dawn pours in, to wash out Slavery's blot:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fairer than aught the bright sun ever saw<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rises a nation without stain or spot.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The men and women mated for that time<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tread not the soothing mosses of the plain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their hands are joined in sacrifice sublime;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their feet firm set in upward paths of pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sleep your thick sleep, and go your drowsy way!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You cannot hear the voices in the air!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ignoble souls will shrivel in that day:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The brightness of its coming can you bear?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For me, I do not walk these hills alone:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Heroes who poured their blood out for the Truth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Women whose hearts bled, martyrs all unknown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Here catch the sunrise of immortal youth<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On their pale cheeks and consecrated brows!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It charms me not,&mdash;your call to rest below:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I press their hands, my lips pronounce their vows<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Take my life's silence for your answer: No!<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><a name="Page_734" id="Page_734"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EUGENE_DELACROIX" id="EUGENE_DELACROIX"></a>EUGENE DELACROIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The death of Eugene Delacroix cuts the last bond between the great
+artistic epoch which commenced with the Bellini and that which had its
+beginning with the nineteenth century, epochs as diverse in character as
+the Venice of 1400 and the Paris of 1800. In him died the last great
+painter whose art was moulded by the instincts and traditions that made
+Titian and Veronese, and the greatest artist whose eyes have opened on
+the, to him, uncongenial and freezing life of the nineteenth century. In
+our time we have a new ideal, a new and maybe a higher development of
+intellectual art, and as great a soul as Titian's might to-day reach
+farther towards the reconciled perfections of graphic art: but what he
+did no one can now do; the glory of that time has passed away,&mdash;its
+unreasoning faith, its wanton instinct, revelling in Art like children
+in the sunshine, and rejoicing in childlike perception of the pomp and
+glory which overlay creation, unconscious of effort, indifferent to
+science,&mdash;all gone with the fairies, the saints, the ecstatic visions
+which framed their poor lives in gold. Only, still reflecting the glory,
+as eastern mountains the sunken sun, came a few sympathetic souls
+kindling into like glow, with faint perception of what had passed from
+the whole world beside. Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, Reynolds,
+Gainsborough, Turner, and Delacroix, kept the line of color, now at last
+utterly extinguished. Now we reason, now we see facts; sentiment is out
+of joint, and appearances are known to be liars; we have found the
+greater substance; we kindle with the utilities, and worship with the
+aspiring spirit of a common humanity; we banish the saints from our
+souls and the gewgaws from our garments, and walk clothed and in our
+right minds in what we believe to be the noonday light of reason and
+science. We are humanitarian, enlightened. We begin to comprehend the
+great problems of human existence and development; our science touches
+the infinitely removed, and apprehends the mysteries of macrocosmic
+organism: but we have lost the art of painting; for, when Eugene
+Delacroix died, the last painter (visible above the man) who understood
+Art as Titian understood it, and painted with such eyes as Veronese's,
+passed away, leaving no pupil or successor. It is as when the last scion
+of a kingly race dies in some alien land. Greater artists than he we may
+have in scores; but he was of the Venetians, and, with his <i>nearly</i>
+rival, Turner, lived to testify that it was not from a degeneracy of the
+kind that we have no more Tintorets and Veroneses; for both these, if
+they had lived in the days of those, had been their peers.</p>
+
+<p>Painting, as the Venetians understood it, is a lost art, because the
+mental conditions which made it possible exist no longer. The race is
+getting to that mannish stature in which every childlike quality is a
+shame to it; and the Venetian feeling for and cultivation of color are
+essentially childlike traits. No shadows of optics, no spectra of the
+prism clouded their passionate enjoyment of color as it was or as it
+might be, no uplifted finger of cold decorum frightened them into gray
+or sable gloom; they garbed themselves in rainbows, and painted with the
+sunset. Color was to them a rapture and one of the great pursuits of
+their lives; it was music visible, and they cultivated it as such,&mdash;not
+by rule and measure, by scales and opposites, through theories and
+canons, with petrific chill of intellect or entangling subtilty of
+analysis. Their lives developed their instincts, and their instincts
+their art. They loved color more than everything else; and therefore
+color made herself known to them in her rarest and noblest beauty. They
+went to Nature as children, and Nature met them as a loving <a name="Page_735" id="Page_735"></a>mother
+meets her child, with her happiest smile and the richest of her gifts. I
+do not believe that to any Venetian painter the thought of whether a
+given tint was true ever came; if only his fine instinct told him it was
+lovely, he asked no question further,&mdash;and if he took a tint from
+Nature, it was because it was lovely, and not because he found it in
+Nature. <i>Our</i> painter must see,&mdash;<i>their</i> painter could feel; and in this
+antithesis is told the whole difference between the times, so far as
+color is concerned.</p>
+
+<p>But while Delacroix worked in the same spirit and must be ranked in the
+same school, there were differences produced by the action of the so
+different social and intellectual influences under which he grew up. His
+nature was intensely imaginative, and so was preserved from the dwarfing
+effect of French rationalism and materialism: their clay could not hide
+his light or close his eyes, for imagination sees at all points and
+through all disguises, and so his spiritual and intellectual nature was
+kept alive when all Art around him was sinking into mere shapely clay.
+Classic taste and rationalistic pride had left in his contemporaries
+little else than cold propriety of form and color, studied negations of
+spontaneity and imaginative abandon; yet such was the force of his
+imagination, that these qualities, almost more than any other,
+characterize his conceptions: but the perpetual contact and presence of
+elements so uncongenial to his good genius produced their effects in a
+morbid sadness, in his feeling for subject, and in a gloomy tone of
+coloring, sometimes only plaintive, but at other times as melancholy as
+the voice of a lost soul. When healthiest, as in his Harem picture in
+the Luxembourg Gallery, it is still in the minor key of that lovely
+Eastern color-work, such as we see in the Persian carpets, and to me
+always something weird and mysterious and touching, like the tones of an
+Aeolian harp, or the greetings of certain sad-voiced children touched by
+the shadow of death before their babyhood is gone. No color has ever
+affected me like that of Delacroix,&mdash;his Dante pictures are the
+"Commedia" set in color, and palpitating with the woe of the damned.</p>
+
+<p>His intellect was of that nobler kind which cannot leave the questions
+of the Realities; and conscious kindred with great souls passed away
+must have given a terrible reality to the great question of the future,
+the terror of which French philosophy was poorly able to dispel or lead
+to anything else than this hopeless gloom. His great picture of the
+<i>plafond</i> of the Salon d'Apollon, in the Louvre, seems like a great ode
+to light, in the singing of which he felt the gloom break and saw the
+tones of healthy life lighten in his day for a prophetic moment; but
+<i>dispelled</i> the gloom <i>never</i> was. What he might have been, bred in the
+cheerful, unquestioning, and healthy, if unprogressive faith of Venice,
+we can only conjecture, seeing how great he grew in the cold of Gallic
+life.</p>
+
+<p>His health was, through his later life, bad; and for my own part, I
+believe that the same morbid feeling manifested in his art affected
+injuriously his physical life, aided doubtless by the excessive work
+which occupied all his available hours. For many years previous to his
+death he alternated between periods of almost unbroken labor, taking
+time only to eat and sleep, and intervals of absolute rest for days
+together. In his working fits, so deranged had his digestion become, he
+could take only one meal, a late dinner, each day, and saw no visitors
+except in the hour preceding his dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Having gone to Paris to spend a winter in professional studies, I made
+an earnest application by letter to Delacroix to be admitted as a pupil
+to his <i>atelier</i>. In reply, he invited me to visit him at his rooms the
+next day at four, to talk with him about my studies, proffering any
+counsel in his gift, but assuring me that it was impossible for him to
+receive me into his studio, as he could not work in the room with
+another, and his strength and occupations did not permit him to have a
+school apart, as he once had.</p><p><a name="Page_736" id="Page_736"></a></p>
+
+<p>At the appointed time I presented myself, and was received very
+pleasantly in a little drawing-room at his house in the Latin Quarter.
+His appearance, to me, was prepossessing; and though I had heard French
+artists speak of him as morose and bearish, I must say that his whole
+manner was most kindly and sympathetic, though not demonstrative. He was
+small, spare, and nervous-looking, with evident ill-health in his face
+and bearing, and under slight provocation, I should think, might have
+been disagreeable, but had nothing egoistic in his manner, and, unlike
+most celebrated artists, didn't seem to care to talk about his own
+pictures. After personal inquiries of my studies and the masters whom I
+knew and had studied, and most kindly, but appreciative criticism on all
+whom we spoke of, "Ah," said he, "I could not have an <i>atelier</i> (i.e.
+school-<i>atelier</i>) now, the spirit in which the young artists approach
+their work now is so different from that of the time when I was in the
+school. Then they were earnest, resolute men: there were Delaroche and
+Vernet," and others he mentioned, whose names I cannot remember, "men
+who went into their painting with their whole souls and in seriousness;
+but now the students come into the <i>atelier</i> to laugh and joke and
+frolic, as if Art were a game; there is an utter want of seriousness in
+the young men now which would make it impossible for me to teach them. I
+should be glad to direct your studies, but the work on which I am
+engaged leaves me no time to dispose of." I asked if I could not
+sometime see him working; but he replied that it was quite impossible
+for him to work with any one looking on.</p>
+
+<p>I asked him where, to his mind, was the principal want of the modern
+schools. He replied, "In execution; there is intellect enough, intention
+enough, and sometimes great conception, but everywhere a want of
+executive ability, which enfeebles all they do. They work too much with
+the crayon, instead of studying with the brush. If they want to be
+engravers, it is all well enough to work in charcoal; but the execution
+of an engraver is not that of a painter. I remember an English artist,
+who was in Paris when I was a young man, who had a wonderful power in
+using masses of black and white, but he was never able to do anything in
+painting, much to my surprise at that time; but later I came to know,
+that, if a man wants to be a painter, he must learn to draw with the
+brush."</p>
+
+<p>I asked him for advice in my own studies; to which he replied, "You
+ought to copy a great deal,&mdash;copy passages of all the great painters. I
+have copied a great deal, and of the works of almost everybody"; and as
+he spoke, he pointed to a line of studies of heads and parts of pictures
+from various old masters which hung around the room.</p>
+
+<p>I am inclined to think that he carried copying too far; for the
+principal defect of his later pictures is a kind of hardness and want of
+thought in the touch, a verging on the mechanical, as if his hand and
+feeling did not keep perfectly together.</p>
+
+<p>I regret much that I did not immediately after my interview take notes
+of the conversation, as he said many things which I cannot now recall,
+and which, as mainly critical of the works of other artists, would have
+been of interest to the world. I only remember that he spoke in great
+praise of Turner and Sir Joshua Reynolds. As his dinner-hour drew near,
+I took my leave, asking for some directions to see pictures of his which
+I had not seen; in reply to which, he offered to send me notes securing
+me admission to all the places where were pictures of his not easily
+accessible,&mdash;a promise he fulfilled a day or two after. I left him with
+as pleasant a personal impression as I have ever received from any great
+artist, and I have met many.</p>
+
+<p>The works of Delacroix, like those of all geniuses, are very unequal;
+but those who, not having studied them, attempt to estimate them by any
+ordinary standard will be far from the truth in their estimate, and will
+most certainly fail to be <a name="Page_737" id="Page_737"></a>impressed by their true excellence. The
+public has a mistaken habit of measuring greatness by the capacity to
+give <i>it</i> pleasure; but the public has no more ignorant habit than this.
+That is no great work which the popular taste can fully appreciate, and
+no thoroughly educated man can at once grasp the full calibre of a work
+of great power differing from his own standard. It took Penelope's
+nights to unweave the web of her days' weaving, and no sudden shears of
+untaught comprehension will serve to analyze those finer fabrics of a
+genius like Delacroix. Perhaps, owing to many peculiarities of his
+nature, showing themselves in unsympathetic forms in his pictures, he
+may always fall short of complete appreciation by the educated taste
+even,&mdash;and, indeed, to me he seems, of all the great colorists, the one
+least likely ever to win general favor, but not from want of greatness.</p>
+
+<p>I have often heard his drawing spoken of as bad. It was not the drawing
+of a <i>dessinateur</i>, but there was method in its badness. I remember
+hearing a friend say, that, going into his studio one day, he found him
+just in the act of finishing a hand. He said, "It looks very badly
+drawn, but I have painted it three times before I could get it right
+Once I had it well drawn, and then it looked very badly; and now it
+suits me better than when it was well drawn." A neatly drawn figure
+would have made as bad an appearance in one of his pictures as a dandy
+in the heat and turmoil of a battle-field; yet, as they came, all the
+parts were consistent with the whole, reminding one of what Ruskin says
+of Turner's figures.</p>
+
+<p>For vigor and dash in execution, and the trooping energy of some of his
+competitions, he reminds me more of Rubens than of any other; but his
+composition has a more purely imaginative cast than that of Rubens, a
+purer melody, a far more refined spiritualism. Nothing was coarse or
+gross, much less sensual. His was the true imaginative fusion from which
+pictures spring complete, subject to no revision. Between him and Turner
+there were many points of resemblance, of which the greatest was in a
+common defect,&mdash;an impulsive, unschooled, unsubstantial method of
+execution, contrasting strongly with the exact, deliberate, and yet,
+beyond description, masterly touch of Titian and most of his school.
+Tintoret alone shows something of the same tendency,&mdash;attributable, no
+doubt, to the late time at which he came into the method of his master.
+If Delacroix has none of the great serenity and cheerfulness of Titian,
+or the large and manly way of seeing of Veronese, he has an imaginative
+fervor and intensity we do not see in them, and of which Tintoret and
+Tiepolo only among the Venetians show any trace. Generations hence,
+Eugene Delacroix will loom larger above his contemporaries, now hiding
+him by proximity.</p><p><a name="Page_738" id="Page_738"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SYMPATHETIC_LYING" id="SYMPATHETIC_LYING"></a>SYMPATHETIC LYING.</h2>
+
+
+<p>If "all men are liars," and everybody deceives us a little sometimes, so
+that David's <i>dictum</i> hardly needs his apology of <i>haste</i>, it is a
+comfort to remember that many lies are not downright, but sympathetic;
+and an understanding of their nature, if it does not palliate them, may
+put us on our guard. <i>Sympathetic</i> we think a better name than the
+unfortunate title of <i>white</i>, which was given them by Mrs. Opie, because
+that designation carries a meaning of innocence, if not even of virtue;
+and instead of protecting our virtue, may even expose us to practise
+them without remorse. Of laughing over them and making light of them,
+and calling them by various ludicrous synonymes, as <i>fibs</i>, and <i>telling
+the thing that is not</i>, there has been enough. We have a purpose in our
+essay, than which no preaching could be more sober. Our aim is to give
+for them no opiate, but to quicken the sense of their guilt, and their
+exceeding mischief, too; for, if Francis Bacon be right in declaring the
+lie we swallow down more dangerous than that which only passes through
+our mind, how seriously the wine-bibbing of this sweet poison of kindly
+misrepresentation must have weakened the constitution of mankind! Lying
+for selfish gain or glory, for sensual pleasure, or for exculpation from
+a criminal charge, is more gross, but it involves at once such
+condemnation in society, and such inward reproach, as to be far less
+insidious than lying out of amiable consideration for others, to shield
+or further kinsfolk or friends, which may pass unrebuked, or stand for
+an actual merit. Yet, be the motive what it may, there is a certain
+invariable quantity of essential baseness in all violation of the truth;
+and it may be feared our affectionate falsehoods often work more evil
+than our malignant ones, by having free course and meeting with little
+objection. "Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for
+Him?" severely asks the old prophet of those who thought to cheat for
+their own set, as though it were in the cause of religion; and no godly
+soul can accept as a grateful tribute the least prevarication, however
+disinterested or devoted in its behalf. Indeed, no smart antithesis has
+been so hurtful as the overstated distinction between <i>black</i> lies and
+<i>white</i>. They are of different species, but have no generic difference.
+Charles Reade's novel, of "White Lies," in which the deceptions of love
+are so glorified, charming story as it is, will sap the character of
+whoever does not, with a mental protest, countermine its main idea. The
+very theory of our integrity is gone, if we do not insist on this. God
+has not so made the world that any perjury or cover of the facts is
+necessary to serve the cause of goodness. Commend it though English or
+German critics do, can we not conceive of a speech grander than the
+untruth which Shakspeare has put into the dying Desdemona's mouth?</p>
+
+<p>Let us, then, examine some of the forms of sympathetic lying.</p>
+
+<p>One of them is that of over-liberal praise. That a person is always
+ready to extol others, and was never heard to speak ill of anybody under
+the sun, appears to some the very crown of excellence. But what is the
+panegyric worth that has no discrimination, that finds any mortal
+faultless, or bestows on the varying and contradictory behaviors of men
+an equal meed? To what does universal commendation amount more than
+universal indifference? What value do we put on the lavish regard which
+is not <i>individual</i>, or founded on any intelligent appreciation of its
+object, but scattered blindly abroad on all flesh, as once thousands
+were vaguely baptized in the open air by a general sprinkling, and which
+any one can appropriate only as he may own a certain indeterminate
+section of an undivided township or unfenced <a name="Page_739" id="Page_739"></a>common? To have a good
+word for everybody, and take exception to nothing, is to incapacitate
+one's self for the exquisite delight of real fellowship. We all know
+persons who seem a sort of social favorites on account of this gracious
+manner which they afford with such mechanical plenty. But what a
+dilution and deterioration their external quality of half-artificial
+courtesy becomes! It is handing round sweetened water, instead of
+tasting the juice of the grape. It is pouring from a pail, instead of
+opening a vial of sweet odors. This broadcast and easy approval lacks
+that very honesty which, in the absence of fineness, is the single grace
+by which it could be sanctified.</p>
+
+<p>The same vice affects more public concerns. Of what sheer hypocrisy
+eulogistic resolutions upon officers leaving their posts in Church or
+State are too frequently composed! The men who are tired and want to get
+rid of their Representative or minister are so overjoyed at losing sight
+of him, that they can set no bounds to their thankful exaltation of his
+name! Truly they speed the parting guest, wish well to the traveller
+from their latitude, and launch with shouts the ship of his fortunes
+from their <i>ways</i>! They recommend him as a paragon of genius and
+learning to all communities or societies who want a service in his kind.
+How happy both sides to this transaction are expected to feel, and how
+willing people are sometimes to add to the soft words a solid
+testimonial of gold, if only thus a dismissal can be effected! But are
+not the reports of the committees and the votes of the meetings false
+coin, nowhere current in the kingdom of God, circulate as they may in
+this realm of earth? Nay, does not everybody, save the one that receives
+the somewhat insincere and left-handed blessing, read the formal and
+solemn record with a disposition to ridicule or a pitying smile?</p>
+
+<p>How well it is understood that we are not to speak the truth, but only
+good, of the dead! How melancholy it is, that <i>lying</i> has come to be so
+common an epithet for the gravestones we set over their dust! How few
+obituaries characterize those for whom they are written, or are
+distinguishable from each other in the terms of their funeral
+celebrations of departed virtue! How refreshing, as rare, is any of the
+veritable description which implies real lamentation! But what a
+suspicion falls on the mourning in whose loquacity we cannot detect one
+natural tone! As if that last messenger, who strips off all delusions
+and appearances, should be pursued and affronted with the mockery of our
+pretence, and we could circumvent the angel of judgment with the
+sentence of our fond wishes and the affectation of our groundless
+claims! As if the disembodied, in the light of truth, by which they are
+surrounded and pierced, could be pleased with our make-believe, or
+tolerate the folly of our factitious phrase! With what sadness their
+purged eyes must follow the pens inditing their epitaphs, and the
+sculptors' chisels making the commonplaces of fulsome commendation
+permanent on their tombs! What vanity to their nicer ears must be the
+sonorous and declamatory orator's breath! Let us not offend them so.
+They will take it for the insult of perfunctory honor, not for the
+sympathy it assumes to be. <i>Nothing but good of the dead</i>, do you say?
+<i>Nothing but truth of the dead</i>, we answer. <i>Do not disturb their bones;
+let them rest easy at last</i>, is the commentary on all keen criticism of
+those who have played important parts in life, and whose influence has
+perhaps been a curse. No, we reply, their bones will rest easier, and
+their benedictions come to us surer, for our unaffected plain-dealing.
+The trick of flattery may succeed with the living. Those still in this
+world of shadows, cross-lights, and glaring reflections may be caught by
+the images we flash upon them from the mirrors of admiration we swing in
+our hands. But they who have laid down all the shows of things with
+their own superficial countenances and <a name="Page_740" id="Page_740"></a>mortal frames cannot be imposed
+upon by the faces of adulation we make up. They who listen to that other
+speech, whose tones are the literally translated truth, cannot be
+patient with the gloss and varnish of our, at best, imperfect language.
+Let their awful presences shame and transfigure, terrify and transport
+us, into reality of communication akin to their own! "I will express
+myself in music to you," said a great composer to a bereft woman, as he
+took his seat at the piano. He felt that he could not manifest otherwise
+the feeling in him that was so deep. By sound or by silence, let it be
+only the conviction of our heart we venture to offer to spirits before
+whom the meaning of all things is unveiled!</p>
+
+<p>But <i>private conversation</i> is the great sphere of sympathetic lying. Our
+antipathies doubtless often tempt to falsify. We stretch the truth,
+trying, in private quarrels, to make out our case, or holding up our end
+in party-controversies. Anger, malice, envy, and revenge make us often
+break the ninth commandment. But concession, compromise, yielding to
+others' influence, and indisposition to contradict those whom we love or
+the world respects, generate more deceit than comes from all the evil
+passions, which, as Sterne said of lust, are too serious to be
+successful in cunning play. How it would mortify most persons to have
+brought back to them at night exact accounts of the divers opinions they
+have expressed to different persons, with facile conformity to the mood
+of each one during the course of a single day! How the members of any
+pleasant evening-company might astonish or amuse each other by narrating
+together the contradictory views the same voluble discourser has
+unfolded to them successively during the passage of one hour! so easily
+we bend and conform, and deny God and ourselves, to gratify the guest we
+converse with. On account of a few variations, scholars have composed
+what they call Harmonies of the Gospels; but how much harder it would be
+for any one of us to harmonize his talk on any subject moving the minds
+of men! Where strong self-interest acts, we can explain changes and
+inconsistencies in the great organs set up to operate on public
+sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher
+than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous
+centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world,
+splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other
+stupid chanticleers, crowing at false signals of the dawn, and well
+called the "Times," as in its columns nothing eternal was ever evinced.
+Everywhere exist these agents of custom and convention, wielded by a
+power behind them, and holding long no one direction, but varying in
+every wind. Some breeze of general policy, however, prescribes the law
+of these alterations, while only a weak and brainless sensibility,
+blowing from every source, commonly occasions the continual veering of
+our private word. Through what manifold phases <i>a good conversationist</i>
+has dexterity to pass! Quarterings of the uncertain moon, the lights
+that glance blue, silver, yellow, and green from the shifting angles of
+the gems that move with their wearers, or the confused motions of some
+of our inferior fellow-creatures that flutter from side to side of the
+road as intimidating objects fail on the eyes planted on opposite sides
+of their heads, feebly symbolize these human displays of unstable
+equilibrium. We must adapt our method to circumstances; but the
+apostolic rule, of "All things to all men," should not touch, as in Paul
+it never did, the fundamental consistency of principle which is the
+chief sign of spiritual life. The degree of elevation in the scale of
+being is marked by the approximation of the sight to a focus of unity.
+But, judging from the pictures they give us of their interior states, we
+might think many of our rational companions as myriad-eyed as
+naturalists tell us are some insects. Behold the wondrous transformation
+undergone by those very looks and features that give the natural
+language, as sentiments contrary to <a name="Page_741" id="Page_741"></a>each other are successively
+presented, and Republican or Democrat, Pro-Slavery man or Abolitionist,
+walks up! In truth, a man at once kindly and ingenuous can hardly help
+in most assemblies coming continually to grief. He knows not what to do,
+to be at once frank and polite. The transverse beams of the cross on
+which he is crucified are made of the sincerity and amiability which in
+no company can he quite reconcile. Happy is he who has discovered
+beneath all pleasant humors the unity at bottom of candor with goodness,
+in an Apostle's clause, "speaking the truth in love"! No rare and
+beautiful monster could stir more surprise and curiosity. It is but
+shifting the scene from a domestic dwelling to a concert-hall to notice
+how much sympathetic lying is in all applause. We saw a young man
+vigorously clap the performance to which he had not listened, and, when
+the <i>encore</i> took effect, return immediately to his noisy and disturbing
+engrossment in the young ladies' society from whose impertinent
+whispering he had only rested for the moment, troubling all who sat near
+him both with his talk and his sympathetic lie. A true man will not move
+a finger or lisp a syllable to echo what he does not apprehend and
+approve. A true man never assents anywise to what is error to him. In
+the delicious letters of Mendelssohn we read of an application by a
+distinguished lady made to him to write a piece of music to accompany
+the somewhat famous lines known as "Napoleon's Midnight Review." The
+great artist, feeling the untruth to his genius of any such attempt at
+description in sound, with gentle energy declines the request. He
+affirms that music is a most sober thing in his thoughts, that notes
+have their veracity as well as words, and even a deeper relation to
+reality than any other tongue or dialect of province or people, and that
+acquiescence in her wishes would be for him an unrighteous abuse of his
+function. We know a conscientious artist on the organ who would no more
+perjure his instrument than his lips, but go to the stake sooner than
+turn his keys into tongues to captivate a meretricious taste or
+transform one breath of the air under his fingers into sympathetic
+lying, though thousands should be ready to resound their delight. So was
+it with the noble Christian Jew, an Israelite of harmony indeed. The
+most sympathetic of vocations, whose appeal more than any other is
+direct to the feelings, could not induce him to tell a sympathetic lie.
+Would that the writers and speakers of plain English, and of their
+mother-tongue in every vernacular, might take example from the
+conscientious creator, who would not put a particle of cant into the
+crooked marks and ruled bars which are such a mystery to the
+uninitiated, blot with one demi-semi-quaver of falsehood his papers, or
+leave aught but truth of the heavenly sphere at a single point on any
+line! Then our sternest utterance with each other would be concord, our
+common questions and answers more melodiously responsive than chants in
+great cathedrals, and our lowest whispers like tones caught from angelic
+harps. For truth and tenderness are not, after all, incompatible; but
+whoever is falsely fond alone proves himself in the end harsh and rough.
+The sympathetic lie is of all things most unsympathetic, smoothing and
+stroking the surface to haunt and kill at the very centre and core. The
+proclamation from the house-top of what is told in the ear in closets
+will give more pain than if it were fairly published at first. There is
+a distinction here to be noted. All truth, or rather all matter of fact,
+does not, of course, belong to everybody. There are private and domestic
+secrets, whose promulgation, by no law of duty required, would make the
+streets of every city and village run with blood. There is a style of
+speaking, miscalled sincerity, which in mere tattling and tale-bearing,
+minding others' business, interfering with their relations,
+impertinently meddling with cases we can neither settle nor understand,
+and eating over again the forbidden fruit of that tree of knowledge of
+good and evil planted in the Garden of<a name="Page_742" id="Page_742"></a> Eden, whose seed has been
+scattered through the earth, though having less to do with truth than
+with the falsehood, to promulgate which artful and malicious combination
+of facts is one of the Devil's most skilful means, while truth is always
+no mere fact or circumstance, but a spirit. Sincerity consists in
+dealing openly with every one in things that concern himself, reserving
+concerns useless to him, and purely our neighbors' or our own. Husbands
+and wives, parents and children, fellow-citizens and friends, or
+strangers, owning but the bond of humanity, let such <i>discrete</i>
+sentences&mdash;if we may use rhetorically a musical word&mdash;from your lips
+afford a sweeter consonance than can vibrate and flow from all the pipes
+and strings of orchestra or organ. So sympathy and verity shall be at
+one: mercy and truth shall meet together, righteousness and peace shall
+kiss each other.</p>
+
+<p>Another form of sympathetic lying appears in a part of the social
+machinery whose morality has somehow been more strangely and unhappily
+overlooked,&mdash;we mean in <i>letters of introduction</i>. But the falsehood is
+only by perversion. The letter of introduction is an affair of noble
+design, to bring together parties really related, to give room for the
+elective affinities of friendship, to furnish occasion for the
+comparison of notes to the votaries of science, to extend the privilege
+of all liberal arts, and promote the offices of a common brotherhood.
+How much we owe to these little paper messengers for the new treasures
+of love and learning they have brought! It is hard to tell whose debt to
+them is greatest, that of the giver, the bearer, or the receiver, or
+whether, beyond all private benefit and pleasure, their chief result has
+not been the improvement and refinement of the human race. But, it must
+be confessed, the letter of introduction is too much fallen and
+degenerate. Convenience, depredation, the compassing of by-ends, rather
+than any loving communion, is too often its intent. It savors less of
+the paradise of affection than of the vulgar wilderness of the world. We
+are a little afraid of it, when it comes. A worthy man told me he knew
+not whether to be sorry or glad, when he found a letter addressed to him
+at the post-office. How does the balance incline, when a man or woman
+stands before us with a letter of introduction in hand? We eye it with a
+mistrust that it may turn out to be a tool of torture, serving us only
+for a sort of mental surgery. Frequently, it has been simply procured,
+and is but an impudent falsehood on its very face. The writer of it
+professes an admiration he does not feel for the person introduced, to
+whose own reading he leaves it magnificently open before its terms of
+exaggerated compliment can reach him to whom it is sent. What is the
+reason of this deceit? there is a ground for it, no doubt. "This effect
+defective comes by cause." The inditer has certainly some sympathy with
+the bearer he so amply commissions and wordily exalts. This bearer has
+some distress to be relieved, some faculty to exercise, some institution
+to recommend, or some ware to dispose of. He that forwards him to us
+very likely has first had him introduced to himself, has bestowed
+attention and hospitable fellowship upon him, and now, growing weary of
+the care and trouble and expense, is very happy to be rid of him at so
+small a cost as that of passing him on to a distant acquaintance by a
+letter of introduction, which the holder's business in life is to carry
+round from place to place through the world! Sometimes dear companions
+call on us to pay this tax; sometimes those who themselves have no claim
+on us. But, be it one class or the other, how little they may consider
+what they demand! Upon what a neglect or misappreciation of values the
+proceed! Verily we need a new Political Economy written, deeper than
+that of Malthus or Smith, to inform them. Our precious time, our cordial
+regards, the diversion of our mind from our regular duties, the neglect
+of already engrossing relations in our business or profession, the
+surrender <a name="Page_743" id="Page_743"></a>of body and soul, they require for the prey of idlers and
+strangers! Had our correspondents drawn upon us for a sum of money, had
+a highwayman bid us stand and deliver our purse, we should not have been
+so much out of pocket. But we cannot help yielding; there is no excuse
+or escape. We are under the operation of that most delicate and
+resistless of powers no successor of Euclid ever explained the principle
+of, which may be called the <i>social screw</i>. We submit patiently, because
+we cannot endure to deny to the new-comer the assumed right of him who
+cruelly turns it, out of reach and out of sight. We know some men, of
+extraordinary strength of countenance themselves, who have been able to
+defend their door-stone against an impostor's brazen face. A good
+householder, when a stage-full of country-cousins came to his door, bade
+the driver take them to the hotel, and he would willingly pay the bills.
+But few have the courage thus to board out those who have a staff in
+their hands to knock at the very gate of their hearts. There would be
+satisfaction in the utmost amount of this labor and sacrifice, could we
+have any truth for its condition. But the falsehood has been written
+down by one whom we can nowise accuse. Alas! there is often as little
+truth in the entertainer. All together in the matter are walking in a
+vain show. We are at the mercy of a diviner's wand and a conjurer's
+spell. We have put on a foolish look of consent and compromise. We join
+with our new mate in extolling the wrong-doer who has inflicted him upon
+us. We dare not analyze the base alloy of the composition he conveys,
+which pretends to be pure gold. We must either act falsely ourselves, or
+charge falsehood upon others. We prefer the guilt to seeming unkindness;
+when, if we were perfectly good and wise, we should shake off the coil
+of deception, refuse insincere favors, and, however infinite and
+overflowing our benevolence, insist on doing, in any case, only willing
+and authentic good,&mdash;for affection is too noble to be feigned. "If,"
+said Ole Bull, "I kiss my enemy, what have I left for my friend?" We
+must forgive and love our enemies and all men, and show our love by
+treating them without dissimulation, but a sublime openness, according
+to their needs and deserts.</p>
+
+<p>The male or female adventurers, launching with their bag of letters for
+all their merchandise on the social sea, understand well the potent
+value, beyond bills of exchange, of the sheets they bear. They may have
+taken them as an equivalent for some service they have rendered, in
+discharge of some actual or apparent obligation in the great market
+limited to no quarter of our towns and no description of articles, but
+running through every section of human life. Our <i>acceptance</i> of these
+notes is a commercial transaction, not of the fairest sort. It belongs
+to a species of trade in which we are made to pay other people's debts,
+and our dear friends and intimate relations sell us for some song or
+other which has been melodiously chanted into their own ears. "A new way
+to pay old debts," indeed! Every part of the bargain or trick of the
+game is by the main operators well known and availed of for their own
+behoof. By letter, persons have been introduced into circles where they
+had no footing, posts for whose responsibilities they were utterly
+unfit, and trusts whose funds they showed more faculty to embezzle than
+apply. Such licentious proceedings have good-natured concessions to
+wrong requests multiplied to the hurt of the commonweal. Let us beware
+of this kind of sympathetic lie, which ends in robbery, and swindles
+thousands out of what is more important than material property, for the
+support of pretenders that are worse than thieves, who are bold enough,
+like drones, to break into the hive of the busy and eat the honey they
+never gathered, absorbing to themselves, as far as they can, the
+courtesy of the useful members of the community by the worst monopoly in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>Our treatment of the subject would be partial, if we did not emphasize
+the advantage <a name="Page_744" id="Page_744"></a>of a right use, of this <i>introductory</i> prerogative. What
+more delightful to remember than that we brought together those who were
+each other's counterparts? What more beautiful than to have put the
+deserving in the way of the philanthropic, and illustrated the old law,
+that, grateful as it is to have our wants supplied, a lofty soul always
+finds it more blessed to give than to receive, and a boon infinitely
+greater to exercise beneficent affection than even to be its object? It
+ill becomes us who write on this theme to put down one unfair or
+churlish period. We too well remember our own experience in
+circumstances wherein our only merit was to be innocent recipients of
+abundant tokens of good-will; and perhaps the familiar instance may have
+pardon for its recital, in illustration of the mercy which the
+letter-bearer may not seldom find. An epistle from a mutual acquaintance
+was our opportunity of intercourse with a venerable bachelor residing in
+the city of Antwerp. It was so urged upon us, that the least we could do
+was to present it, expecting only a few minutes' agreeable conversation.
+Shall we ever forget the instant welcome that beamed from his benignant
+face, or how he honored the draft upon him by immediately calling upon
+all the members of our travelling-party? how literally, against all our
+expostulations, he gave himself up to us, attending us to
+picture-galleries and zoological gardens, insisting on disbursing the
+entrance-fee for us all, with our unavoidable allowance at the moment,
+and, on our exaction of a just reckoning with him at last, declining to
+name the sum, on the unanswerable plea of an old man's poor and failing
+memory! "Does the old man still live?" Surely he does the better life in
+heaven, if his gray locks on earth are under the sod, and it is too late
+for these poor lines to reach his eyes, for our sole repayment. Without
+note, but only chance introduction, a similar case of disinterested
+bounty in Liverpool from one of goodness undiscriminating as the Divine,
+which gives the sun and rain to all, stood in strange contrast with the
+reception of a Manchester manufacturer, almost whose only manifestation
+in reply to the document we tendered was a sort of growl that <i>we could
+see mills in Lowell like those under his own control</i>. Perhaps, from his
+shrewd old head, as he kept his seat at his desk, like a sharp-shooter
+on the watch and wary for the foe, he only covered us with the surly
+weapon of his tongue in the equitable way for which we have here been
+contending ourselves! Certainly we were quite satisfied, if the
+Englishman was.</p>
+
+<p>But printed lies, as well as written, are largely sympathetic. We are
+bitter against the press; and surely it needs a greater Luther for its
+reformer. But its follies are ours; its corruptions belong to its
+patrons. The editor of a paper edits the mind of those that take it. He
+cannot help being in a sort of close communion. Perhaps he mainly
+borrows the very indignation, not so very pure and independent, with
+which he reproves some ingenuous satirist of what may appear indecent in
+our fashions of amusement, or unbecoming in the relations of the sexes
+or the habits of the young. "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the
+hands are the hands of Esau." He is two and more, as we all are, while
+he is one, and must not be blamed on his own score alone. The London
+"Times," already mentioned, is called the <i>Thunderer</i>; but, like the man
+behind the scenes at the theatre with his machinery, it thunders as it
+is told. How sympathetic are the countless brood of falsehoods
+respecting our country in foreign publications is evident from the
+cases, too few, of periodicals which, with the same means of
+information, rise to a noble accuracy and justice. While the more
+virulent, like the "Saturday Review," servile to its peculiar customers,
+make a show of holding out against the ever more manifest truth, others,
+among which is even the "Times" itself, learn the prudence of an altered
+style. When the wind is about to change, an uncertain fluttering and
+swinging to and fro may be observed in the vanes. So do <a name="Page_745" id="Page_745"></a>many organs
+prove what pure indicators they are, as they shake in the breeze of
+public opinion. "Stop my paper" is a cry whose real meaning is for the
+constituency which the paper represents.</p>
+
+<p>It is a more shameful illustration of the same weakness, when the pens
+of literary men, not dependent on local support, are subsidized by the
+prejudice or sold to the pride and wealth of the society in which they
+live. "I believe in testifying," once said a great man; and we have,
+among the philosophic and learned, noble witnesses for the equity of our
+national case. But what a spectacle of degraded functions, when poets,
+historians, and religious thinkers bow the knee to an aristocracy so
+vilely proud to stretch forth its hand of fellowship to a slaveholding
+brotherhood beyond the sea! We need not denounce them. The ideas they
+pretend to stand for hold them in scorn. The imagination whose pictures
+they drew will quench all her lustre for the deserters that devote
+themselves to the slavish passions of the hour. The history whose tales
+of glory and ignominy they related will rear a gibbet for their own
+reputation in the future time. As for us, at the present, we mention not
+their names, but, like the injured ghost in the poet's picture of the
+world of spirits, turn from them silently and pass on. We remember there
+was a grand old republican in the realm of letters, John Milton by name,
+whose shade must be terrible to their thoughts. Let them beware of
+making of themselves a public shame. The great revenge of years will
+turn into a mere trick of literature the prose and verse of all not
+inspired by devotion to humanity, zeal for the cause of the oppressed,
+and a hearty love of truth, while every covering of lies shall be torn
+away. They who have despised our free institutions, and prophesied our
+downfall, and gloated by anticipation over the destruction of our
+country, to get the lease of a hundred years more to their own lordship
+of Church and State, and have put their faith in the oppressive Rebels
+trying to build an empire on the ruins of the Ten Commandments, are as
+blind to discern the laws of human nature as they are awkward to raise
+the horoscope of events. This Western Continent, under God, may it
+please the despots, is not going to barbarism and desolation. That good
+missionary of freedom as well as religion, whom New England sent to
+California in the person of Thomas Starr King, writes us that Mount
+Shasta is ascertained to be higher than Mont Blanc. Some other
+elevations than of the surface of the globe, in this hemisphere, the
+Transatlantics may yet behold.</p>
+
+<p>The pulpit is but a sympathetic deceiver, when it violates the truth it
+is set to defend. All its lies are echoes of the avarice and inhumanity
+sitting in the pews; and when, in the rough old figure, it is a dumb dog
+that will not bark at the robber or warn us of danger, the real mutes,
+whom its silence but copies, are those demure men below who seem to
+listen to its instructions.</p>
+
+<p>We are astonished to find a liar in the lightning of heaven over the
+telegraphic wires. Let us get over our surprise. The lie is human
+altogether, not elemental at all. The operator has his private object to
+carry, the partisan his political end to serve, the government itself
+flatters the people it fears with incorrect accounts of military
+movements and fortified posts and the numbers of dead and wounded on
+either side. Kinglake calls the telegraph a device by which a clerk
+dictates to a nation. Who but the nation, or some part of it, dictates
+to the clerk? He does not control, but records, the sentiment of the
+community in all his invented facts; and when we hear the click or read
+the strange dots, we want some trustworthy voucher or responsible human
+auditor even of these electric accounts.</p>
+
+<p>But, creatures of sympathy, needy dependants on approbation, as we are,
+shall we surrender to all or any of these lies? No,&mdash;there is a sympathy
+of truth, to whose higher court and supreme verdict we must appeal.
+Before it let us stand ourselves, perpetual witnesses of the very <a name="Page_746" id="Page_746"></a>truth
+of God in our breast. Said the lion-hearted Andrew Jackson, "When I
+decide on my course, I do not ask what people will think, but look into
+my own heart for guidance, believing that all brave men will agree with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"As the minister began on the subject of Slavery, I left the church,"
+said a respectable citizen to a modest woman, of whose consent with him
+he felt sure.</p>
+
+<p>"And did the minister go on?" she gently inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he went on," the mistaken citizen replied.</p>
+
+<p>So, in this land, let us go on in the way of justice and truth we have
+at last begun. Let us have no more sympathetic, however once legal, lies
+for oppression and wrong. We shall be as good as a thousand years old,
+when we are through our struggle. For the respect of Europe let us have
+no anxiety. It will come cordially or by constraint, upon the victory of
+the right and the reinstating of our manhood by the divine law, to the
+discouragement of all iniquity at home or abroad. Our success will be a
+signal for all the tyrannies, in which the proud and strong have been
+falsely banded together to crush the ignorant and lowly, to come down.
+The domineering political and ecclesiastical usurpers of exclusive
+privilege will no longer give and take reciprocal support against the
+rising of mankind than the Roman augurs could at last keep one another
+in countenance. Let us go on, through dark omens as well as bright, and
+suffer ourselves to have no doubting day. Let us show that something
+besides a monarchy in this world can stand. On disbelievers and
+obstructers let us have companion. They cannot live contented, and it is
+not quite safe for them to die. The path of our progress opens clear.
+Let us not admit the idea of failure. To think of failing is to fail. As
+it was with the sick before their Saviour of old, only our faith can
+make us whole.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SOMETHING_ABOUT_BRIDGES" id="SOMETHING_ABOUT_BRIDGES"></a>SOMETHING ABOUT BRIDGES.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Instinctively, Treason, in this vast land, aimed its first blow at the
+Genius of Communication,&mdash;the benign and potent means and method of
+American civilization and nationality. The great problem Watt and
+Fulton, Clinton and Morse so gloriously solved, a barbaric necessity
+thus reduces back to chaos; and not the least sad and significant of the
+bulletins whereby the most base of civic mutinies finds current record
+is that entitled, "Destruction of the Bridges"; and (melancholy
+contrast!) simultaneously we hear of constructive energy in the same
+direction, on the Italian peninsula,&mdash;an engineer having submitted to
+Victor Emmanuel proposals for throwing a bridge across the Straits of
+Messina, "binding Scylla to Charybdis, and thus clinching Italian unity
+with bonds of iron." Bonds of nationality, in more than a physical
+sense, indeed, are bridges: even cynical Heine found an endeared outlook
+to his native Rhine on the bastion of a familiar bridge; Tennyson makes
+one an essential feature of his English summer picture, wherein forever
+glows the sweet image of the "Gardener's Daughter"; and Bunyan found no
+better similitude for Christian's passage from Time to Eternity than the
+"river where there is no bridge."</p>
+
+<p>The primitive need, the possible genius, the science, and the sentiment
+of a bridge endear its aspect and associations beyond those of any other
+economical structure. There is, indeed, something genially picturesque
+about a mill, as Constable's pencil <a name="Page_747" id="Page_747"></a>and Tennyson's muse have aptly
+demonstrated; there is an artistic miracle possible in a sculptured
+gate, as those of Ghiberti so elaborately evidence; science, poetry, and
+human enterprise consecrate a light-house; sacred feelings hallow a
+spire; and medi&aelig;val towers stand forth in noble relief against the
+sunset sky: but around none of these familiar objects cluster the same
+thoroughly human associations which make a bridge attractive to the
+sight and memory. In its most remote suggestion it typifies man's primal
+relation to Nature, his first instinctive effort to circumvent or avail
+himself of her resources; indeed, he might take his hint of a bridge
+from Nature herself,&mdash;her fallen monarchs of the forest athwart a
+stream, "the testimony of the rocks," the curving shores, cavern roofs,
+and pendent branches, and the prismatic bow in the heavens, which a poet
+well calls "a bridge to tempt the angels down."</p>
+
+<p>A bridge of the simplest kind is often charmingly effective as a
+landscape-accessory: there is a short plank one in a glen of the White
+Mountains, which, seen through a vista of woodland, makes out the
+picture so aptly that it is sketched by every artist who haunts the
+region. What lines of grace are added to the night view of a great city
+by the lights on the bridges! what subtile principles enter into the
+building of such a bridge as the Britannia, where even the metallic
+contraction of the enormous tubes is provided for by supporting them on
+cannon-balls! how venerable seems the most graceful of Tuscan bridges,
+when we remember it was erected in the fifteenth century,&mdash;and the
+Rialto, when we think that it was designed by Michel Angelo! and how
+signal an instance is it of the progressive application of a true
+principle in science, that the contrivance whereby the South-Americans
+bridge the gorges of their mountains, by a pendulous causeway of twisted
+osiers and bamboo,&mdash;one of which, crossed by Humboldt, was a hundred and
+twenty feet long,&mdash;is identical with that which sustains the magnificent
+structure over the Niagara River! In a bridge the arch is triumphal,
+both for practical and commemorative ends: unknown to the Greeks and
+Egyptians, even the ancient Romans, it is said by modern architects, did
+not appreciate its true mechanical principle, but ascribed the
+marvellous strength thereof to the cement which kept intact their
+semicircle. In C&aelig;sar's "Commentaries," the bridge transit and vigilance
+form no small part of military tactics,&mdash;boats and baskets serving the
+same purpose in ancient and modern warfare. The Church of old originated
+and consecrated bridges; religion, royalty, and art celebrate their
+advent; the opening of Waterloo Bridge is the subject of one of the best
+pictures of a modern English painter; and Cockney visitors to the
+peerless Bridge of Telford still ask the guide where the Queen stood at
+its inauguration. But it is when we turn from the historical and
+scientific to the familiar and personal that we realize the spontaneous
+interest attached to a bridge. It is as a feature of our native
+landscape, the goal of habitual excursions, the rendezvous, the
+observatory, the favorite haunt or transit, that it wins the gaze and
+the heart. There the musing angler sits content; there the echoes of the
+horse's hoofs rouse to expectancy the dozing traveller; there the glad
+lover dreams, and the despairing wretch seeks a watery grave, and the
+song of the poet finds a response in the universal heart,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"How often, oh, how often,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the days that have gone by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have I stood on that bridge at midnight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gazed on the wave and sky!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>One of the most primitive tokens of civilization is a bridge; and yet no
+artificial object is more picturesquely associated with its ultimate
+symbols: the fallen tree whereon the pioneer crosses a stream in the
+wilderness is not more significant of human isolation than the
+fragmentary arch in an ancient city of the vanished homo of thousands.
+Thus, by its necessity and its survival, a bridge suggests the first
+exigency and the last relic of civilized life. The old explorers of our
+Western Continent record the <a name="Page_748" id="Page_748"></a>savage expedients whereby water-courses
+were passed,&mdash;coils of grape-vine carried between the teeth of an
+aboriginal swimmer and attached to the opposite bank, a floating log,
+or, in shallow streams, a series of stepping-stones; and the most
+popular historian of England, when delineating to the eye of fancy the
+hour of her capital's venerable decay, can find no more impressive
+illustration than to make a broken arch of London Bridge the observatory
+of the speculative reminiscent.</p>
+
+<p>The bridge is, accordingly, of all economical inventions, that which is
+most inevitable to humanity, signalizing the first steps of man amid the
+solitude of Nature, and accompanying his progress through every stage of
+civic life: its crude form makes the wanderer's heart beat in the lonely
+forest, as a sign of the vicinity or the track of his kind; and its
+massive remains excite the reverent curiosity of the arch&aelig;ologist, who
+seeks among the ruins of Art for trophies of a by-gone race. Few
+indications of Roman supremacy are more striking than the unexpected
+sight of one of those bridges of solid and symmetrical masonry which the
+traveller in Italy encounters, when emerging from a mountain-pass or a
+squalid town upon the ancient highway. The permanent method herein
+apparent suggests an energetic and pervasive race whose constructive
+instinct was imperial; such an evidence of their pathway over water is
+as suggestive of national power as the evanescent trail of the savage is
+of his casual domain. In the bridge, as in no other structure, use
+combines with beauty by an instinctive law; and the stone arch, more or
+less elaborate in detail, is as essential now to the function and the
+grace of a bridge as when it was first thrown, invincible and
+harmonious, athwart the rivers C&aelig;sar's legions crossed.</p>
+
+<p>As I stood on the scattered planks which afford a precarious foothold
+amid the rapids of St. Anthony, methought these frail bridges of hewn
+timber accorded with the reminiscence of the missionary pioneer who
+discovered and named the picturesque waters more than an elaborate and
+ancient causeway. Even those long, inelegant structures which lead the
+pedestrian over our own Charles River, or the broad inlets of the
+adjacent bay, have their peculiar charm as the scene of many a gorgeous
+autumnal sunset and many a patient "constitutional" walk. It is a
+homely, but significant proverb, "Never find fault with the bridge that
+carries you safe over." What beautiful shadows graceful bridges cast,
+when the twilight deepens and the waves are calm! how mysteriously sleep
+the moonbeams there! what a suggestive vocation is a toll-keeper's'
+patriarchs in this calling will tell of methodical and eccentric
+characters known for years.</p>
+
+<p>Bridges have their legends. There is one in Lombardy whence a jilted
+lover sprang with his faithless bride as she passed to church with her
+new lover; it is yet called the "Bridge of the Betrothed." An old
+traveller, describing New-York amusements, tells us of a favorite ride
+from the city to the suburban country, and says,&mdash;"In the way there is a
+bridge about three miles distant, which you always pass as you return,
+called the 'Kissing Bridge,' where it is part of the etiquette to salute
+the lady who has put herself under your protection."<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> A curious
+lawsuit was lately instituted by the proprietor of a menagerie who lost
+an elephant by a bridge giving way beneath his unaccustomed weight; the
+authorities protested against damages, as they never undertook to give
+safe passage to so large an animal.</p>
+
+<p>The office of a bridge is prolific of metaphor, whereof an amusing
+instance is Boswell's comparison of himself, when translating Paoli's
+talk to Dr. Johnson, to a "narrow isthmus connecting two continents." It
+has been aptly said of Dante's great poem, that, in the world of
+letters, it is a medi&aelig;val bridge over that vast chasm which divides
+classical <a name="Page_749" id="Page_749"></a>from modern times. All concliating authors bridge select
+severed intelligences, and even national feeling: as Irving's writings
+brought more near to each other the alienated sympathies of England and
+America, and Carlyle made a trysting-place for British and German
+thought; as Sydney Smith's talk threw a suspension-bridge from
+Conservative to Reformer, and Lord Bacon's (in the hour of bitter
+alienation between Crown and Commons) "reconciling genius spanned the
+dividing stream of party."</p>
+
+<p>How isolated and bewildered are villagers, when, after a tempest, the
+news spreads that a freshet has carried away the bridge! Every time we
+shake hands, we make a human bridge of courtesy or love; and that was a
+graceful fancy of one of our ingenious writers to give expression to his
+thoughts in "Letters from under a Bridge." With an eye and an ear for
+Nature's poetry, the gleam of lamps from a bridge, the figures that pass
+and repass thereon, the rush and the lull of waters beneath, the
+perspective of the arch, the weather-stains on the parapet, the sunshine
+and the cloud-shadows around, are phases and sounds fraught with meaning
+and mystery.</p>
+
+<p>It is an acknowledged truth in the philosophy of Art, that Beauty is the
+handmaid of Use; and as the grace of the swan and the horse results from
+a conformation whose <i>rationale</i> is movement, so the pillar that
+supports the roof, and the arch that spans the current, by their
+serviceable fitness, wed grace of form to wise utility. The laws of
+architecture illustrate this principle copiously; but in no single and
+familiar product of human skill is it more striking than in bridges; if
+lightness, symmetry, elegance, proportion charm the ideal sense, not
+less are the economy and adaptation of the structure impressive to the
+eye of science. Perhaps the ideas of use and beauty, of convenience and
+taste, in no instance, coalesce more obviously; and therefore, of all
+human inventions, the bridge lends the most undisputed charm to the
+landscape. It is one of those symbols of humanity which spring from and
+are not grafted upon Nature; it proclaims her affinity with man, and
+links her spontaneous benefits with his invention and his needs; it
+seems to celebrate the stream over which it rises, and to wed the
+wayward waters to the order and the mystery of life. There is no hint of
+superfluity or impertinence in a bridge; it blends with the wildest and
+the most cultivated scene with singular aptitude, and is a feature of
+both rural and metropolitan landscape that strikes the mind as
+essential. The most usual form has its counterpart in those rocky arches
+which flood and fire have excavated or penned up in many picturesque
+regions,&mdash;the segments of caverns, or the ribs of strata,&mdash;so that,
+without the instinctive suggestion of the mind itself, Nature furnishes
+complete models of a bridge whereon neither Art nor Science can improve.
+Herein the most advanced and the most rude peoples own a common skill;
+bridges, of some kind, and all adapted to their respective countries,
+being the familiar invention of savage necessity and architectural
+genius. The explorer finds them in Africa as well as the artist in Rome;
+swung, like huge hammocks of ox-hide, over the rapid streams of South
+America; spanning in fragile cane-platforms the gorges of the Andes;
+crossing vast chasms of the Alleghanies with the slender iron viaduct of
+the American railways; and jutting, a crumbling segment of the ancient
+world, over the yellow Tiber: as familiar on the Chinese tea-caddy as on
+Canaletto's canvas; as traditional a local feature of London as of
+Florence; as significant of the onward march of civilization in Wales
+to-day as in Liguria during the Middle Ages. Where men dwell and wander,
+and water flows, these beautiful and enduring, or curious and casual
+expedients are found, as memorable triumphs of architecture, crowned
+with historical associations, or as primitive inventions that
+unconsciously mark the first faltering steps of humanity in the course
+of empire: for, on this continent, where the French missionary crossed
+the narrow log supported <a name="Page_750" id="Page_750"></a>by his Indian convert in the midst of a
+wilderness, massive stone arches shadow broad streams that flow through
+populous cities; and the history of civilization may be traced from the
+loose stones whereon the lone settler fords the water-course, to such
+grand, graceful, and permanent monuments of human prosperity as the
+elaborate and ancient stone bridges of European capitals.</p>
+
+<p>When we look forth upon a grand or lovely scene of Nature,&mdash;mountain,
+river, meadow, and forest,&mdash;what a fine central object, what an
+harmonious artificial feature of the picture, is a bridge, whether
+rustic and simple, a mere rude passage-way over a brook, or a curve of
+gray stone throwing broad shadows upon the bright surface of a river!
+Nor less effective is the same object amid the crowded walls, spires,
+streets, and chimney-stacks of a city. There the bridge is the least
+conventional structure, the suggestive point, the favorite locality; it
+seems to reunite the working-day world with the freedom of Nature; it is
+perhaps the one spot in the dense array of edifices and thoroughfares
+which "gives us pause." There, if anywhere, our gaze and our feet
+linger; people have a relief against the sky, as they pass over it;
+artists look patiently thither; lovers, the sad, the humorous, and the
+meditative, stop there to observe and to muse; they lean over the
+parapet and watch the flowing tide; they look thence around as from a
+pleasant vantage-ground. The bridge, in populous old towns, is the
+rendezvous, the familiar landmark, the traditional nucleus of the place,
+and perhaps the only picturesque framework in all those marts and homes,
+more free, open, and suggestive of a common lot than temple, square, or
+palace; for there pass and repass noble and peasant, regal equipage and
+humble caravan; children plead to stay, and veterans moralize there; the
+privileged beggar finds a standing-place for charity to bless; a shrine
+hallows or a sentry guards, history consecrates or Art glorifies, and
+trade, pleasure, or battle, perchance, lends to it the spell of fame.
+Let any one recall his sojourn in a foreign city, and conjure to his
+mind's eye the scenes, and prominent to his fancy, distinct to his
+memory, will be the bridge. He will think of Florence as intersected by
+the Arno, and with the very name of that river reappears the peerless
+grace of the Ponte Santa Trinit&agrave; with its moss-grown escutcheons and
+a&euml;rial curves; the Pont Neuf, at Paris, with its soldiers and priests,
+its boot-blacks and grisettes, the gay streets on one side and the
+studious quarter on the other, typifies and concentrates for him the
+associations of the French capital; and what a complete symbol of
+Venice&mdash;its canals, its marbles, its mysterious polity, its romance of
+glory and woe&mdash;is a good photograph of the Bridge of Sighs!</p>
+
+<p>The history of Rome is written on her bridges. The Ponte Rotto is Art's
+favorite trophy of her decay; two-thirds of it has disappeared; and the
+last Pope has ineffectively repaired it, by a platform sustained by iron
+wire: yet who that has stood thereon in the sunset, and looked from the
+dome of St. Peter's to the islands projected at that hour so distinctly
+from the river's surface, glanced along the flushed dwellings upon its
+bank, with their intervals of green terraces, or gazed, in the other
+direction, upon the Cloaca of Tarquin, Vesta's dome, and the Aventine
+Hill, with its palaces, convents, vineyards, and gardens, has not felt
+that the Ponte Rotto was the most suggestive servatory in the Eternal
+City? The Ponte Molle brings back Constantine and his vision of the
+Cross; and the statues on Sant' Angelo mutely attest the vicissitudes of
+ecclesiastical eras.</p>
+
+<p>England boasts no monument of her modern victories so impressive as the
+bridge named for the most memorable of them. The best view of Prague and
+its people is from the long series of stone arches which span the
+Moldau. The solitude and serenity of genius are rarely better realized
+than by musing of Klopstock and Gessner, Lavator and Zimmermann, on the
+Bridge of Rapperschwyl on the<a name="Page_751" id="Page_751"></a> Lake of Zurich, where they dwelt and
+wrote or died. From the Bridge of St. Martin we have the first view of
+Mont Blanc. The Suspension Bridge at Niagara is an artificial wonder as
+great, in its degree, as the natural miracle of the mighty cataract
+which thunders forever at its side; while no triumph of inventive
+economy could more aptly lead the imaginative stranger into the
+picturesque beauties of Wales than the extraordinary tubular bridge
+across the Menai Strait. The aqueduct-bridge at Lisbon, the long
+causeway over Cayuga Lake in our own country, and the bridge over the
+Loire at Orl&eacute;ans are memorable in every traveller's retrospect.</p>
+
+<p>But the economical and the artistic interest of bridges is often
+surpassed by their historical suggestions; almost every vocation and
+sentiment of humanity being intimately associated therewith. The Rialto
+at Venice and the Ponte Vecchio at Florence are identified with the
+financial enterprise of the one city and the goldsmith's skill of the
+other: one was long the Exchange of the "City of the Sea," and still
+revives the image of Shylock and the rendezvous of Antonio; while the
+other continues to represent medi&aelig;val trade in the quaint little shops
+of jewellers and lapidaries. One of the characteristic religious orders
+of that era is identified with the ancient bridge which crosses the
+Rhone at Avignon, erected by the "Brethren of the Bridge," a fraternity
+instituted in an age of anarchy expressly to protect travellers from the
+bandits, whose favorite place of attack was at the passage of rivers.
+The builder of the old London Bridge, Peter Colechurch, is believed to
+have been attached to this same order; he died in 1176, and was buried
+in a crypt of the little chapel on the second pier, according to the
+habit of the fraternity. For many years a market was held on this
+bridge; it was often the scene of war; it stayed the progress of
+Canute's fleet; at one time destroyed by fire, and at another carried
+away by ice; half ruined in one era by the bastard Faulconbridge, and,
+at another, the watchword of civil war, when the cry resounded, "Cade
+hath gotten Londonbridge," and Wat Tyler's rebels convened there;
+Elizabeth and her peerless courtiers have floated, in luxurious barges
+and splendid attire, by its old piers, and the heads of traitors rotted
+in the sun upon its venerable battlements. Only sixty years ago a
+portion of the original structure remained; it was once covered with
+houses; Peter the Dutchman's famous water-wheels plashed at its side;
+from the dark street and projecting gables noted tavern-signs vibrated
+in the wind. The exclusive thoroughfare from the city to Kent and
+Surrey, what ceremonial and scenes has it not witnessed,&mdash;royal
+entrances and greetings, rites under the low brown arches of the old
+chapel, revelry in the convenient hostels, traffic in the crowded mart,
+chimes from the quaint belfry, the tragic triumph of vindictive law in
+the gory heads upon spikes! The veritable and minute history of London
+Bridge would illustrate the civic and social annals of England; and
+romance could scarce invent a more effective background for the varied
+scenes and personages such a chronicle would exhibit than the dim local
+perspective, when, ere any bridge stood there, the ferryman's daughter
+founded with the tolls a House of Sisters, subsequently transformed into
+a college of priests. By a law of Nature, thus do the elements of
+civilization cluster around the place of transit; thus do the courses of
+the water indicate the direction and nucleus of emigration,&mdash;from the
+vast lakes and mighty rivers of America, whereby an immense continent is
+made available to human intercourse, and therefore to material unity, to
+the point where the Thames was earliest crossed and spanned. More
+special historical and social facts may be found attached to every old
+bridge. In war, especially, heroic achievement and desperate valor have
+often consecrated these narrow defiles and exclusive means of advance
+and retreat:&mdash;</p><p><a name="Page_752" id="Page_752"></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When the goodman mends his armor<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And trims his helmet's plume,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the good-wife's shuttle merrily<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Goes flashing through the loom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With weeping and with laughter<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still is the story told<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How well Horatius kept the bridge<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the good old days of old."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The bridge of Darius spanned the Bosphorus,&mdash;of Xerxes, the
+Hellespont,&mdash;of C&aelig;sar, the Rhine,&mdash;and of Trajan, the Danube; while the
+victorious march of Napoleon has left few traces so unexceptionably
+memorable as the massive causeways of the Simplon. Cicero arrested the
+bearer of letters to Catiline on the Pons Milonis, built in the time of
+Sylla on the ancient Via Flaminia; and by virtue of the blazing cross
+which he saw in the sky from the Ponte Molle the Christian emperor
+Constantine conquered Maxentius. The Pont du Gard near Nismes and the
+St. Esprit near Lyons were originally of Roman construction. During the
+war of freedom, so admirably described by our countryman, whereby rose
+the Dutch Republic, the Huguenots, at the siege of Valenciennes, we are
+told, "made forays upon the monasteries for the purpose of procuring
+supplies, and the broken statues of the dismantled churches were used to
+build a bridge across an arm of the river, which was called, in
+derision, the Bridge of Idols."</p>
+
+<p>But a more memorable historical bridge is admirably described in another
+military episode of this favorite historian,&mdash;that which Alexander of
+Parma built across the Scheldt, whereby Antwerp was finally won for
+Philip of Spain. Its construction was a miracle of science and courage;
+and it became the scene of one of the most terrible tragedies and the
+most fantastic festivals which signalize the history of that age, and
+illustrate the extraordinary and momentous struggle for religious
+liberty in the Netherlands. Its piers extended five hundred feet into
+the stream,&mdash;connected with the shore by boats, defended by palisades,
+fortified parapets, and spiked rafts; cleft and partially destroyed by
+the volcanic fireship of Gianebelli, a Mantuan chemist and engineer,
+whereby a thousand of the best troops of the Spanish army were instantly
+killed, and their brave chief stunned,&mdash;when the hour of victory came to
+the besiegers, it was the scene of a floral procession and Arcadian
+banquet, and "the whole extent of its surface from the Flemish to the
+Brabant shore" was alive with "war-bronzed figures crowned with
+flowers." "This magnificent undertaking has been favorably compared with
+the celebrated Rhine bridge of Julius C&aelig;sar. When it is remembered,
+however, that the Roman work was performed in summer, across a river
+only half as broad as the Scheldt, free from the disturbing action of
+the tides, and flowing through an unresisting country, while the whole
+character of the structure, intended only to serve for the single
+passage of an army, was far inferior to the massive solidity of Parma's
+bridge, it seems not unreasonable to assign the superiority to the
+general who had surmounted all the obstacles of a northern winter,
+vehement ebb and flow from the sea, and enterprising and desperate
+enemies at every point."<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a></p>
+
+<p>Even the fragile bridges of our own country, during the Revolution, have
+an historical importance in the story of war: the "Great Bridge" across
+the Elizabeth River, nine miles from Norfolk in Virginia, the floating
+bridge at Ticonderoga, that which spanned Stony Brook in New Jersey, and
+many others, are identified with strife or stratagem: King's Bridge was
+a formidable barrier to the invasion of New York by land. Indeed, from
+Trenton to Lodi, military annals have few more fierce conflicts than
+those wherein the bridge of the battle-ground is disputed; to cross one
+is often a declaration of war, and Rubicons abound in history.</p>
+
+<p>There is probably no single problem, wherein the laws of science and
+mechanical skill combine, which has so won the attention and challenged
+the powers of inventive minds as the construction of bridges. The
+various exigencies to be met, <a name="Page_753" id="Page_753"></a>the possible triumphs to be achieved, the
+experiments as to form, material, security, and grace, have been
+prolific causes of inspiration and disappointment. In this branch of
+economy, the mechanic and the mathematician fairly meet; and it requires
+a rare union of ability in both vocations to arrive at original results
+in this sphere. To invent a bridge, through the application of a
+scientific principle by a novel method, is one of those projects which
+seem to fascinate philosophical minds; in few have theory and practice
+been more completely tested; and the history of bridges, scientifically
+written, would exhibit as remarkable conflicts of opinion, trials of
+inventive skill, decision of character, genius, folly, and fame, as any
+other chapter in the annals of progress. How to unite security with the
+least inconvenience, permanence with availability, strength with
+beauty,&mdash;how to adapt the structure to the location, climate, use, and
+risks,&mdash;are questions which often invoke all the science and skill of
+the architect, and which have increased in difficulty with the advance
+of other resources and requisitions of civilization. Whether a bridge is
+to cross a brook, a river, a strait, an inlet, an arm of the sea, a
+canal, or a valley, are so many diverse contingencies which modify the
+calculations and plans of the engineer. Here liability to sudden
+freshets, there to overwhelming tides, now to the enormous weight of
+railway-trains, and again to the corrosive influence of the elements,
+must be taken into consideration; the navigation of waters, the
+exigencies of war, the needs of a population, the respective uses of
+viaduct, aqueduct, and roadway, have often to be included in the
+problem. These considerations influence not only the method of
+construction, but the form adopted and the material, and have given
+birth to bridges of wood, brick, stone, iron, wire, and chain,&mdash;to
+bridges supported by piers, to floating, suspension, and tubular
+structures, many of which are among the remarkable trophies of modern
+science and the noblest fruits of the arts of peace. Railways have
+created an entirely new species of bridge, to enable a train to
+intersect a road, to cross canals in slanting directions, to turn amid
+jagged precipices, and to cross arms of the sea at a sufficient
+elevation not to interfere with the passage of ships,&mdash;objects not to be
+accomplished by suspension-bridges because of their oscillation, nor
+girder for lack of support, the desiderata being extensive span with
+rigid strength, so triumphantly realized in the tubular bridge. The day
+when the great Holyrood train passed over the Strait of Menai by this
+grand expedient established the superiority of this principle of
+construction, and became a memorable occasion in the annals of
+mechanical science, and immortalized the name of Stephenson.</p>
+
+<p>We find great national significance in the history of bridges in
+different countries. Their costly and substantial grandeur in Britain
+accords with the solid qualities of the race, and their elegance on the
+Continent with the pervasive influence of Art in Europe. It is a curious
+illustration of the inferior economical and high intellectual
+development of Greece, that the "Athenians waded, when their temples
+were the most perfect models of architecture"; and equally an evidence
+of the practical energy of the old Romans, that their stone bridges
+often remain to this hour intact. Our own incomplete civilization is
+manifest in the marvellous number of bridges that annually break down,
+from negligent or unscientific construction; while the indomitable
+enterprise of the people is no less apparent in some of the longest,
+loftiest, most wonderfully constructed and sustained bridges in the
+world. We have only to cross the Suspension Bridge at Niagara, or gaze
+up to its a&euml;rial tracery from the river, or look forth upon wooded
+ravines and down precipitous and umbrageous glens from the Erie Railway,
+to feel that in this, as in all other branches of mechanical enterprise,
+our nation is as boldly dexterous as culpably reckless. As an instance
+of ingenuity <a name="Page_754" id="Page_754"></a>in this sphere, the bridge which crosses the Potomac
+Creek, near Washington, deserves notice. The hollow iron arches which
+support this bridge also serve as conduits to the aqueduct which
+supplies the city with water.</p>
+
+<p>Amid the mass of prosaic structures in London, what a grand exception to
+the architectural monotony are her bridges! how effectually they have
+promoted her suburban growth! Canova thought the Waterloo Bridge the
+finest in Europe, and, by a strangely tragic coincidence, this noble and
+costly structure is the favorite scene of suicidal despair, wherewith
+the catastrophes of modern novels and the most pathetic of city lyrics
+are indissolably associated. Westminster Bridge is as truly the Swiss
+Laboyle's monument of architectural genius, fortitude, and patience, as
+St. Paul's is that of Wren; and our own Remington's bridge-enthusiasm
+involves a pathetic story. At Cordova, the bridge over the Guadalquivir
+is a grand relic of Moorish supremacy. The oldest bridge in England is
+that of Croyland in Lincolnshire; the largest crosses the Trent in
+Staffordshire. Tom Paine designed a cast-iron bridge, but the
+speculation failed, and the materials were subsequently used in the
+beautiful bridge over the River Wear in Durham County. There is a
+segment of a circle six hundred feet in diameter in Palmer's bridge
+which spans our own Piscataqua. It is said that the first edifice of the
+kind which the Romans built of stone was the Ponte Rotto, begun by the
+Censor Fulvius and finished by Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius.
+Popes Julius III. and Gregory XIV. repaired it; so that the fragment now
+so valued as a picturesque ruin symbolizes both Imperial and
+Ecclesiastical rule. In striking contrast with the reminiscences of
+valor, hinted by ancient Roman bridges, are the ostentatious Papal
+inscriptions which everywhere in the States of the Church, in elaborate
+Latin, announce that this Pontiff built or that Pontiff repaired these
+structures.</p>
+
+<p>The medi&aelig;val castle moat and drawbridge have, indeed, been transferred
+from the actual world to that of fiction, history, and art, except where
+preserved as memorials of antiquity; but the civil importance which from
+the dawn of civilization attached to the bridge is as patent to-day as
+when a Roman emperor, a feudal lord, or a monastic procession went forth
+to celebrate or consecrate its advent or completion; in evidence
+whereof, we have the appropriate function which made permanently
+memorable the late visit of Victoria's son to her American realms, in
+his inauguration of the magnificent bridge bearing her name, which is
+thrown across the St. Lawrence for a distance of only sixty yards less
+than two English miles,&mdash;the greatest tubular bridge in the world. When
+Prince Albert, amid the cheers of a multitude and the grand cadence of
+the national anthem, finished the Victoria Bridge by giving three blows
+with a mallet to the last rivet in the central tube, he celebrated one
+of the oldest, though vastly advanced, triumphs of the arts of peace,
+which ally the rights of the people and the good of human society to the
+representatives of law and polity.</p>
+
+<p>One may recoil with a painful sense of material incongruity, as did
+Hawthorne, when contemplating the noisome suburban street where Burns
+lived; but all the humane and poetical associations connected with the
+long struggle sustained by him, of "the highest in man's soul against
+the lowest in man's destiny," recur in sight of the Bridge of Doon, and
+the two "briggs of Ayr," whose "imaginary conversations" he caught and
+recorded, or that other bridge which spans a glen on the Auchinleck
+estate, where the rustic bard first saw the Lass of Ballochmyle. The
+tender admiration which embalms the name of Keats is also blent with the
+idea of a bridge. The poem which commences his earliest published volume
+was suggested, according to Milnes, as he "loitered by the gate that
+leads from the battery on Hampstead Heath to the field by Camwood"; and
+the young poet told his friend Clarke that the sweet <a name="Page_755" id="Page_755"></a>passage, "Awhile
+upon some bending planks," came to him as he hung "over the rail of a
+foot-bridge that spanned a little brook in the last field upon entering
+Edmonton." To the meditative pedestrian, indeed, such places lure to
+quietude; the genial Country Parson, whose "Recreations" we have
+recently shared, unconsciously illustrates this, when he speaks of the
+privilege men like him enjoy, when free "to saunter forth with a
+delightful sense of leisure, and know that nothing will go wrong,
+although he should sit down on the mossy parapet of the little
+one-arched bridge that spans the brawling mountain-stream." On that
+Indian-summer day when Irving was buried, no object of the familiar
+landscape, through which, without formality, and in quiet grief, so many
+of the renowned and the humble followed his remains from the
+village-church to the rural graveyard, wore so pensive a fitness to the
+eye as the simple bridge over Sleepy-Hollow Creek, near to which Ichabod
+Crane encountered the headless horseman,&mdash;not only as typical of his
+genius, which thus gave a local charm to the scene, but because the
+country-people, in their heartfelt wish to do him honor, had hung
+wreaths of laurel upon the rude planks.</p>
+
+<p>Fragments, as well as entire roadways and arches of natural bridges, are
+more numerous in rocky, mountainous, and volcanic regions than is
+generally supposed; the action of the water in excavating cliffs, the
+segments of caverns, the, accidental shapes of geological formations,
+often result in structures so adapted for the use and like the shape of
+bridges as to appear of artificial origin. In the States of Alabama and
+Kentucky, especially, we have notable instances of these remarkable
+freaks of Nature: there is one in Walker County, of the former State,
+which, as a local curiosity, is unsurpassed; and one in the romantic
+County of Christian, in the latter State, makes a span of seventy feet
+with an altitude of thirty; while the vicinity of the famous Alabaster
+Mountain of Arkansas boasts a very curious and interesting formation of
+this species. Two of these natural bridges are of such vast proportions
+and symmetrical structure that they rank among the wonders of the world,
+and have long been the goals of pilgrimage, the shrines of travel. Their
+structure would hint the requisites, and their forms the lines of
+beauty, desirable in architectural prototypes. Across Cedar Creek, in
+Rockbridge County, Virginia, a beautiful and gigantic arch, thrown by
+elemental forces and shaped by time, extends. It is a stratified arch,
+whence you gaze down two hundred feet upon the flowing water; its sides
+are rock, nearly perpendicular. Popular conjecture reasonably deems it
+the fragmentary arch of an immense limestone cave; its loftiness imparts
+an aspect of lightness, although at the centre it is nearly fifty feet
+thick, and so massive is the whole that over it passes a public road, so
+that by keeping in the middle one might cross unaware of the marvel. To
+realize its height it must be viewed from beneath; from the side of the
+creek it has a Gothic aspect; its immense walls, clad with forest-trees,
+its dizzy elevation, buttress-like masses, and a&euml;rial symmetry make this
+sublime arch one of those objects which impress the imagination with
+grace and grandeur all the more impressive because the mysterious work
+of Nature,&mdash;eloquent of the ages, and instinct with the latent forces of
+the universe. Equally remarkable, but in a diverse style, is the Giant's
+Causeway, whose innumerable black stone columns rise from two to four
+hundred feet above the water's edge in the County of Antrim, on the
+north coast of Ireland. These basaltic pillars are for the most part
+pentagonal, whose five sides are closely united, not in one conglomerate
+mass, but, articulated so aptly that to be traced the ball and socket
+must be disjointed.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of statuary upon bridges is memorable: the Imperial statues
+which line that of Berlin form an impressive array; and whoever has seen
+the figures on the Bridge of Sant' Angelo at Home, <a name="Page_756" id="Page_756"></a>when illuminated on
+a Carnival night, or the statues upon Santa Trinit&agrave; at Florence, bathed
+in moonlight, and their outline distinctly revealed against sky and
+water, cannot but realize how harmoniously sculpture may illustrate and
+heighten the architecture of the bridge. More quaint than appropriate is
+pictorial embellishment; a beautiful Madonna or local saint placed
+midway or at either end of a bridge, especially one of medi&aelig;val form and
+fashion, seems appropriate; but elaborate painting, such as one sees at
+Lucerne, strikes us as more curious than desirable. The bridge which
+divides the town and crosses the Reuss is covered, yet most of the
+pictures are weather-stained; as no vehicles are allowed,
+foot-passengers can examine them at ease. They are in triangular frames,
+ten feet apart, but few have any technical merit. One series illustrates
+Swiss history; and the Kapellbr&uuml;cke has the pictorial life of the Saint
+of the town; while the Mile Bridge exhibits a quaint and rough copy of
+the famous "Dance of Death."</p>
+
+<p>In Switzerland what fearful ravines and foaming cascades do bridges
+cross! sometimes so a&euml;rial, and overhanging such precipices, as to
+justify to the imagination the name superstitiously bestowed on more
+than one, of the Devil's Bridge; while from few is a more lovely effect
+of near water seen than the "arrowy Rhone," as we gaze down upon its
+"blue rushing" beneath the bridge at Geneva. Perhaps the varied
+pictorial effects of bridges, at least in a city, are nowhere more
+striking than at Venice, whose five hundred, with their mellow tint and
+association with palatial architecture and streets of water, especially
+when revealed by the soft and radiant hues of an Italian sunset, present
+outlines, shapes, colors, and contrasts so harmonious and beautiful as
+to warm and haunt the imagination while they charm the eye. It is
+remarkable, as an artistic fact, how graciously these structures adapt
+themselves to such diverse scenes,&mdash;equally, though variously,
+picturesque amid the sturdy foliage and wild gorges of the Alps, the
+bustle, fog, and mast-forest of the Thames, and the crystal atmosphere,
+Byzantine edifices, and silent canals of Venice.</p>
+
+<p>Whoever has truly felt the a&euml;rial perspective of Turner has attained a
+delicate sense of the pictorial significance of the bridge; for, as we
+look through his floating mists, we descry, amid Nature's most
+evanescent phenomena, the span, the arch, the connecting lines or masses
+whereby this familiar image seems to identify itself not less with
+Nature than with Art. Among the drawings which Arctic voyagers have
+brought home, many a bridge of ice, enormous and symmetrical, seems to
+tempt adventurous feet and to reflect a like form of fleecy cloud-land;
+daguerreotyped by the frost in miniature, the same structures may be
+traced on the window-pane; printed on the fossil and the strata of rock,
+in the veins of bark and the lips of shells, or floating in sunbeams, an
+identical design appears; and, on a summer morning, as the eye carefully
+roams over a lawn, how often do the most perfect little
+suspension-bridges hang from spear to spear of herbage, their filmy span
+embossed with glittering dew-drops!</p><p><a name="Page_757" id="Page_757"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INTERNAL_STRUCTURE_AND_PROGRESSION_OF_THE_GLACIER" id="INTERNAL_STRUCTURE_AND_PROGRESSION_OF_THE_GLACIER"></a>INTERNAL STRUCTURE AND PROGRESSION OF THE GLACIER.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It is not my intention, in these articles, to discuss a general theory
+of the glaciers upon physical and mechanical principles. My special
+studies, always limited to Natural History, have but indifferently
+fitted me for such a task, and quite recently the subject has been
+admirably treated from this point of view by Dr. Tyndall, in his
+charming volume entitled "Glaciers of the Alps." I have worked upon the
+glaciers as an amateur, devoting my summer vacations, with friends
+desirous of sharing my leisure, to excursions in the Alps, for the sake
+of relaxation from the closer application of my professional studies,
+and have considered them especially in their connection with geological
+phenomena, with a view of obtaining, by means of a thorough acquaintance
+with glaciers as they exist now, some insight into the glacial phenomena
+of past times, the distribution of drift, the transportation of
+boulders, etc. It was, however, impossible to treat one series of facts
+without some reference to the other; but such explanations as I have
+given of the mechanism of the glacier, in connection with its structure,
+are presented in the language of the unprofessional observer, without
+any attempt at the technicalities of the physicist. I do not wonder,
+therefore, that those who have looked upon the glacier chiefly with
+reference to the physical and mechanical principles involved in its
+structure and movement should have found my Natural Philosophy
+defective. I am satisfied with their agreement as to my correct
+observation of the facts, and am the less inclined to quarrel with the
+doubts thrown on my theory since I see that the most eminent physicists
+of the day do not differ from me more sharply than they do from each
+other. The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form,
+after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal. In the mean
+while, I am not sorry that just at this moment, when recent
+investigations and publications have aroused new interest in the
+glaciers, the course of these articles brings me naturally to a
+discussion of the subject in its bearing upon geological questions. I
+shall, however, address myself especially, as I have done throughout
+these papers, to my unprofessional readers, who, while they admire the
+glaciers, may also wish to form a general idea of their structure and
+mode of action, as well as to know something of the important part they
+have played in the later geological history of our earth. It would,
+indeed, be out of place, were I to undertake here a discussion of the
+different views entertained by the various students who have
+investigated the glacier itself, among whom Dr. Tyndall is especially
+distinguished, or those of the more theoretical writers, among whom Mr.
+Hopkins occupies a prominent position.</p>
+
+<p>Removed, as I am, from all possibility of renewing my own observations,
+begun in 1836 and ended in 1845, I will take this opportunity to call
+the attention of those particularly interested in the matter to one
+essential point with reference to which all other observers differ from
+me. I mean the stratification of the glacier, which I do not believe to
+be rightly understood, even at this moment. It may seem presumptuous to
+dissent absolutely from the statements of one who has seen so much and
+so well as Dr. Tyndall, on a question for the solution of which, from
+the physicist's point of view, his special studies have been a far
+better preparation than mine; and yet I feel confident that I was
+correct in describing the stratification of the glacier as a fundamental
+feature of its structure, and the so-called dirt-bands as the margins of
+the snow-strata successively deposited, and in no way originating in the
+<a name="Page_758" id="Page_758"></a>ice-cascades. I shall endeavor to make this plain to my readers in the
+course of the present article. I believe, also, that renewed
+observations will satisfy dissenting observers that there really exists
+a net-work of capillary fissures extending throughout the whole glacier,
+constantly closing and reopening, and constituting the channels by means
+of which water filtrates into its mass. This infiltration, also, has
+been denied, in consequence of the failure of some experiments in which
+an attempt was made to introduce colored fluids into the glacier. To
+this I can only answer, that I succeeded completely, myself, in the
+self-same experiments which a later investigator found impracticable,
+and that I see no reason why the failure of the latter attempt should
+cast a doubt upon the former. The explanation of the difference in the
+result may, perhaps, be found in the fact, that, as a sponge gorged with
+water can admit no more fluid than it already contains, so the glacier,
+under certain circumstances, and especially at noonday in summer, may be
+so soaked with water that all attempts to pour colored fluids into it
+would necessarily fail. I have stated, in my work upon glaciers, that my
+infiltration-experiments were chiefly made at night; and I chose that
+time, because I knew the glacier would most readily admit an additional
+supply of liquid from without when the water formed during the day at
+its surface and rushing over it in myriad rills had ceased to flow.</p>
+
+<p>While we admit a number of causes as affecting the motion of a glacier,
+namely, the natural tendency of heavy bodies to slide down a sloping
+surface, the pressure to which the mass is subjected forcing it onward,
+the infiltration of moisture, its freezing and consequent expansion,&mdash;we
+must also remember that these various causes, by which the accumulated
+masses of snow and ice are brought down from higher to lower levels, are
+not all acting at all times with the same intensity, nor is their action
+always the same at every point of the moving mass. While the bulk of
+snow and ice moves from higher to lower levels, the whole mass of the
+snow, in consequence of its own downward tendency, is also under a
+strong vertical pressure, arising from its own incumbent weight, and
+that pressure is, of course, greater at its bottom than at its centre or
+surface. It is therefore plain, that, inasmuch as the snow can be
+compressed by its own weight, it will be more compact at the bottom of
+such an accumulation than at its surface, this cause acting most
+powerfully at the upper part of a glacier, where the snow has not yet
+been transformed into a more solid icy mass. To these two agencies, the
+downward tendency and the vertical pressure, must be added the pressure
+from behind, which is most-effective where the mass is largest and the
+amount of motion in a given time greatest. In the glacier, the mass is,
+of course, largest in the centre, where the trough which holds it is
+deepest, and least on the margins, where the trough slopes upward and
+becomes more shallow. Consequently, the middle of a glacier always
+advances more rapidly than the sides. Were the slope of the ground over
+which it passes, combined with the pressure to which the mass is
+subjected, the whole secret of the onward progress of a glacier, it is
+evident that the rate of advance would be gradually accelerated,
+reaching its maximum at its lower extremity, and losing its impetus by
+degrees on the higher levels nearer the point where the descent begins.
+This, however, is not the case. The glacier of the Aar, for instance, is
+about ten miles in length; its rate of annual motion is greatest near
+the point of junction of the two great branches by which it is formed,
+diminishing farther down, and reaching a minimum at its lower extremity.
+But in the upper regions, near their origin, the progress of these
+branches is again gradually less. Let us see whether the next cause of
+displacement, the infiltration of moisture, may not in some measure
+explain this <a name="Page_759" id="Page_759"></a>retardation, at least of the lower part of the glacier.
+This agency, like that of the compression of the snow by its own weight
+and the pressure from behind, is most effective where the accumulation
+is largest. In the centre, where the body of the mass is greatest, it
+will imbibe the most moisture. But here a modifying influence comes in,
+not sufficiently considered by the investigators of glacial structure.
+We have already seen that snow and ice at different degrees of
+compactness are not equally permeable to moisture. Above the line at
+which the annual winter snow melts, there is, of course, little
+moisture; but below that point, as soon as the temperature rises in
+summer sufficiently to melt the surface, the water easily penetrates the
+mass, passing through it more readily where the snow is lightest and
+least compact,&mdash;in short, where it has not begun its transformation into
+ice. A summer's day sends countless rills of water trickling through
+such a mass of snow. If the snow be loose and porous throughout, the
+water will pass through its whole thickness, accumulating at the bottom,
+so that the lower portion of the mass will be damper, more completely
+soaked with water, than the upper part; if, on the contrary, in
+consequence of the process previously described, alternate melting and
+freezing combined with pressure, the mass has assumed the character of
+icy snow, it does not admit moisture so readily, and still farther down,
+where the snow is actually transformed into pure compact ice, the amount
+of surface-water admitted into its structure will, of course, be greatly
+diminished. There may, however, be conditions under which even the
+looser snow is comparatively impervious to water; as, for instance, when
+rain falls upon a snow-field which has been long under a low
+temperature, and an ice-crust is formed upon its surface, preventing the
+water from penetrating below. Admitting, as I believe we must, that the
+water thus introduced into the snow and ice is one of the most powerful
+agents to which its motion is due, we must suppose that it has a twofold
+influence, since its action when fluid and when frozen would be
+different. When fluid, it would contribute to the advance of the mass in
+proportion to its quantity; but when frozen, its expansion would produce
+a displacement corresponding to the greater volume of ice as compared
+with water; add to this that while trickling through the mass it will
+loosen and displace the particles of already consolidated ice. I have
+already said that I did not intend to trespass on the ground of the
+physicist, and I will not enter here upon any discussion as to the
+probable action of the laws of hydrostatic pressure and dilatation in
+this connection. I will only state, that, so far as my own observation
+goes, the movement of the glacier is most rapid where the greatest
+amount of moisture is introduced into the mass, and that I believe there
+must be a direct relation between these two facts. If I am right in
+this, then the motion, so far as it is connected with infiltrated
+moisture or with the dilatation caused by the freezing of that moisture,
+will, of course, be most rapid where the glacier is most easily
+penetrated by water, namely, in the region of the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i> and in the
+upper portion of the glacier-troughs, where the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i> begins to be
+transformed into more or less porous ice. This cause also accounts, in
+part at least, for another singular fact in the motion of the glacier:
+that, in its higher levels, where its character is more porous and the
+water entering at the surface sinks readily to the bottom, there the
+bottom seems to move more rapidly than the superficial parts of the
+mass, whereas at the lower end of the glacier, in the region of the
+compact ice, where the infiltration of the water at the bottom is at its
+minimum, while the disintegrating influences at the surface admit of
+infiltration to a certain limited depth, there the motion is greater
+near the surface than toward the bottom. But, under all circumstances,
+it is plain that the various causes producing motion, gravitation,
+pressure, infiltration of water, <a name="Page_760" id="Page_760"></a>frost, will combine to propel the mass
+at a greater rate along its axis than near its margins. For details
+concerning the facts of the case, I would refer to my work entitled
+"Syst&egrave;me Glaciaire."</p>
+
+<p>We will next consider the stratification of the glacier. I have stated
+in my introductory remarks, that I consider this to be one of its
+primary and fundamental features, and I confess, that, after a careful
+examination of the results obtained by my successors in the field of
+glacial phenomena, I still believe that the original stratification of
+the mass of snow from which the glacier arises gives us the key to many
+facts of its internal structure. The ultimate features resulting from
+this connection are so exceedingly intricate and entangled that their
+relation is not easily explained. Nevertheless, I trust my readers will
+follow me in this Alpine excursion, where I shall try to smooth the
+asperities of the road for them as much as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Imparted to it, at the very beginning of its formation, by the manner in
+which snow accumulates, and retained through all its transformations,
+the stratification of a glacier, however distorted, and at times almost
+obliterated, remains, notwithstanding, as distinct to one who is
+acquainted with all its phases, as is the stratified character of
+metamorphic rocks to the skilful geologist, even though they may be
+readily mistaken for plutonic masses by the common observer. Indeed,
+even those secondary features, as the dirt-bands, for instance, which we
+shall see to be intimately connected with snow-strata, and which
+eventually become so prominent as to be mistaken for the cause of the
+lines of stratification, do nevertheless tend, when properly understood,
+to make the evidence of stratification more permanent, and to point out
+its primitive lines.</p>
+
+<p>On the plains, in our latitude, we rarely have the accumulated layers of
+several successive snow-storms preserved one above another. We can,
+therefore, hardly imagine with what distinctness the sequence of such
+beds is marked in the upper Alpine regions. The first cause of this
+distinction between the layers is the quality of the snow when it falls,
+then the immediate changes it undergoes after its deposit, then the
+falling of mist or rain upon it, and lastly and most efficient of all,
+the accumulation of dust upon its surface. One who has not felt the
+violence of a storm in the high mountains, and seen the clouds of dust
+and sand carried along with the gusts of wind passing over a
+mountain-ridge and sweeping through the valley beyond, can hardly
+conceive that not only the superficial aspect of a glacier, but its
+internal structure also, can be materially affected by such a cause. Not
+only are dust and sand thus transported in large quantities to the
+higher mountain-regions, but leaves are frequently found strewn upon the
+upper glacier, and even pine-cones, and maple-seeds flying upward on
+their spread wings, are scattered thousands of feet above and many miles
+beyond the forests where they grew.</p>
+
+<p>This accumulation of sand and dust goes on all the year round, but the
+amount accumulated over one and the same surface is greatest during the
+summer, when the largest expanse of rocky wall is bare of snow and its
+loose soil dried by the heat so as to be easily dislodged. This summer
+deposit of loose inorganic materials, light enough to be transported by
+the wind, forms the main line of division between the snow of one year
+and the next, though only that of the last year is visible for its whole
+extent. Those of the preceding years, as we shall see hereafter, exhibit
+only their edges cropping out lower down one beyond another, being
+brought successively to lower levels by the onward motion of the
+glacier.</p>
+
+<p>Other observers of the glacier, Professor Forbes and Dr. Tyndall, have
+noticed only the edges of these seams, and called them dirt-bands.
+Looking upon them as merely superficial phenomena, they have given
+explanations of their appearance which I hold to be quite <a name="Page_761" id="Page_761"></a>untenable.
+Indeed, to consider these successive lines of dirt on the glacier as
+limited only to its surface, and to explain them from that point of
+view, is much as if a geologist were to consider the lines presented by
+the strata on a cut through a sedimentary mass of rock as representing
+their whole extent, and to explain them as a superficial deposit due to
+external causes.</p>
+
+<p>A few more details may help to make this statement clearer to my
+readers. Let us imagine that a fresh layer of snow has fallen in these
+mountain-regions, and that a deposit of dirt has been scattered over its
+surface, which, if any moisture arises from the melting of the snow or
+from the falling of rain or mist, will become more closely compacted
+with it. The next snow-storm deposits a fresh bed of snow, separated
+from the one below it by the sheet of dust just described, and this bed
+may, in its turn, receive a like deposit. For greater ease and
+simplicity of explanation, I speak here as if each successive snow-layer
+were thus indicated; of course this is not literally true, because
+snow-storms in the winter may follow each other so fast that there is no
+time for such a collection of foreign materials upon each newly formed
+surface. But whenever such a fresh snow-bed, or accumulation of beds,
+remains with its surface exposed for some time, such a deposit of dirt
+will inevitably be found upon it. This process may go on till we have a
+number of successive snow-layers divided from each other by thin sheets
+of dust. Of course, such seams, marking the stratification of snow, are
+as permanent and indelible as the seams of coarser materials alternating
+with the finest mud in a sedimentary rock.</p>
+
+<p>The gradual progress of a glacier, which, though more rapid in summer
+than in winter, is never intermitted, must, of course, change the
+relation of these beds to each other. Their lower edge is annually cut
+off at a certain level, because the snow deposited every winter melts
+with the coming summer, up to a certain line, determined by the local
+climate of the place. But although the snow does not melt above this
+line, we have seen, in the preceding article, that it is prevented from
+accumulating indefinitely in the higher regions by its own tendency to
+move down to the lower valleys, and crowding itself between their walls,
+thus to force its way toward the outlet below. Now, as this movement is
+very gradual, it is evident that there must be a perceptible difference
+in the progress of the successive layers, the lower and older ones
+getting the advance of the upper and more recent ones: that is, when the
+snow that has covered the face of the country during one winter melts
+away from the glacier up to the so-called snow-line, there will be seen
+cropping out below and beyond that line the layers of the preceding
+years, which are already partially transformed into ice, and have become
+a part of the frozen mass of the glacier with which they are moving
+onward and downward. In the autumn, when the dust of a whole season has
+been accumulated upon the surface of the preceding winter's snow, the
+extent of the layer which year after year will henceforth crop out lower
+down, as a dirt-band, may best be appreciated.</p>
+
+<p>Beside the snow-layers and the sheets of dust alternating with them,
+there is still another feature of the horizontal and parallel structure
+of the mass in immediate connection with those above considered. I
+allude to the layers of pure compact ice occurring at different
+intervals between the snow-layers. In July, when the snow of the
+preceding winter melts up to the line of perpetual snow, the masses
+above, which are to withstand the summer heat and become part of the
+glacier forever, or at least until they melt away at the lower end,
+begin to undergo the changes through which all snow passes before it
+acquires the character of glacial ice. It thaws at the surface, is
+rained upon, or condenses moisture, thus becoming gradually soaked, and
+after assuming the granular character of <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>-ice, it ends in being
+transformed <a name="Page_762" id="Page_762"></a>into pure compact ice. Toward the end of August, or early
+in September, when the nights are already very cold in the Alps, but
+prior to the first permanent autumnal snow-falls, the surface of these
+masses becomes frozen to a greater or less depth, varying, of course,
+according to temperature. These layers of ice become numerous and are
+parallel to each other, like the layers of ice formed from slosh. Such
+crusts of ice I have myself observed again and again upon the glacier.
+This stratified snowy ice is now the bottom on which the first autumnal
+snow-falls accumulate. These sheets of ice may be formed not only
+annually before the winter snows set in, but may recur at intervals
+whenever water accumulating upon an extensive snow-surface, either in
+consequence of melting or of rain, is frozen under a sharp frost before
+another deposit of snow takes place. Or suppose a fresh layer of light
+porous snow to have accumulated above one the surface of which has
+already been slightly glazed with frost; rain or dew, falling upon the
+upper one, will easily penetrate it; but when it reaches the lower one,
+it will be stopped by the film of ice already formed, and under a
+sufficiently low temperature, it will be frozen between the two. This
+result may be frequently noticed in winter, on the plains, where sudden
+changes of temperature take place.</p>
+
+<p>There is still a third cause, to which the same result may possibly be
+due, and to which I shall refer at greater length hereafter; but as it
+has not, like the preceding ones, been the subject of direct
+observation, it must be considered as hypothetical. The admirable
+experiments of Dr. Tyndall have shown that water may be generated in ice
+by pressure, and it is therefore possible that at a lower depth in the
+glacier, where the incumbent weight of the mass above is sufficient to
+produce water, the water thus accumulated may be frozen into ice-layers.
+But this depends so much upon the internal temperature of the glacier,
+about which we know little beyond a comparatively superficial depth,
+that it cannot at present afford a sound basis even for conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>There are, then, in the upper snow-fields three kinds of horizontal
+deposits: the beds of snow, the sheets of dust, and the layers of ice,
+alternating with each other. If, now, there were no modifying
+circumstances to change the outline and surface of the glacier,&mdash;if it
+moved on uninterruptedly through an open valley, the lower layers,
+forming the mass, getting by degrees the advance of the upper ones, our
+problem would be simple enough. We should then have a longitudinal mass
+of snow, inclosed between rocky walls, its surface crossed by straight
+transverse lines marking the annual additions to the glacier, as in the
+adjoining figure.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 244px;">
+<img src="images/image01.png" width="244" height="354" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>But that mass of snow, before it reaches the outlet of the valley, is to
+be compressed, contorted, folded, rent in a thousand directions. The
+beds of snow, which in the upper ranges of the mountain were spread out
+over broad, open surfaces, are to be crowded into comparatively
+circumscribed valleys, to force and press themselves through narrow
+passes, alternately melting and freezing, till they pass from the
+condition of snow into that of ice, to undergo, in short, constant
+transformations, by which the primitive stratification will be
+extensively modified. In the first place, the more rapid motion of the
+centre of the glacier, as compared with the margins, will draw the lines
+of stratification downward toward the middle faster than at the sides.
+Accurate <a name="Page_763" id="Page_763"></a>measurements have shown that the axis of a glacier may move
+ten- or twenty-fold more rapidly than its margins. This is not the place
+to introduce a detailed account of the experiments made to ascertain
+this result; but I would refer those who are interested in the matter to
+the measurements given in my "Syst&egrave;me Glaciaire," where it will be seen
+that the middle may move at a rate of two hundred feet a year, while the
+margins may not advance more than ten or fifteen or twenty feet. These
+observations of mine have the advantage over those of other observers,
+that, while they embrace the whole extent of the glacier, transversely
+as well as in its length, they cover a period of several successive
+years, instead of being limited to summer campaigns and a few winter
+observations. The consequence of this mode of progressing will be that
+the straight lines drawn transversely across the surface of the glacier
+above will be gradually changed to curved ones below. After a few years,
+such a line will appear on the surface of the glacier like a crescent,
+with the bow turned downward, within which, above, are other crescents,
+less and less sharply arched up to the last year's line, which may be
+again straight across the snow-field. (See the subjoined figure, which
+represents a part of the glacier of the Lauter-Aar.)</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 262px;">
+<img src="images/image02.png" width="262" height="533" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus the glacier records upon its surface its annual growth and
+progress, and registers also the inequality in the rate of advance
+between the axis and the sides.</p>
+
+<p>But these are only surface-phenomena. Let us see what will be the effect
+upon the internal structure. We must not forget, in considering the
+changes taking place within glaciers, the shape of the valleys which
+contain them. A glacier lies in a deep trough, and the tendency of the
+mass will be to sink toward its deeper part, and to fold inward and
+downward, if subjected to a strong lateral pressure,&mdash;that is, to dip
+toward the centre and slope upward along the sides, following the scoop
+of the trough. If, now, we examine the face of a transverse cut in the
+glacier, we find it traversed by a number of lines, vertical in some
+places, more or less oblique in others, and frequently these lines are
+joined together at the lower ends, forming loops, some of which are
+close and vertical, while others are quite open. These lines are due to
+the folding of the strata in consequence of the lateral pressure they
+are subjected to, when crowded into the lower course of the valleys, and
+the difference in their dip is due to the greater or less force of that
+pressure. The wood-cut on the next page represents a transverse cut
+across the Lauter-Aar and the Finster-Aar, the two principal tributaries
+to the great Aar glacier, and includes also a number of small lateral
+glaciers which join them. The beds on the left, which dip least, and are
+only folded gently downward, forming very open loops, are those of the
+Lauter-Aar, where the lateral pressure is comparatively slight. Those
+which are almost vertical belong in part to the several small tributary
+glaciers, which have been crowded together and very strongly compressed,
+and partly to the Finster-Aar. The close uniform vertical lines in this
+wood-cut represent a different feature in the structure of the glacier,
+called blue bands, to which I <a name="Page_764" id="Page_764"></a>shall refer presently. These loops or
+lines dipping into the internal mass of the glacier have been the
+subject of much discussion, and various theories have been recently
+proposed respecting them. I believe them to be caused, as I have said,
+by the snow-layers, originally deposited horizontally, but afterward
+folded into a more or less vertical position, in consequence of the
+lateral pressure brought to bear upon them. The sheets of dust and of
+ice alternating with the snow-strata are of course subjected to the same
+action, and are contorted, bent, and folded by the same lateral
+pressure.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 859px;">
+<img src="images/image03.png" width="859" height="219" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Dr. Tyndall has advanced the view that the lines of apparent
+stratification, and especially the dirt-bands across the surface of the
+glacier, are due to ice-cascades: that is, the glacier, passing over a
+sharp angle, is cracked across transversely in consequence of the
+tension, and these rents, where the back of the glacier has been
+successively broken, when recompacted, cause the transverse lines, the
+dirt being collected in the furrow formed between the successive ridges.
+Unfortunately for his theory, the lines of stratification constantly
+occur in glaciers where no such ice-falls are found. His principal
+observations upon this subject were made on the Glacier du G&eacute;ant, where
+the ice-cascade is very remarkable. The lines may perhaps be rendered
+more distinct on the Glacier du G&eacute;ant by the cascade, and necessarily
+must be so, if the rents coincide with the limit at which the annual
+snow-line is nearly straight across the glacier. In the region of the
+Aar glacier, however, where my own investigations were made, all the
+tributaries entering into the larger glacier are ribbed across in this
+way, and most of them join the main trunk over uniform slopes, without
+the slightest cascade.</p>
+
+<p>It must be remembered that these surface-phenomena of the glacier are
+not to be seen at all times, nor under all conditions. During the first
+year of my sojourn on the glacier of the Aar, I was not aware that the
+stratification of its tributaries was so universal as I afterward found
+it to be; the primitive lines of the strata are often so far erased that
+they are not perceptible, except under the most favorable circumstances.
+But when the glacier has been washed clean by rain, and the light
+strikes upon it in the right direction, these lines become perfectly
+distinct, where, under different conditions, they could not be discerned
+at all. After passing many summers on the same glacier, renewing my
+observations year after year over the same localities, I can confidently
+state that not only do the lines of stratification exist throughout the
+great glacier of the Aar, but in all its tributaries also. Of course,
+they are greatly modified in the lower part of the glacier by the
+intimate fusion of its tributaries, and by the circumstance that their
+movement, primarily independent, is merged in the movement of the main
+glacier embracing them all. We have seen that not only does the centre
+of a glacier move more rapidly than its sides, but that the deeper mass
+of the glacier also moves at a different rate from its more superficial
+portion. My own observations (for the details of which I would again
+refer the reader to my "Syst&egrave;me Glaciaire ") show that in the higher
+part of the glacier, especially in the region of the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>, the bottom
+of the mass seems to move more rapidly than the surface, while lower
+down, toward <a name="Page_765" id="Page_765"></a>the terminus of the glacier, the surface, on the contrary,
+moves faster than the bottom. The annexed wood-cut exhibits a
+longitudinal section of the glacier, in which this difference in the
+motion of the upper and lower portions of the mass is represented, the
+beds being almost horizontal in the upper snow-fields, while their lower
+portion slopes move rapidly downward in the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i> region, and toward
+the lower end the upper portion takes the lead, and advances more
+rapidly than the lower.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 857px;">
+<img src="images/image04.png" width="857" height="286" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>I presented these results for the first time in two letters, dated
+October 9th, 1842, which were published in a German periodical, the
+Jahrbuch of Leonhard and Bronn. The last three wood-cuts introduced
+above, the transverse and longitudinal sections of the glacier as well
+as that representing the concentric lines of stratification on the
+surface, are the identical ones contained in those communications. These
+papers seem to have been overlooked by contemporary investigators, and I
+may be permitted to translate here a passage from one of them, since it
+sums up the results of the inequality of motion throughout the glacier
+and its influence on the primitive stratification of the mass in as few
+words and as correctly as I could give them to-day, twenty years
+later:&mdash;"Combining these views, it appears that the glacier may be
+represented as composed of concentric shells which arise from the
+parallel strata of the upper region by the following process. The
+primitively regular strata advance into gradually narrower and deeper
+valleys, in consequence of which the margins are raised, while the
+middle is bent not only downward, but, from its more rapid motion,
+forward also, so that they assume a trough-like form in the interior of
+the mass. Lower down, the glacier is worn by the surrounding air, and
+assumes the peculiar form characteristic of its lower course." The last
+clause alludes to another series of facts, which we shall examine in a
+future article, when we shall see that the heat of the walls in the
+lower part of its course melts the sides of the glacier, so that,
+instead of following the trough-like shape of the valley, it becomes
+convex, arching upward in the centre and sinking at the margins.</p>
+
+<p>I have dwelt thus long, and perhaps my readers may think tediously, upon
+this part of my subject, because the stratification of the glacier has
+been constantly questioned by the more recent investigators of glacial
+phenomena, and has indeed been set aside as an exploded theory. They
+consider the lines of stratification, the dirt-bands, and the seams of
+ice alternating with the more porous snow, as disconnected
+surface-phenomena, while I believe them all to be intimately connected
+together as primary essential features of the original mass.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There is another feature of glacial structure, intimately connected, by
+similarity of position and aspect, with the stratification, which has
+greatly perplexed the students of glacial phenomena. I allude to the
+so-called blue bands, or bands of infiltration, also designated as
+veined structure, ribboned or laminated structure, marginal structure,
+and longitudinal structure. The difficulty lies, I <a name="Page_766" id="Page_766"></a>believe, in the fact
+that two very distinct structures, that of the stratification and the
+blue bands, are frequently blended together in certain parts of the
+glacier in such a manner as to seem identical, while elsewhere the one
+is prominent and the other subordinate, and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>. According to
+their various opportunities of investigation, observers have either
+confounded the two, believing them to be the same, or some have
+overlooked the one and insisted upon the other as the prevailing
+feature, while that very feature has been absolutely denied again by
+others who have seen its fellow only, and taken that to be the only
+prominent and important fact in this peculiar structural character of
+the ice.</p>
+
+<p>We have already seen how the stratification of the glacier arises,
+accompanied by layers of dust and other material foreign to the glacier,
+and how blue bands of compact ice may be formed parallel to the surface
+of these strata. We have also seen how the horizontality of these strata
+may be modified by pressure till they assume a position within the mass
+of the glacier, varying from a slightly oblique inclination to a
+vertical one. Now, while the position of the strata becomes thus altered
+under pressure, other changes take place in the constitution of the ice
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Before attempting to explain how these changes take place, let us
+consider the facts themselves. The mass of the glacial ice is traversed
+by thin bands of compact blue ice, these bands being very numerous along
+the margins of the glacier, where they constitute what Dr. Tyndall calls
+marginal structure, and still more crowded along the line upon which two
+glaciers unite, where he has called it longitudinal structure. In the
+latter case, where the extreme pressure resulting from the junction of
+two glaciers has rendered the strata nearly vertical, these blue bands
+follow their trend so closely that it is difficult to distinguish one
+from the other. It will be seen, on referring to the wood-cut on page
+758, where the close, uniform, vertical lines represent the true veined
+structure, that at several points of that section the lines of
+stratification run so nearly parallel with them, that, were the former
+not drawn more strongly, they could not be easily distinguished from the
+latter. Along the margins, also, in consequence of the retarded motion,
+the blue bands and the lines of stratification run nearly parallel with
+each other, both following the sides of the trough in which they move.</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly, in both these instances, we have two kinds of blue bands,
+namely: those formed primitively in a horizontal position, indicating
+seams of stratification, and those which have arisen subsequently in
+connection with the movement of the whole mass, which I have
+occasionally called bands of infiltration, as they appeared to me to be
+formed by the infiltration and freezing of water. The fact that these
+blue bands are most numerous where two glaciers are crowded together
+into a common bed naturally suggests pressure as their cause. And since
+the beautiful experiments of Dr. Tyndall have illustrated the internal
+liquefaction of ice by pressure, it becomes highly probable that his
+theory of the origin of these secondary blue bands is the true one. He
+suggests that layers of water may be formed in the glacier at right
+angles with the pressure, and pass into a state of solid ice upon the
+removal of that pressure, the pressure being of course relieved in
+proportion to the diminution in the body of the ice by compression. The
+number of blue bands diminishes as we recede from the source of the
+pressure,&mdash;few only being formed, usually at right angles with the
+surfaces of stratification, in the middle of a glacier, half-way between
+its sides. If they are caused by pressure, this diminution of their
+number toward the middle of the glacier would be inevitable, since the
+intensity of the pressure naturally fades as we recede from the motive
+power.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Tyndall also alludes to another structure of the same kind, which he
+calls transverse structure, where the blue bands extend in
+crescent-shaped curves, <a name="Page_767" id="Page_767"></a>more or less arched, across the surface of the
+glacier. Where these do not coincide with the stratification, they are
+probably formed by vertical pressure in connection with the unequal
+movement of the mass.</p>
+
+<p>With these facts before us, it seems to me plain that the primitive blue
+bands arise with the stratification of the snow in the very first
+formation of the glacier, while the secondary blue bands are formed
+subsequently, in consequence of the onward progress of the glacier and
+the pressure to which it is subjected. The secondary blue bands
+intersect the planes of stratification at every possible angle, and may
+therefore seem identical with the stratification in some places, while
+in others they cut it at right angles. It has been objected to my theory
+of glacial structure, that I have considered the so-called blue bands as
+a superficial feature when compared with the stratification. And in a
+certain sense this is true; since, if my views are correct, the glacier
+exists and is in full life and activity before the secondary blue bands
+arise in it, whereas the stratification is a feature of its embryo
+condition, already established in the accumulated snow before it begins
+its transformation into glacier-ice. In other words, the veined
+structure of the glacier is not a primary structural feature of its
+whole mass, but the result of various local influences acting upon the
+constitution of the ice: the marginal structure resulting from the
+resistance of the sides of the valley to the onward movement of the
+glacier, the longitudinal structure arising from the pressure caused by
+two glaciers uniting in one common bed, the transverse structure being
+produced by vertical pressure in consequence of the weight of the mass
+itself and the increased rate of motion at the centre.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i> fields, where the strata are still horizontal, the few
+blue bands observed are perpendicular to the strata of snow, and
+therefore also perpendicular to the blue seams of ice and the sheets of
+dust alternating with them. Upon the sides of the glacier they are more
+or less parallel to the slopes of the valley; along the line of junction
+of two glaciers they follow the vertical trend of the axis of the mass;
+while at intermediate positions they are more or less oblique. Along the
+outcropping edges of the strata, on the surface of the glacier, they
+follow more or less the dip of the strata themselves; that is to say,
+they are more or less parallel with the dirt-bands. In conclusion, I
+would recommend future investigators to examine the glaciers, with
+reference to the distribution of the blue bands, after heavy rains and
+during foggy days, when the surface is freed from the loose materials
+and decomposed fragments of ice resulting from the prolonged action of
+the sun.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The most important facts, then, to be considered with reference to the
+motion of the glacier are as follows. First that the rate of advance
+between the axis and the margins of a glacier differs in the ratio of
+about ten to one and even less; that is to say; when the centre is
+advancing at a rate of two hundred and fifty feet a year, the motion
+toward the sides may be gradually diminished to two hundred, one hundred
+and fifty, one hundred, fifty feet, and so on, till nearest the margin
+it becomes almost inappreciable. Secondly, the rate of motion is not the
+same throughout the length of the glacier, the advance being greatest
+about half-way down in the region of the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>, and diminishing in
+rapidity both above and below; thus the onward motion in the higher
+portion of a glacier may not exceed twenty to fifty feet a year, while
+it reaches its maximum of some two hundred and fifty feet annually in
+the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i> region, and is retarded again toward the lower extremity,
+where it is reduced to about one-fourth of its maximum rate. Thirdly,
+the glacier moves at different rates throughout the thickness of its
+mass; toward the lower extremity of the glacier the bottom is retarded,
+and the surface portion moves faster, while in the upper region the
+bottom seems to advance more rapidly. I say <i>seems</i>, because upon this
+latter <a name="Page_768" id="Page_768"></a>point there are no positive measurements, and it is only
+inferred from general appearances, while the former statement has been
+demonstrated by accurate experiments. Remembering the form of the
+troughs in which the glaciers arise, that they have their source in
+expansive, open fields of snow and <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>, and that these immense
+accumulations move gradually down into ever narrowing channels, though
+at times widening again to contract anew, their surface wasting so
+little from external influences that they advance far below the line of
+perpetual snow without any sensible diminution in size, it is evident
+that an enormous pressure must have been brought to bear upon them
+before they could have been packed into the lower valleys through which
+they descend.</p>
+
+<p>Physicists seem now to agree that pressure is the chief agency in the
+motion of glaciers. No doubt, all the facts point that way; but it now
+becomes a matter of philosophical interest to determine in what
+direction it acts most powerfully, and upon this point glacialists are
+by no means agreed. The latest conclusion seems to be, that the weight
+of the advancing mass is itself the efficient cause of the motion. But
+while this is probably true in the main, other elements tending to the
+same result, and generally overlooked by investigators, ought to be
+taken into consideration; and before leaving the subject, I would add a
+few words upon infiltration in this connection.</p>
+
+<p>The weight of the glacier, as a whole, is about the same all the year
+round. If, therefore, pressure, resulting from that weight, be the
+all-controlling agency, its progress should be uniform daring the whole
+year, or even greatest in winter, which is by no means the case. By a
+series of experiments, I have ascertained that the onward movement,
+whatever be its annual average, is accelerated in spring and early
+summer. The average annual advance of the glacier being, at a given
+point, at the rate of about two hundred feet, its average summer
+advance, at the same point, will be at a rate of two hundred and fifty
+feet, while its average rate of movement in winter will be about one
+hundred and fifty feet. This can be accounted for only by the increased
+pressure due to the large accession of water trickling in spring and
+early summer into the interior through the net-work of capillary
+fissures pervading the whole mass. The unusually large infiltration of
+water at that season is owing to the melting of the winter snow. Careful
+experiments made on the glacier of the Aar, respecting the water thus
+accumulating on the surface, penetrating its mass, and finally
+discharged in part at its lower extremity, fully confirm this view.
+Here, then, is a powerful cause of pressure and consequent motion, quite
+distinct from the permanent weight of the mass itself, since it operates
+only at certain seasons of the year. In midwinter, when the infiltration
+is reduced to a minimum, the motion is least. The water thus introduced
+into the glacier acts, as we have seen above, in various ways: by its
+weight, by loosening the particles of snow through which it trickles,
+and by freezing and consequent expansion, at least within the limits and
+during the season at which the temperature of the glacier sinks below
+32&deg; Fahrenheit. The simple fact, that in the spring the glacier swells
+on an average to about five feet more than its usual level, shows how
+important this infiltration must be. I can therefore only wonder that
+other glacialists have given so little weight to this fact. It is
+admitted by all, that the waste of a glacier at its surface, in
+consequence of evaporation and melting, amounts to about nine or ten
+feet in a year. At this rate of diminution, a glacier, even one thousand
+feet in thickness, could not advance during a single century without
+being exhausted. The water supplied by infiltration no doubt repairs the
+loss to a great degree. Indeed, the lower part of the glacier must be
+chiefly maintained from this source, since the annual increase from the
+fresh accumulations of snow is felt only above the snow-line, below
+which <a name="Page_769" id="Page_769"></a>the yearly snow melts away and disappears. In a complete theory
+of the glaciers, the effect of so great an accession of plastic material
+cannot be overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>I now come to some points in the structure of the glacier, the
+consideration of which is likely to have a decided influence in settling
+the conflicting views respecting their motion. The experiments of
+Faraday concerning regelation, and the application of the facts made
+known by the great English physicist to the theory of the glaciers, as
+first presented by Dr. Tyndall in his admirable work, show that
+fragments of ice with most surfaces are readily reunited under pressure
+into a solid mass. It follows from these experiments, that glacier-ice,
+at a temperature of 32&deg; Fahrenheit, may change its form and preserve its
+continuity during its motion, in virtue of the pressure to which it is
+subjected. The statement is, that, when two pieces of ice with moistened
+surfaces are placed in contact, they become cemented together by the
+freezing of a film of water between them, while, when the ice is below
+32&deg; Fahrenheit, and therefore <i>dry</i>, no effect of the kind can be
+produced. The freezing was also found to take place under water; and the
+result was the same, even when the water into which the ice was plunged
+was as hot as the hand can bear.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that ice becomes cemented under these circumstances is fully
+established, and my own experiments have confirmed it to the fullest
+extent. I question, however, the statement, that regelation takes place
+<i>by the freezing of a film of water between the fragments</i>. I never have
+been able to detect any indication of the presence of such a film, and
+am, therefore, inclined to consider this result as akin to what takes
+place when fragments of moist clay or marl are pressed together and thus
+reunited. When examining beds of clay and marl, or even of compact
+limestone, especially in large mountain-masses, I have frequently
+observed that the rock presents a net-work of minute fissures pervading
+the whole, without producing a distinct solution of continuity, though
+generally determining the lines according to which it breaks under
+sudden shocks. The net-work of capillary fissures pervading the glacier
+may fairly be compared to these rents in hard rocks,&mdash;with this
+difference, however, that in ice they are more permeable to water than
+in stone.</p>
+
+<p>How this net-work of capillary fissures is formed has not been
+ascertained by direct observation. Following, however, the
+transformation of the snow and <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i> into compact ice, it is easily
+conceived that the porous mass of snow, as it falls in the upper regions
+of the Alps, and in the broad caldrons in which the glaciers properly
+originate, cannot pass into solid ice, by the process described in a
+former article, without retaining within itself larger or smaller
+quantities of air. This air is finally surrounded from all sides by the
+cementation of the granules of <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>, through the freezing of the water
+that penetrates it. So inclosed, the bubbles of air are subject to the
+same compression as the ice itself, and become more flattened in
+proportion as the snow has been more fully transformed into compact ice.
+As long as the transformation of snow into ice is not complete, a rise
+of its temperature to 32&deg; Fahrenheit, accompanied with thawing, reduces
+it at once again to the condition of loose grains of <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>; but when
+more compact, it always presents the aspect of a mass composed of
+angular fragments, wedged and dove-tailed together, and separated by
+capillary fissures, the flattened air-bubbles trending in the same
+direction in each fragment, but varying in their trend from one fragment
+to another. There is, moreover, this important point to notice,&mdash;that,
+the older the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>, the larger are its composing granules; and where
+<i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i> passes into porous ice, small angular fragments are mixed with
+rounded <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>-granules, the angular fragments appearing larger and more
+numerous, and the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>-granules fewer, in proportion as the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>-ice
+has undergone most completely its transformation into compact
+glacier-ice.<a name="Page_770" id="Page_770"></a> These facts show conclusively that the dimensions and form
+of the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>-granules, the size and shape of the angular fragments, the
+porosity of the ice, the arrangement of its capillary fissures, and the
+distribution and compression of the air-bubbles it contains, are all
+connected features, mutually dependent. Whether the transformation of
+snow into ice be the result of pressure only, or, as I believe, quite as
+much the result of successive thawings and freezings, these structural
+features can equally be produced, and exhibit these relations to one
+another. It may be, moreover, that, when the glacier is at a temperature
+below 32&deg;, its motion produces extensive fissuration throughout the
+mass.</p>
+
+<p>Now that water pervades this net-work of fissures in the glacier to a
+depth not yet ascertained, my experiments upon the glacier of the Aar
+have abundantly proved; and that the fissures themselves exist at a
+depth of two hundred and fifty feet I also know, from actual
+observation. All this can, of course, take place, even if the internal
+temperature of the glacier never should fall below 32&deg; Fahrenheit; and
+it has actually been assumed that the temperature within the glacier
+does not fall below this point, and that, therefore, no phenomena,
+dependent upon a greater degree of cold, can take place beyond a very
+superficial depth, to which the cold outside may be supposed to
+penetrate. I have, however, observed facts which seem to me
+irreconcilable with this assumption. In the first place, a
+thermometrograph indicating -2&deg; Centigrade, (about 28&deg; Fahrenheit,) at a
+depth of a little over two metres, that is, about six feet and a half,
+has been recovered from the interior of the glacier of the Aar, while
+all my attempts to thaw out other instruments placed in the ice at a
+greater depth utterly failed, owing to the circumstance, that, after
+being left for some time in the glacier, they were invariably frozen up
+in newly formed water-ice, entirely different in its structure from the
+surrounding glacier-ice. This freezing could not have taken place, did
+the mass of the glacier never fall below 32&deg; Fahrenheit. And this is not
+the only evidence of hard frost in the interior of the glaciers. The
+innumerable large walls of water-ice, which may be seen intersecting
+their mass in every direction and to any depth thus far reached, show
+that water freezes in their interior. It cannot be objected, that this
+is merely the result of pressure; since the thin fluid seams, exhibited
+under pressure in the interesting experiments of Dr. Tyndall, and
+described in his work under the head of Crystallization and Internal
+Liquefaction, cannot be compared to the large, irregular masses of
+water-ice found in the interior of the glacier, to which I here allude.</p>
+
+<p>In the absence of direct thermometric observations, from which the
+lowest internal temperature of the glacier could be determined with
+precision in all its parts, we are certainly justified in assuming that
+every particle of water-ice found in the glacier, the formation of which
+cannot be ascribed to the mere fact of pressure, is due to the influence
+of a temperature inferior to 32&deg; Fahrenheit at the time of its
+consolidation. The fact that the temperature in winter has been proved
+by actual experimentation to fall as low as 28&deg; Fahrenheit, that is,
+four degrees below the freezing-point at a depth of six feet below a
+thick covering of snow, though not absolutely conclusive as to the
+temperature at a greater depth, is certainly very significant.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances, it is not out of place to consider through
+what channels the low temperature of the air surrounding the glacier may
+penetrate into the interior. The heavy cold air may of course sink from
+the surface into every large open space, such as the crevasses, large
+fissures, and <i>moulins</i> or mill like holes to be described in a future
+article; it may also penetrate with the currents which ingulf themselves
+under the glacier, or it may enter through its terminal vault, or
+through the lateral openings between the walls of the valley and the
+ice. Indeed, if all the spaces in the <a name="Page_771" id="Page_771"></a>mass of the glacier, not occupied
+by continuous ice, could be graphically represented, I believe it would
+be seen that cold air surrounds the glacier-ice itself in every
+direction, so that probably no masses of a greater thickness than that
+already known to be permeable to cold at the surface would escape this
+contact with the external temperature. If this be the case, it is
+evident that water may freeze in any part of the glacier.</p>
+
+<p>To substantiate this position, which, if sustained, would prove that the
+dilatation of the mass of the glacier is an essential element of its
+motion, I may allude to several other well-known facts. The loose snow
+of the upper regions is gradually transformed into compact ice. The
+experiments of Dr. Tyndall prove that this may be the result of
+pressure; but in the region of the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i> it is evidently owing to the
+transformation of the snow-flakes into ice by repeated melting and
+freezing, for it takes place in the uppermost layers of the snow, where
+pressure can have no such effect, as well as in its deeper beds. I take
+it for granted, also, that no one, familiar with the presence of the
+numerous ice-seams parallel to the layers of snow in these upper regions
+of the glacier, can doubt that they, as well as the <i>n&eacute;v&eacute;</i>, are the
+result of frost. But be this as it may, the difference between the
+porous ice of the upper region of the glacier and the compact blue ice
+of its lower track seems to me evidence direct that at times the whole
+mass must assume the rigidity imparted to it by a temperature inferior
+to the freezing-point. We know that at 32&deg; Fahrenheit, regelation
+renders the mass continuous, and that it becomes brittle only at a
+temperature below this. In other words, the ice can break up into a mass
+of disconnected fragments, such as the capillary fissures and the
+infiltration-experiments described in my "Syst&egrave;me Glaciaire," show to
+exist, only when it is below 32&deg; Fahrenheit. If it be contended that ice
+at 32&deg; does break, and that therefore the whole mass of the glacier may
+break at that temperature, setting aside the contradiction to the facts
+of regelation which such an assumption involves, I would refer to Dr.
+Tyndall's experiments concerning the vacuous spots in the ice.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 404px;">
+<img src="images/image05.png" width="404" height="325" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Those who have read his startling investigations will remember that by
+sending a beam of sunlight through ice he brought to view the primitive
+crystalline forms to which it owes its solidity, and that he insisted
+that these star-shaped figures are always in the plane of
+crystallization. Without knowing what might be their origin, I had
+myself noticed these figures, and represented them in a diagram, part of
+which is reproduced in the annexed wood-cut. I had considered them to be
+compressed air-bubbles; and though I cannot, under my present
+circumstances, repeat the experiment of Dr. Tyndall upon glacier-ice, I
+conceive that the star-shaped figures represented upon Pl. VII. figs. 8
+and 9, in my "Syst&egrave;me Glaciaire," may refer to the same phenomenon as
+that observed by him in pond-ice. Yet while I make this concession, I
+still maintain, that besides these crystalline figures there exist
+compressed air-bubbles in the angular fragments of the glacier-ice, as
+shown in the above wood-cut; and that these bubbles are grouped in sets,
+trending in the same direction in one and the same fragment, and
+diverging under various angles in the different fragments. I have
+explained this fact concerning the position of the compressed
+air-bubbles, by assuming that ice, under various pressure, may take the
+appearance it presents in each fragment with every compressed air-bubble
+<a name="Page_772" id="Page_772"></a>trending in the same direction, while their divergence in the different
+fragments is owing to a change in the respective position of the
+fragments resulting from the movement of the whole glacier. I have
+further assumed, that throughout the glacier the change of the snow and
+porous ice into compact ice is the result of successive freezing,
+alternating with melting, or at least with the resumption of a
+temperature of 32&deg; Fahrenheit in consequence of the infiltration of
+liquid water, to which the effects of pressure must be added, the
+importance of which in this connection no one could have anticipated
+prior to the experiments of Dr. Tyndall. Of course, if the interior
+temperature of the glacier never falls below 32&deg;, the changes here
+alluded to could not take place. But if the <i>vacuous spaces</i> observed by
+Dr. Tyndall are really identical with the spaces I have described as
+<i>extremely flattened air-bubbles</i>, I think the arrangement of these
+spaces as above described proves that it freezes in the interior of the
+glacier to the depth at which these crosswise fragments have been
+observed: that is, at a depth of two hundred feet. For, since the
+experiments of Dr. Tyndall show that the vacuous spaces are parallel to
+the surface of crystallization, and as no crystallization of water can
+take place unless the surrounding temperature fall below 32&deg;, it follows
+that these vacuous spaces could not exist in such large continuous
+fragments, presenting throughout the fragments the same trend, if there
+had been no frost within the mass, affecting the whole of such a
+fragment while it remained in the same position.</p>
+
+<p>The most striking evidence, in my opinion, that at times the whole mass
+of the glacier actually freezes, is drawn from the fact, already alluded
+to, that, while the surface of the glacier loses annually from nine to
+ten feet of its thickness by evaporation and melting, it swells, on the
+other hand, in the spring, to the amount of about five feet. Such a
+dilatation can hardly be the result of pressure and the packing of the
+snow and ice, since the difference in the bulk of the ice brought down,
+during one year, from a point above to that under observation, would not
+account for the swelling. It is more readily explained by the freezing
+of the water of infiltration during spring and early summer, when the
+infiltration is most copious and the winter cold has been accumulating
+for the longest time. This view of the case is sustained by &Eacute;lie de
+Beaumont, who states his opinion upon this point as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Pendant l'hiver, la temp&eacute;rature de la surface du glacier s'abaisse &agrave; un
+grand nombre de degr&eacute;s au-dessous de z&eacute;ro, et cette basse temp&eacute;rature
+p&eacute;n&egrave;tre, quoique avec un affaiblissement graduel, dans l'interieur de la
+masse. Le glacier se fendille par l'effet de la contraction r&eacute;sultant de
+ce refroidissement. Les fentes restent d'abord vides, et concourent an
+refroidissement des glaciers en favorisant l'introduction de l'air froid
+ext&eacute;rieur; mais an printemps, lorsque les rayons du soleil &eacute;chaffent la
+surface de la neige qui couvre le glacier, ils la rem&egrave;nent d'abord &agrave;
+z&eacute;ro, et ils produisent ensuite de l'eau &agrave; z&eacute;ro qui tombe dans le
+glacier refroidi et fendill&eacute;. Cette eau s'y cong&egrave;le &agrave; l'instant, en
+laissant d&eacute;gager de la chaleur qui tend &agrave; ramener le glacier &agrave; z&eacute;ro; et
+la ph&eacute;nom&egrave;ne se continue jusqu'&agrave; ce que la masse enti&egrave;re du glacier
+refroidi soit ramen&eacute; &agrave; la temp&eacute;rature de z&eacute;ro."<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a></p>
+<p><a name="Page_773" id="Page_773"></a></p>
+<p>But where direct observations are still so scanty, and the
+interpretations of the facts so conflicting, it is the part of wisdom to
+be circumspect in forming opinions. This much, however, I believe to be
+already settled: that any theory which ascribes the very complicated
+phenomena of the glacier to one cause must be defective and one-sided.
+It seems to me most probable, that, while pressure has the larger share
+in producing the onward movement of the glacier, as well as in the
+transformation of the snow into ice, a careful analysis of all the facts
+will show that this pressure is owing partly to the weight of the mass
+itself, partly to the pushing on of the accumulated snow from behind,
+partly to its sliding along the surface upon which it rests, partly to
+the weight of water pervading the whole, partly to the softening of the
+rigid ice by the infiltration of water, and partly, also, to the
+dilatation of the mass, requiting from the freezing of this water. These
+causes, of course, modify the ice itself, while they contribute to the
+motion. Further investigations are required to ascertain in what
+proportion these different influences contribute to the general result,
+and at what time and under what circumstances they modify most directly
+the motion of the glacier.</p>
+
+<p>That a glacier cannot be altogether compared to a river, although there
+is an unmistakable analogy between the flow of the one and the onward
+movement of the other, seems to me plain,&mdash;since the river, by the
+combination of its tributaries, goes on increasing in bulk in
+consequence of the incompressibility of water, while a glacier gradually
+thins out in consequence of the packing of its mass, however large and
+numerous may be its accessions. The analogy fails also in one important
+point, that of the acceleration of speed with the steepness of the
+slope. The motion of the glacier bears no such direct relation to the
+inclination of its bed. And though in a glacier, as in a river, the axis
+of swiftest motion is thrown alternately on one or the other side of the
+valley, according to its shape and slope, the very nature of ice makes
+it impossible that eddies should be formed in the glacier, and the
+impressive feature of whirlpools is altogether wanting in them. What
+have been called glacier-cascades bear only a remote resemblance to
+river-cascades, as in the former the surface only is thrown into
+confusion by breaking, without affecting the primitive structure;<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a> and
+I reiterate my formerly expressed opinion that even the stratification
+of the upper regions is still recognizable at the lower end of the
+glacier of the Rhone.</p>
+
+<p>The internal structure of the glacier has already led me beyond the
+limits I had proposed to myself in the present article. But I trust my
+readers will not be discouraged by this dry discussion of various
+theories concerning it, and will meet me again on the glacier, when we
+will examine together some of its more picturesque features, its
+crevasses, its rivulets and cascades, its moraines, its boulders, etc.,
+and endeavor also to track its ancient course and boundaries in earlier
+geological times.</p><p><a name="Page_774" id="Page_774"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IN_AN_ATTIC" id="IN_AN_ATTIC"></a>IN AN ATTIC.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This is my attic-room. Sit down, my friend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My swallow's-nest is high and hard to gain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stairs are long and steep, but at the end<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">The rest repays the pain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For here are peace and freedom; room for speech<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or silence, as may suit a changeful mood;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Society's hard by-laws do not reach<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">This lofty altitude.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You hapless dwellers in the lower rooms<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">See only bricks and sand and windowed walls;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But here, above the dust and smoky glooms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Heaven's light unhindered falls.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So early in the street the shadows creep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your night begins while yet my eyes behold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The purpling hills, the wide horizon's sweep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Flooded with sunset gold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The day comes earlier here. At morn I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Along the roofs the eldest sunbeam peep,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I live in daylight, limitless and free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">While you are lost in sleep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I catch the rustle of the maple-leaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I see their breathing branches rise and fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hear, from their high perch along the eaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">The bright-necked pigeons call.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Far from the parlors with their garrulous crowds<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I dwell alone, with little need of words;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have mute friendships with the stars and clouds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">And love-trysts with the birds.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So all who walk steep ways, in grief and night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where every step is full of toil and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May see, when they have gained the sharpest height,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">It has not been in vain:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Since they have left behind the noise and heat,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And, though their eyes drop tears, their sight is clear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The air is purer, and the breeze is sweet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">And the blue heaven more near.<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><a name="Page_775" id="Page_775"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LONGFELLOW" id="LONGFELLOW"></a>LONGFELLOW.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The preface of "Outre-Mer," Longfellow's first book, is dated 1833. The
+last poem in his last volume is published in 1863. In those thirty years
+what wide renown, what literary achievement, what love of friends in
+many lands, what abounding success and triumph, what profound sorrow,
+mark the poet's career! The young scholar, returning from that European
+tour which to the imaginative and educated American is the great
+romance, sits down in Bowdoin College in Maine, where he is Professor,
+and writes the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "worthy and gentle reader."
+Those two phrases tell the tale. The instinct of genius and literary
+power stirring in the heart of the young man naturally takes the quaint,
+dainty expression of an experience fed, thus far, only upon good old
+books and his own imagination. The frolicking tone of mock humility,
+deprecating the intrusion upon the time of a busy world, does not
+conceal the conviction that the welcome so airily asked by the tyro will
+at last be commanded by the master.</p>
+
+<p>Like the "Sketch-Book" of the other most popular of our authors, Irving,
+the "Outre-Mer" of Longfellow is a series of tales, reveries,
+descriptions, reminiscences, and character-pieces, suggested by European
+travel. But his beat lies in France, Spain, and Italy. It is the romance
+of the Continent, and not that of England, which inspires him. It is the
+ruddy light upon the vines and the scraps of old <i>chansons</i> which
+enliven and decorate his pilgrimage, and through all his literary life
+they have not lost their fascination. While Irving sketches "Rural Life
+in England," Longfellow paints "The Village of Auteuil"; Irving gives us
+"The Boar's Head Tavern," and Longfellow "The Golden Lion Inn" at Rouen;
+Irving draws "A Royal Poet," Longfellow discusses "The Trouv&egrave;res," or
+"The Devotional Poetry of Spain." It is delightful to trace the charming
+resemblance between the books and the writers, widely different as they
+are. There is the same geniality, the same tender pathos, the same
+lambent humor, the same delicate observation of details, the same
+overpowering instinct of literary art. But Geoffrey Crayon is a
+humorist, while the Pilgrim beyond the Sea is a poet. The one looks at
+the broad aspects of English life with the shrewd, twinkling eye of a
+man of the world; the other haunts the valley of the Loire, the German
+street, the Spanish inn, with the kindling fancy of the scholar and
+poet. The moral and emotional elements are quite wanting in Irving; they
+are characteristic of Longfellow. But the sweetness of soul, the freedom
+from cynicism or stinging satire, which is most unusual in American, or
+in any humorous or descriptive literature, is remarkable in both. "I
+have no wife, nor children, good or bad, to provide for," begins
+Geoffrey Crayon, quoting from old Burton. But neither had he an enemy
+against whom to defend himself. It was true of Geoffrey Crayon, down to
+the soft autumn day on which he died, leaving a people to mourn for him.
+It is true of the Pilgrim of Outre-Mer, in all the thirty years since
+first he launched forth "into the uncertain current of public favor."</p>
+
+<p>In this earliest book of Longfellow's the notable points are not power
+of invention, or vigorous creation, or profound thought, but a
+mellowness of observation, instinctively selecting the picturesque and
+characteristic details, a copious and rich scholarship, and that
+indefinable grace of the imagination which announces genius. The work,
+like the "Sketch-Book," was originally issued in parts, and it was
+hardly possible for any observer thirty years ago not to see that its
+peculiar character revealed a new strain in our literature. Longfellow's
+poems as yet were very few, printed in literary journals, and not yet
+signalizing his genius. It was the day <a name="Page_776" id="Page_776"></a>when Percival Halleck, Sprague,
+Dana, Willis, Bryant, were the undisputed lords of the American
+Parnassus. But the school reading-books already contained "An April Day"
+and "Woods in Winter," and all the verses of the young author had a
+recognition in volumes of elegant extracts and commonplace-books. But
+the universal popularity of Longfellow was not established until the
+publication of "Hyperion" in 1839, followed by "The Voices of the Night"
+in the next year. With these two works his name arose to the highest
+popularity, both in America and England; and no living author has been
+more perpetually reproduced in all forms and with every decoration.</p>
+
+<p>If now we care to explain the eager and affectionate welcome which
+always hails his writings, it is easy to see to what general quality
+that greeting must be ascribed. As with Walter Scott, or Victor Hugo, or
+B&eacute;ranger, or Dickens, or Addison in the "Spectator," or Washington
+Irving, it is a genial humanity. It is a quality, in all these
+instances, independent of literary art and of genius, but which is made
+known to others, and therefore becomes possible to be recognized, only
+through literary forms. The creative imagination, the airy fancy, the
+exquisite grace, harmony, and simplicity, the rhetorical brilliancy, the
+incisive force, all the intellectual powers and charms of style with
+which that feeling may be expressed, are informed and vitalized by the
+sympathy itself. But whether a man who writes verses has
+genius,&mdash;whether he be a poet according to arbitrary canons,&mdash;whether
+some of his lines resemble the lines of other writers,&mdash;and whether he
+be original, are questions which may be answered in every way of every
+poet in history. Who is a poet but he whom the heart of man permanently
+accepts as a singer of its own hopes, emotions, and thoughts? And what
+is poetry but that song? If words have a uniform meaning, it is useless
+to declare that Pope cannot be a poet, if Lord Byron is, or that Moore
+is counterfeit, if Wordsworth be genuine. For the art of poetry is like
+all other arts. The casket that Cellini worked is not less genuine and
+excellent than the dome of Michel Angelo. Is nobody but Shakspeare a
+poet? Is there no music but Beethoven's? Is there no mountain-peak but
+Dhawalaghiri? no cataract but Niagara?</p>
+
+<p>Thirty years ago almost every critic in England exploded with laughter
+over the poetry of Tennyson. Yet his poetry has exactly the same
+characteristics now that it had then; and Tennyson has gone up to his
+place among English poets. It is not "Blackwood," nor any quarterly
+review or monthly magazine, (except, of course, the "North American" and
+the "Atlantic,") which can decree or deny fame. While the critics are
+busily proving that an author is a plagiarist or a pretender, the world
+is crowning him,&mdash;as the first ocean-steamer from England brought Dr.
+Lardner's essay to prove that steamers could not cross the ocean.
+Literary criticism, indeed, is a lost art, if it ever were an art. For
+there are no permanent acknowledged canons of literary excellence; and
+if there were any, there are none who can apply them. What critic shall
+decide if the song of a new singer be poetry, or the bard himself a
+poet? Consequently, modern criticism wisely contents itself with
+pointing out errors of fact or of inference, or the difference between
+the critic's and the author's philosophic or &aelig;sthetic view, and bitterly
+assaults or foolishly praises him. When Horace Binney Wallace, one of
+the most accomplished and subtile-minded of our writers, says of General
+Morris that he is "a great poet," and that "he who can understand Mr.
+Emerson may value Mr. Bancroft," we can feel only the more profoundly
+persuaded that fame is not the judgment of individuals, but of the mass
+of men, and that he whose song men love to hear is a poet.</p>
+
+<p>But while the magnetism of Longfellow's touch lies in the broad humanity
+of his sympathy, which leads him neither to mysticism nor cynicism, and
+which commends his poetry to the universal <a name="Page_777" id="Page_777"></a>heart, his artistic sense is
+so exquisite that each of his poems is a valuable literary study. In
+this he has now reached a perfection quite unrivalled among living
+poets, except sometimes by Tennyson. His literary career has been
+contemporary with the sensational school, but he has been entirely
+untainted by it, and in the present volume, "Tales of a Wayside Inn,"
+his style has a tranquil lucidity which recalls Chaucer. The literary
+style of an intellectually introverted age or author will always be
+somewhat obscure, however gorgeous; but Longfellow's mind takes a
+simple, child-like hold of life, and his style never betrays the
+inadequate effort to describe thoughts or emotions that are but vaguely
+perceived, which is the characteristic of the best sensational writing.
+Indeed, there is little poetry by the eminent contemporary masters which
+is so ripe and racy as his. He does not make rhetoric stand for passion,
+nor vagueness for profundity; nor, on the other hand, is he such a
+voluntary and malicious "Bohemian" as to conceive that either in life or
+letters a man is released from the plain rules of morality. Indeed, he
+used to be accused of preaching in his poetry by gentle critics who held
+that Elysium was to be found in an oyster-cellar, and that intemperance
+was the royal prerogative of genius.</p>
+
+<p>His literary scholarship, also, his delightful familiarity with the pure
+literature of all languages and times, must rank Longfellow among the
+learned poets. Yet he wears this various knowledge like a shining suit
+of chain-mail, to adorn and strengthen his gait, like Milton, instead of
+tripping and clumsily stumbling in it, as Ben Jonson sometimes did. He
+whips out an exquisitely pointed allusion that flashes like a Damascus
+rapier and strikes nimbly home, or he recounts some weird tradition, or
+enriches his line with some gorgeous illustration from hidden stores, or
+merely unrolls, as Milton loved to do, the vast perspective of romantic
+association by recounting in measured order names which themselves make
+music in the mind,&mdash;names not musical only, but fragrant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sabean odors from the spicy shore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Araby the blest."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the prelude to the "Wayside Inn," with how consummate a skill the
+poet graces his modern line with the shadowy charm of ancient verse, by
+the mere mention of the names!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The chronicles of Charlemagne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mingled together in his brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With talcs of Flores and Blanchefleur,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A most felicitous illustration of this trait is in "The Evening Star,"
+an earlier poem. Chrysaor, in the old mythology, sprang from the blood
+of Medusa, armed with a golden sword, and married Callirrho&euml;, one of the
+Oceanides. The poet, looking at evening upon the sea, muses upon the
+long-drawn, quivering reflection of the evening star, and sings. How the
+verses oscillate like the swaying calm of the sea, while the image
+inevitably floats into the scholar's imagination:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Just above yon sandy bar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the day grows fainter and dimmer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lonely and lovely a single star<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Into the ocean faint and far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Falls the trail of its golden splendor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the gleam of that single star<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Chrysaor rising out of the sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Showed tints glorious and thus emulous,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leaving the arms of Callirrho&euml;,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Thus o'er the ocean faint and far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is it a god, or is it a star,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, entranced, I gaze on nightly?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The blending of the poetical faculty and scholarly taste is seen, also,
+in his translations; and would not a translation of Dante's great poem
+be the crowning work of Longfellow's literary life?</p><p><a name="Page_778" id="Page_778"></a></p>
+
+<p>But while we chat along the road, and pause to repeat these simple and
+musical poems, each so elegant, so finished, as the monk finished his
+ivory crucifix, or the lapidary his choicest gem, we have reached the
+Wayside Inn. It is the title of Longfellow's new volume, "Tales of a
+Wayside Inn." They are New-England "Canterbury Tales." Those of old
+London town were told at the Tabard at Southwark; these at the Red Horse
+in Sudbury town. And although it is but the form of the poem, peculiar
+neither to Chaucer nor to Longfellow, which recalls the earlier work,
+yet they have a further likeness in the sources of some of the tales,
+and in the limpid blitheness of the style and the pure objectivity of
+the poems.</p>
+
+<p>The melodious, picturesque simplicity of the opening, in which the place
+and the persons are introduced, is inexpressibly graceful and
+masterly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"One autumn night in Sudbury town,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Across the meadows bare and brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The windows of the wayside inn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of woodbine hanging from the eaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their crimson curtains rent and thin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As ancient is this hostelry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As any in the land may be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Built in the old colonial day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When men lived in a grander way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With ampler hospitality:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now somewhat fallen to decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With weather-stains upon the wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stairways worn, and crazy doors,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And creaking and uneven floors,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chimneys huge, and tiled, and tall."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The autumn wind moans without, and dashes in gusts against the windows;
+but there is a pleasant murmur from the parlor, with the music of a
+violin. In this comfortable tavern-parlor, ruddy with the fire-light, a
+rapt musician stands erect before the chimney and bends his ear to his
+instrument,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And seemed to listen, till he caught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Confessions of its secret thought,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;a figure and a picture, as he is afterward painted,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His figure tall and straight and lithe,"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>which recall the Norwegian magician, Ole Bull. He plays to the listening
+group of friends. Of these there is the landlord,&mdash;a youth of quiet
+ways, "a student of old books and days,"&mdash;a young Sicilian,&mdash;"a Spanish
+Jew from Alieant,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A theologian, from the school<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Cambridge on the Charles,"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>then a poet, whose portrait, exquisitely sketched and meant for quite
+another, will yet be prized by the reader, as the spectator prizes, in
+the Uffizi at Florence, the portraits of the painters by themselves:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A poet, too, was there, whose verse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was tender, musical, and terse:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The inspiration, the delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gleam, the glory, the swift flight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thoughts so sudden that they seem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The revelations of a dream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All these were his: but with them came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No envy of another's fame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He did not find his sleep less sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For music in some neighboring street,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor rustling hear in every breeze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The laurels of Miltiades.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Honor and blessings on his head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While living, good report when dead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, not too eager for renown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Accepts, but does not clutch, the crown."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The musician completes the group.</p>
+
+<p>When he stops playing, they call upon the landlord for his tale, which
+he, "although a bashful man," begins. It is "Paul Revere's Ride,"
+already known to many readers as a ballad of the famous incident in the
+Revolution which has, in American hearts, immortalized a name which this
+war has but the more closely endeared to them. It is one of the most
+stirring, ringing, and graphic ballads in the language,&mdash;a proper
+pendant to Browning's "How they brought the good news from Ghent to
+Aix."</p>
+
+<p>The poet, listening with eager delight, seizes the sword of the
+landlord's ancestor which was drawn at Concord fight, and tells him that
+his grandfather was a grander shape than any old Sir William,<a name="Page_779" id="Page_779"></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Clinking about in foreign lands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With iron gauntlets on his hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on his head an iron pot."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All laughed but the landlord,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For those who had been longest dead<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were always greatest in his eyes."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Did honest and dull "Conservatism" have ever a happier description? But
+lest the immortal foes of Conservatism and Progress should come to
+loggerheads in the conversation, the student opens his lips and breathes
+Italy upon the New-England autumn night. He tells the tale of "The
+Falcon of Sir Federigo," from the "Decameron." It is an exquisite poem.
+So charming is the manner, that the "Decameron," so rendered into
+English, would acquire a new renown, and the public of to-day would
+understand the fame of Boccaccio.</p>
+
+<p>But the theologian hears with other ears, and declares that the old
+Italian tales</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Are either trifling, dull, or lewd."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The student will not argue. He says only,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Nor were it grateful to forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That from these reservoirs and tanks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even imperial Shakespeare drew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His Moor of Venice and the Jew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Romeo and Juliet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a famous comedy."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After a longer pause, the Spanish Jew from Alieant begins "a story in
+the Talmud old," "The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi." This is followed after
+the interlude by the Sicilian's tale, "King Robert of Sicily," a noble
+legend of the Church, whose moral is humility. It is told in a broad,
+stately measure, and with consummate simplicity and skill. The attention
+is not distracted for a moment from the story, which monks might tell in
+the still cloisters of a Sicilian convent, and every American child hear
+with interest and delight.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And then the blue-eyed Norseman told.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Saga of the days of old."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is the Saga of King Olaf, and is much the longest tale in the volume,
+recounting the effort to plant Christianity in Norway by the sword of
+the King. In every variety of measure, heroic, elegiac, lyrical, the
+wild old Scandinavian tradition is told. Even readers who may be at
+first repelled by legends almost beyond modern human sympathy cannot
+escape the most musical persuasion of the poem which wafts them along
+those icy seas.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And King Olaf heard the cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw the red light in the sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laid his hand upon his sword,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he leaned upon the railing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his ships went sailing, sailing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Northward into Drontheim fiord.<br /></span>
+</div>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' /><br />
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Trained for either camp or court,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Skilful in each manly sport,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Young and beautiful and tall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Art of warfare, craft of chases,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swimming, stating, snow-shoe races,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Excellent alike at all."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is no continuous thread of story in the Saga, but each fragment of
+the whole is complete in itself, a separate poem. The traditions are
+fierce and wild. The waves dash in them, the winds moan and shriek.
+There are evanescent glimpses of green meadows, and a swift gleam of
+summer; but the cold salt sea and winter close round all. The tides rise
+and fall; they eddy in the sand; they float off and afar the huge
+dragon-ships. But the queens pine for revenge and slaughter; the kings
+drink and swear and fight, and sail away to their doom.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Louder the war-horses growl and snarl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sharper the dragons bite and sting!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eric the son of Hakon Yarl<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A death-drink salt as the sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pledges to thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Olaf the King!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Whoever has heard Ole Bull play, or Jenny Lind sing, the weird minor
+melodies of the North, will comprehend the kind of spell which these
+legends weave around the mind. Nor is their character lost in the
+skilful and symmetrical rendering of Longfellow. The reader has not the
+feeling, as in Sir William Jones's <a name="Page_780" id="Page_780"></a>translations, that he is reading Sir
+William, and not the Persian.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'What was that?' said Olaf, standing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the quarter-deck;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Something heard I like the stranding<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of a shattered wreck.'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Einar, then, the arrow taking<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the loosened string,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Answered, 'That was Norway breaking<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From thy hand, O King!'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the battle which Thor had defied was not to end by the weapons of
+war. In the fierce sea-fight,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"There is told a wonderful tale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How the King stripped off his mail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like leaves of the brown sea-kale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As he swam beneath the main;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But the young grew old and gray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And never by night or day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In his kingdom of Norroway<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was King Olaf seen again."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The victory must be won by other weapons. In the convent of Drontheim,
+Astrid, the abbess, hears a voice in the darkness:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Cross against corslet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love against hatred.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Peace-cry for war-cry!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The voice continues in peaceful music, forecasting heavenly rest:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"As torrents in summer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Half dried in their channels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suddenly rise, though the<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sky is still cloudless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For rain has been falling<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far off at their fountains;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So hearts that are fainting<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grow full to o'erflowing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they that behold it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marvel, and know not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That God at their fountains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far off has been raining."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>With this exquisitely beautiful strain of the abbess the Saga ends.</p>
+
+<p>The theologian muses aloud upon creeds and churches, then tells a
+fearful tragedy of Spain,&mdash;the story of a father who betrays his
+daughter to the fires of Torquemada. It chills the heart to think that
+such unspeakable ruin of a human soul was ever wrought by any system
+that even professed to be Christian. Moloch was truly divine, compared
+with the God of the Spanish Inquisition. But the gloom of the tragedy is
+not allowed to linger. The poet scatters it by the story of the merry
+"Birds of Killingworth," which appears elsewhere in the pages of this
+number of the "Atlantic." The blithe beauty of the verses is
+captivating, and the argument of the shy preceptor is the most poetic
+plea that ever wooed a world to justice. What an airy felicity in the
+lines,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Tis always morning somewhere, and above<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The awakening continents from shore to shore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Somewhere the birds are singing evermore."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And so, amid sunshine and the carolling of birds, the legendary rural
+romance of the Yankee shore, we turn the page, and find, with real
+sorrow, that the last tale is told in the Wayside Inn. The finale is
+brief. The guests arose and said good night. The drowsy squire remains
+to rake the embers of the fire. The scattered lamps gleam a moment at
+the windows. The Red Horse inn seems, in the misty night, the sinking
+constellation of the Bear,&mdash;and then,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Far off the village-clock struck one."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So ends this ripe and mellow work, leaving the reader like one who
+listens still for pleasant music i' the air which sounds no more. Those
+who will may compare it with the rippling strangeness of "Hiawatha," the
+mournfully rolling cadence of "Evangeline," the medi&aelig;val romance of "The
+Golden Legend." For ourselves, its beauty does not clash with theirs.
+The simple old form of the group of guests telling stories, the thread
+of so many precious rosaries, has a new charm from this poem. The Tabard
+inn is gone; but who, henceforth, will ride through Sudbury town without
+seeing the purple light shining around the Red Horse tavern?</p>
+
+<p>The volume closes with a few poems, classed as "Birds of Passage." It is
+the "second flight,"&mdash;the first being those at the end of the "Miles
+Standish" volume.<a name="Page_781" id="Page_781"></a> Some of these have a pathos and interest which all
+will perceive, but the depth and tenderness of which not all can know.
+"The Children's Hour" is a strain of parental love, which haunts the
+memory with its melody, its sportive, affectionate, and yearning lay.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"They almost devour me with kisses,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their arms about me entwine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In his mouse-tower on the Rhine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Because you have scaled the wall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such an old moustache as I am<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is not a match for you all?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here, too, is the grand ballad of "The Cumberland," and the delicate
+fancy of "The Snow-Flakes," expressing what every sensitive observer has
+so often felt,&mdash;that the dull leaden trouble of the winter sky finds the
+relief in snow that the suffering human heart finds in expression. Then
+there is "A Day of June," an outburst of the fulness of life and love in
+the beautiful sunny weather of blossoms on the earth and soft clouds in
+the sky.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O life and love! O happy throng<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O heart of man! canst thou not be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blithe as the air is, and as free?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To this poem the date is added, June, 1860.</p>
+
+<p>And here, at length, is the last poem. We pause as we reach it, and turn
+back to the first page of "Outre-Mer." "'Lystenyth, ye godely gentylmen,
+and all that ben hereyn!' I am a pilgrim benighted on my way, and crave
+a shelter till the storm is over, and a seat by the fireside in this
+honorable company. As a stranger I claim this courtesy at your hands,
+and will repay your hospitable welcome with tales of the countries I
+have passed through in my pilgrimage." It is the gay confidence of
+youth. It is the bright prelude of the happy traveller and scholar, to
+whom the very quaint conceits and antiquated language of romance are
+themselves romantic, and who makes himself a bard and troubadour. Hope
+allures him; ambition spurs him; conscious power assures him. His eager
+step dances along the ground. His words are an outburst of youth and
+joy. Thirty years pass by. What sober step pauses at the Wayside Inn? Is
+this the jocund Pilgrim of Outre-Mer? The harp is still in his strong
+hand. It sounds yet with the old tenderness and grace and sweetness. But
+this is the man, not the boy. This is the doubtful tyro no longer, but
+the wise master, honored and beloved. To how many hearts has his song
+brought peace! How like a benediction in all our homes his music falls!
+Ah! not more surely, when the stretched string of the full-tuned harp
+snaps in the silence, the cords of every neighboring instrument respond,
+than the hearts which love the singer and his song thrill with the
+heart-break of this last poem:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O little feet, that such long years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must wander on through doubts and fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Must ache and bleed beneath your load!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I, nearer to the wayside inn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where toil shall cease and rest begin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Am weary, thinking of your road."<br /></span>
+</div></div><p><a name="Page_782" id="Page_782"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LETTER_TO_A_PEACE_DEMOCRAT" id="LETTER_TO_A_PEACE_DEMOCRAT"></a>LETTER TO A PEACE DEMOCRAT.</h2>
+
+<p>ADDRESSED TO ANDREW JACKSON BROWN.</p>
+
+
+<p>MY DEAR ANDREW,&mdash;You can hardly have forgotten that our last
+conversation on the national questions of the day had an abrupt, if not
+angry, termination. I very much fear that we both lost temper, and that
+our discussion degenerated into a species of political sparring. You
+will certainly agree with me that the great issues now agitating the
+country are too grave to be treated in the flippant style of bar-room
+debate. When the stake for which we are contending with immense armies
+in the field and powerful navies on the ocean is nothing less than the
+existence of our Union and the life of our nation, it ill becomes
+intelligent and thoughtful men to descend to personal abuse, or to be
+blinded for one moment by prejudice or passion to the cardinal principle
+on which the whole controversy turns.</p>
+
+<p>In view of these considerations, therefore, as our previous discussions
+have left some vital questions untouched, and as our past experience
+seems to have proved that we cannot, with mutual profit, compare our
+opinions upon these subjects orally, I have decided to embody my
+sentiments on the general points of difference between us in the form of
+a letter. Knowing my personal regard for you, I am sure that you will
+not believe me guilty of intentional discourtesy in anything I may say,
+while you certainly will not be surprised, if I occasionally express
+myself with a degree of warmth which finds its full justification in the
+urgent importance of the questions to be considered.</p>
+
+<p>I have not the vanity to believe that anything I can say on subjects
+that have so long engrossed the attention of thoughtful Americans will
+have the charm of novelty. And yet, in view of the unwelcome fact, that
+there exists to some extent a decided difference at the North about
+questions in regard to which it is essential that there should be a
+community of feeling, it certainly can do no harm to make an attempt,
+however feeble, to enlist in the cause of constitutional liberty and
+good government at least one man who may have been led astray by a too
+zealous obedience to the dictates of his party. As the success of our
+republican institutions must depend on the morality and intelligence of
+the citizens composing the nation, no honest appeal to that morality and
+that intelligence can be productive of serious evil.</p>
+
+<p>Permit me, then, at the outset, to remind you of what, from first to
+last, has formed the key-note of all your opposition to the war-policy
+of the Administration. You say that you have no heart in this struggle,
+because Abolitionists have caused the war,&mdash;always adding, that
+Abolitionists may carry it on, if they please: at any rate, they shall
+have no support, direct or indirect, from you. I have carefully
+considered all the arguments which you have employed to convince me that
+the solemn responsibility of involving the nation in this sanguinary
+conflict rests upon Abolitionists, and these arguments seem to me to be
+summed up in the following proposition: Before Abolitionists began to
+disseminate their dangerous doctrines, we had no war; therefore
+Abolitionists caused the war. I might, perhaps, disarm you with your own
+weapons, by saying that before Slavery existed in this country we had no
+Abolitionists; but I prefer to meet your argument in another manner.</p>
+
+<p>Not to spend time in considering any aspect of the question about which
+we do not substantially differ, let us at once ascertain how far we can
+agree. I presume you will not deny that this nation is, and since the
+twelfth of April, 1861, <a name="Page_783" id="Page_783"></a>has been, in a state of civil war; that the
+actively contending parties are the North and the South; and that on the
+part of the South the war was commenced and is still waged in the
+interest of Slavery. We should probably differ <i>toto coelo</i> as to the
+causes which led to the conflict; but, my excellent Andrew, I think
+there are certain facts which after more than two years' hard fighting
+may be considered fairly established. Whatever may be your own
+conclusions, as you read our recent history in the light of your ancient
+and I had almost said absurd prejudices, I believe that the vast
+majority of thinking men at the North have made up their minds that a
+deliberate conspiracy to overturn this government has existed in the
+South for at least a quarter of a century; that the proofs of such a
+conspiracy have been daily growing more and move palpable, until any
+additional evidence has become simply cumulative; that the election of
+Abraham Lincoln was not the cause, but only marked the culmination of
+the treason, and furnished the shallow pretext for its first overt acts.
+That you are not prepared to admit all this is, I am forced to believe,
+mainly because you dislike the conclusions which must inevitably follow
+from such an admission. I say this, because, passing over for the
+present the undoubted fact, that this nation would have elected a
+Democratic President in 1860 but for the division of the Democratic
+party, and the further fact, equally indisputable, that Southern
+politicians wilfully created this division, I think you will hardly
+venture to deny that even after the election of Abraham Lincoln the
+South controlled the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the House of
+Representatives. And to come down to a still later period, you can have
+no treasonable doubt that the passage of the Corwin Amendment disarmed
+the South of any cause for hostilities, based on the danger of
+Congressional interference with Slavery wherever existing by force of
+State laws. There remains, then, only one conceivable excuse for the
+aggressive policy of the South, and that is found in the alleged
+apprehension that the slaves would be incited to open rebellion against
+their masters. But, I ask, can any intelligent and fair-minded man
+believe, to-day, that slaveholders were forced into this war by the fear
+that the anti-slavery sentiment of the North would lead to a general
+slave-insurrection? Nine-tenths of the able-bodied Southern population
+have been in arms for more than two years, far away from their
+plantations, and unable to render any assistance to the old men, women,
+and children remaining at home. The President's Emancipation
+Proclamation was made public nearly a year ago, and subsequent
+circumstances have conspired to give it a very wide circulation through
+the South. And yet there has not been a single slave-insurrection of any
+magnitude, and not one that has not been speedily suppressed and
+promptly punished. This fact would seem to be a tolerably conclusive
+answer to all apologies for the wicked authors of this Rebellion, drawn
+from their alarm for their own safety and the safety of their families.
+But the persistent Peace Democrat has infinite resources at command in
+defence of the conduct of his Southern allies.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Destroy his web of sophistry in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The creature's at his dirty work again."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We are now told that the obedient and unresisting submission of the
+slaves proves that they are satisfied with their condition, and have no
+desire to be free. And we are asked to admit, therefore, that Slavery is
+not a curse, but an absolute blessing, to those whom it affects most
+nearly! Or we are pointed to the multitude of slaves daily seeking the
+protection of the United States flag, and are informed that slaveholders
+are contending for the right to retain their property. As if the
+Fugitive-Slave Law&mdash;of which Mr. Douglas said, in one of his latest
+speeches, that not one of the Federal statutes had ever been more
+implicitly obeyed&mdash;did not afford the South most <a name="Page_784" id="Page_784"></a>ample protection, so
+long as it remained in the Union!</p>
+
+<p>Another grievance of which you bitterly complain, another count in the
+long indictment which you have drawn up against the Administration, is
+what you denominate its anti-slavery policy. You disapprove of the
+Emancipation Proclamation, you denounce the employment of armed negroes;
+and therefore you have no stomach for the fight.</p>
+
+<p>But has not the President published to the world that the Proclamation
+was a measure of military necessity? and has he not also said that its
+constitutionality is to be decided and the extent and duration of its
+privileges and penalties are to be defined by the Supreme Court of the
+United States? If, as you are accustomed to assert, the Proclamation is
+a dead letter, it certainly need not give you very serious discomfort.
+If it exercises a powerful influence in crippling the energies of the
+South, it surely is not among Northern men that we should look for its
+opponents. As to its future efficacy and binding force, shall we not do
+well to leave this question, and all similar and at present purely
+speculative inquiries, till that time&mdash;which may Heaven hasten!&mdash;when
+this war shall terminate in the restoration of the Union and the
+acknowledged supremacy of the Constitution?</p>
+
+<p>And now a word about that formidable bugbear, the enlistment of negro
+soldiers. For my own part, I candidly confess that I am utterly unable
+to comprehend your unmeasured abuse of this expedient. If slaves are
+chattels, I can conceive of no good reason why we may not confiscate
+them as Rebel property, useful to the Rebels in their armed resistance
+to Federal authority, precisely as we appropriate their corn and cattle.
+And when once confiscated, why should they not be employed in whatever
+manner will make them most serviceable to us? But you insist that they
+shall not be armed. You might with equal show of reason contend that the
+mules which we have taken from the Rebels may be rightfully used in
+ambulances, but must not be used in ammunition-wagons.</p>
+
+<p>But if slaves are not chattels, they are human beings, with brains and
+muscles,&mdash;brains at least intelligent enough to comprehend the stake
+they have in this controversy, and muscles strong enough to do good
+service in the cause of constitutional liberty and republican
+institutions. Is it wise to reject their offered assistance. Will not
+our foes have good cause to despise our folly, if we leave in their
+hands this most efficient element of their power? You have friends and
+relatives fighting in the Union armies. If you give the subject a
+moment's reflection, you must see that all slaves labouring on the
+plantations of their masters not only are feeding the traitors who are
+doing their utmost to destroy our country, but by relieving thousands
+upon thousands of Southern men from the necessity of remaining at home
+and cultivating the soil, are, to all practical purposes, as directly
+imperilling the lives of our Union soldiers as if these same slaves with
+sword or musket were serving in the Rebel ranks. And again, while you
+object to the enlistment of negroes, you are unwilling that any member
+of your family should leave your household and expose himself to the
+many hazards of war. Now is it not too plain for argument, that every
+negro who is enrolled in our army prevents, by just that unit, the
+necessity of sending one Northern soldier into the field?</p>
+
+<p>But will the slaves consent to enlist? Let the thousands who have forced
+their way to Union camps,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Over hill, over dale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thorough bush, thorough brier,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over park, over pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Thorough flood, thorough fire,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>tracked by blood-hounds, and by their inhuman oppressors more savage
+than blood-hounds, answer the insulting inquiry. Are they brave? Will
+they fight for the cause which they have dared so many dangers to
+espouse? I point you to the bloody records of Vicksburg,<a name="Page_785" id="Page_785"></a> Million's
+Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner; I appeal to the testimony of every
+Union officer under whom black soldiers have fought, as the most fitting
+reply to such questions. Shame on the miserable sneer, that we are
+spending the money and shedding the blood of white men to fight the
+battles of the negro! Blush for your own unmanly and ungenerous
+prejudices, and ask yourself whether future history will not pronounce
+the black man, morally, not only your equal, but your superior, when it
+is found recorded, that, denied the rights of citizenship, long
+proscribed, persecuted, and enslaved, he was yet willing, and even
+eager, to save the life of your brother on the battle-field, and to
+preserve you in the peaceable enjoyment of your property at home. Is the
+efficient aid of such men to be rejected? Is their noble self-sacrifice
+to be slighted? Shall we, under the contemptible pretext, that this war
+must be waged&mdash;if waged at all&mdash;for the benefit of the white race,
+deprive negroes of an opportunity to risk their lives to maintain a
+government which has never protected them, and a Constitution which has
+been practically interpreted in such a manner as to recognize and
+sanction their servitude? Do not, I implore you, answer these inquiries
+by that easy, but infamous taunt, so constantly on the lips of
+unscrupulous politicians in your party,&mdash;"Here comes the inevitable
+nigger again!" It is precisely because the awful and too long unavenged
+sufferings of the slave must be inevitable, while Slavery exists, that
+these questions must sooner or later be asked and answered, and that
+your political upholding of such a system becomes a monstrous crime
+against humanity.</p>
+
+<p>After all, my dear Andrew, why are you so sensitive on the subject of
+Slavery? You certainly can have no personal interest in the peculiar and
+patriarchal institution. You are too skilful a financier ever to have
+invested a single dollar in that fugacious wealth which so often takes
+to its legs and runs away. Nor does your unwillingness to listen to any
+expression of anti-slavery sentiment arise from affection for or real
+sympathy with Slavery, on moral grounds. Indeed, I have more than once
+been exceedingly refreshed in spirit at observing the sincere and hearty
+contempt with which you have treated what is blasphemously called the
+Biblical argument in favor of human bondage. The pleading precedent of
+Abraham has not seduced you, nor has the happy lot of the more modern
+Onesimus quieted all your conscientious scruples. You have never failed,
+in private conversation, to condemn the advocates of Slavery on whatever
+grounds they have rested its defence, nor have you ever ceased to
+deplore its existence in our country.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time I must admit that you have invariably resisted all
+attempts to apply any practical check or remedy to the great and growing
+evil, stoutly maintaining that it was a local institution, and that we
+of the North had no right to meddle with it. I am well aware that you
+have stigmatized every effort to awaken public attention to its nature
+and tendency, or to point out methods, more or less available, of
+abolishing the system, as unconstitutional, incendiary, and quixotic. I
+concede that your indignation has always been in the abstract, and your
+zeal eminently conservative. Yet, as a moral man, with a New-England
+training, and a general disposition to indorse those principles which
+have made New England what she is, you will not deny, that, in a
+harmless and inoffensive way, you have been anti-slavery in your
+opinions.</p>
+
+<p>But, once more, my friend, have you any reason to be attached to Slavery
+on political grounds? You have always been an earnest and uncompromising
+Democrat. You have always professed to believe in the omnipotence of
+political conventions and the sacred obligation of political platforms.
+You have never failed to repudiate any effort to influence party action
+by moral considerations. Indeed, I have sometimes thought that you must
+have selected as your model <a name="Page_786" id="Page_786"></a>that sturdy old Democratic deacon in New
+Hampshire, who said that "politics was one thing, and religion was
+another." You have never hesitated to support any candidate, or to
+uphold any measure, dictated by the wisdom or the wickedness of your
+party. Although you must have observed, that, with occasional and
+infrequent eddies of opinion, the current of its political progress has
+been steadily carrying the Northern Democracy farther and farther away
+from the example and the doctrines of Jefferson, you have surrendered
+yourself to the evil influence without a twinge of remorse or a sigh of
+regret. You have submitted to the insolent demands of Southern
+politicians with such prompt and easy acquiescence, that many of your
+oldest friends have mourned over your lost manhood, and sadly abandoned
+you to the worship of your ugly and obscene idol. A Northern man,
+descended from the best Puritan stock, surrounded from childhood by
+institutions really free, breathing the atmosphere of free thought,
+enjoying the luxury of free speech, you have deliberately allied
+yourself to a party which has owed its long-continued political
+supremacy to the practical denial of these inestimable privileges. Yet,
+on the whole, Andrew, what have you gained by it? Undoubtedly, the seed
+thus sown in dishonor soon ripened into an abundant harvest of fat
+offices and rapid promotions. But winter&mdash;the winter of your
+discontent&mdash;has followed this harvest. Circumstances quite beyond your
+control have utterly demolished the political combination which was once
+your peculiar pride. You have lived to see the Dagon before which you
+and your friends have for so many years cheerfully prostrated yourselves
+fall to the ground, and lie a helpless, hopeless ruin on the very
+threshold of the temple where it lately stood defiant and dominant.</p>
+
+<p>Have you ever had the curiosity to investigate the causes of this
+disaster? It is a curiosity which can be easily gratified. The
+Democratic party was killed in cold blood by Southern traitors. There
+never was a more causeless, malicious, or malignant murder. The fool in
+the fable who gained an unenviable notoriety by killing the goose which
+laid golden eggs, Balaam, who, but for angelic interposition, would have
+slain his faithful ass, were praiseworthy in comparison. Well might any
+one of the Northern victims of this cruel outrage have exclaimed, in the
+language of Balaam's long-eared servant, "Am not I thine ass, upon which
+thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto to this day? was I ever
+wont to do so unto thee?" And the modern, like the ancient Balaam, must
+have answered, "Nay."</p>
+
+<p>But, alas for Northern manhood, alas for human nature corrupted by long
+possession of political power, after a short-lived, though, let us hope,
+sincere outburst of indignation, followed by protests and remonstrances,
+growing daily milder and more moderate, the Northern Democracy now begs
+permission to return once more to its former servitude, and would gladly
+peril the permanence of the Union, to hug again the fetters which it has
+so patiently and so profitably worn.</p>
+
+<p>Lay aside party prejudice, for one moment, my dear Andrew, and tell me
+if the world ever saw a more humiliating spectacle. Slighted, spurned,
+spit upon by their ancient allies, compelled to bear the odium of an
+aggressive and offensive pro-slavery policy, tamely consenting to a
+denial of the dearest human rights and the plainest principles of
+natural justice, rewarded only by a share in the Federal offices, and
+punished by the contempt of all who, at home or abroad, intelligently
+and unselfishly studied the problem of our republican institutions, the
+Northern Democracy found themselves, at the most critical period of our
+national history, abandoned by the masters whom they had faithfully
+served, and whom many were willing to follow to a depth of degradation
+which could have no lower deep. And yet, when thus freed from their long
+slavery by the voluntary act of their oppressors, we <a name="Page_787" id="Page_787"></a>hear them to-day
+clamoring for the privilege of wearing anew the accustomed yoke, and
+feeling again the familiar lash! Are these white men, with Anglo-Saxon
+blood in their veins, and the fair fame of this country in their
+keeping? Why, if the most abject slave that ever toiled on a Southern
+plantation, cast off by his master and compelled to claim the rights of
+a freeman, should, of his own deliberate choice, elect to return to his
+miserable vassalage, who would not pronounce him unfit to enjoy the
+priceless boon of liberty? who would hesitate to say that natural
+stupidity, or the acquired imbecility of long enslavement, had doomed
+him to remain, to the day of his death, a hewer of wood and a drawer of
+water?</p>
+
+<p>But, as if to render the humiliation of these Democratic leaders still
+more fruitless and gratuitous, mark how their overtures are received by
+their Southern brethren. Having sold their birthright, let us see what
+prospect our Northern Esaus have of gaining their mess of pottage.
+Perhaps no better illustration can be given of the state of feeling
+among the chiefs of the Southern Rebellion than is found in a letter
+from Colonel R.C. Hill to the Richmond "Sentinel," dated September 13th,
+1863. It had been stated by a correspondent of the New York "Tribune,"
+that, during a recent interview between General Custer (Union) and
+Colonel Hill (Confederate), at Fredericksburg, Virginia, Colonel Hill
+had assured General Custer that "there would soon be peace." After
+giving an explicit and emphatic denial to this statement, Colonel Hill
+(who, it would seem, commands the Forty-Eighth North-Carolina
+Volunteers) closes by saying, "I am opposed to any terms short of a
+submission of the Federals to such terms as we may dictate, which, in my
+opinion, should be, Mason and Dixon's line a boundary; the exclusive
+navigation of the Mississippi below Cairo; full indemnification for all
+the negroes stolen and destroyed; and the restoration of Fortress
+Monroe, Jefferson, Key West, and all other strongholds which may have
+fallen into their possession during the war. If they are unwilling to
+accede to these terms, I propose an indefinite continuance of the war
+until the now existing fragment of the old Union breaks to pieces from
+mere rottenness and want of cohesion, when we will step in, as the only
+first-class power on the Western Hemisphere, and take possession of the
+pieces as subjugated and conquered provinces."</p>
+
+<p>To the same effect is a letter from Robert Toombs, who had been charged
+with a leaning towards a reconstruction of the Union. A short extract
+will suffice to show the spirit of the whole communication. "I can
+conceive of no extremity to which my country can be reduced in which I
+would, for a single moment, entertain any proposition for any union with
+the North on any terms whatever. When all else is lost, I prefer to
+unite with the thousands of our own countrymen who have found honorable
+deaths, if not graves, on the battle-field." And the recently elected
+Governor of Alabama puts to rest all doubts as to his desire for
+Southern independence, by saying, "If I had the power, I would build up
+a wall of fire between Yankeedom and the Confederate States, there to
+burn for ages."</p>
+
+<p>The tone and temper of these extracts&mdash;and similar quotations might be
+made indefinitely&mdash;are exactly in keeping with everything that comes
+from the pens or the lips of the leaders of this Rebellion. And even
+those Southern statesmen who at the outset were opposed to Secession,
+and have never ceased to deplore the fruitless civil war into which the
+South has plunged the nation, are compelled to admit, with a
+distinguished citizen of Georgia, that "the war, with all its afflictive
+train of suffering, privation, and death, has served to eradicate all
+idea of reconstruction, even with those who made it the basis of their
+arguments in favor of disunion."</p>
+
+<p>Rely upon it, this tone and temper will never be changed so long as the
+Rebels have any considerable armed force <a name="Page_788" id="Page_788"></a>in the field ready for
+service. Unless we are willing to consent to a divided country, a
+dissevered Union, and the recognition of a Southern Confederacy,&mdash;in a
+word, unless we are prepared to acquiesce in all the demands of our
+enemies, we have no alternative but a vigorous prosecution of the war.</p>
+
+<p>Fernando Wood and his followers ask for an armistice. An armistice to
+whom, and for what purpose? The Rebels, represented by their Government,
+ask for no armistice, except upon their own terms, and what those terms
+are we have already seen. It is idle to say that there are men at the
+South who crave peace and a restoration of the Union. Assume the
+statement to be true, and you have made no progress towards a
+satisfactory result. Such men are powerless in the hands of the guiding
+and governing minds of the conspiracy. The treason is of such magnitude,
+its leaders so completely control the active forces of the whole
+community, that the passive strength of Union sentiment cannot now be
+taken into the account. It would be a farce too absurd to be gravely
+considered, to treat with men who, whatever their disposition or numbers
+may be, are utterly helpless, unable to make any promise which they can
+fulfil, or to give any pledge which can bind any but themselves.</p>
+
+<p>We must deal with an armed and powerful rebellion; and so long as it is
+effectively armed, and powerful enough to hold in subjection the whole
+Southern population, it is moral, if not legal, treason for a Northern
+man to talk of peace. What avails it to talk of the blessings of peace
+and the horrors of war? It is a fearful thing to take the life of a
+human being; but we can easily conceive of circumstances when homicide
+is not only justifiable, but highly commendable.</p>
+
+<p>Permit me here to quote, as most pertinent to this view of the subject,
+an extract from a speech of Mr. Pitt in 1797, defending his refusal to
+offer terms of peace to the Directory of France. Alluding to some
+remarks of Sir John Sinclair, in the House of Commons, deprecating war
+as a great evil, and calling on ministers to propose an immediate peace,
+Mr. Pitt says,&mdash;"He began with deploring the calamities of war, on the
+general topic that all war is calamitous. Do I object to that sentiment?
+No. But is it our business, at a moment when we feel that the
+continuance of that war is owing to the animosity, the implacable
+animosity, of our enemy, to the inveterate and insatiable ambition of
+the present frantic government of France,&mdash;not of the <i>people</i> of
+France, as the honorable baronet unjustly stated,&mdash;is it our business,
+at that moment, to content ourselves with merely lamenting, in
+commonplace terms, the calamities of war, and forgetting that it is part
+of the duty which, as representatives of the people, we owe to our
+government and our country, to state that the continuance of those evils
+upon ourselves, and upon France, too, is the fruit only of the conduct
+of the enemy, that it is to be imputed to them and not to us?" Now does
+not this correctly describe our position? We make no question about the
+calamities of war; but how are these calamities to be avoided? This war
+has been forced upon us, and we must wage it to the end, or submit to
+the dismemberment of the Union, and acknowledge, in flat contradiction
+of the letter and spirit of the Constitution, the right of Secession.
+The true motto for the Government is precisely and preeminently the
+motto of the State of Massachusetts, "<i>Ense petit placidam sub libertate
+quietem</i>," which, freely, but faithfully, translated, means, "We must
+conquer a just and abiding peace."</p>
+
+<p>And now, my dear Andrew, I am curious to know what answer you will make
+to the general views which I have advanced on these vital questions.
+Will you say that I have misrepresented the record of the Northern
+Democratic party? that I have charged them with a submission and
+subserviency to the dictates of their Southern allies, which truthful
+<a name="Page_789" id="Page_789"></a>history will not confirm? You surely remember the uncontradicted
+assertion of Mr. Hammond, Senator from South Carolina, made on the floor
+of the Senate in 1856, at a time when fears were entertained by the
+Democracy that Mr. Fremont might be elected:&mdash;"The South has now ruled
+the country for sixty years." Do you believe that this rule could have
+been maintained for so many years without the connivance and co&ouml;peration
+of Northern Democrats? Will you venture to say that Texas could have
+been annexed, the Fugitive-Slave Law passed, the Missouri Compromise
+Bill repealed, without the consent and active assistance of Northern
+Democrats? In fact, my friend, when, in our frequent conversations, you
+have repeatedly charged Southern Democrats with ingratitude and want of
+good faith, have you not intended to assert, that, having complied with
+all the demands of the South, you looked upon their deliberate
+destruction of the Democratic party as a wanton act of political
+treachery?</p>
+
+<p>Do you deny that I have presented a truthful picture of the present
+position of your party? Can there be any doubt about the issue now
+offered to the North by Peace Democrats? I say <i>Peace</i> Democrats,
+because all War Democrats are acting heartily and zealously with the
+Administration. Is not the policy which the Peace Democracy support in
+their papers, platforms, and public addresses, an immediate cessation of
+hostilities on the part of the North? And do they not select, as the
+exponents of this policy, men who have, from the commencement of the
+war, sympathized with the South, and denounced the military measures of
+the Government as unjustifiable, oppressive, and iniquitous? Open any
+newspaper of "Copperhead" complexion, and tell me, candidly, if you can
+approve of the manner in which the all-engrossing questions of the day
+are discussed.</p>
+
+<p>You know, in advance, as well as I know, that you will find both open
+and insidious attacks upon whatever feature of the war-policy of the
+Administration chances at the moment to be uppermost in the public mind,
+a liberal collection of incidents illustrating the horrors of war,
+abundant abuse of army-contractors, appalling estimates of our probable
+national debt, enthusiastic commendation of the skill of Southern
+officers and the bravery of Southern soldiers, extravagant laudation of
+some Federal commander who has disobeyed the orders of his superior and
+conducted a campaign in such a manner as not to annoy or alarm the
+enemy, eloquent denunciation of all attempts to fetter free speech or
+limit the liberty of the press, indignant complaint that the rights of
+the citizen are disregarded, an ostentatious parade of historical
+parallels to prove that an earnest and united people fighting for
+independence has never been subjugated, a bitter paragraph attributing
+to Abolitionists all the evils of the existing controversy, the
+inevitable sneer at negro soldiers in spite of the bloody baptism which
+they have so heroically borne,&mdash;all this, but (mark the significant
+circumstance!) not one word in condemnation of Southern treason, not a
+single sentiment that can by possibility alienate old friends, or can
+ever be quoted as evidence that the editor had dared to assert his
+manhood. Is this loyalty to the Constitution and the Union? Is this the
+allegiance which a citizen owes to his country? Away with the
+mischievous sophistry, that the Government is not the country, and does
+not represent the people! Can any sane man doubt that an Administration
+legally chosen, and rightfully in power, and receiving the emphatic
+indorsement of decisive majorities in Congress, does, during its
+constitutional term of office, and while so supported, speak the mind
+and embody the will of the nation? Is there any show of reason for
+saying that such an Administration is an irresponsible despotism,
+governing the country without the moral countenance of its citizens, and
+in defiance of their declared sentiments?</p><p><a name="Page_790" id="Page_790"></a></p>
+
+<p>But the views of Peace Democrats are not to be ascertained alone by
+consulting the newspapers which are their acknowledged organs. Listen to
+the speeches of their prominent leaders. I will not stop to call your
+attention to their bold treason after a Union reverse, or their
+non-committal platitudes after a Union victory. Let me rather ask you to
+consider the prevailing tone of their public addresses. Remember,
+meanwhile, that our Government is grappling with an active and resolute
+enemy, whose avowed and persistent purpose is to divide the Union, and
+by means unconstitutional and treasonable to erect on the ruins of our
+once happy Republic an independent and necessarily hostile power. Bear
+in mind that this enemy, with an intense and inflexible determination
+which would be most commendable in a better cause, is summoning all its
+strength to accomplish its wicked designs, and tell me if it does not
+find among Peace Democrats most efficient allies and adherents.</p>
+
+<p>Can you discover in the speeches of your political friends one sentence
+that would give a future student of the history of this struggle a
+correct idea of the principles for which we are contending? Would not
+such a student, accepting these speeches as authentic, reasonably infer
+that the Central Government, invested by a sad accident with supreme
+power, was using its accidental authority for the sole and sinister
+purpose of abridging the constitutional rights of the citizen, by
+withholding the privilege of free speech, and preventing the expression
+of popular sentiment at the polls? And yet, methinks, an intelligent
+posterity will somewhat wonder how such speeches could be made with
+impunity, and such candidates receive unchallenged votes, in the face of
+such unscrupulous tyranny. In fact, was there ever so wicked a farce as
+this "Copperhead" complaint about the denial of the right of free speech
+and free votes, from the lips of men whose daily exemption from
+punishment proves the falsity of their appeals to popular prejudice? Do
+they not say what they please, and vote as they choose, without
+molestation or hindrance? Why, a many-wived Mormon, surrounded by the
+beauties of his harem, inveighing against the laws of the United States
+which prohibit polygamy,&mdash;a Roman Catholic priest, openly and safely
+carnivorous during Lent, denouncing that regulation of his church which
+denies him the luxury of meat during the forty days immediately
+preceding Easter,&mdash;a cannibal, with a tender morsel of young missionary
+in his mouth, complaining that he cannot gratify his appetite for human
+flesh,&mdash;these would be models of reason and common sense, compared with
+the factious demagogues whose conduct we are considering.</p>
+
+<p>In point of fact, their real unhappiness arises from their impunity.
+They are gasping for a substantial grievance. Their highest ambition is
+to become political martyrs. Now and then one of them, like
+Vallandigham, deliberately transcends the bounds of a wise forbearance,
+and receives from the Government a very mild rebuke. Straightway he is
+placed on the bad eminence to which he has so long aspired. Already dead
+to all feeling of patriotism, he is canonized for his crimes, with rites
+and ceremonies appropriate to such a priesthood. And, unhappily, he
+finds but too many followers weak enough or wicked enough to recognize
+his saintship and accept his creed. To all true and loyal men, he
+resembles rather the veiled prophet of Khorassan, concealing behind the
+fair mask of a zealous regard for free speech and a free press the
+hideous features of Secession and civil war, despising the dupes whom he
+is leading to certain and swift destruction, and clinging fondly to the
+hope of involving in a common ruin, not only the party which he
+represents, but the country which he has dishonored.</p>
+
+<p>That such political monsters are possible in the Free States, at such a
+time as this, sufficiently demonstrates towards what an abyss of
+degradation we were drifting when this war began. They are the
+legitimate and necessary fruits of the <a name="Page_791" id="Page_791"></a>numerous compromises by which
+well-meaning men have sought to avert a crisis which could only be
+postponed. The North has been diligently educated to connive at
+injustice and wink at oppression for the sake of peace, until there was
+good reason to fear that the public sense of right was blunted, and the
+public conscience seared as with a hot iron. While the South kept always
+clearly in view the single object on which it had staked everything, the
+North was daily growing more and more absorbed in the accumulation of
+wealth, and more and more callous to all considerations of humanity and
+all claims of natural justice. The feeblest remonstrance against the
+increasing insolence of Southern demands was rudely dismissed as
+fanatical, and any attempt to awaken attention to the disloyal
+sentiments of Southern politicians was believed to be fully met and
+conclusively answered by the cry of "Abolitionist" and
+"Negro-Worshipper."</p>
+
+<p>It must be confessed that for a time these expedients were successful.
+Like another Cassandra predicting the coming disasters of another Troy,
+the statesman who foresaw and foretold the perils which threatened the
+nation addressed a careless or contemptuous public. It was in vain to
+say that the South was determined to rule or ruin the country, in vain
+to point out the constantly recurring illustrations of the aggressive
+spirit of Slavery, in vain to urge that every year of delay was but
+adding to the difficulty of dealing with the gigantic evil. The merchant
+feared a financial crisis, the repudiation of Southern debts and his own
+consequent inability to maintain the social position which his easily
+earned wealth had secured; the politician, who, at the great
+auction-sales of Northern pride and principle held every four years, had
+so often sought to outbid his rivals in baseness, that his party or
+faction might win the Presidential prize, turned pale at the prospect of
+losing Southern support; the divine could see no danger threatening his
+country except from the alleged infidelity of a few leading radicals;
+the timid citizen, with no fixed political opinions, was overawed by the
+bluster of Southern bullies, shuddered at the sight of pistol and
+dirk-knife, and only asked "to be let alone"; while the thoughtless
+votary of fashion, readily accepting the lordly bearing and imperious
+air of the planter as the highest evidence of genuine aristocracy,
+reasoned, with the sort of logic which we should look for in such a
+mind, that slaveholding was the normal condition of an American
+gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>I will not allude to the views entertained by those men whose ignorance
+disqualified them from forming an intelligent opinion about our national
+affairs, and whose votes were always at the service of the highest
+bidders. You know perfectly well where they were sure to be found, and
+they exercised no inconsiderable influence on our public policy from
+year to year. Leaving this class out of the question, our peril arose
+largely from the fact, that too many men, sensible on other subjects,
+were fast settling into the conviction, that their wisest course was to
+be conservative, and that to be conservative was to act with the party
+which had longest held the reins of power. Their reasoning, practically,
+but perhaps unconsciously, was this:&mdash;The object of a government is to
+make a country prosperous and rich; this country has grown prosperous
+and rich under the rule of the Democratic party; therefore why should we
+not give it our support, and more especially as all sorts of dreadful
+results are predicted, if the opposition party comes into power? Why
+part with a present good, with the risk of incurring a future evil?
+Above all things, let us discountenance the agitation of exciting
+topics.&mdash;Profound philosophy! deserving to be compared with that of the
+modern Cockney who does not want his after-dinner rest to be disturbed
+by even a lively discussion. "I say, look here, why have row?
+Excessively unpleasant to have row, when a fellow wants to be quiet! I
+say, don't!"</p>
+
+<p>In fact, this "conservatism" was only <a name="Page_792" id="Page_792"></a>another and convenient name for a
+most dangerous type of moral and political paralysis. Its immediate
+effect was to discourage discussion, and to induce an alarming apathy as
+to all the vital questions of the day among men whose abilities
+qualified them to be of essential service to their country. Their
+adhesion to the ranks of the Democratic party, while increasing the
+average intelligence of that organisation, without improving its public
+virtue or private morals, served simply to give it greater numerical
+strength. It was still in the hands of unscrupulous leaders, who,
+intoxicated with their previous triumphs, believed that the nation would
+submit to any measure which they saw fit to recommend. And who shall say
+that their confidence was unreasonable? Did not all their past
+experience justify such confidence? When had any one of their schemes,
+no matter how monstrous it might at first have appeared, ever failed of
+final accomplishment? Had they not repeatedly tested the temper and
+measured the <i>morale</i> of the people? Had they not learned to anticipate
+with absolute certainty the regular sequence of national emotions,&mdash;the
+prompt recoil as from impending dishonor, the excited public meetings,
+the indignant remonstrance embodied in eloquent resolutions, then the
+sober, selfish second-thought, followed by the question, What if the
+South should carry out its threats and dissolve the Union? then the
+alarm of the mercantile and commercial interest, then a growing
+indifference to the very features of the project which had caused the
+early apprehension, and lastly the meek and cowardly acquiescence in the
+enacted outrage? Would not these arch-conspirators North and South have
+been wilfully blind, if they had not seen not only that the nation was
+sinking in the scale of public virtue, but that it had acquired "a
+strange alacrity in sinking"?</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile they had learned a lesson, the value and significance of which
+they fully appreciated. He must have been an inattentive student of our
+political history, who has not observed that the successful prosecution
+of any political enterprise has too often dignified its author in the
+eyes of the people, in spite of its intrinsic iniquity. The party
+reaping the benefit of the measure has not withheld the expected reward,
+and the originator and abettors of the accomplished wrong have found
+that exalted official position covers a multitude of sins.</p>
+
+<p>Wisely availing themselves of this national weakness, and most adroitly
+using all the elements of political power with which long practice had
+made them familiar, the leaders of the Democratic party had every reason
+to believe that the duration of their political supremacy would be
+coeval with the life of the Republic. In fact, the peril predicted more
+than twenty years ago, by one of the purest and wisest men whom this
+country has ever seen, with a sagacity which, in the light of subsequent
+events, seems almost inspired, had wellnigh become an historical fact.
+"The great danger to our institutions," said Dr. Channing, writing to a
+friend in 1841, "is of a party organization so subtle and strong as to
+make the Government the monopoly of a few leaders, and to insure the
+transmission of the executive power from hand to hand almost as
+regularly as in a monarchy."</p>
+
+<p>But an overruling Providence, building better than we knew, had decreed
+that the sway of this powerful party should be broken by means of the
+very element of supposed strength on which it so confidently relied for
+unlimited supremacy. Losing sight of those cardinal principles which the
+far-reaching sagacity of Jefferson had enunciated, and faithfully
+following which the Democracy had, during its early history, so
+completely controlled the country, the modern leaders, intent only on
+present success, had based all their political hopes on an intimate
+alliance, offensive and defensive, with that institution which Jefferson
+so eloquently denounced, and the existence of which awakened his most
+lively fears for the future of his country.<a name="Page_793" id="Page_793"></a> And what has been the
+result of this ill-omened alliance? Precisely what might sooner or later
+have been expected. Precisely what might have been predicted from the
+attempt to unite the essentially incongruous ideas of Aristocracy and
+Democracy. For the system of Slavery is confessedly the very essence of
+an Aristocracy, while the genuine idea of a Democracy is the submission
+of all to the expressed will of the majority. Take as one of the latest
+illustrations of the irreconcilable difference between Aristocracy and
+Democracy, the manner in which the South received the doctrine of
+"Squatter Sovereignty." This doctrine, whatever its ultimate purpose
+might have been, certainly embodied the idea of a democracy, pure and
+simple, resting on the right of a people to enact their own laws and
+adopt their own institutions. It was believed by many to be a movement
+in the interest of Slavery, and on that ground met with fierce
+opposition. Was it welcomed by slaveholders? Far from it. The Southern
+Aristocracy, clear-sighted on every question affecting their peculiar
+institution, applied their remorseless logic to the existing dilemma,
+and promptly decided that to admit the correctness of the principle was
+to endanger the existence of the system which was the corner-stone of
+their faith. They looked beyond the result of the immediate election.
+They foresaw the crisis which must ultimately arise. Indeed, they had
+long appreciated the fact, that the "irrepressible conflict" in which we
+are now involved was impending, and had been mustering all their forces
+to meet the inevitable issue. The crisis came. But how? In an evil hour
+for its own success, but a most-fortunate one for the welfare of the
+Republic, Slavery, overestimating its inherent power, and underrating
+the resources and virtue of the nation, committed the fatal error of
+measuring its strength with a free North. From that moment it lost
+forever all that it had ever gained by united action, by skilful
+diplomacy, by dexterously playing upon the "fears of the wise and
+follies of the brave," and by ingeniously masking its dark designs.</p>
+
+<p>The new policy once inaugurated, however, the career of treason once
+commenced, its authors can never recede. Their only safety lies in
+complete success. They must conquer or die. They may in secret confess
+to themselves that they have been guilty of a stupendous blunder, but
+that they clearly comprehend and sternly accept their position is
+abundantly evident. For, if anything is proved in the history of this
+war, it is, that the chiefs in the Rebellion believe in no middle ground
+between peace on their own terms and the utter annihilation of their
+political power and military resources.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, then, my dear Andrew, the insane ambition and wanton treachery of
+the Southern wing of your party have delivered the North from the danger
+of white slavery, and, by breaking up the Democratic party, have
+delivered the nation from the despotism of an organization which had
+become too powerful for its own good and for the best interests of the
+country. Do you dare to complain of this deliverance? You ought rather
+to go on your knees every day of your life, and devoutly thank the kind
+Providence which gave you such an unexpected opportunity to escape from
+so demoralizing a servitude.</p>
+
+<p>Do not allow your attachment to party names and party associations to
+warp your judgment or limit your patriotism. You need have no fear that
+any one of the sound and beneficent ideas which the Democratic party has
+ever impressed upon the mind of the nation will perish or be forgotten.
+Whatever features of the organization, whatever principles which it has
+labored to inculcate, are essential to the just development of our
+intellectual activity or our material resources, will survive the
+present struggle, perhaps to reappear in the creed and be promulgated by
+the statesmen of some future party; or who shall say that the Democratic
+party, freed from its corrupting associations, rejecting the leaders who
+have been its <a name="Page_794" id="Page_794"></a>worst enemies, and the political heresies which have
+wrought its temporary ruin, may not again wield its former power, and
+once more direct the destinies of the country?</p>
+
+<p>But, returning to considerations of more immediate importance, what, I
+ask, is the obvious duty of every true and loyal citizen in such a
+crisis as this? You resent, as insulting, any imputation of disloyalty,
+and therefore I have a right to infer that you are unwilling to be
+ranked among the enemies of your country. But who are those enemies?
+Clearly, those whose avowed intention or whose thinly disguised design
+is, to divide the Union and to rend the Republic in twain. How are those
+enemies to be overcome? Only by a hearty and earnest co&ouml;peration with
+the measures devised by our legally constituted Government for the
+suppression of the Rebellion. I can easily understand that you may not
+be willing to give your cordial assent to all the measures and all the
+appointments of the Administration. It is not the Administration which
+you would have selected, or for which you voted. But, nevertheless, it
+is our rightful government, and nothing else can save the nation from
+absolute anarchy. Postpone, therefore, I beseech you, all merely
+partisan prejudices, and remember only that the Union is in danger. You
+are a Democrat. Adopt, then, during the continuance of this war, the
+noble sentiments of a distinguished Western Democrat:<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a>&mdash;"The whole
+object of the Rebellion is to destroy the principle of Democracy. The
+party which stands by the Government is the true Democracy. Every
+soldier in the army is a true Democrat. Every man who lifts his head
+above party trammels is a Democrat. And every man who permits old issues
+to stand in the way of a vigorous prosecution of the war cannot, in my
+opinion, have any claims on the party." By such men and such utterances
+will the Democratic party secure the respect and admiration of mankind;
+while those spurious Democrats, whose hearts are with the South while
+their homes are in the North, whose voice is the voice of Jacob while
+their hands are the hands of Esau, whose first slavish impulse is to
+kiss the rod which smites them, and who long for nothing so much as the
+triumph of their Southern masters, have earned, and will surely receive,
+the contempt and detestation of all honest men, now and forever.</p>
+
+<p>God forbid that I should suspect you of sympathizing with these
+miscreants! But, my friend, there is still another class of Democrats
+with whom I should exceedingly regret to see you associated. I mean
+those who, without any love for Rebels or their cause, are yet so
+fearful of being called Republicans that they refuse to support the
+Government. Can you justify yourself in standing upon such a platform?
+Is this a time in which to permit your old party animosities to render
+you indifferent to the honor and welfare of the nation? Are you simply
+in the position of a violent partisan out of office, eager to embarrass
+the Administration, and keenly on the watch to discover how best to
+inflame the prejudices of the populace against the Government? Is there
+nothing more important just now than to devise means of reinstating your
+party in power at the next Presidential election? Will it not be well
+first to settle the question, whether, in the month of November, 1864,
+we shall still be a free people, competent to elect the candidates of
+any party? May you not be, nay, are you not sure to be, giving
+substantial aid and comfort to the enemies of your country, while
+seeking only to cripple the power of your political opponents? Are not
+the dearest interests, and, indeed, the very life of the nation, of
+necessity, so dependent upon a cordial and constant support of the
+Government, that active hostility to its principal measures, or even
+absolute neutrality, strengthens the hands and increases the confidence
+of Rebels in arms?</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the notorious virulence <a name="Page_795" id="Page_795"></a>of party feeling in this
+country, it certainly would not seem to require a very large amount of
+manly principle to rise superior to such a sordid sentiment in view of
+our common peril. Patriotism, my friend, is an admirable and most
+praiseworthy virtue. It is correctly classed among the noblest instincts
+of human nature. It has in all ages been a fruitful theme of poetic
+fervor; it has sustained the orator in his loftiest flights of
+eloquence; it has nerved the arm of the warrior to perform deeds of
+signal valor; it has transformed the timid matron and the shrinking
+maiden into heroines whom history has delighted to honor. But when
+patriotism is really synonymous with self-preservation, when small
+sacrifices are demanded and overwhelming disasters are to be averted,
+the love of country, although still highly commendable, does not,
+perhaps, deserve very enthusiastic praise, while the want of it will be
+sure to excite universal condemnation and scorn. I cannot believe that
+you will consent to fasten upon yourself, and upon all who are dear to
+you, the lasting stigma which will inevitably attach to the man who,
+whether from a mean partisan jealousy or an ignoble indifference to the
+honor of his country, has failed in an hour of sorest need to defend the
+land which gave him birth, and the institutions which his fathers
+suffered and sacrificed so much to establish.</p>
+
+<p>Hoping that the vital importance of the subject which I have so
+imperfectly considered will induce you to pardon the length of this
+communication, I remain, as ever,</p>
+
+<p>Very sincerely yours,</p>
+
+<p>---- &mdash;&mdash;</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>The History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.</i> By JOHN FOSTER
+KIRK. Two Volumes. 8vo. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co.</p>
+
+<p>There is probably no period of European history which has been so
+thoroughly explored and so richly illustrated as the sixteenth
+century,&mdash;that century of great men, lofty ideas, and gigantic
+enterprise, of intellectual activity, and of tremendous political and
+religious struggles. The numerous scholars of Continental Europe who
+have made this era the subject of their researches have generally been
+content to dig that others might plant and reap, sending forth in
+abundance the raw material of history to be woven into forms adapted to
+popular appreciation. In England, also, but only within a very recent
+period, much solid labor of the same kind has been performed. But the
+Anglo-Saxon mind, on some sides comparatively deficient in plastic and
+inventive power, as well as in that of abstract thought, seems to
+possess in a peculiar degree the faculty of comprehending, representing,
+and idealizing the varied phases and incessant motion of human life and
+character. In science it excels less in the discovery than in the
+application of laws. In what may be termed "pure art," music, sculpture,
+painting, except where the representation of the Beautiful is
+subservient to that of the Real, lyrical and idyllic poetry, and all
+departments of literature in which fancy predominates over reason, it
+must yield the palm to the genius of Italy, of Germany, of Spain. But in
+the drama, in the novel, in history, and in works partaking more or less
+of the character of these, its supremacy is established. Shakespeare and
+Chaucer are at once the greatest and the most characteristic of English
+poets; Hogarth and Wilkie, of English painters; Fielding, Scott, Miss
+Austen, Thackeray, and others whose names will at once suggest
+themselves, of English writers of fiction; Gibbon, Macaulay, <a name="Page_796" id="Page_796"></a>and
+Hallam, of English historians. The drama, in its highest forms, belongs
+to the past, and that past which was at once too earnest in its spirit
+and too narrow in its development to allow of a less vivid or a more
+expansive delineation. Fiction, to judge from a multitude of recent
+specimens, seems at present on the decline, with some threatenings of a
+precipitate descent into the inane. History, on the other hand, is only
+at the outset of its career. Its highest achievements are in all
+probability reserved for a still distant future, when loftier points of
+view shall have been attained, and the haze that now hangs over even the
+nearest and most conspicuous objects in some measure dissipated. Its
+endeavors hitherto have only shown how much is still to be
+accomplished,&mdash;how little, indeed, comparatively speaking, it will ever
+be possible to accomplish. Not the less, on this account, are the
+laborers deserving of the honors bestowed upon them. Every fresh
+contribution is a permanent gain. Even in the same field the results of
+one exploration do not interfere with or supersede those of another.
+Robertson has, in many respects, been surpassed, but he has not been
+supplanted, by Prescott; Froude and Motley may traverse the same ground
+without impairing our interest in the researches of either.</p>
+
+<p>These four distinguished writers have all devoted their efforts to the
+illustration of the period of which we have before spoken,&mdash;the grand
+and fruitful sixteenth century. With the men and with the events of that
+age we have thus become singularly familiar. We have been made
+acquainted, not only with the deeds, but with the thoughts, of Charles
+V., Philip II., Elizabeth Tudor, Cort&eacute;s, Alva, Farnese, William the
+Silent, and a host of other actors in some of the most striking scenes
+of history. But we have also been tempted into forgetting that those
+were not isolated scenes, that they belonged to a drama which had long
+been in progress, and that the very energy they displayed, the power put
+forth, the conquests won, were indicative of previous struggles and a
+long accumulation of resources. Of what are called the Middle Ages the
+general notion might, perhaps, be comprised in the statement that they
+were ages of barbarism and ignorance, of picturesque customs and aimless
+adventure. "I desire to know nothing of those who knew nothing," was the
+saying, in reference to them, of the French <i>philosophe</i>. "Classical
+antiquity is nearer to us than the intervening darkness," said Hazlitt.
+And Hume and Robertson both consider that the interest of European
+history begins with the revival of letters, the invention of printing,
+the colonization of America, and the great contests between consolidated
+monarchies and between antagonistic principles and creeds.</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that the greater portion of medi&aelig;val history,
+whatever its true character, is shrouded in an obscurity which it would
+be difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate. But the same cannot be
+said of the close of that period,&mdash;the transitional era that preceded
+what we are accustomed to consider as the dawn of modern civilization.
+For Continental Europe, at least, the fifteenth century is hardly less
+susceptible of a thorough revelation than the sixteenth. The chroniclers
+and memoir-writers are more communicative than those of the succeeding
+age. The documentary evidence, if still deficient, is rapidly
+accumulating. The conspicuous personages of the time are daily becoming
+more palpable and familiar to us. Joan of Arc has glided from the
+luminous haze of legend and romance into the clearer light of history.
+Philippe de Comines has a higher fame than any eye-witness and narrator
+of later events. Louis XI. discloses to posterity those features which
+he would fain have concealed from his contemporaries. And confronting
+Louis stands another figure, not less prominent in their own day, not
+less striking when viewed from our day,&mdash;that of Charles the Bold, of
+Burgundy.</p>
+
+<p>The career of this latter prince has generally been regarded as merely a
+romantic episode in European history. Scott has painted it in vivid
+colors in two of his most brilliant fictions,&mdash;"Quentin Durward," and
+"Anne of Geierstein." But, perhaps from this very notion in regard to
+its lack of historical importance, the reality has never been depicted
+in fulness or with detail, except in M. de Barante's elegant
+<i>rifacimento</i> of the French chroniclers of the fifteenth century. That
+the subject was, however, one of a very different character has been
+apparent to the scholars in France, Belgium, Germany, and<a name="Page_797" id="Page_797"></a> Switzerland,
+who during the last twenty years have made it a special object of their
+researches. A stronger light has been thrown upon every part of it, and
+an entirely new light upon many portions. Charles has assumed his
+rightful position, as the "Napoleon of the Middle Ages," whose ambition
+and whose fall exercised, a powerful influence on the destinies of the
+principal European states.</p>
+
+<p>But the labors through which this has been accomplished are as yet
+unknown to the general mass of readers. The results lie scattered in
+quarters difficult of access, and in forms that repel rather than
+attract the glance. Chronicles written in tough French and tougher
+German have been published in provincial towns, and have scarcely found
+their way beyond those localities. Various learned societies and
+commissions have edited documents which would be nearly unintelligible
+without a wide comparison and complete elucidation. Single, isolated
+points have been treated and discussed by those who took for granted a
+familiarity on the part of the reader with the general facts of the
+case. To combine this mass of evidence, to sift and establish it, and to
+weave it into a symmetrical narrative, is the aim of the work before us.
+The idea was conceived while the author was engaged in assisting the
+late Mr. Prescott in cognate branches of study. That great and generous
+writer entered heartily into the project, and made use of the ample
+facilities which he is well known to have possessed for the collection
+of the necessary materials. The correspondence which he opened for this
+purpose led to the belief that he had himself undertaken the task; and
+great satisfaction was expressed by the eminent Belgian archivist, M.
+Gachard, that a pen which had already given so much delight and
+instruction to the world was about to be engaged on so attractive a
+theme. But Prescott was not more ardent in the prosecution of his own
+inquiries than in furthering those of others; and he displayed in this,
+as in many like instances, the same noble spirit which, since his death,
+has been so gracefully acknowledged by Mr. Motley.</p>
+
+<p>Of the manner in which the work is executed it would be, perhaps,
+premature to speak. We have no hesitation, however, in assigning to Mr.
+Kirk's most fascinating narrative a place with the great achievements of
+genius in the department he has chosen to fill. His advent among the
+historians will be welcomed the world over. A glance at the copy placed
+in our hands has enabled us to indicate its nature. The two volumes
+about to appear bring the story down to the crisis of Charles's fate,
+the moment when he became involved in a war with the Swiss. A third
+volume, now in course of preparation, will complete the eventful tale.</p>
+
+<p>We think it not unlikely that to the American reader the first half of
+the history will seem, at the present time, to possess a peculiar
+interest. For this part of the work contains the last great struggle
+between the French crown and the feudal princes,&mdash;a struggle involving
+the question whether France was to form one nation or to be divided into
+a number of petty states. Such a struggle is now going on in our own
+country. The question we are debating is whether the nation is to be
+disintegrated or consolidated. The theory of "State sovereignty" is
+nothing more than the old theory of feudal independence. "I love France
+so well," said Charles of Burgundy, "that I would fain see it ruled over
+by six kings instead of one." "I love the republic founded by our
+fathers so well," says Jefferson Davis, "that I would fain see it split
+up into several hostile confederacies." When we see that France, under
+the direction of a Louis XI., came out of that struggle triumphant, we
+shall not despair of our own future, trusting rather to the guidance of
+that Providence which is working out its own great designs than to
+instruments little cognizant of its plans and too often unconscious of
+its influence.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and Other Papers.</i> By THOMAS FULLER, D.D.
+Boston: Ticknor &amp; Fields.</p>
+
+<p>There certainly never was a greater piece of publishing felicity, in its
+seasonableness, than this entire reprint. The "Thoughts" are as good,
+for whatever is bad or trying in our times, as they were hundreds of
+years ago; so that one might almost suspect the title of the book for an
+invention, and consider many a passage in it to be new matter,
+only&mdash;after the fashion of some who, in essay or story, try to
+<a name="Page_798" id="Page_798"></a>reproduce the ancients&mdash;skilfully put in the manner of the old
+preacher. To all who would have religious comfort in the distractions of
+present events we especially recommend this incomparable divine's truly
+devout and thoughtful pages. None of our authors have succeeded so well
+in providing for our own wants. The sea of our political agitations
+might become smooth under the well-beaten oil which he pours out. The
+divisions made by the sword to-day would heal with the use of his
+prescriptions. Human nature never grows old; and America, in her Civil
+War, is the former England over again now.</p>
+
+<p>Sticklers for a style of conventional dignity and smooth decorum may
+think to despatch Fuller's claims by denominating him a quaint writer.
+This would be what is vulgarly called a snap-judgment indeed. His
+quaintness never runs into superficial conceit, but embodies always a
+deep and comprehensive wisdom. He insinuates truth with a friendly
+indirectness, and banters us out of our folly with a foreign instance.
+Plutarch or Montaigne is not more happy in historical parallels, for
+personal reflection and sober application to actual duty. Never was
+fancy more alert in the service of piety. His imagination is as luminous
+as Sir Thomas Browne's, and, if less peculiar and original in its
+combinations, rises into identity with more child-like and lofty
+worship. Ever ready to fall on his knees, there is in his adoration no
+touch of cant, or of that <i>other-worldliness</i> which Coleridge complains
+of as interfering with the pressing affairs and obligations of the
+present. No pen ever drew a firmer boundary between sentiment and
+sentimentality. But never was shrewd knowledge of this world so humane,
+keen observation so kind, wit so tender, and humor so sanctified, united
+with resolution by all means to teach and save mankind so invariably
+strong.</p>
+
+<p>While so much of our religious literature is a weak appeal to shallow
+feeling and a gross affront to reason, it is refreshing to meet with an
+author who helps us to obey the great precept of the Master, and put
+<i>mind</i> and <i>strength</i>, as well as heart and soul, into our love of God.
+Indeed, this precious treatise, or assemblage of little treatises, so
+rational without form of logic, so convenient to be read for a moment or
+all day long, and so harmonious in its diverse headings, should be
+everywhere circulated as a larger sort of religious tract. We hear of
+exhortations impressed in letters on little loaves for the soldiers to
+eat. We wish every military man or civilian, intelligent enough for the
+relish, could have Fuller's sentences to feed on, as, beyond all
+rhetoric, bread of life.</p>
+
+<p>So let a welcome go to the old worthy, our hearts' brother, as he seems
+to rise out of his two-centuries' grave. At a time when Satan appears
+again to have been let loose for a season, and we know the power of
+evil, described in the Apocalypse, in the fearful headway made by the
+rebellious conspiracy of his servants, carried to such a point of
+success, that statesmen, and scholars, and preachers, even of so-called
+liberal views, on the farther shore, bow to it the knee, while the
+frowning cannon at every point shows how remote the Millennium still
+is,&mdash;thanks for the counsels, fit to our need, of a writer still fresh,
+while the main host of his contemporaries are long since obsolete, with
+dead volumes for their tombs. How many precious quotations from his
+leaves we might make, but that we prefer to invite a perusal of the
+whole!</p>
+
+<p>We add to our criticism no drawbacks, as we like to give to transcendent
+merit unstinted praise, and have really no exceptions in mind, could we
+presume in such a case to express any. Looking on the features of
+Fuller's portrait, which makes the frontispiece of his work as here
+reproduced for us, we note a weight of prudence strangely blending with
+a buoyancy of prayer, well corresponding to the inseparable sagacity and
+ecstasy of his words, teaching us the consistency of immortal aspiration
+with an infallible good-sense,&mdash;a lesson never more important to be
+learned than now. To be an executive mystic, an energetic saint, is the
+very ideal of human excellence; and to go forward in the name of the
+Divinity is the meaning of the book we have here passed in review.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Speeches, Lectures, and Letters.</i> By WENDELL PHILLIPS. Boston: James
+Redpath.</p>
+
+<p>In vigor, in point, in command of language and felicity of phrase, in
+affluence <a name="Page_799" id="Page_799"></a>and aptness of illustration, in barbed keenness and <i>cling</i>
+of sarcasm, in terror of invective, in moral weight and momentum, in
+copiousness and quality of thought, in aggressive boldness of statement,
+finally in equality to all audiences and readiness for all occasions,
+Wendell Phillips is certainly the first orator in America,&mdash;and that we
+esteem much the same as saying that he is first among those whose
+vernacular is the English tongue. That no speeches are made of equal
+<i>value</i> with his, that he has an intellectual superiority to all
+competitors in the forum, we do not assert; but his preeminence in pure
+oratorical genius may now be considered as established and
+unquestionable. Ajax has the strength, perhaps more than the strength,
+of Achilles; but Achilles adds to vigor of arm incomparable swiftness of
+foot. The mastiff is stout, brave, trusty, intelligent, but the hound
+outruns him; and this greyhound of modern oratory, deep-chested,
+light-limbed, supple, elastic, elegant, powerful, must be accredited
+with his own special superiorities. Or taking a cue from the tales of
+chivalry, we might say that he is the Sir Launcelot of the platform, in
+all but Sir Launcelot's sin; and woe to the knight against whom in full
+career he levels his lance!</p>
+
+<p>And yet one is half ashamed to praise his gifts, so superbly does he
+himself cast those gifts behind him. He is not trying to be eloquent: he
+is trying to get a grand piece of justice done in the world. No engineer
+building a bridge, no ship-master in a storm at sea, was ever more
+simply intent on substantive results. It is not any "Oration for the
+Crown" that he stands here pronouncing: it is service, not distinction,
+at which he aims, and he will be crowned only in the gladness of a
+redeemed race. The story of his life is a tale of romance; he makes real
+the legends of chivalry. He might have sat at meat with Arthur and the
+knights of the Round Table, and looked with equal unabashed eyes into
+theirs; and a thousand years hence, some skeptic, reading the history of
+these days, will smile a light disdain, and say, "Very well for fiction;
+but <i>real</i> men are selfish beings, and serve themselves always to the
+sweetest and biggest loaf they can find."</p>
+
+<p>We praise his gifts and his nobility, not always his opinions. He was
+once the apostle of a doctrine of disunion; he fervently believes in
+enforcing "total abstinence" by statute; he is the strenuous advocate of
+woman-suffrage. We have stood by the Union always; we have some faith in
+pure wine, notwithstanding the Maine Law; and believing that women have
+a right to vote, we believe also that they have a higher right to be
+excused from voting. We are unwilling to consume their delicate
+fitnesses in this rude labor. It is not economical. We do not believe in
+using silk for ships' top-sails, or China porcelain for wash-tubs. There
+are tasks for American women&mdash;tasks, we mean, of a social and public,
+not alone of a domestic nature&mdash;which only women <i>can</i> rightly perform,
+while their accomplishment was never more needed than here.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Phillips is no "faultless painter." He is given to snap-judgments.
+The minor element of <i>considerateness</i> should be more liberally present.
+He forgets that fast driving is not suitable to crowded streets; and
+through the densest thoroughfares the hoofs of his flying charger go
+ringing over the pavements, to the alarm of many and the damage of some.
+Softly, Bucephalus! A little gentle ambling through these social
+complications might sometimes be well.</p>
+
+<p>Again, while he has the utmost of moral stability and constancy, and
+also great firmness of intellectual adhesion to main principles, there
+is in him a certain minor changefulness. He pours out a powerful light,
+but it flickers. Momentary partialities sway him,&mdash;to be balanced,
+indeed, by subsequent partialities, for his broad nature will not be
+permanently one-sided; but meantime his authority suffers. Mood,
+occasion, the latest event, govern overmuch the color of his statement;
+so that an unsympathetic auditor&mdash;and every partiality, by the law of
+the world, must push <i>some one</i> out of the ring of sympathy&mdash;may
+honestly deem him unfair, even wilfully unfair.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, he relies too much upon sarcasm and personal invective as
+agents. He has a theory on this matter; and we feel <i>sure</i> that it is
+erroneous. Not that invective is to be forbidden. Not that personal
+criticism is always out of place, or always useless. We are among the
+"all men" whom Thoreau declared to be "enamored of the beauty of plain
+speech." We ask no man <a name="Page_800" id="Page_800"></a>in public or private life to wear a satin glove
+upon his tongue. We believe, too, in the "noble wrath" of Tasso's
+heroes, When the heart <i>must</i> burn, let the words be fire. It is just
+where personal invective begins to be used as matter of <i>theory and
+system</i> that it begins to be used amiss. Let the rule be to spare it, if
+it <i>can</i> be spared, and to use it only under the strictest compelling of
+moral indignation. And were not Mr. Phillips among the most genial and
+sunny of human beings, really incapable of any malign passion, he would
+fool the reactive sting of this invective in his own bosom, and so
+become fearful of indulging it.</p>
+
+<p>Still it must be said that he has the genius and function of a critic.
+He is the censor of our statesmanship. He is the pruner of our politics.
+Let his censure be broad and deliberate, that it may be weighty; let his
+pruning be with care and kindness, that it may be with benefit.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>Systems of Military Bridges in Use by the United States Army, those
+adopted by the Great European Powers, and such as are employed in
+British India.</i> With Directions for the Preservation, Destruction, and
+Reestablishment of Bridges. By Brigadier-General GEORGE W. CULLUM,
+Lieutenant-Colonel, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, Chief of Staff of the
+General-in-Chief, etc., etc. New York: D. Van Nostrand.</p>
+
+<p>A nation can hardly achieve military success without paying special heed
+to its <i>material</i> of war. It is the explicit duty of a nation's
+constituted guardians assiduously to apply all the resources of science
+and art, of theory and practice, of experience and invention, of
+judgment and genius, to the systematic production of the best military
+apparatus. Ordnance and ordnance stores, arms and equipments, commissary
+and quartermaster supplies, the means of transportation, fortifications
+and engineer-trains, navies and naval appliances,&mdash;these are the
+material elements of military strength, which decide the fate of
+nations. If in these we are behind the age, our delinquency must be
+atoned by disaster and wasted lives. Civilization conquers barbarism
+chiefly by its superior skill in the construction and use of the
+material instruments of warfare. Courage and conduct are certainly
+important factors in all legitimate successes; but they must work
+through material means, and are emphasized or nullified by the skill or
+rudeness exhibited in the device and fabrication of those means. The
+great contest now in progress has taught us afresh the potency of those
+material agencies through which patriotic zeal must act, and we shall
+hereafter lack all good excuse for <i>not</i> having the very best attainable
+system of producing, preserving, providing, and using whatever
+implements, supplies, and muniments our future may demand.</p>
+
+<p>As an aid in this direction, we welcome the truly valuable book which
+General Cullum has now supplied on one of the Special brandies of
+military <i>mat&eacute;riel</i>. We owe him thanks for his treatise on military
+bridges, which was nearly as much needed as though we had not already
+the works of Sir Howard Douglas, Drien, Haillot, and Meurdra, and the
+chapters on bridges by Laisn&eacute; and Duane. General Cullum's work has more
+precision and is more available for practical guidance than any other.
+The absolute thoroughness with which the India-rubber pontoon system is
+described by him gives a basis for appreciating the other systems
+described in outline.</p>
+
+<p>It is hardly too much to say that we owe to General Cullum more than to
+any other person the development in our service of systematic
+instruction in pontoniering. Before the Mexican War, Cullum and Halleck
+had ably argued the necessity of organizing engineer troops to be
+specially instructed as sappers, miners, and pontoniers. In an article
+on "Army Organization," in the "Democratic Review," were cited a
+striking series of instances in which bridge-trains or their lack had
+decided the issue of grand operations. The history of Napoleon's
+campaigns abounds in proofs of their necessity, and the testimony of the
+Great Captain was most emphatic on this point. His Placentia and
+Beresina crossings are specially instructive. The well-sustained
+argument of the article on "Army Organization" was a most effective aid
+to General Totten's efforts as Chief Engineer to secure the organization
+of our first engineer company. This company proved to be the <a name="Page_801" id="Page_801"></a>well-timed
+and successful school in which our pontoon-drill grew up and became
+available for use in the present war. There are now four regular
+companies and several volunteer regiments of engineer troops, whose
+services are too highly valued to be hereafter ignored.</p>
+
+<p>In 1846, General Taylor reported, that, after the victories of Palo Alto
+and Resaca de la Palma, a pontoon-train would have enabled him to cross
+the Rio Grande "on the evening of the battle," take Matamoras "with all
+the artillery and stores of the enemy and a great number of
+prisoners,&mdash;in short, to destroy entirely the Mexican army." This
+striking evidence of the necessity of bridge-equipages as part of the
+material of army-trains coincided with the organization of the first
+engineer company, and led to the preparation of pontoon-trains for
+General Taylor and General Scott. General (then Captain) Cullum "had the
+almost exclusive supervision, devising, building, and preparing for
+service" of these trains, and of that used for instruction at West
+Point. To him is chiefly due the formation of the system of military
+bridges with India-rubber pontoons, which was most fully described and
+illustrated in the original memoir from which the volume now just
+published has grown. He subsequently, as Professor of Practical
+Engineering at the Military Academy, aided in developing and perfecting
+the pontoon-drill,&mdash;a department in which G.W. Smith, McClellan, and
+Duane ably and successfully labored.</p>
+
+<p>We suppose that all profound and sincere students of military operations
+are agreed in accepting bridge-trains and skilled pontoniers as among
+the necessities of grand armies. In proportion as the campaigns which an
+army is to make are to be conducted on theatres intersected by rivers
+will be the importance of its bridge-service. Our own country, abounding
+in rivers of the grandest proportions, will need to be always ready for
+applying the highest skill and the best bridge-equipage in facilitating
+such movements as may prove necessary. We accept this as an
+indispensable part of our organized system of war-<i>mat&eacute;riel</i>. Were other
+evidences lacking, the experiences of the Chickahominy, Rappahannock,
+Potomac, and Tennessee will perpetually enforce the argument. The
+generation which has fought the Battle of Fredericksburg, and which has
+witnessed Lee's narrow escape near Williamsport, is sufficiently
+instructed not to question the saving virtues and mobilizing influences
+of bridge-trains.</p>
+
+<p>The chief essentials in a military bridge-system are lightness, facility
+of transportation, ease of man&#339;uvre in bridge-formation, stability,
+security, and economy. It necessarily makes heavy demands for
+transportation; and on this account bridge-trains have frequently been
+left behind, when their retention would have proved of the utmost
+importance. Their true use is to facilitate campaign-movements; and
+while they should be taken only when there is a reasonable prospect of
+their being real facilites, they should not be left behind when any such
+prospect exists. It was in response to the demand for easy
+transportation that the system for India-rubber pontoons was elaborated.
+Single supporting cylinders of rubber-coated canvas were first
+experimentally used in 1836 by Captain John F. Lane, United States army,
+on the Tallapoosa and Chattahoochee Rivers in Alabama. The
+service-pontoon, as arranged by General Cullum, is composed of three
+connected cylinders of rubber-coated canvas, each having three
+compartments. On these pontoons, when inflated, the bridge-table is
+built, lashed, and anchored. This bridge has remarkable portability, but
+it has also serious defects. The oxidation of the sulphur in vulcanized
+rubber produces sulphuric acid in sufficient amount to impair the
+strength of the canvas-fibres, thus causing eventual decay, rendering it
+prudent to renew the pontoons after a year's campaigning. The pontoons
+are required to be air-tight, and are temporarily made partially useless
+by punctures, bullet-holes, rents and chafings, although they are easily
+repaired. Hence this bridge, despite its portability, is hardly equal to
+all the requirements of service, though it was the main dependence in
+Banks's operations in Louisiana, and was successfully used in Grant's
+Mississippi campaign.</p>
+
+<p>General Cullum briefly describes the various bridge-systems employed in
+the different services of the world, including the galvanized iron boat
+system, the Blanchard metal cylinder system, the Russian and Fowke's
+systems of canvas stretched over frames, the Birigo system, the French<a name="Page_802" id="Page_802"></a>
+<i>bateau</i> system, the various trestle systems, and many others. The
+French wooden <i>bateau</i> is the pontoon chiefly used in our service, and
+it is specially commended by its thoroughly proved efficiency, and by
+its utility as an independent boat. Its great weight and the consequent
+difficulty of its transportation are the great drawbacks, and to this
+cause may well be ascribed much of the fatal delay before the
+Fredericksburg crossing.</p>
+
+<p>It is a hopeless problem to devise any bridge-equipage which shall
+overcome all serious objections. All that should be expected is to
+reduce the faults to a practical minimum, while meeting the general
+wants of the service in a satisfactory manner. The lack of mobility in
+any bridge-train which can be pronounced always trustworthy may,
+perhaps, compel the adoption, in addition to the <i>bateau</i>-train, of a
+light equipage for use in quick movements. This will, however, create
+complication, which is nearly as objectionable here as in the calibre of
+guns. Thus it is that any solution may prove not exactly the best one
+for the particular cases which may arise under it. All that should be
+demanded is, that, by the application of sound judgment to the data
+which experience and invention afford, our probable wants may be as well
+met as practicable. Some system we must have; and, on the one hand, zeal
+for mobility, commendable as it is, must not be permitted to invite
+grand disasters through failures of the pontoons to do their allotted
+work; while, on the other hand, a morbid desire to insure absolutely
+trustworthy solidity of construction must be restrained from imposing
+needless burdens, which may habitually make our crossings Fredericksburg
+affairs. Between these extremes lies the right road. American skill has
+hardly exhausted its resources on this problem. The suspension-bridge
+train, a description of which General Meigs has published, is deserving
+of consideration for many cases in campaigns. General Haupt's remarkable
+railroad-bridges thrown over the Rappahannock River and Potomac Creek,
+the latter in nine working-days, were structures of such striking and
+judicious boldness as to justify most hopeful anticipations from the
+designer's expected treatise on bridge-building. Our national eminence
+in the art of building wooden trussed and suspension bridges is proof
+enough that whatever can be done to improve on the military
+bridge-trains of Europe may be expected at our hands. We shall not lack
+inventiveness; let us be as careful not to lack judgment, and by all
+means to be fair and honest in seeking for the best system. When the
+experience of this war can be generalized, a more positive
+pontoon-system will be exacted for our service. It is fortunate that
+this matter is in good hands. While hoping that the close of the present
+war may, for a long time, end the reign of Mars, it behooves us never
+again to be caught napping when the Republic is assailed.</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 Natural Laws of Husbandry. By Justus von Liebig. Edited by John
+Blyth, M.D., Professor of Chemistry in Queen's College, Cork. New York.
+D. Appleton &amp; Co. 12mo. pp. 388. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George
+Third, 1760-1860. By Thomas Erskine May, C.B. In Two Volumes. Vol. II.
+Boston. Crosby &amp; Nichols. 12mo. pp. 596. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>The Holy Word in its own Defence: addressed to Bishop Colenso and all
+other Earnest Seekers after Truth. By Rev. Abiel Silver, Author of
+"Lectures on the Symbolic Character of the Sacred Scriptures." New York.
+D. Appleton &amp; Co. 12mo. pp. 305. $1.25.</p>
+
+<p>"Who Breaks Pays." By the Author of "Cousin Stella," etc. Philadelphia.
+F. Leypoldt. 16mo. paper, pp. 302. 50 cts.</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> The phrase is General Taylor's. When Santa A&ntilde;a brought up
+his immense army at Buena Vista, he sent a flag of truce to invite
+Taylor to surrender. "Tell him to go to hell," said old Rough-and-Ready.
+"Bliss, put that into Spanish." "Perfect Bliss," as this accomplished
+officer, too early lost, was called, interpreted liberally, replying to
+the flag, in exquisite Castilian, "Say to General Santa A&ntilde;a, that, if he
+wants us, he must come and take us." And this is the answer which has
+gone into history.</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> After Sheridan had made his maiden speech in the House, of
+Commons, he went to the gallery where Whitbread was sitting and asked
+the latter's opinion of his effort.
+</p><p>
+"It will never do, Sheridan; you had better give it up."
+</p><p>
+"Never, by G&mdash;&mdash;d!" replied Sheridan; "it is in me, and it shall come
+out."</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> Dagneaux's is the most expensive restaurant of the
+Latin Quarter.</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> These are characters in the novel, portraits from real
+life. Murger drew himself, and told his own history, when he sketched
+Rodolphe.</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> He was urged to rent a room in Paris as his lodgings when
+he came to town.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> <i>Travels through the Middle Settlements of North America
+in</i> 1759-60. By Rev. Andrew Burnaby.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> <i>History of the Netherlands</i>, Vol. I. p. 182.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> "During the winter, the temperature at the surface of the
+glacier sinks a great many degrees below 32&deg; Fahrenheit, and this low
+temperature penetrates, though at a gradually decreasing rate, into the
+interior of the mass. The glacier becomes fissured in consequence of the
+contraction resulting from this cooling process. The cracks remain open
+at first, and contribute to lower the temperature of the glacier by
+favoring the introduction of the cold air from without; but in the
+spring, when the rays of the sun raise the temperature of the snow
+covering the glacier, they first bring it back to 32&deg; Fahrenheit, and
+presently produce water at 32&deg;, which falls into the chilled and
+fissured mass of the glacier. There this water is instantly frozen,
+releasing heat which tends to bring back the glacier to the temperature
+of 32&deg;; and this process continues till the entire mass of the cooled
+glacier returns to the temperature of 32&deg;."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> For the evidence of this statement I must, however, refer
+to my work on Glaciers, already so often quoted in this article, where
+it may be found with all the necessary details.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> Hon. H.M. Rice, Ex-Senator from Minnesota.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74,
+December, 1863, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74,
+December, 1863, 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. 12, No. 74, December, 1863
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2005 [EBook #15913]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+VOL. XII.--DECEMBER, 1863.--NO. LXXIV.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863 by TICKNOR AND
+FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
+
+
+I suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald" of
+August 13th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the
+announcement,
+
+    "NOLAN. DIED, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2 deg. 11' S., Long.
+    131 deg. W., on the 11th of May: Philip Nolan."
+
+I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old
+Mission-House in Mackinac, waiting for a Lake-Superior steamer which did
+not choose to come, and I was devouring, to the very stubble, all the
+current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and
+marriages in the "Herald." My memory for names and people is good, and
+the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember
+Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at
+that announcement, if the officer of the Levant who reported it had
+chosen to make it thus:--"Died, May 11th, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY."
+For it was as "The Man without a Country" that poor Philip Nolan had
+generally been known by the officers who had him in charge during some
+fifty years, as, indeed, by all the men who sailed under them. I dare
+say there is many a man who has taken wine with him once a fortnight, in
+a three years' cruise, who never knew that his name was "Nolan," or
+whether the poor wretch had any name at all.
+
+There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature's story.
+Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison's
+Administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy of
+honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan in
+successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the _esprit de
+corps_ of the profession and the personal honor of its members, that to
+the press this man's story has been wholly unknown,--and, I think, to
+the country at large also. I have reason to think, from some
+investigations I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the
+Bureau of Construction, that every official report relating to him was
+burned when Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the
+Tuckers, or possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end
+of the war; and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at
+Washington to one of the Crowninshields,--who was in the Navy Department
+when he came home,--he found that the Department ignored the whole
+business. Whether they really knew nothing about it, or whether it was a
+"_Non mi ricordo_," determined on as a piece of policy, I do not know.
+But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no naval
+officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.
+
+But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor
+creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his
+story, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to be
+
+    A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
+
+Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of
+the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When
+Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in
+1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the
+Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some
+dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him,
+took him a day or two's voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short,
+fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor
+Nolan. He occasionally availed of the permission the great man had given
+him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the poor boy
+wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in reply from
+the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at him, because
+he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a politician the time
+which they devoted to Monongahela, sledge, and high-low-jack. Bourbon,
+euchre, and poker were still unknown. But one day Nolan had his revenge.
+This time Burr came down the river, not as an attorney seeking a place
+for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. He had defeated I know not
+how many district-attorneys; he had dined at I know not how many public
+dinners; he had been heralded in I know not how many Weekly Arguses; and
+it was rumored that he had an army behind him and an empire before him.
+It was a great day--his arrival--to poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the
+fort an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked Nolan to take
+him out in his skiff, to show him a canebrake or a cotton-wood tree, as
+he said,--really to seduce him; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan
+was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though he did not yet know
+it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
+
+What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none
+of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and
+Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on
+the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the
+great treason-trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant
+Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is
+to-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage, and, to
+while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for
+_spectacles_, a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and
+another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the
+list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence
+enough,--that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false
+to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any one
+who would follow him, had the order only been signed, "By command of His
+Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped,--rightly
+for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I
+would never have heard of him, reader, but that, when the president of
+the court asked him at the close, whether he wished to say anything to
+show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried
+out, in a fit of frenzy,--
+
+"D----n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States
+again!"
+
+I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who
+was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served
+through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had
+been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his
+madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the
+midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had been
+educated on a plantation, where the finest company was a Spanish officer
+or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, had
+been perfected in commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I think he
+told me his father once hired an Englishman to be a private tutor for a
+winter on the plantation. He had spent half his youth with an older
+brother, hunting horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him "United States"
+was scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by "United States" for all
+the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a
+Christian to be true to "United States." It was "United States" which
+gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. Nay, my poor
+Nolan, it was only because "United States" had picked you out first as
+one of her own confidential men of honor, that "A. Burr" cared for you a
+straw more than for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for him. I do
+not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he damned his
+country, and wished he might never hear her name again.
+
+He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September
+23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name
+again. For that half century and more he was a man without a country.
+
+Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. If Nolan had compared
+George Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, "God save King
+George," Morgan would not have felt worse. He called the court into his
+private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a sheet,
+to say,--
+
+"Prisoner, hear the sentence of the Court. The Court decides, subject to
+the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the
+United States again."
+
+Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and
+the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost
+his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added,--
+
+"Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver
+him to the naval commander there."
+
+The marshal gave his orders, and the prisoner was taken out of court.
+
+"Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the
+United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to
+Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one
+shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board
+ship. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty here
+this evening. The court is adjourned without day."
+
+I have always supposed that Colonel Morgan himself took the proceedings
+of the court to Washington City, and explained them to Mr. Jefferson.
+Certain it is that the President approved them,--certain, that is, if I
+may believe the men who say they have seen his signature. Before the
+Nautilus got round from New Orleans to the Northern Atlantic coast with
+the prisoner on board, the sentence had been approved, and he was a man
+without a country.
+
+The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily
+followed ever after. Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of
+sending him by water from Fort Adams and Orleans. The Secretary of the
+Navy--it must have been the first Crowninshield, though he is a man I do
+not remember--was requested to put Nolan on board a Government vessel
+bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so far
+confined there as to make it certain that he never saw or heard of the
+country. We had few long cruises then, and the navy was very much out of
+favor; and as almost all of this story is traditional, as I have
+explained, I do not know certainly what his first cruise was. But the
+commander to whom he was intrusted--perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw,
+though I think it was one of the younger men,--we are all old enough
+now--regulated the etiquette and the precautions of the affair, and
+according to his scheme they were carried out, I suppose, till Nolan
+died.
+
+When I was second officer of the Intrepid, some thirty years after, I
+saw the original paper of instructions. I have been sorry ever since
+that I did not copy the whole of it. It ran, however, much in this
+way:--
+
+"_Washington_," (with the date, which must have been late in 1807.)
+
+"Sir,--You will receive from Lt. Neale the person of Philip Nolan, late
+a Lieutenant in the United States Army.
+
+"This person on his trial by court-martial expressed with an oath the
+wish that he might 'never hear of the United States again.'
+
+"The Court sentenced him to have his wish fulfilled.
+
+"For the present, the execution of the order is intrusted by the
+President to this department.
+
+"You will take the prisoner on board your ship, and keep him there with
+such precautions as shall prevent his escape.
+
+"You will provide him with such quarters, rations, and clothing as would
+be proper for an officer of his late rank, if he were a passenger on
+your vessel on the business of his Government.
+
+"The gentlemen on board will make any arrangements agreeable to
+themselves regarding his society. He is to be exposed to no indignity of
+any kind, nor is he ever unnecessarily to be reminded that he is a
+prisoner.
+
+"But under no circumstances is he ever to hear of his country or to see
+any information regarding it; and you will specially caution all the
+officers under your command to take care, that, in the various
+indulgences which may be granted, this rule, in which his punishment is
+involved, shall not be broken.
+
+"It is the intention of the Government that he shall never again see the
+country which he has disowned. Before the end of your cruise you will
+receive orders which will give effect to this intention.
+
+    "Resp'y yours,
+
+    "W. SOUTHARD, for the
+    Sec'y of the Navy."
+
+If I had only preserved the whole of this paper, there would be no break
+in the beginning of my sketch of this story. For Captain Shaw, if it was
+he, handed it to his successor in the charge, and he to his, and I
+suppose the commander of the Levant has it to-day as his authority for
+keeping this man in this mild custody.
+
+The rule adopted on board the ships on which I have met "the man without
+a country" was, I think, transmitted from the beginning. No mess liked
+to have him permanently, because his presence cut off all talk of home
+or of the prospect of return, of politics or letters, of peace or of
+war,--cut off more than half the talk men like to have at sea. But it
+was always thought too hard that he should never meet the rest of us,
+except to touch hats, and we finally sank into one system. He was not
+permitted to talk with the men, unless an officer was by. With officers
+he had unrestrained intercourse, as far as they and he chose. But he
+grew shy, though he had favorites: I was one. Then the captain always
+asked him to dinner on Monday. Every mess in succession took up the
+invitation in its turn. According to the size of the ship, you had him
+at your mess more or less often at dinner. His breakfast he ate in his
+own state-room,--he always had a state-room,--which was where a
+sentinel, or somebody on the watch, could see the door. And whatever
+else he ate or drank he ate or drank alone. Sometimes, when the marines
+or sailors had any special jollification, they were permitted to invite
+"Plain-Buttons," as they called him. Then Nolan was sent with some
+officer, and the men were forbidden to speak of home while he was there.
+I believe the theory was, that the sight of his punishment did them
+good. They called him "Plain-Buttons," because, while he always chose to
+wear a regulation army-uniform, he was not permitted to wear the
+army-button, for the reason that it bore either the initials or the
+insignia of the country he had disowned.
+
+I remember, soon after I joined the navy, I was on shore with some of
+the older officers from our ship and from the Brandywine, which we had
+met at Alexandria. We had leave to make a party and go up to Cairo and
+the Pyramids. As we jogged along, (you went on donkeys then,) some of
+the gentlemen (we boys called them "Dons," but the phrase was long since
+changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and some one told the system which
+was adopted from the first about his books and other reading. As he was
+almost never permitted to go on shore, even though the vessel lay in
+port for months, his time, at the best, hung heavy; and everybody was
+permitted to lend him books, if they were not published in America and
+made no allusion to it. These were common enough in the old days, when
+people in the other hemisphere talked of the United States as little as
+we do of Paraguay. He had almost all the foreign papers that came into
+the ship, sooner or later; only somebody must go over them first, and
+cut out any advertisement or stray paragraph that alluded to America.
+This was a little cruel sometimes, when the back of what was cut out
+might be as innocent as Hesiod. Right in the midst of one of Napoleon's
+battles, or one of Canning's speeches, poor Nolan would find a great
+hole, because on the back of the page of that paper there had been an
+advertisement of a packet for New York, or a scrap from the President's
+message. I say this was the first time I ever heard of this plan, which
+afterwards I had enough, and more than enough, to do with. I remember
+it, because poor Phillips, who was of the party, as soon as the allusion
+to reading was made, told a story of something which happened at the
+Cape of Good Hope on Nolan's first voyage; and it is the only thing I
+ever knew of that voyage. They had touched at the Cape, and had done the
+civil thing with the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, leaving
+for a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of
+English books from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed in these,
+was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was the "Lay
+of the Last Minstrel," which they had all of them heard of, but which
+most of them had never seen. I think it could not have been published
+long. Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of anything national
+in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out the "Tempest" from
+Shakspeare before he let Nolan have it, because he, said "the Bermudas
+ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one day." So Nolan was
+permitted to join the circle one afternoon when a lot of them sat on
+deck smoking and reading aloud. People do not do such things so often
+now; but when I was young we got rid of a great deal of time so. Well,
+so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the
+others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in the circle knew a
+line of the poem, only it was all magic and Border chivalry, and was ten
+thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto,
+stopped a minute and drank something, and then began, without a thought
+of what was coming,--
+
+    "Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
+    Who never to himself hath said,"--
+
+It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first
+time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on,
+still unconsciously or mechanically,--
+
+    "This is my own, my native land!"
+
+Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through,
+I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on,--
+
+    "Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
+    As home his footsteps he hath turned
+       From wandering on a foreign strand?--
+    If such there breathe, go, mark him well."
+
+By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was any
+way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of
+mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on,--
+
+    "For him no minstrel raptures swell;
+    High though his titles, proud his name,
+    Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
+    Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
+    The wretch, concentred all in self,"--
+
+and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung
+the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room, "and by Jove," said
+Phillips, "we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make up
+some beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did not return his
+Walter Scott to him."
+
+That story shows about the time when Nolan's braggadocio must have
+broken down. At first, they said, he took a very high tone, considered
+his imprisonment a mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and all
+that; but Phillips said that after he came out of his state-room he
+never was the same man again. He never read aloud again, unless it was
+the Bible or Shakespeare, or something else he was sure of. But it was
+not that merely. He never entered in with the other young men exactly as
+a companion again. He was always shy afterwards, when I knew him,--very
+seldom spoke, unless he was spoken to, except to a very few friends. He
+lighted up occasionally,--I remember late in his life hearing him fairly
+eloquent on something which had been suggested to him by one of
+Flechier's sermons,--but generally he had the nervous, tired look of a
+heart-wounded man.
+
+When Captain Shaw was coming home,--if, as I say, it was Shaw,--rather
+to the surprise of everybody they made one of the Windward Islands, and
+lay off and on for nearly a week. The boys said the officers were sick
+of salt-junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before they came home. But
+after several days the Warren came to the same rendezvous; they
+exchanged signals; she sent to Phillips and these homeward-bound men
+letters and papers, and told them she was outward-bound, perhaps to the
+Mediterranean, and took poor Nolan and his traps on the boat back to try
+his second cruise. He looked very blank when he was told to get ready to
+join her. He had known enough of the signs of the sky to know that till
+that moment he was going "home." But this was a distinct evidence of
+something he had not thought of, perhaps,--that there was no going home
+for him, even to a prison. And this was the first of some twenty such
+transfers, which brought him sooner or later into half our best vessels,
+but which kept him all his life at least some hundred miles from the
+country he had hoped he might never hear of again.
+
+It may have been on that second cruise,--it was once when he was up the
+Mediterranean,--that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated Southern beauty of those
+days, danced with him. They had been lying a long time in the Bay of
+Naples, and the officers were very intimate in the English fleet, and
+there had been great festivities, and our men thought they must give a
+great ball on board the ship. How they ever did it on board the Warren I
+am sure I do not know. Perhaps it was not the Warren, or perhaps ladies
+did not take up so much room as they do now. They wanted to use Nolan's
+state-room for something, and they hated to do it without asking him to
+the ball; so the captain said they might ask him, if they would be
+responsible that he did not talk with the wrong people, "who would give
+him intelligence." So the dance went on, the finest party that had ever
+been known, I dare say; for I never heard of a man-of-war ball that was
+not. For ladies they had the family of the American consul, one or two
+travellers who had adventured so far, and a nice bevy of English girls
+and matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton herself.
+
+Well, different officers relieved each other in standing and talking
+with Nolan in a friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke to
+him. The dancing went on with spirit, and after a while even the fellows
+who took this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear any _contre-temps_.
+Only when some English lady--Lady Hamilton, as I said, perhaps--called
+for a set of "American dances," an odd thing happened. Everybody then
+danced contra-dances. The black band, nothing loath, conferred as to
+what "American dances" were, and started off with "Virginia Reel," which
+they followed with "Money-Musk," which, in its turn in those days,
+should have been followed by "The Old Thirteen." But just as Dick, the
+leader, tapped for his fiddles to begin, and bent forward, about to say,
+in true negro state, "'The Old Thirteen,' gentlemen and ladies!" as he
+had said, "'Virginny Reel,' if you please!" and "'Money-Musk,' if you
+please!" the captain's boy tapped him on the shoulder, whispered to him,
+and he did not announce the name of the dance; he merely bowed, began on
+the air, and they all fell to,--the officers teaching the English girls
+the figure, but not telling them why it had no name.
+
+But that is not the story I started to tell.--As the dancing went on,
+Nolan and our fellows all got at ease, as I said,--so much so, that it
+seemed quite natural for him to bow to that splendid Mrs. Graff, and
+say,--
+
+"I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss Rutledge. Shall I have the honor
+of dancing?"
+
+He did it so quickly, that Shubrick, who was by him, could not hinder
+him. She laughed, and said,--
+
+"I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. Nolan; but I will dance all the
+same," just nodded to Shubrick, as if to say he must leave Mr. Nolan to
+her, and led him off to the place where the dance was forming.
+
+Nolan thought he had got his chance. He had known her at Philadelphia,
+and at other places had met her, and this was a Godsend. You could not
+talk in contra-dances, as you do in cotillons, or even in the pauses of
+waltzing; but there were chances for tongues and sounds, as well as for
+eyes and blushes. He began with her travels, and Europe, and Vesuvius,
+and the French; and then, when they had worked down, and had that long
+talking-time at the bottom of the set, he said, boldly,--a little pale,
+she said, as she told me the story, years after,--
+
+"And what do you hear from home, Mrs. Graff?"
+
+And that splendid creature looked through him. Jove! how she must have
+looked through him!
+
+"Home!! Mr. Nolan!!! I thought you were the man who never wanted to hear
+of home again!"--and she walked directly up the deck to her husband, and
+left poor Nolan alone, as he always was.--He did not dance again.
+
+I cannot give any history of him in order: nobody can now: and, indeed,
+I am not trying to. These are the traditions, which I sort out, as I
+believe them, from the myths which have been told about this man for
+forty years. The lies that have been told about him are legion. The
+fellows used to say he was the "Iron Mask"; and poor George Pons went to
+his grave in the belief that this was the author of "Junius," who was
+being punished for his celebrated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was
+not very strong in the historical line. A happier story than either of
+these I have told is of the War. That came along soon after. I have
+heard this affair told in three or four ways,--and, indeed, it may have
+happened more than once. But which ship it was on I cannot tell.
+However, in one, at least, of the great frigate-duels with the English,
+in which the navy was really baptized, it happened that a round shot
+from the enemy entered one of our ports square, and took right down the
+officer of the gun himself, and almost every man of the gun's crew. Now
+you may say what you choose about courage, but that is not a nice thing
+to see. But, as the men who were not killed picked themselves up, and as
+they and the surgeon's people were carrying off the bodies, there
+appeared Nolan, in his shirt-sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, and,
+just as if he had been the officer, told them off with authority,--who
+should go to the cockpit with the wounded men, who should stay with
+him,--perfectly cheery, and with that way which makes men feel sure all
+is right and is going to be right. And he finished loading the gun with
+his own hands, aimed it, and bade the men fire. And there he stayed,
+captain of that gun, keeping those fellows in spirits, till the enemy
+struck,--sitting on the carriage while the gun was cooling, though he
+was exposed all the time,--showing them easier ways to handle heavy
+shot,--making the raw hands laugh at their own blunders,--and when the
+gun cooled again, getting it loaded and fired twice as often as any
+other gun on the ship. The captain walked forward, by way of encouraging
+the men, and Nolan touched his hat and said,--
+
+"I am showing them how we do this in the artillery, Sir."
+
+And this is the part of the story where all the legends agree: that the
+Commodore said,--
+
+"I see you do, and I thank you, Sir; and I shall never forget this day,
+Sir, and you never shall, Sir."
+
+And after the whole thing was over, and he had the Englishman's sword,
+in the midst of the state and ceremony of the quarter-deck, he said,--
+
+"Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to come here."
+
+And when Nolan came, the captain, said,--
+
+"Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to you to-day; you are one of us
+to-day; you will be named in the despatches."
+
+And then the old man took off his own sword of ceremony, and gave it to
+Nolan, and made him put it on. The man told me this who saw it. Nolan
+cried like a baby, and well he might. He had not worn a sword since that
+infernal day at Fort Adams. But always afterwards, on occasions of
+ceremony, he wore that quaint old French sword of the Commodore's.
+
+The captain did mention him in the despatches. It was always said he
+asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the
+Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As I said, that was about
+the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at Washington,
+and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry itself on because there was
+nobody to stop it without any new orders from home.
+
+I have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession of
+the Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter, his
+father, Essex Porter,--that is, the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As
+an artillery officer, who had seen service in the West, Nolan knew more
+about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades, and all that,
+than any of them did; and he worked with a right good will in fixing
+that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did
+not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all
+the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and
+at this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our
+French friends, too, when they wanted this little watering-place, would
+have found it was preoccupied. But Madison and the Virginians, of
+course, flung all that away.
+
+All that was near fifty years ago. If Nolan was thirty then, he must
+have been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty.
+But he never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards. As I imagine his
+life, from what I have seen and heard of it, he must have been in every
+sea, and yet almost never on land. He must have known, in a formal way,
+more officers in our service than any man living knows. He told me
+once, with a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so methodical a
+life as he. "You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you know how
+busy he was." He said it did not do for any one to try to read all the
+time, more than to do any thing else all the time; but that he read just
+five hours a day. "Then," he said, "I keep up my note-books, writing in
+them at such and such hours from what I have been reading; and I include
+in these my scrap-books." These were very curious indeed. He had six or
+eight, of different subjects. There was one of History, one of Natural
+Science, one which he, called "Odds and Ends." But they were not merely
+books of extract from newspapers. They had bits of plants and ribbons,
+shells tied on, and carved scraps of bone and wood, which he had taught
+the men to cut for him, and they were beautifully illustrated. He drew
+admirably. He had some of the funniest drawings there, and some of the
+most pathetic, that I have ever seen in my life. I wonder who will have
+Nolan's scrap-books.
+
+Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that
+they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. "Then,"
+said he, "every man should have a diversion as well as a profession. My
+Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more. The
+men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to
+satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He
+was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about the habits of
+the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether
+they are _Lepidoptera_ _Steptopotera_; but as for telling how you can
+get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike
+them,--why, Linnaeus knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did.
+These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of
+the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a
+great deal. He always kept up with his exercise; and I never heard that
+he was ill. If any other man was ill, he was the kindest nurse in the
+world; and he knew more than half the surgeons do. Then if anybody was
+sick or died, or if the captain wanted him to on any other occasion, he
+was always ready to read prayers. I have remarked that he read
+beautifully.
+
+My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after the
+War, on my first voyage after I was appointed a midshipman. It was in
+the first days after our Slave-Trade treaty, while the Reigning House,
+which was still the House of Virginia, had still a sort of
+sentimentalism about the suppression of the horrors of the Middle
+Passage, and something was sometimes done that way. We were in the South
+Atlantic on that business. From the time I joined, I believe I thought
+Nolan was a sort of lay chaplain--a chaplain with a blue coat. I never
+asked about him. Everything in the ship was strange to me. I knew it was
+green to ask questions, and I suppose I thought there was a
+"Plain-Buttons" on every ship. We had him to dine in our mess once a
+week, and the caution was given that on that day nothing was to be said
+about home. But if they had told us not to say anything about the planet
+Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I should not have asked why; there
+were, a great many things which seemed to me to have as little reason. I
+first came to understand anything about "the man without a country" one
+day when we overhauled a dirty little schooner which had slaves on
+board. An officer was sent to take charge of her, and, after a few
+minutes, he sent back his boat to ask that some one might be sent him
+who could speak Portuguese. We were all looking over the rail when the
+message came, and we all wished we could interpret, when the captain
+asked who spoke Portuguese. But none of the officers did; and just as
+the captain was sending forward to ask if any of the people could, Nolan
+stepped out and said he should be glad to interpret, if the captain
+wished, as he understood the language. The captain thanked him, fitted
+out another boat with him, and in this boat it was my luck to go.
+
+When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never want
+to. Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of the
+nastiness. There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way of
+making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had had
+their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience'
+sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the schooner's crew. The
+negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the
+dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him
+in every dialect and _patois_ of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to
+the Parisian of Beledeljereed.
+
+As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had
+mounted in desperation, and said,--
+
+"For God's love, is there anybody who can make these wretches understand
+something? The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet them. I knocked
+that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him. And then I
+talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I'll be hanged if they
+understood that as well as they understood the English."
+
+Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking
+Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked
+for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.
+
+"Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; "and tell them that these
+rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough."
+
+Nolan "put that into Spanish,"[A]--that is, he explained it in such
+Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of
+the negroes as could understand them. Then there was such a yell of
+delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's
+feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous
+worship of Vaughan, as the _deus ex machina_ of the occasion.
+
+"Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, "that I will take them all to
+Cape Palmas."
+
+This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practically as far from the
+homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is, they
+would be eternally separated from home there. And their interpreters, as
+we could understand, instantly said, "_Ah, non Palmas_," and began to
+propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan was
+rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan
+eagerly what they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan's white forehead,
+as he hushed the men down, and said,--
+
+"He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us home, take us to our own
+country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and
+our own women.' He says he has an old father and mother, who will die,
+if they do not see him. And this one says he left his people all sick,
+and paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help
+them, and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home,
+and that he has never seen anybody from home since then. And this one
+says," choked out Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from his home in
+six months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon."
+
+Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan struggled through
+this interpretation. I, who did not understand anything of the passion
+involved in it, saw that the very elements were melting with fervent
+heat, and that something was to pay somewhere. Even the negroes
+themselves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan's agony, and Vaughan's
+almost equal agony of sympathy. As quick as he could get words, he
+said,--
+
+"Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they shall go to the Mountains of
+the Moon, if they will. If I sail the schooner through the Great White
+Desert, they shall go home!"
+
+And after some fashion Nolan said so. And then they all fell to kissing
+him again, and wanted to rub his nose with theirs.
+
+But he could not stand it long; and getting Vaughan to say he might go
+back, he beckoned me down into our boat. As we lay back in the
+stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to me,--"Youngster, let that
+show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and without
+a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a thing
+that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, and your
+country, pray God in His mercy to take you that instant home to His own
+heaven. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self, while you do
+everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write and send, and talk
+about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the farther you
+have to travel from it; and rush back to it, when you are free, as that
+poor black slave is doing now. And for your country, boy," and the words
+rattled in his throat, "and for that flag," and he pointed to the ship,
+"never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the
+service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to
+you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another
+flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag.
+Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind
+officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself,
+your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own
+mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, if those
+devils there had got hold of her to-day!"
+
+I was frightened to death by his calm, hard passion; but I blundered
+out, that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought of
+doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did, almost in
+a whisper, say,--"Oh, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your
+age!"
+
+I think it was this half-confidence of his, which I never abused, for I
+never told this story till now, which afterward made us great friends.
+He was very kind to me. Often he sat up, or even got up, at night to
+walk the deck with me, when it was my watch. He explained to me a great
+deal of my mathematics, and I owe to him my taste for mathematics. He
+lent me books, and helped me about my reading. He never alluded so
+directly to his story again; but from one and another officer I have
+learned, in thirty years, what I am telling. When we parted from him in
+St. Thomas harbor, at the end of our cruise, I was more sorry than I can
+tell. I was very glad to meet him again in 1830; and later in life, when
+I thought I had some influence in Washington, I moved heaven and earth
+to have him discharged. But it was like getting a ghost out of prison.
+They pretended there was no such man, and never was such a man. They
+will say so at the Department now! Perhaps they do not know. It will not
+be the first thing in the service of which the Department appears to
+know nothing!
+
+There is a story that Nolan met Burr once on one of our vessels, when a
+party of Americans came on board in the Mediterranean. But this I
+believe to be a lie; or rather, it is a myth, _ben trovato_, involving a
+tremendous blowing-up with which he sunk Burr,--asking him how he liked
+to be "without a country." But it is clear, from Burr's life, that
+nothing of the sort could have happened; and I mention this only as an
+illustration of the stories which get a-going where there is the least
+mystery at bottom.
+
+So poor Philip Nolan had his wish fulfilled. I know but one fate more
+dreadful: it is the fate reserved for those men who shall have one day
+to exile themselves from their country because they have attempted her
+ruin, and shall have at the same time to see the prosperity and honor to
+which she rises when she has rid herself of them and their iniquities.
+The wish of poor Nolan, as we all learned to call him, not because his
+punishment was too great, but because his repentance was so clear, was
+precisely the wish of every Bragg and Beauregard who broke a soldier's
+oath two years ago, and of every Maury and Barron who broke a sailor's.
+I do not know how often they have repented. I do know that they have
+done all that in them lay that they might have no country,--that all the
+honors, associations, memories, and hopes which belong to "country"
+might be broken up into little shreds and distributed to the winds. I
+know, too, that their punishment, as they vegetate through what is left
+of life to them in wretched Boulognes and Leicester Squares, where they
+are destined to upbraid each other till they die, will have all the
+agony of Nolan's, with the added pang that every one who sees them will
+see them to despise and to execrate them. They will have their wish,
+like him.
+
+For him, poor fellow, he repented of his folly, and then, like a man,
+submitted to the fate he had asked for. He never intentionally added to
+the difficulty or delicacy of the charge of those who had him in hold.
+Accidents would happen; but they never happened from his fault.
+Lieutenant Truxton told me, that, when Texas was annexed, there was a
+careful discussion among the officers, whether they should get hold of
+Nolan's handsome set of maps, and cut Texas out of it,--from the map of
+the world and the map of Mexico. The United States had been cut out when
+the atlas was bought for him. But it was voted, rightly enough, that to
+do this would be virtually to reveal to him what had happened, or, as
+Harry Cole said, to make him think Old Burr had succeeded. So it was
+from no fault of Nolan's that a great botch happened at my own table,
+when, for a short time, I was in command of the George Washington
+corvette, on the South-American station. We were lying in the La Plata,
+and some of the officers, who had been on shore, and had just joined
+again, were entertaining us with accounts of their misadventures in
+riding the half-wild horses of Buenos Ayres. Nolan was at table, and was
+in an unusually bright and talkative mood. Some story of a tumble
+reminded him of an adventure of his own, when he was catching wild
+horses in Texas with his brother Stephen, at a time when he must have
+been quite a boy. He told the story with a good deal of spirit,--so much
+so, that the silence which often follows a good story hung over the
+table for an instant, to be broken by Nolan himself. For he asked,
+perfectly unconsciously,--
+
+"Pray, what has become of Texas? After the Mexicans got their
+independence, I thought that province of Texas would come forward very
+fast. It is really one of the finest regions on earth; it is the Italy
+of this continent. But I have not seen or heard a word of Texas for near
+twenty years."
+
+There were two Texan officers at the table. The reason he had never
+heard of Texas was that Texas and her affairs had been painfully cut out
+of his newspapers since Austin began his settlements; so that, while he
+read of Honduras and Tamaulipas, and, till quite lately, of California,
+this virgin province, in which his brother had travelled so far, and, I
+believe, had died, had ceased to be to him. Waters and Williams, the two
+Texas men, looked grimly at each other, and tried not to laugh. Edward
+Morris had his attention attracted by the third link in the chain of the
+captain's chandelier. Watrous was seized with a convulsion of sneezing.
+Nolan himself saw that something was to pay, he did not know what. And
+I, as master of the feast, had to say,--
+
+"Texas is out of the map, Mr. Nolan. Have you seen Captain Back's
+curious account of Sir Thomas Hoe's Welcome?"
+
+After that cruise I never saw Nolan again. I wrote to him at least twice
+a year, for in that voyage we became even confidentially intimate; but
+he never wrote to me. The other men tell me that in those fifteen years
+he _aged_ very fast, as well he might indeed, but that he was still the
+same gentle, uncomplaining, silent sufferer that he ever was, bearing as
+best he could his self-appointed punishment,--rather less social,
+perhaps, with new men whom he did not know, but more anxious,
+apparently, than ever to serve and befriend and teach the boys, some of
+whom fairly seemed to worship him. And now it seems the dear old fellow
+is dead. He has found a home at last, and a country.
+
+Since writing this, and while considering whether or no I would print
+it, as a warning to the young Nolans and Vallandighams and Tatnalls of
+to-day of what it is to throw away a country, I have received from
+Danforth, who is on board the Levant, a letter which gives an account of
+Nolan's last hours. It removes all my doubts about telling this story.
+
+To understand the first words of the letter, the non-professional reader
+should remember that after 1817 the position of every officer who had
+Nolan in charge was one of the greatest delicacy. The Government had
+failed to renew the order of 1807 regarding him. What was a man to do?
+Should he let him go? What, then, if he were called to account by the
+Department for violating the order of 1807? Should he keep him? What,
+then, if Nolan should be liberated some day, and should bring an action
+for false imprisonment or kidnapping against every man who had had him
+in charge? I urged and pressed this upon Southard, and I have reason to
+think that other officers did the same thing. But the Secretary always
+said, as they so often do at Washington, that there were no special
+orders to give, and that we must act on our own judgment. That means,
+"If you succeed, you will be sustained; if you fail, you will be
+disavowed." Well, as Danforth says, all that is over now, though I do
+not know but I expose myself to a criminal prosecution on the evidence
+of the very revelation I am making.
+
+Here is the letter:--
+
+"_Levant_, 2 deg. 2' S. @ 131 deg. W.
+
+"DEAR FRED,--I try to find heart and life to tell you that it is all
+over with dear old Nolan. I have been with him on this voyage more than
+I ever was, and I can understand wholly now the way in which you used to
+speak of the dear old fellow. I could see that he was not strong, but I
+had no idea the end was so near. The doctor had been watching him very
+carefully, and yesterday morning came to me and told me that Nolan was
+not so well, and had not left his state-room,--a thing I never remember
+before. He had let the doctor come and see him as he lay there,--the
+first time the doctor had been in the state-room,--and he said he should
+like to see me. Oh, dear! do you remember the mysteries we boys used to
+invent about his room, in the old Intrepid days? Well, I went in, and
+there, to be sure, the poor fellow lay in his berth, smiling pleasantly
+as he gave me his hand, but looking very frail. I could not help a
+glance round, which showed me what a little shrine he had made of the
+box he was lying in. The stars and stripes were triced up above and
+around a picture of Washington, and he had painted a majestic eagle,
+with lightnings blazing from his beak and his foot just clasping the
+whole globe, which his wings overshadowed. The dear old boy saw my
+glance, and said, with a sad smile, 'Here, you see, I have a country!'
+And then he pointed to the foot of his bed, where I had not seen before
+a great map of the United Stales, as he had drawn it from memory, and
+which he had there to look upon as he lay. Quaint, queer old names were
+on it, in large letters: 'Indiana Territory,' 'Mississippi Territory,'
+and 'Louisiana Territory,' as I suppose our fathers learned such
+things: but the old fellow had patched in Texas, too; he had carried his
+western boundary all the way to the Pacific, but on that shore he had
+defined nothing.
+
+"'Oh, Danforth,' he said, 'I know I am dying. I cannot get home. Surely
+you will tell me something now?--Stop! stop! Do not speak till I say
+what I am sure you know, that there is not in this ship, that there is
+not in America,--God bless her!--a more loyal man than I. There cannot
+be a man who loves the old flag as I do, or prays for it as I do, or
+hopes for it as I do. There are thirty-four stars in it now, Danforth. I
+thank God for that, though I do not know what their names are. There has
+never been one taken away: I thank God for that. I know by that, that
+there has never been any successful Burr. Oh, Danforth, Danforth,' he
+sighed out, 'how like a wretched night's dream a boy's idea of personal
+fame or of separate sovereignty seems, when one looks back on it after
+such a life as mine! But tell me,--tell me something,--tell me
+everything, Danforth, before I die!'"
+
+"Ingham, I swear to you that I felt like a monster that I had not told
+him everything before. Danger or no danger, delicacy or no delicacy, who
+was I, that I should have been acting the tyrant all this time over this
+dear, sainted old man, who had years ago expiated, in his whole
+manhood's life, the madness of a boy's treason? 'Mr. Nolan,' said I, 'I
+will tell you everything you ask about. Only, where shall I begin?'
+
+"Oh, the blessed smile that crept over his white face! and he pressed my
+hand and said, 'God bless you!' 'Tell me their names,' he said, and he
+pointed to the stars on the flag. 'The last I know is Ohio. My father
+lived in Kentucky. But I have guessed Michigan and Indiana and
+Mississippi,--that was where Fort Adams is,--they make twenty. But where
+are your other fourteen? You have not cut up any of the old ones, I
+hope?'
+
+"Well, that was not a bad text, and I told him the names, in as good
+order as I could, and he bade me take down his beautiful map and draw
+them in as I best could with my pencil. He was wild with delight about
+Texas, told me how his brother died there; he had marked a gold cross
+where he supposed his brother's grave was; and he had guessed at Texas.
+Then he was delighted as he saw California and Oregon;--that, he said,
+he had suspected partly, because he had never been permitted to land on
+that shore, though the ships were there so much. 'And the men,' said he,
+laughing, 'brought off a good deal besides furs.' Then he went
+back--heavens, how far!--to ask about the Chesapeake, and what was done
+to Barron for surrendering her to the Leopard, and whether Burr ever
+tried again,--and he ground his teeth with the only passion he showed.
+But in a moment that was over, and he said, 'God forgive me, for I am
+sure I forgive him.' Then he asked about the old war,--told me the true
+story of his serving the gun the day we took the Java,--asked about dear
+old David Porter, as he called him. Then he settled down more quietly,
+and very happily, to hear me tell in an hour the history of fifty years.
+
+"How I wished it had been somebody who knew something! But I did as well
+as I could. I told him of the English war. I told him about Fulton and
+the steamboat beginning. I told him about old Scott, and Jackson; told
+him all I could think about the Mississippi, and New Orleans, and Texas,
+and his own old Kentucky. And do you think he asked who was in command
+of the "Legion of the West." I told him it was a very gallant officer,
+named Grant, and that, by our last news, he was about to establish his
+head-quarters at Vicksburg. Then, 'Where was Vicksburg?' I worked that
+out on the map; it was about a hundred miles, more or less, above his
+old Fort Adams; and I thought Fort Adams must be a ruin now. 'It must be
+at old Vicks's plantation,' said he; 'well, that is a change!'
+
+"I tell you, Ingham, it was a hard thing to condense the history of half
+a century into that talk with a sick man. And I do not now know what I
+told him,--of emigration, and the means of it,--of steamboats and
+railroads and telegraphs,--of inventions and books and literature,--of
+the colleges and West Point and the Naval School,--but with the queerest
+interruptions that ever you heard. You see it was Robinson Crusoe asking
+all the accumulated questions of fifty-six years:
+
+"I remember he asked, all of a sudden, who was President now; and when I
+told him, he asked if Old Abe was General Benjamin Lincoln's son. He
+said he met old General Lincoln, when he was quite a boy himself, at
+some Indian treaty. I said no, that Old Abe was a Kentuckian like
+himself, but I could not tell him of what family; he had worked up from
+the ranks. 'Good for him!' cried Nolan; 'I am glad of that. As I have
+brooded and wondered, I have thought our danger was in keeping up those
+regular successions in the first families.' Then I got talking about my
+visit to Washington. I told him of meeting the Oregon Congressman,
+Harding; I told him about the Smithsonian and the Exploring Expedition;
+I told him about the Capitol,--and the statues for the pediment,--and
+Crawford's Liberty,--and Greenough's Washington: Ingham, I told him
+everything I could think of that would show the grandeur of his country
+and its prosperity; but I could not make up my mouth to tell him a word
+about this infernal Rebellion!
+
+"And he drank it in, and enjoyed it as I cannot tell you. He grew more
+and more silent, yet I never thought he was tired or faint. I gave him a
+glass of water, but he just wet his lips, and told me not to go away.
+Then he asked me to bring the Presbyterian 'Book of Public Prayer,'
+which lay there, and said, with a smile, that it would open at the
+right, place,--and so it did. There was his double red mark down the
+page; and I knelt down and read, and he repeated with me,--'For
+ourselves and our country, O gracious God, we thank Thee, that,
+notwithstanding our manifold transgressions of Thy holy laws, Thou hast
+continued to us Thy marvellous kindness,'--and so to the end of that
+thanksgiving. Then he turned to the end of the same book, and I read the
+words more familiar to me,--'Most heartily we beseech Thee with Thy
+favor to behold and bless Thy servant, the President of the United
+States, and all others in authority,'--and the rest of the Episcopal
+collect. 'Danforth,' said he, 'I have repeated those prayers night and
+morning, it is now fifty-five years.' And then he said he would go to
+sleep. He bent me down over him and kissed me; and he said, 'Look in my
+Bible, Danforth, when I am gone.' And I went away.
+
+"But I had no thought it was the end. I thought he was tired and would
+sleep. I knew he was happy, and I wanted him to be alone.
+
+"But in an hour, when the doctor went in gently, he found Nolan had
+breathed his life away with a smile. He had something pressed close to
+his lips. It was his father's badge of the Order of Cincinnati.
+
+"We looked in his Bible, and there was a slip of paper, at the place
+where he had marked the text,--
+
+"'They desire a country, even a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed
+to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.'
+
+"On this slip of paper he had written,--
+
+"'Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not
+some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that
+my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it,--
+
+"'_In Memory of_
+
+"'PHILIP NOLAN,
+
+"'_Lieutenant in the Army of the United States._
+
+"'He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man
+deserved less at her hands.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.
+
+    It was the season when through all the land
+      The merle and mavis build, and building sing
+    Those lovely lyrics written by His hand
+      Whom Saxon Caedmon calls the Blithe-Heart King,--
+    When on the boughs the purple buds expand,
+      The banners of the vanguard of the Spring,
+    And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap,
+      And wave their fluttering signals from the steep.
+
+    The robin and the bluebird, piping loud,
+      Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee;
+    The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud
+      Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;
+    And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd,
+      Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,
+    Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said,
+      "Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bread!"
+
+    Across the Sound the birds of passage sailed,
+      Speaking some unknown language strange and sweet
+    Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed
+      The village with the cheers of all their fleet,--
+    Or, quarrelling together, laughed and railed
+      Like foreign sailors landed in the street
+    Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise
+      Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and boys.
+
+    Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth,
+      In fabulous days, some hundred years ago;
+    And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth,
+      Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow,
+    That mingled with the universal mirth,
+      Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe:
+    They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words
+      To swift destruction the whole race of birds.
+
+    And a town-meeting was convened straightway
+      To set a price upon the guilty heads
+    Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay,
+      Levied black-mail upon the garden-beds
+    And cornfields, and beheld without dismay
+      The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering shreds,--
+    The skeleton that waited at their feast,
+      Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased.
+
+    Then from his house, a temple painted white,
+      With fluted columns, and a roof of red,
+    The Squire came forth,--august and splendid sight!--
+      Slowly descending, with majestic tread,
+    Three flights of steps, nor looking left nor right;
+      Down the long street he walked, as one who said,
+    "A town that boasts inhabitants like me
+      Can have no lack of good society!"
+
+    The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere,
+      The instinct of whose nature was to kill;
+    The wrath of God he preached from year to year,
+      And read with fervor Edwards on the Will;
+    His favorite pastime was to slay the deer
+      In Summer on some Adirondack hill;
+    E'en now, while walking down the rural lane,
+      He lopped the way-side lilies with his cane.
+
+    From the Academy, whose belfry crowned
+      The hill of Science with its vane of brass,
+    Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round,
+      Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass,
+    And all absorbed in reveries profound
+      Of fair Almira in the upper class,
+    Who was, as in a sonnet he had said,
+      As pure as water, and as good as bread.
+
+    And next the Deacon issued from his door,
+      In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as snow;
+    A suit of sable bombazine he wore;
+      His form was ponderous, and his step was slow;
+    There never was so wise a man before;
+      He seemed the incarnate "Well, I told you so!"
+    And to perpetuate his great renown,
+      There was a street named after him in town.
+
+    These came together in the new town-hall,
+      With sundry farmers from the region round;
+    The Squire presided, dignified and tall,
+      His air impressive and his reasoning sound.
+    Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small;
+      Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found,
+    But enemies enough, who every one
+      Charged them with all the crimes beneath the sun.
+
+    When they had ended, from his place apart,
+      Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong,
+    And, trembling like a steed before the start,
+      Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng;
+    Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart
+      To speak out what was in him, clear and strong,
+    Alike regardless of their smile or frown,
+      And quite determined not to be laughed down.
+
+    "Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,
+      From his Republic banished without pity
+    The Poets; in this little town of yours,
+      You put to death, by means of a Committee,
+    The ballad-singers and the Troubadours,
+      The street-musicians of the heavenly city,
+    The birds, who make sweet music for us all
+      In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.
+
+    "The thrush, that carols at the dawn of day
+      From the green steeples of the piny wood;
+    The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay,
+      Jargoning like a foreigner at his food;
+    The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray,
+      Flooding with melody the neighborhood;
+    Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng
+      That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song.
+
+    "You slay them all! and wherefore? For the gain
+      Of a scant handful more or less of wheat,
+    Or rye, or barley, or some other grain,
+      Scratched up at random by industrious feet
+    Searching for worm or weevil after rain,
+      Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet
+    As are the songs these uninvited guests
+      Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts.
+
+    "Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?
+      Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught
+    The dialect they speak, where melodies
+      Alone are the interpreters of thought?
+    Whose household words are songs in many keys,
+      Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!
+    Whose habitations in the tree-tops even
+      Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!
+
+    "Think, every morning when the sun peeps through
+      The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove,
+    How jubilant the happy birds renew
+      Their old melodious madrigals of love!
+    And when you think of this, remember, too,
+      'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
+    The awakening continents, from shore to shore,
+      Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.
+
+    "Think of your woods and orchards without birds!
+      Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams,
+    As in an idiot's brain remembered words
+      Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!
+    Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds
+      Make up for the lost music, when your teams
+    Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more
+      The feathered gleaners follow to your door?
+
+    "What! would you rather see the incessant stir
+      Of insects in the windrows of the hay,
+    And hear the locust and the grasshopper
+      Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play?
+    Is this more pleasant to you than the whirr
+      Of meadow-lark, and its sweet roundelay,
+    Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take
+      Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake?
+
+    "You call them thieves and pillagers; but know
+      They are the winged wardens of your farms,
+    Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,
+      And from your harvests keep a hundred harms;
+    Even the blackest of them all, the crow,
+      Renders good service as your man-at-arms,
+    Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
+      And crying havoc on the slug and snail.
+
+    "How can I teach your children gentleness,
+      And mercy to the weak, and reverence
+    For Life, which, in its weakness or excess,
+      Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence,
+    Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less
+      The self-same light, although averted hence,
+    When by your laws, your actions, and your speech,
+      You contradict the very things I teach?"
+
+    With this he closed; and through the audience went
+      A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves;
+    The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent
+      Their yellow heads together like their sheaves:
+    Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment
+      Who put their trust in bullocks and in beeves.
+    The birds were doomed; and, as the record shows,
+      A bounty offered for the heads of crows.
+
+    There was another audience out of reach,
+      Who had no voice nor vote in making laws,
+    But in the papers read his little speech,
+      And crowned his modest temples with applause;
+    They made him conscious, each one more than each,
+      He still was victor, vanquished in their cause:
+    Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee,
+      O fair Almira at the Academy!
+
+    And so the dreadful massacre began;
+      O'er fields and orchards, and o'er woodland crests,
+    The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran.
+      Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts,
+    Or wounded crept away from sight of man,
+      While the young died of famine in their nests:
+    A slaughter to be told in groans, not words,
+      The very St. Bartholomew of Birds!
+
+    The Summer came, and all the birds were dead;
+      The days were like hot coals; the very ground
+    Was burned to ashes; in the orchards fed
+      Myriads of caterpillars, and around
+    The cultivated fields and garden-beds
+      Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found
+    No foe to check their march, till they had made
+      The land a desert without leaf or shade.
+
+    Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town,
+      Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly
+    Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down
+      The canker-worms upon the passers-by,--
+    Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown,
+      Who shook them off with just a little cry;
+    They were the terror of each favorite walk,
+      The endless theme of all the village-talk.
+
+    The farmers grew impatient, but a few
+      Confessed their error, and would not complain;
+    For, after all, the best thing one can do,
+      When it is raining, is to let it rain.
+    Then they repealed the law, although they knew
+      It would not call the dead to life again;
+    As school-boys, finding their mistake too late,
+      Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate.
+
+    That year in Killingworth the Autumn came
+      Without the light of his majestic look,
+    The wonder of the falling tongues of flame,
+      The illumined pages of his Doom's-Day Book.
+    A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame,
+      And drowned themselves despairing in the brook,
+    While the wild wind went moaning everywhere,
+      Lamenting the dead children of the air.
+
+    But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen,
+      A sight that never yet by bard was sung,--
+    As great a wonder as it would have been,
+      If some dumb animal had found a tongue:
+    A wagon, overarched with evergreen,
+      Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung,
+    All full of singing-birds, came down the street,
+      Filling the air with music wild and sweet.
+
+    From all the country round these birds were brought,
+      By order of the town, with anxious quest,
+    And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought
+      In woods and fields the places they loved best,
+    Singing loud canticles, which many thought
+      Were satires to the authorities addressed,
+    While others, listening in green lanes, averred
+      Such lovely music never had been heard.
+
+    But blither still and louder carolled they
+      Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know
+    It was the fair Almira's wedding-day,
+      And everywhere, around, above, below,
+    When the Preceptor bore his bride away,
+      Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow,
+    And a new heaven bent over a new earth
+      Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LITERARY LIFE IN PARIS.
+
+THE GARRET.
+
+
+Would you know something of the way in which men live in Paris? Would
+you penetrate a little beneath the brilliant, glossy epidermis of the
+French capital? Would you know other shadows and other sights than those
+you find in "Galignani's Messenger" under the rubric, "Stranger's
+Diary"? Listen to us. We hope to be brief. We hope to succeed in
+tangling your interest. We don't hope to make you merry,--oh, no, no,
+no! we don't hope that! Life isn't a merry thing anywhere,--least of all
+in Paris; for, look you, in modern Babylon there are so many calls for
+money, (which Southey called "a huge evil" everywhere,) there are so
+many temptations to expense, one has to keep a most cool head and a most
+silent heart to live in Paris and to avoid debt. Few are able
+successfully to achieve this charmed life. The Duke of Wellington, who
+was in debt but twice in his life,--first, when he became of age, and,
+like all young men, _felt_ his name by indorsing it on negotiable paper,
+and placing it in a tradesman's book; secondly, when he lived in Paris,
+master of all France by consent of Europe,--the Duke of Wellington
+involved himself in debt in Paris to the amount of a million of dollars.
+Bluecher actually ruined himself in the city he conquered. The last heir
+to the glorious name and princely estates of Von Kaunitz lost everything
+he possessed, even his dignity, in a few years of life in Paris. Judge
+of the resistless force and fury of the great maelstroem!
+
+And I hope, after you have measured some degree of its force and of its
+fury by these illustrious examples, that you may be softened into
+something like pity and terror, when I tell you how a poor fellow, who
+had no name but that he made with his pen, who commanded no money save
+only that he obtained by transmuting ink and paper into gold, strove
+against it with various success, and often was vanquished. You will not
+judge him too harshly, will you? You will not be the first to throw a
+stone at him, neither will you add your stone, to those that may be
+thrown at him: hands enough are raised against him! We do not
+altogether absolve him for many a shortcoming; but we crave permission
+to keep our censure and our sighs for our study. Permit us to forbear
+arraigning him at the public bar. He is dead,--and everybody respects
+the dead, except profligate editors, prostitutes, and political
+clergymen. Besides, his life was such a hard one,--so full of clouds,
+with so few gleams of sunshine,--so agitated by storm,--so bereaved of
+halcyon days,--'twould be most cruel to deny him the grave's dearest
+privilege, peace and quiet. Amen! Amen! with all my heart to thy
+benediction and prayer, O priest! as, aspersing his lifeless remains
+with holy-water, thou sayest, _Requiescat!_ So mote it be! _Requiescat!
+Requiescat! Requiescat in pace!_
+
+Approach, then, reader, with softest step, and we will, in lowest
+whispers, pour into your ear the story of the battle of life as 'tis
+fought in Paris. We will show you the fever and the heartache, the
+corroding care and the panting labor which oppress life in Paris. Then
+will you say, No wonder they all die of a shattered heart or consumed
+brain at Paris! No wonder De Balzac died of heart-disease! No wonder
+Frederic Soulie's heart burst! No wonder Bruffault went crazy, and
+Eugene Sue's heart collapsed, and Malitourne lives at the mad-house! It
+is killing!
+
+We will show you this life, not by didactic description, but by example,
+by telling you the story of one who lived this life. He was born in the
+lowest social station, he battled against every disadvantage, the
+hospital was his sick-chamber, his funeral was at the Government's
+expense, and everybody eminent in literature and art followed his
+remains to the grave, over which, after a proper interval of time, a
+monument was erected by public subscription to his memory. His father
+was a porter at the door of one of the houses in the Rue des Trois
+Freres. He added the tailor's trade to his poorly paid occupation. A
+native of Savoy, he possessed the mountaineer's taciturnity and love of
+home. War carried him to Paris. The rigors of conscription threw him
+into the ranks of the army; and when the first Empire fell, the child of
+Savoy made Paris his home, married a young seamstress, and obtained the
+lodge of house No. 5 Rue des Trois Freres. This marriage gave to French
+letters Henry Murger. It had no other issue.
+
+Henry Murger was born March 24th, 1822. His earlier years seemed likely
+to be his last; he was never well; his mother gave many a tear and many
+a vigil to the sickly child she thought every week she must lose. To
+guard his days, she placed him, to gratify a Romish superstition, under
+the special protection of the Blessed Virgin, and in accordance with
+custom clad him in the Madonna's livery of blue. His costume of a blue
+smock, blue pantaloons, and a blue cap procured for him the name of
+_Bleuet_, or, as we should perhaps say, Blueling, if indeed we may coin
+for the occasion one of those familiar, affectionate diminutives, so
+common in the Italian, rarer in the French, and almost unknown in our
+masculine tongue. An only child, and an invalid, poor Bleuet was of
+course a spoiled child, his mother's darling and pet. His wishes, his
+sick-child's caprices were her law, and she gratified them at the cost
+of many a secret privation. She seemed to know--maternal love hath often
+the faculty of second-sight--that her poor boy, though only the child of
+the humblest parentage, was destined to rise one day far above the
+station in which he was born. She attired him better than children of
+his class commonly dressed. She polished his manners as much as she
+could,--and 'twas much, for women, even of the lowest classes, have
+gentle tastes and delicacy. She could not bear to think that her darling
+should one day sit cross-legged on the paternal bench, and ply needle
+and scissors. She breathed her own aspirations into the boy's ears, and
+filled his mind with them. O mothers, ye do make us what ye please! Your
+tears and caresses are the rain and the sun that mature the seed which
+time and the accidents of life sow in our tender minds! She filled him
+with pride,--which is a cardinal virtue, let theologians say what they
+will,--and kept him aloof from the little blackguards who toss and
+tumble over the curb-stones, losing that dignity which is man's
+chastity, and removing one barrier between them and crime.
+
+He was, even in his earlier years, exquisitely sensitive. La Blache, the
+famous singer, occupied a suite of rooms in the house of which his
+father was porter. One day La Blache's daughter, (now Madame Thalberg,)
+who was confined to her rooms by a fall which had dislocated her ankle,
+sent for the sprightly lad. He was in love with her, just as boys will
+adore a pretty face without counting years or differences of position
+(at that happy age a statesman and a stage-driver seem equal,--if,
+indeed, the latter does not appear to occupy the more enviable position
+in life). He dressed himself with all the elegance he could command, and
+obeyed Mademoiselle La Blache's summons, building all sorts of castles
+in the air as he arranged his toilet and while he was climbing the
+staircase. His affected airs were so laughable, she told him in a
+mock-heroic manner what she wished of him, and probably with something
+of that paternal talent which had shaken so many opera-houses with
+applause:--"I have sent for you to teach me the song I hear you sing
+every day." This downfall from his castles in the air, and her manner,
+brought blushes to his cheek and flames to his eyes, which amused her
+all the more; so she went on,--"Oh, don't be afraid! I will pay--two
+ginger-cakes a lesson." So sensitive was the child's nature, this
+innocent pleasantry wounded him with such pain, that he fell on the
+carpet sobbing and with nerves all jangled. How the pangs poverty
+attracts must have wrung him!--But let us not anticipate the course of
+events.
+
+As he advanced in life he outgrew his disease, and became a
+chubby-cheeked boy, health's own picture. He was the favorite of the
+neighborhood, his mother's pride, and the source of many a heartache to
+her; for, as he grew towards manhood, his father insisted every day more
+strenuously that he should learn some trade. His poor mother obstinately
+opposed this scheme. Many were the boisterous quarrels on this subject
+the boy witnessed, sobbing between his parents; for his father was a
+rough, ill-bred mountaineer, who had reached Paris through the barrack
+and the battle-field, neither of which tends to smooth the asperities of
+character. The woman was tenacious; for what will not a mother's heart
+brave? what will it not endure? Those natures which are gentle as water
+are yet deep and changeless as the ocean. Of course the wife carried her
+point. Who can resist a mother struggling for her son? The boy was
+placed as copying-clerk in an attorney's office. All the world over, the
+law is the highway to literature. The lad, however, was uneducated; he
+wrote well, and this was enough to enable him to copy the law-papers of
+the office, but he was ignorant of the first elements of grammar, and
+his language, although far better than that of the lads of his class in
+life, was shocking to polite ears. It could not well be otherwise, as
+his only school was a petty public primary school, and he was but
+fourteen years old when his father ordered him to begin to earn his
+daily bread. But he was not only endowed with a literary instinct, he
+had, too, that obstinate perseverance which would, as one of his friends
+said of him, "have enabled him to learn to read by looking at the signs
+in the streets, and to cipher by glancing at the numbers on the houses."
+
+Murger always attributed a great deal of influence upon his life to the
+accident which had given his father artists for tenants. Not only La
+Blache, but Garcia and his incomparable daughters, Marie Malibran and
+Pauline Viardot, and, after they left, Baroilhet, the opera-singer, had
+rooms in the house. The handsome boy was constantly with them, and this
+early and long and intimate association with Art gave him elegance and
+grace and vivacity. The seeds sown during such intercourse may for years
+lie buried beneath the cares and thoughts of a laborious life, and yet
+grow and bring forth fruit as soon as a more propitious atmosphere
+environs them. Comrades in the office where he wrote likewise had
+influence upon his career. He found among the clerks two brothers,
+Pierre and Emile Bisson, gentlemen who have now attained reputation by
+their admirable photographic landscapes, especially of Alpine scenery.
+They were then as poor and as uneducated as Henry Murger. They lived in
+a house inhabited by several painters, from whom they caught a love and
+some knowledge of Art. They communicated the contagion to their new
+comrade, and the moment office-hours were over all three hastened, as
+fast as they could go, to the nearest public drawing-school. All three
+aspired to the fame of Rubens and of Paul Veronese. Murger had no talent
+for painting. One day, after he had been guilty of some pictures which
+are said to be--for they are still in existence--enough to make the hair
+of a connoisseur of painting stand on end, Pierre Bisson said to him,
+"Throw away the pencil, Murger; you will never make a painter." Murger
+accepted the decree without appeal. He felt that painting was not _in
+him_.[B] He took up the pen and wrote poetry. There is nothing equal to
+the foolhardiness of youth. It grapples with the most difficult
+subjects, and _knows_ it can master them. As all of Murger's friends
+were painters, except his father and mother, and they were illiterate,
+his insane prose seemed as fine poetry as was ever written, because it
+turned somersets on feet. Nobody noticed whether it was on five or six
+or fifteen feet. His father, however, had heard what a dangerous disease
+of the purse poetry was, and forbade his son from trying to catch
+it,--vowing, that, if he heard again of its continued pursuit, he would
+immediately make a tailor of him. Of course, the threat did not deter
+Murger from the chase; but instead of pursuing it openly, he pursued it
+by stealth. The sportsman became a poacher. Pierre and Emile Bisson
+quitted the attorney's office and opened a studio: they were painters
+now. Henry Murger managed to filch an hour every day from the time
+allotted to the errands of the office about Paris to spend in the studio
+of his friends, where he would write his poetry and hide his
+manuscripts. Here he made the acquaintance of artists and literary young
+men as unfledged as himself, but who possessed the advantages of a
+regular scholastic education. They taught him the rules of prosody and
+the exercises proper to overcome the mere mechanical difficulties of
+versification. This society made Murger more than ever ambitious; a
+secret instinct told him that the pen was the arm with which he would
+win fame and fortune. He determined to abandon the law-office.
+
+His father was furious enough at this resolution, and more than one
+painful scene took place between them. The boy was within an ace of
+bring kicked out of doors, when his troubles reached the ears of a
+literary tenant of the house: this was no other than Monsieur de Jouy, a
+member of the French Academy, and quite famous in his day for "L'Ermite
+de la Chaussee d'Antin," and a tragedy, "Sylla," which Talma's genius
+threw such beams upon as made it radiant, and for an imprisonment for
+political offences, a condiment without which French reputations seem to
+lack savor. Heaven knows what would have become of the poor boy but for
+this intervention, as his mother was dead and he was all friendless.
+Monsieur de Jouy procured him the place of private secretary to Count
+Tolstoy, a Russian nobleman established by the Czar in Paris as his
+political correspondent. The salary given was meagre enough, but in this
+world all things have a relative as well as an intrinsic value, and
+eight dollars a month seemed to the poor lad, who had never yet earned
+a cent, a fragment of El Dorado or of Peru. It gave him independence.
+His contemporaries have described him as gay, free, easy, and happy at
+this period. He had ceased to be dependent upon anybody; he lived upon
+his own earnings; he was in the full bloom of health and youth; and the
+horizon before him, even though clouded, wore all the colors of the
+rainbow. His father gave him a garret in the house, and continued to
+allow him a seat at the table, but he made young Murger give him six of
+the eight dollars earned. The rest of his salary was spent among the
+boxes of books which line the parapet of the Paris quays,--a sort of
+literary Morgue or dead-house, where the still-born and deceased
+children of the press are exhibited, to challenge the pity of
+passers-by, and so escape the corner grocer and the neighboring
+trunk-maker. Here Murger purchased all the volumes of new poems he could
+discover. When his friends jested him upon his wasteful extravagance in
+buying verse good for nothing but to cheapen the value of the paper on
+which it was printed, he replied, that a poet should keep himself
+informed of the progress of Art. He has since confessed that his object
+in buying this trash was simply to compare his efforts with those which
+had been deemed worthy to see print. His ambition then was to be pale,
+consumptive, to drink the dregs of poverty's poisoned chalice, and to
+toss on a hospital-bed. He found it hard work to gratify these desires.
+His plethoric person, his rubicund cheeks and high health, gave him much
+more the appearance of a jovial monk of Bolton Abbey than of a Werther
+or a Chatterton or a Lara. But as he was determined to look the poet of
+the Byron school, for a fortnight he followed a regimen "which would
+have given phthisis to Mount Atlas"; he studied in some medical treatise
+the symptoms of the consumption, and, after wading through thirty miles
+of the mud and mire to be found in the environs of Paris, drenched to
+the skin by an autumnal rain, he went to the hospital and was admitted.
+He was delighted. He instantly wrote an ode to "Hallowed Misery," dated
+from the "House of Woe," sent it off to the Atlantic Monthly of Paris,
+and lay in bed dreaming he should find himself famous next morning, and
+receive the visits of all Paris, from Monsieur Guizot, then
+Prime-Minister, to the most callous poetaster of the Latin Quarter, and
+be besieged by every publisher, armed with bags full of money. He woke
+the next morning to find himself in perfect health, and to hear the
+physician order him to clear out of the hospital. He had no news from
+the magazine nor from Monsieur Guizot.
+
+'Tis ill playing with edge-tools! The hospital is not to be coquetted
+with. There is no such thing as romping with misery. One might as well
+amuse himself toying with the rattlesnake or playing with fluoric acid.
+Wait a moment, and the hospital will reappear in the story of his life,
+sombre, pitiless, fatal, as it is in reality. A little patience, and
+misery will come, in its gaunt, wolf-like shape, to harry and to harass.
+Play not with fire!
+
+Distress soon came. The young poet fell into bad company. He came home
+late one night. His father scolded: 'tis a porter's infirmity to fret at
+late-comers. Another night he came home later. The scolding became a
+philippic. Again he did not come home at all. His father ordered him
+never more to darken his doors. Murger took him at his word, and went to
+share a friend's bed in another garret. The friend was little better off
+in worldly goods; he lived in a chamber for which he paid twenty dollars
+a year, and which was furnished "with one of those lots of furniture
+which are the terror of landlords, especially when quarter-day comes."
+Murger now began to know what it was to be poor, to go to bed without
+having tasted a morsel of food the whole day, to be dressed ludicrously
+shabby. He had never before known these horrors of poverty; for under
+his father's roof the meals, though humble, were always regularly
+served, and quarter-day never came. As eight dollars,--less by a great
+deal than an ordinary servant earns by sweeping rooms and washing
+dishes, besides being fed and lodged,--which Count Tolstoy gave his
+secretary, was not enough to enable Murger to live, he tried to add
+something to his income by his pen. He wrote petty tales for children's
+magazines, and exerted himself to gain admission into other and more
+profitable periodicals, but for a long time without success. Many and
+many a sheet must be blotted before the apprentice-writer can merit even
+the lowest honors of print: can it be called an honor to see printed
+lines forgotten before the book is closed? Yet even this dubious honor
+cannot be won until after days and nights have been given to literary
+composition.
+
+Murger was for some time uncertain what course to adopt. His father sent
+him word that the best thing he could do would be to get the place of
+body-servant to some gentleman or of waiter in some _cafe_! He himself
+half determined, in his hours of depression, when despair was his only
+hope, to ship as a sailor on board some man-of-war. He would at other
+times return to his first love, and vow he would be a painter; then
+music would solicit him; medicine next, and then surgery would tangle
+his eyes. These excursions, which commonly lasted three months each,
+were not fruitless; they increased his stock of information, and
+supplied him with some of his most striking images. He became joyous
+about this period, and his hilarity _broke out_ all at once. One night
+Count Tolstoy had ordered Murger to color several thousand strategic
+maps, and, after he had postponed the labor repeatedly, he asked several
+of his friends to aid him. They sat up all night. He suddenly became
+very gay, and told story after story in a most vivid and humorous
+manner. His friends roared with laughter, and one of them begged him to
+abandon poetry and become a prose-writer, predicting for him a most
+brilliant career. But poetry has its peculiar fascinations, and is not
+relinquished without painful throes. Murger refused to cease versifying.
+
+He had pernicious habits of labor. He never rose until three o'clock in
+the afternoon, and never began to write until after the lamp was
+lighted. He wrote until daybreak. If sleep came, if inspiration lagged,
+he would resort to coffee, and drink it in enormous quantities. One may
+turn night into day without great danger, upon condition of leading a
+temperate and regular life; for Nature has wonderful power of adapting
+herself to all circumstances, upon condition that irregularity itself he
+regular in its irregularity. He fell into this habit from poverty. He
+was too poor to buy fuel and comfortable clothes, so he lay in bed to
+keep warm; he worked in bed,--reading, writing, correcting, buried under
+the comfortable bedclothes. He would sometimes drink "as many as six
+ounces of coffee." "I am literally killing myself," he said. "You must
+care me of drinking coffee; I reckon upon you." His room-mate suggested
+to him that they should close the windows, draw the curtains, and light
+the lamp in the daytime, to deceive habit by counterfeiting night. They
+made the attempt in vain. The roar of a great city penetrates through
+wall and curtain. They could not work. Inspiration ceased to flow.
+Murger returned to his protracted vigils, and to the stimulus of coffee,
+and never more attempted to break away from them. This sort of life, his
+frequent privations, his innumerable disappointments, drove him in good
+earnest to the hospital. He announces it in this way to a friend:--
+
+    "_Hospital Saint Louis, 23 May, 1842_.
+
+    "MY DEAR FRIEND,--Here I am again at the hospital. Two days after
+    I sent you my last letter I woke up feeling as if my whole body
+    were on fire. I felt as if I were enveloped in flames. I was
+    literally burning. I lighted my candle, and was alarmed by the
+    spectacle my poor self presented. I was red from my feet to my
+    head,--as red as a boiled lobster, neither more nor less. So I
+    went to the hospital this morning, as early as I could go, and
+    here I am,--Henry IV.'s ward, bed No. 10. The doctors were
+    astonished at my case; they say it is _purpura_. I should say it
+    was! The purple of the Roman emperors was not, I am very sure, as
+    purple as my envelope.... My disease is now in a stage of
+    reaction, and the doctors do not know what to do, I cannot walk
+    thirty paces without stumbling. I have thousands of trumpets
+    blowing flourishes in my ears. I have been bled, re-bled,
+    mustard-plastered, all in vain. I have swallowed down my poor
+    throat more arsenic than any three melodramatists of the
+    Boulevards. I do not know how all this is going to end. The
+    physician tells me that he will cure me, but that it will take
+    time. To-day they are going to put all sorts of things on my body,
+    and among them leeches to remove my giddiness.... I am greatly
+    fatigued by my life here, and I pass some; very gloomy days,--and
+    they are the gloomier, because there is not a single day but I see
+    in the ward next to mine men die thick as flies. A hospital may be
+    very poetical, but it is, too, a sad, sad place."
+
+Many and many a time afterwards did he return to the hospital, all sad
+as it was. His garret was sadder in _purpura's_ hour. Want had taken up
+its abode with him. He wanted bread often. His clothes went and came
+with painful regularity from his back to the pawnbroker's. His father
+refused to do anything for him. "He saw me without bread to put in my
+mouth, and offered me not a crumb, although he had money belonging to me
+in his hands. He saw me in boots full of holes, and gave me to
+understand that I was not to come to see him in such plight." Such was
+the poor fellow's distress, that he was almost glad when the _purpura_,
+with its intolerable pains, returned, that he might crawl to the
+hospital, where he could say, that, "bad as the hospital-fare is, it is
+at least certain, and is, after all, ten times better than that I am
+able to earn. I can eat as many as two or three plates of soup, but then
+I am obliged to change my costume to do so, for it is only by cheating
+that one can get it." But all the time he was in the hospital he was
+tormented by the fear that he would lose during his absence his wretched
+place as Count Tolstoy's secretary, and which, wretched as it was,
+nevertheless was something,--was as a plank in the great ocean to one
+who, it gone, saw nothing but water around him, and he no swimmer. He
+did lose the situation, because one day he stayed at home to finish a
+poem, instead of appearing at his desk. The misfortune came at the worst
+possible time. It came when he owed two quarters' rent, fifteen dollars,
+to his landlord, and ten dollars to other people. "I am half dead of
+hunger. I am at the end of the rope. I must get a place somewhere, or
+blow my brains out." The mental anguish and physical privation brought
+back the _purpura_. He went to the hospital,--for the fifth time in
+eleven months and seven days,--all his furniture was sold for rent, and
+he knew not where he was to go when he quitted the hospital. Yet he did
+not give up in despair. "Notwithstanding all this, I declare to you, my
+dear friend," he wrote, "that, when I feel somewhat satisfied with what
+I have written, I am ready to clap my hands at life.... Everything is
+against me, and yet I shall none the less remain in the arena. The wild
+beasts may devour me: so be it!"
+
+After leaving the hospital, he formed the acquaintance of Monsieur Jules
+Fleury, or, as he is better known to the world of letters, Monsieur
+Champfleury,--for, with that license the French take with their names,
+so this rising novelist styles himself. This acquaintance was of great
+advantage to Henry Murger. Monsieur Champfleury was a young man of
+energy and will, who took a practical view of life, and believed that a
+pen could in good hands earn bread as well as a yardstick, and command,
+what the latter cannot hope, fame. He believed that independence was
+the first duty of a literary man, and that true dignity consists in
+diligent labor rather than in indolent railing at fate and the scoffings
+of "uncomprehended" genius. Monsieur Champfleury was no poet. He
+detested poetry, and his accurate perception of the world showed him
+that poetry is a good deal like paper money, which depends for its
+current value rather upon the credit possessed by the issuer than upon
+its own intrinsic value. He pressed Murger to abandon poetry and take to
+prose. He was successful, and Murger labored to acquire bread and
+reputation by his prose-compositions. He practised his hand in writing
+vaudevilles, dramas, tales, and novels, and abandoned poetry until
+better days, when his life should have a little more silk and a little
+more gold woven into its woof. But the hours of literary apprenticeship
+even of prose-writers are long and arduous, especially to those whose
+only patrimony is their shadow in the sun. Monsieur Champfleury has
+given in one of his works an interesting picture of their life in
+common. We translate the painful narration:--
+
+    "T'other evening I was sitting in my chimney-corner looking over a
+    mountain of papers, notes, unfinished articles, and fine novels
+    begun, but which will never have an end. I discovered amid my
+    landlords' receipts for house-rent (all of which I keep with great
+    care, just to prove to myself that they are really and truly paid)
+    a little copy-book, which was narrow and long, like some mediaeval
+    piece of sculpture. I opened this little blue-backed copy-book; it
+    bore the title, ACCOUNT-BOOK. How many memories were contained in
+    this little copy-book! What a happy life is literary life, seen
+    after a lapse of five or six years! I could not sleep for thinking
+    of that little copy-book, so I rose and sat down at my table to
+    discharge on these sheets all the delightful blue-backed copy-book
+    memories which haunted my head. Were any stranger to pick up this
+    little copy-book in the street, he would think it belonged to some
+    poor, honest family. I dare say you have forgotten the little
+    copy-book, although three-fourths of its manuscript is in your
+    hand-writing. I am going to recall its origin to you.
+
+    "Nine years ago we lived together, and we possessed between us
+    fourteen dollars a month. Full of confidence in the future, we
+    rented two rooms in the Rue de Vaugirard for sixty dollars a year.
+    Youth reckons not. You spoke to the porter's wife of such a
+    sumptuous set of furniture that she let the rooms to you on your
+    honest face without asking references. Poor woman, what thrills of
+    horror ran through her when she saw our furniture set down before
+    her door! You had six plates, three of which were of porcelain, a
+    Shakspeare, the works of Victor Hugo, a chest of drawers in its
+    dotage, and a Phrygian cap. By some extraordinary chance, I had
+    two mattresses, a hundred and fifty volumes, an arm-chair, two
+    plain chairs, a table, and a skull. The idea of making a grand
+    sofa belongs to you, I confess; but it was a deplorable idea. We
+    sawed off the four feet of a cot-bedstead and made it rest on the
+    floor; the consequence of which was, that the cot-bedstead proved
+    to be utterly worthless. The porter's wife took pity upon us, and
+    lent us a second cot-bedstead, which 'furnished' your chamber,
+    which was likewise adorned with several dusty souvenirs you hung
+    on the wall, such as a woman's glove, a velvet mask, and various
+    other objects which love had hallowed.
+
+    "The first week passed away in the most delightful manner. We
+    stayed at home, we worked hard, we smoked a great deal. I have
+    found among this mountain of papers a blank sheet on which is
+    written,--
+
+          Beatrix,
+          A Drama in Five Acts,
+          By Henry Murger,
+          Played at the ---- Theatre on the ---- day of 18--.
+
+    This sheet was torn out of an enormous blank copy-book; for you
+    were guilty of the execrable habit of using all our paper to write
+    nothing else but titles of dramas; you wrote 'Played' as seriously
+    as could be, just to see what effect the title-page would produce.
+    Our paper disappeared too fast in this way. Luckily, when all of
+    it had disappeared, you discovered, Heaven knows where or how,
+    some old atlas of geography whose alternate leaves were blank,--a
+    discovery which enabled us to do without the stationer.
+
+    "Hard times began to press after the first week flew away. We had
+    a long discussion, in which each hurled at the other reproaches on
+    the spendthrift prodigality with which we threw away our money.
+    The discussion ended in our agreeing, that, the moment the next
+    instalment of our income should be received, I should keep a
+    severe account of our expenses, in order that no more quarrels
+    should disturb the harmony of our household, each of us taking
+    care every day to examine the accounts. This is the little book I
+    have found. How simple, how touching, how laconic, how full of
+    souvenirs it is!
+
+    "We were wonderfully honest on the first of every month. I read at
+    the date of November 1st, 1843, 'Paid Madame Bastien forty cents
+    for tobacco due.' We paid, too, the grocer, the restaurant, (I
+    declare there is 'restaurant' on the book!) the coal-dealer, etc.
+    The first day of this month was a merry day, I see: 'Spent at the
+    _cafe_ seven cents'; a piece of extravagance for which I am sure
+    you must have scolded me that evening. The same day you bought
+    (the sight still makes me tremble!) thirteen cents' worth of
+    pipes. The second of November we bought twenty-two cents' worth of
+    ribbon: this enormous quantity of ribbon was purchased to give the
+    last touches to our famous sofa. Our sofa's history would fill
+    volumes. It did us yeoman's service. My pallet on the floor,
+    formed of one single mattress and sheets without counterpane, made
+    a poor show in our 'drawing-room,' especially as a
+    restaurant-keeper lived in our house, and you pretended, that, if
+    we made him bring our meals up to our 'drawing-room,' he would be
+    so dazzled by our splendor he could not refuse us credit. I
+    demurred, that the odd appearance of my pallet had nothing capable
+    of fascinating a tradesman's eye; whereupon we agreed that we
+    would spread over it a piece of violet silk which came, Heaven
+    knows where from; but, unfortunately, the silk was not large
+    enough by one-third. After long reflection we thought the library
+    might be turned to some account: the quarto volumes of Shakspeare,
+    thrown with cunning negligence on the pallet, hid the narrowness
+    of the silk, and concealed the sheets from every eye. We managed
+    in this way to contrive a sofa. I may add, that the keeper of the
+    restaurant dedicated to the 'Guardian Angel,' who had no customers
+    except hack-drivers and bricklayers, was caught by our innocent
+    intrigues. On this same second of November we paid an immense sum
+    of money to the laundress,--one whole dollar. I crossed the Pont
+    des Arts, proud as a member of the Institute, and entered with a
+    stiff upper-lip the Cafe Momus. You remember this beneficent
+    establishment, which we discovered, gave half a cup of coffee for
+    five cents, until bread rose, when the price went up to six cents,
+    a measure which so discontented many of the frequenters that they
+    carried their custom elsewhere. I passed the evening at Laurent's
+    room. I must have been seized with vertigo,--for I actually lost
+    ten cents at _ecarte_, ten cents which we had appropriated to the
+    purchase of roasted chestnuts. Poor Laurent, who was such a
+    democrat, who used to go 'at the head of the schools' to see
+    Beranger, is dead and gone now! His poems were too revolutionary
+    for this world.
+
+    "You resolved on the third of November that we would cook our own
+    victuals as long as the fourteen dollars lasted; so you bought a
+    soup-pot which cost fifteen cents, some thyme and some laurel:
+    being a poet, you had such a marked weakness for laurel, you used
+    to poison all the soup with it. We laid in a supply of potatoes,
+    and constantly bought tobacco, coffee, and sugar. There was
+    gnashing of teeth and curses when the expenses of the fourth of
+    November were written. Why did you let me go out with my pockets
+    so full of money? And you went to Dagneaux's and spent five cents.
+    What in the name of Heaven could you have gotten at Dagneaux's for
+    five cents?[C] Good me! how expensive are the least pleasures!
+    Upon pretext of going with a free-ticket to see a drama by an
+    inhabitant of Belleville, I bought two omnibus-tickets, one to go
+    and the other to return. Two omnibus-tickets! I was severely
+    punished for this prodigality. Seventy-four cents ran away from
+    me, making their escape through a hole in my pocket. How could I
+    dare to return home and confront your wrath? Two omnibus-tickets
+    alone would have brought a severe admonition on my head; but
+    seventy-four cents with them--! If I had not begun to disarm you
+    by telling you the Belleville drama, I should have been a doomed
+    man. Nevertheless, the next day, without thinking of these
+    terrible losses, we lent G---- money; he really seemed to look
+    upon us as Messrs. Murger and Co., his bankers. I wonder by what
+    insidious means this G---- contrived to captivate our confidence,
+    and the only solution I can discover is the inexperience of giddy
+    youth; for two days afterwards G---- was audacious enough to
+    reappear and to ask for another loan. Nothing new appears on the
+    pages of the book, except fifteen cents for wine: this must have
+    been one of your ideas: I do not mean to say that you were ever a
+    wine-bibber, but we were so accustomed to water, we drank so much
+    water without getting tired of it, that this item, 'wine,' seems
+    very extraordinary to me. We added up every page until the eighth
+    of November, when the sum total reached eight dollars and twelve
+    cents; here the additions ceased. We doubtless were averse to
+    trembling at the sight of the total. The tenth of November, you
+    purchased a thimble: some men have skill enough to mend their
+    clothes at their leisure moments. A few days ago I paid a visit to
+    a charming literary man, who writes articles full of life and wit
+    for the newspapers. I opened the door so suddenly, he blushed as
+    he threw a pair of pantaloons into the corner. He had a thimble on
+    his finger. Ah! wretched cits, who refuse to give your daughters
+    in marriage to literary men, you would be full of admiration for
+    them, could you see them mending their clothes! Smoking-tobacco
+    absorbed more than one-third of our money; we received too many
+    friends, and then there was a celebrated artisan-poet who used to
+    be brought to our rooms, and who used to bawl so many stanzas I
+    would go to bed.
+
+    "Monsieur Credit made his reappearance on the fourteenth of
+    November. He went to the grocer, to the tobacco-shop, to the
+    fuel-dealer, and was received tolerably well; he was especially
+    successful with the grocer's daughter when he appeared in your
+    likeness. Did Monsieur Credit die on the seventeenth of November?
+    I ask, because I see on the 'credit' side of our account-book,
+    'Frock-coat, sixty cents.' These sixty cents came from the
+    pawnbroker's. How his clerks humiliated us! I could make a long
+    and terrible history of our dealings with the pawnbroker; I shall
+    make a short and simple story of it. When money failed us, you
+    pointed out to me an old cashmere shawl which we used as a
+    table-cover. I told you, 'They will give us nothing on that.' You
+    replied, 'Oh, yes, they will, if we add pantaloons and waistcoats
+    to it.' I added pantaloons and waistcoats to it, and you took the
+    bundle and started for the den in Place de la Croix Rouge. You
+    soon came back with the huge package, and you were sad enough as
+    you said, 'They are disagreeable _yonder_; try in the Rue de
+    Conde; the clerks, who are accustomed to deal with students, are
+    not so hard-hearted as they are in the Place de la Croix Rouge.'
+    I went to the Rue de Conde. The two pair of pantaloons, the famous
+    shawl, and the waistcoats were closely examined; even their
+    pockets were searched. 'We cannot lend anything on that,' said the
+    pawnbroker's clerk, disdainfully pushing the things away from him.
+    You had the excellent habit of never despairing. You said, 'We
+    must wait until this evening; at night all clothes are new; and to
+    take every precaution, I shall go to the pawnbroker's shop in the
+    Rue du Fouare, where all the poor go; as they are accustomed there
+    to see nothing pledged but rags and tatters, our clothes will
+    glitter like barbaric pearl and gold.' Alas! the pawnbroker in the
+    Rue du Fouare was as cruel as his brethren. So the next morning in
+    sheer despair I went to pledge my only frock-coat, and I did this
+    to lend half the sum to that incessant borrower, G----. Lastly, on
+    the nineteenth of November, we sold some books. Fortune smiled on
+    us; we had a chicken-soup with a superabundance of laurel. Do you
+    remember an excellent shopkeeper of the Rue du Faubourg Saint
+    Jacques, near the city-gate, who, we were told, not only sold
+    thread, but kept a circulating library? What a circulating library
+    it was! Plays, three odd volumes of Anne Radcliffe's novels,--and
+    if the old lady had never made our acquaintance, the inhabitants
+    of the Faubourg Saint Jacques would never have known of the
+    existence of 'Letters upon Mythology' and 'De Profundis,' two
+    books I was heartless enough to sell, notwithstanding all their
+    titles to my respect. The authors were born in the same
+    neighborhood which gave me birth: one is Desmoustiers, the other
+    Alfred Mousse. Maybe Arsene Houssaye would not be pleased, were I
+    to remind him of one of the _crimes_ of his youth, where one sees
+    for a frontispiece skeletons--'twas the heyday of the Romantic
+    School--playing tenpins with skulls for balls! The sale of 'De
+    Profundis' enabled us to visit Cafe Tabourey that evening. You
+    sold soon afterwards eighty cents' worth of books. Allow me to
+    record that they came from your library; my library remained
+    constantly upon the shelves; notwithstanding all your appeals, I
+    never sold any books, except the lamentable history of Alfred
+    Mousse. Monsieur Credit contrived to go to the tradesmen's with
+    imperturbable coolness; he went everywhere until the first of
+    December, when he paid every cent of debt. I have but one regret,
+    and this is, that the little account-book suddenly ceases after a
+    month; it contains only the month of November. This is not enough!
+    Had I continued it, Its pages would have been so many mementos to
+    recall my past life to me."
+
+Monsieur Champfleury introduced Henry Murger to Monsieur Arsene
+Houssaye, who was then chief editor of "L'Artiste," and it happened
+oddly enough that Murger wrote nothing but poetry for this journal.
+Monsieur Houssaye took a great fancy to Murger, and persuaded him, for
+the sake of "effect" on the title-pages of books and on the backs of
+magazines, to change Henri to Henry, and give Murger a German
+physiognomy by writing it Muerger. As Frenchmen treat their names with as
+much freedom as we use towards old gloves, Murger instantly adopted
+Monsieur Houssaye's suggestion, and clung as long as he lived to the new
+orthography of his name. He began to find it less difficult to procure
+each day his daily bread, but still the gaunt wolf, Poverty, continued
+to glare on him. "Our existence," he said, "is like a ballad which has
+several couplets; sometimes all goes well, at other times all goes
+badly, then worse, next worst, and so on; but the burden never changes;
+'tis always the same,--Misery! Misery! Misery!" One day he became so
+absolutely and hopelessly poor, that he was undecided whether to enlist
+as a sailor or take a clerk's place in the Messrs. de Rothschilds'
+banking-house. He actually did make application to Madame de Rothschild.
+Here is the letter in which he records this application:--
+
+"_15th August, 1844._
+
+"I am delighted to be at last able to write you without being obliged to
+describe wretchedness. Ill-fortune seems to begin to tire of pursuing
+me, and good-fortune appears about to make advances to me. Madame
+Rothschild, to whom I wrote begging her to get her husband to give me a
+situation, informed her correspondent of it, and told him to send for
+and talk with me. I could not obtain a place, but I was offered ten
+dollars rather delicately, and I took it. As soon as I received it, I
+went as fast as I could to put myself in condition to be able to go out
+in broad daylight."
+
+We scarcely know which is the saddest to see: Henry Murger accepting ten
+dollars from Madame de Rothschild's generous privy purse,--for it is
+alms, soften it as you may,--or to observe the happiness this paltry sum
+gives him. How deeply he must have been steeped in poverty!
+
+But now the very worst was over. In 1848 he sent a contribution to "Le
+Corsaire," a petty newspaper of odds and ends, of literature and of
+gossip. The contribution was published. He became attached to the paper.
+In 1849 he began the publication in "Le Corsaire" of the story which was
+to make him famous, "La Vie de Boheme," which was, like all his works,
+something in the nature of an autobiographical sketch. Its wit, its
+sprightly style, its odd images, its odd scenes, its strange mixture of
+gayety and sadness, attracted attention immediately. But who pays
+attention to newspaper-articles? However brilliant and profound they may
+be, they are forgotten quite as soon as read. The best newspaper-writer
+on his most successful day can only hope to be remembered from one
+morning to another; if he commands attention for so long a period, his
+utmost ambition should consider itself satisfied.
+
+It was not until Murger had rescued his book from the columns of the
+newspaper that he obtained reputation. He was indebted to Monsieur Jules
+Janin, the eminent theatrical reporter of the "Journal des Debats," for
+great assistance at this critical hour of his life. One morning Henry
+Murger entered Monsieur Jules Janin's study, carrying under his arm an
+immense bundle of old newspapers, secured by a piece of old twine. He
+asked Monsieur Jules Janin to read the story contained in the old
+newspapers, and to advise him if it was worth republication, and what
+form of publication was best suited to it. As soon as Murger retired,
+Monsieur Jules Janin took up the newspapers. Few bibliopoles in Paris
+are more delicate than Monsieur Janin; it is positive pain to him to
+peruse any volume, unless the margin be broad, the type excellent, the
+printing executed by a famous printer, and the binding redolent of the
+rich perfume of Russian leather. These newspapers were torn and
+tattered, stained with wine and coffee and tobacco. They were not so
+much as in consecutive order. Conceive the irritation they must have
+produced on Monsieur Janin! But when he once got fairly into the story
+he forgot all his delicacy, and when Henry Murger returned, two days
+afterwards, he said to him,--"Sir, go home and write us a comedy with
+Rodolphe and Schaunard and Nini and Musette.[D] It shall be played as
+soon as you have written it; in four-and-twenty hours it will be
+celebrated, and the dramatic reporters will see to the rest." The
+magnificent promises to the poverty-racked man fevered him almost to
+madness; he took up the packet, (which Monsieur Janin had elegantly
+bound with a rose-colored ribbon,) and off he went, without even
+thinking to thank Monsieur Janin for his kindness, or to close the door.
+Murger carried his story to a friend, Theodore Barriere, (since famous
+as a play-writer,) and in three months' time the piece was ready for the
+stage, was soon brought out at the "Varietes," and the names of Murger
+and Barriere were on every lip in Paris.
+
+We have nothing like the French stage in the suddenness and
+extensiveness of the popularity it gives men. We have no means by which
+a gifted man can suddenly acquire universal fame,--can "go to bed
+unknown and wake famous." The most brilliant speech at the bar is heard
+within a narrow horizon. The most brilliant novel is slow in making its
+way; and before its author is famous beyond the shadow of the
+publisher's house, a later new novel pales the lustre of the rising
+star. The French stage occupies the position our Congress once held,
+when its halls were adorned by the great men, the Clays, Calhouns,
+Websters, of our fathers' days, or the Supreme Court occupied, when
+Marshall sat in the chief seat on its bench, and William Pinckney
+brought to its bar his elaborate eloquence, and William Wirt his ornate
+and touching oratory. The stage is to France what Parliament is to
+England. It is more: it is the mirror and the fool; it glasses society's
+form and pressure; it criticizes folly. Murger's success on the stage
+opened every door of publicity to him. His name was current, it had a
+known market-value. The success of the piece assured the success of the
+book. The "Revue des Deux Mondes" begged Murger to write for its pages.
+Murger's fortune seemed assured.
+
+There was but one croak heard in all the applause. It came from Murger's
+father. He could not believe his eyes and his ears, when they avouched
+to him that his son's name and praises filled every paper and every
+mouth. It utterly confounded him. The day of the second performance of
+the piece Murger went to see his father.
+
+"If you would like to see my piece again to-day, you may take these
+tickets."
+
+His father replied,--
+
+"Your piece? What! you don't mean to say that they are still playing
+it?"
+
+He could not conceive it possible that his "vagabond" son should
+interest anybody's attention.
+
+The very first use Murger made of his increased income was to fly Paris
+and to seek the country,--that rural life which Frenchmen abhor.
+Marlotte, a little village in the Forest of Fontainebleau, became his
+home; there he spent eight months of every year. Too poor, at first, to
+rent a cottage for himself, he lodged at the miserable village-inn,
+which, with its eccentric drunken landlord, he has sketched in one of
+his novels; and when fortune proved less unkind to him, he took a
+cottage which lay between the highway and the forest, and there the
+first happy years of his life were spent. They were few, and they were
+checkered. His chief petty annoyance was his want of skill as a
+sportsman. He could never bring down game with his gun, and he was
+passionately fond of shooting. On taking up his abode in the country,
+the first thing he had made was a full hunting-suit in the most approved
+fashion, and this costume he would wear upon all occasions, even when he
+came up to Paris. He never attained any nearer approximation to a
+sportsman's character. One day he went out shooting with a friend. A
+flock of partridges rose at their feet.
+
+"Fire, Murger! fire!" exclaimed his friend.
+
+"Why, great heavens, man, I can't shoot so! Wait until they _light_ on
+yon fence, and then I'll take a crack at them."
+
+He could no better shoot at stationary objects, however, than at game on
+the wing. Hard by his cottage a hare had burrowed in a potato-field.
+Every morning and every evening Murger fired at the hare, but with such
+little effect, that the hare soon took no notice either of Murger or his
+gun, and gambolled before them both as if they were simply a scarecrow.
+Murger bagged but one piece of game in the whole course of his life, and
+the way this was done happened in this wise. One day he was asleep at
+the foot of a tree in the Forest of Fontainebleau,--his gun by his side.
+He was suddenly awakened by the barking of a dog which he knew belonged
+to the most adroit poacher that levied illicit tribute on the imperial
+domain. The dog continued to bark and to look steadily up into the tree.
+Murger followed the dog's eyes, but could discover nothing. The poacher
+ran up, saying,--"Quick, Monsieur Murger! quick! Give me your gun. Don't
+you see it?"
+
+Murger replied,--"See it? See what?"
+
+"Why, a pheasant! a splendid cock! There he is on the top limb!"
+
+The poacher aimed and fired; the pheasant fell at Murger's feet. "Take
+the bird and put it in your game-bag, Monsieur Murger, and tell
+everybody you killed it."
+
+Murger gratefully accepted the present; and this was the first and only
+time that Murger ever bagged a bird.
+
+But the cloud which darkened his sky now was the cloud which had lowered
+on all his life,--poverty. He was always fevered by the care and anxiety
+of procuring money. Life is expensive to a man occupying such a position
+as Murger filled, and French authors are ill paid. A French publisher
+thinks he has done wonders, if he sells all the copies of an edition of
+three thousand volumes; and if any work reaches a sale of sixteen or
+seventeen thousand volumes, the publisher is ready to cry, "Miracle!"
+Further, men who lead intellectual lives are almost necessarily
+extravagant of money. They know not its value. They know, indeed, that
+ten mills make one cent, and that ten cents make one dime, and that ten
+dimes make one dollar; but they are ignorant of the practical value of
+these denominations of the great medium of exchange. They cannot "jew,"
+and know not that the slight percentage they would take off the price
+asked is a prize worth contending for. Again, the physical exhaustion or
+reaction which almost invariably follows mental exertion requires
+stimulants of some kind or other to remove the pain--it is an acute
+pain--which reaction brings upon the whole system. These stimulants,
+whether they be good dinners, or brilliant company, or generous wines,
+or parties of pleasure, are always costly. Besides, life in Paris is
+such an expensive mode of existence, the simplest pleasures there are so
+very costly, and there are so many microscopic issues through which
+money pours away in that undomestic life, in that career passed almost
+continually in public, that one must have a considerable fortune, or
+lead an extremely retired life. A fashionable author, whose books are in
+every book-shop window, and whose plays are posted for performance on
+every wall, cannot lead a secluded life; and all the circumstances we
+have hinted at conspire to make his life expensive. In vain Murger fled
+the great city. It pursued him even in the country. Admirers and
+parasites sought him out even in his retreat, and forced their way to
+his table. There is another reason for Murger's life-long poverty: he
+worked slowly, and this natural difficulty of intellectual travail was
+increased by his exquisite taste and desire of perfection. The novel was
+written and re-written time and again. The plot was changed; the
+characters were altered; each phrase was polished and repolished. Where
+ordinary writers threw off half a dozen volumes, Murger found it hard to
+fit a single volume for the press. Ordinary writers grew rich in writing
+speedily forgotten novels; he continued poor in writing novels which
+will live for many years. Then, Murger's vein of talent made him work
+for theatres which gave more reputation than ready money. He was too
+delicate a writer to construct those profitable dramas which run a
+hundred or a hundred and fifty nights and place ten or twenty thousand
+dollars in the writer's purse. His original poverty kept him poor. He
+could not afford to wait until the seed he had sown had grown and
+ripened for the sickle; so he fell into the hands of usurers, who
+purchased the crop while it was yet green, and made the harvest yield
+them profits of fifty or seventy-five per centum.
+
+His distress during the last years of his life was as great as the
+distress of his youth. His published letters tell a sorrowful tale.
+They are filled with apprehensions of notes maturing only to be
+protested, or complaints of inability to go up to Paris one day because
+he has not a shirt to wear, another day because he cannot procure the
+seventy-five cents which are the railway-fare from Fontainebleau to
+Paris. Here is one of his letters, one of the gayest of them It is
+charming, but sad:--
+
+    "I send you my little stock. Carry it instantly to Monsieur
+    Heugel, the music-publisher in the Rue Vivienne, next door to
+    Michel Levy's. Go the day afterwards to Michel Levy's for the
+    answer. Read it, and if it shows that Monsieur Heugel buys my
+    songs, go to him with the blank receipt, herein inclosed, which
+    you will fill up as he will point out, according to the usual
+    conditions. It is ten dollars a song; but as there is a poor song
+    among them, and money I must have, take whatever he gives you; but
+    you must pretend as if you expected ten dollars for each song.
+    This money must be used to take up Saccault's note, which is due
+    the fifteenth. Take the address of the holder, and pay it before
+    it is protested. You will be allowed till the next day to pay it.
+    Be active in this matter, and let me hear how things turn out. I
+    cannot, in reason, in my present situation, take a room at a rent
+    of a hundred and twenty dollars a year.[E] We have cares enough
+    for the present; therefore let us not sow that seed of
+    embarrassment which flowers every three months in the shape of
+    quarterly rent. Do not give at the outside more than eighty
+    dollars for the room, even though we be embarrassed by its
+    smallness. I hope we may have means before long of being more
+    delicate in our selection; but at present put a leaf to your
+    patience, for the horizon is black enough to make ink withal.
+    However, the little dialogue (which has been quite successful) I
+    have just had with the muses has given me better spirits. I have a
+    fever of working which is high enough to give me a real fever. I
+    have shaken the box, and see that it is not empty. But I stood in
+    need of this evidence, for in my own eyes I had fallen as low as
+    the Public Funds in 1848. Return here before the money Michel Levy
+    gave you is exhausted, for I cannot get any more for you. I am
+    working half the day and half the night. I feel that the great
+    flood-tide of 'copy' is at hand. My laundress and my pantaloons
+    have both deserted me. I am obliged to use grape-vine leaves for
+    my pocket-handkerchief.... There is nothing new here. The dogs are
+    in good health, but they do not look fat; I am afraid they have
+    fasted sometimes. Our chimney is again inhabited by a family of
+    swallows; they say that is a good sign: maybe it means that we
+    shall have fire all the winter long."
+
+To this letter was added a postscript which one of the dogs was supposed
+to have written:--
+
+    "My dear lady,--They say here we are going to see mighty hard
+    times. My master talks of suppressing my breakfast, and he wants
+    to hire me to a shepherd in order that I may earn some money for a
+    living. But as I have the reputation of loving mutton-chops,
+    nobody will hire me to keep sheep. If you see anywhere in Paris a
+    pretty diamond collar which does not cost more than
+    five-and-twenty cents, bring it to
+
+    "DOG MIRZA.
+
+    "_14th March, 1855_."
+
+Hope dawned upon him in 1856. He was promised a pension of three hundred
+dollars from the Government out of the literary fund of the Minister of
+Public Instruction's budget. It would have been, from its regularity of
+payment, a fortune to him. It would have saved him from the anxiety of
+quarter-day when rent fell due. But the pension never came. The
+Government gave him the decoration of the Legion of Honor, which
+certainly gratified him. But money for bread would have been of more
+service. When Rachel lay upon that invalid's chair which she was never
+to quit except for her coffin, she gazed one morning upon the breakfast
+of delicacies spread before her to tempt the return of absent appetite.
+After some moments of silence, she took up a piece of bread as white as
+the driven snow, and, sighing, said in that whisper which was all that
+remained to her of voice,--"Ay, me! Had the world given me a little more
+of _this_, and earlier in my life, I had not been here at
+three-and-thirty." Those early years of want which sapped Rachel's life
+undermined Murger's constitution. His rustic life repaired some of the
+damage wrought, and would probably have entirely retrieved it, had his
+life then been freer from care, less visited by privation. Had the money
+the Government and his friends lavished on his corpse been bestowed on
+him living, he had probably still been numbered among the writers
+militant of France. Some obscure parasite got the pension. He continued
+to work on still hounded by debt. "Five times a week," he wrote in 1858,
+"I dine at twelve or one o'clock at night. One thing is certain: if I am
+not forced to stop writing for three or four days, I shall fall sick."
+In 1860 we find him complaining that he is "sick in soul, and _maybe in
+body too_. I am, of a truth, fatigued, and a great deal more fatigued
+than people think me." Death's shadow was upon him. The world thought
+him in firmer health and in gayer spirits than ever. He knew better. He
+felt as the traveller feels towards the close of the day and the end of
+the journey. It was not strange that the world was deceived, for
+Murger's gayety had always been factitious. He often turned off grief
+with a smile, where other men relieve it with a tear. Sensitive natures
+shrink from letting the world see their exquisite sensibility. Besides,
+Murger's gayety was intellectual rather than physical. It consisted
+almost entirely in bright gleams of repartee. It was quickness, 'twas
+not mirth. No wonder, then, that the world was deceived; the mind
+retained its old activity amid all its fatigue; and besides, the world
+sees men only in their hours of full-dress, when the will lights up the
+leaden eyes and wreathes the drawn countenance in smiles. Tears are for
+our midnight pillow,--the hand-buried face for our solitary study.
+
+So when the rumor flew over Paris, Murger is sick!--Murger is
+dying!--Murger is dead! it raised the greatest surprise. Everybody
+wondered how the stalwart man they saw yesterday could be brought low so
+soon. Where was his youth, that it came not to the rescue? The reader
+can answer the question. Of a truth, the last act of the drama we have
+sketched in these pages moved rapidly to the catastrophe. He awoke in
+the middle of one night with a violent pain in the thigh, which ached as
+if a red-hot ball had passed through it. The pain momentarily increased
+in violence, and became intolerable. The nearest physician was summoned.
+After diagnosis, he declared the case too grave for action until after
+consultation. Another medical attendant was called in. After
+consultation they decided that the most eminent surgeons of Paris must
+be consulted. It was a decomposition of the whole body, attended with
+symptoms rarely observed. The princes of medical science in Paris met at
+the bedside. They all confessed that their art was impotent to
+alleviate, much less to cure this dreadful disease. Murger's hours were
+numbered. The doctors insisted upon his being transported to the
+hospital. To the hospital he went: 'twas not for the first,--'twas for
+the last time. His agonies were distressing. They wrung from him screams
+which could be heard from the fifth floor, where he lay, to the street.
+Death made his approaches like some skilful engineer against some
+impregnable fortress: fibre by fibre, vein by vein, atom by atom, was
+mastered and destroyed.
+
+During one of the rare intervals of freedom from torture, he turned to
+the sick-nurse who kept watch by his pillow, and, after vacantly gazing
+on her buxom form and ruddy cheek, he significantly asked,--"Mammy, do
+you find this world a happy place, and life an easy burden?" The
+well-fed woman understood not the bitterness of soul which prompted this
+question. "Keep quiet, and sleep," was her reply. He fell back upon his
+pillow, murmuring, "_I_ haven't! _I_ haven't!" Yet he was only
+eight-and-thirty years old, and men's sorrows commonly commence later in
+life. A friend came to see him. As the physicians had forbidden him all
+conversation, he wrote on a card this explanation of his
+situation:--"Ricord and the other doctors were of opinion that I should
+come to Dubois's Hospital. I should have preferred St. Louis's Hospital.
+I feel more _at home_ there. _Enfin_!..." Is there in the martyrology of
+poets any passage sadder than these lines? Just think of a man so bereft
+of home and family, so accustomed to the common cot of the hospital, so
+familiar to hospital sights and sounds and odors, that he can associate
+home with the public ward! Poor Murger!
+
+So lived and so died the poet of youth, and of ambitious, struggling,
+hopeful poverty. We describe not his funeral, nor the monument reared
+over his grave. Our heart fails us at sight of these sterile honors.
+They are ill-timed. What boot they, when he on whom they are bestowed is
+beyond the reach of earthly voices? The ancients crowned the live animal
+they selected as the sacrifice for their altars; it saw the garlands of
+flowers which were laid on its head, and the stately procession which
+accompanied it, and heard the music which discoursed of its happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE GREAT AIR-ENGINE.
+
+
+There is an odd collection of houses, and a stretch of green, with half
+a dozen old elms, raspberry-bushes, and pruned oaks growing on it,
+opening out from this window where I work; this morning, they blended
+curiously with this old story that I want to tell you, helping me to
+understand it better. And the story, too, explained to me one reason why
+people always choose to look at those trees rather than the houses: at
+any trees before any houses. Because, you see, whatever grows out of
+Nature is itself, and says so: has its own especial little soul-sap, and
+leafs that out intact, borrows no trait or trick or habit from its
+neighbor. The sunshine is sunshine, and the pine-burr a pine-burr,
+obstinately, through and through. So Nature rests us. But whatever grows
+out of a man's brain is like the brain, patched, uncertain: a perverse
+streak in it somewhere, to spoil its thorough good or ill meaning.
+
+There is a little Grecian temple yonder, back of the evergreens, with a
+triangular stove-funnel revolving at its top; and next door a
+Dutch-built stable, with a Turk's turban for a cupola; and just beyond
+that, a _chalet_-roof, sprouting without any provocation whatever out of
+an engine-house. I do not think they are caricatures of some characters.
+I knew a politician once, very low down in even that scale; Quilp they
+nicknamed him; the cruelest husband; quarter-dollarish in his views and
+principles, and greedy for bribes even as low as that: yet I have seen
+that man work with a rose-bush as long and tenderly as a mother with her
+baby, and his eyes glow and grow wet at the sight of a new and delicate
+plant. Near him lived a woman,--a relative of his, I believe: one of
+those women who absorb so much of the world's room and air, and have a
+right to do it: a nature made up of grand, good pieces, with no mean
+bits mortared in: fresh and child-like, too, with heat or tears ready
+for any tale of wrong, or strongly spoken, true word. But strike against
+one prejudice that woman had, her religious sect-feeling, and she was
+hard and cruel as Nero. It was the stove-funnel in that temple.
+
+Human nature is full of such unaccountable warts and birth-marks and
+sixth fingers; and the best reason that I know of why all practical
+schemes for a perfect social system have failed is, that they are so
+perfect, so compact, that they ignore all these excrescences, these
+untied ends, in making up their whole. Yet it is a wonderful bit of
+mosaic, this Communist system: a place for every man, and every man in
+his place; "to insure to each human being the freest development of his
+faculties": there is a grand fragment of absolute truth in that, a going
+back to primal Nature, to a like life with that of sunshine and pines, a
+Utopia more Christ-like than the heaven (which Christ never taught) of
+eternal harp-playing and golden streets. But as for making it real,
+every man's life should have the integrity of meaning of that of a tree.
+A. statesman, B. seer, C. scavenger: pines, raspberries, oaks.
+Impossible, as we know. And then, a thistle at the beginning knows it is
+a thistle, and cannot be anything else, so there is the end of it; but
+when Pratt, by nature _ne_ knife-grinder, asserts himself poet, what
+then? How many men know their vocation? Who is going about to tie on the
+labels? Who would you be willing should tie on yours? Then, again, there
+is your neighbor Brownson, with a yeasty brain, fermenting too fast
+through every phase of creed or party to accept a healthful "settling";
+so it is left to work itself out, and it will settle itself by-and-by,
+in a life or two it may be. You know other brains which, if you will but
+consider, prove this life to be only one stage of a many-yeared era:
+they are lying fallow from birth until death; they have powers latent in
+them, that next time, perhaps, will bear golden grain or fruit. Now they
+are resting, they lie fallow. Communism allows no time for fermentation,
+or lying fallow; God does: for brains, I mean, not souls. But what are
+we going to do with this blindness of human beings as to what they are
+fit for,--when they go, or are forced to go, stumbling along the wrong
+path all their lives? Why, the bitterest prayers that God bears are from
+men who think they have lost time in the world. The lowest matter alive,
+the sponges, _fungi_, know what they have to do, and are blessed in the
+doing, while we--Did you think the Socialist helped the matter? Men
+needed thousand years' education to make their schemes practicable; they
+ignored all this blindness, all selfishness, and overgrowth of the
+passions: no wonder these facts knobbed themselves up against their
+system, and so, in every instance it crumbled to pieces. The things are
+facts, and here; there is no use in denying that; and it is a fact, too,
+that almost every life seems a wasted failure, compared with what it
+might have been. Such hard, grimy problems there are in life! They
+weaken the eyes that look long at them: stories hard to understand, like
+that of this old machinist, Joe Starke.
+
+But over yonder, how cool and shady it is on that sweep of green! that
+rests one so thoroughly, in eyes and brain! The quiet shadows ebb and
+flow over the uncut grass; every hazy form or color is beyond art, true
+and beautiful, being fresh from God; there are countless purpled vines
+creeping out from the earth under that grass; the air trembles with the
+pure spring healing and light; the gray-barked old elms wrestle, and
+knot their roots underground, clutching down at the very thews and
+sinews of the earth, and overhead unfold their shivering delicate leaves
+fresh in the sunlight to catch the patter of the summer rain when it
+comes. It is sure to come. Winter and summer, spring and autumn, shall
+not fail. God always stays there, in the great Fatherland of Nature. One
+knows now why Jesus went back there when these hard riddles of the world
+made his soul sorrowful even unto death, and he needed a word from Home
+to refresh him.
+
+Do you know the meaning to-day of the beds of rock and pregnant loam, of
+the woods, and water-courses, and live growths and colors on these
+thousand hills near us? Is it that God has room for all things in this
+Life of His? for all these problems, all Evil as it seems to us? that
+nothing in any man's life is wasted? every hunger, loss, effort, held
+underneath and above in some infinite Order, suffered to live out its
+purpose, give up its uttermost uses? If, after all, the end of science,
+of fact and fiction, of watching those raspberry-bushes growing, or of
+watching the phases of these terrible years in which we live, were only
+to give us glimpses of that eternal Order, so that we could lie down in
+it, grow out of it, like that ground-ivy in the earth and sunshine
+yonder, sure, as it is, that there is no chance nor waste in our own
+lives? It would be something to know that sentence in which all the
+world's words are ordered, and to find that the war, and the Devil, and
+even your own life's pain, had its use, and was an accord there,--would
+it not? Thinking of that, even this bit of a history of Joe Starke might
+have its meaning, the more if there should be trouble and a cold wind
+blowing in it; because any idiot can know what God means by happy lives,
+but to find His thought behind the hunger and intolerable loss that
+wring the world's heart is a harder thing to do,--a better, a great,
+healthful thing. And one may be sure that the man, be he Christian or
+Pagan, who does believe in this under Order and Love, and tries to see
+and clear his way down to it, through every day's circumstance, will
+have come very near to the real soul of good and humanity,--to the
+Christ,--before the time comes for him to rest, and stand in his lot, at
+the end of the days.
+
+But to our story. It was in Philadelphia the old machinist lived; he had
+been born and had grown old there; but there are only one or two days in
+his life you would care to hear about: August days, in the summer of
+'59, the culmination and end of all the years gone before for him. You
+know what a quiet place Philadelphia is? One might fancy that the first
+old Quaker, sitting down among its low, flattish hills, had left a spell
+of thoughtful reticence behind him. The hills never dare to rise into
+abrupt earnestness; the two broad, bright-faced rivers that hold it in
+lapse with a calm consciousness into the sleepy, oyster-bedded bay; even
+the accretion of human life there never has been able to utter itself in
+the myriad rebellious phases of a great city, but falls gravely into the
+drilled monotony of its streets. Brick and mortar will not yield
+themselves there to express any whim in the mind of their owner: the
+house-fronts turn the same impassive, show-hating faces on the sidewalks
+from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. Give the busiest street a moment's
+chance and it broods down into a solitary reverie, saying,--"You may
+force me into hotels and market-places, if you will, but I know the
+business of this town is to hold its tongue." Even the curiously
+beautiful women wrap themselves in the uniform of gray, silent color;
+the cast of thought of the people is critical, attentive,
+self-controlled. When a covered, leaden day shuts the sun out, and the
+meaning of the place in, hills and city and human life, one might fancy,
+utter the old answer of the woman accused of witchcraft:--"While I hold
+my thought, it is my own; when I speak it, it is my master." Out in the
+near hills the quietude deepens, loosening and falling back out of the
+rigid reserve of the city into the unconscious silence of a fresh
+Nature: no solitudes near a large town are so solitary as these. There
+is one little river in especial, that empties into the Schuylkill, which
+comes from some water-bed under the shady hills in Montgomery
+County,--some pool far underground, which never in all these ages has
+heard a sound, or seen the sun, nor ever shall; therefore the water
+flowing from it carries to the upper air a deeper silence than the spell
+left by the old Quaker on the hills, or even the ghostly memory of the
+Indian tribes, who, ages long ago, hunted and slowly faded away in these
+forests on its shores.
+
+When they came to the New World, at a time so far gone from us that no
+dead nation even has left of it any record, they found the river flowing
+as strangely silent and pure as now, and the name they gave it,
+Wissahickon, it bears to-day. The hills are there as when they first saw
+them, wrapping themselves every year in heavier mantles of hemlocks and
+cedars; but a shaded road winds now gravely by the river-side, and along
+it the city sends out those who are tired, worn out, and need to hear
+that message of the river. No matter how dull their heads or hearts may
+be, they never fail to catch something of its meaning. So quiet it is
+there, so pure, it is like being born again, they say. So, all the time,
+in the cool autumn-mornings, in the heavy lull of noon, or with the low
+harvest-moon slanting blue and white shadows, sharp and uncanny, across
+its surface, the water flows steadily from its dark birthplace, clear,
+cheerful, bright. The hills crouch attentive on its edge, shaggy with
+shadows; from the grim rocks ferns and mosses sleep out delicate color
+unmolested, the red-bearded grass drops its seed unshaken. The
+sweetbrier trails its pink fingers through the water. They know what the
+bright little river means, as well as the mill-boy fishing by the bank:
+how He sent it near the city, just as He brought that child into the
+midst of the hackneyed, doubting old tax-gatherers and publicans long
+ago, with the same message. Such a curious calm and clearness rest in
+it, one is almost persuaded, that, in some day gone by, some sick,
+thirsty soul has in truth gone into its dewy solitude in a gray summer
+dawn, and, finding there the fabled fountain of eternal life, has left
+behind a blessing from all those stronger redeemed years to come.
+
+There is a narrow road which leaves the main one, and penetrates behind
+the river-hills, only to find others, lower and more heavily wooded,
+with now and then odd-shaped bits of pasture-land wedged in between
+their sides, or else low brick farm-houses set in a field of corn and
+potatoes, with a dripping pump-trough at the door. It is a thorough
+country-road, lazy, choking itself up with mud even in summer, to keep
+city-carriages out, bordering itself with slow-growing maples and banks
+of lush maiden's-hair, blood-red partridge-berries, and thistles. You
+can find dandelions growing in the very middle of it, there is so little
+travel out there.
+
+One August morning, in one of its quietest curves among the hills, there
+was a fat old horse, standing on it, sniffing up the cool air: pure air,
+it is there, so cool and rare that you can detect even the faint scent
+of the wild-grape blossoms or the buttercups in it in spring. The wagon
+to which the horse was fastened had no business there in the cedar-hills
+or slow-going road; it belonged to town, every inch, from hub to
+cover,--was square-built, shiningly clean, clear-lettered as
+Philadelphia itself.
+
+"That completes the practical whole," said Andy Fawcett, polishing a tin
+measure, and putting it on the front seat of the wagon, and then
+surveying the final effect.
+
+Andy was part-owner of it: the yellow letters on the sides were, "_A.
+Fawcett & Co. Milk_." It was very early,--gray, soggy clouds keeping
+back the dawn,--but light enough for Andy to see that his shoes, which
+he had blacked late last night, were bright, and his waistcoat, etc.,
+"all taut."
+
+"I like the sailor lingo," he said, curling his moustache, and turning
+over his pink shirt-collar. "They've a loose dash about 'em. It must go
+far with the girls."
+
+Then he looked at the wagon again, and at a pinchbeck watch he carried.
+
+"Five. No matter how neat an' easy a fellow's dress is, it's wasted this
+time in the mornin'. Them street-car conductors hev a chance for it all
+day, dang 'em!"
+
+He went back to the house as softly as possible, and brought out a
+lantern, which was silver-mounted and of cut glass. He hung it carefully
+in the wagon.
+
+"There's no knowin' what use I may have for it,"--shaking his head, and
+rubbing it tenderly.
+
+Andy had owned that lantern for several years, and carried it with him
+always. "You cannot know, Jane," he used to say to the woman whom he
+worked for, "what a comfort I find in it. It"--He always stopped there,
+and she never replied, but immediately talked of something else. Their
+customers (for they kept half a dozen cows on the place, and Andy took
+the milk into town)--their customers, when they found out about the
+lantern, used to look oddly at Andy, and one or two of them had tried in
+consequence to overreach him in the bills. But no thimble-rigger had a
+keener eye for the cents than Fawcett. So their milk-speculation had
+prospered, until, this spring, they had added to their stock of cows. It
+was the only business in which Andy was partner; after he brought the
+wagon back at noon, he put on his flannel shirt, and worked as a hired
+hand for the woman; the other produce she sold herself.
+
+The house was low, built of lichen-covered stone, an old buttonwood-tree
+tenting it over; in the sunny back-yard you could see fat pullets and
+glossy-backed Muscovy ducks wabbling in and out through the
+lilac-bushes. Comfortable and quaint the old place looked, with no bald
+white paint about it, no unseemly trig new fences to jar against the
+ashen and green tones of color in house and woods. The gate by which you
+passed through the stone wall was made of twisted boughs; and wherever a
+tree had been cut down, the stump still stood, covered with
+crimson-leaved ivy. "I'd like things nattier," Andy used to say; "but
+it's Jane's way."
+
+The Quaker woman herself, as she stood in the gateway in her gray
+clothes, the hair pushed back from her sallow face, her brown, muscular
+arms bare, suited the quiet, earnest look of the place.
+
+"Thee'll take neighbor Wart into town, Andrew?" she said.
+
+"More noosances?" he growled.
+
+"Thee'd best take her in, Andrew. It costs thee nothing," with a dry,
+quizzical smile.
+
+Andy's face grew redder than his shirt, as he climbed up on the
+wagon-wheel.
+
+"H'ist me up her basket here, then. A'n't I kind to her? I drink my
+coffee every noon at her stall, though 't's the worst in the market. If
+'twas a man had sech a bamboozlin' phiz as hers, I'd bat him over th'
+head, that 's all."
+
+"She's a widow, and thee's afraid of thy weak point," said Jane.
+
+"Take yer joke, Jane." The lad looked down on the woman's bony face
+kindly. "They don't hurt, yer words. It's different when some folks
+pokes fun at me, askin' for the lantern, an'"--
+
+"What odds?" said the woman hurriedly, a quick change coming over her
+face. "They mean well. Haven't I told thee since the night thee comed
+here first for a meal's victuals, an' all the years since, how as all
+the world meaned well to thee, Andrew? Not only sun an' air an' growth,
+an' God behind; but folks, ef thee takes them by the palm of the hand
+first, an' not raps them with the knuckles, or go about seekin' to make
+summat off of each."
+
+Andy was in no mood for moralizing.
+
+"Ye'r' hard on old Wart in that last remark, I'm thinkin',"--glancing at
+the dumpy bunch of a woman seated at their breakfast-table within, her
+greedy blue eyes and snub-nose close to her plate.
+
+The Quaker turned away, trying to hide a smile, and began tugging at
+some dock-weeds. Her arms were tougher and stronger than Fawcett's. He
+used to say Jane was a better worker than he, though she did it by fits
+and starts, going at it sometimes as if every limb was iron and was
+moved by a steam-engine, and then for days doing nothing, playing with a
+neighbor's baby, sitting by the window, humming some old tune to
+herself, in a way that even Andy thought idle and childish. For the
+rest, he had thought little about her, except that she was a strangely
+clean and silent woman, and kind, even to tenderness,--to him; but to
+the very bats in the barn, or old Wart, or any other vermin, as well.
+
+Perhaps an artist would have found more record in the brawny frame and
+the tanned, chronicled face of the woman, as she bent over her work in
+her gray dress in the fresh morning light. Forty years of hard, healthy
+labor,--you could read that in the knotted muscles and burnt skin: and
+no lack of strength in the face, with its high Indian cheek-bones and
+firm-set jaws. But there was a curious flickering shadow of grace and
+beauty over all this coarse hardness. The eyes were large, like the
+cow's under yonder tree, slow-moving, absorbing, a soft brown in color,
+and unreasoning; if pain came to this woman, she would not struggle, nor
+try to understand it: bear it dumbly, that was all. The nervous lips
+were not heavy, but delicately, even archly cut, with dimples waiting
+the slightest moving of the mouth; you would be sure that naturally the
+laughter and fun and cheery warmth of the world lay as close to her as
+to a child. But something--some loss or uncertainty in her life--had
+given to her smile a quick, pitiful meaning, like that of a mother
+watching her baby at her breast.
+
+Andy climbed into the wagon, and cracked his whip impatiently.
+
+"Time!" he shouted.
+
+Neighbor Wart scuffed down the path, wiping her mouth.
+
+"I'm glad I dropped in to breakfast, an' for company to friend Andrew
+here. Does thee frequent the prize-fighters' ring, that thee's got their
+slang so pat, lad?" as she scrambled in behind him. "Don't jerk at thy
+gallowses so fiercely. It's only my way. 'Sarah has a playful way with
+her': my father used to say that, an' it's kept by me. I don't feel a
+day older than when--Andrew!" sharply, "did thee bring thy lunch, to eat
+at my stall? The coffee'll be strong as lye this morning."
+
+The Quaker, Jane, had a small white basket in her hand, into which she
+was looking.
+
+"It's here," she said, putting it by the young man's feet. "There's ham
+an' bread an' pie,--plum,--enough for two. Thee'll not want to eat
+alone?" anxiously.
+
+"I never do," he said, gruffly. "The old buster's savage on
+pie,--gettin' fat on it, I tell you, Jane, though his jaws are like
+nut-crackers yet."
+
+Andy had dropped into one of the few ruts of talk in which his brain
+could jog easily along; he began, as usual, to rub the knees of his
+trousers smooth, and to turn the quid of tobacco in his mouth.
+
+Jane, oddly enough, did not remind him that it was time to go, but
+stood, not heeding him, leaning on the wheel, drawing a buckle in the
+harness tighter.
+
+"He! he!" giggled Andy, "if you'd seen him munch the pastry an' biscuit,
+an' our biggest cuts of tenderloin, an' then plank down his pennies to
+Mis' Wart here, thinkin' he'd paid for all! Innocent as a staggerin'
+calf, that old chap! Says I to him last week, when we were leavin' the
+market, havin' my joke, says I,--
+
+"'Pervisions is goin' down, Mr. Starke.'
+
+"'It hadn't occurred to me, Andrew,' he says, in his dazed way. 'But you
+know, doubtless,' says he, with one of his queer bows, touchin' the
+banged old felt he sticks on the back of his head.
+
+"'Yes, I know,' says I. An' I took his hand an' pulled it through my
+arm, an' we walked down to Arch. Dunno what the girls thought, seein' me
+in sech ragged company. Don't care. He's a brick, old Joe.
+
+"Says he, 'Ef I hed hed your practical knowledge, at your age, Andrew,
+it might hev been better for the cause of science this day,' an'
+buttons up his coat.
+
+"'Pears as if he wasn't used to wearin' shirts, an' so hed got that
+trick o' buttonin' up. But he has a appreciatin' eye, he has,--more than
+th' common,--much more." And Andy crossed his legs, and looked down, and
+coughed in a modest, deprecating way.
+
+"Well," finding no one spoke, "I've found that meal, sure enough, is his
+breakfast, dinner, an' supper. I calls it luncheon to him, in a easy,
+gentlemanly sort of way. I believe I never mentioned to you," looking at
+Jane, "how I smuggled him into the pants you made, you thinkin' him a
+friend of mine? As he is."
+
+"No," said the woman.
+
+"As with the pants, so with coat, an' shirt; likewise boots,"--checking
+off each with a rub on his trousers.
+
+Andy's tongue was oiled, and ran glibly.
+
+Mrs. Wart, on the back seat, shuffled her feet and hemmed in vain.
+
+Jane pulled away at the dock and mullein, in one of her old fits of
+silent musing.
+
+"Says I, 'See my ducks an' sack, Mr. Starke? Latest cut,' says I. 'Wish
+you knew my tailor. Man of enterprise, an' science, Sir. Knows
+mechanics, an' acoustics, an' the rest,--at his finger-ends,--well as
+his needle,' said I.
+
+"The old chap's watery eyes began to open at that.
+
+"'Heard of yer engine, by George!' I goes on.
+
+"'What's he think of the chances?' he says. 'Hes _he_ influence?'
+
+"'No,--but he's pants an' sech, which is more to the purpose,' I says.
+'An' without a decent suit to yer back, how kin you carry the thing
+before Congress?' says I. Put it to him strong, that way. 'How kin ye?'
+I says. 'Now look here, Mr. Starke. Ye 'r' no runner in debt, I know:
+not willin' to let other people fill yer stomach an' cover yer back,
+because you've got genius into ye, which they haven't. All right!' says
+I. 'American pluck. But ye see, facts is facts, an' yer coat, not to
+mince matters, is nothin' but rags. An' yer shirt'--
+
+"His old wizened phiz got quite red at that, an' he caught his breath a
+minute.
+
+"'Go on, Andrew,' says he, puttin' his hand on my arm, 'you mean well.
+_I_ don't mind it. Indeed, no.' Smilin' kind, to let me see as he wasn't
+hurt. However, I dropped the shirt.
+
+"'It can't be otherwise,' says I, soothin', you know, 'so long's you've
+to sleep in the markets, an' so forth,' meanin' Hayes's stable. 'Now
+look o' here. My tailor, wishin' to help on the cause of science, as you
+say, wants to advance you a suit of clothes. On the engine. Of course,
+on the engine. You to pay when the thing's through. Congress or patents
+or what not. What d'ye say?' An' so"--
+
+"He wears them. You told me that," said the Quaker, in a dry, mechanical
+tone.
+
+"You don't care to hear the ins an' outs of it? Well, there's one thing
+I'll mention," sulkily gathering up the reins; "to-morrow it'll be all
+up with the old chap, one way or t'other: him an' his engine's goin' on
+trial. Come up, Jerry!" jerking the horse's head; "ye ought to be in
+Broad Street this minute. An' if it's worsted he is, it'll be a case of
+manslaughter agin the judges. That old fellow's built his soul into them
+wheels an' pipes. An' his skin an' bone too, for that matter. There's
+little enough of 'em left, God knows! Come up, Jerry!"
+
+But Jane was leaning on the shafts again. Perhaps the story of the
+starving old machinist had touched her; even Andy guessed how big and
+childish the heart was in her woman's body, and how she always choked it
+down. She had taken out the basket now that held the old man's lunch,
+and was rearranging the slices of bread and ham, her fingers trembling,
+and lingering curiously over each. Her lips moved, but she said nothing.
+
+"Thy bread _is_ amazin' soft-crusted," said Mrs. Wart. "Thee scalds the
+raisin', don't thee, now?"
+
+"To-morrow, thee said, Andrew?"
+
+"Yes, that'll be the end of the engine, for good or bad. Ten years he's
+been at it, he says."
+
+"Ten years, last spring," to herself.
+
+She had put the basket down, and was stooping over the weeds.
+
+"Did I tell ye that? I forgot. Well, Mis' Wart, we'll be off. Don't
+fret, it's not late. Jerry's blooded. He'll not let the grass grow under
+his feet."
+
+And the milk-wagon, with its yellow letters, went trundling down the
+road, the sun beginning to shine pleasantly in on the cool tin vessels
+within, and the crisp red curls and blue eyes of the driver,--on the
+lantern, too, swinging from the roof inside, as Andy glanced back. He
+chuckled; even Mrs. Wart looked tidy and clean in the morning air; his
+lunch smelt savory in the basket. Then suddenly recalling the old
+machinist, and the history in which he was himself part actor, he
+abruptly altered his expression, drawing down his red eyebrows to a
+tragic scowl, and glaring out into the pleasant light as one who insults
+fate.
+
+"Whatever is thee glowerin' thataway about?" snapped his companion.
+
+Andy took out his handkerchief, and wiped his forehead deliberately.
+
+"Men see passages in human life that women suspect nothing about, Mem.
+Darn this wagon, how it jolts! There's lots of genius trampled underfoot
+by yer purse-proud tyrants, Mem."
+
+"Theeself, for instance. Thee'd best mind thy horse, boy."
+
+But she patted her basket comfortably. It is so easy to think people
+cruel and coarse who have more money than ourselves! Not for Andy,
+however. His agrarian proclivities were shallow and transient enough. So
+presently, as they bowled along the level road, he forgot Joe Starke,
+and began drumming on the foot-board and humming a tune,--touching now
+and then the stuffed breast-pocket of his coat with an inward chuckle of
+mystery. And when little Ann Mipps, at the toll-gate, came out with her
+chubby cheeks burning, and her shy eyes down, he took no notice at all.
+Nice little midge of a thing; but what did she know of the thrilling
+"Personals" of the "Ledger" and their mysterious meaning, beginning at
+the matrimonial advertisements last May? or of these letters in his
+breast-pocket from the widow of an affectionate and generous disposition
+and easy income on Callowhill, or from the confiding Estelle, whose
+maiden aunt dragonized her on Ridge Road above Parrish? When he saw them
+once, fate would speak out. Something in him was made for better things
+than this flat life: "instincts of chivalry and kindred souls,"--quoting
+Estelle's last letter. Poor Ann! he wondered if they had toffy-pullings
+at Mipps's now. He hadn't been there since April. Such a dog-trot sort
+of love-making that used to be! And Andy stopped to give a quart of milk
+to a seamstress who came out of Poole's cheap boarding-house, and who,
+by the bye, had just been imbibing the fashion-book literature on which
+he had been living lately. A sort of weak wine-whey, that gives to the
+brains of that class a perpetual tipsiness.
+
+Ann Mipps, meanwhile, who had been at her scrubbing since four o'clock,
+so that she should be through and have on her pink calico before the
+milk-cart rolled by, went in and cried herself sick: tasting the tears
+now and then to see how bitter they were,--what a hard time she had in
+the world; and then remembering she had not said her prayers last night,
+and so comprehending this judgment on her. For the Mippses were
+Calvinists, and pain was punishment and not a test. So Ann got up
+comforted; said her prayers twice with a will, and went out to milk. It
+might be different to-morrow. So as she had always thought how he needed
+somebody to make him happy, poor Andy! And she thought _she_ understood
+him. She knew how brave and noble he was! And she always thought, if he
+could get the toll-gate, now that her father was so old, how snug that
+would be!
+
+"Oh, if that should happen, and--there wouldn't be a house in the world
+so happy, if"--
+
+And then her checks began to burn again, and the light came back in her
+eyes, until, by the time the day had grown into the hot August noon, she
+went laughing and buzzing in and out of the shady little toll-house as
+contented as any bee in the clover yonder. Andy would call again
+soon,--maybe to-night! While Andy, in the hot streets, was looking at
+every closed shutter, wondering if Estelle was behind it.
+
+"Poor little Ann! she"--
+
+No! not even to himself would he say, "She likes me"; but his face grew
+suddenly fiery red, and he lashed Jerry spitefully.
+
+A damp, sharp air was blowing up from the bay that evening, when the
+milk-wagon rumbled up the lane towards home. Only on the high tree-tops
+the sun lingered; beneath were broad sweeps of brown shadows cooling
+into night. The lindens shook out fresh perfume into the dew and quiet.
+The few half-tamed goats that browse on the hills hunted some dark
+corner under the pines to dampen out in the wet grass the remembrance of
+the scorching day. Here and there passed some laborer going home in his
+shirt-sleeves, fanning off the hot dust with his straw hat, glad of the
+chance to stop at the cart-wheel and gossip with Andy.
+
+"Ye 'r' late, Fawcett. What news from town?"
+
+So that it was nearly dark before he came under the shadow of the great
+oak by his own gate. The Quaker was walking backwards and forwards along
+the lane. Andy stopped to look at her, therefore; for she was usually so
+quiet and reticent in her motion.
+
+"What kept thee all day, Andrew?" catching the shaft. "Was summat wrong?
+One ill, maybe?"--her lips parched and stiff.
+
+"What ails ye, Jane?"--holding out his hand, as was their custom when
+they met. "No. No one ailin'; only near baked with th' heat. I was wi'
+old Joe,"--lowering his voice. "He took me home,--to his hole, that is;
+I stayed there, ye see. Well, God help us all! Come up, Jerry! D' ye
+smell yer oats? Eh! the basket ye've got? No, he'd touch none of it.
+It's not victual he's livin' on, this day. I wish 'n this matter was
+done with."
+
+He drove on slowly: something had sobered the Will-o'-the-wisp in Andy's
+brain, and all that was manly in him looked out, solemn and pitying. The
+woman was standing by the barn-door when he reached it, watching his
+lips for a stray word as a dog might, but not speaking. He unhitched the
+horse, put him in his stall, and pushed the wagon under cover,--then
+stopped, looking at her uncertainly.
+
+"I--I don't like to talk of this, I hardly know why. But I'm goin' to
+stay with him to-morrow,--till th' trial's done with."
+
+"Yes, Andrew."
+
+"I wish 'n he hed a friend," he said, after a pause, breaking off bits
+of the sunken wall. "Not like me, Jane," raising his voice, and trying
+to speak carelessly. "Like himself. I'm so poor learned, I can't do
+anything for sech as them. Like him. Jane," after another silence, "I've
+seen IT."
+
+She looked at him.
+
+"The engine. Jane"--
+
+"I know."
+
+She turned sharply and walked away, the bluish light of the first
+moonbeams lighting up her face and shoulders suddenly as she went off
+down the wall. Was it that which brought out from the face of the
+middle-aged working woman such a strange meaning of latent youth,
+beauty, and passion? God only knows when the real childhood comes into a
+life, how early or late; but one might fancy this woman had waited long
+for hers, and it was coming to-night, the coarse hardness of look was
+swept away so suddenly. The great thought and hope of her life surged up
+quick, uncontrollably; her limbs shook, the big, mournful animal eyes
+were wet with tears, her very horny hands worked together uncertainly
+and helpless as a child's. On the face, too, especially about the mouth,
+such a terror of pain, such a hungry wish to smile, to be tender, that I
+think a baby would have liked to put up its lips then to be kissed, and
+have hid its face on her neck.
+
+"Summat ails her, sure," said Andy, stupidly watching her a moment or
+two, and then going in to kick off his boots and eat his supper, warm on
+the range.
+
+The moonlight was cold; he shut it out, and sat meditating over his
+cigar for an hour or two before the Quaker came in. When she did, he
+went to light her night-lamp for her,--for he had an odd, old-fashioned
+courtesy about him to women or the aged. He noticed, as he did it, that
+her hair had fallen from the close, thin cap, and how singularly soft
+and fine it was. She stood by the window, drawing her fingers through
+the long, damp folds, in a silly, childish way.
+
+"Good night, Andrew," as he gave it to her.
+
+"Good night."
+
+She looked at him gravely.
+
+"I wish, lad--Would thee say, 'God bless thee, Jane'? It's long since as
+I've heard that, an' there's no one but thee t' 'll say it."
+
+The boy was touched.
+
+"Often I thinks it, Jane,--often. Ye've been good to me these six years.
+I was nothin' but a beggar's brat when ye took me in. I mind that,
+though ye think I forget, when I'm newly rigged out sometimes. God bless
+ye! yes, I'll say it: God knows I will."
+
+She went out into the little passage. He heard her hesitate there a
+minute. It was a double house: the kitchen and sitting-room at one side
+of the narrow hall; at the other, Jane's chamber, and a room which she
+usually kept locked. He had heard her there at night sometimes, for he
+slept above it, and once or twice had seen the door open in the daytime,
+and looked in. It held, he saw, better furniture than the rest of the
+house: a homespun carpet of soft, grave colors, thick drab curtains, a
+bedstead, one or two bookcases, filled and locked, of which Jane made as
+little use, he was sure, as she could of the fowling-piece and patent
+fishing-rod which he saw in one corner. There were no shams, no cheap
+makeshifts in the Quaker's little house, in any part of it; but this
+room was the essence of cleanness and comfort, Andy thought. He never
+asked questions, however: some ingredient in his poor hodge-podge of a
+brain keeping him always true to this hard test of good breeding. So
+to-night, though he heard her until near eleven o'clock moving
+restlessly about in this room, he hesitated until then, before he went
+to speak to her.
+
+"She's surely sick," he said, with a worried look, lighting his candle.
+"Women are the Devil for nerves."
+
+Coming to the open door, however, he found her only busy in rubbing the
+furniture with a bit of chamois-skin. She looked up at him, her face
+very red, and the look in her face that children have when going out for
+a holiday.
+
+"How does thee think it looks, Andy?" her voice strangely low and rapid.
+
+He looked at her curiously.
+
+"I'm makin' it ready, thee knows. Pull to this shutter for me, lad. A
+good many years I've been makin' it ready"--
+
+"You shiver so, ye'd better go to bed, Jane."
+
+"Yes. Only the white valance is to put to the bed; I'm done
+then,"--going on silently for a while.
+
+"I've been so long at it,"--catching her breath. "Hard scrapin', the
+first years. We'd only a lease on the place at first. It's ours now, an'
+it's stocked, an'--Don't thee think the house is snug itself, Andrew?
+Thee sees other houses. Is't home-like lookin'? Good for rest"--
+
+"Yes, surely. What are you so anxious an' wild about, Jane? It's yer own
+house."
+
+"I'm not anxious,"--trying to calm herself. "Mine, is it, lad? All mine;
+nobody sharin' in it."
+
+She laughed. In all these years he had never heard her laugh before; it
+was low and full-hearted,--a live, real laugh. Somehow, all comfort,
+home, and frolic in the coming years were promised in it.
+
+"Mine?" folding up her duster. "Well, lad, thee says so. Daily savin' of
+the cents got it. Maybe thee thought me a hard woman?"--with an anxious
+look. "I kept all the accounts of it in that blue book I burned
+to-night. Nobody must know what it cost. No. Thee'd best go to sleep,
+lad. I've an hour's more work, I think. There'll be no time for it
+to-morrow, bein' the last day."
+
+He did not like to leave her so feverish and unlike herself.
+
+"Well, good night, then."
+
+"Good night, Andrew. Mine, eh?"--her face flushing. "Thee'll know
+to-morrow. Thee thinks it looks comfortable?"--holding his hand
+anxiously. "Heartsome? Mis' Hale called the place that the other day. I
+was so glad to hear that! Well, good night. _I_ think it does."
+
+And she went back to her work, while Andy made his way up-stairs,
+puzzled and sleepy.
+
+The next day was cool and grave for intemperate August. Very seldom a
+stream of fresh sunshine broke through the gray, mottling the pavements
+with uncertain lights. Summer was evidently tired of its own lusty life,
+and had a mind to put on a cowl of hodden-gray, and call itself
+November. The pale, pleasant light toned in precisely, however, to the
+meaning of Arch and Walnut Streets, where the old Quaker family-life has
+rooted itself into the city, and looks out on the passers-by in such a
+sober, cheerful fashion. There was one house, low down in Arch, that
+would have impressed you as having grown more sincerely than the others
+out of the character of its owner. There was nothing bigoted or
+purse-proud or bawbling in the habit of the man who built it; from the
+massive blocks in the foundation, to the great horse-chestnuts in front,
+and the creeping ivy over pictures and bookshelves, there was the same
+constant hint of a life liberal, solid, graceful. It had its whim of
+expression, too, in the man himself,--a small man, lean,
+stoop-shouldered, with gray hair and whiskers, wearing a clergyman's
+black suit and white cravat: his every motion was quiet, self-poised,
+intelligent; a quizzical, kind smile on the mouth, listening eyes, a
+grave forehead; a man who had heard other stories than any in your
+life,--of different range, yet who waited, helpful, for yours, knowing
+it to be something new and full of an eternal meaning. It was Dr.
+Bowdler, rector of an Episcopal church, a man of more influence out of
+the Church than any in it. He was in the breakfast-room now, trimming
+the hanging-baskets in the window, while his niece finished her coffee:
+he "usually saved his appetite for dinner, English fashion; cigars until
+then,"--poohing at all preaching of hygiene, as usual, as "stuff."
+
+There were several other gentlemen in the room,--waiting, apparently,
+for something,--reading the morning papers, playing with the
+Newfoundland dog that had curled himself up in the patch of sunshine by
+the window, or chatting with Miss Defourchet. None of them, she saw,
+were men of cultured leisure: one or two millionnaires, burly,
+stubby-nosed fellows, with practised eyes and Port-hinting faces: the
+class of men whose money was made thirty years back, who wear slouched
+clothes, and wield the coarser power in the States. They came out to the
+talk fit for a lady, on the open general field, in a lumbering, soggy
+way, the bank-note smell on every thought. The others, more unused to
+society, caught its habit better, she thought, belonging as they did to
+a higher order: they were practical mechanicians, and their profession
+called, she knew, for tolerably powerful and facile faculties of brain.
+The young lady, who was waiting too, though not so patiently as the
+others, amused herself in drawing them out and foiling them against each
+other, with a good deal of youthful tact, and want of charity, for a
+while. She grew tired at last.
+
+"They are long coming, uncle," she said, rising from her chair.
+
+"They are here, Mary: putting up the model in the back lobby for the
+last hour. Did you think it would be brought in here?"
+
+"I don't know. Mr. Aikens is not here,"--glancing at the timepiece
+uneasily.
+
+"He's always slow," said one of the machinists, patting the dog's head.
+"But I will rely more on his judgment of the engine than on my own.
+He'll not risk a dollar on it, either, if there's a chance of its
+proving a failure."
+
+"It cannot be a failure," she said, impatiently, her peremptory brown
+eyes lighting.
+
+"It has been tried before," said her uncle, cautiously,--"or the same
+basis of experiment,--substitution of compressed air for steam,--and it
+did not succeed. But it is the man you reason from, Mary, not the
+machine."
+
+"I don't understand anything about the machine," in a lower voice,
+addressing the man she knew to possess most influence in the party. "But
+this Starke has given his life to it, and a life worth living, too. All
+the strength of soul and body that God gave him has gone into that model
+out yonder. He has been dragging it from place to place for years, half
+starving, to get it a chance of trial"--
+
+"All which says nothing for the wheels and pulleys," dryly interrupted
+the man, with a critical look at her flushing and paling face.
+
+People of standfast habit were always shy of this young person, because,
+having an acute brain and generous impulses, and being a New-Englander
+by birth, she had believed herself called to be a reformer, and had
+lectured in public last winter. Her lightest remarks had, somehow, an
+oratorical twang. The man might have seen what a true, grand face hers
+would be, when time had taken off the acrid, aggressive heat which the,
+to her, novel wrongs in the world provoked in it.
+
+"When you see the man," interposed her uncle, "you will understand why
+Miss Defourchet espouses his cause so hotly. Nobody is proof against his
+intense, fierce belief in this thing he has made. It reminds me of the
+old cases of possession by a demon."
+
+The young girl looked up quickly.
+
+"Demon? It was the spirit of God, the Bible says, that filled Bezaleel
+and that other, I forget his name, with wisdom to work in gold and
+silver and fine linen. It's the spirit of God that you call
+genius,--anything that reveals truth: in pictures, or actions,
+_or_--machines."
+
+Friend Turner, who was there, took her fingers in his wrinkled hand.
+
+"Thee feels strongly, Mary."
+
+"I wish you could see the man," in a lower voice. "Your old favorite,
+Fichte," with a smile, "says that 'thorough integrity of purpose is our
+nearest approach to the Divine idea.' There never was such integrity of
+purpose as his, I believe. Men don't often fight through hunger and want
+like death, for a pure aim. And I tell you, if fate thwarts him at this
+last chance, it is unjust and cruel."
+
+"Thee means _God_, thee knows?"
+
+She was silent, then looked up.
+
+"I do know."
+
+The old Quaker put his hand kindly on her hair.
+
+"He will find His own teachers for thee, dear," was all the reproof he
+gave.
+
+There was a noise in the hall, and a servant, opening the door, ushered
+in Andy, and behind him the machinist, Starke. A younger man than Friend
+Turner had expected to see,--about fifty, his hair prematurely white, in
+coarse, but decent brown clothes, bearing in his emaciated limbs and
+face marks of privation, it was true, but with none of the fierce
+enthusiasm of expression or nervousness he had looked for. A quiet,
+grave, preoccupied manner. While Dr. Bowdler and some of the others
+crowded about him, he stood, speaking seldom, his hands clasped behind
+him and his head bent forward, the gray hair brushed straight up from
+his forehead. Miss Defourchet was disappointed a little: the best of
+women like to patronize, and she had meant to meet him as an equal,
+recognize him in this new atmosphere of refinement into which he was
+brought, set him at his ease, as she did Andy, by a few quiet words. But
+he was her equal: more master of this or any occasion than she, because
+so thoroughly unconscious, standing on something higher. She suspected,
+too, he had been used to a life as cultivated as this, long ago, by the
+low, instructed voice, the intangible simplicity of look and word
+belonging to the bred gentleman.
+
+"They may fuss as they please about him now," chuckled Andy to himself,
+"but darn a one of 'em would have smuggled him into them clothes. Spruce
+they look, too; baggy about the knees, maybe. No, thank you, Miss; I've
+had sufficient," putting down the wine he had barely sipped,--groaning
+inwardly; but he knew what was genteel, I hope, and that comforted him
+afterwards.
+
+"The model is ready," said Starke to Dr. Bowdler. "We are keeping your
+friends waiting."
+
+"No. It is Aikens who is not here. You know him? If the thing satisfies
+him, he'll bring it into his factories over the Delaware, and make Johns
+push it through at Washington. He's a thorough-goer, Aikens. Then it
+will be a success. That's Johns,--that burly fellow in the frock-coat.
+You have had the model at Washington, I think you told me, Mr. Starke?"
+
+"Three years ago. I exhibited it before a committee. On the Capitol
+grounds it was."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Oh, with success, certainly. They brought in a bill to introduce it
+into the public works, but it fell through. Woods brought it in. He was
+a young man: not strong, maybe. That was the reason they laughed, I
+suppose. He tried it for two or three sessions, until it got to be a
+sort of joke. I had no influence. That has been the cause of its
+failure, always."
+
+His eyes dropped; then he suddenly lifted his hand to his mouth, putting
+it behind him again, to turn with a smile when Miss Defourchet addressed
+him. Dr. Bowdler started.
+
+"Look at the blood," he whispered to Friend Turner. "He bit his finger
+to the bone."
+
+"I know," said the old Quaker. "The man is quiet from inanition and
+nervous tension. This trial means more to him than we guess. Get him out
+of this crowd."
+
+"Come, Mr. Starke," and the Doctor touched his arm, "into my library.
+There are some curious plates there which"--
+
+Andy had been gulping for courage to speak for some time.
+
+"Don't let him go without a glass of wine," he muttered to the young
+lady. "I give you my honor I haven't got food across his lips for"--
+
+She started away from him, and made the machinist drink to the success
+of "our engine," as she called it; but he only touched the glass to his
+lips and smiled at her faintly: then left the room with her uncle.
+
+The dog followed him: he had kept by Starke since the moment he came
+into the breakfast-room, cuddling down across his feet when he was
+called away. The man had only patted him absently, saying that all dogs
+did so with him, he didn't know why. Thor followed him now. Friend
+Turner beckoned the clergyman back a moment.
+
+"Make him talk, Richard. Be rough, hurt him, if thee chooses; it will be
+a safety-valve. Look in his eyes! I tell thee we have no idea of all
+that has brought this poor creature into this state,--such rigid strain.
+But if it is broken in on first by the failure of his pump, if it be a
+pump, I will not answer for the result, Richard."
+
+Dr. Bowdler nodded abruptly, and hurried after Starke. When he entered
+the cozy south room which he called the library, he found Starke
+standing before an oil-painting of a baby, one the Doctor had lost years
+ago.
+
+"Such a bright little thing!" the man said, patting the chubby bare foot
+as if it were alive.
+
+"You have children?" Dr. Bowdler asked eagerly.
+
+"No, but I know almost all I meet in the street, or they know me. 'Uncle
+Joe' they call me,"--with a boyish laugh.
+
+It was gone in a moment.
+
+"Are they ready?"
+
+"No."
+
+The Doctor hesitated. The man beside him was gray-haired as himself, a
+man of power, with a high, sincere purpose looking out of the haggard
+scraggy face and mild blue eyes,--how could he presume to advise him?
+Yet this Starke, he saw, had narrowed his life down to a point beyond
+which lay madness; and that baby had not been in life more helpless or
+solitary or unable than he was now, when the trial had come. The Doctor
+caught the bony hands in his own fat healthy ones.
+
+"I wish I could help you," he said impetuously.
+
+Starke looked in his face keenly.
+
+"For what? How?"
+
+"This engine--have you nothing to care for in life but that?"
+
+"Nothing,--nothing but that and what it will gain me."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"If it fails?"
+
+The dark blood dyed the man's face and throat; he choked, waited a
+moment before he spoke.
+
+"It would not hurt me. No. I'm nearly tired out, Sir. I hardly look for
+success."
+
+"Will you try again?"
+
+"No, I'll not try again."
+
+He had drawn away and stood by the window, his face hidden by the
+curtain. The Doctor was baffled.
+
+"You have yourself lost faith in your invention?"
+
+Something of the old fierceness flashed into the man's eye, but died
+out.
+
+"No matter," he said under his breath, shaking his head, and putting his
+hand in a feeble way to his mouth.
+
+"Inanition of soul as well as body," thought the Doctor. "I'll rouse
+him, cruel or not."
+
+"Have you anything to which to turn, if this disappoints you? Home or
+friends?"
+
+He waited for an answer. When it came, he felt like an intruder, the man
+was so quiet, far-off.
+
+"I have nothing,--no friends,--unless I count that boy in the next room.
+Eh? He has fragments of the old knightly spirit, if his brain be
+cracked. No others."
+
+"Well, well! You'll forgive me?" said the Doctor. "I did not mean to be
+coarse. Only I--The matter will succeed, I know. You will find happiness
+in that. Money and fame will come after."
+
+The old man looked up and came towards him with a certain impressive
+dignity, though the snuff-colored clothes were bagging about his limbs,
+and his eyes were heavy and unsteady.
+
+"You're not coarse. No. I'm glad you spoke to me in that way. It is as
+if you stopped my life short, and made me look before and behind. But
+you don't understand. I"--
+
+He put his hand to his head, then began buttoning his coat uncertainly,
+with a deprecating, weak smile.
+
+"I don't know what the matter is. I'm not strong as I used to be."
+
+"You need success."
+
+How strong and breezy the Doctor's voice sounded!
+
+"Cheer up, Mr. Starke. You're a stronger-brained man than I, and twenty
+years younger. It's something to have lived for a single high purpose
+like yours, if you succeed. And if not, God's life is broad, and needs
+other things than air-engines. Perhaps you've been 'in training,' as the
+street-talk goes, getting your muscles and nerves well grown, and your
+real work and fight are yet to come."
+
+"I don't know," said the man, dully.
+
+Dr. Bowdler, perhaps, with well-breathed body and soul, did not quite
+comprehend how vacant and well worn out both heart and lungs were under
+poor Starke's bony chest.
+
+"You don't seem to comprehend what this engine is to me.--You said the
+world was broad. I had a mind, even when I was a boy, to do something in
+it. My father was a small farmer over there in the Jerseys. Well, I used
+to sit thinking there, after the day's work was done, until my head
+ached, of how I might do something,--to help, you understand?"
+
+"I understand."
+
+"To make people glad I had lived. I was lazy, too. I'd have liked to
+settle down and grub like the rest, but this notion kept driving me
+like, a sting. I can understand why missionaries cross the seas when
+their hearts stay behind. It grew with me, kept me restless, like a
+devil inside of me. I'm not strong-brained, as you said. I had only one
+talent,--for mechanism. They bred me a lawyer, but I was a machinist
+born. Well,--it's the old story. What's the use of telling it?"
+
+He stopped abruptly, his eyes on the floor.
+
+"Go on. It will be good for both of us. Aikens has not come."
+
+"There's nothing to tell. If it was God or the Devil that led me on to
+this thing I don't know. I sold myself to it, soul and body. The idea of
+this invention was not new, but my application was. So it got possession
+of me. Whatever I made by the law went into it. I tried experiments in a
+costly way then, had laboratories there, and workshops in the city. My
+father left me a fortune; _that_ was swallowed up. I worked on with hard
+struggle then. I was forty years old. I thought success lay just within
+my reach. God! You don't know how I had fought for it, day by day, all
+that long life! I was near mad, I think. And then"--
+
+He stopped again, biting his under lip, standing motionless. The Doctor
+waited until he was controlled.
+
+"Never mind," gently. "Don't go on."
+
+"Yes, I'll tell you all. I was married. A little Quaker girl she was,
+uneducated, but the gentlest, truest woman God ever made, I think. It
+rested one to look at her. There were two children. They died. Maybe, if
+they had lived, it would have been different with me,--I'm so fond of
+children. I was of her,--God knows I was! But after the children were
+gone, and the property sunk, and the experiments all topped just short
+of success, for want of means, I grew irritable and cross,--used to her.
+It's the way with husbands and wives, sometimes. Well"--
+
+He swallowed some choking in his throat, and hurried on.
+
+"She had some money,--not much, but her own. I wanted it. Then I stopped
+to think. This engine seemed like a greedy devil swallowing everything.
+Another step, and she was penniless, ruined: common sense told me that.
+And I loved her,--well enough to see how my work came between us every
+hour, made me cruel to her, kept her wretched. If I were gone, she would
+be better off. I said that to myself day after day. I used to finger the
+bonds of that money, thinking how it would enable me to finish all I had
+to do. She wanted me to take it. I knew some day I should do it."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"No,"--his face clearing. "I was not altogether lost, I think. I left
+her, settling it on herself. Then I was out of temptation. But I
+deceived her: I said I was tired of married life, wished to give myself
+to my work. Then I left her."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She? Nothing that I remember. 'As thee will, Joseph,' that was all, if
+anything. She had suspected it a long time. If I had stayed with her, I
+should have used that money,"--his fingers working with his white
+whiskers. "I've been near starving sometimes since. So I saved her from
+that,"--looking steadily at the Doctor, when he had finished speaking,
+but as if he did not see him.
+
+"But your wife? Have you never seen her since?"
+
+"Once." He spoke with difficulty now, but the clergyman suffered him to
+go on. "I don't know where she is now. I saw her once in the Fulton
+ferry-boat at New York; she had grown suddenly old and hard. She did not
+see me. I never thought she could grow so old as that. But I did what I
+could. I saved her from my life."
+
+Dr. Bowdler looked into the man's eyes as a physician might look at a
+cancer.
+
+"Since then you have not seen her, I understand you? Not wished to see
+her?"
+
+There was a moment's pause.
+
+"I have told you the facts of my life, Sir," said the old machinist,
+with a bow, his stubbly gray hair seeming to stand more erect; "the rest
+is of trifling interest."
+
+Dr. Bowdler colored.
+
+"Don't be unjust to me, my friend," he said, kindly. "I meant well."
+
+There had been some shuffling noises in the next room in the half-hour
+just past, which the Doctor had heard uneasily, raising his voice each
+time to stifle the sound. A servant came to the door now, beckoning him
+out. As he went, Starke watched him from under his bushy brows, smiling,
+when he turned and apologized for leaving him.
+
+That man was a thorough man, of good steel. What an infinite patience
+there was in his voice! He was glad he had told him so much; he breathed
+freer himself for it. But he was not going to whine. Whatever pain had
+been in his life he had left out of that account. What right had any man
+to know what his wife was to him? Other men had given up home and
+friends and wife for the truth's sake, and not whimpered over it.
+
+What a long time they were waiting to examine the engine! He began his
+walk up and down the room, with the habitual stoop of the shoulders, and
+an occasional feeble wandering of the hand to his mouth, wondering a
+little at himself, at his coolness. For this was the last throw of the
+dice. After to-day, no second chance. If it succeeded--Well, he washed
+his hands of the world's work then. _His_ share was finished, surely.
+Then for happiness! What would she say when he came back? He had earned
+his reward in life by this time; his work was done, well
+done,--repeating that to himself again and again. But _would_ she care?
+His long-jawed, gaunt face was all aglow now, and he rubbed his hands
+softly together, his thought sliding back evidently into some accustomed
+track, one that gave him fresh pleasure, though it had been the same
+these many years, through days of hammering and moulding and nights of
+sleeping in cheap taverns or under market-stalls. When they were first
+married, he used to bring her a peculiar sort of white shawl,--quite
+outside of the Quaker dress, to be sure, but he liked it. She used to
+look like a bride, freshly, every time she put one on. One of those
+should be the first thing he bought her. Dr. Bowdler was not wrong: he
+was a young man yet; they could enjoy life strongly and heartily, both
+of them. But no more work: with a dull perception of the fact that his
+strength was sapped out beyond the power of recuperation. That baby
+(stopping before the picture) was like Rob, about the forehead. But Rob
+was fairer, and had brown eyes and a snub-nose, like his mother.
+Remembering how, down in the farm-house, she used to sit on the
+front-porch step nursing the baby, while he smoked or read, in the
+evenings: where they could see the salt marshes. Jane liked them, for
+their color: a dead flat of brown salt grass with patches of brilliant
+emerald, and the black, snaky lines up which the tide crept, the
+white-sailed boats looking as if they were wedged in the grass. She
+liked that. Her tastes were all good.
+
+How long _did_ they mean to wait? He went to the window and looked out.
+Just then a horse neighed, and the sound oddly recalled the country-town
+where they had lived after they came into this State. On market-days it
+was one perpetual whinny along the streets from the colts trotting
+along-side of the wagons. He and Jane used to keep open table for their
+country-friends then, and on court- or fair-days. What a hard-fisted,
+shrewd people they were! talking bad English (like Jane herself); but
+there was more refinement and softness of feeling among them than among
+city-bred men. He should relish that life again; it suited him. To die
+like a grub? But he _had_ done his work. Thank God!
+
+He opened the window to catch the damp air, as Dr. Bowdler came in and
+touched him on the arm.
+
+"Shall we stay here? Mr. Aikens has come, and they have been testing the
+machine for some time, I find. Go? Certainly, but--You're a little
+nervous, Mr. Starke, and--Wouldn't it be better if you were not present?
+They would be freer in deciding, and--suppose you and I stay here?"
+
+"Eh? How? At it for some time?" hurrying out. "At it?" as the Doctor
+tried to keep pace with him. "Why, God bless my soul, Sir, what can
+_they_ do? Nobody understands the valves but myself. A set of
+ignoramuses, Sir. I saw that at a glance. But it's my last
+chance,"--panting and wheezing before he reached the back lobby, and
+holding his hand to his side.
+
+Dr. Bowdler stopped outside.
+
+"What are you waiting here for, Mary?"
+
+"I want to hear. What chance has it? I think I'd give something off my
+own life, if that man had succeeded in doing a great thing."
+
+"Not much of a chance, Aikens says. The theory is good, but they are
+afraid the expense will make it of no practical use. However, they have
+not decided. It is well it is his last chance, though, as he says. I
+never saw a man who had dragged himself so near to insanity in pursuit
+of a hobby. Nothing but a great reaction can save him."
+
+"Success, you mean? I think that man's life is worth a thousand aimless
+ones, Sir. If it fails, where's your 'justice on earth'? I"--
+
+She pushed her curls back hotly. The Doctor did not answer.
+
+The trial lasted until late in the afternoon. One or two of the
+gentlemen came out at odd times to luncheon, which was spread in the
+adjoining room. They looked grave, and talked earnestly in low tones:
+the man had infected them with his own feeling in a measure.
+
+"I don't know when I was more concerned for the success of anything not
+my own," said Mr. Aikens to Miss Defourchet, as he rose to go back to
+the lobby, putting down his glass. "It is such a daring innovation; it
+would be worth thousands per annum to me, if I could make it
+practicable. And then that poor devil himself,--I feel as if we were
+trying him for his life to-day. It's pitiful."
+
+She went in herself once, when the door was open, and saw Starke: he was
+in his shirt-sleeves, driving in a wedge that had come out; his face was
+parched, looked contracted, his eyes glazed. She spoke to him, but he
+made no answer, went from side to side of the engine, working with it,
+glancing furtively at the men, who stood gravely talking. The girl was
+nervous, and felt she should cry, if she stayed there. She called the
+dog, but he would not come; he was crouched with his head on his
+fore-paws, watching Starke.
+
+"It is curious how the dog follows him," she said, after she had gone
+out, to Andy, who was in the back porch, watching the rain come up.
+
+"I've noticed animals did it to him. My Jerry knows him as well as me.
+What chances has he, Miss?"
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"You heard Dr. Bowdler say he was married. Do you know his wife?" she
+asked.
+
+Some strange doubts had been in Andy's brain for the last hour, but he
+never told a secret.
+
+"It was in the market I come, to know Mr. Starke," he said, confusedly.
+"At the eatin'-stalls. He never said to me as he hed a wife."
+
+The rain was heavy and constant when it came, a muddy murkiness in the
+air that bade fair to last for a day or more. Evening closed in rapidly.
+Andy sat still on the porch; he could shuffle his heels as he pleased
+there, and take a sly bit of tobacco, watching, through a crack between
+the houses, the drip, drip, of rain on the umbrellas going by, the lamps
+beginning to glow here and there in the darkness, listening to the soggy
+footfalls and the rumble of the streetcars.
+
+"This is tiresome,"--putting one finger carefully under the rungs of his
+chair, where he had the lantern. "I wonder ef Jane is waiting for
+me,--an' for any one else."
+
+He trotted one foot, and chewed more vehemently. On the verge of some
+mystery, it seemed to him.
+
+"Ef it is--What ef he misses, an' won't go back with me? God help the
+woman! What kin _I_ do?"
+
+After a while, taking out the lantern, and rubbing it where the damp had
+dimmed it,--
+
+"I'll need it to-night, that's sure!"
+
+Now and then he bent his head, trying to catch a sound from the lobby,
+but to no purpose. About five o'clock, however, there was a sudden
+sound, shoving of chairs, treading, half-laughs, as of people departing.
+The door opened, and the gentlemen came out into the lighted hall, in
+groups of two or three,--some who were to dine with the Doctor passing
+up the staircase, the others chatting by the door. The Doctor was not
+with them, nor Starke. Andy stood up, trying to hear, holding his felt
+hat over his mouth. "If he's hed a chance!" But he could catch only
+broken sentences.
+
+"A long session."
+
+"I knew it from the first."
+
+"I asked Starke to call on me to-morrow," etc.
+
+And so they put on their hats, and went out, leaving the hall vacant.
+
+"I can't stand this," said Andy, after a pause.
+
+He wiped his wet feet, and went into the hall. The door out of which the
+men came opened into a reception-room; beyond that was the lobby. It was
+dimly lighted as yet, when he entered it; the engine-model, a mass of
+miniature wheels and cylinders, was in the middle of the bare floor; the
+Doctor and Starke at the other end of the apartment. The Doctor was
+talking,--a few words now and then, earnestly spoken. Andy could not
+hear them; but Starke sat, saying nothing. Miss Defourchet took a pair
+of India-rubber boots from the servant in the hall, and went to him.
+
+"You must wear them, and take an umbrella, if you will not stay," she
+said, stooping down, as if she would like to have put them on his feet,
+her voice a little unsteady. "It rains very heavily, and your shoes are
+not strong. Indeed, you must."
+
+"Shoes, eh?" said the old machinist, lifting one foot end then the other
+on his knee, and looking vacantly at the holes through which the bare
+skin showed. "Oh, yes, yes,"--rising and going past her, as if he did
+not see her.
+
+"But you'll take them?"
+
+"Hush, Mary! Mr. Starke, I may come and see you to-morrow, you said?
+We'll arrange matters,"--with a hearty tone.
+
+Starke touched his hat with the air of an old-school gentleman.
+
+"I shall be happy to see you, Sir,--very happy. You will allow me to
+wish you good evening?"--smiling. "I am not well,"--with the same
+meaningless look.
+
+"Certainly,"--shaking hands earnestly. "I wish I could induce you to
+stay and have a talk over your future prospects, eh? But to-morrow--I
+will be down early to-morrow. Your young friend gave me the address. The
+model--we'll have that sent down to-morrow, too."
+
+Starke stopped.
+
+"The model," without, however, looking at it. "Yes. It can go to-night.
+I should prefer that. Andrew will bring an express-wagon for
+it,"--fumbling in his pocket.
+
+"I have the exact change," said Miss Defourchet, eagerly; "let me pay
+the express."
+
+Starke's face colored and grew pale again.
+
+"You mistake me," he said, smiling.
+
+"He's no beggar. You hurt him," Andy had whispered, pushing back her
+hand. Some women had no sense, if they were ladies. Ann Mipps would
+never have done that!
+
+Starke drew out a tattered leather purse: there was a dime in it, which
+Andy took. He lighted his lantern, and followed Starke out of the house,
+noticing how the Doctor hesitated before he closed the door after them.
+They stood a moment on the pavement; the rain was dark and drenching,
+with sudden gusts of wind coming down the street. The machinist stood,
+his old cap stuck on the back of his head, his arms fallen nerveless at
+his sides, hair and coat and trousers flapping and wet: the very picture
+of a man whom the world had tried, and in whom it had found no possible
+savor of use but to be trodden under foot of men.
+
+"God help him!" thought Andy, "he's far gone! He don't even button an'
+unbutton his coat as allus."
+
+But he asked no questions, excepting where should he take _it_. Some
+young men came up, three abreast; Starke drew humbly out of their way
+before he replied.
+
+"I--I do not know, Andrew. But I'd rather not see it again. You"--
+
+His voice went down into a low mumbling, and he turned and went slowly
+off up the street. Andy stood puzzled a moment, then hurried after him.
+
+"Let me go home with you."
+
+"What use, boy?"
+
+"To-morrow, then?"
+
+Starke said nothing, thrust his hands into his pockets, his head falling
+on his breast with an unchanged vacancy of expression. Andy looked after
+him, coughing, gazing about him uncertainly.
+
+"He's clean given up! What kin _I_ do?"
+
+Then overtook him again, forcing the lantern into his hand,--not without
+a gulp for breath.
+
+"Here! take this! I like to. It's yours now, Mr. Starke, d' y'
+understand? Yours. But you'll take care of it, won't you?"
+
+"I do not need anything, my good boy. Let me go."
+
+But Andy held on desperately to his coat.
+
+"Come home. _She's_ there. Maybe I ought not to say it. It's Jane. For
+God's sake, come to Jane!"
+
+It was so dark that Andy could not see the expression of the man's face
+when he heard this. Starke did not speak for some minutes; when he did,
+his voice was firm and conscious, as it had not been before to-night.
+
+"Let go my coat, Andrew; I feel choking. You know my wife, then?"
+
+"Yes, this many a year. She's waited for you. Come home. Come!"
+
+But Starke drew his arm away.
+
+"Tell her I would have gone, if I had succeeded. But not now. I'm tired,
+I'm going to rest."
+
+With both hands he pushed the lank, wet hair off his face. Somehow, all
+his tired life showed itself in the gesture.
+
+"I don't think I ever did care as much for her as I do to-night. Is she
+always well, Andrew?"
+
+"Yes, well. Come!"
+
+"No; good night. Bid her good night."
+
+As he turned away, he stopped and looked back.
+
+"Ask her if she ever thinks of our Rob. I do." And so was gone.
+
+As he went down the street, turning into an alley, something black
+jumped over the low gate beside Andy and followed him.
+
+"It's the dog! Well, dumb creatures _are_ curious, beyond me. Now for
+Jane"; and with his head muddled and aching, he went to find an
+express-stand.
+
+The examination of the model took place on Tuesday. On the Saturday
+following, Dr. Bowdler was summoned to his back parlor to see a man and
+woman who had called. Going in, he found Andy, clad as before in his
+dress-suit of blue coat and marvellously plaid trousers, balancing
+himself uneasily on the edge of his chair, and a woman in Quaker dress
+beside him. Her face and presence attracted the Doctor at once,
+strongly, though they were evidently those of an uneducated
+working-woman. The quietude in her motions and expression, the repressed
+power, the delicacy, had worked out, from within, to carve her sad face
+into those fine lines he saw. No outside culture could do that. She
+spoke, too, with that simple directness that belongs to people who are
+sure of what they have to do in the world.
+
+"I came to see if thee knew anything of my husband: thee was so kind to
+him some days ago. I am Jane Starke."
+
+The Doctor comprehended in a moment. He watched the deserted wife
+curiously, as he answered her.
+
+"No, my dear Madam. Is it possible he is not with you? I went to his
+lodging twice with my niece, and, finding it vacant, concluded that he
+had returned to you, or gone with our young friend Andrew here."
+
+"He is not with me."
+
+She rose, her fingers twitching nervously at her bonnet-strings.
+
+"She was so dead sure you would know," said Andy, rising also. "We've
+been on the search for four days. We thought you would know. Where will
+you go now, Jane?"
+
+The woman lost every trace of color when Dr. Bowdler answered her, but
+she showed no other sign of her disappointment.
+
+"We will find him somewhere, Andrew."
+
+"Stop, stop," interrupted the Doctor. "Tell me what you have done. You
+must not go in this way."
+
+The woman began to answer, but Andy took the word from her.
+
+"You keep yerself quiet, Jane. She's dreadful worn out, Sir. There's not
+much to tell. Jane had come into town that night to meet him,--gone to
+his lodgins--she was so sure he'd come home. She's been waitin' these
+ten years,"--in a whisper. "But he didn't come. Nor the next day, nor
+any day since. An' the last I saw of him was goin' down the street in
+the rain, with the dog followin'. We've been lookin' every way we could,
+but I don't know the town much, out of my streets for milk, an' Jane
+knows nothin' of it at all, so"--
+
+"It is as I told you!" broke in Miss Defourchet, who had entered,
+unperceived, with a blaze of enthusiasm that made Jane start,
+bewildered. "He is at work,--some new effort. Madam, you have reason to
+thank God for making you the wife of such a man. It makes my blood
+glow," turning to her uncle, "to find this dauntless heroism in the rank
+and file of the people."
+
+She was sincere in her own heroic sympathy for the rank and file: her
+slender form dilated, her eyes flashed, and there was a rich color
+mounting to her fine aquiline features.
+
+"I like a man to fight fate to the death as this one,--never to give
+up,--to sacrifice life to his idea."
+
+"If thee means the engine by the idea," said Jane, dully, "we've given
+up a good deal to it. He has. It don't matter for me."
+
+Miss Defourchet glanced indignantly at the lumbering figure, the big
+slow eyes, following her with a puzzled pain in them. For all mischances
+or sinister fates in the world she had compassion, except for
+one,--stupidity.
+
+"I knew," to Dr. Bowdler, "he would not be content with the decision the
+other day. It is his destiny to help the world. And if this woman will
+come between him and his work, I hope she may never find him."
+
+Jane put a coarse hand up to her breast as if something hurt her; after
+a moment, she said, with her heavy, sad face looking full down on the
+young girl,--
+
+"Thee is young yet. It may be God meant my old man to do this work: it
+may be not. He knows. Myself, I do not think He keeps the world waitin'
+for this air-engine. Others'll be found to do it when it's needed; what
+matter if he fails? An' when a man gives up all little works for
+himself, an' his child, or--his wife," with a gasp, "for some great
+work"--
+
+She stopped.
+
+"It's more likely that the Devil is driving him than God leading," said
+the Doctor, hastily.
+
+"Come, Andrew," said Jane, gravely. "We have no time to lose."
+
+She moved to the door,--unsteadily, however.
+
+"_She_'s fagged out," said Andy, lingering behind her. "Since Tuesday
+night I've followed her through streets an' alleys, night an' day. Jest
+as prim an' sober as you see. Cryin' softly to herself at times. It's a
+sore heart-break, Sir. Waitin' these ten years"--
+
+Dr. Bowdler offered his help, earnestly, as did his niece, with a
+certain reserve. The dog Thor had disappeared with Starke, and they
+hoped that would afford some clue.
+
+"But the woman is a mere clog," said Miss Defourchet, impatiently, after
+they were gone. "Her eyes are as sad, unreasonable as Thor's. Nothing in
+them but instinct. But it is so with most women,"--with a sigh.
+
+"But somehow, Mary, those women never mistake their errand in the world
+any more than Thor, and do it as unconsciously and completely as he,"
+said the Doctor, with a quizzical smile. "If Starke had followed, his
+'instincts,' he would have been a snug farmer to-day in the Jerseys."
+
+Miss Defourchet vouchsafed no answer.
+
+Dr. Bowdler gave his help, as he had promised, but to no purpose. A week
+passed in the search without success, until at last Thor brought it. The
+dog was discovered one night in the kitchen, waiting for his supper, as
+he had been used to do: his affection for his new master, I suppose, not
+having overcome his recollection of the flesh-pots of Egypt. They
+followed him (Jane, the Doctor, and Andy) out to that maze of narrow
+streets, near Fairmount, called, I think, Francisville. He stopped at a
+low house, used in front as a cake-shop, the usual young girl with high
+cheek-bones and oily curls waiting within.
+
+"The dog's owner?" the trading look going out of her eyes suddenly, "Oh,
+are you his friends? He's low to-night: mother's up with him since
+supper; mother's kept him since last Tuesday,"--fussing out from behind
+the counter. "Take chairs, Ma'am. I'll call her. Go out, you
+Stevy,"--driving out two or three urchins in their bed-gowns who were
+jamming up the door-way.
+
+Miserably poor the whole place was; the woman, when she came down, a
+hard skinflint--in Andy's phrase--in the face: just home from her day's
+washing, her gown pinned up, her arms flabby and red.
+
+"Good evenin', Sir! evenin', Ma'am! See the man? Of course, Ma'am; but
+you'd best be keerful,"--standing between Jane and the door. "He's very
+poorly."
+
+"What ails him?"
+
+"Well, I'll say it out,--if you're his friends, as you say," stammering.
+"I'd not like to accuse any one rashly, but--I think he'd a notion of
+starvin' to death, an' got himself so low. Come to me las' week, an'
+pawned his coat for my back room to sleep in. He eat nothin' then: I
+seen that. An' he used to go out an' look at the dam for hours: but he
+never throwed himself in. Since he took to bed, we keep him up with
+broth and sech as we have,--Sally an' me. Sir? Afford it? Hum! We're not
+as well off as we have been," dryly; "but I'm not a beast to see a man
+starvin' under my roof. Oh, certingly, Ma'am; go up."
+
+And while Jane mounted the rickety back-stairs, she turned to the door
+to meet two or three women with shawls pinned about their heads.
+
+"He's very poorly, Mis' Crawford, thank ye, Mem. No, you can't do
+nothing'," in a sepulchral whisper, which continued in a lower tone,
+with a nod back to the Doctor and Andy.
+
+Starke's affair was a godsend to the neighborhood, Dr. Bowdler saw.
+Untrained people enjoy a sickness with more keenness and hearty
+good-feeling than you do the opera. The Doctor had providently brought a
+flask of brandy in his pocket. He went on tiptoe up the creaking stairs
+and gave it to Jane. She was standing, holding the handle of the door,
+not turning it.
+
+"What is it, Jane?" cheerfully. "What do you tremble for, eh?"
+
+"Nothin'",--chewing her lips and opening the door. "It's ten years
+since,"--to herself, as she went in.
+
+Not when she was a shy girl had he been to her what these ten years of
+desertion had made him.
+
+It was half an hour before the Doctor and Andy went up softly into the
+upper room and sat quietly down out of sight in the corner. Jane was
+sitting on the low cot-bed, holding Starke's head on her breast. They
+could not see her face in the feeble light. She had some brandy and
+water in a glass, and gave him a spoonful of it now and then; and when
+she had done that, smoothed the yellow face incessantly with her hard
+fingers. The Doctor fancied that such dumb pain and affection as there
+was in even that little action ought to bring him to life, if he were
+dead. There was some color on his cheeks, and occasionally he opened his
+eyes and tried to speak, but closed them wearily. They watched by him
+until midnight; his pulse grew stronger by that time, and he lay
+wistfully looking at his wife like one who had wakened out of a long
+death, and tried to collect his thought. She did not speak nor stir,
+knowing on how slight a thread his sense hung.
+
+"Jane!" he said, at last.
+
+They bent forward eagerly.
+
+"Jane, I wish thee'd take me home."'
+
+"To be sure, Joseph," cheerfully. "In the morning. It is too chilly
+to-night. Is thee comfortable?" drawing his head closer to her breast.
+"O God! He'll live!" silently clutching at the bed-rail until her hand
+ached. "Go to sleep, dear."
+
+Whatever sobs or tears choked her voice just then, she forced them back:
+they might disturb him. He closed his eyes a moment.
+
+"I have something to say to thee, Jane."
+
+"No. Thee must rest."
+
+"I'd sleep better, if I tell thee first."
+
+There was a moment's silence. The woman's face was pale, her eyes
+burning, but she only smiled softly, holding him steadily.
+
+"It has been so long!"--passing his hand over his forehead vaguely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+She could not command a smile now.
+
+"It was all wasted. I've been worth nothing."
+
+How close she held him then to her breast! How tender the touches grew
+on his face!
+
+"I was not strong enough to kill myself even, the other day, when I was
+so tired. So cowardly! Not worth much, Jane!"
+
+She bent forward over him, to keep the others from hearing this.
+
+"Thee's tired too, Jane?" looking up dully.
+
+"A little, Joseph."
+
+Another silence.
+
+"To-morrow, did thee say, we would go home?"
+
+"Yes, to-morrow."
+
+He shut his eyes to sleep.
+
+"Kiss him," said the Doctor to her. "It will make him more certain."
+
+Her face grew crimson.
+
+"He has not asked me yet," she said.
+
+Sometime early in the summer, nearly four years after, Miss Defourchet
+came down to make her uncle another visit,--a little thinned and jaded
+with her winter's work, and glad of the daily ride into the fresh
+country-air. One morning, the Doctor, jumping into the barouche beside
+her, said,--
+
+"We'll make a day of it, Mary,--spend it with some old friends of ours.
+They are such wholesome, natural people, it refreshes me to be with them
+when I am tired."
+
+"Starke and his wife?" she asked, arranging her scarf. "I never desire
+to be with him, or with any man recreant to his work."
+
+"Recreant, eh? Starke? Well, no; he works hard, digs and ditches, and is
+happy. I think he takes his work more humbly and healthily than any man
+I know."
+
+Miss Defourchet looked absently out at the gleaming river. Her interest
+had always been languid in the man since he had declined either to fight
+fate or drown himself. The Doctor jerked his hat down into the bottom of
+the carriage and pulled open his cravat.
+
+"Hah! do you catch that river-breeze? Don't that expand your lungs? And
+the whiff of the fresh clover-blossoms? I come out here to study my
+sermons, did you know? Nature is so simple and grand here, a man could
+not well say a mean or unbrotherly thing while he stays. It forces you
+to be 'a faithful witness' to the eternal truth. There is good fishing
+hereabouts, eh, Jim?"--calling to the driver. "Do you see that black
+pool under the sycamore?"
+
+"_I_ could not call it 'faithful witnessing' to delight in taking even a
+fish's life," dryly said his niece.
+
+The Doctor winced.
+
+"It's the old Adam in me, I suppose. You'll have to be charitable to the
+different making-up of people, Mary."
+
+However, he was silent for a while after that, with rather an
+extinguished feeling, bursting out again when they reached the gate of a
+little snug place by the road-side.
+
+"Here is where my little friend Ann lives. There's a wife for you! 'And
+though she rules him, never shows she rules.' They've a dairy-farm, you
+know, back of the hills; but they live here because it was her father's
+toll-house then, and they won't give up the old place. I like such
+notions. Andy's full of them. There he is! Hillo, Fawcett!"
+
+Andy came out from the kitchen-garden, his freckled face redder than his
+hair, his eyes showing his welcome. Dr. Bowdler was an old tried friend
+now of his and Ann's. "He took a heap of nonsense out of me," he used to
+say.
+
+"No, no, we'll not stop now," said the Doctor; "we are going on to
+Starke's, and Ann is not in, I see. I will stop in the evening for my
+glass of buttermilk, though, and a bunch of country-grown flowers."
+
+But they waited long enough to discuss the price of poultry, etc., in
+market, before they drove on. Miss Defourchet looked wearied.
+
+"Such things seem so paltry while the country is in the state it is,"
+she said.
+
+"Well, my dear, so it is. But it's 'the work by which Andy thrives,' you
+know. And I like it, somehow."
+
+The lady had worked nobly in the hospitals last winter, and naturally
+she wanted to see every head and hand at work on some noble scheme or
+task for the world's good. The hearty, comfortable quiet of the Starkes'
+little farm-house tired her. It was such a sluggish life of nothings,
+she thought,--even when Jane had brought her chair close to the window
+where the sunshine came in broadest and clearest through the
+buttonwood-leaves. Jane saw the look, and it troubled her. She was not
+much of a talker, only when with her husband, so there was no use of
+trying that. She put a little table beside the window and a white cloth
+on it, and then brought a saucer of crimson strawberries and yellow
+cream; but the lady was no eater, she was sorry to see. She stood a
+moment timidly, but Miss Defourchet did not put her at her ease. It was
+the hungry poor she cared for, with stifled brains and souring feeling.
+This woman was at ease, stupidly at peace with God and herself.
+
+"Perhaps thee'd be amused to look over Joseph's case of books?" handing
+her the key, and then sitting down with her knitting, contented in
+having finished her duty. "After a while thee'll have a pleasant
+time,"--smiling consciously. "Richard'll be awake. Richard's our boy,
+thee knows? I wish he was awake, but it is his mornin' nap, an' I never
+disturb him in his mornin' nap."
+
+"You lead a very quiet life, apparently," said Miss Defourchet; for she
+meant to see what was in all these dull trifles.
+
+"Yes, thee might call it so. My old man farms; he has more skill that
+way than me. He bought land in Iowa, an' has been out seein' it, an'
+that freshened him up this spring. But we'll never leave the old place."
+
+"So he farms, and you"--
+
+"Well, I oversee the house," glancing at the word into the kitchen to
+see how Bessy was getting on with the state dinner in progress. "It
+keeps me busy, an' Bessy, (she's an orphan we've taken to raise,) an'
+the dairy, an' Richard most of all. I let nobody touch Richard but
+myself. That's my work."
+
+"You have little time for reading?"
+
+Jane colored.
+
+"I'm not fond of it. A book always put me to sleep quicker than a hop
+pillow. But lately I read some things," hesitating,--"the first books
+Richard'll have to know. I want to keep him with ourselves as long as I
+can. I'd like,"--her eyes with a new outlook in them, as she raised
+them, something beyond Miss Defourchet's experience,--"I'd like to make
+my boy a good, healthy, honest boy before _I_'m done with him. I wish I
+could teach him his Latin an' th' others. But there's no use to try for
+that."
+
+"How goes it, Mary?" said the Doctor heartily, coming in, all in a heat,
+and sun-burnt, with Starke.
+
+Both men were past the prime of life, thin, and stooped, but Starke's
+frame was tough and weather-cured. He was good for ten years longer in
+the world than Dr. Bowdler.
+
+"I've just been looking at the stock. Full and plenty, in every corner,
+as I say to Joseph. It warms me up to come here, Starke. I don't know a
+healthier, more cheerful farm on these hills than just this one."
+
+Starke's face brightened.
+
+"The ground's not overly rich, Sir. Tough work, tough work; but I like
+it. I'm saving off it, too. We put by a hundred or two last year; same
+next, God willing. For Richard, Dr. Bowdler. We want enough to give him
+a thorough education, and then let him rough it with the others. That
+will be the best way to bring out the stuff that's in him. It's good
+stuff," in an under-tone.
+
+"How old is he?" said Miss Defourchet.
+
+"Two years last February," said Jane, eagerly.
+
+"Two years; yes. He's my namesake, Mary, did you know? Where is the
+young lion?"
+
+"Why, yes, mother. Why isn't Richard down? Morning nap? Hoot, toot!
+bring the boy down!"
+
+Miss Defourchet, while Jane went for the boy, noticed how heavy the
+scent of the syringas grew, how the bees droned down into a luxurious
+delight in the hot noon. One might dream out life very pleasantly there,
+she thought. The two men talked politics, but glanced constantly at the
+stairs. She did not wonder that Starke's worn, yellow face should grow
+so curiously bright at the sight of his boy; but her uncle did not care
+for children,--unless, indeed, there was something in them. Jane came
+down and put the boy on the floor.
+
+"He has pulled all my hair down," she said, trying to look grave, to
+hide the proud smile in her face.
+
+Miss Defourchet had taken Richard up with an involuntary kiss, which he
+resisted, looking her full in the face. There _was_ something in this
+child.
+
+"He won't kiss you, unless he likes you," said Starke, chafing his hands
+delightedly.
+
+"What do you think of that fellow, Mary?" said the Doctor, coming over.
+"He's my young lion, Richard is. Look at this square forehead. You don't
+believe in Phrenology, eh? Well, I do. Feel his jaws. Look at that lady,
+Sir! Do you see the big, brave eyes of him?"
+
+"His mouth is like his mother's," said Starke, jealously.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes! So. You think that is the best part of his face, I know.
+It is; as tender as a woman's."
+
+"It is a real hero-face," said the young lady, frankly; "not a mean line
+in it."
+
+Starke had drawn the boy between his knees, and was playing roughly with
+him.
+
+"There never shall be one, with God's help," he thought, but said
+nothing.
+
+Richard was "a hobby" of Dr. Bowdler's, his niece perceived.
+
+"His very hair is like a mane," he said; "he's as uncouth as a young
+giant that don't feel his strength. I say this, Mary: that the boy will
+never be goodish and weak: he'll be greatly good or greatly bad."
+
+The young lady noticed how intently Starke listened; she wondered if he
+had forgotten entirely his own God-sent mission, and turned baby-tender
+altogether.
+
+"What has become of your model, Mr. Starke?" she asked.
+
+Dr. Bowdler looked up uneasily; it was a subject he never had dared to
+touch.
+
+"Andrew keeps it," said Starke, with a smile, "for the sake of old
+times, side by side with his lantern, I believe."
+
+"You never work with it?"
+
+"No; why should I? The principle has since been made practical, as you
+know, better than I could have done it. My idea was too crude, I can see
+now. So I just grazed success, as one may say."
+
+"Have you given up all hope of serving your fellows?" persisted the
+lady. "You seemed to me to be the very man to lead a forlorn hope
+against ignorance: are you quite content to settle down here and do
+nothing?"
+
+His color changed, but he said quietly,--
+
+"I've learned to be humbler, maybe. It was hard learning. But," trying
+to speak lightly, "when I found I was not fit to be an officer, I tried
+to be as good a private as I could. Your uncle will tell you the cause
+is the same."
+
+There was a painful silence.
+
+"I think sometimes, though," said Starke, "that God meant Jane and I
+should not be useless in the world."
+
+He put his hand almost reverently on the boy's head.
+
+"Richard is ours, you know, to make what we will of. He will do a
+different work in life from any engine. I try to think we have strength
+enough saved out of our life to make him what we ought."
+
+"You're right, Starke," said the Doctor, emphatically. "Some day, when
+you and I have done with this long fight, we shall find that as many
+privates as captains will have earned the cross of the Legion of Honor."
+
+Miss Defourchet said nothing; the day did not please her. Jane, she
+noticed, when evening came on, slipped up-stairs to brush her hair, and
+put on a soft white shawl.
+
+"Joseph likes to see me dress a little for the evenings," she said, with
+quite a flush in her cheek.
+
+And the young lady noticed that Starke smiled tenderly as his wife
+passed him. It was so weak! in ugly, large-boned people, too.
+
+"It does one good to go there," said the Doctor, drawing a long breath
+as they drove off in the cool evening, the shadowed red of the sun
+lighting up the little porch where the machinist stood with his wife and
+child. "The unity among them is so healthy and beautiful."
+
+"I did not feel it as you do," said Miss Defourchet, drawing her shawl
+closer, and shivering.
+
+Starke came down on the grass to play with the boy, throwing him down on
+the heaps of hay there to see him jump and rush back undaunted. Yet in
+all his rude romps the solemn quiet of the hour was creeping over him.
+He sat down by Jane on the wooden steps at last, while, the boy, after
+an impetuous kiss or two, curled up at their feet and went to sleep The
+question about the model had stirred an old doubt in Jane's heart. She
+watched her husband keenly. Was he thinking of that old dream? _Would_
+he go back to it? the long dull pain of those dead years creeping
+through her brain. He looked up from the boy, stroking his gray
+beard,--his eyes, she saw, full of tears.
+
+"I was thinking, Jane, how much of our lives was lost before we found
+our true work."
+
+"Yes, Joseph."
+
+He gathered up the boy, holding him close to his bony chest.
+
+"I'd like to think," he said. "I could atone for that waste, Jane. It
+was my fault. I'd like to think I'd earn up yonder that cross of the
+Legion of Honor--through him."
+
+"God knows," she said.
+
+After that they were silent a long while, They were thinking of Him who
+had brought the little child to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A LOYAL WOMAN'S NO.
+
+
+    No! is my answer from this cold, bleak ridge
+      Down to your valley: you may rest you there:
+    The gulf is wide, and none can build a bridge
+      That your gross weight would safely hither bear.
+
+    Pity me, if you will. I look at you
+      With something that is kinder far than scorn,
+    And think, "Ah, well! I might have grovelled, too;
+      I might have walked there, fettered and forsworn."
+
+    I am of nature weak as others are;
+      I might have chosen comfortable ways;
+    Once from these heights I shrank, beheld afar,
+      In the soft lap of quiet, easy days.
+
+    I might--(I will not hide it)--once I might
+      Have lost, in the warm whirlpools of your voice,
+    The sense of Evil, the stern cry of Right;
+      But Truth has steered me free, and I rejoice:
+
+    Not with the triumph that looks back to jeer
+      At the poor herd that call their misery bliss;
+    But as a mortal speaks when God is near,
+      I drop you down my answer; it is this:--
+
+    I am not yours, because you seek in me
+      What is the lowest in my own esteem:
+    Only my flowery levels can you see,
+      Nor of my heaven-smit summits do you dream.
+
+    I am not yours, because you love yourself:
+      Your heart has scarcely room for me beside.
+    I could not be shut in with name and pelf;
+      I spurn the shelter of your narrow pride!
+
+    Not yours,--because you are not man enough
+      To grasp your country's measure of a man!
+    If such as you, when Freedom's ways are rough,
+      Cannot walk in them, learn that women can!
+
+    Not yours, because, in this the nation's need,
+      You stoop to bend her losses to your gain,
+    And do not feel the meanness of your deed:
+      I touch no palm defiled with such a stain!
+
+    Whether man's thought can find too lofty steeps
+      For woman's scaling, care not I to know;
+    But when he falters by her side, or creeps,
+      She must not clog her soul with him to go.
+
+    Who weds me must at least with equal pace
+      Sometimes move with me at my being's height:
+    To follow him to his more glorious place,
+      His purer atmosphere, were keen delight.
+
+    You lure me to the valley: men should call
+      Up to the mountains, where the air is clear.
+    Win me and help me climbing, if at all!
+      Beyond these peaks rich harmonies I hear,--
+
+    The morning chant of Liberty and Law!
+      The dawn pours in, to wash out Slavery's blot:
+    Fairer than aught the bright sun ever saw
+      Rises a nation without stain or spot.
+
+    The men and women mated for that time
+      Tread not the soothing mosses of the plain;
+    Their hands are joined in sacrifice sublime;
+      Their feet firm set in upward paths of pain.
+
+    Sleep your thick sleep, and go your drowsy way!
+      You cannot hear the voices in the air!
+    Ignoble souls will shrivel in that day:
+      The brightness of its coming can you bear?
+
+    For me, I do not walk these hills alone:
+      Heroes who poured their blood out for the Truth,
+    Women whose hearts bled, martyrs all unknown,
+      Here catch the sunrise of immortal youth
+
+    On their pale cheeks and consecrated brows!
+      It charms me not,--your call to rest below:
+    I press their hands, my lips pronounce their vows
+      Take my life's silence for your answer: No!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+EUGENE DELACROIX.
+
+
+The death of Eugene Delacroix cuts the last bond between the great
+artistic epoch which commenced with the Bellini and that which had its
+beginning with the nineteenth century, epochs as diverse in character as
+the Venice of 1400 and the Paris of 1800. In him died the last great
+painter whose art was moulded by the instincts and traditions that made
+Titian and Veronese, and the greatest artist whose eyes have opened on
+the, to him, uncongenial and freezing life of the nineteenth century. In
+our time we have a new ideal, a new and maybe a higher development of
+intellectual art, and as great a soul as Titian's might to-day reach
+farther towards the reconciled perfections of graphic art: but what he
+did no one can now do; the glory of that time has passed away,--its
+unreasoning faith, its wanton instinct, revelling in Art like children
+in the sunshine, and rejoicing in childlike perception of the pomp and
+glory which overlay creation, unconscious of effort, indifferent to
+science,--all gone with the fairies, the saints, the ecstatic visions
+which framed their poor lives in gold. Only, still reflecting the glory,
+as eastern mountains the sunken sun, came a few sympathetic souls
+kindling into like glow, with faint perception of what had passed from
+the whole world beside. Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, Reynolds,
+Gainsborough, Turner, and Delacroix, kept the line of color, now at last
+utterly extinguished. Now we reason, now we see facts; sentiment is out
+of joint, and appearances are known to be liars; we have found the
+greater substance; we kindle with the utilities, and worship with the
+aspiring spirit of a common humanity; we banish the saints from our
+souls and the gewgaws from our garments, and walk clothed and in our
+right minds in what we believe to be the noonday light of reason and
+science. We are humanitarian, enlightened. We begin to comprehend the
+great problems of human existence and development; our science touches
+the infinitely removed, and apprehends the mysteries of macrocosmic
+organism: but we have lost the art of painting; for, when Eugene
+Delacroix died, the last painter (visible above the man) who understood
+Art as Titian understood it, and painted with such eyes as Veronese's,
+passed away, leaving no pupil or successor. It is as when the last scion
+of a kingly race dies in some alien land. Greater artists than he we may
+have in scores; but he was of the Venetians, and, with his _nearly_
+rival, Turner, lived to testify that it was not from a degeneracy of the
+kind that we have no more Tintorets and Veroneses; for both these, if
+they had lived in the days of those, had been their peers.
+
+Painting, as the Venetians understood it, is a lost art, because the
+mental conditions which made it possible exist no longer. The race is
+getting to that mannish stature in which every childlike quality is a
+shame to it; and the Venetian feeling for and cultivation of color are
+essentially childlike traits. No shadows of optics, no spectra of the
+prism clouded their passionate enjoyment of color as it was or as it
+might be, no uplifted finger of cold decorum frightened them into gray
+or sable gloom; they garbed themselves in rainbows, and painted with the
+sunset. Color was to them a rapture and one of the great pursuits of
+their lives; it was music visible, and they cultivated it as such,--not
+by rule and measure, by scales and opposites, through theories and
+canons, with petrific chill of intellect or entangling subtilty of
+analysis. Their lives developed their instincts, and their instincts
+their art. They loved color more than everything else; and therefore
+color made herself known to them in her rarest and noblest beauty. They
+went to Nature as children, and Nature met them as a loving mother
+meets her child, with her happiest smile and the richest of her gifts. I
+do not believe that to any Venetian painter the thought of whether a
+given tint was true ever came; if only his fine instinct told him it was
+lovely, he asked no question further,--and if he took a tint from
+Nature, it was because it was lovely, and not because he found it in
+Nature. _Our_ painter must see,--_their_ painter could feel; and in this
+antithesis is told the whole difference between the times, so far as
+color is concerned.
+
+But while Delacroix worked in the same spirit and must be ranked in the
+same school, there were differences produced by the action of the so
+different social and intellectual influences under which he grew up. His
+nature was intensely imaginative, and so was preserved from the dwarfing
+effect of French rationalism and materialism: their clay could not hide
+his light or close his eyes, for imagination sees at all points and
+through all disguises, and so his spiritual and intellectual nature was
+kept alive when all Art around him was sinking into mere shapely clay.
+Classic taste and rationalistic pride had left in his contemporaries
+little else than cold propriety of form and color, studied negations of
+spontaneity and imaginative abandon; yet such was the force of his
+imagination, that these qualities, almost more than any other,
+characterize his conceptions: but the perpetual contact and presence of
+elements so uncongenial to his good genius produced their effects in a
+morbid sadness, in his feeling for subject, and in a gloomy tone of
+coloring, sometimes only plaintive, but at other times as melancholy as
+the voice of a lost soul. When healthiest, as in his Harem picture in
+the Luxembourg Gallery, it is still in the minor key of that lovely
+Eastern color-work, such as we see in the Persian carpets, and to me
+always something weird and mysterious and touching, like the tones of an
+Aeolian harp, or the greetings of certain sad-voiced children touched by
+the shadow of death before their babyhood is gone. No color has ever
+affected me like that of Delacroix,--his Dante pictures are the
+"Commedia" set in color, and palpitating with the woe of the damned.
+
+His intellect was of that nobler kind which cannot leave the questions
+of the Realities; and conscious kindred with great souls passed away
+must have given a terrible reality to the great question of the future,
+the terror of which French philosophy was poorly able to dispel or lead
+to anything else than this hopeless gloom. His great picture of the
+_plafond_ of the Salon d'Apollon, in the Louvre, seems like a great ode
+to light, in the singing of which he felt the gloom break and saw the
+tones of healthy life lighten in his day for a prophetic moment; but
+_dispelled_ the gloom _never_ was. What he might have been, bred in the
+cheerful, unquestioning, and healthy, if unprogressive faith of Venice,
+we can only conjecture, seeing how great he grew in the cold of Gallic
+life.
+
+His health was, through his later life, bad; and for my own part, I
+believe that the same morbid feeling manifested in his art affected
+injuriously his physical life, aided doubtless by the excessive work
+which occupied all his available hours. For many years previous to his
+death he alternated between periods of almost unbroken labor, taking
+time only to eat and sleep, and intervals of absolute rest for days
+together. In his working fits, so deranged had his digestion become, he
+could take only one meal, a late dinner, each day, and saw no visitors
+except in the hour preceding his dinner.
+
+Having gone to Paris to spend a winter in professional studies, I made
+an earnest application by letter to Delacroix to be admitted as a pupil
+to his _atelier_. In reply, he invited me to visit him at his rooms the
+next day at four, to talk with him about my studies, proffering any
+counsel in his gift, but assuring me that it was impossible for him to
+receive me into his studio, as he could not work in the room with
+another, and his strength and occupations did not permit him to have a
+school apart, as he once had.
+
+At the appointed time I presented myself, and was received very
+pleasantly in a little drawing-room at his house in the Latin Quarter.
+His appearance, to me, was prepossessing; and though I had heard French
+artists speak of him as morose and bearish, I must say that his whole
+manner was most kindly and sympathetic, though not demonstrative. He was
+small, spare, and nervous-looking, with evident ill-health in his face
+and bearing, and under slight provocation, I should think, might have
+been disagreeable, but had nothing egoistic in his manner, and, unlike
+most celebrated artists, didn't seem to care to talk about his own
+pictures. After personal inquiries of my studies and the masters whom I
+knew and had studied, and most kindly, but appreciative criticism on all
+whom we spoke of, "Ah," said he, "I could not have an _atelier_ (i.e.
+school-_atelier_) now, the spirit in which the young artists approach
+their work now is so different from that of the time when I was in the
+school. Then they were earnest, resolute men: there were Delaroche and
+Vernet," and others he mentioned, whose names I cannot remember, "men
+who went into their painting with their whole souls and in seriousness;
+but now the students come into the _atelier_ to laugh and joke and
+frolic, as if Art were a game; there is an utter want of seriousness in
+the young men now which would make it impossible for me to teach them. I
+should be glad to direct your studies, but the work on which I am
+engaged leaves me no time to dispose of." I asked if I could not
+sometime see him working; but he replied that it was quite impossible
+for him to work with any one looking on.
+
+I asked him where, to his mind, was the principal want of the modern
+schools. He replied, "In execution; there is intellect enough, intention
+enough, and sometimes great conception, but everywhere a want of
+executive ability, which enfeebles all they do. They work too much with
+the crayon, instead of studying with the brush. If they want to be
+engravers, it is all well enough to work in charcoal; but the execution
+of an engraver is not that of a painter. I remember an English artist,
+who was in Paris when I was a young man, who had a wonderful power in
+using masses of black and white, but he was never able to do anything in
+painting, much to my surprise at that time; but later I came to know,
+that, if a man wants to be a painter, he must learn to draw with the
+brush."
+
+I asked him for advice in my own studies; to which he replied, "You
+ought to copy a great deal,--copy passages of all the great painters. I
+have copied a great deal, and of the works of almost everybody"; and as
+he spoke, he pointed to a line of studies of heads and parts of pictures
+from various old masters which hung around the room.
+
+I am inclined to think that he carried copying too far; for the
+principal defect of his later pictures is a kind of hardness and want of
+thought in the touch, a verging on the mechanical, as if his hand and
+feeling did not keep perfectly together.
+
+I regret much that I did not immediately after my interview take notes
+of the conversation, as he said many things which I cannot now recall,
+and which, as mainly critical of the works of other artists, would have
+been of interest to the world. I only remember that he spoke in great
+praise of Turner and Sir Joshua Reynolds. As his dinner-hour drew near,
+I took my leave, asking for some directions to see pictures of his which
+I had not seen; in reply to which, he offered to send me notes securing
+me admission to all the places where were pictures of his not easily
+accessible,--a promise he fulfilled a day or two after. I left him with
+as pleasant a personal impression as I have ever received from any great
+artist, and I have met many.
+
+The works of Delacroix, like those of all geniuses, are very unequal;
+but those who, not having studied them, attempt to estimate them by any
+ordinary standard will be far from the truth in their estimate, and will
+most certainly fail to be impressed by their true excellence. The
+public has a mistaken habit of measuring greatness by the capacity to
+give _it_ pleasure; but the public has no more ignorant habit than this.
+That is no great work which the popular taste can fully appreciate, and
+no thoroughly educated man can at once grasp the full calibre of a work
+of great power differing from his own standard. It took Penelope's
+nights to unweave the web of her days' weaving, and no sudden shears of
+untaught comprehension will serve to analyze those finer fabrics of a
+genius like Delacroix. Perhaps, owing to many peculiarities of his
+nature, showing themselves in unsympathetic forms in his pictures, he
+may always fall short of complete appreciation by the educated taste
+even,--and, indeed, to me he seems, of all the great colorists, the one
+least likely ever to win general favor, but not from want of greatness.
+
+I have often heard his drawing spoken of as bad. It was not the drawing
+of a _dessinateur_, but there was method in its badness. I remember
+hearing a friend say, that, going into his studio one day, he found him
+just in the act of finishing a hand. He said, "It looks very badly
+drawn, but I have painted it three times before I could get it right
+Once I had it well drawn, and then it looked very badly; and now it
+suits me better than when it was well drawn." A neatly drawn figure
+would have made as bad an appearance in one of his pictures as a dandy
+in the heat and turmoil of a battle-field; yet, as they came, all the
+parts were consistent with the whole, reminding one of what Ruskin says
+of Turner's figures.
+
+For vigor and dash in execution, and the trooping energy of some of his
+competitions, he reminds me more of Rubens than of any other; but his
+composition has a more purely imaginative cast than that of Rubens, a
+purer melody, a far more refined spiritualism. Nothing was coarse or
+gross, much less sensual. His was the true imaginative fusion from which
+pictures spring complete, subject to no revision. Between him and Turner
+there were many points of resemblance, of which the greatest was in a
+common defect,--an impulsive, unschooled, unsubstantial method of
+execution, contrasting strongly with the exact, deliberate, and yet,
+beyond description, masterly touch of Titian and most of his school.
+Tintoret alone shows something of the same tendency,--attributable, no
+doubt, to the late time at which he came into the method of his master.
+If Delacroix has none of the great serenity and cheerfulness of Titian,
+or the large and manly way of seeing of Veronese, he has an imaginative
+fervor and intensity we do not see in them, and of which Tintoret and
+Tiepolo only among the Venetians show any trace. Generations hence,
+Eugene Delacroix will loom larger above his contemporaries, now hiding
+him by proximity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SYMPATHETIC LYING.
+
+
+If "all men are liars," and everybody deceives us a little sometimes, so
+that David's _dictum_ hardly needs his apology of _haste_, it is a
+comfort to remember that many lies are not downright, but sympathetic;
+and an understanding of their nature, if it does not palliate them, may
+put us on our guard. _Sympathetic_ we think a better name than the
+unfortunate title of _white_, which was given them by Mrs. Opie, because
+that designation carries a meaning of innocence, if not even of virtue;
+and instead of protecting our virtue, may even expose us to practise
+them without remorse. Of laughing over them and making light of them,
+and calling them by various ludicrous synonymes, as _fibs_, and _telling
+the thing that is not_, there has been enough. We have a purpose in our
+essay, than which no preaching could be more sober. Our aim is to give
+for them no opiate, but to quicken the sense of their guilt, and their
+exceeding mischief, too; for, if Francis Bacon be right in declaring the
+lie we swallow down more dangerous than that which only passes through
+our mind, how seriously the wine-bibbing of this sweet poison of kindly
+misrepresentation must have weakened the constitution of mankind! Lying
+for selfish gain or glory, for sensual pleasure, or for exculpation from
+a criminal charge, is more gross, but it involves at once such
+condemnation in society, and such inward reproach, as to be far less
+insidious than lying out of amiable consideration for others, to shield
+or further kinsfolk or friends, which may pass unrebuked, or stand for
+an actual merit. Yet, be the motive what it may, there is a certain
+invariable quantity of essential baseness in all violation of the truth;
+and it may be feared our affectionate falsehoods often work more evil
+than our malignant ones, by having free course and meeting with little
+objection. "Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for
+Him?" severely asks the old prophet of those who thought to cheat for
+their own set, as though it were in the cause of religion; and no godly
+soul can accept as a grateful tribute the least prevarication, however
+disinterested or devoted in its behalf. Indeed, no smart antithesis has
+been so hurtful as the overstated distinction between _black_ lies and
+_white_. They are of different species, but have no generic difference.
+Charles Reade's novel, of "White Lies," in which the deceptions of love
+are so glorified, charming story as it is, will sap the character of
+whoever does not, with a mental protest, countermine its main idea. The
+very theory of our integrity is gone, if we do not insist on this. God
+has not so made the world that any perjury or cover of the facts is
+necessary to serve the cause of goodness. Commend it though English or
+German critics do, can we not conceive of a speech grander than the
+untruth which Shakspeare has put into the dying Desdemona's mouth?
+
+Let us, then, examine some of the forms of sympathetic lying.
+
+One of them is that of over-liberal praise. That a person is always
+ready to extol others, and was never heard to speak ill of anybody under
+the sun, appears to some the very crown of excellence. But what is the
+panegyric worth that has no discrimination, that finds any mortal
+faultless, or bestows on the varying and contradictory behaviors of men
+an equal meed? To what does universal commendation amount more than
+universal indifference? What value do we put on the lavish regard which
+is not _individual_, or founded on any intelligent appreciation of its
+object, but scattered blindly abroad on all flesh, as once thousands
+were vaguely baptized in the open air by a general sprinkling, and which
+any one can appropriate only as he may own a certain indeterminate
+section of an undivided township or unfenced common? To have a good
+word for everybody, and take exception to nothing, is to incapacitate
+one's self for the exquisite delight of real fellowship. We all know
+persons who seem a sort of social favorites on account of this gracious
+manner which they afford with such mechanical plenty. But what a
+dilution and deterioration their external quality of half-artificial
+courtesy becomes! It is handing round sweetened water, instead of
+tasting the juice of the grape. It is pouring from a pail, instead of
+opening a vial of sweet odors. This broadcast and easy approval lacks
+that very honesty which, in the absence of fineness, is the single grace
+by which it could be sanctified.
+
+The same vice affects more public concerns. Of what sheer hypocrisy
+eulogistic resolutions upon officers leaving their posts in Church or
+State are too frequently composed! The men who are tired and want to get
+rid of their Representative or minister are so overjoyed at losing sight
+of him, that they can set no bounds to their thankful exaltation of his
+name! Truly they speed the parting guest, wish well to the traveller
+from their latitude, and launch with shouts the ship of his fortunes
+from their _ways_! They recommend him as a paragon of genius and
+learning to all communities or societies who want a service in his kind.
+How happy both sides to this transaction are expected to feel, and how
+willing people are sometimes to add to the soft words a solid
+testimonial of gold, if only thus a dismissal can be effected! But are
+not the reports of the committees and the votes of the meetings false
+coin, nowhere current in the kingdom of God, circulate as they may in
+this realm of earth? Nay, does not everybody, save the one that receives
+the somewhat insincere and left-handed blessing, read the formal and
+solemn record with a disposition to ridicule or a pitying smile?
+
+How well it is understood that we are not to speak the truth, but only
+good, of the dead! How melancholy it is, that _lying_ has come to be so
+common an epithet for the gravestones we set over their dust! How few
+obituaries characterize those for whom they are written, or are
+distinguishable from each other in the terms of their funeral
+celebrations of departed virtue! How refreshing, as rare, is any of the
+veritable description which implies real lamentation! But what a
+suspicion falls on the mourning in whose loquacity we cannot detect one
+natural tone! As if that last messenger, who strips off all delusions
+and appearances, should be pursued and affronted with the mockery of our
+pretence, and we could circumvent the angel of judgment with the
+sentence of our fond wishes and the affectation of our groundless
+claims! As if the disembodied, in the light of truth, by which they are
+surrounded and pierced, could be pleased with our make-believe, or
+tolerate the folly of our factitious phrase! With what sadness their
+purged eyes must follow the pens inditing their epitaphs, and the
+sculptors' chisels making the commonplaces of fulsome commendation
+permanent on their tombs! What vanity to their nicer ears must be the
+sonorous and declamatory orator's breath! Let us not offend them so.
+They will take it for the insult of perfunctory honor, not for the
+sympathy it assumes to be. _Nothing but good of the dead_, do you say?
+_Nothing but truth of the dead_, we answer. _Do not disturb their bones;
+let them rest easy at last_, is the commentary on all keen criticism of
+those who have played important parts in life, and whose influence has
+perhaps been a curse. No, we reply, their bones will rest easier, and
+their benedictions come to us surer, for our unaffected plain-dealing.
+The trick of flattery may succeed with the living. Those still in this
+world of shadows, cross-lights, and glaring reflections may be caught by
+the images we flash upon them from the mirrors of admiration we swing in
+our hands. But they who have laid down all the shows of things with
+their own superficial countenances and mortal frames cannot be imposed
+upon by the faces of adulation we make up. They who listen to that other
+speech, whose tones are the literally translated truth, cannot be
+patient with the gloss and varnish of our, at best, imperfect language.
+Let their awful presences shame and transfigure, terrify and transport
+us, into reality of communication akin to their own! "I will express
+myself in music to you," said a great composer to a bereft woman, as he
+took his seat at the piano. He felt that he could not manifest otherwise
+the feeling in him that was so deep. By sound or by silence, let it be
+only the conviction of our heart we venture to offer to spirits before
+whom the meaning of all things is unveiled!
+
+But _private conversation_ is the great sphere of sympathetic lying. Our
+antipathies doubtless often tempt to falsify. We stretch the truth,
+trying, in private quarrels, to make out our case, or holding up our end
+in party-controversies. Anger, malice, envy, and revenge make us often
+break the ninth commandment. But concession, compromise, yielding to
+others' influence, and indisposition to contradict those whom we love or
+the world respects, generate more deceit than comes from all the evil
+passions, which, as Sterne said of lust, are too serious to be
+successful in cunning play. How it would mortify most persons to have
+brought back to them at night exact accounts of the divers opinions they
+have expressed to different persons, with facile conformity to the mood
+of each one during the course of a single day! How the members of any
+pleasant evening-company might astonish or amuse each other by narrating
+together the contradictory views the same voluble discourser has
+unfolded to them successively during the passage of one hour! so easily
+we bend and conform, and deny God and ourselves, to gratify the guest we
+converse with. On account of a few variations, scholars have composed
+what they call Harmonies of the Gospels; but how much harder it would be
+for any one of us to harmonize his talk on any subject moving the minds
+of men! Where strong self-interest acts, we can explain changes and
+inconsistencies in the great organs set up to operate on public
+sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher
+than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous
+centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world,
+splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other
+stupid chanticleers, crowing at false signals of the dawn, and well
+called the "Times," as in its columns nothing eternal was ever evinced.
+Everywhere exist these agents of custom and convention, wielded by a
+power behind them, and holding long no one direction, but varying in
+every wind. Some breeze of general policy, however, prescribes the law
+of these alterations, while only a weak and brainless sensibility,
+blowing from every source, commonly occasions the continual veering of
+our private word. Through what manifold phases _a good conversationist_
+has dexterity to pass! Quarterings of the uncertain moon, the lights
+that glance blue, silver, yellow, and green from the shifting angles of
+the gems that move with their wearers, or the confused motions of some
+of our inferior fellow-creatures that flutter from side to side of the
+road as intimidating objects fail on the eyes planted on opposite sides
+of their heads, feebly symbolize these human displays of unstable
+equilibrium. We must adapt our method to circumstances; but the
+apostolic rule, of "All things to all men," should not touch, as in Paul
+it never did, the fundamental consistency of principle which is the
+chief sign of spiritual life. The degree of elevation in the scale of
+being is marked by the approximation of the sight to a focus of unity.
+But, judging from the pictures they give us of their interior states, we
+might think many of our rational companions as myriad-eyed as
+naturalists tell us are some insects. Behold the wondrous transformation
+undergone by those very looks and features that give the natural
+language, as sentiments contrary to each other are successively
+presented, and Republican or Democrat, Pro-Slavery man or Abolitionist,
+walks up! In truth, a man at once kindly and ingenuous can hardly help
+in most assemblies coming continually to grief. He knows not what to do,
+to be at once frank and polite. The transverse beams of the cross on
+which he is crucified are made of the sincerity and amiability which in
+no company can he quite reconcile. Happy is he who has discovered
+beneath all pleasant humors the unity at bottom of candor with goodness,
+in an Apostle's clause, "speaking the truth in love"! No rare and
+beautiful monster could stir more surprise and curiosity. It is but
+shifting the scene from a domestic dwelling to a concert-hall to notice
+how much sympathetic lying is in all applause. We saw a young man
+vigorously clap the performance to which he had not listened, and, when
+the _encore_ took effect, return immediately to his noisy and disturbing
+engrossment in the young ladies' society from whose impertinent
+whispering he had only rested for the moment, troubling all who sat near
+him both with his talk and his sympathetic lie. A true man will not move
+a finger or lisp a syllable to echo what he does not apprehend and
+approve. A true man never assents anywise to what is error to him. In
+the delicious letters of Mendelssohn we read of an application by a
+distinguished lady made to him to write a piece of music to accompany
+the somewhat famous lines known as "Napoleon's Midnight Review." The
+great artist, feeling the untruth to his genius of any such attempt at
+description in sound, with gentle energy declines the request. He
+affirms that music is a most sober thing in his thoughts, that notes
+have their veracity as well as words, and even a deeper relation to
+reality than any other tongue or dialect of province or people, and that
+acquiescence in her wishes would be for him an unrighteous abuse of his
+function. We know a conscientious artist on the organ who would no more
+perjure his instrument than his lips, but go to the stake sooner than
+turn his keys into tongues to captivate a meretricious taste or
+transform one breath of the air under his fingers into sympathetic
+lying, though thousands should be ready to resound their delight. So was
+it with the noble Christian Jew, an Israelite of harmony indeed. The
+most sympathetic of vocations, whose appeal more than any other is
+direct to the feelings, could not induce him to tell a sympathetic lie.
+Would that the writers and speakers of plain English, and of their
+mother-tongue in every vernacular, might take example from the
+conscientious creator, who would not put a particle of cant into the
+crooked marks and ruled bars which are such a mystery to the
+uninitiated, blot with one demi-semi-quaver of falsehood his papers, or
+leave aught but truth of the heavenly sphere at a single point on any
+line! Then our sternest utterance with each other would be concord, our
+common questions and answers more melodiously responsive than chants in
+great cathedrals, and our lowest whispers like tones caught from angelic
+harps. For truth and tenderness are not, after all, incompatible; but
+whoever is falsely fond alone proves himself in the end harsh and rough.
+The sympathetic lie is of all things most unsympathetic, smoothing and
+stroking the surface to haunt and kill at the very centre and core. The
+proclamation from the house-top of what is told in the ear in closets
+will give more pain than if it were fairly published at first. There is
+a distinction here to be noted. All truth, or rather all matter of fact,
+does not, of course, belong to everybody. There are private and domestic
+secrets, whose promulgation, by no law of duty required, would make the
+streets of every city and village run with blood. There is a style of
+speaking, miscalled sincerity, which in mere tattling and tale-bearing,
+minding others' business, interfering with their relations,
+impertinently meddling with cases we can neither settle nor understand,
+and eating over again the forbidden fruit of that tree of knowledge of
+good and evil planted in the Garden of Eden, whose seed has been
+scattered through the earth, though having less to do with truth than
+with the falsehood, to promulgate which artful and malicious combination
+of facts is one of the Devil's most skilful means, while truth is always
+no mere fact or circumstance, but a spirit. Sincerity consists in
+dealing openly with every one in things that concern himself, reserving
+concerns useless to him, and purely our neighbors' or our own. Husbands
+and wives, parents and children, fellow-citizens and friends, or
+strangers, owning but the bond of humanity, let such _discrete_
+sentences--if we may use rhetorically a musical word--from your lips
+afford a sweeter consonance than can vibrate and flow from all the pipes
+and strings of orchestra or organ. So sympathy and verity shall be at
+one: mercy and truth shall meet together, righteousness and peace shall
+kiss each other.
+
+Another form of sympathetic lying appears in a part of the social
+machinery whose morality has somehow been more strangely and unhappily
+overlooked,--we mean in _letters of introduction_. But the falsehood is
+only by perversion. The letter of introduction is an affair of noble
+design, to bring together parties really related, to give room for the
+elective affinities of friendship, to furnish occasion for the
+comparison of notes to the votaries of science, to extend the privilege
+of all liberal arts, and promote the offices of a common brotherhood.
+How much we owe to these little paper messengers for the new treasures
+of love and learning they have brought! It is hard to tell whose debt to
+them is greatest, that of the giver, the bearer, or the receiver, or
+whether, beyond all private benefit and pleasure, their chief result has
+not been the improvement and refinement of the human race. But, it must
+be confessed, the letter of introduction is too much fallen and
+degenerate. Convenience, depredation, the compassing of by-ends, rather
+than any loving communion, is too often its intent. It savors less of
+the paradise of affection than of the vulgar wilderness of the world. We
+are a little afraid of it, when it comes. A worthy man told me he knew
+not whether to be sorry or glad, when he found a letter addressed to him
+at the post-office. How does the balance incline, when a man or woman
+stands before us with a letter of introduction in hand? We eye it with a
+mistrust that it may turn out to be a tool of torture, serving us only
+for a sort of mental surgery. Frequently, it has been simply procured,
+and is but an impudent falsehood on its very face. The writer of it
+professes an admiration he does not feel for the person introduced, to
+whose own reading he leaves it magnificently open before its terms of
+exaggerated compliment can reach him to whom it is sent. What is the
+reason of this deceit? there is a ground for it, no doubt. "This effect
+defective comes by cause." The inditer has certainly some sympathy with
+the bearer he so amply commissions and wordily exalts. This bearer has
+some distress to be relieved, some faculty to exercise, some institution
+to recommend, or some ware to dispose of. He that forwards him to us
+very likely has first had him introduced to himself, has bestowed
+attention and hospitable fellowship upon him, and now, growing weary of
+the care and trouble and expense, is very happy to be rid of him at so
+small a cost as that of passing him on to a distant acquaintance by a
+letter of introduction, which the holder's business in life is to carry
+round from place to place through the world! Sometimes dear companions
+call on us to pay this tax; sometimes those who themselves have no claim
+on us. But, be it one class or the other, how little they may consider
+what they demand! Upon what a neglect or misappreciation of values the
+proceed! Verily we need a new Political Economy written, deeper than
+that of Malthus or Smith, to inform them. Our precious time, our cordial
+regards, the diversion of our mind from our regular duties, the neglect
+of already engrossing relations in our business or profession, the
+surrender of body and soul, they require for the prey of idlers and
+strangers! Had our correspondents drawn upon us for a sum of money, had
+a highwayman bid us stand and deliver our purse, we should not have been
+so much out of pocket. But we cannot help yielding; there is no excuse
+or escape. We are under the operation of that most delicate and
+resistless of powers no successor of Euclid ever explained the principle
+of, which may be called the _social screw_. We submit patiently, because
+we cannot endure to deny to the new-comer the assumed right of him who
+cruelly turns it, out of reach and out of sight. We know some men, of
+extraordinary strength of countenance themselves, who have been able to
+defend their door-stone against an impostor's brazen face. A good
+householder, when a stage-full of country-cousins came to his door, bade
+the driver take them to the hotel, and he would willingly pay the bills.
+But few have the courage thus to board out those who have a staff in
+their hands to knock at the very gate of their hearts. There would be
+satisfaction in the utmost amount of this labor and sacrifice, could we
+have any truth for its condition. But the falsehood has been written
+down by one whom we can nowise accuse. Alas! there is often as little
+truth in the entertainer. All together in the matter are walking in a
+vain show. We are at the mercy of a diviner's wand and a conjurer's
+spell. We have put on a foolish look of consent and compromise. We join
+with our new mate in extolling the wrong-doer who has inflicted him upon
+us. We dare not analyze the base alloy of the composition he conveys,
+which pretends to be pure gold. We must either act falsely ourselves, or
+charge falsehood upon others. We prefer the guilt to seeming unkindness;
+when, if we were perfectly good and wise, we should shake off the coil
+of deception, refuse insincere favors, and, however infinite and
+overflowing our benevolence, insist on doing, in any case, only willing
+and authentic good,--for affection is too noble to be feigned. "If,"
+said Ole Bull, "I kiss my enemy, what have I left for my friend?" We
+must forgive and love our enemies and all men, and show our love by
+treating them without dissimulation, but a sublime openness, according
+to their needs and deserts.
+
+The male or female adventurers, launching with their bag of letters for
+all their merchandise on the social sea, understand well the potent
+value, beyond bills of exchange, of the sheets they bear. They may have
+taken them as an equivalent for some service they have rendered, in
+discharge of some actual or apparent obligation in the great market
+limited to no quarter of our towns and no description of articles, but
+running through every section of human life. Our _acceptance_ of these
+notes is a commercial transaction, not of the fairest sort. It belongs
+to a species of trade in which we are made to pay other people's debts,
+and our dear friends and intimate relations sell us for some song or
+other which has been melodiously chanted into their own ears. "A new way
+to pay old debts," indeed! Every part of the bargain or trick of the
+game is by the main operators well known and availed of for their own
+behoof. By letter, persons have been introduced into circles where they
+had no footing, posts for whose responsibilities they were utterly
+unfit, and trusts whose funds they showed more faculty to embezzle than
+apply. Such licentious proceedings have good-natured concessions to
+wrong requests multiplied to the hurt of the commonweal. Let us beware
+of this kind of sympathetic lie, which ends in robbery, and swindles
+thousands out of what is more important than material property, for the
+support of pretenders that are worse than thieves, who are bold enough,
+like drones, to break into the hive of the busy and eat the honey they
+never gathered, absorbing to themselves, as far as they can, the
+courtesy of the useful members of the community by the worst monopoly in
+the world.
+
+Our treatment of the subject would be partial, if we did not emphasize
+the advantage of a right use, of this _introductory_ prerogative. What
+more delightful to remember than that we brought together those who were
+each other's counterparts? What more beautiful than to have put the
+deserving in the way of the philanthropic, and illustrated the old law,
+that, grateful as it is to have our wants supplied, a lofty soul always
+finds it more blessed to give than to receive, and a boon infinitely
+greater to exercise beneficent affection than even to be its object? It
+ill becomes us who write on this theme to put down one unfair or
+churlish period. We too well remember our own experience in
+circumstances wherein our only merit was to be innocent recipients of
+abundant tokens of good-will; and perhaps the familiar instance may have
+pardon for its recital, in illustration of the mercy which the
+letter-bearer may not seldom find. An epistle from a mutual acquaintance
+was our opportunity of intercourse with a venerable bachelor residing in
+the city of Antwerp. It was so urged upon us, that the least we could do
+was to present it, expecting only a few minutes' agreeable conversation.
+Shall we ever forget the instant welcome that beamed from his benignant
+face, or how he honored the draft upon him by immediately calling upon
+all the members of our travelling-party? how literally, against all our
+expostulations, he gave himself up to us, attending us to
+picture-galleries and zoological gardens, insisting on disbursing the
+entrance-fee for us all, with our unavoidable allowance at the moment,
+and, on our exaction of a just reckoning with him at last, declining to
+name the sum, on the unanswerable plea of an old man's poor and failing
+memory! "Does the old man still live?" Surely he does the better life in
+heaven, if his gray locks on earth are under the sod, and it is too late
+for these poor lines to reach his eyes, for our sole repayment. Without
+note, but only chance introduction, a similar case of disinterested
+bounty in Liverpool from one of goodness undiscriminating as the Divine,
+which gives the sun and rain to all, stood in strange contrast with the
+reception of a Manchester manufacturer, almost whose only manifestation
+in reply to the document we tendered was a sort of growl that _we could
+see mills in Lowell like those under his own control_. Perhaps, from his
+shrewd old head, as he kept his seat at his desk, like a sharp-shooter
+on the watch and wary for the foe, he only covered us with the surly
+weapon of his tongue in the equitable way for which we have here been
+contending ourselves! Certainly we were quite satisfied, if the
+Englishman was.
+
+But printed lies, as well as written, are largely sympathetic. We are
+bitter against the press; and surely it needs a greater Luther for its
+reformer. But its follies are ours; its corruptions belong to its
+patrons. The editor of a paper edits the mind of those that take it. He
+cannot help being in a sort of close communion. Perhaps he mainly
+borrows the very indignation, not so very pure and independent, with
+which he reproves some ingenuous satirist of what may appear indecent in
+our fashions of amusement, or unbecoming in the relations of the sexes
+or the habits of the young. "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the
+hands are the hands of Esau." He is two and more, as we all are, while
+he is one, and must not be blamed on his own score alone. The London
+"Times," already mentioned, is called the _Thunderer_; but, like the man
+behind the scenes at the theatre with his machinery, it thunders as it
+is told. How sympathetic are the countless brood of falsehoods
+respecting our country in foreign publications is evident from the
+cases, too few, of periodicals which, with the same means of
+information, rise to a noble accuracy and justice. While the more
+virulent, like the "Saturday Review," servile to its peculiar customers,
+make a show of holding out against the ever more manifest truth, others,
+among which is even the "Times" itself, learn the prudence of an altered
+style. When the wind is about to change, an uncertain fluttering and
+swinging to and fro may be observed in the vanes. So do many organs
+prove what pure indicators they are, as they shake in the breeze of
+public opinion. "Stop my paper" is a cry whose real meaning is for the
+constituency which the paper represents.
+
+It is a more shameful illustration of the same weakness, when the pens
+of literary men, not dependent on local support, are subsidized by the
+prejudice or sold to the pride and wealth of the society in which they
+live. "I believe in testifying," once said a great man; and we have,
+among the philosophic and learned, noble witnesses for the equity of our
+national case. But what a spectacle of degraded functions, when poets,
+historians, and religious thinkers bow the knee to an aristocracy so
+vilely proud to stretch forth its hand of fellowship to a slaveholding
+brotherhood beyond the sea! We need not denounce them. The ideas they
+pretend to stand for hold them in scorn. The imagination whose pictures
+they drew will quench all her lustre for the deserters that devote
+themselves to the slavish passions of the hour. The history whose tales
+of glory and ignominy they related will rear a gibbet for their own
+reputation in the future time. As for us, at the present, we mention not
+their names, but, like the injured ghost in the poet's picture of the
+world of spirits, turn from them silently and pass on. We remember there
+was a grand old republican in the realm of letters, John Milton by name,
+whose shade must be terrible to their thoughts. Let them beware of
+making of themselves a public shame. The great revenge of years will
+turn into a mere trick of literature the prose and verse of all not
+inspired by devotion to humanity, zeal for the cause of the oppressed,
+and a hearty love of truth, while every covering of lies shall be torn
+away. They who have despised our free institutions, and prophesied our
+downfall, and gloated by anticipation over the destruction of our
+country, to get the lease of a hundred years more to their own lordship
+of Church and State, and have put their faith in the oppressive Rebels
+trying to build an empire on the ruins of the Ten Commandments, are as
+blind to discern the laws of human nature as they are awkward to raise
+the horoscope of events. This Western Continent, under God, may it
+please the despots, is not going to barbarism and desolation. That good
+missionary of freedom as well as religion, whom New England sent to
+California in the person of Thomas Starr King, writes us that Mount
+Shasta is ascertained to be higher than Mont Blanc. Some other
+elevations than of the surface of the globe, in this hemisphere, the
+Transatlantics may yet behold.
+
+The pulpit is but a sympathetic deceiver, when it violates the truth it
+is set to defend. All its lies are echoes of the avarice and inhumanity
+sitting in the pews; and when, in the rough old figure, it is a dumb dog
+that will not bark at the robber or warn us of danger, the real mutes,
+whom its silence but copies, are those demure men below who seem to
+listen to its instructions.
+
+We are astonished to find a liar in the lightning of heaven over the
+telegraphic wires. Let us get over our surprise. The lie is human
+altogether, not elemental at all. The operator has his private object to
+carry, the partisan his political end to serve, the government itself
+flatters the people it fears with incorrect accounts of military
+movements and fortified posts and the numbers of dead and wounded on
+either side. Kinglake calls the telegraph a device by which a clerk
+dictates to a nation. Who but the nation, or some part of it, dictates
+to the clerk? He does not control, but records, the sentiment of the
+community in all his invented facts; and when we hear the click or read
+the strange dots, we want some trustworthy voucher or responsible human
+auditor even of these electric accounts.
+
+But, creatures of sympathy, needy dependants on approbation, as we are,
+shall we surrender to all or any of these lies? No,--there is a sympathy
+of truth, to whose higher court and supreme verdict we must appeal.
+Before it let us stand ourselves, perpetual witnesses of the very truth
+of God in our breast. Said the lion-hearted Andrew Jackson, "When I
+decide on my course, I do not ask what people will think, but look into
+my own heart for guidance, believing that all brave men will agree with
+me."
+
+"As the minister began on the subject of Slavery, I left the church,"
+said a respectable citizen to a modest woman, of whose consent with him
+he felt sure.
+
+"And did the minister go on?" she gently inquired.
+
+"Yes, he went on," the mistaken citizen replied.
+
+So, in this land, let us go on in the way of justice and truth we have
+at last begun. Let us have no more sympathetic, however once legal, lies
+for oppression and wrong. We shall be as good as a thousand years old,
+when we are through our struggle. For the respect of Europe let us have
+no anxiety. It will come cordially or by constraint, upon the victory of
+the right and the reinstating of our manhood by the divine law, to the
+discouragement of all iniquity at home or abroad. Our success will be a
+signal for all the tyrannies, in which the proud and strong have been
+falsely banded together to crush the ignorant and lowly, to come down.
+The domineering political and ecclesiastical usurpers of exclusive
+privilege will no longer give and take reciprocal support against the
+rising of mankind than the Roman augurs could at last keep one another
+in countenance. Let us go on, through dark omens as well as bright, and
+suffer ourselves to have no doubting day. Let us show that something
+besides a monarchy in this world can stand. On disbelievers and
+obstructers let us have companion. They cannot live contented, and it is
+not quite safe for them to die. The path of our progress opens clear.
+Let us not admit the idea of failure. To think of failing is to fail. As
+it was with the sick before their Saviour of old, only our faith can
+make us whole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+SOMETHING ABOUT BRIDGES.
+
+
+Instinctively, Treason, in this vast land, aimed its first blow at the
+Genius of Communication,--the benign and potent means and method of
+American civilization and nationality. The great problem Watt and
+Fulton, Clinton and Morse so gloriously solved, a barbaric necessity
+thus reduces back to chaos; and not the least sad and significant of the
+bulletins whereby the most base of civic mutinies finds current record
+is that entitled, "Destruction of the Bridges"; and (melancholy
+contrast!) simultaneously we hear of constructive energy in the same
+direction, on the Italian peninsula,--an engineer having submitted to
+Victor Emmanuel proposals for throwing a bridge across the Straits of
+Messina, "binding Scylla to Charybdis, and thus clinching Italian unity
+with bonds of iron." Bonds of nationality, in more than a physical
+sense, indeed, are bridges: even cynical Heine found an endeared outlook
+to his native Rhine on the bastion of a familiar bridge; Tennyson makes
+one an essential feature of his English summer picture, wherein forever
+glows the sweet image of the "Gardener's Daughter"; and Bunyan found no
+better similitude for Christian's passage from Time to Eternity than the
+"river where there is no bridge."
+
+The primitive need, the possible genius, the science, and the sentiment
+of a bridge endear its aspect and associations beyond those of any other
+economical structure. There is, indeed, something genially picturesque
+about a mill, as Constable's pencil and Tennyson's muse have aptly
+demonstrated; there is an artistic miracle possible in a sculptured
+gate, as those of Ghiberti so elaborately evidence; science, poetry, and
+human enterprise consecrate a light-house; sacred feelings hallow a
+spire; and mediaeval towers stand forth in noble relief against the
+sunset sky: but around none of these familiar objects cluster the same
+thoroughly human associations which make a bridge attractive to the
+sight and memory. In its most remote suggestion it typifies man's primal
+relation to Nature, his first instinctive effort to circumvent or avail
+himself of her resources; indeed, he might take his hint of a bridge
+from Nature herself,--her fallen monarchs of the forest athwart a
+stream, "the testimony of the rocks," the curving shores, cavern roofs,
+and pendent branches, and the prismatic bow in the heavens, which a poet
+well calls "a bridge to tempt the angels down."
+
+A bridge of the simplest kind is often charmingly effective as a
+landscape-accessory: there is a short plank one in a glen of the White
+Mountains, which, seen through a vista of woodland, makes out the
+picture so aptly that it is sketched by every artist who haunts the
+region. What lines of grace are added to the night view of a great city
+by the lights on the bridges! what subtile principles enter into the
+building of such a bridge as the Britannia, where even the metallic
+contraction of the enormous tubes is provided for by supporting them on
+cannon-balls! how venerable seems the most graceful of Tuscan bridges,
+when we remember it was erected in the fifteenth century,--and the
+Rialto, when we think that it was designed by Michel Angelo! and how
+signal an instance is it of the progressive application of a true
+principle in science, that the contrivance whereby the South-Americans
+bridge the gorges of their mountains, by a pendulous causeway of twisted
+osiers and bamboo,--one of which, crossed by Humboldt, was a hundred and
+twenty feet long,--is identical with that which sustains the magnificent
+structure over the Niagara River! In a bridge the arch is triumphal,
+both for practical and commemorative ends: unknown to the Greeks and
+Egyptians, even the ancient Romans, it is said by modern architects, did
+not appreciate its true mechanical principle, but ascribed the
+marvellous strength thereof to the cement which kept intact their
+semicircle. In Caesar's "Commentaries," the bridge transit and vigilance
+form no small part of military tactics,--boats and baskets serving the
+same purpose in ancient and modern warfare. The Church of old originated
+and consecrated bridges; religion, royalty, and art celebrate their
+advent; the opening of Waterloo Bridge is the subject of one of the best
+pictures of a modern English painter; and Cockney visitors to the
+peerless Bridge of Telford still ask the guide where the Queen stood at
+its inauguration. But it is when we turn from the historical and
+scientific to the familiar and personal that we realize the spontaneous
+interest attached to a bridge. It is as a feature of our native
+landscape, the goal of habitual excursions, the rendezvous, the
+observatory, the favorite haunt or transit, that it wins the gaze and
+the heart. There the musing angler sits content; there the echoes of the
+horse's hoofs rouse to expectancy the dozing traveller; there the glad
+lover dreams, and the despairing wretch seeks a watery grave, and the
+song of the poet finds a response in the universal heart,--
+
+    "How often, oh, how often,
+    In the days that have gone by,
+    Have I stood on that bridge at midnight,
+    And gazed on the wave and sky!"
+
+One of the most primitive tokens of civilization is a bridge; and yet no
+artificial object is more picturesquely associated with its ultimate
+symbols: the fallen tree whereon the pioneer crosses a stream in the
+wilderness is not more significant of human isolation than the
+fragmentary arch in an ancient city of the vanished homo of thousands.
+Thus, by its necessity and its survival, a bridge suggests the first
+exigency and the last relic of civilized life. The old explorers of our
+Western Continent record the savage expedients whereby water-courses
+were passed,--coils of grape-vine carried between the teeth of an
+aboriginal swimmer and attached to the opposite bank, a floating log,
+or, in shallow streams, a series of stepping-stones; and the most
+popular historian of England, when delineating to the eye of fancy the
+hour of her capital's venerable decay, can find no more impressive
+illustration than to make a broken arch of London Bridge the observatory
+of the speculative reminiscent.
+
+The bridge is, accordingly, of all economical inventions, that which is
+most inevitable to humanity, signalizing the first steps of man amid the
+solitude of Nature, and accompanying his progress through every stage of
+civic life: its crude form makes the wanderer's heart beat in the lonely
+forest, as a sign of the vicinity or the track of his kind; and its
+massive remains excite the reverent curiosity of the archaeologist, who
+seeks among the ruins of Art for trophies of a by-gone race. Few
+indications of Roman supremacy are more striking than the unexpected
+sight of one of those bridges of solid and symmetrical masonry which the
+traveller in Italy encounters, when emerging from a mountain-pass or a
+squalid town upon the ancient highway. The permanent method herein
+apparent suggests an energetic and pervasive race whose constructive
+instinct was imperial; such an evidence of their pathway over water is
+as suggestive of national power as the evanescent trail of the savage is
+of his casual domain. In the bridge, as in no other structure, use
+combines with beauty by an instinctive law; and the stone arch, more or
+less elaborate in detail, is as essential now to the function and the
+grace of a bridge as when it was first thrown, invincible and
+harmonious, athwart the rivers Caesar's legions crossed.
+
+As I stood on the scattered planks which afford a precarious foothold
+amid the rapids of St. Anthony, methought these frail bridges of hewn
+timber accorded with the reminiscence of the missionary pioneer who
+discovered and named the picturesque waters more than an elaborate and
+ancient causeway. Even those long, inelegant structures which lead the
+pedestrian over our own Charles River, or the broad inlets of the
+adjacent bay, have their peculiar charm as the scene of many a gorgeous
+autumnal sunset and many a patient "constitutional" walk. It is a
+homely, but significant proverb, "Never find fault with the bridge that
+carries you safe over." What beautiful shadows graceful bridges cast,
+when the twilight deepens and the waves are calm! how mysteriously sleep
+the moonbeams there! what a suggestive vocation is a toll-keeper's'
+patriarchs in this calling will tell of methodical and eccentric
+characters known for years.
+
+Bridges have their legends. There is one in Lombardy whence a jilted
+lover sprang with his faithless bride as she passed to church with her
+new lover; it is yet called the "Bridge of the Betrothed." An old
+traveller, describing New-York amusements, tells us of a favorite ride
+from the city to the suburban country, and says,--"In the way there is a
+bridge about three miles distant, which you always pass as you return,
+called the 'Kissing Bridge,' where it is part of the etiquette to salute
+the lady who has put herself under your protection."[F] A curious
+lawsuit was lately instituted by the proprietor of a menagerie who lost
+an elephant by a bridge giving way beneath his unaccustomed weight; the
+authorities protested against damages, as they never undertook to give
+safe passage to so large an animal.
+
+The office of a bridge is prolific of metaphor, whereof an amusing
+instance is Boswell's comparison of himself, when translating Paoli's
+talk to Dr. Johnson, to a "narrow isthmus connecting two continents." It
+has been aptly said of Dante's great poem, that, in the world of
+letters, it is a mediaeval bridge over that vast chasm which divides
+classical from modern times. All concliating authors bridge select
+severed intelligences, and even national feeling: as Irving's writings
+brought more near to each other the alienated sympathies of England and
+America, and Carlyle made a trysting-place for British and German
+thought; as Sydney Smith's talk threw a suspension-bridge from
+Conservative to Reformer, and Lord Bacon's (in the hour of bitter
+alienation between Crown and Commons) "reconciling genius spanned the
+dividing stream of party."
+
+How isolated and bewildered are villagers, when, after a tempest, the
+news spreads that a freshet has carried away the bridge! Every time we
+shake hands, we make a human bridge of courtesy or love; and that was a
+graceful fancy of one of our ingenious writers to give expression to his
+thoughts in "Letters from under a Bridge." With an eye and an ear for
+Nature's poetry, the gleam of lamps from a bridge, the figures that pass
+and repass thereon, the rush and the lull of waters beneath, the
+perspective of the arch, the weather-stains on the parapet, the sunshine
+and the cloud-shadows around, are phases and sounds fraught with meaning
+and mystery.
+
+It is an acknowledged truth in the philosophy of Art, that Beauty is the
+handmaid of Use; and as the grace of the swan and the horse results from
+a conformation whose _rationale_ is movement, so the pillar that
+supports the roof, and the arch that spans the current, by their
+serviceable fitness, wed grace of form to wise utility. The laws of
+architecture illustrate this principle copiously; but in no single and
+familiar product of human skill is it more striking than in bridges; if
+lightness, symmetry, elegance, proportion charm the ideal sense, not
+less are the economy and adaptation of the structure impressive to the
+eye of science. Perhaps the ideas of use and beauty, of convenience and
+taste, in no instance, coalesce more obviously; and therefore, of all
+human inventions, the bridge lends the most undisputed charm to the
+landscape. It is one of those symbols of humanity which spring from and
+are not grafted upon Nature; it proclaims her affinity with man, and
+links her spontaneous benefits with his invention and his needs; it
+seems to celebrate the stream over which it rises, and to wed the
+wayward waters to the order and the mystery of life. There is no hint of
+superfluity or impertinence in a bridge; it blends with the wildest and
+the most cultivated scene with singular aptitude, and is a feature of
+both rural and metropolitan landscape that strikes the mind as
+essential. The most usual form has its counterpart in those rocky arches
+which flood and fire have excavated or penned up in many picturesque
+regions,--the segments of caverns, or the ribs of strata,--so that,
+without the instinctive suggestion of the mind itself, Nature furnishes
+complete models of a bridge whereon neither Art nor Science can improve.
+Herein the most advanced and the most rude peoples own a common skill;
+bridges, of some kind, and all adapted to their respective countries,
+being the familiar invention of savage necessity and architectural
+genius. The explorer finds them in Africa as well as the artist in Rome;
+swung, like huge hammocks of ox-hide, over the rapid streams of South
+America; spanning in fragile cane-platforms the gorges of the Andes;
+crossing vast chasms of the Alleghanies with the slender iron viaduct of
+the American railways; and jutting, a crumbling segment of the ancient
+world, over the yellow Tiber: as familiar on the Chinese tea-caddy as on
+Canaletto's canvas; as traditional a local feature of London as of
+Florence; as significant of the onward march of civilization in Wales
+to-day as in Liguria during the Middle Ages. Where men dwell and wander,
+and water flows, these beautiful and enduring, or curious and casual
+expedients are found, as memorable triumphs of architecture, crowned
+with historical associations, or as primitive inventions that
+unconsciously mark the first faltering steps of humanity in the course
+of empire: for, on this continent, where the French missionary crossed
+the narrow log supported by his Indian convert in the midst of a
+wilderness, massive stone arches shadow broad streams that flow through
+populous cities; and the history of civilization may be traced from the
+loose stones whereon the lone settler fords the water-course, to such
+grand, graceful, and permanent monuments of human prosperity as the
+elaborate and ancient stone bridges of European capitals.
+
+When we look forth upon a grand or lovely scene of Nature,--mountain,
+river, meadow, and forest,--what a fine central object, what an
+harmonious artificial feature of the picture, is a bridge, whether
+rustic and simple, a mere rude passage-way over a brook, or a curve of
+gray stone throwing broad shadows upon the bright surface of a river!
+Nor less effective is the same object amid the crowded walls, spires,
+streets, and chimney-stacks of a city. There the bridge is the least
+conventional structure, the suggestive point, the favorite locality; it
+seems to reunite the working-day world with the freedom of Nature; it is
+perhaps the one spot in the dense array of edifices and thoroughfares
+which "gives us pause." There, if anywhere, our gaze and our feet
+linger; people have a relief against the sky, as they pass over it;
+artists look patiently thither; lovers, the sad, the humorous, and the
+meditative, stop there to observe and to muse; they lean over the
+parapet and watch the flowing tide; they look thence around as from a
+pleasant vantage-ground. The bridge, in populous old towns, is the
+rendezvous, the familiar landmark, the traditional nucleus of the place,
+and perhaps the only picturesque framework in all those marts and homes,
+more free, open, and suggestive of a common lot than temple, square, or
+palace; for there pass and repass noble and peasant, regal equipage and
+humble caravan; children plead to stay, and veterans moralize there; the
+privileged beggar finds a standing-place for charity to bless; a shrine
+hallows or a sentry guards, history consecrates or Art glorifies, and
+trade, pleasure, or battle, perchance, lends to it the spell of fame.
+Let any one recall his sojourn in a foreign city, and conjure to his
+mind's eye the scenes, and prominent to his fancy, distinct to his
+memory, will be the bridge. He will think of Florence as intersected by
+the Arno, and with the very name of that river reappears the peerless
+grace of the Ponte Santa Trinita with its moss-grown escutcheons and
+aerial curves; the Pont Neuf, at Paris, with its soldiers and priests,
+its boot-blacks and grisettes, the gay streets on one side and the
+studious quarter on the other, typifies and concentrates for him the
+associations of the French capital; and what a complete symbol of
+Venice--its canals, its marbles, its mysterious polity, its romance of
+glory and woe--is a good photograph of the Bridge of Sighs!
+
+The history of Rome is written on her bridges. The Ponte Rotto is Art's
+favorite trophy of her decay; two-thirds of it has disappeared; and the
+last Pope has ineffectively repaired it, by a platform sustained by iron
+wire: yet who that has stood thereon in the sunset, and looked from the
+dome of St. Peter's to the islands projected at that hour so distinctly
+from the river's surface, glanced along the flushed dwellings upon its
+bank, with their intervals of green terraces, or gazed, in the other
+direction, upon the Cloaca of Tarquin, Vesta's dome, and the Aventine
+Hill, with its palaces, convents, vineyards, and gardens, has not felt
+that the Ponte Rotto was the most suggestive servatory in the Eternal
+City? The Ponte Molle brings back Constantine and his vision of the
+Cross; and the statues on Sant' Angelo mutely attest the vicissitudes of
+ecclesiastical eras.
+
+England boasts no monument of her modern victories so impressive as the
+bridge named for the most memorable of them. The best view of Prague and
+its people is from the long series of stone arches which span the
+Moldau. The solitude and serenity of genius are rarely better realized
+than by musing of Klopstock and Gessner, Lavator and Zimmermann, on the
+Bridge of Rapperschwyl on the Lake of Zurich, where they dwelt and
+wrote or died. From the Bridge of St. Martin we have the first view of
+Mont Blanc. The Suspension Bridge at Niagara is an artificial wonder as
+great, in its degree, as the natural miracle of the mighty cataract
+which thunders forever at its side; while no triumph of inventive
+economy could more aptly lead the imaginative stranger into the
+picturesque beauties of Wales than the extraordinary tubular bridge
+across the Menai Strait. The aqueduct-bridge at Lisbon, the long
+causeway over Cayuga Lake in our own country, and the bridge over the
+Loire at Orleans are memorable in every traveller's retrospect.
+
+But the economical and the artistic interest of bridges is often
+surpassed by their historical suggestions; almost every vocation and
+sentiment of humanity being intimately associated therewith. The Rialto
+at Venice and the Ponte Vecchio at Florence are identified with the
+financial enterprise of the one city and the goldsmith's skill of the
+other: one was long the Exchange of the "City of the Sea," and still
+revives the image of Shylock and the rendezvous of Antonio; while the
+other continues to represent mediaeval trade in the quaint little shops
+of jewellers and lapidaries. One of the characteristic religious orders
+of that era is identified with the ancient bridge which crosses the
+Rhone at Avignon, erected by the "Brethren of the Bridge," a fraternity
+instituted in an age of anarchy expressly to protect travellers from the
+bandits, whose favorite place of attack was at the passage of rivers.
+The builder of the old London Bridge, Peter Colechurch, is believed to
+have been attached to this same order; he died in 1176, and was buried
+in a crypt of the little chapel on the second pier, according to the
+habit of the fraternity. For many years a market was held on this
+bridge; it was often the scene of war; it stayed the progress of
+Canute's fleet; at one time destroyed by fire, and at another carried
+away by ice; half ruined in one era by the bastard Faulconbridge, and,
+at another, the watchword of civil war, when the cry resounded, "Cade
+hath gotten Londonbridge," and Wat Tyler's rebels convened there;
+Elizabeth and her peerless courtiers have floated, in luxurious barges
+and splendid attire, by its old piers, and the heads of traitors rotted
+in the sun upon its venerable battlements. Only sixty years ago a
+portion of the original structure remained; it was once covered with
+houses; Peter the Dutchman's famous water-wheels plashed at its side;
+from the dark street and projecting gables noted tavern-signs vibrated
+in the wind. The exclusive thoroughfare from the city to Kent and
+Surrey, what ceremonial and scenes has it not witnessed,--royal
+entrances and greetings, rites under the low brown arches of the old
+chapel, revelry in the convenient hostels, traffic in the crowded mart,
+chimes from the quaint belfry, the tragic triumph of vindictive law in
+the gory heads upon spikes! The veritable and minute history of London
+Bridge would illustrate the civic and social annals of England; and
+romance could scarce invent a more effective background for the varied
+scenes and personages such a chronicle would exhibit than the dim local
+perspective, when, ere any bridge stood there, the ferryman's daughter
+founded with the tolls a House of Sisters, subsequently transformed into
+a college of priests. By a law of Nature, thus do the elements of
+civilization cluster around the place of transit; thus do the courses of
+the water indicate the direction and nucleus of emigration,--from the
+vast lakes and mighty rivers of America, whereby an immense continent is
+made available to human intercourse, and therefore to material unity, to
+the point where the Thames was earliest crossed and spanned. More
+special historical and social facts may be found attached to every old
+bridge. In war, especially, heroic achievement and desperate valor have
+often consecrated these narrow defiles and exclusive means of advance
+and retreat:--
+
+    "When the goodman mends his armor
+      And trims his helmet's plume,
+    When the good-wife's shuttle merrily
+      Goes flashing through the loom,
+    With weeping and with laughter
+      Still is the story told
+    How well Horatius kept the bridge
+      In the good old days of old."
+
+The bridge of Darius spanned the Bosphorus,--of Xerxes, the
+Hellespont,--of Caesar, the Rhine,--and of Trajan, the Danube; while the
+victorious march of Napoleon has left few traces so unexceptionably
+memorable as the massive causeways of the Simplon. Cicero arrested the
+bearer of letters to Catiline on the Pons Milonis, built in the time of
+Sylla on the ancient Via Flaminia; and by virtue of the blazing cross
+which he saw in the sky from the Ponte Molle the Christian emperor
+Constantine conquered Maxentius. The Pont du Gard near Nismes and the
+St. Esprit near Lyons were originally of Roman construction. During the
+war of freedom, so admirably described by our countryman, whereby rose
+the Dutch Republic, the Huguenots, at the siege of Valenciennes, we are
+told, "made forays upon the monasteries for the purpose of procuring
+supplies, and the broken statues of the dismantled churches were used to
+build a bridge across an arm of the river, which was called, in
+derision, the Bridge of Idols."
+
+But a more memorable historical bridge is admirably described in another
+military episode of this favorite historian,--that which Alexander of
+Parma built across the Scheldt, whereby Antwerp was finally won for
+Philip of Spain. Its construction was a miracle of science and courage;
+and it became the scene of one of the most terrible tragedies and the
+most fantastic festivals which signalize the history of that age, and
+illustrate the extraordinary and momentous struggle for religious
+liberty in the Netherlands. Its piers extended five hundred feet into
+the stream,--connected with the shore by boats, defended by palisades,
+fortified parapets, and spiked rafts; cleft and partially destroyed by
+the volcanic fireship of Gianebelli, a Mantuan chemist and engineer,
+whereby a thousand of the best troops of the Spanish army were instantly
+killed, and their brave chief stunned,--when the hour of victory came to
+the besiegers, it was the scene of a floral procession and Arcadian
+banquet, and "the whole extent of its surface from the Flemish to the
+Brabant shore" was alive with "war-bronzed figures crowned with
+flowers." "This magnificent undertaking has been favorably compared with
+the celebrated Rhine bridge of Julius Caesar. When it is remembered,
+however, that the Roman work was performed in summer, across a river
+only half as broad as the Scheldt, free from the disturbing action of
+the tides, and flowing through an unresisting country, while the whole
+character of the structure, intended only to serve for the single
+passage of an army, was far inferior to the massive solidity of Parma's
+bridge, it seems not unreasonable to assign the superiority to the
+general who had surmounted all the obstacles of a northern winter,
+vehement ebb and flow from the sea, and enterprising and desperate
+enemies at every point."[G]
+
+Even the fragile bridges of our own country, during the Revolution, have
+an historical importance in the story of war: the "Great Bridge" across
+the Elizabeth River, nine miles from Norfolk in Virginia, the floating
+bridge at Ticonderoga, that which spanned Stony Brook in New Jersey, and
+many others, are identified with strife or stratagem: King's Bridge was
+a formidable barrier to the invasion of New York by land. Indeed, from
+Trenton to Lodi, military annals have few more fierce conflicts than
+those wherein the bridge of the battle-ground is disputed; to cross one
+is often a declaration of war, and Rubicons abound in history.
+
+There is probably no single problem, wherein the laws of science and
+mechanical skill combine, which has so won the attention and challenged
+the powers of inventive minds as the construction of bridges. The
+various exigencies to be met, the possible triumphs to be achieved, the
+experiments as to form, material, security, and grace, have been
+prolific causes of inspiration and disappointment. In this branch of
+economy, the mechanic and the mathematician fairly meet; and it requires
+a rare union of ability in both vocations to arrive at original results
+in this sphere. To invent a bridge, through the application of a
+scientific principle by a novel method, is one of those projects which
+seem to fascinate philosophical minds; in few have theory and practice
+been more completely tested; and the history of bridges, scientifically
+written, would exhibit as remarkable conflicts of opinion, trials of
+inventive skill, decision of character, genius, folly, and fame, as any
+other chapter in the annals of progress. How to unite security with the
+least inconvenience, permanence with availability, strength with
+beauty,--how to adapt the structure to the location, climate, use, and
+risks,--are questions which often invoke all the science and skill of
+the architect, and which have increased in difficulty with the advance
+of other resources and requisitions of civilization. Whether a bridge is
+to cross a brook, a river, a strait, an inlet, an arm of the sea, a
+canal, or a valley, are so many diverse contingencies which modify the
+calculations and plans of the engineer. Here liability to sudden
+freshets, there to overwhelming tides, now to the enormous weight of
+railway-trains, and again to the corrosive influence of the elements,
+must be taken into consideration; the navigation of waters, the
+exigencies of war, the needs of a population, the respective uses of
+viaduct, aqueduct, and roadway, have often to be included in the
+problem. These considerations influence not only the method of
+construction, but the form adopted and the material, and have given
+birth to bridges of wood, brick, stone, iron, wire, and chain,--to
+bridges supported by piers, to floating, suspension, and tubular
+structures, many of which are among the remarkable trophies of modern
+science and the noblest fruits of the arts of peace. Railways have
+created an entirely new species of bridge, to enable a train to
+intersect a road, to cross canals in slanting directions, to turn amid
+jagged precipices, and to cross arms of the sea at a sufficient
+elevation not to interfere with the passage of ships,--objects not to be
+accomplished by suspension-bridges because of their oscillation, nor
+girder for lack of support, the desiderata being extensive span with
+rigid strength, so triumphantly realized in the tubular bridge. The day
+when the great Holyrood train passed over the Strait of Menai by this
+grand expedient established the superiority of this principle of
+construction, and became a memorable occasion in the annals of
+mechanical science, and immortalized the name of Stephenson.
+
+We find great national significance in the history of bridges in
+different countries. Their costly and substantial grandeur in Britain
+accords with the solid qualities of the race, and their elegance on the
+Continent with the pervasive influence of Art in Europe. It is a curious
+illustration of the inferior economical and high intellectual
+development of Greece, that the "Athenians waded, when their temples
+were the most perfect models of architecture"; and equally an evidence
+of the practical energy of the old Romans, that their stone bridges
+often remain to this hour intact. Our own incomplete civilization is
+manifest in the marvellous number of bridges that annually break down,
+from negligent or unscientific construction; while the indomitable
+enterprise of the people is no less apparent in some of the longest,
+loftiest, most wonderfully constructed and sustained bridges in the
+world. We have only to cross the Suspension Bridge at Niagara, or gaze
+up to its aerial tracery from the river, or look forth upon wooded
+ravines and down precipitous and umbrageous glens from the Erie Railway,
+to feel that in this, as in all other branches of mechanical enterprise,
+our nation is as boldly dexterous as culpably reckless. As an instance
+of ingenuity in this sphere, the bridge which crosses the Potomac
+Creek, near Washington, deserves notice. The hollow iron arches which
+support this bridge also serve as conduits to the aqueduct which
+supplies the city with water.
+
+Amid the mass of prosaic structures in London, what a grand exception to
+the architectural monotony are her bridges! how effectually they have
+promoted her suburban growth! Canova thought the Waterloo Bridge the
+finest in Europe, and, by a strangely tragic coincidence, this noble and
+costly structure is the favorite scene of suicidal despair, wherewith
+the catastrophes of modern novels and the most pathetic of city lyrics
+are indissolably associated. Westminster Bridge is as truly the Swiss
+Laboyle's monument of architectural genius, fortitude, and patience, as
+St. Paul's is that of Wren; and our own Remington's bridge-enthusiasm
+involves a pathetic story. At Cordova, the bridge over the Guadalquivir
+is a grand relic of Moorish supremacy. The oldest bridge in England is
+that of Croyland in Lincolnshire; the largest crosses the Trent in
+Staffordshire. Tom Paine designed a cast-iron bridge, but the
+speculation failed, and the materials were subsequently used in the
+beautiful bridge over the River Wear in Durham County. There is a
+segment of a circle six hundred feet in diameter in Palmer's bridge
+which spans our own Piscataqua. It is said that the first edifice of the
+kind which the Romans built of stone was the Ponte Rotto, begun by the
+Censor Fulvius and finished by Scipio Africanus and Lucius Mummius.
+Popes Julius III. and Gregory XIV. repaired it; so that the fragment now
+so valued as a picturesque ruin symbolizes both Imperial and
+Ecclesiastical rule. In striking contrast with the reminiscences of
+valor, hinted by ancient Roman bridges, are the ostentatious Papal
+inscriptions which everywhere in the States of the Church, in elaborate
+Latin, announce that this Pontiff built or that Pontiff repaired these
+structures.
+
+The mediaeval castle moat and drawbridge have, indeed, been transferred
+from the actual world to that of fiction, history, and art, except where
+preserved as memorials of antiquity; but the civil importance which from
+the dawn of civilization attached to the bridge is as patent to-day as
+when a Roman emperor, a feudal lord, or a monastic procession went forth
+to celebrate or consecrate its advent or completion; in evidence
+whereof, we have the appropriate function which made permanently
+memorable the late visit of Victoria's son to her American realms, in
+his inauguration of the magnificent bridge bearing her name, which is
+thrown across the St. Lawrence for a distance of only sixty yards less
+than two English miles,--the greatest tubular bridge in the world. When
+Prince Albert, amid the cheers of a multitude and the grand cadence of
+the national anthem, finished the Victoria Bridge by giving three blows
+with a mallet to the last rivet in the central tube, he celebrated one
+of the oldest, though vastly advanced, triumphs of the arts of peace,
+which ally the rights of the people and the good of human society to the
+representatives of law and polity.
+
+One may recoil with a painful sense of material incongruity, as did
+Hawthorne, when contemplating the noisome suburban street where Burns
+lived; but all the humane and poetical associations connected with the
+long struggle sustained by him, of "the highest in man's soul against
+the lowest in man's destiny," recur in sight of the Bridge of Doon, and
+the two "briggs of Ayr," whose "imaginary conversations" he caught and
+recorded, or that other bridge which spans a glen on the Auchinleck
+estate, where the rustic bard first saw the Lass of Ballochmyle. The
+tender admiration which embalms the name of Keats is also blent with the
+idea of a bridge. The poem which commences his earliest published volume
+was suggested, according to Milnes, as he "loitered by the gate that
+leads from the battery on Hampstead Heath to the field by Camwood"; and
+the young poet told his friend Clarke that the sweet passage, "Awhile
+upon some bending planks," came to him as he hung "over the rail of a
+foot-bridge that spanned a little brook in the last field upon entering
+Edmonton." To the meditative pedestrian, indeed, such places lure to
+quietude; the genial Country Parson, whose "Recreations" we have
+recently shared, unconsciously illustrates this, when he speaks of the
+privilege men like him enjoy, when free "to saunter forth with a
+delightful sense of leisure, and know that nothing will go wrong,
+although he should sit down on the mossy parapet of the little
+one-arched bridge that spans the brawling mountain-stream." On that
+Indian-summer day when Irving was buried, no object of the familiar
+landscape, through which, without formality, and in quiet grief, so many
+of the renowned and the humble followed his remains from the
+village-church to the rural graveyard, wore so pensive a fitness to the
+eye as the simple bridge over Sleepy-Hollow Creek, near to which Ichabod
+Crane encountered the headless horseman,--not only as typical of his
+genius, which thus gave a local charm to the scene, but because the
+country-people, in their heartfelt wish to do him honor, had hung
+wreaths of laurel upon the rude planks.
+
+Fragments, as well as entire roadways and arches of natural bridges, are
+more numerous in rocky, mountainous, and volcanic regions than is
+generally supposed; the action of the water in excavating cliffs, the
+segments of caverns, the, accidental shapes of geological formations,
+often result in structures so adapted for the use and like the shape of
+bridges as to appear of artificial origin. In the States of Alabama and
+Kentucky, especially, we have notable instances of these remarkable
+freaks of Nature: there is one in Walker County, of the former State,
+which, as a local curiosity, is unsurpassed; and one in the romantic
+County of Christian, in the latter State, makes a span of seventy feet
+with an altitude of thirty; while the vicinity of the famous Alabaster
+Mountain of Arkansas boasts a very curious and interesting formation of
+this species. Two of these natural bridges are of such vast proportions
+and symmetrical structure that they rank among the wonders of the world,
+and have long been the goals of pilgrimage, the shrines of travel. Their
+structure would hint the requisites, and their forms the lines of
+beauty, desirable in architectural prototypes. Across Cedar Creek, in
+Rockbridge County, Virginia, a beautiful and gigantic arch, thrown by
+elemental forces and shaped by time, extends. It is a stratified arch,
+whence you gaze down two hundred feet upon the flowing water; its sides
+are rock, nearly perpendicular. Popular conjecture reasonably deems it
+the fragmentary arch of an immense limestone cave; its loftiness imparts
+an aspect of lightness, although at the centre it is nearly fifty feet
+thick, and so massive is the whole that over it passes a public road, so
+that by keeping in the middle one might cross unaware of the marvel. To
+realize its height it must be viewed from beneath; from the side of the
+creek it has a Gothic aspect; its immense walls, clad with forest-trees,
+its dizzy elevation, buttress-like masses, and aerial symmetry make this
+sublime arch one of those objects which impress the imagination with
+grace and grandeur all the more impressive because the mysterious work
+of Nature,--eloquent of the ages, and instinct with the latent forces of
+the universe. Equally remarkable, but in a diverse style, is the Giant's
+Causeway, whose innumerable black stone columns rise from two to four
+hundred feet above the water's edge in the County of Antrim, on the
+north coast of Ireland. These basaltic pillars are for the most part
+pentagonal, whose five sides are closely united, not in one conglomerate
+mass, but, articulated so aptly that to be traced the ball and socket
+must be disjointed.
+
+The effect of statuary upon bridges is memorable: the Imperial statues
+which line that of Berlin form an impressive array; and whoever has seen
+the figures on the Bridge of Sant' Angelo at Home, when illuminated on
+a Carnival night, or the statues upon Santa Trinita at Florence, bathed
+in moonlight, and their outline distinctly revealed against sky and
+water, cannot but realize how harmoniously sculpture may illustrate and
+heighten the architecture of the bridge. More quaint than appropriate is
+pictorial embellishment; a beautiful Madonna or local saint placed
+midway or at either end of a bridge, especially one of mediaeval form and
+fashion, seems appropriate; but elaborate painting, such as one sees at
+Lucerne, strikes us as more curious than desirable. The bridge which
+divides the town and crosses the Reuss is covered, yet most of the
+pictures are weather-stained; as no vehicles are allowed,
+foot-passengers can examine them at ease. They are in triangular frames,
+ten feet apart, but few have any technical merit. One series illustrates
+Swiss history; and the Kapellbruecke has the pictorial life of the Saint
+of the town; while the Mile Bridge exhibits a quaint and rough copy of
+the famous "Dance of Death."
+
+In Switzerland what fearful ravines and foaming cascades do bridges
+cross! sometimes so aerial, and overhanging such precipices, as to
+justify to the imagination the name superstitiously bestowed on more
+than one, of the Devil's Bridge; while from few is a more lovely effect
+of near water seen than the "arrowy Rhone," as we gaze down upon its
+"blue rushing" beneath the bridge at Geneva. Perhaps the varied
+pictorial effects of bridges, at least in a city, are nowhere more
+striking than at Venice, whose five hundred, with their mellow tint and
+association with palatial architecture and streets of water, especially
+when revealed by the soft and radiant hues of an Italian sunset, present
+outlines, shapes, colors, and contrasts so harmonious and beautiful as
+to warm and haunt the imagination while they charm the eye. It is
+remarkable, as an artistic fact, how graciously these structures adapt
+themselves to such diverse scenes,--equally, though variously,
+picturesque amid the sturdy foliage and wild gorges of the Alps, the
+bustle, fog, and mast-forest of the Thames, and the crystal atmosphere,
+Byzantine edifices, and silent canals of Venice.
+
+Whoever has truly felt the aerial perspective of Turner has attained a
+delicate sense of the pictorial significance of the bridge; for, as we
+look through his floating mists, we descry, amid Nature's most
+evanescent phenomena, the span, the arch, the connecting lines or masses
+whereby this familiar image seems to identify itself not less with
+Nature than with Art. Among the drawings which Arctic voyagers have
+brought home, many a bridge of ice, enormous and symmetrical, seems to
+tempt adventurous feet and to reflect a like form of fleecy cloud-land;
+daguerreotyped by the frost in miniature, the same structures may be
+traced on the window-pane; printed on the fossil and the strata of rock,
+in the veins of bark and the lips of shells, or floating in sunbeams, an
+identical design appears; and, on a summer morning, as the eye carefully
+roams over a lawn, how often do the most perfect little
+suspension-bridges hang from spear to spear of herbage, their filmy span
+embossed with glittering dew-drops!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+INTERNAL STRUCTURE AND PROGRESSION OF THE GLACIER.
+
+
+It is not my intention, in these articles, to discuss a general theory
+of the glaciers upon physical and mechanical principles. My special
+studies, always limited to Natural History, have but indifferently
+fitted me for such a task, and quite recently the subject has been
+admirably treated from this point of view by Dr. Tyndall, in his
+charming volume entitled "Glaciers of the Alps." I have worked upon the
+glaciers as an amateur, devoting my summer vacations, with friends
+desirous of sharing my leisure, to excursions in the Alps, for the sake
+of relaxation from the closer application of my professional studies,
+and have considered them especially in their connection with geological
+phenomena, with a view of obtaining, by means of a thorough acquaintance
+with glaciers as they exist now, some insight into the glacial phenomena
+of past times, the distribution of drift, the transportation of
+boulders, etc. It was, however, impossible to treat one series of facts
+without some reference to the other; but such explanations as I have
+given of the mechanism of the glacier, in connection with its structure,
+are presented in the language of the unprofessional observer, without
+any attempt at the technicalities of the physicist. I do not wonder,
+therefore, that those who have looked upon the glacier chiefly with
+reference to the physical and mechanical principles involved in its
+structure and movement should have found my Natural Philosophy
+defective. I am satisfied with their agreement as to my correct
+observation of the facts, and am the less inclined to quarrel with the
+doubts thrown on my theory since I see that the most eminent physicists
+of the day do not differ from me more sharply than they do from each
+other. The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form,
+after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal. In the mean
+while, I am not sorry that just at this moment, when recent
+investigations and publications have aroused new interest in the
+glaciers, the course of these articles brings me naturally to a
+discussion of the subject in its bearing upon geological questions. I
+shall, however, address myself especially, as I have done throughout
+these papers, to my unprofessional readers, who, while they admire the
+glaciers, may also wish to form a general idea of their structure and
+mode of action, as well as to know something of the important part they
+have played in the later geological history of our earth. It would,
+indeed, be out of place, were I to undertake here a discussion of the
+different views entertained by the various students who have
+investigated the glacier itself, among whom Dr. Tyndall is especially
+distinguished, or those of the more theoretical writers, among whom Mr.
+Hopkins occupies a prominent position.
+
+Removed, as I am, from all possibility of renewing my own observations,
+begun in 1836 and ended in 1845, I will take this opportunity to call
+the attention of those particularly interested in the matter to one
+essential point with reference to which all other observers differ from
+me. I mean the stratification of the glacier, which I do not believe to
+be rightly understood, even at this moment. It may seem presumptuous to
+dissent absolutely from the statements of one who has seen so much and
+so well as Dr. Tyndall, on a question for the solution of which, from
+the physicist's point of view, his special studies have been a far
+better preparation than mine; and yet I feel confident that I was
+correct in describing the stratification of the glacier as a fundamental
+feature of its structure, and the so-called dirt-bands as the margins of
+the snow-strata successively deposited, and in no way originating in the
+ice-cascades. I shall endeavor to make this plain to my readers in the
+course of the present article. I believe, also, that renewed
+observations will satisfy dissenting observers that there really exists
+a net-work of capillary fissures extending throughout the whole glacier,
+constantly closing and reopening, and constituting the channels by means
+of which water filtrates into its mass. This infiltration, also, has
+been denied, in consequence of the failure of some experiments in which
+an attempt was made to introduce colored fluids into the glacier. To
+this I can only answer, that I succeeded completely, myself, in the
+self-same experiments which a later investigator found impracticable,
+and that I see no reason why the failure of the latter attempt should
+cast a doubt upon the former. The explanation of the difference in the
+result may, perhaps, be found in the fact, that, as a sponge gorged with
+water can admit no more fluid than it already contains, so the glacier,
+under certain circumstances, and especially at noonday in summer, may be
+so soaked with water that all attempts to pour colored fluids into it
+would necessarily fail. I have stated, in my work upon glaciers, that my
+infiltration-experiments were chiefly made at night; and I chose that
+time, because I knew the glacier would most readily admit an additional
+supply of liquid from without when the water formed during the day at
+its surface and rushing over it in myriad rills had ceased to flow.
+
+While we admit a number of causes as affecting the motion of a glacier,
+namely, the natural tendency of heavy bodies to slide down a sloping
+surface, the pressure to which the mass is subjected forcing it onward,
+the infiltration of moisture, its freezing and consequent expansion,--we
+must also remember that these various causes, by which the accumulated
+masses of snow and ice are brought down from higher to lower levels, are
+not all acting at all times with the same intensity, nor is their action
+always the same at every point of the moving mass. While the bulk of
+snow and ice moves from higher to lower levels, the whole mass of the
+snow, in consequence of its own downward tendency, is also under a
+strong vertical pressure, arising from its own incumbent weight, and
+that pressure is, of course, greater at its bottom than at its centre or
+surface. It is therefore plain, that, inasmuch as the snow can be
+compressed by its own weight, it will be more compact at the bottom of
+such an accumulation than at its surface, this cause acting most
+powerfully at the upper part of a glacier, where the snow has not yet
+been transformed into a more solid icy mass. To these two agencies, the
+downward tendency and the vertical pressure, must be added the pressure
+from behind, which is most-effective where the mass is largest and the
+amount of motion in a given time greatest. In the glacier, the mass is,
+of course, largest in the centre, where the trough which holds it is
+deepest, and least on the margins, where the trough slopes upward and
+becomes more shallow. Consequently, the middle of a glacier always
+advances more rapidly than the sides. Were the slope of the ground over
+which it passes, combined with the pressure to which the mass is
+subjected, the whole secret of the onward progress of a glacier, it is
+evident that the rate of advance would be gradually accelerated,
+reaching its maximum at its lower extremity, and losing its impetus by
+degrees on the higher levels nearer the point where the descent begins.
+This, however, is not the case. The glacier of the Aar, for instance, is
+about ten miles in length; its rate of annual motion is greatest near
+the point of junction of the two great branches by which it is formed,
+diminishing farther down, and reaching a minimum at its lower extremity.
+But in the upper regions, near their origin, the progress of these
+branches is again gradually less. Let us see whether the next cause of
+displacement, the infiltration of moisture, may not in some measure
+explain this retardation, at least of the lower part of the glacier.
+This agency, like that of the compression of the snow by its own weight
+and the pressure from behind, is most effective where the accumulation
+is largest. In the centre, where the body of the mass is greatest, it
+will imbibe the most moisture. But here a modifying influence comes in,
+not sufficiently considered by the investigators of glacial structure.
+We have already seen that snow and ice at different degrees of
+compactness are not equally permeable to moisture. Above the line at
+which the annual winter snow melts, there is, of course, little
+moisture; but below that point, as soon as the temperature rises in
+summer sufficiently to melt the surface, the water easily penetrates the
+mass, passing through it more readily where the snow is lightest and
+least compact,--in short, where it has not begun its transformation into
+ice. A summer's day sends countless rills of water trickling through
+such a mass of snow. If the snow be loose and porous throughout, the
+water will pass through its whole thickness, accumulating at the bottom,
+so that the lower portion of the mass will be damper, more completely
+soaked with water, than the upper part; if, on the contrary, in
+consequence of the process previously described, alternate melting and
+freezing combined with pressure, the mass has assumed the character of
+icy snow, it does not admit moisture so readily, and still farther down,
+where the snow is actually transformed into pure compact ice, the amount
+of surface-water admitted into its structure will, of course, be greatly
+diminished. There may, however, be conditions under which even the
+looser snow is comparatively impervious to water; as, for instance, when
+rain falls upon a snow-field which has been long under a low
+temperature, and an ice-crust is formed upon its surface, preventing the
+water from penetrating below. Admitting, as I believe we must, that the
+water thus introduced into the snow and ice is one of the most powerful
+agents to which its motion is due, we must suppose that it has a twofold
+influence, since its action when fluid and when frozen would be
+different. When fluid, it would contribute to the advance of the mass in
+proportion to its quantity; but when frozen, its expansion would produce
+a displacement corresponding to the greater volume of ice as compared
+with water; add to this that while trickling through the mass it will
+loosen and displace the particles of already consolidated ice. I have
+already said that I did not intend to trespass on the ground of the
+physicist, and I will not enter here upon any discussion as to the
+probable action of the laws of hydrostatic pressure and dilatation in
+this connection. I will only state, that, so far as my own observation
+goes, the movement of the glacier is most rapid where the greatest
+amount of moisture is introduced into the mass, and that I believe there
+must be a direct relation between these two facts. If I am right in
+this, then the motion, so far as it is connected with infiltrated
+moisture or with the dilatation caused by the freezing of that moisture,
+will, of course, be most rapid where the glacier is most easily
+penetrated by water, namely, in the region of the _neve_ and in the
+upper portion of the glacier-troughs, where the _neve_ begins to be
+transformed into more or less porous ice. This cause also accounts, in
+part at least, for another singular fact in the motion of the glacier:
+that, in its higher levels, where its character is more porous and the
+water entering at the surface sinks readily to the bottom, there the
+bottom seems to move more rapidly than the superficial parts of the
+mass, whereas at the lower end of the glacier, in the region of the
+compact ice, where the infiltration of the water at the bottom is at its
+minimum, while the disintegrating influences at the surface admit of
+infiltration to a certain limited depth, there the motion is greater
+near the surface than toward the bottom. But, under all circumstances,
+it is plain that the various causes producing motion, gravitation,
+pressure, infiltration of water, frost, will combine to propel the mass
+at a greater rate along its axis than near its margins. For details
+concerning the facts of the case, I would refer to my work entitled
+"Systeme Glaciaire."
+
+We will next consider the stratification of the glacier. I have stated
+in my introductory remarks, that I consider this to be one of its
+primary and fundamental features, and I confess, that, after a careful
+examination of the results obtained by my successors in the field of
+glacial phenomena, I still believe that the original stratification of
+the mass of snow from which the glacier arises gives us the key to many
+facts of its internal structure. The ultimate features resulting from
+this connection are so exceedingly intricate and entangled that their
+relation is not easily explained. Nevertheless, I trust my readers will
+follow me in this Alpine excursion, where I shall try to smooth the
+asperities of the road for them as much as possible.
+
+Imparted to it, at the very beginning of its formation, by the manner in
+which snow accumulates, and retained through all its transformations,
+the stratification of a glacier, however distorted, and at times almost
+obliterated, remains, notwithstanding, as distinct to one who is
+acquainted with all its phases, as is the stratified character of
+metamorphic rocks to the skilful geologist, even though they may be
+readily mistaken for plutonic masses by the common observer. Indeed,
+even those secondary features, as the dirt-bands, for instance, which we
+shall see to be intimately connected with snow-strata, and which
+eventually become so prominent as to be mistaken for the cause of the
+lines of stratification, do nevertheless tend, when properly understood,
+to make the evidence of stratification more permanent, and to point out
+its primitive lines.
+
+On the plains, in our latitude, we rarely have the accumulated layers of
+several successive snow-storms preserved one above another. We can,
+therefore, hardly imagine with what distinctness the sequence of such
+beds is marked in the upper Alpine regions. The first cause of this
+distinction between the layers is the quality of the snow when it falls,
+then the immediate changes it undergoes after its deposit, then the
+falling of mist or rain upon it, and lastly and most efficient of all,
+the accumulation of dust upon its surface. One who has not felt the
+violence of a storm in the high mountains, and seen the clouds of dust
+and sand carried along with the gusts of wind passing over a
+mountain-ridge and sweeping through the valley beyond, can hardly
+conceive that not only the superficial aspect of a glacier, but its
+internal structure also, can be materially affected by such a cause. Not
+only are dust and sand thus transported in large quantities to the
+higher mountain-regions, but leaves are frequently found strewn upon the
+upper glacier, and even pine-cones, and maple-seeds flying upward on
+their spread wings, are scattered thousands of feet above and many miles
+beyond the forests where they grew.
+
+This accumulation of sand and dust goes on all the year round, but the
+amount accumulated over one and the same surface is greatest during the
+summer, when the largest expanse of rocky wall is bare of snow and its
+loose soil dried by the heat so as to be easily dislodged. This summer
+deposit of loose inorganic materials, light enough to be transported by
+the wind, forms the main line of division between the snow of one year
+and the next, though only that of the last year is visible for its whole
+extent. Those of the preceding years, as we shall see hereafter, exhibit
+only their edges cropping out lower down one beyond another, being
+brought successively to lower levels by the onward motion of the
+glacier.
+
+Other observers of the glacier, Professor Forbes and Dr. Tyndall, have
+noticed only the edges of these seams, and called them dirt-bands.
+Looking upon them as merely superficial phenomena, they have given
+explanations of their appearance which I hold to be quite untenable.
+Indeed, to consider these successive lines of dirt on the glacier as
+limited only to its surface, and to explain them from that point of
+view, is much as if a geologist were to consider the lines presented by
+the strata on a cut through a sedimentary mass of rock as representing
+their whole extent, and to explain them as a superficial deposit due to
+external causes.
+
+A few more details may help to make this statement clearer to my
+readers. Let us imagine that a fresh layer of snow has fallen in these
+mountain-regions, and that a deposit of dirt has been scattered over its
+surface, which, if any moisture arises from the melting of the snow or
+from the falling of rain or mist, will become more closely compacted
+with it. The next snow-storm deposits a fresh bed of snow, separated
+from the one below it by the sheet of dust just described, and this bed
+may, in its turn, receive a like deposit. For greater ease and
+simplicity of explanation, I speak here as if each successive snow-layer
+were thus indicated; of course this is not literally true, because
+snow-storms in the winter may follow each other so fast that there is no
+time for such a collection of foreign materials upon each newly formed
+surface. But whenever such a fresh snow-bed, or accumulation of beds,
+remains with its surface exposed for some time, such a deposit of dirt
+will inevitably be found upon it. This process may go on till we have a
+number of successive snow-layers divided from each other by thin sheets
+of dust. Of course, such seams, marking the stratification of snow, are
+as permanent and indelible as the seams of coarser materials alternating
+with the finest mud in a sedimentary rock.
+
+The gradual progress of a glacier, which, though more rapid in summer
+than in winter, is never intermitted, must, of course, change the
+relation of these beds to each other. Their lower edge is annually cut
+off at a certain level, because the snow deposited every winter melts
+with the coming summer, up to a certain line, determined by the local
+climate of the place. But although the snow does not melt above this
+line, we have seen, in the preceding article, that it is prevented from
+accumulating indefinitely in the higher regions by its own tendency to
+move down to the lower valleys, and crowding itself between their walls,
+thus to force its way toward the outlet below. Now, as this movement is
+very gradual, it is evident that there must be a perceptible difference
+in the progress of the successive layers, the lower and older ones
+getting the advance of the upper and more recent ones: that is, when the
+snow that has covered the face of the country during one winter melts
+away from the glacier up to the so-called snow-line, there will be seen
+cropping out below and beyond that line the layers of the preceding
+years, which are already partially transformed into ice, and have become
+a part of the frozen mass of the glacier with which they are moving
+onward and downward. In the autumn, when the dust of a whole season has
+been accumulated upon the surface of the preceding winter's snow, the
+extent of the layer which year after year will henceforth crop out lower
+down, as a dirt-band, may best be appreciated.
+
+Beside the snow-layers and the sheets of dust alternating with them,
+there is still another feature of the horizontal and parallel structure
+of the mass in immediate connection with those above considered. I
+allude to the layers of pure compact ice occurring at different
+intervals between the snow-layers. In July, when the snow of the
+preceding winter melts up to the line of perpetual snow, the masses
+above, which are to withstand the summer heat and become part of the
+glacier forever, or at least until they melt away at the lower end,
+begin to undergo the changes through which all snow passes before it
+acquires the character of glacial ice. It thaws at the surface, is
+rained upon, or condenses moisture, thus becoming gradually soaked, and
+after assuming the granular character of _neve_-ice, it ends in being
+transformed into pure compact ice. Toward the end of August, or early
+in September, when the nights are already very cold in the Alps, but
+prior to the first permanent autumnal snow-falls, the surface of these
+masses becomes frozen to a greater or less depth, varying, of course,
+according to temperature. These layers of ice become numerous and are
+parallel to each other, like the layers of ice formed from slosh. Such
+crusts of ice I have myself observed again and again upon the glacier.
+This stratified snowy ice is now the bottom on which the first autumnal
+snow-falls accumulate. These sheets of ice may be formed not only
+annually before the winter snows set in, but may recur at intervals
+whenever water accumulating upon an extensive snow-surface, either in
+consequence of melting or of rain, is frozen under a sharp frost before
+another deposit of snow takes place. Or suppose a fresh layer of light
+porous snow to have accumulated above one the surface of which has
+already been slightly glazed with frost; rain or dew, falling upon the
+upper one, will easily penetrate it; but when it reaches the lower one,
+it will be stopped by the film of ice already formed, and under a
+sufficiently low temperature, it will be frozen between the two. This
+result may be frequently noticed in winter, on the plains, where sudden
+changes of temperature take place.
+
+There is still a third cause, to which the same result may possibly be
+due, and to which I shall refer at greater length hereafter; but as it
+has not, like the preceding ones, been the subject of direct
+observation, it must be considered as hypothetical. The admirable
+experiments of Dr. Tyndall have shown that water may be generated in ice
+by pressure, and it is therefore possible that at a lower depth in the
+glacier, where the incumbent weight of the mass above is sufficient to
+produce water, the water thus accumulated may be frozen into ice-layers.
+But this depends so much upon the internal temperature of the glacier,
+about which we know little beyond a comparatively superficial depth,
+that it cannot at present afford a sound basis even for conjecture.
+
+There are, then, in the upper snow-fields three kinds of horizontal
+deposits: the beds of snow, the sheets of dust, and the layers of ice,
+alternating with each other. If, now, there were no modifying
+circumstances to change the outline and surface of the glacier,--if it
+moved on uninterruptedly through an open valley, the lower layers,
+forming the mass, getting by degrees the advance of the upper ones, our
+problem would be simple enough. We should then have a longitudinal mass
+of snow, inclosed between rocky walls, its surface crossed by straight
+transverse lines marking the annual additions to the glacier, as in the
+adjoining figure.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But that mass of snow, before it reaches the outlet of the valley, is to
+be compressed, contorted, folded, rent in a thousand directions. The
+beds of snow, which in the upper ranges of the mountain were spread out
+over broad, open surfaces, are to be crowded into comparatively
+circumscribed valleys, to force and press themselves through narrow
+passes, alternately melting and freezing, till they pass from the
+condition of snow into that of ice, to undergo, in short, constant
+transformations, by which the primitive stratification will be
+extensively modified. In the first place, the more rapid motion of the
+centre of the glacier, as compared with the margins, will draw the lines
+of stratification downward toward the middle faster than at the sides.
+Accurate measurements have shown that the axis of a glacier may move
+ten- or twenty-fold more rapidly than its margins. This is not the place
+to introduce a detailed account of the experiments made to ascertain
+this result; but I would refer those who are interested in the matter to
+the measurements given in my "Systeme Glaciaire," where it will be seen
+that the middle may move at a rate of two hundred feet a year, while the
+margins may not advance more than ten or fifteen or twenty feet. These
+observations of mine have the advantage over those of other observers,
+that, while they embrace the whole extent of the glacier, transversely
+as well as in its length, they cover a period of several successive
+years, instead of being limited to summer campaigns and a few winter
+observations. The consequence of this mode of progressing will be that
+the straight lines drawn transversely across the surface of the glacier
+above will be gradually changed to curved ones below. After a few years,
+such a line will appear on the surface of the glacier like a crescent,
+with the bow turned downward, within which, above, are other crescents,
+less and less sharply arched up to the last year's line, which may be
+again straight across the snow-field. (See the subjoined figure, which
+represents a part of the glacier of the Lauter-Aar.)
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Thus the glacier records upon its surface its annual growth and
+progress, and registers also the inequality in the rate of advance
+between the axis and the sides.
+
+But these are only surface-phenomena. Let us see what will be the effect
+upon the internal structure. We must not forget, in considering the
+changes taking place within glaciers, the shape of the valleys which
+contain them. A glacier lies in a deep trough, and the tendency of the
+mass will be to sink toward its deeper part, and to fold inward and
+downward, if subjected to a strong lateral pressure,--that is, to dip
+toward the centre and slope upward along the sides, following the scoop
+of the trough. If, now, we examine the face of a transverse cut in the
+glacier, we find it traversed by a number of lines, vertical in some
+places, more or less oblique in others, and frequently these lines are
+joined together at the lower ends, forming loops, some of which are
+close and vertical, while others are quite open. These lines are due to
+the folding of the strata in consequence of the lateral pressure they
+are subjected to, when crowded into the lower course of the valleys, and
+the difference in their dip is due to the greater or less force of that
+pressure. The wood-cut on the next page represents a transverse cut
+across the Lauter-Aar and the Finster-Aar, the two principal tributaries
+to the great Aar glacier, and includes also a number of small lateral
+glaciers which join them. The beds on the left, which dip least, and are
+only folded gently downward, forming very open loops, are those of the
+Lauter-Aar, where the lateral pressure is comparatively slight. Those
+which are almost vertical belong in part to the several small tributary
+glaciers, which have been crowded together and very strongly compressed,
+and partly to the Finster-Aar. The close uniform vertical lines in this
+wood-cut represent a different feature in the structure of the glacier,
+called blue bands, to which I shall refer presently. These loops or
+lines dipping into the internal mass of the glacier have been the
+subject of much discussion, and various theories have been recently
+proposed respecting them. I believe them to be caused, as I have said,
+by the snow-layers, originally deposited horizontally, but afterward
+folded into a more or less vertical position, in consequence of the
+lateral pressure brought to bear upon them. The sheets of dust and of
+ice alternating with the snow-strata are of course subjected to the same
+action, and are contorted, bent, and folded by the same lateral
+pressure.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Dr. Tyndall has advanced the view that the lines of apparent
+stratification, and especially the dirt-bands across the surface of the
+glacier, are due to ice-cascades: that is, the glacier, passing over a
+sharp angle, is cracked across transversely in consequence of the
+tension, and these rents, where the back of the glacier has been
+successively broken, when recompacted, cause the transverse lines, the
+dirt being collected in the furrow formed between the successive ridges.
+Unfortunately for his theory, the lines of stratification constantly
+occur in glaciers where no such ice-falls are found. His principal
+observations upon this subject were made on the Glacier du Geant, where
+the ice-cascade is very remarkable. The lines may perhaps be rendered
+more distinct on the Glacier du Geant by the cascade, and necessarily
+must be so, if the rents coincide with the limit at which the annual
+snow-line is nearly straight across the glacier. In the region of the
+Aar glacier, however, where my own investigations were made, all the
+tributaries entering into the larger glacier are ribbed across in this
+way, and most of them join the main trunk over uniform slopes, without
+the slightest cascade.
+
+It must be remembered that these surface-phenomena of the glacier are
+not to be seen at all times, nor under all conditions. During the first
+year of my sojourn on the glacier of the Aar, I was not aware that the
+stratification of its tributaries was so universal as I afterward found
+it to be; the primitive lines of the strata are often so far erased that
+they are not perceptible, except under the most favorable circumstances.
+But when the glacier has been washed clean by rain, and the light
+strikes upon it in the right direction, these lines become perfectly
+distinct, where, under different conditions, they could not be discerned
+at all. After passing many summers on the same glacier, renewing my
+observations year after year over the same localities, I can confidently
+state that not only do the lines of stratification exist throughout the
+great glacier of the Aar, but in all its tributaries also. Of course,
+they are greatly modified in the lower part of the glacier by the
+intimate fusion of its tributaries, and by the circumstance that their
+movement, primarily independent, is merged in the movement of the main
+glacier embracing them all. We have seen that not only does the centre
+of a glacier move more rapidly than its sides, but that the deeper mass
+of the glacier also moves at a different rate from its more superficial
+portion. My own observations (for the details of which I would again
+refer the reader to my "Systeme Glaciaire ") show that in the higher
+part of the glacier, especially in the region of the _neve_, the bottom
+of the mass seems to move more rapidly than the surface, while lower
+down, toward the terminus of the glacier, the surface, on the contrary,
+moves faster than the bottom. The annexed wood-cut exhibits a
+longitudinal section of the glacier, in which this difference in the
+motion of the upper and lower portions of the mass is represented, the
+beds being almost horizontal in the upper snow-fields, while their lower
+portion slopes move rapidly downward in the _neve_ region, and toward
+the lower end the upper portion takes the lead, and advances more
+rapidly than the lower.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I presented these results for the first time in two letters, dated
+October 9th, 1842, which were published in a German periodical, the
+Jahrbuch of Leonhard and Bronn. The last three wood-cuts introduced
+above, the transverse and longitudinal sections of the glacier as well
+as that representing the concentric lines of stratification on the
+surface, are the identical ones contained in those communications. These
+papers seem to have been overlooked by contemporary investigators, and I
+may be permitted to translate here a passage from one of them, since it
+sums up the results of the inequality of motion throughout the glacier
+and its influence on the primitive stratification of the mass in as few
+words and as correctly as I could give them to-day, twenty years
+later:--"Combining these views, it appears that the glacier may be
+represented as composed of concentric shells which arise from the
+parallel strata of the upper region by the following process. The
+primitively regular strata advance into gradually narrower and deeper
+valleys, in consequence of which the margins are raised, while the
+middle is bent not only downward, but, from its more rapid motion,
+forward also, so that they assume a trough-like form in the interior of
+the mass. Lower down, the glacier is worn by the surrounding air, and
+assumes the peculiar form characteristic of its lower course." The last
+clause alludes to another series of facts, which we shall examine in a
+future article, when we shall see that the heat of the walls in the
+lower part of its course melts the sides of the glacier, so that,
+instead of following the trough-like shape of the valley, it becomes
+convex, arching upward in the centre and sinking at the margins.
+
+I have dwelt thus long, and perhaps my readers may think tediously, upon
+this part of my subject, because the stratification of the glacier has
+been constantly questioned by the more recent investigators of glacial
+phenomena, and has indeed been set aside as an exploded theory. They
+consider the lines of stratification, the dirt-bands, and the seams of
+ice alternating with the more porous snow, as disconnected
+surface-phenomena, while I believe them all to be intimately connected
+together as primary essential features of the original mass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is another feature of glacial structure, intimately connected, by
+similarity of position and aspect, with the stratification, which has
+greatly perplexed the students of glacial phenomena. I allude to the
+so-called blue bands, or bands of infiltration, also designated as
+veined structure, ribboned or laminated structure, marginal structure,
+and longitudinal structure. The difficulty lies, I believe, in the fact
+that two very distinct structures, that of the stratification and the
+blue bands, are frequently blended together in certain parts of the
+glacier in such a manner as to seem identical, while elsewhere the one
+is prominent and the other subordinate, and _vice versa_. According to
+their various opportunities of investigation, observers have either
+confounded the two, believing them to be the same, or some have
+overlooked the one and insisted upon the other as the prevailing
+feature, while that very feature has been absolutely denied again by
+others who have seen its fellow only, and taken that to be the only
+prominent and important fact in this peculiar structural character of
+the ice.
+
+We have already seen how the stratification of the glacier arises,
+accompanied by layers of dust and other material foreign to the glacier,
+and how blue bands of compact ice may be formed parallel to the surface
+of these strata. We have also seen how the horizontality of these strata
+may be modified by pressure till they assume a position within the mass
+of the glacier, varying from a slightly oblique inclination to a
+vertical one. Now, while the position of the strata becomes thus altered
+under pressure, other changes take place in the constitution of the ice
+itself.
+
+Before attempting to explain how these changes take place, let us
+consider the facts themselves. The mass of the glacial ice is traversed
+by thin bands of compact blue ice, these bands being very numerous along
+the margins of the glacier, where they constitute what Dr. Tyndall calls
+marginal structure, and still more crowded along the line upon which two
+glaciers unite, where he has called it longitudinal structure. In the
+latter case, where the extreme pressure resulting from the junction of
+two glaciers has rendered the strata nearly vertical, these blue bands
+follow their trend so closely that it is difficult to distinguish one
+from the other. It will be seen, on referring to the wood-cut on page
+758, where the close, uniform, vertical lines represent the true veined
+structure, that at several points of that section the lines of
+stratification run so nearly parallel with them, that, were the former
+not drawn more strongly, they could not be easily distinguished from the
+latter. Along the margins, also, in consequence of the retarded motion,
+the blue bands and the lines of stratification run nearly parallel with
+each other, both following the sides of the trough in which they move.
+
+Undoubtedly, in both these instances, we have two kinds of blue bands,
+namely: those formed primitively in a horizontal position, indicating
+seams of stratification, and those which have arisen subsequently in
+connection with the movement of the whole mass, which I have
+occasionally called bands of infiltration, as they appeared to me to be
+formed by the infiltration and freezing of water. The fact that these
+blue bands are most numerous where two glaciers are crowded together
+into a common bed naturally suggests pressure as their cause. And since
+the beautiful experiments of Dr. Tyndall have illustrated the internal
+liquefaction of ice by pressure, it becomes highly probable that his
+theory of the origin of these secondary blue bands is the true one. He
+suggests that layers of water may be formed in the glacier at right
+angles with the pressure, and pass into a state of solid ice upon the
+removal of that pressure, the pressure being of course relieved in
+proportion to the diminution in the body of the ice by compression. The
+number of blue bands diminishes as we recede from the source of the
+pressure,--few only being formed, usually at right angles with the
+surfaces of stratification, in the middle of a glacier, half-way between
+its sides. If they are caused by pressure, this diminution of their
+number toward the middle of the glacier would be inevitable, since the
+intensity of the pressure naturally fades as we recede from the motive
+power.
+
+Dr. Tyndall also alludes to another structure of the same kind, which he
+calls transverse structure, where the blue bands extend in
+crescent-shaped curves, more or less arched, across the surface of the
+glacier. Where these do not coincide with the stratification, they are
+probably formed by vertical pressure in connection with the unequal
+movement of the mass.
+
+With these facts before us, it seems to me plain that the primitive blue
+bands arise with the stratification of the snow in the very first
+formation of the glacier, while the secondary blue bands are formed
+subsequently, in consequence of the onward progress of the glacier and
+the pressure to which it is subjected. The secondary blue bands
+intersect the planes of stratification at every possible angle, and may
+therefore seem identical with the stratification in some places, while
+in others they cut it at right angles. It has been objected to my theory
+of glacial structure, that I have considered the so-called blue bands as
+a superficial feature when compared with the stratification. And in a
+certain sense this is true; since, if my views are correct, the glacier
+exists and is in full life and activity before the secondary blue bands
+arise in it, whereas the stratification is a feature of its embryo
+condition, already established in the accumulated snow before it begins
+its transformation into glacier-ice. In other words, the veined
+structure of the glacier is not a primary structural feature of its
+whole mass, but the result of various local influences acting upon the
+constitution of the ice: the marginal structure resulting from the
+resistance of the sides of the valley to the onward movement of the
+glacier, the longitudinal structure arising from the pressure caused by
+two glaciers uniting in one common bed, the transverse structure being
+produced by vertical pressure in consequence of the weight of the mass
+itself and the increased rate of motion at the centre.
+
+In the _neve_ fields, where the strata are still horizontal, the few
+blue bands observed are perpendicular to the strata of snow, and
+therefore also perpendicular to the blue seams of ice and the sheets of
+dust alternating with them. Upon the sides of the glacier they are more
+or less parallel to the slopes of the valley; along the line of junction
+of two glaciers they follow the vertical trend of the axis of the mass;
+while at intermediate positions they are more or less oblique. Along the
+outcropping edges of the strata, on the surface of the glacier, they
+follow more or less the dip of the strata themselves; that is to say,
+they are more or less parallel with the dirt-bands. In conclusion, I
+would recommend future investigators to examine the glaciers, with
+reference to the distribution of the blue bands, after heavy rains and
+during foggy days, when the surface is freed from the loose materials
+and decomposed fragments of ice resulting from the prolonged action of
+the sun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most important facts, then, to be considered with reference to the
+motion of the glacier are as follows. First that the rate of advance
+between the axis and the margins of a glacier differs in the ratio of
+about ten to one and even less; that is to say; when the centre is
+advancing at a rate of two hundred and fifty feet a year, the motion
+toward the sides may be gradually diminished to two hundred, one hundred
+and fifty, one hundred, fifty feet, and so on, till nearest the margin
+it becomes almost inappreciable. Secondly, the rate of motion is not the
+same throughout the length of the glacier, the advance being greatest
+about half-way down in the region of the _neve_, and diminishing in
+rapidity both above and below; thus the onward motion in the higher
+portion of a glacier may not exceed twenty to fifty feet a year, while
+it reaches its maximum of some two hundred and fifty feet annually in
+the _neve_ region, and is retarded again toward the lower extremity,
+where it is reduced to about one-fourth of its maximum rate. Thirdly,
+the glacier moves at different rates throughout the thickness of its
+mass; toward the lower extremity of the glacier the bottom is retarded,
+and the surface portion moves faster, while in the upper region the
+bottom seems to advance more rapidly. I say _seems_, because upon this
+latter point there are no positive measurements, and it is only
+inferred from general appearances, while the former statement has been
+demonstrated by accurate experiments. Remembering the form of the
+troughs in which the glaciers arise, that they have their source in
+expansive, open fields of snow and _neve_, and that these immense
+accumulations move gradually down into ever narrowing channels, though
+at times widening again to contract anew, their surface wasting so
+little from external influences that they advance far below the line of
+perpetual snow without any sensible diminution in size, it is evident
+that an enormous pressure must have been brought to bear upon them
+before they could have been packed into the lower valleys through which
+they descend.
+
+Physicists seem now to agree that pressure is the chief agency in the
+motion of glaciers. No doubt, all the facts point that way; but it now
+becomes a matter of philosophical interest to determine in what
+direction it acts most powerfully, and upon this point glacialists are
+by no means agreed. The latest conclusion seems to be, that the weight
+of the advancing mass is itself the efficient cause of the motion. But
+while this is probably true in the main, other elements tending to the
+same result, and generally overlooked by investigators, ought to be
+taken into consideration; and before leaving the subject, I would add a
+few words upon infiltration in this connection.
+
+The weight of the glacier, as a whole, is about the same all the year
+round. If, therefore, pressure, resulting from that weight, be the
+all-controlling agency, its progress should be uniform daring the whole
+year, or even greatest in winter, which is by no means the case. By a
+series of experiments, I have ascertained that the onward movement,
+whatever be its annual average, is accelerated in spring and early
+summer. The average annual advance of the glacier being, at a given
+point, at the rate of about two hundred feet, its average summer
+advance, at the same point, will be at a rate of two hundred and fifty
+feet, while its average rate of movement in winter will be about one
+hundred and fifty feet. This can be accounted for only by the increased
+pressure due to the large accession of water trickling in spring and
+early summer into the interior through the net-work of capillary
+fissures pervading the whole mass. The unusually large infiltration of
+water at that season is owing to the melting of the winter snow. Careful
+experiments made on the glacier of the Aar, respecting the water thus
+accumulating on the surface, penetrating its mass, and finally
+discharged in part at its lower extremity, fully confirm this view.
+Here, then, is a powerful cause of pressure and consequent motion, quite
+distinct from the permanent weight of the mass itself, since it operates
+only at certain seasons of the year. In midwinter, when the infiltration
+is reduced to a minimum, the motion is least. The water thus introduced
+into the glacier acts, as we have seen above, in various ways: by its
+weight, by loosening the particles of snow through which it trickles,
+and by freezing and consequent expansion, at least within the limits and
+during the season at which the temperature of the glacier sinks below
+32 deg. Fahrenheit. The simple fact, that in the spring the glacier swells
+on an average to about five feet more than its usual level, shows how
+important this infiltration must be. I can therefore only wonder that
+other glacialists have given so little weight to this fact. It is
+admitted by all, that the waste of a glacier at its surface, in
+consequence of evaporation and melting, amounts to about nine or ten
+feet in a year. At this rate of diminution, a glacier, even one thousand
+feet in thickness, could not advance during a single century without
+being exhausted. The water supplied by infiltration no doubt repairs the
+loss to a great degree. Indeed, the lower part of the glacier must be
+chiefly maintained from this source, since the annual increase from the
+fresh accumulations of snow is felt only above the snow-line, below
+which the yearly snow melts away and disappears. In a complete theory
+of the glaciers, the effect of so great an accession of plastic material
+cannot be overlooked.
+
+I now come to some points in the structure of the glacier, the
+consideration of which is likely to have a decided influence in settling
+the conflicting views respecting their motion. The experiments of
+Faraday concerning regelation, and the application of the facts made
+known by the great English physicist to the theory of the glaciers, as
+first presented by Dr. Tyndall in his admirable work, show that
+fragments of ice with most surfaces are readily reunited under pressure
+into a solid mass. It follows from these experiments, that glacier-ice,
+at a temperature of 32 deg. Fahrenheit, may change its form and preserve its
+continuity during its motion, in virtue of the pressure to which it is
+subjected. The statement is, that, when two pieces of ice with moistened
+surfaces are placed in contact, they become cemented together by the
+freezing of a film of water between them, while, when the ice is below
+32 deg. Fahrenheit, and therefore _dry_, no effect of the kind can be
+produced. The freezing was also found to take place under water; and the
+result was the same, even when the water into which the ice was plunged
+was as hot as the hand can bear.
+
+The fact that ice becomes cemented under these circumstances is fully
+established, and my own experiments have confirmed it to the fullest
+extent. I question, however, the statement, that regelation takes place
+_by the freezing of a film of water between the fragments_. I never have
+been able to detect any indication of the presence of such a film, and
+am, therefore, inclined to consider this result as akin to what takes
+place when fragments of moist clay or marl are pressed together and thus
+reunited. When examining beds of clay and marl, or even of compact
+limestone, especially in large mountain-masses, I have frequently
+observed that the rock presents a net-work of minute fissures pervading
+the whole, without producing a distinct solution of continuity, though
+generally determining the lines according to which it breaks under
+sudden shocks. The net-work of capillary fissures pervading the glacier
+may fairly be compared to these rents in hard rocks,--with this
+difference, however, that in ice they are more permeable to water than
+in stone.
+
+How this net-work of capillary fissures is formed has not been
+ascertained by direct observation. Following, however, the
+transformation of the snow and _neve_ into compact ice, it is easily
+conceived that the porous mass of snow, as it falls in the upper regions
+of the Alps, and in the broad caldrons in which the glaciers properly
+originate, cannot pass into solid ice, by the process described in a
+former article, without retaining within itself larger or smaller
+quantities of air. This air is finally surrounded from all sides by the
+cementation of the granules of _neve_, through the freezing of the water
+that penetrates it. So inclosed, the bubbles of air are subject to the
+same compression as the ice itself, and become more flattened in
+proportion as the snow has been more fully transformed into compact ice.
+As long as the transformation of snow into ice is not complete, a rise
+of its temperature to 32 deg. Fahrenheit, accompanied with thawing, reduces
+it at once again to the condition of loose grains of _neve_; but when
+more compact, it always presents the aspect of a mass composed of
+angular fragments, wedged and dove-tailed together, and separated by
+capillary fissures, the flattened air-bubbles trending in the same
+direction in each fragment, but varying in their trend from one fragment
+to another. There is, moreover, this important point to notice,--that,
+the older the _neve_, the larger are its composing granules; and where
+_neve_ passes into porous ice, small angular fragments are mixed with
+rounded _neve_-granules, the angular fragments appearing larger and more
+numerous, and the _neve_-granules fewer, in proportion as the _neve_-ice
+has undergone most completely its transformation into compact
+glacier-ice. These facts show conclusively that the dimensions and form
+of the _neve_-granules, the size and shape of the angular fragments, the
+porosity of the ice, the arrangement of its capillary fissures, and the
+distribution and compression of the air-bubbles it contains, are all
+connected features, mutually dependent. Whether the transformation of
+snow into ice be the result of pressure only, or, as I believe, quite as
+much the result of successive thawings and freezings, these structural
+features can equally be produced, and exhibit these relations to one
+another. It may be, moreover, that, when the glacier is at a temperature
+below 32 deg., its motion produces extensive fissuration throughout the
+mass.
+
+Now that water pervades this net-work of fissures in the glacier to a
+depth not yet ascertained, my experiments upon the glacier of the Aar
+have abundantly proved; and that the fissures themselves exist at a
+depth of two hundred and fifty feet I also know, from actual
+observation. All this can, of course, take place, even if the internal
+temperature of the glacier never should fall below 32 deg. Fahrenheit; and
+it has actually been assumed that the temperature within the glacier
+does not fall below this point, and that, therefore, no phenomena,
+dependent upon a greater degree of cold, can take place beyond a very
+superficial depth, to which the cold outside may be supposed to
+penetrate. I have, however, observed facts which seem to me
+irreconcilable with this assumption. In the first place, a
+thermometrograph indicating -2 deg. Centigrade, (about 28 deg. Fahrenheit,) at a
+depth of a little over two metres, that is, about six feet and a half,
+has been recovered from the interior of the glacier of the Aar, while
+all my attempts to thaw out other instruments placed in the ice at a
+greater depth utterly failed, owing to the circumstance, that, after
+being left for some time in the glacier, they were invariably frozen up
+in newly formed water-ice, entirely different in its structure from the
+surrounding glacier-ice. This freezing could not have taken place, did
+the mass of the glacier never fall below 32 deg. Fahrenheit. And this is not
+the only evidence of hard frost in the interior of the glaciers. The
+innumerable large walls of water-ice, which may be seen intersecting
+their mass in every direction and to any depth thus far reached, show
+that water freezes in their interior. It cannot be objected, that this
+is merely the result of pressure; since the thin fluid seams, exhibited
+under pressure in the interesting experiments of Dr. Tyndall, and
+described in his work under the head of Crystallization and Internal
+Liquefaction, cannot be compared to the large, irregular masses of
+water-ice found in the interior of the glacier, to which I here allude.
+
+In the absence of direct thermometric observations, from which the
+lowest internal temperature of the glacier could be determined with
+precision in all its parts, we are certainly justified in assuming that
+every particle of water-ice found in the glacier, the formation of which
+cannot be ascribed to the mere fact of pressure, is due to the influence
+of a temperature inferior to 32 deg. Fahrenheit at the time of its
+consolidation. The fact that the temperature in winter has been proved
+by actual experimentation to fall as low as 28 deg. Fahrenheit, that is,
+four degrees below the freezing-point at a depth of six feet below a
+thick covering of snow, though not absolutely conclusive as to the
+temperature at a greater depth, is certainly very significant.
+
+Under these circumstances, it is not out of place to consider through
+what channels the low temperature of the air surrounding the glacier may
+penetrate into the interior. The heavy cold air may of course sink from
+the surface into every large open space, such as the crevasses, large
+fissures, and _moulins_ or mill like holes to be described in a future
+article; it may also penetrate with the currents which ingulf themselves
+under the glacier, or it may enter through its terminal vault, or
+through the lateral openings between the walls of the valley and the
+ice. Indeed, if all the spaces in the mass of the glacier, not occupied
+by continuous ice, could be graphically represented, I believe it would
+be seen that cold air surrounds the glacier-ice itself in every
+direction, so that probably no masses of a greater thickness than that
+already known to be permeable to cold at the surface would escape this
+contact with the external temperature. If this be the case, it is
+evident that water may freeze in any part of the glacier.
+
+To substantiate this position, which, if sustained, would prove that the
+dilatation of the mass of the glacier is an essential element of its
+motion, I may allude to several other well-known facts. The loose snow
+of the upper regions is gradually transformed into compact ice. The
+experiments of Dr. Tyndall prove that this may be the result of
+pressure; but in the region of the _neve_ it is evidently owing to the
+transformation of the snow-flakes into ice by repeated melting and
+freezing, for it takes place in the uppermost layers of the snow, where
+pressure can have no such effect, as well as in its deeper beds. I take
+it for granted, also, that no one, familiar with the presence of the
+numerous ice-seams parallel to the layers of snow in these upper regions
+of the glacier, can doubt that they, as well as the _neve_, are the
+result of frost. But be this as it may, the difference between the
+porous ice of the upper region of the glacier and the compact blue ice
+of its lower track seems to me evidence direct that at times the whole
+mass must assume the rigidity imparted to it by a temperature inferior
+to the freezing-point. We know that at 32 deg. Fahrenheit, regelation
+renders the mass continuous, and that it becomes brittle only at a
+temperature below this. In other words, the ice can break up into a mass
+of disconnected fragments, such as the capillary fissures and the
+infiltration-experiments described in my "Systeme Glaciaire," show to
+exist, only when it is below 32 deg. Fahrenheit. If it be contended that ice
+at 32 deg. does break, and that therefore the whole mass of the glacier may
+break at that temperature, setting aside the contradiction to the facts
+of regelation which such an assumption involves, I would refer to Dr.
+Tyndall's experiments concerning the vacuous spots in the ice.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Those who have read his startling investigations will remember that by
+sending a beam of sunlight through ice he brought to view the primitive
+crystalline forms to which it owes its solidity, and that he insisted
+that these star-shaped figures are always in the plane of
+crystallization. Without knowing what might be their origin, I had
+myself noticed these figures, and represented them in a diagram, part of
+which is reproduced in the annexed wood-cut. I had considered them to be
+compressed air-bubbles; and though I cannot, under my present
+circumstances, repeat the experiment of Dr. Tyndall upon glacier-ice, I
+conceive that the star-shaped figures represented upon Pl. VII. figs. 8
+and 9, in my "Systeme Glaciaire," may refer to the same phenomenon as
+that observed by him in pond-ice. Yet while I make this concession, I
+still maintain, that besides these crystalline figures there exist
+compressed air-bubbles in the angular fragments of the glacier-ice, as
+shown in the above wood-cut; and that these bubbles are grouped in sets,
+trending in the same direction in one and the same fragment, and
+diverging under various angles in the different fragments. I have
+explained this fact concerning the position of the compressed
+air-bubbles, by assuming that ice, under various pressure, may take the
+appearance it presents in each fragment with every compressed air-bubble
+trending in the same direction, while their divergence in the different
+fragments is owing to a change in the respective position of the
+fragments resulting from the movement of the whole glacier. I have
+further assumed, that throughout the glacier the change of the snow and
+porous ice into compact ice is the result of successive freezing,
+alternating with melting, or at least with the resumption of a
+temperature of 32 deg. Fahrenheit in consequence of the infiltration of
+liquid water, to which the effects of pressure must be added, the
+importance of which in this connection no one could have anticipated
+prior to the experiments of Dr. Tyndall. Of course, if the interior
+temperature of the glacier never falls below 32 deg., the changes here
+alluded to could not take place. But if the _vacuous spaces_ observed by
+Dr. Tyndall are really identical with the spaces I have described as
+_extremely flattened air-bubbles_, I think the arrangement of these
+spaces as above described proves that it freezes in the interior of the
+glacier to the depth at which these crosswise fragments have been
+observed: that is, at a depth of two hundred feet. For, since the
+experiments of Dr. Tyndall show that the vacuous spaces are parallel to
+the surface of crystallization, and as no crystallization of water can
+take place unless the surrounding temperature fall below 32 deg., it follows
+that these vacuous spaces could not exist in such large continuous
+fragments, presenting throughout the fragments the same trend, if there
+had been no frost within the mass, affecting the whole of such a
+fragment while it remained in the same position.
+
+The most striking evidence, in my opinion, that at times the whole mass
+of the glacier actually freezes, is drawn from the fact, already alluded
+to, that, while the surface of the glacier loses annually from nine to
+ten feet of its thickness by evaporation and melting, it swells, on the
+other hand, in the spring, to the amount of about five feet. Such a
+dilatation can hardly be the result of pressure and the packing of the
+snow and ice, since the difference in the bulk of the ice brought down,
+during one year, from a point above to that under observation, would not
+account for the swelling. It is more readily explained by the freezing
+of the water of infiltration during spring and early summer, when the
+infiltration is most copious and the winter cold has been accumulating
+for the longest time. This view of the case is sustained by Elie de
+Beaumont, who states his opinion upon this point as follows:--
+
+"Pendant l'hiver, la temperature de la surface du glacier s'abaisse a un
+grand nombre de degres au-dessous de zero, et cette basse temperature
+penetre, quoique avec un affaiblissement graduel, dans l'interieur de la
+masse. Le glacier se fendille par l'effet de la contraction resultant de
+ce refroidissement. Les fentes restent d'abord vides, et concourent an
+refroidissement des glaciers en favorisant l'introduction de l'air froid
+exterieur; mais an printemps, lorsque les rayons du soleil echaffent la
+surface de la neige qui couvre le glacier, ils la remenent d'abord a
+zero, et ils produisent ensuite de l'eau a zero qui tombe dans le
+glacier refroidi et fendille. Cette eau s'y congele a l'instant, en
+laissant degager de la chaleur qui tend a ramener le glacier a zero; et
+la phenomene se continue jusqu'a ce que la masse entiere du glacier
+refroidi soit ramene a la temperature de zero."[H]
+
+But where direct observations are still so scanty, and the
+interpretations of the facts so conflicting, it is the part of wisdom to
+be circumspect in forming opinions. This much, however, I believe to be
+already settled: that any theory which ascribes the very complicated
+phenomena of the glacier to one cause must be defective and one-sided.
+It seems to me most probable, that, while pressure has the larger share
+in producing the onward movement of the glacier, as well as in the
+transformation of the snow into ice, a careful analysis of all the facts
+will show that this pressure is owing partly to the weight of the mass
+itself, partly to the pushing on of the accumulated snow from behind,
+partly to its sliding along the surface upon which it rests, partly to
+the weight of water pervading the whole, partly to the softening of the
+rigid ice by the infiltration of water, and partly, also, to the
+dilatation of the mass, requiting from the freezing of this water. These
+causes, of course, modify the ice itself, while they contribute to the
+motion. Further investigations are required to ascertain in what
+proportion these different influences contribute to the general result,
+and at what time and under what circumstances they modify most directly
+the motion of the glacier.
+
+That a glacier cannot be altogether compared to a river, although there
+is an unmistakable analogy between the flow of the one and the onward
+movement of the other, seems to me plain,--since the river, by the
+combination of its tributaries, goes on increasing in bulk in
+consequence of the incompressibility of water, while a glacier gradually
+thins out in consequence of the packing of its mass, however large and
+numerous may be its accessions. The analogy fails also in one important
+point, that of the acceleration of speed with the steepness of the
+slope. The motion of the glacier bears no such direct relation to the
+inclination of its bed. And though in a glacier, as in a river, the axis
+of swiftest motion is thrown alternately on one or the other side of the
+valley, according to its shape and slope, the very nature of ice makes
+it impossible that eddies should be formed in the glacier, and the
+impressive feature of whirlpools is altogether wanting in them. What
+have been called glacier-cascades bear only a remote resemblance to
+river-cascades, as in the former the surface only is thrown into
+confusion by breaking, without affecting the primitive structure;[I] and
+I reiterate my formerly expressed opinion that even the stratification
+of the upper regions is still recognizable at the lower end of the
+glacier of the Rhone.
+
+The internal structure of the glacier has already led me beyond the
+limits I had proposed to myself in the present article. But I trust my
+readers will not be discouraged by this dry discussion of various
+theories concerning it, and will meet me again on the glacier, when we
+will examine together some of its more picturesque features, its
+crevasses, its rivulets and cascades, its moraines, its boulders, etc.,
+and endeavor also to track its ancient course and boundaries in earlier
+geological times.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+IN AN ATTIC.
+
+
+    This is my attic-room. Sit down, my friend;
+      My swallow's-nest is high and hard to gain;
+    The stairs are long and steep, but at the end
+              The rest repays the pain.
+
+    For here are peace and freedom; room for speech
+      Or silence, as may suit a changeful mood;--
+    Society's hard by-laws do not reach
+              This lofty altitude.
+
+    You hapless dwellers in the lower rooms
+      See only bricks and sand and windowed walls;
+    But here, above the dust and smoky glooms,
+              Heaven's light unhindered falls.
+
+    So early in the street the shadows creep,
+      Your night begins while yet my eyes behold
+    The purpling hills, the wide horizon's sweep,
+              Flooded with sunset gold.
+
+    The day comes earlier here. At morn I see
+      Along the roofs the eldest sunbeam peep,--
+    I live in daylight, limitless and free,
+              While you are lost in sleep.
+
+    I catch the rustle of the maple-leaves,
+      I see their breathing branches rise and fall,
+    And hear, from their high perch along the eaves,
+              The bright-necked pigeons call.
+
+    Far from the parlors with their garrulous crowds
+      I dwell alone, with little need of words;
+    I have mute friendships with the stars and clouds,
+              And love-trysts with the birds.
+
+    So all who walk steep ways, in grief and night,
+      Where every step is full of toil and pain,
+    May see, when they have gained the sharpest height,
+              It has not been in vain:
+
+    Since they have left behind the noise and heat,--
+      And, though their eyes drop tears, their sight is clear;
+    The air is purer, and the breeze is sweet,
+              And the blue heaven more near.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+The preface of "Outre-Mer," Longfellow's first book, is dated 1833. The
+last poem in his last volume is published in 1863. In those thirty years
+what wide renown, what literary achievement, what love of friends in
+many lands, what abounding success and triumph, what profound sorrow,
+mark the poet's career! The young scholar, returning from that European
+tour which to the imaginative and educated American is the great
+romance, sits down in Bowdoin College in Maine, where he is Professor,
+and writes the "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "worthy and gentle reader."
+Those two phrases tell the tale. The instinct of genius and literary
+power stirring in the heart of the young man naturally takes the quaint,
+dainty expression of an experience fed, thus far, only upon good old
+books and his own imagination. The frolicking tone of mock humility,
+deprecating the intrusion upon the time of a busy world, does not
+conceal the conviction that the welcome so airily asked by the tyro will
+at last be commanded by the master.
+
+Like the "Sketch-Book" of the other most popular of our authors, Irving,
+the "Outre-Mer" of Longfellow is a series of tales, reveries,
+descriptions, reminiscences, and character-pieces, suggested by European
+travel. But his beat lies in France, Spain, and Italy. It is the romance
+of the Continent, and not that of England, which inspires him. It is the
+ruddy light upon the vines and the scraps of old _chansons_ which
+enliven and decorate his pilgrimage, and through all his literary life
+they have not lost their fascination. While Irving sketches "Rural Life
+in England," Longfellow paints "The Village of Auteuil"; Irving gives us
+"The Boar's Head Tavern," and Longfellow "The Golden Lion Inn" at Rouen;
+Irving draws "A Royal Poet," Longfellow discusses "The Trouveres," or
+"The Devotional Poetry of Spain." It is delightful to trace the charming
+resemblance between the books and the writers, widely different as they
+are. There is the same geniality, the same tender pathos, the same
+lambent humor, the same delicate observation of details, the same
+overpowering instinct of literary art. But Geoffrey Crayon is a
+humorist, while the Pilgrim beyond the Sea is a poet. The one looks at
+the broad aspects of English life with the shrewd, twinkling eye of a
+man of the world; the other haunts the valley of the Loire, the German
+street, the Spanish inn, with the kindling fancy of the scholar and
+poet. The moral and emotional elements are quite wanting in Irving; they
+are characteristic of Longfellow. But the sweetness of soul, the freedom
+from cynicism or stinging satire, which is most unusual in American, or
+in any humorous or descriptive literature, is remarkable in both. "I
+have no wife, nor children, good or bad, to provide for," begins
+Geoffrey Crayon, quoting from old Burton. But neither had he an enemy
+against whom to defend himself. It was true of Geoffrey Crayon, down to
+the soft autumn day on which he died, leaving a people to mourn for him.
+It is true of the Pilgrim of Outre-Mer, in all the thirty years since
+first he launched forth "into the uncertain current of public favor."
+
+In this earliest book of Longfellow's the notable points are not power
+of invention, or vigorous creation, or profound thought, but a
+mellowness of observation, instinctively selecting the picturesque and
+characteristic details, a copious and rich scholarship, and that
+indefinable grace of the imagination which announces genius. The work,
+like the "Sketch-Book," was originally issued in parts, and it was
+hardly possible for any observer thirty years ago not to see that its
+peculiar character revealed a new strain in our literature. Longfellow's
+poems as yet were very few, printed in literary journals, and not yet
+signalizing his genius. It was the day when Percival Halleck, Sprague,
+Dana, Willis, Bryant, were the undisputed lords of the American
+Parnassus. But the school reading-books already contained "An April Day"
+and "Woods in Winter," and all the verses of the young author had a
+recognition in volumes of elegant extracts and commonplace-books. But
+the universal popularity of Longfellow was not established until the
+publication of "Hyperion" in 1839, followed by "The Voices of the Night"
+in the next year. With these two works his name arose to the highest
+popularity, both in America and England; and no living author has been
+more perpetually reproduced in all forms and with every decoration.
+
+If now we care to explain the eager and affectionate welcome which
+always hails his writings, it is easy to see to what general quality
+that greeting must be ascribed. As with Walter Scott, or Victor Hugo, or
+Beranger, or Dickens, or Addison in the "Spectator," or Washington
+Irving, it is a genial humanity. It is a quality, in all these
+instances, independent of literary art and of genius, but which is made
+known to others, and therefore becomes possible to be recognized, only
+through literary forms. The creative imagination, the airy fancy, the
+exquisite grace, harmony, and simplicity, the rhetorical brilliancy, the
+incisive force, all the intellectual powers and charms of style with
+which that feeling may be expressed, are informed and vitalized by the
+sympathy itself. But whether a man who writes verses has
+genius,--whether he be a poet according to arbitrary canons,--whether
+some of his lines resemble the lines of other writers,--and whether he
+be original, are questions which may be answered in every way of every
+poet in history. Who is a poet but he whom the heart of man permanently
+accepts as a singer of its own hopes, emotions, and thoughts? And what
+is poetry but that song? If words have a uniform meaning, it is useless
+to declare that Pope cannot be a poet, if Lord Byron is, or that Moore
+is counterfeit, if Wordsworth be genuine. For the art of poetry is like
+all other arts. The casket that Cellini worked is not less genuine and
+excellent than the dome of Michel Angelo. Is nobody but Shakspeare a
+poet? Is there no music but Beethoven's? Is there no mountain-peak but
+Dhawalaghiri? no cataract but Niagara?
+
+Thirty years ago almost every critic in England exploded with laughter
+over the poetry of Tennyson. Yet his poetry has exactly the same
+characteristics now that it had then; and Tennyson has gone up to his
+place among English poets. It is not "Blackwood," nor any quarterly
+review or monthly magazine, (except, of course, the "North American" and
+the "Atlantic,") which can decree or deny fame. While the critics are
+busily proving that an author is a plagiarist or a pretender, the world
+is crowning him,--as the first ocean-steamer from England brought Dr.
+Lardner's essay to prove that steamers could not cross the ocean.
+Literary criticism, indeed, is a lost art, if it ever were an art. For
+there are no permanent acknowledged canons of literary excellence; and
+if there were any, there are none who can apply them. What critic shall
+decide if the song of a new singer be poetry, or the bard himself a
+poet? Consequently, modern criticism wisely contents itself with
+pointing out errors of fact or of inference, or the difference between
+the critic's and the author's philosophic or aesthetic view, and bitterly
+assaults or foolishly praises him. When Horace Binney Wallace, one of
+the most accomplished and subtile-minded of our writers, says of General
+Morris that he is "a great poet," and that "he who can understand Mr.
+Emerson may value Mr. Bancroft," we can feel only the more profoundly
+persuaded that fame is not the judgment of individuals, but of the mass
+of men, and that he whose song men love to hear is a poet.
+
+But while the magnetism of Longfellow's touch lies in the broad humanity
+of his sympathy, which leads him neither to mysticism nor cynicism, and
+which commends his poetry to the universal heart, his artistic sense is
+so exquisite that each of his poems is a valuable literary study. In
+this he has now reached a perfection quite unrivalled among living
+poets, except sometimes by Tennyson. His literary career has been
+contemporary with the sensational school, but he has been entirely
+untainted by it, and in the present volume, "Tales of a Wayside Inn,"
+his style has a tranquil lucidity which recalls Chaucer. The literary
+style of an intellectually introverted age or author will always be
+somewhat obscure, however gorgeous; but Longfellow's mind takes a
+simple, child-like hold of life, and his style never betrays the
+inadequate effort to describe thoughts or emotions that are but vaguely
+perceived, which is the characteristic of the best sensational writing.
+Indeed, there is little poetry by the eminent contemporary masters which
+is so ripe and racy as his. He does not make rhetoric stand for passion,
+nor vagueness for profundity; nor, on the other hand, is he such a
+voluntary and malicious "Bohemian" as to conceive that either in life or
+letters a man is released from the plain rules of morality. Indeed, he
+used to be accused of preaching in his poetry by gentle critics who held
+that Elysium was to be found in an oyster-cellar, and that intemperance
+was the royal prerogative of genius.
+
+His literary scholarship, also, his delightful familiarity with the pure
+literature of all languages and times, must rank Longfellow among the
+learned poets. Yet he wears this various knowledge like a shining suit
+of chain-mail, to adorn and strengthen his gait, like Milton, instead of
+tripping and clumsily stumbling in it, as Ben Jonson sometimes did. He
+whips out an exquisitely pointed allusion that flashes like a Damascus
+rapier and strikes nimbly home, or he recounts some weird tradition, or
+enriches his line with some gorgeous illustration from hidden stores, or
+merely unrolls, as Milton loved to do, the vast perspective of romantic
+association by recounting in measured order names which themselves make
+music in the mind,--names not musical only, but fragrant:--
+
+    "Sabean odors from the spicy shore
+    Of Araby the blest."
+
+In the prelude to the "Wayside Inn," with how consummate a skill the
+poet graces his modern line with the shadowy charm of ancient verse, by
+the mere mention of the names!
+
+    "The chronicles of Charlemagne,
+    Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure,
+    Mingled together in his brain
+    With talcs of Flores and Blanchefleur,
+    Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour,
+    Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain."
+
+A most felicitous illustration of this trait is in "The Evening Star,"
+an earlier poem. Chrysaor, in the old mythology, sprang from the blood
+of Medusa, armed with a golden sword, and married Callirrhoe, one of the
+Oceanides. The poet, looking at evening upon the sea, muses upon the
+long-drawn, quivering reflection of the evening star, and sings. How the
+verses oscillate like the swaying calm of the sea, while the image
+inevitably floats into the scholar's imagination:--
+
+    "Just above yon sandy bar,
+    As the day grows fainter and dimmer,
+    Lonely and lovely a single star
+    Lights the air with a dusky glimmer.
+
+    "Into the ocean faint and far
+    Falls the trail of its golden splendor,
+    And the gleam of that single star
+    Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender.
+
+    "Chrysaor rising out of the sea
+    Showed tints glorious and thus emulous,
+    Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe,
+    Forever tender, soft, and tremulous.
+
+    "Thus o'er the ocean faint and far
+    Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly:
+    Is it a god, or is it a star,
+    That, entranced, I gaze on nightly?"
+
+The blending of the poetical faculty and scholarly taste is seen, also,
+in his translations; and would not a translation of Dante's great poem
+be the crowning work of Longfellow's literary life?
+
+But while we chat along the road, and pause to repeat these simple and
+musical poems, each so elegant, so finished, as the monk finished his
+ivory crucifix, or the lapidary his choicest gem, we have reached the
+Wayside Inn. It is the title of Longfellow's new volume, "Tales of a
+Wayside Inn." They are New-England "Canterbury Tales." Those of old
+London town were told at the Tabard at Southwark; these at the Red Horse
+in Sudbury town. And although it is but the form of the poem, peculiar
+neither to Chaucer nor to Longfellow, which recalls the earlier work,
+yet they have a further likeness in the sources of some of the tales,
+and in the limpid blitheness of the style and the pure objectivity of
+the poems.
+
+The melodious, picturesque simplicity of the opening, in which the place
+and the persons are introduced, is inexpressibly graceful and
+masterly:--
+
+    "One autumn night in Sudbury town,
+    Across the meadows bare and brown,
+    The windows of the wayside inn
+    Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
+    Of woodbine hanging from the eaves,
+    Their crimson curtains rent and thin.
+    As ancient is this hostelry
+    As any in the land may be,
+    Built in the old colonial day,
+    When men lived in a grander way,
+    With ampler hospitality:
+    A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
+    Now somewhat fallen to decay,
+    With weather-stains upon the wall,
+    And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
+    And creaking and uneven floors,
+    And chimneys huge, and tiled, and tall."
+
+The autumn wind moans without, and dashes in gusts against the windows;
+but there is a pleasant murmur from the parlor, with the music of a
+violin. In this comfortable tavern-parlor, ruddy with the fire-light, a
+rapt musician stands erect before the chimney and bends his ear to his
+instrument,--
+
+    "And seemed to listen, till he caught
+    Confessions of its secret thought,"
+
+--a figure and a picture, as he is afterward painted,--
+
+    "Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe,
+    His figure tall and straight and lithe,"--
+
+which recall the Norwegian magician, Ole Bull. He plays to the listening
+group of friends. Of these there is the landlord,--a youth of quiet
+ways, "a student of old books and days,"--a young Sicilian,--"a Spanish
+Jew from Alieant,"--
+
+    "A theologian, from the school
+    Of Cambridge on the Charles,"--
+
+then a poet, whose portrait, exquisitely sketched and meant for quite
+another, will yet be prized by the reader, as the spectator prizes, in
+the Uffizi at Florence, the portraits of the painters by themselves:--
+
+    "A poet, too, was there, whose verse
+    Was tender, musical, and terse:
+    The inspiration, the delight,
+    The gleam, the glory, the swift flight
+    Of thoughts so sudden that they seem
+    The revelations of a dream,
+    All these were his: but with them came
+    No envy of another's fame;
+    He did not find his sleep less sweet
+    For music in some neighboring street,
+    Nor rustling hear in every breeze
+    The laurels of Miltiades.
+    Honor and blessings on his head
+    While living, good report when dead,
+    Who, not too eager for renown,
+    Accepts, but does not clutch, the crown."
+
+The musician completes the group.
+
+When he stops playing, they call upon the landlord for his tale, which
+he, "although a bashful man," begins. It is "Paul Revere's Ride,"
+already known to many readers as a ballad of the famous incident in the
+Revolution which has, in American hearts, immortalized a name which this
+war has but the more closely endeared to them. It is one of the most
+stirring, ringing, and graphic ballads in the language,--a proper
+pendant to Browning's "How they brought the good news from Ghent to
+Aix."
+
+The poet, listening with eager delight, seizes the sword of the
+landlord's ancestor which was drawn at Concord fight, and tells him that
+his grandfather was a grander shape than any old Sir William,
+
+    "Clinking about in foreign lands,
+    With iron gauntlets on his hands,
+    And on his head an iron pot."
+
+All laughed but the landlord,--
+
+    "For those who had been longest dead
+    Were always greatest in his eyes."
+
+Did honest and dull "Conservatism" have ever a happier description? But
+lest the immortal foes of Conservatism and Progress should come to
+loggerheads in the conversation, the student opens his lips and breathes
+Italy upon the New-England autumn night. He tells the tale of "The
+Falcon of Sir Federigo," from the "Decameron." It is an exquisite poem.
+So charming is the manner, that the "Decameron," so rendered into
+English, would acquire a new renown, and the public of to-day would
+understand the fame of Boccaccio.
+
+But the theologian hears with other ears, and declares that the old
+Italian tales
+
+    "Are either trifling, dull, or lewd."
+
+The student will not argue. He says only,--
+
+    "Nor were it grateful to forget
+    That from these reservoirs and tanks
+    Even imperial Shakespeare drew
+    His Moor of Venice and the Jew,
+    And Romeo and Juliet,
+    And many a famous comedy."
+
+After a longer pause, the Spanish Jew from Alieant begins "a story in
+the Talmud old," "The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi." This is followed after
+the interlude by the Sicilian's tale, "King Robert of Sicily," a noble
+legend of the Church, whose moral is humility. It is told in a broad,
+stately measure, and with consummate simplicity and skill. The attention
+is not distracted for a moment from the story, which monks might tell in
+the still cloisters of a Sicilian convent, and every American child hear
+with interest and delight.
+
+    "And then the blue-eyed Norseman told.
+    A Saga of the days of old."
+
+It is the Saga of King Olaf, and is much the longest tale in the volume,
+recounting the effort to plant Christianity in Norway by the sword of
+the King. In every variety of measure, heroic, elegiac, lyrical, the
+wild old Scandinavian tradition is told. Even readers who may be at
+first repelled by legends almost beyond modern human sympathy cannot
+escape the most musical persuasion of the poem which wafts them along
+those icy seas.
+
+    "And King Olaf heard the cry,
+    Saw the red light in the sky,
+    Laid his hand upon his sword,
+    As he leaned upon the railing,
+    And his ships went sailing, sailing
+    Northward into Drontheim fiord.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "Trained for either camp or court,
+    Skilful in each manly sport,
+    Young and beautiful and tall;
+    Art of warfare, craft of chases,
+    Swimming, stating, snow-shoe races,
+    Excellent alike at all."
+
+There is no continuous thread of story in the Saga, but each fragment of
+the whole is complete in itself, a separate poem. The traditions are
+fierce and wild. The waves dash in them, the winds moan and shriek.
+There are evanescent glimpses of green meadows, and a swift gleam of
+summer; but the cold salt sea and winter close round all. The tides rise
+and fall; they eddy in the sand; they float off and afar the huge
+dragon-ships. But the queens pine for revenge and slaughter; the kings
+drink and swear and fight, and sail away to their doom.
+
+    "Louder the war-horses growl and snarl,
+    Sharper the dragons bite and sting!
+    Eric the son of Hakon Yarl
+    A death-drink salt as the sea
+      Pledges to thee,
+    Olaf the King!"
+
+Whoever has heard Ole Bull play, or Jenny Lind sing, the weird minor
+melodies of the North, will comprehend the kind of spell which these
+legends weave around the mind. Nor is their character lost in the
+skilful and symmetrical rendering of Longfellow. The reader has not the
+feeling, as in Sir William Jones's translations, that he is reading Sir
+William, and not the Persian.
+
+    "'What was that?' said Olaf, standing
+      On the quarter-deck;
+    Something heard I like the stranding
+      Of a shattered wreck.'
+    Einar, then, the arrow taking
+      From the loosened string,
+    Answered, 'That was Norway breaking
+      From thy hand, O King!'"
+
+But the battle which Thor had defied was not to end by the weapons of
+war. In the fierce sea-fight,
+
+    "There is told a wonderful tale,
+    How the King stripped off his mail,
+    Like leaves of the brown sea-kale,
+      As he swam beneath the main;
+
+    "But the young grew old and gray,
+    And never by night or day
+    In his kingdom of Norroway
+      Was King Olaf seen again."
+
+The victory must be won by other weapons. In the convent of Drontheim,
+Astrid, the abbess, hears a voice in the darkness:--
+
+    "Cross against corslet,
+    Love against hatred.
+    Peace-cry for war-cry!"
+
+The voice continues in peaceful music, forecasting heavenly rest:--
+
+    "As torrents in summer,
+    Half dried in their channels,
+    Suddenly rise, though the
+    Sky is still cloudless,
+    For rain has been falling
+    Far off at their fountains;
+
+    "So hearts that are fainting
+    Grow full to o'erflowing,
+    And they that behold it
+    Marvel, and know not
+    That God at their fountains
+    Far off has been raining."
+
+With this exquisitely beautiful strain of the abbess the Saga ends.
+
+The theologian muses aloud upon creeds and churches, then tells a
+fearful tragedy of Spain,--the story of a father who betrays his
+daughter to the fires of Torquemada. It chills the heart to think that
+such unspeakable ruin of a human soul was ever wrought by any system
+that even professed to be Christian. Moloch was truly divine, compared
+with the God of the Spanish Inquisition. But the gloom of the tragedy is
+not allowed to linger. The poet scatters it by the story of the merry
+"Birds of Killingworth," which appears elsewhere in the pages of this
+number of the "Atlantic." The blithe beauty of the verses is
+captivating, and the argument of the shy preceptor is the most poetic
+plea that ever wooed a world to justice. What an airy felicity in the
+lines,--
+
+    "'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
+    The awakening continents from shore to shore
+    Somewhere the birds are singing evermore."
+
+And so, amid sunshine and the carolling of birds, the legendary rural
+romance of the Yankee shore, we turn the page, and find, with real
+sorrow, that the last tale is told in the Wayside Inn. The finale is
+brief. The guests arose and said good night. The drowsy squire remains
+to rake the embers of the fire. The scattered lamps gleam a moment at
+the windows. The Red Horse inn seems, in the misty night, the sinking
+constellation of the Bear,--and then,
+
+    "Far off the village-clock struck one."
+
+So ends this ripe and mellow work, leaving the reader like one who
+listens still for pleasant music i' the air which sounds no more. Those
+who will may compare it with the rippling strangeness of "Hiawatha," the
+mournfully rolling cadence of "Evangeline," the mediaeval romance of "The
+Golden Legend." For ourselves, its beauty does not clash with theirs.
+The simple old form of the group of guests telling stories, the thread
+of so many precious rosaries, has a new charm from this poem. The Tabard
+inn is gone; but who, henceforth, will ride through Sudbury town without
+seeing the purple light shining around the Red Horse tavern?
+
+The volume closes with a few poems, classed as "Birds of Passage." It is
+the "second flight,"--the first being those at the end of the "Miles
+Standish" volume. Some of these have a pathos and interest which all
+will perceive, but the depth and tenderness of which not all can know.
+"The Children's Hour" is a strain of parental love, which haunts the
+memory with its melody, its sportive, affectionate, and yearning lay.
+
+    "They almost devour me with kisses,
+      Their arms about me entwine,
+    Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
+      In his mouse-tower on the Rhine.
+
+    "Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
+      Because you have scaled the wall,
+    Such an old moustache as I am
+      Is not a match for you all?"
+
+Here, too, is the grand ballad of "The Cumberland," and the delicate
+fancy of "The Snow-Flakes," expressing what every sensitive observer has
+so often felt,--that the dull leaden trouble of the winter sky finds the
+relief in snow that the suffering human heart finds in expression. Then
+there is "A Day of June," an outburst of the fulness of life and love in
+the beautiful sunny weather of blossoms on the earth and soft clouds in
+the sky.
+
+    "O life and love! O happy throng
+    Of thoughts, whose only speech is song!
+    O heart of man! canst thou not be
+    Blithe as the air is, and as free?"
+
+To this poem the date is added, June, 1860.
+
+And here, at length, is the last poem. We pause as we reach it, and turn
+back to the first page of "Outre-Mer." "'Lystenyth, ye godely gentylmen,
+and all that ben hereyn!' I am a pilgrim benighted on my way, and crave
+a shelter till the storm is over, and a seat by the fireside in this
+honorable company. As a stranger I claim this courtesy at your hands,
+and will repay your hospitable welcome with tales of the countries I
+have passed through in my pilgrimage." It is the gay confidence of
+youth. It is the bright prelude of the happy traveller and scholar, to
+whom the very quaint conceits and antiquated language of romance are
+themselves romantic, and who makes himself a bard and troubadour. Hope
+allures him; ambition spurs him; conscious power assures him. His eager
+step dances along the ground. His words are an outburst of youth and
+joy. Thirty years pass by. What sober step pauses at the Wayside Inn? Is
+this the jocund Pilgrim of Outre-Mer? The harp is still in his strong
+hand. It sounds yet with the old tenderness and grace and sweetness. But
+this is the man, not the boy. This is the doubtful tyro no longer, but
+the wise master, honored and beloved. To how many hearts has his song
+brought peace! How like a benediction in all our homes his music falls!
+Ah! not more surely, when the stretched string of the full-tuned harp
+snaps in the silence, the cords of every neighboring instrument respond,
+than the hearts which love the singer and his song thrill with the
+heart-break of this last poem:--
+
+    "O little feet, that such long years
+    Must wander on through doubts and fears,
+      Must ache and bleed beneath your load!
+    I, nearer to the wayside inn
+    Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
+      Am weary, thinking of your road."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LETTER TO A PEACE DEMOCRAT.
+
+ADDRESSED TO ANDREW JACKSON BROWN.
+
+
+MY DEAR ANDREW,--You can hardly have forgotten that our last
+conversation on the national questions of the day had an abrupt, if not
+angry, termination. I very much fear that we both lost temper, and that
+our discussion degenerated into a species of political sparring. You
+will certainly agree with me that the great issues now agitating the
+country are too grave to be treated in the flippant style of bar-room
+debate. When the stake for which we are contending with immense armies
+in the field and powerful navies on the ocean is nothing less than the
+existence of our Union and the life of our nation, it ill becomes
+intelligent and thoughtful men to descend to personal abuse, or to be
+blinded for one moment by prejudice or passion to the cardinal principle
+on which the whole controversy turns.
+
+In view of these considerations, therefore, as our previous discussions
+have left some vital questions untouched, and as our past experience
+seems to have proved that we cannot, with mutual profit, compare our
+opinions upon these subjects orally, I have decided to embody my
+sentiments on the general points of difference between us in the form of
+a letter. Knowing my personal regard for you, I am sure that you will
+not believe me guilty of intentional discourtesy in anything I may say,
+while you certainly will not be surprised, if I occasionally express
+myself with a degree of warmth which finds its full justification in the
+urgent importance of the questions to be considered.
+
+I have not the vanity to believe that anything I can say on subjects
+that have so long engrossed the attention of thoughtful Americans will
+have the charm of novelty. And yet, in view of the unwelcome fact, that
+there exists to some extent a decided difference at the North about
+questions in regard to which it is essential that there should be a
+community of feeling, it certainly can do no harm to make an attempt,
+however feeble, to enlist in the cause of constitutional liberty and
+good government at least one man who may have been led astray by a too
+zealous obedience to the dictates of his party. As the success of our
+republican institutions must depend on the morality and intelligence of
+the citizens composing the nation, no honest appeal to that morality and
+that intelligence can be productive of serious evil.
+
+Permit me, then, at the outset, to remind you of what, from first to
+last, has formed the key-note of all your opposition to the war-policy
+of the Administration. You say that you have no heart in this struggle,
+because Abolitionists have caused the war,--always adding, that
+Abolitionists may carry it on, if they please: at any rate, they shall
+have no support, direct or indirect, from you. I have carefully
+considered all the arguments which you have employed to convince me that
+the solemn responsibility of involving the nation in this sanguinary
+conflict rests upon Abolitionists, and these arguments seem to me to be
+summed up in the following proposition: Before Abolitionists began to
+disseminate their dangerous doctrines, we had no war; therefore
+Abolitionists caused the war. I might, perhaps, disarm you with your own
+weapons, by saying that before Slavery existed in this country we had no
+Abolitionists; but I prefer to meet your argument in another manner.
+
+Not to spend time in considering any aspect of the question about which
+we do not substantially differ, let us at once ascertain how far we can
+agree. I presume you will not deny that this nation is, and since the
+twelfth of April, 1861, has been, in a state of civil war; that the
+actively contending parties are the North and the South; and that on the
+part of the South the war was commenced and is still waged in the
+interest of Slavery. We should probably differ _toto coelo_ as to the
+causes which led to the conflict; but, my excellent Andrew, I think
+there are certain facts which after more than two years' hard fighting
+may be considered fairly established. Whatever may be your own
+conclusions, as you read our recent history in the light of your ancient
+and I had almost said absurd prejudices, I believe that the vast
+majority of thinking men at the North have made up their minds that a
+deliberate conspiracy to overturn this government has existed in the
+South for at least a quarter of a century; that the proofs of such a
+conspiracy have been daily growing more and move palpable, until any
+additional evidence has become simply cumulative; that the election of
+Abraham Lincoln was not the cause, but only marked the culmination of
+the treason, and furnished the shallow pretext for its first overt acts.
+That you are not prepared to admit all this is, I am forced to believe,
+mainly because you dislike the conclusions which must inevitably follow
+from such an admission. I say this, because, passing over for the
+present the undoubted fact, that this nation would have elected a
+Democratic President in 1860 but for the division of the Democratic
+party, and the further fact, equally indisputable, that Southern
+politicians wilfully created this division, I think you will hardly
+venture to deny that even after the election of Abraham Lincoln the
+South controlled the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the House of
+Representatives. And to come down to a still later period, you can have
+no treasonable doubt that the passage of the Corwin Amendment disarmed
+the South of any cause for hostilities, based on the danger of
+Congressional interference with Slavery wherever existing by force of
+State laws. There remains, then, only one conceivable excuse for the
+aggressive policy of the South, and that is found in the alleged
+apprehension that the slaves would be incited to open rebellion against
+their masters. But, I ask, can any intelligent and fair-minded man
+believe, to-day, that slaveholders were forced into this war by the fear
+that the anti-slavery sentiment of the North would lead to a general
+slave-insurrection? Nine-tenths of the able-bodied Southern population
+have been in arms for more than two years, far away from their
+plantations, and unable to render any assistance to the old men, women,
+and children remaining at home. The President's Emancipation
+Proclamation was made public nearly a year ago, and subsequent
+circumstances have conspired to give it a very wide circulation through
+the South. And yet there has not been a single slave-insurrection of any
+magnitude, and not one that has not been speedily suppressed and
+promptly punished. This fact would seem to be a tolerably conclusive
+answer to all apologies for the wicked authors of this Rebellion, drawn
+from their alarm for their own safety and the safety of their families.
+But the persistent Peace Democrat has infinite resources at command in
+defence of the conduct of his Southern allies.
+
+    "Destroy his web of sophistry in vain,
+    The creature's at his dirty work again."
+
+We are now told that the obedient and unresisting submission of the
+slaves proves that they are satisfied with their condition, and have no
+desire to be free. And we are asked to admit, therefore, that Slavery is
+not a curse, but an absolute blessing, to those whom it affects most
+nearly! Or we are pointed to the multitude of slaves daily seeking the
+protection of the United States flag, and are informed that slaveholders
+are contending for the right to retain their property. As if the
+Fugitive-Slave Law--of which Mr. Douglas said, in one of his latest
+speeches, that not one of the Federal statutes had ever been more
+implicitly obeyed--did not afford the South most ample protection, so
+long as it remained in the Union!
+
+Another grievance of which you bitterly complain, another count in the
+long indictment which you have drawn up against the Administration, is
+what you denominate its anti-slavery policy. You disapprove of the
+Emancipation Proclamation, you denounce the employment of armed negroes;
+and therefore you have no stomach for the fight.
+
+But has not the President published to the world that the Proclamation
+was a measure of military necessity? and has he not also said that its
+constitutionality is to be decided and the extent and duration of its
+privileges and penalties are to be defined by the Supreme Court of the
+United States? If, as you are accustomed to assert, the Proclamation is
+a dead letter, it certainly need not give you very serious discomfort.
+If it exercises a powerful influence in crippling the energies of the
+South, it surely is not among Northern men that we should look for its
+opponents. As to its future efficacy and binding force, shall we not do
+well to leave this question, and all similar and at present purely
+speculative inquiries, till that time--which may Heaven hasten!--when
+this war shall terminate in the restoration of the Union and the
+acknowledged supremacy of the Constitution?
+
+And now a word about that formidable bugbear, the enlistment of negro
+soldiers. For my own part, I candidly confess that I am utterly unable
+to comprehend your unmeasured abuse of this expedient. If slaves are
+chattels, I can conceive of no good reason why we may not confiscate
+them as Rebel property, useful to the Rebels in their armed resistance
+to Federal authority, precisely as we appropriate their corn and cattle.
+And when once confiscated, why should they not be employed in whatever
+manner will make them most serviceable to us? But you insist that they
+shall not be armed. You might with equal show of reason contend that the
+mules which we have taken from the Rebels may be rightfully used in
+ambulances, but must not be used in ammunition-wagons.
+
+But if slaves are not chattels, they are human beings, with brains and
+muscles,--brains at least intelligent enough to comprehend the stake
+they have in this controversy, and muscles strong enough to do good
+service in the cause of constitutional liberty and republican
+institutions. Is it wise to reject their offered assistance. Will not
+our foes have good cause to despise our folly, if we leave in their
+hands this most efficient element of their power? You have friends and
+relatives fighting in the Union armies. If you give the subject a
+moment's reflection, you must see that all slaves labouring on the
+plantations of their masters not only are feeding the traitors who are
+doing their utmost to destroy our country, but by relieving thousands
+upon thousands of Southern men from the necessity of remaining at home
+and cultivating the soil, are, to all practical purposes, as directly
+imperilling the lives of our Union soldiers as if these same slaves with
+sword or musket were serving in the Rebel ranks. And again, while you
+object to the enlistment of negroes, you are unwilling that any member
+of your family should leave your household and expose himself to the
+many hazards of war. Now is it not too plain for argument, that every
+negro who is enrolled in our army prevents, by just that unit, the
+necessity of sending one Northern soldier into the field?
+
+But will the slaves consent to enlist? Let the thousands who have forced
+their way to Union camps,
+
+    "Over hill, over dale,
+      Thorough bush, thorough brier,
+    Over park, over pale,
+     Thorough flood, thorough fire,"
+
+tracked by blood-hounds, and by their inhuman oppressors more savage
+than blood-hounds, answer the insulting inquiry. Are they brave? Will
+they fight for the cause which they have dared so many dangers to
+espouse? I point you to the bloody records of Vicksburg, Million's
+Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner; I appeal to the testimony of every
+Union officer under whom black soldiers have fought, as the most fitting
+reply to such questions. Shame on the miserable sneer, that we are
+spending the money and shedding the blood of white men to fight the
+battles of the negro! Blush for your own unmanly and ungenerous
+prejudices, and ask yourself whether future history will not pronounce
+the black man, morally, not only your equal, but your superior, when it
+is found recorded, that, denied the rights of citizenship, long
+proscribed, persecuted, and enslaved, he was yet willing, and even
+eager, to save the life of your brother on the battle-field, and to
+preserve you in the peaceable enjoyment of your property at home. Is the
+efficient aid of such men to be rejected? Is their noble self-sacrifice
+to be slighted? Shall we, under the contemptible pretext, that this war
+must be waged--if waged at all--for the benefit of the white race,
+deprive negroes of an opportunity to risk their lives to maintain a
+government which has never protected them, and a Constitution which has
+been practically interpreted in such a manner as to recognize and
+sanction their servitude? Do not, I implore you, answer these inquiries
+by that easy, but infamous taunt, so constantly on the lips of
+unscrupulous politicians in your party,--"Here comes the inevitable
+nigger again!" It is precisely because the awful and too long unavenged
+sufferings of the slave must be inevitable, while Slavery exists, that
+these questions must sooner or later be asked and answered, and that
+your political upholding of such a system becomes a monstrous crime
+against humanity.
+
+After all, my dear Andrew, why are you so sensitive on the subject of
+Slavery? You certainly can have no personal interest in the peculiar and
+patriarchal institution. You are too skilful a financier ever to have
+invested a single dollar in that fugacious wealth which so often takes
+to its legs and runs away. Nor does your unwillingness to listen to any
+expression of anti-slavery sentiment arise from affection for or real
+sympathy with Slavery, on moral grounds. Indeed, I have more than once
+been exceedingly refreshed in spirit at observing the sincere and hearty
+contempt with which you have treated what is blasphemously called the
+Biblical argument in favor of human bondage. The pleading precedent of
+Abraham has not seduced you, nor has the happy lot of the more modern
+Onesimus quieted all your conscientious scruples. You have never failed,
+in private conversation, to condemn the advocates of Slavery on whatever
+grounds they have rested its defence, nor have you ever ceased to
+deplore its existence in our country.
+
+At the same time I must admit that you have invariably resisted all
+attempts to apply any practical check or remedy to the great and growing
+evil, stoutly maintaining that it was a local institution, and that we
+of the North had no right to meddle with it. I am well aware that you
+have stigmatized every effort to awaken public attention to its nature
+and tendency, or to point out methods, more or less available, of
+abolishing the system, as unconstitutional, incendiary, and quixotic. I
+concede that your indignation has always been in the abstract, and your
+zeal eminently conservative. Yet, as a moral man, with a New-England
+training, and a general disposition to indorse those principles which
+have made New England what she is, you will not deny, that, in a
+harmless and inoffensive way, you have been anti-slavery in your
+opinions.
+
+But, once more, my friend, have you any reason to be attached to Slavery
+on political grounds? You have always been an earnest and uncompromising
+Democrat. You have always professed to believe in the omnipotence of
+political conventions and the sacred obligation of political platforms.
+You have never failed to repudiate any effort to influence party action
+by moral considerations. Indeed, I have sometimes thought that you must
+have selected as your model that sturdy old Democratic deacon in New
+Hampshire, who said that "politics was one thing, and religion was
+another." You have never hesitated to support any candidate, or to
+uphold any measure, dictated by the wisdom or the wickedness of your
+party. Although you must have observed, that, with occasional and
+infrequent eddies of opinion, the current of its political progress has
+been steadily carrying the Northern Democracy farther and farther away
+from the example and the doctrines of Jefferson, you have surrendered
+yourself to the evil influence without a twinge of remorse or a sigh of
+regret. You have submitted to the insolent demands of Southern
+politicians with such prompt and easy acquiescence, that many of your
+oldest friends have mourned over your lost manhood, and sadly abandoned
+you to the worship of your ugly and obscene idol. A Northern man,
+descended from the best Puritan stock, surrounded from childhood by
+institutions really free, breathing the atmosphere of free thought,
+enjoying the luxury of free speech, you have deliberately allied
+yourself to a party which has owed its long-continued political
+supremacy to the practical denial of these inestimable privileges. Yet,
+on the whole, Andrew, what have you gained by it? Undoubtedly, the seed
+thus sown in dishonor soon ripened into an abundant harvest of fat
+offices and rapid promotions. But winter--the winter of your
+discontent--has followed this harvest. Circumstances quite beyond your
+control have utterly demolished the political combination which was once
+your peculiar pride. You have lived to see the Dagon before which you
+and your friends have for so many years cheerfully prostrated yourselves
+fall to the ground, and lie a helpless, hopeless ruin on the very
+threshold of the temple where it lately stood defiant and dominant.
+
+Have you ever had the curiosity to investigate the causes of this
+disaster? It is a curiosity which can be easily gratified. The
+Democratic party was killed in cold blood by Southern traitors. There
+never was a more causeless, malicious, or malignant murder. The fool in
+the fable who gained an unenviable notoriety by killing the goose which
+laid golden eggs, Balaam, who, but for angelic interposition, would have
+slain his faithful ass, were praiseworthy in comparison. Well might any
+one of the Northern victims of this cruel outrage have exclaimed, in the
+language of Balaam's long-eared servant, "Am not I thine ass, upon which
+thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto to this day? was I ever
+wont to do so unto thee?" And the modern, like the ancient Balaam, must
+have answered, "Nay."
+
+But, alas for Northern manhood, alas for human nature corrupted by long
+possession of political power, after a short-lived, though, let us hope,
+sincere outburst of indignation, followed by protests and remonstrances,
+growing daily milder and more moderate, the Northern Democracy now begs
+permission to return once more to its former servitude, and would gladly
+peril the permanence of the Union, to hug again the fetters which it has
+so patiently and so profitably worn.
+
+Lay aside party prejudice, for one moment, my dear Andrew, and tell me
+if the world ever saw a more humiliating spectacle. Slighted, spurned,
+spit upon by their ancient allies, compelled to bear the odium of an
+aggressive and offensive pro-slavery policy, tamely consenting to a
+denial of the dearest human rights and the plainest principles of
+natural justice, rewarded only by a share in the Federal offices, and
+punished by the contempt of all who, at home or abroad, intelligently
+and unselfishly studied the problem of our republican institutions, the
+Northern Democracy found themselves, at the most critical period of our
+national history, abandoned by the masters whom they had faithfully
+served, and whom many were willing to follow to a depth of degradation
+which could have no lower deep. And yet, when thus freed from their long
+slavery by the voluntary act of their oppressors, we hear them to-day
+clamoring for the privilege of wearing anew the accustomed yoke, and
+feeling again the familiar lash! Are these white men, with Anglo-Saxon
+blood in their veins, and the fair fame of this country in their
+keeping? Why, if the most abject slave that ever toiled on a Southern
+plantation, cast off by his master and compelled to claim the rights of
+a freeman, should, of his own deliberate choice, elect to return to his
+miserable vassalage, who would not pronounce him unfit to enjoy the
+priceless boon of liberty? who would hesitate to say that natural
+stupidity, or the acquired imbecility of long enslavement, had doomed
+him to remain, to the day of his death, a hewer of wood and a drawer of
+water?
+
+But, as if to render the humiliation of these Democratic leaders still
+more fruitless and gratuitous, mark how their overtures are received by
+their Southern brethren. Having sold their birthright, let us see what
+prospect our Northern Esaus have of gaining their mess of pottage.
+Perhaps no better illustration can be given of the state of feeling
+among the chiefs of the Southern Rebellion than is found in a letter
+from Colonel R.C. Hill to the Richmond "Sentinel," dated September 13th,
+1863. It had been stated by a correspondent of the New York "Tribune,"
+that, during a recent interview between General Custer (Union) and
+Colonel Hill (Confederate), at Fredericksburg, Virginia, Colonel Hill
+had assured General Custer that "there would soon be peace." After
+giving an explicit and emphatic denial to this statement, Colonel Hill
+(who, it would seem, commands the Forty-Eighth North-Carolina
+Volunteers) closes by saying, "I am opposed to any terms short of a
+submission of the Federals to such terms as we may dictate, which, in my
+opinion, should be, Mason and Dixon's line a boundary; the exclusive
+navigation of the Mississippi below Cairo; full indemnification for all
+the negroes stolen and destroyed; and the restoration of Fortress
+Monroe, Jefferson, Key West, and all other strongholds which may have
+fallen into their possession during the war. If they are unwilling to
+accede to these terms, I propose an indefinite continuance of the war
+until the now existing fragment of the old Union breaks to pieces from
+mere rottenness and want of cohesion, when we will step in, as the only
+first-class power on the Western Hemisphere, and take possession of the
+pieces as subjugated and conquered provinces."
+
+To the same effect is a letter from Robert Toombs, who had been charged
+with a leaning towards a reconstruction of the Union. A short extract
+will suffice to show the spirit of the whole communication. "I can
+conceive of no extremity to which my country can be reduced in which I
+would, for a single moment, entertain any proposition for any union with
+the North on any terms whatever. When all else is lost, I prefer to
+unite with the thousands of our own countrymen who have found honorable
+deaths, if not graves, on the battle-field." And the recently elected
+Governor of Alabama puts to rest all doubts as to his desire for
+Southern independence, by saying, "If I had the power, I would build up
+a wall of fire between Yankeedom and the Confederate States, there to
+burn for ages."
+
+The tone and temper of these extracts--and similar quotations might be
+made indefinitely--are exactly in keeping with everything that comes
+from the pens or the lips of the leaders of this Rebellion. And even
+those Southern statesmen who at the outset were opposed to Secession,
+and have never ceased to deplore the fruitless civil war into which the
+South has plunged the nation, are compelled to admit, with a
+distinguished citizen of Georgia, that "the war, with all its afflictive
+train of suffering, privation, and death, has served to eradicate all
+idea of reconstruction, even with those who made it the basis of their
+arguments in favor of disunion."
+
+Rely upon it, this tone and temper will never be changed so long as the
+Rebels have any considerable armed force in the field ready for
+service. Unless we are willing to consent to a divided country, a
+dissevered Union, and the recognition of a Southern Confederacy,--in a
+word, unless we are prepared to acquiesce in all the demands of our
+enemies, we have no alternative but a vigorous prosecution of the war.
+
+Fernando Wood and his followers ask for an armistice. An armistice to
+whom, and for what purpose? The Rebels, represented by their Government,
+ask for no armistice, except upon their own terms, and what those terms
+are we have already seen. It is idle to say that there are men at the
+South who crave peace and a restoration of the Union. Assume the
+statement to be true, and you have made no progress towards a
+satisfactory result. Such men are powerless in the hands of the guiding
+and governing minds of the conspiracy. The treason is of such magnitude,
+its leaders so completely control the active forces of the whole
+community, that the passive strength of Union sentiment cannot now be
+taken into the account. It would be a farce too absurd to be gravely
+considered, to treat with men who, whatever their disposition or numbers
+may be, are utterly helpless, unable to make any promise which they can
+fulfil, or to give any pledge which can bind any but themselves.
+
+We must deal with an armed and powerful rebellion; and so long as it is
+effectively armed, and powerful enough to hold in subjection the whole
+Southern population, it is moral, if not legal, treason for a Northern
+man to talk of peace. What avails it to talk of the blessings of peace
+and the horrors of war? It is a fearful thing to take the life of a
+human being; but we can easily conceive of circumstances when homicide
+is not only justifiable, but highly commendable.
+
+Permit me here to quote, as most pertinent to this view of the subject,
+an extract from a speech of Mr. Pitt in 1797, defending his refusal to
+offer terms of peace to the Directory of France. Alluding to some
+remarks of Sir John Sinclair, in the House of Commons, deprecating war
+as a great evil, and calling on ministers to propose an immediate peace,
+Mr. Pitt says,--"He began with deploring the calamities of war, on the
+general topic that all war is calamitous. Do I object to that sentiment?
+No. But is it our business, at a moment when we feel that the
+continuance of that war is owing to the animosity, the implacable
+animosity, of our enemy, to the inveterate and insatiable ambition of
+the present frantic government of France,--not of the _people_ of
+France, as the honorable baronet unjustly stated,--is it our business,
+at that moment, to content ourselves with merely lamenting, in
+commonplace terms, the calamities of war, and forgetting that it is part
+of the duty which, as representatives of the people, we owe to our
+government and our country, to state that the continuance of those evils
+upon ourselves, and upon France, too, is the fruit only of the conduct
+of the enemy, that it is to be imputed to them and not to us?" Now does
+not this correctly describe our position? We make no question about the
+calamities of war; but how are these calamities to be avoided? This war
+has been forced upon us, and we must wage it to the end, or submit to
+the dismemberment of the Union, and acknowledge, in flat contradiction
+of the letter and spirit of the Constitution, the right of Secession.
+The true motto for the Government is precisely and preeminently the
+motto of the State of Massachusetts, "_Ense petit placidam sub libertate
+quietem_," which, freely, but faithfully, translated, means, "We must
+conquer a just and abiding peace."
+
+And now, my dear Andrew, I am curious to know what answer you will make
+to the general views which I have advanced on these vital questions.
+Will you say that I have misrepresented the record of the Northern
+Democratic party? that I have charged them with a submission and
+subserviency to the dictates of their Southern allies, which truthful
+history will not confirm? You surely remember the uncontradicted
+assertion of Mr. Hammond, Senator from South Carolina, made on the floor
+of the Senate in 1856, at a time when fears were entertained by the
+Democracy that Mr. Fremont might be elected:--"The South has now ruled
+the country for sixty years." Do you believe that this rule could have
+been maintained for so many years without the connivance and cooeperation
+of Northern Democrats? Will you venture to say that Texas could have
+been annexed, the Fugitive-Slave Law passed, the Missouri Compromise
+Bill repealed, without the consent and active assistance of Northern
+Democrats? In fact, my friend, when, in our frequent conversations, you
+have repeatedly charged Southern Democrats with ingratitude and want of
+good faith, have you not intended to assert, that, having complied with
+all the demands of the South, you looked upon their deliberate
+destruction of the Democratic party as a wanton act of political
+treachery?
+
+Do you deny that I have presented a truthful picture of the present
+position of your party? Can there be any doubt about the issue now
+offered to the North by Peace Democrats? I say _Peace_ Democrats,
+because all War Democrats are acting heartily and zealously with the
+Administration. Is not the policy which the Peace Democracy support in
+their papers, platforms, and public addresses, an immediate cessation of
+hostilities on the part of the North? And do they not select, as the
+exponents of this policy, men who have, from the commencement of the
+war, sympathized with the South, and denounced the military measures of
+the Government as unjustifiable, oppressive, and iniquitous? Open any
+newspaper of "Copperhead" complexion, and tell me, candidly, if you can
+approve of the manner in which the all-engrossing questions of the day
+are discussed.
+
+You know, in advance, as well as I know, that you will find both open
+and insidious attacks upon whatever feature of the war-policy of the
+Administration chances at the moment to be uppermost in the public mind,
+a liberal collection of incidents illustrating the horrors of war,
+abundant abuse of army-contractors, appalling estimates of our probable
+national debt, enthusiastic commendation of the skill of Southern
+officers and the bravery of Southern soldiers, extravagant laudation of
+some Federal commander who has disobeyed the orders of his superior and
+conducted a campaign in such a manner as not to annoy or alarm the
+enemy, eloquent denunciation of all attempts to fetter free speech or
+limit the liberty of the press, indignant complaint that the rights of
+the citizen are disregarded, an ostentatious parade of historical
+parallels to prove that an earnest and united people fighting for
+independence has never been subjugated, a bitter paragraph attributing
+to Abolitionists all the evils of the existing controversy, the
+inevitable sneer at negro soldiers in spite of the bloody baptism which
+they have so heroically borne,--all this, but (mark the significant
+circumstance!) not one word in condemnation of Southern treason, not a
+single sentiment that can by possibility alienate old friends, or can
+ever be quoted as evidence that the editor had dared to assert his
+manhood. Is this loyalty to the Constitution and the Union? Is this the
+allegiance which a citizen owes to his country? Away with the
+mischievous sophistry, that the Government is not the country, and does
+not represent the people! Can any sane man doubt that an Administration
+legally chosen, and rightfully in power, and receiving the emphatic
+indorsement of decisive majorities in Congress, does, during its
+constitutional term of office, and while so supported, speak the mind
+and embody the will of the nation? Is there any show of reason for
+saying that such an Administration is an irresponsible despotism,
+governing the country without the moral countenance of its citizens, and
+in defiance of their declared sentiments?
+
+But the views of Peace Democrats are not to be ascertained alone by
+consulting the newspapers which are their acknowledged organs. Listen to
+the speeches of their prominent leaders. I will not stop to call your
+attention to their bold treason after a Union reverse, or their
+non-committal platitudes after a Union victory. Let me rather ask you to
+consider the prevailing tone of their public addresses. Remember,
+meanwhile, that our Government is grappling with an active and resolute
+enemy, whose avowed and persistent purpose is to divide the Union, and
+by means unconstitutional and treasonable to erect on the ruins of our
+once happy Republic an independent and necessarily hostile power. Bear
+in mind that this enemy, with an intense and inflexible determination
+which would be most commendable in a better cause, is summoning all its
+strength to accomplish its wicked designs, and tell me if it does not
+find among Peace Democrats most efficient allies and adherents.
+
+Can you discover in the speeches of your political friends one sentence
+that would give a future student of the history of this struggle a
+correct idea of the principles for which we are contending? Would not
+such a student, accepting these speeches as authentic, reasonably infer
+that the Central Government, invested by a sad accident with supreme
+power, was using its accidental authority for the sole and sinister
+purpose of abridging the constitutional rights of the citizen, by
+withholding the privilege of free speech, and preventing the expression
+of popular sentiment at the polls? And yet, methinks, an intelligent
+posterity will somewhat wonder how such speeches could be made with
+impunity, and such candidates receive unchallenged votes, in the face of
+such unscrupulous tyranny. In fact, was there ever so wicked a farce as
+this "Copperhead" complaint about the denial of the right of free speech
+and free votes, from the lips of men whose daily exemption from
+punishment proves the falsity of their appeals to popular prejudice? Do
+they not say what they please, and vote as they choose, without
+molestation or hindrance? Why, a many-wived Mormon, surrounded by the
+beauties of his harem, inveighing against the laws of the United States
+which prohibit polygamy,--a Roman Catholic priest, openly and safely
+carnivorous during Lent, denouncing that regulation of his church which
+denies him the luxury of meat during the forty days immediately
+preceding Easter,--a cannibal, with a tender morsel of young missionary
+in his mouth, complaining that he cannot gratify his appetite for human
+flesh,--these would be models of reason and common sense, compared with
+the factious demagogues whose conduct we are considering.
+
+In point of fact, their real unhappiness arises from their impunity.
+They are gasping for a substantial grievance. Their highest ambition is
+to become political martyrs. Now and then one of them, like
+Vallandigham, deliberately transcends the bounds of a wise forbearance,
+and receives from the Government a very mild rebuke. Straightway he is
+placed on the bad eminence to which he has so long aspired. Already dead
+to all feeling of patriotism, he is canonized for his crimes, with rites
+and ceremonies appropriate to such a priesthood. And, unhappily, he
+finds but too many followers weak enough or wicked enough to recognize
+his saintship and accept his creed. To all true and loyal men, he
+resembles rather the veiled prophet of Khorassan, concealing behind the
+fair mask of a zealous regard for free speech and a free press the
+hideous features of Secession and civil war, despising the dupes whom he
+is leading to certain and swift destruction, and clinging fondly to the
+hope of involving in a common ruin, not only the party which he
+represents, but the country which he has dishonored.
+
+That such political monsters are possible in the Free States, at such a
+time as this, sufficiently demonstrates towards what an abyss of
+degradation we were drifting when this war began. They are the
+legitimate and necessary fruits of the numerous compromises by which
+well-meaning men have sought to avert a crisis which could only be
+postponed. The North has been diligently educated to connive at
+injustice and wink at oppression for the sake of peace, until there was
+good reason to fear that the public sense of right was blunted, and the
+public conscience seared as with a hot iron. While the South kept always
+clearly in view the single object on which it had staked everything, the
+North was daily growing more and more absorbed in the accumulation of
+wealth, and more and more callous to all considerations of humanity and
+all claims of natural justice. The feeblest remonstrance against the
+increasing insolence of Southern demands was rudely dismissed as
+fanatical, and any attempt to awaken attention to the disloyal
+sentiments of Southern politicians was believed to be fully met
+and conclusively answered by the cry of "Abolitionist" and
+"Negro-Worshipper."
+
+It must be confessed that for a time these expedients were successful.
+Like another Cassandra predicting the coming disasters of another Troy,
+the statesman who foresaw and foretold the perils which threatened the
+nation addressed a careless or contemptuous public. It was in vain to
+say that the South was determined to rule or ruin the country, in vain
+to point out the constantly recurring illustrations of the aggressive
+spirit of Slavery, in vain to urge that every year of delay was but
+adding to the difficulty of dealing with the gigantic evil. The merchant
+feared a financial crisis, the repudiation of Southern debts and his own
+consequent inability to maintain the social position which his easily
+earned wealth had secured; the politician, who, at the great
+auction-sales of Northern pride and principle held every four years, had
+so often sought to outbid his rivals in baseness, that his party or
+faction might win the Presidential prize, turned pale at the prospect of
+losing Southern support; the divine could see no danger threatening his
+country except from the alleged infidelity of a few leading radicals;
+the timid citizen, with no fixed political opinions, was overawed by the
+bluster of Southern bullies, shuddered at the sight of pistol and
+dirk-knife, and only asked "to be let alone"; while the thoughtless
+votary of fashion, readily accepting the lordly bearing and imperious
+air of the planter as the highest evidence of genuine aristocracy,
+reasoned, with the sort of logic which we should look for in such a
+mind, that slaveholding was the normal condition of an American
+gentleman.
+
+I will not allude to the views entertained by those men whose ignorance
+disqualified them from forming an intelligent opinion about our national
+affairs, and whose votes were always at the service of the highest
+bidders. You know perfectly well where they were sure to be found, and
+they exercised no inconsiderable influence on our public policy from
+year to year. Leaving this class out of the question, our peril arose
+largely from the fact, that too many men, sensible on other subjects,
+were fast settling into the conviction, that their wisest course was to
+be conservative, and that to be conservative was to act with the party
+which had longest held the reins of power. Their reasoning, practically,
+but perhaps unconsciously, was this:--The object of a government is to
+make a country prosperous and rich; this country has grown prosperous
+and rich under the rule of the Democratic party; therefore why should we
+not give it our support, and more especially as all sorts of dreadful
+results are predicted, if the opposition party comes into power? Why
+part with a present good, with the risk of incurring a future evil?
+Above all things, let us discountenance the agitation of exciting
+topics.--Profound philosophy! deserving to be compared with that of the
+modern Cockney who does not want his after-dinner rest to be disturbed
+by even a lively discussion. "I say, look here, why have row?
+Excessively unpleasant to have row, when a fellow wants to be quiet! I
+say, don't!"
+
+In fact, this "conservatism" was only another and convenient name for a
+most dangerous type of moral and political paralysis. Its immediate
+effect was to discourage discussion, and to induce an alarming apathy as
+to all the vital questions of the day among men whose abilities
+qualified them to be of essential service to their country. Their
+adhesion to the ranks of the Democratic party, while increasing the
+average intelligence of that organisation, without improving its public
+virtue or private morals, served simply to give it greater numerical
+strength. It was still in the hands of unscrupulous leaders, who,
+intoxicated with their previous triumphs, believed that the nation would
+submit to any measure which they saw fit to recommend. And who shall say
+that their confidence was unreasonable? Did not all their past
+experience justify such confidence? When had any one of their schemes,
+no matter how monstrous it might at first have appeared, ever failed of
+final accomplishment? Had they not repeatedly tested the temper and
+measured the _morale_ of the people? Had they not learned to anticipate
+with absolute certainty the regular sequence of national emotions,--the
+prompt recoil as from impending dishonor, the excited public meetings,
+the indignant remonstrance embodied in eloquent resolutions, then the
+sober, selfish second-thought, followed by the question, What if the
+South should carry out its threats and dissolve the Union? then the
+alarm of the mercantile and commercial interest, then a growing
+indifference to the very features of the project which had caused the
+early apprehension, and lastly the meek and cowardly acquiescence in the
+enacted outrage? Would not these arch-conspirators North and South have
+been wilfully blind, if they had not seen not only that the nation was
+sinking in the scale of public virtue, but that it had acquired "a
+strange alacrity in sinking"?
+
+Meanwhile they had learned a lesson, the value and significance of which
+they fully appreciated. He must have been an inattentive student of our
+political history, who has not observed that the successful prosecution
+of any political enterprise has too often dignified its author in the
+eyes of the people, in spite of its intrinsic iniquity. The party
+reaping the benefit of the measure has not withheld the expected reward,
+and the originator and abettors of the accomplished wrong have found
+that exalted official position covers a multitude of sins.
+
+Wisely availing themselves of this national weakness, and most adroitly
+using all the elements of political power with which long practice had
+made them familiar, the leaders of the Democratic party had every reason
+to believe that the duration of their political supremacy would be
+coeval with the life of the Republic. In fact, the peril predicted more
+than twenty years ago, by one of the purest and wisest men whom this
+country has ever seen, with a sagacity which, in the light of subsequent
+events, seems almost inspired, had wellnigh become an historical fact.
+"The great danger to our institutions," said Dr. Channing, writing to a
+friend in 1841, "is of a party organization so subtle and strong as to
+make the Government the monopoly of a few leaders, and to insure the
+transmission of the executive power from hand to hand almost as
+regularly as in a monarchy."
+
+But an overruling Providence, building better than we knew, had decreed
+that the sway of this powerful party should be broken by means of the
+very element of supposed strength on which it so confidently relied for
+unlimited supremacy. Losing sight of those cardinal principles which the
+far-reaching sagacity of Jefferson had enunciated, and faithfully
+following which the Democracy had, during its early history, so
+completely controlled the country, the modern leaders, intent only on
+present success, had based all their political hopes on an intimate
+alliance, offensive and defensive, with that institution which Jefferson
+so eloquently denounced, and the existence of which awakened his most
+lively fears for the future of his country. And what has been the
+result of this ill-omened alliance? Precisely what might sooner or later
+have been expected. Precisely what might have been predicted from the
+attempt to unite the essentially incongruous ideas of Aristocracy and
+Democracy. For the system of Slavery is confessedly the very essence of
+an Aristocracy, while the genuine idea of a Democracy is the submission
+of all to the expressed will of the majority. Take as one of the latest
+illustrations of the irreconcilable difference between Aristocracy and
+Democracy, the manner in which the South received the doctrine of
+"Squatter Sovereignty." This doctrine, whatever its ultimate purpose
+might have been, certainly embodied the idea of a democracy, pure and
+simple, resting on the right of a people to enact their own laws and
+adopt their own institutions. It was believed by many to be a movement
+in the interest of Slavery, and on that ground met with fierce
+opposition. Was it welcomed by slaveholders? Far from it. The Southern
+Aristocracy, clear-sighted on every question affecting their peculiar
+institution, applied their remorseless logic to the existing dilemma,
+and promptly decided that to admit the correctness of the principle was
+to endanger the existence of the system which was the corner-stone of
+their faith. They looked beyond the result of the immediate election.
+They foresaw the crisis which must ultimately arise. Indeed, they had
+long appreciated the fact, that the "irrepressible conflict" in which we
+are now involved was impending, and had been mustering all their forces
+to meet the inevitable issue. The crisis came. But how? In an evil hour
+for its own success, but a most-fortunate one for the welfare of the
+Republic, Slavery, overestimating its inherent power, and underrating
+the resources and virtue of the nation, committed the fatal error of
+measuring its strength with a free North. From that moment it lost
+forever all that it had ever gained by united action, by skilful
+diplomacy, by dexterously playing upon the "fears of the wise and
+follies of the brave," and by ingeniously masking its dark designs.
+
+The new policy once inaugurated, however, the career of treason once
+commenced, its authors can never recede. Their only safety lies in
+complete success. They must conquer or die. They may in secret confess
+to themselves that they have been guilty of a stupendous blunder, but
+that they clearly comprehend and sternly accept their position is
+abundantly evident. For, if anything is proved in the history of this
+war, it is, that the chiefs in the Rebellion believe in no middle ground
+between peace on their own terms and the utter annihilation of their
+political power and military resources.
+
+Thus, then, my dear Andrew, the insane ambition and wanton treachery of
+the Southern wing of your party have delivered the North from the danger
+of white slavery, and, by breaking up the Democratic party, have
+delivered the nation from the despotism of an organization which had
+become too powerful for its own good and for the best interests of the
+country. Do you dare to complain of this deliverance? You ought rather
+to go on your knees every day of your life, and devoutly thank the kind
+Providence which gave you such an unexpected opportunity to escape from
+so demoralizing a servitude.
+
+Do not allow your attachment to party names and party associations to
+warp your judgment or limit your patriotism. You need have no fear that
+any one of the sound and beneficent ideas which the Democratic party has
+ever impressed upon the mind of the nation will perish or be forgotten.
+Whatever features of the organization, whatever principles which it has
+labored to inculcate, are essential to the just development of our
+intellectual activity or our material resources, will survive the
+present struggle, perhaps to reappear in the creed and be promulgated by
+the statesmen of some future party; or who shall say that the Democratic
+party, freed from its corrupting associations, rejecting the leaders who
+have been its worst enemies, and the political heresies which have
+wrought its temporary ruin, may not again wield its former power, and
+once more direct the destinies of the country?
+
+But, returning to considerations of more immediate importance, what, I
+ask, is the obvious duty of every true and loyal citizen in such a
+crisis as this? You resent, as insulting, any imputation of disloyalty,
+and therefore I have a right to infer that you are unwilling to be
+ranked among the enemies of your country. But who are those enemies?
+Clearly, those whose avowed intention or whose thinly disguised design
+is, to divide the Union and to rend the Republic in twain. How are those
+enemies to be overcome? Only by a hearty and earnest cooeperation with
+the measures devised by our legally constituted Government for the
+suppression of the Rebellion. I can easily understand that you may not
+be willing to give your cordial assent to all the measures and all the
+appointments of the Administration. It is not the Administration which
+you would have selected, or for which you voted. But, nevertheless, it
+is our rightful government, and nothing else can save the nation from
+absolute anarchy. Postpone, therefore, I beseech you, all merely
+partisan prejudices, and remember only that the Union is in danger. You
+are a Democrat. Adopt, then, during the continuance of this war, the
+noble sentiments of a distinguished Western Democrat:[J]--"The whole
+object of the Rebellion is to destroy the principle of Democracy. The
+party which stands by the Government is the true Democracy. Every
+soldier in the army is a true Democrat. Every man who lifts his head
+above party trammels is a Democrat. And every man who permits old issues
+to stand in the way of a vigorous prosecution of the war cannot, in my
+opinion, have any claims on the party." By such men and such utterances
+will the Democratic party secure the respect and admiration of mankind;
+while those spurious Democrats, whose hearts are with the South while
+their homes are in the North, whose voice is the voice of Jacob while
+their hands are the hands of Esau, whose first slavish impulse is to
+kiss the rod which smites them, and who long for nothing so much as the
+triumph of their Southern masters, have earned, and will surely receive,
+the contempt and detestation of all honest men, now and forever.
+
+God forbid that I should suspect you of sympathizing with these
+miscreants! But, my friend, there is still another class of Democrats
+with whom I should exceedingly regret to see you associated. I mean
+those who, without any love for Rebels or their cause, are yet so
+fearful of being called Republicans that they refuse to support the
+Government. Can you justify yourself in standing upon such a platform?
+Is this a time in which to permit your old party animosities to render
+you indifferent to the honor and welfare of the nation? Are you simply
+in the position of a violent partisan out of office, eager to embarrass
+the Administration, and keenly on the watch to discover how best to
+inflame the prejudices of the populace against the Government? Is there
+nothing more important just now than to devise means of reinstating your
+party in power at the next Presidential election? Will it not be well
+first to settle the question, whether, in the month of November, 1864,
+we shall still be a free people, competent to elect the candidates of
+any party? May you not be, nay, are you not sure to be, giving
+substantial aid and comfort to the enemies of your country, while
+seeking only to cripple the power of your political opponents? Are not
+the dearest interests, and, indeed, the very life of the nation, of
+necessity, so dependent upon a cordial and constant support of the
+Government, that active hostility to its principal measures, or even
+absolute neutrality, strengthens the hands and increases the confidence
+of Rebels in arms?
+
+Notwithstanding the notorious virulence of party feeling in this
+country, it certainly would not seem to require a very large amount of
+manly principle to rise superior to such a sordid sentiment in view of
+our common peril. Patriotism, my friend, is an admirable and most
+praiseworthy virtue. It is correctly classed among the noblest instincts
+of human nature. It has in all ages been a fruitful theme of poetic
+fervor; it has sustained the orator in his loftiest flights of
+eloquence; it has nerved the arm of the warrior to perform deeds of
+signal valor; it has transformed the timid matron and the shrinking
+maiden into heroines whom history has delighted to honor. But when
+patriotism is really synonymous with self-preservation, when small
+sacrifices are demanded and overwhelming disasters are to be averted,
+the love of country, although still highly commendable, does not,
+perhaps, deserve very enthusiastic praise, while the want of it will be
+sure to excite universal condemnation and scorn. I cannot believe that
+you will consent to fasten upon yourself, and upon all who are dear to
+you, the lasting stigma which will inevitably attach to the man who,
+whether from a mean partisan jealousy or an ignoble indifference to the
+honor of his country, has failed in an hour of sorest need to defend the
+land which gave him birth, and the institutions which his fathers
+suffered and sacrificed so much to establish.
+
+Hoping that the vital importance of the subject which I have so
+imperfectly considered will induce you to pardon the length of this
+communication, I remain, as ever,
+
+Very sincerely yours,
+
+---- ----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_The History of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy._ By JOHN FOSTER
+KIRK. Two Volumes. 8vo. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Co.
+
+There is probably no period of European history which has been so
+thoroughly explored and so richly illustrated as the sixteenth
+century,--that century of great men, lofty ideas, and gigantic
+enterprise, of intellectual activity, and of tremendous political and
+religious struggles. The numerous scholars of Continental Europe who
+have made this era the subject of their researches have generally been
+content to dig that others might plant and reap, sending forth in
+abundance the raw material of history to be woven into forms adapted to
+popular appreciation. In England, also, but only within a very recent
+period, much solid labor of the same kind has been performed. But the
+Anglo-Saxon mind, on some sides comparatively deficient in plastic and
+inventive power, as well as in that of abstract thought, seems to
+possess in a peculiar degree the faculty of comprehending, representing,
+and idealizing the varied phases and incessant motion of human life and
+character. In science it excels less in the discovery than in the
+application of laws. In what may be termed "pure art," music, sculpture,
+painting, except where the representation of the Beautiful is
+subservient to that of the Real, lyrical and idyllic poetry, and all
+departments of literature in which fancy predominates over reason, it
+must yield the palm to the genius of Italy, of Germany, of Spain. But in
+the drama, in the novel, in history, and in works partaking more or less
+of the character of these, its supremacy is established. Shakespeare and
+Chaucer are at once the greatest and the most characteristic of English
+poets; Hogarth and Wilkie, of English painters; Fielding, Scott, Miss
+Austen, Thackeray, and others whose names will at once suggest
+themselves, of English writers of fiction; Gibbon, Macaulay, and
+Hallam, of English historians. The drama, in its highest forms, belongs
+to the past, and that past which was at once too earnest in its spirit
+and too narrow in its development to allow of a less vivid or a more
+expansive delineation. Fiction, to judge from a multitude of recent
+specimens, seems at present on the decline, with some threatenings of a
+precipitate descent into the inane. History, on the other hand, is only
+at the outset of its career. Its highest achievements are in all
+probability reserved for a still distant future, when loftier points of
+view shall have been attained, and the haze that now hangs over even the
+nearest and most conspicuous objects in some measure dissipated. Its
+endeavors hitherto have only shown how much is still to be
+accomplished,--how little, indeed, comparatively speaking, it will ever
+be possible to accomplish. Not the less, on this account, are the
+laborers deserving of the honors bestowed upon them. Every fresh
+contribution is a permanent gain. Even in the same field the results of
+one exploration do not interfere with or supersede those of another.
+Robertson has, in many respects, been surpassed, but he has not been
+supplanted, by Prescott; Froude and Motley may traverse the same ground
+without impairing our interest in the researches of either.
+
+These four distinguished writers have all devoted their efforts to the
+illustration of the period of which we have before spoken,--the grand
+and fruitful sixteenth century. With the men and with the events of that
+age we have thus become singularly familiar. We have been made
+acquainted, not only with the deeds, but with the thoughts, of Charles
+V., Philip II., Elizabeth Tudor, Cortes, Alva, Farnese, William the
+Silent, and a host of other actors in some of the most striking scenes
+of history. But we have also been tempted into forgetting that those
+were not isolated scenes, that they belonged to a drama which had long
+been in progress, and that the very energy they displayed, the power put
+forth, the conquests won, were indicative of previous struggles and a
+long accumulation of resources. Of what are called the Middle Ages the
+general notion might, perhaps, be comprised in the statement that they
+were ages of barbarism and ignorance, of picturesque customs and aimless
+adventure. "I desire to know nothing of those who knew nothing," was the
+saying, in reference to them, of the French _philosophe_. "Classical
+antiquity is nearer to us than the intervening darkness," said Hazlitt.
+And Hume and Robertson both consider that the interest of European
+history begins with the revival of letters, the invention of printing,
+the colonization of America, and the great contests between consolidated
+monarchies and between antagonistic principles and creeds.
+
+It must be admitted that the greater portion of mediaeval history,
+whatever its true character, is shrouded in an obscurity which it would
+be difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate. But the same cannot be
+said of the close of that period,--the transitional era that preceded
+what we are accustomed to consider as the dawn of modern civilization.
+For Continental Europe, at least, the fifteenth century is hardly less
+susceptible of a thorough revelation than the sixteenth. The chroniclers
+and memoir-writers are more communicative than those of the succeeding
+age. The documentary evidence, if still deficient, is rapidly
+accumulating. The conspicuous personages of the time are daily becoming
+more palpable and familiar to us. Joan of Arc has glided from the
+luminous haze of legend and romance into the clearer light of history.
+Philippe de Comines has a higher fame than any eye-witness and narrator
+of later events. Louis XI. discloses to posterity those features which
+he would fain have concealed from his contemporaries. And confronting
+Louis stands another figure, not less prominent in their own day, not
+less striking when viewed from our day,--that of Charles the Bold, of
+Burgundy.
+
+The career of this latter prince has generally been regarded as merely a
+romantic episode in European history. Scott has painted it in vivid
+colors in two of his most brilliant fictions,--"Quentin Durward," and
+"Anne of Geierstein." But, perhaps from this very notion in regard to
+its lack of historical importance, the reality has never been depicted
+in fulness or with detail, except in M. de Barante's elegant
+_rifacimento_ of the French chroniclers of the fifteenth century. That
+the subject was, however, one of a very different character has been
+apparent to the scholars in France, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland,
+who during the last twenty years have made it a special object of their
+researches. A stronger light has been thrown upon every part of it, and
+an entirely new light upon many portions. Charles has assumed his
+rightful position, as the "Napoleon of the Middle Ages," whose ambition
+and whose fall exercised, a powerful influence on the destinies of the
+principal European states.
+
+But the labors through which this has been accomplished are as yet
+unknown to the general mass of readers. The results lie scattered in
+quarters difficult of access, and in forms that repel rather than
+attract the glance. Chronicles written in tough French and tougher
+German have been published in provincial towns, and have scarcely found
+their way beyond those localities. Various learned societies and
+commissions have edited documents which would be nearly unintelligible
+without a wide comparison and complete elucidation. Single, isolated
+points have been treated and discussed by those who took for granted a
+familiarity on the part of the reader with the general facts of the
+case. To combine this mass of evidence, to sift and establish it, and to
+weave it into a symmetrical narrative, is the aim of the work before us.
+The idea was conceived while the author was engaged in assisting the
+late Mr. Prescott in cognate branches of study. That great and generous
+writer entered heartily into the project, and made use of the ample
+facilities which he is well known to have possessed for the collection
+of the necessary materials. The correspondence which he opened for this
+purpose led to the belief that he had himself undertaken the task; and
+great satisfaction was expressed by the eminent Belgian archivist, M.
+Gachard, that a pen which had already given so much delight and
+instruction to the world was about to be engaged on so attractive a
+theme. But Prescott was not more ardent in the prosecution of his own
+inquiries than in furthering those of others; and he displayed in this,
+as in many like instances, the same noble spirit which, since his death,
+has been so gracefully acknowledged by Mr. Motley.
+
+Of the manner in which the work is executed it would be, perhaps,
+premature to speak. We have no hesitation, however, in assigning to Mr.
+Kirk's most fascinating narrative a place with the great achievements of
+genius in the department he has chosen to fill. His advent among the
+historians will be welcomed the world over. A glance at the copy placed
+in our hands has enabled us to indicate its nature. The two volumes
+about to appear bring the story down to the crisis of Charles's fate,
+the moment when he became involved in a war with the Swiss. A third
+volume, now in course of preparation, will complete the eventful tale.
+
+We think it not unlikely that to the American reader the first half of
+the history will seem, at the present time, to possess a peculiar
+interest. For this part of the work contains the last great struggle
+between the French crown and the feudal princes,--a struggle involving
+the question whether France was to form one nation or to be divided into
+a number of petty states. Such a struggle is now going on in our own
+country. The question we are debating is whether the nation is to be
+disintegrated or consolidated. The theory of "State sovereignty" is
+nothing more than the old theory of feudal independence. "I love France
+so well," said Charles of Burgundy, "that I would fain see it ruled over
+by six kings instead of one." "I love the republic founded by our
+fathers so well," says Jefferson Davis, "that I would fain see it split
+up into several hostile confederacies." When we see that France, under
+the direction of a Louis XI., came out of that struggle triumphant, we
+shall not despair of our own future, trusting rather to the guidance of
+that Providence which is working out its own great designs than to
+instruments little cognizant of its plans and too often unconscious of
+its influence.
+
+
+_Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and Other Papers._ By THOMAS FULLER, D.D.
+Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
+
+There certainly never was a greater piece of publishing felicity, in its
+seasonableness, than this entire reprint. The "Thoughts" are as good,
+for whatever is bad or trying in our times, as they were hundreds of
+years ago; so that one might almost suspect the title of the book for an
+invention, and consider many a passage in it to be new matter,
+only--after the fashion of some who, in essay or story, try to
+reproduce the ancients--skilfully put in the manner of the old
+preacher. To all who would have religious comfort in the distractions of
+present events we especially recommend this incomparable divine's truly
+devout and thoughtful pages. None of our authors have succeeded so well
+in providing for our own wants. The sea of our political agitations
+might become smooth under the well-beaten oil which he pours out. The
+divisions made by the sword to-day would heal with the use of his
+prescriptions. Human nature never grows old; and America, in her Civil
+War, is the former England over again now.
+
+Sticklers for a style of conventional dignity and smooth decorum may
+think to despatch Fuller's claims by denominating him a quaint writer.
+This would be what is vulgarly called a snap-judgment indeed. His
+quaintness never runs into superficial conceit, but embodies always a
+deep and comprehensive wisdom. He insinuates truth with a friendly
+indirectness, and banters us out of our folly with a foreign instance.
+Plutarch or Montaigne is not more happy in historical parallels, for
+personal reflection and sober application to actual duty. Never was
+fancy more alert in the service of piety. His imagination is as luminous
+as Sir Thomas Browne's, and, if less peculiar and original in its
+combinations, rises into identity with more child-like and lofty
+worship. Ever ready to fall on his knees, there is in his adoration no
+touch of cant, or of that _other-worldliness_ which Coleridge complains
+of as interfering with the pressing affairs and obligations of the
+present. No pen ever drew a firmer boundary between sentiment and
+sentimentality. But never was shrewd knowledge of this world so humane,
+keen observation so kind, wit so tender, and humor so sanctified, united
+with resolution by all means to teach and save mankind so invariably
+strong.
+
+While so much of our religious literature is a weak appeal to shallow
+feeling and a gross affront to reason, it is refreshing to meet with an
+author who helps us to obey the great precept of the Master, and put
+_mind_ and _strength_, as well as heart and soul, into our love of God.
+Indeed, this precious treatise, or assemblage of little treatises, so
+rational without form of logic, so convenient to be read for a moment or
+all day long, and so harmonious in its diverse headings, should be
+everywhere circulated as a larger sort of religious tract. We hear of
+exhortations impressed in letters on little loaves for the soldiers to
+eat. We wish every military man or civilian, intelligent enough for the
+relish, could have Fuller's sentences to feed on, as, beyond all
+rhetoric, bread of life.
+
+So let a welcome go to the old worthy, our hearts' brother, as he seems
+to rise out of his two-centuries' grave. At a time when Satan appears
+again to have been let loose for a season, and we know the power of
+evil, described in the Apocalypse, in the fearful headway made by the
+rebellious conspiracy of his servants, carried to such a point of
+success, that statesmen, and scholars, and preachers, even of so-called
+liberal views, on the farther shore, bow to it the knee, while the
+frowning cannon at every point shows how remote the Millennium still
+is,--thanks for the counsels, fit to our need, of a writer still fresh,
+while the main host of his contemporaries are long since obsolete, with
+dead volumes for their tombs. How many precious quotations from his
+leaves we might make, but that we prefer to invite a perusal of the
+whole!
+
+We add to our criticism no drawbacks, as we like to give to transcendent
+merit unstinted praise, and have really no exceptions in mind, could we
+presume in such a case to express any. Looking on the features of
+Fuller's portrait, which makes the frontispiece of his work as here
+reproduced for us, we note a weight of prudence strangely blending with
+a buoyancy of prayer, well corresponding to the inseparable sagacity and
+ecstasy of his words, teaching us the consistency of immortal aspiration
+with an infallible good-sense,--a lesson never more important to be
+learned than now. To be an executive mystic, an energetic saint, is the
+very ideal of human excellence; and to go forward in the name of the
+Divinity is the meaning of the book we have here passed in review.
+
+
+_Speeches, Lectures, and Letters._ By WENDELL PHILLIPS. Boston: James
+Redpath.
+
+In vigor, in point, in command of language and felicity of phrase, in
+affluence and aptness of illustration, in barbed keenness and _cling_
+of sarcasm, in terror of invective, in moral weight and momentum, in
+copiousness and quality of thought, in aggressive boldness of statement,
+finally in equality to all audiences and readiness for all occasions,
+Wendell Phillips is certainly the first orator in America,--and that we
+esteem much the same as saying that he is first among those whose
+vernacular is the English tongue. That no speeches are made of equal
+_value_ with his, that he has an intellectual superiority to all
+competitors in the forum, we do not assert; but his preeminence in pure
+oratorical genius may now be considered as established and
+unquestionable. Ajax has the strength, perhaps more than the strength,
+of Achilles; but Achilles adds to vigor of arm incomparable swiftness of
+foot. The mastiff is stout, brave, trusty, intelligent, but the hound
+outruns him; and this greyhound of modern oratory, deep-chested,
+light-limbed, supple, elastic, elegant, powerful, must be accredited
+with his own special superiorities. Or taking a cue from the tales of
+chivalry, we might say that he is the Sir Launcelot of the platform, in
+all but Sir Launcelot's sin; and woe to the knight against whom in full
+career he levels his lance!
+
+And yet one is half ashamed to praise his gifts, so superbly does he
+himself cast those gifts behind him. He is not trying to be eloquent: he
+is trying to get a grand piece of justice done in the world. No engineer
+building a bridge, no ship-master in a storm at sea, was ever more
+simply intent on substantive results. It is not any "Oration for the
+Crown" that he stands here pronouncing: it is service, not distinction,
+at which he aims, and he will be crowned only in the gladness of a
+redeemed race. The story of his life is a tale of romance; he makes real
+the legends of chivalry. He might have sat at meat with Arthur and the
+knights of the Round Table, and looked with equal unabashed eyes into
+theirs; and a thousand years hence, some skeptic, reading the history of
+these days, will smile a light disdain, and say, "Very well for fiction;
+but _real_ men are selfish beings, and serve themselves always to the
+sweetest and biggest loaf they can find."
+
+We praise his gifts and his nobility, not always his opinions. He was
+once the apostle of a doctrine of disunion; he fervently believes in
+enforcing "total abstinence" by statute; he is the strenuous advocate of
+woman-suffrage. We have stood by the Union always; we have some faith in
+pure wine, notwithstanding the Maine Law; and believing that women have
+a right to vote, we believe also that they have a higher right to be
+excused from voting. We are unwilling to consume their delicate
+fitnesses in this rude labor. It is not economical. We do not believe in
+using silk for ships' top-sails, or China porcelain for wash-tubs. There
+are tasks for American women--tasks, we mean, of a social and public,
+not alone of a domestic nature--which only women _can_ rightly perform,
+while their accomplishment was never more needed than here.
+
+Mr. Phillips is no "faultless painter." He is given to snap-judgments.
+The minor element of _considerateness_ should be more liberally present.
+He forgets that fast driving is not suitable to crowded streets; and
+through the densest thoroughfares the hoofs of his flying charger go
+ringing over the pavements, to the alarm of many and the damage of some.
+Softly, Bucephalus! A little gentle ambling through these social
+complications might sometimes be well.
+
+Again, while he has the utmost of moral stability and constancy, and
+also great firmness of intellectual adhesion to main principles, there
+is in him a certain minor changefulness. He pours out a powerful light,
+but it flickers. Momentary partialities sway him,--to be balanced,
+indeed, by subsequent partialities, for his broad nature will not be
+permanently one-sided; but meantime his authority suffers. Mood,
+occasion, the latest event, govern overmuch the color of his statement;
+so that an unsympathetic auditor--and every partiality, by the law of
+the world, must push _some one_ out of the ring of sympathy--may
+honestly deem him unfair, even wilfully unfair.
+
+Finally, he relies too much upon sarcasm and personal invective as
+agents. He has a theory on this matter; and we feel _sure_ that it is
+erroneous. Not that invective is to be forbidden. Not that personal
+criticism is always out of place, or always useless. We are among the
+"all men" whom Thoreau declared to be "enamored of the beauty of plain
+speech." We ask no man in public or private life to wear a satin glove
+upon his tongue. We believe, too, in the "noble wrath" of Tasso's
+heroes, When the heart _must_ burn, let the words be fire. It is just
+where personal invective begins to be used as matter of _theory and
+system_ that it begins to be used amiss. Let the rule be to spare it, if
+it _can_ be spared, and to use it only under the strictest compelling of
+moral indignation. And were not Mr. Phillips among the most genial and
+sunny of human beings, really incapable of any malign passion, he would
+fool the reactive sting of this invective in his own bosom, and so
+become fearful of indulging it.
+
+Still it must be said that he has the genius and function of a critic.
+He is the censor of our statesmanship. He is the pruner of our politics.
+Let his censure be broad and deliberate, that it may be weighty; let his
+pruning be with care and kindness, that it may be with benefit.
+
+
+_Systems of Military Bridges in Use by the United States Army, those
+adopted by the Great European Powers, and such as are employed in
+British India._ With Directions for the Preservation, Destruction, and
+Reestablishment of Bridges. By Brigadier-General GEORGE W. CULLUM,
+Lieutenant-Colonel, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, Chief of Staff of the
+General-in-Chief, etc., etc. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
+
+A nation can hardly achieve military success without paying special heed
+to its _material_ of war. It is the explicit duty of a nation's
+constituted guardians assiduously to apply all the resources of science
+and art, of theory and practice, of experience and invention, of
+judgment and genius, to the systematic production of the best military
+apparatus. Ordnance and ordnance stores, arms and equipments, commissary
+and quartermaster supplies, the means of transportation, fortifications
+and engineer-trains, navies and naval appliances,--these are the
+material elements of military strength, which decide the fate of
+nations. If in these we are behind the age, our delinquency must be
+atoned by disaster and wasted lives. Civilization conquers barbarism
+chiefly by its superior skill in the construction and use of the
+material instruments of warfare. Courage and conduct are certainly
+important factors in all legitimate successes; but they must work
+through material means, and are emphasized or nullified by the skill or
+rudeness exhibited in the device and fabrication of those means. The
+great contest now in progress has taught us afresh the potency of those
+material agencies through which patriotic zeal must act, and we shall
+hereafter lack all good excuse for _not_ having the very best attainable
+system of producing, preserving, providing, and using whatever
+implements, supplies, and muniments our future may demand.
+
+As an aid in this direction, we welcome the truly valuable book which
+General Cullum has now supplied on one of the Special brandies of
+military _materiel_. We owe him thanks for his treatise on military
+bridges, which was nearly as much needed as though we had not already
+the works of Sir Howard Douglas, Drien, Haillot, and Meurdra, and the
+chapters on bridges by Laisne and Duane. General Cullum's work has more
+precision and is more available for practical guidance than any other.
+The absolute thoroughness with which the India-rubber pontoon system is
+described by him gives a basis for appreciating the other systems
+described in outline.
+
+It is hardly too much to say that we owe to General Cullum more than to
+any other person the development in our service of systematic
+instruction in pontoniering. Before the Mexican War, Cullum and Halleck
+had ably argued the necessity of organizing engineer troops to be
+specially instructed as sappers, miners, and pontoniers. In an article
+on "Army Organization," in the "Democratic Review," were cited a
+striking series of instances in which bridge-trains or their lack had
+decided the issue of grand operations. The history of Napoleon's
+campaigns abounds in proofs of their necessity, and the testimony of the
+Great Captain was most emphatic on this point. His Placentia and
+Beresina crossings are specially instructive. The well-sustained
+argument of the article on "Army Organization" was a most effective aid
+to General Totten's efforts as Chief Engineer to secure the organization
+of our first engineer company. This company proved to be the well-timed
+and successful school in which our pontoon-drill grew up and became
+available for use in the present war. There are now four regular
+companies and several volunteer regiments of engineer troops, whose
+services are too highly valued to be hereafter ignored.
+
+In 1846, General Taylor reported, that, after the victories of Palo Alto
+and Resaca de la Palma, a pontoon-train would have enabled him to cross
+the Rio Grande "on the evening of the battle," take Matamoras "with all
+the artillery and stores of the enemy and a great number of
+prisoners,--in short, to destroy entirely the Mexican army." This
+striking evidence of the necessity of bridge-equipages as part of the
+material of army-trains coincided with the organization of the first
+engineer company, and led to the preparation of pontoon-trains for
+General Taylor and General Scott. General (then Captain) Cullum "had the
+almost exclusive supervision, devising, building, and preparing for
+service" of these trains, and of that used for instruction at West
+Point. To him is chiefly due the formation of the system of military
+bridges with India-rubber pontoons, which was most fully described and
+illustrated in the original memoir from which the volume now just
+published has grown. He subsequently, as Professor of Practical
+Engineering at the Military Academy, aided in developing and perfecting
+the pontoon-drill,--a department in which G.W. Smith, McClellan, and
+Duane ably and successfully labored.
+
+We suppose that all profound and sincere students of military operations
+are agreed in accepting bridge-trains and skilled pontoniers as among
+the necessities of grand armies. In proportion as the campaigns which an
+army is to make are to be conducted on theatres intersected by rivers
+will be the importance of its bridge-service. Our own country, abounding
+in rivers of the grandest proportions, will need to be always ready for
+applying the highest skill and the best bridge-equipage in facilitating
+such movements as may prove necessary. We accept this as an
+indispensable part of our organized system of war-_materiel_. Were other
+evidences lacking, the experiences of the Chickahominy, Rappahannock,
+Potomac, and Tennessee will perpetually enforce the argument. The
+generation which has fought the Battle of Fredericksburg, and which has
+witnessed Lee's narrow escape near Williamsport, is sufficiently
+instructed not to question the saving virtues and mobilizing influences
+of bridge-trains.
+
+The chief essentials in a military bridge-system are lightness, facility
+of transportation, ease of manoeuvre in bridge-formation, stability,
+security, and economy. It necessarily makes heavy demands for
+transportation; and on this account bridge-trains have frequently been
+left behind, when their retention would have proved of the utmost
+importance. Their true use is to facilitate campaign-movements; and
+while they should be taken only when there is a reasonable prospect of
+their being real facilites, they should not be left behind when any such
+prospect exists. It was in response to the demand for easy
+transportation that the system for India-rubber pontoons was elaborated.
+Single supporting cylinders of rubber-coated canvas were first
+experimentally used in 1836 by Captain John F. Lane, United States army,
+on the Tallapoosa and Chattahoochee Rivers in Alabama. The
+service-pontoon, as arranged by General Cullum, is composed of three
+connected cylinders of rubber-coated canvas, each having three
+compartments. On these pontoons, when inflated, the bridge-table is
+built, lashed, and anchored. This bridge has remarkable portability, but
+it has also serious defects. The oxidation of the sulphur in vulcanized
+rubber produces sulphuric acid in sufficient amount to impair the
+strength of the canvas-fibres, thus causing eventual decay, rendering it
+prudent to renew the pontoons after a year's campaigning. The pontoons
+are required to be air-tight, and are temporarily made partially useless
+by punctures, bullet-holes, rents and chafings, although they are easily
+repaired. Hence this bridge, despite its portability, is hardly equal to
+all the requirements of service, though it was the main dependence in
+Banks's operations in Louisiana, and was successfully used in Grant's
+Mississippi campaign.
+
+General Cullum briefly describes the various bridge-systems employed in
+the different services of the world, including the galvanized iron boat
+system, the Blanchard metal cylinder system, the Russian and Fowke's
+systems of canvas stretched over frames, the Birigo system, the French
+_bateau_ system, the various trestle systems, and many others. The
+French wooden _bateau_ is the pontoon chiefly used in our service, and
+it is specially commended by its thoroughly proved efficiency, and by
+its utility as an independent boat. Its great weight and the consequent
+difficulty of its transportation are the great drawbacks, and to this
+cause may well be ascribed much of the fatal delay before the
+Fredericksburg crossing.
+
+It is a hopeless problem to devise any bridge-equipage which shall
+overcome all serious objections. All that should be expected is to
+reduce the faults to a practical minimum, while meeting the general
+wants of the service in a satisfactory manner. The lack of mobility in
+any bridge-train which can be pronounced always trustworthy may,
+perhaps, compel the adoption, in addition to the _bateau_-train, of a
+light equipage for use in quick movements. This will, however, create
+complication, which is nearly as objectionable here as in the calibre of
+guns. Thus it is that any solution may prove not exactly the best one
+for the particular cases which may arise under it. All that should be
+demanded is, that, by the application of sound judgment to the data
+which experience and invention afford, our probable wants may be as well
+met as practicable. Some system we must have; and, on the one hand, zeal
+for mobility, commendable as it is, must not be permitted to invite
+grand disasters through failures of the pontoons to do their allotted
+work; while, on the other hand, a morbid desire to insure absolutely
+trustworthy solidity of construction must be restrained from imposing
+needless burdens, which may habitually make our crossings Fredericksburg
+affairs. Between these extremes lies the right road. American skill has
+hardly exhausted its resources on this problem. The suspension-bridge
+train, a description of which General Meigs has published, is deserving
+of consideration for many cases in campaigns. General Haupt's remarkable
+railroad-bridges thrown over the Rappahannock River and Potomac Creek,
+the latter in nine working-days, were structures of such striking and
+judicious boldness as to justify most hopeful anticipations from the
+designer's expected treatise on bridge-building. Our national eminence
+in the art of building wooden trussed and suspension bridges is proof
+enough that whatever can be done to improve on the military
+bridge-trains of Europe may be expected at our hands. We shall not lack
+inventiveness; let us be as careful not to lack judgment, and by all
+means to be fair and honest in seeking for the best system. When the
+experience of this war can be generalized, a more positive
+pontoon-system will be exacted for our service. It is fortunate that
+this matter is in good hands. While hoping that the close of the present
+war may, for a long time, end the reign of Mars, it behooves us never
+again to be caught napping when the Republic is assailed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS
+
+RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+
+The Natural Laws of Husbandry. By Justus von Liebig. Edited by John
+Blyth, M.D., Professor of Chemistry in Queen's College, Cork. New York.
+D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 388. $1.50.
+
+The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George
+Third, 1760-1860. By Thomas Erskine May, C.B. In Two Volumes. Vol. II.
+Boston. Crosby & Nichols. 12mo. pp. 596. $1.50.
+
+The Holy Word in its own Defence: addressed to Bishop Colenso and all
+other Earnest Seekers after Truth. By Rev. Abiel Silver, Author of
+"Lectures on the Symbolic Character of the Sacred Scriptures." New York.
+D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 305. $1.25.
+
+"Who Breaks Pays." By the Author of "Cousin Stella," etc. Philadelphia.
+F. Leypoldt. 16mo. paper, pp. 302. 50 cts.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote A: The phrase is General Taylor's. When Santa Ana brought up
+his immense army at Buena Vista, he sent a flag of truce to invite
+Taylor to surrender. "Tell him to go to hell," said old Rough-and-Ready.
+"Bliss, put that into Spanish." "Perfect Bliss," as this accomplished
+officer, too early lost, was called, interpreted liberally, replying to
+the flag, in exquisite Castilian, "Say to General Santa Ana, that, if he
+wants us, he must come and take us." And this is the answer which has
+gone into history.]
+
+[Footnote B: After Sheridan had made his maiden speech in the House, of
+Commons, he went to the gallery where Whitbread was sitting and asked
+the latter's opinion of his effort.
+
+"It will never do, Sheridan; you had better give it up."
+
+"Never, by G----d!" replied Sheridan; "it is in me, and it shall come
+out."]
+
+[Footnote C: Dagneaux's is the most expensive restaurant of the Latin
+Quarter.]
+
+[Footnote D: These are characters in the novel, portraits from real
+life. Murger drew himself, and told his own history, when he sketched
+Rodolphe.]
+
+[Footnote E: He was urged to rent a room in Paris as his lodgings when
+he came to town.]
+
+[Footnote F: _Travels through the Middle Settlements of North America
+in_ 1759-60. By Rev. Andrew Burnaby.]
+
+[Footnote G: _History of the Netherlands_, Vol. I. p. 182.]
+
+[Footnote H: "During the winter, the temperature at the surface of the
+glacier sinks a great many degrees below 32 deg. Fahrenheit, and this low
+temperature penetrates, though at a gradually decreasing rate, into the
+interior of the mass. The glacier becomes fissured in consequence of the
+contraction resulting from this cooling process. The cracks remain open
+at first, and contribute to lower the temperature of the glacier by
+favoring the introduction of the cold air from without; but in the
+spring, when the rays of the sun raise the temperature of the snow
+covering the glacier, they first bring it back to 32 deg. Fahrenheit, and
+presently produce water at 32 deg., which falls into the chilled and
+fissured mass of the glacier. There this water is instantly frozen,
+releasing heat which tends to bring back the glacier to the temperature
+of 32 deg.; and this process continues till the entire mass of the cooled
+glacier returns to the temperature of 32 deg.."]
+
+[Footnote I: For the evidence of this statement I must, however, refer
+to my work on Glaciers, already so often quoted in this article, where
+it may be found with all the necessary details.]
+
+[Footnote J: Hon. H.M. Rice, Ex-Senator from Minnesota.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74,
+December, 1863, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. ***
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:47:47 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:47:47 -0700
commit	dd36d0468a45d812fdf44782fd3f387a51538d8c (patch)
tree	0dac013a20aec300b64ce9dda95697945e595cc3