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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863,
+No. 70, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70
+       A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 9, 2005 [EBook #16033]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. 12 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Guido
+Royackers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+VOL. XII.--AUGUST, 1863.--NO. LXX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+AN AMERICAN IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
+
+
+Having in a former number of this magazine attempted to give some
+account of the House of Commons, and to present some sketches of its
+leading members,[1] I now design to introduce my readers to the House of
+Lords.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Atlantic Monthly_ for December, 1861.]
+
+It is obviously unnecessary to repeat so much of the previous
+description as applies to the general external and internal appearance
+of the New Palace of Westminster. It only remains to speak of the hall
+devoted to the sessions of the House of Lords. And certainly it is an
+apartment deserving a more extended notice than our limits will allow.
+As the finest specimen of Gothic civil architecture in the world,
+perfect in its proportions, beautiful and appropriate in its
+decorations, the frescoes perpetuating some of the most striking scenes
+in English history, the stained glass windows representing the Kings and
+Queens of the United Kingdom from the accession of William the Conqueror
+down to the present reign, the niches filled with effigies of the Barons
+who wrested Magna Charta from King John, the ceiling glowing with gold
+and colors presenting different national symbols and devices in most
+elaborate workmanship and admirable intricacy of design, it is
+undeniably worthy of the high purpose to which it is dedicated.
+
+The House of Lords also contains the throne occupied by the reigning
+sovereign at the opening and prorogation of Parliament. Perhaps its more
+appropriate designation would be a State-Chair. In general form and
+outline it is substantially similar to the chairs in which the
+sovereigns of England have for centuries been accustomed to sit at their
+coronations. We need hardly add that no expense has been spared to give
+to the throne such intrinsic value, and to adorn it with such emblems of
+national significance, as to furnish renewed evidence of England's
+unwavering loyalty to the reigning house.
+
+In pointing out what is peculiar to the House of Lords, I am aware that
+there is danger of falling into the error of stating what is already
+familiar to some of my readers. And yet a traveller's narrative is not
+always tiresome to the tourist who has himself visited the same
+localities and witnessed the same scenes. If anxious for the "diffusion
+of useful knowledge," he will cheerfully consent that the curiosity of
+others, who have not shared his good fortune, should be gratified,
+although it be at his expense. At the same time, he certainly has a
+right to insist that the extraordinary and improbable stories told to
+the too credulous _voyageur_ by some lying scoundrel of a courier or
+some unprincipled _valet-de-place_ shall not be palmed upon the
+unsuspecting public as genuine tales of travel and adventure.
+
+The House of Lords is composed of lords spiritual and lords temporal. As
+this body is now constituted, the lords spiritual are two archbishops,
+twenty-four bishops, and four Irish representative prelates. The lords
+temporal are three peers of the blood royal, twenty dukes, nineteen
+marquises, one hundred and ten earls, twenty-two viscounts, two hundred
+and ten barons, sixteen Scotch representative peers, and twenty-eight
+Irish representative peers. There are twenty-three Scotch peers and
+eighty-five Irish peers who have no seats in Parliament. The
+representative peers for Scotland are elected for every Parliament,
+while the representative peers for Ireland are elected for life. As has
+been already intimated, this enumeration applies only to the present
+House of Lords, which comprises four hundred and fifty-eight
+members,--an increase of about thirty noblemen in as many years.
+
+The persons selected from time to time for the honor of the peerage are
+members of families already among the nobility, eminent barristers,
+military and naval commanders who have distinguished themselves in the
+service, and occasionally persons of controlling and acknowledged
+importance in commercial life. Lord Macaulay is the first instance in
+which this high compliment has been conferred for literary merit; and it
+was well understood, when the great essayist and historian was ennobled,
+that the exception in his favor was mainly due to the fact that he was
+unmarried. With his untimely death the title became extinct. Lord
+Overstone, formerly Mr. Loyd, and a prominent member of the banking firm
+of Jones, Loyd, and Co. of London, elevated to the peerage in 1850, is
+without heirs apparent or presumptive, and there is good reason to
+believe that this circumstance had a material bearing upon his
+well-deserved promotion. But these infrequent exceptions, these rare
+concessions so ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule.
+Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished
+for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or
+clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable. Brown may reach the
+highest range of artistic excellence, he may achieve world-wide fame as
+an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian
+or repeat the rare and delicate grace of Correggio, the triumphs of his
+chisel may reflect honor upon England and his age; the inventive genius
+of Jones, painfully elaborating, through long and suffering years of
+obscure poverty, the crude conceptions of his boyhood, may confer
+inestimable benefits upon his race; the scientific discoveries of
+Robinson may add incalculable wealth to the resources of his nation: but
+let them not dream of any other nobility than that conferred by Nature;
+let them be content to live and die plain, untitled Brown, Jones, and
+Robinson, or at best look forward only to the barren honors of
+knighthood. Indeed, it is not too much to say that for plebeian merit
+the only available avenues to the peerage are the Church and the Bar.
+
+The proportion of law lords now in the House of Lords is unusually
+large,--there being, besides Lord Westbury, the present
+Lord-High-Chancellor, no fewer than six Ex-Lord-Chancellors, each
+enjoying the very satisfactory pension of five thousand pounds per
+annum. Lord Lyndhurst still survives at the ripe age of ninety-one; and
+Lord Brougham, now in his eighty-sixth year, has made good his promise
+that he would outlive Lord Campbell, and spare his friends the pain of
+seeing his biography added to the lives of the Lord-Chancellors to
+whom, in Lord Brougham's opinion, Lord Campbell had done such inadequate
+justice.
+
+The course of proceeding in the House of Lords differs considerably from
+that pursued in the House of Commons. The Lord-High-Chancellor, seated
+on the wool-sack,--a crimson cushion, innocent of any support to the
+back, and by no means suggestive of comfort, or inviting deliberations
+of the peers, but is never addressed by the speakers. "My lords" is the
+phrase with which every peer commences his remarks.
+
+Another peculiarity patent to the stranger is the small number usually
+present at the debates. The average attendance is less than fifty, and
+often one sees only fifteen or twenty peers in their seats. Two or three
+leading members of the Ministry, as many prominent members of the
+opposition, a bishop or two, a score of deluded, but well-meaning
+gentlemen, who obstinately adhere to the unfashionable notion, that,
+where great political powers are enjoyed, there are certain serious
+duties to the public closely connected therewith, a few prosy and
+pompous peers who believe that their constant presence is essential to
+the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom,--such, I think, is a correct
+classification of the ordinary attendance of noblemen at the House of
+Lords.
+
+This body possesses several obvious advantages over any other
+deliberative assembly now existing. Not the least among these is the
+fact that the oldest son of every peer is prepared by a careful course
+of education for political and diplomatic life. Every peer, except some
+of recent creation, has from childhood enjoyed all conceivable
+facilities for acquiring a finished education. In giving direction to
+his studies at school and at the university, special reference has been
+had to his future Parliamentary career. Nothing that large wealth could
+supply, or the most powerful family-influence could command, has been
+spared to give to the future legislator every needed qualification for
+the grave and responsible duties which he will one day be called to
+assume. His ambition has been stimulated by the traditional achievements
+of a long line of illustrious ancestors, and his pride has been awakened
+and kept alive by the universal deference paid to his position as the
+heir apparent or presumptive of a noble house.
+
+This view is so well presented in "The Caxtons," that I need offer no
+apology for making an extract from that most able and discriminating
+picture of English society. "The fact is, that Lord Castleton had been
+taught everything that relates to property (a knowledge that embraces
+very wide circumference). It had been said to him, 'You will be an
+immense proprietor: knowledge is essential to your self-preservation.
+You will be puzzled, ridiculed, duped every day of your life, if you do
+not make yourself acquainted with all by which property is assailed or
+defended, impoverished or increased. You have a stake in the country:
+you must learn all the interests of Europe, nay, of the civilized world;
+for these interests react on the country, and the interests of the
+country are of the greatest possible consequence to the interests of the
+Marquis of Castleton.' Thus, the state of the Continent, the policy of
+Metternich, the condition of the Papacy, the growth of Dissent, the
+proper mode of dealing with the spirit of democracy which was the
+epidemic of European monarchies, the relative proportions of the
+agricultural and manufacturing population, corn-laws, currency, and the
+laws that regulate wages, a criticism on the leading speakers in the
+House of Commons, with some discursive observations on the importance of
+fattening cattle, the introduction of flax into Ireland, emigration, the
+condition of the poor: these and such-like stupendous subjects for
+reflection--all branching more or less intricately from the single idea
+of the Castleton property--the young lord discussed and disposed of in
+half a dozen prim, poised sentences, evincing, I must say in justice, no
+inconsiderable information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. The
+oddity was, that the subjects so selected and treated should not come
+rather from some young barrister, or mature political economist, than
+from so gorgeous a lily of the field."
+
+But to all these pre�minent advantages of early education and training
+there must be added the invaluable opportunities of enlarged and
+extended legislative experience in the House of Commons. If we examine
+the antecedents of some of the most prominent men now in the House of
+Lords, we shall discover abundant evidence of this fact. Earl Russell
+was a member of the House of Commons for more than thirty years; Earl
+Derby, more than twenty-five years; the Earl of Shaftesbury, for about
+twenty-four years; the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the
+Duke of Rutland, for about the same period. And of the present House of
+Commons more than fifty members are heirs apparent or presumptive to
+existing peerages.
+
+And then there is the further circumstance that seats in the House of
+Lords are for life. Members of this body do not stand in fear of removal
+by the votes of disappointed or indignant constituents. Entirely
+independent of public opinion, they can defy the disapprobation of the
+masses, and smile at the denunciation of the press. Undoubtedly, this
+fact has a twofold bearing, and deprives the peers of that strong
+incentive to active exertion and industrious legislation which the House
+of Commons, looking directly to the people for support and continuance,
+always possesses. Yet the advantages in point of prolonged experience
+and ever increasing familiarity with the details of public business are
+unquestionable.
+
+As a matter of course, there are many noblemen upon whom these rare
+facilities of education and this admirable training for public life
+would seem to have been wasted. As Americans, we must be pardoned for
+expressing our belief in the venerable doctrine that there is no royal
+road to learning. If a peer of the realm is determined to be a dunce,
+nothing in the English Constitution prevents him from being a dunce, and
+"not all the blood of all the Howards" can make him a scholar or a
+statesman. If, resting securely in the conviction that a nobleman does
+not need to be instructed, he will not condescend to study, and does not
+avail himself of his most enviable advantages, whatever may be his
+social rank, his ignorance and incapacity cannot be disguised, but will
+even become more odious and culpable in the view of impartial criticism
+by reason of his conspicuous position and his neglect of these very
+advantages.
+
+But frequent as these instances are, it will not be for a moment
+supposed that the whole peerage would justly fall under such censure.
+Nor will it be thought surprising that the House of Lords contains a
+considerable number of men of sterling ability, statesmen of broad and
+comprehensive views, accustomed to deal with important questions of
+public interest and national policy with calm, deliberate judgment, and
+far-reaching sagacity. Hampered as they certainly are by a traditional
+conservatism often as much at variance with sound political philosophy
+as it is with the lessons of all history, and characterized as their
+attitude towards foreign nations always has been by a singular want of
+all generosity, still it must be confessed that their steady and
+unwavering adherence to a line of conduct which has made England feared
+and her power respected by every country in the world has a certain
+element of dignity and manly self-reliance which compels our admiration.
+And while they have been of late so frequently outwitted by the
+flexible, if not tortuous, policy of Louis Napoleon, it yet remains to
+be seen whether the firm and unyielding course of the English Ministry
+will not in the end prove quite as successful as the more Machiavellian
+management of the French Emperor.
+
+I hardly know how to describe accurately the impression made upon the
+mind of an American by his first visit to the House of Lords. What
+memories haunt him of the Norman Conquest and the Crusades, of Magna
+Charta and the King-Maker, of noblemen who suffered with Charles I. and
+supped with Charles II., and of noblemen still later whose family-pride
+looked down upon the House of Hanover, and whose banded political power
+and freely lavished wealth checked the brilliant career of Napoleon, and
+maintained, the supremacy of England on sea and land!
+
+Enter, then, the House of Lords with these stirring memories, and
+confess frankly to a feeling of disappointment. Here are seated a few
+well-behaved gentlemen of all ages, often carelessly dressed, and almost
+invariably in English morning-costume. They are sleepily discussing some
+uninteresting question, and you are disposed to retire in view of the
+more powerful attractions of Drury Lane or the Haymarket, or the chance
+of something better worth hearing in the House of Commons. Take my
+advice, and wait until the adjournment. It will not be long, and by
+leaving now you may lose an important debate and the sight of some men
+whose fame is bounded only by the limits of Christendom. Even now there
+is a slight stir in the House. A nobleman has entered whose movements
+you will do well to follow. He takes his place just at the left of the
+Lord-Chancellor, but remains seated only for a moment. If you are
+familiar with the pencil of Punch, you will recognize him at a glance. A
+thin, wiry, yet muscular frame, a singularly marked and expressive face
+and mobile features, a nose that defies description, a high cravat like
+a poultice covered with a black silk bandage, clothes that seem to have
+been made for a much larger man, and always a pair of old-fashioned
+checked trousers,--of course, this can only be Lord Brougham. He is
+eighty-five years old, and yet his physical activity would do no
+injustice to a man in the prime of life. If you watch him a few moments,
+you will have abundant evidence of his restless energy. While we look,
+he has crossed to the opposite side of the House, and is enjoying a
+hearty laugh with the Bishop of Oxford. The round, full face of
+"Slippery Sam" (as he is disrespectfully called throughout England) is
+beaming with appreciative delight; but before the Bishop has time to
+reply, the titled humorist is on the wing again, and in an instant we
+see him seated between Earl Granville and the Duke of Somerset,
+conversing with all the vivacity and enthusiasm of a school-boy. In a
+moment he is in motion again, and has shaken hands with half a dozen
+peers. Undeterred by the supernaturally solemn countenance of the
+Marquis of Normanby, he has actually addressed a joke to that dignified
+fossil, and has passed on without waiting to observe its effect. A few
+words with Earl Derby, a little animated talk with the Earl of
+Ellenborough, and he has made the circuit of the House, everywhere
+received with a welcoming smile and a kindly grasp of the hand, and
+everywhere finding willing and gratified listeners. Possibly that is
+pardoned to his age and eminence which would be resented as impertinence
+in a younger man, but certainly he enjoys a license accorded to no one
+else in this aristocratic assembly.
+
+The dull debate of the past hour is now concluded, the House is thin,
+and there are indications of immediate adjournment. Remain a little
+longer, however, and your patience may possibly be richly rewarded.
+There is no order in the discussion of topics, and at any moment while
+the House continues in session there may spring up a debate calling out
+all the ability of the leading peers in attendance. After a short pause
+the quiet is broken by an aged nobleman on the opposition benches. He
+rises slowly and feebly with the assistance of a cane, but his voice is
+firm and his manner is forcible. That he is a man of mark is evident
+from the significant silence and the deferential attention with which
+his first words are received. You ask his name, and with ill-disguised
+amazement at your ignorance a gentleman by your side informs you that
+the speaker is Lord Lyndhurst.
+
+Perhaps the life of no public man in England has so much of interest to
+an American as that of this distinguished nobleman. Born in Boston while
+we were still in a condition of colonial dependence, he has lived to see
+his native land emerge from her state of vassalage, pass through a
+long-protracted struggle for liberty with the most powerful nation on
+earth, successfully maintain her right to be free and independent,
+advance with giant strides in a career of unexampled prosperity, assume
+an undisputed position as one of the great powers of Christendom, and
+finally put forth the most gigantic efforts to crush a rebellion
+compared with which the conspiracy of Catiline was but the impotent
+uprising of an angry dwarf.
+
+Lord Lyndhurst was called to the bar of England in 1804. It was before
+the splendid forensic successes of Erskine had been rewarded by a seat
+on the wool-sack, or Wellington had completed his brilliant and decisive
+campaign in India, or the military glory of Napoleon had culminated at
+Austerlitz, or Pitt, turning sadly from the map of Europe and saying,
+"Henceforth we may close that map for half a century," had gone
+broken-hearted to an early grave, or Nelson had defeated the combined
+navies of France and Spain at Trafalgar. Lord Byron had not yet entered
+Cambridge University, Sir Walter Scott had not published his first poem,
+and Canova was still in the height of his well-earned fame. It was
+before the first steamboat of Robert Fulton had vexed the quiet waters
+of the Hudson, or Aaron Burr had failed in his attempted treason, or
+Daniel Welter had entered upon his professional career, or Thomas
+Jefferson had completed his first official term as President of the
+United States.
+
+Lord Lyndhurst's advancement to the highest honors of his profession and
+to a commanding place in the councils of his adopted country was rapid
+almost beyond precedent. He was appointed Solicitor-General in 1819,
+Attorney-General in 1823, Master of the Rolls in 1826, and
+Lord-Chancellor in 1827. He remained in this office until 1830, and
+retired only to be created Lord-Chief-Baron of the Exchequer. In 1835 he
+was again appointed Lord-Chancellor, and once more, for the third time,
+in 1841.
+
+The characteristic qualities of the oratory of Lord Lyndhurst, when in
+his prime, were perfect coolness and self-possession, a most pleasing
+and plausible manner, singular ingenuity in dealing with a difficult
+question or in weakening the effect of an argument really unanswerable,
+a clear and musical voice, great ease and felicity of expression, and a
+wonderful command, always discreetly used, of all the weapons of irony
+and invective. He is, perhaps, the only nobleman in the House of Lords
+whom Lord Brougham has ever feared to encounter. All these elements of
+successful oratory Lord Lyndhurst has retained to an extraordinary
+degree until within a year or two.
+
+I chanced to hear this remarkable man during an evening in the month of
+July, 1859. The House of Lords was thinly attended. There had been a
+short and uninteresting debate on "The Atlantic-Telegraph Bill," and an
+early adjournment seemed certain. But at this juncture Lord Lyndhurst
+rose, and, after adverting to the fact that he had previously given
+notice of his design to draw their lordships' attention to the military
+and naval defences of the country, proceeded to address the House upon
+this question. It should be borne in mind that this was a period of
+great and engrossing excitement in England, created by the supposed
+danger of invasion by France. Volunteer rifle-companies were springing
+up all over the kingdom, newspapers were filled with discussions
+concerning the sufficiency of the national defences, and speculations on
+the chances for and against such an armed invasion. There was,
+meanwhile, a strong peace-party which earnestly deprecated all agitation
+of the subject, maintained that the sentiments of the French Emperor and
+the French nation were most friendly to England, and contended that to
+incur largely increased expenses for additional war-preparations was
+unnecessary, impolitic, and ruinously extravagant. At the head of this
+party were Cobden and Bright.
+
+It was to answer these arguments, to convince England that there was a
+real and positive peril, and to urge upon Her Majesty's Government the
+paramount importance of preparing to meet not only a possible, but a
+probable danger, that Lord Lyndhurst addressed the House of Lords. He
+began by impressing upon their lordships the fact that the policy which
+he advocated was not aggressive, but strictly defensive. He reviewed the
+history of previous attempts to invade England. He pointed out the
+significant circumstance, that these attempts had hitherto failed mainly
+by reason of the casualties to which sailing-vessels were always
+exposed. He pressed upon their attention the change which
+steam-navigation had recently wrought in naval warfare. He quoted the
+pithy remark of Lord Palmerston, that "steam had converted the Channel
+into a river, and thrown a bridge across it."
+
+He demonstrated from recent history the facility with which France could
+transport large forces by sea to distant points. Then, in tones
+tremulous with emotion, he drew upon the resources of his own marvellous
+memory. "I have experienced, my lords, something like a sentiment of
+humiliation in going through these details. I recollect the day when
+every part of the opposite coast was blockaded by an English fleet. I
+remember the victory of Camperdown, and that of St. Vincent, won by Sir
+J. Jervis. I do not forget the great victory of the Nile, nor, last of
+all, that triumphant fight at Trafalgar, which almost annihilated the
+navies of France and Spain, I contrast the position which we occupied at
+that period with that which we now hold. I recollect the expulsion of
+the French from Egypt, the achievement of victory after victory in
+Spain, the British army established in the South of France, and then the
+great battle by which that war was terminated. I cannot glance back over
+that series of events without feeling some degree of humiliation when I
+am called upon to state in this House the measures which I deem it to be
+necessary to take in order to provide for the safety of the country."
+
+Then pausing a moment and overcoming his evident emotion, he continued,
+with a force of manner and dignity of bearing which no words can fitly
+describe,--"But I may be asked, 'Why do you think such measures
+requisite? Are we not in alliance with France? Are we not on terms of
+friendship with Russia? What other power can molest us?' To these
+questions, my lords, my answer shall be a short and simple one. I will
+not consent to live in dependence on the friendship or forbearance of
+any country. I rely solely on my own vigor, my own exertion, and my own
+intelligence." It will be readily believed that cheer after cheer rang
+through the House when this bold and manly announcement was made.
+
+Then, after alluding to the immense armament by sea and land which
+France had hurled with such incredible rapidity upon the Austrian Empire
+during the recent war in Italy, he concluded by saying,--"Are we to sit
+supine on our own shores, and not to prepare the means necessary in case
+of war to resist that power? I do not wish to say that we should do this
+for any aggressive purpose. What I insist upon is, that we are bound to
+make every effort necessary for our own shelter and protection. Beside
+this, the question of expense and of money sinks into insignificance. It
+is the price we must pay for our insurance, and it is but a moderate
+price for so important an insurance. I know there are persons who will
+say, 'Let us run the risk.' Be it so. But, my lords, if the calamity
+should come, if the conflagration should take place, what words can
+describe the extent of the calamity, or what imagination can paint the
+overwhelming ruin that would fall upon us? I shall be told, perhaps,
+that these are the timid counsels of old age. My lords, for myself, I
+should run no risk. Personally I have nothing to fear. But to point out
+possible peril and how to guard effectively against it,--that is surely
+to be considered not as timidity, but as the dictate of wisdom and
+prudence. I have confined myself to facts that cannot be disputed. I
+think I have confined myself to inferences that no man can successfully
+contravene. I hope what I have said has been in accordance with your
+feelings and opinions. I shall terminate what I have to say in two
+emphatic words, '_Voe victis!_'--words of solemn and most significant
+import."
+
+So spoke the Nestor of the English nation. Has our country no lesson to
+learn from the well-considered words of this aged and accomplished
+statesman? Are we not paying a large insurance to secure permanent
+national prosperity? And is it not a wise and profitable investment, at
+any cost of blood and treasure, if it promises the supremacy of our
+Constitution, the integrity of our Union, and the impartial enforcement
+of our laws?
+
+When it is remembered that Lord Lyndhurst was at this time in his
+eighty-eighth year, this speech of nearly an hour in length, giving no
+evidence from first to last of physical debility or mental decay,
+delivered in a firm, clear, and unfaltering voice, admirable for its
+logical arrangement, most forcible and telling in its treatment of the
+subject, and irresistible in its conclusions, must be considered as
+hardly finding a parallel in ancient or modern times. We might almost
+call it his valedictory; for his lordship's subsequent speeches have
+been infrequent, and, with, we believe, a single exception, short, and
+he is now rarely, if ever, seen in the House of Lords.
+
+I shall not dwell upon the speeches that followed this earnest and
+eloquent appeal to the wisdom and patriotism of the listening peers.
+They were mainly confined to grateful recognition of the service which
+Lord Lyndhurst had rendered to the nation by his frank and fearless
+avowal of those principles which alone could preserve the honor and
+independence of England. The opposition urged the most vigorous
+preparations for resisting invasion, while Her Majesty's ministers
+disclaimed any intention of weakening or neglecting the national
+defences. As the speeches, however exhibited little worthy of mention
+beyond the presentation of these points, I have supposed that a more
+general description of some of the leading members of the Upper House
+would be more interesting to my readers than a detailed account of what
+was said upon this particular occasion.
+
+I have already alluded to the personal appearance and bearing of Lord
+Brougham. By reason of his great age, his long Parliamentary experience,
+(he has been in the House of Commons and House of Lords for nearly fifty
+years,) his habit of frequent speaking, and the commanding ability of
+many of his public efforts, his name as an orator is perhaps more widely
+known, and his peculiar style of declamation more correctly appreciated,
+than those of any other man now living. It would therefore seem
+unnecessary to give any sketch of his oratory, or of his manner in
+debate. Very few educated men in this country are unfamiliar with his
+eloquent defence of Queen Caroline, or his most bitter attack upon Mr.
+Canning, or his brilliant argument for Mr. Williams when prosecuted by
+the Durham clergy. Lord Brougham retains to this day the same fearless
+contempt of all opposition, the same extravagant and often inconsistent
+animosity to every phase of conservative policy, and the same fiery zeal
+in advocating every measure which he has espoused, that have ever
+characterized his erratic career. The witty author of "The Bachelor of
+the Albany" has tersely, and not without a certain spice of truth,
+described him as "a man of brilliant incapacity, vast and various
+misinformation, and immense moral requirements."
+
+The Duke of Argyle deserves more than a passing mention. Although
+comparatively a young man, he has already had a most creditable career,
+and given new lustre to an old and honored name. In politics he is a
+decided and consistent Liberal, and he merits the favorable
+consideration of all loyal Americans from the fact that he has not
+failed on every proper occasion to advocate our cause with such
+arguments as show clearly that he fully understands our position and
+appreciates the importance of the principles for which we are
+contending. It is a curious coincidence, that his style of address bears
+a close resemblance to what may be called the American manner. Rapid,
+but distinct, in utterance, facile and fluent in speech, natural and
+graceful in gesticulation, he might almost be transplanted to the halls
+of Congress at Washington without betraying his foreign birth and
+education.
+
+Lord Derby is undoubtedly the most skillful Parliamentary tactician and
+the most accomplished speaker in the House of Lords. In 1834, (when he
+was a member of the House of Commons,) Macaulay said of him, that "his
+knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembled an
+instinct." He is the acknowledged leader of the Tories or Conservatives
+in England, and dictates the policy of his party with absolute
+despotism. Belonging to one of the oldest peerages in the kingdom,
+having already filled some of the most important offices in Her
+Majesty's Government, occupying the highly honorable position of
+Chancellor of the University of Oxford, (as successor of the first Duke
+of Wellington,) an exact and finished scholar, enjoying an immense
+income, and the proprietor of vast landed estates, he may be justly
+considered one of the best types of England's aristocracy. He has that
+unmistakable air of authority without the least alloy of arrogance, that
+"pride in his port," which quietly asserts the dignity of long descent.
+As a speaker, his manner is impressive and forcible, with a rare command
+of choice language, an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of all
+subjects connected with the administration of public affairs, and that
+entire self-control which comes from life-long contact on terms of
+equality with the best society in Europe and a thorough confidence in
+his own mental resources. Lord Derby is pre�minently a Parliamentary
+orator, and furnishes one of the unusual instances where a reputation
+for eloquence earned in the House of Commons has been fully sustained by
+a successful trial in the House of Lords.
+
+Another debater of marked ability in this body is Dr. Samuel
+Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He is the third son of William
+Wilberforce, the celebrated philanthropist, but by no means inherits the
+simplicity of character and singular absence of all personal ambition
+which made his father so widely beloved and respected. He is known as
+the leading exponent of High-Church views, and has been heard in the
+House of Lords on every question directly or indirectly affecting the
+interests of the Establishment. It was long ago said of him, that, had
+he been in political life, he would surely and easily have risen to the
+position of Premier. He has for years been charged with a marked
+proclivity to the doctrines of the Puseyites; and his adroitness in
+baffling all attempted investigation into the manner in which he has
+conducted the discipline of his diocese has perhaps contributed more
+than any other cause to fasten upon him the significant _sobriquet_ to
+which I have already alluded.
+
+Any sketch of the prominent members of the House of Lords would be
+imperfect which should omit to give some account of Lord Westbury, the
+present Lord-High-Chancellor. Having been Solicitor-General in two
+successive Administrations, he was filling for the second time the
+position of Attorney-General, when, upon the death of Lord Campbell, he
+was raised to the wool-sack. As a Chancery practitioner he was for years
+at the head of his profession, and is supposed to have received the
+largest income ever enjoyed by an English barrister. During the four
+years next preceding his elevation to the peerage his average annual
+earnings at the bar were twenty thousand pounds. In the summer of 1860
+it was my good fortune to hear the argument of Lord Westbury (then Sir
+Richard Bethell) in a case of great interest and importance, before
+Vice-Chancellor Wood. The point at issue involved the construction of a
+marriage-settlement between the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Prince
+Borghese of Rome, drawn up on the occasion of the marriage of the Prince
+with Lady Talbot, second daughter of the Earl. The interpretation of the
+terms of the contract was by express stipulation to be in accordance
+with the Roman common law. A commission sent to Rome to ascertain the
+meaning of certain provisions contained in the contract resulted in
+several folio volumes, embodying "the conflicting opinions of the most
+eminent Roman lawyers," supported by references to the Canonists, the
+decisions of the "Sacred Rota," the great text-writers upon
+jurisprudence, the Institutes and Pandects, and ascending still higher
+to the laws of the Roman Republic and the Augustan era.
+
+The leading counsel in the kingdom were retained in the case, and
+unusual public interest was enlisted. The amount at stake was twenty
+thousand pounds, and it was estimated that nearly, if not quite, that
+amount had already been consumed in costs. Legal proceedings are not an
+inexpensive luxury anywhere; but "the fat contention and the flowing
+fee" have a significance to English ears which we can hardly appreciate
+in this country.
+
+It will be at once apparent even to the unprofessional reader that most
+difficult and complicated questions were presented by this
+case,--questions turning on the exact interpretation of contracts,
+involving delicate verbal distinctions, and demanding a thorough
+comprehension of an immense and unwieldy mass of Roman law embraced in
+the dissenting _dicta_ of Roman lawyers. It required the exercise of the
+very highest legal ability, trained and habituated by long and patient
+discipline to grapple with great issues.
+
+The argument of Sir Richard Bethell abundantly demonstrated his capacity
+to satisfy the demands of the occasion, and displayed most triumphantly
+his perfect mastery of the whole subject. As the time drew near when he
+was expected to close for the defence, barristers and students-at-law
+began to flock into the small and inconveniently arranged courtroom. A
+stranger and a foreigner could not but see at once that the
+Attorney-General was the cynosure of all eyes. And, indeed, no one in
+the room more thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was the central
+and controlling attraction than Sir Richard himself. I must be pardoned
+for using an English slang-phrase, but I can convey the impression which
+he inevitably makes upon a spectator in no other way than by saying that
+he is "a most magnificent swell." And I do this with the more confidence
+as I have heard him characterized in precisely these words by members of
+the English bar. Every motion, every attitude, indicates an intense
+self-consciousness. The Earl of Chatham had not a greater passion for
+theatrical effect, nor has a more consummate and finished actor ever
+graced the stage. If the performance had been less perfect, it would
+have been ludicrous in the extreme; for it did not overlook the minutest
+details. He could not examine his brief, or make a suggestion to one of
+his associates, or note an important point in the argument of opposing
+counsel, or listen to an intimation of opinion from the Bench, without
+an obvious eye to dramatic propriety. During the trial, an attorney's
+clerk handed him a letter, and the air with which it was opened, read,
+and answered was of itself a study. Yet it was all in the highest style
+of the art. No possible fault could be found with the execution. Not a
+single spectator ventured to smile. The supremacy of undoubted genius
+was never more apparent, and never exacted nor received more willing
+worship. Through the kindness of a friendly barrister I was introduced
+to one of the juniors of the Attorney-General,--a stripling of about
+fifty years of age. While we were conversing about the case, Sir Richard
+turned and made some comment upon the conduct of the trial; but my
+friend would no more have thought of introducing me to the leader of the
+bar than he would have ventured to stop the carriage of the Queen in
+Hyde Park and present me then and there to Her Majesty.
+
+I remember as well as if it were but yesterday how attorneys and junior
+counsel listened with the utmost deference to every suggestion which he
+condescended to address to them, how narrowly the law-students watched
+him, as if some legal principle were to be read in his cold, hard
+countenance, and, as he at last rose slowly and solemnly to make his
+long-expected argument, how court, bar, and by-standers composed
+themselves to hear. He spoke with great deliberation and distinctness,
+with singular precision and propriety of language, without any parade of
+rhetoric or attempt at eloquence. After a very short and appropriate
+exordium, he proceeded directly to the merits of the case. His words
+were well-weighed, and his manner was earnest and impressive. It was, in
+short, the perfection of reason confidently addressed to a competent
+tribunal.
+
+And yet his manner was by no means that of a man seeking to persuade a
+superior, but rather that of one comparing opinions with an equal, if
+not an inferior mind, elevated by some accident to a position of
+factitious importance. One could not but feel that here was a power
+behind the throne greater than the throne itself.
+
+It cannot be doubted that this consciousness of mental and professional
+pre�minence, sustained by the unanimous verdict of public opinion, has
+given to Lord Westbury a defiant, if not an insolent bearing. The story
+is current at the English bar, that, some years ago, when offered a seat
+on the Bench, with a salary of five thousand pounds, he promptly
+declined, saying, "I would rather earn ten thousand pounds a year by
+talking sense than five thousand pounds a year by hearing other men talk
+nonsense." Anecdotes are frequent in illustration of his supercilious
+treatment of attorneys and clients while he was a barrister. And since
+his elevation to the wool-sack there has been no abatement or
+modification of his offensive manner. His demeanor toward counsel
+appearing before him has been the subject of constant and indignant
+complaint. It will be remembered by some of my readers, that, not long
+since, during a session of the House of Lords, he gave the lie direct to
+one of the peers,--an occurrence almost without precedent in that
+decorous body. Far different from this was the tone in which Lord
+Thurlow, while Lord-Chancellor, asserted his independence and vindicated
+his title to respect in his memorable rebuke addressed to the Duke of
+Grafton. If the testimony of English travellers in this country is to be
+believed, the legislative assemblies of our own land have hitherto
+enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this species of retort.
+
+The House of Lords contains other peers of marked ability and protracted
+Parliamentary experience, among whom are Earl Granville, the Earl of
+Ellenborough, the Duke of Somerset, and the Earl of Shaftesbury; but we
+cannot dwell in detail upon their individual characteristics as
+speakers, or upon the share they have severally taken in the public
+councils, without extending this article beyond its legitimate limits.
+
+As genius is not necessarily or usually transmitted from generation to
+generation, while a seat in the House of Lords is an inheritable
+privilege, it will be readily believed that there is a considerable
+number of peers with no natural or acquired fitness for legislative
+duties,--men whose dullness in debate, and whose utter incapacity to
+comprehend any question of public interest or importance, cannot be
+adequately described. They speak occasionally, from a certain
+ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are
+obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are
+greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been
+discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and
+canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about
+what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an
+evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while
+noblemen of this stamp are quieting their tender consciences by a
+statement of their views upon the subject under discussion, will be sure
+to retire with a very unfavorable and wholly incorrect estimate of the
+speaking talent of English peers.
+
+It would hardly seem necessary to devote time or space to those members
+of the House of Lords who are rarely, if ever, present at the debates.
+As has been already stated, the whole number of peers is about four
+hundred and sixty, of whom less than twenty-five are minors, while the
+average attendance is less than fifty. The right to vote by proxy is a
+peculiar and exclusive privilege of the Upper House, and vicarious
+voting to a great extent is common on all important issues. Macaulay,
+many years ago, pronounced the House of Lords "a small and torpid
+audience"; and certainly, since the expression of this opinion, there
+has been no increase of average attendance. A considerable proportion of
+the absentees will be found among the "fast noblemen" of the
+kingdom,--the men who prostitute their exalted social position to the
+basest purposes, squandering their substance and wasting their time in
+degrading dissipation, the easy prey of accomplished sharpers, and a
+burning disgrace to their order. Sometimes, indeed, they pause on the
+brink of utter ruin, only to become in their turn apostles of iniquity,
+and to lure others to a like destruction. The unblushing and successful
+audacity of these titled _rou�s_ is beginning to attract the attention
+and awaken the fears of the better part of the English people. Their
+pernicious example is bearing most abundant and bitter fruit in the
+depraved morals of what are called the "lower classes" of society, and
+their misdeeds are repeated in less fashionable quarters, with less
+brilliant surroundings. Against this swelling tide of corrupting
+influence the press of England is now raising its warning voice, and the
+statements which are publicly and unreservedly made, and the predictions
+which are confidently given, are very far from being welcome to English
+eyes or grateful to English ears.
+
+Another class of the House of Lords, and it is a large one, is most
+happily characterized by Sydney Smith in his review of "Granby." "Lord
+Chesterton we have often met with, and suffered a good deal from his
+lordship: a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of
+the conversation, saying things in ten words which required only two,
+and evidently convinced that he is making a great impression; a large
+man, with a large head, and a very landed manner; knowing enough to
+torment his fellow-creatures, not to instruct them; the ridicule of
+young ladies, and the natural butt and target of wit. It is easy to talk
+of carnivorous animals and beasts of prey; but does such a man, who lays
+waste a whole civilized party of beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy
+he spoils and the misery he creates in the course of his life, and that
+any one who listens to him through politeness would prefer toothache or
+ear-ache to his conversation? Does he consider the great uneasiness
+which ensues, when the company has discovered a man to be an extremely
+absurd person, at the same time that it is absolutely impossible to
+convey by words or manner the most distant suspicion of the discovery?"
+
+Now, most unfortunately, the noble House of Chesterton is still extant,
+and its numerous representatives cherish with jealous care every
+inherited absurdity of the family. Their favorite field of operations is
+the House of Lords, partly because the strict proprieties of the place
+protect them from rude and inconvenient interruption, and partly because
+they can be sure of a "fit audience found, though few,"--an audience
+of equals, whom it is no condescension to address. In the House of
+Commons they would be coughed down or groaned down before they had
+wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift
+suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the
+courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of
+human life. There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords
+during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his
+morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and
+exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. That
+such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so
+frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and
+the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying
+circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike
+opinions are not confined to democratic deliberative assemblies, and
+that the choicest advantages of education, literary and political, are
+not at all inconsistent with ignorance and arrogance.
+
+But we will allow his lordship to tell his own story. Here is his set
+speech, only slightly modified from evening to evening, as may be
+demanded by the difference in the questions under debate.
+
+"My lords, the noble lord who has just taken his seat, although, I am
+bound to say, presenting his view of the case with that candor which my
+noble friend (if the noble lord will allow me to call him so) always
+displays, yet, my lords, I cannot but add, omitted one important feature
+of the subject. Now, my lords, I am exceedingly reluctant to take up the
+time of your lordships with my views upon the subject-matter of this
+debate; yet, my lords, as the noble and learned lord who spoke last but
+one, as well as the noble earl at the head of Her Majesty's Government,
+and the noble marquis who addressed your lordships early in the evening,
+have all fallen into the same mistake, (if these noble lords will permit
+me to presume that they could be mistaken,) I must beg leave to call
+your lordships' attention to the significant fact, that each and all of
+these noble lords have failed to point out to your lordships, that,
+important and even conclusive as the arguments and statistics of their
+lordships may at first sight appear, yet they have not directed your
+lordships to the very suspicious circumstance that our noble ancestors
+have never discovered the necessity of resorting to this singular
+expedient.
+
+"For myself, my lords, I confess that I am filled with the most gloomy
+forebodings for the future of this country, when I hear a question of
+this transcendent importance gravely discussed by noble lords without
+the slightest allusion to this vital consideration. I beg to ask noble
+lords, Are we wiser than our forefathers? Are any avenues of information
+open to us which were closed to them? Were they less patriotic, less
+intelligent, less statesmanlike, than the present generation? Why, then,
+I most earnestly put it to your lordships, should we disregard, or,
+certainly, lose sight of their wisdom and their experience? I implore
+noble lords to pause before it is too late. I solemnly call upon them to
+consider that the proposed measure is, after all, only democracy under a
+thin disguise. Has it never occurred to noble lords that this project
+did not originate in this House? that its warmest friends and most
+ardent and persevering advocates are found among those who come from the
+people, and who, from the very nature of the case, are incompetent to
+decide upon what will be for the, best interests of the kingdom? My
+lords, I feel deeply upon this subject, and I must be pardoned for
+expressing myself in strong terms. I say again, that I see here the
+clearest evidence of democratic tendencies, a contempt for existing and
+ancient institutions, and an alarming want of respect for time-honored
+precedents, which, I am bound to say, demand our prompt and indignant
+condemnation," etc., etc., etc.[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: If any one of my readers is inclined to suspect that I have
+drawn upon my imagination for this specimen speech, I will only say,
+that, if he were my bitterest enemy, I could wish him no more severe
+punishment than to undergo as I have done, (_horresco referens_,) an
+hour of the Marquis of Normanby, the Earl of Malmesbury, and a few other
+kindred spirits. If he have no opportunity of subjecting the truth of my
+statement and the accuracy of my report to this most grievous test, I
+beg to assure him that I have given no fancy sketch, but that I have
+heard speeches from these noblemen in precisely this tone and to exactly
+this effect.]
+
+This is the regular speech, protracted in the same strain for perhaps
+half an hour. Of the manner of the noble orator I will not venture a
+description. Any attempt to convey an idea of the air of omniscience
+with which these dreary platitudes are delivered would surely result in
+failure. It is enough to say that the impression which the noble lord
+leaves upon an unprejudiced and un-English mind is in all respects
+painful. Indeed, one sees at a glance how absolutely hopeless would be
+any finite effort to convince him of the absurdity of his positions or
+the weakness of his understanding. There he stands, a solemn, shallow,
+conceited, narrow-minded, imperturbable, impracticable, incorrigible
+blockhead, on whom everything in the shape of argument is utterly
+wasted, and from whom all the arrows of wit and sarcasm fall harmless to
+the ground. In fact, he is perfectly proof against any intellectual
+weapons forged by human skill or wielded by mortal arm, and he awaits
+and receives every attack with a stolid and insulting indifference which
+must be maddening to an opponent.
+
+I hasten to confess my entire incapacity to describe the uniform
+personal bearing of a Chesterton in or out of the House of Lords. It is
+strictly _sui generis_. It has neither the quiet, unassuming dignity of
+the Derbys, the Shaftesburys, or the Warwicks, nor the vulgar vanity of
+the untravelled Cockney. It simply defies accurate delineation. Dickens
+has attempted to paint the portrait of such a character in "Bleak
+House"; but Sir Leicester Dedlock, even in the hands of this great
+artist, is not a success,--merely because, in the case of the Baronet,
+selfishness and self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with
+your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as
+much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A
+genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own
+theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the
+French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and
+exclaiming, "G---- d----! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is unlike
+the Englishman of real life. Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass
+in his right eye, nor commence every other sentence with "Aw! weally
+now." He does not stare you out of countenance in a _caf�_, nor wonder
+"what the Devil that fellaw means by his insolence." So much by way of
+negative description. To appreciate him positively, one must see him and
+hear him. No matter when or where you encounter him, you will find him
+ever the same; and you will at last conclude that his manners are not
+unnatural to a very weak man inheriting the traditions of an ancient and
+titled family, and educated from childhood to believe that he belongs to
+a superior order of beings.
+
+Of course the strong point of a Chesterton is what he calls his
+"conservatism." He values everything in proportion to its antiquity, and
+prefers a time-honored abuse to a modern blessing. With a former Duke of
+Somerset, he would pity Adam, "because he had no ancestors." His
+sympathies, so far as he has any sentiments which deserve to be
+dignified by that name, are ever on the side of tyranny. He condescends
+to give his valuable sanction to the liberal institutions of England,
+not because they are liberal, but because they are English. Next after
+the Established Church, the reigning sovereign and the royal family, his
+own order and his precious self, his warmest admiration is bestowed on
+some good old-fashioned, thorough-going, grinding despotism. He defends
+the Emperor of Austria, and considers the King of Naples a much-abused
+monarch.
+
+If his lordship has ever been in diplomatic life,--an event highly
+probable,--he becomes the most intolerable nuisance that ever belied the
+noblest sentiments of civilized society or blocked the wheels of public
+debate. Flattered by the interested attention of despotic courts, his
+poor weak head has been completely turned. He has seen everything _en
+couleur de rose_. He assures their lordships that he has never known a
+single well-authenticated case of oppression of the lower classes, while
+it is within his personal knowledge that many of the best families (in
+Italy, for instance) have been compelled to leave all their property
+behind them, and fly for their lives before an insolent and unreasoning
+mob. How he deluges the House with distorted facts and garbled
+statistics! How he warns noble lords against the wiles of Mazzini, the
+unscrupulous ambition of Victor Emmanuel, and the headlong haste of
+Garibaldi!
+
+Of course, his lordship's bitterest hatred and intensest aversion are
+reserved for democratic institutions. Against these he wages a constant
+crusade. Armed _cap-�-pie_ in his common-sense-proof coat of mail, he
+charges feebly upon them with his blunt lance, works away furiously with
+his wooden sword, and then ambles off with a triumphant air very
+ludicrous to behold. Democracy is the _b�te noir_ of all the
+Chestertons. They attack it not only because they consider it a recent
+innovation, but also because it threatens the permanence of their order.
+About the practical working of a republic they have no better
+information than they have about the institutions of Iceland or the
+politics of Patagonia. It is quite enough for them to know that the
+theory of democracy is based on the equality of man, and that where
+democracy prevails a privileged class is unknown.
+
+It is hardly necessary to add, that the present condition of the United
+Stales is a perfect godsend to the whole family of Chestertons. Have
+they not long predicted our disgrace and downfall? Have they not,
+indeed, ever since our unjustifiable Declaration of Independence,
+anticipated precisely what has happened? Have they not always and
+everywhere contended that a republic had no elements of national
+cohesion? In a word, have they not feared our growing power and
+population as only such base and ignoble spirits can fear the sure and
+steady progress of a rival nation? Unhappily, their influence in the
+councils of the kingdom is by no means inconsiderable. The prestige of
+an ancient family, the obsequious deference paid in England to exalted
+social position, and the power of patronage, all combine to confer on
+the Chestertons a commanding and controlling authority absurdly out of
+proportion to their intrinsic ability.
+
+There has been a prevalent notion in this country that England was
+slowly, but certainly, tending towards a more democratic form of
+government, and a more equal and equitable distribution of power among
+the different orders of society. This is very far from being the case.
+It has been well said, that "it is always considered a piece of
+impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a
+year has any opinions at all upon important subjects." But if this
+income is quadrupled, and the high honor of a seat in the House of Lords
+is superadded, it is not difficult to understand that the titled
+recipient of such a revenue will find that his opinions command the
+greatest consideration. The organization of the present Cabinet of
+England is a fresh and conclusive illustration of this principle. It is
+not too much to say, that at this moment the home and foreign
+administration of the government is substantially in the hands of the
+House of Lords. Indeed, the aristocratic element of English society is
+as powerful to-day as it has been at any time during the past century.
+To fortify this statement by competent authority, we make an extract
+from a leader in the London "Times," on the occasion of the elevation of
+Lord John Russell to the peerage. "But however welcome to the House of
+Lords may be the accession of Lord John Russell, the House of Commons,
+we apprehend, will contemplate it with very little satisfaction. While
+the House of Lords does but one-twentieth part of the business of the
+House of Commons, it boasts a lion's share of the present
+administration. Three out of our five Secretaries of State, the
+Lord-Chancellor, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Lord-President of
+the Council, the Postmaster-General, the Lord Privy Seal, all hold seats
+in the Upper House, while the Home-Secretary, and the Secretary for
+India, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
+the President of the Board of Trade, the President of the Poor-Law
+Board, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Secretary for
+Ireland hold seats in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell goes to
+give more to that which had already too much. At the present moment, the
+two ministers whose united departments distribute between twenty and
+thirty millions of the national revenue sit in the House which does not
+represent the people. In voting the army and navy estimates, the House
+of Commons received this year from the Under-Secretaries that
+information which they ought to have from the best and most authentic,
+sources. To these is now added the all-important department of Foreign
+Affairs; so that, if things remain as they are, the representatives of
+the people must be content to feed on second-hand information.... Most
+of us can remember a time when it was a favorite topic with popular
+agitators to expatiate on the number of lords which a government
+contained, as if every peer of Parliament wielded an influence
+necessarily hostile to the liberties of the country. We look down in the
+present age with contempt on such vulgar prejudices; but we seem to be
+running into the contrary extreme, when we allow almost all the
+important offices of our government to be monopolized by a chamber where
+there is small scope for rhetorical ability, and the short sittings and
+unbusiness-like habits of which make it very unsuited for the
+enforcement of ministerial responsibility. The statesmen who have charge
+of large departments of expenditure, like the army and navy, and of the
+highest interests of the nation, ought to be in the House of Commons, is
+necessarily superior to a member of the House of the House of Lords, but
+it is to the House of Commons that these high functionaries are
+principally accountable, and because, if they forfeit the confidence of
+the House of Commons, the House of Lords can avail them but little. The
+matter is of much importance and much difficulty. We can only hope that
+the opportunity of redressing this manifest imperfection in the
+structure of the present government will not be lost, and that the House
+of Commons may recover those political privileges which it has hitherto
+been its pride to enjoy."
+
+This distribution of power in the English Cabinet furnishes a sufficient
+solution of the present attitude of the English Government towards this
+country. The ruling classes of England can have no sincere sympathy with
+the North, because its institutions and instincts are democratic. They
+give countenance to the South, because at heart and in practice it is
+essentially an aristocracy. To remove the dangerous example of a
+successful and powerful republic, where every man has equal rights,
+civil and religious, and where a privileged order in Church and State is
+impossible, has become in the minds of England's governing classes an
+imperious necessity. Compared with the importance of securing this
+result, all other considerations weigh as nothing. Brothers by blood,
+language, and religion, as they have been accustomed to call us while we
+were united and formidable, we are now, since civil war has weakened us
+and great national questions have distracted our councils, treated as
+aliens, if not as enemies. On the other hand, the South, whose leaders
+have ever been first to take hostile ground against England, and whose
+"peculiar institution" has drawn upon us the eloquent and unsparing
+denunciations of English philanthropists, is just now in high favor with
+the "mother-country." Not only has the ill-disguised dislike of the
+Tories ripened into open animosity, not only are we the target for the
+shallow scorn of the Chestertons, (even a donkey may dare to kick a
+dying lion,) but we have lost the once strongly pronounced friendship of
+such ardent anti-slavery men as Lord Brougham and the Earl of
+Shaftesbury. Why is this? Does not the explanation lie in a nutshell? We
+were becoming too strong. We were disturbing the balance of power. We
+were demonstrating too plainly the inherent activity and irresistible
+energy of a purely democratic form of government. Therefore _Carthago
+delenda est_. "But yet the pity of it, Iago!" Mark how a Christian
+nation deals with a Christian ally. Our destruction is to be
+accomplished, not by open warfare, but by the delusive and dastardly
+pretence of neutrality. There is to be no diplomatic recognition of an
+independent Southern Confederacy, but a formidable navy is to be
+furnished to our enemies, and their armies are to be abundantly supplied
+with the munitions of war. But how? By the English Government? Oh, no!
+This would be in violation of solemn treaties. Earl Russell says, "We
+have long maintained relations of peace and amity" with the United
+States. England cannot officially recognize or aid the South without
+placing herself in a hostile attitude towards this country. Yet
+meanwhile English capitalists can publicly subscribe to the loan which
+our enemies solicit, and from English ship-yards a fleet of iron-clad
+war-vessels can be sent to lay waste our commerce and break our blockade
+of Southern ports. What the end will be no one may venture to foretell;
+but it needs no prophet to predict that many years will not obliterate
+from the minds of the American people the present policy of the English
+Cabinet, controlled as it is by the genius of English aristocracy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS.
+
+
+"The first time I saw Theodore Winthrop," said one to me a few days ago,
+"he came into my office with a common friend. They were talking as they
+entered, and Winthrop said, 'Yes, the fellows who came over in the
+Mayflower can't afford to do that!'
+
+"'There,' thought I to myself, 'there's another of the Mayflower men! I
+wish to my soul that ship had sunk on her voyage out!' But when I came
+to know him, I quickly learned that with him origin was not a matter of
+vain pride, but a fact inciting him to all nobleness of thought and
+life, and spurring him on to emulate the qualities of his ancestor."
+
+That is to say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he
+remembered that he "came over in the Mayflower," it was because he felt
+that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work,
+than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he wrote in the
+opening chapter of "John Brent," that "deeds of the heroic and chivalric
+times do not utterly disdain our day. There are men," he continues, "as
+ready to gallop for love and strike for love now as in the age of
+Amadis." Ay, and for a nobler love than the love of woman--for love of
+country, and of liberty--he was ready to strike, and to die.
+
+Ready to do, when the time came; but also--what required a greater
+soul--ready to wait in cheerful content till the fitting time should
+come. Think of these volumes lying in his desk at home, and he, their
+author, going about his daily tasks and pleasures, as hearty and as
+unrepining as though no whisper of ambition had ever come to his
+soul,--as though he had no slightest desire for the pleasant fame which
+a successful book gives to a young man. Think of it, O race of
+scribblers, to whom a month in the printer's hands seems a monstrous
+delay, and who bore publishers with half-finished manuscripts, as
+impatient hens begin, untimely, to cackle before the egg is laid.
+
+That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written
+these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide
+reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men
+and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself. That he should have let the
+manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more. But,
+much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was
+not that of the author, but of the actor. He has often told me that it
+was a pleasure to write,--probably such a pleasure as it is to an old
+tar to spin his yarns. His mind was active, stored with the accumulated
+facts of a varied experience. How keen an observer of Nature he was,
+those who have read "John Brent" or the "Canoe and Saddle" need not be
+told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that
+brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago,
+under the title of "Love and Skates." Our American life lost by his
+death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to
+the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as
+well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its
+manifestations.
+
+That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic
+spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however
+common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always
+something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with
+prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was
+none the less true,--was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true.
+Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature,
+or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature
+which concerns itself with American life. To him the hard-featured
+Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw
+the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that
+
+    "Poor lone Hannah,
+    Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"
+
+had somewhat besides coarse hands and red eyes. He was not tainted with
+the vicious habit of caricature, which is the excuse with which
+superficial and heartless writers impose their false art upon the
+public. Nor did he need that his heroes should wear kid gloves,--though
+he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew. "Armstrong of Oregon" was
+a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly
+traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that
+sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon
+mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless
+not too scrupulous in a "trade," has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities
+which draw us to him.
+
+To sit down to "John Brent" after rending one of the popular novels of
+these days, by one of the class of writers who imagine photography the
+noblest of arts, is like getting out of a fashionable "party" into the
+crisp air of a clear, starlight, December night. And yet Winthrop was a
+"society" man; one might almost say he knew that life better than the
+other, the freer, the nobler, which he loved to describe, as he loved to
+live it.
+
+A neat, active figure of a man, carefully dressed, as one who pays all
+proper honor to the body in which he walks about; a gentleman, not only
+in the broader and more generous sense, but also according to the
+narrower, conventional meaning of the term; plainly a scholarly man,
+fond of books, and knowing the best books; with that modest, diffident
+air which bookish men have; with a curious shyness, indeed, as of one
+who was not accustomed and did not like to come into too close contact
+with the every-day world: such Theodore Winthrop appeared to me. I
+recollect the surprise with which I heard--not from him--that he had
+ridden across the Plains, had camped with Lieutenant Strain, had
+"roughed it" in the roughest parts of our continent. But if you looked a
+little closely into the face, you saw in the fine lines of the mouth the
+determination of a man who can bear to carry his body into any peril or
+difficulty; and in the eye--he had the eye of a born sailor, an eye
+accustomed to measure the distance for a dangerous leap, quick to
+comprehend all parts of a novel situation--you saw there presence of
+mind, unfaltering readiness, and a spirit equal to anything the day
+might bring forth.
+
+In the Memoir prefixed to "Cecil Dreeme" Curtis has drawn a portrait,
+tender and true, of his friend and neighbor. The few words which have
+written themselves here tell of him only as he appeared to one who knew
+him less intimately, who saw him not often.
+
+I come now to speak of the writings which Winthrop left. These have the
+singular merit, that they are all American. From first to last, they are
+plainly the work of a man who had no need to go to Europe for characters
+or scenery or plot,--who valued and understood the peculiar life and
+the peculiar Nature of this continent, and, like a true artist and poet,
+chose to represent that life and Nature of which he was a part. His
+stories smack of the soil; his characters--especially in "John Brent,"
+where his own ride across the continent is dramatized--are as fresh and
+as true as only a true artist could make them. Take, for instance, the
+"Pike," the border-ruffian transplanted to a California "ranch,"--not a
+ruffian, as he says, but a barbarian.
+
+"America is manufacturing several new types of men. The Pike is one of
+the newest. He is a bastard pioneer. With one hand he clutches the
+pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of
+civilization. It is hard to understand how a man can have so little
+virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the
+soul, as they are to beauty in the face.
+
+"He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new
+race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith,
+which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He
+is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man
+into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair
+Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his
+walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths
+are to his words as Falstaff's sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese
+beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New-York aldermen, Digger
+Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are
+thorough-bred Pikes."
+
+This is not complimentary, but any one who has seen the creature knows
+that it is a portrait done by a first-rate artist.
+
+Take, again, that other vulgarer ruffian, "Jim Robinson," "a little man,
+stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a
+certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,"--and
+how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub
+into a still more disgusting butterfly!
+
+"I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple
+coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or
+a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged,
+patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters'
+House."
+
+Or, once more, that more saintly villain, the Mormon Elder Sizzum.
+
+"Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the pioneer
+and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had
+made of himself. He was clean shaved: clean shaving is a favorite
+coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black hair, growing rank from a
+muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears. A large white blossom of
+cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black
+dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except that his pantaloons
+were thrust into boots with the maker's name (Abel Gushing, Lynn, Mass.)
+stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct
+go-to-meetin' costume,--a Chadband of the Plains."
+
+When you see one of these men, you will know him again. Winthrop has
+sketched these rascals with a few touches, as felicitous as any of
+Dickens's, and they will bear his mark forever: _T.W. fecit._
+
+As for Jake Shamberlain, with his odd mixture of many religious and
+irreligious dialects, what there is of him is as good as Sam Weller or
+Mrs. Poyser.
+
+"'Hillo, Shamberlain!' hailed Brent, riding up to the train.
+
+"'Howdydo? Howdydo? No swap!' responded Jake, after the Indian fashion.
+'Bung my eyes, ef you're not the mate of all mates I'm glad to see! Pax
+vobiscrum, my filly! You look as fresh as an Aperel shad. Prais�d be the
+Lord,' continued he, relapsing into Mormon slang, 'who has sent thee
+again, like a brand from the burning, to fall into paths of pleasantness
+with the Saints, as they wander from the Promised Land to the mean
+section where the low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for hell!'"
+
+Or Jake's droll commentary on the story of Old Bridger, ousted from his
+fort, and robbed of his goods, by the Saints, in the name of the Prophet
+Brigham.
+
+"'It's olluz so,' says Jake; 'Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the
+increase. Not that Bridger's like Paul, any more 'n we're like Apollyon;
+but we're goan to have all the cider off his apple-trees.'"
+
+Or, again, Jake's compliments to "Armstrong of Oregon," that galloping
+Vigilant Committee of one.
+
+"I'll help you, if I know how, Armstrong. I ha'n't seen no two in my
+life, Old Country or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I'd do more for
+'n you and your brother. I've olluz said, ef the world was chock full of
+Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout
+just as well blow out their candle and go under a bushel-basket,--unless
+a half-bushel would kiver 'em."
+
+But the true hero of the book is the horse Don Fulano. It is easy to see
+that Winthrop was a first-rate horseman, from the loving manner in which
+he describes and dwells on the perfections of the matchless stallion.
+None but one who knew every point of a horse, none but one of the
+Centaur breed, could have drawn Don Fulano,--just as none but a born
+skater could have written those inimitable skating-scenes in his story
+of "Love and Skates."
+
+"He was an American horse,--so they distinguish in California one
+brought from the old States,--A SUPERB YOUNG STALLION, PERFECTLY BLACK,
+WITHOUT MARK. It was magnificent to see him, as he circled about me,
+fire in his eye, pride in his nostril, tail flying like a banner, power
+and grace from tip to tip. No one would ever mount him, or ride him,
+unless it was his royal pleasure. He was conscious of his representative
+position, and showed his paces handsomely."
+
+This is the creature who takes the lead in that stirring and matchless
+"Gallop of Three" to the Luggernel Spring, to quote from which would be
+to spoil it. It must be read entire.
+
+In the "Canoe and Saddle" is recorded Winthrop's long ride across the
+continent. Setting out in a canoe, from Port Townsend, in Vancouver's
+Island, he journeyed, without company of other white men, to the Salt
+Lake City and thence to "the States,"--a tedious and barbarous
+experience, heightened, in this account of it, by the traveller's cheery
+spirits, his ardent love of Nature, and capacity to describe the grand
+natural scenery, of the effect of which upon himself he says, at the
+end,--
+
+"And in all that period, while I was so near to Nature, the great
+lessons of the wilderness deepened into my heart day by day, the hedges
+of conventionalism withered away from my horizon, and all the pedantries
+of scholastic thought perished out of my mind forever."
+
+He bore hardships with the courage and imperturbable good-nature of a
+born gentleman. It is when men are starving, when the plating of romance
+is worn off by the chafe of severe and continued suffering,--it is then
+that "blood tells." Winthrop had evidently that keen relish for rough
+life which the gently nurtured and highly cultivated man has oftener
+than his rude neighbor, partly because, in his case, contrast lends a
+zest to the experience. Thus, when he camps with a gang of
+"road-makers," in the farthest Western wilderness,--a part of Captain
+McClellan's Pacific Railroad Expedition,--how thoroughly he enjoys the
+rough hospitality and rude wit of these pioneers!
+
+"In such a Platonic republic as this a man found his place according to
+his powers. The cooks were no base scullions; they were brethren, whom
+conscious ability, sustained by universal suffrage, had endowed with the
+frying-pan."
+
+"My hosts were a stalwart gang.... Their talk was as muscular as their
+arms. When these laughed, as only men fresh and hearty and in the open
+air can laugh, the world became mainly grotesque: it seemed at once a
+comic thing to live,--a subject for chuckling, that we were bipeds, with
+noses,--a thing to roar at, that we had all met there from the wide
+world, to hobnob by a frolicsome fire with tin pots of coffee, and
+partake of crisped bacon and toasted dough-boys in ridiculous abundance.
+Easy laughter infected the atmosphere. Echoes ceased to be pensive, and
+became jocose. A rattling humor pervaded the forest, and Green River
+rippled with noise of fantastic jollity. Civilization and its
+_dilettante_ diners-out sneer when Clodpole at Dives's table doubles his
+soup, knifes his fish, tilts his plate into his lap, puts muscle into
+the crushing of his _m�ringue_, and tosses off the warm beaker in his
+finger-bowl. Camps by Tacoma sneer not at all, but candidly roar, at
+parallel accidents. Gawky makes a cushion of his flapjack. Butterfingers
+drops his red-hot rasher into his bosom, or lets slip his mug of coffee
+into his boot drying at the fire,--a boot henceforth saccharine. A mule,
+slipping his halter, steps forward unnoticed, puts his nose into the
+circle, and brays resonant. These are the jocular boons of life, and at
+these the woodsmen guffaw with lusty good-nature. Coarse and rude the
+jokes may be, but not nasty, like the innuendoes of pseudo-refined
+cockneys. If the woodsmen are guilty of uncleanly wit, it differs from
+the uncleanly wit of cities as the mud of a road differs from the sticky
+slime of slums.
+
+"It is a stout sensation to meet masculine, muscular men at the brave
+point of a penetrating Boston hooihut,--men who are mates,--men to whom
+technical culture means nought,--men to whom myself am nought, unless I
+can saddle, lasso, cook, sing, and chop,--unless I am a man of nerve and
+pluck, and a brother in generosity and heartiness. It is restoration to
+play at cudgels of jocoseness with a circle of friendly roughs, not one
+of whom ever heard the word bore,--with pioneers, who must think and
+act, and wrench their living from the closed hand of Nature."
+
+And here is a dinner "in the open."
+
+"Upon the _carte du jour_ at Restaurant Sowee was written Grouse. 'How
+shall we have them?' said I, cook and convive, to Loolowcan, marmiton
+and convive. 'One of these cocks of the mountain shall be fried, since
+gridiron is not,' responded I to myself, after meditation; 'two shall be
+spitted and roasted; and, as Azrael may not want us before breakfast
+to-morrow, the fourth shall go upon the _carte de d�jeuner'_.
+
+"'O Pork! what a creature thou art!' continued I, in monologue, cutting
+neat slices of that viand with my bowie-knife, and laying them
+fraternally, three in a bed, in the frying-pan. 'Blessed be Moses, who
+forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispensations, heirs of
+all the ages, inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon cheaper! O Pork!
+what could campaigners do without thy fatness, thy leanness, thy
+saltness, thy portableness?'
+
+"Here Loolowcan presented me the three birds, plucked featherless as
+Plato's man. The two roasters we planted carefully on spits before a
+sultry spot of the fire. From a horizontal stick, supported on forked
+stakes, we suspended by a twig over each roaster an automatic baster, an
+inverted cone of pork, ordained to yield its spicy juices to the wooing
+flame, and drip bedewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters ripened
+deliberately, while keen and quick fire told upon the frier, the first
+course of our feast. Meanwhile I brewed a pot of tea, blessing Confucius
+for that restorative weed, as I had blessed Moses for his abstinence
+from porkers.
+
+"Need I say that the grouse were admirable, that everything was
+delicious, and the Confucian weed first chop? Even a scouse of mouldy
+biscuit met the approval of Loolowcan. Feasts cooked under the greenwood
+tree, and eaten by their cooks after a triumphant day of progress, are
+sweeter than the conventional banquets of languid Christendom."
+
+"Life in the Open Air"--containing sketches of travel among the
+mountains and lakes of Maine, as well as the story of "Love and Skates,"
+which has been spoken of, "The March of the Seventh Regiment,"
+"Washington as a Camp," an essay descriptive of Church's great picture,
+"The Heart of the Andes," and two fragments, one of them the charming
+commencement of a story which promised to be one of his best and most
+enjoyable efforts in this direction--is the concluding volume of
+Winthrop's collected writings. I speak of it in this place, because it
+is in some part a companion-book to the volumes we have been discussing.
+It is as full of buoyant life, of fresh and noble thought, of graceful
+wit and humor, as those; in parts it contains the most finished of his
+literary work. Few Americans who read it at the time will ever forget
+that stirring description of the march of the New-York Seventh; it is a
+piece of the history of our war which will live and be read as long as
+Americans read their history. It moved my blood, in the reading,
+tonight, as it did in those days--which seem already some centuries old,
+so do events crowd the retrospect--when we were all reading it in the
+pages of the "Atlantic." In the unfinished story of "Brightly's Orphan"
+there is a Jew boy from Chatham Street, an original of the first water,
+who, though scarce fairly introduced, will, I am sure, make a place for
+himself and for his author in the memories of all who relish humor of
+the best kind.
+
+"Cecil Dreeme" and "Edwin Brothertoft" are quite other books than these
+we have spoken of. Here Winthrop tried a different vein,--two different
+veins, perhaps. Both are stories of suffering and crime, stories of the
+world and society. In one it is a woman, in the other a man, who is
+wronged. One deals with New York city-life of the very present day; the
+other is a story of the Revolutionary War, and of Tories and Patriots.
+The popular verdict has declared him successful, even here. "Cecil
+Dreeme" has run through no less than fifteen editions.
+
+In this story we are shown New York "society" as doubtless Winthrop knew
+it to be. Yet the book has a curious air of the Old-World; it might be a
+story of Venice, almost. It tells us of Old-World vices and crimes, and
+the fittings and furnishings are of a piece. The localities, indeed, are
+sketched so faithfully, that a stranger to the city, coming suddenly, in
+his wanderings, upon Chrysalis College Buildings, could not fail to
+recognize them at once,--as indeed happened to a country friend of mine
+recently, to his great delight. But the men are Americans, bred and
+formed--and for the most part spoiled--in Europe; Americans who have
+gone to Paris before their time, if it be true, what a witty Bostonian
+said, that good Americans go to Paris when they die. With all this, the
+book has a strange charm, so that it takes possession of you in spite of
+yourself. It is as though it drew away the curtain, for one slight
+moment, from the mysteries which "society" decorously hides,--as though
+he who drew the curtain stood beside it, pointing with solemn finger and
+silent indignation to the baseness of which he gives you a glimpse. Yet
+even here the good carries the day, and that in no maudlin way, but
+because the true men are the better men.
+
+These, then, are Winthrop's writings,--the literary works of a young man
+who died at thirty-two, and who had spent a goodly part of his mature
+life in the saddle and the canoe, exploring his own country, and in
+foreign travel. As we look at the volumes, we wonder how he found time
+for so much; but when we have read, we wonder yet more at the excellence
+of all he wrote. In all and through all shines his own noble spirit; and
+thus these books of his, whose printed pages he never saw, will keep his
+memory green amongst us; for, through them, all who read may know that
+there wrote a true gentleman.
+
+Once he wrote,--
+
+    "Let me not waste in skirmishes my power,
+    In petty struggles. Rather in the hour
+    Of deadly conflict may I nobly die,
+    In my first battle perish gloriously."
+
+Even so he fell; but in these written works, as in his gallant death, he
+left with us lessons which will yet win battles for the good cause of
+American liberty, which he held dearest in his heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HILARY.
+
+
+                 Hilary,
+    Summer calls thee, o'er the sea!
+      Like white flowers upon the tide,
+      In and out the vessels glide;
+      But no wind on all the main
+      Sends thy blithe soul home again:
+    Every salt breeze moans for thee,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    Welcome Summer's step will be,
+      Save to those beside whose door
+      Doleful birds sit evermore
+      Singing, "Never comes he here
+      Who made every season's cheer!"
+    Dull the June that brings not thee,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    What strange world has sheltered thee?
+      Here the soil beneath thy feet
+      Rang with songs, and blossomed sweet;
+      Blue skies ask thee yet of Earth,
+      Blind and dumb without thy mirth:
+    With thee went her heart of glee,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    All things shape a sigh for thee!
+      O'er the waves, among the flowers,
+      Through the lapse of odorous hours,
+      Breathes a lonely, longing sound,
+      As of something sought, unfound:
+    Lorn are all things, lorn are we,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    Oh, to sail in quest of thee,
+      To the trade-wind's steady tune,
+      Past the hurrying monsoon,
+      Into torrid seas, that lave
+      Dry, hot sands,--a breathless grave,--
+    Sad as vain the search would be,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    Chase the sorrow from the sea!
+      Summer-heart, bring summer near,
+      Warm, and fresh, and airy-clear!
+      --Dead thou art not: dead is pain;
+      Now Earth sees and sings again:
+    Death, to hold thee, Life must be,
+                 Hilary!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DEBBY'S D�BUT.
+
+
+On a cheery June day Mrs. Penelope Carroll and her niece Debby Wilder
+were whizzing along on their way to a certain gay watering-place, both
+in the best of humors with each other and all the world beside. Aunt Pen
+was concocting sundry mild romances, and laying harmless plots for the
+pursuance of her favorite pastime, match-making; for she had invited her
+pretty relative to join her summer jaunt, ostensibly that the girl might
+see a little of fashionable life, but the good lady secretly proposed to
+herself to take her to the beach and get her a rich husband, very much
+as she would have proposed to take her to Broadway and get her a new
+bonnet; for both articles she considered necessary, but somewhat
+difficult for a poor girl to obtain.
+
+Debby was slowly getting her poise, after the excitement of a first
+visit to New York; for ten days of bustle had introduced the young
+philosopher to a new existence, and the working-day world seemed to have
+vanished when she made her last pat of butter in the dairy at home. For
+an hour she sat thinking over the good-fortune which had befallen her,
+and the comforts of this life which she had suddenly acquired. Debby was
+a true girl,--with all a girl's love of ease and pleasure; and it must
+not be set down against her that she surveyed her pretty travelling-suit
+with much complacency, rejoicing inwardly that she could use her hands
+without exposing fractured gloves, that her bonnet was of the newest
+mode, needing no veil to hide a faded ribbon or a last year's shape,
+that her dress swept the ground with fashionable untidiness, and her
+boots were guiltless of a patch,--that she was the possessor of a mine
+of wealth in two of the eight trunks belonging to her aunt, that she was
+travelling like any lady of the land with man-and maid-servant at her
+command, and that she was leaving work and care behind her for a month
+or two of novelty and rest.
+
+When these agreeable facts were fully realized, and Aunt Pen had fallen
+asleep behind her veil, Debby took out a book, and indulged in her
+favorite luxury, soon forgetting past, present, and future in the
+inimitable history of Martin Chuzzlewit. The sun blazed, the cars
+rattled, children cried, ladies nodded, gentlemen longed for the solace
+of prohibited cigars, and newspapers were converted into sun-shades,
+nightcaps, and fans; but Debby read on, unconscious of all about her,
+even of the pair of eyes that watched her from the opposite corner of
+the car. A gentleman with a frank, strong-featured face sat therein, and
+amused himself by scanning with thoughtful gaze the countenances of his
+fellow-travellers. Stout Aunt Pen, dignified even in her sleep, was a
+"model of deportment" to the rising generation; but the student of human
+nature found a more attractive subject in her companion, the girl with
+an apple-blossom face and merry brown eyes, who sat smiling into her
+book, never heeding that her bonnet was awry, and the wind taking
+unwarrantable liberties with her ribbons and her hair.
+
+Innocent Debby turned her pages, unaware that her fate sat opposite in
+the likeness of a serious, black-bearded gentleman, who watched the
+smiles rippling from her lips to her eyes with an interest that deepened
+as the minutes passed. If his paper had been full of anything but
+"Bronchial Troches" and "Spalding's Prepared Glue," he would have found
+more profitable employment; but it wasn't, and with the usual readiness
+of idle souls he fell into evil ways, and permitted curiosity, that
+feminine sin, to enter in and take possession of his manly mind. A great
+desire seized him to discover what book so interested his pretty
+neighbor; but a cover hid the name, and he was too distant to catch it
+on the fluttering leaves. Presently a stout Emerald-Islander, with her
+wardrobe oozing out of sundry paper parcels, vacated the seat behind the
+two ladies; and it was soon quietly occupied by the individual for whom
+Satan was finding such indecorous employment. Peeping round the little
+gray bonnet, past a brown braid and a fresh cheek, the young man's eye
+fell upon the words the girl was reading, and forgot to look away again.
+Books were the desire of his life; but an honorable purpose and an
+indomitable will kept him steady at his ledgers till he could feel that
+he had earned the right to read. Like wine to many another was an open
+page to him; he read a line, and, longing for more, took a hasty sip
+from his neighbor's cup, forgetting that it was a stranger's also.
+
+Down the page went the two pairs of eyes, and the merriment from Debby's
+seemed to light up the sombre ones behind her with a sudden shine that
+softened the whole face and made it very winning. No wonder they
+twinkled, for Elijah Pogram spoke, and "Mrs. Hominy, the mother of the
+modern Gracchi, in the classical blue cap and the red cotton
+pocket-handkerchief, came down the room in a procession of one." A low
+laugh startled Debby, though it was smothered like the babes in the
+Tower; and, turning, she beheld the trespasser scarlet with confusion,
+and sobered with a tardy sense of his transgression. Debby was not a
+starched young lady of the "prune and prism" school, but a frank,
+free-hearted little body, quick to read the sincerity of others, and to
+take looks and words at their real value. Dickens was her idol; and for
+his sake she could have forgiven a greater offence than this. The
+stranger's contrite countenance and respectful apology won her good-will
+at once; and with a finer courtesy than any Aunt Pen would have taught,
+she smilingly bowed her pardon, and, taking another book from her
+basket, opened it, saying, pleasantly,--
+
+"Here is the first volume, if you like it, Sir. I can recommend it as an
+invaluable consolation for the discomforts of a summer day's journey,
+and it is heartily at your service."
+
+As much surprised as gratified, the gentleman accepted the book, and
+retired behind it with the sudden discovery that wrong-doing has its
+compensation in the pleasurable sensation of being forgiven. Stolen
+delights are well known to be specially saccharine; and much as this
+pardoned sinner loved books, it seemed to him that the interest of the
+story flagged, and that the enjoyment of reading was much enhanced by
+the proximity of a gray bonnet and a girlish profile. But Dickens soon
+proved more powerful than Debby, and she was forgotten, till, pausing to
+turn a leaf, the young man met her shy glance, as she asked, with the
+pleased expression of a child who has shared an apple with a playmate,--
+
+"Is it good?"
+
+"Oh, very!"--and the man looked as honestly grateful for the book as the
+boy would have done for the apple.
+
+Only five words in the conversation, but Aunt Pen woke, as if the
+watchful spirit of propriety had roused her to pluck her charge from the
+precipice on which she stood.
+
+"Dora, I'm astonished at you! Speaking to strangers in that free manner
+is a most unladylike thing. How came you to forget what I have told you
+over and over again about a proper reserve?"
+
+The energetic whisper reached the gentleman's ear, and he expected to be
+annihilated with a look when his offence was revealed; but he was spared
+that ordeal, for the young voice answered, softly,--
+
+"Don't faint, Aunt Pen; I only did as I'd be done by; for I had two
+books, and the poor man looked so hungry for something to read that I
+couldn't resist sharing my 'goodies.' He will see that I'm a countrified
+little thing in spite of my fine feathers, and won't be shocked at my
+want of rigidity and frigidity; so don't look dismal, and I'll be prim
+and proper all the rest of the way,--if I don't forget it."
+
+"I wonder who he is; may belong to some of our first families, and in
+that case it might be worth while to exert ourselves, you know. Did you
+learn his name, Dora?" whispered the elder lady.
+
+Debby shook her head, and murmured, "Hush!"--but Aunt Pen had heard of
+matches being made in cars as well as in heaven; and as an experienced
+general, it became her to reconnoitre, when one of the enemy approached
+her camp. Slightly altering her position, she darted an
+all-comprehensive glance at the invader, who seemed entirely absorbed,
+for not an eyelash stirred during the scrutiny. It lasted but an
+instant, yet in that instant he was weighed and found wanting; for that
+experienced eye detected that his cravat was two inches wider than
+fashion ordained, that his coat was not of the latest style, that his
+gloves were mended, and his handkerchief neither cambric nor silk. That
+was enough, and sentence was passed forthwith,--"Some respectable clerk,
+good-looking, but poor, and not at all the thing for Dora"; and Aunt Pen
+turned to adjust a voluminous green veil over her niece's bonnet, "To
+shield it from the dust, dear," which process also shielded the face
+within from the eye of man.
+
+A curious smile, half mirthful, half melancholy, passed over their
+neighbor's lips; but his peace of mind seemed undisturbed, and he
+remained buried in his book till they reached ----, at dusk. As he
+returned it, he offered his services in procuring a carriage or
+attending to luggage; but Mrs. Carroll, with much dignity of aspect,
+informed him that her servants would attend to those matters, and,
+bowing gravely, he vanished into the night.
+
+As they rolled away to the hotel, Debby was wild to run down to the
+beach whence came the solemn music of the sea, making the twilight
+beautiful. But Aunt Pen was too tired to do anything but sup in her own
+apartment and go early to bed; and Debby might as soon have proposed to
+walk up the Great Pyramid as to make her first appearance without that
+sage matron to mount guard over her; so she resigned herself to pie and
+patience, and fell asleep, wishing it were to-morrow.
+
+At five, A.M., a nightcapped head appeared at one of the myriad windows
+of the ---- Hotel, and remained there as if fascinated by the miracle of
+sunrise over the sea. Under her simplicity of character and girlish
+merriment Debby possessed a devout spirit and a nature full of the real
+poetry of life, two gifts that gave her dawning womanhood its sweetest
+charm, and made her what she was. As she looked out that summer dawn
+upon the royal marriage of the ocean and the sun, all petty hopes and
+longings faded out of sight, and her young face grew luminous with
+thoughts too deep for words. Her day was happier for that silent hour,
+her life richer for the aspirations that uplifted her like beautiful
+strong angels, and left a blessing when they went. The smile of the June
+sky touched her lips, the morning red seemed to linger on her cheek, and
+in her eye arose a light kindled by the shimmer of that broad sea of
+gold; for Nature rewarded her young votary well, and gave her beauty,
+when she offered love. How long she leaned there Debby did not know;
+steps from below roused her from her reverie, and led her back into the
+world again. Smiling at herself, she stole to bed, and lay wrapped in
+waking dreams as changeful as the shadows dancing on her chamber-wall.
+
+The advent of her aunt's maid, Victorine, some two hours later, was the
+signal to be "up and doing"; and she meekly resigned herself into the
+hands of that functionary, who appeared to regard her in the light of an
+animated pin-cushion, as she performed the toilet-ceremonies with an
+absorbed aspect, which impressed her subject with a sense of the
+solemnity of the occasion.
+
+"Now, Mademoiselle, regard yourself, and pronounce that you are
+ravishing," Victorine said at length, folding her hands with a sigh of
+satisfaction, as she fell back in an attitude of serene triumph.
+
+Debby obeyed, and inspected herself with great interest and some
+astonishment; for there was a sweeping amplitude of array about the
+young lady whom she beheld in the much-befrilled gown and embroidered
+skirts, which somewhat alarmed her as to the navigation of a vessel
+"with such a spread of sail," while a curious sensation of being
+somebody else pervaded her from the crown of her head, with its shining
+coils of hair, to the soles of the French slippers, whose energies
+seemed to have been devoted to the production of marvellous rosettes.
+
+"Yes, I look very nice, thank you; and yet I feel like a doll, helpless
+and fine, and fancy I was more of a woman in my fresh gingham, with a
+knot of clovers in my hair, than I am now. Aunt Pen was very kind to get
+me all these pretty things; but I'm afraid my mother would look
+horrified to see me in such a high state of flounce externally and so
+little room to breathe internally."
+
+"Your mamma would not flatter me, Mademoiselle; but come now to Madame;
+she is waiting to behold you, and I have yet her toilet to make"; and,
+with a pitying shrug, Victorine followed Debby to her aunt's room.
+
+"Charming! really elegant!" cried that lady, emerging from her towel
+with a rubicund visage. "Drop that braid half an inch lower, and pull
+the worked end of her handkerchief out of the right-hand pocket, Vic.
+There! Now, Dora, don't run about and get rumpled, but sit quietly down
+and practise repose till I am ready."
+
+Debby obeyed, and sat mute, with the air of a child in its Sunday-best
+on a week-day, pleased with the novelty, but somewhat oppressed with the
+responsibility of such unaccustomed splendor, and utterly unable to
+connect any ideas of repose with tight shoes and skirts in a rampant
+state of starch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, you see, I bet on Lady Gay against Cockadoodle, and if you'll
+believe me--Hullo! there's Mrs. Carroll, and deuse take me if she hasn't
+got a girl with her! Look, Seguin!"--and Joe Leavenworth, a "man of the
+world," aged twenty, paused in his account of an exciting race to make
+the announcement.
+
+Mr. Seguin, his friend and Mentor, as much his senior in worldly
+wickedness as in years, tore himself from his breakfast long enough to
+survey the new-comers, and then returned to it, saying, briefly,--
+
+"The old lady is worth cultivating,--gives good suppers, and thanks you
+for eating them. The girl is well got up, but has no style, and blushes
+like a milk-maid. Better fight shy of her, Joe."
+
+"Do you think so? Well, now I rather fancy that kind of thing. She's
+new, you see, and I get on with that sort of girl the best, for the old
+ones are so deused knowing that a fellow has no chance of a--By the Lord
+Harry, she's eating bread and milk!"
+
+Young Leavenworth whisked his glass into his eye, and Mr. Seguin put
+down his roll to behold the phenomenon. Poor Debby! her first step had
+been a wrong one.
+
+All great minds have their weak points. Aunt Pen's was her breakfast,
+and the peace of her entire day depended upon the success of that meal.
+Therefore, being down rather late, the worthy lady concentrated her
+energies upon the achievement of a copious repast, and, trusting to
+former lessons, left Debby to her own resources for a few fatal moments.
+After the flutter occasioned by being scooped into her seat by a
+severe-nosed waiter, Debby had only courage enough left to refuse tea
+and coffee and accept milk. That being done, she took the first familiar
+viand that appeared, and congratulated herself upon being able to get
+her usual breakfast. With returning composure, she looked about her and
+began to enjoy the buzz of voices, the clatter of knives and forks, and
+the long lines of faces all intent upon the business of the hour; but
+her peace was of short duration. Pausing for a fresh relay of toast,
+Aunt Pen glanced toward her niece with the comfortable conviction that
+her appearance was highly creditable; and her dismay can be imagined,
+when she beheld that young lady placidly devouring a great cup of
+brown-bread and milk before the eyes of the assembled multitude. The
+poor lady choked in her coffee, and between her gasps whispered irefully
+behind her napkin,--
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Dora, put away that mess! The Ellenboroughs are
+directly opposite, watching everything you do. Eat that omelet, or
+anything respectable, unless you want me to die of mortific�tion."
+
+Debby dropped her spoon, and, hastily helping herself from the dish her
+aunt pushed toward her, consumed the leathery compound with as much
+grace as she could assume, though unable to repress a laugh at Aunt
+Pen's disturbed countenance. There was a slight lull in the clatter, and
+the blithe sound caused several heads to turn toward the quarter whence
+it came, for it was as unexpected and pleasant a sound as a bobolink's
+song in a cage of shrill-voiced canaries.
+
+"She's a jolly little thing and powerful pretty, so deuse take me if I
+don't make up to the old lady and find out who the girl is. I've been
+introduced to Mrs. Carroll at our house; but I suppose she won't
+remember me till I remind her."
+
+The "deuse" declining to accept of his repeated offers, (probably
+because there was still too much honor and honesty in the boy,) young
+Leavenworth sought out Mrs. Carroll on the piazza, as she and Debby were
+strolling there an hour later.
+
+"Joe Leavenworth, my dear, from one of our first families,--very
+wealthy,--fine match,--pray, be civil,--smooth your hair, hold back your
+shoulders, and put down your parasol," murmured Aunt Pen, as the
+gentleman approached with as much pleasure in his countenance as it was
+consistent with manly dignity to express upon meeting two of the
+inferior race.
+
+"My niece, Miss Dora Wilder. This is her first season at the beach, and
+we must endeavor to make it pleasant for her, or she will be getting
+homesick and running away to mamma," said Aunt Pen, in her society-tone,
+after she had returned his greeting, and perpetrated a polite fiction,
+by declaring that she remembered him perfectly, for he was the image of
+his father.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth brought the heels of his varnished boots together with a
+click, and executed the latest bow imported, then stuck his glass in his
+eye and stared till it fell out, (the glass, not the eye,) upon which he
+fell into step with them, remarking,--
+
+"I shall be most happy to show the lions: they are deused tame ones, so
+you needn't be alarmed, Miss Wilder."
+
+Debby was good-natured enough to laugh; and, elated with that success,
+he proceeded to pour forth his stores of wit and learning in true
+collegian style, quite unconscious that the "jolly little thing" was
+looking him through and through with the smiling eyes that were
+producing such pleasurable sensations under the mosaic studs. They
+strolled toward the beach, and, meeting an old acquaintance, Aunt Pen
+fell behind, and beamed upon the young pair as if her prophetic eye even
+at this early stage beheld them walking altarward in a proper state of
+blond white vest and bridal awkwardness.
+
+"Can you skip a stone, Mr. Leavenworth?" asked Debby, possessed with a
+mischievous desire to shock the piece of elegance at her side.
+
+"Eh? what's that?" he inquired, with his head on one side, like an
+inquisitive robin.
+
+Debby repeated her question, and illustrated it by sending a stone
+skimming over the water in the most scientific manner. Mr. Joe was
+painfully aware that this was not at all "the thing," that his sisters
+never did so, and that Seguin would laugh confoundedly, if he caught him
+at it; but Debby looked so irresistibly fresh and pretty under her
+rose-lined parasol that he was moved to confess that he _had_ done such
+a thing, and to sacrifice his gloves by poking in the sand, that he
+might indulge in a like unfashionable pastime.
+
+"You'll be at the hop tonight, I hope, Miss Wilder," he observed,
+introducing a topic suited to a young lady's mental capacity.
+
+"Yes, indeed; for dancing is one of the joys of my life, next to husking
+and making hay"; and Debby polked a few steps along the beach, much to
+the edification of a pair of old gentlemen, serenely taking their first
+"constitutional."
+
+"Making what?" cried Mr. Joe, polking after her.
+
+"Hay; ah, that is the pleasantest fun in the world,--and better
+exercise, my mother says, for soul and body, than dancing till dawn in
+crowded rooms, with everything in a state of unnatural excitement. If
+one wants real merriment, let him go into a new-mown field, where all
+the air is full of summer odors, where wild-flowers nod along the walls,
+where blackbirds make finer music than any band, and sun and wind and
+cheery voices do their part, while windrows rise, and great loads go
+rumbling through the lanes with merry brown faces atop. Yes, much as I
+like dancing, it is not to be compared with that; for in the one case we
+shut out the lovely world, and in the other we become a part of it, till
+by its magic labor turns to poetry, and we harvest something better than
+dried buttercups and grass."
+
+As she spoke, Debby looked up, expecting to meet a glance of
+disapproval; but something in the simple earnestness of her manner had
+recalled certain boyish pleasures as innocent as they were hearty, which
+now contrasted very favorably with the later pastimes in which fast
+horses, and that lower class of animals, fast men, bore so large a part.
+Mr. Joe thoughtfully punched five holes in the sand, and for a moment
+Debby liked the expression of his face; then the old listlessness
+returned, and, looking up, he said, with an air of _ennui_ that was half
+sad, half ludicrous, in one so young and so generously endowed with
+youth, health, and the good gifts of this life,--
+
+"I used to fancy that sort of thing years ago, but I'm afraid I should
+find it a little slow now, though you describe it in such an inviting
+manner that I should be tempted to try it, if a hay-cock came in my way;
+for, upon my life, it's deused heavy work loafing about at these
+watering-places all summer. Between ourselves, there's a deal of humbug
+about this kind of life, as you will find, when you've tried it as long
+as I have."
+
+"Yes, I begin to think so already; but perhaps you can give me a few
+friendly words of warning from the stores of your experience, that I may
+be spared the pain of saying what so many look,--'Grandma, the world is
+hollow; my doll is stuffed with sawdust; and I should like to go into a
+convent, if you please.'"
+
+Debby's eyes were dancing with merriment; but they were demurely
+downcast, and her voice was perfectly serious.
+
+The milk of human kindness had been slightly curdled for Mr. Joe by
+sundry college-tribulations; and having been "suspended," he very
+naturally vibrated between the inborn jollity of his temperament and the
+bitterness occasioned by his wrongs. He had lost at billiards the night
+before, had been hurried at breakfast, had mislaid his cigar-case, and
+splashed his boots; consequently the darker mood prevailed that morning,
+and when his counsel was asked, he gave it like one who had known the
+heaviest trials of this "Piljin Projiss of a wale."
+
+"There's no justice in the world, no chance for us young people to enjoy
+ourselves, without some penalty to pay, some drawback to worry us like
+these confounded 'all-rounders.' Even here, where all seems free and
+easy, there's no end of gossips and spies who tattle and watch till you
+feel as if you lived in a lantern. 'Every one for himself, and the Devil
+take the hindmost': that's the principle they go on, and you have to
+keep your wits about you in the most exhausting manner, or you are done
+for before you know it. I've seen a good deal of this sort of thing, and
+hope you'll get on better than some do, when it's known that you are the
+rich Mrs. Carroll's niece; though you don't need that fact to enhance
+your charms,--upon my life, you don't."
+
+Debby laughed behind her parasol at this burst of candor; but her
+independent nature prompted her to make a fair beginning, in spite of
+Aunt Pen's polite fictions and well-meant plans.
+
+"Thank you for your warning, but I don't apprehend much annoyance of
+that kind," she said, demurely. "Do you know, I think, if young ladies
+were truthfully labelled when they went into society, it would be a
+charming fashion, and save a world of trouble? Something in this
+style:--'Arabella Marabout, aged nineteen, fortune $100,000, temper
+warranted'; 'Laura Eau-de-Cologne, aged twenty-eight, fortune $30,000,
+temper slightly damaged'; 'Deborah Wilder, aged eighteen, fortune, one
+pair of hands, one head, indifferently well filled, one heart, (not in
+the market,) temper decided, and _no expectations_.' There, you see,
+that would do away with much of the humbug you lament, and we poor
+souls would know at once whether we were sought for our fortunes or
+ourselves, and that would be so comfortable!"
+
+Mr. Leavenworth turned away, with a convicted sort of expression, as she
+spoke, and, making a spyglass of his hand, seemed to be watching
+something out at sea with absorbing interest. He had been guilty of a
+strong desire to discover whether Debby was an heiress, but had not
+expected to be so entirely satisfied on that important subject, and was
+dimly conscious that a keen eye had seen his anxiety, and a quick wit
+devised a means of setting it at rest forever. Somewhat disconcerted, he
+suddenly changed the conversation, and, like many another distressed
+creature, took to the water, saying briskly,--
+
+"By-the-by, Miss Wilder, as I've engaged to do the honors, shall I have
+the pleasure of bathing with you when the fun begins? As you are fond of
+haymaking, I suppose you intend to pay your respects to the old
+gentleman with the three-pronged pitchfork?"
+
+"Yes, Aunt Pen means to put me through a course of salt water, and any
+instructions in the art of navigation will be gratefully received; for I
+never saw the ocean before, and labor under a firm conviction, that,
+once in, I never shall come out again till I am brought, like Mr.
+Mantilini, a 'damp, moist, unpleasant body.'"
+
+As Debby spoke, Mrs. Carroll hove in sight, coming down before the wind
+with all sails set, and signals of distress visible long before she
+dropped anchor and came along-side. The devoted woman had been strolling
+slowly for the girl's sake, though oppressed with a mournful certainty
+that her most prominent feature was fast becoming a fine copper-color;
+yet she had sustained herself like a Spartan matron, till it suddenly
+occurred to her that her charge might be suffering a like
+
+                        "sea-change
+    Into something rich and strange."
+
+Her fears, however, were groundless, for Debby met her without a
+freckle, looking all the better for her walk; and though her feet were
+wet with chasing the waves, and her pretty gown the worse for salt
+water, Aunt Pen never chid her for the destruction of her raiment, nor
+uttered a warning word against an unladylike exuberance of spirits, but
+replied to her inquiry most graciously,--
+
+"Certainly, my love, we shall bathe at eleven, and there will be just
+time to get Victorine and our dresses; so run on to the house, and I
+will join you as soon as I have finished what I am saying to Mrs.
+Earle,"--then added, in a stage-aside, as she put a fallen lock off the
+girl's forehead, "You are doing beautifully! He is evidently struck;
+make yourself interesting, and don't burn your nose, I beg of you."
+
+Debby's bright face clouded over, and she walked on with so much
+stateliness that her escort wondered "what the deuse the old lady had
+done to her," and exerted himself to the utmost to recall her merry
+mood, but with indifferent success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now I begin to feel more like myself, for this is getting back to first
+principles, though I fancy I look like the little old woman who fell
+asleep on the king's highway and woke up with abbreviated drapery; and
+you look funnier still, Aunt Pen," said Debby, as she tied on her
+pagoda-hat, and followed Mrs. Carroll, who walked out of her
+dressing-room an animated bale of blue cloth surmounted by a gigantic
+sun-bonnet.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth was in waiting, and so like a blond-headed lobster in
+his scarlet suit that Debby could hardly keep her countenance as they
+joined the groups of bathers gathering along the breezy shore.
+
+For an hour each day the actors and actresses who played their different
+_r�les_ at the ---- Hotel with such precision and success put off their
+masks and dared to be themselves. The ocean wrought the change, for it
+took old and young into its arms, and for a little while they played
+like children in their mother's lap. No falsehood could withstand its
+rough sincerity; for the waves washed paint and powder from worn faces,
+and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its
+vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing
+many a meagre life with another year of health. No gloomy spirit could
+refuse to listen to its lullaby, and the spray baptized it with the
+subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. No rank held place there; for
+the democratic sea toppled down the greatest statesman in the land, and
+dashed over the bald pate of a millionnaire with the same white-crested
+wave that stranded a poor parson on the beach and filled a fierce
+reformer's mouth with brine. No fashion ruled, but that which is as old
+as Eden,--the beautiful fashion of simplicity. Belles dropped their
+affectations with their hoops, and ran about the shore blithe-hearted
+girls again. Young men forgot their vices and their follies, and were
+not ashamed of the real courage, strength, and skill they had tried to
+leave behind them with their boyish plays. Old men gathered shells with
+the little Cupids dancing on the sand, and were better for that innocent
+companionship; and young mothers never looked so beautiful as when they
+rocked their babies on the bosom of the sea.
+
+Debby vaguely felt this charm, and, yielding to it, splashed and sang
+like any beach-bird, while Aunt Pen bobbed placidly up and down in a
+retired corner, and Mr. Leavenworth swam to and fro, expressing his firm
+belief in mermaids, sirens, and the rest of the aquatic sisterhood,
+whose warbling no manly ear can resist.
+
+"Miss Wilder, you must learn to swim. I've taught quantities of young
+ladies, and shall be delighted to launch the 'Dora,' if you'll accept me
+as a pilot. Stop a bit; I'll get a life-preserver"; and leaving Debby to
+flirt with the waves, the scarlet youth departed like a flame of fire.
+
+A dismal shriek interrupted his pupil's play, and looking up, she saw
+her aunt beckoning wildly with one hand, while she was groping in the
+water with the other. Debby ran to her, alarmed at her tragic
+expression, and Mrs. Carroll, drawing the girl's face into the privacy
+of her big bonnet, whispered one awful word, adding, distractedly,--
+
+"Dive for them! oh, dive for them! I shall be perfectly helpless, if
+they are lost!"
+
+"I can't dive, Aunt Pen; but there is a man, let us ask him," said
+Debby, as a black head appeared to windward.
+
+But Mrs. Carroll's "nerves" had received a shock, and, gathering up her
+dripping garments, she fled precipitately along the shore and vanished
+into her dressing-room.
+
+Debby's keen sense of the ludicrous got the better of her respect, and
+peal after peal of laughter broke from her lips, till a splash behind
+her put an end to her merriment, and, turning, she found that this
+friend in need was her acquaintance of the day before. The gentleman
+seemed pausing for permission to approach, with much the appearance of a
+sagacious Newfoundland, wistful and wet.
+
+"Oh, I'm very glad it's you, Sir!" was Debby's cordial greeting, as she
+shook a drop off the end of her nose, and nodded, smiling.
+
+The new comer immediately beamed upon her like an amiable Triton,
+saying, as they turned shoreward,--
+
+"Our first interview opened with a laugh on my side, and our second with
+one on yours. I accept the fact as a good omen. Your friend seemed in
+trouble; allow me to atone for my past misdemeanors by offering my
+services now. But first let me introduce myself; and as I believe in the
+fitness of things, let me present you with an appropriate card"; and,
+stooping, the young man wrote "Frank Evan" on the hard sand at Debby's
+feet.
+
+The girl liked his manner, and, entering into the spirit of the thing,
+swept as grand a curtsy as her limited drapery would allow, saying,
+merrily,--
+
+"I am Debby Wilder, or Dora, as aunt prefers to call me; and instead of
+laughing, I ought to be four feet under water, looking for something we
+have lost; but I can't dive, and my distress is dreadful, as you see."
+
+"What have you lost? I will look for it, and bring it back in spite of
+the kelpies, if it is a human possibility," replied Mr. Evan, pushing
+his wet locks out of his eyes, and regarding the ocean with a determined
+aspect.
+
+Debby leaned toward him, whispering with solemn countenance,--
+
+"It is a set of teeth, Sir."
+
+Mr. Evan was more a man of deeds than words, therefore he disappeared at
+once with a mighty splash, and after repeated divings and much laughter
+appeared bearing the chief ornament of Mrs. Penelope Carroll's comely
+countenance. Debby looked very pretty and grateful as she returned her
+thanks, and Mr. Evan was guilty of a secret wish that all the worthy
+lady's features were at the bottom of the sea, that he might have the
+satisfaction of restoring them to her attractive niece; but curbing this
+unnatural desire, he bowed, saying, gravely,--
+
+"Tell your aunt, if you please, that this little accident will remain a
+dead secret, so far as I am concerned, and I am very glad to have been
+of service at such a critical moment."
+
+Whereupon Mr. Evan marched again into the briny deep, and Debby trotted
+away to her aunt, whom she found a clammy heap of blue flannel and
+despair. Mrs. Carroll's temper was ruffled, and though she joyfully
+rattled in her teeth, she said, somewhat testily, when Debby's story was
+done,--
+
+"Now that man will have a sort of claim on us, and we must be civil,
+whoever he is. Dear! dear! I wish it had been Joe Leavenworth instead.
+Evan,--I don't remember any of our first families with connections of
+that name, and I dislike to be under obligations to a person of that
+sort, for there's no knowing how far he may presume; so, pray, be
+careful, Dora."
+
+"I think you are very ungrateful, Aunt Pen; and if Mr. Evan should
+happen to be poor, it does not become me to turn up my nose at him, for
+I'm nothing but a make-believe myself just now. I don't wish to go down
+upon my knees to him, but I do intend to be as kind to him as I should
+to that conceited Leavenworth boy; yes, kinder even; for poor people
+value such things more, as I know very well."
+
+Mrs. Carroll instantly recovered her temper, changed the subject, and
+privately resolved to confine her prejudices to her own bosom, as they
+seemed to have an aggravating effect upon the youthful person whom she
+had set her heart on disposing of to the best advantage.
+
+Debby took her swimming-lesson with much success, and would have
+achieved her dinner with composure, if white-aproned gentlemen had not
+effectually taken away her appetite by whisking bills-of-fare into her
+hands, and awaiting her orders with a fatherly interest, which induced
+them to congregate mysterious dishes before her, and blandly rectify
+her frequent mistakes. She survived the ordeal, however, and at four
+P.M. went to drive with "that Leavenworth boy" in the finest turnout
+---- could produce. Aunt Pen then came off guard, and with a sigh of
+satisfaction subsided into a peaceful doze, still murmuring, even in
+her sleep,--
+
+"Propinquity, my love, propinquity works wonders."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Aunt Pen, are you a modest woman?" asked the young crusader against
+established absurdities, as she came into the presence-chamber that
+evening ready for the hop.
+
+"Bless the child, what does she mean?" cried Mrs. Carroll, with a start
+that twitched her back-hair out of Victorine's hands.
+
+"Would you like to have a daughter of yours go to a party looking as I
+look?" continued her niece, spreading her airy dress, and standing very
+erect before her astonished relative.
+
+"Why, of course I should, and be proud to own such a charming
+creature," regarding the slender white shape with much
+approbation,--adding, with a smile, as she met the girl's eye,--
+
+"Ah, I see the difficulty, now; you are disturbed because there is not a
+bit of lace over these pretty shoulders of yours. Now don't be absurd,
+Dora; the dress is perfectly proper, or Madame Tiphany never would have
+sent it home. It is the fashion, child; and many a girl with such a
+figure would go twice as _d�collet�e_, and think nothing of it, I assure
+you."
+
+Debby shook her head with an energy that set the pink heather-bells
+a-tremble in her hair, and her color deepened beautifully as she said,
+with reproachful eyes,--
+
+"Aunt Pen, I think there is a better fashion in every young girl's heart
+than any Madame Tiphany can teach. I am very grateful for all you have
+done for me, but I cannot go into public in such an undress as this; my
+mother would never allow it, and father never forgive it. Please don't
+ask me to, for indeed I cannot do it even for you."
+
+Debby looked so pathetic that both mistress and maid broke into a laugh
+which, somewhat reassured the young lady, who allowed her determined
+features to relax into a smile, as she said,--
+
+"Now, Aunt Pen, you want me to look pretty and be a credit to you; but
+how would you like to see my face the color of those geraniums all the
+evening?"
+
+"Why, Dora, you are out of your mind to ask such a thing, when you know
+it's the desire of my life to keep your color down and make you look
+more delicate," said her aunt, alarmed at the fearful prospect of a
+peony-faced _prot�g�e_.
+
+"Well, I should be anything but that, if I wore this gown in its present
+waistless condition; so here is a remedy which will prevent such a
+calamity and ease my mind."
+
+As she spoke, Debby tied on her little _blonde fichu_ with a gesture
+which left nothing more to be said.
+
+Victorine scolded, and clasped her hands; but Mrs. Carroll, fearing to
+push her authority too far, made a virtue of necessity, saying,
+resignedly,--
+
+"Have your own way, Dora, but in return oblige me by being agreeable to
+such persons as I may introduce to you; and some day, when I ask a
+favor, remember how much I hope to do for you, and grant it cheerfully."
+
+"Indeed I will, Aunt Pen, if it is anything I can do without disobeying
+mother's 'notions', as you call them. Ask me to wear an orange-colored
+gown, or dance with the plainest, poorest man in the room, and I'll do
+it; for there never was a kinder aunt than mine in all the world," cried
+Debby, eager to atone for her seeming wilfulness, and really grateful
+for her escape from what seemed to her benighted mind a very imminent
+peril.
+
+Like a clover-blossom in a vase of camellias little Debby looked that
+night among the dashing or languid women who surrounded her; for she
+possessed the charm they had lost,--the freshness of her youth. Innocent
+gayety sat smiling in her eyes, healthful roses bloomed upon her cheek,
+and maiden modesty crowned her like a garland. She _was_ the creature
+that she seemed, and, yielding to the influence of the hour, danced to
+the music of her own blithe heart. Many felt the spell whose secret they
+had lost the power to divine, and watched the girlish figure as if it
+were a symbol of their early aspirations dawning freshly from the
+dimness of their past. More than one old man thought again of some
+little maid whose love made his boyish days a pleasant memory to him
+now. More than one smiling fop felt the emptiness of his smooth speech,
+when the truthful eyes looked up into his own; and more than one pale
+woman sighed regretfully within herself, "I, too, was a happy-hearted
+creature once!"
+
+"That Mr. Evan does not seem very anxious to claim our acquaintance,
+after all, and I think better of him on that account. Has he spoken to
+you tonight, Dora?" asked Mrs. Carroll, as Debby dropped down beside her
+after a "splendid polka."
+
+"No, Ma'am, he only bowed. You see some people are not so presuming as
+other people thought they were; for we are not the most attractive
+beings on the planet; therefore a gentleman can be polite and then
+forget us without breaking any of the Ten Commandments. Don't be
+offended with him yet, for he may prove to be some great creature with a
+finer pedigree than any of 'our first families.' Mr. Leavenworth, as you
+know everybody, perhaps you can relieve Aunt Pen's mind, by telling her
+something about the tall, brown man standing behind the lady with
+salmon-colored hair."
+
+Mr. Joe, who was fanning the top of Debby's head with the best
+intentions in life, took a survey, and answered readily,--
+
+"Why, that's Frank Evan. I know him, and a deused good fellow he
+is,--though he don't belong to our set, you know."
+
+"Indeed! pray, tell us something about him, Mr. Leavenworth. We met in
+the cars, and he did us a favor or two. Who and what is the man?" asked
+Mrs. Carroll, relenting at once toward a person who was favorably spoken
+of by one who did belong to her "set."
+
+"Well, let me see," began Mr. Joe, whose narrative powers were not
+great. "He is a book-keeper in my Uncle Josh Loring's importing concern,
+and a powerful smart man, they say. There's some kind of clever story
+about his father's leaving a load of debts, and Frank's working a deused
+number of years till they were paid. Good of him, wasn't it? Then, just
+as he was going to take things easier and enjoy life a bit, his mother
+died, and that rather knocked him up, you see. He fell sick, and came to
+grief generally, Uncle Josh said; so he was ordered off to get righted,
+and here he is, looking like a tombstone. I've a regard for Frank, for
+he took care of me through the smallpox a year ago, and I don't forget
+things of that sort; so, if you wish to be introduced, Mrs. Carroll,
+I'll trot him out with pleasure, and make a proud man of him."
+
+Mrs. Carroll glanced at Debby, and as that young lady was regarding Mr.
+Joe with a friendly aspect, owing to the warmth of his words, she
+graciously assented, and the youth departed on his errand. Mr. Evan went
+through the ceremony with a calmness wonderful to behold, considering
+the position of one lady and the charms of the other, and soon glided
+into the conversation with the ease of a more accomplished courtier.
+
+"Now I must tear myself away, for I'm engaged to that stout Miss
+Bandoline for this dance. She 's a friend of my sister's, and I must do
+the civil, you know; powerful slow work it is, too, but I pity the poor
+soul,--upon my life, I do"; and Mr. Joe assumed the air of a martyr.
+
+Debby looked up with a wicked smile in her eyes, as she said,--
+
+"Ah, that sounds very amiable here; but in five minutes you'll be
+murmuring in Miss Bandoline's ear,--'I've been pining to come to you
+this half hour, but I was obliged to take out that Miss Wilder, you
+see,--countrified little thing enough, but not bad-looking, and has a
+rich aunt; so I've done my duty to her, but deuse take me if I can stand
+it any longer.'"
+
+Mr. Evan joined in Debby's merriment; but Mr. Joe was so appalled at the
+sudden attack that he could only stammer a remonstrance and beat a hasty
+retreat, wondering how on earth she came to know that his favorite style
+of making himself agreeable to one young lady was by decrying another.
+
+"Dora, my love, that is very rude, and 'Deuse' is not a proper
+expression for a woman's lips. Pray, restrain your lively tongue, for
+strangers may not understand that it is nothing but the sprightliness of
+your disposition which sometimes runs away with you."
+
+"It was only a quotation, and I thought you would admire anything Mr.
+Leavenworth said, Aunt Pen," replied Debby, demurely.
+
+Mrs. Carroll trod on her foot, and abruptly changed the conversation, by
+saying, with an appearance of deep interest,--
+
+"Mr. Evan, you are doubtless connected with the Malcoms of Georgia; for
+they, I believe, are descended from the ancient Evans of Scotland. They
+are a very wealthy and aristocratic family, and I remember seeing their
+coat-of-arms once: three bannocks and a thistle."
+
+Mr. Evan had been standing before them with a composure which impressed
+Mrs. Carroll with a belief in his gentle blood, for she remembered her
+own fussy, plebeian husband, whose fortune had never been able to
+purchase him the manners of a gentleman. Mr. Evan only grew a little
+more erect, as he replied, with an untroubled mien,--
+
+"I cannot claim relationship with the Malcoms of Georgia or the Evans of
+Scotland, I believe, Madam. My father was a farmer, my grandfather a
+blacksmith, and beyond that my ancestors may have been street-sweepers,
+for anything I know; but whatever they were, I fancy they were honest
+men, for that has always been our boast, though, like President
+Jackson's, our coat-of-arms is nothing but 'a pair of shirt-sleeves.'"
+
+From Debby's eyes there shot a bright glance of admiration for the young
+man who could look two comely women in the face and serenely own that he
+was poor. Mrs. Carroll tried to appear at ease, and, gliding out of
+personalities, expatiated on the comfort of "living in a land where fame
+and fortune were attainable by all who chose to earn them," and the
+contempt she felt for those "who had no sympathy with the humbler
+classes, no interest in the welfare of the race," and many more moral
+reflections as new and original as the Multiplication-Table or the
+Westminster Catechism. To all of which Mr. Evan listened with polite
+deference, though there was something in the keen intelligence of his
+eye that made Debby blush for shallow Aunt Pen, and rejoice when the
+good lady got out of her depth and seized upon a new subject as a
+drowning mariner would a hen-coop.
+
+"Dora, Mr. Ellenborough is coming this way; you have danced with him but
+once, and he is a very desirable partner; so, pray, accept, if he asks
+you," said Mrs. Carroll, watching a far-off individual who seemed
+steering his zigzag course toward them.
+
+"I never intend to dance with Mr. Ellenborough again, so please don't
+urge me, Aunt Pen"; and Debby knit her brows with a somewhat irate
+expression.
+
+"My love, you astonish me! He is a most agreeable and accomplished young
+man,--spent three years in Paris, moves in the first circles, and is
+considered an ornament to fashionable society. What _can_ be your
+objection, Dora?" cried Mrs. Carroll, looking as alarmed as if her niece
+had suddenly announced her belief in the Koran.
+
+"One of his accomplishments consists in drinking Champagne till he is
+not a 'desirable partner' for any young lady with a prejudice in favor
+of decency. His moving in 'circles' is just what I complain of; and if
+he is an ornament, I prefer my society undecorated. Aunt Pen, I cannot
+make the nice distinctions you would have me, and a sot in broadcloth is
+as odious as one in rags. Forgive me, but I cannot dance with that
+silver-labelled decanter again."
+
+Debby was a genuine little piece of womanhood; and though she tried to
+speak lightly, her color deepened, as she remembered looks that had
+wounded her like insults, and her indignant eyes silenced the excuses
+rising to her aunt's lips. Mrs. Carroll began to rue the hour she ever
+undertook the guidance of Sister Deborah's headstrong child, and for an
+instant heartily wished she had left her to bloom unseen in the shadow
+of the parsonage; but she concealed her annoyance, still hoping to
+overcome the girl's absurd resolve, by saying, mildly,--
+
+"As you please, dear; but if you refuse Mr. Ellenborough, you will be
+obliged to sit through the dance, which is your favorite, you know."
+
+Debby's countenance fell, for she had forgotten that, and the Lancers
+was to her the crowning rapture of the night. She paused a moment, and
+Aunt Pen brightened; but Debby made her little sacrifice to principle
+as heroically as many a greater one had been made, and, with a wistful
+look down the long room, answered steadily, though her foot kept time to
+the first strains as she spoke,--
+
+"Then I will sit, Aunt Pen; for that is preferable to staggering about
+the room with a partner who has no idea of the laws of gravitation."
+
+"Shall I have the honor of averting either calamity?" said Mr. Evan,
+coming to the rescue with a devotion beautiful to see; for dancing was
+nearly a lost art with him, and the Lancers to a novice is equal to a
+second Labyrinth of Crete.
+
+"Oh, thank you!" cried Debby, tumbling fan, bouquet, and handkerchief
+into Mrs. Carroll's lap, with a look of relief that repaid him fourfold
+for the trials he was about to undergo. They went merrily away together,
+leaving Aunt Pen to wish that it was according to the laws of etiquette
+to rap officious gentlemen over the knuckles, when they introduce their
+fingers into private pies without permission from the chief cook. How
+the dance went Debby hardly knew, for the conversation fell upon books,
+and in the interest of her favorite theme she found even the "grand
+square" an impertinent interruption, while her own deficiencies became
+almost as great as her partner's; yet, when the music ended with a
+flourish, and her last curtsy was successfully achieved, she longed to
+begin all over again, and secretly regretted that she was engaged four
+deep.
+
+"How do you like our new acquaintance, Dora?" asked Aunt Pen, following
+Joe Leavenworth with her eye, as the "yellow-haired laddie" whirled by
+with the ponderous Miss Flora.
+
+"Very much; and I'm glad we met as we did, for it makes things free and
+easy, and that is so agreeable in this ceremonious place," replied
+Debby, looking in quite an opposite direction.
+
+"Well, I'm delighted to hear you say so, dear, for I was afraid you had
+taken a dislike to him, and he is really a very charming young man, just
+the sort of person to make a pleasant companion for a few weeks. These
+little friendships are part of the summer's amusement, and do no harm;
+so smile away, Dora, and enjoy yourself while you may."
+
+"Yes, Aunt, I certainly will, and all the more because I have found a
+sensible soul to talk to. Do you know, he is very witty and well
+informed, though he says he never had much time for self-cultivation?
+But I think trouble makes people wise, and he seems to have had a good
+deal, though he leaves it for others to tell of. I am glad you are
+willing I should know him, for I shall enjoy talking about my pet heroes
+with him as a relief from the silly chatter I must keep up most of the
+time."
+
+Mrs. Carroll was a woman of one idea; and though a slightly puzzled
+expression appeared in her face, she listened approvingly, and answered,
+with a gracious smile,--
+
+"Of course, I should not object to your knowing such a person, my love;
+but I'd no idea Joe Leavenworth was a literary man, or had known much
+trouble, except his father's death and his sister Clementina's
+runaway-marriage with her drawing-master."
+
+Debby opened her brown eyes very wide, and hastily picked at the down on
+her fan, but had no time to correct her aunt's mistake, for the real
+subject of her commendations appeared at that moment, and Mrs. Carroll
+was immediately absorbed in the consumption of a large pink ice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That girl is what I call a surprise-party, now," remarked Mr. Joe
+confidentially to his cigar, as he pulled off his coat and stuck his
+feet up in the privacy of his own apartment. "She looks as mild as
+strawberries and cream till you come to the complimentary, then she
+turns on a fellow with that deused satirical look of hers, and makes him
+feel like a fool. I'll try the moral dodge to-morrow, and see what
+effect that will have; for she is mighty taking, and I must amuse myself
+somehow, you know."
+
+"How many years will it take to change that fresh-hearted little girl
+into a fashionable belle, I wonder?" thought Frank Evan, as he climbed
+the four flights that led to his "sky-parlor."
+
+"What a curious world this is!" mused Debby, with her nightcap in her
+hand. "The right seems odd and rude, the wrong respectable and easy, and
+this sort of life a merry-go-round, with no higher aim than pleasure.
+Well, I have made my Declaration of Independence, and Aunt Pen must be
+ready for a Revolution, if she taxes me too heavily."
+
+As she leaned her hot cheek on her arm, Debby's eye fell on the quaint
+little cap made by the motherly hands that never were tired of working
+for her. She touched it tenderly, and love's simple magic swept the
+gathering shadows from her face, and left it clear again, as her
+thoughts flew home like birds into the shelter of their nest.
+
+"Good night, mother! I'll face temptation steadily. I'll try to take
+life cheerily, and do nothing that shall make your dear face a reproach,
+when it looks into my own again."
+
+Then Debby said her prayers like any pious child, and lay down to dream
+of pulling buttercups with Baby Bess, and sinking in the twilight on her
+father's knee.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The history of Debby's first day might serve as a sample of most that
+followed, as week after week went by with varying pleasures and
+increasing interest to more than one young _d�butante_. Mrs. Carroll did
+her best, but Debby was too simple for a belle, too honest for a flirt,
+too independent for a fine lady; she would be nothing but her sturdy
+little self, open as daylight, gay as a lark, and blunt as any Puritan.
+Poor Aunt Pen was in despair, till she observed that the girl often
+"took" with the very peculiarities which she was lamenting; this
+somewhat consoled her, and she tried to make the best of the pretty bit
+of homespun which would not and could not become velvet or brocade.
+Seguin, Ellenborough, & Co. looked with lordly scorn upon her, as a worm
+blind to their attractions. Miss MacFlimsy and her "set" quizzed her
+unmercifully behind her back, after being worsted in several passages of
+arms; and more than one successful mamma condoled with Aunt Pen upon the
+terribly defective education of her charge, till that stout matron could
+have found it in her heart to tweak off their caps and walk on them,
+like the irascible Betsey Trotwood.
+
+But Debby had a circle of admirers who loved her with a sincerity few
+summer queens could boast; for they were real friends, won by gentle
+arts, and retained by the gracious sweetness of her nature. Moon-faced
+babies crowed and clapped their chubby hands when she passed by their
+wicker thrones; story-loving children clustered round her knee, and
+never were denied; pale invalids found wild-flowers on their pillows;
+and forlorn papas forgot the state of the money-market when she sang for
+them the homely airs their daughters had no time to learn. Certain plain
+young ladies poured their woes into her friendly ear, and were
+comforted; several smart Sophomores fell into a state of chronic
+stammer, blush, and adoration, when she took a motherly interest in
+their affairs; and a melancholy old Frenchman blessed her with the
+enthusiasm of his nation, because she put a posy in the button-hole of
+his rusty coat, and never failed to smile and bow as he passed by. Yet
+Debby was no Edgeworth heroine, preternaturally prudent, wise, and
+untemptable; she had a fine crop of piques, vanities, and dislikes
+growing up under this new style of cultivation. She loved admiration,
+enjoyed her purple and fine linen, hid new-born envy, disappointed hope,
+and wounded pride behind a smiling face, and often thought with a sigh
+of the humdrum duties that awaited her at home. But under the airs and
+graces Aunt Pen cherished with such sedulous care, under the flounces
+and furbelows Victorine daily adjusted with groans, under the polish
+which she acquired with feminine ease, the girl's heart still beat
+steadfast and strong, and conscience kept watch and ward that no
+traitor should enter in to surprise the citadel which mother-love had
+tried to garrison so well.
+
+In pursuance of his sage resolve, Mr. Joe tried the "moral dodge," as he
+elegantly expressed it, and, failing in that, followed it up with the
+tragic, religious, negligent, and devoted ditto; but acting was not his
+forte, so Debby routed him in all; and at last, when he was at his wit's
+end for an idea, she suggested one, and completed her victory by saying
+pleasantly,--
+
+"You took me behind the curtain too soon, and now the paste diamonds and
+cotton-velvet don't impose upon me a bit. Just be your natural self, and
+we shall get on nicely, Mr. Leavenworth."
+
+The novelty of the proposal struck his fancy, and after a few relapses
+it was carried into effect, and thenceforth, with Debby, he became the
+simple, good-humored lad Nature designed him to be, and, as a proof of
+it, soon fell very sincerely in love.
+
+Frank Evan, seated in the parquet of society, surveyed the dress-circle
+with much the same expression that Debby had seen during Aunt Pen's
+oration; but he soon neglected that amusement to watch several actors in
+the drama going on before his eyes, while a strong desire to perform a
+part therein slowly took possession of his mind. Debby always had a look
+of welcome when he came, always treated him with the kindness of a
+generous woman who has had an opportunity to forgive, and always watched
+the serious, solitary man with a great compassion for his loss, a
+growing admiration for his upright life. More than once the beach birds
+saw two figures pacing the sands at sunrise with the peace of early day
+upon their faces and the light of a kindred mood shining in their eyes.
+More than once the friendly ocean made a third in the pleasant
+conversation, and its low undertone came and went between the mellow
+bass and silvery treble of the human voices with a melody that lent
+another charm to interviews which soon grew wondrous sweet to man and
+maid. Aunt Pen seldom saw the twain together, seldom spoke of Evan; and
+Debby held her peace, for, when she planned to make her innocent
+confessions, she found that what seemed much to her was nothing to
+another ear and scarcely worth the telling; so, unconscious as yet
+whither the green path led, she went on her way, leading two lives, one
+rich and earnest, hoarded deep within herself, the other frivolous and
+gay for all the world to criticize. But those venerable spinsters, the
+Fates, took the matter into their own hands, and soon got the better of
+those short-sighted matrons, Mesdames Grundy and Carroll; for, long
+before they knew it, Frank and Debby had begun to read together a book
+greater than Dickens ever wrote, and when they had come to the fairest
+part of the sweet story Adam first told Eve, they looked for the name
+upon the title-page, and found that it was "Love."
+
+Eight weeks came and went,--eight wonderfully happy weeks to Debby and
+her friend; for "propinquity" had worked more wonders than poor Mrs.
+Carroll knew, as the only one she saw or guessed was the utter
+captivation of Joe Leavenworth. He had become "himself" to such an
+extent that a change of identity would have been a relief; for the
+object of his adoration showed no signs of relenting, and he began to
+fear, that, as Debby said, her heart was "not in the market." She was
+always friendly, but never made those interesting betrayals of regard
+which are so encouraging to youthful gentlemen "who fain would climb,
+yet fear to fall." She never blushed when he pressed her hand, never
+fainted or grew pale when he appeared with a smashed trotting-wagon and
+a black eye, and actually slept through a serenade that would have won
+any other woman's soul out of her body with its despairing quavers.
+Matters were getting desperate; for horses lost their charms, "flowing
+bowls" palled upon his lips, ruffled shirt-bosoms no longer delighted
+him, and hops possessed no soothing power to allay the anguish of his
+mind. Mr. Seguin, after unavailing ridicule and pity, took compassion
+on him, and from his large experience suggested a remedy, just as he was
+departing for a more congenial sphere.
+
+"Now don't be an idiot, Joe, but, if you want to keep your hand in and
+go through a regular chapter of flirtation, just right about face, and
+devote yourself to some one else. Nothing like jealousy to teach
+womankind their own minds, and a touch of it will bring little Wilder
+round in a jiffy. Try it, my boy, and good luck to you!"--with which
+Christian advice Mr. Seguin slapped his pupil on the shoulder, and
+disappeared, like a modern Mephistopheles, in a cloud of cigar-smoke.
+
+"I'm glad he's gone, for in my present state of mind he's not up to my
+mark at all. I'll try his plan, though, and flirt with Clara West; she's
+engaged, so it won't damage her affections; her lover isn't here, so it
+won't disturb his; and, by Jove! I must do something, for I can't stand
+this suspense."
+
+Debby was infinitely relieved by this new move, and infinitely amused as
+she guessed the motive that prompted it but the more contented she
+seemed, the more violently Mr. Joe flirted with her rival, till at last
+weak-minded Miss Clara began to think her absent George the most
+undesirable of lovers, and to mourn that she ever said "Yes" to a
+merchant's clerk, when she might have said it to a merchant's son. Aunt
+Pen watched and approved this stratagem, hoped for the best results, and
+believed the day won when Debby grew pale and silent, and followed with
+her eyes the young couple who were playing battledoor and shuttlecock
+with each other's hearts, as if she took some interest in the game. But
+Aunt Pen clashed her cymbals too soon; for Debby's trouble had a better
+source than jealousy, and in the silence of the sleepless nights that
+stole her bloom she was taking counsel of her own full heart, and
+resolving to serve another woman as she would herself be served in a
+like peril, though etiquette was outraged and the customs of polite
+society turned upside down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Look, Aunt Pen! what lovely shells and moss I've got! Such a splendid
+scramble over the rocks as I've had with Mrs. Duncan's boys! It seemed
+so like home to run and sing with a troop of topsy-turvy children that
+it did me good; and I wish you had all been there to see," cried Debby,
+running into the drawing-room, one day, where Mrs. Carroll and a circle
+of ladies sat enjoying a dish of highly flavored scandal, as they
+exercised their eyesight over fancy-work.
+
+"My dear Dora, spare my nerves; and if you have any regard for the
+proprieties of life, don't go romping in the sun with a parcel of noisy
+boys. If you could see what an object you are, I think you would try to
+imitate Miss Clara, who is always a model of elegant repose."
+
+Miss West primmed up her lips, and settled a fold in her ninth flounce,
+as Mrs. Carroll spoke, while the whole group fixed their eyes with
+dignified disapproval on the invader of their refined society. Debby had
+come like a fresh wind into a sultry room; but no one welcomed the
+healthful visitant, no one saw a pleasant picture in the bright-faced
+girl with wind-tossed hair and rustic hat heaped with moss and
+many-tinted shells; they only saw that her gown was wet, her gloves
+forgotten, and her scarf trailing at her waist in a manner no well-bred
+lady could approve. The sunshine faded out of Debby's face, and there
+was a touch of bitterness in her tone, as she glanced at the circle of
+fashion-plates, saying, with an earnestness which caused Miss West to
+open her pale eyes to their widest extent,--
+
+"Aunt Pen, don't freeze me yet,--don't take away my faith in simple
+things, but let me be a child a little longer,--let me play and sing and
+keep my spirit blithe among the dandelions and the robins while I can;
+for trouble comes soon enough, and all my life will be the richer and
+the better for a happy youth."
+
+Mrs. Carroll had nothing at hand to offer in reply to this appeal, and
+four ladies dropped their work to stare; but Frank Evan looked in from
+the piazza, saying, as he beckoned like a boy,--
+
+"I'll play with you, Miss Dora; come and make sand pies upon the shore.
+Please let her, Mrs. Carroll; we'll be very good, and not wet our
+pinafores or feet."
+
+Without waiting for permission, Debby poured her treasures into the lap
+of a certain lame Freddy, and went away to a kind of play she had never
+known before. Quiet as a chidden child, she walked beside her companion,
+who looked down at the little figure, longing to take it on his knee and
+call the sunshine back again. That he dared not do; but accident, the
+lover's friend, performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The
+old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off
+his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late
+lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave
+was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when
+she returned, she was herself again.
+
+"A thousand thanks; but does Mademoiselle remember the forfeit I might
+demand to add to the favor she has already done me?" asked the gallant
+old gentleman, as Debby took the hat off her own head, and presented it
+with a martial salute.
+
+"Ah, I had forgotten that; but you may claim it, Sir,--indeed, you may;
+I only wish I could do something more to give you pleasure"; and Debby
+looked up into the withered face which had grown familiar to her, with
+kind eyes, full of pity and respect.
+
+Her manner touched the old man very much; he bent his gray head before
+her, saying, gratefully,--
+
+"My child, I am not good enough to salute these blooming cheeks; but I
+shall pray the Virgin to reward you for the compassion you bestow on the
+poor exile, and I shall keep your memory very green through all my
+life."
+
+He kissed her hand, as if it were a queen's, and went on his way,
+thinking of the little daughter whose death left him childless in a
+foreign land.
+
+Debby softly began to sing, "Oh, come unto the yellow sands!" but
+stopped in the middle of a line, to say,--
+
+"Shall I tell you why I did what Aunt Pen would call a very unladylike
+and improper thing, Mr. Evan?"
+
+"If you will be so kind"; and her companion looked delighted at the
+confidence about to be reposed in him.
+
+"Somewhere across this great wide sea I hope I have a brother," Debby
+said, with softened voice and a wistful look into the dim horizon. "Five
+years ago he left us, and we have never heard from him since, except to
+know that he landed safely in Australia. People tell us he is dead; but
+I believe he will yet come home; and so I love to help and pity any man
+who needs it, rich or poor, young or old, hoping that as I do by them
+some tender-hearted woman far away will do by Brother Will."
+
+As Debby spoke, across Frank Evan's face there passed the look that
+seldom comes but once to any young man's countenance; for suddenly the
+moment dawned when love asserted its supremacy, and putting pride,
+doubt, and fear underneath its feet, ruled the strong heart royally and
+bent it to its will. Debby's thoughts had floated across the sea; but
+they came swiftly back when her companion spoke again, steadily and
+slow, but with a subtile change in tone and manner which arrested them
+at once.
+
+"Miss Dora, if you should meet a man who had known a laborious youth, a
+solitary manhood, who had no sweet domestic ties to make home beautiful
+and keep his nature warm, who longed most ardently to be so blessed, and
+made it the aim of his life to grow more worthy the good gift, should it
+ever come,--if you should learn that you possessed the power to make
+this fellow-creature's happiness, could you find it in your gentle heart
+to take compassion on him for the love of 'Brother Will'?"
+
+Debby was silent, wondering why heart and nerves and brain were stirred
+by such a sudden thrill, why she dared not look up, and why, when she
+desired so much to speak, she could only answer, in a voice that sounded
+strange to her own ears,--
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+Still, steadily and slow, with strong emotion deepening and softening
+his voice, the lover at her side went on,--
+
+"Will you ask yourself this question in some quiet hour? For such a man
+has lived in the sunshine of your presence for eight happy weeks, and
+now, when his holiday is done, he finds that the old solitude will be
+more sorrowful than ever, unless he can discover whether his summer
+dream will change into a beautiful reality. Miss Dora, I have very
+little to offer you; a faithful heart to cherish you, a strong arm to
+work for you, an honest name to give into your keeping,--these are all;
+but if they have any worth in your eyes, they are most truly yours
+forever."
+
+Debby was steadying her voice to reply, when a troop of bathers came
+shouting down the bank, and she took flight into her dressing-room,
+there to sit staring at the wall, till the advent of Aunt Pen forced her
+to resume the business of the hour by assuming her aquatic attire and
+stealing shyly down into the surf.
+
+Frank Evan, still pacing in the footprints they had lately made, watched
+the lithe figure tripping to and fro, and, as he looked, murmured to
+himself the last line of a ballad Debby sometimes sang,--
+
+    "Dance light! for my heart it lies under your feet, love!"
+
+Presently a great wave swept Debby up, and stranded her very near him,
+much to her confusion and his satisfaction. Shaking the spray out of her
+eyes, she was hurrying away, when Frank said,--
+
+"You will trip, Miss Dora; let me tie these strings for you"; and,
+suiting the action to the word, he knelt down and began to fasten the
+cords of her bathing-shoe.
+
+Debby stood looking down at the tall head bent before her, with a
+curious sense of wonder that a look from her could make a strong man
+flush and pale, as he had done; and she was trying to concoct some
+friendly speech, when Frank, still fumbling at the knots, said, very
+earnestly and low,--
+
+"Forgive me, if I am selfish in pressing for an answer; but I must go
+to-morrow, and a single word will change my whole future for the better
+or the worse. Won't you speak it, Dora?"
+
+If they had been alone, Debby would have put her arms about his neck,
+and said it with all her heart; but she had a presentiment that she
+should cry, if her love found vent; and here forty pairs of eyes were on
+them, and salt water seemed superfluous. Besides, Debby had not breathed
+the air of coquetry so long without a touch of the infection; and the
+love of power, that lies dormant in the meekest woman's breast, suddenly
+awoke and tempted her.
+
+"If you catch me before I reach that rock, perhaps I will say 'Yes,'"
+was her unexpected answer; and before her lover caught her meaning, she
+was floating leisurely away.
+
+Frank was not in bathing-costume, and Debby never dreamed that he would
+take her at her word; but she did not know the man she had to deal with;
+for, taking no second thought, he flung hat and coat away, and dashed
+into the sea. This gave a serious aspect to Debby's foolish jest. A
+feeling of dismay seized her, when she saw a resolute face dividing the
+waves behind her, and thought of the rash challenge she had given; but
+she had a spirit of her own, and had profited well by Mr. Joe's
+instructions; so she drew a long breath, and swam as if for life,
+instead of love. Evan was incumbered by his clothing, and Debby had much
+the start of him; but, like a second Leander, he hoped to win his Hero,
+and, lending every muscle to the work, gained rapidly upon the little
+hat which was his beacon through the foam. Debby heard the deep
+breathing drawing nearer and nearer, as her pursuer's strong arms cleft
+the water and sent it rippling past her lips. Something like terror took
+possession of her; for the strength seemed going out of her limbs, and
+the rock appeared to recede before her; but the unconquerable blood of
+the Pilgrims was in her veins, and "_Nil desperandum_" her motto; so,
+setting her teeth, she muttered, defiantly,--
+
+"I'll not be beaten, if I go to the bottom!"
+
+A great splashing arose, and when Evan recovered the use of his eyes,
+the pagoda-hat had taken a sudden turn, and seemed making for the
+farthest point of the goal. "I am sure of her now," thought Frank; and,
+like a gallant sea-god, he bore down upon his prize, clutching it with a
+shout of triumph. But the hat was empty, and like a mocking echo came
+Debby's laugh, as she climbed, exhausted, to a cranny in the rock.
+
+"A very neat thing, by Jove! Deuse take me if you a'n't 'an honor to
+your teacher, and a terror to the foe,' Miss Wilder," cried Mr. Joe, as
+he came up from a solitary cruise and dropped anchor at her side. "Here,
+bring along the hat, Evan; I'm going to crown the victor with
+appropriate what-d'-ye-call-'ems," he continued, pulling a handful of
+sea-weed that looked like well-boiled greens.
+
+Frank came up, smiling; but his lips were white, and in his eye a look
+Debby could not meet; so, being full of remorse, she naturally assumed
+an air of gayety, and began to sing the merriest air she knew, merely
+because she longed to throw herself upon the stones and cry violently.
+
+"It was 'most as exciting as a regatta, and you pulled well, Evan; but
+you had too much ballast aboard, and Miss Wilder ran up false colors
+just in time to save her ship. What was the wager?" asked the lively
+Joseph, complacently surveying his marine millinery, which would have
+scandalized a fashionable mermaid.
+
+"Only a trifle," answered Debby, knotting up her braids with a
+revengeful jerk.
+
+"It's taken the wind out of your sails, I fancy, Evan, for you look
+immensely Byronic with the starch minus in your collar and your hair in
+a poetic toss. Come, I'll try a race with you; and Miss Wilder will
+dance all the evening with the winner. Bless the man, what's he doing
+down there? Burying sunfish, hey?"
+
+Frank had been sitting below them on a narrow strip of sand, absently
+piling up a little mound that bore some likeness to a grave. As his
+companion spoke, he looked at it, and a sudden flush of feeling swept
+across his face, as he replied,--
+
+"No, only a dead hope."
+
+"Deuse take it, yes, a good many of that sort of craft founder in these
+waters, as I know to my sorrow"; and, sighing tragically, Mr. Joe turned
+to help Debby from her perch, but she had glided silently into the sea,
+and was gone.
+
+For the next four hours the poor girl suffered the sharpest pain she had
+ever known; for now she clearly saw the strait her folly had betrayed
+her into. Frank Evan was a proud man, and would not ask her love again,
+believing she had tacitly refused it; and how could she tell him that
+she had trifled with the heart she wholly loved and longed to make her
+own? She could not confide in Aunt Pen, for that worldly lady would have
+no sympathy to bestow. She longed for her mother; but there was no time
+to write, for Frank was going on the morrow,--might even then be gone;
+and as this fear came over her, she covered up her face and wished that
+she were dead. Poor Debby! her last mistake was sadder than her first,
+and she was reaping a bitter harvest from her summer's sowing. She sat
+and thought till her cheeks burned and her temples throbbed; but she
+dared not ease her pain with tears. The gong sounded like a Judgment-Day
+trump of doom, and she trembled at the idea of confronting many eyes
+with such a telltale face; but she could not stay behind, for Aunt Pen
+must know the cause. She tried to play her hard part well; but wherever
+she looked, some fresh anxiety appeared, as if every fault and folly of
+those months had blossomed suddenly within the hour. She saw Frank Evan
+more sombre and more solitary than when she met him first, and cried
+regretfully within herself, "How could I so forget the truth I owed
+him?" She saw Clara West watching with eager eyes for the coming of
+young Leavenworth, and sighed, "This is the fruit of my wicked vanity!"
+She saw Aunt Pen regarding her with an anxious face, and longed to say,
+"Forgive me, for I have not been sincere!" At last, as her trouble grew,
+she resolved to go away and have a quiet "think,"--a remedy which had
+served her in many a lesser perplexity; so, stealing out, she went to a
+grove of cedars usually deserted at that hour. But in ten minutes Joe
+Leavenworth appeared at the door of the summer-house, and, looking in,
+said, with a well-acted start of pleasure and surprise,--
+
+"Beg pardon, I thought there was no one here. My dear Miss Wilder, you
+look contemplative; but I fancy it wouldn't do to ask the subject of
+your meditations, would it?"
+
+He paused with such an evident intention of remaining that Debby
+resolved to make use of the moment, and ease her conscience of one care
+that burdened it; therefore she answered his question with her usual
+directness,--
+
+"My meditations were partly about you."
+
+Mr. Joe was guilty of the weakness of blushing violently and looking
+immensely gratified; but his rapture was of short duration, for Debby
+went on very earnestly,--
+
+"I believe I am going to do what you may consider a very impertinent
+thing; but I would rather be unmannerly than unjust to others or untrue
+to my own sense of right. Mr. Leavenworth, if you were an older man, I
+should not dare to say this to you; but I have brothers of my own, and,
+remembering how many unkind things they do for want of thought, I
+venture to remind you that a woman's heart is a perilous plaything, and
+too tender to be used for a selfish purpose or an hour's pleasure. I
+know this kind of amusement is not considered wrong; but it _is_ wrong,
+and I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, or sit silent while another woman
+is allowed to deceive herself and wound the heart that trusts her. Oh,
+if you love your own sisters, be generous, be just, and do not destroy
+that poor girl's happiness, but go away before your sport becomes a
+bitter pain to her!"
+
+Joe Leavenworth had stood staring at Debby with a troubled countenance,
+feeling as if all the misdemeanors of his life were about to be paraded
+before him; but, as he listened to her plea, the womanly spirit that
+prompted it appealed more loudly than her words, and in his really
+generous heart he felt regret for what had never seemed a fault before.
+Shallow as he was, nature was stronger than education, and he admired
+and accepted what many a wiser, worldlier man would have resented with
+auger or contempt. He loved Debby with all his little might; he meant to
+tell her so, and graciously present his fortune and himself for her
+acceptance; but now, when the moment came, the well-turned speech he had
+prepared vanished from his memory, and with the better eloquence of
+feeling he blundered out his passion like a very boy.
+
+"Miss Dora, I never meant to make trouble between Clara and her lover;
+upon my soul, I didn't, and wish Seguin had not put the notion into my
+head, since it has given you pain. I only tried to pique you into
+showing some regret, when I neglected you; but you didn't, and then I
+got desperate and didn't care what became of any one. Oh, Dora, if you
+knew how much I loved you, I am sure you'd forgive it, and let me prove
+my repentance by giving up everything that you dislike. I mean what I
+say; upon my life I do; and I'll keep my word, if you will only let me
+hope."
+
+If Debby had wanted a proof of her love for Frank Evan, she might have
+found it in the fact that she had words enough at her command now, and
+no difficulty in being sisterly pitiful toward her second suitor.
+
+"Please get up," she said; for Mr. Joe, feeling very humble and very
+earnest, had gone down upon his knees, and sat there entirely regardless
+of his personal appearance.
+
+He obeyed; and Debby stood looking up at him with her kindest aspect, as
+she said, more tenderly than she had ever spoken to him before,--
+
+"Thank you for the affection you offer me, but I cannot accept it, for I
+have nothing to give you in return but the friendliest regard, the most
+sincere good-will. I know you will forgive me, and do for your own sake
+the good things you would have done for mine, that I may add to my
+esteem a real respect for one who has been very kind to me."
+
+"I'll try,--indeed, I will, Miss Dora, though it will be powerful hard
+without yourself for a help and a reward."
+
+Poor Joe choked a little, but called up an unexpected manliness, and
+added, stoutly,--
+
+"Don't think I shall be offended at your speaking so, or saying 'No' to
+me,--not a bit; it 's all right, and I'm much obliged to you. I might
+have known you couldn't care for such a fellow as I am, and don't blame
+you, for nobody in the world is good enough for you. I'll go away at
+once, I'll try to keep my promise, and I hope you'll be very happy all
+your life."
+
+He shook Debby's hands heartily, and hurried down the steps, but at the
+bottom paused and looked back. Debby stood upon the threshold with
+sunshine dancing on her winsome face, and kind words trembling on her
+lips; for the moment it seemed impossible to part, and, with an
+impetuous gesture, he cried to her,--
+
+"Oh, Dora, let me stay and try to win you! for everything is possible to
+love, and I never knew how dear you were to me till now!"
+
+There were sudden tears in the young man's eyes, the flush of a genuine
+emotion on his cheek, the tremor of an ardent longing in his voice, and,
+for the first time, a very true affection strengthened his whole
+countenance. Debby's heart was full of penitence; she had given so much
+pain to more than one that she longed to atone for it,--longed to do
+some very friendly thing, and soothe some trouble such as she herself
+had known. She looked into the eager face uplifted to her own and
+thought of Will, then stooped and touched her lover's forehead with the
+lips that softly whispered, "No."
+
+If she had cared for him, she never would have done it; poor Joe knew
+that, and murmuring an incoherent "Thank you!" he rushed away, feeling
+very much as he remembered to have felt when his baby sister died and he
+wept his grief away upon his mother's neck. He began his preparations
+for departure at once, in a burst of virtuous energy quite refreshing to
+behold, thinking within himself, as he flung his cigar-case into the
+grate, kicked a billiard-ball into a corner, and suppressed his favorite
+allusion to the Devil,--
+
+"This is a new sort of thing to me, but I can bear it, and upon my life
+I think I feel the better for it already."
+
+And so he did; for though he was no Augustine to turn in an hour from
+worldly hopes and climb to sainthood through long years of inward
+strife, yet in after-times no one knew how many false steps had been
+saved, how many small sins repented of, through the power of the memory
+that far away a generous woman waited to respect him, and in his secret
+soul he owned that one of the best moments of his life was that in which
+little Debby Wilder whispered "No," and kissed him.
+
+As he passed from sight, the girl leaned her head upon her hand,
+thinking sorrowfully to herself,--
+
+"What right had I to censure him, when my own actions are so far from
+true? I have done a wicked thing, and as an honest girl I should undo
+it, if I can. I have broken through the rules of a false propriety for
+Clara's sake; can I not do as much for Frank's? I will. I'll find him,
+if I search the house,--and tell him all, though I never dare to look
+him in the face again, and Aunt Pen sends me home to-morrow."
+
+Full of zeal and courage, Debby caught up her hat and ran down the
+steps, but, as she saw Frank Evan coming up the path, a sudden panic
+fell upon her, and she could only stand mutely waiting his approach.
+
+It is asserted that Love is blind; and on the strength of that popular
+delusion novel heroes and heroines go blundering through three volumes
+of despair with the plain truth directly under their absurd noses: but
+in real life this theory is not supported; for to a living man the
+countenance of a loving woman is more eloquent than any language, more
+trustworthy than a world of proverbs, more beautiful than the sweetest
+love-lay ever sung.
+
+Frank looked at Debby, and "all her heart stood up in her eyes," as she
+stretched her hands to him, though her lips only whispered very low,--
+
+"Forgive me, and let me say the 'Yes' I should have said so long ago."
+
+Had she required any assurance of her lover's truth, or any reward for
+her own, she would have found it in the change that dawned so swiftly in
+his face, smoothing the lines upon his forehead, lighting the gloom of
+his eye, stirring his firm lips with a sudden tremor, and making his
+touch as soft as it was strong. For a moment both stood very still,
+while Debby's tears streamed down like summer rain; then Frank drew her
+into the green shadow of the grove, and its peace soothed her like a
+mother's voice, till she looked up smiling with a shy delight her glance
+had never known before. The slant sunbeams dropped a benediction on
+their heads, the robins peeped, and the cedars whispered, but no rumor
+of what further passed ever went beyond the precincts of the wood; for
+such hours are sacred, and Nature guards the first blossoms of a human
+love as tenderly as she nurses May-flowers underneath the leaves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Carroll had retired to her bed with a nervous headache, leaving
+Debby to the watch and ward of friendly Mrs. Earle, who performed her
+office finely by letting her charge entirely alone. In her dreams Aunt
+Pen was just imbibing a copious draught of Champagne at the
+wedding-breakfast of her niece, "Mrs. Joseph Leavenworth," when she was
+roused by the bride elect, who passed through the room with a lamp and a
+shawl in her hand.
+
+"What time is it, and where are you going, dear?" she asked, dozily
+wondering if the carriage for the wedding-tour was at the door so soon.
+
+"It's only nine, and I am going for a sail, Aunt Pen."
+
+As Debby spoke, the light flashed full into her face, and a sudden
+thought into Mrs. Carroll's mind. She rose up from her pillow, looking
+as stately in her nightcap as Maria Theresa is said to have done in like
+unassuming head-gear.
+
+"Something has happened, Dora! What have you done? What have you said? I
+insist upon knowing immediately," she demanded, with somewhat startling
+brevity.
+
+"I have said 'No' to Mr. Leavenworth and 'Yes' to Mr. Evan; and I should
+like to go home to-morrow, if you please," was the equally concise
+reply.
+
+Mrs. Carroll fell flat in her bed, and lay there stiff and rigid as
+Morlena Kenwigs. Debby gently drew the curtains, and stole away, leaving
+Aunt Pen's wrath to effervesce before morning.
+
+The moon was hanging luminous and large on the horizon's edge, sending
+shafts of light before her till the melancholy ocean seemed to smile,
+and along that shining pathway happy Debby and her lover floated into
+that new world where all things seem divine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+WET-WEATHER WORK.
+
+BY A FARMER.
+
+III.
+
+
+Will any of our artists ever give us, on canvas, a good, rattling, saucy
+shower? There is room in it for a rare handling of the brush:--the
+vague, indistinguishable line of hills, (as I see them to-day,)--the
+wild scud of gray, with fine gray lines, slanted by the wind, and
+trending eagerly downward,--the swift, petulant dash into the little
+pools of the highway, making fairy bubbles that break as soon as they
+form,--the land smoking with excess of moisture,--and the pelted leaves
+all wincing and shining and adrip.
+
+I know no painter who has so well succeeded in putting a wet sky into
+his pictures as Turner; and in this I judge him by the literal
+_chiaroscuro_ of engraving. In proof of it, I take down from my shelf
+his "Rivers of France": a book over which I have spent a great many
+pleasant hours, and idle ones too,--if it be idle to travel leagues at
+the turning of a page, and to see hill-sides spotty with vineyards, and
+great bridges wallowing through the Loire, and to watch the fishermen of
+Honfleur putting to sea. There are skies, as I said, in some of these
+pictures which make a man instinctively think of his umbrella, or of his
+distance from home: no actual rain-drift stretching from them, but such
+unmistakable promise of a rainy afternoon, in their little parallel
+wisps of dark-bottomed clouds, as would make a provident farmer order
+every scythe out of the field.
+
+In the "Chair of Gargantua," on which my eye falls, as I turn over the
+pages, an actual thunder-storm is breaking. The scene is somewhere upon
+the Lower Seine. From the middle of the left of the picture the lofty
+river-bank stretches far across, forming all the background;--its
+extreme distance hidden by a bold thrust of the right bank, which juts
+into the picture just far enough to shelter a white village, which lies
+gleaming upon the edge of the water. On all the foreground lies the
+river, broad as a bay. The storm is coming down the stream. Over the
+left spur of the bank, and over the meeting of the banks, it broods
+black as night. Through a little rift there is a glimpse of serene sky,
+from which a mellow light streams down upon the edges and angles of a
+few cliffs upon the farther shore. All the rest is heavily shadowed. The
+edges of the coming tempest are tortuous and convulsed, and you know
+that a fierce wind is driving the black billows on; yet all the water
+under the lee of the shores is as tranquil as a dream; a white sail,
+near to the white village, hangs slouchingly to the mast: but in the
+foreground the tempest has already caught the water; a tall lugger is
+scudding and careening under it as if mad; the crews of three
+fishermen's boats, that toss on the vexed water, are making a confused
+rush to shorten sail, and you may almost fancy that you hear their
+outcries sweeping down the wind. In the middle scene, a little steamer
+is floating tranquilly on water which is yet calm; and a column of smoke
+piling up from its tall chimney rises for a space placidly enough, until
+the wind catches and whisks it before the storm. I would wager ten to
+one, upon the mere proof in the picture, that the fishermen and the
+washerwomen in the foreground will be drenched within an hour.
+
+When I have once opened the covers of Turner,--especially upon such a
+wet day as this,--it is hard for me to leave him until I have wandered
+all up and down the Loire, revisited Tours and its quiet cathedral, and
+Blois with its stately chateau, and Amboise with its statelier, and
+coquetted again with memories of the Maid of Orl�ans.
+
+From the Upper Loire it is easy to slip into the branching valleys
+which sidle away from it far down into the country of the Auvergne.
+Turner does not go there, indeed; the more's the pity; but I do, since
+it is the most attractive region rurally (Brittany perhaps excepted) in
+all France. The valleys are green, the brooks are frequent, the rivers
+are tortuous, the mountains are high, and luxuriant walnut-trees embower
+the roads. It was near to Moulins, on the way hither, through the
+pleasant Bourbonnois, that Tristram Shandy met with the poor,
+half-crazed Maria, piping her evening service to the Virgin.
+
+And at that thought I must do no less than pull down my "Tristram
+Shandy," (on which the dust of years has accumulated,) and read again
+that tender story of the lorn maiden, with her attendant goat, and her
+hair caught up in a silken fillet, and her shepherd's pipe, from which
+she pours out a low, plaintive wail upon the evening air.
+
+It is not a little singular that a British author should have supplied
+the only Arcadian resident of all this Arcadian region. The Abb� Delille
+was, indeed, born hereabout, within sight of the bold Puy de Dome, and
+within marketing-distance of the beautiful Clermont. But there is very
+little that is Arcadian, in freshness or simplicity, in either the
+"Gardens" or the other verse of Delille.
+
+Out of his own mouth (the little green-backed book, my boy) I will
+condemn him:--
+
+    "Ce n'est plus cette simple et rustique d�esse
+    Qui suit ses vieilles lois; c'est une enchanteresse
+    Qui, la baguette en main, par des hardis travaux
+    Fait na�tre des aspects et des tr�sors nouveaux,
+    Compose un sol plus riche et des races plus belles,
+    Fertilise les monts, dompte les rocs rebelles."
+
+The _baguette_ of Delille is no shepherd's crook; it has more the
+fashion of a drumstick,--_baguette de tambour_.
+
+If I follow on southward to Provence, whither I am borne upon the scuds
+of rain over Turner's pictures, and the pretty Bourbonnois, and the
+green mountains of Auvergne, I find all the characteristic literature of
+that land of olives is only of love or war: the vines, the
+olive-orchards, and the yellow hill-sides pass for nothing. And if I
+read an old _Sirvente_ of the Troubadours, beginning with a certain
+redolence of the fields, all this yields presently to knights, and
+steeds caparisoned,--
+
+    "Cavalliers ab cavals armatz."
+
+It is smooth reading, and is attributed to Bertrand de Born,[3] who
+lived in the time when even the lion-hearted King Richard turned his
+brawny fingers to the luting of a song. Let us listen:--
+
+    "The beautiful spring delights me well,
+      When flowers and leaves are growing;
+    And it pleases my heart to hear the swell
+      Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing
+        In the echoing wood;
+    And I love to see, all scattered around,
+    Pavilions and tents on the martial ground;
+        And my spirit finds it good
+    To see, on the level plains beyond,
+    Gay knights and steeds caparisoned."
+
+[Footnote 3: M. Raynouard, _Po�sies de Troubadours_, II. 209.]
+
+But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse,
+the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a
+sturdy clang of battle, that would not discredit our own times:--
+
+    "I tell you that nothing my soul can cheer,
+      Or banqueting or reposing,
+    Like the onset cry of 'Charge them!' rung
+      From each side, as in battle closing;
+        Where the horses neigh,
+    And the call to 'aid' is echoing loud,
+    And there, on the earth, the lowly and proud
+        In the foss together lie,
+    And yonder is piled the mingled heap
+    Of the brave that scaled the trenches steep.
+
+    "Barons! your castles in safety place,
+      Your cities and villages, too,
+    Before ye haste to the battle-scene:
+      And Papiol! quickly go,
+    And tell the lord of 'Yes and No'
+    That peace already too long hath been!"[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: I cannot forbear taking a bit of margin to print the
+closing stanzas of the original, which carry the clash of sabres in
+their very sound.
+
+    "Ie us dic que tan no m' a sabor
+      Manjars ni beure ni dormir
+    Cum a quant aug cridar: A lor!
+      D'ambas las partz; et aug agnir
+        Cavals voitz per l'ombratge,
+    Et aug cridar: Aidatz! Aidatz!
+    E vei cazer per los fossatz
+        Paucs e grans per l'erbatge,
+    E vei los mortz que pels costatz
+    An los tronsons outre passatz.
+
+      "Baros, metetz et gatge
+      Castels e vilas e ciutatz,
+      Enans q' usquecs no us guerreiatz.
+
+      "Papiol, d'agradatge
+      Ad _Oc e No_ t' en vai viatz,
+      Dic li que trop estan en patz."
+
+It would seem that the men of that time, like men of most times, bore a
+considerable contempt for people who said "Yes" one day, and "No" the
+next.]
+
+I am on my way to Italy, (it may as well be confessed,) where I had
+fully intended to open my rainy day's work; but Turner has kept me, and
+then Auvergne, and then the brisk battle-song of a Troubadour.
+
+When I was upon the Cajano farm of Lorenzo the Magnificent, during my
+last "spell of wet," it was uncourteous not to refer to the pleasant
+commemorative poem of "Ambra," which Lorenzo himself wrote, and which,
+whatever may be said against the conception and conduct of it, shows in
+its opening stanzas that the great Medici was as appreciative of rural
+images--fir-boughs with loaded snows, thick cypresses in which late
+birds lurked, sharp-leaved junipers, and sturdy pines fighting the
+wind--as ever he had been of antique jewels, or of the rhythm of such as
+Politiano. And if I have spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was
+only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When
+he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan,
+we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna
+Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped
+with such a relishing _gusto_ into the colors of the hyacinths and
+trembling pansies, and into all the blandishments of a gushing and
+wanton spring.[5]
+
+
+[Footnote 5: See Wm. Parr Greswell's _Memoirs of Politiano_, with
+translations.]
+
+But classical affectation was the fashion of that day. A certain
+Bolognese noble, Ber� by name, wrote ten Latin books on rural affairs:
+Tiraboschi says he never saw them; neither have I. Another scholar,
+Pietro da Barga, who astonished his teachers by his wonderful
+proficiency at the age of twelve, and who was afterward guest of the
+French ambassador in Venice, wrote a poem on rural matters, to which,
+with an exaggerated classicism, he gave the Greek name of
+"_Cynegeticon_"; and about the same time Giuseppe Voltolina composed
+three books on kitchen-gardening. I name these writers only out of
+sympathy with their topics: I would not advise the reading of them: it
+would involve a long journey and scrupulous search to find them, through
+I know not what out-of-the-way libraries; and if found, no essentially
+new facts or theories could be counted on which are not covered by the
+treatise of Crescenzi. The Pisans or Venetians may possibly have
+introduced a few new plants from the East; the example of the Medici may
+have suggested some improvements in the arrangement of forcing-houses,
+or the outlay of villas; but in all that regarded general husbandry,
+Crescenzi was still the man.
+
+I linger about this period, and the writers of this time, because I
+snuff here and there among them the perfume of a country bouquet, which
+carries the odor of the fields with it, and transports me to the
+"empurpled hill-sides" of Tuscany. Shall I name Sannazaro, with his
+"Arcadia"?--a dead book now,--or "Amyntas," who, before he is tall
+enough to steal apples from the lowest boughs, (so sings Tasso,) plunges
+head and ears in love with Sylvia, the fine daughter of Montano, who has
+a store of cattle, "_richissimo d'armenti_"?
+
+Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to
+be Governor of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and yet has left a poem of
+fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees. In his suggestions for the
+allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond
+either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln. "Pluck some leafy branch," he
+says, "and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or
+sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their
+strife":--
+
+            "The two warring bands joyful unite,
+    And foe embraces foe: each with its lips
+    Licking the others' wings, feet, arms, and breast,
+    Whereon the luscious mixture hath been shed,
+    And all inebriate with delight."
+
+So the Swiss,[6] he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are
+appeased by some grave old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words, and
+orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip
+their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget
+outrage. It may have been the sixteenth-century way of closing a battle.
+
+[Footnote 6:
+    "Come quando nei Suizzeri si muove
+    Sedizione, e che si grida a l' arme;
+    Se qualche nom grave allor si leva in piede
+    E comincia a parlar con dolce lingua,
+    Mitiga i petti barbari e feroci;
+    E intanto fa portare ondanti vasi
+    Pieni di dolci ed odorati vini;
+    Ahora ognun le labbra e 'l mento immerge
+    Ne' le spumanti tazze," etc.
+]
+
+Guarini, with all his affectations, has little prettinesses which charm
+like the chirping of a bird;--as where he paints (in the very first
+scene of the "Pastor Fido") the little sparrow flitting from fir to
+beech, and from beech to myrtle, and twittering, "How I love! how I
+love!" And the bird-mate ("_il suo dolce desio_") twitters in reply,
+"How I love, how I love, too!" "_Ardo d' amore anch' io._"
+
+Messer Pietro Bembo was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine
+him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a
+flower,--except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward
+the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who
+wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and
+learned; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castlian: but nobody reads him; he
+has only a little crypt in the "Autori Diversi." I think of him as I
+think of fine women who must always rustle in brocade embossed with hard
+jewels, and who never win the triumphs that belong to a charming morning
+_d�shabill�_ with only the added improvisation of a rose.
+
+In his "Asolani" Bembo gives a very full and minute description of the
+gardens at Asolo, which relieved the royal retirement of Caterina, the
+Queen of Cyprus. Nothing could be more admirable than the situation:
+there were skirts of mountain which were covered, and are still covered,
+with oaks; there were grottos in the sides of cliffs, and water so
+disposed--in jets, in pools inclosed by marble, and among rocks--as to
+counterfeit all the wildness of Nature; there was the same stately array
+of cypresses, and of clipped hedges, which had belonged to the villas of
+Pliny; temples were decorated with blazing frescoes, to which, I dare
+say, Carpaccio may have lent a hand, if not that wild rake, Giorgione.
+Here the pretty Queen, with eight thousand gold ducats a year, (whatever
+that amount may have been,) and some seventy odd retainers, held her
+court; and here Bembo, a dashing young fellow at that time of seven or
+eight and twenty, became a party to those disquisitions on Love, and to
+those recitations of song, part of which he has recorded in the
+"Asolani." I am sorry to say, the beauty of the place, so far as regards
+its artificial features, is now all gone. The hall, which may have
+served as the presence-chamber of the Queen, was only a few years since
+doing service as a farmer's barn; and the traces of a Diana and an
+Apollo were still coloring the wall under which a few cows were
+crunching their clover-hay.
+
+All the gardening of Italy at that period, as, indeed, at almost all
+times, depended very much upon architectural accessories: colonnades and
+wall-veil with frescoes make a large part of Italian gardening to this
+day. The Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore, and the Borghese Garden at
+Rome, are fair types. And as I recall the sunny vistas of this last, and
+the noontide loungings upon the marble seats, counting white flecks of
+statues amid the green of cypresses, and watching the shadow which some
+dense-topped pine flings upon a marble flight of steps or a marble
+balustrade, I cannot sneer at the Italian gardening, or wish it were
+other than it is. The art-life of Italy is the crowning and the
+overlapping life. The Campagna seems only a bit of foreground to carry
+the leaping arches of the aqueducts, and to throw the hills of Tivoli
+and Albano to a purple distance. The farmers (_fattori_) who gallop
+across the fields, in rough sheepskin wrappers, and upon scurvy-looking
+ponies, are more picturesque than thrifty; and if I gallop in company
+with one of them to his home upon the farther edge of the Campagna,
+(which is an allowable wet-day fancy,) I shall find a tall stone house
+smeared over roughly with plaster, and its ground-floor devoted to a
+crazy cart, a pony, a brace of cows, and a few goats; a rude court is
+walled in adjoining the house, where a few pigs are grunting. Ascending
+an oaken stair-way within the door, I come upon the living-room of the
+_fattore_; the beams overhead are begrimed with smoke, and garnished
+here and there with flitches of bacon; a scant fire of fagots is
+struggling into blaze upon an open hearth; and on a low table bare of
+either cloth or cleanliness, there waits him his supper of _polenta_,
+which is nothing more or less than our plain boiled Indian-pudding. Add
+to this a red-eyed dog, that seems to be a savage representative of a
+Scotch colley,--a lean, wrinkled, dark-faced woman, who is unwinding the
+bandages from a squalling _Bambino_,--a mixed odor of garlic and of
+goats, that is quickened with an ammoniacal pungency,--and you may form
+some idea of the home of a small Roman farmer in our day. It falls away
+from the standard of Cato; and so does the man.
+
+He takes his twenty or thirty acres, upon shares, from some wealthy
+proprietor of Rome, whose estate may possibly cover a square mile or two
+of territory. He sells vegetables, poultry, a little grain, a few curds,
+and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many
+who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and
+they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift
+under the new government, I cannot say.
+
+Around Bologna, indeed, there was a better race of farmers: the
+intervening thrift of Tuscany had always its influence. The meadows of
+Terni, too, which are watered by the Velino, bear three full crops of
+grass in the season; the valley of the Clitumnus is like a miniature of
+the Genesee; and around Perugia the crimson-tasselled clovers, in the
+season of their bloom, give to the fields the beauty of a garden.
+
+The old Duke of Tuscany, before he became soured by his political
+mishaps, was a great patron of agricultural improvements. He had
+princely farms in the neighborhood both of his capital and of Pisa. Of
+the latter I cannot speak from personal observation; but the dairy-farm,
+_Cascina_, near to Florence, can hardly have been much inferior to the
+Cajano property of the great Lorenzo. The stables were admirably
+arranged, and of permanent character; the neatness was equal to that of
+the dairies of Holland. The Swiss cows, of a pretty dun-color, were kept
+stalled, and luxuriously fed upon freshly cut ray-grass, clover, or
+vetches, with an occasional sprinkling of meal; the calves were
+invariably reared by hand; and the average _per diem_ of milk,
+throughout the season, was stated at fourteen quarts; and I think
+Madonna Clarice never strained more than this into the cheese-tubs of
+Ambra. I trust the burghers of Florence, and the new _Gonfaloniere_,
+whoever he may be, will not forget the dun cows of the Cascina, or their
+baitings with the tender vetches.
+
+The redemption of the waste marshlands in the Val di Chiana by the
+engineering skill of Fossombroni, and the consequent restoration of many
+thousands of acres which seemed hopelessly lost to fertility, is a
+result of which the Medici would hardly have dreamed, and which would do
+credit to any age or country.
+
+About the better-cultivated portions of Lombardy there is an almost
+regal look. The roads are straight, and of most admirable construction.
+Lines of trees lift their stateliness on either side, and carry trailing
+festoons of vines. On both sides streams of water are flowing in
+artificial canals, interrupted here and there by cross sluices and
+gates, by means of which any or all of the fields can be laid under
+water at pleasure, so that old meadows return three and four cuttings of
+grass in the year. There are patches of Indian-corn which are equal to
+any that can be seen on the Miami; hemp and flax appear at intervals,
+and upon the lower lands rice. The barns are huge in size, and are
+raised from the ground upon columns of masonry.
+
+I have a dapper little note-book of travel, from which these facts are
+mainly taken; and at the head of one of its pages I observe an old
+ink-sketch of a few trees, with festoons of vines between. It is
+yellowed now, and poor always; for I am but a dabbler at such things.
+Yet it brings back, clearly and briskly, the broad stretch of Lombard
+meadows, the smooth Macadam, the gleaming canals of water, the white
+finials of Milan Cathedral shining somewhere in the distance, the
+thrushes, as in the "Pastor Fido," filling all the morning air with
+their sweet
+
+    "Ardo d' amore! ardo d' amore!"
+
+the dewy clover-lots, looking like wavy silken plush, the green glitter
+of mulberry-leaves, and the beggar in steeple-crowned hat, who says,
+"_Grazia_," and "_� rivedervi!_" as I drop him a few kreutzers, and
+rattle away to the North, and out of Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About the year 1570, a certain Conrad Heresbach, who was Councillor to
+the Duke of Cleves, (brother to that unfortunate Anne of Cleves who was
+one of the wife-victims of Henry VIII.,) wrote four Latin books on
+rustic affairs, which were translated by Barnaby Googe, a Lincolnshire
+farmer and poet, who was in his day gentleman-pensioner to Queen
+Elizabeth. Our friend Barnaby introduces his translation in this
+style:--"I haue thought it meet (good Reader) for thy further profit &
+pleasure, to put into English these foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected
+& set forth by Master Conrade Heresbatch, a great & a learned Counceller
+of the Duke of Cleues: not thinking it reason, though I haue altered &
+increased his worke, _with mine owne readings & obseruations_, joined
+with the experience of sundry my friends, to take from him (as diuers in
+the like case haue done) the honour & glory of his owne trauaile:
+Neither is it my minde, that this either his doings or mine, should
+deface, or any waves darken the good enterprise, or painfull trauailes
+of such our countrymen, of England, as haue plentifully written of this
+matter: but always haue, & do giue them the reuerence & honour due to so
+vertuous, & well disposed Gentlemen, namely, _Master Fitz herbert_, &
+_Master Tusser_: whose workes may, in my fancie, without any
+presumption, compare with any, either _Varro_, _Columella_, or
+_Palladius_ of _Rome_."
+
+The work is written in the form of a dialogue, the parties being Cono, a
+country-gentleman, Metella, his wife, Rigo, a courtier, and Hermes, a
+servant. The first book relates to tillage, and farm-practice in
+general; the second, to orcharding, gardens, and woods; the third, to
+cattle; and the fourth, to fowl, fish, and bees. He had evidently been
+an attentive reader of the older authors I have discussed, and his
+citations from them are abundant. He had also opportunity for every-day
+observation in a region which, besides being one of the most fertile,
+was probably at that time the most highly cultivated in Europe; and his
+work may be regarded as the most important contribution to agricultural
+literature since the days of Crescenzi. He reaffirms, indeed, many of
+the old fables of the Latinists,--respects the force of proper
+incantations, has abiding faith in "the moon being aloft" in time of
+sowing, and insists that the medlar can be grafted on the pine, and the
+cherry upon the fir. Rue, he tells us, "will prosper the better for
+being stolen"; and "If you breake to powder the horne of a Ram & sowe it
+watrying it well, it is thought it will come to be good Sperage"
+(Asparagus). He assures us that he has grafted the pear successfully
+when in full bloom; and furthermore, that he has seen apples which have
+been kept sound for three years.
+
+Upon the last page are some rules for purchasing land, which I suspect
+are to be attributed to the poet of Lincolnshire, rather than to
+Heresbach. They are as good as they were then; and the poetry none the
+worse:--
+
+    "First see that the land be clear
+    In title of the seller;
+    And that it stand in danger
+    Of no woman's dowrie;
+    See whether the tenure be bond or free,
+    And release of every fee of fee;
+    See that the seller be of age,
+    And that it lie not in mortgage;
+    Whether ataile be thereof found,
+    And whether it stand in statute bound;
+    Consider what service longeth thereto,
+    And what quit rent thereout must goe;
+    And if it become of a wedded woman,
+    Think thou then on covert baron;
+    And if thou may in any wise,
+    Make thy charter in warrantise,
+    To thee, thine heyres, assignes also;
+    Thus should a wise purchaser doe."
+
+The learned Lipsius was a contemporary of Councillor Heresbach, and
+although his orthodoxy was somewhat questionable, and his Calvinism
+somewhat stretchy, there can be no doubt of the honest rural love which
+belongs to some of his letters, and especially to this smack of verse (I
+dare not say poetry) with which he closes his _Eighth (Cent. I.)_
+
+    "Vitam si liceat mihi
+    Formare arbitriis meis:
+    Non fasces cupiam aut opes,
+    Non clarus niveis equis
+    Captiva agmina traxerim.
+      In solis habitem locis,
+    Hortos possideam atque agros,
+    Illic ad strepitus aqu�
+    Musarum studiis fruar.
+      Sic cum fata mihi ultima
+    Pernerit Lachesis mea;
+    Tranquillus moriar senex."
+
+And with this I will have done with a dead language; for I am come to a
+period now when I can garnish my talk with the flowers of good old
+English gardens. At the very thought of them, I seem to hear the royal
+captive James pouring madrigals through the window of his Windsor
+prison,--
+
+    "the hymnis consecrat
+    Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,
+    That all the gardens and the wallis rung."
+
+And through the "Dreme" of Chaucer I seem to see the great plain of
+Woodstock stretching away under my view, all white and green, "green
+y-powdered with daisy." Upon the half-ploughed land, lying yonder veiled
+so tenderly with the mist and the rain, I could take oath to the very
+spot where five hundred years ago the plowman of Chaucer, all "forswat,"
+
+    "plucked up his plowe
+    Whan midsomer mone was comen in
+    And shoke off shear, and coulter off drowe,
+    And honged his harnis on a pinne,
+    And said his beasts should ete enowe
+    And lie in grasse up to the chin."
+
+But Chaucer was no farmer, or he would have known it to be bad husbandry
+(even for poetry) to allow cattle steaming from the plough to lie down
+in grass of that height.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Anthony Fitz-herbert is the first duly accredited writer on British
+husbandry. There are some few earlier ones, it is true,--a certain
+"Mayster Groshede, Bysshop of Lyncoln," and a Henri Calcoensis, among
+them. Indeed, Mr. Donaldson, who has compiled a bibliography of British
+farm-writers, and who once threatened a poem on kindred subjects, has
+the effrontery to include Lord Littleton. Now I have a respect for Lord
+Littleton, and for Coke on Littleton, but it is tempered with some early
+experiences in a lawyer's office, and some later experiences of the
+legal profession; he may have written well upon "Tenures," but he had
+not enough of tenderness even for a teasel.
+
+I think it worthy of remark, in view of the mixed complexion which I
+have given to these wet-day studies, that the oldest printed copy of
+that sweet ballad of the "Nut Browne Mayde" has come to us in a
+Chronicle of 1503, which contains also a chapter upon "the crafte of
+graffynge & plantynge & alterynge of fruyts." What could be happier than
+the conjunction of the knight of "the grenwode tree" with a good chapter
+on "graffynge"?
+
+Fitz-herbert's work is entitled a "Boke of Husbandrie," and counts,
+among other headings of discourse, the following:--
+
+"Whether is better a plough of horses or a plough of oxen."
+
+"To cary out dounge & mucke, & to spreade it."
+
+"The fyrste furryng of the falowes."
+
+"To make a ewe to love hir lambe."
+
+"To bye lean cattel."
+
+"A shorte information for a young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve."
+
+"What the wyfe oughte to dooe generally."
+
+(_seq._) "To kepe measure in spendynge."
+
+"What be God's commandments."
+
+By all which it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of
+husbandry as did Xenophon.
+
+Among other advices to the "young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve"
+he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if "he fynde any
+horses, mares, swyne, shepe, beastes in his pastures that be not his
+own; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture
+uppon his grasse, whereby he may take double herte, bothe losse of his
+grasse, & rotting of his shepe, & calves; or if he fyndeth or seeth
+anything that is amisse, & wold be amended, let him take out his tables
+& wryte the defautes; & when he commeth home to dinner, supper, or at
+nyght, then let him call his bayley, & soo shewe him the defautes. For
+this," says he, "used I to doo x or xi yeres or more; & yf he cannot
+wryte, lette him nycke the defautes uppon a stycke."
+
+Sir Anthony is gracious to the wife, but he is not tender; and it may be
+encouraging to country-housewives nowadays to see what service was
+expected of their mothers in the days of Henry VIII.
+
+"It is a wives occupacion to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte,
+wash & wring, to make hey, to shere corne, & in time of neede to helpe
+her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough,
+to lode hay corne & such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell
+butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees & al
+maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging
+to a household, & to make a true rekening & accompt to her husband what
+she hath receyved & what she hathe payed. And yf the husband go to
+market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his wife in lyke
+maner. For if one of them should use to disceive the other, he
+disceyveth himselfe, & he is not lyke to thryve, & therfore they must be
+true ether to other."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I come next to Master Tusser,--poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond,
+happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon some wag wrote this:--
+
+    "Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,
+    Thou teaching thrift, thyself could never thrive;
+    So, like the whetstone, many men are wont
+    To sharpen others when themselves are blunt."
+
+I cannot help considering poor Tusser's example one of warning to all
+poetically inclined farmers.
+
+He was born at a little village in the County of Essex. Having a good
+voice, he came early in life to be installed as singer at Wallingford
+College; and showing here a great proficiency, he was shortly after
+impressed for the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Afterward he was for
+some time at Eton, where he had the ill-luck to receive some fifty-four
+stripes for his shortcomings in Latin; thence he goes to Trinity
+College, Cambridge, where he lives "in clover." It appears that he had
+some connections at Court, through whose influence he was induced to go
+up to London, where he remained some ten years,--possibly as
+singer,--but finally left in great disgust at the vices of the town, and
+commenced as farmer in Suffolk,--
+
+           "To moil and to toil
+    With loss and pain, to little gain,
+            To cram Sir Knave";--
+
+from which I fancy that he had a hard landlord, and but little sturdy
+resolution. Thence he goes to Ipswich, or its neighborhood, with no
+better experience. Afterward we hear of him with a second wife at
+Dereham Abbey; but his wife is young and sharp-tempered, and his
+landlord a screw: so he does not thrive here, but goes to Norwich and
+commences chorister again; but presently takes another farm in
+Fairstead, Essex, where it would seem he eked out a support by
+collecting tithes for the parson. But he says,--
+
+           "I spyed, if parson died,
+    (All hope in vain,) to hope for gain
+            I might go dance."
+
+Possibly he did go dance: he certainly left the tithe-business, and
+after settling in one more home, from which he ran to escape the plague,
+we find him returned to London, to die,--where he was buried in the
+Poultry.
+
+There are good points in his poem, showing close observation, good
+sense, and excellent judgment. His rules of farm-practice are entirely
+safe and judicious, and make one wonder how the man who could give such
+capital advice could make so capital a failure. In the secret lies all
+the philosophy of the difference between knowledge and practice. The
+instance is not without its modern support: I have the honor of
+acquaintance with several gentlemen who lay down charming rules for
+successful husbandry, every time they pay the country a visit; and yet
+even their poultry-account is always largely against the constipated
+hens.
+
+What is specially remarkable about Tusser is his air of entire
+resignation amid all manner of vicissitudes: he does not seem to count
+his hardships either wonderful or intolerable or unmerited. He tells us
+of the thrashing he had at Eton, (fifty-four licks,) without greatly
+impugning the head-master; and his shiftlessness in life makes us
+strongly suspect that he deserved it all.
+
+Fuller, in his "Worthies," says Tusser "spread his bread with all sorts
+of butter, yet none would stick thereon." In short, though the poet
+wrote well on farm-practice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of
+farm-successes. With all his excellent notions about sowing and reaping,
+and rising with the lark, I should look for a little more of stirring
+mettle and of dogged resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant.
+I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as a kind-hearted
+poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too
+porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve: yet taking
+life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a
+rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and
+looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision:--
+
+    "To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low,
+    But how, and how suddenly, few be that know,
+    What carry we, then, but a sheet to the grave,
+    (To cover this carcass,) of all that we have?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of
+English authors, "the most ingenious husbandman of his age."[7] He is
+elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had two
+estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin's Lane. He was an
+enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries,
+corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful
+experiments within his own grounds. In speaking of that "rare and
+peerless plant, the grape," he insists upon the wholesomeness of the
+wines he made from his Bednall-Greene garden: "And if," he says, "any
+exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am
+content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe
+any true skill in the judgment of high country wines: although for their
+better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now
+almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these
+wines) gaue this sentence upon them: that he neuer drank any better new
+wine in France."
+
+[Footnote 7: Latter part of sixteenth century; and was living, according
+to Johnson, as late as 1606.]
+
+I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the
+speech of the ambassador; French ambassadors are always so complaisant!
+
+Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that
+"delicate Knight," Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by
+a sight of a cherry-tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had
+gone by in England. "This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or
+couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then
+with a scoope or horne, as the heat of the weather required: and so, by
+witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew
+both great, and were very long before they had gotten their perfect
+cherrie-colour: and when he was assured of her Majestie's comming, he
+remoued the Tent, and a few sunny daies brought them to their full
+maturities."
+
+These notices are to be found in his "Flores Paradise." Another work,
+entitled "Dyuers Soyles for manuring pasture & arable land," enumerates,
+in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new
+matters (in that day) as "salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth,
+moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust,
+soap-boilers ashes, and marle." But what I think particularly commends
+him to notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among the pioneers,
+is his little tract upon "The Setting of Corne."[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: This is not mentioned either by Felton in his _Portraits_,
+etc., or by Johnson in his _History of Gardening_. Donaldson gives the
+title, and the headings of the chapters.]
+
+In this he anticipates the system of "dibbling" grain, which,
+notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers within half a century[9] as a
+new thing; and which, it is needless to say, still prevails extensively
+in many parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed the work of
+Sir Hugh Platt, it antedates very many of the suggestions and
+improvements which are usually accorded to Tull. The latter, indeed,
+proposed the drill, and repeated tillage; but certain advantages, before
+unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individual plants, economy
+of seed, and facility of culture, are common to both systems. Sir Hugh,
+in consecutive chapters, shows how the discovery came about; "why the
+corne shootes into so many eares"; how the ground is to be dug for the
+new practice; and what are the several instruments for making the holes
+and covering the grain.
+
+[Footnote 9: See Young, _Annals of Agriculture_, Vol. III. p. 219, _et
+seq._]
+
+I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy gentleman than by
+giving his own _envoi_ to the most considerable of his books:--"Thus,
+gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and
+laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary
+conceit in a Scholler's private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by
+the painfull hand of experience: and having also given thee a touch of
+Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the worlde without
+her veyle: and Expecting, by thy good entertainement of these, some
+encouragement for higher and deeper discoveries hereafter, I leave thee
+to the God of Nature, from whom all the true light of Nature
+proceedeth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gervase Markham must have been a roistering gallant about the time that
+Sir Hugh was conducting his experiments on "Soyles"; for, in 1591, he
+had the honor to be dangerously wounded in a duel which he fought in
+behalf of the Countess of Shrewsbury; there are also some painful rumors
+current (in old books) in regard to his habits in early life, which
+weaken somewhat our trust in him as a quiet country counsellor. I
+suspect, that, up to mature life, at any rate, he knew much more about
+the sparring of a game-cock than the making of capons. Yet he wrote
+books upon the proper care of beasts and fowls, as well as upon almost
+every subject connected with husbandry. And that these were good books,
+or at least in large demand, we have in evidence the memorandum of a
+promise which some griping bookseller extorted from him, under date of
+July, 1617:--
+
+"I, Gervase Markham, of London, Gent, do promise hereafter never to
+write any more book or books to be printed of the diseases or cures of
+any cattle, as horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine and goates, &c. In
+witness whereof, I have hereunto sett my hand, the 24th day of Julie.
+
+"GERVIS MARKHAM."
+
+He seems to have been a man of some literary accomplishments, and one
+who knew how to turn them to account. He translated the "Maison
+Rustique" of Liebault, and had some hand in the concoction of one or two
+poems which kindled the ire of the Puritan clergy. There is no doubt but
+he was an adroit bookmaker; and the value of his labors, in respect to
+practical husbandry, was due chiefly to his art of arranging,
+compacting, and illustrating the maxims and practices already received.
+His observations upon diseases of cattle and upon horsemanship were
+doubtless based on experimental knowledge; for he was a rare and ardent
+sportsman, and possessed all a sportsman's keenness in the detection of
+infirmities.
+
+I suspect, moreover, that there were substantial grounds for that
+acquaintance with gastronomy shown in the "Country Housewife." In this
+book, after discoursing upon cookery and great feasts, he gives the
+details of a "humble feast of a proportion which any good man may keep
+in his family."
+
+"As thus:--first, a shield of brawn with mustard; secondly, a boyl'd
+capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef
+rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted; sixthly, a pig rosted;
+seventhly chewits baked; eighthly, a goose rosted; ninthly, a swan
+rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted;
+twelfth, a pasty of venison; thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the
+belly; fourteenth, an olive pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the
+sixteenth, a custard or dowsets."
+
+This is what Master Gervase calls a frugal dinner, for the entertainment
+of a worthy friend; is it any wonder that he wrote about "Country
+Contentments"?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My chapter is nearly full; and a burst of sunshine is flaming over all
+the land under my eye; and yet I am but just entered upon the period of
+English literary history which is most rich in rural illustration. The
+mere backs of the books relating thereto, as my glance ranges over them,
+where they stand in tidy platoon, start a delightfully confused picture
+to my mind.
+
+I think it possible that Sir Hugh Platt may some day entertain at his
+Bednall-Greene garden the worshipful Francis Bacon, who is living down
+at Twickenham, and who is a thriving lawyer, and has written essays,
+which Sir Hugh must know,--in which he discourses shrewdly upon gardens,
+as well as many kindred matters; and through his wide correspondence,
+Sir Hugh must probably have heard of certain new herbs which have been
+brought home from Virginia and the Roanoke, and very possibly he is
+making trial of a tobacco-plant in his garden, to be submitted some day
+to his friend, the French Ambassador.
+
+I can fancy Gervase Markham "making a night of it" with those rollicking
+bachelors, Beaumont and Fletcher, at the "Mermaid," or going with them
+to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will
+Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,--the latter taking the part of
+Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour." His
+friends say that this Will has parts.
+
+Then there is the fiery and dashing Sir Philip Sidney, who threatened to
+thrust a dagger into the heart of poor Molyneux, his father's steward,
+for opening private letters (which poor Molyneux never did); and Sir
+Philip knows all about poetry and the ancients; and in virtue of his
+knowledges, he writes a terribly magniloquent and tedious "Arcadia,"
+which, when he comes to die gallantly in battle, is admired and read
+everywhere: nowadays it rests mostly on the shelf. But the memory of his
+generous and noble spirit is far livelier than his book. It was through
+him, and his friendship, probably, that the poet Spenser was gifted by
+the Queen with a fine farm of three thousand acres among the Bally-Howra
+hills of Ireland.
+
+And it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh, that "shepherd of the sea,"
+visited the poet, and found him seated
+
+                    "amongst the coolly shade
+    Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore."
+
+Did the gallant privateer possibly talk with the farmer about the
+introduction of that new esculent, the potato? Did they talk tobacco?
+Did Colin Clout have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep, or
+upon the probable "clip" of the year?
+
+Nothing of this; but
+
+    "He pip'd, I sung; and when he sung, I pip'd:
+    By chaunge of tunes each making other merry."
+
+The lines would make a fair argument of the poet's bucolic life. I have
+a strong faith that his farming was of the higgledy-piggledy order; I do
+not believe that he could have set a plough into the sod, or have made a
+good "cast" of barley. It is certain, that, when the Tyrone rebels
+burned him out of Kilcolman Castle, he took no treasure with him but his
+Elizabeth and the two babes; and the only treasures he left were the
+ashes of the dear child whose face shone on him there for the last
+time,--
+
+          "bright with many a curl
+    That clustered round her head."
+
+I wish I could love his "Shepherd's Calendar"; but I cannot. Abounding
+art of language, exquisite fancies, delicacies innumerable there may be;
+but there is no exhilarating air from the mountains, no crisp breezes,
+no songs that make the welkin ring, no river that champs the bit, no
+sky-piercing falcon.
+
+And as for the "Fa�ry Queene," if I must confess it, I can never read
+far without a sense of suffocation from the affluence of its beauties.
+It is a marvellously fair sea and broad,--with tender winds blowing over
+it, and all the ripples are iris-hued; but you long for some brave blast
+that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from
+its lifted waters, and drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming
+curlew.
+
+In short, I can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest--as we
+farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil
+that lifts heavily.
+
+And so I leave the matter,--with the "Fa�ry Queene" in my thought, and
+leaning on my spade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CIVIC BANQUETS.
+
+
+It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Englishman will be able to
+reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the
+earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take
+his appetite along with him, (which it seems to me hardly possible to
+believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition,) the
+immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during
+which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not
+an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of
+dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest
+characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened
+itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with
+Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and
+ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting
+the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less
+complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy.
+Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which
+his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to
+conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for
+the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was
+of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a
+delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents
+the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at
+Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only
+because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more
+acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English
+taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and
+poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately
+implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though
+still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of
+virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in
+midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which,
+elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges
+of Tartarus.
+
+Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a
+kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon
+the table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due
+reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such
+reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest
+abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty
+years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and
+indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost
+the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the
+earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of
+his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my
+countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too
+much to affirm, that, on this side of the water, people never dine. At
+any rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material
+requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in
+America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and
+our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a
+happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of
+culture which we have attained.
+
+It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen
+know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of
+the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that
+particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often
+present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which,
+while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were
+thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It
+could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal
+enjoyment, because out of the very perfection of that lower bliss there
+had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the
+master-pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible,
+a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension,
+vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to
+recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set
+of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special
+fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only
+eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by
+the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a
+little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle,
+delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most
+exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through
+which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was
+worth a heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achievement,--the
+production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect
+taste,--the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening
+for this hour, since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with
+wine,--must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other
+beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no
+better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill
+Coffee-House, unless the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach,
+is ready to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony
+in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch
+of well-according minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the
+guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our
+part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted and tumultuous place we find
+it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner.
+
+The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main
+object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those
+public or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly
+prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in
+matters of peace or war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of
+roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these
+festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all
+considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient
+times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen of
+to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic
+hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place
+have long held their sessions; and always, in convenient contiguity,
+there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fireplace, where an ox might
+lie roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern
+cookery may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St.
+Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient
+banqueting-room that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to
+the description of it.
+
+In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three
+famous spires of Coventry, you behold a medi�val edifice, in the
+basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have
+above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone
+pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathedral. Passing
+up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as
+ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad
+and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained
+glass, on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another
+window at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient panes
+constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some
+of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries.
+Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though
+it was noonday when I last saw it, the panelling of black oak, and some
+faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault
+of the roof above, made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into
+more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the
+dress of Henry VI.'s time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is
+regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of
+that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in
+history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily
+into the old stitch-work of their substance, when you try to make them
+out. Coats-of-arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have
+been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them,
+or by women with dish-clouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating
+hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and spiders' webs.
+Full-length portraits of several English kings, Charles II. being the
+earliest, hang on the walls; and on the da�s, or elevated part of the
+floor, stands an antique chair of state, which more than one royal
+character is traditionally said to have occupied while feasting here
+with their loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person
+of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable,
+reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned
+New-England kitchens.
+
+Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a
+single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in
+shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to
+be seen. At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that
+they are carved with figures of angels, and doubtless many other
+devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness
+that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall,
+opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which
+glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a
+row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It
+impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing
+untouched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable
+precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the
+artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if
+she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good
+people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I
+have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference
+of the scene from my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid
+idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with; insomuch
+that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the
+door-way, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately
+dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling
+a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping
+majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery,
+while the rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound
+beneath,--why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar
+with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger
+from a far country which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing
+pages is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinners, this
+reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the
+English character; since, from, the earliest recognizable period, we
+find them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnificently as
+their palaces or cathedrals.
+
+I know not whether the hall just described is still used for festive
+purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor are so. For
+example, there is Barber-Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old
+room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls.
+It is also enriched with Holbein's master-piece, representing a grave
+assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits, (with such extensive
+beards that methinks one-half of the company might have been profitably
+occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir
+Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of
+cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have
+a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many other pictures of
+distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of
+the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but
+darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not
+my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the
+reader; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of
+stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where
+there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by
+respectable citizens, who would never dream of claiming any privilege of
+rank outside of their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the
+warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets
+or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and
+lined with crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the hall,
+there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table,
+comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the
+gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude of less
+noticeable vessels, two Loving-Cups, very elaborately wrought in silver
+gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups,
+including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although
+the bowl-part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which,
+when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected
+to drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand adown a
+long table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may
+hereafter have occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a
+liberty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official
+dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport where
+I spent several years.
+
+The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and,
+inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Worship probably
+assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished
+personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's
+incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling
+among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A
+miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable
+ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion
+being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest
+wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what
+not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what
+it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political
+hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine,
+without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with
+English taste.
+
+The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present
+took place during assize time, and included among the guests the judges
+and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town-Hall at seven
+o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed
+footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom
+it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the
+reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the
+course of these transmissions; so that I had the advantage of making my
+entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company,
+but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and
+put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very
+affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my
+nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost
+invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of
+his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new
+acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease; and, in requital
+of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company
+in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing
+silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been
+half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment.
+
+There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers
+of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the
+mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, with
+whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky
+over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and
+mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out,
+with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and
+wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the
+military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume.
+It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had
+seen, my honest impression about them was, that they were a heavy and
+homely set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and
+behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity
+with the national character than I then possessed always to detect the
+good-breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still
+farther advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure; for the
+comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his
+body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and
+his stomach to assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to
+that metropolis of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the
+atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance
+of succulent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one
+additional chin, with a promise of more; so that, finally, a stranger
+recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take
+time and a little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with
+an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit
+of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an �sthetic point of view. It
+seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as
+he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully
+exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments: he
+had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out
+of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned
+to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren
+among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual
+propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit
+being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman
+smart, (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few,)
+you make him a monster: his best aspect is that of ponderous
+respectability.
+
+To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied that not merely the
+Suffolk bar, but the bar of any inland county in New England, might show
+a set of thin-visaged, green-spectacled men, looking wretchedly worn,
+sallow with the intemperate use of strong coffee, deeply wrinkled across
+the forehead, and grimly furrowed about the month, with whom these
+heavy-cheeked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they must
+needs be, would stand very little chance in a professional contest. How
+that matter might turn out I am unqualified to decide. But I state these
+results of my earliest glimpses of Englishmen, not for what they are
+worth, but because I ultimately gave them up as worth little or nothing.
+In course of time, I came to the conclusion that Englishmen of all ages
+are a rather good-looking people, dress in admirable taste from their
+own point of view, and, under a surface never silken to the touch, have
+a refinement of manners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a
+separate endowment,--that is to say, if the individual himself be a man
+of station, and has had gentlemen for his father and grandfather. The
+sturdy Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third
+generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, have their own
+proprieties. The only value of my criticisms, therefore, lay in their
+exemplifying the proneness of a traveller to measure one people by the
+distinctive characteristics of another,--as English writers invariably
+measure us, and take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly,
+instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we may
+be in conformity.
+
+In due time we were summoned to the table, and went thither in no solemn
+procession, but with a good deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and
+scrambling for places when we reached our destination. The legal
+gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indecorous zeal, which I
+never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The dining-hall was of
+noble size, and, like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously
+painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There was a splendid
+table-service, and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain
+clothes, and others wearing the town-livery, richly decorated with
+gold-lace, and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming
+young-manhood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was certainly
+an agreeable spectacle to look up and down the long vista of earnest
+faces, and behold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an
+important business in hand, and so determined to be equal to the
+occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I hardly know what can be prettier
+than a snow-white table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central
+decoration, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of
+Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artistically folded napkin
+at each plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in short, that comes
+before the first mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of
+artificial light, without which a dinner of made-dishes looks spectral,
+and the simplest viands are the best. Printed bills-of-fare were
+distributed, representing an abundant feast, no part of which appeared
+on the table until called for in separate plates. I have entirely
+forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there is
+a pervading commonplace and identicalness in the composition of
+extensive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supplying a
+hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. It was
+suggested to me that certain juicy old gentlemen had a private
+understanding what to call for, and that it would be good policy in a
+stranger to follow in their footsteps through the feast. I did not care
+to do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out of Camacho's
+caldron, any sort of pot-luck at such a table would be sure to suit my
+purpose; so I chose a dish or two on my own judgment, and, getting
+through my labors betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the Englishmen
+toil onward to the end.
+
+They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely; for I observed that
+they seldom took Hock, and let the Champagne bubble slowly away out of
+the goblet, solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily
+before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however,
+did not seem so exquisite, and certainly was not so various, as that to
+which many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate acquaintance
+with rare vintage: does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very
+much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his life-long
+friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a moment, and
+reaping the reward of his constancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only
+so much gout as he deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the
+measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass too often.
+Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate habitual imprudences of that
+kind, though, in my opinion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could
+carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of
+their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes
+sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if
+it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our
+temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous
+disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England.
+I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the
+very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the
+memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir
+John Linkwater, or Drinkwater,--but I think the jolly old knight could
+hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last,--while
+sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to
+the clerk. "Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the most
+indifferent fact in the world, "I was drunk last night. There are my
+five shillings."
+
+During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with the
+gentlemen on either side of me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with
+great unction on the social standing of the judges. Representing the
+dignity and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during
+assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, of the
+Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes,
+and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they are the greatest
+men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to
+enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal dinner, a
+judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm
+and take the Queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company with
+some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occasions, it appeared
+to me that the judges are fully conscious of their paramount claims to
+respect, and take rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial
+inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if it
+be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a similar
+characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he
+needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with his
+nature from its original germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it
+obtrusively in the faces of innocent by-standers.
+
+My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth
+in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn
+visage, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the
+machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and
+let slip few opportunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be
+passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly-featured
+table-fellow might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me with a
+surly sort of kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then
+began a conversation that abounded, on his part, with sturdy sense, and,
+somehow or other, brought me closer to him than I had yet stood to an
+Englishman. I should hardly have taken him to be an educated man,
+certainly not a scholar of accurate training; and yet he seemed to have
+all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at
+command. My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of English
+characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse him, or perhaps
+both. Under the mollifying influences of abundance of meat and drink, he
+grew very gracious, (not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe
+his evidently genuine good-will,) and by-and-by expressed a wish for
+further acquaintance, asking me to call at his rooms in London and
+inquire for Sergeant Wilkins,--throwing out the name forcibly, as if he
+had no occasion to be ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's retort to
+Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar announcement,--"Of what regiment,
+pray, Sir?"--and fancied that the same question might not have been
+quite amiss, if applied to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard
+of him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English bar, a
+rough customer, and a terribly strong champion in criminal cases; and it
+caused me more regret than might have been expected, on so slight an
+acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death announced
+in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qualities, he possessed, I
+think, the most attractive one of all,--thorough manhood.
+
+After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decanters were set before
+the Mayor, who sent them forth on their outward voyage, full freighted
+with Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors,
+methought, the latter found least acceptance among the guests. When
+every man had filled his glass, his Worship stood up and proposed a
+toast. It was, of course, "Our gracious Sovereign," or words to that
+effect; and immediately a band of musicians, whose preliminary tootings
+and thrummings I had already heard behind me, struck up "God save the
+Queen," and the whole company rose with one impulse to assist in singing
+that famous national anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had
+ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the active
+influence of the sentiment of Loyalty; for, though we call ourselves
+loyal to our country and institutions, and prove it by our readiness to
+shed blood and sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as
+cold and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in
+motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's system, a force similar
+to that of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human
+hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood,--at present,
+in the flesh and blood of a woman,--and manages to combine love, awe,
+and intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to embody his
+mother, his wife, his children, the whole idea of kindred, in a single
+person, and make her the representative of his country and its laws. We
+Americans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table; and yet, I
+fancy, we lose some very agreeable titillations of the heart in
+consequence of our proud perogative of caring no more about our
+President than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in
+a cornfield.
+
+But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather ludicrously, to
+see this party of stout middle-aged and elderly gentlemen, in the
+fulness of meat and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening with
+wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old
+stanzas from the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which two
+organs, in the English interior arrangement, lie closer together than in
+ours. The song seemed to me the rudest old ditty in the world; but I
+could not wonder at its universal acceptance and indestructible
+popularity, considering how inimitably it expresses the national faith
+and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness of England, the
+Almighty's consequent respect and partiality for that redoubtable little
+island, and His presumed readiness to strengthen its defence against the
+contumacious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or
+republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English to the very last
+prejudice, could not write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding
+that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of every pitch
+between rolling thunder and the squeak of a cartwheel, and that the
+strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of
+them, I determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the triumphant
+roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to the first Lady in the land,
+whose guest, in the largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly,
+my first tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I purpose not to
+sing any more, unless it be "Hail Columbia" on the restoration of the
+Union) were poured freely forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The
+Sergeant smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, and the
+other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinced grave
+approbation of so suitable a tribute to English superiority; and we
+finished our stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind.
+
+Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions and interests
+of the country, and speeches in response to each were made by
+individuals whom the Mayor designated or the company called for. None of
+them impressed me with a very high idea of English postprandial oratory.
+It is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and shapeless utterances most
+Englishmen are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything
+like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there, and
+ultimately getting out what they want to say, and generally with a
+result of sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as
+if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that
+this was almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious
+of public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his
+countrymen distrust him. They dislike smartness. The stronger and
+heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of
+commonplace running through them; and any rough, yet never vulgar force
+of expression, such as would knock an opponent down, if it hit him, only
+it must not be too personal, is altogether to their taste; but a studied
+neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, they cannot
+abide. They do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of
+malice aforethought, that is, unless he be a nobleman, (as, for example,
+Lord Stanley, of the Derby family,) who, as an hereditary legislator and
+necessarily a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery
+in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, and, if
+I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as likely to applaud theirs
+as our own. When an English speaker sits down, you feel that you have
+been listening to a real man, and not to an actor; his sentiments have a
+wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this apparent
+naturalness is as much an art as what we expend in rounding a sentence
+or elaborating a peroration.
+
+It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that nobody in England
+seems to feel any shyness about shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable
+ideas out of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, nobody
+did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little Major of
+Artillery, who responded for the Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a
+terribly hesitating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not,
+would rather have been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have
+said a word. Not his own mouth, but the cannon's, was this poor Major's
+proper organ of utterance.
+
+While I was thus amiably occupied in criticizing my fellow-guests, the
+Mayor had got up to propose another toast; and listening rather
+inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a
+drift in his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively
+towards Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving
+a decanter of Port towards me, "it is your turn next"; and seeing in my
+face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he
+kindly added,--"It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the
+purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being the
+case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best, if I said
+nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving
+the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might
+possibly be brought into my present predicament; but I had dismissed the
+idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover,
+as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not
+keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an
+earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need
+rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably,--and,
+indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of
+his wordy wanderings find no end.
+
+If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to
+desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker
+quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it
+does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I,
+in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently
+rose to speak. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me
+whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I
+should unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really
+nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal
+worse, any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out
+that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such
+as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time
+pressed; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the
+United States and highly complimentary to their distinguished
+representative at that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering;
+and the band struck up "Hail Columbia," "Old Hundred," or "God save the
+Queen" over again, for anything that I should have known or cared. When
+the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant, during
+which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and
+rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a
+speech. The guests rattled on the table, and cried, "Hear!" most
+vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous
+world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word was to be
+spoken; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit
+of an effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and must, and
+should do to utter.
+
+Well; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most
+was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a
+declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other
+person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech: a
+prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went
+on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great
+applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won
+from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone
+had enabled me to speak at all. "It was handsomely done!" quoth Sergeant
+Wilkins; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under
+fire.
+
+I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and there forever,
+but was often placed in a similar or worse position, and compelled to
+meet it as I best might; for this was one of the necessities of an
+office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which
+I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not
+shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various.
+Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by
+heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot
+every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as
+well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points
+in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of
+Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any
+considerable proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I
+would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I
+was much embarrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better with a
+large one,--the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect,
+which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality and tosses
+him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one.
+Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of
+going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I
+had little or nothing to say; whereas, if I came to the scratch in
+perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would have been horrible,
+it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my
+poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expression
+to sentiments which an instant before looked as vague and far-off as the
+clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may have
+been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the
+chief requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many of the others,
+if he deems it worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains
+on an object which the most accomplished orators, I suspect, have not
+found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it
+must be a remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception
+of truth when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural
+sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him,
+when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may
+make it ten times as acceptable to the audience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too
+wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted description of a Lord-Mayor's
+dinner at the Mansion-House in London. I should have preferred the
+annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good-fortune to witness it.
+Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular
+dinners, and gladly accepted it,--taking the precaution, nevertheless,
+though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a
+mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence,
+and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to
+open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful
+hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented
+myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion-House, at half-past six
+o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous
+apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion-House
+was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is
+a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his
+traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed,
+however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious
+Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of life-long integrity
+was a seat in the Lord-Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real
+dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do,
+sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted
+and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only
+second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the
+Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants
+of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were
+mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the
+early days of our country; so that the Lord-Mayor was a potentate of
+huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be
+hardly second to the prime-minister of the throne. The true great men of
+the city now appear to have aims beyond city-greatness, connecting
+themselves with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the
+aristocracy of the country.
+
+In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a
+livery of blue and buff, in which they looked wonderfully like American
+Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery
+than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There
+were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should have taken to be
+military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver
+epaulets; but they turned out to be officers of the Lord-Mayor's
+household, and were now employed in assigning to the guests the places
+which they were respectively to occupy at the dinner-table. Our names
+(for I had included myself in a little group of friends) were announced;
+and ascending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the door-way of the
+first reception-room, where, also, we had the advantage of a
+presentation to the Lady-Mayoress. As this distinguished couple retired
+into private life at the termination of their year of office, it is
+inadmissible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the manners
+and bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position of
+respectable mediocrity into one of pre�minent dignity within their own
+sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to
+the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on
+the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an
+exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater
+than that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the
+outward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have
+been correctly informed, the Lord-Mayor's salary is exactly double that
+of the President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate
+to his necessary expenditure.
+
+There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide
+folding-doors; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be
+venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as
+spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid
+fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers
+and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them
+celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I
+recollect none pre�minently distinguished in either department. But it
+is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for
+example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face
+to face, thus to bring them together, under genial auspices, in
+connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be
+the Lord-Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether,
+during his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every man of
+noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his
+Lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued; but it seemed to me
+that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which
+the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among
+different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society,
+however, I presume that the Lord-Mayor's card does not often seek out
+modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the
+bore, and doubtful about the honor.
+
+One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met with at any other
+public or partially public dinner, was the presence of ladies. No doubt,
+they were principally the wives and daughters of city-magnates; and if
+we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satirical
+poems, the city of London has always been famous for the beauty of its
+women and the reciprocal attractions between them and the men of
+quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither and thither through
+those crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying certain
+heterodox opinions which I had inbibed, in my Transatlantic newness and
+rawness, as regarded the delicate character and frequent occurrence of
+English beauty. To state the entire truth, (being, at this period, some
+years old in English life,) my taste, I fear, had long since begun to be
+deteriorated by acquaintance with other models of feminine loveliness
+than it was my happiness to know in America. I often found, or seemed to
+find, if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear
+countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagreness, (Heaven
+forbid that I should call it scrawniness!) a deficiency of physical
+development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material
+make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of voice,--all which
+characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more
+sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because I was
+sometimes driven to a half-acknowledgment, that the English ladies,
+looked at from a lower point of view, were perhaps a little finer
+animals than they. The advantages of the latter, if any they could
+really be said to have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of
+clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a
+pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in
+exchange for half a hundred-weight of human clay!
+
+At a given signal we all found our way into an immense room, called the
+Egyptian Hall, I know not why, except that the architecture was classic,
+and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the
+Pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we entered, and a
+brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables, extending
+the whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between them, occupying
+nearly its entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre
+or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accompaniments
+of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the
+Lord-Mayor's chaplain implored a blessing on the food,--a ceremony which
+the English never omit, at a great dinner or a small one, yet consider,
+I fear, not so much a religious rite as a sort of preliminary relish
+before the soup.
+
+The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of which, in
+accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls,
+in spite of the otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed,
+judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that
+there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the
+capacity of the soup-tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I
+partook of it but once, and then only in accordance with the wise maxim,
+always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its indigenous
+site; and the very fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the
+Lord-Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox customs which
+people follow for half a century without knowing why, to drink a sip of
+rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently
+well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for
+the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in
+a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque
+border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English
+and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive
+reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be
+carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is
+attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy,
+yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby
+the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes, instead
+of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as
+a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder
+that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of
+butcher's-meat, do not generally better estimate the �sthetic gormandism
+of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to
+nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic
+appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even
+an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things
+enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away
+wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden
+him,--a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part
+of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding
+high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a
+wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially
+nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my
+memory as completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had
+clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals, inspiriting us
+to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen
+supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with
+little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a
+to-morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case,
+a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner.
+
+Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, sat a young lady
+in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because
+not only the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character,
+would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be
+drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a
+picture-frame, or the covers of a romance: not that I had ever met with
+her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an
+apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and
+picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too
+apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to
+gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in
+the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly
+attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline
+of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that
+you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to
+speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became
+aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery.
+There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child
+would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife
+(the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom
+overshadowing her fair young brow) travelling in their honey-moon, and
+dining, among other distinguished strangers, at the Lord-Mayor's table.
+
+After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife and fork came the
+dessert; and at the point of the festival where finger-glasses are
+usually introduced, a large silver basin was carried round to the
+guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped the ends of our
+napkins and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of that
+heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems
+to be an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the Lord-Mayor's
+table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar.
+
+During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient custom, the
+origin or purport of which I do not remember to have heard, there stood
+a man in armor, with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's chair.
+When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, still another
+official personage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a
+solemn and sonorous proclamation, (in which he enumerated the principal
+guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several baronets, and plenty
+of generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the
+illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears,) ending
+in some such style as this: "and other gentlemen and ladies, here
+present, the Lord-Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,"--giving a
+sort of sentimental twang to the two words,--"and sends it round among
+you!" And forthwith the loving-cup--several of them, indeed, on each
+side of the tables--came slowly down with all the antique ceremony.
+
+The fashion of it is thus. The Lord-Mayor, standing up and taking the
+covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his elbow, who
+likewise rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which
+being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and
+receives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next
+neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a
+draught, after which the third person goes through a similar manoeuvre
+with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find
+themselves inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one complicated
+chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I examined it critically,
+both inside and out, and perceived it to be an antique and richly
+ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about a quart of wine.
+Considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our
+lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully
+moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of wine
+being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the company
+had more than barely touched the silver rim before passing it to their
+neighbors,--a degree of abstinence that might be accounted for by a
+fastidious repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or possibly by
+a disapprobation of the liquor. Being curious to know all about these
+important matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever
+they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving-cup,
+and had no occasion for another,--ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor
+original quality, largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened.
+It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial drink,
+and could never have been intended for any better purpose.
+
+The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches
+neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of
+table-eloquence which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to
+each new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of
+state, gave awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor was
+about to propose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof,
+together with some accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate
+tune, and the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such
+or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what
+not, was going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor's toast;
+then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of
+trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments; and finally the doomed
+individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and
+proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his
+maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got
+every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most
+seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a
+book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in
+England.
+
+The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion, but
+all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to
+say absurd. Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits
+into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into
+a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious libations of Sherry and
+old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to
+speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so
+refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of
+these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their
+substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen
+a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should
+undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt
+nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent
+expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I
+imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his
+ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard
+matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a
+rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of
+modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid,
+in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to
+come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they
+come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by
+way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine
+and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another.
+
+Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a
+circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much
+interrupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my
+condition had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the
+brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close proximity with three
+very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored
+name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write
+it; another, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste,
+kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such
+happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in
+England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me
+good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, camp, and country,
+which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the
+kind of help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not
+had a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt
+safer or cozier at anybody's fireside, even my own, than at the
+dinner-table of the Lord-Mayor.
+
+Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lordship got up and
+proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon "the literary and
+commercial"--I question whether those two adjectives were ever before
+married by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would not live
+together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord--"the literary and
+commercial attainments of an eminent gentleman there present," and then
+went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Great
+Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country. Those
+bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great
+nations, throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured that that
+whole honorable company would join him in the expression of a fervent
+wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both sides of the
+Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry
+and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of
+nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously
+announced that Mr. So-and-so would now respond to his Right Honorable
+Lordship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish
+for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause,
+and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall.
+
+All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord-Mayor's part, after
+beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe-conduct; and it seemed
+very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his
+dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion-House wine, and go
+away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship
+had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have
+taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the
+matter to have been somewhat as follows.
+
+All England, just then, was in one of those singular fits of panic
+excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as that
+emotion,) which, in consequence of the homogeneous character of the
+people, their intense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas
+in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and
+individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and unreasoning than any
+similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American
+public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of
+it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong,
+are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North,
+at the commencement of this war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion
+only because it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just
+as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand people out of
+their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We
+were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to
+the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is
+nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as
+this characteristic. They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind
+of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always
+looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers
+of international law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the
+world, with themselves at the head, to combine for the purpose of
+putting us into a stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so
+powerful, (and when one man feels it, a million do,) that it resembles
+the passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you see the
+whole crop bending and swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate
+stalk tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad companions.
+At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of
+sentiment and expression. You have the whole country in each man; and
+not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a
+reasonable ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the
+world--our own country and France--that can put England into this
+singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely
+well-to-do, most anxious for the preservation of the cumbrous and
+moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and
+incompetent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of
+trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when
+that prosperity is really threatened.
+
+If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign side of any
+international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that
+there was very little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from
+the simple circumstance that their own Government had positively not an
+inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of
+the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a
+justification for incurring war. It was no such perilous juncture as
+exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or
+plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the
+first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a
+mere diplomatic squabble, which the British ministers, with the politic
+generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official
+subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an
+ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government
+(for God had not denied us an administration of Statesmen then) had
+retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a
+cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them with no
+pretence whatever for active resentment.
+
+Now the Lord-Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War
+was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so
+insignificant an American as myself, who might be made to harp on the
+rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and
+interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace
+where there was no peace, in however weak an utterance. And possibly his
+Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to
+be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and
+far-famed dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on the grand
+result. Thus, when the Lord-Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a
+piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser
+Curtius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of
+discord between England and America, and, on my ignominious demur, had
+resolved to shove me in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope
+of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his
+Lordship. He meant well by all parties,--himself, who would share the
+glory, and me, who ought to have desired nothing better than such an
+heroic opportunity,--his own country, which would continue to get cotton
+and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything that men work with
+and wear.
+
+As soon as the Lord-Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it
+gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas.
+I never thought of listening to the speech, because I knew it all
+beforehand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it
+would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned to
+one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable
+flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest,
+to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once
+afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder
+ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to
+the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his
+office was held--at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm
+in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or
+no--was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if I
+liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily
+slide off into the momentous subject of the relations between England
+and America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty allusion.
+
+Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three
+friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or
+perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and
+suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a
+position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage
+policy here to close the sketch, leaving myself still erect in so heroic
+an attitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE.
+
+
+I shall pass lightly over the Permian and Triassic epochs, as being more
+nearly related in their organic forms to the Carboniferous epoch, with
+which we are already somewhat familiar, while in those next in
+succession, the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, the later conditions of
+animal life begin to be already foreshadowed. But though less
+significant for us in the present stage of our discussion, it must not
+be supposed that the Permian and Triassic epochs were unimportant in the
+physical and organic history of Europe. A glance at any geological map
+of Europe will show the reader how the Belgian island stretched
+gradually in a southwesterly direction during the Permian epoch,
+approaching the coast of France by slowly increasing accumulations, and
+thus filling the Burgundian channel; a wide border of Permian deposits
+around the coal-field of Great Britain marks the increase of this region
+also during the same time, and a very extensive tract of a like
+character is to be seen in Russia. The latter is, however, still under
+doubt and discussion among geologists, and more recent investigations
+tend to show that this Russian region, supposed at first to be
+exclusively Permian, is at least in part Triassic.
+
+With the coming in of the Triassic epoch began the great deposits of Red
+Sandstone, Muschel-Kalk, and Keuper, in Central Europe. They united the
+Belgian island to the region of the Vosges and the Black Forest, while
+they also filled to a great extent the channel between Belgium and the
+Bohemian island. Thus the land slowly gained upon the Triassic ocean,
+shutting it within ever-narrowing limits, and preparing the large inland
+seas so characteristic of the later Secondary times. The character of
+the organic world still retained a general resemblance to that of the
+Carboniferous epoch. Among Radiates, the Corals were more nearly allied
+to those of the earlier ages than to those of modern times, and Crinoids
+abounded still, though some of the higher Echinoderm types were already
+introduced. Among Mollusks, the lower Bivalves, that is, the Brachiopods
+and Bryozoa, still prevailed, while Ammonites continued to be very
+numerous, differing from the earlier ones chiefly in the ever-increasing
+complications of their inner partitions, which become so deeply
+involuted and cut upon their margins, before the type disappears, as to
+make an intricate tracery of very various patterns on the surface of
+these shells. The most conspicuous type of Articulates continues as
+before to be that of Crustacea; but Trilobites have finished their
+career, and the Lobster-like Crustacea make their appearance for the
+first time. It does not seem that the class of Insects has greatly
+increased since the Carboniferous epoch; and Worms are still as
+difficult to trace as ever, being chiefly known by the cases in which
+they sheltered themselves. Among Vertebrates, the Fishes still resemble
+those of the Carboniferous epoch, belonging principally to the
+Selachians and Ganoids. They have, however, approached somewhat toward a
+modern pattern, the lobes of the tail being more evenly cut, and their
+general outline more like that of common fishes. The gigantic marsh
+Reptiles have become far more numerous and various. They continue
+through several epochs, but may be said to reach their culminating point
+in the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits.
+
+I cannot pass over the Triassic epoch without some allusion to the
+so-called bird-tracks, so generally believed to mark the introduction of
+Birds at this time. It is true that in the deposits of the Trias there
+have been found many traces of footsteps, indicating a vast number of
+animals which, except for these footprints, remain unknown to us. In the
+sandstone of the Connecticut Valley they are found in extraordinary
+numbers, as if these animals, whatever they were, had been in the habit
+of frequenting that shore. They appear to have been very diversified;
+for some of the tracks are very large, others quite small, while some
+would seem, from the way in which the footsteps follow each other, to
+have been quadrupedal, and others bipedal. We can even measure the
+length of their strides, following the impressions which, from their
+succession in a continuous line, mark the walk of a single animal.[10]
+The fact that we find these footprints without any bones or other
+remains to indicate the animals by which they were made is accounted for
+by the mode of deposition of the sandstone. It is very unfavorable for
+the preservation of bones; but, being composed of minute sand mixed with
+mud, it affords an admirable substance for the reception of these
+impressions, which have been thus cast in a mould, as it were, and
+preserved through ages. These animals must have been large, when
+full-grown, for we find strides measuring six feet between, evidently
+belonging to the same animal. In the quadrupedal tracks, the front feet
+seem to have been smaller than the hind ones. Some of the tracks show
+four toes all turned forward, while in others three toes are turned
+forward and one backward. It happened that the first tracks found
+belonged to the latter class; and they very naturally gave rise to the
+idea that these impressions were made by birds, on account of this
+formation of the foot. This, however, is a mere inference; and since the
+inductive method is the only true one in science, it seems to me that we
+should turn to the facts we have in our possession for the explanation
+of these mysterious footprints, rather than endeavor to supply by
+assumption those which we have not. As there are no bones found in
+connection with these tracks, the only way to arrive at their true
+character, in the present state of our knowledge, is by comparing them
+with bones found in other localities in the deposits of the same period
+in the world's history. Now there have never been found in the Trias any
+remains of Birds, while it contains innumerable bones of Reptiles; and
+therefore I think that it is in the latter class that we shall
+eventually find the solution of this mystery.
+
+[Footnote 10: For all details respecting these tracks see Hitchcock's
+_Ichnology of New England_. Boston, 1858. 4to.]
+
+It is true that the bones of the Triassic Reptiles are scattered and
+disconnected; no complete skeleton has yet been discovered, nor has any
+foot been found; so that no direct comparison can be made with the
+steps. It is, however, my belief, from all we know of the character of
+the Animal Kingdom in those days, that these animals were reptilian, but
+combined, like so many of the early types, characters of their own class
+with those of higher animals yet to come. It seems to me probable, that,
+in those tracks where one toe is turned backward, the impression is made
+not by a toe, but by a heel, or by a long sole projecting backward; for
+it is not pointed, like those of the front toes, but is blunt. It is
+true that there is a division of joints in the toes, which seems in
+favor of the idea that they were those of Birds; for when the three toes
+are turned forward, there are two joints on the inner one, three on the
+middle, and four on the outer one, as in Birds. But this feature is not
+peculiar to Birds; it is found in Turtles also. The correspondence of
+these footprints with each other leaves no doubt that they were all by
+one kind of animal; for both the bipedal and the quadrupedal tracks have
+the same character. The only quadrupedal animals now known to us which
+walk on two legs are the Kangaroos. They raise themselves on their hind
+legs, using the front ones to bring their food to their mouth. They leap
+with the hind legs, sometimes bringing down their front feet to steady
+themselves after the spring, and making use also of their tails, to
+balance the body after leaping. In these tracks we find traces of a tail
+between the feet. I do not bring this forward as any evidence that these
+animals were allied to Kangaroos, since I believe that nothing is more
+injurious in science than assumptions which do not rest on a broad basis
+of facts; but I wish only to show that these tracks recall other animals
+besides Birds, with which they have been universally associated. And
+seeing, as we do, that so many of the early types prophesy future forms,
+it seems not improbable that they may have belonged to animals which
+combined with reptilian characters some birdlike features, and also some
+features of the earliest and lowest group of Mammalia, the Marsupials.
+To sum up my opinion respecting these footmarks, I believe that they
+were made by animals of a prophetic type, belonging to the class of
+Reptiles, and exhibiting many synthetic characters.
+
+The more closely we study past creations, the more impressive and
+significant do the synthetic types, presenting features of the higher
+classes under the guise of the lower ones, become. They hold the promise
+of the future. As the opening overture of an opera contains all the
+musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the
+Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively
+developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw the teeth of a
+Wealden Reptile, he pronounced them to be those of a Rhinoceros, so
+mammalian were they in their character. So, when Sommering first saw the
+remains of a Jurassic Pterodactyl, he pronounced them to be those of a
+Bird. These mistakes were not due to a superficial judgment in men who
+knew Nature so well, but to this prophetic character in the early types
+themselves, in which features were united never known to exist together
+in our days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Jurassic epoch, next in succession, was a very important one in the
+history of Europe. It completed the junction of several of the larger
+islands, filling the channel between the central plateau of France and
+the Belgian island, as well as that between the former and the island of
+Bretagne, so that France was now a sort of crescent of land holding a
+Jurassic sea in its centre, Bretagne and Belgium forming the two horns.
+This Jurassic basin or inland sea united England and France, and it may
+not be amiss to say a word here of its subsequent transformations.
+During the long succession of Jurassic periods, the deposits of that
+epoch, chiefly limestone and clays, with here and there a bed of sand,
+were accumulated at its bottom. Upon these followed the chalk deposits
+of the Cretaceous epoch, until the basin was gradually filled, and
+partially, at least, turned to dry land. But at the close of the
+Cretaceous epoch a fissure was formed, allowing the entrance of the sea
+at the western end, so that the constant washing of the tides and storms
+wore away the lower, softer deposits, leaving the overhanging chalk
+cliffs unsupported. These latter, as their support were undermined,
+crumbled down, thus widening the channel gradually. This process must,
+of course, have gone on more rapidly at the western end, where the sea
+rushed on with most force, till the channel was worn through to the
+German Ocean on the other side, and the sea then began to act with like
+power at both ends of the channel. This explains its form, wider at the
+western end, narrower between Dover and Calais, and widening again at
+the eastern extremity. This ancient basin, extending from the centre of
+France into England, is rich in the remains of a number of successive
+epochs. Around its margin we find the Jurassic deposits, showing that
+there must have been some changes of level which raised the shores and
+prevented later accumulations from covering them, while in the centre
+the Jurassic deposits are concealed by those of the Cretaceous epoch
+above them, these being also partially hidden under the later Tertiary
+beds. Let us see, then, what this inland sea has to tell us of the
+organic world in the Jurassic epoch.
+
+At that time the region where Lyme-Regis is now situated in modern
+England was an estuary on the shore of that ancient sea. About forty
+years ago a discovery of large and curious bones, belonging to some
+animal unknown to the scientific world, turned the attention of
+naturalists to this locality, and since then such a quantity and variety
+of such remains have been found in the neighborhood as to show that the
+Sharks, Whales, Porpoises, etc., of the present ocean are not more
+numerous and diversified than were the inhabitants of this old bay or
+inlet. Among these animals, the Ichthyosauri (Fish-Lizards) form one of
+the best-known and most prominent groups. They are chiefly found in the
+Lias, the lowest set of beds of the Jurassic deposits, and seem to have
+come in with the close of the Triassic epoch. It is greatly to be
+regretted that all that is known of the Triassic Reptiles antecedent to
+the Ichthyosauri still remains in the form of original papers, and is
+not yet embodied in text-books. They are quite as interesting, as
+curious, and as diversified as those of the Jurassic epoch, which are,
+however, much more extensively known, on account of the large
+collections of these animals belonging to the British Museum. It will be
+more easy to understand the structural relations of the latter, and
+their true position in the Animal Kingdom, when those which preceded
+them are better understood. One of the most remarkable and numerous of
+these Triassic Reptiles seems to have been an animal resembling, in the
+form of the head, and in the two articulating surfaces at the juncture
+of the head with the backbone, the Frogs and Salamanders, though its
+teeth are like those of a Crocodile. As yet nothing has been found of
+these animals except the head,--neither the backbone nor the limbs; so
+that little is known of their general structure.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1. An Ichthyosaurus.]
+
+The Ichthyosauri (Figure 1) must have been very large, seven or eight
+feet being the ordinary length, while specimens measuring from twenty to
+thirty feet are not uncommon. The large head is pointed, like that of
+the Porpoise; the jaws contain a number of conical teeth, of reptilian
+form and character; the eyeball was very large, as may be seen by the
+socket, and it was supported by pieces of bone, such as we find now only
+in the eyes of birds of prey and in the bony fishes. The ribs begin at
+the neck and continue to the tail, and there is no distinction between
+head and neck, as in most Reptiles, but a continuous outline, as in
+Fishes. They had four limbs, not divided into fingers, but forming mere
+paddles. Yet fingers seem to be hinted at in these paddles, though not
+developed, for the bones are in parallel rows, as if to mark what might
+be such a division. The back-bones are short, but very high, and the
+surfaces of articulation are hollow, conical cavities, as in Fishes,
+instead of ball-and-socket joints, as in Reptiles. The ribs are more
+complicated than in Vertebrates generally: they consist of several
+pieces, and the breast-bone is formed of a number of bones, making
+together quite an intricate bony net-work. There is only one living
+animal, the Crocodile, characterized by this peculiar structure of the
+breast-bone. The Ichthyosaurus is, indeed, one of the most remarkable of
+the synthetic types: by the shape of its head one would associate it
+with the Porpoises, while by its paddles and its long tail it reminds
+one of the whole group of Cetaceans to which the Porpoises belong; by
+its crocodilian teeth, its ribs, and its breast-bone, it seems allied to
+Reptiles; and by its uniform neck, not distinguished from the body, and
+the structure of the backbone, it recalls the Fishes.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2. A Plesiosaurus.]
+
+Another most curious member of this group is the Plesiosaurus, odd
+Saurian (Figure 2). By its disproportionately long and flexible neck,
+and its small, flat head, it unquestionably foreshadows the Serpents,
+while by the structure of the backbone, the limbs, and the tail, it is
+closely allied with the Ichthyosaurus. Its flappers are, however, more
+slender, less clumsy, and were, no doubt, adapted to more rapid motion
+than the fins of the Ichthyosaurus, while its tail is shorter in
+proportion to the whole length of the animal. It seems probable, from
+its general structure, that the Ichthyosaurus moved like a Fish, chiefly
+by the flapping of the tail, aided by the fins, while in the
+Plesiosaurus the tail must have been much less efficient as a locomotive
+organ, and the long, snake-like, flexible neck no doubt rendered the
+whole body more agile and rapid in its movements. In comparing the two,
+it may be said, that, as a whole, the Ichthyosaurus, though belonging by
+its structure to the class of Reptiles, has a closer external
+resemblance to the Fishes, while the Plesiosaurus is more decidedly
+reptilian in character. If there exists any animal in our waters, not
+yet known to naturalists, answering to the descriptions of the
+"Sea-Serpent," it must be closely allied to the Plesiosaurus. The
+occurrence in the fresh waters of North America of a Fish, the
+Lepidosteus, which is closely allied to the fossil Fishes found with the
+Plesiosaurus in the Jurassic beds, renders such a supposition probable.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3. A Pterodactylus.]
+
+Of all these strange old forms, so singularly uniting features of Fishes
+and Reptiles, none has given rise to more discussion than the
+Pterodactylus, (Figure 3,) another of the Saurian tribe, associated,
+however, with Birds by some naturalists, on account of its large
+wing-like appendages. From the extraordinary length of its anterior
+limbs, they have generally been described as wings, and the animal is
+usually represented as a flying Reptile. But if we consider its whole
+structure, this does not seem probable, and I believe it to have been an
+essentially aquatic animal, moving after the fashion of the Sea-Turtle.
+Its so-called wings resemble in structure the front paddles of the
+Sea-Turtles far more than the wings of a Bird; differing from them,
+indeed, only by the extraordinary length of the inner toe, while the
+outer ones are comparatively much shorter. But, notwithstanding this
+difference, the hand of the Pterodactylus is constructed like that of an
+aquatic swimming marine Reptile; and I believe, that, if we represent it
+with its long neck stretched upon the water, its large head furnished
+with powerful, well-armed jaws, ready to dive after the innumerable
+smaller animals living in the same ocean, we shall have a more natural
+picture of its habits than if we consider it as a flying animal, which
+it is generally supposed to have been. It has not the powerful
+breast-bone, with the large projecting keel along the middle line, such
+as exists in all the flying animals. Its breast-bone, on the contrary,
+is thin and flat, like that of the present Sea-Turtle; and if it moved
+through the water by the help of its long flappers, as the Sea-Turtle
+does now, it could well dispense with that powerful construction of the
+breast-bone so essential to all animals which fly through the air.
+Again, the powerful teeth, long and conical, placed at considerable
+intervals in the jaw, constitute a feature common to all predaceous
+aquatic animals, and would seem to have been utterly useless in a flying
+animal at that time, since there were no a�rial beings of any size to
+prey upon. The Dragon-Flies found in the same deposits with the
+Pterodactylus were certainly not a game requiring so powerful a battery
+of attack.
+
+The Fishes of the Jurassic sea were exceedingly numerous, but were all
+of the Ganoid and Selachian tribes. It would weary the reader, were I to
+introduce here any detailed description of them, but they were as
+numerous and varied as those living in our present waters. There was the
+Hybodus, with the marked furrows on the spines and the strong hooks
+along their margin,--the huge Chimera, with its long whip, its curved
+bone over the back, and its parrot-like bill,--the Lepidotus, with its
+large square scales, its large head, its numerous rows of teeth, one
+within another, forming a powerful grinding apparatus,--the Microdon,
+with its round, flat body, its jaw paved with small grinding teeth,--the
+swift Aspidorhynchus, with its long, slender body and massive tail,
+enabling it to strike the water powerfully and dart forward with great
+rapidity. There were also a host of small Fishes, comparing with those
+above mentioned as our Perch, Herring, Smelts, etc., compare with our
+larger Fishes; but, whatever their size or form, all the Fishes of those
+days had the same hard scales fitting to each other by hooks, instead of
+the thin membranous scales overlapping each other at the edge, like the
+common Fishes of more modern times. The smaller Fishes, no doubt,
+afforded food to the larger ones, and to the aquatic Reptiles. Indeed,
+in parts of the intestines of the Ichthyosauri, and in their petrified
+excrements, have been found the scales and teeth of these smaller Fishes
+perfectly preserved. It is amazing that we can learn so much of the
+habits of life of these past creatures, and know even what was the food
+of animals existing countless ages before man was created.
+
+There are traces of Mammalia in the Jurassic deposits, but they were of
+those inferior kinds known now as Marsupials, and no complete specimens
+have yet been found.
+
+The Articulates were largely represented in this epoch. There were
+already in the vegetation a number of Gymnosperms, affording more
+favorable nourishment for Insects than the forests of earlier times; and
+we accordingly find that class in larger numbers than ever before,
+though still meagre in comparison with its present representation.
+Crustacea were numerous,--those of the Shrimp and Lobster kinds
+prevailing, though in some of the Lobsters we have the first advance
+towards the highest class of Crustacea in the expansion of the
+transverse diameter now so characteristic of the Crabs. Among Mollusks
+we have a host of gigantic Ammonites; and the naked Cephalopods, which
+were in later times to become the prominent representatives of that
+class, already begin to make their appearance. Among Radiates, some of
+the higher kinds of Echinoderms, the Ophiurans and Echinolds, take the
+place of the Crinoids, and the Acalephian Corals give way to the Astr�an
+and Meandrina-like types, resembling the Reef-Builders of the present
+time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have spoken especially of the inhabitants of the Jurassic sea lying
+between England and France, because it was there that were first found
+the remains of some of the most remarkable and largest Jurassic animals.
+But wherever these deposits have been investigated, the remains
+contained in them reveal the same organic character, though, of course,
+we find the land Reptiles only where there happen to have been marshes,
+the aquatic Saurians wherever large estuaries or bays gave them an
+opportunity of coming in near shore, so that their bones were preserved
+in the accumulations of mud or clay constantly collecting in such
+localities,--the Crustacea, Shells, or Sea-Urchins on the old
+sea-beaches, the Corals in the neighborhood of coral reefs, and so on.
+In short, the distribution of animals then as now was in accordance with
+their nature and habits, and we shall seek vainly for them in the
+localities where they did not belong.
+
+But when I say that the character of the Jurassic animals is the same, I
+mean, that, wherever a Jurassic sea-shore occurs, be it in France,
+Germany, England, or elsewhere throughout the world, the Shells,
+Crustacea, or other animals found upon it have a special character, and
+are not to be confounded by any one thoroughly acquainted with these
+fossils with the Shells or Crustacea of any preceding or subsequent
+time,--that, where a Jurassic marsh exists, the land Reptiles inhabiting
+it are Jurassic, and neither Triassic nor Cretaceous,--that a Jurassic
+coral reef is built of Corals belonging as distinctly to the Jurassic
+creation as the Corals on the Florida reefs belong to the present
+creation,--that, where some Jurassic bay or inlet is disclosed to us
+with the Fishes anciently inhabiting it, they are as characteristic of
+their time as are the Fishes of Massachusetts Bay now.
+
+And not only so, but, while this unity of creation prevails throughout
+the entire epoch as a whole, there is the same variety of geographical
+distribution, the same circumscription of faun� within distinct
+zo�logical provinces, as at the present time. The Fishes of
+Massachusetts Bay are not the same as those of Chesapeake Bay, nor those
+of Chesapeake Bay the same as those of Pamlico Sound, nor those of
+Pamlico Sound the same as those of the Florida coast. This division of
+the surface of the earth into given areas within which certain
+combinations of animals and plants are confined is not peculiar to the
+present creation, but has prevailed in all times, though with
+ever-increasing diversity, as the surface of the earth itself assumed a
+greater variety of climatic conditions. D'Orbigny and others were
+mistaken in assuming that faunal differences have been introduced only
+in the last geological epochs. Besides these adjoining zo�logical faun�,
+each epoch is divided, as we have seen, into a number of periods,
+occupying successive levels one above another, and differing
+specifically from each other in time as zo�logical provinces differ from
+each other in space. In short, every epoch is to be looked upon from two
+points of view: as a unit, complete in itself, having one character
+throughout, and as a stage in the progressive history of the world,
+forming part of an organic whole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the Jurassic epoch was ushered in by the upheaval of the Jura, so its
+close was marked by the upheaval of that system of mountains called the
+C�te d'Or. With this latter upheaval began the Cretaceous epoch, which
+we will examine with special reference to its subdivision into periods,
+since the periods in this epoch have been clearly distinguished, and
+investigated with especial care. I have alluded in the preceding article
+to the immediate contact of the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs in
+Switzerland, affording peculiar facilities for the direct comparison of
+their organic remains. But the Cretaceous deposits are well known, not
+only in this inland sea of ancient Switzerland, but in a number of
+European basins, in France, in the Pyrenees, on the Mediterranean
+shores, and also in Syria, Egypt, India, and Southern Africa, as well as
+on our own continent. In all these localities, the Cretaceous remains,
+like those of the Jurassic epoch, have one organic character, distinct
+and unique. This fact is especially significant, because the contact of
+their respective deposits is in many localities so immediate and
+continuous that it affords an admirable test for the development-theory.
+If this is the true mode of origin of animals, those of the later
+Jurassic beds must be the progenitors of those of the earlier Cretaceous
+deposits. Let us see now how far this agrees with our knowledge of the
+physiological laws of development.
+
+Take first the class of Fishes. We have seen that in the Jurassic
+periods there were none of our common Fishes, none corresponding to our
+Herring, Pickerel, Mackerel, and the like,--no Fishes, in short, with
+thin membranous scales, but that the class was represented exclusively
+by those with hard, flint-like scales. In the Cretaceous epoch, however,
+we come suddenly upon a horde of Fishes corresponding to our smaller
+common Fishes of the Pickerel and Herring tribes, but principally of the
+kinds found now in tropical waters; there are none like our Cods,
+Haddocks, etc., such as are found at present in the colder seas. The
+Fishes of the Jurassic epoch corresponding to our Sharks and Skates and
+Gar-Pikes still exist, but in much smaller proportion, while these more
+modern kinds are very numerous. Indeed, a classification of the
+Cretaceous Fishes would correspond very nearly to one founded on those
+now living. Shall we, then, suppose that the large reptilian Fishes of
+the Jurassic time began suddenly to lay numerous broods of these
+smaller, more modern, scaly Fishes? And shall we account for the
+diminution of the previous forms by supposing that in order to give a
+fair chance to the new kinds they brought them forth in large numbers,
+while they reproduced their own kind less abundantly? According to very
+careful estimates, if we accept this view, the progeny of the Jurassic
+Fishes must have borne a proportion of about ninety per cent, of
+entirely new types to some ten per cent, of those resembling the
+parents. One would like a fact or two on which to rest so very
+extraordinary a reversal of all known physiological laws of
+reproduction, but, unhappily, there is not one.
+
+Still more unaccountable, upon any theory of development according to
+ordinary laws of reproduction, are those unique, isolated types limited
+to a single epoch, or sometimes even to a single period. There are some
+very remarkable instances of this in the Cretaceous deposits. To make my
+statement clearer, I will say a word of the sequence of these deposits
+and their division into periods.
+
+These Cretaceous beds were at first divided only into three sets, called
+the Neocomian, or lower deposits, the Green-Sands, or middle deposits,
+and the Chalk, or upper deposits. The Neocomian, the lower division, was
+afterwards subdivided into three sets of beds, called the Lower, Middle,
+and Upper Neocomian by some geologists, the Valengian, Neocomian, and
+Urgonian by others. These three periods are not only traced in immediate
+succession, one above another, in the transverse cut before described,
+across the mountain of Chaumont, near Neufchatel, but they are also
+traced almost on one level along the plain at the foot of the Jura. It
+is evident that by some disturbance of the surface the eastern end of
+the range was raised slightly, lifting the lower or Valengian deposits
+out of the water, so that they remain uncovered, and the next set of
+deposits, the Neocomian, is accumulated along their base, while these in
+their turn are slightly raised, and the Urgonian beds are accumulated
+against them a little lower down. They follow each other from east to
+west in a narrower area, just as the Azoic, Silurian, and Devonian
+deposits follow each other from north to south in the northern part of
+the United States. The Cretaceous deposits have been intimately studied
+in various localities by different geologists, and are now subdivided
+into at least ten, or it may be fifteen or sixteen distinct periods, as
+they stand at present. This is, however, but the beginning of the work;
+and the recent investigations of the French geologist, Coquand, indicate
+that several of these periods at least are susceptible of further
+subdivision. I present here a table enumerating the periods of the
+Cretaceous epoch best known at present, in their sequence, because I
+want to show how sharply and in how arbitrary a manner, if I may so
+express it, new forms are introduced. The names are simply derived from
+the localities, or from some circumstances connected with the locality
+where each period has been studied.
+
+    _Table of Periods in the Cretaceous Epoch._
+
+      Maestrichtian } Chalk.
+      Senonian      }
+
+      Turonian      } Chalk Marl.
+      Cenomanian    }
+
+      Albian        }
+      Aptian        } Green Sands.
+      Rhodanian     }
+
+      Urgonian      }
+      Neocomian     } Wealden.
+      Valengian     }
+
+One of the most peculiar and distinct of those unique types alluded to
+above is that of the Rudistes, a singular Bivalve, in which the lower
+valve is very deep and conical, while the upper valve sets into to it as
+into a cup. The subjoined woodcut represents such a Bivalve. These
+Rudistes are found suddenly in the Urgonian deposits; there are none in
+the two preceding sets of beds; they disappear in the three following
+periods, and reappear again in great numbers in the Cenomanian,
+Turonian, and Senonian periods, and disappear again in the succeeding
+one. These can hardly be missed from any negligence or oversight in the
+examination of these deposits, for they are by no means rare. They are
+found always in great numbers, occupying crowded beds, like Oysters in
+the present time. So numerous are they, where they occur at all, that
+the deposits containing them are called by many naturalists the first,
+second, third, and fourth _bank_ of Rudistes. Which of the ordinary
+Bivalves, then, gave rise to this very remarkable form in the class,
+allowed it to die out, and revived it again at various intervals? This
+is by no means the only instance of the same kind. There are a number of
+types making their appearance suddenly, lasting during one period or
+during a succession of periods, and then disappearing forever, while
+others, like the Rudistes, come in, vanish, and reappear at a later
+time.
+
+[Illustration: Rudistes.]
+
+I am well aware that the advocates of the development-theory do not
+state their views as I have here presented them. On the contrary, they
+protest against any idea of sudden, violent, abrupt changes, and
+maintain that by slow and imperceptible modifications during immense
+periods of time these new types have been introduced without involving
+any infringement of the ordinary processes of development; and they
+account for the entire absence of corroborative facts in the past
+history of animals by what they call the "imperfection of the geological
+record." Now, while I admit that our knowledge of geology is still very
+incomplete, I assert that just where the direct sequence of geological
+deposits is needed for this evidence, we have it. The Jurassic beds,
+without a single modern scaly Fish, are in immediate contact with the
+Cretaceous beds, in which the Fishes of that kind are proportionately
+almost as numerous as they are now; and between these two sets of
+deposits there is not a trace of any transition or intermediate form to
+unite the reptilian Fishes of the Jurassic with the common Fishes of the
+Cretaceous times. Again, the Cretaceous beds in which the crowded banks
+of Rudistes, so singular and unique in form, first make their
+appearance, follow immediately upon those in which all the Bivalves are
+of an entirely different character. In short, the deposits of this year
+along any sea-coast or at the mouth of any of our rivers do not follow
+more directly upon those of last year than do these successive sets of
+beds of past ages follow upon each other. In making these statements, I
+do not forget the immense length of the geological periods; on the
+contrary, I fully accede to it, and believe that it is more likely to
+have been underrated than overstated. But let it be increased a
+thousand-fold, the fact remains, that these new types occur commonly at
+the dividing line where one period joins the next, just on the margin of
+both.
+
+For years I have collected daily among some of these deposits, and I
+know the Sea-Urchins, Corals, Fishes, Crustacea, and Shells of those old
+shores as well as I know those of Nahant Beach, and there is nothing
+more striking to a naturalist than the sudden, abrupt changes of species
+in passing from one to another. In the second set of Cretaceous beds,
+the Neocomian, there is found a little Terebratula (a small Bivalve
+Shell) in immense quantities: they may actually be collected by the
+bushel. Pass to the Urgonian beds, resting directly upon the Neocomian,
+and there is not one to be found, and an entirely new species comes in.
+There is a peculiar Spatangus (Sea-Urchin) found throughout the whole
+series of beds in which this Terebratula occurs. At the same moment that
+you miss the Shell, the Sea-Urchin disappears also, and another takes
+its place. Now, admitting for a moment that the later can have grown out
+of the earlier forms, I maintain, that, if this be so, the change is
+immediate, sudden, without any gradual transitions, and is, therefore,
+wholly inconsistent with all our known physiological laws, as well as
+with the transmutation-theory.
+
+There is a very singular group of Ammonites in the Cretaceous epoch,
+which, were it not for the suddenness of its appearance, might seem
+rather to favor the development-theory, from its great variety of
+closely allied forms. We have traced the Chambered Shells from the
+straight, simple ones of the earliest epochs up to the intricate and
+closely coiled forms of the Jurassic epoch. In the so-called Portland
+stone, belonging to the upper set of Jurassic beds, there is only one
+type of Ammonite; but in the Cretaceous beds, immediately above it,
+there set in a number of different genera and distinct species,
+including the most fantastic and seemingly abnormal forms. It is as if
+the close coil by which these shells had been characterized during the
+Middle Age had been suddenly broken up and decomposed into an endless
+variety of outlines. Some of these new types still retain the coil, but
+the whorls are much less compact than before, as in the Crioceras; in
+others, the direction of the coil is so changed as to make a spiral, as
+in the Turrilites; or the shell starts with a coil, then proceeds in a
+straight line, and changes to a curve again at the other extremity, as
+in the Ancyloceras, or in the Scaphites, in which the first coil is
+somewhat closer than in the Ancyloceras; or the tendency to a coil is
+reduced to a single curve, so as to give the shell the outline of a
+horn, as in the Toxoceras; or the coil is entirely lost, and the shell
+reduced to its primitive straight form, as in the Baculites, which,
+except for their undulating partitions, might be mistaken for the
+Orthoceratites of the Silurian and Devonian epochs. I have presented
+here but a few species of these extraordinary Cretaceous Ammonites, and,
+strange to say, with this breaking-up of the type into a number of
+fantastic and often contorted shapes, it disappears. It is singular that
+forms so unusual and so contrary to the previous regularity of this
+group should accompany its last stage of existence, and seem to shadow
+forth by their strange contortions the final dissolution of their type.
+When I look upon a collection of these old shells, I can never divest
+myself of an impression that the contortions of a death-struggle have
+been made the pattern of living types, and with that the whole group has
+ended.
+
+[Illustration: Crioceras.]
+
+[Illustration: Turrilites.]
+
+[Illustration: Ancyloceras.]
+
+[Illustration: Scaphites.]
+
+[Illustration: Toxoceras.]
+
+[Illustration: Baculites.]
+
+Now shall we infer that the compact, closely coiled Ammonites of the
+Jurassic deposits, while continuing their own kind, brought forth a
+variety of other kinds, and so distributed these new organic elements as
+to produce a large number of distinct genera and species? I confess that
+these ideas are so contrary to all I have learned from Nature in the
+course of a long life that I should be forced to renounce completely the
+results of my studies in Embryology and Pal�ontology before I could
+adopt these new views of the origin of species. And while the
+distinguished originator of this theory is entitled to our highest
+respect for his scientific researches, yet it should not be forgotten
+that the most conclusive evidence brought forward by him and his
+adherents is of a negative character, drawn from a science in which they
+do not pretend to have made personal investigations, that of Geology,
+while the proofs they offer us from their own departments of science,
+those of Zo�logy and Botany, are derived from observations, still very
+incomplete, upon domesticated animals and cultivated plants, which can
+never be made a test of the origin of wild species.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: The advocates of the development-theory allude to the
+metamorphosis of animals and plants as supporting their view of a change
+of one species into another. They compare the passage of a common leaf
+into the calyx or crown-leaves in plants, or that of a larva into a
+perfect insect, to the passage of one species into another. The only
+objection to this argument seems to be, that, whereas Nature daily
+presents us myriads of examples of the one set of phenomena, showing it
+to be a norm, not a single instance of the other has ever been known to
+occur either in the animal or in the vegetable kingdom.]
+
+In my next article I shall show the relation between the Cretaceous and
+Tertiary epochs, and see whether there is any reason to believe that the
+gigantic Mammalia of more modern times were derived from the Reptiles of
+the Secondary age.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE-THROATED SPARROW.
+
+
+    Hark! 't is our Northern Nightingale that sings
+    In far-off, leafy cloisters, dark and cool,
+    Flinging his flute-notes bounding from the skies!
+
+    Thou wild musician of the mountain-streams,
+    Most tuneful minstrel of the forest-choirs,
+    Bird of all grace and harmony of soul,
+    Unseen, we hail thee for thy blissful voice!
+
+    Up in yon tremulous mist where morning wakes
+    Illimitable shadows from their dark abodes,
+    Or in this woodland glade tumultuous grown
+    With all the murmurous language of the trees,
+    No blither presence fills the vocal space.
+    The wandering rivulets dancing through the grass,
+    The gambols, low or loud, of insect-life,
+    The cheerful call of cattle in the vales,
+    Sweet natural sounds of the contented hours,--
+    All seem less jubilant when thy song begins.
+
+    Deep in the shade we lie and listen long;
+    For human converse well may pause, and man
+    Learn from such notes fresh hints of praise,
+    That upward swelling from thy grateful tribe
+    Circles the hills with melodies of joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE FLEUR-DE-LIS IN FLORIDA.
+
+    [In the July number of this magazine is a sketch of the attempt
+    of the Huguenots, under the auspices of Coligny, to found a
+    colony at Port Royal. Two years later, an attempt was made to
+    establish a Protestant community on the banks of the River St.
+    John's, in Florida. The following paper embodies the substance
+    of the letters and narratives of the actors in this striking
+    episode of American history.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+On the 25th of June, 1564, a French squadron anchored a second time off
+the mouth of the River of May. There were three vessels, the smallest of
+sixty tons, the largest of one hundred and twenty, all crowded with men.
+Ren� de Laudonni�re held command. He was of a noble race of Poitou,
+attached to the House of Ch�tillon, of which Coligny was the head;
+pious, we are told, and an excellent marine officer. An engraving,
+purporting to be his likeness, shows us a slender figure, leaning
+against the mast, booted to the thigh, with slouched hat and plume,
+slashed doublet, and short cloak. His thin oval face, with curled
+moustache and close-trimmed beard, wears a thoughtful and somewhat
+pensive look, as if already shadowed by the destiny that awaited him.
+
+The intervening year since Ribaut's voyage had been a dark and deadly
+year for France. From the peaceful solitude of the River of May, that
+voyager returned to a land reeking with slaughter. But the carnival of
+bigotry and hate had found a respite. The Peace of Amboise had been
+signed. The fierce monk choked down his venom; the soldier sheathed his
+sword; the assassin, his dagger; rival chiefs grasped hands, and masked
+their rancor under hollow smiles. The king and the queen-mother,
+helpless amid the storm of factions which threatened their destruction,
+smiled now on Cond�, now on Guise,--gave ear to the Cardinal of
+Lorraine, or listened in secret to the emissaries of Theodore Beza.
+Coligny was again strong at Court. He used his opportunity, and
+solicited with success the means of renewing his enterprise of
+colonization. With pains and zeal, men were mustered for the work. In
+name, at least, they were all Huguenots; yet again, as before, the
+staple of the projected colony was unsound: soldiers, paid out of the
+royal treasury, hired artisans and tradesmen, joined with a swarm of
+volunteers from the young Huguenot noblesse, whose restless swords had
+rusted in their scabbards since the peace. The foundation-stone was left
+out. There were no tillers of the soil. Such, indeed, were rare among
+the Huguenots; for the dull peasants who guided the plough clung with
+blind tenacity to the ancient faith. Adventurous gentlemen, reckless
+soldiers, discontented tradesmen, all keen for novelty and heated with
+dreams of wealth,--these were they who would build for their country and
+their religion an empire beyond the sea.
+
+With a few officers and twelve soldiers, Laudonni�re landed where Ribaut
+had landed before him; and as their boat neared the shore, they saw an
+Indian chief who ran to meet them, whooping and clamoring welcome from
+afar. It was Satouriona, the savage potentate who ruled some thirty
+villages around the lower St. John's and northward along the coast. With
+him came two stalwart sons, and behind trooped a host of tribesmen
+arrayed in smoke-tanned deerskins stained with wild devices in gaudy
+colors. They crowded around the voyagers with beaming visages and yelps
+of gratulation. The royal Satouriona could not contain the exuberance of
+his joy, since in the person of the French commander he recognized the
+brother of the Sun, descended from the skies to aid him against his
+great rival, Outina.
+
+Hard by stood the column of stone, graven with the fleur-de-lis,
+planted here on the former voyage. The Indians had crowned the mystic
+emblem with evergreens, and placed offerings of maize on the ground
+before it; for with an affectionate and reverent wonder they had ever
+remembered the steel-clad strangers whom, two summers before, John
+Ribaut had led to their shores.
+
+Five miles up the St. John's, or River of May, there stands, on the
+southern bank, a hill some forty feet high, boldly thrusting itself into
+the broad and lazy waters. It is now called St. John's Bluff. Thither
+the Frenchmen repaired, pushed through the dense semi-tropical forest,
+and climbed the steep acclivity. Thence they surveyed their Canaan.
+Beneath them moved the unruffled river, gliding around the reed-grown
+shores of marshy islands, the haunt of alligators, and betwixt the
+bordering expanse of wide, wet meadows, studded with island-like clumps
+of pine and palmetto, and bounded by the sunny verge of distant forests.
+Far on their right, seen by glimpses between the shaggy cedar-boughs,
+the glistening sea lay stretched along the horizon. Before, in hazy
+distance, the softened green of the woodlands was veined with the mazes
+of the countless interlacing streams that drain the watery region behind
+St. Mary's and Fernandina. To the left, the St. John's flowed gleaming
+betwixt verdant shores beyond whose portals lay the El Dorado of their
+dreams. "Briefly," writes Laudonni�re, "the place is so pleasant that
+those which are melancholicke would be inforced to change their humour."
+
+A fresh surprise awaited them. The allotted span of mortal life was
+quadrupled in that benign climate. Laudonni�re's lieutenant, Ottigny,
+ranging the neighboring forest with a party of soldiers, met a troop of
+Indians who invited him to their dwellings. Mounted on the back of a
+stout savage, who plunged with him through the deep marshes, and guided
+him by devious pathways through the tangled thickets, he arrived at
+length, and beheld a wondrous spectacle. In the lodge sat a venerable
+chief, who assured him that he was the father of five successive
+generations, and that he had lived two hundred and fifty years.
+Opposite, sat a still more ancient veteran, the father of the first,
+shrunken to a mere anatomy, and "seeming to be rather a dead carkeis
+than a living body." "Also," pursues the history, "his age was so great
+that the good man had lost his sight, and could not speak one onely word
+but with exceeding great paine." Despite his dismal condition, the
+visitor was told that he might expect to live in the course of Nature
+thirty or forty years more. As the two patriarchs sat face to face, half
+hidden with their streaming white hair, Ottigny and his credulous
+soldiers looked from one to the other, lost in wonder and admiration.
+
+Man and Nature alike seemed to mark the borders of the River of May as
+the site of the new colony; for here, around the Indian towns, the
+harvests of maize, beans, and pumpkins promised abundant food, while the
+river opened a ready way to the mines of gold and silver and the stores
+of barbaric wealth which glittered before the dreaming vision of the
+colonists. Yet, the better to content himself and his men, Laudonni�re
+weighed anchor, and sailed for a time along the neighboring coasts.
+Returning, confirmed in his first impression, he set forth with a party
+of officers and soldiers to explore the borders of the chosen stream.
+The day was hot. The sun beat fiercely on the woollen caps and heavy
+doublets of the men, till at length they gained the shade of one of
+those deep forests of pine where the dead and sultry air is thick with
+resinous odors, and the earth, carpeted with fallen leaves, gives no
+sound beneath the foot. Yet, in the stillness, deer leaped up on all
+sides as they moved along. Then they emerged into sunlight. A broad
+meadow, a running brook, a lofty wall of encircling forests. The men
+called it the Vale of Laudonni�re. The afternoon was spent, and the sun
+was near its setting, when they reached the bank of the river. They
+strewed the ground with boughs and leaves, and, stretched on that
+sylvan couch, slept the sleep of travel-worn and weary men.
+
+At daybreak they were roused by sound of trumpet. Men and officers
+joined their voices in a psalm, then betook themselves to their task.
+Their task was the building of a fort, and this was the chosen spot. It
+was a tract of dry ground on the brink of the river, immediately above
+St. John's Bluff. On the right was the bluff; on the left, a marsh; in
+front, the river; behind, the forest.
+
+Boats came up the stream with laborers, tents, provision, cannon, and
+tools. The engineers marked out the work in the form of a triangle; and,
+from the noble volunteer to the meanest artisan, all lent a hand to
+complete it. On the river side the defences were a palisade of timber.
+On the two other sides were a ditch, and a rampart of fascines, earth,
+and sods. At each angle was a bastion, in one of which was the magazine.
+Within was a spacious parade, and around it various buildings for
+lodging and storage. A large house with covered galleries was built on
+the side towards the river for Laudonni�re and his officers. In honor of
+Charles IX the fort was named Fort Caroline.
+
+Meanwhile, Satouriona, "lord of all that country," as the narratives
+style him, was seized with misgivings, learning these mighty
+preparations. The work was but begun, and all was din and confusion
+around the incipient fort, when the startled Frenchmen saw the
+neighboring height of St. John's swarming with naked warriors. The
+prudent Laudonni�re set his men in array, and for a season pick and
+spade were dropped for arquebuse and pike. The savage potentate
+descended to the camp. The artist Le Moyne, who saw him, drew his
+likeness from memory,--a tall, athletic figure, tattooed in token of his
+rank, plumed with feathers, hung with strings of beads, and girdled with
+tinkling pieces of metal which hung from the belt, his only garment. He
+came in regal state, a crowd of warriors around him, and, in advance, a
+troop of young Indians armed with spears. Twenty musicians followed,
+blowing a hideous discord through pipes of reeds. Arrived, he seated
+himself on the ground "like a monkey," as Le Moyne has it in the grave
+Latin of his "Brevis Narratio." A council followed, in which broken
+words were aided by signs and pantomime. A treaty of alliance was made,
+and Laudonni�re had the folly to promise the chief that he would lend
+him aid against his enemies. Satouriona, well pleased, ordered his
+Indians to aid the French at their work. They obeyed with alacrity, and
+in two days the buildings of the fort were all thatched after the native
+fashion with leaves of the palmetto.
+
+A word touching these savages. In the peninsula of Florida were several
+distinct Indian confederacies, with three of which the French were
+brought into contact. The first was that of Satouriona. The next was the
+potent confederacy of the Thimagoa, under a chief called Outina, whose
+forty villages were scattered among the lakes and forests around the
+upper waters of this remarkable river. The third was that of "King
+Potanou," whose domain lay among the pine-barrens, cypress-swamps, and
+fertile hummocks, westward and northwestward of the St. John's. The
+three communities were at deadly enmity. Their social state was more
+advanced than that of the wandering hunter-tribes of the North. They
+were an agricultural people. Around all their villages were fields of
+maize, beans, and pumpkins. The harvest, due chiefly to the labor of the
+women, was gathered into a public granary, and on this they lived during
+three-fourths of the year, dispersing in winter to hunt among the
+forests.
+
+Their villages were clusters of huts thatched with palmetto. In the
+midst was the dwelling of the chief, much larger than the rest, and
+sometimes raised on an artificial mound. They were inclosed with
+palisades, and, strange to say, some of them were approached by wide
+avenues, artificially graded, and several hundred yards in length.
+Remains of them may still be seen, as may also the mounds in which the
+Floridians, like the Hurons and various other tribes, collected at
+stated intervals the bones of their dead.
+
+The most prominent feature of their religion was sun-worship, and, like
+other wild American tribes, they abounded in "medicine-men," who
+combined the functions of priest, physician, and necromancer.
+
+Social distinctions were sharply defined among them. Their chiefs, whose
+office was hereditary, sometimes exercised a power almost absolute. Each
+village had its chief, subordinate to the grand chief of the nation. In
+the language of the French narratives, they were all kings or lords,
+vassals of the great monarch Satouriona, Outina, or Potanou. All these
+tribes are now extinct, and it is difficult to ascertain with precision
+their tribal affinities. There can be no doubt that they were the
+authors of the mounds and other remains at present found in various
+parts of Florida.
+
+Their fort nearly finished, and their league made with Satouriona, the
+gold-hunting Huguenots were eager to spy out the secrets of the
+interior. To this end the lieutenant, Ottigny, went up the river in a
+sail-boat. With him were a few soldiers and two Indians, the latter
+going forth, says Laudonni�re, as if bound to a wedding, keen for a
+fight with the hated Thimagoa, and exulting in the havoc to be wrought
+among them by the magic weapons of their white allies. They were doomed
+to grievous disappointment.
+
+The Sieur d'Ottigny spread his sail, and calmly glided up the dark
+waters of the St. John's. A scene fraught with strange interest to the
+naturalist and the lover of Nature. Here, two centuries later, the
+Bartrams, father and son, guided their skiff and kindled their nightly
+bivouac-fire; and here, too, roamed Audubon, with his sketch-book and
+his gun. Each alike has left the record of his wanderings, fresh as the
+woods and waters that inspired it. Slight, then, was the change since
+Ottigny, first of white men, steered his bark along the still breast of
+the virgin river. Before him, like a lake, the redundant waters spread
+far and wide; and along the low shores, or jutting points, or the
+waveless margin of deep and sheltered coves, towered wild, majestic
+forms of vegetable beauty. Here rose the magnolia, high above
+surrounding woods; but the gorgeous bloom had fallen, that a few weeks
+earlier studded the verdant dome with silver. From the edge of the
+bordering swamp the cypress reared its vast buttressed column and leafy
+canopy. From the rugged arms of oak and pine streamed the gray drapery
+of the long Spanish moss, swayed mournfully in the faintest breeze. Here
+were the tropical plumage of the palm, the dark green masses of the
+live-oak, the glistening verdure of wild orange-groves; and from out the
+shadowy thickets hung the wreaths of the jessamine and the scarlet
+trumpets of the bignonia.
+
+Nor less did the fruitful river teem with varied forms of animal life.
+From the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of
+many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on
+the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the
+alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his hideous length,
+or, sluggish and sullen, drifted past the boat, his grim head level with
+the surface, and each scale, each folding of his horny hide, distinctly
+visible, as, with the slow movement of distended paws, he balanced
+himself in the water. When, at sunset, they drew up their boat on the
+strand, and built their camp-fire under the arches of the woods, the
+shores resounded with the roaring of these colossal lizards; all night
+the forest rang with the whooping of the owls; and in the morning the
+sultry mists that wrapped the river were vocal, far and near, with the
+clamor of wild turkeys.
+
+Among such scenes, for twenty leagues, the adventurous sail moved on.
+Far to the right, beyond the silent waste of pines, lay the realm of
+the mighty Potanou. The Thimagoa towns were still above them on the
+river, when they saw three canoes of this people at no great distance in
+front. Forthwith the two Indians in the boat were fevered with
+excitement. With glittering eyes they snatched pike and sword, and
+prepared for fight; but the sage Ottigny, bearing slowly down on the
+strangers, gave them time to run their craft ashore and escape to the
+woods. Then, landing, he approached the canoes, placed in them a few
+trinkets, and withdrew to a distance. The fugitives took heart, and,
+step by step, returned. An amicable intercourse was opened, with
+assurances of friendship on the part of the French, a procedure viewed
+by Satouriona's Indians with unspeakable disgust and ire.
+
+The ice thus broken, Ottigny returned to Fort Caroline; and a fortnight
+later, an officer named Vasseur sailed up the river to pursue the
+adventure: for the French, thinking that the nation of the Thimagoa lay
+betwixt them and the gold-mines, would by no means quarrel with them,
+and Laudonni�re repented him already of his rash pledge to Satouriona.
+
+As Vasseur moved on, two Indians hailed him from the shore, inviting him
+to their dwellings. He accepted their guidance, and presently saw before
+him the cornfields and palisades of an Indian town. Led through the
+wondering crowd to the lodge of the chief, Mollua, Vasseur and his
+followers were seated in the place of honor and plentifully regaled with
+fish and bread. The repast over, Mollua began his discourse. He told
+them that he was one of the forty vassal chiefs of the great Outina,
+lord of all the Thimagoa, whose warriors wore armor of gold and silver
+plate. He told them, too, of Potanou, his enemy, a mighty and redoubted
+prince; and of the two kings of the distant Appalachian Mountains, rich
+beyond utterance in gems and gold. While thus, with earnest pantomime
+and broken words, the chief discoursed with his guests, Vasseur, intent
+and eager, strove to follow his meaning; and no sooner did he hear of
+these Appalachian treasures than he promised to join Outina in war
+against the two potentates of the mountains. Hereupon the sagacious
+Mollua, well pleased, promised that each of Outina's vassal chiefs
+should requite their French allies with a heap of gold and silver two
+feet high. Thus, while Laudonni�re stood pledged to Satouriona, Vasseur
+made alliance with his mortal enemy.
+
+Returning, he was met, near the fort, by one of Satouriona's chiefs, who
+questioned him touching his dealings with the Thimagoa. Vasseur replied,
+that he had set upon and routed them with incredible slaughter. But as
+the chief, seeming as yet unsatisfied, continued his inquiries, the
+sergeant, Francis la Caille, drew his sword, and, like Falstaff before
+him, re-enacted his deeds of valor, pursuing and thrusting at the
+imaginary Thimagoa as they fled before his fury. Whereat the chief, at
+length convinced, led the party to his lodge, and entertained them with
+a certain savory decoction with which the Indians were wont to regale
+those whom they delighted to honor.
+
+Elate at the promise of a French alliance, Satouriona had summoned his
+vassal chiefs to war. From the St. Mary's and the Satilla and the
+distant Altamaha, from every quarter of his woodland realm, they had
+mustered at his call. By the margin of the St. John's, the forest was
+alive with their bivouacs. Ten chiefs were here, and some five hundred
+men. And now, when all was ready, Satouriona reminded Laudonni�re of his
+promise, and claimed its fulfilment; but the latter gave evasive answers
+and a virtual refusal. Stifling his rage, the chief prepared to go
+without him.
+
+Near the bank of the river, a fire was kindled, and two large vessels of
+water placed beside it. Here Satouriona took his stand. His chiefs
+crouched on the grass around him, and the savage visages of his five
+hundred warriors filled the outer circle, their long hair garnished with
+feathers, or covered with the heads and skins of wolves, panthers,
+bears, or eagles. Satouriona, looking towards the country of his enemy,
+distorted his features to a wild expression of rage and hate; then
+muttered to himself; then howled an invocation to his god, the sun; then
+besprinkled the assembly with water from one of the vessels, and,
+turning the other upon the fire, suddenly quenched it. "So," he cried,
+"may the blood of our enemies be poured out, and their lives
+extinguished!" and the concourse gave forth an explosion of responsive
+yells, till the shores resounded with the wolfish din.
+
+The rites over, they set forth, and in a few days returned exulting with
+thirteen prisoners and a number of scalps. The latter were hung on a
+pole before the royal lodge, and when night came, it brought with it a
+pandemonium of dancing and whooping, drumming and feasting.
+
+A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudonni�re. Resolved, cost what
+it might, to make a friend of Outina, he conceived it a stroke of policy
+to send back to him two of the prisoners. In the morning he sent a
+soldier to Satouriona to demand them. The astonished chief gave a flat
+refusal, adding that he owed the French no favors, for they had
+shamefully broken faith with him. On this, Laudonni�re, at the head of
+twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the
+opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated
+himself without ceremony in the highest place. Here, to show his
+displeasure, he remained in silence for a half-hour. At length he spoke,
+renewing his demand. For some moments Satouriona made no reply, then
+coldly observed that the sight of so many armed men had frightened the
+prisoners away. Laudonni�re grew peremptory, when the chiefs son,
+Athore, went out, and presently returned with the two Indians, whom the
+French led back to Fort Caroline.
+
+Satouriona dissembled, professed good-will, and sent presents to the
+fort; but the outrage rankled in his savage breast, and he never forgave
+it.
+
+Captain Vasseur, with Arlac, the ensign, a sergeant, and ten soldiers,
+embarked to bear the ill-gotten gift to Outina. Arrived, they were
+showered with thanks by that grateful potentate, who, hastening to avail
+himself of his new alliance, invited them to join in a raid against his
+neighbor, Potanou. To this end, Arlac and five soldiers remained, while
+Vasseur with the rest descended to Fort Caroline.
+
+The warriors were mustered, the dances were danced, and the songs were
+sung. Then the wild cohort took up its march. The wilderness through
+which they passed holds its distinctive features to this day,--the shady
+desert of the pine-barrens, where many a wanderer has miserably died,
+with haggard eye seeking in vain for clue or guidance in the pitiless,
+inexorable monotony. Yet the waste has its oases, the "hummocks," where
+the live-oaks are hung with long festoons of grape-vines,--where the air
+is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the
+deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast
+sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and
+root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy
+bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable
+disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless
+forms lean propped in wild disorder against the living, and from every
+rugged stem and lank limb outstretched hangs the dark drapery of the
+Spanish moss. The swamp is veiled in mourning. No breath, no voice. A
+deathly stillness, till the plunge of the alligator, lashing the waters
+of the black lagoon, resounds with hollow echo through the tomb-like
+solitude.
+
+Next, the broad sunlight and the wide savanna. Wading breast-deep in
+grass, they view the wavy sea of verdure, with headland and cape and
+far-reaching promontory, with distant coasts, hazy and dim, havens and
+shadowed coves, islands of the magnolia and the palm, high, impending
+shores of the mulberry and the elm, the ash, hickory, and maple. Here
+the rich _gordonia_, never out of bloom, sends down its thirsty roots to
+drink at the stealing brook. Here the _halesia_ hangs out its silvery
+bells, the purple clusters of the _wistaria_ droop from the supporting
+bough, and the coral blossoms of the _erythryna_ glow in the shade
+beneath. From tufted masses of sword-like leaves shoot up the tall
+spires of the _yucca_, heavy with pendent flowers, of pallid hue, like
+the moon, and from the grass gleams the blue eye of the starry _ixia_.
+
+Through forest, swamp, savanna, the valiant Frenchmen held their way. At
+first, Outina's Indians kept always in advance; but when they reached
+the hostile district, the modest warriors fell to the rear, resigning
+the post of honor to their French allies.
+
+An open country; a rude cultivation; the tall palisades of an Indian
+town. Their approach was seen, and the warriors of Potanou, nowise
+daunted, came swarming forth to meet them. But the sight of the bearded
+strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, the fall of their
+foremost chief, shot through the brain with the bullet of Arlac, filled
+them with consternation, and they fled headlong within their defences.
+The men of Thimagoa ran screeching in pursuit. Pell-mell, all entered
+the town together. Slaughter; pillage; flame. The work was done, and the
+band returned triumphant.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+In the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature France, cliques and
+parties, conspiracy and sedition, were fast stirring into life. Hopes
+had been dashed; wild expectations had come to nought. The adventurers
+had found, not conquest and gold, but a dull exile in a petty fort by a
+hot and sickly river, with hard labor, ill fare, prospective famine, and
+nothing to break the weary sameness but some passing canoe or floating
+alligator. Gathered in knots, they nursed each other's wrath, and
+inveighed against the commandant.
+
+Why are we put on half-rations, when he told us that provision should be
+made for a full year? Where are the reinforcements and supplies that he
+said should follow us from France? Why is he always closeted with
+Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that favorite, when we, men of blood as
+good as theirs, cannot gain his ear for a moment? And why has he sent La
+Roche Ferri�re to make his fortune among the Indians, while we are kept
+here, digging at the works?
+
+Of La Roche Ferri�re and his adventures, more hereafter. The young
+nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own
+expenses, in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in
+impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony--unlike the
+former Huguenot emigration to Brazil--was evidently subordinate. The
+adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith; yet
+there were not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva to
+complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers had been sent with them.
+The burden of all grievances was thrown upon Laudonni�re, whose greatest
+errors seem to have arisen from weakness and a lack of judgment,--fatal
+defects in his position.
+
+The growing discontent was brought to a partial head by one Roquette,
+who gave out that by magic he had discovered a mine of gold and silver,
+high up the river, which would give each of them a share of ten thousand
+crowns, besides fifteen hundred thousand for the king. But for
+Laudonni�re, he said, their fortunes would all be made. He found an ally
+in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonni�re's confidants, who, still
+professing fast adherence to the interests of the latter, is charged by
+him with plotting against his life. Many of the soldiers were in the
+conspiracy. They made a flag of an old shirt, which they carried with
+them to the rampart when they went to their work, at the same time
+wearing their arms, and watching an opportunity to kill the commandant.
+About this time, overheating himself, he fell ill, and was confined to
+his quarters. On this, Genre made advances to the apothecary, urging him
+to put arsenic into his medicines; but the apothecary shrugged his
+shoulders. They next devised a scheme to blow him up, by hiding a keg of
+gunpowder under his bed; but here, too, they failed. Hints of Genre's
+machinations reaching the ears of Laudonni�re, the culprit fled to the
+woods, whence he wrote repentant letters, with full confession, to his
+commander.
+
+Two of the ships meanwhile returned to France,--the third, the Breton,
+remaining at anchor opposite the fort. The malecontents took the
+opportunity to send home charges against Laudonni�re of peculation,
+favoritism, and tyranny.
+
+Early in September, Captain Bourdet, apparently a private adventurer,
+had arrived from France with a small vessel. When he returned, about the
+tenth of November, Laudonni�re persuaded him to carry home seven or
+eight of the malecontent soldiers. Bourdet left some of his sailors in
+their place. The exchange proved most disastrous. These pirates joined
+with others whom they had won over, stole Laudonni�re's two pinnaces,
+and set forth on a plundering excursion to the West Indies. They took a
+small Spanish vessel off the coast of Cuba, but were soon compelled by
+famine to put into Havana and surrender themselves. Here, to make their
+peace with the authorities, they told all they knew of the position and
+purposes of their countrymen at Fort Caroline, and hence was forged the
+thunderbolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little colony.
+
+On a Sunday morning, Francis de la Caille came to Laudonni�re's
+quarters, and, in the name of the whole company, requested him to come
+to the parade-ground. He complied, and, issuing forth, his inseparable
+Ottigny at his side, saw some thirty of his officers, soldiers, and
+gentlemen-volunteers waiting before the building with fixed and sombre
+countenance. La Caille, advancing, begged leave to read, in behalf of
+the rest, a paper which he held in his hand. It opened with
+protestations of duty and obedience; next came complaints of hard work,
+starvation, and broken promises, and a request that the petitioners
+should be allowed to embark in the vessel lying in the river, and cruise
+along the Spanish main in order to procure provision by purchase "or
+otherwise." In short, the flower of the company wished to turn
+buccaneers.
+
+Laudonni�re refused, but assured them, that, so soon as the defences of
+the fort should be completed, a search should be begun in earnest for
+the Appalachian gold-mine, and that meanwhile two small vessels then
+building on the river should be sent along the coast to barter for
+provisions with the Indians. With this answer they were forced to
+content themselves; but the fermentation continued, and the plot
+thickened. Their spokesman, La Caille, however, seeing whither the
+affair tended, broke with them, and, beside Ottigny, Vasseur, and the
+brave Swiss, Arlac, was the only officer who held to his duty.
+
+A severe illness again seized Laudonni�re and confined him to his bed.
+Improving their advantage, the malecontents gained over nearly all the
+best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of
+good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up
+a paper to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed
+the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le
+Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a hint from a friend that
+he had better change his quarters; upon which he warned La Caille, who
+escaped to the woods. It was late in the night. Fourneaux, with twenty
+men armed to the teeth, knocked fiercely at the commandant's door.
+Forcing an entrance, they wounded a gentleman who opposed them, and
+crowded around the sick man's bed. Fourneaux, armed with steel cap and
+cuirass, held his arquebuse to Laudonni�re's breast, and demanded leave
+to go on a cruise among the Spanish islands. The latter kept his
+presence of mind, and remonstrated with some firmness; on which, with
+oaths and menaces, they dragged him from his bed, put him in fetters,
+carried him out to the gate of the fort, placed him in a boat, and rowed
+him to the ship anchored in the river.
+
+Two other gangs at the same time visited Ottigny and Arlac, whom they
+disarmed, and ordered to keep their rooms till the night following, on
+pain of death. Smaller parties were busied, meanwhile, in disarming all
+the loyal soldiers. The fort was completely in the hands of the
+conspirators. Fourneaux drew up a commission for his meditated
+West-India cruise, which he required Laudonni�re to sign. The sick
+commandant, imprisoned in the ship, with one attendant, at first
+refused; but, receiving a message from the mutineers, that, if he did
+not comply, they would come on board and cut his throat, he at length
+yielded.
+
+The buccaneers now bestirred themselves to finish the two small vessels
+on which the carpenters had been for some time at work. In a fortnight
+they were ready for sea, armed and provided with the king's cannon,
+munitions, and stores. Trenchant, an excellent pilot, was forced to join
+the party. Their favorite object was the plunder of a certain church, on
+one of the Spanish islands, which they proposed to assail during the
+midnight mass of Christmas, whereby a triple end would be achieved:
+first, a rich booty; secondly, the punishment of idolatry; thirdly,
+vengeance on the arch-enemies of their party and their faith. They set
+sail on the eighth of December, taunting those who remained, calling
+them greenhorns, and threatening condign punishment, if, on their
+triumphant return, they should be refused free entrance to the fort.
+
+They were no sooner gone than the unfortunate Laudonni�re was gladdened
+in his solitude by the approach of his fast friends, Ottigny and Arlac,
+who conveyed him to the fort, and reinstated him. The entire command was
+reorganized and new officers appointed. The colony was wofully depleted;
+but the bad blood had been drawn, and thenceforth all internal danger
+was at an end. In finishing the fort, in building two new vessels to
+replace those of which they had been robbed, and in various intercourse
+with the tribes far and near, the weeks passed until the twenty-fifth of
+March, when an Indian came in with the tidings that a vessel was
+hovering off the coast. Laudonni�re sent to reconnoitre. The stranger
+lay anchored at the mouth of the river. She was a Spanish brigantine,
+manned by the returning mutineers, starving, downcast, and anxious to
+make terms. Yet, as their posture seemed not wholly pacific, Laudonni�re
+sent down La Caille with thirty soldiers, concealed at the bottom of his
+little vessel. Seeing only two or three on deck, the pirates allowed her
+to come along-side; when, to their amazement, they were boarded and
+taken before they could snatch their arms. Discomfited, woebegone, and
+drunk, they were landed under a guard. Their story was soon told.
+Fortune had flattered them at the outset. On the coast of Cuba, they
+took a brigantine, with wine and stores. Embarking in her, they next
+fell in with a caravel, which they also captured. Landing at a village
+of Jamaica, they plundered and caroused for a week, and had hardly
+re�mbarked when they fell in with a small vessel having on board the
+governor of the island. She made desperate fight, but was taken at last,
+and with her a rich booty. They thought to put the governor to ransom;
+but the astute official deceived them, and, on pretence of negotiating
+for the sum demanded, together with certain apes and parrots, for which
+his captors had also bargained, contrived to send instructions to his
+wife. Whence it happened that at daybreak three armed vessels fell upon
+them, retook the prize, and captured or killed all the pirates but
+twenty-six, who, cutting the moorings of their brigantine, fled out to
+sea. Among these was the ringleader, Fourneaux, and, happily, the pilot,
+Trenchant. The latter, eager to return to Fort Caroline, whence he had
+been forcibly taken, succeeded during the night in bringing the vessel
+to the coast of Florida. Great were the wrath and consternation of the
+discomfited pirates, when they saw their dilemma; for, having no
+provision, they must either starve or seek succor at the fort. They
+chose the latter alternative, and bore away for the St. John's. A few
+casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternized
+by the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the wine
+mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, they
+enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another the
+commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and speeches on either
+side.
+
+"Say what you like," said one of them, after hearing the counsel for the
+defence, "but if Laudonni�re does not hang us all, I will never call him
+an honest man."
+
+They had some hope of gaining provision from the Indians at the mouth of
+the river, and then patting to sea again; but this was frustrated by La
+Caille's sudden attack. A court-martial was called near Fort Caroline,
+and all were found guilty. Fourneaux and three others were sentenced to
+be hanged.
+
+"Comrades," said one of the condemned, appealing to the soldiers, "will
+you stand by and see us butchered?"
+
+"These," retorted Laudonni�re, "are no comrades of mutineers and
+rebels."
+
+At the request of his followers, however, he commuted the sentence to
+shooting.
+
+A file of men; a rattling volley; and the debt of justice was paid. The
+bodies were hanged on gibbets at the river's mouth, and order reigned at
+Fort Caroline.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+While the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche Ferri�re had been sent out as
+an agent or emissary among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold, and
+restless, he pushed his way from town to town, and pretended to have
+reached the mysterious mountains of Appalachee. He sent to the fort
+mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered with choice furs, arrows
+tipped with gold, wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and
+other trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named Grotaut took up the
+quest, and penetrated to the dominions of Hostaqua, who could muster
+three or four thousand warriors, and who promised with the aid of a
+hundred arquebusiers to conquer all the kings of the adjacent mountains,
+and subject them and their gold-mines to the rule of the French. A
+humbler adventurer was Peter Gamble, a robust and daring youth, who had
+been brought up in the household of Coligny, and was now a soldier under
+Laudonni�re. The latter gave him leave to trade with the Indians, a
+privilege which he used so well that he grew rich with his traffic,
+became prime favorite with the chief of Edelano, married his daughter,
+and, in his absence, reigned in his stead. But, as his sway verged
+towards despotism, his subjects took offence, and beat out his brains
+with a hatchet.
+
+During the winter, Indians from the neighborhood of Cape Canaveral
+brought to the fort two Spaniards, wrecked fifteen years before on the
+southwestern extremity of the peninsula. They were clothed like the
+Indians,--in other words, were not clothed at all,--and their uncut hair
+streamed wildly down their backs. They brought strange tales of those
+among whom they had dwelt. They told of the King of Calos, on whose
+domains they had suffered wreck, a chief mighty in stature and in power.
+In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a
+hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent
+reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest, too, and a magician, with
+power over the elements. Each year he withdrew from the public gaze to
+hold converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each year
+he sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards whom the fortune of the
+sea had cast upon his shores. The name of the tribe is preserved in that
+of the River Caloosa. In close league with him was the mighty Oathcaqua,
+dwelling near Cape Canaveral, who gave his daughter, a maiden of
+wondrous beauty, in marriage to his great ally. But, as the bride, with
+her bridesmaids, was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen
+band, they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an
+island called Sarrope, in the midst of a great lake, who put the
+warriors to flight, bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness,
+espoused them all, and, as we are assured, "loved them above all
+measure."
+
+Outina, taught by Arlac the efficacy of the French fire-arms, begged for
+ten arquebusiers to aid him on a new raid among the villages of Potanou,
+again alluring his greedy allies by the assurance, that, thus
+reinforced, he would conquer for them a free access to the phantom
+gold-mines of Appalachec. Ottigny set forth on this fool's-errand with
+thrice the force demanded. Three hundred Thimagoa and thirty Frenchmen
+took up their march through the pine-barrens. Outina's conjurer was of
+the number, and had well-nigh ruined the enterprise. Kneeling on
+Ottigny's shield, that he might not touch the earth, with hideous
+grimaces, howlings, and contortions, he wrought himself into a prophetic
+frenzy, and proclaimed to the astounded warriors that to advance farther
+would be destruction. Outina was for instant retreat, but Ottigny's
+sarcasms shamed him into a show of courage. Again they moved forward,
+and soon encountered Potanou with all his host. Le Moyne drew a picture
+of the fight. In the foreground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with
+a gigantic savage, who, with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the
+plumed helmet of his foe; but the latter, with target raised to guard
+his head, darts under the arms of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him
+with his sword. The arquebuse did its work: panic, slaughter, and a
+plentiful harvest of scalps. But no persuasion could induce Outina to
+follow up his victory. He went home to dance around his trophies, and
+the French returned disgusted to Fort Caroline.
+
+And now, in ample measure, the French began to reap the harvest of their
+folly. Conquest, gold, military occupation,--such had been their aims.
+Not a rood of ground had been stirred with the spade. Their stores were
+consumed; the expected supplies had not come. The Indians, too, were
+hostile. Satouriona hated them as allies of his enemies; and his
+tribesmen, robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in
+their miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle neighbors, was their
+only hope.
+
+May-day came, the third anniversary of the day when Ribaut and his
+companions, full of delighted anticipations, had explored the flowery
+borders of the St. John's. Dire was the contrast; for, within the
+homesick precinct of Fort Caroline, a squalid band, dejected and worn,
+dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun-scorched area, or lay
+stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks. Some
+were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the
+meadows. One collected refuse fish-bones and pounded them into meal.
+Yet, giddy with weakness, their skin clinging to their bones, they
+dragged themselves in turn to the top of St. John's Bluff, straining
+their eyes across the sea to descry the anxiously expected sail.
+
+Had Coligny left them to perish? or had some new tempest of calamity,
+let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the
+watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection
+fell upon them, a dejection that would have sunk to despair, could their
+eyes have pierced the future.
+
+The Indians had left the neighborhood, but, from time to time, brought
+in meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at
+exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion,
+they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river,
+beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them.
+"Oftentimes," says Laudonni�re, "our poor soldiers were constrained to
+give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish. If at any
+time they shewed unto the savages the excessive price which they tooke,
+these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly: If thou make
+so great account of thy marchandise, eat it, and we will eat our fish:
+then fell they out a laughing and mocked us with open throat."
+
+The spring wore away, and no relief appeared. One thought now engrossed
+the colonists, the thought of return to France. Vasseur's ship, the
+Breton, still remained in the river, and they had also the Spanish
+brigantine brought by the mutineers. But these vessels were
+insufficient, and they prepared to build a new one. The energy of
+reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted frames. Some gathered
+pitch in the pine forests; some made charcoal; some cut and sawed the
+timber. The maize began to ripen, and this brought some relief; but the
+Indians, exasperated and greedy, sold it with reluctance, and murdered
+two half-famished Frenchmen who gathered a handful in the fields.
+
+The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them two victories. The result
+was a churlish message and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an
+invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief, the plunder of whose
+villages would yield an ample supply. The offer was accepted. Ottigny
+and Vasseur set forth, but were grossly deceived, led against a
+different enemy, and sent back empty-handed and half-starved.
+
+Pale with famine and with rage, a crowd of soldiers beset Laudonni�re,
+and fiercely demanded to be led against Outina to take him prisoner and
+extort from his fears the supplies which could not be looked for from
+his gratitude. The commandant was forced to comply. Those who could bear
+the weight of their armor put it on, embarked, to the number of fifty,
+in two barges, and sailed up the river under the commandant himself.
+Outina's landing reached, they marched inland, entered his village,
+surrounded his mud-plastered palace, seized him amid the yells and
+howlings of his subjects, and led him prisoner to their boats. Here,
+anchored in mid-stream, they demanded a supply of corn and beans as the
+price of his ransom.
+
+The alarm spread. Excited warriors, bedaubed with red, came thronging
+from all his villages. The forest along the shore was full of them; and
+troops of women gathered at the water's edge with moans, outcries, and
+gestures of despair. Yet no ransom was offered, since, reasoning from
+their own instincts, they never doubted, that, the price paid, the
+captive would be put to death.
+
+Laudonni�re waited two days, then descended the river. In a rude chamber
+of Fort Caroline, pike in hand, the sentinel stood his guard, while
+before him crouched the captive chief, mute, impassive, brooding on his
+woes. His old enemy, Satouriona, keen as a hound on the scent of prey,
+tried, by great offers, to bribe Laudonni�re to give the prisoner into
+his hands. Outina, however, was kindly treated, and assured of immediate
+freedom on payment of the ransom.
+
+Meanwhile his captivity was entailing dire affliction on his realm; for,
+despairing of his return, his subjects mustered to the election of a new
+chief. Party-strife ran high. Some were for a boy, his son, and some for
+an ambitious kinsman who coveted the vacant throne. Outina chafed in his
+prison, learning these dissensions, and, eager to convince his
+over-hasty subjects that their king still lived, he was so profuse of
+promises, that he was again embarked and carried up the river.
+
+At no great distance below Lake George, a small affluent of the St.
+John's gave access by water to a point within eighteen miles of Outina's
+principal town. The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and bearing also
+the royal captive, rowed up this little stream. Indians awaited them at
+the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and piteous prayers
+for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an ample supply of
+corn. As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonni�re yielded,
+released the chief, and received in his place two hostages, who were
+fast bound in the boats. Ottigny and Arlac, with a strong detachment of
+arquebusiers, set forth to receive the promised supplies, for which,
+from the first, full payment in merchandise had been offered. Arrived at
+the village, they filed into the great central lodge, within whose dusky
+precincts were gathered the magnates of the tribe. Council-chamber,
+forum, banquet-hall, dancing-hall, palace, all in one, the royal
+dwelling could hold half the population in its capacious confines. Here
+the French made their abode. Their armor buckled, their
+arquebuse-matches lighted, they stood, or sat, or reclined on the
+earthen floor, with anxious eyes watching the strange, dim scene, half
+lighted by the daylight that streamed down through the hole at the apex
+of the roof. Tall, dark forms stalked to and fro, quivers at their
+backs, bows and arrows in their hands, while groups, crouched in the
+shadow beyond, eyed the hated guests with inscrutable visages, and
+malignant, sidelong eyes. Corn came in slowly, but warriors were
+mustering fast. The village without was full of them. The French
+officers grew anxious, and urged the chiefs to greater alacrity in
+collecting the promised ransom. The answer boded no good, "Our women are
+afraid, when they see the matches of your guns burning. Put them out,
+and they will bring the corn faster."
+
+Outina was nowhere to be seen. At length they learned that he was in one
+of the small huts adjacent. Several of the officers went to him,
+complaining of the slow payment of his ransom. The kindness of his
+captors at Fort Caroline seemed to have won his heart. He replied, that
+such was the rage of his subjects that he could no longer control
+them,--that the French were in danger,--and that he had seen arrows
+stuck in the ground by the side of the path, in token that war was
+declared. Their peril was thickening hourly, and Ottigny resolved to
+regain the boats while there was yet time.
+
+On the twenty-seventh of July, at nine in the morning, he set his men in
+order. Each shouldering a sack of corn, they marched through the rows of
+squalid huts that surrounded the great lodge, and out betwixt the
+interfolding extremities of the palisade that encircled the town. Before
+them stretched a wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long, flanked
+by a natural growth of trees,--one of those curious monuments of native
+industry to which allusion has been already made. Here Ottigny halted
+and formed his line of march. Arlac with eight matchlockmen was sent in
+advance, and flanking parties thrown into the woods on either side.
+Ottigny told his soldiers, that, if the Indians meant to attack them,
+they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. He was
+right. As Arlac's party reached the spot, the whole pack gave tongue at
+once. The war-whoop quavered through the startled air, and a tempest of
+stone-headed arrows clattered against the breastplates of the French, or
+tore, scorching like fire, through their unprotected limbs. They stood
+firm, and sent back their shot so steadily that several of the
+assailants were laid dead, and the rest, two or three hundred in number,
+gave way as Ottigny came up with his men.
+
+They moved on for a quarter of a mile through a country, as it seems,
+comparatively open; when again the war-cry pealed in front, and three
+hundred savages came bounding to the assault. Their whoops were echoed
+from the rear. It was the party whom Arlac had just repulsed, who,
+leaping and showering their arrows, were rushing on with a ferocity
+restrained only by their lack of courage. There was no panic. The men
+threw down their corn-bags, and took to their weapons. They blew their
+matches, and, under two excellent officers, stood well to their work.
+The Indians, on their part, showed a good discipline, after their
+fashion, and were perfectly under the control of their chiefs. With
+cries that imitated the yell of owls, the scream of cougars, and the
+howl of wolves, they ran up in successive bands, let fly their arrows,
+and instantly fell back, giving place to others. At the sight of the
+levelled arquebuse, they dropped flat on the earth. Whenever, sword in
+hand, the French charged upon them, they fled like foxes through the
+woods; and whenever the march was resumed, the arrows were showering
+again upon the flanks and rear of the retiring band. The soldiers coolly
+picked them up and broke them as they fell. Thus, beset with swarming
+savages, the handful of Frenchmen pushed their march till nightfall,
+fighting as they went.
+
+The Indians gradually drew off, and the forest was silent again. Two of
+the French had been killed and twenty-two wounded, several so severely
+that they were supported to the boats with the utmost difficulty. Of the
+corn, two bags only had been brought off.
+
+Famine and desperation now reigned at Fort Caroline. The Indians had
+killed two of the carpenters; hence long delay in the finishing of the
+new ship. They would not wait, but resolved to put to sea in the Breton
+and the brigantine. The problem was to find food for the voyage; for
+now, in their extremity, they roasted and ate snakes, a delicacy in
+which the neighborhood abounded.
+
+On the third of August, Laudonni�re, perturbed and oppressed, was
+walking on the hill, when, looking seaward, he saw a sight that shot a
+thrill through his exhausted frame. A great ship was standing towards
+the river's mouth. Then another came in sight, and another, and another.
+He called the tidings to the fort below. Then languid forms rose and
+danced for joy, and voices, shrill with weakness, joined in wild
+laughter and acclamation.
+
+A doubt soon mingled with their joy. Who were the strangers? Were they
+the succors so long hoped in vain? or were they Spaniards bringing steel
+and fire? They were neither. The foremost was a stately ship, of seven
+hundred tons, a mighty burden at that day. She was named the Jesus; and
+with her were three smaller vessels, the Solomon, the Tiger, and the
+Swallow. Their commander was "a right worshipful and valiant
+knight,"--for so the record styles him,--a pious man and a prudent, to
+judge him by the orders he gave his crew, when, ten months before, he
+sailed out of Plymouth:--"Serve God daily, love one another, preserve
+your victuals, beware of fire, and keepe good companie." Nor were the
+crew unworthy the graces of their chief; for the devout chronicler of
+the voyage ascribes their deliverance from the perils of the seas to
+"the Almightie God, who never suffereth his Elect to perish."
+
+Who, then, were they, this chosen band, serenely conscious of a special
+Providential care? Apostles of the cross, bearing the word of peace to
+benighted heathendom? They were the pioneers of that detested traffic
+destined to inoculate with its black infection nations yet unborn,
+parent of discord and death, with the furies in their train, filling
+half a continent with the tramp of armies and the clash of fratricidal
+swords. Their chief was Sir John Hawkins, father of the English
+slave-trade.
+
+He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he bought and kidnapped a
+cargo of slaves. These he had sold to the jealous Spaniards of
+Hispaniola, forcing them, with sword, matchlock, and culverin, to grant
+him free trade, and then to sign testimonials that he had borne himself
+as became a peaceful merchant. Prospering greatly by this summary
+commerce, but distressed by the want of water, he had put into the River
+of May to obtain a supply.
+
+Among the rugged heroes of the British marine, Sir John stood in the
+front rank, and along with Drake, his relative, is extolled as "a man
+borne for the honour of the English name.... Neither did the West of
+England yeeld such an Indian Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean
+peeres, Hawkins and Drake." So writes the old chronicler, Purchas, and
+all England was of his thinking. A hardy seaman, a bold fighter,
+overbearing towards equals, but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath
+him, rude in speech, somewhat crafty withal, and avaricious, he buffeted
+his way to riches and fame, and died at last full of years and honor. As
+for the abject humanity stowed between the reeking decks of the ship
+Jesus, they were merely in his eyes so many black cattle tethered for
+the market. Queen Elizabeth had an interest in the venture, and received
+her share of the sugar, pearls, ginger, and hides which the vigorous
+measures of Sir John gained from his Spanish customers.
+
+Hawkins came up the river in a pinnace, and landed at Fort Caroline,
+"accompanied," says Laudonni�re, "with gentlemen honorably apparelled,
+yet unarmed." Between the Huguenots and the English there was a double
+tie of sympathy. Both hated priests, and both hated Spaniards. Wakening
+from their apathetic misery, the starveling garrison hailed him as a
+deliverer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced, when he learned their purpose
+to abandon Florida; for, though, not to tempt his cupidity, they hid
+from him the secret of their Appalachian gold-mine, he coveted for his
+royal mistress the possession of this rich domain. He shook his head,
+however, when he saw the vessels in which they proposed to embark, and
+offered them all a free passage to France in his own ships. This, from
+obvious motives of honor and prudence, Laudonni�re declined, upon which
+Hawkins offered to lend or sell to him one of his smaller vessels.
+
+Hereupon arose a great clamor. A mob of soldiers and artisans beset
+Laudonni�re's chamber, threatening loudly to desert him, and take
+passage with Hawkins, unless the offer of the latter were accepted. The
+commandant accordingly resolved to buy the vessel. The generous slaver,
+whose reputed avarice nowise appears in the transaction, desired him to
+set his own price; and, in place of money, took the cannon of the fort,
+with other articles now useless to their late owners. He sent them, too,
+a gift of wine and biscuit, and supplied them with provision for the
+voyage, receiving in payment Laudonni�re's note,--"for which," adds the
+latter, "I am until this present indebted to him." With a friendly
+leave-taking he returned to his ships and stood out to sea, leaving
+golden opinions among the grateful inmates of Fort Caroline.
+
+Before the English top-sails had sunk beneath the horizon, the colonists
+bestirred themselves to depart. In a few days their preparations were
+made. They waited only for a fair wind. It was long in coming, and
+meanwhile their troubled fortunes assumed a new phase.
+
+On the twenty-eighth of August, the two captains, Vasseur and Verdier,
+came in with tidings of an approaching squadron. Again the fort was wild
+with excitement. Friends or foes, French or Spaniards, succor or death:
+betwixt these were their hopes and fears divided. With the following
+morning, they saw seven barges rowing up the river, bristling with
+weapons and crowded with men in armor. The sentries on the bluff
+challenged, and received no answer. One of them fired at the advancing
+boats. Still no response. Laudonni�re was almost defenceless. He had
+given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and only two field-pieces were
+left. They were levelled at the foremost boats, and the word was about
+to be given, when a voice from among the strangers called that they were
+French, commanded by John Ribaut.
+
+At the eleventh hour, the long-looked-for succors were come. Ribaut had
+been commissioned to sail with seven ships for Florida. A disorderly
+concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed with artisans and their families,
+and young nobles weary of a two-years' peace, were mustered at the port
+of Dieppe, and embarked, to the number of three hundred men, bearing
+with them all things thought necessary to a prosperous colony.
+
+No longer in dread of the Spaniards, the colonists saluted the
+new-comers with the cannon by which a moment before they had hoped to
+blow them out of the water. Laudonni�re issued from his stronghold to
+welcome them, and regaled them with what cheer he might. Ribaut was
+present, conspicuous by his long beard, the astonishment of the Indians;
+and here, too, were officers, old friends of Laudonni�re. Why, then, had
+they approached in the attitude of enemies? The mystery was soon
+explained; for they expressed to the commandant their pleasure at
+finding that the charges made against him had proved false. He begged to
+know more, on which Ribaut, taking him aside, told him that the
+returning ships had brought home letters filled with accusations of
+arrogance, tyranny, cruelty, and a purpose of establishing an
+independent command: accusations which he now saw to be unfounded, but
+which had been the occasion of his unusual and startling precaution. He
+gave him, too, a letter from the Admiral Coligny. In brief, but
+courteous terms, it required him to resign his command, and invited his
+return to France to clear his name from the imputations cast upon it.
+Ribaut warmly urged him to remain; but Laudonni�re declined his friendly
+proposals.
+
+Worn in body and mind, mortified and wounded, he soon fell ill again. A
+peasant-woman attended him, brought over, he says, to nurse the sick and
+take charge of the poultry, and of whom Le Moyne also speaks as a
+servant, but who had been made the occasion of additional charges
+against him, most offensive to the austere Admiral.
+
+Stores were landed, tents were pitched, women and children were sent on
+shore, feathered Indians mingled in the throng, and the sunny borders of
+the River of May swarmed with busy life. "But, lo, how oftentimes
+misfortune doth search and pursue us, even then when we thinke to be at
+rest!" exclaims the unhappy Laudonni�re. Behind the light and cheer of
+renovated hope, a cloud of blackest omen was gathering in the east.
+
+At half-past eleven on the night of Tuesday, the fourth of September,
+the crew of Ribaut's flag-ship, anchored on the still sea outside the
+bar, saw a huge hulk, grim with the throats of cannon, drifting towards
+them through the gloom; and from its stern rolled on the sluggish air
+the portentous banner of Spain.
+
+Here opens a wilder act of this eventful drama. At another day we shall
+lift the curtain on its fierce and bloody scenes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SEAWARD.
+
+TO ----.
+
+
+    How long it seems since that mild April night,
+      When, leaning from the window, you and I
+    Heard, clearly ringing from the shadowy bight,
+                 The loon's unearthly cry!
+
+    Southwest the wind blew; million little waves
+      Ran rippling round the point in mellow tune;
+    But mournful, like the voice of one who raves,
+                 That laughter of the loon.
+
+    We called to him, while blindly through the haze
+      Upclimbed the meagre moon behind us, slow,
+    So dim, the fleet of boats we scarce could trace,
+                 Moored lightly, just below.
+
+    We called, and, lo, he answered! Half in fear,
+      I sent the note back. Echoing rock and bay
+    Made melancholy music far and near;
+                 Slowly it died away.
+
+    That schooner, you remember? Flying ghost!
+      Her canvas catching every wandering beam,
+    A�rial, noiseless, past the glimmering coast
+                 She glided like a dream.
+
+    Would we were leaning from your window now,
+      Together calling to the eerie loon,
+    The fresh wind blowing care from either brow,
+                 This sumptuous night of June!
+
+    So many sighs load this sweet inland air,
+      'T is hard to breathe, nor can we find relief;
+    However lightly touched, we all must share
+                 The nobleness of grief.
+
+    But sighs are spent before they reach your ear,
+      Vaguely they mingle with the water's rune;
+    No sadder sound salutes you than the clear,
+                 Wild laughter of the loon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SIDE-GLANCES AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY.
+
+
+It happened to me once to "assist" at the celebration of Class-Day at
+Harvard University. Class-Day is the peculiar institution of the Senior
+Class, and marks its completion of college study and release from
+college rules. It is also an institution peculiar, I believe, to
+Harvard, and I was somewhat curious to observe its ceremonials, besides
+feeling a not entirely _unawful_ interest in being introduced for the
+first time to the _arcana_ of that renowned Alma Mater.
+
+She has set up her Lares and Penates in a fine old grove, or a fine old
+grove and green have sprouted up around her, as the case may be. At all
+events, there is sufficient groundwork for any quantity of euphuism
+about "classic shades," "groves of Academe," _et cetera_. Trollope had
+his fling at the square brick buildings; but it was a fling that they
+richly deserved, for they are in very deed as ugly as it is possible to
+conceive,--angular, formal, stiff, windowy, bricky,--and the farther in
+you go, the worse it grows. Why, I pray to know, as the first inquiry
+suggested by Class-Day, is it necessary for boys' schools to be placed
+without the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the
+amenities of life that they can safely dispense with the conditions of
+amenity? When I entered those brick boxes, I felt as if I were going
+into a stable. Wood-work dingy, unpainted, gashed, scratched; windows
+dingy and dim; walls dingy and gray and smoked; everything unhomelike,
+unattractive, narrow, and rickety. Think, now, of taking a boy away from
+his home, from his mother and sisters, from carpets and curtains and all
+the softening influences of cultivated taste, and turning him loose with
+dozens of other boys into a congeries of pens like this! Who wonders
+that he comes out a boor? I felt a sinking at the heart in climbing up
+those narrow, uncouth staircases. We talk about education. We boast of
+having the finest system in the world. Harvard is, if not the most
+distinguished, certainly among the first institutions in the country;
+but, in my opinion, formed in the entry of the first Harvard house I
+entered, Harvard has not begun to hit the nail on the head. Education!
+Do you call it education, to put a boy into a hole, and work out of him
+a certain amount of mathematics, and work into him a certain number of
+languages? Is a man dressed, because one arm has a spotless wristband,
+unquestionable sleeve-buttons, a handsome sleeve, and a well-fitting
+glove at the end, while the man is out at the other elbow, patched on
+both knees, and down at the heels? Should we consider Nature a success,
+if she concerned herself only with carrying nutriment to the stomach,
+and left the heart and the lungs and the liver and the nerves to shift
+for themselves? Yet so do we, educating boys in these dens called
+colleges. We educate the mind, the memory, the intellectual faculties;
+but the manners, the courtesies, the social tastes, the greater part of
+what goes to make life happy and genial, not to say good, we leave out
+of view. People talk about the "awkward age" of boys,--the age in which
+their hands and feet trouble them, and in which they are a social burden
+to themselves and their friends. But one age need be no more awkward
+than another. I have seen boys that were gentlemen from the cradle to
+the grave,--almost; certainly from the time they ceased to be babies
+till they passed altogether out of my sight. Let boys have the
+associations, the culture, the training, and the treatment of gentlemen,
+and I do not believe there will be a single moment of their lives in
+which they will be clowns.
+
+And among the first necessities are the surroundings of a gentleman.
+When a man is grown up, he can live in a sty and not be a pig; but turn
+a horde of boys in, and when they come out they will root out. A man is
+strong and stiff. His inward, inherent power, toughened by exposure and
+fortified by knowledge, overmasters opposing circumstances. He can
+neglect the prickles and assume the rose of his position. He stands
+scornfully erect amid the grovelling influences that would pull him
+down. It may perhaps be, also, that here and there a boy, with a strong
+native predilection to refinement, shall be eclectic, and, with the
+water-lily's instinct, select from coarse contiguities only that which
+will nourish a delicate soul. But human nature in its infancy is usually
+a very susceptible material. It grows as it is trained. It will be rude,
+if it is left rude, and fine only as it is wrought finely. Educate a boy
+to tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and grimy to his
+grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the
+appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of
+the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am
+not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I
+would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot
+into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the
+heights of true manhood than the clumsiness of the clod, but I think it
+is just as near. I would have college rooms, college entrances, and all
+college domains cleanly and attractive. I would, in the first place,
+have every rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. I
+would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or
+bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden
+under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope
+matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put
+upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky,
+a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish his room
+handsomely, the furnishings will not shame the room and its vicinity. If
+he is poor and can provide but cheaply, he will still have a comely home
+provided for him by the Mater who then will be Alma to some purpose.
+
+Do you laugh at all this? So did Sarah laugh at the angels, but the
+angels had the right of it for all that.
+
+I am told that it would all be useless,--that the boys would deface and
+destroy, till the last state of the buildings would be worse than the
+first. I do not believe one word of it. It is inferred that they would
+deface, because they deface now. But what is it that they deface?
+Deformity. And who blames them? You see a rough board, and, by natural
+instinct, you dive into it with your jackknife. A base bare wall is a
+standing invitation to energetic and unruly pencils. Give the boys a
+little elegance and the tutors a little tact, and I do not believe there
+would be any trouble. If I had a thousand dollars,--as I did have once,
+but it is gone: shall I ever look upon its like again?--I would not be
+afraid to stake the whole of it upon the good behavior of college
+students,--that is, if I could have the managing of them. I would make
+them "a speech," when they came back at the end of one of their long
+vacations, telling them what had been done, why it had been done, and
+the objections that had been urged against doing it. Then I would put
+the matter entirely into their hands. I would appeal solely to their
+honor. I would repose in them so much confidence that they could by no
+possibility betray it. We don't trust people half enough. We hedge
+ourselves about with laws and locks and deeds and bonds, and neglect the
+weightier matters of inherent right and justice that lie in every bosom.
+
+It may be thought hardly polite to accept hospitality and then go away
+and inveigh against the hospital; but my animadversions, you will do me
+the justice to observe, are not aimed at my entertainers. I am marauding
+for, not against them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Oration and Poem form the first public features of Class-Day, but,
+arriving late, I could only eddy on the surge that swept around the
+door. Strains of distant eloquence would occasionally float musically to
+my ear; now and then a single word would steer clear of the thousands of
+heads and come into my port unharmed. Frequent waves of laughter beat
+and broke into the vestibule; but what is more "trying" to a frail
+temper than laughter in which one cannot join? So we tarried long enough
+to mark the fair faces and fine dresses, and then rambled under the old
+trees till the hour for the "collation" came; and this is the second
+point on which I purpose to dwell.
+
+Each member of the Senior Class prepares a banquet,--sometimes
+separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense varying from fifty to
+five hundred dollars,--to which he invites as many friends as he
+chooses, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and
+elegant as you find at ordinary evening parties, and the occasion is a
+merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be
+unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of
+seventy-five, in a country like America, it is quite probable that a
+certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such a custom
+necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must
+have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this
+elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience.
+The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met
+without strict economy and much parental and family sacrifice. And at
+the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be
+strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his
+feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for
+entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom.
+There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory
+_symposium_. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream
+beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as
+rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young
+men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth
+collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it
+involved personal sacrifice at home,--whether there was generally
+sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class, whether
+there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding, to make the
+omission of this party-giving unnoticeable or not unpleasant. I by no
+means say that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain
+their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing
+so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a
+fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and
+the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and
+worth or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the
+time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a
+distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore
+on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot
+comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and
+of which I have no tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. I think it
+is an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has
+any exaltation of life, any real elevation of character, any
+self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a shame. One may be
+annoyed at the inconveniences and impatient of the restraints of
+poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be thought poor, to
+resort to shifts, not for the sake of being comfortable or elegant, but
+of seeming to be above the necessity of shifts, is an indication of an
+inferior mind, whether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The man who
+does it shows that he has not in his own opinion character enough to
+stand alone. He must be supported by adventitious circumstances, or he
+must fall. Nobody, therefore, need ever expect to receive sympathy from
+me in recounting the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never can
+be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. People may attempt to do
+it, but their shafts have no barb. You turn it all into natural history.
+It is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something to be analyzed,
+classified, reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to
+be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your
+stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer
+from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you
+deserve to be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have
+become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live
+chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach
+maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding and depend upon their
+own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and
+prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of
+attainments and abilities. If I live a thousand years, I do not believe
+I shall ever do a more virtuous deed than I did long ago in staying at
+home for the sake of a quarter of a dollar when the rest of the school
+went to see Tom Thumb, the late bewritten bridegroom. I call it
+virtuous, because I had the quarter and could have gone, and could not
+explain the reason why I did not go. And though a senior class in
+Harvard College may reasonably be supposed to be beyond the eminent
+domain of Tom Thumb and quarter-dollars, the principle is precisely the
+same,--only the temptation, I suppose, is much stronger, as the stake is
+larger. Have they self-poise enough to refrain from these festive
+expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to
+refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have
+they nobility and generosity and largeness of soul enough, while
+abstaining themselves for conscience sake, to share in the plans and
+sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to
+look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at
+the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to
+selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence,
+and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there
+such a state of public opinion and usage in college that this custom is
+equally honored in the breach and in the observance?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began.
+The college green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became
+
+    "Embrouded ... as it were a mede
+    Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"--
+
+"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare
+charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without
+angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the
+scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of
+Arabian Nights. I think I may safely say I never saw so many
+well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame
+fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The
+distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual
+beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women,
+perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual
+ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly
+plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could
+have the full effect of costumes,--rich, majestic, floating, gossamery,
+impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely
+needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a
+dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the
+beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured
+activity,--
+
+    "A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved
+    By the soft wind of whispering silks."
+
+Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the
+Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet
+bliss-month among the Blumenthal Mountains.
+
+Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the
+green. Youth and gayety and beauty--and in summer we are all young and
+gay and beautiful--mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and
+velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and
+Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy
+summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil
+their faces there.
+
+Yet I must confess I wish men would not dance. It is the most unbecoming
+exercise which they can adopt. In women you have the sweep and wave of
+drapery, gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, sinuous
+movements, the fluency of pliant forms, the willowy bend and rebound of
+lithe and lovely suppleness. It is grace generic,--the sublime, the
+evanescent mysticism of motion, without use, without aim, except its own
+overflowing and all-sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it
+reminds me of that amusing French book called "Le Diable Boiteux," which
+has been or may be free-thinkingly translated, "The Devil on Two
+Sticks." In saying this, I design to cast no slur on the moral character
+of masculine dancers. It is unquestionably above reproach; but let an
+angel put on the black coat and trousers which constitute the
+"full-dress" of a modern gentleman, and therein antic through the
+"Lancers," and he would simply be ridiculous,--which is all I allege
+against Thomas, Richard, and Henry, Esq. A woman's dancing is gliding,
+swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute
+angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined: airy movements
+are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly
+outlined; and nothing is more incongruous, to my thinking, than this
+dancing, well portrayed in the contraband melody of
+
+    "Old Joe," etc.
+
+The feminine drapery conceals processes and gives results. The masculine
+absence of drapery reveals processes and thereby destroys results.
+
+Once upon a time, long before the Flood, the clergyman of a
+country-village, possessed with such a zeal as Paul bore record of
+concerning Israel, conceived it his duty to "make a note" of sundry
+young members of his flock who had met for a drive and a supper, with a
+dance fringed upon the outskirts. The fame thereof being noised abroad,
+a sturdy old farmer, with a good deal of shrewd sense and mother-wit in
+his brains, and a fine, indirect way of hitting the nail on the head
+with a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring village as to the
+facts of the case. "Yes," he said, surlily, "the young folks had a
+party, and got up a dance, and the minister was mad,--and I don't blame
+him,--he thinks nobody has any business to dance, unless he knows how
+better than they did!" It was a rather different _casus belli_ from that
+which the worthy clergyman would have preferred before a council; but it
+"meets my views" precisely as to the validity of the objections urged
+against dancing. I would have women dance, because it is the most
+beautiful thing in the world. I would have men dance, if it is
+necessary, in order to "set off" women, and to keep themselves out of
+mischief; but in point of grace, or elegance, or attractiveness, I
+should beg men to hold their peace--and their pumps.
+
+From my window overlooking the green, I was led away into some one or
+other of the several halls to see the "round dances"; and it was like
+going from Paradise to Pandemonium. From the pure and healthy lawn, all
+the purer for the pure and peaceful people pleasantly walking up and
+down in the sunshine and shade, or grouped in the numerous windows, like
+bouquets of rare tropical flowers,--from the green, rainbowed in vivid
+splendor, and alive with soft, tranquil motion, fair forms, and the
+flutter of beautiful and brilliant colors,--from the green, sanctified
+already by the pale faces of sick and wounded and maimed soldiers who
+had gone out from the shadows of those sheltering trees to draw the
+sword for country, and returned white wraiths of their vigorous youth,
+the sad vanguard of that great army of blessed martyrs who shall keep
+forever in the mind of this generation how costly and precious a thing
+is liberty, who shall lift our worldly age out of the plough of its
+material prosperity into the sublimity of suffering and sacrifice,--from
+suggestions and fancies and dreamy musing and "phantasms sweet," into
+the hall, where, for flower-scented summer air were thick clouds of
+fine, penetrating dust, and for lightly trooping fairies a jam of heated
+human beings, so that you shall hardly come nigh the dancers for the
+press; and when you have, with difficulty and many contortions and much
+apologizing, threaded the solid mass, piercing through the forest of
+fans,--what? An inclosure, but no more illusion.
+
+Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. Always. When it is prosecuted
+in the centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer
+day, it is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time.
+The blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the
+salient points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl
+that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in
+through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the
+whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this
+most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very _pose_ of the dance is
+profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate
+emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and
+justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of
+unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, and carelessly
+assumed by people who have but a casual and partial
+society-acquaintance. This I reckon profanity. This is levity the most
+culpable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of delicacy.
+
+That it is practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does
+not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A
+good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as
+you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not
+cleanse the waltz. It is of itself unclean.
+
+There were, besides, peculiar _d�sagr�ments_ on this occasion. How can
+people,--I could not help saying to myself,--how can people endure such
+proximity in such a sweltering heat? For, as I said, there was no
+illusion,--not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with Nymphs and
+Apollos. The boys were boys, appallingly young, full of healthful
+promise, but too much in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at
+ease in their situation,--indeed, very much _not_ at ease,--unmistakably
+warm, nervous, and uncomfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls, I
+dare say, under ordinary circumstances,--one was really lovely, with
+soft cheeks, long eyelashes, eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in
+her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,--but Venus
+herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight as
+they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowsy,--puff-balls revolving
+through an atmosphere of dust,--a maze of steaming, reeking human
+couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than
+Spartan fortitude.
+
+It was remarkable, and at the same time amusing, to observe the
+difference in the demeanor of the two sexes. The lions and the fawns
+seemed to have changed hearts,--perhaps they had. It was the boys that
+were nervous. The girls were unquailing. The boys were, however, heroic.
+They tried bravely to hide the fox and his gnawings; but traces were
+visible. They made desperate feint of being at the height of enjoyment
+and unconscious of spectators; but they had much modesty, for all that.
+The girls threw themselves into it _pugnis et calcibus_,--unshrinking,
+indefatigable.
+
+There is another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to
+consider. The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as
+objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French
+ballet-dancer. Not to put too fine a point on it, I mean that these
+girls' gyrations in the centre of their gyrating and centrifugal hoops
+make a most operatic drapery-display. I saw scores and scores of public
+waltzing-girls last summer, and among them all I saw but one who
+understood the art, or, at any rate, who practised the art, of avoiding
+an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light it is only
+flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight,
+it is not. Do I shock ears polite? I trust so. If the saying of shocking
+things might prevent the doing of shocking things, I should be well
+content. And is it an unpardonable sin for me to sit alone in my own
+room and write about what you go into a great hall, before hundreds of
+strange men and women, and do?
+
+I do not speak thus about waltzing because I like to say it; but ye have
+compelled me. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. I
+respect and revere woman, and I cannot see her destroying or debasing
+the impalpable fragrance and delicacy of her nature without feeling the
+shame and shudder in my own heart. Great is my boldness of speech
+towards you, because great is my glorying of you. Though I speak as a
+fool, yet as a fool receive me. My opinions may be rustic. They are at
+least honest; and may it not be that the first fresh impressions of an
+unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as likely to be natural and
+correct views as those which are the result of many afterthoughts, long
+use, and an experience of multifold fascinations, combined with the
+original producing cause? My opinions may be wrong, but they will do no
+harm; the penalty will rest alone on me: while, if they are right, they
+may serve as a nail or two to be fastened by the masters of assemblies.
+
+The funny part of Class-Day comes last,--not so very funny to tell, but
+amazingly funny to see,--only a wreath of bouquets fastened around the
+trunk of an old tree, perhaps eight or ten feet from the ground, and
+then the four classes range themselves around it in four circles with
+their hands fast locked together, the Freshman Class on the outside, the
+Senior Class within, grotesquely tricked out in vile old coats and
+"shocking bad hats." Then the two alternate classes go one way around
+the tree and the two others the opposite, pell-mell, harum-scarum,
+pushing and pulling, down and up again, only keeping fast hold of hands,
+singing, shouting, cheering _ad libitum_, _ad throatum_, (theirs,) _ad
+earsum_, (ours,) and going all the time in that din and yell and crowd
+and crash dear to the hearts of boys. At a given signal there is a
+pause, and the Senior Class make sudden charge upon the bouquets,
+huddling and hustling and crowding and jumping at the foot of the old
+tree; bubbling up on each other's shoulders into momentary prominence
+and prospect of success, and immediately disappearing ignominiously;
+making frantic grasps and clutches with a hundred long arms and eager
+outstretched hands, and finally succeeding, by shoulders and fists, in
+bringing the wreath away piecemeal; and then they give themselves up to
+mutual embraces, groans, laments, and all the enginery of pathetic
+affection in the last gasping throes of separation,--to the doleful
+tearing of hair and the rending of their fantastic garments. It is the
+personification of legalized rowdyism; and if young men would but
+confine themselves to such rowdyism as may be looked at and laughed at
+by their mothers and sisters, they would find life just as amusing and a
+thousand times more pure and profitable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It occurs to me here that there is one subject on which I desire to
+"give my views," though it is quite unconnected with Class-Day. But it
+is probable that in the whole course of my natural life it will never
+again happen to me to be writing about colleges, so I desire to say in
+this paper everything I have to say on the subject. I refer to the
+practice of "hazing," which is an abomination. If we should find it
+among hinds, a remnant of the barbarisms of the Dark Ages, blindly
+handed down by such slow-growing people as go to mill with their meal on
+one side of the saddle and a stone on the other to balance, as their
+fathers did, because it never occurred to their loggerheads to divide
+the meal into two parcels and make it balance itself, we should not be
+surprised; but hazing occurs among boys who have been accustomed to the
+circulation of ideas, boys old enough and intelligent enough to
+understand the difference between brutality and frolic, old enough to
+know what honor and courage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive how
+they should countenance a practice which entirely ignores and defies
+honor, and whose brutality has not a single redeeming feature. It has
+neither wisdom nor wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely
+the mirth of boyish frolic. A narrow range of stale practical jokes,
+lighted up by no gleam of originality, is transmitted from year to year
+with as much fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude
+allowed to clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its
+platitude, its one overpowering and fatal characteristic is its intense
+and essential cowardice. Cowardice is its head and front and bones and
+blood. One boy does not single out another boy of his own weight, and
+take his chances in a fair stand-up fight. But a party of Sophomores
+club together in such numbers as to render opposition useless, and
+pounce upon their victim unawares, as Brooks and his minions pounced
+upon Sumner, and as the Southern chivalry is given to doing. For sweet
+pity's sake, let this mode of warfare be monopolized by the Southern
+chivalry.
+
+The lame excuse is offered, that it does the Freshmen good,--takes the
+conceit out of them. But if there is any class in college so divested of
+conceit as to be justified in throwing stones, it is surely not the
+Sophomore Class. Moreover, whatever good it may do the sufferers, it
+does harm, and only harm, to the perpetrators; and neither the law nor
+the gospel requires a man to improve other people's characters at the
+expense of his own. Nobody can do a wrong without injuring himself; and
+no young man can do a mean, cowardly wrong like this without suffering
+severest injury. It is the very spirit of the slaveholder, a dastardly
+and detestable, a tyrannical and cruel spirit. If young men are so
+blinded by custom and habit that a meanness is not to them a meanness
+because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for the young
+men, and so much the worse for our country, whose sweat of blood attests
+the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If uprightness,
+if courage, if humanity and rectitude and the mind conscious to itself
+of right, are anything more than a name. Let the young men who mean to
+make time minister to life scorn and scotch and kill this debasing and
+stupid practice.
+
+And why is not some legitimate and wholesome safety-valve provided by
+authority to let off superabundant vitality, that boys may not, by the
+mere occasions of their own natures, be driven into wickedness?
+Class-Day is very well, but it comes only once a year, and what is
+needed is an opportunity for daily ebullition, so that each night may
+square its own account and forestall explosion. Why should there not be,
+for instance, a military department to every college, as well as a
+mathematical department? Why might not every college be a military
+normal school? The exuberance and riot of animal spirits, the young,
+adventurous strength and joy in being, would not only be kept from
+striking out as now in illegitimate, unworthy, and hurtful directions,
+but it would become the very basis and groundwork of useful purposes.
+Such exercise would be so promotive of health and discipline, it would
+so train and harmonize and _limber_ the physical powers, that the
+superior quality of study would, I doubt not, more than atone for
+whatever deficiency in quantity might result. And even suppose a little
+less attention should be given to Euclid and Homer, which is of the
+greater importance nowadays, an ear that can detect a false quantity in
+a Greek verse, or an eye that can sight a Rebel nine hundred yards off,
+and a hand that can pull a trigger and shoot him? Knowledge is power;
+but knowledge must sharpen its edges and polish its points, if it would
+be greatliest available in days like these. The knowledge that can plant
+batteries and plan campaigns, that is fertile in expedients and wise to
+baffle the foe, is just now the strongest power. Diagrams and
+first-aorists are good, and they who have fed on such meat have grown
+great, and done the State service in their generation; but these times
+demand new measures and new men. It is conceded that we shall probably
+be for many years a military nation. At least a generation of vigilance
+shall be the price of our liberty. And even of peace we can have no
+stronger assurance than a wise and wieldy readiness for war. Now the
+education of our unwarlike days is not adequate to the emergencies of
+this martial hour. We must be seasoned with something stronger than
+Attic salt, or we shall be cast out and trodden under foot of men. True,
+all education is worthy. Everything that exercises the mind fits it for
+its work; but professional education is indispensable to professional
+men. And the profession, _par excellence_, of every man of this
+generation is war. Country overrides all personal considerations.
+Lawyer, minister, what not, a man's first duty is the salvation of his
+country. When she calls, he must go; and before she calls, let him, if
+possible, prepare himself to serve her in the best manner. As things are
+now, college-boys are scarcely better than cow-boys for the army. Their
+costly education runs greatly to waste. It gives them no direct
+advantage over the clod who stumbles against a trisyllable. So far as it
+makes them better men, of course they are better soldiers; but for all
+of military education which their college gives them, they are fit only
+for privates, whose sole duty is to obey. They know nothing of military
+drill or tactics or strategy. The State cannot afford this waste. She
+cannot afford to lose the fruits of mental toil and discipline. She
+needs trained mind even more than trained muscle. It is harder to find
+brains than to find hands. The average mental endowment may be no higher
+in college than out; but granting it to be as high, the culture which it
+receives gives it immense advantage. The fruits of that culture,
+readiness, resources, comprehensiveness, should all be held in the
+service of the State. Military knowledge and practice should be imparted
+and enforced to utilize ability, and make it the instrument, not only of
+personal, but of national welfare. That education which gives men the
+advantage over others in the race of life should be so directed as to
+convey that advantage to country, when she stands in need. Every college
+might and should be made a nursery of athletes in mind and body,
+clear-eyed, stout-hearted, strong-limbed, cool-brained,--a nursery of
+soldiers, quick, self-possessed, brave and cautious and wary, ready in
+invention, skilful to command men and evolve from a mob an army,--a
+nursery of gentlemen, reminiscent of no lawless revels, midnight orgies,
+brutal outrages, launching out already attainted into an attainting
+world, but with many a memory of adventure, wild, it may be, and not
+over-wise, yet pure as a breeze from the hills,--banded and sworn
+
+    "To serve as model for the mighty world,
+    To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
+    To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
+    To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
+    To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
+    Not only to keep down the base in man,
+    But teach high thought, and amiable words.
+    And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
+    And love of truth, and all that makes a man."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+LOVE'S CHALLENGE.
+
+
+    I picked this trifle from the floor,
+       Unknowing from whose tender hand
+    It fell,--but now would fain restore
+       A thing which hath my heart unmanned.
+
+    I say unmanned, for 't is not now
+       A manly mood to dream of Love,
+    When each bold champion knits his brow,
+       And for War's gauntlet doffs his glove.
+
+    But we're exempt, and have no heart
+       Of wreak within us for the fray;
+    And therefore teach our souls the art
+       With life and life's concerns to play.
+
+    Yet, lady, trust me, 't is not all
+       In play that I proclaim intent,
+    When next thou lett'st thy gauntlet fall,
+       To take it as a challenge meant.
+
+    REPLY.
+
+    SIR CARPET-KNIGHT, who canst not fight,
+       Thy gallantries are not for me;
+    The man whom I with love requite
+       Must sing in a more martial key.
+
+    I have two brothers on the field,
+       And one beneath it,--none knows where;
+    And I shall keep my spirit steeled
+       To any save a soldier's prayer.
+
+    If thou have music in thy soul,
+       Yet hast no sinew for the strife,
+    Go teach thyself the war-drum's roll,
+       And woo me better with a fife!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POLITICAL PROBLEMS, AND CONDITIONS OF PEACE.
+
+
+The relations existing between the Federal Government and the several
+States, and the reciprocal rights and powers of each, have never been
+settled, except in part. Upon matters of taxation and commerce, and the
+diversified questions that arise in times of peace, the decisions of the
+Supreme Court have marked the boundary-lines of State and Federal power
+with considerable clearness and precision. But all these questions are
+superficial and trivial, when compared with those which are coming up
+for decision out of the great struggle in which we are now engaged. The
+Southern Rebellion, greater than any recorded in history since the world
+began, must necessarily call for the exercise of all the powers with
+which the Government is clothed. And we need not be surprised, if, in
+resorting to the new measures which the great exigency of the new
+condition seems to require, it shall be found, after the storm has
+ceased and the clouds have rolled away, that in some things the
+Government has transcended its legitimate powers, while in others it has
+suffered, because fearing to use those which it really possesses. It is
+dependent in many things upon the States; and yet it is supreme over
+them all. There can be no Senate, as a branch either of the executive or
+of the legislative department, without the action of the States; and yet
+the Government emanates directly from the people. In defending itself
+against an armed rebellion of nearly half the States themselves,
+struggling for self-preservation, it may rightfully, as in other wars,
+grasp all the means within its reach. War makes its own methods, for all
+of which necessity is a sufficient plea. But when the defence shall have
+been made, when the attack is repelled, and the Rebellion shall have
+been fully suppressed, then will come the questions, What are the best
+means of restoration? and, How shall a recurrence of the evil be
+prevented?
+
+Though the Federal Government is one of limited powers, _the people_
+possess _all governmental powers_; and these are spoken of as powers
+_delegated_ and powers _reserved_. So far as these are reserved to _the
+people_, they may be exercised either through the _Federal Government_
+or the _State_. And the Federal Government, though limited in its
+powers, is restricted in _the subjects upon which it can act_, rather
+than in the _quantum_ of power it can exercise over those matters within
+its jurisdiction. Over those interests which are committed to its care
+it has all the powers incident to any other government in the
+world,--powers necessary by implication to accomplish the purpose
+intended. The construction of the grant in the Constitution is not to be
+critical and stringent, as if the people, by its adoption, were
+_selling_ power to a _stranger_,--but liberal, considering that they
+were enabling _their own agents_ to achieve a noble work for them.
+
+We have been accustomed to extol the wisdom of our fathers, in framing
+and establishing such a form of government; but our highest praises have
+been too small. We have hitherto had but a partial conception of their
+wisdom. We knew not the terrible test to which their work was to be
+exposed. After the long discipline of the Revolutionary War, and the
+experience of the weakness and impending anarchy of the Confederation,
+they understood, far better than we, the dangers to which every
+government is liable, from within and from without. And we are just now
+beginning to see, that, in the Constitution they adopted, they not only
+provided for the interests of peace, but for the dangers and emergencies
+of war. Brief sentences, hardly noticed before, now throw open their
+doors like a magazine of arms, ready for use in the hour of peril. And
+while we shall come out of this struggle, and the political contest
+that will follow it, without impairing any of the rights of the States,
+the Federal Government _restored_ will stand before the world in a
+majesty of strength of which we have before had no conception.
+
+The questions evolved by the war are already attracting public
+attention. It is well that they should do so. The peace and prosperity
+of the country in future years depend upon their solution. They are so
+interwoven that a mistake in regard to one may involve us in other
+errors. The power of the Government so to remove the cause of the
+present rebellion as to prevent its recurrence, if it have any such
+power, is one which it is imperatively bound to exercise,--else all the
+treasure and blood expended in quelling it will be wasted. Has it any
+such power? Can Slavery be exterminated? And can the Rebel States be
+held as conquests, and be restored only upon condition of being forever
+free? It is proposed briefly to discuss these questions.
+
+
+
+EMANCIPATION.
+
+
+There are those who believe that the President's Proclamation will cease
+to be of any force at the close of the war, and that no slaves will have
+any right to their freedom by it except such as may be actually
+liberated by the military authorities.
+
+There are others, who hold that the Proclamation has the force of
+law,--that by it every slave within the designated territory has now a
+legal right to his liberty,--and that, if the military power does not
+secure that right to him _during the war_, he may successfully appeal to
+the civil power _afterwards_.
+
+If the Proclamation is a law, it must be conceded, that, like all the
+laws of war, it will cease to be in force when the war is closed. But
+if, like a legislative act, it confers actual rights on the slaves,
+whether they are able to secure them in fact or not, then those _rights_
+are not lost, though the law cease to exist. On the other hand, if it
+confers no actual rights on any who are beyond its reach,--if it is
+merely an _offer_ of freedom to all who can come and receive it,--then
+those only who do receive it while the offer continues will have any
+rights by it when it has ceased to be in force.
+
+The position of Mr. Adams on this subject seems to have been
+misunderstood. When his remarks in Congress are carefully examined, it
+will be found that he did not claim that the proclamation of a military
+commander would operate, like a statute, to confer the right of freedom
+upon all the slaves in an invaded country. But he asserted a general
+principle of international law,--that the commander of an invading army
+is not bound to recognize the municipal laws of the country,--that he
+may treat all as freemen, though some are slaves. And he claimed, that,
+in case of a servile war in this country, our army would have a right to
+suppress the insurrection by giving freedom to the insurgents. In regard
+to the effect of such a proclamation upon those not liberated by the
+military power, he expressed no opinion.
+
+The precedents usually cited are not any more satisfactory. In Hayti,
+and in the South-American republics, emancipation became an established
+fact by the action of the civil power. In each case a proclamation by
+the military power was the initial step; but the consummation was
+attained by the fact that the same power afterwards became dominant in
+civil, as well as in military affairs.
+
+Conceding, then, that the Proclamation is but a declaration of the
+war-policy, designed and adapted to secure a still higher end,--the
+preservation and perpetuity of our free institutions,--it is still
+claimed that the Government has the right to pursue this policy until
+Slavery is abolished, _and forever prohibited_, within all the Rebel
+States.
+
+Though we speak of the Rebellion as an "insurrection," it has assumed
+such proportions that we are in a state of actual war. Nor does it make
+any difference that it is a _civil_ war. It has just been decided by
+the Supreme Court of the United States, _that we have the same rights
+against the people and States in rebellion_, by the law of nations, that
+we should have against _alien enemies_. The property of non-combatants
+is liable to confiscation, as _enemies'_ property; and it makes no
+difference that some of them are _personally_ loyal. All the inhabitants
+of the Rebel States have the rights of _enemies_ only. The recent cases
+of the Brilliant, Hiawatha, and Amy Warwick settle this beyond all
+question. There was some difference of opinion among the judges, but
+only on the question whether this condition _preceded_ the Act of
+Congress of July, 1861,--a majority holding that it did, commencing with
+the proclamation of the blockade. So that it cannot be denied that we
+may treat the Rebel States as _enemies_, and adopt all measures against
+them _which any belligerents engaged in a just war may adopt_.
+
+And no principle of the law of nations is more universally admitted than
+this,--that the party in the right, after the war is commenced, may
+continue to carry it on until the enemy shall submit to such terms as
+will be a sufficient indemnity for all the losses and expenses caused by
+it, _and will prevent another war in the future_. And to this end he may
+conquer and hold in subjection people and territory, until such terms
+are submitted to. And until then, the state of war continues. The right
+to impose such terms as will _secure peace in the future_ is one of the
+fundamental principles of international law.
+
+"Of the absolute international rights of States," says Mr. Wheaton, "one
+of the most essential and important, and that which lies at the
+foundation of all the rest, is _the right of self-preservation_. This
+right necessarily involves all other incidental rights which are
+essential as means to give effect to the principal end."
+
+"The end of a just war," says Vattel, "is to avenge, _or prevent_,
+injury."
+
+"If _the safety of the State_ lies at stake, our precaution and
+foresight cannot be extended too far. Must we delay to arrest our ruin
+until it has become inevitable?"
+
+"Where the end is lawful, he who has the right to pursue that end has,
+of course, a right to employ all the means necessary for its
+attainment."
+
+"When the conqueror has totally subdued a nation, he undoubtedly may, in
+the first place, do himself justice respecting the object which had
+given rise to the war, and indemnify himself for the expenses and
+damages sustained by it; he may, according to the exigency of the case,
+subject the nation to punishment by way of example; and he may, _if
+prudence require it, render her incapable of doing mischief with the
+same ease in future_."
+
+"Every nation," says Chancellor Kent, "has an undoubted right to provide
+for its own safety, and to take due precaution against _distant_, as
+well as impending danger."
+
+Our rights _as belligerents_, therefore, are ample for our security in
+time to come. The Rebel States will not cease to be enemies by being
+defeated and exhausted and disabled from continuing active hostilities.
+They have invoked the laws of war, and they must abide the decision of
+the tribunal to which they have appealed. We may hold them _as enemies_
+until they submit to such reasonable terms of peace as we may demand.
+Whether we shall require any indemnity for the vast expenditures and
+losses to which we have been subjected is a question of great magnitude;
+but it is of little importance compared with that of guarding against a
+recurrence of the Rebellion, by removing _the cause_ of it. It would be
+worse than madness to restore them to all their former rights under the
+government they have done their utmost to destroy, and at the same time
+permit them to retain a system that would surely involve us or our
+children in another struggle of the same kind.
+
+Slavery and freedom cannot permanently coexist under the same
+government. There is an inevitable, perpetual, irrepressible conflict
+between them. The present rebellion is but the culmination of this
+conflict, long existing,--transferred from social and political life to
+the camp and the battle-field. _In the new arena, we have all the rights
+of belligerents in an international war._ Slavery has taken the sword;
+let it perish by the sword. If we spare it, its wickedness will be
+exceeded by our folly. As victors, the world concedes our right to
+demand, for our own future peace, as the only terms of restoration, not
+only the abolition of Slavery in all the Rebel States, but its
+prohibition in all coming time. It cannot be, that, with the terrible
+lessons of these passing years, we shall be so utterly destitute of
+wisdom and prudence as to leave our children exposed to the dangers of
+another rebellion, after entailing upon them the vast burdens of this,
+by our national debt.
+
+It has been said, that, if Slavery should be abolished, the States could
+afterwards reestablish it. This is claimed, on the ground that every
+State may determine for itself the character of its own domestic
+institutions. The right to do so has been conceded to some of the new
+States.
+
+But it should be remembered that this right has been, to establish
+Slavery _by bringing in slaves from the old States_,--not by taking
+_citizens of the United States_, and reducing _them_ to slavery. If one
+such citizen can be enslaved, then can any other; and the very
+foundations of the Federal Government can be overturned by a State. For
+a government that cannot protect _its own citizens_ from loss of
+citizenship by being chattellized is no government at all.
+
+Citizenship is a reciprocal relation. The citizen owes allegiance; the
+government owes protection. When a person is naturalized, he takes the
+oath of allegiance. Does he got nothing in return? Can a State annul all
+the rights which the Federal Government has conferred? Then, indeed,
+would it be better for those who come to our shores to remain citizens
+of the old nations; for _they_ could protect them, but _we_ cannot.
+Then, to be a citizen of the United States--a privilege we had thought
+greater than that of Roman citizenship when that empire was in its
+glory--is a privilege which any State may annul at its pleasure!
+
+The power and position of a nation depend upon the number, wealth,
+intelligence, and power of its citizens. And the nation, in order to
+employ and develop its resources, must have free scope for the use of
+its powers. No State has a right to block the path of the United States,
+or in any way to "retard, impede, or burden it, in the execution of its
+powers." For this reason, if a citizen is wealthy enough to lend money
+to the Federal Government, a State cannot _tax his scrip_ to the amount
+of one cent. But, if the doctrine contended for by some is sound, then
+it may take _the citizen himself_, confiscate the whole of his property,
+blot out his citizenship, and make a chattel of him, and the Federal
+Government can afford him no protection! Among all the doctrines that
+Slavery has originated in this country, there is none more monstrous
+than this.
+
+But this is not a question of any practical importance at this time.
+There is no danger that Slavery will ever be tolerated where it has been
+once abolished. It may go into new fields; it seldom returns to those
+from which it has been driven. The institutions of learning and religion
+that follow in the path of freedom, if they find a congenial soil, are
+not likely to be supplanted by the dark and noxious exotics of ignorance
+and barbarism.
+
+And besides, as we have already seen, it is our right, as one of the
+conditions of restoration, to provide for the _perpetual prohibition_ of
+Slavery within the Rebel States. This, like the Ordinance of 1787, will
+stand as an insurmountable barrier in all time to come. And the security
+it will afford will be even more certain. For, while there may be a
+difference of opinion in regard to the effect of a law of Congress
+relating to existing Territories, there is no doubt that conditions
+imposed at the time upon the admission of new States, or the restoration
+of the Rebel States, will be of perpetual obligation.
+
+
+
+RIGHTS OF REBEL STATES.
+
+
+On this subject there are two theories, each of which has advocates
+among our most eminent statesmen.
+
+By some it is claimed that the Rebels have lost all rights as citizens
+of States, and are in the condition of the inhabitants of unorganized
+territories belonging to the United States,--and that, having forfeited
+their rights, they can never be restored to their former position,
+except by the consent of the Federal Government. This consent may be
+given by admitting them as new States, or restoring them as old,--the
+Government having the right in either case to annex terms and
+conditions.
+
+There are others who contend that the Rebel States, though in rebellion,
+have lost none of their rights as States,--that the moment they submit
+they may choose members of Congress and Presidential electors, and
+demand, and we must concede, the same position they formerly held. This
+theory has been partially recognized by the present Administration, but
+not to an extent that precludes the other from being adopted, if it is
+right.
+
+If the people of the States which have seceded, as soon as they submit,
+have an absolute right to resume their former position in the
+Government, with their present constitutions upholding Slavery, it
+certainly will be a great, if not an insurmountable, obstacle to the
+adoption of those measures which may be necessary to secure our peace in
+the future. That they have no such right, it is believed may be made
+perfectly clear.
+
+If we triumph, we shall have all the rights which, by the laws of
+nations, belong to conquerors in a just war. In a civil war, the rights
+of conquest may not be of the same nature as in a war between different
+nations; but that there are such rights in all wars has already been
+stated on the highest authority. If a province, having definite
+constitutional rights, revolts, and attempts to overthrow the power of
+the central government, it would be a strange doctrine, to claim, that,
+after being subdued, it had risked and lost nothing by the undertaking.
+No authority can be found to sustain such a proposition. A rebellion
+puts everything at risk. Any other doctrine would hold out encouragement
+to all wicked and rebellious spirits. If they revolt, they know that
+everything is staked upon the chances of success. Everything is lost by
+defeat. By the laws of war, long established among the nations,--laws
+which the Rebel States have themselves invoked,--if they fail, they will
+have no right to be restored, except upon such terms as our Government
+may prescribe. The right to make war, conferred by the Constitution,
+carries with it all the rights and powers incident to a war, necessary
+for its successful prosecution, and essential to prevent its recurrence.
+
+But without resorting to the extraordinary powers incident to a state of
+war, the same conclusion, in regard to the effect of a rebellion by a
+State Government, results from the relations which the States sustain to
+the Federal Government. Though they cannot escape its jurisdiction,
+their position, _as States_, is one which may be forfeited and lost.
+
+It has been objected that this doctrine is equivalent to a recognition
+of the right of Secession, because it concedes the power of any one
+State to withdraw from the Union. But the fallacy of this objection is
+easily demonstrated.
+
+The Federal Government does not emanate from the States, but directly
+from the people. The relation between them is that _of protection_ on
+the one hand and _allegiance_ on the other. This relation cannot be
+dissolved by either party, unless by voluntary or compulsory
+expatriation. It subsists alike in States and Territories, not being
+dependent upon any local government. The Rebels claim the right to
+dissolve this relation, and to become free from and independent of the
+Federal Government, though retaining the same territory as before. We
+deny any such right, and hold, that, though they may forfeit their
+rights _as a State_, they are still bound by, and under the jurisdiction
+of, the Federal Government. This jurisdiction, though absolute in all
+places, is not the same in all.
+
+In the District of Columbia, and in all unorganized territories, the
+jurisdiction of the Federal Government is exclusive in its _extent_, as
+well as in its _nature_. It must protect the inhabitants in _all_ their
+rights,--for there is no other power to protect them. They owe
+allegiance to it, and to no other.
+
+The inhabitants of the _organized_ territories, though under the general
+jurisdiction of the Federal Government, are, to some extent, under the
+jurisdiction of the Territorial Governments. Each is bound to protect
+them in certain things; they are bound to support and obey each in
+certain things.
+
+The people of a State are also under the absolute jurisdiction of the
+Federal Government in all matters embraced in the Constitution. They owe
+it unqualified allegiance and support in those things. But they are
+also, in some matters, under the jurisdiction of the State Government,
+and owe allegiance to that. There are many matters over which both have
+jurisdiction, and in which the citizens have a right to look to each, or
+both, for protection. The courts of each issue writs of _habeas corpus_,
+and give the citizens their liberty, unless there is legal cause for
+their custody or restraint.
+
+Now, if a State Government forfeits all right to the allegiance and
+support of its citizens, they are not thereby absolved from their
+allegiance to the Federal Government. On the contrary, the jurisdiction
+of the Federal Government is thereby enlarged; for it is then the only
+Government which the citizens are bound to obey. Take, for illustration,
+the State of Arkansas. By seceding, the State Government forfeited all
+claim to the obedience of the citizens. The inhabitants no longer owe it
+any allegiance. If loyal, they will not obey it, except as compelled by
+force. But they still owe allegiance to the United States Government.
+And there being no other Government which they are bound to obey, they
+are in the same condition as before the State was admitted into the
+Union, or any Territorial Government was organized.
+
+The same is true of South Carolina. For, though it was an independent
+State before the Constitution was adopted, its citizens voluntarily
+yielded up that position, and became subject to the Federal Government,
+claiming the privileges and assuming the liabilities of a higher
+citizenship. And if, by reason of its rebellion, their State Government
+has forfeited its claim upon them, and its right to rule over them, they
+owe no allegiance to any except the Government of the United States.
+
+But it is argued by some, that a State, once admitted into the Union,
+cannot forfeit its rights as a State under the Constitution, because it
+cannot, as such, be guilty of treason; that the inhabitants may all be
+traitors, and the State Government secede, and engage in a war against
+the Republic, and yet retain all its rights intact.
+
+A State, in the meaning of public law, has been defined to be a body of
+persons _united together_ in one community, for the defence of their
+rights. They do not constitute a State until _organized_. If the
+organization ceases to exist, they are no longer a State. If the State
+organization becomes despotic, and the inhabitants overthrow it by a
+revolution, it then ceases to exist. The people are remitted to their
+original rights, and must organize a new State.
+
+A State, as such, may be guilty of treason. Crimes may be committed by
+organized bodies of men. Corporations are often convicted, and punished
+by fines, or by a forfeiture of all corporate rights. And though we have
+no provision for putting a State on trial, it may, as a State, be
+guilty. Treason is defined by the Constitution to be "levying war
+against the United States." This is just what South Carolina, as a
+State, is doing. Not only the people, but _the State Government_, has
+revolted. The people owe it no allegiance. It is their duty, not to
+support, but to _oppose_ it. The Federal Government owes it no
+recognition. It has the right to destroy and exterminate it. A State
+Government in rebellion has no rights under the Constitution. _It is
+itself a rebellion_, and must necessarily cease to exist when the
+rebellion is suppressed.
+
+And when the State Government which has revolted shall be conquered and
+overthrown, there will then be no South Carolina in existence. If there
+were loyal people enough there, bond or free, to rise up and overthrow
+it, they would be no more bound to revive the old Constitution, with its
+tyrannical provisions, than were our fathers to return to the British
+Government. Such a revolution is inaugurated in that State, by loyal
+men, to overthrow the despotic power of the State Government. If the
+State Government had remained loyal, it might have called on the Federal
+Government. But by seceding it has justified the Federal Government in
+aiding or organizing a revolution against it, for its utter overthrow
+and extinction.
+
+It is true, indeed, the idea prevails that there is still, somehow, a
+State of South Carolina, besides that which is in rebellion. But the
+State must exist _in fact_, or it has no existence. There is no such
+thing as a merely theoretical State, separate and different from the
+actual. The revolted States are the same States that were once loyal.
+And when some loyal citizens in each of them, with the aid of the
+Federal Government, have overthrown and destroyed them, the ground will
+be cleared for the formation of new States, or the _reorganization_ of
+the old; and they may be admitted or restored, upon such conditions as
+may be deemed wise and prudent, to promote and secure the future peace
+and welfare of the whole country.
+
+There is no evidence that loyal persons in the Rebel States claim or
+desire to uphold the existence of those States, under their present
+constitutions, with the system of Slavery. But if there are any such
+persons, their wishes are not to override the interests of the Republic.
+It is their misfortune to reside in States that have revolted; and all
+their losses, pecuniary and political, are chargeable to those States,
+and not to the Federal Government. If they are so blind as to suppose
+that their losses will be increased by emancipation, _that_, also, will
+be chargeable to the rebellion of those States. _Their_ loyalty does not
+save those States from being treated as enemies; it does not prevent
+_their own_ condition from being determined by that of their States. As
+it is well known, a portion of their property has been confiscated by an
+Act of Congress, on the ground that they are, in part, responsible for
+the rebellion of those States. The theory, therefore, that such loyal
+men constitute loyal States, still existing, in distinction from the
+States that have rebelled, is utterly groundless. On this point we
+cannot do better than quote from the opinion of the Supreme Court of the
+United States in a case already referred to, sustaining the belligerent
+legislation of Congress.
+
+"In organizing this rebellion, _they have acted as States_, claiming to
+be sovereign over all persons and property within their respective
+limits, and claiming the right to absolve their citizens from their
+allegiance to the Federal Government. Several of these States have
+combined to form a new Confederacy, claiming to be acknowledged by the
+world as a sovereign State. Their right to do so is now being decided by
+wager of battle. The ports and territory of each of these States are
+held in hostility to the General Government. It is no loose, unorganized
+insurrection, having no defined boundary or possession. It has a
+boundary, marked by lines of bayonets, and which can be crossed only by
+force. South of this line is enemy's territory, because it is claimed
+and held in possession by an organized, hostile, and belligerent power.
+All persons residing within this territory, whose property may be used
+to increase the revenues of the hostile power, are in this contest
+liable to be treated as enemies."
+
+It is not to be presumed that Congress will do anything unnecessarily to
+add to the misfortunes of loyal men in the South. On the contrary, all
+that is being done is more directly for their benefit than for that of
+any other class of men. The vast expenditure of treasure and blood in
+this war is for the purpose of protecting them first of all, and
+restoring to them the blessings of a good government. And if it shall be
+found practicable to indemnify them for all losses, whether by
+emancipation or otherwise, no one will object.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The object of this article is to prove that the Government possesses
+ample power, according to the law of nations, to suppress the Rebellion,
+and secure the country against the danger of another, by Emancipation,
+through the military power; that, though Emancipation is a _policy_, and
+not a _law_, the war may be prosecuted until this end is accomplished,
+and Slavery in future forever prohibited; that, by secession and
+rebellion, the revolted States have forfeited all right to the
+allegiance of their citizens, who are thereby remitted to the condition
+and rights of citizens solely of the United States; and that the Federal
+Government, as well _under the Constitution_ as _by right of conquest_,
+may impose such terms upon the reorganization and restoration of those
+States as may be necessary to secure present safety, and avert danger in
+time to come. These views are presented in as brief and simple terms as
+possible, with the hope that they may be adopted by the people and by
+the Government. It is confidently believed, that, if the President and
+Congress will act in accordance with them, their acts will be fully
+sustained by the Supreme Court,--and that, the element and source of
+discord being at last entirely removed from the country, a career of
+peace and prosperity will then begin which shall be the admiration of
+the world.
+
+At this time we present a humiliating spectacle to other nations: nearly
+half of our national temple in ruins,--the work of blind folly and mad
+ambition. The people of the North claimed no right to tear it down, or
+even to repair it. But since the people of the South have risen in
+rebellion, let us believe that there is now an opportunity, nay, an
+imperative _necessity_, to remove from its foundations the rock of
+Oppression, that was sure to crumble in the refining fires of a
+Christian civilization, and establish in its place the stone of
+LIBERTY,--unchanging and eternal as its Author. Let us rejoice in the
+hope, already brightening into fruition, that out of these ruins our
+temple shall rise again, in a fresher beauty, a firmer strength, a
+brighter glory,--and above it again shall float the old flag, every star
+restored, henceforth to all, of every color and every race, the flag of
+the free.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+
+_Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39._ By FRANCES
+ANNE KEMBLE. New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+
+Those who remember the "Journal of a Residence in America," of Frances
+Anne Kemble, or, as she was universally and kindly called, Fanny
+Kemble,--a book long since out of print, and entirely out of the
+knowledge of our younger readers,--will not cease to wonder, as they
+close these thoughtful, tranquil, and tragical pages. The earlier
+journal was the dashing, fragmentary diary of a brilliant girl, half
+impatient of her own success in an art for which she was peculiarly
+gifted, yet the details of which were sincerely repugnant to her. It
+crackled and sparkled with _na�ve_ arrogance. It criticized a new world
+and fresh forms of civilization with the amusing petulance of a spoiled
+daughter of John Bull. It was flimsy, flippant, laughable, rollicking,
+vivid. It described scenes and persons, often with airy grace, often
+with profound and pensive feeling. It was the slightest of diaries,
+written in public for the public; but it was universally read, as its
+author had been universally sought and admired in the sphere of her art;
+and no one who knew anything of her truly, but knew what an incisive
+eye, what a large heart, what a candid and vigorous mind, what real
+humanity, generosity, and sympathy, characterized Miss Kemble.
+
+The dazzling phantasmagoria which life had been to the young actress was
+suddenly exchanged for the most practical acquaintance with its
+realities. She was married, left the stage, and as a wife and mother
+resided for a winter on the plantations of her husband upon the coast of
+Georgia. And now, after twenty-five years, the journal of her residence
+there is published. It has been wisely kept. For never could such a book
+speak with such power as at this moment. The tumult of the war will be
+forgotten, as you read, in the profound and appalled attention enforced
+by this remarkable revelation of the interior life of Slavery. The
+spirit, the character, and the purpose of the Rebellion are here laid
+bare. Its inevitability is equally apparent. The book is a permanent and
+most valuable chapter in our history; for it is the first ample, lucid,
+faithful, detailed account, from the actual head-quarters of a
+slave-plantation in this country, of the workings of the system,--its
+persistent, hopeless, helpless crushing of humanity in the slave, and
+the more fearful moral and mental dry-rot it generates in the master.
+
+We have had plenty of literature upon the subject. First of all, in
+spirit and comprehension, the masterly, careful, copious, and patient
+works of Mr. Olmsted. But he, like Arthur Young in France, was only an
+observer. He could be no more. "Uncle Tom," as its "Key" shows, and as
+Mrs. Kemble declares, was no less a faithful than the most famous
+witness against the system. But it was a novel. Then there was "American
+Slavery as it is," a work of authenticated facts, issued by the American
+Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, and the fearful mass of testimony
+incessantly published by the distinctively Abolition papers,
+periodicals, books, and orators, during the last quarter of a century.
+But the world was deaf. "They have made it a business. They select all
+the horrors. They accumulate exceptions." Such were the objections that
+limited the power of this tremendous battery. Meanwhile, also, it was
+answered. Foreign tourists were taken to "model plantations." They shed
+tears over the patriarchal benignity of this venerable and beautiful
+provision of Divine Providence for the spiritual training of our African
+fellow-creatures. The affection of "Mammy" for "Massa and Missis" was
+something unknown where hired labor prevailed. Graver voices took up the
+burden of the song. There was no pauperism in a slave-country. There
+were no prostitutes. It had its disadvantages, certainly; but what form
+of society, what system of labor has not? Besides, here it was. It was
+the interest of slaveholders to be kind. And what a blessing to bring
+the poor heathen from benighted Africa and pagan servitude to the
+ennobling influences of Slavery, as practised among Southwestern
+Christians in America, and "professors" in South Carolina and Georgia!
+See the Reverend Mr. Adams and Miss Murray _passim_. This was the
+answer made to the statements of the actual facts of the system, when it
+was found that the question had gone before public opinion, and would be
+decided upon its merits by that tribunal, all the panders, bullies,
+assassins, apologists, and chaplains of Slavery to the contrary
+notwithstanding. In fact, when that was once clearly perceived, the
+issue was no less visible; only whether it were to be reached by war or
+peace was not so plain.
+
+Yet in all this tremendous debate which resounds through the last thirty
+years of our history, rising and swelling until every other sound was
+lost in its imperious roar, one decisive voice was silent. It was
+precisely that which is heard in this book. General statements,
+harrowing details from those who had been slaveholders, and who had
+renounced Slavery, were sometimes made public. Indeed, the most cruel
+and necessary incidents, the hunting with blood-hounds, the branding,
+the maiming, the roasting, the whipping of pregnant women, could not be
+kept from knowledge. They blazed into print. But the public, hundreds of
+miles away, while it sighed and shuddered a little, resolved that such
+atrocities were exceptional. 'Twas a shocking pity, to be sure! Poor
+things! Women, too! Tut, tut!
+
+Now, at last, we have no general statement, no single, sickening
+incident, but the diary of the mistress of plantations of seven hundred
+slaves, living under the most favorable circumstances, upon the islands
+at the mouth of the Altamaha River, in Georgia. It is a journal, kept
+from day to day, of the actual ordinary life of the plantation, where
+the slaves belonged to educated, intelligent, and what are called the
+most respectable people,--not persons imbruted by exile among slaves
+upon solitary islands, but who had lived in large Northern cities and
+the most accomplished society, subject to all the influences of the
+highest civilization. It is the journal of a hearty, generous,
+clear-sighted woman, who went to the plantation, loving the master, and
+believing, that, though Slavery might be sad, it might also be
+mitigated, and the slave might be content. It is the record of ghastly
+undeceiving,--of the details of a system so wantonly, brutally, damnably
+unjust, inhuman, and degrading, that it blights the country, paralyzes
+civilization, and vitiates human nature itself. The brilliant girl of
+the earlier journal is the sobered and solemnized matron of this. The
+very magnitude of the misery that surrounds her, the traces of which
+everywhere sadden her eye and wring her heart, compel her to the
+simplest narration. There is no writing for effect. There is not a
+single "sensational" passage. The story is monotonous; for the wrong it
+describes is perpetual and unrelieved. "There is not a single natural
+right," she says, after some weeks' residence, "that is not taken away
+from these unfortunate people; and the worst of all is, that their
+condition does not appear to me, upon further observation of it, to be
+susceptible of even partial alleviation, as long as the fundamental
+evil, the Slavery itself, remains."
+
+As the mistress of the plantation, she was brought into constant
+intercourse with the slave-women; and no other account of this class is
+so thorough and plainly stated. So pitiful a tale was seldom told. It
+was a "model plantation"; but every day was darkened to the mistress by
+the appeals of these women and her observation of their condition. The
+heart of the reader sickens as hers despaired. To produce "little
+niggers" for Massa and Missis was the enforced ambition of these poor
+women. After the third week of confinement they were sent into the
+fields to work. If they lingered or complained, they were whipped. For
+beseeching the mistress to pray for some relief in their sad straits,
+they were also whipped. If their tasks were unperformed, or the driver
+lost his temper, they were whipped again. If they would not yield to the
+embrace of the overseer, they were whipped once more. How are they
+whipped? They are tied by the wrists to a beam or the branch of a tree,
+their feet barely touching the ground, so that they are utterly
+powerless to resist; their clothes are turned over their heads, and
+their backs scarred with a leathern thong, either by the driver himself,
+or by father, brother, husband, or lover, if the driver choose to order
+it. What a blessing for these poor heathen that they are brought to a
+Christian land! When a band of pregnant women came to their master to
+implore relief from overwork, he seemed "positively degraded" to his
+wife, as he stood urging them to do their allotted tasks. She began to
+fear lest she should cease to respect the man she loved; "for the
+details of slaveholding are so unmanly, letting alone every other
+consideration, that I know not how any one with the spirit of a man can
+condescend to them." The master gives a slave as a present to an
+overseer whose administration of the estate was agreeable to him. The
+slave is intelligent and capable, the husband of a wife and the father
+of children, and they are all fondly attached to each other. He
+passionately declares that he will kill himself rather than follow his
+new master and leave wife and children behind. Roused by the storm of
+grief, the wife opens the door of her room, and beholds her husband,
+with his arms folded, advising his slave "not to make a fuss about what
+there is no help for." The same master insists that there is no hardship
+or injustice in whipping a woman who asks his wife to intercede for her,
+but confesses that it is "disagreeable." At last he tells her that she
+must no longer fatigue him with the "stuff" and "trash" which "the
+niggers," who are "all d----d liars," make her believe, and
+henceforward closes his ears to all complaint.
+
+Yet this was a model plantation, and this was probably not a hard
+master, as masters go. "These are the conditions which can only be known
+to one who lives among them. Flagrant acts of cruelty may be rare, but
+this ineffable state of utter degradation, this really _beastly_
+existence, is the normal condition of these men and women; and of that
+no one seems to take heed, nor had I ever heard it described so as to
+form any adequate conception of it, till I found myself plunged into
+it.... Industry, man's crown of honor elsewhere, is here his badge of
+utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here
+surrounded,--pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance,
+squalor, dirt, and ineffable abasement."
+
+And yet this is the system which we have been in the habit of calling
+patriarchal, because the model masters said it was so, and trade was too
+prosperous to allow any difference with them! And these are the model
+masters, supported in luxury by all this unpaid labor and untold woe,
+these women-whippers and breeders of babies for sale, who have figured
+in our talk and imaginations as "the chivalry" and "gentlemen"! These
+are they to whom American society has koo-too'd, and in whose presence
+it has been ill-bred and uncourteous to say that every man has rights,
+that every laborer is worthy of his hire, that injustice is unjust, and
+uncleanness foul. No wonder that Russell, coming to New York, and
+finding the rich men and the political confederates of the conspirators
+declaring that the Government of the United States could not help
+itself, and that they would allow no interference with their Southern
+friends, sincerely believed what he wished to, and wrote to John Bull,
+whose round face was red with eager desire to hear it, that the
+Revolution was virtually accomplished. No wonder that the haughty
+slaveholders, smeared with sycophantic slime, at Newport, at Saratoga,
+in the "polite" and "conservative" Northern circles, believed what Mr.
+Hunter of Virginia told a Massachusetts delegate to the Peace
+Congress,--that there would be no serious trouble, and that the
+Montgomery Constitution would be readily adopted by the "conservative"
+sentiment of the North.
+
+Mrs. Kemble's book shows what the miserable magic is that enchants these
+Southern American citizens into people whose philosophy of society would
+disgrace the Dark Ages, and whose social system is that of Dahomey.
+
+The life that she describes upon the model plantation is the necessary
+life of Slavery everywhere,--injustice, ignorance, superstition, terror,
+degradation, brutality; and this is the system to which a great
+political party--counting upon the enervation of prosperity, the
+timidity of trade, the distance of the suffering, the legal quibbles,
+the moral sophisms, the hatred of ignorance, the jealousy of race, and
+the possession of power--has conspired to keep the nation blind and
+deaf, trusting that its mind was utterly obscured and its conscience
+wholly destroyed.
+
+But the nation is young, and of course the effort has ended in civil
+war. Slavery, industrially and politically, inevitably resists Christian
+civilization. The natural progress and development of men into a
+constantly higher manhood must cease, or this system, which strives to
+convert men into things, must give way. Its haughty instinct knows it,
+and therefore Slavery rebels. This Rebellion is simply the insurrection
+of Barbarism against Civilization. It would overthrow the Government,
+not for any wrong the Government has done, for that is not alleged. It
+knows that the people are the Government,--that the spirit of the people
+is progressive and intelligent,--and that there is no hope for permanent
+and expansive injustice, so long as the people freely discuss and
+decide. It would therefore establish a new Government, of which this
+meanest and most beastly despotism shall be the chief corner-stone. In a
+letter to C.G., in the appendix of her book, Mrs. Kemble sets this truth
+in the clearest light. But whoever would comprehend the real social
+scope of the Rebellion should ponder every page of the journal itself.
+It will show him that Slavery and rebellion to this Government are
+identical, not only in fact, but of necessity. It will teach him that
+the fierce battle between Slavery and the Government, once engaged, can
+end only in the destruction of one or the other.
+
+This is not a book which a woman like Mrs. Kemble publishes without a
+solemn sense of responsibility. A sadder book the human hand never
+wrote, nor one more likely to arrest the thoughts of all those in the
+world who watch our war and are yet not steeled to persuasion and
+conviction. An Englishwoman, she publishes it in England, which hates
+us, that a testimony which will not be doubted may be useful to the
+country in which she has lived so long, and with which her sweetest and
+saddest memories are forever associated. It is a noble service nobly
+done. The enthusiasm, the admiration, the affection, which in our day of
+seemingly cloudless prosperity greeted the brilliant girl, have been
+bountifully repaid by the true and timely words now spoken in our
+seeming adversity by the grave and thoughtful woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_An Historical Research respecting the Opinions of the Founders of the
+Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers._ Read
+before the Massachusetts Historical Society, August 14, 1862. By GEORGE
+LIVERMORE. Third Edition. Boston: A. Williams & Co.
+
+
+This Historical Research is one of the most valuable works that have
+been called out by the existing Rebellion. It is a thorough and candid
+exposition of the opinions of the founders of the Republic on negroes as
+slaves, as citizens, and as soldiers, and has done more, perhaps, than
+any other single essay to form the public opinion of the present time in
+respect to the position that the negro should rightfully hold in our
+State and our army. It has, therefore, and will retain, a double
+interest, as exhibiting and illustrating the opinions prevalent during
+the two most important periods of our history. It was first printed,
+several months since, for private distribution only. More than a
+thousand copies were thus distributed by its public-spirited author. By
+this means the attention of persons in positions of influence was more
+readily secured than it could have been, had the essay been published in
+the ordinary way. The manner in which the research was conducted, the
+evidence afforded by every page of the author's conscientious labor,
+impartial selection, and exhaustive investigation, won immediate
+confidence in his statements, while his obvious candor, fairness of
+judgment, and love of truth secured respect for his conclusions. The
+interest excited by the work extended to a wider circle than could be
+satisfied by any private issue, while its value became more and more
+evident, so that, after its publication in the Proceedings of the
+Massachusetts Historical Society, the permission of the author was
+obtained by the New-England Loyal Publication Society to issue the work
+in a form for general circulation.
+
+We are glad to assist, by our hearty commendation, the extension of the
+influence of this essay. It forms, as now issued, a handsome pamphlet of
+two hundred pages, with a full Table of Contents and a copious Index,
+and is for sale at a price which brings it within the means of every one
+who may wish to obtain it. It is a book which should be in the
+reading-room of every Loyal League throughout the country, and of every
+military hospital. Editors of the loyal press should be provided with
+it, as containing an arsenal of incontrovertible arguments with which to
+meet the false assertions by which the maligners of the negro race and
+the supporters of Slavery too often undertake to maintain their bad
+cause.
+
+Exhibiting, as Mr. Livermore's book does, the contrast between the
+opinions of the founders of the Republic and those professed by the
+would-be destroyers of the Republic, and showing, as it does, how far a
+large portion even of the people of the North have fallen away from the
+just and generous doctrine of the earlier time, it must lead every
+thoughtful reader to a deep sense of the need of a regeneration of the
+spirit of the nation, and to a confirmed conviction of the
+incompatibility of Slavery with national greatness and virtue. The
+Rebellion has taught us that the Republic is not safe while Slavery is
+permitted to exercise any political power. It ought to teach us also,
+that, as long as Slavery exists in any of the States, it will not cease
+to exercise political power, and that the only means to make the nation
+safe is utterly to abolish and destroy Slavery, wherever it is found
+within its limits. Nor is this all; the lesson of the Rebellion is but
+half learned, unless we resolve that henceforth there shall be no fatal
+division between our consciences, our principles, our theories, and our
+treatment of the black race, and unless we acknowledge their inalienable
+right to that justice by which alone the most ancient heavens and the
+most sacred institutions are fresh and strong.
+
+There is no better textbook for enforcing these lessons than Mr.
+Livermore's Research.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August,
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+    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Issue 70.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863,
+No. 70, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70
+       A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 9, 2005 [EBook #16033]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. 12 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Guido
+Royackers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</h1>
+
+<h2>A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.</h2>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<h3>VOL. XII.&mdash;AUGUST, 1863.&mdash;NO. LXX.</h3>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<h4>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.</h4>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="an_american_in_the_house_of_lords" id="an_american_in_the_house_of_lords"></a>AN AMERICAN IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Having in a former number of this magazine attempted to give some
+account of the House of Commons, and to present some sketches of its
+leading members,<a name="fnanchor_1_1" id="fnanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#footnote_1_1"><sup>1</sup></a>
+I now design to introduce my readers to the House of
+Lords.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_1_1" id="footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#fnanchor_1_1"><span class="label">1</span></a>
+<i>Atlantic Monthly</i> for December, 1861.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is obviously unnecessary to repeat so much of the previous
+description as applies to the general external and internal appearance
+of the New Palace of Westminster. It only remains to speak of the hall
+devoted to the sessions of the House of Lords. And certainly it is an
+apartment deserving a more extended notice than our limits will allow.
+As the finest specimen of Gothic civil architecture in the world,
+perfect in its proportions, beautiful and appropriate in its
+decorations, the frescoes perpetuating some of the most striking scenes
+in English history, the stained glass windows representing the Kings and
+Queens of the United Kingdom from the accession of William the Conqueror
+down to the present reign, the niches filled with effigies of the Barons
+who wrested Magna Charta from King John, the ceiling glowing with gold
+and colors presenting different national symbols and devices in most
+elaborate workmanship and admirable intricacy of design, it is
+undeniably worthy of the high purpose to which it is dedicated.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Lords also contains the throne occupied by the reigning
+sovereign at the opening and prorogation of Parliament. Perhaps its more
+appropriate designation would be a State-Chair. In general form and
+outline it is substantially similar to the chairs in which the
+sovereigns of England have for centuries been accustomed to sit at their
+coronations. We need hardly add that no expense has been spared to give
+to the throne such intrinsic value, and to adorn it with such emblems of
+national significance, as to furnish renewed evidence of England's
+unwavering loyalty to the reigning house.</p>
+
+<p>In pointing out what is peculiar to the House of Lords, I am aware that
+there is danger of falling into the error of stating what is already
+familiar to some of my readers. And yet a traveller's narrative is not
+always tiresome to the tourist who has himself visited the same
+localities and witnessed the same scenes. If anxious for the &quot;diffusion
+of useful knowledge,&quot; he will cheerfully consent that the curiosity of
+others, who have not shared his good fortune, should be gratified,
+although it be at his expense. At the same time, he certainly has a
+right to insist that the extraordinary and improbable stories told to
+the too credulous <i>voyageur</i> by some lying scoundrel of a courier or
+some unprincipled <i>valet-de-place</i> shall not be palmed upon the
+unsuspecting public as genuine tales of travel and adventure.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Lords is composed of lords spiritual and lords temporal. As
+this body is now constituted, the lords spiritual are two archbishops,
+twenty-four bishops, and four Irish representative prelates. The lords
+temporal are three peers of the blood royal, twenty dukes, nineteen
+marquises, one hundred and ten earls, twenty-two viscounts, two hundred
+and ten barons, sixteen Scotch representative peers, and twenty-eight
+Irish representative peers. There are twenty-three Scotch peers and
+eighty-five Irish peers who have no seats in Parliament. The
+representative peers for Scotland are elected for every Parliament,
+while the representative peers for Ireland are elected for life. As has
+been already intimated, this enumeration applies only to the present
+House of Lords, which comprises four hundred and fifty-eight
+members,&mdash;an increase of about thirty noblemen in as many years.</p>
+
+<p>The persons selected from time to time for the honor of the peerage are
+members of families already among the nobility, eminent barristers,
+military and naval commanders who have distinguished themselves in the
+service, and occasionally persons of controlling and acknowledged
+importance in commercial life. Lord Macaulay is the first instance in
+which this high compliment has been conferred for literary merit; and it
+was well understood, when the great essayist and historian was ennobled,
+that the exception in his favor was mainly due to the fact that he was
+unmarried. With his untimely death the title became extinct. Lord
+Overstone, formerly Mr. Loyd, and a prominent member of the banking firm
+of Jones, Loyd, and Co. of London, elevated to the peerage in 1850, is
+without heirs apparent or presumptive, and there is good reason to
+believe that this circumstance had a material bearing upon his
+well-deserved promotion. But these infrequent exceptions, these rare
+concessions so ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule.
+Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished
+for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or
+clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable. Brown may reach the
+highest range of artistic excellence, he may achieve world-wide fame as
+an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian
+or repeat the rare and delicate grace of Correggio, the triumphs of his
+chisel may reflect honor upon England and his age; the inventive genius
+of Jones, painfully elaborating, through long and suffering years of
+obscure poverty, the crude conceptions of his boyhood, may confer
+inestimable benefits upon his race; the scientific discoveries of
+Robinson may add incalculable wealth to the resources of his nation: but
+let them not dream of any other nobility than that conferred by Nature;
+let them be content to live and die plain, untitled Brown, Jones, and
+Robinson, or at best look forward only to the barren honors of
+knighthood. Indeed, it is not too much to say that for plebeian merit
+the only available avenues to the peerage are the Church and the Bar.</p>
+
+<p>The proportion of law lords now in the House of Lords is unusually
+large,&mdash;there being, besides Lord Westbury, the present
+Lord-High-Chancellor, no fewer than six Ex-Lord-Chancellors, each
+enjoying the very satisfactory pension of five thousand pounds per
+annum. Lord Lyndhurst still survives at the ripe age of ninety-one; and
+Lord Brougham, now in his eighty-sixth year, has made good his promise
+that he would outlive Lord Campbell, and spare his friends the pain of
+seeing his biography added to the lives of the Lord-Chancellors to
+whom, in Lord Brougham's opinion, Lord Campbell had done such inadequate
+justice.</p>
+
+<p>The course of proceeding in the House of Lords differs considerably from
+that pursued in the House of Commons. The Lord-High-Chancellor, seated
+on the wool-sack,&mdash;a crimson cushion, innocent of any support to the
+back, and by no means suggestive of comfort, or inviting deliberations
+of the peers, but is never addressed by the speakers. &quot;My lords&quot; is the
+phrase with which every peer commences his remarks.</p>
+
+<p>Another peculiarity patent to the stranger is the small number usually
+present at the debates. The average attendance is less than fifty, and
+often one sees only fifteen or twenty peers in their seats. Two or three
+leading members of the Ministry, as many prominent members of the
+opposition, a bishop or two, a score of deluded, but well-meaning
+gentlemen, who obstinately adhere to the unfashionable notion, that,
+where great political powers are enjoyed, there are certain serious
+duties to the public closely connected therewith, a few prosy and
+pompous peers who believe that their constant presence is essential to
+the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom,&mdash;such, I think, is a correct
+classification of the ordinary attendance of noblemen at the House of
+Lords.</p>
+
+<p>This body possesses several obvious advantages over any other
+deliberative assembly now existing. Not the least among these is the
+fact that the oldest son of every peer is prepared by a careful course
+of education for political and diplomatic life. Every peer, except some
+of recent creation, has from childhood enjoyed all conceivable
+facilities for acquiring a finished education. In giving direction to
+his studies at school and at the university, special reference has been
+had to his future Parliamentary career. Nothing that large wealth could
+supply, or the most powerful family-influence could command, has been
+spared to give to the future legislator every needed qualification for
+the grave and responsible duties which he will one day be called to
+assume. His ambition has been stimulated by the traditional achievements
+of a long line of illustrious ancestors, and his pride has been awakened
+and kept alive by the universal deference paid to his position as the
+heir apparent or presumptive of a noble house.</p>
+
+<p>This view is so well presented in &quot;The Caxtons,&quot; that I need offer no
+apology for making an extract from that most able and discriminating
+picture of English society. &quot;The fact is, that Lord Castleton had been
+taught everything that relates to property (a knowledge that embraces
+very wide circumference). It had been said to him, 'You will be an
+immense proprietor: knowledge is essential to your self-preservation.
+You will be puzzled, ridiculed, duped every day of your life, if you do
+not make yourself acquainted with all by which property is assailed or
+defended, impoverished or increased. You have a stake in the country:
+you must learn all the interests of Europe, nay, of the civilized world;
+for these interests react on the country, and the interests of the
+country are of the greatest possible consequence to the interests of the
+Marquis of Castleton.' Thus, the state of the Continent, the policy of
+Metternich, the condition of the Papacy, the growth of Dissent, the
+proper mode of dealing with the spirit of democracy which was the
+epidemic of European monarchies, the relative proportions of the
+agricultural and manufacturing population, corn-laws, currency, and the
+laws that regulate wages, a criticism on the leading speakers in the
+House of Commons, with some discursive observations on the importance of
+fattening cattle, the introduction of flax into Ireland, emigration, the
+condition of the poor: these and such-like stupendous subjects for
+reflection&mdash;all branching more or less intricately from the single idea
+of the Castleton property&mdash;the young lord discussed and disposed of in
+half a dozen prim, poised sentences, evincing, I must say in justice, no
+inconsiderable information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. The
+oddity was, that the subjects so selected and treated should not come
+rather from some young barrister, or mature political economist, than
+from so gorgeous a lily of the field.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But to all these pre&euml;minent advantages of early education and training
+there must be added the invaluable opportunities of enlarged and
+extended legislative experience in the House of Commons. If we examine
+the antecedents of some of the most prominent men now in the House of
+Lords, we shall discover abundant evidence of this fact. Earl Russell
+was a member of the House of Commons for more than thirty years; Earl
+Derby, more than twenty-five years; the Earl of Shaftesbury, for about
+twenty-four years; the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the
+Duke of Rutland, for about the same period. And of the present House of
+Commons more than fifty members are heirs apparent or presumptive to
+existing peerages.</p>
+
+<p>And then there is the further circumstance that seats in the House of
+Lords are for life. Members of this body do not stand in fear of removal
+by the votes of disappointed or indignant constituents. Entirely
+independent of public opinion, they can defy the disapprobation of the
+masses, and smile at the denunciation of the press. Undoubtedly, this
+fact has a twofold bearing, and deprives the peers of that strong
+incentive to active exertion and industrious legislation which the House
+of Commons, looking directly to the people for support and continuance,
+always possesses. Yet the advantages in point of prolonged experience
+and ever increasing familiarity with the details of public business are
+unquestionable.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of course, there are many noblemen upon whom these rare
+facilities of education and this admirable training for public life
+would seem to have been wasted. As Americans, we must be pardoned for
+expressing our belief in the venerable doctrine that there is no royal
+road to learning. If a peer of the realm is determined to be a dunce,
+nothing in the English Constitution prevents him from being a dunce, and
+&quot;not all the blood of all the Howards&quot; can make him a scholar or a
+statesman. If, resting securely in the conviction that a nobleman does
+not need to be instructed, he will not condescend to study, and does not
+avail himself of his most enviable advantages, whatever may be his
+social rank, his ignorance and incapacity cannot be disguised, but will
+even become more odious and culpable in the view of impartial criticism
+by reason of his conspicuous position and his neglect of these very
+advantages.</p>
+
+<p>But frequent as these instances are, it will not be for a moment
+supposed that the whole peerage would justly fall under such censure.
+Nor will it be thought surprising that the House of Lords contains a
+considerable number of men of sterling ability, statesmen of broad and
+comprehensive views, accustomed to deal with important questions of
+public interest and national policy with calm, deliberate judgment, and
+far-reaching sagacity. Hampered as they certainly are by a traditional
+conservatism often as much at variance with sound political philosophy
+as it is with the lessons of all history, and characterized as their
+attitude towards foreign nations always has been by a singular want of
+all generosity, still it must be confessed that their steady and
+unwavering adherence to a line of conduct which has made England feared
+and her power respected by every country in the world has a certain
+element of dignity and manly self-reliance which compels our admiration.
+And while they have been of late so frequently outwitted by the
+flexible, if not tortuous, policy of Louis Napoleon, it yet remains to
+be seen whether the firm and unyielding course of the English Ministry
+will not in the end prove quite as successful as the more Machiavellian
+management of the French Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>I hardly know how to describe accurately the impression made upon the
+mind of an American by his first visit to the House of Lords. What
+memories haunt him of the Norman Conquest and the Crusades, of Magna
+Charta and the King-Maker, of noblemen who suffered with Charles I. and
+supped with Charles II., and of noblemen still later whose family-pride
+looked down upon the House of Hanover, and whose banded political power
+and freely lavished wealth checked the brilliant career of Napoleon, and
+maintained, the supremacy of England on sea and land!</p>
+
+<p>Enter, then, the House of Lords with these stirring memories, and
+confess frankly to a feeling of disappointment. Here are seated a few
+well-behaved gentlemen of all ages, often carelessly dressed, and almost
+invariably in English morning-costume. They are sleepily discussing some
+uninteresting question, and you are disposed to retire in view of the
+more powerful attractions of Drury Lane or the Haymarket, or the chance
+of something better worth hearing in the House of Commons. Take my
+advice, and wait until the adjournment. It will not be long, and by
+leaving now you may lose an important debate and the sight of some men
+whose fame is bounded only by the limits of Christendom. Even now there
+is a slight stir in the House. A nobleman has entered whose movements
+you will do well to follow. He takes his place just at the left of the
+Lord-Chancellor, but remains seated only for a moment. If you are
+familiar with the pencil of Punch, you will recognize him at a glance. A
+thin, wiry, yet muscular frame, a singularly marked and expressive face
+and mobile features, a nose that defies description, a high cravat like
+a poultice covered with a black silk bandage, clothes that seem to have
+been made for a much larger man, and always a pair of old-fashioned
+checked trousers,&mdash;of course, this can only be Lord Brougham. He is
+eighty-five years old, and yet his physical activity would do no
+injustice to a man in the prime of life. If you watch him a few moments,
+you will have abundant evidence of his restless energy. While we look,
+he has crossed to the opposite side of the House, and is enjoying a
+hearty laugh with the Bishop of Oxford. The round, full face of
+&quot;Slippery Sam&quot; (as he is disrespectfully called throughout England) is
+beaming with appreciative delight; but before the Bishop has time to
+reply, the titled humorist is on the wing again, and in an instant we
+see him seated between Earl Granville and the Duke of Somerset,
+conversing with all the vivacity and enthusiasm of a school-boy. In a
+moment he is in motion again, and has shaken hands with half a dozen
+peers. Undeterred by the supernaturally solemn countenance of the
+Marquis of Normanby, he has actually addressed a joke to that dignified
+fossil, and has passed on without waiting to observe its effect. A few
+words with Earl Derby, a little animated talk with the Earl of
+Ellenborough, and he has made the circuit of the House, everywhere
+received with a welcoming smile and a kindly grasp of the hand, and
+everywhere finding willing and gratified listeners. Possibly that is
+pardoned to his age and eminence which would be resented as impertinence
+in a younger man, but certainly he enjoys a license accorded to no one
+else in this aristocratic assembly.</p>
+
+<p>The dull debate of the past hour is now concluded, the House is thin,
+and there are indications of immediate adjournment. Remain a little
+longer, however, and your patience may possibly be richly rewarded.
+There is no order in the discussion of topics, and at any moment while
+the House continues in session there may spring up a debate calling out
+all the ability of the leading peers in attendance. After a short pause
+the quiet is broken by an aged nobleman on the opposition benches. He
+rises slowly and feebly with the assistance of a cane, but his voice is
+firm and his manner is forcible. That he is a man of mark is evident
+from the significant silence and the deferential attention with which
+his first words are received. You ask his name, and with ill-disguised
+amazement at your ignorance a gentleman by your side informs you that
+the speaker is Lord Lyndhurst.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the life of no public man in England has so much of interest to
+an American as that of this distinguished nobleman. Born in Boston while
+we were still in a condition of colonial dependence, he has lived to see
+his native land emerge from her state of vassalage, pass through a
+long-protracted struggle for liberty with the most powerful nation on
+earth, successfully maintain her right to be free and independent,
+advance with giant strides in a career of unexampled prosperity, assume
+an undisputed position as one of the great powers of Christendom, and
+finally put forth the most gigantic efforts to crush a rebellion
+compared with which the conspiracy of Catiline was but the impotent
+uprising of an angry dwarf.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Lyndhurst was called to the bar of England in 1804. It was before
+the splendid forensic successes of Erskine had been rewarded by a seat
+on the wool-sack, or Wellington had completed his brilliant and decisive
+campaign in India, or the military glory of Napoleon had culminated at
+Austerlitz, or Pitt, turning sadly from the map of Europe and saying,
+&quot;Henceforth we may close that map for half a century,&quot; had gone
+broken-hearted to an early grave, or Nelson had defeated the combined
+navies of France and Spain at Trafalgar. Lord Byron had not yet entered
+Cambridge University, Sir Walter Scott had not published his first poem,
+and Canova was still in the height of his well-earned fame. It was
+before the first steamboat of Robert Fulton had vexed the quiet waters
+of the Hudson, or Aaron Burr had failed in his attempted treason, or
+Daniel Welter had entered upon his professional career, or Thomas
+Jefferson had completed his first official term as President of the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Lyndhurst's advancement to the highest honors of his profession and
+to a commanding place in the councils of his adopted country was rapid
+almost beyond precedent. He was appointed Solicitor-General in 1819,
+Attorney-General in 1823, Master of the Rolls in 1826, and
+Lord-Chancellor in 1827. He remained in this office until 1830, and
+retired only to be created Lord-Chief-Baron of the Exchequer. In 1835 he
+was again appointed Lord-Chancellor, and once more, for the third time,
+in 1841.</p>
+
+<p>The characteristic qualities of the oratory of Lord Lyndhurst, when in
+his prime, were perfect coolness and self-possession, a most pleasing
+and plausible manner, singular ingenuity in dealing with a difficult
+question or in weakening the effect of an argument really unanswerable,
+a clear and musical voice, great ease and felicity of expression, and a
+wonderful command, always discreetly used, of all the weapons of irony
+and invective. He is, perhaps, the only nobleman in the House of Lords
+whom Lord Brougham has ever feared to encounter. All these elements of
+successful oratory Lord Lyndhurst has retained to an extraordinary
+degree until within a year or two.</p>
+
+<p>I chanced to hear this remarkable man during an evening in the month of
+July, 1859. The House of Lords was thinly attended. There had been a
+short and uninteresting debate on &quot;The Atlantic-Telegraph Bill,&quot; and an
+early adjournment seemed certain. But at this juncture Lord Lyndhurst
+rose, and, after adverting to the fact that he had previously given
+notice of his design to draw their lordships' attention to the military
+and naval defences of the country, proceeded to address the House upon
+this question. It should be borne in mind that this was a period of
+great and engrossing excitement in England, created by the supposed
+danger of invasion by France. Volunteer rifle-companies were springing
+up all over the kingdom, newspapers were filled with discussions
+concerning the sufficiency of the national defences, and speculations on
+the chances for and against such an armed invasion. There was,
+meanwhile, a strong peace-party which earnestly deprecated all agitation
+of the subject, maintained that the sentiments of the French Emperor and
+the French nation were most friendly to England, and contended that to
+incur largely increased expenses for additional war-preparations was
+unnecessary, impolitic, and ruinously extravagant. At the head of this
+party were Cobden and Bright.</p>
+
+<p>It was to answer these arguments, to convince England that there was a
+real and positive peril, and to urge upon Her Majesty's Government the
+paramount importance of preparing to meet not only a possible, but a
+probable danger, that Lord Lyndhurst addressed the House of Lords. He
+began by impressing upon their lordships the fact that the policy which
+he advocated was not aggressive, but strictly defensive. He reviewed the
+history of previous attempts to invade England. He pointed out the
+significant circumstance, that these attempts had hitherto failed mainly
+by reason of the casualties to which sailing-vessels were always
+exposed. He pressed upon their attention the change which
+steam-navigation had recently wrought in naval warfare. He quoted the
+pithy remark of Lord Palmerston, that &quot;steam had converted the Channel
+into a river, and thrown a bridge across it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He demonstrated from recent history the facility with which France could
+transport large forces by sea to distant points. Then, in tones
+tremulous with emotion, he drew upon the resources of his own marvellous
+memory. &quot;I have experienced, my lords, something like a sentiment of
+humiliation in going through these details. I recollect the day when
+every part of the opposite coast was blockaded by an English fleet. I
+remember the victory of Camperdown, and that of St. Vincent, won by Sir
+J. Jervis. I do not forget the great victory of the Nile, nor, last of
+all, that triumphant fight at Trafalgar, which almost annihilated the
+navies of France and Spain, I contrast the position which we occupied at
+that period with that which we now hold. I recollect the expulsion of
+the French from Egypt, the achievement of victory after victory in
+Spain, the British army established in the South of France, and then the
+great battle by which that war was terminated. I cannot glance back over
+that series of events without feeling some degree of humiliation when I
+am called upon to state in this House the measures which I deem it to be
+necessary to take in order to provide for the safety of the country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then pausing a moment and overcoming his evident emotion, he continued,
+with a force of manner and dignity of bearing which no words can fitly
+describe,&mdash;&quot;But I may be asked, 'Why do you think such measures
+requisite? Are we not in alliance with France? Are we not on terms of
+friendship with Russia? What other power can molest us?' To these
+questions, my lords, my answer shall be a short and simple one. I will
+not consent to live in dependence on the friendship or forbearance of
+any country. I rely solely on my own vigor, my own exertion, and my own
+intelligence.&quot; It will be readily believed that cheer after cheer rang
+through the House when this bold and manly announcement was made.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after alluding to the immense armament by sea and land which
+France had hurled with such incredible rapidity upon the Austrian Empire
+during the recent war in Italy, he concluded by saying,&mdash;&quot;Are we to sit
+supine on our own shores, and not to prepare the means necessary in case
+of war to resist that power? I do not wish to say that we should do this
+for any aggressive purpose. What I insist upon is, that we are bound to
+make every effort necessary for our own shelter and protection. Beside
+this, the question of expense and of money sinks into insignificance. It
+is the price we must pay for our insurance, and it is but a moderate
+price for so important an insurance. I know there are persons who will
+say, 'Let us run the risk.' Be it so. But, my lords, if the calamity
+should come, if the conflagration should take place, what words can
+describe the extent of the calamity, or what imagination can paint the
+overwhelming ruin that would fall upon us? I shall be told, perhaps,
+that these are the timid counsels of old age. My lords, for myself, I
+should run no risk. Personally I have nothing to fear. But to point out
+possible peril and how to guard effectively against it,&mdash;that is surely
+to be considered not as timidity, but as the dictate of wisdom and
+prudence. I have confined myself to facts that cannot be disputed. I
+think I have confined myself to inferences that no man can successfully
+contravene. I hope what I have said has been in accordance with your
+feelings and opinions. I shall terminate what I have to say in two
+emphatic words, '<i>V&oelig; victis!</i>'&mdash;words of solemn and most significant
+import.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So spoke the Nestor of the English nation. Has our country no lesson to
+learn from the well-considered words of this aged and accomplished
+statesman? Are we not paying a large insurance to secure permanent
+national prosperity? And is it not a wise and profitable investment, at
+any cost of blood and treasure, if it promises the supremacy of our
+Constitution, the integrity of our Union, and the impartial enforcement
+of our laws?</p>
+
+<p>When it is remembered that Lord Lyndhurst was at this time in his
+eighty-eighth year, this speech of nearly an hour in length, giving no
+evidence from first to last of physical debility or mental decay,
+delivered in a firm, clear, and unfaltering voice, admirable for its
+logical arrangement, most forcible and telling in its treatment of the
+subject, and irresistible in its conclusions, must be considered as
+hardly finding a parallel in ancient or modern times. We might almost
+call it his valedictory; for his lordship's subsequent speeches have
+been infrequent, and, with, we believe, a single exception, short, and
+he is now rarely, if ever, seen in the House of Lords.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not dwell upon the speeches that followed this earnest and
+eloquent appeal to the wisdom and patriotism of the listening peers.
+They were mainly confined to grateful recognition of the service which
+Lord Lyndhurst had rendered to the nation by his frank and fearless
+avowal of those principles which alone could preserve the honor and
+independence of England. The opposition urged the most vigorous
+preparations for resisting invasion, while Her Majesty's ministers
+disclaimed any intention of weakening or neglecting the national
+defences. As the speeches, however exhibited little worthy of mention
+beyond the presentation of these points, I have supposed that a more
+general description of some of the leading members of the Upper House
+would be more interesting to my readers than a detailed account of what
+was said upon this particular occasion.</p>
+
+<p>I have already alluded to the personal appearance and bearing of Lord
+Brougham. By reason of his great age, his long Parliamentary experience,
+(he has been in the House of Commons and House of Lords for nearly fifty
+years,) his habit of frequent speaking, and the commanding ability of
+many of his public efforts, his name as an orator is perhaps more widely
+known, and his peculiar style of declamation more correctly appreciated,
+than those of any other man now living. It would therefore seem
+unnecessary to give any sketch of his oratory, or of his manner in
+debate. Very few educated men in this country are unfamiliar with his
+eloquent defence of Queen Caroline, or his most bitter attack upon Mr.
+Canning, or his brilliant argument for Mr. Williams when prosecuted by
+the Durham clergy. Lord Brougham retains to this day the same fearless
+contempt of all opposition, the same extravagant and often inconsistent
+animosity to every phase of conservative policy, and the same fiery zeal
+in advocating every measure which he has espoused, that have ever
+characterized his erratic career. The witty author of &quot;The Bachelor of
+the Albany&quot; has tersely, and not without a certain spice of truth,
+described him as &quot;a man of brilliant incapacity, vast and various
+misinformation, and immense moral requirements.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of Argyle deserves more than a passing mention. Although
+comparatively a young man, he has already had a most creditable career,
+and given new lustre to an old and honored name. In politics he is a
+decided and consistent Liberal, and he merits the favorable
+consideration of all loyal Americans from the fact that he has not
+failed on every proper occasion to advocate our cause with such
+arguments as show clearly that he fully understands our position and
+appreciates the importance of the principles for which we are
+contending. It is a curious coincidence, that his style of address bears
+a close resemblance to what may be called the American manner. Rapid,
+but distinct, in utterance, facile and fluent in speech, natural and
+graceful in gesticulation, he might almost be transplanted to the halls
+of Congress at Washington without betraying his foreign birth and
+education.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Derby is undoubtedly the most skillful Parliamentary tactician and
+the most accomplished speaker in the House of Lords. In 1834, (when he
+was a member of the House of Commons,) Macaulay said of him, that &quot;his
+knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembled an
+instinct.&quot; He is the acknowledged leader of the Tories or Conservatives
+in England, and dictates the policy of his party with absolute
+despotism. Belonging to one of the oldest peerages in the kingdom,
+having already filled some of the most important offices in Her
+Majesty's Government, occupying the highly honorable position of
+Chancellor of the University of Oxford, (as successor of the first Duke
+of Wellington,) an exact and finished scholar, enjoying an immense
+income, and the proprietor of vast landed estates, he may be justly
+considered one of the best types of England's aristocracy. He has that
+unmistakable air of authority without the least alloy of arrogance, that
+&quot;pride in his port,&quot; which quietly asserts the dignity of long descent.
+As a speaker, his manner is impressive and forcible, with a rare command
+of choice language, an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of all
+subjects connected with the administration of public affairs, and that
+entire self-control which comes from life-long contact on terms of
+equality with the best society in Europe and a thorough confidence in
+his own mental resources. Lord Derby is pre&euml;minently a Parliamentary
+orator, and furnishes one of the unusual instances where a reputation
+for eloquence earned in the House of Commons has been fully sustained by
+a successful trial in the House of Lords.</p>
+
+<p>Another debater of marked ability in this body is Dr. Samuel
+Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He is the third son of William
+Wilberforce, the celebrated philanthropist, but by no means inherits the
+simplicity of character and singular absence of all personal ambition
+which made his father so widely beloved and respected. He is known as
+the leading exponent of High-Church views, and has been heard in the
+House of Lords on every question directly or indirectly affecting the
+interests of the Establishment. It was long ago said of him, that, had
+he been in political life, he would surely and easily have risen to the
+position of Premier. He has for years been charged with a marked
+proclivity to the doctrines of the Puseyites; and his adroitness in
+baffling all attempted investigation into the manner in which he has
+conducted the discipline of his diocese has perhaps contributed more
+than any other cause to fasten upon him the significant <i>sobriquet</i> to
+which I have already alluded.</p>
+
+<p>Any sketch of the prominent members of the House of Lords would be
+imperfect which should omit to give some account of Lord Westbury, the
+present Lord-High-Chancellor. Having been Solicitor-General in two
+successive Administrations, he was filling for the second time the
+position of Attorney-General, when, upon the death of Lord Campbell, he
+was raised to the wool-sack. As a Chancery practitioner he was for years
+at the head of his profession, and is supposed to have received the
+largest income ever enjoyed by an English barrister. During the four
+years next preceding his elevation to the peerage his average annual
+earnings at the bar were twenty thousand pounds. In the summer of 1860
+it was my good fortune to hear the argument of Lord Westbury (then Sir
+Richard Bethell) in a case of great interest and importance, before
+Vice-Chancellor Wood. The point at issue involved the construction of a
+marriage-settlement between the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Prince
+Borghese of Rome, drawn up on the occasion of the marriage of the Prince
+with Lady Talbot, second daughter of the Earl. The interpretation of the
+terms of the contract was by express stipulation to be in accordance
+with the Roman common law. A commission sent to Rome to ascertain the
+meaning of certain provisions contained in the contract resulted in
+several folio volumes, embodying &quot;the conflicting opinions of the most
+eminent Roman lawyers,&quot; supported by references to the Canonists, the
+decisions of the &quot;Sacred Rota,&quot; the great text-writers upon
+jurisprudence, the Institutes and Pandects, and ascending still higher
+to the laws of the Roman Republic and the Augustan era.</p>
+
+<p>The leading counsel in the kingdom were retained in the case, and
+unusual public interest was enlisted. The amount at stake was twenty
+thousand pounds, and it was estimated that nearly, if not quite, that
+amount had already been consumed in costs. Legal proceedings are not an
+inexpensive luxury anywhere; but &quot;the fat contention and the flowing
+fee&quot; have a significance to English ears which we can hardly appreciate
+in this country.</p>
+
+<p>It will be at once apparent even to the unprofessional reader that most
+difficult and complicated questions were presented by this
+case,&mdash;questions turning on the exact interpretation of contracts,
+involving delicate verbal distinctions, and demanding a thorough
+comprehension of an immense and unwieldy mass of Roman law embraced in
+the dissenting <i>dicta</i> of Roman lawyers. It required the exercise of the
+very highest legal ability, trained and habituated by long and patient
+discipline to grapple with great issues.</p>
+
+<p>The argument of Sir Richard Bethell abundantly demonstrated his capacity
+to satisfy the demands of the occasion, and displayed most triumphantly
+his perfect mastery of the whole subject. As the time drew near when he
+was expected to close for the defence, barristers and students-at-law
+began to flock into the small and inconveniently arranged courtroom. A
+stranger and a foreigner could not but see at once that the
+Attorney-General was the cynosure of all eyes. And, indeed, no one in
+the room more thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was the central
+and controlling attraction than Sir Richard himself. I must be pardoned
+for using an English slang-phrase, but I can convey the impression which
+he inevitably makes upon a spectator in no other way than by saying that
+he is &quot;a most magnificent swell.&quot; And I do this with the more confidence
+as I have heard him characterized in precisely these words by members of
+the English bar. Every motion, every attitude, indicates an intense
+self-consciousness. The Earl of Chatham had not a greater passion for
+theatrical effect, nor has a more consummate and finished actor ever
+graced the stage. If the performance had been less perfect, it would
+have been ludicrous in the extreme; for it did not overlook the minutest
+details. He could not examine his brief, or make a suggestion to one of
+his associates, or note an important point in the argument of opposing
+counsel, or listen to an intimation of opinion from the Bench, without
+an obvious eye to dramatic propriety. During the trial, an attorney's
+clerk handed him a letter, and the air with which it was opened, read,
+and answered was of itself a study. Yet it was all in the highest style
+of the art. No possible fault could be found with the execution. Not a
+single spectator ventured to smile. The supremacy of undoubted genius
+was never more apparent, and never exacted nor received more willing
+worship. Through the kindness of a friendly barrister I was introduced
+to one of the juniors of the Attorney-General,&mdash;a stripling of about
+fifty years of age. While we were conversing about the case, Sir Richard
+turned and made some comment upon the conduct of the trial; but my
+friend would no more have thought of introducing me to the leader of the
+bar than he would have ventured to stop the carriage of the Queen in
+Hyde Park and present me then and there to Her Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>I remember as well as if it were but yesterday how attorneys and junior
+counsel listened with the utmost deference to every suggestion which he
+condescended to address to them, how narrowly the law-students watched
+him, as if some legal principle were to be read in his cold, hard
+countenance, and, as he at last rose slowly and solemnly to make his
+long-expected argument, how court, bar, and by-standers composed
+themselves to hear. He spoke with great deliberation and distinctness,
+with singular precision and propriety of language, without any parade of
+rhetoric or attempt at eloquence. After a very short and appropriate
+exordium, he proceeded directly to the merits of the case. His words
+were well-weighed, and his manner was earnest and impressive. It was, in
+short, the perfection of reason confidently addressed to a competent
+tribunal.</p>
+
+<p>And yet his manner was by no means that of a man seeking to persuade a
+superior, but rather that of one comparing opinions with an equal, if
+not an inferior mind, elevated by some accident to a position of
+factitious importance. One could not but feel that here was a power
+behind the throne greater than the throne itself.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be doubted that this consciousness of mental and professional
+pre&euml;minence, sustained by the unanimous verdict of public opinion, has
+given to Lord Westbury a defiant, if not an insolent bearing. The story
+is current at the English bar, that, some years ago, when offered a seat
+on the Bench, with a salary of five thousand pounds, he promptly
+declined, saying, &quot;I would rather earn ten thousand pounds a year by
+talking sense than five thousand pounds a year by hearing other men talk
+nonsense.&quot; Anecdotes are frequent in illustration of his supercilious
+treatment of attorneys and clients while he was a barrister. And since
+his elevation to the wool-sack there has been no abatement or
+modification of his offensive manner. His demeanor toward counsel
+appearing before him has been the subject of constant and indignant
+complaint. It will be remembered by some of my readers, that, not long
+since, during a session of the House of Lords, he gave the lie direct to
+one of the peers,&mdash;an occurrence almost without precedent in that
+decorous body. Far different from this was the tone in which Lord
+Thurlow, while Lord-Chancellor, asserted his independence and vindicated
+his title to respect in his memorable rebuke addressed to the Duke of
+Grafton. If the testimony of English travellers in this country is to be
+believed, the legislative assemblies of our own land have hitherto
+enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this species of retort.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Lords contains other peers of marked ability and protracted
+Parliamentary experience, among whom are Earl Granville, the Earl of
+Ellenborough, the Duke of Somerset, and the Earl of Shaftesbury; but we
+cannot dwell in detail upon their individual characteristics as
+speakers, or upon the share they have severally taken in the public
+councils, without extending this article beyond its legitimate limits.</p>
+
+<p>As genius is not necessarily or usually transmitted from generation to
+generation, while a seat in the House of Lords is an inheritable
+privilege, it will be readily believed that there is a considerable
+number of peers with no natural or acquired fitness for legislative
+duties,&mdash;men whose dullness in debate, and whose utter incapacity to
+comprehend any question of public interest or importance, cannot be
+adequately described. They speak occasionally, from a certain
+ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are
+obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are
+greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been
+discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and
+canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about
+what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an
+evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while
+noblemen of this stamp are quieting their tender consciences by a
+statement of their views upon the subject under discussion, will be sure
+to retire with a very unfavorable and wholly incorrect estimate of the
+speaking talent of English peers.</p>
+
+<p>It would hardly seem necessary to devote time or space to those members
+of the House of Lords who are rarely, if ever, present at the debates.
+As has been already stated, the whole number of peers is about four
+hundred and sixty, of whom less than twenty-five are minors, while the
+average attendance is less than fifty. The right to vote by proxy is a
+peculiar and exclusive privilege of the Upper House, and vicarious
+voting to a great extent is common on all important issues. Macaulay,
+many years ago, pronounced the House of Lords &quot;a small and torpid
+audience&quot;; and certainly, since the expression of this opinion, there
+has been no increase of average attendance. A considerable proportion of
+the absentees will be found among the &quot;fast noblemen&quot; of the
+kingdom,&mdash;the men who prostitute their exalted social position to the
+basest purposes, squandering their substance and wasting their time in
+degrading dissipation, the easy prey of accomplished sharpers, and a
+burning disgrace to their order. Sometimes, indeed, they pause on the
+brink of utter ruin, only to become in their turn apostles of iniquity,
+and to lure others to a like destruction. The unblushing and successful
+audacity of these titled <i>rou&eacute;s</i> is beginning to attract the attention
+and awaken the fears of the better part of the English people. Their
+pernicious example is bearing most abundant and bitter fruit in the
+depraved morals of what are called the &quot;lower classes&quot; of society, and
+their misdeeds are repeated in less fashionable quarters, with less
+brilliant surroundings. Against this swelling tide of corrupting
+influence the press of England is now raising its warning voice, and the
+statements which are publicly and unreservedly made, and the predictions
+which are confidently given, are very far from being welcome to English
+eyes or grateful to English ears.</p>
+
+<p>Another class of the House of Lords, and it is a large one, is most
+happily characterized by Sydney Smith in his review of &quot;Granby.&quot; &quot;Lord
+Chesterton we have often met with, and suffered a good deal from his
+lordship: a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of
+the conversation, saying things in ten words which required only two,
+and evidently convinced that he is making a great impression; a large
+man, with a large head, and a very landed manner; knowing enough to
+torment his fellow-creatures, not to instruct them; the ridicule of
+young ladies, and the natural butt and target of wit. It is easy to talk
+of carnivorous animals and beasts of prey; but does such a man, who lays
+waste a whole civilized party of beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy
+he spoils and the misery he creates in the course of his life, and that
+any one who listens to him through politeness would prefer toothache or
+ear-ache to his conversation? Does he consider the great uneasiness
+which ensues, when the company has discovered a man to be an extremely
+absurd person, at the same time that it is absolutely impossible to
+convey by words or manner the most distant suspicion of the discovery?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Now, most unfortunately, the noble House of Chesterton is still extant,
+and its numerous representatives cherish with jealous care every
+inherited absurdity of the family. Their favorite field of operations is
+the House of Lords, partly because the strict proprieties of the place
+protect them from rude and inconvenient interruption, and partly because
+they can be sure of a &quot;fit audience found, though few,&quot;&mdash;an audience
+of equals, whom it is no condescension to address. In the House of
+Commons they would be coughed down or groaned down before they had
+wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift
+suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the
+courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of
+human life. There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords
+during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his
+morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and
+exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. That
+such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so
+frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and
+the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying
+circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike
+opinions are not confined to democratic deliberative assemblies, and
+that the choicest advantages of education, literary and political, are
+not at all inconsistent with ignorance and arrogance.</p>
+
+<p>But we will allow his lordship to tell his own story. Here is his set
+speech, only slightly modified from evening to evening, as may be
+demanded by the difference in the questions under debate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My lords, the noble lord who has just taken his seat, although, I am
+bound to say, presenting his view of the case with that candor which my
+noble friend (if the noble lord will allow me to call him so) always
+displays, yet, my lords, I cannot but add, omitted one important feature
+of the subject. Now, my lords, I am exceedingly reluctant to take up the
+time of your lordships with my views upon the subject-matter of this
+debate; yet, my lords, as the noble and learned lord who spoke last but
+one, as well as the noble earl at the head of Her Majesty's Government,
+and the noble marquis who addressed your lordships early in the evening,
+have all fallen into the same mistake, (if these noble lords will permit
+me to presume that they could be mistaken,) I must beg leave to call
+your lordships' attention to the significant fact, that each and all of
+these noble lords have failed to point out to your lordships, that,
+important and even conclusive as the arguments and statistics of their
+lordships may at first sight appear, yet they have not directed your
+lordships to the very suspicious circumstance that our noble ancestors
+have never discovered the necessity of resorting to this singular
+expedient.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For myself, my lords, I confess that I am filled with the most gloomy
+forebodings for the future of this country, when I hear a question of
+this transcendent importance gravely discussed by noble lords without
+the slightest allusion to this vital consideration. I beg to ask noble
+lords, Are we wiser than our forefathers? Are any avenues of information
+open to us which were closed to them? Were they less patriotic, less
+intelligent, less statesmanlike, than the present generation? Why, then,
+I most earnestly put it to your lordships, should we disregard, or,
+certainly, lose sight of their wisdom and their experience? I implore
+noble lords to pause before it is too late. I solemnly call upon them to
+consider that the proposed measure is, after all, only democracy under a
+thin disguise. Has it never occurred to noble lords that this project
+did not originate in this House? that its warmest friends and most
+ardent and persevering advocates are found among those who come from the
+people, and who, from the very nature of the case, are incompetent to
+decide upon what will be for the, best interests of the kingdom? My
+lords, I feel deeply upon this subject, and I must be pardoned for
+expressing myself in strong terms. I say again, that I see here the
+clearest evidence of democratic tendencies, a contempt for existing and
+ancient institutions, and an alarming want of respect for time-honored
+precedents, which, I am bound to say, demand our prompt and indignant
+condemnation,&quot; etc., etc., etc.<a name="fnanchor_2_2" id="fnanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#footnote_2_2"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_2_2" id="footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#fnanchor_2_2"><span class="label">2</span></a>
+If any one of my readers is inclined to suspect that I have
+drawn upon my imagination for this specimen speech, I will only say,
+that, if he were my bitterest enemy, I could wish him no more severe
+punishment than to undergo as I have done, (<i>horresco referens</i>,) an
+hour of the Marquis of Normanby, the Earl of Malmesbury, and a few other
+kindred spirits. If he have no opportunity of subjecting the truth of my
+statement and the accuracy of my report to this most grievous test, I
+beg to assure him that I have given no fancy sketch, but that I have
+heard speeches from these noblemen in precisely this tone and to exactly
+this effect.</p></div>
+
+<p>This is the regular speech, protracted in the same strain for perhaps
+half an hour. Of the manner of the noble orator I will not venture a
+description. Any attempt to convey an idea of the air of omniscience
+with which these dreary platitudes are delivered would surely result in
+failure. It is enough to say that the impression which the noble lord
+leaves upon an unprejudiced and un-English mind is in all respects
+painful. Indeed, one sees at a glance how absolutely hopeless would be
+any finite effort to convince him of the absurdity of his positions or
+the weakness of his understanding. There he stands, a solemn, shallow,
+conceited, narrow-minded, imperturbable, impracticable, incorrigible
+blockhead, on whom everything in the shape of argument is utterly
+wasted, and from whom all the arrows of wit and sarcasm fall harmless to
+the ground. In fact, he is perfectly proof against any intellectual
+weapons forged by human skill or wielded by mortal arm, and he awaits
+and receives every attack with a stolid and insulting indifference which
+must be maddening to an opponent.</p>
+
+<p>I hasten to confess my entire incapacity to describe the uniform
+personal bearing of a Chesterton in or out of the House of Lords. It is
+strictly <i>sui generis</i>. It has neither the quiet, unassuming dignity of
+the Derbys, the Shaftesburys, or the Warwicks, nor the vulgar vanity of
+the untravelled Cockney. It simply defies accurate delineation. Dickens
+has attempted to paint the portrait of such a character in &quot;Bleak
+House&quot;; but Sir Leicester Dedlock, even in the hands of this great
+artist, is not a success,&mdash;merely because, in the case of the Baronet,
+selfishness and self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with
+your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as
+much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A
+genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own
+theaters in the person of &quot;Lord Dundreary,&quot; as the John Bull of the
+French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and
+exclaiming, &quot;G&mdash;&mdash; d&mdash;&mdash;! I will sell my wife at Smithfield,&quot; is unlike
+the Englishman of real life. Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass
+in his right eye, nor commence every other sentence with &quot;Aw! weally
+now.&quot; He does not stare you out of countenance in a <i>caf&eacute;</i>, nor wonder
+&quot;what the Devil that fellaw means by his insolence.&quot; So much by way of
+negative description. To appreciate him positively, one must see him and
+hear him. No matter when or where you encounter him, you will find him
+ever the same; and you will at last conclude that his manners are not
+unnatural to a very weak man inheriting the traditions of an ancient and
+titled family, and educated from childhood to believe that he belongs to
+a superior order of beings.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the strong point of a Chesterton is what he calls his
+&quot;conservatism.&quot; He values everything in proportion to its antiquity, and
+prefers a time-honored abuse to a modern blessing. With a former Duke of
+Somerset, he would pity Adam, &quot;because he had no ancestors.&quot; His
+sympathies, so far as he has any sentiments which deserve to be
+dignified by that name, are ever on the side of tyranny. He condescends
+to give his valuable sanction to the liberal institutions of England,
+not because they are liberal, but because they are English. Next after
+the Established Church, the reigning sovereign and the royal family, his
+own order and his precious self, his warmest admiration is bestowed on
+some good old-fashioned, thorough-going, grinding despotism. He defends
+the Emperor of Austria, and considers the King of Naples a much-abused
+monarch.</p>
+
+<p>If his lordship has ever been in diplomatic life,&mdash;an event highly
+probable,&mdash;he becomes the most intolerable nuisance that ever belied the
+noblest sentiments of civilized society or blocked the wheels of public
+debate. Flattered by the interested attention of despotic courts, his
+poor weak head has been completely turned. He has seen everything <i>en
+couleur de rose</i>. He assures their lordships that he has never known a
+single well-authenticated case of oppression of the lower classes, while
+it is within his personal knowledge that many of the best families (in
+Italy, for instance) have been compelled to leave all their property
+behind them, and fly for their lives before an insolent and unreasoning
+mob. How he deluges the House with distorted facts and garbled
+statistics! How he warns noble lords against the wiles of Mazzini, the
+unscrupulous ambition of Victor Emmanuel, and the headlong haste of
+Garibaldi!</p>
+
+<p>Of course, his lordship's bitterest hatred and intensest aversion are
+reserved for democratic institutions. Against these he wages a constant
+crusade. Armed <i>cap-&agrave;-pie</i> in his common-sense-proof coat of mail, he
+charges feebly upon them with his blunt lance, works away furiously with
+his wooden sword, and then ambles off with a triumphant air very
+ludicrous to behold. Democracy is the <i>b&ecirc;te noir</i> of all the
+Chestertons. They attack it not only because they consider it a recent
+innovation, but also because it threatens the permanence of their order.
+About the practical working of a republic they have no better
+information than they have about the institutions of Iceland or the
+politics of Patagonia. It is quite enough for them to know that the
+theory of democracy is based on the equality of man, and that where
+democracy prevails a privileged class is unknown.</p>
+
+<p>It is hardly necessary to add, that the present condition of the United
+Stales is a perfect godsend to the whole family of Chestertons. Have
+they not long predicted our disgrace and downfall? Have they not,
+indeed, ever since our unjustifiable Declaration of Independence,
+anticipated precisely what has happened? Have they not always and
+everywhere contended that a republic had no elements of national
+cohesion? In a word, have they not feared our growing power and
+population as only such base and ignoble spirits can fear the sure and
+steady progress of a rival nation? Unhappily, their influence in the
+councils of the kingdom is by no means inconsiderable. The prestige of
+an ancient family, the obsequious deference paid in England to exalted
+social position, and the power of patronage, all combine to confer on
+the Chestertons a commanding and controlling authority absurdly out of
+proportion to their intrinsic ability.</p>
+
+<p>There has been a prevalent notion in this country that England was
+slowly, but certainly, tending towards a more democratic form of
+government, and a more equal and equitable distribution of power among
+the different orders of society. This is very far from being the case.
+It has been well said, that &quot;it is always considered a piece of
+impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a
+year has any opinions at all upon important subjects.&quot; But if this
+income is quadrupled, and the high honor of a seat in the House of Lords
+is superadded, it is not difficult to understand that the titled
+recipient of such a revenue will find that his opinions command the
+greatest consideration. The organization of the present Cabinet of
+England is a fresh and conclusive illustration of this principle. It is
+not too much to say, that at this moment the home and foreign
+administration of the government is substantially in the hands of the
+House of Lords. Indeed, the aristocratic element of English society is
+as powerful to-day as it has been at any time during the past century.
+To fortify this statement by competent authority, we make an extract
+from a leader in the London &quot;Times,&quot; on the occasion of the elevation of
+Lord John Russell to the peerage. &quot;But however welcome to the House of
+Lords may be the accession of Lord John Russell, the House of Commons,
+we apprehend, will contemplate it with very little satisfaction. While
+the House of Lords does but one-twentieth part of the business of the
+House of Commons, it boasts a lion's share of the present
+administration. Three out of our five Secretaries of State, the
+Lord-Chancellor, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Lord-President of
+the Council, the Postmaster-General, the Lord Privy Seal, all hold seats
+in the Upper House, while the Home-Secretary, and the Secretary for
+India, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
+the President of the Board of Trade, the President of the Poor-Law
+Board, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Secretary for
+Ireland hold seats in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell goes to
+give more to that which had already too much. At the present moment, the
+two ministers whose united departments distribute between twenty and
+thirty millions of the national revenue sit in the House which does not
+represent the people. In voting the army and navy estimates, the House
+of Commons received this year from the Under-Secretaries that
+information which they ought to have from the best and most authentic,
+sources. To these is now added the all-important department of Foreign
+Affairs; so that, if things remain as they are, the representatives of
+the people must be content to feed on second-hand information.... Most
+of us can remember a time when it was a favorite topic with popular
+agitators to expatiate on the number of lords which a government
+contained, as if every peer of Parliament wielded an influence
+necessarily hostile to the liberties of the country. We look down in the
+present age with contempt on such vulgar prejudices; but we seem to be
+running into the contrary extreme, when we allow almost all the
+important offices of our government to be monopolized by a chamber where
+there is small scope for rhetorical ability, and the short sittings and
+unbusiness-like habits of which make it very unsuited for the
+enforcement of ministerial responsibility. The statesmen who have charge
+of large departments of expenditure, like the army and navy, and of the
+highest interests of the nation, ought to be in the House of Commons, is
+necessarily superior to a member of the House of the House of Lords, but
+it is to the House of Commons that these high functionaries are
+principally accountable, and because, if they forfeit the confidence of
+the House of Commons, the House of Lords can avail them but little. The
+matter is of much importance and much difficulty. We can only hope that
+the opportunity of redressing this manifest imperfection in the
+structure of the present government will not be lost, and that the House
+of Commons may recover those political privileges which it has hitherto
+been its pride to enjoy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This distribution of power in the English Cabinet furnishes a sufficient
+solution of the present attitude of the English Government towards this
+country. The ruling classes of England can have no sincere sympathy with
+the North, because its institutions and instincts are democratic. They
+give countenance to the South, because at heart and in practice it is
+essentially an aristocracy. To remove the dangerous example of a
+successful and powerful republic, where every man has equal rights,
+civil and religious, and where a privileged order in Church and State is
+impossible, has become in the minds of England's governing classes an
+imperious necessity. Compared with the importance of securing this
+result, all other considerations weigh as nothing. Brothers by blood,
+language, and religion, as they have been accustomed to call us while we
+were united and formidable, we are now, since civil war has weakened us
+and great national questions have distracted our councils, treated as
+aliens, if not as enemies. On the other hand, the South, whose leaders
+have ever been first to take hostile ground against England, and whose
+&quot;peculiar institution&quot; has drawn upon us the eloquent and unsparing
+denunciations of English philanthropists, is just now in high favor with
+the &quot;mother-country.&quot; Not only has the ill-disguised dislike of the
+Tories ripened into open animosity, not only are we the target for the
+shallow scorn of the Chestertons, (even a donkey may dare to kick a
+dying lion,) but we have lost the once strongly pronounced friendship of
+such ardent anti-slavery men as Lord Brougham and the Earl of
+Shaftesbury. Why is this? Does not the explanation lie in a nutshell? We
+were becoming too strong. We were disturbing the balance of power. We
+were demonstrating too plainly the inherent activity and irresistible
+energy of a purely democratic form of government. Therefore <i>Carthago
+delenda est</i>. &quot;But yet the pity of it, Iago!&quot; Mark how a Christian
+nation deals with a Christian ally. Our destruction is to be
+accomplished, not by open warfare, but by the delusive and dastardly
+pretence of neutrality. There is to be no diplomatic recognition of an
+independent Southern Confederacy, but a formidable navy is to be
+furnished to our enemies, and their armies are to be abundantly supplied
+with the munitions of war. But how? By the English Government? Oh, no!
+This would be in violation of solemn treaties. Earl Russell says, &quot;We
+have long maintained relations of peace and amity&quot; with the United
+States. England cannot officially recognize or aid the South without
+placing herself in a hostile attitude towards this country. Yet
+meanwhile English capitalists can publicly subscribe to the loan which
+our enemies solicit, and from English ship-yards a fleet of iron-clad
+war-vessels can be sent to lay waste our commerce and break our blockade
+of Southern ports. What the end will be no one may venture to foretell;
+but it needs no prophet to predict that many years will not obliterate
+from the minds of the American people the present policy of the English
+Cabinet, controlled as it is by the genius of English aristocracy.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="theodore_winthrops_writings" id="theodore_winthrops_writings"></a>THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>&quot;The first time I saw Theodore Winthrop,&quot; said one to me a few days ago,
+&quot;he came into my office with a common friend. They were talking as they
+entered, and Winthrop said, 'Yes, the fellows who came over in the
+Mayflower can't afford to do that!'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'There,' thought I to myself, 'there's another of the Mayflower men! I
+wish to my soul that ship had sunk on her voyage out!' But when I came
+to know him, I quickly learned that with him origin was not a matter of
+vain pride, but a fact inciting him to all nobleness of thought and
+life, and spurring him on to emulate the qualities of his ancestor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he
+remembered that he &quot;came over in the Mayflower,&quot; it was because he felt
+that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work,
+than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he wrote in the
+opening chapter of &quot;John Brent,&quot; that &quot;deeds of the heroic and chivalric
+times do not utterly disdain our day. There are men,&quot; he continues, &quot;as
+ready to gallop for love and strike for love now as in the age of
+Amadis.&quot; Ay, and for a nobler love than the love of woman&mdash;for love of
+country, and of liberty&mdash;he was ready to strike, and to die.</p>
+
+<p>Ready to do, when the time came; but also&mdash;what required a greater
+soul&mdash;ready to wait in cheerful content till the fitting time should
+come. Think of these volumes lying in his desk at home, and he, their
+author, going about his daily tasks and pleasures, as hearty and as
+unrepining as though no whisper of ambition had ever come to his
+soul,&mdash;as though he had no slightest desire for the pleasant fame which
+a successful book gives to a young man. Think of it, O race of
+scribblers, to whom a month in the printer's hands seems a monstrous
+delay, and who bore publishers with half-finished manuscripts, as
+impatient hens begin, untimely, to cackle before the egg is laid.</p>
+
+<p>That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written
+these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide
+reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men
+and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself. That he should have let the
+manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more. But,
+much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was
+not that of the author, but of the actor. He has often told me that it
+was a pleasure to write,&mdash;probably such a pleasure as it is to an old
+tar to spin his yarns. His mind was active, stored with the accumulated
+facts of a varied experience. How keen an observer of Nature he was,
+those who have read &quot;John Brent&quot; or the &quot;Canoe and Saddle&quot; need not be
+told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that
+brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago,
+under the title of &quot;Love and Skates.&quot; Our American life lost by his
+death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to
+the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as
+well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its
+manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic
+spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however
+common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always
+something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with
+prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was
+none the less true,&mdash;was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true.
+Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature,
+or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature
+which concerns itself with American life. To him the hard-featured
+Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw
+the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">"Poor lone Hannah,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>had somewhat besides coarse hands and red eyes. He was not tainted with
+the vicious habit of caricature, which is the excuse with which
+superficial and heartless writers impose their false art upon the
+public. Nor did he need that his heroes should wear kid gloves,&mdash;though
+he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew. &quot;Armstrong of Oregon&quot; was
+a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly
+traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that
+sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon
+mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless
+not too scrupulous in a &quot;trade,&quot; has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities
+which draw us to him.</p>
+
+<p>To sit down to &quot;John Brent&quot; after rending one of the popular novels of
+these days, by one of the class of writers who imagine photography the
+noblest of arts, is like getting out of a fashionable &quot;party&quot; into the
+crisp air of a clear, starlight, December night. And yet Winthrop was a
+&quot;society&quot; man; one might almost say he knew that life better than the
+other, the freer, the nobler, which he loved to describe, as he loved to
+live it.</p>
+
+<p>A neat, active figure of a man, carefully dressed, as one who pays all
+proper honor to the body in which he walks about; a gentleman, not only
+in the broader and more generous sense, but also according to the
+narrower, conventional meaning of the term; plainly a scholarly man,
+fond of books, and knowing the best books; with that modest, diffident
+air which bookish men have; with a curious shyness, indeed, as of one
+who was not accustomed and did not like to come into too close contact
+with the every-day world: such Theodore Winthrop appeared to me. I
+recollect the surprise with which I heard&mdash;not from him&mdash;that he had
+ridden across the Plains, had camped with Lieutenant Strain, had
+&quot;roughed it&quot; in the roughest parts of our continent. But if you looked a
+little closely into the face, you saw in the fine lines of the mouth the
+determination of a man who can bear to carry his body into any peril or
+difficulty; and in the eye&mdash;he had the eye of a born sailor, an eye
+accustomed to measure the distance for a dangerous leap, quick to
+comprehend all parts of a novel situation&mdash;you saw there presence of
+mind, unfaltering readiness, and a spirit equal to anything the day
+might bring forth.</p>
+
+<p>In the Memoir prefixed to &quot;Cecil Dreeme&quot; Curtis has drawn a portrait,
+tender and true, of his friend and neighbor. The few words which have
+written themselves here tell of him only as he appeared to one who knew
+him less intimately, who saw him not often.</p>
+
+<p>I come now to speak of the writings which Winthrop left. These have the
+singular merit, that they are all American. From first to last, they are
+plainly the work of a man who had no need to go to Europe for characters
+or scenery or plot,&mdash;who valued and understood the peculiar life and
+the peculiar Nature of this continent, and, like a true artist and poet,
+chose to represent that life and Nature of which he was a part. His
+stories smack of the soil; his characters&mdash;especially in &quot;John Brent,&quot;
+where his own ride across the continent is dramatized&mdash;are as fresh and
+as true as only a true artist could make them. Take, for instance, the
+&quot;Pike,&quot; the border-ruffian transplanted to a California &quot;ranch,&quot;&mdash;not a
+ruffian, as he says, but a barbarian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;America is manufacturing several new types of men. The Pike is one of
+the newest. He is a bastard pioneer. With one hand he clutches the
+pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of
+civilization. It is hard to understand how a man can have so little
+virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the
+soul, as they are to beauty in the face.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new
+race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith,
+which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He
+is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man
+into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair
+Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his
+walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths
+are to his words as Falstaff's sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese
+beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New-York aldermen, Digger
+Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are
+thorough-bred Pikes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This is not complimentary, but any one who has seen the creature knows
+that it is a portrait done by a first-rate artist.</p>
+
+<p>Take, again, that other vulgarer ruffian, &quot;Jim Robinson,&quot; &quot;a little man,
+stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a
+certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,&quot;&mdash;and
+how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub
+into a still more disgusting butterfly!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple
+coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or
+a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged,
+patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters'
+House.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Or, once more, that more saintly villain, the Mormon Elder Sizzum.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the pioneer
+and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had
+made of himself. He was clean shaved: clean shaving is a favorite
+coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black hair, growing rank from a
+muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears. A large white blossom of
+cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black
+dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except that his pantaloons
+were thrust into boots with the maker's name (Abel Gushing, Lynn, Mass.)
+stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct
+go-to-meetin' costume,&mdash;a Chadband of the Plains.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When you see one of these men, you will know him again. Winthrop has
+sketched these rascals with a few touches, as felicitous as any of
+Dickens's, and they will bear his mark forever: <i>T.W. fecit.</i></p>
+
+<p>As for Jake Shamberlain, with his odd mixture of many religious and
+irreligious dialects, what there is of him is as good as Sam Weller or
+Mrs. Poyser.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Hillo, Shamberlain!' hailed Brent, riding up to the train.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'Howdydo? Howdydo? No swap!' responded Jake, after the Indian fashion.
+'Bung my eyes, ef you're not the mate of all mates I'm glad to see! Pax
+vobiscrum, my filly! You look as fresh as an Aperel shad. Prais&egrave;d be the
+Lord,' continued he, relapsing into Mormon slang, 'who has sent thee
+again, like a brand from the burning, to fall into paths of pleasantness
+with the Saints, as they wander from the Promised Land to the mean
+section where the low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for hell!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Or Jake's droll commentary on the story of Old Bridger, ousted from his
+fort, and robbed of his goods, by the Saints, in the name of the Prophet
+Brigham.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'It's olluz so,' says Jake; 'Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the
+increase. Not that Bridger's like Paul, any more 'n we're like Apollyon;
+but we're goan to have all the cider off his apple-trees.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Or, again, Jake's compliments to &quot;Armstrong of Oregon,&quot; that galloping
+Vigilant Committee of one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll help you, if I know how, Armstrong. I ha'n't seen no two in my
+life, Old Country or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I'd do more for
+'n you and your brother. I've olluz said, ef the world was chock full of
+Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout
+just as well blow out their candle and go under a bushel-basket,&mdash;unless
+a half-bushel would kiver 'em.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the true hero of the book is the horse Don Fulano. It is easy to see
+that Winthrop was a first-rate horseman, from the loving manner in which
+he describes and dwells on the perfections of the matchless stallion.
+None but one who knew every point of a horse, none but one of the
+Centaur breed, could have drawn Don Fulano,&mdash;just as none but a born
+skater could have written those inimitable skating-scenes in his story
+of &quot;Love and Skates.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was an American horse,&mdash;so they distinguish in California one
+brought from the old States,&mdash;A SUPERB YOUNG STALLION, PERFECTLY BLACK,
+WITHOUT MARK. It was magnificent to see him, as he circled about me,
+fire in his eye, pride in his nostril, tail flying like a banner, power
+and grace from tip to tip. No one would ever mount him, or ride him,
+unless it was his royal pleasure. He was conscious of his representative
+position, and showed his paces handsomely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This is the creature who takes the lead in that stirring and matchless
+&quot;Gallop of Three&quot; to the Luggernel Spring, to quote from which would be
+to spoil it. It must be read entire.</p>
+
+<p>In the &quot;Canoe and Saddle&quot; is recorded Winthrop's long ride across the
+continent. Setting out in a canoe, from Port Townsend, in Vancouver's
+Island, he journeyed, without company of other white men, to the Salt
+Lake City and thence to &quot;the States,&quot;&mdash;a tedious and barbarous
+experience, heightened, in this account of it, by the traveller's cheery
+spirits, his ardent love of Nature, and capacity to describe the grand
+natural scenery, of the effect of which upon himself he says, at the
+end,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And in all that period, while I was so near to Nature, the great
+lessons of the wilderness deepened into my heart day by day, the hedges
+of conventionalism withered away from my horizon, and all the pedantries
+of scholastic thought perished out of my mind forever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He bore hardships with the courage and imperturbable good-nature of a
+born gentleman. It is when men are starving, when the plating of romance
+is worn off by the chafe of severe and continued suffering,&mdash;it is then
+that &quot;blood tells.&quot; Winthrop had evidently that keen relish for rough
+life which the gently nurtured and highly cultivated man has oftener
+than his rude neighbor, partly because, in his case, contrast lends a
+zest to the experience. Thus, when he camps with a gang of
+&quot;road-makers,&quot; in the farthest Western wilderness,&mdash;a part of Captain
+McClellan's Pacific Railroad Expedition,&mdash;how thoroughly he enjoys the
+rough hospitality and rude wit of these pioneers!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In such a Platonic republic as this a man found his place according to
+his powers. The cooks were no base scullions; they were brethren, whom
+conscious ability, sustained by universal suffrage, had endowed with the
+frying-pan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My hosts were a stalwart gang.... Their talk was as muscular as their
+arms. When these laughed, as only men fresh and hearty and in the open
+air can laugh, the world became mainly grotesque: it seemed at once a
+comic thing to live,&mdash;a subject for chuckling, that we were bipeds, with
+noses,&mdash;a thing to roar at, that we had all met there from the wide
+world, to hobnob by a frolicsome fire with tin pots of coffee, and
+partake of crisped bacon and toasted dough-boys in ridiculous abundance.
+Easy laughter infected the atmosphere. Echoes ceased to be pensive, and
+became jocose. A rattling humor pervaded the forest, and Green River
+rippled with noise of fantastic jollity. Civilization and its
+<i>dilettante</i> diners-out sneer when Clodpole at Dives's table doubles his
+soup, knifes his fish, tilts his plate into his lap, puts muscle into
+the crushing of his <i>m&eacute;ringue</i>, and tosses off the warm beaker in his
+finger-bowl. Camps by Tacoma sneer not at all, but candidly roar, at
+parallel accidents. Gawky makes a cushion of his flapjack. Butterfingers
+drops his red-hot rasher into his bosom, or lets slip his mug of coffee
+into his boot drying at the fire,&mdash;a boot henceforth saccharine. A mule,
+slipping his halter, steps forward unnoticed, puts his nose into the
+circle, and brays resonant. These are the jocular boons of life, and at
+these the woodsmen guffaw with lusty good-nature. Coarse and rude the
+jokes may be, but not nasty, like the innuendoes of pseudo-refined
+cockneys. If the woodsmen are guilty of uncleanly wit, it differs from
+the uncleanly wit of cities as the mud of a road differs from the sticky
+slime of slums.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a stout sensation to meet masculine, muscular men at the brave
+point of a penetrating Boston hooihut,&mdash;men who are mates,&mdash;men to whom
+technical culture means nought,&mdash;men to whom myself am nought, unless I
+can saddle, lasso, cook, sing, and chop,&mdash;unless I am a man of nerve and
+pluck, and a brother in generosity and heartiness. It is restoration to
+play at cudgels of jocoseness with a circle of friendly roughs, not one
+of whom ever heard the word bore,&mdash;with pioneers, who must think and
+act, and wrench their living from the closed hand of Nature.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And here is a dinner &quot;in the open.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Upon the <i>carte du jour</i> at Restaurant Sowee was written Grouse. 'How
+shall we have them?' said I, cook and convive, to Loolowcan, marmiton
+and convive. 'One of these cocks of the mountain shall be fried, since
+gridiron is not,' responded I to myself, after meditation; 'two shall be
+spitted and roasted; and, as Azrael may not want us before breakfast
+to-morrow, the fourth shall go upon the <i>carte de d&eacute;jeuner'</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;'O Pork! what a creature thou art!' continued I, in monologue, cutting
+neat slices of that viand with my bowie-knife, and laying them
+fraternally, three in a bed, in the frying-pan. 'Blessed be Moses, who
+forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispensations, heirs of
+all the ages, inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon cheaper! O Pork!
+what could campaigners do without thy fatness, thy leanness, thy
+saltness, thy portableness?'</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here Loolowcan presented me the three birds, plucked featherless as
+Plato's man. The two roasters we planted carefully on spits before a
+sultry spot of the fire. From a horizontal stick, supported on forked
+stakes, we suspended by a twig over each roaster an automatic baster, an
+inverted cone of pork, ordained to yield its spicy juices to the wooing
+flame, and drip bedewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters ripened
+deliberately, while keen and quick fire told upon the frier, the first
+course of our feast. Meanwhile I brewed a pot of tea, blessing Confucius
+for that restorative weed, as I had blessed Moses for his abstinence
+from porkers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Need I say that the grouse were admirable, that everything was
+delicious, and the Confucian weed first chop? Even a scouse of mouldy
+biscuit met the approval of Loolowcan. Feasts cooked under the greenwood
+tree, and eaten by their cooks after a triumphant day of progress, are
+sweeter than the conventional banquets of languid Christendom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Life in the Open Air&quot;&mdash;containing sketches of travel among the
+mountains and lakes of Maine, as well as the story of &quot;Love and Skates,&quot;
+which has been spoken of, &quot;The March of the Seventh Regiment,&quot;
+&quot;Washington as a Camp,&quot; an essay descriptive of Church's great picture,
+&quot;The Heart of the Andes,&quot; and two fragments, one of them the charming
+commencement of a story which promised to be one of his best and most
+enjoyable efforts in this direction&mdash;is the concluding volume of
+Winthrop's collected writings. I speak of it in this place, because it
+is in some part a companion-book to the volumes we have been discussing.
+It is as full of buoyant life, of fresh and noble thought, of graceful
+wit and humor, as those; in parts it contains the most finished of his
+literary work. Few Americans who read it at the time will ever forget
+that stirring description of the march of the New-York Seventh; it is a
+piece of the history of our war which will live and be read as long as
+Americans read their history. It moved my blood, in the reading,
+tonight, as it did in those days&mdash;which seem already some centuries old,
+so do events crowd the retrospect&mdash;when we were all reading it in the
+pages of the &quot;Atlantic.&quot; In the unfinished story of &quot;Brightly's Orphan&quot;
+there is a Jew boy from Chatham Street, an original of the first water,
+who, though scarce fairly introduced, will, I am sure, make a place for
+himself and for his author in the memories of all who relish humor of
+the best kind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cecil Dreeme&quot; and &quot;Edwin Brothertoft&quot; are quite other books than these
+we have spoken of. Here Winthrop tried a different vein,&mdash;two different
+veins, perhaps. Both are stories of suffering and crime, stories of the
+world and society. In one it is a woman, in the other a man, who is
+wronged. One deals with New York city-life of the very present day; the
+other is a story of the Revolutionary War, and of Tories and Patriots.
+The popular verdict has declared him successful, even here. &quot;Cecil
+Dreeme&quot; has run through no less than fifteen editions.</p>
+
+<p>In this story we are shown New York &quot;society&quot; as doubtless Winthrop knew
+it to be. Yet the book has a curious air of the Old-World; it might be a
+story of Venice, almost. It tells us of Old-World vices and crimes, and
+the fittings and furnishings are of a piece. The localities, indeed, are
+sketched so faithfully, that a stranger to the city, coming suddenly, in
+his wanderings, upon Chrysalis College Buildings, could not fail to
+recognize them at once,&mdash;as indeed happened to a country friend of mine
+recently, to his great delight. But the men are Americans, bred and
+formed&mdash;and for the most part spoiled&mdash;in Europe; Americans who have
+gone to Paris before their time, if it be true, what a witty Bostonian
+said, that good Americans go to Paris when they die. With all this, the
+book has a strange charm, so that it takes possession of you in spite of
+yourself. It is as though it drew away the curtain, for one slight
+moment, from the mysteries which &quot;society&quot; decorously hides,&mdash;as though
+he who drew the curtain stood beside it, pointing with solemn finger and
+silent indignation to the baseness of which he gives you a glimpse. Yet
+even here the good carries the day, and that in no maudlin way, but
+because the true men are the better men.</p>
+
+<p>These, then, are Winthrop's writings,&mdash;the literary works of a young man
+who died at thirty-two, and who had spent a goodly part of his mature
+life in the saddle and the canoe, exploring his own country, and in
+foreign travel. As we look at the volumes, we wonder how he found time
+for so much; but when we have read, we wonder yet more at the excellence
+of all he wrote. In all and through all shines his own noble spirit; and
+thus these books of his, whose printed pages he never saw, will keep his
+memory green amongst us; for, through them, all who read may know that
+there wrote a true gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>Once he wrote,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Let me not waste in skirmishes my power,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">In petty struggles. Rather in the hour</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Of deadly conflict may I nobly die,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">In my first battle perish gloriously.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Even so he fell; but in these written works, as in his gallant death, he
+left with us lessons which will yet win battles for the good cause of
+American liberty, which he held dearest in his heart.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="hilary" id="hilary"></a>HILARY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Summer calls thee, o'er the sea!</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Like white flowers upon the tide,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">In and out the vessels glide;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">But no wind on all the main</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Sends thy blithe soul home again:</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Every salt breeze moans for thee,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Welcome Summer's step will be,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Save to those beside whose door</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Doleful birds sit evermore</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Singing, &quot;Never comes he here</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Who made every season's cheer!&quot;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Dull the June that brings not thee,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">What strange world has sheltered thee?</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Here the soil beneath thy feet</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Rang with songs, and blossomed sweet;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Blue skies ask thee yet of Earth,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Blind and dumb without thy mirth:</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">With thee went her heart of glee,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">All things shape a sigh for thee!</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">O'er the waves, among the flowers,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Through the lapse of odorous hours,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Breathes a lonely, longing sound,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">As of something sought, unfound:</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Lorn are all things, lorn are we,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Oh, to sail in quest of thee,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">To the trade-wind's steady tune,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Past the hurrying monsoon,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Into torrid seas, that lave</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Dry, hot sands,&mdash;a breathless grave,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Sad as vain the search would be,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Chase the sorrow from the sea!</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Summer-heart, bring summer near,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Warm, and fresh, and airy-clear!</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">&mdash;Dead thou art not: dead is pain;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Now Earth sees and sings again:</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Death, to hold thee, Life must be,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml7m">Hilary!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="debbys_debut" id="debbys_debut"></a>DEBBY'S D&Eacute;BUT.</h2>
+
+
+<p>On a cheery June day Mrs. Penelope Carroll and her niece Debby Wilder
+were whizzing along on their way to a certain gay watering-place, both
+in the best of humors with each other and all the world beside. Aunt Pen
+was concocting sundry mild romances, and laying harmless plots for the
+pursuance of her favorite pastime, match-making; for she had invited her
+pretty relative to join her summer jaunt, ostensibly that the girl might
+see a little of fashionable life, but the good lady secretly proposed to
+herself to take her to the beach and get her a rich husband, very much
+as she would have proposed to take her to Broadway and get her a new
+bonnet; for both articles she considered necessary, but somewhat
+difficult for a poor girl to obtain.</p>
+
+<p>Debby was slowly getting her poise, after the excitement of a first
+visit to New York; for ten days of bustle had introduced the young
+philosopher to a new existence, and the working-day world seemed to have
+vanished when she made her last pat of butter in the dairy at home. For
+an hour she sat thinking over the good-fortune which had befallen her,
+and the comforts of this life which she had suddenly acquired. Debby was
+a true girl,&mdash;with all a girl's love of ease and pleasure; and it must
+not be set down against her that she surveyed her pretty travelling-suit
+with much complacency, rejoicing inwardly that she could use her hands
+without exposing fractured gloves, that her bonnet was of the newest
+mode, needing no veil to hide a faded ribbon or a last year's shape,
+that her dress swept the ground with fashionable untidiness, and her
+boots were guiltless of a patch,&mdash;that she was the possessor of a mine
+of wealth in two of the eight trunks belonging to her aunt, that she was
+travelling like any lady of the land with man-and maid-servant at her
+command, and that she was leaving work and care behind her for a month
+or two of novelty and rest.</p>
+
+<p>When these agreeable facts were fully realized, and Aunt Pen had fallen
+asleep behind her veil, Debby took out a book, and indulged in her
+favorite luxury, soon forgetting past, present, and future in the
+inimitable history of Martin Chuzzlewit. The sun blazed, the cars
+rattled, children cried, ladies nodded, gentlemen longed for the solace
+of prohibited cigars, and newspapers were converted into sun-shades,
+nightcaps, and fans; but Debby read on, unconscious of all about her,
+even of the pair of eyes that watched her from the opposite corner of
+the car. A gentleman with a frank, strong-featured face sat therein, and
+amused himself by scanning with thoughtful gaze the countenances of his
+fellow-travellers. Stout Aunt Pen, dignified even in her sleep, was a
+&quot;model of deportment&quot; to the rising generation; but the student of human
+nature found a more attractive subject in her companion, the girl with
+an apple-blossom face and merry brown eyes, who sat smiling into her
+book, never heeding that her bonnet was awry, and the wind taking
+unwarrantable liberties with her ribbons and her hair.</p>
+
+<p>Innocent Debby turned her pages, unaware that her fate sat opposite in
+the likeness of a serious, black-bearded gentleman, who watched the
+smiles rippling from her lips to her eyes with an interest that deepened
+as the minutes passed. If his paper had been full of anything but
+&quot;Bronchial Troches&quot; and &quot;Spalding's Prepared Glue,&quot; he would have found
+more profitable employment; but it wasn't, and with the usual readiness
+of idle souls he fell into evil ways, and permitted curiosity, that
+feminine sin, to enter in and take possession of his manly mind. A great
+desire seized him to discover what book so interested his pretty
+neighbor; but a cover hid the name, and he was too distant to catch it
+on the fluttering leaves. Presently a stout Emerald-Islander, with her
+wardrobe oozing out of sundry paper parcels, vacated the seat behind the
+two ladies; and it was soon quietly occupied by the individual for whom
+Satan was finding such indecorous employment. Peeping round the little
+gray bonnet, past a brown braid and a fresh cheek, the young man's eye
+fell upon the words the girl was reading, and forgot to look away again.
+Books were the desire of his life; but an honorable purpose and an
+indomitable will kept him steady at his ledgers till he could feel that
+he had earned the right to read. Like wine to many another was an open
+page to him; he read a line, and, longing for more, took a hasty sip
+from his neighbor's cup, forgetting that it was a stranger's also.</p>
+
+<p>Down the page went the two pairs of eyes, and the merriment from Debby's
+seemed to light up the sombre ones behind her with a sudden shine that
+softened the whole face and made it very winning. No wonder they
+twinkled, for Elijah Pogram spoke, and &quot;Mrs. Hominy, the mother of the
+modern Gracchi, in the classical blue cap and the red cotton
+pocket-handkerchief, came down the room in a procession of one.&quot; A low
+laugh startled Debby, though it was smothered like the babes in the
+Tower; and, turning, she beheld the trespasser scarlet with confusion,
+and sobered with a tardy sense of his transgression. Debby was not a
+starched young lady of the &quot;prune and prism&quot; school, but a frank,
+free-hearted little body, quick to read the sincerity of others, and to
+take looks and words at their real value. Dickens was her idol; and for
+his sake she could have forgiven a greater offence than this. The
+stranger's contrite countenance and respectful apology won her good-will
+at once; and with a finer courtesy than any Aunt Pen would have taught,
+she smilingly bowed her pardon, and, taking another book from her
+basket, opened it, saying, pleasantly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here is the first volume, if you like it, Sir. I can recommend it as an
+invaluable consolation for the discomforts of a summer day's journey,
+and it is heartily at your service.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As much surprised as gratified, the gentleman accepted the book, and
+retired behind it with the sudden discovery that wrong-doing has its
+compensation in the pleasurable sensation of being forgiven. Stolen
+delights are well known to be specially saccharine; and much as this
+pardoned sinner loved books, it seemed to him that the interest of the
+story flagged, and that the enjoyment of reading was much enhanced by
+the proximity of a gray bonnet and a girlish profile. But Dickens soon
+proved more powerful than Debby, and she was forgotten, till, pausing to
+turn a leaf, the young man met her shy glance, as she asked, with the
+pleased expression of a child who has shared an apple with a playmate,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it good?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, very!&quot;&mdash;and the man looked as honestly grateful for the book as the
+boy would have done for the apple.</p>
+
+<p>Only five words in the conversation, but Aunt Pen woke, as if the
+watchful spirit of propriety had roused her to pluck her charge from the
+precipice on which she stood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dora, I'm astonished at you! Speaking to strangers in that free manner
+is a most unladylike thing. How came you to forget what I have told you
+over and over again about a proper reserve?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The energetic whisper reached the gentleman's ear, and he expected to be
+annihilated with a look when his offence was revealed; but he was spared
+that ordeal, for the young voice answered, softly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't faint, Aunt Pen; I only did as I'd be done by; for I had two
+books, and the poor man looked so hungry for something to read that I
+couldn't resist sharing my 'goodies.' He will see that I'm a countrified
+little thing in spite of my fine feathers, and won't be shocked at my
+want of rigidity and frigidity; so don't look dismal, and I'll be prim
+and proper all the rest of the way,&mdash;if I don't forget it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder who he is; may belong to some of our first families, and in
+that case it might be worth while to exert ourselves, you know. Did you
+learn his name, Dora?&quot; whispered the elder lady.</p>
+
+<p>Debby shook her head, and murmured, &quot;Hush!&quot;&mdash;but Aunt Pen had heard of
+matches being made in cars as well as in heaven; and as an experienced
+general, it became her to reconnoitre, when one of the enemy approached
+her camp. Slightly altering her position, she darted an
+all-comprehensive glance at the invader, who seemed entirely absorbed,
+for not an eyelash stirred during the scrutiny. It lasted but an
+instant, yet in that instant he was weighed and found wanting; for that
+experienced eye detected that his cravat was two inches wider than
+fashion ordained, that his coat was not of the latest style, that his
+gloves were mended, and his handkerchief neither cambric nor silk. That
+was enough, and sentence was passed forthwith,&mdash;&quot;Some respectable clerk,
+good-looking, but poor, and not at all the thing for Dora&quot;; and Aunt Pen
+turned to adjust a voluminous green veil over her niece's bonnet, &quot;To
+shield it from the dust, dear,&quot; which process also shielded the face
+within from the eye of man.</p>
+
+<p>A curious smile, half mirthful, half melancholy, passed over their
+neighbor's lips; but his peace of mind seemed undisturbed, and he
+remained buried in his book till they reached &mdash;&mdash;, at dusk. As he
+returned it, he offered his services in procuring a carriage or
+attending to luggage; but Mrs. Carroll, with much dignity of aspect,
+informed him that her servants would attend to those matters, and,
+bowing gravely, he vanished into the night.</p>
+
+<p>As they rolled away to the hotel, Debby was wild to run down to the
+beach whence came the solemn music of the sea, making the twilight
+beautiful. But Aunt Pen was too tired to do anything but sup in her own
+apartment and go early to bed; and Debby might as soon have proposed to
+walk up the Great Pyramid as to make her first appearance without that
+sage matron to mount guard over her; so she resigned herself to pie and
+patience, and fell asleep, wishing it were to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>At five, A.M., a nightcapped head appeared at one of the myriad windows
+of the &mdash;&mdash; Hotel, and remained there as if fascinated by the miracle of
+sunrise over the sea. Under her simplicity of character and girlish
+merriment Debby possessed a devout spirit and a nature full of the real
+poetry of life, two gifts that gave her dawning womanhood its sweetest
+charm, and made her what she was. As she looked out that summer dawn
+upon the royal marriage of the ocean and the sun, all petty hopes and
+longings faded out of sight, and her young face grew luminous with
+thoughts too deep for words. Her day was happier for that silent hour,
+her life richer for the aspirations that uplifted her like beautiful
+strong angels, and left a blessing when they went. The smile of the June
+sky touched her lips, the morning red seemed to linger on her cheek, and
+in her eye arose a light kindled by the shimmer of that broad sea of
+gold; for Nature rewarded her young votary well, and gave her beauty,
+when she offered love. How long she leaned there Debby did not know;
+steps from below roused her from her reverie, and led her back into the
+world again. Smiling at herself, she stole to bed, and lay wrapped in
+waking dreams as changeful as the shadows dancing on her chamber-wall.</p>
+
+<p>The advent of her aunt's maid, Victorine, some two hours later, was the
+signal to be &quot;up and doing&quot;; and she meekly resigned herself into the
+hands of that functionary, who appeared to regard her in the light of an
+animated pin-cushion, as she performed the toilet-ceremonies with an
+absorbed aspect, which impressed her subject with a sense of the
+solemnity of the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Mademoiselle, regard yourself, and pronounce that you are
+ravishing,&quot; Victorine said at length, folding her hands with a sigh of
+satisfaction, as she fell back in an attitude of serene triumph.</p>
+
+<p>Debby obeyed, and inspected herself with great interest and some
+astonishment; for there was a sweeping amplitude of array about the
+young lady whom she beheld in the much-befrilled gown and embroidered
+skirts, which somewhat alarmed her as to the navigation of a vessel
+&quot;with such a spread of sail,&quot; while a curious sensation of being
+somebody else pervaded her from the crown of her head, with its shining
+coils of hair, to the soles of the French slippers, whose energies
+seemed to have been devoted to the production of marvellous rosettes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I look very nice, thank you; and yet I feel like a doll, helpless
+and fine, and fancy I was more of a woman in my fresh gingham, with a
+knot of clovers in my hair, than I am now. Aunt Pen was very kind to get
+me all these pretty things; but I'm afraid my mother would look
+horrified to see me in such a high state of flounce externally and so
+little room to breathe internally.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your mamma would not flatter me, Mademoiselle; but come now to Madame;
+she is waiting to behold you, and I have yet her toilet to make&quot;; and,
+with a pitying shrug, Victorine followed Debby to her aunt's room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Charming! really elegant!&quot; cried that lady, emerging from her towel
+with a rubicund visage. &quot;Drop that braid half an inch lower, and pull
+the worked end of her handkerchief out of the right-hand pocket, Vic.
+There! Now, Dora, don't run about and get rumpled, but sit quietly down
+and practise repose till I am ready.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby obeyed, and sat mute, with the air of a child in its Sunday-best
+on a week-day, pleased with the novelty, but somewhat oppressed with the
+responsibility of such unaccustomed splendor, and utterly unable to
+connect any ideas of repose with tight shoes and skirts in a rampant
+state of starch.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you see, I bet on Lady Gay against Cockadoodle, and if you'll
+believe me&mdash;Hullo! there's Mrs. Carroll, and deuse take me if she hasn't
+got a girl with her! Look, Seguin!&quot;&mdash;and Joe Leavenworth, a &quot;man of the
+world,&quot; aged twenty, paused in his account of an exciting race to make
+the announcement.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Seguin, his friend and Mentor, as much his senior in worldly
+wickedness as in years, tore himself from his breakfast long enough to
+survey the new-comers, and then returned to it, saying, briefly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The old lady is worth cultivating,&mdash;gives good suppers, and thanks you
+for eating them. The girl is well got up, but has no style, and blushes
+like a milk-maid. Better fight shy of her, Joe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you think so? Well, now I rather fancy that kind of thing. She's
+new, you see, and I get on with that sort of girl the best, for the old
+ones are so deused knowing that a fellow has no chance of a&mdash;By the Lord
+Harry, she's eating bread and milk!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Young Leavenworth whisked his glass into his eye, and Mr. Seguin put
+down his roll to behold the phenomenon. Poor Debby! her first step had
+been a wrong one.</p>
+
+<p>All great minds have their weak points. Aunt Pen's was her breakfast,
+and the peace of her entire day depended upon the success of that meal.
+Therefore, being down rather late, the worthy lady concentrated her
+energies upon the achievement of a copious repast, and, trusting to
+former lessons, left Debby to her own resources for a few fatal moments.
+After the flutter occasioned by being scooped into her seat by a
+severe-nosed waiter, Debby had only courage enough left to refuse tea
+and coffee and accept milk. That being done, she took the first familiar
+viand that appeared, and congratulated herself upon being able to get
+her usual breakfast. With returning composure, she looked about her and
+began to enjoy the buzz of voices, the clatter of knives and forks, and
+the long lines of faces all intent upon the business of the hour; but
+her peace was of short duration. Pausing for a fresh relay of toast,
+Aunt Pen glanced toward her niece with the comfortable conviction that
+her appearance was highly creditable; and her dismay can be imagined,
+when she beheld that young lady placidly devouring a great cup of
+brown-bread and milk before the eyes of the assembled multitude. The
+poor lady choked in her coffee, and between her gasps whispered irefully
+behind her napkin,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For Heaven's sake, Dora, put away that mess! The Ellenboroughs are
+directly opposite, watching everything you do. Eat that omelet, or
+anything respectable, unless you want me to die of mortific&aacute;tion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby dropped her spoon, and, hastily helping herself from the dish her
+aunt pushed toward her, consumed the leathery compound with as much
+grace as she could assume, though unable to repress a laugh at Aunt
+Pen's disturbed countenance. There was a slight lull in the clatter, and
+the blithe sound caused several heads to turn toward the quarter whence
+it came, for it was as unexpected and pleasant a sound as a bobolink's
+song in a cage of shrill-voiced canaries.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She's a jolly little thing and powerful pretty, so deuse take me if I
+don't make up to the old lady and find out who the girl is. I've been
+introduced to Mrs. Carroll at our house; but I suppose she won't
+remember me till I remind her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;deuse&quot; declining to accept of his repeated offers, (probably
+because there was still too much honor and honesty in the boy,) young
+Leavenworth sought out Mrs. Carroll on the piazza, as she and Debby were
+strolling there an hour later.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Joe Leavenworth, my dear, from one of our first families,&mdash;very
+wealthy,&mdash;fine match,&mdash;pray, be civil,&mdash;smooth your hair, hold back your
+shoulders, and put down your parasol,&quot; murmured Aunt Pen, as the
+gentleman approached with as much pleasure in his countenance as it was
+consistent with manly dignity to express upon meeting two of the
+inferior race.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My niece, Miss Dora Wilder. This is her first season at the beach, and
+we must endeavor to make it pleasant for her, or she will be getting
+homesick and running away to mamma,&quot; said Aunt Pen, in her society-tone,
+after she had returned his greeting, and perpetrated a polite fiction,
+by declaring that she remembered him perfectly, for he was the image of
+his father.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Leavenworth brought the heels of his varnished boots together with a
+click, and executed the latest bow imported, then stuck his glass in his
+eye and stared till it fell out, (the glass, not the eye,) upon which he
+fell into step with them, remarking,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall be most happy to show the lions: they are deused tame ones, so
+you needn't be alarmed, Miss Wilder.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby was good-natured enough to laugh; and, elated with that success,
+he proceeded to pour forth his stores of wit and learning in true
+collegian style, quite unconscious that the &quot;jolly little thing&quot; was
+looking him through and through with the smiling eyes that were
+producing such pleasurable sensations under the mosaic studs. They
+strolled toward the beach, and, meeting an old acquaintance, Aunt Pen
+fell behind, and beamed upon the young pair as if her prophetic eye even
+at this early stage beheld them walking altarward in a proper state of
+blond white vest and bridal awkwardness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can you skip a stone, Mr. Leavenworth?&quot; asked Debby, possessed with a
+mischievous desire to shock the piece of elegance at her side.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eh? what's that?&quot; he inquired, with his head on one side, like an
+inquisitive robin.</p>
+
+<p>Debby repeated her question, and illustrated it by sending a stone
+skimming over the water in the most scientific manner. Mr. Joe was
+painfully aware that this was not at all &quot;the thing,&quot; that his sisters
+never did so, and that Seguin would laugh confoundedly, if he caught him
+at it; but Debby looked so irresistibly fresh and pretty under her
+rose-lined parasol that he was moved to confess that he <i>had</i> done such
+a thing, and to sacrifice his gloves by poking in the sand, that he
+might indulge in a like unfashionable pastime.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll be at the hop tonight, I hope, Miss Wilder,&quot; he observed,
+introducing a topic suited to a young lady's mental capacity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, indeed; for dancing is one of the joys of my life, next to husking
+and making hay&quot;; and Debby polked a few steps along the beach, much to
+the edification of a pair of old gentlemen, serenely taking their first
+&quot;constitutional.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Making what?&quot; cried Mr. Joe, polking after her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hay; ah, that is the pleasantest fun in the world,&mdash;and better
+exercise, my mother says, for soul and body, than dancing till dawn in
+crowded rooms, with everything in a state of unnatural excitement. If
+one wants real merriment, let him go into a new-mown field, where all
+the air is full of summer odors, where wild-flowers nod along the walls,
+where blackbirds make finer music than any band, and sun and wind and
+cheery voices do their part, while windrows rise, and great loads go
+rumbling through the lanes with merry brown faces atop. Yes, much as I
+like dancing, it is not to be compared with that; for in the one case we
+shut out the lovely world, and in the other we become a part of it, till
+by its magic labor turns to poetry, and we harvest something better than
+dried buttercups and grass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke, Debby looked up, expecting to meet a glance of
+disapproval; but something in the simple earnestness of her manner had
+recalled certain boyish pleasures as innocent as they were hearty, which
+now contrasted very favorably with the later pastimes in which fast
+horses, and that lower class of animals, fast men, bore so large a part.
+Mr. Joe thoughtfully punched five holes in the sand, and for a moment
+Debby liked the expression of his face; then the old listlessness
+returned, and, looking up, he said, with an air of <i>ennui</i> that was half
+sad, half ludicrous, in one so young and so generously endowed with
+youth, health, and the good gifts of this life,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I used to fancy that sort of thing years ago, but I'm afraid I should
+find it a little slow now, though you describe it in such an inviting
+manner that I should be tempted to try it, if a hay-cock came in my way;
+for, upon my life, it's deused heavy work loafing about at these
+watering-places all summer. Between ourselves, there's a deal of humbug
+about this kind of life, as you will find, when you've tried it as long
+as I have.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I begin to think so already; but perhaps you can give me a few
+friendly words of warning from the stores of your experience, that I may
+be spared the pain of saying what so many look,&mdash;'Grandma, the world is
+hollow; my doll is stuffed with sawdust; and I should like to go into a
+convent, if you please.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby's eyes were dancing with merriment; but they were demurely
+downcast, and her voice was perfectly serious.</p>
+
+<p>The milk of human kindness had been slightly curdled for Mr. Joe by
+sundry college-tribulations; and having been &quot;suspended,&quot; he very
+naturally vibrated between the inborn jollity of his temperament and the
+bitterness occasioned by his wrongs. He had lost at billiards the night
+before, had been hurried at breakfast, had mislaid his cigar-case, and
+splashed his boots; consequently the darker mood prevailed that morning,
+and when his counsel was asked, he gave it like one who had known the
+heaviest trials of this &quot;Piljin Projiss of a wale.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's no justice in the world, no chance for us young people to enjoy
+ourselves, without some penalty to pay, some drawback to worry us like
+these confounded 'all-rounders.' Even here, where all seems free and
+easy, there's no end of gossips and spies who tattle and watch till you
+feel as if you lived in a lantern. 'Every one for himself, and the Devil
+take the hindmost': that's the principle they go on, and you have to
+keep your wits about you in the most exhausting manner, or you are done
+for before you know it. I've seen a good deal of this sort of thing, and
+hope you'll get on better than some do, when it's known that you are the
+rich Mrs. Carroll's niece; though you don't need that fact to enhance
+your charms,&mdash;upon my life, you don't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby laughed behind her parasol at this burst of candor; but her
+independent nature prompted her to make a fair beginning, in spite of
+Aunt Pen's polite fictions and well-meant plans.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you for your warning, but I don't apprehend much annoyance of
+that kind,&quot; she said, demurely. &quot;Do you know, I think, if young ladies
+were truthfully labelled when they went into society, it would be a
+charming fashion, and save a world of trouble? Something in this
+style:&mdash;'Arabella Marabout, aged nineteen, fortune $100,000, temper
+warranted'; 'Laura Eau-de-Cologne, aged twenty-eight, fortune $30,000,
+temper slightly damaged'; 'Deborah Wilder, aged eighteen, fortune, one
+pair of hands, one head, indifferently well filled, one heart, (not in
+the market,) temper decided, and <i>no expectations</i>.' There, you see,
+that would do away with much of the humbug you lament, and we poor
+souls would know at once whether we were sought for our fortunes or
+ourselves, and that would be so comfortable!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Leavenworth turned away, with a convicted sort of expression, as she
+spoke, and, making a spyglass of his hand, seemed to be watching
+something out at sea with absorbing interest. He had been guilty of a
+strong desire to discover whether Debby was an heiress, but had not
+expected to be so entirely satisfied on that important subject, and was
+dimly conscious that a keen eye had seen his anxiety, and a quick wit
+devised a means of setting it at rest forever. Somewhat disconcerted, he
+suddenly changed the conversation, and, like many another distressed
+creature, took to the water, saying briskly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By-the-by, Miss Wilder, as I've engaged to do the honors, shall I have
+the pleasure of bathing with you when the fun begins? As you are fond of
+haymaking, I suppose you intend to pay your respects to the old
+gentleman with the three-pronged pitchfork?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Aunt Pen means to put me through a course of salt water, and any
+instructions in the art of navigation will be gratefully received; for I
+never saw the ocean before, and labor under a firm conviction, that,
+once in, I never shall come out again till I am brought, like Mr.
+Mantilini, a 'damp, moist, unpleasant body.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As Debby spoke, Mrs. Carroll hove in sight, coming down before the wind
+with all sails set, and signals of distress visible long before she
+dropped anchor and came along-side. The devoted woman had been strolling
+slowly for the girl's sake, though oppressed with a mournful certainty
+that her most prominent feature was fast becoming a fine copper-color;
+yet she had sustained herself like a Spartan matron, till it suddenly
+occurred to her that her charge might be suffering a like</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml95">&quot;sea-change</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Into something rich and strange.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Her fears, however, were groundless, for Debby met her without a
+freckle, looking all the better for her walk; and though her feet were
+wet with chasing the waves, and her pretty gown the worse for salt
+water, Aunt Pen never chid her for the destruction of her raiment, nor
+uttered a warning word against an unladylike exuberance of spirits, but
+replied to her inquiry most graciously,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly, my love, we shall bathe at eleven, and there will be just
+time to get Victorine and our dresses; so run on to the house, and I
+will join you as soon as I have finished what I am saying to Mrs.
+Earle,&quot;&mdash;then added, in a stage-aside, as she put a fallen lock off the
+girl's forehead, &quot;You are doing beautifully! He is evidently struck;
+make yourself interesting, and don't burn your nose, I beg of you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby's bright face clouded over, and she walked on with so much
+stateliness that her escort wondered &quot;what the deuse the old lady had
+done to her,&quot; and exerted himself to the utmost to recall her merry
+mood, but with indifferent success.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>&quot;Now I begin to feel more like myself, for this is getting back to first
+principles, though I fancy I look like the little old woman who fell
+asleep on the king's highway and woke up with abbreviated drapery; and
+you look funnier still, Aunt Pen,&quot; said Debby, as she tied on her
+pagoda-hat, and followed Mrs. Carroll, who walked out of her
+dressing-room an animated bale of blue cloth surmounted by a gigantic
+sun-bonnet.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Leavenworth was in waiting, and so like a blond-headed lobster in
+his scarlet suit that Debby could hardly keep her countenance as they
+joined the groups of bathers gathering along the breezy shore.</p>
+
+<p>For an hour each day the actors and actresses who played their different
+<i>r&ocirc;les</i> at the &mdash;&mdash; Hotel with such precision and success put off their
+masks and dared to be themselves. The ocean wrought the change, for it
+took old and young into its arms, and for a little while they played
+like children in their mother's lap. No falsehood could withstand its
+rough sincerity; for the waves washed paint and powder from worn faces,
+and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its
+vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing
+many a meagre life with another year of health. No gloomy spirit could
+refuse to listen to its lullaby, and the spray baptized it with the
+subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. No rank held place there; for
+the democratic sea toppled down the greatest statesman in the land, and
+dashed over the bald pate of a millionnaire with the same white-crested
+wave that stranded a poor parson on the beach and filled a fierce
+reformer's mouth with brine. No fashion ruled, but that which is as old
+as Eden,&mdash;the beautiful fashion of simplicity. Belles dropped their
+affectations with their hoops, and ran about the shore blithe-hearted
+girls again. Young men forgot their vices and their follies, and were
+not ashamed of the real courage, strength, and skill they had tried to
+leave behind them with their boyish plays. Old men gathered shells with
+the little Cupids dancing on the sand, and were better for that innocent
+companionship; and young mothers never looked so beautiful as when they
+rocked their babies on the bosom of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Debby vaguely felt this charm, and, yielding to it, splashed and sang
+like any beach-bird, while Aunt Pen bobbed placidly up and down in a
+retired corner, and Mr. Leavenworth swam to and fro, expressing his firm
+belief in mermaids, sirens, and the rest of the aquatic sisterhood,
+whose warbling no manly ear can resist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Wilder, you must learn to swim. I've taught quantities of young
+ladies, and shall be delighted to launch the 'Dora,' if you'll accept me
+as a pilot. Stop a bit; I'll get a life-preserver&quot;; and leaving Debby to
+flirt with the waves, the scarlet youth departed like a flame of fire.</p>
+
+<p>A dismal shriek interrupted his pupil's play, and looking up, she saw
+her aunt beckoning wildly with one hand, while she was groping in the
+water with the other. Debby ran to her, alarmed at her tragic
+expression, and Mrs. Carroll, drawing the girl's face into the privacy
+of her big bonnet, whispered one awful word, adding, distractedly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dive for them! oh, dive for them! I shall be perfectly helpless, if
+they are lost!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't dive, Aunt Pen; but there is a man, let us ask him,&quot; said
+Debby, as a black head appeared to windward.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Carroll's &quot;nerves&quot; had received a shock, and, gathering up her
+dripping garments, she fled precipitately along the shore and vanished
+into her dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>Debby's keen sense of the ludicrous got the better of her respect, and
+peal after peal of laughter broke from her lips, till a splash behind
+her put an end to her merriment, and, turning, she found that this
+friend in need was her acquaintance of the day before. The gentleman
+seemed pausing for permission to approach, with much the appearance of a
+sagacious Newfoundland, wistful and wet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I'm very glad it's you, Sir!&quot; was Debby's cordial greeting, as she
+shook a drop off the end of her nose, and nodded, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>The new comer immediately beamed upon her like an amiable Triton,
+saying, as they turned shoreward,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Our first interview opened with a laugh on my side, and our second with
+one on yours. I accept the fact as a good omen. Your friend seemed in
+trouble; allow me to atone for my past misdemeanors by offering my
+services now. But first let me introduce myself; and as I believe in the
+fitness of things, let me present you with an appropriate card&quot;; and,
+stooping, the young man wrote &quot;Frank Evan&quot; on the hard sand at Debby's
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>The girl liked his manner, and, entering into the spirit of the thing,
+swept as grand a curtsy as her limited drapery would allow, saying,
+merrily,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am Debby Wilder, or Dora, as aunt prefers to call me; and instead of
+laughing, I ought to be four feet under water, looking for something we
+have lost; but I can't dive, and my distress is dreadful, as you see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What have you lost? I will look for it, and bring it back in spite of
+the kelpies, if it is a human possibility,&quot; replied Mr. Evan, pushing
+his wet locks out of his eyes, and regarding the ocean with a determined
+aspect.</p>
+
+<p>Debby leaned toward him, whispering with solemn countenance,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a set of teeth, Sir.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Evan was more a man of deeds than words, therefore he disappeared at
+once with a mighty splash, and after repeated divings and much laughter
+appeared bearing the chief ornament of Mrs. Penelope Carroll's comely
+countenance. Debby looked very pretty and grateful as she returned her
+thanks, and Mr. Evan was guilty of a secret wish that all the worthy
+lady's features were at the bottom of the sea, that he might have the
+satisfaction of restoring them to her attractive niece; but curbing this
+unnatural desire, he bowed, saying, gravely,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell your aunt, if you please, that this little accident will remain a
+dead secret, so far as I am concerned, and I am very glad to have been
+of service at such a critical moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon Mr. Evan marched again into the briny deep, and Debby trotted
+away to her aunt, whom she found a clammy heap of blue flannel and
+despair. Mrs. Carroll's temper was ruffled, and though she joyfully
+rattled in her teeth, she said, somewhat testily, when Debby's story was
+done,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now that man will have a sort of claim on us, and we must be civil,
+whoever he is. Dear! dear! I wish it had been Joe Leavenworth instead.
+Evan,&mdash;I don't remember any of our first families with connections of
+that name, and I dislike to be under obligations to a person of that
+sort, for there's no knowing how far he may presume; so, pray, be
+careful, Dora.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think you are very ungrateful, Aunt Pen; and if Mr. Evan should
+happen to be poor, it does not become me to turn up my nose at him, for
+I'm nothing but a make-believe myself just now. I don't wish to go down
+upon my knees to him, but I do intend to be as kind to him as I should
+to that conceited Leavenworth boy; yes, kinder even; for poor people
+value such things more, as I know very well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carroll instantly recovered her temper, changed the subject, and
+privately resolved to confine her prejudices to her own bosom, as they
+seemed to have an aggravating effect upon the youthful person whom she
+had set her heart on disposing of to the best advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Debby took her swimming-lesson with much success, and would have
+achieved her dinner with composure, if white-aproned gentlemen had not
+effectually taken away her appetite by whisking bills-of-fare into her
+hands, and awaiting her orders with a fatherly interest, which induced
+them to congregate mysterious dishes before her, and blandly rectify
+her frequent mistakes. She survived the ordeal, however, and at four
+P.M. went to drive with &quot;that Leavenworth boy&quot; in the finest turnout
+&mdash;&mdash; could produce. Aunt Pen then came off guard, and with a sigh of
+satisfaction subsided into a peaceful doze, still murmuring, even in
+her sleep,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Propinquity, my love, propinquity works wonders.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>&quot;Aunt Pen, are you a modest woman?&quot; asked the young crusader against
+established absurdities, as she came into the presence-chamber that
+evening ready for the hop.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bless the child, what does she mean?&quot; cried Mrs. Carroll, with a start
+that twitched her back-hair out of Victorine's hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you like to have a daughter of yours go to a party looking as I
+look?&quot; continued her niece, spreading her airy dress, and standing very
+erect before her astonished relative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, of course I should, and be proud to own such a charming
+creature,&quot; regarding the slender white shape with much
+approbation,&mdash;adding, with a smile, as she met the girl's eye,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, I see the difficulty, now; you are disturbed because there is not a
+bit of lace over these pretty shoulders of yours. Now don't be absurd,
+Dora; the dress is perfectly proper, or Madame Tiphany never would have
+sent it home. It is the fashion, child; and many a girl with such a
+figure would go twice as <i>d&eacute;collet&eacute;e</i>, and think nothing of it, I assure
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby shook her head with an energy that set the pink heather-bells
+a-tremble in her hair, and her color deepened beautifully as she said,
+with reproachful eyes,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aunt Pen, I think there is a better fashion in every young girl's heart
+than any Madame Tiphany can teach. I am very grateful for all you have
+done for me, but I cannot go into public in such an undress as this; my
+mother would never allow it, and father never forgive it. Please don't
+ask me to, for indeed I cannot do it even for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby looked so pathetic that both mistress and maid broke into a laugh
+which, somewhat reassured the young lady, who allowed her determined
+features to relax into a smile, as she said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, Aunt Pen, you want me to look pretty and be a credit to you; but
+how would you like to see my face the color of those geraniums all the
+evening?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Dora, you are out of your mind to ask such a thing, when you know
+it's the desire of my life to keep your color down and make you look
+more delicate,&quot; said her aunt, alarmed at the fearful prospect of a
+peony-faced <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I should be anything but that, if I wore this gown in its present
+waistless condition; so here is a remedy which will prevent such a
+calamity and ease my mind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke, Debby tied on her little <i>blonde fichu</i> with a gesture
+which left nothing more to be said.</p>
+
+<p>Victorine scolded, and clasped her hands; but Mrs. Carroll, fearing to
+push her authority too far, made a virtue of necessity, saying,
+resignedly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have your own way, Dora, but in return oblige me by being agreeable to
+such persons as I may introduce to you; and some day, when I ask a
+favor, remember how much I hope to do for you, and grant it cheerfully.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed I will, Aunt Pen, if it is anything I can do without disobeying
+mother's 'notions', as you call them. Ask me to wear an orange-colored
+gown, or dance with the plainest, poorest man in the room, and I'll do
+it; for there never was a kinder aunt than mine in all the world,&quot; cried
+Debby, eager to atone for her seeming wilfulness, and really grateful
+for her escape from what seemed to her benighted mind a very imminent
+peril.</p>
+
+<p>Like a clover-blossom in a vase of camellias little Debby looked that
+night among the dashing or languid women who surrounded her; for she
+possessed the charm they had lost,&mdash;the freshness of her youth. Innocent
+gayety sat smiling in her eyes, healthful roses bloomed upon her cheek,
+and maiden modesty crowned her like a garland. She <i>was</i> the creature
+that she seemed, and, yielding to the influence of the hour, danced to
+the music of her own blithe heart. Many felt the spell whose secret they
+had lost the power to divine, and watched the girlish figure as if it
+were a symbol of their early aspirations dawning freshly from the
+dimness of their past. More than one old man thought again of some
+little maid whose love made his boyish days a pleasant memory to him
+now. More than one smiling fop felt the emptiness of his smooth speech,
+when the truthful eyes looked up into his own; and more than one pale
+woman sighed regretfully within herself, &quot;I, too, was a happy-hearted
+creature once!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That Mr. Evan does not seem very anxious to claim our acquaintance,
+after all, and I think better of him on that account. Has he spoken to
+you tonight, Dora?&quot; asked Mrs. Carroll, as Debby dropped down beside her
+after a &quot;splendid polka.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Ma'am, he only bowed. You see some people are not so presuming as
+other people thought they were; for we are not the most attractive
+beings on the planet; therefore a gentleman can be polite and then
+forget us without breaking any of the Ten Commandments. Don't be
+offended with him yet, for he may prove to be some great creature with a
+finer pedigree than any of 'our first families.' Mr. Leavenworth, as you
+know everybody, perhaps you can relieve Aunt Pen's mind, by telling her
+something about the tall, brown man standing behind the lady with
+salmon-colored hair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Joe, who was fanning the top of Debby's head with the best
+intentions in life, took a survey, and answered readily,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, that's Frank Evan. I know him, and a deused good fellow he
+is,&mdash;though he don't belong to our set, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! pray, tell us something about him, Mr. Leavenworth. We met in
+the cars, and he did us a favor or two. Who and what is the man?&quot; asked
+Mrs. Carroll, relenting at once toward a person who was favorably spoken
+of by one who did belong to her &quot;set.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, let me see,&quot; began Mr. Joe, whose narrative powers were not
+great. &quot;He is a book-keeper in my Uncle Josh Loring's importing concern,
+and a powerful smart man, they say. There's some kind of clever story
+about his father's leaving a load of debts, and Frank's working a deused
+number of years till they were paid. Good of him, wasn't it? Then, just
+as he was going to take things easier and enjoy life a bit, his mother
+died, and that rather knocked him up, you see. He fell sick, and came to
+grief generally, Uncle Josh said; so he was ordered off to get righted,
+and here he is, looking like a tombstone. I've a regard for Frank, for
+he took care of me through the smallpox a year ago, and I don't forget
+things of that sort; so, if you wish to be introduced, Mrs. Carroll,
+I'll trot him out with pleasure, and make a proud man of him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carroll glanced at Debby, and as that young lady was regarding Mr.
+Joe with a friendly aspect, owing to the warmth of his words, she
+graciously assented, and the youth departed on his errand. Mr. Evan went
+through the ceremony with a calmness wonderful to behold, considering
+the position of one lady and the charms of the other, and soon glided
+into the conversation with the ease of a more accomplished courtier.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now I must tear myself away, for I'm engaged to that stout Miss
+Bandoline for this dance. She 's a friend of my sister's, and I must do
+the civil, you know; powerful slow work it is, too, but I pity the poor
+soul,&mdash;upon my life, I do&quot;; and Mr. Joe assumed the air of a martyr.</p>
+
+<p>Debby looked up with a wicked smile in her eyes, as she said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, that sounds very amiable here; but in five minutes you'll be
+murmuring in Miss Bandoline's ear,&mdash;'I've been pining to come to you
+this half hour, but I was obliged to take out that Miss Wilder, you
+see,&mdash;countrified little thing enough, but not bad-looking, and has a
+rich aunt; so I've done my duty to her, but deuse take me if I can stand
+it any longer.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Evan joined in Debby's merriment; but Mr. Joe was so appalled at the
+sudden attack that he could only stammer a remonstrance and beat a hasty
+retreat, wondering how on earth she came to know that his favorite style
+of making himself agreeable to one young lady was by decrying another.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dora, my love, that is very rude, and 'Deuse' is not a proper
+expression for a woman's lips. Pray, restrain your lively tongue, for
+strangers may not understand that it is nothing but the sprightliness of
+your disposition which sometimes runs away with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was only a quotation, and I thought you would admire anything Mr.
+Leavenworth said, Aunt Pen,&quot; replied Debby, demurely.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carroll trod on her foot, and abruptly changed the conversation, by
+saying, with an appearance of deep interest,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Evan, you are doubtless connected with the Malcoms of Georgia; for
+they, I believe, are descended from the ancient Evans of Scotland. They
+are a very wealthy and aristocratic family, and I remember seeing their
+coat-of-arms once: three bannocks and a thistle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Evan had been standing before them with a composure which impressed
+Mrs. Carroll with a belief in his gentle blood, for she remembered her
+own fussy, plebeian husband, whose fortune had never been able to
+purchase him the manners of a gentleman. Mr. Evan only grew a little
+more erect, as he replied, with an untroubled mien,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot claim relationship with the Malcoms of Georgia or the Evans of
+Scotland, I believe, Madam. My father was a farmer, my grandfather a
+blacksmith, and beyond that my ancestors may have been street-sweepers,
+for anything I know; but whatever they were, I fancy they were honest
+men, for that has always been our boast, though, like President
+Jackson's, our coat-of-arms is nothing but 'a pair of shirt-sleeves.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From Debby's eyes there shot a bright glance of admiration for the young
+man who could look two comely women in the face and serenely own that he
+was poor. Mrs. Carroll tried to appear at ease, and, gliding out of
+personalities, expatiated on the comfort of &quot;living in a land where fame
+and fortune were attainable by all who chose to earn them,&quot; and the
+contempt she felt for those &quot;who had no sympathy with the humbler
+classes, no interest in the welfare of the race,&quot; and many more moral
+reflections as new and original as the Multiplication-Table or the
+Westminster Catechism. To all of which Mr. Evan listened with polite
+deference, though there was something in the keen intelligence of his
+eye that made Debby blush for shallow Aunt Pen, and rejoice when the
+good lady got out of her depth and seized upon a new subject as a
+drowning mariner would a hen-coop.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dora, Mr. Ellenborough is coming this way; you have danced with him but
+once, and he is a very desirable partner; so, pray, accept, if he asks
+you,&quot; said Mrs. Carroll, watching a far-off individual who seemed
+steering his zigzag course toward them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I never intend to dance with Mr. Ellenborough again, so please don't
+urge me, Aunt Pen&quot;; and Debby knit her brows with a somewhat irate
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My love, you astonish me! He is a most agreeable and accomplished young
+man,&mdash;spent three years in Paris, moves in the first circles, and is
+considered an ornament to fashionable society. What <i>can</i> be your
+objection, Dora?&quot; cried Mrs. Carroll, looking as alarmed as if her niece
+had suddenly announced her belief in the Koran.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One of his accomplishments consists in drinking Champagne till he is
+not a 'desirable partner' for any young lady with a prejudice in favor
+of decency. His moving in 'circles' is just what I complain of; and if
+he is an ornament, I prefer my society undecorated. Aunt Pen, I cannot
+make the nice distinctions you would have me, and a sot in broadcloth is
+as odious as one in rags. Forgive me, but I cannot dance with that
+silver-labelled decanter again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby was a genuine little piece of womanhood; and though she tried to
+speak lightly, her color deepened, as she remembered looks that had
+wounded her like insults, and her indignant eyes silenced the excuses
+rising to her aunt's lips. Mrs. Carroll began to rue the hour she ever
+undertook the guidance of Sister Deborah's headstrong child, and for an
+instant heartily wished she had left her to bloom unseen in the shadow
+of the parsonage; but she concealed her annoyance, still hoping to
+overcome the girl's absurd resolve, by saying, mildly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As you please, dear; but if you refuse Mr. Ellenborough, you will be
+obliged to sit through the dance, which is your favorite, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby's countenance fell, for she had forgotten that, and the Lancers
+was to her the crowning rapture of the night. She paused a moment, and
+Aunt Pen brightened; but Debby made her little sacrifice to principle
+as heroically as many a greater one had been made, and, with a wistful
+look down the long room, answered steadily, though her foot kept time to
+the first strains as she spoke,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then I will sit, Aunt Pen; for that is preferable to staggering about
+the room with a partner who has no idea of the laws of gravitation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall I have the honor of averting either calamity?&quot; said Mr. Evan,
+coming to the rescue with a devotion beautiful to see; for dancing was
+nearly a lost art with him, and the Lancers to a novice is equal to a
+second Labyrinth of Crete.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, thank you!&quot; cried Debby, tumbling fan, bouquet, and handkerchief
+into Mrs. Carroll's lap, with a look of relief that repaid him fourfold
+for the trials he was about to undergo. They went merrily away together,
+leaving Aunt Pen to wish that it was according to the laws of etiquette
+to rap officious gentlemen over the knuckles, when they introduce their
+fingers into private pies without permission from the chief cook. How
+the dance went Debby hardly knew, for the conversation fell upon books,
+and in the interest of her favorite theme she found even the &quot;grand
+square&quot; an impertinent interruption, while her own deficiencies became
+almost as great as her partner's; yet, when the music ended with a
+flourish, and her last curtsy was successfully achieved, she longed to
+begin all over again, and secretly regretted that she was engaged four
+deep.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you like our new acquaintance, Dora?&quot; asked Aunt Pen, following
+Joe Leavenworth with her eye, as the &quot;yellow-haired laddie&quot; whirled by
+with the ponderous Miss Flora.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very much; and I'm glad we met as we did, for it makes things free and
+easy, and that is so agreeable in this ceremonious place,&quot; replied
+Debby, looking in quite an opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I'm delighted to hear you say so, dear, for I was afraid you had
+taken a dislike to him, and he is really a very charming young man, just
+the sort of person to make a pleasant companion for a few weeks. These
+little friendships are part of the summer's amusement, and do no harm;
+so smile away, Dora, and enjoy yourself while you may.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, Aunt, I certainly will, and all the more because I have found a
+sensible soul to talk to. Do you know, he is very witty and well
+informed, though he says he never had much time for self-cultivation?
+But I think trouble makes people wise, and he seems to have had a good
+deal, though he leaves it for others to tell of. I am glad you are
+willing I should know him, for I shall enjoy talking about my pet heroes
+with him as a relief from the silly chatter I must keep up most of the
+time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carroll was a woman of one idea; and though a slightly puzzled
+expression appeared in her face, she listened approvingly, and answered,
+with a gracious smile,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, I should not object to your knowing such a person, my love;
+but I'd no idea Joe Leavenworth was a literary man, or had known much
+trouble, except his father's death and his sister Clementina's
+runaway-marriage with her drawing-master.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby opened her brown eyes very wide, and hastily picked at the down on
+her fan, but had no time to correct her aunt's mistake, for the real
+subject of her commendations appeared at that moment, and Mrs. Carroll
+was immediately absorbed in the consumption of a large pink ice.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>&quot;That girl is what I call a surprise-party, now,&quot; remarked Mr. Joe
+confidentially to his cigar, as he pulled off his coat and stuck his
+feet up in the privacy of his own apartment. &quot;She looks as mild as
+strawberries and cream till you come to the complimentary, then she
+turns on a fellow with that deused satirical look of hers, and makes him
+feel like a fool. I'll try the moral dodge to-morrow, and see what
+effect that will have; for she is mighty taking, and I must amuse myself
+somehow, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How many years will it take to change that fresh-hearted little girl
+into a fashionable belle, I wonder?&quot; thought Frank Evan, as he climbed
+the four flights that led to his &quot;sky-parlor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a curious world this is!&quot; mused Debby, with her nightcap in her
+hand. &quot;The right seems odd and rude, the wrong respectable and easy, and
+this sort of life a merry-go-round, with no higher aim than pleasure.
+Well, I have made my Declaration of Independence, and Aunt Pen must be
+ready for a Revolution, if she taxes me too heavily.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As she leaned her hot cheek on her arm, Debby's eye fell on the quaint
+little cap made by the motherly hands that never were tired of working
+for her. She touched it tenderly, and love's simple magic swept the
+gathering shadows from her face, and left it clear again, as her
+thoughts flew home like birds into the shelter of their nest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good night, mother! I'll face temptation steadily. I'll try to take
+life cheerily, and do nothing that shall make your dear face a reproach,
+when it looks into my own again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then Debby said her prayers like any pious child, and lay down to dream
+of pulling buttercups with Baby Bess, and sinking in the twilight on her
+father's knee.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>The history of Debby's first day might serve as a sample of most that
+followed, as week after week went by with varying pleasures and
+increasing interest to more than one young <i>d&eacute;butante</i>. Mrs. Carroll did
+her best, but Debby was too simple for a belle, too honest for a flirt,
+too independent for a fine lady; she would be nothing but her sturdy
+little self, open as daylight, gay as a lark, and blunt as any Puritan.
+Poor Aunt Pen was in despair, till she observed that the girl often
+&quot;took&quot; with the very peculiarities which she was lamenting; this
+somewhat consoled her, and she tried to make the best of the pretty bit
+of homespun which would not and could not become velvet or brocade.
+Seguin, Ellenborough, &amp; Co. looked with lordly scorn upon her, as a worm
+blind to their attractions. Miss MacFlimsy and her &quot;set&quot; quizzed her
+unmercifully behind her back, after being worsted in several passages of
+arms; and more than one successful mamma condoled with Aunt Pen upon the
+terribly defective education of her charge, till that stout matron could
+have found it in her heart to tweak off their caps and walk on them,
+like the irascible Betsey Trotwood.</p>
+
+<p>But Debby had a circle of admirers who loved her with a sincerity few
+summer queens could boast; for they were real friends, won by gentle
+arts, and retained by the gracious sweetness of her nature. Moon-faced
+babies crowed and clapped their chubby hands when she passed by their
+wicker thrones; story-loving children clustered round her knee, and
+never were denied; pale invalids found wild-flowers on their pillows;
+and forlorn papas forgot the state of the money-market when she sang for
+them the homely airs their daughters had no time to learn. Certain plain
+young ladies poured their woes into her friendly ear, and were
+comforted; several smart Sophomores fell into a state of chronic
+stammer, blush, and adoration, when she took a motherly interest in
+their affairs; and a melancholy old Frenchman blessed her with the
+enthusiasm of his nation, because she put a posy in the button-hole of
+his rusty coat, and never failed to smile and bow as he passed by. Yet
+Debby was no Edgeworth heroine, preternaturally prudent, wise, and
+untemptable; she had a fine crop of piques, vanities, and dislikes
+growing up under this new style of cultivation. She loved admiration,
+enjoyed her purple and fine linen, hid new-born envy, disappointed hope,
+and wounded pride behind a smiling face, and often thought with a sigh
+of the humdrum duties that awaited her at home. But under the airs and
+graces Aunt Pen cherished with such sedulous care, under the flounces
+and furbelows Victorine daily adjusted with groans, under the polish
+which she acquired with feminine ease, the girl's heart still beat
+steadfast and strong, and conscience kept watch and ward that no
+traitor should enter in to surprise the citadel which mother-love had
+tried to garrison so well.</p>
+
+<p>In pursuance of his sage resolve, Mr. Joe tried the &quot;moral dodge,&quot; as he
+elegantly expressed it, and, failing in that, followed it up with the
+tragic, religious, negligent, and devoted ditto; but acting was not his
+forte, so Debby routed him in all; and at last, when he was at his wit's
+end for an idea, she suggested one, and completed her victory by saying
+pleasantly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You took me behind the curtain too soon, and now the paste diamonds and
+cotton-velvet don't impose upon me a bit. Just be your natural self, and
+we shall get on nicely, Mr. Leavenworth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The novelty of the proposal struck his fancy, and after a few relapses
+it was carried into effect, and thenceforth, with Debby, he became the
+simple, good-humored lad Nature designed him to be, and, as a proof of
+it, soon fell very sincerely in love.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Evan, seated in the parquet of society, surveyed the dress-circle
+with much the same expression that Debby had seen during Aunt Pen's
+oration; but he soon neglected that amusement to watch several actors in
+the drama going on before his eyes, while a strong desire to perform a
+part therein slowly took possession of his mind. Debby always had a look
+of welcome when he came, always treated him with the kindness of a
+generous woman who has had an opportunity to forgive, and always watched
+the serious, solitary man with a great compassion for his loss, a
+growing admiration for his upright life. More than once the beach birds
+saw two figures pacing the sands at sunrise with the peace of early day
+upon their faces and the light of a kindred mood shining in their eyes.
+More than once the friendly ocean made a third in the pleasant
+conversation, and its low undertone came and went between the mellow
+bass and silvery treble of the human voices with a melody that lent
+another charm to interviews which soon grew wondrous sweet to man and
+maid. Aunt Pen seldom saw the twain together, seldom spoke of Evan; and
+Debby held her peace, for, when she planned to make her innocent
+confessions, she found that what seemed much to her was nothing to
+another ear and scarcely worth the telling; so, unconscious as yet
+whither the green path led, she went on her way, leading two lives, one
+rich and earnest, hoarded deep within herself, the other frivolous and
+gay for all the world to criticize. But those venerable spinsters, the
+Fates, took the matter into their own hands, and soon got the better of
+those short-sighted matrons, Mesdames Grundy and Carroll; for, long
+before they knew it, Frank and Debby had begun to read together a book
+greater than Dickens ever wrote, and when they had come to the fairest
+part of the sweet story Adam first told Eve, they looked for the name
+upon the title-page, and found that it was &quot;Love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Eight weeks came and went,&mdash;eight wonderfully happy weeks to Debby and
+her friend; for &quot;propinquity&quot; had worked more wonders than poor Mrs.
+Carroll knew, as the only one she saw or guessed was the utter
+captivation of Joe Leavenworth. He had become &quot;himself&quot; to such an
+extent that a change of identity would have been a relief; for the
+object of his adoration showed no signs of relenting, and he began to
+fear, that, as Debby said, her heart was &quot;not in the market.&quot; She was
+always friendly, but never made those interesting betrayals of regard
+which are so encouraging to youthful gentlemen &quot;who fain would climb,
+yet fear to fall.&quot; She never blushed when he pressed her hand, never
+fainted or grew pale when he appeared with a smashed trotting-wagon and
+a black eye, and actually slept through a serenade that would have won
+any other woman's soul out of her body with its despairing quavers.
+Matters were getting desperate; for horses lost their charms, &quot;flowing
+bowls&quot; palled upon his lips, ruffled shirt-bosoms no longer delighted
+him, and hops possessed no soothing power to allay the anguish of his
+mind. Mr. Seguin, after unavailing ridicule and pity, took compassion
+on him, and from his large experience suggested a remedy, just as he was
+departing for a more congenial sphere.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now don't be an idiot, Joe, but, if you want to keep your hand in and
+go through a regular chapter of flirtation, just right about face, and
+devote yourself to some one else. Nothing like jealousy to teach
+womankind their own minds, and a touch of it will bring little Wilder
+round in a jiffy. Try it, my boy, and good luck to you!&quot;&mdash;with which
+Christian advice Mr. Seguin slapped his pupil on the shoulder, and
+disappeared, like a modern Mephistopheles, in a cloud of cigar-smoke.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm glad he's gone, for in my present state of mind he's not up to my
+mark at all. I'll try his plan, though, and flirt with Clara West; she's
+engaged, so it won't damage her affections; her lover isn't here, so it
+won't disturb his; and, by Jove! I must do something, for I can't stand
+this suspense.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby was infinitely relieved by this new move, and infinitely amused as
+she guessed the motive that prompted it but the more contented she
+seemed, the more violently Mr. Joe flirted with her rival, till at last
+weak-minded Miss Clara began to think her absent George the most
+undesirable of lovers, and to mourn that she ever said &quot;Yes&quot; to a
+merchant's clerk, when she might have said it to a merchant's son. Aunt
+Pen watched and approved this stratagem, hoped for the best results, and
+believed the day won when Debby grew pale and silent, and followed with
+her eyes the young couple who were playing battledoor and shuttlecock
+with each other's hearts, as if she took some interest in the game. But
+Aunt Pen clashed her cymbals too soon; for Debby's trouble had a better
+source than jealousy, and in the silence of the sleepless nights that
+stole her bloom she was taking counsel of her own full heart, and
+resolving to serve another woman as she would herself be served in a
+like peril, though etiquette was outraged and the customs of polite
+society turned upside down.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>&quot;Look, Aunt Pen! what lovely shells and moss I've got! Such a splendid
+scramble over the rocks as I've had with Mrs. Duncan's boys! It seemed
+so like home to run and sing with a troop of topsy-turvy children that
+it did me good; and I wish you had all been there to see,&quot; cried Debby,
+running into the drawing-room, one day, where Mrs. Carroll and a circle
+of ladies sat enjoying a dish of highly flavored scandal, as they
+exercised their eyesight over fancy-work.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear Dora, spare my nerves; and if you have any regard for the
+proprieties of life, don't go romping in the sun with a parcel of noisy
+boys. If you could see what an object you are, I think you would try to
+imitate Miss Clara, who is always a model of elegant repose.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Miss West primmed up her lips, and settled a fold in her ninth flounce,
+as Mrs. Carroll spoke, while the whole group fixed their eyes with
+dignified disapproval on the invader of their refined society. Debby had
+come like a fresh wind into a sultry room; but no one welcomed the
+healthful visitant, no one saw a pleasant picture in the bright-faced
+girl with wind-tossed hair and rustic hat heaped with moss and
+many-tinted shells; they only saw that her gown was wet, her gloves
+forgotten, and her scarf trailing at her waist in a manner no well-bred
+lady could approve. The sunshine faded out of Debby's face, and there
+was a touch of bitterness in her tone, as she glanced at the circle of
+fashion-plates, saying, with an earnestness which caused Miss West to
+open her pale eyes to their widest extent,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Aunt Pen, don't freeze me yet,&mdash;don't take away my faith in simple
+things, but let me be a child a little longer,&mdash;let me play and sing and
+keep my spirit blithe among the dandelions and the robins while I can;
+for trouble comes soon enough, and all my life will be the richer and
+the better for a happy youth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carroll had nothing at hand to offer in reply to this appeal, and
+four ladies dropped their work to stare; but Frank Evan looked in from
+the piazza, saying, as he beckoned like a boy,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll play with you, Miss Dora; come and make sand pies upon the shore.
+Please let her, Mrs. Carroll; we'll be very good, and not wet our
+pinafores or feet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting for permission, Debby poured her treasures into the lap
+of a certain lame Freddy, and went away to a kind of play she had never
+known before. Quiet as a chidden child, she walked beside her companion,
+who looked down at the little figure, longing to take it on his knee and
+call the sunshine back again. That he dared not do; but accident, the
+lover's friend, performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The
+old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off
+his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late
+lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave
+was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when
+she returned, she was herself again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A thousand thanks; but does Mademoiselle remember the forfeit I might
+demand to add to the favor she has already done me?&quot; asked the gallant
+old gentleman, as Debby took the hat off her own head, and presented it
+with a martial salute.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, I had forgotten that; but you may claim it, Sir,&mdash;indeed, you may;
+I only wish I could do something more to give you pleasure&quot;; and Debby
+looked up into the withered face which had grown familiar to her, with
+kind eyes, full of pity and respect.</p>
+
+<p>Her manner touched the old man very much; he bent his gray head before
+her, saying, gratefully,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My child, I am not good enough to salute these blooming cheeks; but I
+shall pray the Virgin to reward you for the compassion you bestow on the
+poor exile, and I shall keep your memory very green through all my
+life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand, as if it were a queen's, and went on his way,
+thinking of the little daughter whose death left him childless in a
+foreign land.</p>
+
+<p>Debby softly began to sing, &quot;Oh, come unto the yellow sands!&quot; but
+stopped in the middle of a line, to say,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shall I tell you why I did what Aunt Pen would call a very unladylike
+and improper thing, Mr. Evan?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you will be so kind&quot;; and her companion looked delighted at the
+confidence about to be reposed in him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Somewhere across this great wide sea I hope I have a brother,&quot; Debby
+said, with softened voice and a wistful look into the dim horizon. &quot;Five
+years ago he left us, and we have never heard from him since, except to
+know that he landed safely in Australia. People tell us he is dead; but
+I believe he will yet come home; and so I love to help and pity any man
+who needs it, rich or poor, young or old, hoping that as I do by them
+some tender-hearted woman far away will do by Brother Will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As Debby spoke, across Frank Evan's face there passed the look that
+seldom comes but once to any young man's countenance; for suddenly the
+moment dawned when love asserted its supremacy, and putting pride,
+doubt, and fear underneath its feet, ruled the strong heart royally and
+bent it to its will. Debby's thoughts had floated across the sea; but
+they came swiftly back when her companion spoke again, steadily and
+slow, but with a subtile change in tone and manner which arrested them
+at once.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Dora, if you should meet a man who had known a laborious youth, a
+solitary manhood, who had no sweet domestic ties to make home beautiful
+and keep his nature warm, who longed most ardently to be so blessed, and
+made it the aim of his life to grow more worthy the good gift, should it
+ever come,&mdash;if you should learn that you possessed the power to make
+this fellow-creature's happiness, could you find it in your gentle heart
+to take compassion on him for the love of 'Brother Will'?&quot; </p>
+
+<p>Debby was silent, wondering why heart and nerves and brain were stirred
+by such a sudden thrill, why she dared not look up, and why, when she
+desired so much to speak, she could only answer, in a voice that sounded
+strange to her own ears,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot tell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Still, steadily and slow, with strong emotion deepening and softening
+his voice, the lover at her side went on,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Will you ask yourself this question in some quiet hour? For such a man
+has lived in the sunshine of your presence for eight happy weeks, and
+now, when his holiday is done, he finds that the old solitude will be
+more sorrowful than ever, unless he can discover whether his summer
+dream will change into a beautiful reality. Miss Dora, I have very
+little to offer you; a faithful heart to cherish you, a strong arm to
+work for you, an honest name to give into your keeping,&mdash;these are all;
+but if they have any worth in your eyes, they are most truly yours
+forever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Debby was steadying her voice to reply, when a troop of bathers came
+shouting down the bank, and she took flight into her dressing-room,
+there to sit staring at the wall, till the advent of Aunt Pen forced her
+to resume the business of the hour by assuming her aquatic attire and
+stealing shyly down into the surf.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Evan, still pacing in the footprints they had lately made, watched
+the lithe figure tripping to and fro, and, as he looked, murmured to
+himself the last line of a ballad Debby sometimes sang,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Dance light! for my heart it lies under your feet, love!&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Presently a great wave swept Debby up, and stranded her very near him,
+much to her confusion and his satisfaction. Shaking the spray out of her
+eyes, she was hurrying away, when Frank said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will trip, Miss Dora; let me tie these strings for you&quot;; and,
+suiting the action to the word, he knelt down and began to fasten the
+cords of her bathing-shoe.</p>
+
+<p>Debby stood looking down at the tall head bent before her, with a
+curious sense of wonder that a look from her could make a strong man
+flush and pale, as he had done; and she was trying to concoct some
+friendly speech, when Frank, still fumbling at the knots, said, very
+earnestly and low,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forgive me, if I am selfish in pressing for an answer; but I must go
+to-morrow, and a single word will change my whole future for the better
+or the worse. Won't you speak it, Dora?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If they had been alone, Debby would have put her arms about his neck,
+and said it with all her heart; but she had a presentiment that she
+should cry, if her love found vent; and here forty pairs of eyes were on
+them, and salt water seemed superfluous. Besides, Debby had not breathed
+the air of coquetry so long without a touch of the infection; and the
+love of power, that lies dormant in the meekest woman's breast, suddenly
+awoke and tempted her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you catch me before I reach that rock, perhaps I will say 'Yes,'&quot;
+was her unexpected answer; and before her lover caught her meaning, she
+was floating leisurely away.</p>
+
+<p>Frank was not in bathing-costume, and Debby never dreamed that he would
+take her at her word; but she did not know the man she had to deal with;
+for, taking no second thought, he flung hat and coat away, and dashed
+into the sea. This gave a serious aspect to Debby's foolish jest. A
+feeling of dismay seized her, when she saw a resolute face dividing the
+waves behind her, and thought of the rash challenge she had given; but
+she had a spirit of her own, and had profited well by Mr. Joe's
+instructions; so she drew a long breath, and swam as if for life,
+instead of love. Evan was incumbered by his clothing, and Debby had much
+the start of him; but, like a second Leander, he hoped to win his Hero,
+and, lending every muscle to the work, gained rapidly upon the little
+hat which was his beacon through the foam. Debby heard the deep
+breathing drawing nearer and nearer, as her pursuer's strong arms cleft
+the water and sent it rippling past her lips. Something like terror took
+possession of her; for the strength seemed going out of her limbs, and
+the rock appeared to recede before her; but the unconquerable blood of
+the Pilgrims was in her veins, and &quot;<i>Nil desperandum</i>&quot; her motto; so,
+setting her teeth, she muttered, defiantly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll not be beaten, if I go to the bottom!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A great splashing arose, and when Evan recovered the use of his eyes,
+the pagoda-hat had taken a sudden turn, and seemed making for the
+farthest point of the goal. &quot;I am sure of her now,&quot; thought Frank; and,
+like a gallant sea-god, he bore down upon his prize, clutching it with a
+shout of triumph. But the hat was empty, and like a mocking echo came
+Debby's laugh, as she climbed, exhausted, to a cranny in the rock.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A very neat thing, by Jove! Deuse take me if you a'n't 'an honor to
+your teacher, and a terror to the foe,' Miss Wilder,&quot; cried Mr. Joe, as
+he came up from a solitary cruise and dropped anchor at her side. &quot;Here,
+bring along the hat, Evan; I'm going to crown the victor with
+appropriate what-d'-ye-call-'ems,&quot; he continued, pulling a handful of
+sea-weed that looked like well-boiled greens.</p>
+
+<p>Frank came up, smiling; but his lips were white, and in his eye a look
+Debby could not meet; so, being full of remorse, she naturally assumed
+an air of gayety, and began to sing the merriest air she knew, merely
+because she longed to throw herself upon the stones and cry violently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was 'most as exciting as a regatta, and you pulled well, Evan; but
+you had too much ballast aboard, and Miss Wilder ran up false colors
+just in time to save her ship. What was the wager?&quot; asked the lively
+Joseph, complacently surveying his marine millinery, which would have
+scandalized a fashionable mermaid.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Only a trifle,&quot; answered Debby, knotting up her braids with a
+revengeful jerk.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's taken the wind out of your sails, I fancy, Evan, for you look
+immensely Byronic with the starch minus in your collar and your hair in
+a poetic toss. Come, I'll try a race with you; and Miss Wilder will
+dance all the evening with the winner. Bless the man, what's he doing
+down there? Burying sunfish, hey?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Frank had been sitting below them on a narrow strip of sand, absently
+piling up a little mound that bore some likeness to a grave. As his
+companion spoke, he looked at it, and a sudden flush of feeling swept
+across his face, as he replied,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, only a dead hope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Deuse take it, yes, a good many of that sort of craft founder in these
+waters, as I know to my sorrow&quot;; and, sighing tragically, Mr. Joe turned
+to help Debby from her perch, but she had glided silently into the sea,
+and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>For the next four hours the poor girl suffered the sharpest pain she had
+ever known; for now she clearly saw the strait her folly had betrayed
+her into. Frank Evan was a proud man, and would not ask her love again,
+believing she had tacitly refused it; and how could she tell him that
+she had trifled with the heart she wholly loved and longed to make her
+own? She could not confide in Aunt Pen, for that worldly lady would have
+no sympathy to bestow. She longed for her mother; but there was no time
+to write, for Frank was going on the morrow,&mdash;might even then be gone;
+and as this fear came over her, she covered up her face and wished that
+she were dead. Poor Debby! her last mistake was sadder than her first,
+and she was reaping a bitter harvest from her summer's sowing. She sat
+and thought till her cheeks burned and her temples throbbed; but she
+dared not ease her pain with tears. The gong sounded like a Judgment-Day
+trump of doom, and she trembled at the idea of confronting many eyes
+with such a telltale face; but she could not stay behind, for Aunt Pen
+must know the cause. She tried to play her hard part well; but wherever
+she looked, some fresh anxiety appeared, as if every fault and folly of
+those months had blossomed suddenly within the hour. She saw Frank Evan
+more sombre and more solitary than when she met him first, and cried
+regretfully within herself, &quot;How could I so forget the truth I owed
+him?&quot; She saw Clara West watching with eager eyes for the coming of
+young Leavenworth, and sighed, &quot;This is the fruit of my wicked vanity!&quot;
+She saw Aunt Pen regarding her with an anxious face, and longed to say,
+&quot;Forgive me, for I have not been sincere!&quot; At last, as her trouble grew,
+she resolved to go away and have a quiet &quot;think,&quot;&mdash;a remedy which had
+served her in many a lesser perplexity; so, stealing out, she went to a
+grove of cedars usually deserted at that hour. But in ten minutes Joe
+Leavenworth appeared at the door of the summer-house, and, looking in,
+said, with a well-acted start of pleasure and surprise,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Beg pardon, I thought there was no one here. My dear Miss Wilder, you
+look contemplative; but I fancy it wouldn't do to ask the subject of
+your meditations, would it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He paused with such an evident intention of remaining that Debby
+resolved to make use of the moment, and ease her conscience of one care
+that burdened it; therefore she answered his question with her usual
+directness,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My meditations were partly about you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Joe was guilty of the weakness of blushing violently and looking
+immensely gratified; but his rapture was of short duration, for Debby
+went on very earnestly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe I am going to do what you may consider a very impertinent
+thing; but I would rather be unmannerly than unjust to others or untrue
+to my own sense of right. Mr. Leavenworth, if you were an older man, I
+should not dare to say this to you; but I have brothers of my own, and,
+remembering how many unkind things they do for want of thought, I
+venture to remind you that a woman's heart is a perilous plaything, and
+too tender to be used for a selfish purpose or an hour's pleasure. I
+know this kind of amusement is not considered wrong; but it <i>is</i> wrong,
+and I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, or sit silent while another woman
+is allowed to deceive herself and wound the heart that trusts her. Oh,
+if you love your own sisters, be generous, be just, and do not destroy
+that poor girl's happiness, but go away before your sport becomes a
+bitter pain to her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Joe Leavenworth had stood staring at Debby with a troubled countenance,
+feeling as if all the misdemeanors of his life were about to be paraded
+before him; but, as he listened to her plea, the womanly spirit that
+prompted it appealed more loudly than her words, and in his really
+generous heart he felt regret for what had never seemed a fault before.
+Shallow as he was, nature was stronger than education, and he admired
+and accepted what many a wiser, worldlier man would have resented with
+auger or contempt. He loved Debby with all his little might; he meant to
+tell her so, and graciously present his fortune and himself for her
+acceptance; but now, when the moment came, the well-turned speech he had
+prepared vanished from his memory, and with the better eloquence of
+feeling he blundered out his passion like a very boy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Miss Dora, I never meant to make trouble between Clara and her lover;
+upon my soul, I didn't, and wish Seguin had not put the notion into my
+head, since it has given you pain. I only tried to pique you into
+showing some regret, when I neglected you; but you didn't, and then I
+got desperate and didn't care what became of any one. Oh, Dora, if you
+knew how much I loved you, I am sure you'd forgive it, and let me prove
+my repentance by giving up everything that you dislike. I mean what I
+say; upon my life I do; and I'll keep my word, if you will only let me
+hope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If Debby had wanted a proof of her love for Frank Evan, she might have
+found it in the fact that she had words enough at her command now, and
+no difficulty in being sisterly pitiful toward her second suitor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please get up,&quot; she said; for Mr. Joe, feeling very humble and very
+earnest, had gone down upon his knees, and sat there entirely regardless
+of his personal appearance.</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed; and Debby stood looking up at him with her kindest aspect, as
+she said, more tenderly than she had ever spoken to him before,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you for the affection you offer me, but I cannot accept it, for I
+have nothing to give you in return but the friendliest regard, the most
+sincere good-will. I know you will forgive me, and do for your own sake
+the good things you would have done for mine, that I may add to my
+esteem a real respect for one who has been very kind to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll try,&mdash;indeed, I will, Miss Dora, though it will be powerful hard
+without yourself for a help and a reward.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Poor Joe choked a little, but called up an unexpected manliness, and
+added, stoutly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't think I shall be offended at your speaking so, or saying 'No' to
+me,&mdash;not a bit; it 's all right, and I'm much obliged to you. I might
+have known you couldn't care for such a fellow as I am, and don't blame
+you, for nobody in the world is good enough for you. I'll go away at
+once, I'll try to keep my promise, and I hope you'll be very happy all
+your life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook Debby's hands heartily, and hurried down the steps, but at the
+bottom paused and looked back. Debby stood upon the threshold with
+sunshine dancing on her winsome face, and kind words trembling on her
+lips; for the moment it seemed impossible to part, and, with an
+impetuous gesture, he cried to her,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, Dora, let me stay and try to win you! for everything is possible to
+love, and I never knew how dear you were to me till now!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There were sudden tears in the young man's eyes, the flush of a genuine
+emotion on his cheek, the tremor of an ardent longing in his voice, and,
+for the first time, a very true affection strengthened his whole
+countenance. Debby's heart was full of penitence; she had given so much
+pain to more than one that she longed to atone for it,&mdash;longed to do
+some very friendly thing, and soothe some trouble such as she herself
+had known. She looked into the eager face uplifted to her own and
+thought of Will, then stooped and touched her lover's forehead with the
+lips that softly whispered, &quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If she had cared for him, she never would have done it; poor Joe knew
+that, and murmuring an incoherent &quot;Thank you!&quot; he rushed away, feeling
+very much as he remembered to have felt when his baby sister died and he
+wept his grief away upon his mother's neck. He began his preparations
+for departure at once, in a burst of virtuous energy quite refreshing to
+behold, thinking within himself, as he flung his cigar-case into the
+grate, kicked a billiard-ball into a corner, and suppressed his favorite
+allusion to the Devil,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is a new sort of thing to me, but I can bear it, and upon my life
+I think I feel the better for it already.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so he did; for though he was no Augustine to turn in an hour from
+worldly hopes and climb to sainthood through long years of inward
+strife, yet in after-times no one knew how many false steps had been
+saved, how many small sins repented of, through the power of the memory
+that far away a generous woman waited to respect him, and in his secret
+soul he owned that one of the best moments of his life was that in which
+little Debby Wilder whispered &quot;No,&quot; and kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>As he passed from sight, the girl leaned her head upon her hand,
+thinking sorrowfully to herself,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What right had I to censure him, when my own actions are so far from
+true? I have done a wicked thing, and as an honest girl I should undo
+it, if I can. I have broken through the rules of a false propriety for
+Clara's sake; can I not do as much for Frank's? I will. I'll find him,
+if I search the house,&mdash;and tell him all, though I never dare to look
+him in the face again, and Aunt Pen sends me home to-morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Full of zeal and courage, Debby caught up her hat and ran down the
+steps, but, as she saw Frank Evan coming up the path, a sudden panic
+fell upon her, and she could only stand mutely waiting his approach.</p>
+
+<p>It is asserted that Love is blind; and on the strength of that popular
+delusion novel heroes and heroines go blundering through three volumes
+of despair with the plain truth directly under their absurd noses: but
+in real life this theory is not supported; for to a living man the
+countenance of a loving woman is more eloquent than any language, more
+trustworthy than a world of proverbs, more beautiful than the sweetest
+love-lay ever sung.</p>
+
+<p>Frank looked at Debby, and &quot;all her heart stood up in her eyes,&quot; as she
+stretched her hands to him, though her lips only whispered very low,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forgive me, and let me say the 'Yes' I should have said so long ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Had she required any assurance of her lover's truth, or any reward for
+her own, she would have found it in the change that dawned so swiftly in
+his face, smoothing the lines upon his forehead, lighting the gloom of
+his eye, stirring his firm lips with a sudden tremor, and making his
+touch as soft as it was strong. For a moment both stood very still,
+while Debby's tears streamed down like summer rain; then Frank drew her
+into the green shadow of the grove, and its peace soothed her like a
+mother's voice, till she looked up smiling with a shy delight her glance
+had never known before. The slant sunbeams dropped a benediction on
+their heads, the robins peeped, and the cedars whispered, but no rumor
+of what further passed ever went beyond the precincts of the wood; for
+such hours are sacred, and Nature guards the first blossoms of a human
+love as tenderly as she nurses May-flowers underneath the leaves.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>Mrs. Carroll had retired to her bed with a nervous headache, leaving
+Debby to the watch and ward of friendly Mrs. Earle, who performed her
+office finely by letting her charge entirely alone. In her dreams Aunt
+Pen was just imbibing a copious draught of Champagne at the
+wedding-breakfast of her niece, &quot;Mrs. Joseph Leavenworth,&quot; when she was
+roused by the bride elect, who passed through the room with a lamp and a
+shawl in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What time is it, and where are you going, dear?&quot; she asked, dozily
+wondering if the carriage for the wedding-tour was at the door so soon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's only nine, and I am going for a sail, Aunt Pen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As Debby spoke, the light flashed full into her face, and a sudden
+thought into Mrs. Carroll's mind. She rose up from her pillow, looking
+as stately in her nightcap as Maria Theresa is said to have done in like
+unassuming head-gear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Something has happened, Dora! What have you done? What have you said? I
+insist upon knowing immediately,&quot; she demanded, with somewhat startling
+brevity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have said 'No' to Mr. Leavenworth and 'Yes' to Mr. Evan; and I should
+like to go home to-morrow, if you please,&quot; was the equally concise
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Carroll fell flat in her bed, and lay there stiff and rigid as
+Morlena Kenwigs. Debby gently drew the curtains, and stole away, leaving
+Aunt Pen's wrath to effervesce before morning.</p>
+
+<p>The moon was hanging luminous and large on the horizon's edge, sending
+shafts of light before her till the melancholy ocean seemed to smile,
+and along that shining pathway happy Debby and her lover floated into
+that new world where all things seem divine. </p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="wet_weather_work" id="wet_weather_work"></a>WET-WEATHER WORK.</h2>
+
+<p>BY A FARMER.</p>
+
+<p>III.</p>
+
+
+<p>Will any of our artists ever give us, on canvas, a good, rattling, saucy
+shower? There is room in it for a rare handling of the brush:&mdash;the
+vague, indistinguishable line of hills, (as I see them to-day,)&mdash;the
+wild scud of gray, with fine gray lines, slanted by the wind, and
+trending eagerly downward,&mdash;the swift, petulant dash into the little
+pools of the highway, making fairy bubbles that break as soon as they
+form,&mdash;the land smoking with excess of moisture,&mdash;and the pelted leaves
+all wincing and shining and adrip.</p>
+
+<p>I know no painter who has so well succeeded in putting a wet sky into
+his pictures as Turner; and in this I judge him by the literal
+<i>chiaroscuro</i> of engraving. In proof of it, I take down from my shelf
+his &quot;Rivers of France&quot;: a book over which I have spent a great many
+pleasant hours, and idle ones too,&mdash;if it be idle to travel leagues at
+the turning of a page, and to see hill-sides spotty with vineyards, and
+great bridges wallowing through the Loire, and to watch the fishermen of
+Honfleur putting to sea. There are skies, as I said, in some of these
+pictures which make a man instinctively think of his umbrella, or of his
+distance from home: no actual rain-drift stretching from them, but such
+unmistakable promise of a rainy afternoon, in their little parallel
+wisps of dark-bottomed clouds, as would make a provident farmer order
+every scythe out of the field.</p>
+
+<p>In the &quot;Chair of Gargantua,&quot; on which my eye falls, as I turn over the
+pages, an actual thunder-storm is breaking. The scene is somewhere upon
+the Lower Seine. From the middle of the left of the picture the lofty
+river-bank stretches far across, forming all the background;&mdash;its
+extreme distance hidden by a bold thrust of the right bank, which juts
+into the picture just far enough to shelter a white village, which lies
+gleaming upon the edge of the water. On all the foreground lies the
+river, broad as a bay. The storm is coming down the stream. Over the
+left spur of the bank, and over the meeting of the banks, it broods
+black as night. Through a little rift there is a glimpse of serene sky,
+from which a mellow light streams down upon the edges and angles of a
+few cliffs upon the farther shore. All the rest is heavily shadowed. The
+edges of the coming tempest are tortuous and convulsed, and you know
+that a fierce wind is driving the black billows on; yet all the water
+under the lee of the shores is as tranquil as a dream; a white sail,
+near to the white village, hangs slouchingly to the mast: but in the
+foreground the tempest has already caught the water; a tall lugger is
+scudding and careening under it as if mad; the crews of three
+fishermen's boats, that toss on the vexed water, are making a confused
+rush to shorten sail, and you may almost fancy that you hear their
+outcries sweeping down the wind. In the middle scene, a little steamer
+is floating tranquilly on water which is yet calm; and a column of smoke
+piling up from its tall chimney rises for a space placidly enough, until
+the wind catches and whisks it before the storm. I would wager ten to
+one, upon the mere proof in the picture, that the fishermen and the
+washerwomen in the foreground will be drenched within an hour.</p>
+
+<p>When I have once opened the covers of Turner,&mdash;especially upon such a
+wet day as this,&mdash;it is hard for me to leave him until I have wandered
+all up and down the Loire, revisited Tours and its quiet cathedral, and
+Blois with its stately chateau, and Amboise with its statelier, and
+coquetted again with memories of the Maid of Orl&eacute;ans.</p>
+
+<p>From the Upper Loire it is easy to slip into the branching valleys
+which sidle away from it far down into the country of the Auvergne.
+Turner does not go there, indeed; the more's the pity; but I do, since
+it is the most attractive region rurally (Brittany perhaps excepted) in
+all France. The valleys are green, the brooks are frequent, the rivers
+are tortuous, the mountains are high, and luxuriant walnut-trees embower
+the roads. It was near to Moulins, on the way hither, through the
+pleasant Bourbonnois, that Tristram Shandy met with the poor,
+half-crazed Maria, piping her evening service to the Virgin.</p>
+
+<p>And at that thought I must do no less than pull down my &quot;Tristram
+Shandy,&quot; (on which the dust of years has accumulated,) and read again
+that tender story of the lorn maiden, with her attendant goat, and her
+hair caught up in a silken fillet, and her shepherd's pipe, from which
+she pours out a low, plaintive wail upon the evening air.</p>
+
+<p>It is not a little singular that a British author should have supplied
+the only Arcadian resident of all this Arcadian region. The Abb&eacute; Delille
+was, indeed, born hereabout, within sight of the bold Puy de Dome, and
+within marketing-distance of the beautiful Clermont. But there is very
+little that is Arcadian, in freshness or simplicity, in either the
+&quot;Gardens&quot; or the other verse of Delille.</p>
+
+<p>Out of his own mouth (the little green-backed book, my boy) I will
+condemn him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Ce n'est plus cette simple et rustique d&eacute;esse</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Qui suit ses vieilles lois; c'est une enchanteresse</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Qui, la baguette en main, par des hardis travaux</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Fait na&icirc;tre des aspects et des tr&eacute;sors nouveaux,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Compose un sol plus riche et des races plus belles,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Fertilise les monts, dompte les rocs rebelles.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The <i>baguette</i> of Delille is no shepherd's crook; it has more the
+fashion of a drumstick,&mdash;<i>baguette de tambour</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If I follow on southward to Provence, whither I am borne upon the scuds
+of rain over Turner's pictures, and the pretty Bourbonnois, and the
+green mountains of Auvergne, I find all the characteristic literature of
+that land of olives is only of love or war: the vines, the
+olive-orchards, and the yellow hill-sides pass for nothing. And if I
+read an old <i>Sirvente</i> of the Troubadours, beginning with a certain
+redolence of the fields, all this yields presently to knights, and
+steeds caparisoned,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Cavalliers ab cavals armatz.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>It is smooth reading, and is attributed to Bertrand de Born,<a name="fnanchor_3_3" id="fnanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#footnote_3_3"><sup>3</sup></a> who
+lived in the time when even the lion-hearted King Richard turned his
+brawny fingers to the luting of a song. Let us listen:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;The beautiful spring delights me well,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">When flowers and leaves are growing;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And it pleases my heart to hear the swell</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing</span><br />
+<span class="spanml4m">In the echoing wood;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And I love to see, all scattered around,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Pavilions and tents on the martial ground;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml4m">And my spirit finds it good</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">To see, on the level plains beyond,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Gay knights and steeds caparisoned.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_3_3" id="footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#fnanchor_3_3"><span class="label">3</span></a>
+M. Raynouard, <i>Po&eacute;sies de Troubadours</i>, II. 209.</p></div>
+
+<p>But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse,
+the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a
+sturdy clang of battle, that would not discredit our own times:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;I tell you that nothing my soul can cheer,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Or banqueting or reposing,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Like the onset cry of 'Charge them!' rung</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">From each side, as in battle closing;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml4m">Where the horses neigh,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And the call to 'aid' is echoing loud,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And there, on the earth, the lowly and proud</span><br />
+<span class="spanml4m">In the foss together lie,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And yonder is piled the mingled heap</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Of the brave that scaled the trenches steep.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Barons! your castles in safety place,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Your cities and villages, too,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Before ye haste to the battle-scene:</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">And Papiol! quickly go,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And tell the lord of 'Yes and No'</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">That peace already too long hath been!&quot;<a name="fnanchor_3_4" id="fnanchor_3_4"></a><a href="#footnote_3_4"><sup>4</sup></a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_3_4" id="footnote_3_4"></a><a href="#fnanchor_3_4"><span class="label">4</span></a>
+I cannot forbear taking a bit of margin to print the
+closing stanzas of the original, which carry the clash of sabres in
+their very sound.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">"Ie us dic que tan no m' a sabor</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Manjars ni beure ni dormir</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Cum a quant aug cridar: A lor!</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">D'ambas las partz; et aug agnir</span><br />
+<span class="spanml4m">Cavals voitz per l'ombratge,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Et aug cridar: Aidatz! Aidatz!</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">E vei cazer per los fossatz</span><br />
+<span class="spanml4m">Paucs e grans per l'erbatge,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">E vei los mortz que pels costatz</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">An los tronsons outre passatz.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml3m">"Baros, metetz et gatge</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Castels e vilas e ciutatz,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Enans q' usquecs no us guerreiatz.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml3m">"Papiol, d'agradatge</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Ad <i>Oc e No</i> t' en vai viatz,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Dic li que trop estan en patz."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>It would seem that the men of that time, like men of most times, bore a
+considerable contempt for people who said "Yes" one day, and "No" the
+next.</p></div>
+
+<p>I am on my way to Italy, (it may as well be confessed,) where I had
+fully intended to open my rainy day's work; but Turner has kept me, and
+then Auvergne, and then the brisk battle-song of a Troubadour.</p>
+
+<p>When I was upon the Cajano farm of Lorenzo the Magnificent, during my
+last &quot;spell of wet,&quot; it was uncourteous not to refer to the pleasant
+commemorative poem of &quot;Ambra,&quot; which Lorenzo himself wrote, and which,
+whatever may be said against the conception and conduct of it, shows in
+its opening stanzas that the great Medici was as appreciative of rural
+images&mdash;fir-boughs with loaded snows, thick cypresses in which late
+birds lurked, sharp-leaved junipers, and sturdy pines fighting the
+wind&mdash;as ever he had been of antique jewels, or of the rhythm of such as
+Politiano. And if I have spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was
+only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When
+he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan,
+we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna
+Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped
+with such a relishing <i>gusto</i> into the colors of the hyacinths and
+trembling pansies, and into all the blandishments of a gushing and
+wanton spring.<a name="fnanchor_4_4" id="fnanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#footnote_4_4"><sup>5</sup></a></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_4_4" id="footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#fnanchor_4_4"><span class="label">5</span></a>
+See Wm. Parr Greswell's <i>Memoirs of Politiano</i>, with
+translations.</p></div>
+
+<p>But classical affectation was the fashion of that day. A certain
+Bolognese noble, Ber&ograve; by name, wrote ten Latin books on rural affairs:
+Tiraboschi says he never saw them; neither have I. Another scholar,
+Pietro da Barga, who astonished his teachers by his wonderful
+proficiency at the age of twelve, and who was afterward guest of the
+French ambassador in Venice, wrote a poem on rural matters, to which,
+with an exaggerated classicism, he gave the Greek name of
+&quot;<i>Cynegeticon</i>&quot;; and about the same time Giuseppe Voltolina composed
+three books on kitchen-gardening. I name these writers only out of
+sympathy with their topics: I would not advise the reading of them: it
+would involve a long journey and scrupulous search to find them, through
+I know not what out-of-the-way libraries; and if found, no essentially
+new facts or theories could be counted on which are not covered by the
+treatise of Crescenzi. The Pisans or Venetians may possibly have
+introduced a few new plants from the East; the example of the Medici may
+have suggested some improvements in the arrangement of forcing-houses,
+or the outlay of villas; but in all that regarded general husbandry,
+Crescenzi was still the man.</p>
+
+<p>I linger about this period, and the writers of this time, because I
+snuff here and there among them the perfume of a country bouquet, which
+carries the odor of the fields with it, and transports me to the
+&quot;empurpled hill-sides&quot; of Tuscany. Shall I name Sannazaro, with his
+&quot;Arcadia&quot;?&mdash;a dead book now,&mdash;or &quot;Amyntas,&quot; who, before he is tall
+enough to steal apples from the lowest boughs, (so sings Tasso,) plunges
+head and ears in love with Sylvia, the fine daughter of Montano, who has
+a store of cattle, &quot;<i>richissimo d'armenti</i>&quot;?</p>
+
+<p>Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to
+be Governor of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and yet has left a poem of
+fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees. In his suggestions for the
+allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond
+either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln. &quot;Pluck some leafy branch,&quot; he
+says, &quot;and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or
+sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their
+strife&quot;:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml6m">&quot;The two warring bands joyful unite,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And foe embraces foe: each with its lips</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Licking the others' wings, feet, arms, and breast,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Whereon the luscious mixture hath been shed,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And all inebriate with delight.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>So the Swiss,<a name="fnanchor_1_5" id="fnanchor_1_5"></a><a href="#footnote_1_5"><sup>6</sup></a>
+he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are
+appeased by some grave old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words, and
+orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip
+their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget
+outrage. It may have been the sixteenth-century way of closing a battle.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_1_5" id="footnote_1_5"></a><a href="#fnanchor_1_5"><span class="label">6</span></a>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Come quando nei Suizzeri si muove</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Sedizione, e che si grida a l' arme;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Se qualche nom grave allor si leva in piede</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">E comincia a parlar con dolce lingua,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Mitiga i petti barbari e feroci;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">E intanto fa portare ondanti vasi</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Pieni di dolci ed odorati vini;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Ahora ognun le labbra e 'l mento immerge</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Ne' le spumanti tazze,&quot; etc.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Guarini, with all his affectations, has little prettinesses which charm
+like the chirping of a bird;&mdash;as where he paints (in the very first
+scene of the &quot;Pastor Fido&quot;) the little sparrow flitting from fir to
+beech, and from beech to myrtle, and twittering, &quot;How I love! how I
+love!&quot; And the bird-mate (&quot;<i>il suo dolce desio</i>&quot;) twitters in reply,
+&quot;How I love, how I love, too!&quot; &quot;<i>Ardo d' amore anch' io.</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Messer Pietro Bembo was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine
+him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a
+flower,&mdash;except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward
+the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who
+wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and
+learned; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castlian: but nobody reads him; he
+has only a little crypt in the &quot;Autori Diversi.&quot; I think of him as I
+think of fine women who must always rustle in brocade embossed with hard
+jewels, and who never win the triumphs that belong to a charming morning
+<i>d&eacute;shabill&eacute;</i> with only the added improvisation of a rose.</p>
+
+<p>In his &quot;Asolani&quot; Bembo gives a very full and minute description of the
+gardens at Asolo, which relieved the royal retirement of Caterina, the
+Queen of Cyprus. Nothing could be more admirable than the situation:
+there were skirts of mountain which were covered, and are still covered,
+with oaks; there were grottos in the sides of cliffs, and water so
+disposed&mdash;in jets, in pools inclosed by marble, and among rocks&mdash;as to
+counterfeit all the wildness of Nature; there was the same stately array
+of cypresses, and of clipped hedges, which had belonged to the villas of
+Pliny; temples were decorated with blazing frescoes, to which, I dare
+say, Carpaccio may have lent a hand, if not that wild rake, Giorgione.
+Here the pretty Queen, with eight thousand gold ducats a year, (whatever
+that amount may have been,) and some seventy odd retainers, held her
+court; and here Bembo, a dashing young fellow at that time of seven or
+eight and twenty, became a party to those disquisitions on Love, and to
+those recitations of song, part of which he has recorded in the
+&quot;Asolani.&quot; I am sorry to say, the beauty of the place, so far as regards
+its artificial features, is now all gone. The hall, which may have
+served as the presence-chamber of the Queen, was only a few years since
+doing service as a farmer's barn; and the traces of a Diana and an
+Apollo were still coloring the wall under which a few cows were
+crunching their clover-hay.</p>
+
+<p>All the gardening of Italy at that period, as, indeed, at almost all
+times, depended very much upon architectural accessories: colonnades and
+wall-veil with frescoes make a large part of Italian gardening to this
+day. The Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore, and the Borghese Garden at
+Rome, are fair types. And as I recall the sunny vistas of this last, and
+the noontide loungings upon the marble seats, counting white flecks of
+statues amid the green of cypresses, and watching the shadow which some
+dense-topped pine flings upon a marble flight of steps or a marble
+balustrade, I cannot sneer at the Italian gardening, or wish it were
+other than it is. The art-life of Italy is the crowning and the
+overlapping life. The Campagna seems only a bit of foreground to carry
+the leaping arches of the aqueducts, and to throw the hills of Tivoli
+and Albano to a purple distance. The farmers (<i>fattori</i>) who gallop
+across the fields, in rough sheepskin wrappers, and upon scurvy-looking
+ponies, are more picturesque than thrifty; and if I gallop in company
+with one of them to his home upon the farther edge of the Campagna,
+(which is an allowable wet-day fancy,) I shall find a tall stone house
+smeared over roughly with plaster, and its ground-floor devoted to a
+crazy cart, a pony, a brace of cows, and a few goats; a rude court is
+walled in adjoining the house, where a few pigs are grunting. Ascending
+an oaken stair-way within the door, I come upon the living-room of the
+<i>fattore</i>; the beams overhead are begrimed with smoke, and garnished
+here and there with flitches of bacon; a scant fire of fagots is
+struggling into blaze upon an open hearth; and on a low table bare of
+either cloth or cleanliness, there waits him his supper of <i>polenta</i>,
+which is nothing more or less than our plain boiled Indian-pudding. Add
+to this a red-eyed dog, that seems to be a savage representative of a
+Scotch colley,&mdash;a lean, wrinkled, dark-faced woman, who is unwinding the
+bandages from a squalling <i>Bambino</i>,&mdash;a mixed odor of garlic and of
+goats, that is quickened with an ammoniacal pungency,&mdash;and you may form
+some idea of the home of a small Roman farmer in our day. It falls away
+from the standard of Cato; and so does the man.</p>
+
+<p>He takes his twenty or thirty acres, upon shares, from some wealthy
+proprietor of Rome, whose estate may possibly cover a square mile or two
+of territory. He sells vegetables, poultry, a little grain, a few curds,
+and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many
+who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and
+they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift
+under the new government, I cannot say.</p>
+
+<p>Around Bologna, indeed, there was a better race of farmers: the
+intervening thrift of Tuscany had always its influence. The meadows of
+Terni, too, which are watered by the Velino, bear three full crops of
+grass in the season; the valley of the Clitumnus is like a miniature of
+the Genesee; and around Perugia the crimson-tasselled clovers, in the
+season of their bloom, give to the fields the beauty of a garden.</p>
+
+<p>The old Duke of Tuscany, before he became soured by his political
+mishaps, was a great patron of agricultural improvements. He had
+princely farms in the neighborhood both of his capital and of Pisa. Of
+the latter I cannot speak from personal observation; but the dairy-farm,
+<i>Cascina</i>, near to Florence, can hardly have been much inferior to the
+Cajano property of the great Lorenzo. The stables were admirably
+arranged, and of permanent character; the neatness was equal to that of
+the dairies of Holland. The Swiss cows, of a pretty dun-color, were kept
+stalled, and luxuriously fed upon freshly cut ray-grass, clover, or
+vetches, with an occasional sprinkling of meal; the calves were
+invariably reared by hand; and the average <i>per diem</i> of milk,
+throughout the season, was stated at fourteen quarts; and I think
+Madonna Clarice never strained more than this into the cheese-tubs of
+Ambra. I trust the burghers of Florence, and the new <i>Gonfaloniere</i>,
+whoever he may be, will not forget the dun cows of the Cascina, or their
+baitings with the tender vetches.</p>
+
+<p>The redemption of the waste marshlands in the Val di Chiana by the
+engineering skill of Fossombroni, and the consequent restoration of many
+thousands of acres which seemed hopelessly lost to fertility, is a
+result of which the Medici would hardly have dreamed, and which would do
+credit to any age or country.</p>
+
+<p>About the better-cultivated portions of Lombardy there is an almost
+regal look. The roads are straight, and of most admirable construction.
+Lines of trees lift their stateliness on either side, and carry trailing
+festoons of vines. On both sides streams of water are flowing in
+artificial canals, interrupted here and there by cross sluices and
+gates, by means of which any or all of the fields can be laid under
+water at pleasure, so that old meadows return three and four cuttings of
+grass in the year. There are patches of Indian-corn which are equal to
+any that can be seen on the Miami; hemp and flax appear at intervals,
+and upon the lower lands rice. The barns are huge in size, and are
+raised from the ground upon columns of masonry.</p>
+
+<p>I have a dapper little note-book of travel, from which these facts are
+mainly taken; and at the head of one of its pages I observe an old
+ink-sketch of a few trees, with festoons of vines between. It is
+yellowed now, and poor always; for I am but a dabbler at such things.
+Yet it brings back, clearly and briskly, the broad stretch of Lombard
+meadows, the smooth Macadam, the gleaming canals of water, the white
+finials of Milan Cathedral shining somewhere in the distance, the
+thrushes, as in the &quot;Pastor Fido,&quot; filling all the morning air with
+their sweet</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Ardo d' amore! ardo d' amore!&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>the dewy clover-lots, looking like wavy silken plush, the green glitter
+of mulberry-leaves, and the beggar in steeple-crowned hat, who says,
+&quot;<i>Grazia</i>,&quot; and &quot;<i>&Aacute; rivedervi!</i>&quot; as I drop him a few kreutzers, and
+rattle away to the North, and out of Italy.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>About the year 1570, a certain Conrad Heresbach, who was Councillor to
+the Duke of Cleves, (brother to that unfortunate Anne of Cleves who was
+one of the wife-victims of Henry VIII.,) wrote four Latin books on
+rustic affairs, which were translated by Barnaby Googe, a Lincolnshire
+farmer and poet, who was in his day gentleman-pensioner to Queen
+Elizabeth. Our friend Barnaby introduces his translation in this
+style:&mdash;&quot;I haue thought it meet (good Reader) for thy further profit &amp;
+pleasure, to put into English these foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected
+&amp; set forth by Master Conrade Heresbatch, a great &amp; a learned Counceller
+of the Duke of Cleues: not thinking it reason, though I haue altered &amp;
+increased his worke, <i>with mine owne readings &amp; obseruations</i>, joined
+with the experience of sundry my friends, to take from him (as diuers in
+the like case haue done) the honour &amp; glory of his owne trauaile:
+Neither is it my minde, that this either his doings or mine, should
+deface, or any waves darken the good enterprise, or painfull trauailes
+of such our countrymen, of England, as haue plentifully written of this
+matter: but always haue, &amp; do giue them the reuerence &amp; honour due to so
+vertuous, &amp; well disposed Gentlemen, namely, <i>Master Fitz herbert</i>, &amp;
+<i>Master Tusser</i>: whose workes may, in my fancie, without any
+presumption, compare with any, either <i>Varro</i>, <i>Columella</i>, or
+<i>Palladius</i> of <i>Rome</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The work is written in the form of a dialogue, the parties being Cono, a
+country-gentleman, Metella, his wife, Rigo, a courtier, and Hermes, a
+servant. The first book relates to tillage, and farm-practice in
+general; the second, to orcharding, gardens, and woods; the third, to
+cattle; and the fourth, to fowl, fish, and bees. He had evidently been
+an attentive reader of the older authors I have discussed, and his
+citations from them are abundant. He had also opportunity for every-day
+observation in a region which, besides being one of the most fertile,
+was probably at that time the most highly cultivated in Europe; and his
+work may be regarded as the most important contribution to agricultural
+literature since the days of Crescenzi. He reaffirms, indeed, many of
+the old fables of the Latinists,&mdash;respects the force of proper
+incantations, has abiding faith in &quot;the moon being aloft&quot; in time of
+sowing, and insists that the medlar can be grafted on the pine, and the
+cherry upon the fir. Rue, he tells us, &quot;will prosper the better for
+being stolen&quot;; and &quot;If you breake to powder the horne of a Ram &amp; sowe it
+watrying it well, it is thought it will come to be good Sperage&quot;
+(Asparagus). He assures us that he has grafted the pear successfully
+when in full bloom; and furthermore, that he has seen apples which have
+been kept sound for three years.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the last page are some rules for purchasing land, which I suspect
+are to be attributed to the poet of Lincolnshire, rather than to
+Heresbach. They are as good as they were then; and the poetry none the
+worse:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;First see that the land be clear</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">In title of the seller;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And that it stand in danger</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Of no woman's dowrie;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">See whether the tenure be bond or free,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And release of every fee of fee;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">See that the seller be of age,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And that it lie not in mortgage;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Whether ataile be thereof found,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And whether it stand in statute bound;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Consider what service longeth thereto,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And what quit rent thereout must goe;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And if it become of a wedded woman,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Think thou then on covert baron;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And if thou may in any wise,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Make thy charter in warrantise,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">To thee, thine heyres, assignes also;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Thus should a wise purchaser doe.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The learned Lipsius was a contemporary of Councillor Heresbach, and
+although his orthodoxy was somewhat questionable, and his Calvinism
+somewhat stretchy, there can be no doubt of the honest rural love which
+belongs to some of his letters, and especially to this smack of verse (I
+dare not say poetry) with which he closes his <i>Eighth (Cent. I.)</i></p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Vitam si liceat mihi</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Formare arbitriis meis:</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Non fasces cupiam aut opes,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Non clarus niveis equis</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Captiva agmina traxerim.</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">In solis habitem locis,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Hortos possideam atque agros,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Illic ad strepitus aqu&aelig;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Musarum studiis fruar.</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Sic cum fata mihi ultima</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Pernerit Lachesis mea;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Tranquillus moriar senex.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>And with this I will have done with a dead language; for I am come to a
+period now when I can garnish my talk with the flowers of good old
+English gardens. At the very thought of them, I seem to hear the royal
+captive James pouring madrigals through the window of his Windsor
+prison,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;the hymnis consecrat</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">That all the gardens and the wallis rung.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>And through the &quot;Dreme&quot; of Chaucer I seem to see the great plain of
+Woodstock stretching away under my view, all white and green, &quot;green
+y-powdered with daisy.&quot; Upon the half-ploughed land, lying yonder veiled
+so tenderly with the mist and the rain, I could take oath to the very
+spot where five hundred years ago the plowman of Chaucer, all &quot;forswat,&quot;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;plucked up his plowe</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Whan midsomer mone was comen in</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And shoke off shear, and coulter off drowe,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And honged his harnis on a pinne,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And said his beasts should ete enowe</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And lie in grasse up to the chin.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>But Chaucer was no farmer, or he would have known it to be bad husbandry
+(even for poetry) to allow cattle steaming from the plough to lie down
+in grass of that height.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>Sir Anthony Fitz-herbert is the first duly accredited writer on British
+husbandry. There are some few earlier ones, it is true,&mdash;a certain
+&quot;Mayster Groshede, Bysshop of Lyncoln,&quot; and a Henri Calcoensis, among
+them. Indeed, Mr. Donaldson, who has compiled a bibliography of British
+farm-writers, and who once threatened a poem on kindred subjects, has
+the effrontery to include Lord Littleton. Now I have a respect for Lord
+Littleton, and for Coke on Littleton, but it is tempered with some early
+experiences in a lawyer's office, and some later experiences of the
+legal profession; he may have written well upon &quot;Tenures,&quot; but he had
+not enough of tenderness even for a teasel.</p>
+
+<p>I think it worthy of remark, in view of the mixed complexion which I
+have given to these wet-day studies, that the oldest printed copy of
+that sweet ballad of the &quot;Nut Browne Mayde&quot; has come to us in a
+Chronicle of 1503, which contains also a chapter upon &quot;the crafte of
+graffynge &amp; plantynge &amp; alterynge of fruyts.&quot; What could be happier than
+the conjunction of the knight of &quot;the grenwode tree&quot; with a good chapter
+on &quot;graffynge&quot;?</p>
+
+<p>Fitz-herbert's work is entitled a &quot;Boke of Husbandrie,&quot; and counts,
+among other headings of discourse, the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whether is better a plough of horses or a plough of oxen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To cary out dounge &amp; mucke, &amp; to spreade it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fyrste furryng of the falowes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To make a ewe to love hir lambe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To bye lean cattel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A shorte information for a young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What the wyfe oughte to dooe generally.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>(<i>seq.</i>) &quot;To kepe measure in spendynge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What be God's commandments.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By all which it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of
+husbandry as did Xenophon.</p>
+
+<p>Among other advices to the &quot;young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve&quot;
+he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if &quot;he fynde any
+horses, mares, swyne, shepe, beastes in his pastures that be not his
+own; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture
+uppon his grasse, whereby he may take double herte, bothe losse of his
+grasse, &amp; rotting of his shepe, &amp; calves; or if he fyndeth or seeth
+anything that is amisse, &amp; wold be amended, let him take out his tables
+&amp; wryte the defautes; &amp; when he commeth home to dinner, supper, or at
+nyght, then let him call his bayley, &amp; soo shewe him the defautes. For
+this,&quot; says he, &quot;used I to doo x or xi yeres or more; &amp; yf he cannot
+wryte, lette him nycke the defautes uppon a stycke.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sir Anthony is gracious to the wife, but he is not tender; and it may be
+encouraging to country-housewives nowadays to see what service was
+expected of their mothers in the days of Henry VIII.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a wives occupacion to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte,
+wash &amp; wring, to make hey, to shere corne, &amp; in time of neede to helpe
+her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough,
+to lode hay corne &amp; such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell
+butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees &amp; al
+maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging
+to a household, &amp; to make a true rekening &amp; accompt to her husband what
+she hath receyved &amp; what she hathe payed. And yf the husband go to
+market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his wife in lyke
+maner. For if one of them should use to disceive the other, he
+disceyveth himselfe, &amp; he is not lyke to thryve, &amp; therfore they must be
+true ether to other.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>I come next to Master Tusser,&mdash;poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond,
+happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon some wag wrote this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Thou teaching thrift, thyself could never thrive;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">So, like the whetstone, many men are wont</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">To sharpen others when themselves are blunt.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>I cannot help considering poor Tusser's example one of warning to all
+poetically inclined farmers.</p>
+
+<p>He was born at a little village in the County of Essex. Having a good
+voice, he came early in life to be installed as singer at Wallingford
+College; and showing here a great proficiency, he was shortly after
+impressed for the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Afterward he was for
+some time at Eton, where he had the ill-luck to receive some fifty-four
+stripes for his shortcomings in Latin; thence he goes to Trinity
+College, Cambridge, where he lives &quot;in clover.&quot; It appears that he had
+some connections at Court, through whose influence he was induced to go
+up to London, where he remained some ten years,&mdash;possibly as
+singer,&mdash;but finally left in great disgust at the vices of the town, and
+commenced as farmer in Suffolk,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml55">&quot;To moil and to toil</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">With loss and pain, to little gain,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml6m">To cram Sir Knave&quot;;&mdash;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>from which I fancy that he had a hard landlord, and but little sturdy
+resolution. Thence he goes to Ipswich, or its neighborhood, with no
+better experience. Afterward we hear of him with a second wife at
+Dereham Abbey; but his wife is young and sharp-tempered, and his
+landlord a screw: so he does not thrive here, but goes to Norwich and
+commences chorister again; but presently takes another farm in
+Fairstead, Essex, where it would seem he eked out a support by
+collecting tithes for the parson. But he says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml55">&quot;I spyed, if parson died,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">(All hope in vain,) to hope for gain</span><br />
+<span class="spanml6m">I might go dance.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Possibly he did go dance: he certainly left the tithe-business, and
+after settling in one more home, from which he ran to escape the plague,
+we find him returned to London, to die,&mdash;where he was buried in the
+Poultry.</p>
+
+<p>There are good points in his poem, showing close observation, good
+sense, and excellent judgment. His rules of farm-practice are entirely
+safe and judicious, and make one wonder how the man who could give such
+capital advice could make so capital a failure. In the secret lies all
+the philosophy of the difference between knowledge and practice. The
+instance is not without its modern support: I have the honor of
+acquaintance with several gentlemen who lay down charming rules for
+successful husbandry, every time they pay the country a visit; and yet
+even their poultry-account is always largely against the constipated
+hens.</p>
+
+<p>What is specially remarkable about Tusser is his air of entire
+resignation amid all manner of vicissitudes: he does not seem to count
+his hardships either wonderful or intolerable or unmerited. He tells us
+of the thrashing he had at Eton, (fifty-four licks,) without greatly
+impugning the head-master; and his shiftlessness in life makes us
+strongly suspect that he deserved it all.</p>
+
+<p>Fuller, in his &quot;Worthies,&quot; says Tusser &quot;spread his bread with all sorts
+of butter, yet none would stick thereon.&quot; In short, though the poet
+wrote well on farm-practice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of
+farm-successes. With all his excellent notions about sowing and reaping,
+and rising with the lark, I should look for a little more of stirring
+mettle and of dogged resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant.
+I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as a kind-hearted
+poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too
+porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve: yet taking
+life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a
+rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and
+looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">But how, and how suddenly, few be that know,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">What carry we, then, but a sheet to the grave,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">(To cover this carcass,) of all that we have?&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of
+English authors, &quot;the most ingenious husbandman of his age.&quot;<a name="fnanchor_1_6" id="fnanchor_1_6"></a><a href="#footnote_1_6"><sup>7</sup></a> He is
+elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had two
+estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin's Lane. He was an
+enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries,
+corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful
+experiments within his own grounds. In speaking of that &quot;rare and
+peerless plant, the grape,&quot; he insists upon the wholesomeness of the
+wines he made from his Bednall-Greene garden: &quot;And if,&quot; he says, &quot;any
+exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am
+content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe
+any true skill in the judgment of high country wines: although for their
+better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now
+almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these
+wines) gaue this sentence upon them: that he neuer drank any better new
+wine in France.&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_1_6" id="footnote_1_6"></a><a href="#fnanchor_1_6"><span class="label">7</span></a>
+Latter part of sixteenth century; and was living, according
+to Johnson, as late as 1606.</p></div>
+
+<p>I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the
+speech of the ambassador; French ambassadors are always so complaisant!</p>
+
+<p>Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that
+&quot;delicate Knight,&quot; Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by
+a sight of a cherry-tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had
+gone by in England. &quot;This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or
+couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then
+with a scoope or horne, as the heat of the weather required: and so, by
+witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew
+both great, and were very long before they had gotten their perfect
+cherrie-colour: and when he was assured of her Majestie's comming, he
+remoued the Tent, and a few sunny daies brought them to their full
+maturities.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These notices are to be found in his &quot;Flores Paradise.&quot; Another work,
+entitled &quot;Dyuers Soyles for manuring pasture &amp; arable land,&quot; enumerates,
+in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new
+matters (in that day) as &quot;salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth,
+moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust,
+soap-boilers ashes, and marle.&quot; But what I think particularly commends
+him to notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among the pioneers,
+is his little tract upon &quot;The Setting of Corne.&quot;<a name="fnanchor_5_7" id="fnanchor_5_7"></a><a href="#footnote_5_7"><sup>8</sup></a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_5_7" id="footnote_5_7"></a><a href="#fnanchor_5_7"><span class="label">8</span></a>
+This is not mentioned either by Felton in his <i>Portraits</i>,
+etc., or by Johnson in his <i>History of Gardening</i>. Donaldson gives the
+title, and the headings of the chapters.</p></div>
+
+<p>In this he anticipates the system of &quot;dibbling&quot; grain, which,
+notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers within half a century<a name="fnanchor_6_8" id="fnanchor_6_8"></a><a href="#footnote_6_8"><sup>9</sup></a> as a
+new thing; and which, it is needless to say, still prevails extensively
+in many parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed the work of
+Sir Hugh Platt, it antedates very many of the suggestions and
+improvements which are usually accorded to Tull. The latter, indeed,
+proposed the drill, and repeated tillage; but certain advantages, before
+unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individual plants, economy
+of seed, and facility of culture, are common to both systems. Sir Hugh,
+in consecutive chapters, shows how the discovery came about; &quot;why the
+corne shootes into so many eares&quot;; how the ground is to be dug for the
+new practice; and what are the several instruments for making the holes
+and covering the grain.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_6_8" id="footnote_6_8"></a><a href="#fnanchor_6_8"><span class="label">9</span></a>
+See Young, <i>Annals of Agriculture</i>, Vol. III. p. 219, <i>et
+seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy gentleman than by
+giving his own <i>envoi</i> to the most considerable of his books:&mdash;&quot;Thus,
+gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and
+laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary
+conceit in a Scholler's private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by
+the painfull hand of experience: and having also given thee a touch of
+Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the worlde without
+her veyle: and Expecting, by thy good entertainement of these, some
+encouragement for higher and deeper discoveries hereafter, I leave thee
+to the God of Nature, from whom all the true light of Nature
+proceedeth.&quot;</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>Gervase Markham must have been a roistering gallant about the time that
+Sir Hugh was conducting his experiments on &quot;Soyles&quot;; for, in 1591, he
+had the honor to be dangerously wounded in a duel which he fought in
+behalf of the Countess of Shrewsbury; there are also some painful rumors
+current (in old books) in regard to his habits in early life, which
+weaken somewhat our trust in him as a quiet country counsellor. I
+suspect, that, up to mature life, at any rate, he knew much more about
+the sparring of a game-cock than the making of capons. Yet he wrote
+books upon the proper care of beasts and fowls, as well as upon almost
+every subject connected with husbandry. And that these were good books,
+or at least in large demand, we have in evidence the memorandum of a
+promise which some griping bookseller extorted from him, under date of
+July, 1617:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I, Gervase Markham, of London, Gent, do promise hereafter never to
+write any more book or books to be printed of the diseases or cures of
+any cattle, as horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine and goates, &amp;c. In
+witness whereof, I have hereunto sett my hand, the 24th day of Julie.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;GERVIS MARKHAM.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He seems to have been a man of some literary accomplishments, and one
+who knew how to turn them to account. He translated the &quot;Maison
+Rustique&quot; of Liebault, and had some hand in the concoction of one or two
+poems which kindled the ire of the Puritan clergy. There is no doubt but
+he was an adroit bookmaker; and the value of his labors, in respect to
+practical husbandry, was due chiefly to his art of arranging,
+compacting, and illustrating the maxims and practices already received.
+His observations upon diseases of cattle and upon horsemanship were
+doubtless based on experimental knowledge; for he was a rare and ardent
+sportsman, and possessed all a sportsman's keenness in the detection of
+infirmities.</p>
+
+<p>I suspect, moreover, that there were substantial grounds for that
+acquaintance with gastronomy shown in the &quot;Country Housewife.&quot; In this
+book, after discoursing upon cookery and great feasts, he gives the
+details of a &quot;humble feast of a proportion which any good man may keep
+in his family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As thus:&mdash;first, a shield of brawn with mustard; secondly, a boyl'd
+capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef
+rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted; sixthly, a pig rosted;
+seventhly chewits baked; eighthly, a goose rosted; ninthly, a swan
+rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted;
+twelfth, a pasty of venison; thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the
+belly; fourteenth, an olive pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the
+sixteenth, a custard or dowsets.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This is what Master Gervase calls a frugal dinner, for the entertainment
+of a worthy friend; is it any wonder that he wrote about &quot;Country
+Contentments&quot;?</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>My chapter is nearly full; and a burst of sunshine is flaming over all
+the land under my eye; and yet I am but just entered upon the period of
+English literary history which is most rich in rural illustration. The
+mere backs of the books relating thereto, as my glance ranges over them,
+where they stand in tidy platoon, start a delightfully confused picture
+to my mind.</p>
+
+<p>I think it possible that Sir Hugh Platt may some day entertain at his
+Bednall-Greene garden the worshipful Francis Bacon, who is living down
+at Twickenham, and who is a thriving lawyer, and has written essays,
+which Sir Hugh must know,&mdash;in which he discourses shrewdly upon gardens,
+as well as many kindred matters; and through his wide correspondence,
+Sir Hugh must probably have heard of certain new herbs which have been
+brought home from Virginia and the Roanoke, and very possibly he is
+making trial of a tobacco-plant in his garden, to be submitted some day
+to his friend, the French Ambassador.</p>
+
+<p>I can fancy Gervase Markham &quot;making a night of it&quot; with those rollicking
+bachelors, Beaumont and Fletcher, at the &quot;Mermaid,&quot; or going with them
+to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will
+Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,&mdash;the latter taking the part of
+Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of &quot;Every Man in his Humour.&quot; His
+friends say that this Will has parts.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is the fiery and dashing Sir Philip Sidney, who threatened to
+thrust a dagger into the heart of poor Molyneux, his father's steward,
+for opening private letters (which poor Molyneux never did); and Sir
+Philip knows all about poetry and the ancients; and in virtue of his
+knowledges, he writes a terribly magniloquent and tedious &quot;Arcadia,&quot;
+which, when he comes to die gallantly in battle, is admired and read
+everywhere: nowadays it rests mostly on the shelf. But the memory of his
+generous and noble spirit is far livelier than his book. It was through
+him, and his friendship, probably, that the poet Spenser was gifted by
+the Queen with a fine farm of three thousand acres among the Bally-Howra
+hills of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>And it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh, that &quot;shepherd of the sea,&quot;
+visited the poet, and found him seated</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml8m">&quot;amongst the coolly shade</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Did the gallant privateer possibly talk with the farmer about the
+introduction of that new esculent, the potato? Did they talk tobacco?
+Did Colin Clout have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep, or
+upon the probable &quot;clip&quot; of the year?</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of this; but</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;He pip'd, I sung; and when he sung, I pip'd:</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">By chaunge of tunes each making other merry.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The lines would make a fair argument of the poet's bucolic life. I have
+a strong faith that his farming was of the higgledy-piggledy order; I do
+not believe that he could have set a plough into the sod, or have made a
+good &quot;cast&quot; of barley. It is certain, that, when the Tyrone rebels
+burned him out of Kilcolman Castle, he took no treasure with him but his
+Elizabeth and the two babes; and the only treasures he left were the
+ashes of the dear child whose face shone on him there for the last
+time,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml5m">&quot;bright with many a curl</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">That clustered round her head.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>I wish I could love his &quot;Shepherd's Calendar&quot;; but I cannot. Abounding
+art of language, exquisite fancies, delicacies innumerable there may be;
+but there is no exhilarating air from the mountains, no crisp breezes,
+no songs that make the welkin ring, no river that champs the bit, no
+sky-piercing falcon.</p>
+
+<p>And as for the &quot;Fa&euml;ry Queene,&quot; if I must confess it, I can never read
+far without a sense of suffocation from the affluence of its beauties.
+It is a marvellously fair sea and broad,&mdash;with tender winds blowing over
+it, and all the ripples are iris-hued; but you long for some brave blast
+that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from
+its lifted waters, and drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming
+curlew.</p>
+
+<p>In short, I can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest&mdash;as we
+farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil
+that lifts heavily.</p>
+
+<p>And so I leave the matter,&mdash;with the &quot;Fa&euml;ry Queene&quot; in my thought, and
+leaning on my spade.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="civic_banquets" id="civic_banquets"></a>CIVIC BANQUETS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Englishman will be able to
+reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the
+earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take
+his appetite along with him, (which it seems to me hardly possible to
+believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition,) the
+immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during
+which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not
+an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of
+dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest
+characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened
+itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with
+Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and
+ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting
+the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less
+complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy.
+Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which
+his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to
+conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for
+the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was
+of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a
+delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents
+the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at
+Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only
+because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more
+acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English
+taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and
+poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately
+implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though
+still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to &quot;Laurence, of
+virtuous father virtuous son,&quot; a series of nice little dinners in
+midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which,
+elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges
+of Tartarus.</p>
+
+<p>Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a
+kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon
+the table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due
+reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such
+reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest
+abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty
+years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and
+indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost
+the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the
+earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of
+his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my
+countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too
+much to affirm, that, on this side of the water, people never dine. At
+any rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material
+requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in
+America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and
+our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a
+happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of
+culture which we have attained.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen
+know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of
+the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that
+particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often
+present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which,
+while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were
+thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It
+could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal
+enjoyment, because out of the very perfection of that lower bliss there
+had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the
+master-pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible,
+a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension,
+vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to
+recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set
+of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special
+fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only
+eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by
+the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a
+little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle,
+delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most
+exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through
+which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was
+worth a heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achievement,&mdash;the
+production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect
+taste,&mdash;the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening
+for this hour, since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with
+wine,&mdash;must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other
+beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no
+better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill
+Coffee-House, unless the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach,
+is ready to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony
+in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch
+of well-according minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the
+guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our
+part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted and tumultuous place we find
+it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner.</p>
+
+<p>The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main
+object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those
+public or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly
+prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in
+matters of peace or war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of
+roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these
+festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all
+considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient
+times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen of
+to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic
+hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place
+have long held their sessions; and always, in convenient contiguity,
+there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fireplace, where an ox might
+lie roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern
+cookery may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St.
+Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient
+banqueting-room that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to
+the description of it.</p>
+
+<p>In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three
+famous spires of Coventry, you behold a medi&aelig;val edifice, in the
+basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have
+above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone
+pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathedral. Passing
+up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as
+ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad
+and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained
+glass, on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another
+window at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient panes
+constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some
+of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries.
+Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though
+it was noonday when I last saw it, the panelling of black oak, and some
+faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault
+of the roof above, made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into
+more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the
+dress of Henry VI.'s time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is
+regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of
+that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in
+history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily
+into the old stitch-work of their substance, when you try to make them
+out. Coats-of-arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have
+been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them,
+or by women with dish-clouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating
+hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and spiders' webs.
+Full-length portraits of several English kings, Charles II. being the
+earliest, hang on the walls; and on the da&iuml;s, or elevated part of the
+floor, stands an antique chair of state, which more than one royal
+character is traditionally said to have occupied while feasting here
+with their loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person
+of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable,
+reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned
+New-England kitchens.</p>
+
+<p>Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a
+single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in
+shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to
+be seen. At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that
+they are carved with figures of angels, and doubtless many other
+devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness
+that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall,
+opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which
+glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a
+row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It
+impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing
+untouched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable
+precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the
+artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if
+she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good
+people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I
+have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference
+of the scene from my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid
+idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with; insomuch
+that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the
+door-way, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately
+dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling
+a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping
+majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery,
+while the rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound
+beneath,&mdash;why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar
+with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger
+from a far country which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing
+pages is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinners, this
+reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the
+English character; since, from, the earliest recognizable period, we
+find them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnificently as
+their palaces or cathedrals.</p>
+
+<p>I know not whether the hall just described is still used for festive
+purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor are so. For
+example, there is Barber-Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old
+room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls.
+It is also enriched with Holbein's master-piece, representing a grave
+assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits, (with such extensive
+beards that methinks one-half of the company might have been profitably
+occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir
+Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of
+cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have
+a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many other pictures of
+distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of
+the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but
+darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not
+my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the
+reader; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of
+stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where
+there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by
+respectable citizens, who would never dream of claiming any privilege of
+rank outside of their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the
+warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets
+or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and
+lined with crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the hall,
+there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table,
+comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the
+gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude of less
+noticeable vessels, two Loving-Cups, very elaborately wrought in silver
+gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups,
+including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although
+the bowl-part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which,
+when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected
+to drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand adown a
+long table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may
+hereafter have occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a
+liberty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official
+dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport where
+I spent several years.</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and,
+inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Worship probably
+assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished
+personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's
+incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling
+among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A
+miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable
+ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion
+being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest
+wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what
+not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what
+it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political
+hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine,
+without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with
+English taste.</p>
+
+<p>The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present
+took place during assize time, and included among the guests the judges
+and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town-Hall at seven
+o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed
+footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom
+it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the
+reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the
+course of these transmissions; so that I had the advantage of making my
+entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company,
+but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and
+put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very
+affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my
+nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost
+invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of
+his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new
+acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease; and, in requital
+of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company
+in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing
+silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been
+half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers
+of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the
+mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, with
+whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky
+over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and
+mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out,
+with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and
+wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the
+military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume.
+It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had
+seen, my honest impression about them was, that they were a heavy and
+homely set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and
+behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity
+with the national character than I then possessed always to detect the
+good-breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still
+farther advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure; for the
+comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his
+body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and
+his stomach to assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to
+that metropolis of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the
+atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance
+of succulent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one
+additional chin, with a promise of more; so that, finally, a stranger
+recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take
+time and a little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with
+an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit
+of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an &aelig;sthetic point of view. It
+seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as
+he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully
+exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments: he
+had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out
+of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned
+to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren
+among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual
+propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit
+being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman
+smart, (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few,)
+you make him a monster: his best aspect is that of ponderous
+respectability.</p>
+
+<p>To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied that not merely the
+Suffolk bar, but the bar of any inland county in New England, might show
+a set of thin-visaged, green-spectacled men, looking wretchedly worn,
+sallow with the intemperate use of strong coffee, deeply wrinkled across
+the forehead, and grimly furrowed about the month, with whom these
+heavy-cheeked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they must
+needs be, would stand very little chance in a professional contest. How
+that matter might turn out I am unqualified to decide. But I state these
+results of my earliest glimpses of Englishmen, not for what they are
+worth, but because I ultimately gave them up as worth little or nothing.
+In course of time, I came to the conclusion that Englishmen of all ages
+are a rather good-looking people, dress in admirable taste from their
+own point of view, and, under a surface never silken to the touch, have
+a refinement of manners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a
+separate endowment,&mdash;that is to say, if the individual himself be a man
+of station, and has had gentlemen for his father and grandfather. The
+sturdy Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third
+generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, have their own
+proprieties. The only value of my criticisms, therefore, lay in their
+exemplifying the proneness of a traveller to measure one people by the
+distinctive characteristics of another,&mdash;as English writers invariably
+measure us, and take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly,
+instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we may
+be in conformity.</p>
+
+<p>In due time we were summoned to the table, and went thither in no solemn
+procession, but with a good deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and
+scrambling for places when we reached our destination. The legal
+gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indecorous zeal, which I
+never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The dining-hall was of
+noble size, and, like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously
+painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There was a splendid
+table-service, and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain
+clothes, and others wearing the town-livery, richly decorated with
+gold-lace, and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming
+young-manhood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was certainly
+an agreeable spectacle to look up and down the long vista of earnest
+faces, and behold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an
+important business in hand, and so determined to be equal to the
+occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I hardly know what can be prettier
+than a snow-white table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central
+decoration, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of
+Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artistically folded napkin
+at each plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in short, that comes
+before the first mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of
+artificial light, without which a dinner of made-dishes looks spectral,
+and the simplest viands are the best. Printed bills-of-fare were
+distributed, representing an abundant feast, no part of which appeared
+on the table until called for in separate plates. I have entirely
+forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there is
+a pervading commonplace and identicalness in the composition of
+extensive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supplying a
+hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. It was
+suggested to me that certain juicy old gentlemen had a private
+understanding what to call for, and that it would be good policy in a
+stranger to follow in their footsteps through the feast. I did not care
+to do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out of Camacho's
+caldron, any sort of pot-luck at such a table would be sure to suit my
+purpose; so I chose a dish or two on my own judgment, and, getting
+through my labors betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the Englishmen
+toil onward to the end.</p>
+
+<p>They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely; for I observed that
+they seldom took Hock, and let the Champagne bubble slowly away out of
+the goblet, solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily
+before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however,
+did not seem so exquisite, and certainly was not so various, as that to
+which many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate acquaintance
+with rare vintage: does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very
+much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his life-long
+friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a moment, and
+reaping the reward of his constancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only
+so much gout as he deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the
+measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass too often.
+Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate habitual imprudences of that
+kind, though, in my opinion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could
+carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of
+their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes
+sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if
+it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our
+temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous
+disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England.
+I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the
+very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the
+memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir
+John Linkwater, or Drinkwater,&mdash;but I think the jolly old knight could
+hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last,&mdash;while
+sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to
+the clerk. &quot;Mr. Clerk,&quot; said Sir John, as if it were the most
+indifferent fact in the world, &quot;I was drunk last night. There are my
+five shillings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with the
+gentlemen on either side of me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with
+great unction on the social standing of the judges. Representing the
+dignity and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during
+assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, of the
+Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes,
+and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they are the greatest
+men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to
+enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal dinner, a
+judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm
+and take the Queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company with
+some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occasions, it appeared
+to me that the judges are fully conscious of their paramount claims to
+respect, and take rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial
+inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if it
+be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a similar
+characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he
+needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with his
+nature from its original germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it
+obtrusively in the faces of innocent by-standers.</p>
+
+<p>My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth
+in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn
+visage, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the
+machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and
+let slip few opportunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be
+passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly-featured
+table-fellow might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me with a
+surly sort of kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then
+began a conversation that abounded, on his part, with sturdy sense, and,
+somehow or other, brought me closer to him than I had yet stood to an
+Englishman. I should hardly have taken him to be an educated man,
+certainly not a scholar of accurate training; and yet he seemed to have
+all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at
+command. My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of English
+characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse him, or perhaps
+both. Under the mollifying influences of abundance of meat and drink, he
+grew very gracious, (not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe
+his evidently genuine good-will,) and by-and-by expressed a wish for
+further acquaintance, asking me to call at his rooms in London and
+inquire for Sergeant Wilkins,&mdash;throwing out the name forcibly, as if he
+had no occasion to be ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's retort to
+Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar announcement,&mdash;&quot;Of what regiment,
+pray, Sir?&quot;&mdash;and fancied that the same question might not have been
+quite amiss, if applied to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard
+of him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English bar, a
+rough customer, and a terribly strong champion in criminal cases; and it
+caused me more regret than might have been expected, on so slight an
+acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death announced
+in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qualities, he possessed, I
+think, the most attractive one of all,&mdash;thorough manhood.</p>
+
+<p>After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decanters were set before
+the Mayor, who sent them forth on their outward voyage, full freighted
+with Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors,
+methought, the latter found least acceptance among the guests. When
+every man had filled his glass, his Worship stood up and proposed a
+toast. It was, of course, &quot;Our gracious Sovereign,&quot; or words to that
+effect; and immediately a band of musicians, whose preliminary tootings
+and thrummings I had already heard behind me, struck up &quot;God save the
+Queen,&quot; and the whole company rose with one impulse to assist in singing
+that famous national anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had
+ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the active
+influence of the sentiment of Loyalty; for, though we call ourselves
+loyal to our country and institutions, and prove it by our readiness to
+shed blood and sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as
+cold and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in
+motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's system, a force similar
+to that of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human
+hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood,&mdash;at present,
+in the flesh and blood of a woman,&mdash;and manages to combine love, awe,
+and intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to embody his
+mother, his wife, his children, the whole idea of kindred, in a single
+person, and make her the representative of his country and its laws. We
+Americans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table; and yet, I
+fancy, we lose some very agreeable titillations of the heart in
+consequence of our proud perogative of caring no more about our
+President than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in
+a cornfield.</p>
+
+<p>But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather ludicrously, to
+see this party of stout middle-aged and elderly gentlemen, in the
+fulness of meat and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening with
+wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old
+stanzas from the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which two
+organs, in the English interior arrangement, lie closer together than in
+ours. The song seemed to me the rudest old ditty in the world; but I
+could not wonder at its universal acceptance and indestructible
+popularity, considering how inimitably it expresses the national faith
+and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness of England, the
+Almighty's consequent respect and partiality for that redoubtable little
+island, and His presumed readiness to strengthen its defence against the
+contumacious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or
+republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English to the very last
+prejudice, could not write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding
+that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of every pitch
+between rolling thunder and the squeak of a cartwheel, and that the
+strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of
+them, I determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the triumphant
+roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to the first Lady in the land,
+whose guest, in the largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly,
+my first tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I purpose not to
+sing any more, unless it be &quot;Hail Columbia&quot; on the restoration of the
+Union) were poured freely forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The
+Sergeant smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, and the
+other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinced grave
+approbation of so suitable a tribute to English superiority; and we
+finished our stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind.</p>
+
+<p>Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions and interests
+of the country, and speeches in response to each were made by
+individuals whom the Mayor designated or the company called for. None of
+them impressed me with a very high idea of English postprandial oratory.
+It is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and shapeless utterances most
+Englishmen are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything
+like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there, and
+ultimately getting out what they want to say, and generally with a
+result of sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as
+if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that
+this was almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious
+of public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his
+countrymen distrust him. They dislike smartness. The stronger and
+heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of
+commonplace running through them; and any rough, yet never vulgar force
+of expression, such as would knock an opponent down, if it hit him, only
+it must not be too personal, is altogether to their taste; but a studied
+neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, they cannot
+abide. They do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of
+malice aforethought, that is, unless he be a nobleman, (as, for example,
+Lord Stanley, of the Derby family,) who, as an hereditary legislator and
+necessarily a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery
+in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, and, if
+I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as likely to applaud theirs
+as our own. When an English speaker sits down, you feel that you have
+been listening to a real man, and not to an actor; his sentiments have a
+wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this apparent
+naturalness is as much an art as what we expend in rounding a sentence
+or elaborating a peroration.</p>
+
+<p>It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that nobody in England
+seems to feel any shyness about shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable
+ideas out of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, nobody
+did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little Major of
+Artillery, who responded for the Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a
+terribly hesitating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not,
+would rather have been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have
+said a word. Not his own mouth, but the cannon's, was this poor Major's
+proper organ of utterance.</p>
+
+<p>While I was thus amiably occupied in criticizing my fellow-guests, the
+Mayor had got up to propose another toast; and listening rather
+inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a
+drift in his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively
+towards Sergeant Wilkins. &quot;Yes,&quot; grumbled that gruff personage, shoving
+a decanter of Port towards me, &quot;it is your turn next&quot;; and seeing in my
+face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he
+kindly added,&mdash;&quot;It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the
+purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it.&quot; That being the
+case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best, if I said
+nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving
+the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might
+possibly be brought into my present predicament; but I had dismissed the
+idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover,
+as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not
+keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an
+earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need
+rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably,&mdash;and,
+indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of
+his wordy wanderings find no end.</p>
+
+<p>If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to
+desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker
+quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it
+does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I,
+in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently
+rose to speak. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me
+whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I
+should unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really
+nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal
+worse, any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out
+that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such
+as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time
+pressed; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the
+United States and highly complimentary to their distinguished
+representative at that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering;
+and the band struck up &quot;Hail Columbia,&quot; &quot;Old Hundred,&quot; or &quot;God save the
+Queen&quot; over again, for anything that I should have known or cared. When
+the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant, during
+which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and
+rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a
+speech. The guests rattled on the table, and cried, &quot;Hear!&quot; most
+vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous
+world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word was to be
+spoken; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit
+of an effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and must, and
+should do to utter.</p>
+
+<p>Well; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most
+was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a
+declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other
+person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech: a
+prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went
+on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great
+applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won
+from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone
+had enabled me to speak at all. &quot;It was handsomely done!&quot; quoth Sergeant
+Wilkins; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and there forever,
+but was often placed in a similar or worse position, and compelled to
+meet it as I best might; for this was one of the necessities of an
+office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which
+I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not
+shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various.
+Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by
+heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot
+every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as
+well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points
+in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of
+Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any
+considerable proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I
+would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I
+was much embarrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better with a
+large one,&mdash;the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect,
+which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality and tosses
+him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one.
+Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of
+going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I
+had little or nothing to say; whereas, if I came to the scratch in
+perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would have been horrible,
+it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my
+poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expression
+to sentiments which an instant before looked as vague and far-off as the
+clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may have
+been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the
+chief requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many of the others,
+if he deems it worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains
+on an object which the most accomplished orators, I suspect, have not
+found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it
+must be a remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception
+of truth when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural
+sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him,
+when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may
+make it ten times as acceptable to the audience.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>This slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too
+wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted description of a Lord-Mayor's
+dinner at the Mansion-House in London. I should have preferred the
+annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good-fortune to witness it.
+Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular
+dinners, and gladly accepted it,&mdash;taking the precaution, nevertheless,
+though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a
+mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence,
+and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to
+open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful
+hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented
+myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion-House, at half-past six
+o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous
+apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion-House
+was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is
+a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his
+traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed,
+however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious
+Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of life-long integrity
+was a seat in the Lord-Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real
+dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do,
+sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted
+and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only
+second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the
+Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants
+of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were
+mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the
+early days of our country; so that the Lord-Mayor was a potentate of
+huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be
+hardly second to the prime-minister of the throne. The true great men of
+the city now appear to have aims beyond city-greatness, connecting
+themselves with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the
+aristocracy of the country.</p>
+
+<p>In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a
+livery of blue and buff, in which they looked wonderfully like American
+Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery
+than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There
+were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should have taken to be
+military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver
+epaulets; but they turned out to be officers of the Lord-Mayor's
+household, and were now employed in assigning to the guests the places
+which they were respectively to occupy at the dinner-table. Our names
+(for I had included myself in a little group of friends) were announced;
+and ascending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the door-way of the
+first reception-room, where, also, we had the advantage of a
+presentation to the Lady-Mayoress. As this distinguished couple retired
+into private life at the termination of their year of office, it is
+inadmissible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the manners
+and bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position of
+respectable mediocrity into one of pre&euml;minent dignity within their own
+sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to
+the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on
+the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an
+exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater
+than that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the
+outward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have
+been correctly informed, the Lord-Mayor's salary is exactly double that
+of the President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate
+to his necessary expenditure.</p>
+
+<p>There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide
+folding-doors; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be
+venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as
+spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid
+fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers
+and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them
+celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I
+recollect none pre&euml;minently distinguished in either department. But it
+is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for
+example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face
+to face, thus to bring them together, under genial auspices, in
+connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be
+the Lord-Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether,
+during his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every man of
+noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his
+Lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued; but it seemed to me
+that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which
+the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among
+different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society,
+however, I presume that the Lord-Mayor's card does not often seek out
+modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the
+bore, and doubtful about the honor.</p>
+
+<p>One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met with at any other
+public or partially public dinner, was the presence of ladies. No doubt,
+they were principally the wives and daughters of city-magnates; and if
+we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satirical
+poems, the city of London has always been famous for the beauty of its
+women and the reciprocal attractions between them and the men of
+quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither and thither through
+those crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying certain
+heterodox opinions which I had inbibed, in my Transatlantic newness and
+rawness, as regarded the delicate character and frequent occurrence of
+English beauty. To state the entire truth, (being, at this period, some
+years old in English life,) my taste, I fear, had long since begun to be
+deteriorated by acquaintance with other models of feminine loveliness
+than it was my happiness to know in America. I often found, or seemed to
+find, if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear
+countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagreness, (Heaven
+forbid that I should call it scrawniness!) a deficiency of physical
+development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material
+make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of voice,&mdash;all which
+characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more
+sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because I was
+sometimes driven to a half-acknowledgment, that the English ladies,
+looked at from a lower point of view, were perhaps a little finer
+animals than they. The advantages of the latter, if any they could
+really be said to have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of
+clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a
+pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in
+exchange for half a hundred-weight of human clay!</p>
+
+<p>At a given signal we all found our way into an immense room, called the
+Egyptian Hall, I know not why, except that the architecture was classic,
+and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the
+Pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we entered, and a
+brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables, extending
+the whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between them, occupying
+nearly its entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre
+or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accompaniments
+of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the
+Lord-Mayor's chaplain implored a blessing on the food,&mdash;a ceremony which
+the English never omit, at a great dinner or a small one, yet consider,
+I fear, not so much a religious rite as a sort of preliminary relish
+before the soup.</p>
+
+<p>The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of which, in
+accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls,
+in spite of the otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed,
+judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that
+there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the
+capacity of the soup-tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I
+partook of it but once, and then only in accordance with the wise maxim,
+always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its indigenous
+site; and the very fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the
+Lord-Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox customs which
+people follow for half a century without knowing why, to drink a sip of
+rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently
+well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for
+the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in
+a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque
+border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English
+and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive
+reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be
+carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is
+attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy,
+yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby
+the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes, instead
+of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as
+a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder
+that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of
+butcher's-meat, do not generally better estimate the &aelig;sthetic gormandism
+of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to
+nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic
+appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even
+an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things
+enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away
+wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden
+him,&mdash;a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part
+of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding
+high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a
+wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially
+nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my
+memory as completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had
+clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals, inspiriting us
+to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen
+supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with
+little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a
+to-morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case,
+a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, sat a young lady
+in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because
+not only the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character,
+would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be
+drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a
+picture-frame, or the covers of a romance: not that I had ever met with
+her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an
+apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and
+picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too
+apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to
+gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in
+the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly
+attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline
+of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that
+you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to
+speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became
+aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery.
+There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child
+would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife
+(the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom
+overshadowing her fair young brow) travelling in their honey-moon, and
+dining, among other distinguished strangers, at the Lord-Mayor's table.</p>
+
+<p>After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife and fork came the
+dessert; and at the point of the festival where finger-glasses are
+usually introduced, a large silver basin was carried round to the
+guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped the ends of our
+napkins and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of that
+heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems
+to be an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the Lord-Mayor's
+table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar.</p>
+
+<p>During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient custom, the
+origin or purport of which I do not remember to have heard, there stood
+a man in armor, with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's chair.
+When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, still another
+official personage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a
+solemn and sonorous proclamation, (in which he enumerated the principal
+guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several baronets, and plenty
+of generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the
+illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears,) ending
+in some such style as this: &quot;and other gentlemen and ladies, here
+present, the Lord-Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,&quot;&mdash;giving a
+sort of sentimental twang to the two words,&mdash;&quot;and sends it round among
+you!&quot; And forthwith the loving-cup&mdash;several of them, indeed, on each
+side of the tables&mdash;came slowly down with all the antique ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>The fashion of it is thus. The Lord-Mayor, standing up and taking the
+covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his elbow, who
+likewise rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which
+being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and
+receives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next
+neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a
+draught, after which the third person goes through a similar man&oelig;uvre
+with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find
+themselves inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one complicated
+chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I examined it critically,
+both inside and out, and perceived it to be an antique and richly
+ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about a quart of wine.
+Considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our
+lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully
+moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of wine
+being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the company
+had more than barely touched the silver rim before passing it to their
+neighbors,&mdash;a degree of abstinence that might be accounted for by a
+fastidious repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or possibly by
+a disapprobation of the liquor. Being curious to know all about these
+important matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever
+they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving-cup,
+and had no occasion for another,&mdash;ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor
+original quality, largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened.
+It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial drink,
+and could never have been intended for any better purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches
+neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of
+table-eloquence which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to
+each new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of
+state, gave awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor was
+about to propose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof,
+together with some accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate
+tune, and the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such
+or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what
+not, was going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor's toast;
+then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of
+trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments; and finally the doomed
+individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and
+proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his
+maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got
+every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most
+seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a
+book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion, but
+all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to
+say absurd. Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits
+into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into
+a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious libations of Sherry and
+old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to
+speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so
+refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of
+these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their
+substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen
+a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should
+undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt
+nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent
+expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I
+imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his
+ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard
+matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a
+rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of
+modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid,
+in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to
+come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they
+come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by
+way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine
+and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a
+circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much
+interrupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my
+condition had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the
+brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close proximity with three
+very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored
+name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write
+it; another, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste,
+kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such
+happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in
+England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me
+good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, camp, and country,
+which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the
+kind of help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not
+had a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt
+safer or cozier at anybody's fireside, even my own, than at the
+dinner-table of the Lord-Mayor.</p>
+
+<p>Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lordship got up and
+proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon &quot;the literary and
+commercial&quot;&mdash;I question whether those two adjectives were ever before
+married by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would not live
+together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord&mdash;&quot;the literary and
+commercial attainments of an eminent gentleman there present,&quot; and then
+went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Great
+Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country. Those
+bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great
+nations, throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured that that
+whole honorable company would join him in the expression of a fervent
+wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both sides of the
+Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry
+and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of
+nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously
+announced that Mr. So-and-so would now respond to his Right Honorable
+Lordship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish
+for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause,
+and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall.</p>
+
+<p>All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord-Mayor's part, after
+beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe-conduct; and it seemed
+very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his
+dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion-House wine, and go
+away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship
+had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have
+taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the
+matter to have been somewhat as follows.</p>
+
+<p>All England, just then, was in one of those singular fits of panic
+excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as that
+emotion,) which, in consequence of the homogeneous character of the
+people, their intense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas
+in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and
+individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and unreasoning than any
+similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American
+public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of
+it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong,
+are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North,
+at the commencement of this war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion
+only because it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just
+as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand people out of
+their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We
+were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to
+the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is
+nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as
+this characteristic. They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind
+of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always
+looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers
+of international law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the
+world, with themselves at the head, to combine for the purpose of
+putting us into a stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so
+powerful, (and when one man feels it, a million do,) that it resembles
+the passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you see the
+whole crop bending and swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate
+stalk tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad companions.
+At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of
+sentiment and expression. You have the whole country in each man; and
+not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a
+reasonable ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the
+world&mdash;our own country and France&mdash;that can put England into this
+singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely
+well-to-do, most anxious for the preservation of the cumbrous and
+moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and
+incompetent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of
+trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when
+that prosperity is really threatened.</p>
+
+<p>If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign side of any
+international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that
+there was very little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from
+the simple circumstance that their own Government had positively not an
+inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of
+the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a
+justification for incurring war. It was no such perilous juncture as
+exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or
+plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the
+first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a
+mere diplomatic squabble, which the British ministers, with the politic
+generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official
+subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an
+ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government
+(for God had not denied us an administration of Statesmen then) had
+retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a
+cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them with no
+pretence whatever for active resentment.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Lord-Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War
+was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so
+insignificant an American as myself, who might be made to harp on the
+rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and
+interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace
+where there was no peace, in however weak an utterance. And possibly his
+Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to
+be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and
+far-famed dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on the grand
+result. Thus, when the Lord-Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a
+piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser
+Curtius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of
+discord between England and America, and, on my ignominious demur, had
+resolved to shove me in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope
+of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his
+Lordship. He meant well by all parties,&mdash;himself, who would share the
+glory, and me, who ought to have desired nothing better than such an
+heroic opportunity,&mdash;his own country, which would continue to get cotton
+and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything that men work with
+and wear.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the Lord-Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it
+gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas.
+I never thought of listening to the speech, because I knew it all
+beforehand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it
+would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned to
+one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable
+flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest,
+to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once
+afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder
+ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to
+the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his
+office was held&mdash;at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm
+in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or
+no&mdash;was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if I
+liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily
+slide off into the momentous subject of the relations between England
+and America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty allusion.</p>
+
+<p>Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three
+friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or
+perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and
+suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a
+position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage
+policy here to close the sketch, leaving myself still erect in so heroic
+an attitude.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="the_geological_middle_age" id="the_geological_middle_age"></a>THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I shall pass lightly over the Permian and Triassic epochs, as being more
+nearly related in their organic forms to the Carboniferous epoch, with
+which we are already somewhat familiar, while in those next in
+succession, the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, the later conditions of
+animal life begin to be already foreshadowed. But though less
+significant for us in the present stage of our discussion, it must not
+be supposed that the Permian and Triassic epochs were unimportant in the
+physical and organic history of Europe. A glance at any geological map
+of Europe will show the reader how the Belgian island stretched
+gradually in a southwesterly direction during the Permian epoch,
+approaching the coast of France by slowly increasing accumulations, and
+thus filling the Burgundian channel; a wide border of Permian deposits
+around the coal-field of Great Britain marks the increase of this region
+also during the same time, and a very extensive tract of a like
+character is to be seen in Russia. The latter is, however, still under
+doubt and discussion among geologists, and more recent investigations
+tend to show that this Russian region, supposed at first to be
+exclusively Permian, is at least in part Triassic.</p>
+
+<p>With the coming in of the Triassic epoch began the great deposits of Red
+Sandstone, Muschel-Kalk, and Keuper, in Central Europe. They united the
+Belgian island to the region of the Vosges and the Black Forest, while
+they also filled to a great extent the channel between Belgium and the
+Bohemian island. Thus the land slowly gained upon the Triassic ocean,
+shutting it within ever-narrowing limits, and preparing the large inland
+seas so characteristic of the later Secondary times. The character of
+the organic world still retained a general resemblance to that of the
+Carboniferous epoch. Among Radiates, the Corals were more nearly allied
+to those of the earlier ages than to those of modern times, and Crinoids
+abounded still, though some of the higher Echinoderm types were already
+introduced. Among Mollusks, the lower Bivalves, that is, the Brachiopods
+and Bryozoa, still prevailed, while Ammonites continued to be very
+numerous, differing from the earlier ones chiefly in the ever-increasing
+complications of their inner partitions, which become so deeply
+involuted and cut upon their margins, before the type disappears, as to
+make an intricate tracery of very various patterns on the surface of
+these shells. The most conspicuous type of Articulates continues as
+before to be that of Crustacea; but Trilobites have finished their
+career, and the Lobster-like Crustacea make their appearance for the
+first time. It does not seem that the class of Insects has greatly
+increased since the Carboniferous epoch; and Worms are still as
+difficult to trace as ever, being chiefly known by the cases in which
+they sheltered themselves. Among Vertebrates, the Fishes still resemble
+those of the Carboniferous epoch, belonging principally to the
+Selachians and Ganoids. They have, however, approached somewhat toward a
+modern pattern, the lobes of the tail being more evenly cut, and their
+general outline more like that of common fishes. The gigantic marsh
+Reptiles have become far more numerous and various. They continue
+through several epochs, but may be said to reach their culminating point
+in the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot pass over the Triassic epoch without some allusion to the
+so-called bird-tracks, so generally believed to mark the introduction of
+Birds at this time. It is true that in the deposits of the Trias there
+have been found many traces of footsteps, indicating a vast number of
+animals which, except for these footprints, remain unknown to us. In the
+sandstone of the Connecticut Valley they are found in extraordinary
+numbers, as if these animals, whatever they were, had been in the habit
+of frequenting that shore. They appear to have been very diversified;
+for some of the tracks are very large, others quite small, while some
+would seem, from the way in which the footsteps follow each other, to
+have been quadrupedal, and others bipedal. We can even measure the
+length of their strides, following the impressions which, from their
+succession in a continuous line, mark the walk of a single animal.<a name="fnanchor_7_9" id="fnanchor_7_9"></a><a href="#footnote_7_9"><sup>10</sup></a>
+The fact that we find these footprints without any bones or other
+remains to indicate the animals by which they were made is accounted for
+by the mode of deposition of the sandstone. It is very unfavorable for
+the preservation of bones; but, being composed of minute sand mixed with
+mud, it affords an admirable substance for the reception of these
+impressions, which have been thus cast in a mould, as it were, and
+preserved through ages. These animals must have been large, when
+full-grown, for we find strides measuring six feet between, evidently
+belonging to the same animal. In the quadrupedal tracks, the front feet
+seem to have been smaller than the hind ones. Some of the tracks show
+four toes all turned forward, while in others three toes are turned
+forward and one backward. It happened that the first tracks found
+belonged to the latter class; and they very naturally gave rise to the
+idea that these impressions were made by birds, on account of this
+formation of the foot. This, however, is a mere inference; and since the
+inductive method is the only true one in science, it seems to me that we
+should turn to the facts we have in our possession for the explanation
+of these mysterious footprints, rather than endeavor to supply by
+assumption those which we have not. As there are no bones found in
+connection with these tracks, the only way to arrive at their true
+character, in the present state of our knowledge, is by comparing them
+with bones found in other localities in the deposits of the same period
+in the world's history. Now there have never been found in the Trias any
+remains of Birds, while it contains innumerable bones of Reptiles; and
+therefore I think that it is in the latter class that we shall
+eventually find the solution of this mystery.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_7_9" id="footnote_7_9"></a><a href="#fnanchor_7_9"><span class="label">10</span></a>
+For all details respecting these tracks see Hitchcock's
+<i>Ichnology of New England</i>. Boston, 1858. 4to.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is true that the bones of the Triassic Reptiles are scattered and
+disconnected; no complete skeleton has yet been discovered, nor has any
+foot been found; so that no direct comparison can be made with the
+steps. It is, however, my belief, from all we know of the character of
+the Animal Kingdom in those days, that these animals were reptilian, but
+combined, like so many of the early types, characters of their own class
+with those of higher animals yet to come. It seems to me probable, that,
+in those tracks where one toe is turned backward, the impression is made
+not by a toe, but by a heel, or by a long sole projecting backward; for
+it is not pointed, like those of the front toes, but is blunt. It is
+true that there is a division of joints in the toes, which seems in
+favor of the idea that they were those of Birds; for when the three toes
+are turned forward, there are two joints on the inner one, three on the
+middle, and four on the outer one, as in Birds. But this feature is not
+peculiar to Birds; it is found in Turtles also. The correspondence of
+these footprints with each other leaves no doubt that they were all by
+one kind of animal; for both the bipedal and the quadrupedal tracks have
+the same character. The only quadrupedal animals now known to us which
+walk on two legs are the Kangaroos. They raise themselves on their hind
+legs, using the front ones to bring their food to their mouth. They leap
+with the hind legs, sometimes bringing down their front feet to steady
+themselves after the spring, and making use also of their tails, to
+balance the body after leaping. In these tracks we find traces of a tail
+between the feet. I do not bring this forward as any evidence that these
+animals were allied to Kangaroos, since I believe that nothing is more
+injurious in science than assumptions which do not rest on a broad basis
+of facts; but I wish only to show that these tracks recall other animals
+besides Birds, with which they have been universally associated. And
+seeing, as we do, that so many of the early types prophesy future forms,
+it seems not improbable that they may have belonged to animals which
+combined with reptilian characters some birdlike features, and also some
+features of the earliest and lowest group of Mammalia, the Marsupials.
+To sum up my opinion respecting these footmarks, I believe that they
+were made by animals of a prophetic type, belonging to the class of
+Reptiles, and exhibiting many synthetic characters.</p>
+
+<p>The more closely we study past creations, the more impressive and
+significant do the synthetic types, presenting features of the higher
+classes under the guise of the lower ones, become. They hold the promise
+of the future. As the opening overture of an opera contains all the
+musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the
+Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively
+developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw the teeth of a
+Wealden Reptile, he pronounced them to be those of a Rhinoceros, so
+mammalian were they in their character. So, when Sommering first saw the
+remains of a Jurassic Pterodactyl, he pronounced them to be those of a
+Bird. These mistakes were not due to a superficial judgment in men who
+knew Nature so well, but to this prophetic character in the early types
+themselves, in which features were united never known to exist together
+in our days.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>The Jurassic epoch, next in succession, was a very important one in the
+history of Europe. It completed the junction of several of the larger
+islands, filling the channel between the central plateau of France and
+the Belgian island, as well as that between the former and the island of
+Bretagne, so that France was now a sort of crescent of land holding a
+Jurassic sea in its centre, Bretagne and Belgium forming the two horns.
+This Jurassic basin or inland sea united England and France, and it may
+not be amiss to say a word here of its subsequent transformations.
+During the long succession of Jurassic periods, the deposits of that
+epoch, chiefly limestone and clays, with here and there a bed of sand,
+were accumulated at its bottom. Upon these followed the chalk deposits
+of the Cretaceous epoch, until the basin was gradually filled, and
+partially, at least, turned to dry land. But at the close of the
+Cretaceous epoch a fissure was formed, allowing the entrance of the sea
+at the western end, so that the constant washing of the tides and storms
+wore away the lower, softer deposits, leaving the overhanging chalk
+cliffs unsupported. These latter, as their support were undermined,
+crumbled down, thus widening the channel gradually. This process must,
+of course, have gone on more rapidly at the western end, where the sea
+rushed on with most force, till the channel was worn through to the
+German Ocean on the other side, and the sea then began to act with like
+power at both ends of the channel. This explains its form, wider at the
+western end, narrower between Dover and Calais, and widening again at
+the eastern extremity. This ancient basin, extending from the centre of
+France into England, is rich in the remains of a number of successive
+epochs. Around its margin we find the Jurassic deposits, showing that
+there must have been some changes of level which raised the shores and
+prevented later accumulations from covering them, while in the centre
+the Jurassic deposits are concealed by those of the Cretaceous epoch
+above them, these being also partially hidden under the later Tertiary
+beds. Let us see, then, what this inland sea has to tell us of the
+organic world in the Jurassic epoch.</p>
+
+<p>At that time the region where Lyme-Regis is now situated in modern
+England was an estuary on the shore of that ancient sea. About forty
+years ago a discovery of large and curious bones, belonging to some
+animal unknown to the scientific world, turned the attention of
+naturalists to this locality, and since then such a quantity and variety
+of such remains have been found in the neighborhood as to show that the
+Sharks, Whales, Porpoises, etc., of the present ocean are not more
+numerous and diversified than were the inhabitants of this old bay or
+inlet. Among these animals, the Ichthyosauri (Fish-Lizards) form one of
+the best-known and most prominent groups. They are chiefly found in the
+Lias, the lowest set of beds of the Jurassic deposits, and seem to have
+come in with the close of the Triassic epoch. It is greatly to be
+regretted that all that is known of the Triassic Reptiles antecedent to
+the Ichthyosauri still remains in the form of original papers, and is
+not yet embodied in text-books. They are quite as interesting, as
+curious, and as diversified as those of the Jurassic epoch, which are,
+however, much more extensively known, on account of the large
+collections of these animals belonging to the British Museum. It will be
+more easy to understand the structural relations of the latter, and
+their true position in the Animal Kingdom, when those which preceded
+them are better understood. One of the most remarkable and numerous of
+these Triassic Reptiles seems to have been an animal resembling, in the
+form of the head, and in the two articulating surfaces at the juncture
+of the head with the backbone, the Frogs and Salamanders, though its
+teeth are like those of a Crocodile. As yet nothing has been found of
+these animals except the head,&mdash;neither the backbone nor the limbs; so
+that little is known of their general structure. </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/one.gif" alt="Ichthyosaurus" />
+<p class="center">Fig. 1.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Ichthyosauri (Figure 1) must have been very large, seven or eight
+feet being the ordinary length, while specimens measuring from twenty to
+thirty feet are not uncommon. The large head is pointed, like that of
+the Porpoise; the jaws contain a number of conical teeth, of reptilian
+form and character; the eyeball was very large, as may be seen by the
+socket, and it was supported by pieces of bone, such as we find now only
+in the eyes of birds of prey and in the bony fishes. The ribs begin at
+the neck and continue to the tail, and there is no distinction between
+head and neck, as in most Reptiles, but a continuous outline, as in
+Fishes. They had four limbs, not divided into fingers, but forming mere
+paddles. Yet fingers seem to be hinted at in these paddles, though not
+developed, for the bones are in parallel rows, as if to mark what might
+be such a division. The back-bones are short, but very high, and the
+surfaces of articulation are hollow, conical cavities, as in Fishes,
+instead of ball-and-socket joints, as in Reptiles. The ribs are more
+complicated than in Vertebrates generally: they consist of several
+pieces, and the breast-bone is formed of a number of bones, making
+together quite an intricate bony net-work. There is only one living
+animal, the Crocodile, characterized by this peculiar structure of the
+breast-bone. The Ichthyosaurus is, indeed, one of the most remarkable of
+the synthetic types: by the shape of its head one would associate it
+with the Porpoises, while by its paddles and its long tail it reminds
+one of the whole group of Cetaceans to which the Porpoises belong; by
+its crocodilian teeth, its ribs, and its breast-bone, it seems allied to
+Reptiles; and by its uniform neck, not distinguished from the body, and
+the structure of the backbone, it recalls the Fishes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/two.gif" alt="Plesiosaurus" />
+<p class="center">Fig. 2.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Another most curious member of this group is the Plesiosaurus, odd
+Saurian (Figure 2). By its disproportionately long and flexible neck,
+and its small, flat head, it unquestionably foreshadows the Serpents,
+while by the structure of the backbone, the limbs, and the tail, it is
+closely allied with the Ichthyosaurus. Its flappers are, however, more
+slender, less clumsy, and were, no doubt, adapted to more rapid motion
+than the fins of the Ichthyosaurus, while its tail is shorter in
+proportion to the whole length of the animal. It seems probable, from
+its general structure, that the Ichthyosaurus moved like a Fish, chiefly
+by the flapping of the tail, aided by the fins, while in the
+Plesiosaurus the tail must have been much less efficient as a locomotive
+organ, and the long, snake-like, flexible neck no doubt rendered the
+whole body more agile and rapid in its movements. In comparing the two,
+it may be said, that, as a whole, the Ichthyosaurus, though belonging by
+its structure to the class of Reptiles, has a closer external
+resemblance to the Fishes, while the Plesiosaurus is more decidedly
+reptilian in character. If there exists any animal in our waters, not
+yet known to naturalists, answering to the descriptions of the
+&quot;Sea-Serpent,&quot; it must be closely allied to the Plesiosaurus. The
+occurrence in the fresh waters of North America of a Fish, the
+Lepidosteus, which is closely allied to the fossil Fishes found with the
+Plesiosaurus in the Jurassic beds, renders such a supposition probable.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/three.gif" alt="Pterodactylus" />
+<p class="center">Fig. 3.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of all these strange old forms, so singularly uniting features of Fishes
+and Reptiles, none has given rise to more discussion than the
+Pterodactylus, (Figure 3,) another of the Saurian tribe, associated,
+however, with Birds by some naturalists, on account of its large
+wing-like appendages. From the extraordinary length of its anterior
+limbs, they have generally been described as wings, and the animal is
+usually represented as a flying Reptile. But if we consider its whole
+structure, this does not seem probable, and I believe it to have been an
+essentially aquatic animal, moving after the fashion of the Sea-Turtle.
+Its so-called wings resemble in structure the front paddles of the
+Sea-Turtles far more than the wings of a Bird; differing from them,
+indeed, only by the extraordinary length of the inner toe, while the
+outer ones are comparatively much shorter. But, notwithstanding this
+difference, the hand of the Pterodactylus is constructed like that of an
+aquatic swimming marine Reptile; and I believe, that, if we represent it
+with its long neck stretched upon the water, its large head furnished
+with powerful, well-armed jaws, ready to dive after the innumerable
+smaller animals living in the same ocean, we shall have a more natural
+picture of its habits than if we consider it as a flying animal, which
+it is generally supposed to have been. It has not the powerful
+breast-bone, with the large projecting keel along the middle line, such
+as exists in all the flying animals. Its breast-bone, on the contrary,
+is thin and flat, like that of the present Sea-Turtle; and if it moved
+through the water by the help of its long flappers, as the Sea-Turtle
+does now, it could well dispense with that powerful construction of the
+breast-bone so essential to all animals which fly through the air.
+Again, the powerful teeth, long and conical, placed at considerable
+intervals in the jaw, constitute a feature common to all predaceous
+aquatic animals, and would seem to have been utterly useless in a flying
+animal at that time, since there were no a&euml;rial beings of any size to
+prey upon. The Dragon-Flies found in the same deposits with the
+Pterodactylus were certainly not a game requiring so powerful a battery
+of attack.</p>
+
+<p>The Fishes of the Jurassic sea were exceedingly numerous, but were all
+of the Ganoid and Selachian tribes. It would weary the reader, were I to
+introduce here any detailed description of them, but they were as
+numerous and varied as those living in our present waters. There was the
+Hybodus, with the marked furrows on the spines and the strong hooks
+along their margin,&mdash;the huge Chimera, with its long whip, its curved
+bone over the back, and its parrot-like bill,&mdash;the Lepidotus, with its
+large square scales, its large head, its numerous rows of teeth, one
+within another, forming a powerful grinding apparatus,&mdash;the Microdon,
+with its round, flat body, its jaw paved with small grinding teeth,&mdash;the
+swift Aspidorhynchus, with its long, slender body and massive tail,
+enabling it to strike the water powerfully and dart forward with great
+rapidity. There were also a host of small Fishes, comparing with those
+above mentioned as our Perch, Herring, Smelts, etc., compare with our
+larger Fishes; but, whatever their size or form, all the Fishes of those
+days had the same hard scales fitting to each other by hooks, instead of
+the thin membranous scales overlapping each other at the edge, like the
+common Fishes of more modern times. The smaller Fishes, no doubt,
+afforded food to the larger ones, and to the aquatic Reptiles. Indeed,
+in parts of the intestines of the Ichthyosauri, and in their petrified
+excrements, have been found the scales and teeth of these smaller Fishes
+perfectly preserved. It is amazing that we can learn so much of the
+habits of life of these past creatures, and know even what was the food
+of animals existing countless ages before man was created.</p>
+
+<p>There are traces of Mammalia in the Jurassic deposits, but they were of
+those inferior kinds known now as Marsupials, and no complete specimens
+have yet been found.</p>
+
+<p>The Articulates were largely represented in this epoch. There were
+already in the vegetation a number of Gymnosperms, affording more
+favorable nourishment for Insects than the forests of earlier times; and
+we accordingly find that class in larger numbers than ever before,
+though still meagre in comparison with its present representation.
+Crustacea were numerous,&mdash;those of the Shrimp and Lobster kinds
+prevailing, though in some of the Lobsters we have the first advance
+towards the highest class of Crustacea in the expansion of the
+transverse diameter now so characteristic of the Crabs. Among Mollusks
+we have a host of gigantic Ammonites; and the naked Cephalopods, which
+were in later times to become the prominent representatives of that
+class, already begin to make their appearance. Among Radiates, some of
+the higher kinds of Echinoderms, the Ophiurans and Echinolds, take the
+place of the Crinoids, and the Acalephian Corals give way to the Astr&aelig;an
+and Meandrina-like types, resembling the Reef-Builders of the present
+time.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>I have spoken especially of the inhabitants of the Jurassic sea lying
+between England and France, because it was there that were first found
+the remains of some of the most remarkable and largest Jurassic animals.
+But wherever these deposits have been investigated, the remains
+contained in them reveal the same organic character, though, of course,
+we find the land Reptiles only where there happen to have been marshes,
+the aquatic Saurians wherever large estuaries or bays gave them an
+opportunity of coming in near shore, so that their bones were preserved
+in the accumulations of mud or clay constantly collecting in such
+localities,&mdash;the Crustacea, Shells, or Sea-Urchins on the old
+sea-beaches, the Corals in the neighborhood of coral reefs, and so on.
+In short, the distribution of animals then as now was in accordance with
+their nature and habits, and we shall seek vainly for them in the
+localities where they did not belong.</p>
+
+<p>But when I say that the character of the Jurassic animals is the same, I
+mean, that, wherever a Jurassic sea-shore occurs, be it in France,
+Germany, England, or elsewhere throughout the world, the Shells,
+Crustacea, or other animals found upon it have a special character, and
+are not to be confounded by any one thoroughly acquainted with these
+fossils with the Shells or Crustacea of any preceding or subsequent
+time,&mdash;that, where a Jurassic marsh exists, the land Reptiles inhabiting
+it are Jurassic, and neither Triassic nor Cretaceous,&mdash;that a Jurassic
+coral reef is built of Corals belonging as distinctly to the Jurassic
+creation as the Corals on the Florida reefs belong to the present
+creation,&mdash;that, where some Jurassic bay or inlet is disclosed to us
+with the Fishes anciently inhabiting it, they are as characteristic of
+their time as are the Fishes of Massachusetts Bay now.</p>
+
+<p>And not only so, but, while this unity of creation prevails throughout
+the entire epoch as a whole, there is the same variety of geographical
+distribution, the same circumscription of faun&aelig; within distinct
+zo&ouml;logical provinces, as at the present time. The Fishes of
+Massachusetts Bay are not the same as those of Chesapeake Bay, nor those
+of Chesapeake Bay the same as those of Pamlico Sound, nor those of
+Pamlico Sound the same as those of the Florida coast. This division of
+the surface of the earth into given areas within which certain
+combinations of animals and plants are confined is not peculiar to the
+present creation, but has prevailed in all times, though with
+ever-increasing diversity, as the surface of the earth itself assumed a
+greater variety of climatic conditions. D'Orbigny and others were
+mistaken in assuming that faunal differences have been introduced only
+in the last geological epochs. Besides these adjoining zo&ouml;logical faun&aelig;,
+each epoch is divided, as we have seen, into a number of periods,
+occupying successive levels one above another, and differing
+specifically from each other in time as zo&ouml;logical provinces differ from
+each other in space. In short, every epoch is to be looked upon from two
+points of view: as a unit, complete in itself, having one character
+throughout, and as a stage in the progressive history of the world,
+forming part of an organic whole.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>As the Jurassic epoch was ushered in by the upheaval of the Jura, so its
+close was marked by the upheaval of that system of mountains called the
+C&ocirc;te d'Or. With this latter upheaval began the Cretaceous epoch, which
+we will examine with special reference to its subdivision into periods,
+since the periods in this epoch have been clearly distinguished, and
+investigated with especial care. I have alluded in the preceding article
+to the immediate contact of the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs in
+Switzerland, affording peculiar facilities for the direct comparison of
+their organic remains. But the Cretaceous deposits are well known, not
+only in this inland sea of ancient Switzerland, but in a number of
+European basins, in France, in the Pyrenees, on the Mediterranean
+shores, and also in Syria, Egypt, India, and Southern Africa, as well as
+on our own continent. In all these localities, the Cretaceous remains,
+like those of the Jurassic epoch, have one organic character, distinct
+and unique. This fact is especially significant, because the contact of
+their respective deposits is in many localities so immediate and
+continuous that it affords an admirable test for the development-theory.
+If this is the true mode of origin of animals, those of the later
+Jurassic beds must be the progenitors of those of the earlier Cretaceous
+deposits. Let us see now how far this agrees with our knowledge of the
+physiological laws of development.</p>
+
+<p>Take first the class of Fishes. We have seen that in the Jurassic
+periods there were none of our common Fishes, none corresponding to our
+Herring, Pickerel, Mackerel, and the like,&mdash;no Fishes, in short, with
+thin membranous scales, but that the class was represented exclusively
+by those with hard, flint-like scales. In the Cretaceous epoch, however,
+we come suddenly upon a horde of Fishes corresponding to our smaller
+common Fishes of the Pickerel and Herring tribes, but principally of the
+kinds found now in tropical waters; there are none like our Cods,
+Haddocks, etc., such as are found at present in the colder seas. The
+Fishes of the Jurassic epoch corresponding to our Sharks and Skates and
+Gar-Pikes still exist, but in much smaller proportion, while these more
+modern kinds are very numerous. Indeed, a classification of the
+Cretaceous Fishes would correspond very nearly to one founded on those
+now living. Shall we, then, suppose that the large reptilian Fishes of
+the Jurassic time began suddenly to lay numerous broods of these
+smaller, more modern, scaly Fishes? And shall we account for the
+diminution of the previous forms by supposing that in order to give a
+fair chance to the new kinds they brought them forth in large numbers,
+while they reproduced their own kind less abundantly? According to very
+careful estimates, if we accept this view, the progeny of the Jurassic
+Fishes must have borne a proportion of about ninety per cent, of
+entirely new types to some ten per cent, of those resembling the
+parents. One would like a fact or two on which to rest so very
+extraordinary a reversal of all known physiological laws of
+reproduction, but, unhappily, there is not one.</p>
+
+<p>Still more unaccountable, upon any theory of development according to
+ordinary laws of reproduction, are those unique, isolated types limited
+to a single epoch, or sometimes even to a single period. There are some
+very remarkable instances of this in the Cretaceous deposits. To make my
+statement clearer, I will say a word of the sequence of these deposits
+and their division into periods.</p>
+
+<p>These Cretaceous beds were at first divided only into three sets, called
+the Neocomian, or lower deposits, the Green-Sands, or middle deposits,
+and the Chalk, or upper deposits. The Neocomian, the lower division, was
+afterwards subdivided into three sets of beds, called the Lower, Middle,
+and Upper Neocomian by some geologists, the Valengian, Neocomian, and
+Urgonian by others. These three periods are not only traced in immediate
+succession, one above another, in the transverse cut before described,
+across the mountain of Chaumont, near Neufchatel, but they are also
+traced almost on one level along the plain at the foot of the Jura. It
+is evident that by some disturbance of the surface the eastern end of
+the range was raised slightly, lifting the lower or Valengian deposits
+out of the water, so that they remain uncovered, and the next set of
+deposits, the Neocomian, is accumulated along their base, while these in
+their turn are slightly raised, and the Urgonian beds are accumulated
+against them a little lower down. They follow each other from east to
+west in a narrower area, just as the Azoic, Silurian, and Devonian
+deposits follow each other from north to south in the northern part of
+the United States. The Cretaceous deposits have been intimately studied
+in various localities by different geologists, and are now subdivided
+into at least ten, or it may be fifteen or sixteen distinct periods, as
+they stand at present. This is, however, but the beginning of the work;
+and the recent investigations of the French geologist, Coquand, indicate
+that several of these periods at least are susceptible of further
+subdivision. I present here a table enumerating the periods of the
+Cretaceous epoch best known at present, in their sequence, because I
+want to show how sharply and in how arbitrary a manner, if I may so
+express it, new forms are introduced. The names are simply derived from
+the localities, or from some circumstances connected with the locality
+where each period has been studied.</p>
+
+<h4>
+<i>Table of Periods in the Cretaceous Epoch.</i>
+</h4>
+
+<div class="centered"><table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Periods">
+<tr>
+<td>Maestrichtian</td>
+<td rowspan="2" valign="middle">&nbsp;</td>
+<td rowspan="2" valign="middle">Chalk.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Senonian</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Turonian</td>
+<td rowspan="2" valign="middle">&nbsp;</td>
+<td rowspan="2" valign="middle">Chalk Marl.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Cenomanian</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Albian</td>
+<td rowspan="3" valign="middle">&nbsp;</td>
+<td rowspan="3" valign="middle">Green Sands.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Aptian</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Rhodanian</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Urgonian</td>
+<td rowspan="3" valign="middle">&nbsp;</td>
+<td rowspan="3" valign="middle">Wealden.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Neocomian</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Valengian</td>
+</tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>One of the most peculiar and distinct of those unique types alluded to
+above is that of the Rudistes, a singular Bivalve, in which the lower
+valve is very deep and conical, while the upper valve sets into to it as
+into a cup. The subjoined woodcut represents such a Bivalve. These
+Rudistes are found suddenly in the Urgonian deposits; there are none in
+the two preceding sets of beds; they disappear in the three following
+periods, and reappear again in great numbers in the Cenomanian,
+Turonian, and Senonian periods, and disappear again in the succeeding
+one. These can hardly be missed from any negligence or oversight in the
+examination of these deposits, for they are by no means rare. They are
+found always in great numbers, occupying crowded beds, like Oysters in
+the present time. So numerous are they, where they occur at all, that
+the deposits containing them are called by many naturalists the first,
+second, third, and fourth <i>bank</i> of Rudistes. Which of the ordinary
+Bivalves, then, gave rise to this very remarkable form in the class,
+allowed it to die out, and revived it again at various intervals? This
+is by no means the only instance of the same kind. There are a number of
+types making their appearance suddenly, lasting during one period or
+during a succession of periods, and then disappearing forever, while
+others, like the Rudistes, come in, vanish, and reappear at a later
+time.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/four.gif" alt="Rudistes" />
+<p class="center">Rudistes.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>I am well aware that the advocates of the development-theory do not
+state their views as I have here presented them. On the contrary, they
+protest against any idea of sudden, violent, abrupt changes, and
+maintain that by slow and imperceptible modifications during immense
+periods of time these new types have been introduced without involving
+any infringement of the ordinary processes of development; and they
+account for the entire absence of corroborative facts in the past
+history of animals by what they call the &quot;imperfection of the geological
+record.&quot; Now, while I admit that our knowledge of geology is still very
+incomplete, I assert that just where the direct sequence of geological
+deposits is needed for this evidence, we have it. The Jurassic beds,
+without a single modern scaly Fish, are in immediate contact with the
+Cretaceous beds, in which the Fishes of that kind are proportionately
+almost as numerous as they are now; and between these two sets of
+deposits there is not a trace of any transition or intermediate form to
+unite the reptilian Fishes of the Jurassic with the common Fishes of the
+Cretaceous times. Again, the Cretaceous beds in which the crowded banks
+of Rudistes, so singular and unique in form, first make their
+appearance, follow immediately upon those in which all the Bivalves are
+of an entirely different character. In short, the deposits of this year
+along any sea-coast or at the mouth of any of our rivers do not follow
+more directly upon those of last year than do these successive sets of
+beds of past ages follow upon each other. In making these statements, I
+do not forget the immense length of the geological periods; on the
+contrary, I fully accede to it, and believe that it is more likely to
+have been underrated than overstated. But let it be increased a
+thousand-fold, the fact remains, that these new types occur commonly at
+the dividing line where one period joins the next, just on the margin of
+both.</p>
+
+<p>For years I have collected daily among some of these deposits, and I
+know the Sea-Urchins, Corals, Fishes, Crustacea, and Shells of those old
+shores as well as I know those of Nahant Beach, and there is nothing
+more striking to a naturalist than the sudden, abrupt changes of species
+in passing from one to another. In the second set of Cretaceous beds,
+the Neocomian, there is found a little Terebratula (a small Bivalve
+Shell) in immense quantities: they may actually be collected by the
+bushel. Pass to the Urgonian beds, resting directly upon the Neocomian,
+and there is not one to be found, and an entirely new species comes in.
+There is a peculiar Spatangus (Sea-Urchin) found throughout the whole
+series of beds in which this Terebratula occurs. At the same moment that
+you miss the Shell, the Sea-Urchin disappears also, and another takes
+its place. Now, admitting for a moment that the later can have grown out
+of the earlier forms, I maintain, that, if this be so, the change is
+immediate, sudden, without any gradual transitions, and is, therefore,
+wholly inconsistent with all our known physiological laws, as well as
+with the transmutation-theory.</p>
+
+<p>There is a very singular group of Ammonites in the Cretaceous epoch,
+which, were it not for the suddenness of its appearance, might seem
+rather to favor the development-theory, from its great variety of
+closely allied forms. We have traced the Chambered Shells from the
+straight, simple ones of the earliest epochs up to the intricate and
+closely coiled forms of the Jurassic epoch. In the so-called Portland
+stone, belonging to the upper set of Jurassic beds, there is only one
+type of Ammonite; but in the Cretaceous beds, immediately above it,
+there set in a number of different genera and distinct species,
+including the most fantastic and seemingly abnormal forms. It is as if
+the close coil by which these shells had been characterized during the
+Middle Age had been suddenly broken up and decomposed into an endless
+variety of outlines. Some of these new types still retain the coil, but
+the whorls are much less compact than before, as in the Crioceras; in
+others, the direction of the coil is so changed as to make a spiral, as
+in the Turrilites; or the shell starts with a coil, then proceeds in a
+straight line, and changes to a curve again at the other extremity, as
+in the Ancyloceras, or in the Scaphites, in which the first coil is
+somewhat closer than in the Ancyloceras; or the tendency to a coil is
+reduced to a single curve, so as to give the shell the outline of a
+horn, as in the Toxoceras; or the coil is entirely lost, and the shell
+reduced to its primitive straight form, as in the Baculites, which,
+except for their undulating partitions, might be mistaken for the
+Orthoceratites of the Silurian and Devonian epochs. I have presented
+here but a few species of these extraordinary Cretaceous Ammonites, and,
+strange to say, with this breaking-up of the type into a number of
+fantastic and often contorted shapes, it disappears. It is singular that
+forms so unusual and so contrary to the previous regularity of this
+group should accompany its last stage of existence, and seem to shadow
+forth by their strange contortions the final dissolution of their type.
+When I look upon a collection of these old shells, I can never divest
+myself of an impression that the contortions of a death-struggle have
+been made the pattern of living types, and with that the whole group has
+ended.</p>
+
+<div class="centered"><table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Figures-1">
+<tr>
+<td><img src="images/five.gif" alt="Crioceras" /></td>
+<td><img src="images/six.gif" alt="Turrilites" /></td>
+<td><img src="images/seven.gif" alt="Ancyloceras" /></td>
+<td><img src="images/eight.gif" alt="Scaphites" /></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p class="center">Crioceras.</p></td>
+<td><p class="center">Turrilites.</p></td>
+<td><p class="center">Ancyloceras.</p></td>
+<td><p class="center">Scaphites.</p></td>
+</tr>
+</table></div>
+<div class="centered"><table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Figures-2">
+<tr>
+<td><img src="images/nine.gif" alt="Toxoceras" /></td>
+<td><img src="images/ten.gif" alt="Baculites" /></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p class="center">Toxoceras.</p></td>
+<td><p class="center">Baculites.</p></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>Now shall we infer that the compact, closely coiled Ammonites of the
+Jurassic deposits, while continuing their own kind, brought forth a
+variety of other kinds, and so distributed these new organic elements as
+to produce a large number of distinct genera and species? I confess that
+these ideas are so contrary to all I have learned from Nature in the
+course of a long life that I should be forced to renounce completely the
+results of my studies in Embryology and Pal&aelig;ontology before I could
+adopt these new views of the origin of species. And while the
+distinguished originator of this theory is entitled to our highest
+respect for his scientific researches, yet it should not be forgotten
+that the most conclusive evidence brought forward by him and his
+adherents is of a negative character, drawn from a science in which they
+do not pretend to have made personal investigations, that of Geology,
+while the proofs they offer us from their own departments of science,
+those of Zo&ouml;logy and Botany, are derived from observations, still very
+incomplete, upon domesticated animals and cultivated plants, which can
+never be made a test of the origin of wild species.<a name="fnanchor_8_10" id="fnanchor_8_10"></a><a href="#footnote_8_10"><sup>11</sup></a></p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="footnote_8_10" id="footnote_8_10"></a><a href="#fnanchor_8_10"><span class="label">11</span></a>
+The advocates of the development-theory allude to the
+metamorphosis of animals and plants as supporting their view of a change
+of one species into another. They compare the passage of a common leaf
+into the calyx or crown-leaves in plants, or that of a larva into a
+perfect insect, to the passage of one species into another. The only
+objection to this argument seems to be, that, whereas Nature daily
+presents us myriads of examples of the one set of phenomena, showing it
+to be a norm, not a single instance of the other has ever been known to
+occur either in the animal or in the vegetable kingdom.</p></div>
+
+<p>In my next article I shall show the relation between the Cretaceous and
+Tertiary epochs, and see whether there is any reason to believe that the
+gigantic Mammalia of more modern times were derived from the Reptiles of
+the Secondary age.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="the_white_throated_sparrow" id="the_white_throated_sparrow"></a>THE WHITE-THROATED SPARROW.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">Hark! 't is our Northern Nightingale that sings</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">In far-off, leafy cloisters, dark and cool,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Flinging his flute-notes bounding from the skies!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">Thou wild musician of the mountain-streams,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Most tuneful minstrel of the forest-choirs,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Bird of all grace and harmony of soul,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Unseen, we hail thee for thy blissful voice!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">Up in yon tremulous mist where morning wakes</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Illimitable shadows from their dark abodes,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Or in this woodland glade tumultuous grown</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">With all the murmurous language of the trees,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">No blither presence fills the vocal space.</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">The wandering rivulets dancing through the grass,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">The gambols, low or loud, of insect-life,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">The cheerful call of cattle in the vales,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Sweet natural sounds of the contented hours,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">All seem less jubilant when thy song begins.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">Deep in the shade we lie and listen long;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">For human converse well may pause, and man</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Learn from such notes fresh hints of praise,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">That upward swelling from thy grateful tribe</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Circles the hills with melodies of joy.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="the_fleur-de-lis_in_florida" id="the_fleur-de-lis_in_florida"></a>THE FLEUR-DE-LIS IN FLORIDA.</h2>
+
+<p class="blockquot">[In the July number of this magazine is a sketch of the attempt
+of the Huguenots, under the auspices of Coligny, to found a
+colony at Port Royal. Two years later, an attempt was made to
+establish a Protestant community on the banks of the River St.
+John's, in Florida. The following paper embodies the substance
+of the letters and narratives of the actors in this striking
+episode of American history.]</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="chapter_i" id="chapter_i"></a>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+
+<p>On the 25th of June, 1564, a French squadron anchored a second time off
+the mouth of the River of May. There were three vessels, the smallest of
+sixty tons, the largest of one hundred and twenty, all crowded with men.
+Ren&eacute; de Laudonni&egrave;re held command. He was of a noble race of Poitou,
+attached to the House of Ch&acirc;tillon, of which Coligny was the head;
+pious, we are told, and an excellent marine officer. An engraving,
+purporting to be his likeness, shows us a slender figure, leaning
+against the mast, booted to the thigh, with slouched hat and plume,
+slashed doublet, and short cloak. His thin oval face, with curled
+moustache and close-trimmed beard, wears a thoughtful and somewhat
+pensive look, as if already shadowed by the destiny that awaited him.</p>
+
+<p>The intervening year since Ribaut's voyage had been a dark and deadly
+year for France. From the peaceful solitude of the River of May, that
+voyager returned to a land reeking with slaughter. But the carnival of
+bigotry and hate had found a respite. The Peace of Amboise had been
+signed. The fierce monk choked down his venom; the soldier sheathed his
+sword; the assassin, his dagger; rival chiefs grasped hands, and masked
+their rancor under hollow smiles. The king and the queen-mother,
+helpless amid the storm of factions which threatened their destruction,
+smiled now on Cond&eacute;, now on Guise,&mdash;gave ear to the Cardinal of
+Lorraine, or listened in secret to the emissaries of Theodore Beza.
+Coligny was again strong at Court. He used his opportunity, and
+solicited with success the means of renewing his enterprise of
+colonization. With pains and zeal, men were mustered for the work. In
+name, at least, they were all Huguenots; yet again, as before, the
+staple of the projected colony was unsound: soldiers, paid out of the
+royal treasury, hired artisans and tradesmen, joined with a swarm of
+volunteers from the young Huguenot noblesse, whose restless swords had
+rusted in their scabbards since the peace. The foundation-stone was left
+out. There were no tillers of the soil. Such, indeed, were rare among
+the Huguenots; for the dull peasants who guided the plough clung with
+blind tenacity to the ancient faith. Adventurous gentlemen, reckless
+soldiers, discontented tradesmen, all keen for novelty and heated with
+dreams of wealth,&mdash;these were they who would build for their country and
+their religion an empire beyond the sea.</p>
+
+<p>With a few officers and twelve soldiers, Laudonni&egrave;re landed where Ribaut
+had landed before him; and as their boat neared the shore, they saw an
+Indian chief who ran to meet them, whooping and clamoring welcome from
+afar. It was Satouriona, the savage potentate who ruled some thirty
+villages around the lower St. John's and northward along the coast. With
+him came two stalwart sons, and behind trooped a host of tribesmen
+arrayed in smoke-tanned deerskins stained with wild devices in gaudy
+colors. They crowded around the voyagers with beaming visages and yelps
+of gratulation. The royal Satouriona could not contain the exuberance of
+his joy, since in the person of the French commander he recognized the
+brother of the Sun, descended from the skies to aid him against his
+great rival, Outina.</p>
+
+<p>Hard by stood the column of stone, graven with the fleur-de-lis,
+planted here on the former voyage. The Indians had crowned the mystic
+emblem with evergreens, and placed offerings of maize on the ground
+before it; for with an affectionate and reverent wonder they had ever
+remembered the steel-clad strangers whom, two summers before, John
+Ribaut had led to their shores.</p>
+
+<p>Five miles up the St. John's, or River of May, there stands, on the
+southern bank, a hill some forty feet high, boldly thrusting itself into
+the broad and lazy waters. It is now called St. John's Bluff. Thither
+the Frenchmen repaired, pushed through the dense semi-tropical forest,
+and climbed the steep acclivity. Thence they surveyed their Canaan.
+Beneath them moved the unruffled river, gliding around the reed-grown
+shores of marshy islands, the haunt of alligators, and betwixt the
+bordering expanse of wide, wet meadows, studded with island-like clumps
+of pine and palmetto, and bounded by the sunny verge of distant forests.
+Far on their right, seen by glimpses between the shaggy cedar-boughs,
+the glistening sea lay stretched along the horizon. Before, in hazy
+distance, the softened green of the woodlands was veined with the mazes
+of the countless interlacing streams that drain the watery region behind
+St. Mary's and Fernandina. To the left, the St. John's flowed gleaming
+betwixt verdant shores beyond whose portals lay the El Dorado of their
+dreams. &quot;Briefly,&quot; writes Laudonni&egrave;re, &quot;the place is so pleasant that
+those which are melancholicke would be inforced to change their humour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A fresh surprise awaited them. The allotted span of mortal life was
+quadrupled in that benign climate. Laudonni&egrave;re's lieutenant, Ottigny,
+ranging the neighboring forest with a party of soldiers, met a troop of
+Indians who invited him to their dwellings. Mounted on the back of a
+stout savage, who plunged with him through the deep marshes, and guided
+him by devious pathways through the tangled thickets, he arrived at
+length, and beheld a wondrous spectacle. In the lodge sat a venerable
+chief, who assured him that he was the father of five successive
+generations, and that he had lived two hundred and fifty years.
+Opposite, sat a still more ancient veteran, the father of the first,
+shrunken to a mere anatomy, and &quot;seeming to be rather a dead carkeis
+than a living body.&quot; &quot;Also,&quot; pursues the history, &quot;his age was so great
+that the good man had lost his sight, and could not speak one onely word
+but with exceeding great paine.&quot; Despite his dismal condition, the
+visitor was told that he might expect to live in the course of Nature
+thirty or forty years more. As the two patriarchs sat face to face, half
+hidden with their streaming white hair, Ottigny and his credulous
+soldiers looked from one to the other, lost in wonder and admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Man and Nature alike seemed to mark the borders of the River of May as
+the site of the new colony; for here, around the Indian towns, the
+harvests of maize, beans, and pumpkins promised abundant food, while the
+river opened a ready way to the mines of gold and silver and the stores
+of barbaric wealth which glittered before the dreaming vision of the
+colonists. Yet, the better to content himself and his men, Laudonni&egrave;re
+weighed anchor, and sailed for a time along the neighboring coasts.
+Returning, confirmed in his first impression, he set forth with a party
+of officers and soldiers to explore the borders of the chosen stream.
+The day was hot. The sun beat fiercely on the woollen caps and heavy
+doublets of the men, till at length they gained the shade of one of
+those deep forests of pine where the dead and sultry air is thick with
+resinous odors, and the earth, carpeted with fallen leaves, gives no
+sound beneath the foot. Yet, in the stillness, deer leaped up on all
+sides as they moved along. Then they emerged into sunlight. A broad
+meadow, a running brook, a lofty wall of encircling forests. The men
+called it the Vale of Laudonni&egrave;re. The afternoon was spent, and the sun
+was near its setting, when they reached the bank of the river. They
+strewed the ground with boughs and leaves, and, stretched on that
+sylvan couch, slept the sleep of travel-worn and weary men.</p>
+
+<p>At daybreak they were roused by sound of trumpet. Men and officers
+joined their voices in a psalm, then betook themselves to their task.
+Their task was the building of a fort, and this was the chosen spot. It
+was a tract of dry ground on the brink of the river, immediately above
+St. John's Bluff. On the right was the bluff; on the left, a marsh; in
+front, the river; behind, the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Boats came up the stream with laborers, tents, provision, cannon, and
+tools. The engineers marked out the work in the form of a triangle; and,
+from the noble volunteer to the meanest artisan, all lent a hand to
+complete it. On the river side the defences were a palisade of timber.
+On the two other sides were a ditch, and a rampart of fascines, earth,
+and sods. At each angle was a bastion, in one of which was the magazine.
+Within was a spacious parade, and around it various buildings for
+lodging and storage. A large house with covered galleries was built on
+the side towards the river for Laudonni&egrave;re and his officers. In honor of
+Charles IX the fort was named Fort Caroline.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Satouriona, &quot;lord of all that country,&quot; as the narratives
+style him, was seized with misgivings, learning these mighty
+preparations. The work was but begun, and all was din and confusion
+around the incipient fort, when the startled Frenchmen saw the
+neighboring height of St. John's swarming with naked warriors. The
+prudent Laudonni&egrave;re set his men in array, and for a season pick and
+spade were dropped for arquebuse and pike. The savage potentate
+descended to the camp. The artist Le Moyne, who saw him, drew his
+likeness from memory,&mdash;a tall, athletic figure, tattooed in token of his
+rank, plumed with feathers, hung with strings of beads, and girdled with
+tinkling pieces of metal which hung from the belt, his only garment. He
+came in regal state, a crowd of warriors around him, and, in advance, a
+troop of young Indians armed with spears. Twenty musicians followed,
+blowing a hideous discord through pipes of reeds. Arrived, he seated
+himself on the ground &quot;like a monkey,&quot; as Le Moyne has it in the grave
+Latin of his &quot;Brevis Narratio.&quot; A council followed, in which broken
+words were aided by signs and pantomime. A treaty of alliance was made,
+and Laudonni&egrave;re had the folly to promise the chief that he would lend
+him aid against his enemies. Satouriona, well pleased, ordered his
+Indians to aid the French at their work. They obeyed with alacrity, and
+in two days the buildings of the fort were all thatched after the native
+fashion with leaves of the palmetto.</p>
+
+<p>A word touching these savages. In the peninsula of Florida were several
+distinct Indian confederacies, with three of which the French were
+brought into contact. The first was that of Satouriona. The next was the
+potent confederacy of the Thimagoa, under a chief called Outina, whose
+forty villages were scattered among the lakes and forests around the
+upper waters of this remarkable river. The third was that of &quot;King
+Potanou,&quot; whose domain lay among the pine-barrens, cypress-swamps, and
+fertile hummocks, westward and northwestward of the St. John's. The
+three communities were at deadly enmity. Their social state was more
+advanced than that of the wandering hunter-tribes of the North. They
+were an agricultural people. Around all their villages were fields of
+maize, beans, and pumpkins. The harvest, due chiefly to the labor of the
+women, was gathered into a public granary, and on this they lived during
+three-fourths of the year, dispersing in winter to hunt among the
+forests.</p>
+
+<p>Their villages were clusters of huts thatched with palmetto. In the
+midst was the dwelling of the chief, much larger than the rest, and
+sometimes raised on an artificial mound. They were inclosed with
+palisades, and, strange to say, some of them were approached by wide
+avenues, artificially graded, and several hundred yards in length.
+Remains of them may still be seen, as may also the mounds in which the
+Floridians, like the Hurons and various other tribes, collected at
+stated intervals the bones of their dead.</p>
+
+<p>The most prominent feature of their religion was sun-worship, and, like
+other wild American tribes, they abounded in &quot;medicine-men,&quot; who
+combined the functions of priest, physician, and necromancer.</p>
+
+<p>Social distinctions were sharply defined among them. Their chiefs, whose
+office was hereditary, sometimes exercised a power almost absolute. Each
+village had its chief, subordinate to the grand chief of the nation. In
+the language of the French narratives, they were all kings or lords,
+vassals of the great monarch Satouriona, Outina, or Potanou. All these
+tribes are now extinct, and it is difficult to ascertain with precision
+their tribal affinities. There can be no doubt that they were the
+authors of the mounds and other remains at present found in various
+parts of Florida.</p>
+
+<p>Their fort nearly finished, and their league made with Satouriona, the
+gold-hunting Huguenots were eager to spy out the secrets of the
+interior. To this end the lieutenant, Ottigny, went up the river in a
+sail-boat. With him were a few soldiers and two Indians, the latter
+going forth, says Laudonni&egrave;re, as if bound to a wedding, keen for a
+fight with the hated Thimagoa, and exulting in the havoc to be wrought
+among them by the magic weapons of their white allies. They were doomed
+to grievous disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>The Sieur d'Ottigny spread his sail, and calmly glided up the dark
+waters of the St. John's. A scene fraught with strange interest to the
+naturalist and the lover of Nature. Here, two centuries later, the
+Bartrams, father and son, guided their skiff and kindled their nightly
+bivouac-fire; and here, too, roamed Audubon, with his sketch-book and
+his gun. Each alike has left the record of his wanderings, fresh as the
+woods and waters that inspired it. Slight, then, was the change since
+Ottigny, first of white men, steered his bark along the still breast of
+the virgin river. Before him, like a lake, the redundant waters spread
+far and wide; and along the low shores, or jutting points, or the
+waveless margin of deep and sheltered coves, towered wild, majestic
+forms of vegetable beauty. Here rose the magnolia, high above
+surrounding woods; but the gorgeous bloom had fallen, that a few weeks
+earlier studded the verdant dome with silver. From the edge of the
+bordering swamp the cypress reared its vast buttressed column and leafy
+canopy. From the rugged arms of oak and pine streamed the gray drapery
+of the long Spanish moss, swayed mournfully in the faintest breeze. Here
+were the tropical plumage of the palm, the dark green masses of the
+live-oak, the glistening verdure of wild orange-groves; and from out the
+shadowy thickets hung the wreaths of the jessamine and the scarlet
+trumpets of the bignonia.</p>
+
+<p>Nor less did the fruitful river teem with varied forms of animal life.
+From the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of
+many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on
+the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the
+alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his hideous length,
+or, sluggish and sullen, drifted past the boat, his grim head level with
+the surface, and each scale, each folding of his horny hide, distinctly
+visible, as, with the slow movement of distended paws, he balanced
+himself in the water. When, at sunset, they drew up their boat on the
+strand, and built their camp-fire under the arches of the woods, the
+shores resounded with the roaring of these colossal lizards; all night
+the forest rang with the whooping of the owls; and in the morning the
+sultry mists that wrapped the river were vocal, far and near, with the
+clamor of wild turkeys.</p>
+
+<p>Among such scenes, for twenty leagues, the adventurous sail moved on.
+Far to the right, beyond the silent waste of pines, lay the realm of
+the mighty Potanou. The Thimagoa towns were still above them on the
+river, when they saw three canoes of this people at no great distance in
+front. Forthwith the two Indians in the boat were fevered with
+excitement. With glittering eyes they snatched pike and sword, and
+prepared for fight; but the sage Ottigny, bearing slowly down on the
+strangers, gave them time to run their craft ashore and escape to the
+woods. Then, landing, he approached the canoes, placed in them a few
+trinkets, and withdrew to a distance. The fugitives took heart, and,
+step by step, returned. An amicable intercourse was opened, with
+assurances of friendship on the part of the French, a procedure viewed
+by Satouriona's Indians with unspeakable disgust and ire.</p>
+
+<p>The ice thus broken, Ottigny returned to Fort Caroline; and a fortnight
+later, an officer named Vasseur sailed up the river to pursue the
+adventure: for the French, thinking that the nation of the Thimagoa lay
+betwixt them and the gold-mines, would by no means quarrel with them,
+and Laudonni&egrave;re repented him already of his rash pledge to Satouriona.</p>
+
+<p>As Vasseur moved on, two Indians hailed him from the shore, inviting him
+to their dwellings. He accepted their guidance, and presently saw before
+him the cornfields and palisades of an Indian town. Led through the
+wondering crowd to the lodge of the chief, Mollua, Vasseur and his
+followers were seated in the place of honor and plentifully regaled with
+fish and bread. The repast over, Mollua began his discourse. He told
+them that he was one of the forty vassal chiefs of the great Outina,
+lord of all the Thimagoa, whose warriors wore armor of gold and silver
+plate. He told them, too, of Potanou, his enemy, a mighty and redoubted
+prince; and of the two kings of the distant Appalachian Mountains, rich
+beyond utterance in gems and gold. While thus, with earnest pantomime
+and broken words, the chief discoursed with his guests, Vasseur, intent
+and eager, strove to follow his meaning; and no sooner did he hear of
+these Appalachian treasures than he promised to join Outina in war
+against the two potentates of the mountains. Hereupon the sagacious
+Mollua, well pleased, promised that each of Outina's vassal chiefs
+should requite their French allies with a heap of gold and silver two
+feet high. Thus, while Laudonni&egrave;re stood pledged to Satouriona, Vasseur
+made alliance with his mortal enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Returning, he was met, near the fort, by one of Satouriona's chiefs, who
+questioned him touching his dealings with the Thimagoa. Vasseur replied,
+that he had set upon and routed them with incredible slaughter. But as
+the chief, seeming as yet unsatisfied, continued his inquiries, the
+sergeant, Francis la Caille, drew his sword, and, like Falstaff before
+him, re-enacted his deeds of valor, pursuing and thrusting at the
+imaginary Thimagoa as they fled before his fury. Whereat the chief, at
+length convinced, led the party to his lodge, and entertained them with
+a certain savory decoction with which the Indians were wont to regale
+those whom they delighted to honor.</p>
+
+<p>Elate at the promise of a French alliance, Satouriona had summoned his
+vassal chiefs to war. From the St. Mary's and the Satilla and the
+distant Altamaha, from every quarter of his woodland realm, they had
+mustered at his call. By the margin of the St. John's, the forest was
+alive with their bivouacs. Ten chiefs were here, and some five hundred
+men. And now, when all was ready, Satouriona reminded Laudonni&egrave;re of his
+promise, and claimed its fulfilment; but the latter gave evasive answers
+and a virtual refusal. Stifling his rage, the chief prepared to go
+without him.</p>
+
+<p>Near the bank of the river, a fire was kindled, and two large vessels of
+water placed beside it. Here Satouriona took his stand. His chiefs
+crouched on the grass around him, and the savage visages of his five
+hundred warriors filled the outer circle, their long hair garnished with
+feathers, or covered with the heads and skins of wolves, panthers,
+bears, or eagles. Satouriona, looking towards the country of his enemy,
+distorted his features to a wild expression of rage and hate; then
+muttered to himself; then howled an invocation to his god, the sun; then
+besprinkled the assembly with water from one of the vessels, and,
+turning the other upon the fire, suddenly quenched it. &quot;So,&quot; he cried,
+&quot;may the blood of our enemies be poured out, and their lives
+extinguished!&quot; and the concourse gave forth an explosion of responsive
+yells, till the shores resounded with the wolfish din.</p>
+
+<p>The rites over, they set forth, and in a few days returned exulting with
+thirteen prisoners and a number of scalps. The latter were hung on a
+pole before the royal lodge, and when night came, it brought with it a
+pandemonium of dancing and whooping, drumming and feasting.</p>
+
+<p>A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudonni&egrave;re. Resolved, cost what
+it might, to make a friend of Outina, he conceived it a stroke of policy
+to send back to him two of the prisoners. In the morning he sent a
+soldier to Satouriona to demand them. The astonished chief gave a flat
+refusal, adding that he owed the French no favors, for they had
+shamefully broken faith with him. On this, Laudonni&egrave;re, at the head of
+twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the
+opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated
+himself without ceremony in the highest place. Here, to show his
+displeasure, he remained in silence for a half-hour. At length he spoke,
+renewing his demand. For some moments Satouriona made no reply, then
+coldly observed that the sight of so many armed men had frightened the
+prisoners away. Laudonni&egrave;re grew peremptory, when the chiefs son,
+Athore, went out, and presently returned with the two Indians, whom the
+French led back to Fort Caroline.</p>
+
+<p>Satouriona dissembled, professed good-will, and sent presents to the
+fort; but the outrage rankled in his savage breast, and he never forgave
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Vasseur, with Arlac, the ensign, a sergeant, and ten soldiers,
+embarked to bear the ill-gotten gift to Outina. Arrived, they were
+showered with thanks by that grateful potentate, who, hastening to avail
+himself of his new alliance, invited them to join in a raid against his
+neighbor, Potanou. To this end, Arlac and five soldiers remained, while
+Vasseur with the rest descended to Fort Caroline.</p>
+
+<p>The warriors were mustered, the dances were danced, and the songs were
+sung. Then the wild cohort took up its march. The wilderness through
+which they passed holds its distinctive features to this day,&mdash;the shady
+desert of the pine-barrens, where many a wanderer has miserably died,
+with haggard eye seeking in vain for clue or guidance in the pitiless,
+inexorable monotony. Yet the waste has its oases, the &quot;hummocks,&quot; where
+the live-oaks are hung with long festoons of grape-vines,&mdash;where the air
+is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the
+deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast
+sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and
+root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy
+bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable
+disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless
+forms lean propped in wild disorder against the living, and from every
+rugged stem and lank limb outstretched hangs the dark drapery of the
+Spanish moss. The swamp is veiled in mourning. No breath, no voice. A
+deathly stillness, till the plunge of the alligator, lashing the waters
+of the black lagoon, resounds with hollow echo through the tomb-like
+solitude.</p>
+
+<p>Next, the broad sunlight and the wide savanna. Wading breast-deep in
+grass, they view the wavy sea of verdure, with headland and cape and
+far-reaching promontory, with distant coasts, hazy and dim, havens and
+shadowed coves, islands of the magnolia and the palm, high, impending
+shores of the mulberry and the elm, the ash, hickory, and maple. Here
+the rich <i>gordonia</i>, never out of bloom, sends down its thirsty roots to
+drink at the stealing brook. Here the <i>halesia</i> hangs out its silvery
+bells, the purple clusters of the <i>wistaria</i> droop from the supporting
+bough, and the coral blossoms of the <i>erythryna</i> glow in the shade
+beneath. From tufted masses of sword-like leaves shoot up the tall
+spires of the <i>yucca</i>, heavy with pendent flowers, of pallid hue, like
+the moon, and from the grass gleams the blue eye of the starry <i>ixia</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Through forest, swamp, savanna, the valiant Frenchmen held their way. At
+first, Outina's Indians kept always in advance; but when they reached
+the hostile district, the modest warriors fell to the rear, resigning
+the post of honor to their French allies.</p>
+
+<p>An open country; a rude cultivation; the tall palisades of an Indian
+town. Their approach was seen, and the warriors of Potanou, nowise
+daunted, came swarming forth to meet them. But the sight of the bearded
+strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, the fall of their
+foremost chief, shot through the brain with the bullet of Arlac, filled
+them with consternation, and they fled headlong within their defences.
+The men of Thimagoa ran screeching in pursuit. Pell-mell, all entered
+the town together. Slaughter; pillage; flame. The work was done, and the
+band returned triumphant.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="chapter_ii" id="chapter_ii"></a>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature France, cliques and
+parties, conspiracy and sedition, were fast stirring into life. Hopes
+had been dashed; wild expectations had come to nought. The adventurers
+had found, not conquest and gold, but a dull exile in a petty fort by a
+hot and sickly river, with hard labor, ill fare, prospective famine, and
+nothing to break the weary sameness but some passing canoe or floating
+alligator. Gathered in knots, they nursed each other's wrath, and
+inveighed against the commandant.</p>
+
+<p>Why are we put on half-rations, when he told us that provision should be
+made for a full year? Where are the reinforcements and supplies that he
+said should follow us from France? Why is he always closeted with
+Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that favorite, when we, men of blood as
+good as theirs, cannot gain his ear for a moment? And why has he sent La
+Roche Ferri&egrave;re to make his fortune among the Indians, while we are kept
+here, digging at the works?</p>
+
+<p>Of La Roche Ferri&egrave;re and his adventures, more hereafter. The young
+nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own
+expenses, in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in
+impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony&mdash;unlike the
+former Huguenot emigration to Brazil&mdash;was evidently subordinate. The
+adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith; yet
+there were not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva to
+complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers had been sent with them.
+The burden of all grievances was thrown upon Laudonni&egrave;re, whose greatest
+errors seem to have arisen from weakness and a lack of judgment,&mdash;fatal
+defects in his position.</p>
+
+<p>The growing discontent was brought to a partial head by one Roquette,
+who gave out that by magic he had discovered a mine of gold and silver,
+high up the river, which would give each of them a share of ten thousand
+crowns, besides fifteen hundred thousand for the king. But for
+Laudonni&egrave;re, he said, their fortunes would all be made. He found an ally
+in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonni&egrave;re's confidants, who, still
+professing fast adherence to the interests of the latter, is charged by
+him with plotting against his life. Many of the soldiers were in the
+conspiracy. They made a flag of an old shirt, which they carried with
+them to the rampart when they went to their work, at the same time
+wearing their arms, and watching an opportunity to kill the commandant.
+About this time, overheating himself, he fell ill, and was confined to
+his quarters. On this, Genre made advances to the apothecary, urging him
+to put arsenic into his medicines; but the apothecary shrugged his
+shoulders. They next devised a scheme to blow him up, by hiding a keg of
+gunpowder under his bed; but here, too, they failed. Hints of Genre's
+machinations reaching the ears of Laudonni&egrave;re, the culprit fled to the
+woods, whence he wrote repentant letters, with full confession, to his
+commander.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the ships meanwhile returned to France,&mdash;the third, the Breton,
+remaining at anchor opposite the fort. The malecontents took the
+opportunity to send home charges against Laudonni&egrave;re of peculation,
+favoritism, and tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>Early in September, Captain Bourdet, apparently a private adventurer,
+had arrived from France with a small vessel. When he returned, about the
+tenth of November, Laudonni&egrave;re persuaded him to carry home seven or
+eight of the malecontent soldiers. Bourdet left some of his sailors in
+their place. The exchange proved most disastrous. These pirates joined
+with others whom they had won over, stole Laudonni&egrave;re's two pinnaces,
+and set forth on a plundering excursion to the West Indies. They took a
+small Spanish vessel off the coast of Cuba, but were soon compelled by
+famine to put into Havana and surrender themselves. Here, to make their
+peace with the authorities, they told all they knew of the position and
+purposes of their countrymen at Fort Caroline, and hence was forged the
+thunderbolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little colony.</p>
+
+<p>On a Sunday morning, Francis de la Caille came to Laudonni&egrave;re's
+quarters, and, in the name of the whole company, requested him to come
+to the parade-ground. He complied, and, issuing forth, his inseparable
+Ottigny at his side, saw some thirty of his officers, soldiers, and
+gentlemen-volunteers waiting before the building with fixed and sombre
+countenance. La Caille, advancing, begged leave to read, in behalf of
+the rest, a paper which he held in his hand. It opened with
+protestations of duty and obedience; next came complaints of hard work,
+starvation, and broken promises, and a request that the petitioners
+should be allowed to embark in the vessel lying in the river, and cruise
+along the Spanish main in order to procure provision by purchase &quot;or
+otherwise.&quot; In short, the flower of the company wished to turn
+buccaneers.</p>
+
+<p>Laudonni&egrave;re refused, but assured them, that, so soon as the defences of
+the fort should be completed, a search should be begun in earnest for
+the Appalachian gold-mine, and that meanwhile two small vessels then
+building on the river should be sent along the coast to barter for
+provisions with the Indians. With this answer they were forced to
+content themselves; but the fermentation continued, and the plot
+thickened. Their spokesman, La Caille, however, seeing whither the
+affair tended, broke with them, and, beside Ottigny, Vasseur, and the
+brave Swiss, Arlac, was the only officer who held to his duty.</p>
+
+<p>A severe illness again seized Laudonni&egrave;re and confined him to his bed.
+Improving their advantage, the malecontents gained over nearly all the
+best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of
+good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up
+a paper to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed
+the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le
+Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a hint from a friend that
+he had better change his quarters; upon which he warned La Caille, who
+escaped to the woods. It was late in the night. Fourneaux, with twenty
+men armed to the teeth, knocked fiercely at the commandant's door.
+Forcing an entrance, they wounded a gentleman who opposed them, and
+crowded around the sick man's bed. Fourneaux, armed with steel cap and
+cuirass, held his arquebuse to Laudonni&egrave;re's breast, and demanded leave
+to go on a cruise among the Spanish islands. The latter kept his
+presence of mind, and remonstrated with some firmness; on which, with
+oaths and menaces, they dragged him from his bed, put him in fetters,
+carried him out to the gate of the fort, placed him in a boat, and rowed
+him to the ship anchored in the river.</p>
+
+<p>Two other gangs at the same time visited Ottigny and Arlac, whom they
+disarmed, and ordered to keep their rooms till the night following, on
+pain of death. Smaller parties were busied, meanwhile, in disarming all
+the loyal soldiers. The fort was completely in the hands of the
+conspirators. Fourneaux drew up a commission for his meditated
+West-India cruise, which he required Laudonni&egrave;re to sign. The sick
+commandant, imprisoned in the ship, with one attendant, at first
+refused; but, receiving a message from the mutineers, that, if he did
+not comply, they would come on board and cut his throat, he at length
+yielded.</p>
+
+<p>The buccaneers now bestirred themselves to finish the two small vessels
+on which the carpenters had been for some time at work. In a fortnight
+they were ready for sea, armed and provided with the king's cannon,
+munitions, and stores. Trenchant, an excellent pilot, was forced to join
+the party. Their favorite object was the plunder of a certain church, on
+one of the Spanish islands, which they proposed to assail during the
+midnight mass of Christmas, whereby a triple end would be achieved:
+first, a rich booty; secondly, the punishment of idolatry; thirdly,
+vengeance on the arch-enemies of their party and their faith. They set
+sail on the eighth of December, taunting those who remained, calling
+them greenhorns, and threatening condign punishment, if, on their
+triumphant return, they should be refused free entrance to the fort.</p>
+
+<p>They were no sooner gone than the unfortunate Laudonni&egrave;re was gladdened
+in his solitude by the approach of his fast friends, Ottigny and Arlac,
+who conveyed him to the fort, and reinstated him. The entire command was
+reorganized and new officers appointed. The colony was wofully depleted;
+but the bad blood had been drawn, and thenceforth all internal danger
+was at an end. In finishing the fort, in building two new vessels to
+replace those of which they had been robbed, and in various intercourse
+with the tribes far and near, the weeks passed until the twenty-fifth of
+March, when an Indian came in with the tidings that a vessel was
+hovering off the coast. Laudonni&egrave;re sent to reconnoitre. The stranger
+lay anchored at the mouth of the river. She was a Spanish brigantine,
+manned by the returning mutineers, starving, downcast, and anxious to
+make terms. Yet, as their posture seemed not wholly pacific, Laudonni&egrave;re
+sent down La Caille with thirty soldiers, concealed at the bottom of his
+little vessel. Seeing only two or three on deck, the pirates allowed her
+to come along-side; when, to their amazement, they were boarded and
+taken before they could snatch their arms. Discomfited, woebegone, and
+drunk, they were landed under a guard. Their story was soon told.
+Fortune had flattered them at the outset. On the coast of Cuba, they
+took a brigantine, with wine and stores. Embarking in her, they next
+fell in with a caravel, which they also captured. Landing at a village
+of Jamaica, they plundered and caroused for a week, and had hardly
+re&euml;mbarked when they fell in with a small vessel having on board the
+governor of the island. She made desperate fight, but was taken at last,
+and with her a rich booty. They thought to put the governor to ransom;
+but the astute official deceived them, and, on pretence of negotiating
+for the sum demanded, together with certain apes and parrots, for which
+his captors had also bargained, contrived to send instructions to his
+wife. Whence it happened that at daybreak three armed vessels fell upon
+them, retook the prize, and captured or killed all the pirates but
+twenty-six, who, cutting the moorings of their brigantine, fled out to
+sea. Among these was the ringleader, Fourneaux, and, happily, the pilot,
+Trenchant. The latter, eager to return to Fort Caroline, whence he had
+been forcibly taken, succeeded during the night in bringing the vessel
+to the coast of Florida. Great were the wrath and consternation of the
+discomfited pirates, when they saw their dilemma; for, having no
+provision, they must either starve or seek succor at the fort. They
+chose the latter alternative, and bore away for the St. John's. A few
+casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternized
+by the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the wine
+mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, they
+enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another the
+commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and speeches on either
+side.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say what you like,&quot; said one of them, after hearing the counsel for the
+defence, &quot;but if Laudonni&egrave;re does not hang us all, I will never call him
+an honest man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They had some hope of gaining provision from the Indians at the mouth of
+the river, and then patting to sea again; but this was frustrated by La
+Caille's sudden attack. A court-martial was called near Fort Caroline,
+and all were found guilty. Fourneaux and three others were sentenced to
+be hanged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Comrades,&quot; said one of the condemned, appealing to the soldiers, &quot;will
+you stand by and see us butchered?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These,&quot; retorted Laudonni&egrave;re, &quot;are no comrades of mutineers and
+rebels.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the request of his followers, however, he commuted the sentence to
+shooting.</p>
+
+<p>A file of men; a rattling volley; and the debt of justice was paid. The
+bodies were hanged on gibbets at the river's mouth, and order reigned at
+Fort Caroline.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="chapter_iii" id="chapter_iii"></a>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>While the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche Ferri&egrave;re had been sent out as
+an agent or emissary among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold, and
+restless, he pushed his way from town to town, and pretended to have
+reached the mysterious mountains of Appalachee. He sent to the fort
+mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered with choice furs, arrows
+tipped with gold, wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and
+other trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named Grotaut took up the
+quest, and penetrated to the dominions of Hostaqua, who could muster
+three or four thousand warriors, and who promised with the aid of a
+hundred arquebusiers to conquer all the kings of the adjacent mountains,
+and subject them and their gold-mines to the rule of the French. A
+humbler adventurer was Peter Gamble, a robust and daring youth, who had
+been brought up in the household of Coligny, and was now a soldier under
+Laudonni&egrave;re. The latter gave him leave to trade with the Indians, a
+privilege which he used so well that he grew rich with his traffic,
+became prime favorite with the chief of Edelano, married his daughter,
+and, in his absence, reigned in his stead. But, as his sway verged
+towards despotism, his subjects took offence, and beat out his brains
+with a hatchet.</p>
+
+<p>During the winter, Indians from the neighborhood of Cape Canaveral
+brought to the fort two Spaniards, wrecked fifteen years before on the
+southwestern extremity of the peninsula. They were clothed like the
+Indians,&mdash;in other words, were not clothed at all,&mdash;and their uncut hair
+streamed wildly down their backs. They brought strange tales of those
+among whom they had dwelt. They told of the King of Calos, on whose
+domains they had suffered wreck, a chief mighty in stature and in power.
+In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a
+hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent
+reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest, too, and a magician, with
+power over the elements. Each year he withdrew from the public gaze to
+hold converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each year
+he sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards whom the fortune of the
+sea had cast upon his shores. The name of the tribe is preserved in that
+of the River Caloosa. In close league with him was the mighty Oathcaqua,
+dwelling near Cape Canaveral, who gave his daughter, a maiden of
+wondrous beauty, in marriage to his great ally. But, as the bride, with
+her bridesmaids, was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen
+band, they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an
+island called Sarrope, in the midst of a great lake, who put the
+warriors to flight, bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness,
+espoused them all, and, as we are assured, &quot;loved them above all
+measure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Outina, taught by Arlac the efficacy of the French fire-arms, begged for
+ten arquebusiers to aid him on a new raid among the villages of Potanou,
+again alluring his greedy allies by the assurance, that, thus
+reinforced, he would conquer for them a free access to the phantom
+gold-mines of Appalachec. Ottigny set forth on this fool's-errand with
+thrice the force demanded. Three hundred Thimagoa and thirty Frenchmen
+took up their march through the pine-barrens. Outina's conjurer was of
+the number, and had well-nigh ruined the enterprise. Kneeling on
+Ottigny's shield, that he might not touch the earth, with hideous
+grimaces, howlings, and contortions, he wrought himself into a prophetic
+frenzy, and proclaimed to the astounded warriors that to advance farther
+would be destruction. Outina was for instant retreat, but Ottigny's
+sarcasms shamed him into a show of courage. Again they moved forward,
+and soon encountered Potanou with all his host. Le Moyne drew a picture
+of the fight. In the foreground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with
+a gigantic savage, who, with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the
+plumed helmet of his foe; but the latter, with target raised to guard
+his head, darts under the arms of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him
+with his sword. The arquebuse did its work: panic, slaughter, and a
+plentiful harvest of scalps. But no persuasion could induce Outina to
+follow up his victory. He went home to dance around his trophies, and
+the French returned disgusted to Fort Caroline.</p>
+
+<p>And now, in ample measure, the French began to reap the harvest of their
+folly. Conquest, gold, military occupation,&mdash;such had been their aims.
+Not a rood of ground had been stirred with the spade. Their stores were
+consumed; the expected supplies had not come. The Indians, too, were
+hostile. Satouriona hated them as allies of his enemies; and his
+tribesmen, robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in
+their miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle neighbors, was their
+only hope.</p>
+
+<p>May-day came, the third anniversary of the day when Ribaut and his
+companions, full of delighted anticipations, had explored the flowery
+borders of the St. John's. Dire was the contrast; for, within the
+homesick precinct of Fort Caroline, a squalid band, dejected and worn,
+dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun-scorched area, or lay
+stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks. Some
+were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the
+meadows. One collected refuse fish-bones and pounded them into meal.
+Yet, giddy with weakness, their skin clinging to their bones, they
+dragged themselves in turn to the top of St. John's Bluff, straining
+their eyes across the sea to descry the anxiously expected sail.</p>
+
+<p>Had Coligny left them to perish? or had some new tempest of calamity,
+let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the
+watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection
+fell upon them, a dejection that would have sunk to despair, could their
+eyes have pierced the future.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians had left the neighborhood, but, from time to time, brought
+in meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at
+exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion,
+they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river,
+beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them.
+&quot;Oftentimes,&quot; says Laudonni&egrave;re, &quot;our poor soldiers were constrained to
+give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish. If at any
+time they shewed unto the savages the excessive price which they tooke,
+these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly: If thou make
+so great account of thy marchandise, eat it, and we will eat our fish:
+then fell they out a laughing and mocked us with open throat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The spring wore away, and no relief appeared. One thought now engrossed
+the colonists, the thought of return to France. Vasseur's ship, the
+Breton, still remained in the river, and they had also the Spanish
+brigantine brought by the mutineers. But these vessels were
+insufficient, and they prepared to build a new one. The energy of
+reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted frames. Some gathered
+pitch in the pine forests; some made charcoal; some cut and sawed the
+timber. The maize began to ripen, and this brought some relief; but the
+Indians, exasperated and greedy, sold it with reluctance, and murdered
+two half-famished Frenchmen who gathered a handful in the fields.</p>
+
+<p>The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them two victories. The result
+was a churlish message and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an
+invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief, the plunder of whose
+villages would yield an ample supply. The offer was accepted. Ottigny
+and Vasseur set forth, but were grossly deceived, led against a
+different enemy, and sent back empty-handed and half-starved.</p>
+
+<p>Pale with famine and with rage, a crowd of soldiers beset Laudonni&egrave;re,
+and fiercely demanded to be led against Outina to take him prisoner and
+extort from his fears the supplies which could not be looked for from
+his gratitude. The commandant was forced to comply. Those who could bear
+the weight of their armor put it on, embarked, to the number of fifty,
+in two barges, and sailed up the river under the commandant himself.
+Outina's landing reached, they marched inland, entered his village,
+surrounded his mud-plastered palace, seized him amid the yells and
+howlings of his subjects, and led him prisoner to their boats. Here,
+anchored in mid-stream, they demanded a supply of corn and beans as the
+price of his ransom.</p>
+
+<p>The alarm spread. Excited warriors, bedaubed with red, came thronging
+from all his villages. The forest along the shore was full of them; and
+troops of women gathered at the water's edge with moans, outcries, and
+gestures of despair. Yet no ransom was offered, since, reasoning from
+their own instincts, they never doubted, that, the price paid, the
+captive would be put to death.</p>
+
+<p>Laudonni&egrave;re waited two days, then descended the river. In a rude chamber
+of Fort Caroline, pike in hand, the sentinel stood his guard, while
+before him crouched the captive chief, mute, impassive, brooding on his
+woes. His old enemy, Satouriona, keen as a hound on the scent of prey,
+tried, by great offers, to bribe Laudonni&egrave;re to give the prisoner into
+his hands. Outina, however, was kindly treated, and assured of immediate
+freedom on payment of the ransom.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile his captivity was entailing dire affliction on his realm; for,
+despairing of his return, his subjects mustered to the election of a new
+chief. Party-strife ran high. Some were for a boy, his son, and some for
+an ambitious kinsman who coveted the vacant throne. Outina chafed in his
+prison, learning these dissensions, and, eager to convince his
+over-hasty subjects that their king still lived, he was so profuse of
+promises, that he was again embarked and carried up the river.</p>
+
+<p>At no great distance below Lake George, a small affluent of the St.
+John's gave access by water to a point within eighteen miles of Outina's
+principal town. The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and bearing also
+the royal captive, rowed up this little stream. Indians awaited them at
+the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and piteous prayers
+for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an ample supply of
+corn. As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonni&egrave;re yielded,
+released the chief, and received in his place two hostages, who were
+fast bound in the boats. Ottigny and Arlac, with a strong detachment of
+arquebusiers, set forth to receive the promised supplies, for which,
+from the first, full payment in merchandise had been offered. Arrived at
+the village, they filed into the great central lodge, within whose dusky
+precincts were gathered the magnates of the tribe. Council-chamber,
+forum, banquet-hall, dancing-hall, palace, all in one, the royal
+dwelling could hold half the population in its capacious confines. Here
+the French made their abode. Their armor buckled, their
+arquebuse-matches lighted, they stood, or sat, or reclined on the
+earthen floor, with anxious eyes watching the strange, dim scene, half
+lighted by the daylight that streamed down through the hole at the apex
+of the roof. Tall, dark forms stalked to and fro, quivers at their
+backs, bows and arrows in their hands, while groups, crouched in the
+shadow beyond, eyed the hated guests with inscrutable visages, and
+malignant, sidelong eyes. Corn came in slowly, but warriors were
+mustering fast. The village without was full of them. The French
+officers grew anxious, and urged the chiefs to greater alacrity in
+collecting the promised ransom. The answer boded no good, &quot;Our women are
+afraid, when they see the matches of your guns burning. Put them out,
+and they will bring the corn faster.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Outina was nowhere to be seen. At length they learned that he was in one
+of the small huts adjacent. Several of the officers went to him,
+complaining of the slow payment of his ransom. The kindness of his
+captors at Fort Caroline seemed to have won his heart. He replied, that
+such was the rage of his subjects that he could no longer control
+them,&mdash;that the French were in danger,&mdash;and that he had seen arrows
+stuck in the ground by the side of the path, in token that war was
+declared. Their peril was thickening hourly, and Ottigny resolved to
+regain the boats while there was yet time.</p>
+
+<p>On the twenty-seventh of July, at nine in the morning, he set his men in
+order. Each shouldering a sack of corn, they marched through the rows of
+squalid huts that surrounded the great lodge, and out betwixt the
+interfolding extremities of the palisade that encircled the town. Before
+them stretched a wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long, flanked
+by a natural growth of trees,&mdash;one of those curious monuments of native
+industry to which allusion has been already made. Here Ottigny halted
+and formed his line of march. Arlac with eight matchlockmen was sent in
+advance, and flanking parties thrown into the woods on either side.
+Ottigny told his soldiers, that, if the Indians meant to attack them,
+they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. He was
+right. As Arlac's party reached the spot, the whole pack gave tongue at
+once. The war-whoop quavered through the startled air, and a tempest of
+stone-headed arrows clattered against the breastplates of the French, or
+tore, scorching like fire, through their unprotected limbs. They stood
+firm, and sent back their shot so steadily that several of the
+assailants were laid dead, and the rest, two or three hundred in number,
+gave way as Ottigny came up with his men.</p>
+
+<p>They moved on for a quarter of a mile through a country, as it seems,
+comparatively open; when again the war-cry pealed in front, and three
+hundred savages came bounding to the assault. Their whoops were echoed
+from the rear. It was the party whom Arlac had just repulsed, who,
+leaping and showering their arrows, were rushing on with a ferocity
+restrained only by their lack of courage. There was no panic. The men
+threw down their corn-bags, and took to their weapons. They blew their
+matches, and, under two excellent officers, stood well to their work.
+The Indians, on their part, showed a good discipline, after their
+fashion, and were perfectly under the control of their chiefs. With
+cries that imitated the yell of owls, the scream of cougars, and the
+howl of wolves, they ran up in successive bands, let fly their arrows,
+and instantly fell back, giving place to others. At the sight of the
+levelled arquebuse, they dropped flat on the earth. Whenever, sword in
+hand, the French charged upon them, they fled like foxes through the
+woods; and whenever the march was resumed, the arrows were showering
+again upon the flanks and rear of the retiring band. The soldiers coolly
+picked them up and broke them as they fell. Thus, beset with swarming
+savages, the handful of Frenchmen pushed their march till nightfall,
+fighting as they went.</p>
+
+<p>The Indians gradually drew off, and the forest was silent again. Two of
+the French had been killed and twenty-two wounded, several so severely
+that they were supported to the boats with the utmost difficulty. Of the
+corn, two bags only had been brought off.</p>
+
+<p>Famine and desperation now reigned at Fort Caroline. The Indians had
+killed two of the carpenters; hence long delay in the finishing of the
+new ship. They would not wait, but resolved to put to sea in the Breton
+and the brigantine. The problem was to find food for the voyage; for
+now, in their extremity, they roasted and ate snakes, a delicacy in
+which the neighborhood abounded.</p>
+
+<p>On the third of August, Laudonni&egrave;re, perturbed and oppressed, was
+walking on the hill, when, looking seaward, he saw a sight that shot a
+thrill through his exhausted frame. A great ship was standing towards
+the river's mouth. Then another came in sight, and another, and another.
+He called the tidings to the fort below. Then languid forms rose and
+danced for joy, and voices, shrill with weakness, joined in wild
+laughter and acclamation.</p>
+
+<p>A doubt soon mingled with their joy. Who were the strangers? Were they
+the succors so long hoped in vain? or were they Spaniards bringing steel
+and fire? They were neither. The foremost was a stately ship, of seven
+hundred tons, a mighty burden at that day. She was named the Jesus; and
+with her were three smaller vessels, the Solomon, the Tiger, and the
+Swallow. Their commander was &quot;a right worshipful and valiant
+knight,&quot;&mdash;for so the record styles him,&mdash;a pious man and a prudent, to
+judge him by the orders he gave his crew, when, ten months before, he
+sailed out of Plymouth:&mdash;&quot;Serve God daily, love one another, preserve
+your victuals, beware of fire, and keepe good companie.&quot; Nor were the
+crew unworthy the graces of their chief; for the devout chronicler of
+the voyage ascribes their deliverance from the perils of the seas to
+&quot;the Almightie God, who never suffereth his Elect to perish.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Who, then, were they, this chosen band, serenely conscious of a special
+Providential care? Apostles of the cross, bearing the word of peace to
+benighted heathendom? They were the pioneers of that detested traffic
+destined to inoculate with its black infection nations yet unborn,
+parent of discord and death, with the furies in their train, filling
+half a continent with the tramp of armies and the clash of fratricidal
+swords. Their chief was Sir John Hawkins, father of the English
+slave-trade.</p>
+
+<p>He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he bought and kidnapped a
+cargo of slaves. These he had sold to the jealous Spaniards of
+Hispaniola, forcing them, with sword, matchlock, and culverin, to grant
+him free trade, and then to sign testimonials that he had borne himself
+as became a peaceful merchant. Prospering greatly by this summary
+commerce, but distressed by the want of water, he had put into the River
+of May to obtain a supply.</p>
+
+<p>Among the rugged heroes of the British marine, Sir John stood in the
+front rank, and along with Drake, his relative, is extolled as &quot;a man
+borne for the honour of the English name.... Neither did the West of
+England yeeld such an Indian Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean
+peeres, Hawkins and Drake.&quot; So writes the old chronicler, Purchas, and
+all England was of his thinking. A hardy seaman, a bold fighter,
+overbearing towards equals, but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath
+him, rude in speech, somewhat crafty withal, and avaricious, he buffeted
+his way to riches and fame, and died at last full of years and honor. As
+for the abject humanity stowed between the reeking decks of the ship
+Jesus, they were merely in his eyes so many black cattle tethered for
+the market. Queen Elizabeth had an interest in the venture, and received
+her share of the sugar, pearls, ginger, and hides which the vigorous
+measures of Sir John gained from his Spanish customers.</p>
+
+<p>Hawkins came up the river in a pinnace, and landed at Fort Caroline,
+&quot;accompanied,&quot; says Laudonni&egrave;re, &quot;with gentlemen honorably apparelled,
+yet unarmed.&quot; Between the Huguenots and the English there was a double
+tie of sympathy. Both hated priests, and both hated Spaniards. Wakening
+from their apathetic misery, the starveling garrison hailed him as a
+deliverer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced, when he learned their purpose
+to abandon Florida; for, though, not to tempt his cupidity, they hid
+from him the secret of their Appalachian gold-mine, he coveted for his
+royal mistress the possession of this rich domain. He shook his head,
+however, when he saw the vessels in which they proposed to embark, and
+offered them all a free passage to France in his own ships. This, from
+obvious motives of honor and prudence, Laudonni&egrave;re declined, upon which
+Hawkins offered to lend or sell to him one of his smaller vessels.</p>
+
+<p>Hereupon arose a great clamor. A mob of soldiers and artisans beset
+Laudonni&egrave;re's chamber, threatening loudly to desert him, and take
+passage with Hawkins, unless the offer of the latter were accepted. The
+commandant accordingly resolved to buy the vessel. The generous slaver,
+whose reputed avarice nowise appears in the transaction, desired him to
+set his own price; and, in place of money, took the cannon of the fort,
+with other articles now useless to their late owners. He sent them, too,
+a gift of wine and biscuit, and supplied them with provision for the
+voyage, receiving in payment Laudonni&egrave;re's note,&mdash;&quot;for which,&quot; adds the
+latter, &quot;I am until this present indebted to him.&quot; With a friendly
+leave-taking he returned to his ships and stood out to sea, leaving
+golden opinions among the grateful inmates of Fort Caroline.</p>
+
+<p>Before the English top-sails had sunk beneath the horizon, the colonists
+bestirred themselves to depart. In a few days their preparations were
+made. They waited only for a fair wind. It was long in coming, and
+meanwhile their troubled fortunes assumed a new phase.</p>
+
+<p>On the twenty-eighth of August, the two captains, Vasseur and Verdier,
+came in with tidings of an approaching squadron. Again the fort was wild
+with excitement. Friends or foes, French or Spaniards, succor or death:
+betwixt these were their hopes and fears divided. With the following
+morning, they saw seven barges rowing up the river, bristling with
+weapons and crowded with men in armor. The sentries on the bluff
+challenged, and received no answer. One of them fired at the advancing
+boats. Still no response. Laudonni&egrave;re was almost defenceless. He had
+given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and only two field-pieces were
+left. They were levelled at the foremost boats, and the word was about
+to be given, when a voice from among the strangers called that they were
+French, commanded by John Ribaut. </p>
+
+<p>At the eleventh hour, the long-looked-for succors were come. Ribaut had
+been commissioned to sail with seven ships for Florida. A disorderly
+concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed with artisans and their families,
+and young nobles weary of a two-years' peace, were mustered at the port
+of Dieppe, and embarked, to the number of three hundred men, bearing
+with them all things thought necessary to a prosperous colony.</p>
+
+<p>No longer in dread of the Spaniards, the colonists saluted the
+new-comers with the cannon by which a moment before they had hoped to
+blow them out of the water. Laudonni&egrave;re issued from his stronghold to
+welcome them, and regaled them with what cheer he might. Ribaut was
+present, conspicuous by his long beard, the astonishment of the Indians;
+and here, too, were officers, old friends of Laudonni&egrave;re. Why, then, had
+they approached in the attitude of enemies? The mystery was soon
+explained; for they expressed to the commandant their pleasure at
+finding that the charges made against him had proved false. He begged to
+know more, on which Ribaut, taking him aside, told him that the
+returning ships had brought home letters filled with accusations of
+arrogance, tyranny, cruelty, and a purpose of establishing an
+independent command: accusations which he now saw to be unfounded, but
+which had been the occasion of his unusual and startling precaution. He
+gave him, too, a letter from the Admiral Coligny. In brief, but
+courteous terms, it required him to resign his command, and invited his
+return to France to clear his name from the imputations cast upon it.
+Ribaut warmly urged him to remain; but Laudonni&egrave;re declined his friendly
+proposals.</p>
+
+<p>Worn in body and mind, mortified and wounded, he soon fell ill again. A
+peasant-woman attended him, brought over, he says, to nurse the sick and
+take charge of the poultry, and of whom Le Moyne also speaks as a
+servant, but who had been made the occasion of additional charges
+against him, most offensive to the austere Admiral.</p>
+
+<p>Stores were landed, tents were pitched, women and children were sent on
+shore, feathered Indians mingled in the throng, and the sunny borders of
+the River of May swarmed with busy life. &quot;But, lo, how oftentimes
+misfortune doth search and pursue us, even then when we thinke to be at
+rest!&quot; exclaims the unhappy Laudonni&egrave;re. Behind the light and cheer of
+renovated hope, a cloud of blackest omen was gathering in the east.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past eleven on the night of Tuesday, the fourth of September,
+the crew of Ribaut's flag-ship, anchored on the still sea outside the
+bar, saw a huge hulk, grim with the throats of cannon, drifting towards
+them through the gloom; and from its stern rolled on the sluggish air
+the portentous banner of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Here opens a wilder act of this eventful drama. At another day we shall
+lift the curtain on its fierce and bloody scenes.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="seaward" id="seaward"></a>SEAWARD.</h2>
+
+<p>TO &mdash;&mdash;.</p>
+
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">How long it seems since that mild April night,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">When, leaning from the window, you and I</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Heard, clearly ringing from the shadowy bight,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml85">The loon's unearthly cry!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">Southwest the wind blew; million little waves</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Ran rippling round the point in mellow tune;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">But mournful, like the voice of one who raves,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml85">That laughter of the loon.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">We called to him, while blindly through the haze</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Upclimbed the meagre moon behind us, slow,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">So dim, the fleet of boats we scarce could trace,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml85">Moored lightly, just below.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">We called, and, lo, he answered! Half in fear,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">I sent the note back. Echoing rock and bay</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Made melancholy music far and near;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml85">Slowly it died away.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">That schooner, you remember? Flying ghost!</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Her canvas catching every wandering beam,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">A&euml;rial, noiseless, past the glimmering coast</span><br />
+<span class="spanml85">She glided like a dream.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">Would we were leaning from your window now,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Together calling to the eerie loon,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">The fresh wind blowing care from either brow,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml85">This sumptuous night of June!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">So many sighs load this sweet inland air,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">'T is hard to breathe, nor can we find relief;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">However lightly touched, we all must share</span><br />
+<span class="spanml85">The nobleness of grief.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">But sighs are spent before they reach your ear,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml3m">Vaguely they mingle with the water's rune;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">No sadder sound salutes you than the clear,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml85">Wild laughter of the loon.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="side_glances_at_harvard_class_day" id="side_glances_at_harvard_class_day"></a>SIDE-GLANCES AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It happened to me once to &quot;assist&quot; at the celebration of Class-Day at
+Harvard University. Class-Day is the peculiar institution of the Senior
+Class, and marks its completion of college study and release from
+college rules. It is also an institution peculiar, I believe, to
+Harvard, and I was somewhat curious to observe its ceremonials, besides
+feeling a not entirely <i>unawful</i> interest in being introduced for the
+first time to the <i>arcana</i> of that renowned Alma Mater.</p>
+
+<p>She has set up her Lares and Penates in a fine old grove, or a fine old
+grove and green have sprouted up around her, as the case may be. At all
+events, there is sufficient groundwork for any quantity of euphuism
+about &quot;classic shades,&quot; &quot;groves of Academe,&quot; <i>et cetera</i>. Trollope had
+his fling at the square brick buildings; but it was a fling that they
+richly deserved, for they are in very deed as ugly as it is possible to
+conceive,&mdash;angular, formal, stiff, windowy, bricky,&mdash;and the farther in
+you go, the worse it grows. Why, I pray to know, as the first inquiry
+suggested by Class-Day, is it necessary for boys' schools to be placed
+without the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the
+amenities of life that they can safely dispense with the conditions of
+amenity? When I entered those brick boxes, I felt as if I were going
+into a stable. Wood-work dingy, unpainted, gashed, scratched; windows
+dingy and dim; walls dingy and gray and smoked; everything unhomelike,
+unattractive, narrow, and rickety. Think, now, of taking a boy away from
+his home, from his mother and sisters, from carpets and curtains and all
+the softening influences of cultivated taste, and turning him loose with
+dozens of other boys into a congeries of pens like this! Who wonders
+that he comes out a boor? I felt a sinking at the heart in climbing up
+those narrow, uncouth staircases. We talk about education. We boast of
+having the finest system in the world. Harvard is, if not the most
+distinguished, certainly among the first institutions in the country;
+but, in my opinion, formed in the entry of the first Harvard house I
+entered, Harvard has not begun to hit the nail on the head. Education!
+Do you call it education, to put a boy into a hole, and work out of him
+a certain amount of mathematics, and work into him a certain number of
+languages? Is a man dressed, because one arm has a spotless wristband,
+unquestionable sleeve-buttons, a handsome sleeve, and a well-fitting
+glove at the end, while the man is out at the other elbow, patched on
+both knees, and down at the heels? Should we consider Nature a success,
+if she concerned herself only with carrying nutriment to the stomach,
+and left the heart and the lungs and the liver and the nerves to shift
+for themselves? Yet so do we, educating boys in these dens called
+colleges. We educate the mind, the memory, the intellectual faculties;
+but the manners, the courtesies, the social tastes, the greater part of
+what goes to make life happy and genial, not to say good, we leave out
+of view. People talk about the &quot;awkward age&quot; of boys,&mdash;the age in which
+their hands and feet trouble them, and in which they are a social burden
+to themselves and their friends. But one age need be no more awkward
+than another. I have seen boys that were gentlemen from the cradle to
+the grave,&mdash;almost; certainly from the time they ceased to be babies
+till they passed altogether out of my sight. Let boys have the
+associations, the culture, the training, and the treatment of gentlemen,
+and I do not believe there will be a single moment of their lives in
+which they will be clowns.</p>
+
+<p>And among the first necessities are the surroundings of a gentleman.
+When a man is grown up, he can live in a sty and not be a pig; but turn
+a horde of boys in, and when they come out they will root out. A man is
+strong and stiff. His inward, inherent power, toughened by exposure and
+fortified by knowledge, overmasters opposing circumstances. He can
+neglect the prickles and assume the rose of his position. He stands
+scornfully erect amid the grovelling influences that would pull him
+down. It may perhaps be, also, that here and there a boy, with a strong
+native predilection to refinement, shall be eclectic, and, with the
+water-lily's instinct, select from coarse contiguities only that which
+will nourish a delicate soul. But human nature in its infancy is usually
+a very susceptible material. It grows as it is trained. It will be rude,
+if it is left rude, and fine only as it is wrought finely. Educate a boy
+to tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and grimy to his
+grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the
+appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of
+the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am
+not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I
+would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot
+into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the
+heights of true manhood than the clumsiness of the clod, but I think it
+is just as near. I would have college rooms, college entrances, and all
+college domains cleanly and attractive. I would, in the first place,
+have every rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. I
+would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or
+bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden
+under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope
+matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put
+upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky,
+a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish his room
+handsomely, the furnishings will not shame the room and its vicinity. If
+he is poor and can provide but cheaply, he will still have a comely home
+provided for him by the Mater who then will be Alma to some purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Do you laugh at all this? So did Sarah laugh at the angels, but the
+angels had the right of it for all that.</p>
+
+<p>I am told that it would all be useless,&mdash;that the boys would deface and
+destroy, till the last state of the buildings would be worse than the
+first. I do not believe one word of it. It is inferred that they would
+deface, because they deface now. But what is it that they deface?
+Deformity. And who blames them? You see a rough board, and, by natural
+instinct, you dive into it with your jackknife. A base bare wall is a
+standing invitation to energetic and unruly pencils. Give the boys a
+little elegance and the tutors a little tact, and I do not believe there
+would be any trouble. If I had a thousand dollars,&mdash;as I did have once,
+but it is gone: shall I ever look upon its like again?&mdash;I would not be
+afraid to stake the whole of it upon the good behavior of college
+students,&mdash;that is, if I could have the managing of them. I would make
+them &quot;a speech,&quot; when they came back at the end of one of their long
+vacations, telling them what had been done, why it had been done, and
+the objections that had been urged against doing it. Then I would put
+the matter entirely into their hands. I would appeal solely to their
+honor. I would repose in them so much confidence that they could by no
+possibility betray it. We don't trust people half enough. We hedge
+ourselves about with laws and locks and deeds and bonds, and neglect the
+weightier matters of inherent right and justice that lie in every bosom.</p>
+
+<p>It may be thought hardly polite to accept hospitality and then go away
+and inveigh against the hospital; but my animadversions, you will do me
+the justice to observe, are not aimed at my entertainers. I am marauding
+for, not against them.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>The Oration and Poem form the first public features of Class-Day, but,
+arriving late, I could only eddy on the surge that swept around the
+door. Strains of distant eloquence would occasionally float musically to
+my ear; now and then a single word would steer clear of the thousands of
+heads and come into my port unharmed. Frequent waves of laughter beat
+and broke into the vestibule; but what is more &quot;trying&quot; to a frail
+temper than laughter in which one cannot join? So we tarried long enough
+to mark the fair faces and fine dresses, and then rambled under the old
+trees till the hour for the &quot;collation&quot; came; and this is the second
+point on which I purpose to dwell.</p>
+
+<p>Each member of the Senior Class prepares a banquet,&mdash;sometimes
+separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense varying from fifty to
+five hundred dollars,&mdash;to which he invites as many friends as he
+chooses, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and
+elegant as you find at ordinary evening parties, and the occasion is a
+merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be
+unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of
+seventy-five, in a country like America, it is quite probable that a
+certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such a custom
+necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must
+have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this
+elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience.
+The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met
+without strict economy and much parental and family sacrifice. And at
+the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be
+strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his
+feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for
+entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom.
+There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory
+<i>symposium</i>. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream
+beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as
+rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young
+men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth
+collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it
+involved personal sacrifice at home,&mdash;whether there was generally
+sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class, whether
+there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding, to make the
+omission of this party-giving unnoticeable or not unpleasant. I by no
+means say that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain
+their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing
+so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a
+fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and
+the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and
+worth or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the
+time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a
+distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore
+on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot
+comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and
+of which I have no tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. I think it
+is an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has
+any exaltation of life, any real elevation of character, any
+self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a shame. One may be
+annoyed at the inconveniences and impatient of the restraints of
+poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be thought poor, to
+resort to shifts, not for the sake of being comfortable or elegant, but
+of seeming to be above the necessity of shifts, is an indication of an
+inferior mind, whether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The man who
+does it shows that he has not in his own opinion character enough to
+stand alone. He must be supported by adventitious circumstances, or he
+must fall. Nobody, therefore, need ever expect to receive sympathy from
+me in recounting the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never can
+be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. People may attempt to do
+it, but their shafts have no barb. You turn it all into natural history.
+It is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something to be analyzed,
+classified, reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to
+be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your
+stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer
+from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you
+deserve to be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have
+become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live
+chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach
+maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding and depend upon their
+own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and
+prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of
+attainments and abilities. If I live a thousand years, I do not believe
+I shall ever do a more virtuous deed than I did long ago in staying at
+home for the sake of a quarter of a dollar when the rest of the school
+went to see Tom Thumb, the late bewritten bridegroom. I call it
+virtuous, because I had the quarter and could have gone, and could not
+explain the reason why I did not go. And though a senior class in
+Harvard College may reasonably be supposed to be beyond the eminent
+domain of Tom Thumb and quarter-dollars, the principle is precisely the
+same,&mdash;only the temptation, I suppose, is much stronger, as the stake is
+larger. Have they self-poise enough to refrain from these festive
+expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to
+refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have
+they nobility and generosity and largeness of soul enough, while
+abstaining themselves for conscience sake, to share in the plans and
+sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to
+look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at
+the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to
+selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence,
+and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there
+such a state of public opinion and usage in college that this custom is
+equally honored in the breach and in the observance?</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began.
+The college green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Embrouded ... as it were a mede</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,&quot;&mdash;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>&quot;floures&quot; which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare
+charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without
+angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the
+scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of
+Arabian Nights. I think I may safely say I never saw so many
+well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame
+fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The
+distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual
+beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women,
+perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual
+ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly
+plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could
+have the full effect of costumes,&mdash;rich, majestic, floating, gossamery,
+impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely
+needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a
+dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the
+beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured
+activity,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">By the soft wind of whispering silks.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the
+Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet
+bliss-month among the Blumenthal Mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the
+green. Youth and gayety and beauty&mdash;and in summer we are all young and
+gay and beautiful&mdash;mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and
+velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and
+Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy
+summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil
+their faces there.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I must confess I wish men would not dance. It is the most unbecoming
+exercise which they can adopt. In women you have the sweep and wave of
+drapery, gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, sinuous
+movements, the fluency of pliant forms, the willowy bend and rebound of
+lithe and lovely suppleness. It is grace generic,&mdash;the sublime, the
+evanescent mysticism of motion, without use, without aim, except its own
+overflowing and all-sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it
+reminds me of that amusing French book called &quot;Le Diable Boiteux,&quot; which
+has been or may be free-thinkingly translated, &quot;The Devil on Two
+Sticks.&quot; In saying this, I design to cast no slur on the moral character
+of masculine dancers. It is unquestionably above reproach; but let an
+angel put on the black coat and trousers which constitute the
+&quot;full-dress&quot; of a modern gentleman, and therein antic through the
+&quot;Lancers,&quot; and he would simply be ridiculous,&mdash;which is all I allege
+against Thomas, Richard, and Henry, Esq. A woman's dancing is gliding,
+swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute
+angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined: airy movements
+are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly
+outlined; and nothing is more incongruous, to my thinking, than this
+dancing, well portrayed in the contraband melody of</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;Old Joe,&quot; etc.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The feminine drapery conceals processes and gives results. The masculine
+absence of drapery reveals processes and thereby destroys results.</p>
+
+<p>Once upon a time, long before the Flood, the clergyman of a
+country-village, possessed with such a zeal as Paul bore record of
+concerning Israel, conceived it his duty to &quot;make a note&quot; of sundry
+young members of his flock who had met for a drive and a supper, with a
+dance fringed upon the outskirts. The fame thereof being noised abroad,
+a sturdy old farmer, with a good deal of shrewd sense and mother-wit in
+his brains, and a fine, indirect way of hitting the nail on the head
+with a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring village as to the
+facts of the case. &quot;Yes,&quot; he said, surlily, &quot;the young folks had a
+party, and got up a dance, and the minister was mad,&mdash;and I don't blame
+him,&mdash;he thinks nobody has any business to dance, unless he knows how
+better than they did!&quot; It was a rather different <i>casus belli</i> from that
+which the worthy clergyman would have preferred before a council; but it
+&quot;meets my views&quot; precisely as to the validity of the objections urged
+against dancing. I would have women dance, because it is the most
+beautiful thing in the world. I would have men dance, if it is
+necessary, in order to &quot;set off&quot; women, and to keep themselves out of
+mischief; but in point of grace, or elegance, or attractiveness, I
+should beg men to hold their peace&mdash;and their pumps.</p>
+
+<p>From my window overlooking the green, I was led away into some one or
+other of the several halls to see the &quot;round dances&quot;; and it was like
+going from Paradise to Pandemonium. From the pure and healthy lawn, all
+the purer for the pure and peaceful people pleasantly walking up and
+down in the sunshine and shade, or grouped in the numerous windows, like
+bouquets of rare tropical flowers,&mdash;from the green, rainbowed in vivid
+splendor, and alive with soft, tranquil motion, fair forms, and the
+flutter of beautiful and brilliant colors,&mdash;from the green, sanctified
+already by the pale faces of sick and wounded and maimed soldiers who
+had gone out from the shadows of those sheltering trees to draw the
+sword for country, and returned white wraiths of their vigorous youth,
+the sad vanguard of that great army of blessed martyrs who shall keep
+forever in the mind of this generation how costly and precious a thing
+is liberty, who shall lift our worldly age out of the plough of its
+material prosperity into the sublimity of suffering and sacrifice,&mdash;from
+suggestions and fancies and dreamy musing and &quot;phantasms sweet,&quot; into
+the hall, where, for flower-scented summer air were thick clouds of
+fine, penetrating dust, and for lightly trooping fairies a jam of heated
+human beings, so that you shall hardly come nigh the dancers for the
+press; and when you have, with difficulty and many contortions and much
+apologizing, threaded the solid mass, piercing through the forest of
+fans,&mdash;what? An inclosure, but no more illusion.</p>
+
+<p>Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. Always. When it is prosecuted
+in the centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer
+day, it is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time.
+The blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the
+salient points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl
+that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in
+through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the
+whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this
+most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very <i>pose</i> of the dance is
+profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate
+emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and
+justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of
+unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, and carelessly
+assumed by people who have but a casual and partial
+society-acquaintance. This I reckon profanity. This is levity the most
+culpable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of delicacy.</p>
+
+<p>That it is practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does
+not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A
+good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as
+you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not
+cleanse the waltz. It is of itself unclean.</p>
+
+<p>There were, besides, peculiar <i>d&eacute;sagr&eacute;ments</i> on this occasion. How can
+people,&mdash;I could not help saying to myself,&mdash;how can people endure such
+proximity in such a sweltering heat? For, as I said, there was no
+illusion,&mdash;not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with Nymphs and
+Apollos. The boys were boys, appallingly young, full of healthful
+promise, but too much in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at
+ease in their situation,&mdash;indeed, very much <i>not</i> at ease,&mdash;unmistakably
+warm, nervous, and uncomfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls, I
+dare say, under ordinary circumstances,&mdash;one was really lovely, with
+soft cheeks, long eyelashes, eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in
+her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,&mdash;but Venus
+herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight as
+they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowsy,&mdash;puff-balls revolving
+through an atmosphere of dust,&mdash;a maze of steaming, reeking human
+couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than
+Spartan fortitude.</p>
+
+<p>It was remarkable, and at the same time amusing, to observe the
+difference in the demeanor of the two sexes. The lions and the fawns
+seemed to have changed hearts,&mdash;perhaps they had. It was the boys that
+were nervous. The girls were unquailing. The boys were, however, heroic.
+They tried bravely to hide the fox and his gnawings; but traces were
+visible. They made desperate feint of being at the height of enjoyment
+and unconscious of spectators; but they had much modesty, for all that.
+The girls threw themselves into it <i>pugnis et calcibus</i>,&mdash;unshrinking,
+indefatigable.</p>
+
+<p>There is another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to
+consider. The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as
+objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French
+ballet-dancer. Not to put too fine a point on it, I mean that these
+girls' gyrations in the centre of their gyrating and centrifugal hoops
+make a most operatic drapery-display. I saw scores and scores of public
+waltzing-girls last summer, and among them all I saw but one who
+understood the art, or, at any rate, who practised the art, of avoiding
+an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light it is only
+flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight,
+it is not. Do I shock ears polite? I trust so. If the saying of shocking
+things might prevent the doing of shocking things, I should be well
+content. And is it an unpardonable sin for me to sit alone in my own
+room and write about what you go into a great hall, before hundreds of
+strange men and women, and do?</p>
+
+<p>I do not speak thus about waltzing because I like to say it; but ye have
+compelled me. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. I
+respect and revere woman, and I cannot see her destroying or debasing
+the impalpable fragrance and delicacy of her nature without feeling the
+shame and shudder in my own heart. Great is my boldness of speech
+towards you, because great is my glorying of you. Though I speak as a
+fool, yet as a fool receive me. My opinions may be rustic. They are at
+least honest; and may it not be that the first fresh impressions of an
+unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as likely to be natural and
+correct views as those which are the result of many afterthoughts, long
+use, and an experience of multifold fascinations, combined with the
+original producing cause? My opinions may be wrong, but they will do no
+harm; the penalty will rest alone on me: while, if they are right, they
+may serve as a nail or two to be fastened by the masters of assemblies.</p>
+
+<p>The funny part of Class-Day comes last,&mdash;not so very funny to tell, but
+amazingly funny to see,&mdash;only a wreath of bouquets fastened around the
+trunk of an old tree, perhaps eight or ten feet from the ground, and
+then the four classes range themselves around it in four circles with
+their hands fast locked together, the Freshman Class on the outside, the
+Senior Class within, grotesquely tricked out in vile old coats and
+&quot;shocking bad hats.&quot; Then the two alternate classes go one way around
+the tree and the two others the opposite, pell-mell, harum-scarum,
+pushing and pulling, down and up again, only keeping fast hold of hands,
+singing, shouting, cheering <i>ad libitum</i>, <i>ad throatum</i>, (theirs,) <i>ad
+earsum</i>, (ours,) and going all the time in that din and yell and crowd
+and crash dear to the hearts of boys. At a given signal there is a
+pause, and the Senior Class make sudden charge upon the bouquets,
+huddling and hustling and crowding and jumping at the foot of the old
+tree; bubbling up on each other's shoulders into momentary prominence
+and prospect of success, and immediately disappearing ignominiously;
+making frantic grasps and clutches with a hundred long arms and eager
+outstretched hands, and finally succeeding, by shoulders and fists, in
+bringing the wreath away piecemeal; and then they give themselves up to
+mutual embraces, groans, laments, and all the enginery of pathetic
+affection in the last gasping throes of separation,&mdash;to the doleful
+tearing of hair and the rending of their fantastic garments. It is the
+personification of legalized rowdyism; and if young men would but
+confine themselves to such rowdyism as may be looked at and laughed at
+by their mothers and sisters, they would find life just as amusing and a
+thousand times more pure and profitable.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>It occurs to me here that there is one subject on which I desire to
+&quot;give my views,&quot; though it is quite unconnected with Class-Day. But it
+is probable that in the whole course of my natural life it will never
+again happen to me to be writing about colleges, so I desire to say in
+this paper everything I have to say on the subject. I refer to the
+practice of &quot;hazing,&quot; which is an abomination. If we should find it
+among hinds, a remnant of the barbarisms of the Dark Ages, blindly
+handed down by such slow-growing people as go to mill with their meal on
+one side of the saddle and a stone on the other to balance, as their
+fathers did, because it never occurred to their loggerheads to divide
+the meal into two parcels and make it balance itself, we should not be
+surprised; but hazing occurs among boys who have been accustomed to the
+circulation of ideas, boys old enough and intelligent enough to
+understand the difference between brutality and frolic, old enough to
+know what honor and courage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive how
+they should countenance a practice which entirely ignores and defies
+honor, and whose brutality has not a single redeeming feature. It has
+neither wisdom nor wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely
+the mirth of boyish frolic. A narrow range of stale practical jokes,
+lighted up by no gleam of originality, is transmitted from year to year
+with as much fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude
+allowed to clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its
+platitude, its one overpowering and fatal characteristic is its intense
+and essential cowardice. Cowardice is its head and front and bones and
+blood. One boy does not single out another boy of his own weight, and
+take his chances in a fair stand-up fight. But a party of Sophomores
+club together in such numbers as to render opposition useless, and
+pounce upon their victim unawares, as Brooks and his minions pounced
+upon Sumner, and as the Southern chivalry is given to doing. For sweet
+pity's sake, let this mode of warfare be monopolized by the Southern
+chivalry.</p>
+
+<p>The lame excuse is offered, that it does the Freshmen good,&mdash;takes the
+conceit out of them. But if there is any class in college so divested of
+conceit as to be justified in throwing stones, it is surely not the
+Sophomore Class. Moreover, whatever good it may do the sufferers, it
+does harm, and only harm, to the perpetrators; and neither the law nor
+the gospel requires a man to improve other people's characters at the
+expense of his own. Nobody can do a wrong without injuring himself; and
+no young man can do a mean, cowardly wrong like this without suffering
+severest injury. It is the very spirit of the slaveholder, a dastardly
+and detestable, a tyrannical and cruel spirit. If young men are so
+blinded by custom and habit that a meanness is not to them a meanness
+because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for the young
+men, and so much the worse for our country, whose sweat of blood attests
+the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If uprightness,
+if courage, if humanity and rectitude and the mind conscious to itself
+of right, are anything more than a name. Let the young men who mean to
+make time minister to life scorn and scotch and kill this debasing and
+stupid practice.</p>
+
+<p>And why is not some legitimate and wholesome safety-valve provided by
+authority to let off superabundant vitality, that boys may not, by the
+mere occasions of their own natures, be driven into wickedness?
+Class-Day is very well, but it comes only once a year, and what is
+needed is an opportunity for daily ebullition, so that each night may
+square its own account and forestall explosion. Why should there not be,
+for instance, a military department to every college, as well as a
+mathematical department? Why might not every college be a military
+normal school? The exuberance and riot of animal spirits, the young,
+adventurous strength and joy in being, would not only be kept from
+striking out as now in illegitimate, unworthy, and hurtful directions,
+but it would become the very basis and groundwork of useful purposes.
+Such exercise would be so promotive of health and discipline, it would
+so train and harmonize and <i>limber</i> the physical powers, that the
+superior quality of study would, I doubt not, more than atone for
+whatever deficiency in quantity might result. And even suppose a little
+less attention should be given to Euclid and Homer, which is of the
+greater importance nowadays, an ear that can detect a false quantity in
+a Greek verse, or an eye that can sight a Rebel nine hundred yards off,
+and a hand that can pull a trigger and shoot him? Knowledge is power;
+but knowledge must sharpen its edges and polish its points, if it would
+be greatliest available in days like these. The knowledge that can plant
+batteries and plan campaigns, that is fertile in expedients and wise to
+baffle the foe, is just now the strongest power. Diagrams and
+first-aorists are good, and they who have fed on such meat have grown
+great, and done the State service in their generation; but these times
+demand new measures and new men. It is conceded that we shall probably
+be for many years a military nation. At least a generation of vigilance
+shall be the price of our liberty. And even of peace we can have no
+stronger assurance than a wise and wieldy readiness for war. Now the
+education of our unwarlike days is not adequate to the emergencies of
+this martial hour. We must be seasoned with something stronger than
+Attic salt, or we shall be cast out and trodden under foot of men. True,
+all education is worthy. Everything that exercises the mind fits it for
+its work; but professional education is indispensable to professional
+men. And the profession, <i>par excellence</i>, of every man of this
+generation is war. Country overrides all personal considerations.
+Lawyer, minister, what not, a man's first duty is the salvation of his
+country. When she calls, he must go; and before she calls, let him, if
+possible, prepare himself to serve her in the best manner. As things are
+now, college-boys are scarcely better than cow-boys for the army. Their
+costly education runs greatly to waste. It gives them no direct
+advantage over the clod who stumbles against a trisyllable. So far as it
+makes them better men, of course they are better soldiers; but for all
+of military education which their college gives them, they are fit only
+for privates, whose sole duty is to obey. They know nothing of military
+drill or tactics or strategy. The State cannot afford this waste. She
+cannot afford to lose the fruits of mental toil and discipline. She
+needs trained mind even more than trained muscle. It is harder to find
+brains than to find hands. The average mental endowment may be no higher
+in college than out; but granting it to be as high, the culture which it
+receives gives it immense advantage. The fruits of that culture,
+readiness, resources, comprehensiveness, should all be held in the
+service of the State. Military knowledge and practice should be imparted
+and enforced to utilize ability, and make it the instrument, not only of
+personal, but of national welfare. That education which gives men the
+advantage over others in the race of life should be so directed as to
+convey that advantage to country, when she stands in need. Every college
+might and should be made a nursery of athletes in mind and body,
+clear-eyed, stout-hearted, strong-limbed, cool-brained,&mdash;a nursery of
+soldiers, quick, self-possessed, brave and cautious and wary, ready in
+invention, skilful to command men and evolve from a mob an army,&mdash;a
+nursery of gentlemen, reminiscent of no lawless revels, midnight orgies,
+brutal outrages, launching out already attainted into an attainting
+world, but with many a memory of adventure, wild, it may be, and not
+over-wise, yet pure as a breeze from the hills,&mdash;banded and sworn</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">&quot;To serve as model for the mighty world,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Not only to keep down the base in man,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">But teach high thought, and amiable words.</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And courtliness, and the desire of fame,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And love of truth, and all that makes a man.&quot;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="loves_challenge" id="loves_challenge"></a>LOVE'S CHALLENGE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">I picked this trifle from the floor,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">Unknowing from whose tender hand</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">It fell,&mdash;but now would fain restore</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">A thing which hath my heart unmanned.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">I say unmanned, for 't is not now</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">A manly mood to dream of Love,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">When each bold champion knits his brow,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">And for War's gauntlet doffs his glove.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">But we're exempt, and have no heart</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">Of wreak within us for the fray;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And therefore teach our souls the art</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">With life and life's concerns to play.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">Yet, lady, trust me, 't is not all</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">In play that I proclaim intent,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">When next thou lett'st thy gauntlet fall,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">To take it as a challenge meant.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">REPLY.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">SIR CARPET-KNIGHT, who canst not fight,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">Thy gallantries are not for me;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">The man whom I with love requite</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">Must sing in a more martial key.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">I have two brothers on the field,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">And one beneath it,&mdash;none knows where;</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">And I shall keep my spirit steeled</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">To any save a soldier's prayer.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="spanml2m">If thou have music in thy soul,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">Yet hast no sinew for the strife,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml2m">Go teach thyself the war-drum's roll,</span><br />
+<span class="spanml35">And woo me better with a fife!</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="political_problems_and_conditions_of_peace" id="political_problems_and_conditions_of_peace"></a>POLITICAL PROBLEMS, AND CONDITIONS OF PEACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The relations existing between the Federal Government and the several
+States, and the reciprocal rights and powers of each, have never been
+settled, except in part. Upon matters of taxation and commerce, and the
+diversified questions that arise in times of peace, the decisions of the
+Supreme Court have marked the boundary-lines of State and Federal power
+with considerable clearness and precision. But all these questions are
+superficial and trivial, when compared with those which are coming up
+for decision out of the great struggle in which we are now engaged. The
+Southern Rebellion, greater than any recorded in history since the world
+began, must necessarily call for the exercise of all the powers with
+which the Government is clothed. And we need not be surprised, if, in
+resorting to the new measures which the great exigency of the new
+condition seems to require, it shall be found, after the storm has
+ceased and the clouds have rolled away, that in some things the
+Government has transcended its legitimate powers, while in others it has
+suffered, because fearing to use those which it really possesses. It is
+dependent in many things upon the States; and yet it is supreme over
+them all. There can be no Senate, as a branch either of the executive or
+of the legislative department, without the action of the States; and yet
+the Government emanates directly from the people. In defending itself
+against an armed rebellion of nearly half the States themselves,
+struggling for self-preservation, it may rightfully, as in other wars,
+grasp all the means within its reach. War makes its own methods, for all
+of which necessity is a sufficient plea. But when the defence shall have
+been made, when the attack is repelled, and the Rebellion shall have
+been fully suppressed, then will come the questions, What are the best
+means of restoration? and, How shall a recurrence of the evil be
+prevented?</p>
+
+<p>Though the Federal Government is one of limited powers, <i>the people</i>
+possess <i>all governmental powers</i>; and these are spoken of as powers
+<i>delegated</i> and powers <i>reserved</i>. So far as these are reserved to <i>the
+people</i>, they may be exercised either through the <i>Federal Government</i>
+or the <i>State</i>. And the Federal Government, though limited in its
+powers, is restricted in <i>the subjects upon which it can act</i>, rather
+than in the <i>quantum</i> of power it can exercise over those matters within
+its jurisdiction. Over those interests which are committed to its care
+it has all the powers incident to any other government in the
+world,&mdash;powers necessary by implication to accomplish the purpose
+intended. The construction of the grant in the Constitution is not to be
+critical and stringent, as if the people, by its adoption, were
+<i>selling</i> power to a <i>stranger</i>,&mdash;but liberal, considering that they
+were enabling <i>their own agents</i> to achieve a noble work for them.</p>
+
+<p>We have been accustomed to extol the wisdom of our fathers, in framing
+and establishing such a form of government; but our highest praises have
+been too small. We have hitherto had but a partial conception of their
+wisdom. We knew not the terrible test to which their work was to be
+exposed. After the long discipline of the Revolutionary War, and the
+experience of the weakness and impending anarchy of the Confederation,
+they understood, far better than we, the dangers to which every
+government is liable, from within and from without. And we are just now
+beginning to see, that, in the Constitution they adopted, they not only
+provided for the interests of peace, but for the dangers and emergencies
+of war. Brief sentences, hardly noticed before, now throw open their
+doors like a magazine of arms, ready for use in the hour of peril. And
+while we shall come out of this struggle, and the political contest
+that will follow it, without impairing any of the rights of the States,
+the Federal Government <i>restored</i> will stand before the world in a
+majesty of strength of which we have before had no conception.</p>
+
+<p>The questions evolved by the war are already attracting public
+attention. It is well that they should do so. The peace and prosperity
+of the country in future years depend upon their solution. They are so
+interwoven that a mistake in regard to one may involve us in other
+errors. The power of the Government so to remove the cause of the
+present rebellion as to prevent its recurrence, if it have any such
+power, is one which it is imperatively bound to exercise,&mdash;else all the
+treasure and blood expended in quelling it will be wasted. Has it any
+such power? Can Slavery be exterminated? And can the Rebel States be
+held as conquests, and be restored only upon condition of being forever
+free? It is proposed briefly to discuss these questions.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="emancipation" id="emancipation"></a>EMANCIPATION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There are those who believe that the President's Proclamation will cease
+to be of any force at the close of the war, and that no slaves will have
+any right to their freedom by it except such as may be actually
+liberated by the military authorities.</p>
+
+<p>There are others, who hold that the Proclamation has the force of
+law,&mdash;that by it every slave within the designated territory has now a
+legal right to his liberty,&mdash;and that, if the military power does not
+secure that right to him <i>during the war</i>, he may successfully appeal to
+the civil power <i>afterwards</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If the Proclamation is a law, it must be conceded, that, like all the
+laws of war, it will cease to be in force when the war is closed. But
+if, like a legislative act, it confers actual rights on the slaves,
+whether they are able to secure them in fact or not, then those <i>rights</i>
+are not lost, though the law cease to exist. On the other hand, if it
+confers no actual rights on any who are beyond its reach,&mdash;if it is
+merely an <i>offer</i> of freedom to all who can come and receive it,&mdash;then
+those only who do receive it while the offer continues will have any
+rights by it when it has ceased to be in force.</p>
+
+<p>The position of Mr. Adams on this subject seems to have been
+misunderstood. When his remarks in Congress are carefully examined, it
+will be found that he did not claim that the proclamation of a military
+commander would operate, like a statute, to confer the right of freedom
+upon all the slaves in an invaded country. But he asserted a general
+principle of international law,&mdash;that the commander of an invading army
+is not bound to recognize the municipal laws of the country,&mdash;that he
+may treat all as freemen, though some are slaves. And he claimed, that,
+in case of a servile war in this country, our army would have a right to
+suppress the insurrection by giving freedom to the insurgents. In regard
+to the effect of such a proclamation upon those not liberated by the
+military power, he expressed no opinion.</p>
+
+<p>The precedents usually cited are not any more satisfactory. In Hayti,
+and in the South-American republics, emancipation became an established
+fact by the action of the civil power. In each case a proclamation by
+the military power was the initial step; but the consummation was
+attained by the fact that the same power afterwards became dominant in
+civil, as well as in military affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Conceding, then, that the Proclamation is but a declaration of the
+war-policy, designed and adapted to secure a still higher end,&mdash;the
+preservation and perpetuity of our free institutions,&mdash;it is still
+claimed that the Government has the right to pursue this policy until
+Slavery is abolished, <i>and forever prohibited</i>, within all the Rebel
+States.</p>
+
+<p>Though we speak of the Rebellion as an &quot;insurrection,&quot; it has assumed
+such proportions that we are in a state of actual war. Nor does it make
+any difference that it is a <i>civil</i> war. It has just been decided by
+the Supreme Court of the United States, <i>that we have the same rights
+against the people and States in rebellion</i>, by the law of nations, that
+we should have against <i>alien enemies</i>. The property of non-combatants
+is liable to confiscation, as <i>enemies'</i> property; and it makes no
+difference that some of them are <i>personally</i> loyal. All the inhabitants
+of the Rebel States have the rights of <i>enemies</i> only. The recent cases
+of the Brilliant, Hiawatha, and Amy Warwick settle this beyond all
+question. There was some difference of opinion among the judges, but
+only on the question whether this condition <i>preceded</i> the Act of
+Congress of July, 1861,&mdash;a majority holding that it did, commencing with
+the proclamation of the blockade. So that it cannot be denied that we
+may treat the Rebel States as <i>enemies</i>, and adopt all measures against
+them <i>which any belligerents engaged in a just war may adopt</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And no principle of the law of nations is more universally admitted than
+this,&mdash;that the party in the right, after the war is commenced, may
+continue to carry it on until the enemy shall submit to such terms as
+will be a sufficient indemnity for all the losses and expenses caused by
+it, <i>and will prevent another war in the future</i>. And to this end he may
+conquer and hold in subjection people and territory, until such terms
+are submitted to. And until then, the state of war continues. The right
+to impose such terms as will <i>secure peace in the future</i> is one of the
+fundamental principles of international law.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of the absolute international rights of States,&quot; says Mr. Wheaton, &quot;one
+of the most essential and important, and that which lies at the
+foundation of all the rest, is <i>the right of self-preservation</i>. This
+right necessarily involves all other incidental rights which are
+essential as means to give effect to the principal end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The end of a just war,&quot; says Vattel, &quot;is to avenge, <i>or prevent</i>,
+injury.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If <i>the safety of the State</i> lies at stake, our precaution and
+foresight cannot be extended too far. Must we delay to arrest our ruin
+until it has become inevitable?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where the end is lawful, he who has the right to pursue that end has,
+of course, a right to employ all the means necessary for its
+attainment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When the conqueror has totally subdued a nation, he undoubtedly may, in
+the first place, do himself justice respecting the object which had
+given rise to the war, and indemnify himself for the expenses and
+damages sustained by it; he may, according to the exigency of the case,
+subject the nation to punishment by way of example; and he may, _if
+prudence require it, render her incapable of doing mischief with the
+same ease in future_.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Every nation,&quot; says Chancellor Kent, &quot;has an undoubted right to provide
+for its own safety, and to take due precaution against <i>distant</i>, as
+well as impending danger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Our rights <i>as belligerents</i>, therefore, are ample for our security in
+time to come. The Rebel States will not cease to be enemies by being
+defeated and exhausted and disabled from continuing active hostilities.
+They have invoked the laws of war, and they must abide the decision of
+the tribunal to which they have appealed. We may hold them <i>as enemies</i>
+until they submit to such reasonable terms of peace as we may demand.
+Whether we shall require any indemnity for the vast expenditures and
+losses to which we have been subjected is a question of great magnitude;
+but it is of little importance compared with that of guarding against a
+recurrence of the Rebellion, by removing <i>the cause</i> of it. It would be
+worse than madness to restore them to all their former rights under the
+government they have done their utmost to destroy, and at the same time
+permit them to retain a system that would surely involve us or our
+children in another struggle of the same kind.</p>
+
+<p>Slavery and freedom cannot permanently coexist under the same
+government. There is an inevitable, perpetual, irrepressible conflict
+between them. The present rebellion is but the culmination of this
+conflict, long existing,&mdash;transferred from social and political life to
+the camp and the battle-field. <i>In the new arena, we have all the rights
+of belligerents in an international war.</i> Slavery has taken the sword;
+let it perish by the sword. If we spare it, its wickedness will be
+exceeded by our folly. As victors, the world concedes our right to
+demand, for our own future peace, as the only terms of restoration, not
+only the abolition of Slavery in all the Rebel States, but its
+prohibition in all coming time. It cannot be, that, with the terrible
+lessons of these passing years, we shall be so utterly destitute of
+wisdom and prudence as to leave our children exposed to the dangers of
+another rebellion, after entailing upon them the vast burdens of this,
+by our national debt.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said, that, if Slavery should be abolished, the States could
+afterwards reestablish it. This is claimed, on the ground that every
+State may determine for itself the character of its own domestic
+institutions. The right to do so has been conceded to some of the new
+States.</p>
+
+<p>But it should be remembered that this right has been, to establish
+Slavery <i>by bringing in slaves from the old States</i>,&mdash;not by taking
+<i>citizens of the United States</i>, and reducing <i>them</i> to slavery. If one
+such citizen can be enslaved, then can any other; and the very
+foundations of the Federal Government can be overturned by a State. For
+a government that cannot protect <i>its own citizens</i> from loss of
+citizenship by being chattellized is no government at all.</p>
+
+<p>Citizenship is a reciprocal relation. The citizen owes allegiance; the
+government owes protection. When a person is naturalized, he takes the
+oath of allegiance. Does he got nothing in return? Can a State annul all
+the rights which the Federal Government has conferred? Then, indeed,
+would it be better for those who come to our shores to remain citizens
+of the old nations; for <i>they</i> could protect them, but <i>we</i> cannot.
+Then, to be a citizen of the United States&mdash;a privilege we had thought
+greater than that of Roman citizenship when that empire was in its
+glory&mdash;is a privilege which any State may annul at its pleasure!</p>
+
+<p>The power and position of a nation depend upon the number, wealth,
+intelligence, and power of its citizens. And the nation, in order to
+employ and develop its resources, must have free scope for the use of
+its powers. No State has a right to block the path of the United States,
+or in any way to &quot;retard, impede, or burden it, in the execution of its
+powers.&quot; For this reason, if a citizen is wealthy enough to lend money
+to the Federal Government, a State cannot <i>tax his scrip</i> to the amount
+of one cent. But, if the doctrine contended for by some is sound, then
+it may take <i>the citizen himself</i>, confiscate the whole of his property,
+blot out his citizenship, and make a chattel of him, and the Federal
+Government can afford him no protection! Among all the doctrines that
+Slavery has originated in this country, there is none more monstrous
+than this.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not a question of any practical importance at this time.
+There is no danger that Slavery will ever be tolerated where it has been
+once abolished. It may go into new fields; it seldom returns to those
+from which it has been driven. The institutions of learning and religion
+that follow in the path of freedom, if they find a congenial soil, are
+not likely to be supplanted by the dark and noxious exotics of ignorance
+and barbarism.</p>
+
+<p>And besides, as we have already seen, it is our right, as one of the
+conditions of restoration, to provide for the <i>perpetual prohibition</i> of
+Slavery within the Rebel States. This, like the Ordinance of 1787, will
+stand as an insurmountable barrier in all time to come. And the security
+it will afford will be even more certain. For, while there may be a
+difference of opinion in regard to the effect of a law of Congress
+relating to existing Territories, there is no doubt that conditions
+imposed at the time upon the admission of new States, or the restoration
+of the Rebel States, will be of perpetual obligation.</p>
+
+
+
+<h3><a name="rights_of_rebel_states" id="rights_of_rebel_states"></a>RIGHTS OF REBEL STATES.</h3>
+
+
+<p>On this subject there are two theories, each of which has advocates
+among our most eminent statesmen.</p>
+
+<p>By some it is claimed that the Rebels have lost all rights as citizens
+of States, and are in the condition of the inhabitants of unorganized
+territories belonging to the United States,&mdash;and that, having forfeited
+their rights, they can never be restored to their former position,
+except by the consent of the Federal Government. This consent may be
+given by admitting them as new States, or restoring them as old,&mdash;the
+Government having the right in either case to annex terms and
+conditions.</p>
+
+<p>There are others who contend that the Rebel States, though in rebellion,
+have lost none of their rights as States,&mdash;that the moment they submit
+they may choose members of Congress and Presidential electors, and
+demand, and we must concede, the same position they formerly held. This
+theory has been partially recognized by the present Administration, but
+not to an extent that precludes the other from being adopted, if it is
+right.</p>
+
+<p>If the people of the States which have seceded, as soon as they submit,
+have an absolute right to resume their former position in the
+Government, with their present constitutions upholding Slavery, it
+certainly will be a great, if not an insurmountable, obstacle to the
+adoption of those measures which may be necessary to secure our peace in
+the future. That they have no such right, it is believed may be made
+perfectly clear.</p>
+
+<p>If we triumph, we shall have all the rights which, by the laws of
+nations, belong to conquerors in a just war. In a civil war, the rights
+of conquest may not be of the same nature as in a war between different
+nations; but that there are such rights in all wars has already been
+stated on the highest authority. If a province, having definite
+constitutional rights, revolts, and attempts to overthrow the power of
+the central government, it would be a strange doctrine, to claim, that,
+after being subdued, it had risked and lost nothing by the undertaking.
+No authority can be found to sustain such a proposition. A rebellion
+puts everything at risk. Any other doctrine would hold out encouragement
+to all wicked and rebellious spirits. If they revolt, they know that
+everything is staked upon the chances of success. Everything is lost by
+defeat. By the laws of war, long established among the nations,&mdash;laws
+which the Rebel States have themselves invoked,&mdash;if they fail, they will
+have no right to be restored, except upon such terms as our Government
+may prescribe. The right to make war, conferred by the Constitution,
+carries with it all the rights and powers incident to a war, necessary
+for its successful prosecution, and essential to prevent its recurrence.</p>
+
+<p>But without resorting to the extraordinary powers incident to a state of
+war, the same conclusion, in regard to the effect of a rebellion by a
+State Government, results from the relations which the States sustain to
+the Federal Government. Though they cannot escape its jurisdiction,
+their position, <i>as States</i>, is one which may be forfeited and lost.</p>
+
+<p>It has been objected that this doctrine is equivalent to a recognition
+of the right of Secession, because it concedes the power of any one
+State to withdraw from the Union. But the fallacy of this objection is
+easily demonstrated.</p>
+
+<p>The Federal Government does not emanate from the States, but directly
+from the people. The relation between them is that <i>of protection</i> on
+the one hand and <i>allegiance</i> on the other. This relation cannot be
+dissolved by either party, unless by voluntary or compulsory
+expatriation. It subsists alike in States and Territories, not being
+dependent upon any local government. The Rebels claim the right to
+dissolve this relation, and to become free from and independent of the
+Federal Government, though retaining the same territory as before. We
+deny any such right, and hold, that, though they may forfeit their
+rights <i>as a State</i>, they are still bound by, and under the jurisdiction
+of, the Federal Government. This jurisdiction, though absolute in all
+places, is not the same in all.</p>
+
+<p>In the District of Columbia, and in all unorganized territories, the
+jurisdiction of the Federal Government is exclusive in its <i>extent</i>, as
+well as in its <i>nature</i>. It must protect the inhabitants in <i>all</i> their
+rights,&mdash;for there is no other power to protect them. They owe
+allegiance to it, and to no other.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of the <i>organized</i> territories, though under the general
+jurisdiction of the Federal Government, are, to some extent, under the
+jurisdiction of the Territorial Governments. Each is bound to protect
+them in certain things; they are bound to support and obey each in
+certain things.</p>
+
+<p>The people of a State are also under the absolute jurisdiction of the
+Federal Government in all matters embraced in the Constitution. They owe
+it unqualified allegiance and support in those things. But they are
+also, in some matters, under the jurisdiction of the State Government,
+and owe allegiance to that. There are many matters over which both have
+jurisdiction, and in which the citizens have a right to look to each, or
+both, for protection. The courts of each issue writs of <i>habeas corpus</i>,
+and give the citizens their liberty, unless there is legal cause for
+their custody or restraint.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if a State Government forfeits all right to the allegiance and
+support of its citizens, they are not thereby absolved from their
+allegiance to the Federal Government. On the contrary, the jurisdiction
+of the Federal Government is thereby enlarged; for it is then the only
+Government which the citizens are bound to obey. Take, for illustration,
+the State of Arkansas. By seceding, the State Government forfeited all
+claim to the obedience of the citizens. The inhabitants no longer owe it
+any allegiance. If loyal, they will not obey it, except as compelled by
+force. But they still owe allegiance to the United States Government.
+And there being no other Government which they are bound to obey, they
+are in the same condition as before the State was admitted into the
+Union, or any Territorial Government was organized.</p>
+
+<p>The same is true of South Carolina. For, though it was an independent
+State before the Constitution was adopted, its citizens voluntarily
+yielded up that position, and became subject to the Federal Government,
+claiming the privileges and assuming the liabilities of a higher
+citizenship. And if, by reason of its rebellion, their State Government
+has forfeited its claim upon them, and its right to rule over them, they
+owe no allegiance to any except the Government of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>But it is argued by some, that a State, once admitted into the Union,
+cannot forfeit its rights as a State under the Constitution, because it
+cannot, as such, be guilty of treason; that the inhabitants may all be
+traitors, and the State Government secede, and engage in a war against
+the Republic, and yet retain all its rights intact.</p>
+
+<p>A State, in the meaning of public law, has been defined to be a body of
+persons <i>united together</i> in one community, for the defence of their
+rights. They do not constitute a State until <i>organized</i>. If the
+organization ceases to exist, they are no longer a State. If the State
+organization becomes despotic, and the inhabitants overthrow it by a
+revolution, it then ceases to exist. The people are remitted to their
+original rights, and must organize a new State.</p>
+
+<p>A State, as such, may be guilty of treason. Crimes may be committed by
+organized bodies of men. Corporations are often convicted, and punished
+by fines, or by a forfeiture of all corporate rights. And though we have
+no provision for putting a State on trial, it may, as a State, be
+guilty. Treason is defined by the Constitution to be &quot;levying war
+against the United States.&quot; This is just what South Carolina, as a
+State, is doing. Not only the people, but <i>the State Government</i>, has
+revolted. The people owe it no allegiance. It is their duty, not to
+support, but to <i>oppose</i> it. The Federal Government owes it no
+recognition. It has the right to destroy and exterminate it. A State
+Government in rebellion has no rights under the Constitution. <i>It is
+itself a rebellion</i>, and must necessarily cease to exist when the
+rebellion is suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>And when the State Government which has revolted shall be conquered and
+overthrown, there will then be no South Carolina in existence. If there
+were loyal people enough there, bond or free, to rise up and overthrow
+it, they would be no more bound to revive the old Constitution, with its
+tyrannical provisions, than were our fathers to return to the British
+Government. Such a revolution is inaugurated in that State, by loyal
+men, to overthrow the despotic power of the State Government. If the
+State Government had remained loyal, it might have called on the Federal
+Government. But by seceding it has justified the Federal Government in
+aiding or organizing a revolution against it, for its utter overthrow
+and extinction.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, indeed, the idea prevails that there is still, somehow, a
+State of South Carolina, besides that which is in rebellion. But the
+State must exist <i>in fact</i>, or it has no existence. There is no such
+thing as a merely theoretical State, separate and different from the
+actual. The revolted States are the same States that were once loyal.
+And when some loyal citizens in each of them, with the aid of the
+Federal Government, have overthrown and destroyed them, the ground will
+be cleared for the formation of new States, or the <i>reorganization</i> of
+the old; and they may be admitted or restored, upon such conditions as
+may be deemed wise and prudent, to promote and secure the future peace
+and welfare of the whole country.</p>
+
+<p>There is no evidence that loyal persons in the Rebel States claim or
+desire to uphold the existence of those States, under their present
+constitutions, with the system of Slavery. But if there are any such
+persons, their wishes are not to override the interests of the Republic.
+It is their misfortune to reside in States that have revolted; and all
+their losses, pecuniary and political, are chargeable to those States,
+and not to the Federal Government. If they are so blind as to suppose
+that their losses will be increased by emancipation, <i>that</i>, also, will
+be chargeable to the rebellion of those States. <i>Their</i> loyalty does not
+save those States from being treated as enemies; it does not prevent
+<i>their own</i> condition from being determined by that of their States. As
+it is well known, a portion of their property has been confiscated by an
+Act of Congress, on the ground that they are, in part, responsible for
+the rebellion of those States. The theory, therefore, that such loyal
+men constitute loyal States, still existing, in distinction from the
+States that have rebelled, is utterly groundless. On this point we
+cannot do better than quote from the opinion of the Supreme Court of the
+United States in a case already referred to, sustaining the belligerent
+legislation of Congress.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In organizing this rebellion, <i>they have acted as States</i>, claiming to
+be sovereign over all persons and property within their respective
+limits, and claiming the right to absolve their citizens from their
+allegiance to the Federal Government. Several of these States have
+combined to form a new Confederacy, claiming to be acknowledged by the
+world as a sovereign State. Their right to do so is now being decided by
+wager of battle. The ports and territory of each of these States are
+held in hostility to the General Government. It is no loose, unorganized
+insurrection, having no defined boundary or possession. It has a
+boundary, marked by lines of bayonets, and which can be crossed only by
+force. South of this line is enemy's territory, because it is claimed
+and held in possession by an organized, hostile, and belligerent power.
+All persons residing within this territory, whose property may be used
+to increase the revenues of the hostile power, are in this contest
+liable to be treated as enemies.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be presumed that Congress will do anything unnecessarily to
+add to the misfortunes of loyal men in the South. On the contrary, all
+that is being done is more directly for their benefit than for that of
+any other class of men. The vast expenditure of treasure and blood in
+this war is for the purpose of protecting them first of all, and
+restoring to them the blessings of a good government. And if it shall be
+found practicable to indemnify them for all losses, whether by
+emancipation or otherwise, no one will object.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p>The object of this article is to prove that the Government possesses
+ample power, according to the law of nations, to suppress the Rebellion,
+and secure the country against the danger of another, by Emancipation,
+through the military power; that, though Emancipation is a <i>policy</i>, and
+not a <i>law</i>, the war may be prosecuted until this end is accomplished,
+and Slavery in future forever prohibited; that, by secession and
+rebellion, the revolted States have forfeited all right to the
+allegiance of their citizens, who are thereby remitted to the condition
+and rights of citizens solely of the United States; and that the Federal
+Government, as well <i>under the Constitution</i> as <i>by right of conquest</i>,
+may impose such terms upon the reorganization and restoration of those
+States as may be necessary to secure present safety, and avert danger in
+time to come. These views are presented in as brief and simple terms as
+possible, with the hope that they may be adopted by the people and by
+the Government. It is confidently believed, that, if the President and
+Congress will act in accordance with them, their acts will be fully
+sustained by the Supreme Court,&mdash;and that, the element and source of
+discord being at last entirely removed from the country, a career of
+peace and prosperity will then begin which shall be the admiration of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>At this time we present a humiliating spectacle to other nations: nearly
+half of our national temple in ruins,&mdash;the work of blind folly and mad
+ambition. The people of the North claimed no right to tear it down, or
+even to repair it. But since the people of the South have risen in
+rebellion, let us believe that there is now an opportunity, nay, an
+imperative <i>necessity</i>, to remove from its foundations the rock of
+Oppression, that was sure to crumble in the refining fires of a
+Christian civilization, and establish in its place the stone of
+LIBERTY,&mdash;unchanging and eternal as its Author. Let us rejoice in the
+hope, already brightening into fruition, that out of these ruins our
+temple shall rise again, in a fresher beauty, a firmer strength, a
+brighter glory,&mdash;and above it again shall float the old flag, every star
+restored, henceforth to all, of every color and every race, the flag of
+the free.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="reviews_and_literary_notices" id="reviews_and_literary_notices"></a>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</h2>
+
+
+
+<p><i>Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39.</i> By FRANCES
+ANNE KEMBLE. New York: Harper &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+
+<p>Those who remember the &quot;Journal of a Residence in America,&quot; of Frances
+Anne Kemble, or, as she was universally and kindly called, Fanny
+Kemble,&mdash;a book long since out of print, and entirely out of the
+knowledge of our younger readers,&mdash;will not cease to wonder, as they
+close these thoughtful, tranquil, and tragical pages. The earlier
+journal was the dashing, fragmentary diary of a brilliant girl, half
+impatient of her own success in an art for which she was peculiarly
+gifted, yet the details of which were sincerely repugnant to her. It
+crackled and sparkled with <i>na&iuml;ve</i> arrogance. It criticized a new world
+and fresh forms of civilization with the amusing petulance of a spoiled
+daughter of John Bull. It was flimsy, flippant, laughable, rollicking,
+vivid. It described scenes and persons, often with airy grace, often
+with profound and pensive feeling. It was the slightest of diaries,
+written in public for the public; but it was universally read, as its
+author had been universally sought and admired in the sphere of her art;
+and no one who knew anything of her truly, but knew what an incisive
+eye, what a large heart, what a candid and vigorous mind, what real
+humanity, generosity, and sympathy, characterized Miss Kemble.</p>
+
+<p>The dazzling phantasmagoria which life had been to the young actress was
+suddenly exchanged for the most practical acquaintance with its
+realities. She was married, left the stage, and as a wife and mother
+resided for a winter on the plantations of her husband upon the coast of
+Georgia. And now, after twenty-five years, the journal of her residence
+there is published. It has been wisely kept. For never could such a book
+speak with such power as at this moment. The tumult of the war will be
+forgotten, as you read, in the profound and appalled attention enforced
+by this remarkable revelation of the interior life of Slavery. The
+spirit, the character, and the purpose of the Rebellion are here laid
+bare. Its inevitability is equally apparent. The book is a permanent and
+most valuable chapter in our history; for it is the first ample, lucid,
+faithful, detailed account, from the actual head-quarters of a
+slave-plantation in this country, of the workings of the system,&mdash;its
+persistent, hopeless, helpless crushing of humanity in the slave, and
+the more fearful moral and mental dry-rot it generates in the master.</p>
+
+<p>We have had plenty of literature upon the subject. First of all, in
+spirit and comprehension, the masterly, careful, copious, and patient
+works of Mr. Olmsted. But he, like Arthur Young in France, was only an
+observer. He could be no more. &quot;Uncle Tom,&quot; as its &quot;Key&quot; shows, and as
+Mrs. Kemble declares, was no less a faithful than the most famous
+witness against the system. But it was a novel. Then there was &quot;American
+Slavery as it is,&quot; a work of authenticated facts, issued by the American
+Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, and the fearful mass of testimony
+incessantly published by the distinctively Abolition papers,
+periodicals, books, and orators, during the last quarter of a century.
+But the world was deaf. &quot;They have made it a business. They select all
+the horrors. They accumulate exceptions.&quot; Such were the objections that
+limited the power of this tremendous battery. Meanwhile, also, it was
+answered. Foreign tourists were taken to &quot;model plantations.&quot; They shed
+tears over the patriarchal benignity of this venerable and beautiful
+provision of Divine Providence for the spiritual training of our African
+fellow-creatures. The affection of &quot;Mammy&quot; for &quot;Massa and Missis&quot; was
+something unknown where hired labor prevailed. Graver voices took up the
+burden of the song. There was no pauperism in a slave-country. There
+were no prostitutes. It had its disadvantages, certainly; but what form
+of society, what system of labor has not? Besides, here it was. It was
+the interest of slaveholders to be kind. And what a blessing to bring
+the poor heathen from benighted Africa and pagan servitude to the
+ennobling influences of Slavery, as practised among Southwestern
+Christians in America, and &quot;professors&quot; in South Carolina and Georgia!
+See the Reverend Mr. Adams and Miss Murray <i>passim</i>. This was the
+answer made to the statements of the actual facts of the system, when it
+was found that the question had gone before public opinion, and would be
+decided upon its merits by that tribunal, all the panders, bullies,
+assassins, apologists, and chaplains of Slavery to the contrary
+notwithstanding. In fact, when that was once clearly perceived, the
+issue was no less visible; only whether it were to be reached by war or
+peace was not so plain.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in all this tremendous debate which resounds through the last thirty
+years of our history, rising and swelling until every other sound was
+lost in its imperious roar, one decisive voice was silent. It was
+precisely that which is heard in this book. General statements,
+harrowing details from those who had been slaveholders, and who had
+renounced Slavery, were sometimes made public. Indeed, the most cruel
+and necessary incidents, the hunting with blood-hounds, the branding,
+the maiming, the roasting, the whipping of pregnant women, could not be
+kept from knowledge. They blazed into print. But the public, hundreds of
+miles away, while it sighed and shuddered a little, resolved that such
+atrocities were exceptional. 'Twas a shocking pity, to be sure! Poor
+things! Women, too! Tut, tut!</p>
+
+<p>Now, at last, we have no general statement, no single, sickening
+incident, but the diary of the mistress of plantations of seven hundred
+slaves, living under the most favorable circumstances, upon the islands
+at the mouth of the Altamaha River, in Georgia. It is a journal, kept
+from day to day, of the actual ordinary life of the plantation, where
+the slaves belonged to educated, intelligent, and what are called the
+most respectable people,&mdash;not persons imbruted by exile among slaves
+upon solitary islands, but who had lived in large Northern cities and
+the most accomplished society, subject to all the influences of the
+highest civilization. It is the journal of a hearty, generous,
+clear-sighted woman, who went to the plantation, loving the master, and
+believing, that, though Slavery might be sad, it might also be
+mitigated, and the slave might be content. It is the record of ghastly
+undeceiving,&mdash;of the details of a system so wantonly, brutally, damnably
+unjust, inhuman, and degrading, that it blights the country, paralyzes
+civilization, and vitiates human nature itself. The brilliant girl of
+the earlier journal is the sobered and solemnized matron of this. The
+very magnitude of the misery that surrounds her, the traces of which
+everywhere sadden her eye and wring her heart, compel her to the
+simplest narration. There is no writing for effect. There is not a
+single &quot;sensational&quot; passage. The story is monotonous; for the wrong it
+describes is perpetual and unrelieved. &quot;There is not a single natural
+right,&quot; she says, after some weeks' residence, &quot;that is not taken away
+from these unfortunate people; and the worst of all is, that their
+condition does not appear to me, upon further observation of it, to be
+susceptible of even partial alleviation, as long as the fundamental
+evil, the Slavery itself, remains.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As the mistress of the plantation, she was brought into constant
+intercourse with the slave-women; and no other account of this class is
+so thorough and plainly stated. So pitiful a tale was seldom told. It
+was a &quot;model plantation&quot;; but every day was darkened to the mistress by
+the appeals of these women and her observation of their condition. The
+heart of the reader sickens as hers despaired. To produce &quot;little
+niggers&quot; for Massa and Missis was the enforced ambition of these poor
+women. After the third week of confinement they were sent into the
+fields to work. If they lingered or complained, they were whipped. For
+beseeching the mistress to pray for some relief in their sad straits,
+they were also whipped. If their tasks were unperformed, or the driver
+lost his temper, they were whipped again. If they would not yield to the
+embrace of the overseer, they were whipped once more. How are they
+whipped? They are tied by the wrists to a beam or the branch of a tree,
+their feet barely touching the ground, so that they are utterly
+powerless to resist; their clothes are turned over their heads, and
+their backs scarred with a leathern thong, either by the driver himself,
+or by father, brother, husband, or lover, if the driver choose to order
+it. What a blessing for these poor heathen that they are brought to a
+Christian land! When a band of pregnant women came to their master to
+implore relief from overwork, he seemed &quot;positively degraded&quot; to his
+wife, as he stood urging them to do their allotted tasks. She began to
+fear lest she should cease to respect the man she loved; &quot;for the
+details of slaveholding are so unmanly, letting alone every other
+consideration, that I know not how any one with the spirit of a man can
+condescend to them.&quot; The master gives a slave as a present to an
+overseer whose administration of the estate was agreeable to him. The
+slave is intelligent and capable, the husband of a wife and the father
+of children, and they are all fondly attached to each other. He
+passionately declares that he will kill himself rather than follow his
+new master and leave wife and children behind. Roused by the storm of
+grief, the wife opens the door of her room, and beholds her husband,
+with his arms folded, advising his slave &quot;not to make a fuss about what
+there is no help for.&quot; The same master insists that there is no hardship
+or injustice in whipping a woman who asks his wife to intercede for her,
+but confesses that it is &quot;disagreeable.&quot; At last he tells her that she
+must no longer fatigue him with the &quot;stuff&quot; and &quot;trash&quot; which &quot;the
+niggers,&quot; who are &quot;all d&mdash;&mdash;d liars,&quot; make her believe, and
+henceforward closes his ears to all complaint.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this was a model plantation, and this was probably not a hard
+master, as masters go. &quot;These are the conditions which can only be known
+to one who lives among them. Flagrant acts of cruelty may be rare, but
+this ineffable state of utter degradation, this really <i>beastly</i>
+existence, is the normal condition of these men and women; and of that
+no one seems to take heed, nor had I ever heard it described so as to
+form any adequate conception of it, till I found myself plunged into
+it.... Industry, man's crown of honor elsewhere, is here his badge of
+utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here
+surrounded,&mdash;pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance,
+squalor, dirt, and ineffable abasement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And yet this is the system which we have been in the habit of calling
+patriarchal, because the model masters said it was so, and trade was too
+prosperous to allow any difference with them! And these are the model
+masters, supported in luxury by all this unpaid labor and untold woe,
+these women-whippers and breeders of babies for sale, who have figured
+in our talk and imaginations as &quot;the chivalry&quot; and &quot;gentlemen&quot;! These
+are they to whom American society has koo-too'd, and in whose presence
+it has been ill-bred and uncourteous to say that every man has rights,
+that every laborer is worthy of his hire, that injustice is unjust, and
+uncleanness foul. No wonder that Russell, coming to New York, and
+finding the rich men and the political confederates of the conspirators
+declaring that the Government of the United States could not help
+itself, and that they would allow no interference with their Southern
+friends, sincerely believed what he wished to, and wrote to John Bull,
+whose round face was red with eager desire to hear it, that the
+Revolution was virtually accomplished. No wonder that the haughty
+slaveholders, smeared with sycophantic slime, at Newport, at Saratoga,
+in the &quot;polite&quot; and &quot;conservative&quot; Northern circles, believed what Mr.
+Hunter of Virginia told a Massachusetts delegate to the Peace
+Congress,&mdash;that there would be no serious trouble, and that the
+Montgomery Constitution would be readily adopted by the &quot;conservative&quot;
+sentiment of the North.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kemble's book shows what the miserable magic is that enchants these
+Southern American citizens into people whose philosophy of society would
+disgrace the Dark Ages, and whose social system is that of Dahomey.</p>
+
+<p>The life that she describes upon the model plantation is the necessary
+life of Slavery everywhere,&mdash;injustice, ignorance, superstition, terror,
+degradation, brutality; and this is the system to which a great
+political party&mdash;counting upon the enervation of prosperity, the
+timidity of trade, the distance of the suffering, the legal quibbles,
+the moral sophisms, the hatred of ignorance, the jealousy of race, and
+the possession of power&mdash;has conspired to keep the nation blind and
+deaf, trusting that its mind was utterly obscured and its conscience
+wholly destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>But the nation is young, and of course the effort has ended in civil
+war. Slavery, industrially and politically, inevitably resists Christian
+civilization. The natural progress and development of men into a
+constantly higher manhood must cease, or this system, which strives to
+convert men into things, must give way. Its haughty instinct knows it,
+and therefore Slavery rebels. This Rebellion is simply the insurrection
+of Barbarism against Civilization. It would overthrow the Government,
+not for any wrong the Government has done, for that is not alleged. It
+knows that the people are the Government,&mdash;that the spirit of the people
+is progressive and intelligent,&mdash;and that there is no hope for permanent
+and expansive injustice, so long as the people freely discuss and
+decide. It would therefore establish a new Government, of which this
+meanest and most beastly despotism shall be the chief corner-stone. In a
+letter to C.G., in the appendix of her book, Mrs. Kemble sets this truth
+in the clearest light. But whoever would comprehend the real social
+scope of the Rebellion should ponder every page of the journal itself.
+It will show him that Slavery and rebellion to this Government are
+identical, not only in fact, but of necessity. It will teach him that
+the fierce battle between Slavery and the Government, once engaged, can
+end only in the destruction of one or the other.</p>
+
+<p>This is not a book which a woman like Mrs. Kemble publishes without a
+solemn sense of responsibility. A sadder book the human hand never
+wrote, nor one more likely to arrest the thoughts of all those in the
+world who watch our war and are yet not steeled to persuasion and
+conviction. An Englishwoman, she publishes it in England, which hates
+us, that a testimony which will not be doubted may be useful to the
+country in which she has lived so long, and with which her sweetest and
+saddest memories are forever associated. It is a noble service nobly
+done. The enthusiasm, the admiration, the affection, which in our day of
+seemingly cloudless prosperity greeted the brilliant girl, have been
+bountifully repaid by the true and timely words now spoken in our
+seeming adversity by the grave and thoughtful woman.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr45" />
+
+<p><i>An Historical Research respecting the Opinions of the Founders of the
+Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers.</i> Read
+before the Massachusetts Historical Society, August 14, 1862. By GEORGE
+LIVERMORE. Third Edition. Boston: A. Williams &amp; Co.</p>
+
+
+<p>This Historical Research is one of the most valuable works that have
+been called out by the existing Rebellion. It is a thorough and candid
+exposition of the opinions of the founders of the Republic on negroes as
+slaves, as citizens, and as soldiers, and has done more, perhaps, than
+any other single essay to form the public opinion of the present time in
+respect to the position that the negro should rightfully hold in our
+State and our army. It has, therefore, and will retain, a double
+interest, as exhibiting and illustrating the opinions prevalent during
+the two most important periods of our history. It was first printed,
+several months since, for private distribution only. More than a
+thousand copies were thus distributed by its public-spirited author. By
+this means the attention of persons in positions of influence was more
+readily secured than it could have been, had the essay been published in
+the ordinary way. The manner in which the research was conducted, the
+evidence afforded by every page of the author's conscientious labor,
+impartial selection, and exhaustive investigation, won immediate
+confidence in his statements, while his obvious candor, fairness of
+judgment, and love of truth secured respect for his conclusions. The
+interest excited by the work extended to a wider circle than could be
+satisfied by any private issue, while its value became more and more
+evident, so that, after its publication in the Proceedings of the
+Massachusetts Historical Society, the permission of the author was
+obtained by the New-England Loyal Publication Society to issue the work
+in a form for general circulation.</p>
+
+<p>We are glad to assist, by our hearty commendation, the extension of the
+influence of this essay. It forms, as now issued, a handsome pamphlet of
+two hundred pages, with a full Table of Contents and a copious Index,
+and is for sale at a price which brings it within the means of every one
+who may wish to obtain it. It is a book which should be in the
+reading-room of every Loyal League throughout the country, and of every
+military hospital. Editors of the loyal press should be provided with
+it, as containing an arsenal of incontrovertible arguments with which to
+meet the false assertions by which the maligners of the negro race and
+the supporters of Slavery too often undertake to maintain their bad
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>Exhibiting, as Mr. Livermore's book does, the contrast between the
+opinions of the founders of the Republic and those professed by the
+would-be destroyers of the Republic, and showing, as it does, how far a
+large portion even of the people of the North have fallen away from the
+just and generous doctrine of the earlier time, it must lead every
+thoughtful reader to a deep sense of the need of a regeneration of the
+spirit of the nation, and to a confirmed conviction of the
+incompatibility of Slavery with national greatness and virtue. The
+Rebellion has taught us that the Republic is not safe while Slavery is
+permitted to exercise any political power. It ought to teach us also,
+that, as long as Slavery exists in any of the States, it will not cease
+to exercise political power, and that the only means to make the nation
+safe is utterly to abolish and destroy Slavery, wherever it is found
+within its limits. Nor is this all; the lesson of the Rebellion is but
+half learned, unless we resolve that henceforth there shall be no fatal
+division between our consciences, our principles, our theories, and our
+treatment of the black race, and unless we acknowledge their inalienable
+right to that justice by which alone the most ancient heavens and the
+most sacred institutions are fresh and strong.</p>
+
+<p>There is no better textbook for enforcing these lessons than Mr.
+Livermore's Research.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr65" />
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="recent_american_publications" id="recent_american_publications"></a>RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS</h2>
+
+<h3>RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>&quot;Christopher North.&quot; A Memoir of John Wilson, late Professor of Moral
+Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Compiled from Family-Papers
+and other Sources. By his Daughter, Mrs. Gordon. With an Introduction by
+R. Shelton Mackenzie, D.C.L., Editor of the &quot;Noctes Ambrosian&aelig;,&quot; etc.
+Complete in One Volume. New York. W.J. Widdleton. 8vo. pp. xii., 484.
+$2.00.</p>
+
+<p>Alphabetical Army-Register; giving the Names, Date of Present and
+Original Commissions, Rank, Place of Nativity, and from whence
+Appointed, of all the Officers of the United States Army, as shown by
+the Official Army-Register, May, 1863. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo.
+paper, pp. 64. 50 cts.</p>
+
+<p>The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and
+Lord High Chancellor of England. Collected and edited by James Spedding,
+M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge; Robert Leslie Ellis, M.A., late
+Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Douglas Denon Heath,
+Barrister-at-Law, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Vol. VI.
+Boston. Taggard &amp; Thompson. 12mo. pp. 450. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>Money. By Charles Moran. New York. D. Appleton &amp; Co. 12mo. pp. 228.
+$1.00.</p>
+
+<p>The Crisis. New York. D. Appleton &amp; Co. 8vo. paper, pp. 95. 50 cts.</p>
+
+<p>Chemistry. By William Thomas Brande, D.C.L., F.R.S.L. and E., of Her
+Majesty's Mint, Member of the Senate of the University of London, and
+Honorary Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great
+Britain; and Alfred Swaine Taylor, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal
+College of Physicians of London, and Professor of Chemistry and Medical
+Jurisprudence in Guy's Hospital. Philadelphia. Blanchard &amp; Lea. 8vo. pp.
+696. $3.50.</p>
+
+<p>The Life and Letters of Washington Irving. By his Nephew, Pierre M.
+Irving. New York. G.P. Putnam. 12mo. pp. 403. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>Lectures on the Symbolic Character of the Sacred Scriptures. By Rev.
+Abiel Silver, Minister of the New Jerusalem Church in New York. New
+York. D. Appleton &amp; Co. 12mo. pp. 286. $1.25.</p>
+
+<p>Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature. By Thomas H. Huxley, F.R.S.,
+F.L.S., Professor of Natural History in the Jermyn-Street School of
+Mines. New York. D. Appleton &amp; Co. 12mo. pp. 184. $1.25.</p>
+
+<p>United States Infantry Tactics, for the Instruction, Exercise, and
+Man&oelig;uvres of the Soldier, a Company, Line of Skirmishers, and
+Battalion; for the Use of the Colored Troops of the United States
+Infantry. Prepared under Direction of the War Department. New York. D.
+Van Nostrand. 18mo. pp. 445. $1.50.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August,
+1863, No. 70, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. 12 ***
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863,
+No. 70, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70
+       A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 9, 2005 [EBook #16033]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. 12 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Cornell University, Joshua Hutchinson, Guido
+Royackers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+VOL. XII.--AUGUST, 1863.--NO. LXX.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+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.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+AN AMERICAN IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
+
+
+Having in a former number of this magazine attempted to give some
+account of the House of Commons, and to present some sketches of its
+leading members,[1] I now design to introduce my readers to the House of
+Lords.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Atlantic Monthly_ for December, 1861.]
+
+It is obviously unnecessary to repeat so much of the previous
+description as applies to the general external and internal appearance
+of the New Palace of Westminster. It only remains to speak of the hall
+devoted to the sessions of the House of Lords. And certainly it is an
+apartment deserving a more extended notice than our limits will allow.
+As the finest specimen of Gothic civil architecture in the world,
+perfect in its proportions, beautiful and appropriate in its
+decorations, the frescoes perpetuating some of the most striking scenes
+in English history, the stained glass windows representing the Kings and
+Queens of the United Kingdom from the accession of William the Conqueror
+down to the present reign, the niches filled with effigies of the Barons
+who wrested Magna Charta from King John, the ceiling glowing with gold
+and colors presenting different national symbols and devices in most
+elaborate workmanship and admirable intricacy of design, it is
+undeniably worthy of the high purpose to which it is dedicated.
+
+The House of Lords also contains the throne occupied by the reigning
+sovereign at the opening and prorogation of Parliament. Perhaps its more
+appropriate designation would be a State-Chair. In general form and
+outline it is substantially similar to the chairs in which the
+sovereigns of England have for centuries been accustomed to sit at their
+coronations. We need hardly add that no expense has been spared to give
+to the throne such intrinsic value, and to adorn it with such emblems of
+national significance, as to furnish renewed evidence of England's
+unwavering loyalty to the reigning house.
+
+In pointing out what is peculiar to the House of Lords, I am aware that
+there is danger of falling into the error of stating what is already
+familiar to some of my readers. And yet a traveller's narrative is not
+always tiresome to the tourist who has himself visited the same
+localities and witnessed the same scenes. If anxious for the "diffusion
+of useful knowledge," he will cheerfully consent that the curiosity of
+others, who have not shared his good fortune, should be gratified,
+although it be at his expense. At the same time, he certainly has a
+right to insist that the extraordinary and improbable stories told to
+the too credulous _voyageur_ by some lying scoundrel of a courier or
+some unprincipled _valet-de-place_ shall not be palmed upon the
+unsuspecting public as genuine tales of travel and adventure.
+
+The House of Lords is composed of lords spiritual and lords temporal. As
+this body is now constituted, the lords spiritual are two archbishops,
+twenty-four bishops, and four Irish representative prelates. The lords
+temporal are three peers of the blood royal, twenty dukes, nineteen
+marquises, one hundred and ten earls, twenty-two viscounts, two hundred
+and ten barons, sixteen Scotch representative peers, and twenty-eight
+Irish representative peers. There are twenty-three Scotch peers and
+eighty-five Irish peers who have no seats in Parliament. The
+representative peers for Scotland are elected for every Parliament,
+while the representative peers for Ireland are elected for life. As has
+been already intimated, this enumeration applies only to the present
+House of Lords, which comprises four hundred and fifty-eight
+members,--an increase of about thirty noblemen in as many years.
+
+The persons selected from time to time for the honor of the peerage are
+members of families already among the nobility, eminent barristers,
+military and naval commanders who have distinguished themselves in the
+service, and occasionally persons of controlling and acknowledged
+importance in commercial life. Lord Macaulay is the first instance in
+which this high compliment has been conferred for literary merit; and it
+was well understood, when the great essayist and historian was ennobled,
+that the exception in his favor was mainly due to the fact that he was
+unmarried. With his untimely death the title became extinct. Lord
+Overstone, formerly Mr. Loyd, and a prominent member of the banking firm
+of Jones, Loyd, and Co. of London, elevated to the peerage in 1850, is
+without heirs apparent or presumptive, and there is good reason to
+believe that this circumstance had a material bearing upon his
+well-deserved promotion. But these infrequent exceptions, these rare
+concessions so ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule.
+Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished
+for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or
+clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable. Brown may reach the
+highest range of artistic excellence, he may achieve world-wide fame as
+an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian
+or repeat the rare and delicate grace of Correggio, the triumphs of his
+chisel may reflect honor upon England and his age; the inventive genius
+of Jones, painfully elaborating, through long and suffering years of
+obscure poverty, the crude conceptions of his boyhood, may confer
+inestimable benefits upon his race; the scientific discoveries of
+Robinson may add incalculable wealth to the resources of his nation: but
+let them not dream of any other nobility than that conferred by Nature;
+let them be content to live and die plain, untitled Brown, Jones, and
+Robinson, or at best look forward only to the barren honors of
+knighthood. Indeed, it is not too much to say that for plebeian merit
+the only available avenues to the peerage are the Church and the Bar.
+
+The proportion of law lords now in the House of Lords is unusually
+large,--there being, besides Lord Westbury, the present
+Lord-High-Chancellor, no fewer than six Ex-Lord-Chancellors, each
+enjoying the very satisfactory pension of five thousand pounds per
+annum. Lord Lyndhurst still survives at the ripe age of ninety-one; and
+Lord Brougham, now in his eighty-sixth year, has made good his promise
+that he would outlive Lord Campbell, and spare his friends the pain of
+seeing his biography added to the lives of the Lord-Chancellors to
+whom, in Lord Brougham's opinion, Lord Campbell had done such inadequate
+justice.
+
+The course of proceeding in the House of Lords differs considerably from
+that pursued in the House of Commons. The Lord-High-Chancellor, seated
+on the wool-sack,--a crimson cushion, innocent of any support to the
+back, and by no means suggestive of comfort, or inviting deliberations
+of the peers, but is never addressed by the speakers. "My lords" is the
+phrase with which every peer commences his remarks.
+
+Another peculiarity patent to the stranger is the small number usually
+present at the debates. The average attendance is less than fifty, and
+often one sees only fifteen or twenty peers in their seats. Two or three
+leading members of the Ministry, as many prominent members of the
+opposition, a bishop or two, a score of deluded, but well-meaning
+gentlemen, who obstinately adhere to the unfashionable notion, that,
+where great political powers are enjoyed, there are certain serious
+duties to the public closely connected therewith, a few prosy and
+pompous peers who believe that their constant presence is essential to
+the welfare and prosperity of the kingdom,--such, I think, is a correct
+classification of the ordinary attendance of noblemen at the House of
+Lords.
+
+This body possesses several obvious advantages over any other
+deliberative assembly now existing. Not the least among these is the
+fact that the oldest son of every peer is prepared by a careful course
+of education for political and diplomatic life. Every peer, except some
+of recent creation, has from childhood enjoyed all conceivable
+facilities for acquiring a finished education. In giving direction to
+his studies at school and at the university, special reference has been
+had to his future Parliamentary career. Nothing that large wealth could
+supply, or the most powerful family-influence could command, has been
+spared to give to the future legislator every needed qualification for
+the grave and responsible duties which he will one day be called to
+assume. His ambition has been stimulated by the traditional achievements
+of a long line of illustrious ancestors, and his pride has been awakened
+and kept alive by the universal deference paid to his position as the
+heir apparent or presumptive of a noble house.
+
+This view is so well presented in "The Caxtons," that I need offer no
+apology for making an extract from that most able and discriminating
+picture of English society. "The fact is, that Lord Castleton had been
+taught everything that relates to property (a knowledge that embraces
+very wide circumference). It had been said to him, 'You will be an
+immense proprietor: knowledge is essential to your self-preservation.
+You will be puzzled, ridiculed, duped every day of your life, if you do
+not make yourself acquainted with all by which property is assailed or
+defended, impoverished or increased. You have a stake in the country:
+you must learn all the interests of Europe, nay, of the civilized world;
+for these interests react on the country, and the interests of the
+country are of the greatest possible consequence to the interests of the
+Marquis of Castleton.' Thus, the state of the Continent, the policy of
+Metternich, the condition of the Papacy, the growth of Dissent, the
+proper mode of dealing with the spirit of democracy which was the
+epidemic of European monarchies, the relative proportions of the
+agricultural and manufacturing population, corn-laws, currency, and the
+laws that regulate wages, a criticism on the leading speakers in the
+House of Commons, with some discursive observations on the importance of
+fattening cattle, the introduction of flax into Ireland, emigration, the
+condition of the poor: these and such-like stupendous subjects for
+reflection--all branching more or less intricately from the single idea
+of the Castleton property--the young lord discussed and disposed of in
+half a dozen prim, poised sentences, evincing, I must say in justice, no
+inconsiderable information, and a mighty solemn turn of mind. The
+oddity was, that the subjects so selected and treated should not come
+rather from some young barrister, or mature political economist, than
+from so gorgeous a lily of the field."
+
+But to all these preeminent advantages of early education and training
+there must be added the invaluable opportunities of enlarged and
+extended legislative experience in the House of Commons. If we examine
+the antecedents of some of the most prominent men now in the House of
+Lords, we shall discover abundant evidence of this fact. Earl Russell
+was a member of the House of Commons for more than thirty years; Earl
+Derby, more than twenty-five years; the Earl of Shaftesbury, for about
+twenty-four years; the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the
+Duke of Rutland, for about the same period. And of the present House of
+Commons more than fifty members are heirs apparent or presumptive to
+existing peerages.
+
+And then there is the further circumstance that seats in the House of
+Lords are for life. Members of this body do not stand in fear of removal
+by the votes of disappointed or indignant constituents. Entirely
+independent of public opinion, they can defy the disapprobation of the
+masses, and smile at the denunciation of the press. Undoubtedly, this
+fact has a twofold bearing, and deprives the peers of that strong
+incentive to active exertion and industrious legislation which the House
+of Commons, looking directly to the people for support and continuance,
+always possesses. Yet the advantages in point of prolonged experience
+and ever increasing familiarity with the details of public business are
+unquestionable.
+
+As a matter of course, there are many noblemen upon whom these rare
+facilities of education and this admirable training for public life
+would seem to have been wasted. As Americans, we must be pardoned for
+expressing our belief in the venerable doctrine that there is no royal
+road to learning. If a peer of the realm is determined to be a dunce,
+nothing in the English Constitution prevents him from being a dunce, and
+"not all the blood of all the Howards" can make him a scholar or a
+statesman. If, resting securely in the conviction that a nobleman does
+not need to be instructed, he will not condescend to study, and does not
+avail himself of his most enviable advantages, whatever may be his
+social rank, his ignorance and incapacity cannot be disguised, but will
+even become more odious and culpable in the view of impartial criticism
+by reason of his conspicuous position and his neglect of these very
+advantages.
+
+But frequent as these instances are, it will not be for a moment
+supposed that the whole peerage would justly fall under such censure.
+Nor will it be thought surprising that the House of Lords contains a
+considerable number of men of sterling ability, statesmen of broad and
+comprehensive views, accustomed to deal with important questions of
+public interest and national policy with calm, deliberate judgment, and
+far-reaching sagacity. Hampered as they certainly are by a traditional
+conservatism often as much at variance with sound political philosophy
+as it is with the lessons of all history, and characterized as their
+attitude towards foreign nations always has been by a singular want of
+all generosity, still it must be confessed that their steady and
+unwavering adherence to a line of conduct which has made England feared
+and her power respected by every country in the world has a certain
+element of dignity and manly self-reliance which compels our admiration.
+And while they have been of late so frequently outwitted by the
+flexible, if not tortuous, policy of Louis Napoleon, it yet remains to
+be seen whether the firm and unyielding course of the English Ministry
+will not in the end prove quite as successful as the more Machiavellian
+management of the French Emperor.
+
+I hardly know how to describe accurately the impression made upon the
+mind of an American by his first visit to the House of Lords. What
+memories haunt him of the Norman Conquest and the Crusades, of Magna
+Charta and the King-Maker, of noblemen who suffered with Charles I. and
+supped with Charles II., and of noblemen still later whose family-pride
+looked down upon the House of Hanover, and whose banded political power
+and freely lavished wealth checked the brilliant career of Napoleon, and
+maintained, the supremacy of England on sea and land!
+
+Enter, then, the House of Lords with these stirring memories, and
+confess frankly to a feeling of disappointment. Here are seated a few
+well-behaved gentlemen of all ages, often carelessly dressed, and almost
+invariably in English morning-costume. They are sleepily discussing some
+uninteresting question, and you are disposed to retire in view of the
+more powerful attractions of Drury Lane or the Haymarket, or the chance
+of something better worth hearing in the House of Commons. Take my
+advice, and wait until the adjournment. It will not be long, and by
+leaving now you may lose an important debate and the sight of some men
+whose fame is bounded only by the limits of Christendom. Even now there
+is a slight stir in the House. A nobleman has entered whose movements
+you will do well to follow. He takes his place just at the left of the
+Lord-Chancellor, but remains seated only for a moment. If you are
+familiar with the pencil of Punch, you will recognize him at a glance. A
+thin, wiry, yet muscular frame, a singularly marked and expressive face
+and mobile features, a nose that defies description, a high cravat like
+a poultice covered with a black silk bandage, clothes that seem to have
+been made for a much larger man, and always a pair of old-fashioned
+checked trousers,--of course, this can only be Lord Brougham. He is
+eighty-five years old, and yet his physical activity would do no
+injustice to a man in the prime of life. If you watch him a few moments,
+you will have abundant evidence of his restless energy. While we look,
+he has crossed to the opposite side of the House, and is enjoying a
+hearty laugh with the Bishop of Oxford. The round, full face of
+"Slippery Sam" (as he is disrespectfully called throughout England) is
+beaming with appreciative delight; but before the Bishop has time to
+reply, the titled humorist is on the wing again, and in an instant we
+see him seated between Earl Granville and the Duke of Somerset,
+conversing with all the vivacity and enthusiasm of a school-boy. In a
+moment he is in motion again, and has shaken hands with half a dozen
+peers. Undeterred by the supernaturally solemn countenance of the
+Marquis of Normanby, he has actually addressed a joke to that dignified
+fossil, and has passed on without waiting to observe its effect. A few
+words with Earl Derby, a little animated talk with the Earl of
+Ellenborough, and he has made the circuit of the House, everywhere
+received with a welcoming smile and a kindly grasp of the hand, and
+everywhere finding willing and gratified listeners. Possibly that is
+pardoned to his age and eminence which would be resented as impertinence
+in a younger man, but certainly he enjoys a license accorded to no one
+else in this aristocratic assembly.
+
+The dull debate of the past hour is now concluded, the House is thin,
+and there are indications of immediate adjournment. Remain a little
+longer, however, and your patience may possibly be richly rewarded.
+There is no order in the discussion of topics, and at any moment while
+the House continues in session there may spring up a debate calling out
+all the ability of the leading peers in attendance. After a short pause
+the quiet is broken by an aged nobleman on the opposition benches. He
+rises slowly and feebly with the assistance of a cane, but his voice is
+firm and his manner is forcible. That he is a man of mark is evident
+from the significant silence and the deferential attention with which
+his first words are received. You ask his name, and with ill-disguised
+amazement at your ignorance a gentleman by your side informs you that
+the speaker is Lord Lyndhurst.
+
+Perhaps the life of no public man in England has so much of interest to
+an American as that of this distinguished nobleman. Born in Boston while
+we were still in a condition of colonial dependence, he has lived to see
+his native land emerge from her state of vassalage, pass through a
+long-protracted struggle for liberty with the most powerful nation on
+earth, successfully maintain her right to be free and independent,
+advance with giant strides in a career of unexampled prosperity, assume
+an undisputed position as one of the great powers of Christendom, and
+finally put forth the most gigantic efforts to crush a rebellion
+compared with which the conspiracy of Catiline was but the impotent
+uprising of an angry dwarf.
+
+Lord Lyndhurst was called to the bar of England in 1804. It was before
+the splendid forensic successes of Erskine had been rewarded by a seat
+on the wool-sack, or Wellington had completed his brilliant and decisive
+campaign in India, or the military glory of Napoleon had culminated at
+Austerlitz, or Pitt, turning sadly from the map of Europe and saying,
+"Henceforth we may close that map for half a century," had gone
+broken-hearted to an early grave, or Nelson had defeated the combined
+navies of France and Spain at Trafalgar. Lord Byron had not yet entered
+Cambridge University, Sir Walter Scott had not published his first poem,
+and Canova was still in the height of his well-earned fame. It was
+before the first steamboat of Robert Fulton had vexed the quiet waters
+of the Hudson, or Aaron Burr had failed in his attempted treason, or
+Daniel Welter had entered upon his professional career, or Thomas
+Jefferson had completed his first official term as President of the
+United States.
+
+Lord Lyndhurst's advancement to the highest honors of his profession and
+to a commanding place in the councils of his adopted country was rapid
+almost beyond precedent. He was appointed Solicitor-General in 1819,
+Attorney-General in 1823, Master of the Rolls in 1826, and
+Lord-Chancellor in 1827. He remained in this office until 1830, and
+retired only to be created Lord-Chief-Baron of the Exchequer. In 1835 he
+was again appointed Lord-Chancellor, and once more, for the third time,
+in 1841.
+
+The characteristic qualities of the oratory of Lord Lyndhurst, when in
+his prime, were perfect coolness and self-possession, a most pleasing
+and plausible manner, singular ingenuity in dealing with a difficult
+question or in weakening the effect of an argument really unanswerable,
+a clear and musical voice, great ease and felicity of expression, and a
+wonderful command, always discreetly used, of all the weapons of irony
+and invective. He is, perhaps, the only nobleman in the House of Lords
+whom Lord Brougham has ever feared to encounter. All these elements of
+successful oratory Lord Lyndhurst has retained to an extraordinary
+degree until within a year or two.
+
+I chanced to hear this remarkable man during an evening in the month of
+July, 1859. The House of Lords was thinly attended. There had been a
+short and uninteresting debate on "The Atlantic-Telegraph Bill," and an
+early adjournment seemed certain. But at this juncture Lord Lyndhurst
+rose, and, after adverting to the fact that he had previously given
+notice of his design to draw their lordships' attention to the military
+and naval defences of the country, proceeded to address the House upon
+this question. It should be borne in mind that this was a period of
+great and engrossing excitement in England, created by the supposed
+danger of invasion by France. Volunteer rifle-companies were springing
+up all over the kingdom, newspapers were filled with discussions
+concerning the sufficiency of the national defences, and speculations on
+the chances for and against such an armed invasion. There was,
+meanwhile, a strong peace-party which earnestly deprecated all agitation
+of the subject, maintained that the sentiments of the French Emperor and
+the French nation were most friendly to England, and contended that to
+incur largely increased expenses for additional war-preparations was
+unnecessary, impolitic, and ruinously extravagant. At the head of this
+party were Cobden and Bright.
+
+It was to answer these arguments, to convince England that there was a
+real and positive peril, and to urge upon Her Majesty's Government the
+paramount importance of preparing to meet not only a possible, but a
+probable danger, that Lord Lyndhurst addressed the House of Lords. He
+began by impressing upon their lordships the fact that the policy which
+he advocated was not aggressive, but strictly defensive. He reviewed the
+history of previous attempts to invade England. He pointed out the
+significant circumstance, that these attempts had hitherto failed mainly
+by reason of the casualties to which sailing-vessels were always
+exposed. He pressed upon their attention the change which
+steam-navigation had recently wrought in naval warfare. He quoted the
+pithy remark of Lord Palmerston, that "steam had converted the Channel
+into a river, and thrown a bridge across it."
+
+He demonstrated from recent history the facility with which France could
+transport large forces by sea to distant points. Then, in tones
+tremulous with emotion, he drew upon the resources of his own marvellous
+memory. "I have experienced, my lords, something like a sentiment of
+humiliation in going through these details. I recollect the day when
+every part of the opposite coast was blockaded by an English fleet. I
+remember the victory of Camperdown, and that of St. Vincent, won by Sir
+J. Jervis. I do not forget the great victory of the Nile, nor, last of
+all, that triumphant fight at Trafalgar, which almost annihilated the
+navies of France and Spain, I contrast the position which we occupied at
+that period with that which we now hold. I recollect the expulsion of
+the French from Egypt, the achievement of victory after victory in
+Spain, the British army established in the South of France, and then the
+great battle by which that war was terminated. I cannot glance back over
+that series of events without feeling some degree of humiliation when I
+am called upon to state in this House the measures which I deem it to be
+necessary to take in order to provide for the safety of the country."
+
+Then pausing a moment and overcoming his evident emotion, he continued,
+with a force of manner and dignity of bearing which no words can fitly
+describe,--"But I may be asked, 'Why do you think such measures
+requisite? Are we not in alliance with France? Are we not on terms of
+friendship with Russia? What other power can molest us?' To these
+questions, my lords, my answer shall be a short and simple one. I will
+not consent to live in dependence on the friendship or forbearance of
+any country. I rely solely on my own vigor, my own exertion, and my own
+intelligence." It will be readily believed that cheer after cheer rang
+through the House when this bold and manly announcement was made.
+
+Then, after alluding to the immense armament by sea and land which
+France had hurled with such incredible rapidity upon the Austrian Empire
+during the recent war in Italy, he concluded by saying,--"Are we to sit
+supine on our own shores, and not to prepare the means necessary in case
+of war to resist that power? I do not wish to say that we should do this
+for any aggressive purpose. What I insist upon is, that we are bound to
+make every effort necessary for our own shelter and protection. Beside
+this, the question of expense and of money sinks into insignificance. It
+is the price we must pay for our insurance, and it is but a moderate
+price for so important an insurance. I know there are persons who will
+say, 'Let us run the risk.' Be it so. But, my lords, if the calamity
+should come, if the conflagration should take place, what words can
+describe the extent of the calamity, or what imagination can paint the
+overwhelming ruin that would fall upon us? I shall be told, perhaps,
+that these are the timid counsels of old age. My lords, for myself, I
+should run no risk. Personally I have nothing to fear. But to point out
+possible peril and how to guard effectively against it,--that is surely
+to be considered not as timidity, but as the dictate of wisdom and
+prudence. I have confined myself to facts that cannot be disputed. I
+think I have confined myself to inferences that no man can successfully
+contravene. I hope what I have said has been in accordance with your
+feelings and opinions. I shall terminate what I have to say in two
+emphatic words, '_Voe victis!_'--words of solemn and most significant
+import."
+
+So spoke the Nestor of the English nation. Has our country no lesson to
+learn from the well-considered words of this aged and accomplished
+statesman? Are we not paying a large insurance to secure permanent
+national prosperity? And is it not a wise and profitable investment, at
+any cost of blood and treasure, if it promises the supremacy of our
+Constitution, the integrity of our Union, and the impartial enforcement
+of our laws?
+
+When it is remembered that Lord Lyndhurst was at this time in his
+eighty-eighth year, this speech of nearly an hour in length, giving no
+evidence from first to last of physical debility or mental decay,
+delivered in a firm, clear, and unfaltering voice, admirable for its
+logical arrangement, most forcible and telling in its treatment of the
+subject, and irresistible in its conclusions, must be considered as
+hardly finding a parallel in ancient or modern times. We might almost
+call it his valedictory; for his lordship's subsequent speeches have
+been infrequent, and, with, we believe, a single exception, short, and
+he is now rarely, if ever, seen in the House of Lords.
+
+I shall not dwell upon the speeches that followed this earnest and
+eloquent appeal to the wisdom and patriotism of the listening peers.
+They were mainly confined to grateful recognition of the service which
+Lord Lyndhurst had rendered to the nation by his frank and fearless
+avowal of those principles which alone could preserve the honor and
+independence of England. The opposition urged the most vigorous
+preparations for resisting invasion, while Her Majesty's ministers
+disclaimed any intention of weakening or neglecting the national
+defences. As the speeches, however exhibited little worthy of mention
+beyond the presentation of these points, I have supposed that a more
+general description of some of the leading members of the Upper House
+would be more interesting to my readers than a detailed account of what
+was said upon this particular occasion.
+
+I have already alluded to the personal appearance and bearing of Lord
+Brougham. By reason of his great age, his long Parliamentary experience,
+(he has been in the House of Commons and House of Lords for nearly fifty
+years,) his habit of frequent speaking, and the commanding ability of
+many of his public efforts, his name as an orator is perhaps more widely
+known, and his peculiar style of declamation more correctly appreciated,
+than those of any other man now living. It would therefore seem
+unnecessary to give any sketch of his oratory, or of his manner in
+debate. Very few educated men in this country are unfamiliar with his
+eloquent defence of Queen Caroline, or his most bitter attack upon Mr.
+Canning, or his brilliant argument for Mr. Williams when prosecuted by
+the Durham clergy. Lord Brougham retains to this day the same fearless
+contempt of all opposition, the same extravagant and often inconsistent
+animosity to every phase of conservative policy, and the same fiery zeal
+in advocating every measure which he has espoused, that have ever
+characterized his erratic career. The witty author of "The Bachelor of
+the Albany" has tersely, and not without a certain spice of truth,
+described him as "a man of brilliant incapacity, vast and various
+misinformation, and immense moral requirements."
+
+The Duke of Argyle deserves more than a passing mention. Although
+comparatively a young man, he has already had a most creditable career,
+and given new lustre to an old and honored name. In politics he is a
+decided and consistent Liberal, and he merits the favorable
+consideration of all loyal Americans from the fact that he has not
+failed on every proper occasion to advocate our cause with such
+arguments as show clearly that he fully understands our position and
+appreciates the importance of the principles for which we are
+contending. It is a curious coincidence, that his style of address bears
+a close resemblance to what may be called the American manner. Rapid,
+but distinct, in utterance, facile and fluent in speech, natural and
+graceful in gesticulation, he might almost be transplanted to the halls
+of Congress at Washington without betraying his foreign birth and
+education.
+
+Lord Derby is undoubtedly the most skillful Parliamentary tactician and
+the most accomplished speaker in the House of Lords. In 1834, (when he
+was a member of the House of Commons,) Macaulay said of him, that "his
+knowledge of the science of parliamentary defence resembled an
+instinct." He is the acknowledged leader of the Tories or Conservatives
+in England, and dictates the policy of his party with absolute
+despotism. Belonging to one of the oldest peerages in the kingdom,
+having already filled some of the most important offices in Her
+Majesty's Government, occupying the highly honorable position of
+Chancellor of the University of Oxford, (as successor of the first Duke
+of Wellington,) an exact and finished scholar, enjoying an immense
+income, and the proprietor of vast landed estates, he may be justly
+considered one of the best types of England's aristocracy. He has that
+unmistakable air of authority without the least alloy of arrogance, that
+"pride in his port," which quietly asserts the dignity of long descent.
+As a speaker, his manner is impressive and forcible, with a rare command
+of choice language, an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of all
+subjects connected with the administration of public affairs, and that
+entire self-control which comes from life-long contact on terms of
+equality with the best society in Europe and a thorough confidence in
+his own mental resources. Lord Derby is preeminently a Parliamentary
+orator, and furnishes one of the unusual instances where a reputation
+for eloquence earned in the House of Commons has been fully sustained by
+a successful trial in the House of Lords.
+
+Another debater of marked ability in this body is Dr. Samuel
+Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He is the third son of William
+Wilberforce, the celebrated philanthropist, but by no means inherits the
+simplicity of character and singular absence of all personal ambition
+which made his father so widely beloved and respected. He is known as
+the leading exponent of High-Church views, and has been heard in the
+House of Lords on every question directly or indirectly affecting the
+interests of the Establishment. It was long ago said of him, that, had
+he been in political life, he would surely and easily have risen to the
+position of Premier. He has for years been charged with a marked
+proclivity to the doctrines of the Puseyites; and his adroitness in
+baffling all attempted investigation into the manner in which he has
+conducted the discipline of his diocese has perhaps contributed more
+than any other cause to fasten upon him the significant _sobriquet_ to
+which I have already alluded.
+
+Any sketch of the prominent members of the House of Lords would be
+imperfect which should omit to give some account of Lord Westbury, the
+present Lord-High-Chancellor. Having been Solicitor-General in two
+successive Administrations, he was filling for the second time the
+position of Attorney-General, when, upon the death of Lord Campbell, he
+was raised to the wool-sack. As a Chancery practitioner he was for years
+at the head of his profession, and is supposed to have received the
+largest income ever enjoyed by an English barrister. During the four
+years next preceding his elevation to the peerage his average annual
+earnings at the bar were twenty thousand pounds. In the summer of 1860
+it was my good fortune to hear the argument of Lord Westbury (then Sir
+Richard Bethell) in a case of great interest and importance, before
+Vice-Chancellor Wood. The point at issue involved the construction of a
+marriage-settlement between the Earl of Shrewsbury and the Prince
+Borghese of Rome, drawn up on the occasion of the marriage of the Prince
+with Lady Talbot, second daughter of the Earl. The interpretation of the
+terms of the contract was by express stipulation to be in accordance
+with the Roman common law. A commission sent to Rome to ascertain the
+meaning of certain provisions contained in the contract resulted in
+several folio volumes, embodying "the conflicting opinions of the most
+eminent Roman lawyers," supported by references to the Canonists, the
+decisions of the "Sacred Rota," the great text-writers upon
+jurisprudence, the Institutes and Pandects, and ascending still higher
+to the laws of the Roman Republic and the Augustan era.
+
+The leading counsel in the kingdom were retained in the case, and
+unusual public interest was enlisted. The amount at stake was twenty
+thousand pounds, and it was estimated that nearly, if not quite, that
+amount had already been consumed in costs. Legal proceedings are not an
+inexpensive luxury anywhere; but "the fat contention and the flowing
+fee" have a significance to English ears which we can hardly appreciate
+in this country.
+
+It will be at once apparent even to the unprofessional reader that most
+difficult and complicated questions were presented by this
+case,--questions turning on the exact interpretation of contracts,
+involving delicate verbal distinctions, and demanding a thorough
+comprehension of an immense and unwieldy mass of Roman law embraced in
+the dissenting _dicta_ of Roman lawyers. It required the exercise of the
+very highest legal ability, trained and habituated by long and patient
+discipline to grapple with great issues.
+
+The argument of Sir Richard Bethell abundantly demonstrated his capacity
+to satisfy the demands of the occasion, and displayed most triumphantly
+his perfect mastery of the whole subject. As the time drew near when he
+was expected to close for the defence, barristers and students-at-law
+began to flock into the small and inconveniently arranged courtroom. A
+stranger and a foreigner could not but see at once that the
+Attorney-General was the cynosure of all eyes. And, indeed, no one in
+the room more thoroughly appreciated the fact that he was the central
+and controlling attraction than Sir Richard himself. I must be pardoned
+for using an English slang-phrase, but I can convey the impression which
+he inevitably makes upon a spectator in no other way than by saying that
+he is "a most magnificent swell." And I do this with the more confidence
+as I have heard him characterized in precisely these words by members of
+the English bar. Every motion, every attitude, indicates an intense
+self-consciousness. The Earl of Chatham had not a greater passion for
+theatrical effect, nor has a more consummate and finished actor ever
+graced the stage. If the performance had been less perfect, it would
+have been ludicrous in the extreme; for it did not overlook the minutest
+details. He could not examine his brief, or make a suggestion to one of
+his associates, or note an important point in the argument of opposing
+counsel, or listen to an intimation of opinion from the Bench, without
+an obvious eye to dramatic propriety. During the trial, an attorney's
+clerk handed him a letter, and the air with which it was opened, read,
+and answered was of itself a study. Yet it was all in the highest style
+of the art. No possible fault could be found with the execution. Not a
+single spectator ventured to smile. The supremacy of undoubted genius
+was never more apparent, and never exacted nor received more willing
+worship. Through the kindness of a friendly barrister I was introduced
+to one of the juniors of the Attorney-General,--a stripling of about
+fifty years of age. While we were conversing about the case, Sir Richard
+turned and made some comment upon the conduct of the trial; but my
+friend would no more have thought of introducing me to the leader of the
+bar than he would have ventured to stop the carriage of the Queen in
+Hyde Park and present me then and there to Her Majesty.
+
+I remember as well as if it were but yesterday how attorneys and junior
+counsel listened with the utmost deference to every suggestion which he
+condescended to address to them, how narrowly the law-students watched
+him, as if some legal principle were to be read in his cold, hard
+countenance, and, as he at last rose slowly and solemnly to make his
+long-expected argument, how court, bar, and by-standers composed
+themselves to hear. He spoke with great deliberation and distinctness,
+with singular precision and propriety of language, without any parade of
+rhetoric or attempt at eloquence. After a very short and appropriate
+exordium, he proceeded directly to the merits of the case. His words
+were well-weighed, and his manner was earnest and impressive. It was, in
+short, the perfection of reason confidently addressed to a competent
+tribunal.
+
+And yet his manner was by no means that of a man seeking to persuade a
+superior, but rather that of one comparing opinions with an equal, if
+not an inferior mind, elevated by some accident to a position of
+factitious importance. One could not but feel that here was a power
+behind the throne greater than the throne itself.
+
+It cannot be doubted that this consciousness of mental and professional
+preeminence, sustained by the unanimous verdict of public opinion, has
+given to Lord Westbury a defiant, if not an insolent bearing. The story
+is current at the English bar, that, some years ago, when offered a seat
+on the Bench, with a salary of five thousand pounds, he promptly
+declined, saying, "I would rather earn ten thousand pounds a year by
+talking sense than five thousand pounds a year by hearing other men talk
+nonsense." Anecdotes are frequent in illustration of his supercilious
+treatment of attorneys and clients while he was a barrister. And since
+his elevation to the wool-sack there has been no abatement or
+modification of his offensive manner. His demeanor toward counsel
+appearing before him has been the subject of constant and indignant
+complaint. It will be remembered by some of my readers, that, not long
+since, during a session of the House of Lords, he gave the lie direct to
+one of the peers,--an occurrence almost without precedent in that
+decorous body. Far different from this was the tone in which Lord
+Thurlow, while Lord-Chancellor, asserted his independence and vindicated
+his title to respect in his memorable rebuke addressed to the Duke of
+Grafton. If the testimony of English travellers in this country is to be
+believed, the legislative assemblies of our own land have hitherto
+enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this species of retort.
+
+The House of Lords contains other peers of marked ability and protracted
+Parliamentary experience, among whom are Earl Granville, the Earl of
+Ellenborough, the Duke of Somerset, and the Earl of Shaftesbury; but we
+cannot dwell in detail upon their individual characteristics as
+speakers, or upon the share they have severally taken in the public
+councils, without extending this article beyond its legitimate limits.
+
+As genius is not necessarily or usually transmitted from generation to
+generation, while a seat in the House of Lords is an inheritable
+privilege, it will be readily believed that there is a considerable
+number of peers with no natural or acquired fitness for legislative
+duties,--men whose dullness in debate, and whose utter incapacity to
+comprehend any question of public interest or importance, cannot be
+adequately described. They speak occasionally, from a certain
+ill-defined sense of what may be due to their position, yet are
+obviously aware that what they say is entitled to no weight, and are
+greatly relieved when the unwelcome and disagreeable duty has been
+discharged. They are the men who hesitate and stammer, whose hats and
+canes are always in their way, and who have no very clear notions about
+what should be done with their hands. A visitor who chances to spend an
+evening in the House of Lords for the first and last time, while
+noblemen of this stamp are quieting their tender consciences by a
+statement of their views upon the subject under discussion, will be sure
+to retire with a very unfavorable and wholly incorrect estimate of the
+speaking talent of English peers.
+
+It would hardly seem necessary to devote time or space to those members
+of the House of Lords who are rarely, if ever, present at the debates.
+As has been already stated, the whole number of peers is about four
+hundred and sixty, of whom less than twenty-five are minors, while the
+average attendance is less than fifty. The right to vote by proxy is a
+peculiar and exclusive privilege of the Upper House, and vicarious
+voting to a great extent is common on all important issues. Macaulay,
+many years ago, pronounced the House of Lords "a small and torpid
+audience"; and certainly, since the expression of this opinion, there
+has been no increase of average attendance. A considerable proportion of
+the absentees will be found among the "fast noblemen" of the
+kingdom,--the men who prostitute their exalted social position to the
+basest purposes, squandering their substance and wasting their time in
+degrading dissipation, the easy prey of accomplished sharpers, and a
+burning disgrace to their order. Sometimes, indeed, they pause on the
+brink of utter ruin, only to become in their turn apostles of iniquity,
+and to lure others to a like destruction. The unblushing and successful
+audacity of these titled _roues_ is beginning to attract the attention
+and awaken the fears of the better part of the English people. Their
+pernicious example is bearing most abundant and bitter fruit in the
+depraved morals of what are called the "lower classes" of society, and
+their misdeeds are repeated in less fashionable quarters, with less
+brilliant surroundings. Against this swelling tide of corrupting
+influence the press of England is now raising its warning voice, and the
+statements which are publicly and unreservedly made, and the predictions
+which are confidently given, are very far from being welcome to English
+eyes or grateful to English ears.
+
+Another class of the House of Lords, and it is a large one, is most
+happily characterized by Sydney Smith in his review of "Granby." "Lord
+Chesterton we have often met with, and suffered a good deal from his
+lordship: a heavy, pompous, meddling peer, occupying a great share of
+the conversation, saying things in ten words which required only two,
+and evidently convinced that he is making a great impression; a large
+man, with a large head, and a very landed manner; knowing enough to
+torment his fellow-creatures, not to instruct them; the ridicule of
+young ladies, and the natural butt and target of wit. It is easy to talk
+of carnivorous animals and beasts of prey; but does such a man, who lays
+waste a whole civilized party of beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy
+he spoils and the misery he creates in the course of his life, and that
+any one who listens to him through politeness would prefer toothache or
+ear-ache to his conversation? Does he consider the great uneasiness
+which ensues, when the company has discovered a man to be an extremely
+absurd person, at the same time that it is absolutely impossible to
+convey by words or manner the most distant suspicion of the discovery?"
+
+Now, most unfortunately, the noble House of Chesterton is still extant,
+and its numerous representatives cherish with jealous care every
+inherited absurdity of the family. Their favorite field of operations is
+the House of Lords, partly because the strict proprieties of the place
+protect them from rude and inconvenient interruption, and partly because
+they can be sure of a "fit audience found, though few,"--an audience
+of equals, whom it is no condescension to address. In the House of
+Commons they would be coughed down or groaned down before they had
+wasted ten minutes of the public time, and that they escape as swift
+suppression in the House of Lords is much more creditable to the
+courtesy of that body than to its just appreciation of the shortness of
+human life. There is rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords
+during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his
+morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and
+exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. That
+such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so
+frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and
+the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying
+circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike
+opinions are not confined to democratic deliberative assemblies, and
+that the choicest advantages of education, literary and political, are
+not at all inconsistent with ignorance and arrogance.
+
+But we will allow his lordship to tell his own story. Here is his set
+speech, only slightly modified from evening to evening, as may be
+demanded by the difference in the questions under debate.
+
+"My lords, the noble lord who has just taken his seat, although, I am
+bound to say, presenting his view of the case with that candor which my
+noble friend (if the noble lord will allow me to call him so) always
+displays, yet, my lords, I cannot but add, omitted one important feature
+of the subject. Now, my lords, I am exceedingly reluctant to take up the
+time of your lordships with my views upon the subject-matter of this
+debate; yet, my lords, as the noble and learned lord who spoke last but
+one, as well as the noble earl at the head of Her Majesty's Government,
+and the noble marquis who addressed your lordships early in the evening,
+have all fallen into the same mistake, (if these noble lords will permit
+me to presume that they could be mistaken,) I must beg leave to call
+your lordships' attention to the significant fact, that each and all of
+these noble lords have failed to point out to your lordships, that,
+important and even conclusive as the arguments and statistics of their
+lordships may at first sight appear, yet they have not directed your
+lordships to the very suspicious circumstance that our noble ancestors
+have never discovered the necessity of resorting to this singular
+expedient.
+
+"For myself, my lords, I confess that I am filled with the most gloomy
+forebodings for the future of this country, when I hear a question of
+this transcendent importance gravely discussed by noble lords without
+the slightest allusion to this vital consideration. I beg to ask noble
+lords, Are we wiser than our forefathers? Are any avenues of information
+open to us which were closed to them? Were they less patriotic, less
+intelligent, less statesmanlike, than the present generation? Why, then,
+I most earnestly put it to your lordships, should we disregard, or,
+certainly, lose sight of their wisdom and their experience? I implore
+noble lords to pause before it is too late. I solemnly call upon them to
+consider that the proposed measure is, after all, only democracy under a
+thin disguise. Has it never occurred to noble lords that this project
+did not originate in this House? that its warmest friends and most
+ardent and persevering advocates are found among those who come from the
+people, and who, from the very nature of the case, are incompetent to
+decide upon what will be for the, best interests of the kingdom? My
+lords, I feel deeply upon this subject, and I must be pardoned for
+expressing myself in strong terms. I say again, that I see here the
+clearest evidence of democratic tendencies, a contempt for existing and
+ancient institutions, and an alarming want of respect for time-honored
+precedents, which, I am bound to say, demand our prompt and indignant
+condemnation," etc., etc., etc.[2]
+
+[Footnote 2: If any one of my readers is inclined to suspect that I have
+drawn upon my imagination for this specimen speech, I will only say,
+that, if he were my bitterest enemy, I could wish him no more severe
+punishment than to undergo as I have done, (_horresco referens_,) an
+hour of the Marquis of Normanby, the Earl of Malmesbury, and a few other
+kindred spirits. If he have no opportunity of subjecting the truth of my
+statement and the accuracy of my report to this most grievous test, I
+beg to assure him that I have given no fancy sketch, but that I have
+heard speeches from these noblemen in precisely this tone and to exactly
+this effect.]
+
+This is the regular speech, protracted in the same strain for perhaps
+half an hour. Of the manner of the noble orator I will not venture a
+description. Any attempt to convey an idea of the air of omniscience
+with which these dreary platitudes are delivered would surely result in
+failure. It is enough to say that the impression which the noble lord
+leaves upon an unprejudiced and un-English mind is in all respects
+painful. Indeed, one sees at a glance how absolutely hopeless would be
+any finite effort to convince him of the absurdity of his positions or
+the weakness of his understanding. There he stands, a solemn, shallow,
+conceited, narrow-minded, imperturbable, impracticable, incorrigible
+blockhead, on whom everything in the shape of argument is utterly
+wasted, and from whom all the arrows of wit and sarcasm fall harmless to
+the ground. In fact, he is perfectly proof against any intellectual
+weapons forged by human skill or wielded by mortal arm, and he awaits
+and receives every attack with a stolid and insulting indifference which
+must be maddening to an opponent.
+
+I hasten to confess my entire incapacity to describe the uniform
+personal bearing of a Chesterton in or out of the House of Lords. It is
+strictly _sui generis_. It has neither the quiet, unassuming dignity of
+the Derbys, the Shaftesburys, or the Warwicks, nor the vulgar vanity of
+the untravelled Cockney. It simply defies accurate delineation. Dickens
+has attempted to paint the portrait of such a character in "Bleak
+House"; but Sir Leicester Dedlock, even in the hands of this great
+artist, is not a success,--merely because, in the case of the Baronet,
+selfishness and self-importance are only a superficial crust, while with
+your true Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as
+much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A
+genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own
+theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the
+French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and
+exclaiming, "G---- d----! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is unlike
+the Englishman of real life. Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass
+in his right eye, nor commence every other sentence with "Aw! weally
+now." He does not stare you out of countenance in a _cafe_, nor wonder
+"what the Devil that fellaw means by his insolence." So much by way of
+negative description. To appreciate him positively, one must see him and
+hear him. No matter when or where you encounter him, you will find him
+ever the same; and you will at last conclude that his manners are not
+unnatural to a very weak man inheriting the traditions of an ancient and
+titled family, and educated from childhood to believe that he belongs to
+a superior order of beings.
+
+Of course the strong point of a Chesterton is what he calls his
+"conservatism." He values everything in proportion to its antiquity, and
+prefers a time-honored abuse to a modern blessing. With a former Duke of
+Somerset, he would pity Adam, "because he had no ancestors." His
+sympathies, so far as he has any sentiments which deserve to be
+dignified by that name, are ever on the side of tyranny. He condescends
+to give his valuable sanction to the liberal institutions of England,
+not because they are liberal, but because they are English. Next after
+the Established Church, the reigning sovereign and the royal family, his
+own order and his precious self, his warmest admiration is bestowed on
+some good old-fashioned, thorough-going, grinding despotism. He defends
+the Emperor of Austria, and considers the King of Naples a much-abused
+monarch.
+
+If his lordship has ever been in diplomatic life,--an event highly
+probable,--he becomes the most intolerable nuisance that ever belied the
+noblest sentiments of civilized society or blocked the wheels of public
+debate. Flattered by the interested attention of despotic courts, his
+poor weak head has been completely turned. He has seen everything _en
+couleur de rose_. He assures their lordships that he has never known a
+single well-authenticated case of oppression of the lower classes, while
+it is within his personal knowledge that many of the best families (in
+Italy, for instance) have been compelled to leave all their property
+behind them, and fly for their lives before an insolent and unreasoning
+mob. How he deluges the House with distorted facts and garbled
+statistics! How he warns noble lords against the wiles of Mazzini, the
+unscrupulous ambition of Victor Emmanuel, and the headlong haste of
+Garibaldi!
+
+Of course, his lordship's bitterest hatred and intensest aversion are
+reserved for democratic institutions. Against these he wages a constant
+crusade. Armed _cap-a-pie_ in his common-sense-proof coat of mail, he
+charges feebly upon them with his blunt lance, works away furiously with
+his wooden sword, and then ambles off with a triumphant air very
+ludicrous to behold. Democracy is the _bete noir_ of all the
+Chestertons. They attack it not only because they consider it a recent
+innovation, but also because it threatens the permanence of their order.
+About the practical working of a republic they have no better
+information than they have about the institutions of Iceland or the
+politics of Patagonia. It is quite enough for them to know that the
+theory of democracy is based on the equality of man, and that where
+democracy prevails a privileged class is unknown.
+
+It is hardly necessary to add, that the present condition of the United
+Stales is a perfect godsend to the whole family of Chestertons. Have
+they not long predicted our disgrace and downfall? Have they not,
+indeed, ever since our unjustifiable Declaration of Independence,
+anticipated precisely what has happened? Have they not always and
+everywhere contended that a republic had no elements of national
+cohesion? In a word, have they not feared our growing power and
+population as only such base and ignoble spirits can fear the sure and
+steady progress of a rival nation? Unhappily, their influence in the
+councils of the kingdom is by no means inconsiderable. The prestige of
+an ancient family, the obsequious deference paid in England to exalted
+social position, and the power of patronage, all combine to confer on
+the Chestertons a commanding and controlling authority absurdly out of
+proportion to their intrinsic ability.
+
+There has been a prevalent notion in this country that England was
+slowly, but certainly, tending towards a more democratic form of
+government, and a more equal and equitable distribution of power among
+the different orders of society. This is very far from being the case.
+It has been well said, that "it is always considered a piece of
+impertinence in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a
+year has any opinions at all upon important subjects." But if this
+income is quadrupled, and the high honor of a seat in the House of Lords
+is superadded, it is not difficult to understand that the titled
+recipient of such a revenue will find that his opinions command the
+greatest consideration. The organization of the present Cabinet of
+England is a fresh and conclusive illustration of this principle. It is
+not too much to say, that at this moment the home and foreign
+administration of the government is substantially in the hands of the
+House of Lords. Indeed, the aristocratic element of English society is
+as powerful to-day as it has been at any time during the past century.
+To fortify this statement by competent authority, we make an extract
+from a leader in the London "Times," on the occasion of the elevation of
+Lord John Russell to the peerage. "But however welcome to the House of
+Lords may be the accession of Lord John Russell, the House of Commons,
+we apprehend, will contemplate it with very little satisfaction. While
+the House of Lords does but one-twentieth part of the business of the
+House of Commons, it boasts a lion's share of the present
+administration. Three out of our five Secretaries of State, the
+Lord-Chancellor, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Lord-President of
+the Council, the Postmaster-General, the Lord Privy Seal, all hold seats
+in the Upper House, while the Home-Secretary, and the Secretary for
+India, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
+the President of the Board of Trade, the President of the Poor-Law
+Board, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Secretary for
+Ireland hold seats in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell goes to
+give more to that which had already too much. At the present moment, the
+two ministers whose united departments distribute between twenty and
+thirty millions of the national revenue sit in the House which does not
+represent the people. In voting the army and navy estimates, the House
+of Commons received this year from the Under-Secretaries that
+information which they ought to have from the best and most authentic,
+sources. To these is now added the all-important department of Foreign
+Affairs; so that, if things remain as they are, the representatives of
+the people must be content to feed on second-hand information.... Most
+of us can remember a time when it was a favorite topic with popular
+agitators to expatiate on the number of lords which a government
+contained, as if every peer of Parliament wielded an influence
+necessarily hostile to the liberties of the country. We look down in the
+present age with contempt on such vulgar prejudices; but we seem to be
+running into the contrary extreme, when we allow almost all the
+important offices of our government to be monopolized by a chamber where
+there is small scope for rhetorical ability, and the short sittings and
+unbusiness-like habits of which make it very unsuited for the
+enforcement of ministerial responsibility. The statesmen who have charge
+of large departments of expenditure, like the army and navy, and of the
+highest interests of the nation, ought to be in the House of Commons, is
+necessarily superior to a member of the House of the House of Lords, but
+it is to the House of Commons that these high functionaries are
+principally accountable, and because, if they forfeit the confidence of
+the House of Commons, the House of Lords can avail them but little. The
+matter is of much importance and much difficulty. We can only hope that
+the opportunity of redressing this manifest imperfection in the
+structure of the present government will not be lost, and that the House
+of Commons may recover those political privileges which it has hitherto
+been its pride to enjoy."
+
+This distribution of power in the English Cabinet furnishes a sufficient
+solution of the present attitude of the English Government towards this
+country. The ruling classes of England can have no sincere sympathy with
+the North, because its institutions and instincts are democratic. They
+give countenance to the South, because at heart and in practice it is
+essentially an aristocracy. To remove the dangerous example of a
+successful and powerful republic, where every man has equal rights,
+civil and religious, and where a privileged order in Church and State is
+impossible, has become in the minds of England's governing classes an
+imperious necessity. Compared with the importance of securing this
+result, all other considerations weigh as nothing. Brothers by blood,
+language, and religion, as they have been accustomed to call us while we
+were united and formidable, we are now, since civil war has weakened us
+and great national questions have distracted our councils, treated as
+aliens, if not as enemies. On the other hand, the South, whose leaders
+have ever been first to take hostile ground against England, and whose
+"peculiar institution" has drawn upon us the eloquent and unsparing
+denunciations of English philanthropists, is just now in high favor with
+the "mother-country." Not only has the ill-disguised dislike of the
+Tories ripened into open animosity, not only are we the target for the
+shallow scorn of the Chestertons, (even a donkey may dare to kick a
+dying lion,) but we have lost the once strongly pronounced friendship of
+such ardent anti-slavery men as Lord Brougham and the Earl of
+Shaftesbury. Why is this? Does not the explanation lie in a nutshell? We
+were becoming too strong. We were disturbing the balance of power. We
+were demonstrating too plainly the inherent activity and irresistible
+energy of a purely democratic form of government. Therefore _Carthago
+delenda est_. "But yet the pity of it, Iago!" Mark how a Christian
+nation deals with a Christian ally. Our destruction is to be
+accomplished, not by open warfare, but by the delusive and dastardly
+pretence of neutrality. There is to be no diplomatic recognition of an
+independent Southern Confederacy, but a formidable navy is to be
+furnished to our enemies, and their armies are to be abundantly supplied
+with the munitions of war. But how? By the English Government? Oh, no!
+This would be in violation of solemn treaties. Earl Russell says, "We
+have long maintained relations of peace and amity" with the United
+States. England cannot officially recognize or aid the South without
+placing herself in a hostile attitude towards this country. Yet
+meanwhile English capitalists can publicly subscribe to the loan which
+our enemies solicit, and from English ship-yards a fleet of iron-clad
+war-vessels can be sent to lay waste our commerce and break our blockade
+of Southern ports. What the end will be no one may venture to foretell;
+but it needs no prophet to predict that many years will not obliterate
+from the minds of the American people the present policy of the English
+Cabinet, controlled as it is by the genius of English aristocracy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS.
+
+
+"The first time I saw Theodore Winthrop," said one to me a few days ago,
+"he came into my office with a common friend. They were talking as they
+entered, and Winthrop said, 'Yes, the fellows who came over in the
+Mayflower can't afford to do that!'
+
+"'There,' thought I to myself, 'there's another of the Mayflower men! I
+wish to my soul that ship had sunk on her voyage out!' But when I came
+to know him, I quickly learned that with him origin was not a matter of
+vain pride, but a fact inciting him to all nobleness of thought and
+life, and spurring him on to emulate the qualities of his ancestor."
+
+That is to say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he
+remembered that he "came over in the Mayflower," it was because he felt
+that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work,
+than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he wrote in the
+opening chapter of "John Brent," that "deeds of the heroic and chivalric
+times do not utterly disdain our day. There are men," he continues, "as
+ready to gallop for love and strike for love now as in the age of
+Amadis." Ay, and for a nobler love than the love of woman--for love of
+country, and of liberty--he was ready to strike, and to die.
+
+Ready to do, when the time came; but also--what required a greater
+soul--ready to wait in cheerful content till the fitting time should
+come. Think of these volumes lying in his desk at home, and he, their
+author, going about his daily tasks and pleasures, as hearty and as
+unrepining as though no whisper of ambition had ever come to his
+soul,--as though he had no slightest desire for the pleasant fame which
+a successful book gives to a young man. Think of it, O race of
+scribblers, to whom a month in the printer's hands seems a monstrous
+delay, and who bore publishers with half-finished manuscripts, as
+impatient hens begin, untimely, to cackle before the egg is laid.
+
+That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written
+these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide
+reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men
+and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself. That he should have let the
+manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more. But,
+much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was
+not that of the author, but of the actor. He has often told me that it
+was a pleasure to write,--probably such a pleasure as it is to an old
+tar to spin his yarns. His mind was active, stored with the accumulated
+facts of a varied experience. How keen an observer of Nature he was,
+those who have read "John Brent" or the "Canoe and Saddle" need not be
+told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that
+brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago,
+under the title of "Love and Skates." Our American life lost by his
+death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to
+the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as
+well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its
+manifestations.
+
+That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic
+spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however
+common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always
+something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with
+prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was
+none the less true,--was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true.
+Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature,
+or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature
+which concerns itself with American life. To him the hard-featured
+Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw
+the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that
+
+    "Poor lone Hannah,
+    Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"
+
+had somewhat besides coarse hands and red eyes. He was not tainted with
+the vicious habit of caricature, which is the excuse with which
+superficial and heartless writers impose their false art upon the
+public. Nor did he need that his heroes should wear kid gloves,--though
+he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew. "Armstrong of Oregon" was
+a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly
+traits in that rude lumberman's character! how true to Nature is that
+sketch of a gentleman in homespun! And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon
+mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless
+not too scrupulous in a "trade," has yet, in Winthrop's story, qualities
+which draw us to him.
+
+To sit down to "John Brent" after rending one of the popular novels of
+these days, by one of the class of writers who imagine photography the
+noblest of arts, is like getting out of a fashionable "party" into the
+crisp air of a clear, starlight, December night. And yet Winthrop was a
+"society" man; one might almost say he knew that life better than the
+other, the freer, the nobler, which he loved to describe, as he loved to
+live it.
+
+A neat, active figure of a man, carefully dressed, as one who pays all
+proper honor to the body in which he walks about; a gentleman, not only
+in the broader and more generous sense, but also according to the
+narrower, conventional meaning of the term; plainly a scholarly man,
+fond of books, and knowing the best books; with that modest, diffident
+air which bookish men have; with a curious shyness, indeed, as of one
+who was not accustomed and did not like to come into too close contact
+with the every-day world: such Theodore Winthrop appeared to me. I
+recollect the surprise with which I heard--not from him--that he had
+ridden across the Plains, had camped with Lieutenant Strain, had
+"roughed it" in the roughest parts of our continent. But if you looked a
+little closely into the face, you saw in the fine lines of the mouth the
+determination of a man who can bear to carry his body into any peril or
+difficulty; and in the eye--he had the eye of a born sailor, an eye
+accustomed to measure the distance for a dangerous leap, quick to
+comprehend all parts of a novel situation--you saw there presence of
+mind, unfaltering readiness, and a spirit equal to anything the day
+might bring forth.
+
+In the Memoir prefixed to "Cecil Dreeme" Curtis has drawn a portrait,
+tender and true, of his friend and neighbor. The few words which have
+written themselves here tell of him only as he appeared to one who knew
+him less intimately, who saw him not often.
+
+I come now to speak of the writings which Winthrop left. These have the
+singular merit, that they are all American. From first to last, they are
+plainly the work of a man who had no need to go to Europe for characters
+or scenery or plot,--who valued and understood the peculiar life and
+the peculiar Nature of this continent, and, like a true artist and poet,
+chose to represent that life and Nature of which he was a part. His
+stories smack of the soil; his characters--especially in "John Brent,"
+where his own ride across the continent is dramatized--are as fresh and
+as true as only a true artist could make them. Take, for instance, the
+"Pike," the border-ruffian transplanted to a California "ranch,"--not a
+ruffian, as he says, but a barbarian.
+
+"America is manufacturing several new types of men. The Pike is one of
+the newest. He is a bastard pioneer. With one hand he clutches the
+pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of
+civilization. It is hard to understand how a man can have so little
+virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the
+soul, as they are to beauty in the face.
+
+"He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new
+race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith,
+which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He
+is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man
+into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair
+Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his
+walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths
+are to his words as Falstaff's sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese
+beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New-York aldermen, Digger
+Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are
+thorough-bred Pikes."
+
+This is not complimentary, but any one who has seen the creature knows
+that it is a portrait done by a first-rate artist.
+
+Take, again, that other vulgarer ruffian, "Jim Robinson," "a little man,
+stockish, oily, and red in the face, a jaunty fellow, too, with a
+certain shabby air of coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire,"--and
+how accurately does he describe the metamorphosis of this nauseous grub
+into a still more disgusting butterfly!
+
+"I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis, blossomed into a purple
+coat with velvet lappels, a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or
+a flamboyant scarf pinned with a pinchbeck dog, and red-legged,
+patent-leather boots, picking his teeth on the steps of the Planters'
+House."
+
+Or, once more, that more saintly villain, the Mormon Elder Sizzum.
+
+"Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the pioneer
+and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage he had
+made of himself. He was clean shaved: clean shaving is a favorite
+coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black hair, growing rank from a
+muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his ears. A large white blossom of
+cravat expanded under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black
+dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except that his pantaloons
+were thrust into boots with the maker's name (Abel Gushing, Lynn, Mass.)
+stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct
+go-to-meetin' costume,--a Chadband of the Plains."
+
+When you see one of these men, you will know him again. Winthrop has
+sketched these rascals with a few touches, as felicitous as any of
+Dickens's, and they will bear his mark forever: _T.W. fecit._
+
+As for Jake Shamberlain, with his odd mixture of many religious and
+irreligious dialects, what there is of him is as good as Sam Weller or
+Mrs. Poyser.
+
+"'Hillo, Shamberlain!' hailed Brent, riding up to the train.
+
+"'Howdydo? Howdydo? No swap!' responded Jake, after the Indian fashion.
+'Bung my eyes, ef you're not the mate of all mates I'm glad to see! Pax
+vobiscrum, my filly! You look as fresh as an Aperel shad. Praised be the
+Lord,' continued he, relapsing into Mormon slang, 'who has sent thee
+again, like a brand from the burning, to fall into paths of pleasantness
+with the Saints, as they wander from the Promised Land to the mean
+section where the low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for hell!'"
+
+Or Jake's droll commentary on the story of Old Bridger, ousted from his
+fort, and robbed of his goods, by the Saints, in the name of the Prophet
+Brigham.
+
+"'It's olluz so,' says Jake; 'Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the
+increase. Not that Bridger's like Paul, any more 'n we're like Apollyon;
+but we're goan to have all the cider off his apple-trees.'"
+
+Or, again, Jake's compliments to "Armstrong of Oregon," that galloping
+Vigilant Committee of one.
+
+"I'll help you, if I know how, Armstrong. I ha'n't seen no two in my
+life, Old Country or New Country, Saints or Gentiles, as I'd do more for
+'n you and your brother. I've olluz said, ef the world was chock full of
+Armstrongs, Paradise wouldn't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob mout
+just as well blow out their candle and go under a bushel-basket,--unless
+a half-bushel would kiver 'em."
+
+But the true hero of the book is the horse Don Fulano. It is easy to see
+that Winthrop was a first-rate horseman, from the loving manner in which
+he describes and dwells on the perfections of the matchless stallion.
+None but one who knew every point of a horse, none but one of the
+Centaur breed, could have drawn Don Fulano,--just as none but a born
+skater could have written those inimitable skating-scenes in his story
+of "Love and Skates."
+
+"He was an American horse,--so they distinguish in California one
+brought from the old States,--A SUPERB YOUNG STALLION, PERFECTLY BLACK,
+WITHOUT MARK. It was magnificent to see him, as he circled about me,
+fire in his eye, pride in his nostril, tail flying like a banner, power
+and grace from tip to tip. No one would ever mount him, or ride him,
+unless it was his royal pleasure. He was conscious of his representative
+position, and showed his paces handsomely."
+
+This is the creature who takes the lead in that stirring and matchless
+"Gallop of Three" to the Luggernel Spring, to quote from which would be
+to spoil it. It must be read entire.
+
+In the "Canoe and Saddle" is recorded Winthrop's long ride across the
+continent. Setting out in a canoe, from Port Townsend, in Vancouver's
+Island, he journeyed, without company of other white men, to the Salt
+Lake City and thence to "the States,"--a tedious and barbarous
+experience, heightened, in this account of it, by the traveller's cheery
+spirits, his ardent love of Nature, and capacity to describe the grand
+natural scenery, of the effect of which upon himself he says, at the
+end,--
+
+"And in all that period, while I was so near to Nature, the great
+lessons of the wilderness deepened into my heart day by day, the hedges
+of conventionalism withered away from my horizon, and all the pedantries
+of scholastic thought perished out of my mind forever."
+
+He bore hardships with the courage and imperturbable good-nature of a
+born gentleman. It is when men are starving, when the plating of romance
+is worn off by the chafe of severe and continued suffering,--it is then
+that "blood tells." Winthrop had evidently that keen relish for rough
+life which the gently nurtured and highly cultivated man has oftener
+than his rude neighbor, partly because, in his case, contrast lends a
+zest to the experience. Thus, when he camps with a gang of
+"road-makers," in the farthest Western wilderness,--a part of Captain
+McClellan's Pacific Railroad Expedition,--how thoroughly he enjoys the
+rough hospitality and rude wit of these pioneers!
+
+"In such a Platonic republic as this a man found his place according to
+his powers. The cooks were no base scullions; they were brethren, whom
+conscious ability, sustained by universal suffrage, had endowed with the
+frying-pan."
+
+"My hosts were a stalwart gang.... Their talk was as muscular as their
+arms. When these laughed, as only men fresh and hearty and in the open
+air can laugh, the world became mainly grotesque: it seemed at once a
+comic thing to live,--a subject for chuckling, that we were bipeds, with
+noses,--a thing to roar at, that we had all met there from the wide
+world, to hobnob by a frolicsome fire with tin pots of coffee, and
+partake of crisped bacon and toasted dough-boys in ridiculous abundance.
+Easy laughter infected the atmosphere. Echoes ceased to be pensive, and
+became jocose. A rattling humor pervaded the forest, and Green River
+rippled with noise of fantastic jollity. Civilization and its
+_dilettante_ diners-out sneer when Clodpole at Dives's table doubles his
+soup, knifes his fish, tilts his plate into his lap, puts muscle into
+the crushing of his _meringue_, and tosses off the warm beaker in his
+finger-bowl. Camps by Tacoma sneer not at all, but candidly roar, at
+parallel accidents. Gawky makes a cushion of his flapjack. Butterfingers
+drops his red-hot rasher into his bosom, or lets slip his mug of coffee
+into his boot drying at the fire,--a boot henceforth saccharine. A mule,
+slipping his halter, steps forward unnoticed, puts his nose into the
+circle, and brays resonant. These are the jocular boons of life, and at
+these the woodsmen guffaw with lusty good-nature. Coarse and rude the
+jokes may be, but not nasty, like the innuendoes of pseudo-refined
+cockneys. If the woodsmen are guilty of uncleanly wit, it differs from
+the uncleanly wit of cities as the mud of a road differs from the sticky
+slime of slums.
+
+"It is a stout sensation to meet masculine, muscular men at the brave
+point of a penetrating Boston hooihut,--men who are mates,--men to whom
+technical culture means nought,--men to whom myself am nought, unless I
+can saddle, lasso, cook, sing, and chop,--unless I am a man of nerve and
+pluck, and a brother in generosity and heartiness. It is restoration to
+play at cudgels of jocoseness with a circle of friendly roughs, not one
+of whom ever heard the word bore,--with pioneers, who must think and
+act, and wrench their living from the closed hand of Nature."
+
+And here is a dinner "in the open."
+
+"Upon the _carte du jour_ at Restaurant Sowee was written Grouse. 'How
+shall we have them?' said I, cook and convive, to Loolowcan, marmiton
+and convive. 'One of these cocks of the mountain shall be fried, since
+gridiron is not,' responded I to myself, after meditation; 'two shall be
+spitted and roasted; and, as Azrael may not want us before breakfast
+to-morrow, the fourth shall go upon the _carte de dejeuner'_.
+
+"'O Pork! what a creature thou art!' continued I, in monologue, cutting
+neat slices of that viand with my bowie-knife, and laying them
+fraternally, three in a bed, in the frying-pan. 'Blessed be Moses, who
+forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispensations, heirs of
+all the ages, inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon cheaper! O Pork!
+what could campaigners do without thy fatness, thy leanness, thy
+saltness, thy portableness?'
+
+"Here Loolowcan presented me the three birds, plucked featherless as
+Plato's man. The two roasters we planted carefully on spits before a
+sultry spot of the fire. From a horizontal stick, supported on forked
+stakes, we suspended by a twig over each roaster an automatic baster, an
+inverted cone of pork, ordained to yield its spicy juices to the wooing
+flame, and drip bedewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters ripened
+deliberately, while keen and quick fire told upon the frier, the first
+course of our feast. Meanwhile I brewed a pot of tea, blessing Confucius
+for that restorative weed, as I had blessed Moses for his abstinence
+from porkers.
+
+"Need I say that the grouse were admirable, that everything was
+delicious, and the Confucian weed first chop? Even a scouse of mouldy
+biscuit met the approval of Loolowcan. Feasts cooked under the greenwood
+tree, and eaten by their cooks after a triumphant day of progress, are
+sweeter than the conventional banquets of languid Christendom."
+
+"Life in the Open Air"--containing sketches of travel among the
+mountains and lakes of Maine, as well as the story of "Love and Skates,"
+which has been spoken of, "The March of the Seventh Regiment,"
+"Washington as a Camp," an essay descriptive of Church's great picture,
+"The Heart of the Andes," and two fragments, one of them the charming
+commencement of a story which promised to be one of his best and most
+enjoyable efforts in this direction--is the concluding volume of
+Winthrop's collected writings. I speak of it in this place, because it
+is in some part a companion-book to the volumes we have been discussing.
+It is as full of buoyant life, of fresh and noble thought, of graceful
+wit and humor, as those; in parts it contains the most finished of his
+literary work. Few Americans who read it at the time will ever forget
+that stirring description of the march of the New-York Seventh; it is a
+piece of the history of our war which will live and be read as long as
+Americans read their history. It moved my blood, in the reading,
+tonight, as it did in those days--which seem already some centuries old,
+so do events crowd the retrospect--when we were all reading it in the
+pages of the "Atlantic." In the unfinished story of "Brightly's Orphan"
+there is a Jew boy from Chatham Street, an original of the first water,
+who, though scarce fairly introduced, will, I am sure, make a place for
+himself and for his author in the memories of all who relish humor of
+the best kind.
+
+"Cecil Dreeme" and "Edwin Brothertoft" are quite other books than these
+we have spoken of. Here Winthrop tried a different vein,--two different
+veins, perhaps. Both are stories of suffering and crime, stories of the
+world and society. In one it is a woman, in the other a man, who is
+wronged. One deals with New York city-life of the very present day; the
+other is a story of the Revolutionary War, and of Tories and Patriots.
+The popular verdict has declared him successful, even here. "Cecil
+Dreeme" has run through no less than fifteen editions.
+
+In this story we are shown New York "society" as doubtless Winthrop knew
+it to be. Yet the book has a curious air of the Old-World; it might be a
+story of Venice, almost. It tells us of Old-World vices and crimes, and
+the fittings and furnishings are of a piece. The localities, indeed, are
+sketched so faithfully, that a stranger to the city, coming suddenly, in
+his wanderings, upon Chrysalis College Buildings, could not fail to
+recognize them at once,--as indeed happened to a country friend of mine
+recently, to his great delight. But the men are Americans, bred and
+formed--and for the most part spoiled--in Europe; Americans who have
+gone to Paris before their time, if it be true, what a witty Bostonian
+said, that good Americans go to Paris when they die. With all this, the
+book has a strange charm, so that it takes possession of you in spite of
+yourself. It is as though it drew away the curtain, for one slight
+moment, from the mysteries which "society" decorously hides,--as though
+he who drew the curtain stood beside it, pointing with solemn finger and
+silent indignation to the baseness of which he gives you a glimpse. Yet
+even here the good carries the day, and that in no maudlin way, but
+because the true men are the better men.
+
+These, then, are Winthrop's writings,--the literary works of a young man
+who died at thirty-two, and who had spent a goodly part of his mature
+life in the saddle and the canoe, exploring his own country, and in
+foreign travel. As we look at the volumes, we wonder how he found time
+for so much; but when we have read, we wonder yet more at the excellence
+of all he wrote. In all and through all shines his own noble spirit; and
+thus these books of his, whose printed pages he never saw, will keep his
+memory green amongst us; for, through them, all who read may know that
+there wrote a true gentleman.
+
+Once he wrote,--
+
+    "Let me not waste in skirmishes my power,
+    In petty struggles. Rather in the hour
+    Of deadly conflict may I nobly die,
+    In my first battle perish gloriously."
+
+Even so he fell; but in these written works, as in his gallant death, he
+left with us lessons which will yet win battles for the good cause of
+American liberty, which he held dearest in his heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+HILARY.
+
+
+                 Hilary,
+    Summer calls thee, o'er the sea!
+      Like white flowers upon the tide,
+      In and out the vessels glide;
+      But no wind on all the main
+      Sends thy blithe soul home again:
+    Every salt breeze moans for thee,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    Welcome Summer's step will be,
+      Save to those beside whose door
+      Doleful birds sit evermore
+      Singing, "Never comes he here
+      Who made every season's cheer!"
+    Dull the June that brings not thee,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    What strange world has sheltered thee?
+      Here the soil beneath thy feet
+      Rang with songs, and blossomed sweet;
+      Blue skies ask thee yet of Earth,
+      Blind and dumb without thy mirth:
+    With thee went her heart of glee,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    All things shape a sigh for thee!
+      O'er the waves, among the flowers,
+      Through the lapse of odorous hours,
+      Breathes a lonely, longing sound,
+      As of something sought, unfound:
+    Lorn are all things, lorn are we,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    Oh, to sail in quest of thee,
+      To the trade-wind's steady tune,
+      Past the hurrying monsoon,
+      Into torrid seas, that lave
+      Dry, hot sands,--a breathless grave,--
+    Sad as vain the search would be,
+                 Hilary!
+
+                 Hilary,
+    Chase the sorrow from the sea!
+      Summer-heart, bring summer near,
+      Warm, and fresh, and airy-clear!
+      --Dead thou art not: dead is pain;
+      Now Earth sees and sings again:
+    Death, to hold thee, Life must be,
+                 Hilary!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DEBBY'S DEBUT.
+
+
+On a cheery June day Mrs. Penelope Carroll and her niece Debby Wilder
+were whizzing along on their way to a certain gay watering-place, both
+in the best of humors with each other and all the world beside. Aunt Pen
+was concocting sundry mild romances, and laying harmless plots for the
+pursuance of her favorite pastime, match-making; for she had invited her
+pretty relative to join her summer jaunt, ostensibly that the girl might
+see a little of fashionable life, but the good lady secretly proposed to
+herself to take her to the beach and get her a rich husband, very much
+as she would have proposed to take her to Broadway and get her a new
+bonnet; for both articles she considered necessary, but somewhat
+difficult for a poor girl to obtain.
+
+Debby was slowly getting her poise, after the excitement of a first
+visit to New York; for ten days of bustle had introduced the young
+philosopher to a new existence, and the working-day world seemed to have
+vanished when she made her last pat of butter in the dairy at home. For
+an hour she sat thinking over the good-fortune which had befallen her,
+and the comforts of this life which she had suddenly acquired. Debby was
+a true girl,--with all a girl's love of ease and pleasure; and it must
+not be set down against her that she surveyed her pretty travelling-suit
+with much complacency, rejoicing inwardly that she could use her hands
+without exposing fractured gloves, that her bonnet was of the newest
+mode, needing no veil to hide a faded ribbon or a last year's shape,
+that her dress swept the ground with fashionable untidiness, and her
+boots were guiltless of a patch,--that she was the possessor of a mine
+of wealth in two of the eight trunks belonging to her aunt, that she was
+travelling like any lady of the land with man-and maid-servant at her
+command, and that she was leaving work and care behind her for a month
+or two of novelty and rest.
+
+When these agreeable facts were fully realized, and Aunt Pen had fallen
+asleep behind her veil, Debby took out a book, and indulged in her
+favorite luxury, soon forgetting past, present, and future in the
+inimitable history of Martin Chuzzlewit. The sun blazed, the cars
+rattled, children cried, ladies nodded, gentlemen longed for the solace
+of prohibited cigars, and newspapers were converted into sun-shades,
+nightcaps, and fans; but Debby read on, unconscious of all about her,
+even of the pair of eyes that watched her from the opposite corner of
+the car. A gentleman with a frank, strong-featured face sat therein, and
+amused himself by scanning with thoughtful gaze the countenances of his
+fellow-travellers. Stout Aunt Pen, dignified even in her sleep, was a
+"model of deportment" to the rising generation; but the student of human
+nature found a more attractive subject in her companion, the girl with
+an apple-blossom face and merry brown eyes, who sat smiling into her
+book, never heeding that her bonnet was awry, and the wind taking
+unwarrantable liberties with her ribbons and her hair.
+
+Innocent Debby turned her pages, unaware that her fate sat opposite in
+the likeness of a serious, black-bearded gentleman, who watched the
+smiles rippling from her lips to her eyes with an interest that deepened
+as the minutes passed. If his paper had been full of anything but
+"Bronchial Troches" and "Spalding's Prepared Glue," he would have found
+more profitable employment; but it wasn't, and with the usual readiness
+of idle souls he fell into evil ways, and permitted curiosity, that
+feminine sin, to enter in and take possession of his manly mind. A great
+desire seized him to discover what book so interested his pretty
+neighbor; but a cover hid the name, and he was too distant to catch it
+on the fluttering leaves. Presently a stout Emerald-Islander, with her
+wardrobe oozing out of sundry paper parcels, vacated the seat behind the
+two ladies; and it was soon quietly occupied by the individual for whom
+Satan was finding such indecorous employment. Peeping round the little
+gray bonnet, past a brown braid and a fresh cheek, the young man's eye
+fell upon the words the girl was reading, and forgot to look away again.
+Books were the desire of his life; but an honorable purpose and an
+indomitable will kept him steady at his ledgers till he could feel that
+he had earned the right to read. Like wine to many another was an open
+page to him; he read a line, and, longing for more, took a hasty sip
+from his neighbor's cup, forgetting that it was a stranger's also.
+
+Down the page went the two pairs of eyes, and the merriment from Debby's
+seemed to light up the sombre ones behind her with a sudden shine that
+softened the whole face and made it very winning. No wonder they
+twinkled, for Elijah Pogram spoke, and "Mrs. Hominy, the mother of the
+modern Gracchi, in the classical blue cap and the red cotton
+pocket-handkerchief, came down the room in a procession of one." A low
+laugh startled Debby, though it was smothered like the babes in the
+Tower; and, turning, she beheld the trespasser scarlet with confusion,
+and sobered with a tardy sense of his transgression. Debby was not a
+starched young lady of the "prune and prism" school, but a frank,
+free-hearted little body, quick to read the sincerity of others, and to
+take looks and words at their real value. Dickens was her idol; and for
+his sake she could have forgiven a greater offence than this. The
+stranger's contrite countenance and respectful apology won her good-will
+at once; and with a finer courtesy than any Aunt Pen would have taught,
+she smilingly bowed her pardon, and, taking another book from her
+basket, opened it, saying, pleasantly,--
+
+"Here is the first volume, if you like it, Sir. I can recommend it as an
+invaluable consolation for the discomforts of a summer day's journey,
+and it is heartily at your service."
+
+As much surprised as gratified, the gentleman accepted the book, and
+retired behind it with the sudden discovery that wrong-doing has its
+compensation in the pleasurable sensation of being forgiven. Stolen
+delights are well known to be specially saccharine; and much as this
+pardoned sinner loved books, it seemed to him that the interest of the
+story flagged, and that the enjoyment of reading was much enhanced by
+the proximity of a gray bonnet and a girlish profile. But Dickens soon
+proved more powerful than Debby, and she was forgotten, till, pausing to
+turn a leaf, the young man met her shy glance, as she asked, with the
+pleased expression of a child who has shared an apple with a playmate,--
+
+"Is it good?"
+
+"Oh, very!"--and the man looked as honestly grateful for the book as the
+boy would have done for the apple.
+
+Only five words in the conversation, but Aunt Pen woke, as if the
+watchful spirit of propriety had roused her to pluck her charge from the
+precipice on which she stood.
+
+"Dora, I'm astonished at you! Speaking to strangers in that free manner
+is a most unladylike thing. How came you to forget what I have told you
+over and over again about a proper reserve?"
+
+The energetic whisper reached the gentleman's ear, and he expected to be
+annihilated with a look when his offence was revealed; but he was spared
+that ordeal, for the young voice answered, softly,--
+
+"Don't faint, Aunt Pen; I only did as I'd be done by; for I had two
+books, and the poor man looked so hungry for something to read that I
+couldn't resist sharing my 'goodies.' He will see that I'm a countrified
+little thing in spite of my fine feathers, and won't be shocked at my
+want of rigidity and frigidity; so don't look dismal, and I'll be prim
+and proper all the rest of the way,--if I don't forget it."
+
+"I wonder who he is; may belong to some of our first families, and in
+that case it might be worth while to exert ourselves, you know. Did you
+learn his name, Dora?" whispered the elder lady.
+
+Debby shook her head, and murmured, "Hush!"--but Aunt Pen had heard of
+matches being made in cars as well as in heaven; and as an experienced
+general, it became her to reconnoitre, when one of the enemy approached
+her camp. Slightly altering her position, she darted an
+all-comprehensive glance at the invader, who seemed entirely absorbed,
+for not an eyelash stirred during the scrutiny. It lasted but an
+instant, yet in that instant he was weighed and found wanting; for that
+experienced eye detected that his cravat was two inches wider than
+fashion ordained, that his coat was not of the latest style, that his
+gloves were mended, and his handkerchief neither cambric nor silk. That
+was enough, and sentence was passed forthwith,--"Some respectable clerk,
+good-looking, but poor, and not at all the thing for Dora"; and Aunt Pen
+turned to adjust a voluminous green veil over her niece's bonnet, "To
+shield it from the dust, dear," which process also shielded the face
+within from the eye of man.
+
+A curious smile, half mirthful, half melancholy, passed over their
+neighbor's lips; but his peace of mind seemed undisturbed, and he
+remained buried in his book till they reached ----, at dusk. As he
+returned it, he offered his services in procuring a carriage or
+attending to luggage; but Mrs. Carroll, with much dignity of aspect,
+informed him that her servants would attend to those matters, and,
+bowing gravely, he vanished into the night.
+
+As they rolled away to the hotel, Debby was wild to run down to the
+beach whence came the solemn music of the sea, making the twilight
+beautiful. But Aunt Pen was too tired to do anything but sup in her own
+apartment and go early to bed; and Debby might as soon have proposed to
+walk up the Great Pyramid as to make her first appearance without that
+sage matron to mount guard over her; so she resigned herself to pie and
+patience, and fell asleep, wishing it were to-morrow.
+
+At five, A.M., a nightcapped head appeared at one of the myriad windows
+of the ---- Hotel, and remained there as if fascinated by the miracle of
+sunrise over the sea. Under her simplicity of character and girlish
+merriment Debby possessed a devout spirit and a nature full of the real
+poetry of life, two gifts that gave her dawning womanhood its sweetest
+charm, and made her what she was. As she looked out that summer dawn
+upon the royal marriage of the ocean and the sun, all petty hopes and
+longings faded out of sight, and her young face grew luminous with
+thoughts too deep for words. Her day was happier for that silent hour,
+her life richer for the aspirations that uplifted her like beautiful
+strong angels, and left a blessing when they went. The smile of the June
+sky touched her lips, the morning red seemed to linger on her cheek, and
+in her eye arose a light kindled by the shimmer of that broad sea of
+gold; for Nature rewarded her young votary well, and gave her beauty,
+when she offered love. How long she leaned there Debby did not know;
+steps from below roused her from her reverie, and led her back into the
+world again. Smiling at herself, she stole to bed, and lay wrapped in
+waking dreams as changeful as the shadows dancing on her chamber-wall.
+
+The advent of her aunt's maid, Victorine, some two hours later, was the
+signal to be "up and doing"; and she meekly resigned herself into the
+hands of that functionary, who appeared to regard her in the light of an
+animated pin-cushion, as she performed the toilet-ceremonies with an
+absorbed aspect, which impressed her subject with a sense of the
+solemnity of the occasion.
+
+"Now, Mademoiselle, regard yourself, and pronounce that you are
+ravishing," Victorine said at length, folding her hands with a sigh of
+satisfaction, as she fell back in an attitude of serene triumph.
+
+Debby obeyed, and inspected herself with great interest and some
+astonishment; for there was a sweeping amplitude of array about the
+young lady whom she beheld in the much-befrilled gown and embroidered
+skirts, which somewhat alarmed her as to the navigation of a vessel
+"with such a spread of sail," while a curious sensation of being
+somebody else pervaded her from the crown of her head, with its shining
+coils of hair, to the soles of the French slippers, whose energies
+seemed to have been devoted to the production of marvellous rosettes.
+
+"Yes, I look very nice, thank you; and yet I feel like a doll, helpless
+and fine, and fancy I was more of a woman in my fresh gingham, with a
+knot of clovers in my hair, than I am now. Aunt Pen was very kind to get
+me all these pretty things; but I'm afraid my mother would look
+horrified to see me in such a high state of flounce externally and so
+little room to breathe internally."
+
+"Your mamma would not flatter me, Mademoiselle; but come now to Madame;
+she is waiting to behold you, and I have yet her toilet to make"; and,
+with a pitying shrug, Victorine followed Debby to her aunt's room.
+
+"Charming! really elegant!" cried that lady, emerging from her towel
+with a rubicund visage. "Drop that braid half an inch lower, and pull
+the worked end of her handkerchief out of the right-hand pocket, Vic.
+There! Now, Dora, don't run about and get rumpled, but sit quietly down
+and practise repose till I am ready."
+
+Debby obeyed, and sat mute, with the air of a child in its Sunday-best
+on a week-day, pleased with the novelty, but somewhat oppressed with the
+responsibility of such unaccustomed splendor, and utterly unable to
+connect any ideas of repose with tight shoes and skirts in a rampant
+state of starch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, you see, I bet on Lady Gay against Cockadoodle, and if you'll
+believe me--Hullo! there's Mrs. Carroll, and deuse take me if she hasn't
+got a girl with her! Look, Seguin!"--and Joe Leavenworth, a "man of the
+world," aged twenty, paused in his account of an exciting race to make
+the announcement.
+
+Mr. Seguin, his friend and Mentor, as much his senior in worldly
+wickedness as in years, tore himself from his breakfast long enough to
+survey the new-comers, and then returned to it, saying, briefly,--
+
+"The old lady is worth cultivating,--gives good suppers, and thanks you
+for eating them. The girl is well got up, but has no style, and blushes
+like a milk-maid. Better fight shy of her, Joe."
+
+"Do you think so? Well, now I rather fancy that kind of thing. She's
+new, you see, and I get on with that sort of girl the best, for the old
+ones are so deused knowing that a fellow has no chance of a--By the Lord
+Harry, she's eating bread and milk!"
+
+Young Leavenworth whisked his glass into his eye, and Mr. Seguin put
+down his roll to behold the phenomenon. Poor Debby! her first step had
+been a wrong one.
+
+All great minds have their weak points. Aunt Pen's was her breakfast,
+and the peace of her entire day depended upon the success of that meal.
+Therefore, being down rather late, the worthy lady concentrated her
+energies upon the achievement of a copious repast, and, trusting to
+former lessons, left Debby to her own resources for a few fatal moments.
+After the flutter occasioned by being scooped into her seat by a
+severe-nosed waiter, Debby had only courage enough left to refuse tea
+and coffee and accept milk. That being done, she took the first familiar
+viand that appeared, and congratulated herself upon being able to get
+her usual breakfast. With returning composure, she looked about her and
+began to enjoy the buzz of voices, the clatter of knives and forks, and
+the long lines of faces all intent upon the business of the hour; but
+her peace was of short duration. Pausing for a fresh relay of toast,
+Aunt Pen glanced toward her niece with the comfortable conviction that
+her appearance was highly creditable; and her dismay can be imagined,
+when she beheld that young lady placidly devouring a great cup of
+brown-bread and milk before the eyes of the assembled multitude. The
+poor lady choked in her coffee, and between her gasps whispered irefully
+behind her napkin,--
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Dora, put away that mess! The Ellenboroughs are
+directly opposite, watching everything you do. Eat that omelet, or
+anything respectable, unless you want me to die of mortification."
+
+Debby dropped her spoon, and, hastily helping herself from the dish her
+aunt pushed toward her, consumed the leathery compound with as much
+grace as she could assume, though unable to repress a laugh at Aunt
+Pen's disturbed countenance. There was a slight lull in the clatter, and
+the blithe sound caused several heads to turn toward the quarter whence
+it came, for it was as unexpected and pleasant a sound as a bobolink's
+song in a cage of shrill-voiced canaries.
+
+"She's a jolly little thing and powerful pretty, so deuse take me if I
+don't make up to the old lady and find out who the girl is. I've been
+introduced to Mrs. Carroll at our house; but I suppose she won't
+remember me till I remind her."
+
+The "deuse" declining to accept of his repeated offers, (probably
+because there was still too much honor and honesty in the boy,) young
+Leavenworth sought out Mrs. Carroll on the piazza, as she and Debby were
+strolling there an hour later.
+
+"Joe Leavenworth, my dear, from one of our first families,--very
+wealthy,--fine match,--pray, be civil,--smooth your hair, hold back your
+shoulders, and put down your parasol," murmured Aunt Pen, as the
+gentleman approached with as much pleasure in his countenance as it was
+consistent with manly dignity to express upon meeting two of the
+inferior race.
+
+"My niece, Miss Dora Wilder. This is her first season at the beach, and
+we must endeavor to make it pleasant for her, or she will be getting
+homesick and running away to mamma," said Aunt Pen, in her society-tone,
+after she had returned his greeting, and perpetrated a polite fiction,
+by declaring that she remembered him perfectly, for he was the image of
+his father.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth brought the heels of his varnished boots together with a
+click, and executed the latest bow imported, then stuck his glass in his
+eye and stared till it fell out, (the glass, not the eye,) upon which he
+fell into step with them, remarking,--
+
+"I shall be most happy to show the lions: they are deused tame ones, so
+you needn't be alarmed, Miss Wilder."
+
+Debby was good-natured enough to laugh; and, elated with that success,
+he proceeded to pour forth his stores of wit and learning in true
+collegian style, quite unconscious that the "jolly little thing" was
+looking him through and through with the smiling eyes that were
+producing such pleasurable sensations under the mosaic studs. They
+strolled toward the beach, and, meeting an old acquaintance, Aunt Pen
+fell behind, and beamed upon the young pair as if her prophetic eye even
+at this early stage beheld them walking altarward in a proper state of
+blond white vest and bridal awkwardness.
+
+"Can you skip a stone, Mr. Leavenworth?" asked Debby, possessed with a
+mischievous desire to shock the piece of elegance at her side.
+
+"Eh? what's that?" he inquired, with his head on one side, like an
+inquisitive robin.
+
+Debby repeated her question, and illustrated it by sending a stone
+skimming over the water in the most scientific manner. Mr. Joe was
+painfully aware that this was not at all "the thing," that his sisters
+never did so, and that Seguin would laugh confoundedly, if he caught him
+at it; but Debby looked so irresistibly fresh and pretty under her
+rose-lined parasol that he was moved to confess that he _had_ done such
+a thing, and to sacrifice his gloves by poking in the sand, that he
+might indulge in a like unfashionable pastime.
+
+"You'll be at the hop tonight, I hope, Miss Wilder," he observed,
+introducing a topic suited to a young lady's mental capacity.
+
+"Yes, indeed; for dancing is one of the joys of my life, next to husking
+and making hay"; and Debby polked a few steps along the beach, much to
+the edification of a pair of old gentlemen, serenely taking their first
+"constitutional."
+
+"Making what?" cried Mr. Joe, polking after her.
+
+"Hay; ah, that is the pleasantest fun in the world,--and better
+exercise, my mother says, for soul and body, than dancing till dawn in
+crowded rooms, with everything in a state of unnatural excitement. If
+one wants real merriment, let him go into a new-mown field, where all
+the air is full of summer odors, where wild-flowers nod along the walls,
+where blackbirds make finer music than any band, and sun and wind and
+cheery voices do their part, while windrows rise, and great loads go
+rumbling through the lanes with merry brown faces atop. Yes, much as I
+like dancing, it is not to be compared with that; for in the one case we
+shut out the lovely world, and in the other we become a part of it, till
+by its magic labor turns to poetry, and we harvest something better than
+dried buttercups and grass."
+
+As she spoke, Debby looked up, expecting to meet a glance of
+disapproval; but something in the simple earnestness of her manner had
+recalled certain boyish pleasures as innocent as they were hearty, which
+now contrasted very favorably with the later pastimes in which fast
+horses, and that lower class of animals, fast men, bore so large a part.
+Mr. Joe thoughtfully punched five holes in the sand, and for a moment
+Debby liked the expression of his face; then the old listlessness
+returned, and, looking up, he said, with an air of _ennui_ that was half
+sad, half ludicrous, in one so young and so generously endowed with
+youth, health, and the good gifts of this life,--
+
+"I used to fancy that sort of thing years ago, but I'm afraid I should
+find it a little slow now, though you describe it in such an inviting
+manner that I should be tempted to try it, if a hay-cock came in my way;
+for, upon my life, it's deused heavy work loafing about at these
+watering-places all summer. Between ourselves, there's a deal of humbug
+about this kind of life, as you will find, when you've tried it as long
+as I have."
+
+"Yes, I begin to think so already; but perhaps you can give me a few
+friendly words of warning from the stores of your experience, that I may
+be spared the pain of saying what so many look,--'Grandma, the world is
+hollow; my doll is stuffed with sawdust; and I should like to go into a
+convent, if you please.'"
+
+Debby's eyes were dancing with merriment; but they were demurely
+downcast, and her voice was perfectly serious.
+
+The milk of human kindness had been slightly curdled for Mr. Joe by
+sundry college-tribulations; and having been "suspended," he very
+naturally vibrated between the inborn jollity of his temperament and the
+bitterness occasioned by his wrongs. He had lost at billiards the night
+before, had been hurried at breakfast, had mislaid his cigar-case, and
+splashed his boots; consequently the darker mood prevailed that morning,
+and when his counsel was asked, he gave it like one who had known the
+heaviest trials of this "Piljin Projiss of a wale."
+
+"There's no justice in the world, no chance for us young people to enjoy
+ourselves, without some penalty to pay, some drawback to worry us like
+these confounded 'all-rounders.' Even here, where all seems free and
+easy, there's no end of gossips and spies who tattle and watch till you
+feel as if you lived in a lantern. 'Every one for himself, and the Devil
+take the hindmost': that's the principle they go on, and you have to
+keep your wits about you in the most exhausting manner, or you are done
+for before you know it. I've seen a good deal of this sort of thing, and
+hope you'll get on better than some do, when it's known that you are the
+rich Mrs. Carroll's niece; though you don't need that fact to enhance
+your charms,--upon my life, you don't."
+
+Debby laughed behind her parasol at this burst of candor; but her
+independent nature prompted her to make a fair beginning, in spite of
+Aunt Pen's polite fictions and well-meant plans.
+
+"Thank you for your warning, but I don't apprehend much annoyance of
+that kind," she said, demurely. "Do you know, I think, if young ladies
+were truthfully labelled when they went into society, it would be a
+charming fashion, and save a world of trouble? Something in this
+style:--'Arabella Marabout, aged nineteen, fortune $100,000, temper
+warranted'; 'Laura Eau-de-Cologne, aged twenty-eight, fortune $30,000,
+temper slightly damaged'; 'Deborah Wilder, aged eighteen, fortune, one
+pair of hands, one head, indifferently well filled, one heart, (not in
+the market,) temper decided, and _no expectations_.' There, you see,
+that would do away with much of the humbug you lament, and we poor
+souls would know at once whether we were sought for our fortunes or
+ourselves, and that would be so comfortable!"
+
+Mr. Leavenworth turned away, with a convicted sort of expression, as she
+spoke, and, making a spyglass of his hand, seemed to be watching
+something out at sea with absorbing interest. He had been guilty of a
+strong desire to discover whether Debby was an heiress, but had not
+expected to be so entirely satisfied on that important subject, and was
+dimly conscious that a keen eye had seen his anxiety, and a quick wit
+devised a means of setting it at rest forever. Somewhat disconcerted, he
+suddenly changed the conversation, and, like many another distressed
+creature, took to the water, saying briskly,--
+
+"By-the-by, Miss Wilder, as I've engaged to do the honors, shall I have
+the pleasure of bathing with you when the fun begins? As you are fond of
+haymaking, I suppose you intend to pay your respects to the old
+gentleman with the three-pronged pitchfork?"
+
+"Yes, Aunt Pen means to put me through a course of salt water, and any
+instructions in the art of navigation will be gratefully received; for I
+never saw the ocean before, and labor under a firm conviction, that,
+once in, I never shall come out again till I am brought, like Mr.
+Mantilini, a 'damp, moist, unpleasant body.'"
+
+As Debby spoke, Mrs. Carroll hove in sight, coming down before the wind
+with all sails set, and signals of distress visible long before she
+dropped anchor and came along-side. The devoted woman had been strolling
+slowly for the girl's sake, though oppressed with a mournful certainty
+that her most prominent feature was fast becoming a fine copper-color;
+yet she had sustained herself like a Spartan matron, till it suddenly
+occurred to her that her charge might be suffering a like
+
+                        "sea-change
+    Into something rich and strange."
+
+Her fears, however, were groundless, for Debby met her without a
+freckle, looking all the better for her walk; and though her feet were
+wet with chasing the waves, and her pretty gown the worse for salt
+water, Aunt Pen never chid her for the destruction of her raiment, nor
+uttered a warning word against an unladylike exuberance of spirits, but
+replied to her inquiry most graciously,--
+
+"Certainly, my love, we shall bathe at eleven, and there will be just
+time to get Victorine and our dresses; so run on to the house, and I
+will join you as soon as I have finished what I am saying to Mrs.
+Earle,"--then added, in a stage-aside, as she put a fallen lock off the
+girl's forehead, "You are doing beautifully! He is evidently struck;
+make yourself interesting, and don't burn your nose, I beg of you."
+
+Debby's bright face clouded over, and she walked on with so much
+stateliness that her escort wondered "what the deuse the old lady had
+done to her," and exerted himself to the utmost to recall her merry
+mood, but with indifferent success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now I begin to feel more like myself, for this is getting back to first
+principles, though I fancy I look like the little old woman who fell
+asleep on the king's highway and woke up with abbreviated drapery; and
+you look funnier still, Aunt Pen," said Debby, as she tied on her
+pagoda-hat, and followed Mrs. Carroll, who walked out of her
+dressing-room an animated bale of blue cloth surmounted by a gigantic
+sun-bonnet.
+
+Mr. Leavenworth was in waiting, and so like a blond-headed lobster in
+his scarlet suit that Debby could hardly keep her countenance as they
+joined the groups of bathers gathering along the breezy shore.
+
+For an hour each day the actors and actresses who played their different
+_roles_ at the ---- Hotel with such precision and success put off their
+masks and dared to be themselves. The ocean wrought the change, for it
+took old and young into its arms, and for a little while they played
+like children in their mother's lap. No falsehood could withstand its
+rough sincerity; for the waves washed paint and powder from worn faces,
+and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its
+vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing
+many a meagre life with another year of health. No gloomy spirit could
+refuse to listen to its lullaby, and the spray baptized it with the
+subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. No rank held place there; for
+the democratic sea toppled down the greatest statesman in the land, and
+dashed over the bald pate of a millionnaire with the same white-crested
+wave that stranded a poor parson on the beach and filled a fierce
+reformer's mouth with brine. No fashion ruled, but that which is as old
+as Eden,--the beautiful fashion of simplicity. Belles dropped their
+affectations with their hoops, and ran about the shore blithe-hearted
+girls again. Young men forgot their vices and their follies, and were
+not ashamed of the real courage, strength, and skill they had tried to
+leave behind them with their boyish plays. Old men gathered shells with
+the little Cupids dancing on the sand, and were better for that innocent
+companionship; and young mothers never looked so beautiful as when they
+rocked their babies on the bosom of the sea.
+
+Debby vaguely felt this charm, and, yielding to it, splashed and sang
+like any beach-bird, while Aunt Pen bobbed placidly up and down in a
+retired corner, and Mr. Leavenworth swam to and fro, expressing his firm
+belief in mermaids, sirens, and the rest of the aquatic sisterhood,
+whose warbling no manly ear can resist.
+
+"Miss Wilder, you must learn to swim. I've taught quantities of young
+ladies, and shall be delighted to launch the 'Dora,' if you'll accept me
+as a pilot. Stop a bit; I'll get a life-preserver"; and leaving Debby to
+flirt with the waves, the scarlet youth departed like a flame of fire.
+
+A dismal shriek interrupted his pupil's play, and looking up, she saw
+her aunt beckoning wildly with one hand, while she was groping in the
+water with the other. Debby ran to her, alarmed at her tragic
+expression, and Mrs. Carroll, drawing the girl's face into the privacy
+of her big bonnet, whispered one awful word, adding, distractedly,--
+
+"Dive for them! oh, dive for them! I shall be perfectly helpless, if
+they are lost!"
+
+"I can't dive, Aunt Pen; but there is a man, let us ask him," said
+Debby, as a black head appeared to windward.
+
+But Mrs. Carroll's "nerves" had received a shock, and, gathering up her
+dripping garments, she fled precipitately along the shore and vanished
+into her dressing-room.
+
+Debby's keen sense of the ludicrous got the better of her respect, and
+peal after peal of laughter broke from her lips, till a splash behind
+her put an end to her merriment, and, turning, she found that this
+friend in need was her acquaintance of the day before. The gentleman
+seemed pausing for permission to approach, with much the appearance of a
+sagacious Newfoundland, wistful and wet.
+
+"Oh, I'm very glad it's you, Sir!" was Debby's cordial greeting, as she
+shook a drop off the end of her nose, and nodded, smiling.
+
+The new comer immediately beamed upon her like an amiable Triton,
+saying, as they turned shoreward,--
+
+"Our first interview opened with a laugh on my side, and our second with
+one on yours. I accept the fact as a good omen. Your friend seemed in
+trouble; allow me to atone for my past misdemeanors by offering my
+services now. But first let me introduce myself; and as I believe in the
+fitness of things, let me present you with an appropriate card"; and,
+stooping, the young man wrote "Frank Evan" on the hard sand at Debby's
+feet.
+
+The girl liked his manner, and, entering into the spirit of the thing,
+swept as grand a curtsy as her limited drapery would allow, saying,
+merrily,--
+
+"I am Debby Wilder, or Dora, as aunt prefers to call me; and instead of
+laughing, I ought to be four feet under water, looking for something we
+have lost; but I can't dive, and my distress is dreadful, as you see."
+
+"What have you lost? I will look for it, and bring it back in spite of
+the kelpies, if it is a human possibility," replied Mr. Evan, pushing
+his wet locks out of his eyes, and regarding the ocean with a determined
+aspect.
+
+Debby leaned toward him, whispering with solemn countenance,--
+
+"It is a set of teeth, Sir."
+
+Mr. Evan was more a man of deeds than words, therefore he disappeared at
+once with a mighty splash, and after repeated divings and much laughter
+appeared bearing the chief ornament of Mrs. Penelope Carroll's comely
+countenance. Debby looked very pretty and grateful as she returned her
+thanks, and Mr. Evan was guilty of a secret wish that all the worthy
+lady's features were at the bottom of the sea, that he might have the
+satisfaction of restoring them to her attractive niece; but curbing this
+unnatural desire, he bowed, saying, gravely,--
+
+"Tell your aunt, if you please, that this little accident will remain a
+dead secret, so far as I am concerned, and I am very glad to have been
+of service at such a critical moment."
+
+Whereupon Mr. Evan marched again into the briny deep, and Debby trotted
+away to her aunt, whom she found a clammy heap of blue flannel and
+despair. Mrs. Carroll's temper was ruffled, and though she joyfully
+rattled in her teeth, she said, somewhat testily, when Debby's story was
+done,--
+
+"Now that man will have a sort of claim on us, and we must be civil,
+whoever he is. Dear! dear! I wish it had been Joe Leavenworth instead.
+Evan,--I don't remember any of our first families with connections of
+that name, and I dislike to be under obligations to a person of that
+sort, for there's no knowing how far he may presume; so, pray, be
+careful, Dora."
+
+"I think you are very ungrateful, Aunt Pen; and if Mr. Evan should
+happen to be poor, it does not become me to turn up my nose at him, for
+I'm nothing but a make-believe myself just now. I don't wish to go down
+upon my knees to him, but I do intend to be as kind to him as I should
+to that conceited Leavenworth boy; yes, kinder even; for poor people
+value such things more, as I know very well."
+
+Mrs. Carroll instantly recovered her temper, changed the subject, and
+privately resolved to confine her prejudices to her own bosom, as they
+seemed to have an aggravating effect upon the youthful person whom she
+had set her heart on disposing of to the best advantage.
+
+Debby took her swimming-lesson with much success, and would have
+achieved her dinner with composure, if white-aproned gentlemen had not
+effectually taken away her appetite by whisking bills-of-fare into her
+hands, and awaiting her orders with a fatherly interest, which induced
+them to congregate mysterious dishes before her, and blandly rectify
+her frequent mistakes. She survived the ordeal, however, and at four
+P.M. went to drive with "that Leavenworth boy" in the finest turnout
+---- could produce. Aunt Pen then came off guard, and with a sigh of
+satisfaction subsided into a peaceful doze, still murmuring, even in
+her sleep,--
+
+"Propinquity, my love, propinquity works wonders."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Aunt Pen, are you a modest woman?" asked the young crusader against
+established absurdities, as she came into the presence-chamber that
+evening ready for the hop.
+
+"Bless the child, what does she mean?" cried Mrs. Carroll, with a start
+that twitched her back-hair out of Victorine's hands.
+
+"Would you like to have a daughter of yours go to a party looking as I
+look?" continued her niece, spreading her airy dress, and standing very
+erect before her astonished relative.
+
+"Why, of course I should, and be proud to own such a charming
+creature," regarding the slender white shape with much
+approbation,--adding, with a smile, as she met the girl's eye,--
+
+"Ah, I see the difficulty, now; you are disturbed because there is not a
+bit of lace over these pretty shoulders of yours. Now don't be absurd,
+Dora; the dress is perfectly proper, or Madame Tiphany never would have
+sent it home. It is the fashion, child; and many a girl with such a
+figure would go twice as _decolletee_, and think nothing of it, I assure
+you."
+
+Debby shook her head with an energy that set the pink heather-bells
+a-tremble in her hair, and her color deepened beautifully as she said,
+with reproachful eyes,--
+
+"Aunt Pen, I think there is a better fashion in every young girl's heart
+than any Madame Tiphany can teach. I am very grateful for all you have
+done for me, but I cannot go into public in such an undress as this; my
+mother would never allow it, and father never forgive it. Please don't
+ask me to, for indeed I cannot do it even for you."
+
+Debby looked so pathetic that both mistress and maid broke into a laugh
+which, somewhat reassured the young lady, who allowed her determined
+features to relax into a smile, as she said,--
+
+"Now, Aunt Pen, you want me to look pretty and be a credit to you; but
+how would you like to see my face the color of those geraniums all the
+evening?"
+
+"Why, Dora, you are out of your mind to ask such a thing, when you know
+it's the desire of my life to keep your color down and make you look
+more delicate," said her aunt, alarmed at the fearful prospect of a
+peony-faced _protegee_.
+
+"Well, I should be anything but that, if I wore this gown in its present
+waistless condition; so here is a remedy which will prevent such a
+calamity and ease my mind."
+
+As she spoke, Debby tied on her little _blonde fichu_ with a gesture
+which left nothing more to be said.
+
+Victorine scolded, and clasped her hands; but Mrs. Carroll, fearing to
+push her authority too far, made a virtue of necessity, saying,
+resignedly,--
+
+"Have your own way, Dora, but in return oblige me by being agreeable to
+such persons as I may introduce to you; and some day, when I ask a
+favor, remember how much I hope to do for you, and grant it cheerfully."
+
+"Indeed I will, Aunt Pen, if it is anything I can do without disobeying
+mother's 'notions', as you call them. Ask me to wear an orange-colored
+gown, or dance with the plainest, poorest man in the room, and I'll do
+it; for there never was a kinder aunt than mine in all the world," cried
+Debby, eager to atone for her seeming wilfulness, and really grateful
+for her escape from what seemed to her benighted mind a very imminent
+peril.
+
+Like a clover-blossom in a vase of camellias little Debby looked that
+night among the dashing or languid women who surrounded her; for she
+possessed the charm they had lost,--the freshness of her youth. Innocent
+gayety sat smiling in her eyes, healthful roses bloomed upon her cheek,
+and maiden modesty crowned her like a garland. She _was_ the creature
+that she seemed, and, yielding to the influence of the hour, danced to
+the music of her own blithe heart. Many felt the spell whose secret they
+had lost the power to divine, and watched the girlish figure as if it
+were a symbol of their early aspirations dawning freshly from the
+dimness of their past. More than one old man thought again of some
+little maid whose love made his boyish days a pleasant memory to him
+now. More than one smiling fop felt the emptiness of his smooth speech,
+when the truthful eyes looked up into his own; and more than one pale
+woman sighed regretfully within herself, "I, too, was a happy-hearted
+creature once!"
+
+"That Mr. Evan does not seem very anxious to claim our acquaintance,
+after all, and I think better of him on that account. Has he spoken to
+you tonight, Dora?" asked Mrs. Carroll, as Debby dropped down beside her
+after a "splendid polka."
+
+"No, Ma'am, he only bowed. You see some people are not so presuming as
+other people thought they were; for we are not the most attractive
+beings on the planet; therefore a gentleman can be polite and then
+forget us without breaking any of the Ten Commandments. Don't be
+offended with him yet, for he may prove to be some great creature with a
+finer pedigree than any of 'our first families.' Mr. Leavenworth, as you
+know everybody, perhaps you can relieve Aunt Pen's mind, by telling her
+something about the tall, brown man standing behind the lady with
+salmon-colored hair."
+
+Mr. Joe, who was fanning the top of Debby's head with the best
+intentions in life, took a survey, and answered readily,--
+
+"Why, that's Frank Evan. I know him, and a deused good fellow he
+is,--though he don't belong to our set, you know."
+
+"Indeed! pray, tell us something about him, Mr. Leavenworth. We met in
+the cars, and he did us a favor or two. Who and what is the man?" asked
+Mrs. Carroll, relenting at once toward a person who was favorably spoken
+of by one who did belong to her "set."
+
+"Well, let me see," began Mr. Joe, whose narrative powers were not
+great. "He is a book-keeper in my Uncle Josh Loring's importing concern,
+and a powerful smart man, they say. There's some kind of clever story
+about his father's leaving a load of debts, and Frank's working a deused
+number of years till they were paid. Good of him, wasn't it? Then, just
+as he was going to take things easier and enjoy life a bit, his mother
+died, and that rather knocked him up, you see. He fell sick, and came to
+grief generally, Uncle Josh said; so he was ordered off to get righted,
+and here he is, looking like a tombstone. I've a regard for Frank, for
+he took care of me through the smallpox a year ago, and I don't forget
+things of that sort; so, if you wish to be introduced, Mrs. Carroll,
+I'll trot him out with pleasure, and make a proud man of him."
+
+Mrs. Carroll glanced at Debby, and as that young lady was regarding Mr.
+Joe with a friendly aspect, owing to the warmth of his words, she
+graciously assented, and the youth departed on his errand. Mr. Evan went
+through the ceremony with a calmness wonderful to behold, considering
+the position of one lady and the charms of the other, and soon glided
+into the conversation with the ease of a more accomplished courtier.
+
+"Now I must tear myself away, for I'm engaged to that stout Miss
+Bandoline for this dance. She 's a friend of my sister's, and I must do
+the civil, you know; powerful slow work it is, too, but I pity the poor
+soul,--upon my life, I do"; and Mr. Joe assumed the air of a martyr.
+
+Debby looked up with a wicked smile in her eyes, as she said,--
+
+"Ah, that sounds very amiable here; but in five minutes you'll be
+murmuring in Miss Bandoline's ear,--'I've been pining to come to you
+this half hour, but I was obliged to take out that Miss Wilder, you
+see,--countrified little thing enough, but not bad-looking, and has a
+rich aunt; so I've done my duty to her, but deuse take me if I can stand
+it any longer.'"
+
+Mr. Evan joined in Debby's merriment; but Mr. Joe was so appalled at the
+sudden attack that he could only stammer a remonstrance and beat a hasty
+retreat, wondering how on earth she came to know that his favorite style
+of making himself agreeable to one young lady was by decrying another.
+
+"Dora, my love, that is very rude, and 'Deuse' is not a proper
+expression for a woman's lips. Pray, restrain your lively tongue, for
+strangers may not understand that it is nothing but the sprightliness of
+your disposition which sometimes runs away with you."
+
+"It was only a quotation, and I thought you would admire anything Mr.
+Leavenworth said, Aunt Pen," replied Debby, demurely.
+
+Mrs. Carroll trod on her foot, and abruptly changed the conversation, by
+saying, with an appearance of deep interest,--
+
+"Mr. Evan, you are doubtless connected with the Malcoms of Georgia; for
+they, I believe, are descended from the ancient Evans of Scotland. They
+are a very wealthy and aristocratic family, and I remember seeing their
+coat-of-arms once: three bannocks and a thistle."
+
+Mr. Evan had been standing before them with a composure which impressed
+Mrs. Carroll with a belief in his gentle blood, for she remembered her
+own fussy, plebeian husband, whose fortune had never been able to
+purchase him the manners of a gentleman. Mr. Evan only grew a little
+more erect, as he replied, with an untroubled mien,--
+
+"I cannot claim relationship with the Malcoms of Georgia or the Evans of
+Scotland, I believe, Madam. My father was a farmer, my grandfather a
+blacksmith, and beyond that my ancestors may have been street-sweepers,
+for anything I know; but whatever they were, I fancy they were honest
+men, for that has always been our boast, though, like President
+Jackson's, our coat-of-arms is nothing but 'a pair of shirt-sleeves.'"
+
+From Debby's eyes there shot a bright glance of admiration for the young
+man who could look two comely women in the face and serenely own that he
+was poor. Mrs. Carroll tried to appear at ease, and, gliding out of
+personalities, expatiated on the comfort of "living in a land where fame
+and fortune were attainable by all who chose to earn them," and the
+contempt she felt for those "who had no sympathy with the humbler
+classes, no interest in the welfare of the race," and many more moral
+reflections as new and original as the Multiplication-Table or the
+Westminster Catechism. To all of which Mr. Evan listened with polite
+deference, though there was something in the keen intelligence of his
+eye that made Debby blush for shallow Aunt Pen, and rejoice when the
+good lady got out of her depth and seized upon a new subject as a
+drowning mariner would a hen-coop.
+
+"Dora, Mr. Ellenborough is coming this way; you have danced with him but
+once, and he is a very desirable partner; so, pray, accept, if he asks
+you," said Mrs. Carroll, watching a far-off individual who seemed
+steering his zigzag course toward them.
+
+"I never intend to dance with Mr. Ellenborough again, so please don't
+urge me, Aunt Pen"; and Debby knit her brows with a somewhat irate
+expression.
+
+"My love, you astonish me! He is a most agreeable and accomplished young
+man,--spent three years in Paris, moves in the first circles, and is
+considered an ornament to fashionable society. What _can_ be your
+objection, Dora?" cried Mrs. Carroll, looking as alarmed as if her niece
+had suddenly announced her belief in the Koran.
+
+"One of his accomplishments consists in drinking Champagne till he is
+not a 'desirable partner' for any young lady with a prejudice in favor
+of decency. His moving in 'circles' is just what I complain of; and if
+he is an ornament, I prefer my society undecorated. Aunt Pen, I cannot
+make the nice distinctions you would have me, and a sot in broadcloth is
+as odious as one in rags. Forgive me, but I cannot dance with that
+silver-labelled decanter again."
+
+Debby was a genuine little piece of womanhood; and though she tried to
+speak lightly, her color deepened, as she remembered looks that had
+wounded her like insults, and her indignant eyes silenced the excuses
+rising to her aunt's lips. Mrs. Carroll began to rue the hour she ever
+undertook the guidance of Sister Deborah's headstrong child, and for an
+instant heartily wished she had left her to bloom unseen in the shadow
+of the parsonage; but she concealed her annoyance, still hoping to
+overcome the girl's absurd resolve, by saying, mildly,--
+
+"As you please, dear; but if you refuse Mr. Ellenborough, you will be
+obliged to sit through the dance, which is your favorite, you know."
+
+Debby's countenance fell, for she had forgotten that, and the Lancers
+was to her the crowning rapture of the night. She paused a moment, and
+Aunt Pen brightened; but Debby made her little sacrifice to principle
+as heroically as many a greater one had been made, and, with a wistful
+look down the long room, answered steadily, though her foot kept time to
+the first strains as she spoke,--
+
+"Then I will sit, Aunt Pen; for that is preferable to staggering about
+the room with a partner who has no idea of the laws of gravitation."
+
+"Shall I have the honor of averting either calamity?" said Mr. Evan,
+coming to the rescue with a devotion beautiful to see; for dancing was
+nearly a lost art with him, and the Lancers to a novice is equal to a
+second Labyrinth of Crete.
+
+"Oh, thank you!" cried Debby, tumbling fan, bouquet, and handkerchief
+into Mrs. Carroll's lap, with a look of relief that repaid him fourfold
+for the trials he was about to undergo. They went merrily away together,
+leaving Aunt Pen to wish that it was according to the laws of etiquette
+to rap officious gentlemen over the knuckles, when they introduce their
+fingers into private pies without permission from the chief cook. How
+the dance went Debby hardly knew, for the conversation fell upon books,
+and in the interest of her favorite theme she found even the "grand
+square" an impertinent interruption, while her own deficiencies became
+almost as great as her partner's; yet, when the music ended with a
+flourish, and her last curtsy was successfully achieved, she longed to
+begin all over again, and secretly regretted that she was engaged four
+deep.
+
+"How do you like our new acquaintance, Dora?" asked Aunt Pen, following
+Joe Leavenworth with her eye, as the "yellow-haired laddie" whirled by
+with the ponderous Miss Flora.
+
+"Very much; and I'm glad we met as we did, for it makes things free and
+easy, and that is so agreeable in this ceremonious place," replied
+Debby, looking in quite an opposite direction.
+
+"Well, I'm delighted to hear you say so, dear, for I was afraid you had
+taken a dislike to him, and he is really a very charming young man, just
+the sort of person to make a pleasant companion for a few weeks. These
+little friendships are part of the summer's amusement, and do no harm;
+so smile away, Dora, and enjoy yourself while you may."
+
+"Yes, Aunt, I certainly will, and all the more because I have found a
+sensible soul to talk to. Do you know, he is very witty and well
+informed, though he says he never had much time for self-cultivation?
+But I think trouble makes people wise, and he seems to have had a good
+deal, though he leaves it for others to tell of. I am glad you are
+willing I should know him, for I shall enjoy talking about my pet heroes
+with him as a relief from the silly chatter I must keep up most of the
+time."
+
+Mrs. Carroll was a woman of one idea; and though a slightly puzzled
+expression appeared in her face, she listened approvingly, and answered,
+with a gracious smile,--
+
+"Of course, I should not object to your knowing such a person, my love;
+but I'd no idea Joe Leavenworth was a literary man, or had known much
+trouble, except his father's death and his sister Clementina's
+runaway-marriage with her drawing-master."
+
+Debby opened her brown eyes very wide, and hastily picked at the down on
+her fan, but had no time to correct her aunt's mistake, for the real
+subject of her commendations appeared at that moment, and Mrs. Carroll
+was immediately absorbed in the consumption of a large pink ice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That girl is what I call a surprise-party, now," remarked Mr. Joe
+confidentially to his cigar, as he pulled off his coat and stuck his
+feet up in the privacy of his own apartment. "She looks as mild as
+strawberries and cream till you come to the complimentary, then she
+turns on a fellow with that deused satirical look of hers, and makes him
+feel like a fool. I'll try the moral dodge to-morrow, and see what
+effect that will have; for she is mighty taking, and I must amuse myself
+somehow, you know."
+
+"How many years will it take to change that fresh-hearted little girl
+into a fashionable belle, I wonder?" thought Frank Evan, as he climbed
+the four flights that led to his "sky-parlor."
+
+"What a curious world this is!" mused Debby, with her nightcap in her
+hand. "The right seems odd and rude, the wrong respectable and easy, and
+this sort of life a merry-go-round, with no higher aim than pleasure.
+Well, I have made my Declaration of Independence, and Aunt Pen must be
+ready for a Revolution, if she taxes me too heavily."
+
+As she leaned her hot cheek on her arm, Debby's eye fell on the quaint
+little cap made by the motherly hands that never were tired of working
+for her. She touched it tenderly, and love's simple magic swept the
+gathering shadows from her face, and left it clear again, as her
+thoughts flew home like birds into the shelter of their nest.
+
+"Good night, mother! I'll face temptation steadily. I'll try to take
+life cheerily, and do nothing that shall make your dear face a reproach,
+when it looks into my own again."
+
+Then Debby said her prayers like any pious child, and lay down to dream
+of pulling buttercups with Baby Bess, and sinking in the twilight on her
+father's knee.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The history of Debby's first day might serve as a sample of most that
+followed, as week after week went by with varying pleasures and
+increasing interest to more than one young _debutante_. Mrs. Carroll did
+her best, but Debby was too simple for a belle, too honest for a flirt,
+too independent for a fine lady; she would be nothing but her sturdy
+little self, open as daylight, gay as a lark, and blunt as any Puritan.
+Poor Aunt Pen was in despair, till she observed that the girl often
+"took" with the very peculiarities which she was lamenting; this
+somewhat consoled her, and she tried to make the best of the pretty bit
+of homespun which would not and could not become velvet or brocade.
+Seguin, Ellenborough, & Co. looked with lordly scorn upon her, as a worm
+blind to their attractions. Miss MacFlimsy and her "set" quizzed her
+unmercifully behind her back, after being worsted in several passages of
+arms; and more than one successful mamma condoled with Aunt Pen upon the
+terribly defective education of her charge, till that stout matron could
+have found it in her heart to tweak off their caps and walk on them,
+like the irascible Betsey Trotwood.
+
+But Debby had a circle of admirers who loved her with a sincerity few
+summer queens could boast; for they were real friends, won by gentle
+arts, and retained by the gracious sweetness of her nature. Moon-faced
+babies crowed and clapped their chubby hands when she passed by their
+wicker thrones; story-loving children clustered round her knee, and
+never were denied; pale invalids found wild-flowers on their pillows;
+and forlorn papas forgot the state of the money-market when she sang for
+them the homely airs their daughters had no time to learn. Certain plain
+young ladies poured their woes into her friendly ear, and were
+comforted; several smart Sophomores fell into a state of chronic
+stammer, blush, and adoration, when she took a motherly interest in
+their affairs; and a melancholy old Frenchman blessed her with the
+enthusiasm of his nation, because she put a posy in the button-hole of
+his rusty coat, and never failed to smile and bow as he passed by. Yet
+Debby was no Edgeworth heroine, preternaturally prudent, wise, and
+untemptable; she had a fine crop of piques, vanities, and dislikes
+growing up under this new style of cultivation. She loved admiration,
+enjoyed her purple and fine linen, hid new-born envy, disappointed hope,
+and wounded pride behind a smiling face, and often thought with a sigh
+of the humdrum duties that awaited her at home. But under the airs and
+graces Aunt Pen cherished with such sedulous care, under the flounces
+and furbelows Victorine daily adjusted with groans, under the polish
+which she acquired with feminine ease, the girl's heart still beat
+steadfast and strong, and conscience kept watch and ward that no
+traitor should enter in to surprise the citadel which mother-love had
+tried to garrison so well.
+
+In pursuance of his sage resolve, Mr. Joe tried the "moral dodge," as he
+elegantly expressed it, and, failing in that, followed it up with the
+tragic, religious, negligent, and devoted ditto; but acting was not his
+forte, so Debby routed him in all; and at last, when he was at his wit's
+end for an idea, she suggested one, and completed her victory by saying
+pleasantly,--
+
+"You took me behind the curtain too soon, and now the paste diamonds and
+cotton-velvet don't impose upon me a bit. Just be your natural self, and
+we shall get on nicely, Mr. Leavenworth."
+
+The novelty of the proposal struck his fancy, and after a few relapses
+it was carried into effect, and thenceforth, with Debby, he became the
+simple, good-humored lad Nature designed him to be, and, as a proof of
+it, soon fell very sincerely in love.
+
+Frank Evan, seated in the parquet of society, surveyed the dress-circle
+with much the same expression that Debby had seen during Aunt Pen's
+oration; but he soon neglected that amusement to watch several actors in
+the drama going on before his eyes, while a strong desire to perform a
+part therein slowly took possession of his mind. Debby always had a look
+of welcome when he came, always treated him with the kindness of a
+generous woman who has had an opportunity to forgive, and always watched
+the serious, solitary man with a great compassion for his loss, a
+growing admiration for his upright life. More than once the beach birds
+saw two figures pacing the sands at sunrise with the peace of early day
+upon their faces and the light of a kindred mood shining in their eyes.
+More than once the friendly ocean made a third in the pleasant
+conversation, and its low undertone came and went between the mellow
+bass and silvery treble of the human voices with a melody that lent
+another charm to interviews which soon grew wondrous sweet to man and
+maid. Aunt Pen seldom saw the twain together, seldom spoke of Evan; and
+Debby held her peace, for, when she planned to make her innocent
+confessions, she found that what seemed much to her was nothing to
+another ear and scarcely worth the telling; so, unconscious as yet
+whither the green path led, she went on her way, leading two lives, one
+rich and earnest, hoarded deep within herself, the other frivolous and
+gay for all the world to criticize. But those venerable spinsters, the
+Fates, took the matter into their own hands, and soon got the better of
+those short-sighted matrons, Mesdames Grundy and Carroll; for, long
+before they knew it, Frank and Debby had begun to read together a book
+greater than Dickens ever wrote, and when they had come to the fairest
+part of the sweet story Adam first told Eve, they looked for the name
+upon the title-page, and found that it was "Love."
+
+Eight weeks came and went,--eight wonderfully happy weeks to Debby and
+her friend; for "propinquity" had worked more wonders than poor Mrs.
+Carroll knew, as the only one she saw or guessed was the utter
+captivation of Joe Leavenworth. He had become "himself" to such an
+extent that a change of identity would have been a relief; for the
+object of his adoration showed no signs of relenting, and he began to
+fear, that, as Debby said, her heart was "not in the market." She was
+always friendly, but never made those interesting betrayals of regard
+which are so encouraging to youthful gentlemen "who fain would climb,
+yet fear to fall." She never blushed when he pressed her hand, never
+fainted or grew pale when he appeared with a smashed trotting-wagon and
+a black eye, and actually slept through a serenade that would have won
+any other woman's soul out of her body with its despairing quavers.
+Matters were getting desperate; for horses lost their charms, "flowing
+bowls" palled upon his lips, ruffled shirt-bosoms no longer delighted
+him, and hops possessed no soothing power to allay the anguish of his
+mind. Mr. Seguin, after unavailing ridicule and pity, took compassion
+on him, and from his large experience suggested a remedy, just as he was
+departing for a more congenial sphere.
+
+"Now don't be an idiot, Joe, but, if you want to keep your hand in and
+go through a regular chapter of flirtation, just right about face, and
+devote yourself to some one else. Nothing like jealousy to teach
+womankind their own minds, and a touch of it will bring little Wilder
+round in a jiffy. Try it, my boy, and good luck to you!"--with which
+Christian advice Mr. Seguin slapped his pupil on the shoulder, and
+disappeared, like a modern Mephistopheles, in a cloud of cigar-smoke.
+
+"I'm glad he's gone, for in my present state of mind he's not up to my
+mark at all. I'll try his plan, though, and flirt with Clara West; she's
+engaged, so it won't damage her affections; her lover isn't here, so it
+won't disturb his; and, by Jove! I must do something, for I can't stand
+this suspense."
+
+Debby was infinitely relieved by this new move, and infinitely amused as
+she guessed the motive that prompted it but the more contented she
+seemed, the more violently Mr. Joe flirted with her rival, till at last
+weak-minded Miss Clara began to think her absent George the most
+undesirable of lovers, and to mourn that she ever said "Yes" to a
+merchant's clerk, when she might have said it to a merchant's son. Aunt
+Pen watched and approved this stratagem, hoped for the best results, and
+believed the day won when Debby grew pale and silent, and followed with
+her eyes the young couple who were playing battledoor and shuttlecock
+with each other's hearts, as if she took some interest in the game. But
+Aunt Pen clashed her cymbals too soon; for Debby's trouble had a better
+source than jealousy, and in the silence of the sleepless nights that
+stole her bloom she was taking counsel of her own full heart, and
+resolving to serve another woman as she would herself be served in a
+like peril, though etiquette was outraged and the customs of polite
+society turned upside down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Look, Aunt Pen! what lovely shells and moss I've got! Such a splendid
+scramble over the rocks as I've had with Mrs. Duncan's boys! It seemed
+so like home to run and sing with a troop of topsy-turvy children that
+it did me good; and I wish you had all been there to see," cried Debby,
+running into the drawing-room, one day, where Mrs. Carroll and a circle
+of ladies sat enjoying a dish of highly flavored scandal, as they
+exercised their eyesight over fancy-work.
+
+"My dear Dora, spare my nerves; and if you have any regard for the
+proprieties of life, don't go romping in the sun with a parcel of noisy
+boys. If you could see what an object you are, I think you would try to
+imitate Miss Clara, who is always a model of elegant repose."
+
+Miss West primmed up her lips, and settled a fold in her ninth flounce,
+as Mrs. Carroll spoke, while the whole group fixed their eyes with
+dignified disapproval on the invader of their refined society. Debby had
+come like a fresh wind into a sultry room; but no one welcomed the
+healthful visitant, no one saw a pleasant picture in the bright-faced
+girl with wind-tossed hair and rustic hat heaped with moss and
+many-tinted shells; they only saw that her gown was wet, her gloves
+forgotten, and her scarf trailing at her waist in a manner no well-bred
+lady could approve. The sunshine faded out of Debby's face, and there
+was a touch of bitterness in her tone, as she glanced at the circle of
+fashion-plates, saying, with an earnestness which caused Miss West to
+open her pale eyes to their widest extent,--
+
+"Aunt Pen, don't freeze me yet,--don't take away my faith in simple
+things, but let me be a child a little longer,--let me play and sing and
+keep my spirit blithe among the dandelions and the robins while I can;
+for trouble comes soon enough, and all my life will be the richer and
+the better for a happy youth."
+
+Mrs. Carroll had nothing at hand to offer in reply to this appeal, and
+four ladies dropped their work to stare; but Frank Evan looked in from
+the piazza, saying, as he beckoned like a boy,--
+
+"I'll play with you, Miss Dora; come and make sand pies upon the shore.
+Please let her, Mrs. Carroll; we'll be very good, and not wet our
+pinafores or feet."
+
+Without waiting for permission, Debby poured her treasures into the lap
+of a certain lame Freddy, and went away to a kind of play she had never
+known before. Quiet as a chidden child, she walked beside her companion,
+who looked down at the little figure, longing to take it on his knee and
+call the sunshine back again. That he dared not do; but accident, the
+lover's friend, performed the work, and did him a good turn beside. The
+old Frenchman was slowly approaching, when a frolicsome wind whisked off
+his hat and sent it skimming along the beach. In spite of her late
+lecture, away went Debby, and caught the truant chapeau just as a wave
+was hurrying up to claim it. This restored her cheerfulness, and when
+she returned, she was herself again.
+
+"A thousand thanks; but does Mademoiselle remember the forfeit I might
+demand to add to the favor she has already done me?" asked the gallant
+old gentleman, as Debby took the hat off her own head, and presented it
+with a martial salute.
+
+"Ah, I had forgotten that; but you may claim it, Sir,--indeed, you may;
+I only wish I could do something more to give you pleasure"; and Debby
+looked up into the withered face which had grown familiar to her, with
+kind eyes, full of pity and respect.
+
+Her manner touched the old man very much; he bent his gray head before
+her, saying, gratefully,--
+
+"My child, I am not good enough to salute these blooming cheeks; but I
+shall pray the Virgin to reward you for the compassion you bestow on the
+poor exile, and I shall keep your memory very green through all my
+life."
+
+He kissed her hand, as if it were a queen's, and went on his way,
+thinking of the little daughter whose death left him childless in a
+foreign land.
+
+Debby softly began to sing, "Oh, come unto the yellow sands!" but
+stopped in the middle of a line, to say,--
+
+"Shall I tell you why I did what Aunt Pen would call a very unladylike
+and improper thing, Mr. Evan?"
+
+"If you will be so kind"; and her companion looked delighted at the
+confidence about to be reposed in him.
+
+"Somewhere across this great wide sea I hope I have a brother," Debby
+said, with softened voice and a wistful look into the dim horizon. "Five
+years ago he left us, and we have never heard from him since, except to
+know that he landed safely in Australia. People tell us he is dead; but
+I believe he will yet come home; and so I love to help and pity any man
+who needs it, rich or poor, young or old, hoping that as I do by them
+some tender-hearted woman far away will do by Brother Will."
+
+As Debby spoke, across Frank Evan's face there passed the look that
+seldom comes but once to any young man's countenance; for suddenly the
+moment dawned when love asserted its supremacy, and putting pride,
+doubt, and fear underneath its feet, ruled the strong heart royally and
+bent it to its will. Debby's thoughts had floated across the sea; but
+they came swiftly back when her companion spoke again, steadily and
+slow, but with a subtile change in tone and manner which arrested them
+at once.
+
+"Miss Dora, if you should meet a man who had known a laborious youth, a
+solitary manhood, who had no sweet domestic ties to make home beautiful
+and keep his nature warm, who longed most ardently to be so blessed, and
+made it the aim of his life to grow more worthy the good gift, should it
+ever come,--if you should learn that you possessed the power to make
+this fellow-creature's happiness, could you find it in your gentle heart
+to take compassion on him for the love of 'Brother Will'?"
+
+Debby was silent, wondering why heart and nerves and brain were stirred
+by such a sudden thrill, why she dared not look up, and why, when she
+desired so much to speak, she could only answer, in a voice that sounded
+strange to her own ears,--
+
+"I cannot tell."
+
+Still, steadily and slow, with strong emotion deepening and softening
+his voice, the lover at her side went on,--
+
+"Will you ask yourself this question in some quiet hour? For such a man
+has lived in the sunshine of your presence for eight happy weeks, and
+now, when his holiday is done, he finds that the old solitude will be
+more sorrowful than ever, unless he can discover whether his summer
+dream will change into a beautiful reality. Miss Dora, I have very
+little to offer you; a faithful heart to cherish you, a strong arm to
+work for you, an honest name to give into your keeping,--these are all;
+but if they have any worth in your eyes, they are most truly yours
+forever."
+
+Debby was steadying her voice to reply, when a troop of bathers came
+shouting down the bank, and she took flight into her dressing-room,
+there to sit staring at the wall, till the advent of Aunt Pen forced her
+to resume the business of the hour by assuming her aquatic attire and
+stealing shyly down into the surf.
+
+Frank Evan, still pacing in the footprints they had lately made, watched
+the lithe figure tripping to and fro, and, as he looked, murmured to
+himself the last line of a ballad Debby sometimes sang,--
+
+    "Dance light! for my heart it lies under your feet, love!"
+
+Presently a great wave swept Debby up, and stranded her very near him,
+much to her confusion and his satisfaction. Shaking the spray out of her
+eyes, she was hurrying away, when Frank said,--
+
+"You will trip, Miss Dora; let me tie these strings for you"; and,
+suiting the action to the word, he knelt down and began to fasten the
+cords of her bathing-shoe.
+
+Debby stood looking down at the tall head bent before her, with a
+curious sense of wonder that a look from her could make a strong man
+flush and pale, as he had done; and she was trying to concoct some
+friendly speech, when Frank, still fumbling at the knots, said, very
+earnestly and low,--
+
+"Forgive me, if I am selfish in pressing for an answer; but I must go
+to-morrow, and a single word will change my whole future for the better
+or the worse. Won't you speak it, Dora?"
+
+If they had been alone, Debby would have put her arms about his neck,
+and said it with all her heart; but she had a presentiment that she
+should cry, if her love found vent; and here forty pairs of eyes were on
+them, and salt water seemed superfluous. Besides, Debby had not breathed
+the air of coquetry so long without a touch of the infection; and the
+love of power, that lies dormant in the meekest woman's breast, suddenly
+awoke and tempted her.
+
+"If you catch me before I reach that rock, perhaps I will say 'Yes,'"
+was her unexpected answer; and before her lover caught her meaning, she
+was floating leisurely away.
+
+Frank was not in bathing-costume, and Debby never dreamed that he would
+take her at her word; but she did not know the man she had to deal with;
+for, taking no second thought, he flung hat and coat away, and dashed
+into the sea. This gave a serious aspect to Debby's foolish jest. A
+feeling of dismay seized her, when she saw a resolute face dividing the
+waves behind her, and thought of the rash challenge she had given; but
+she had a spirit of her own, and had profited well by Mr. Joe's
+instructions; so she drew a long breath, and swam as if for life,
+instead of love. Evan was incumbered by his clothing, and Debby had much
+the start of him; but, like a second Leander, he hoped to win his Hero,
+and, lending every muscle to the work, gained rapidly upon the little
+hat which was his beacon through the foam. Debby heard the deep
+breathing drawing nearer and nearer, as her pursuer's strong arms cleft
+the water and sent it rippling past her lips. Something like terror took
+possession of her; for the strength seemed going out of her limbs, and
+the rock appeared to recede before her; but the unconquerable blood of
+the Pilgrims was in her veins, and "_Nil desperandum_" her motto; so,
+setting her teeth, she muttered, defiantly,--
+
+"I'll not be beaten, if I go to the bottom!"
+
+A great splashing arose, and when Evan recovered the use of his eyes,
+the pagoda-hat had taken a sudden turn, and seemed making for the
+farthest point of the goal. "I am sure of her now," thought Frank; and,
+like a gallant sea-god, he bore down upon his prize, clutching it with a
+shout of triumph. But the hat was empty, and like a mocking echo came
+Debby's laugh, as she climbed, exhausted, to a cranny in the rock.
+
+"A very neat thing, by Jove! Deuse take me if you a'n't 'an honor to
+your teacher, and a terror to the foe,' Miss Wilder," cried Mr. Joe, as
+he came up from a solitary cruise and dropped anchor at her side. "Here,
+bring along the hat, Evan; I'm going to crown the victor with
+appropriate what-d'-ye-call-'ems," he continued, pulling a handful of
+sea-weed that looked like well-boiled greens.
+
+Frank came up, smiling; but his lips were white, and in his eye a look
+Debby could not meet; so, being full of remorse, she naturally assumed
+an air of gayety, and began to sing the merriest air she knew, merely
+because she longed to throw herself upon the stones and cry violently.
+
+"It was 'most as exciting as a regatta, and you pulled well, Evan; but
+you had too much ballast aboard, and Miss Wilder ran up false colors
+just in time to save her ship. What was the wager?" asked the lively
+Joseph, complacently surveying his marine millinery, which would have
+scandalized a fashionable mermaid.
+
+"Only a trifle," answered Debby, knotting up her braids with a
+revengeful jerk.
+
+"It's taken the wind out of your sails, I fancy, Evan, for you look
+immensely Byronic with the starch minus in your collar and your hair in
+a poetic toss. Come, I'll try a race with you; and Miss Wilder will
+dance all the evening with the winner. Bless the man, what's he doing
+down there? Burying sunfish, hey?"
+
+Frank had been sitting below them on a narrow strip of sand, absently
+piling up a little mound that bore some likeness to a grave. As his
+companion spoke, he looked at it, and a sudden flush of feeling swept
+across his face, as he replied,--
+
+"No, only a dead hope."
+
+"Deuse take it, yes, a good many of that sort of craft founder in these
+waters, as I know to my sorrow"; and, sighing tragically, Mr. Joe turned
+to help Debby from her perch, but she had glided silently into the sea,
+and was gone.
+
+For the next four hours the poor girl suffered the sharpest pain she had
+ever known; for now she clearly saw the strait her folly had betrayed
+her into. Frank Evan was a proud man, and would not ask her love again,
+believing she had tacitly refused it; and how could she tell him that
+she had trifled with the heart she wholly loved and longed to make her
+own? She could not confide in Aunt Pen, for that worldly lady would have
+no sympathy to bestow. She longed for her mother; but there was no time
+to write, for Frank was going on the morrow,--might even then be gone;
+and as this fear came over her, she covered up her face and wished that
+she were dead. Poor Debby! her last mistake was sadder than her first,
+and she was reaping a bitter harvest from her summer's sowing. She sat
+and thought till her cheeks burned and her temples throbbed; but she
+dared not ease her pain with tears. The gong sounded like a Judgment-Day
+trump of doom, and she trembled at the idea of confronting many eyes
+with such a telltale face; but she could not stay behind, for Aunt Pen
+must know the cause. She tried to play her hard part well; but wherever
+she looked, some fresh anxiety appeared, as if every fault and folly of
+those months had blossomed suddenly within the hour. She saw Frank Evan
+more sombre and more solitary than when she met him first, and cried
+regretfully within herself, "How could I so forget the truth I owed
+him?" She saw Clara West watching with eager eyes for the coming of
+young Leavenworth, and sighed, "This is the fruit of my wicked vanity!"
+She saw Aunt Pen regarding her with an anxious face, and longed to say,
+"Forgive me, for I have not been sincere!" At last, as her trouble grew,
+she resolved to go away and have a quiet "think,"--a remedy which had
+served her in many a lesser perplexity; so, stealing out, she went to a
+grove of cedars usually deserted at that hour. But in ten minutes Joe
+Leavenworth appeared at the door of the summer-house, and, looking in,
+said, with a well-acted start of pleasure and surprise,--
+
+"Beg pardon, I thought there was no one here. My dear Miss Wilder, you
+look contemplative; but I fancy it wouldn't do to ask the subject of
+your meditations, would it?"
+
+He paused with such an evident intention of remaining that Debby
+resolved to make use of the moment, and ease her conscience of one care
+that burdened it; therefore she answered his question with her usual
+directness,--
+
+"My meditations were partly about you."
+
+Mr. Joe was guilty of the weakness of blushing violently and looking
+immensely gratified; but his rapture was of short duration, for Debby
+went on very earnestly,--
+
+"I believe I am going to do what you may consider a very impertinent
+thing; but I would rather be unmannerly than unjust to others or untrue
+to my own sense of right. Mr. Leavenworth, if you were an older man, I
+should not dare to say this to you; but I have brothers of my own, and,
+remembering how many unkind things they do for want of thought, I
+venture to remind you that a woman's heart is a perilous plaything, and
+too tender to be used for a selfish purpose or an hour's pleasure. I
+know this kind of amusement is not considered wrong; but it _is_ wrong,
+and I cannot shut my eyes to the fact, or sit silent while another woman
+is allowed to deceive herself and wound the heart that trusts her. Oh,
+if you love your own sisters, be generous, be just, and do not destroy
+that poor girl's happiness, but go away before your sport becomes a
+bitter pain to her!"
+
+Joe Leavenworth had stood staring at Debby with a troubled countenance,
+feeling as if all the misdemeanors of his life were about to be paraded
+before him; but, as he listened to her plea, the womanly spirit that
+prompted it appealed more loudly than her words, and in his really
+generous heart he felt regret for what had never seemed a fault before.
+Shallow as he was, nature was stronger than education, and he admired
+and accepted what many a wiser, worldlier man would have resented with
+auger or contempt. He loved Debby with all his little might; he meant to
+tell her so, and graciously present his fortune and himself for her
+acceptance; but now, when the moment came, the well-turned speech he had
+prepared vanished from his memory, and with the better eloquence of
+feeling he blundered out his passion like a very boy.
+
+"Miss Dora, I never meant to make trouble between Clara and her lover;
+upon my soul, I didn't, and wish Seguin had not put the notion into my
+head, since it has given you pain. I only tried to pique you into
+showing some regret, when I neglected you; but you didn't, and then I
+got desperate and didn't care what became of any one. Oh, Dora, if you
+knew how much I loved you, I am sure you'd forgive it, and let me prove
+my repentance by giving up everything that you dislike. I mean what I
+say; upon my life I do; and I'll keep my word, if you will only let me
+hope."
+
+If Debby had wanted a proof of her love for Frank Evan, she might have
+found it in the fact that she had words enough at her command now, and
+no difficulty in being sisterly pitiful toward her second suitor.
+
+"Please get up," she said; for Mr. Joe, feeling very humble and very
+earnest, had gone down upon his knees, and sat there entirely regardless
+of his personal appearance.
+
+He obeyed; and Debby stood looking up at him with her kindest aspect, as
+she said, more tenderly than she had ever spoken to him before,--
+
+"Thank you for the affection you offer me, but I cannot accept it, for I
+have nothing to give you in return but the friendliest regard, the most
+sincere good-will. I know you will forgive me, and do for your own sake
+the good things you would have done for mine, that I may add to my
+esteem a real respect for one who has been very kind to me."
+
+"I'll try,--indeed, I will, Miss Dora, though it will be powerful hard
+without yourself for a help and a reward."
+
+Poor Joe choked a little, but called up an unexpected manliness, and
+added, stoutly,--
+
+"Don't think I shall be offended at your speaking so, or saying 'No' to
+me,--not a bit; it 's all right, and I'm much obliged to you. I might
+have known you couldn't care for such a fellow as I am, and don't blame
+you, for nobody in the world is good enough for you. I'll go away at
+once, I'll try to keep my promise, and I hope you'll be very happy all
+your life."
+
+He shook Debby's hands heartily, and hurried down the steps, but at the
+bottom paused and looked back. Debby stood upon the threshold with
+sunshine dancing on her winsome face, and kind words trembling on her
+lips; for the moment it seemed impossible to part, and, with an
+impetuous gesture, he cried to her,--
+
+"Oh, Dora, let me stay and try to win you! for everything is possible to
+love, and I never knew how dear you were to me till now!"
+
+There were sudden tears in the young man's eyes, the flush of a genuine
+emotion on his cheek, the tremor of an ardent longing in his voice, and,
+for the first time, a very true affection strengthened his whole
+countenance. Debby's heart was full of penitence; she had given so much
+pain to more than one that she longed to atone for it,--longed to do
+some very friendly thing, and soothe some trouble such as she herself
+had known. She looked into the eager face uplifted to her own and
+thought of Will, then stooped and touched her lover's forehead with the
+lips that softly whispered, "No."
+
+If she had cared for him, she never would have done it; poor Joe knew
+that, and murmuring an incoherent "Thank you!" he rushed away, feeling
+very much as he remembered to have felt when his baby sister died and he
+wept his grief away upon his mother's neck. He began his preparations
+for departure at once, in a burst of virtuous energy quite refreshing to
+behold, thinking within himself, as he flung his cigar-case into the
+grate, kicked a billiard-ball into a corner, and suppressed his favorite
+allusion to the Devil,--
+
+"This is a new sort of thing to me, but I can bear it, and upon my life
+I think I feel the better for it already."
+
+And so he did; for though he was no Augustine to turn in an hour from
+worldly hopes and climb to sainthood through long years of inward
+strife, yet in after-times no one knew how many false steps had been
+saved, how many small sins repented of, through the power of the memory
+that far away a generous woman waited to respect him, and in his secret
+soul he owned that one of the best moments of his life was that in which
+little Debby Wilder whispered "No," and kissed him.
+
+As he passed from sight, the girl leaned her head upon her hand,
+thinking sorrowfully to herself,--
+
+"What right had I to censure him, when my own actions are so far from
+true? I have done a wicked thing, and as an honest girl I should undo
+it, if I can. I have broken through the rules of a false propriety for
+Clara's sake; can I not do as much for Frank's? I will. I'll find him,
+if I search the house,--and tell him all, though I never dare to look
+him in the face again, and Aunt Pen sends me home to-morrow."
+
+Full of zeal and courage, Debby caught up her hat and ran down the
+steps, but, as she saw Frank Evan coming up the path, a sudden panic
+fell upon her, and she could only stand mutely waiting his approach.
+
+It is asserted that Love is blind; and on the strength of that popular
+delusion novel heroes and heroines go blundering through three volumes
+of despair with the plain truth directly under their absurd noses: but
+in real life this theory is not supported; for to a living man the
+countenance of a loving woman is more eloquent than any language, more
+trustworthy than a world of proverbs, more beautiful than the sweetest
+love-lay ever sung.
+
+Frank looked at Debby, and "all her heart stood up in her eyes," as she
+stretched her hands to him, though her lips only whispered very low,--
+
+"Forgive me, and let me say the 'Yes' I should have said so long ago."
+
+Had she required any assurance of her lover's truth, or any reward for
+her own, she would have found it in the change that dawned so swiftly in
+his face, smoothing the lines upon his forehead, lighting the gloom of
+his eye, stirring his firm lips with a sudden tremor, and making his
+touch as soft as it was strong. For a moment both stood very still,
+while Debby's tears streamed down like summer rain; then Frank drew her
+into the green shadow of the grove, and its peace soothed her like a
+mother's voice, till she looked up smiling with a shy delight her glance
+had never known before. The slant sunbeams dropped a benediction on
+their heads, the robins peeped, and the cedars whispered, but no rumor
+of what further passed ever went beyond the precincts of the wood; for
+such hours are sacred, and Nature guards the first blossoms of a human
+love as tenderly as she nurses May-flowers underneath the leaves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Carroll had retired to her bed with a nervous headache, leaving
+Debby to the watch and ward of friendly Mrs. Earle, who performed her
+office finely by letting her charge entirely alone. In her dreams Aunt
+Pen was just imbibing a copious draught of Champagne at the
+wedding-breakfast of her niece, "Mrs. Joseph Leavenworth," when she was
+roused by the bride elect, who passed through the room with a lamp and a
+shawl in her hand.
+
+"What time is it, and where are you going, dear?" she asked, dozily
+wondering if the carriage for the wedding-tour was at the door so soon.
+
+"It's only nine, and I am going for a sail, Aunt Pen."
+
+As Debby spoke, the light flashed full into her face, and a sudden
+thought into Mrs. Carroll's mind. She rose up from her pillow, looking
+as stately in her nightcap as Maria Theresa is said to have done in like
+unassuming head-gear.
+
+"Something has happened, Dora! What have you done? What have you said? I
+insist upon knowing immediately," she demanded, with somewhat startling
+brevity.
+
+"I have said 'No' to Mr. Leavenworth and 'Yes' to Mr. Evan; and I should
+like to go home to-morrow, if you please," was the equally concise
+reply.
+
+Mrs. Carroll fell flat in her bed, and lay there stiff and rigid as
+Morlena Kenwigs. Debby gently drew the curtains, and stole away, leaving
+Aunt Pen's wrath to effervesce before morning.
+
+The moon was hanging luminous and large on the horizon's edge, sending
+shafts of light before her till the melancholy ocean seemed to smile,
+and along that shining pathway happy Debby and her lover floated into
+that new world where all things seem divine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+WET-WEATHER WORK.
+
+BY A FARMER.
+
+III.
+
+
+Will any of our artists ever give us, on canvas, a good, rattling, saucy
+shower? There is room in it for a rare handling of the brush:--the
+vague, indistinguishable line of hills, (as I see them to-day,)--the
+wild scud of gray, with fine gray lines, slanted by the wind, and
+trending eagerly downward,--the swift, petulant dash into the little
+pools of the highway, making fairy bubbles that break as soon as they
+form,--the land smoking with excess of moisture,--and the pelted leaves
+all wincing and shining and adrip.
+
+I know no painter who has so well succeeded in putting a wet sky into
+his pictures as Turner; and in this I judge him by the literal
+_chiaroscuro_ of engraving. In proof of it, I take down from my shelf
+his "Rivers of France": a book over which I have spent a great many
+pleasant hours, and idle ones too,--if it be idle to travel leagues at
+the turning of a page, and to see hill-sides spotty with vineyards, and
+great bridges wallowing through the Loire, and to watch the fishermen of
+Honfleur putting to sea. There are skies, as I said, in some of these
+pictures which make a man instinctively think of his umbrella, or of his
+distance from home: no actual rain-drift stretching from them, but such
+unmistakable promise of a rainy afternoon, in their little parallel
+wisps of dark-bottomed clouds, as would make a provident farmer order
+every scythe out of the field.
+
+In the "Chair of Gargantua," on which my eye falls, as I turn over the
+pages, an actual thunder-storm is breaking. The scene is somewhere upon
+the Lower Seine. From the middle of the left of the picture the lofty
+river-bank stretches far across, forming all the background;--its
+extreme distance hidden by a bold thrust of the right bank, which juts
+into the picture just far enough to shelter a white village, which lies
+gleaming upon the edge of the water. On all the foreground lies the
+river, broad as a bay. The storm is coming down the stream. Over the
+left spur of the bank, and over the meeting of the banks, it broods
+black as night. Through a little rift there is a glimpse of serene sky,
+from which a mellow light streams down upon the edges and angles of a
+few cliffs upon the farther shore. All the rest is heavily shadowed. The
+edges of the coming tempest are tortuous and convulsed, and you know
+that a fierce wind is driving the black billows on; yet all the water
+under the lee of the shores is as tranquil as a dream; a white sail,
+near to the white village, hangs slouchingly to the mast: but in the
+foreground the tempest has already caught the water; a tall lugger is
+scudding and careening under it as if mad; the crews of three
+fishermen's boats, that toss on the vexed water, are making a confused
+rush to shorten sail, and you may almost fancy that you hear their
+outcries sweeping down the wind. In the middle scene, a little steamer
+is floating tranquilly on water which is yet calm; and a column of smoke
+piling up from its tall chimney rises for a space placidly enough, until
+the wind catches and whisks it before the storm. I would wager ten to
+one, upon the mere proof in the picture, that the fishermen and the
+washerwomen in the foreground will be drenched within an hour.
+
+When I have once opened the covers of Turner,--especially upon such a
+wet day as this,--it is hard for me to leave him until I have wandered
+all up and down the Loire, revisited Tours and its quiet cathedral, and
+Blois with its stately chateau, and Amboise with its statelier, and
+coquetted again with memories of the Maid of Orleans.
+
+From the Upper Loire it is easy to slip into the branching valleys
+which sidle away from it far down into the country of the Auvergne.
+Turner does not go there, indeed; the more's the pity; but I do, since
+it is the most attractive region rurally (Brittany perhaps excepted) in
+all France. The valleys are green, the brooks are frequent, the rivers
+are tortuous, the mountains are high, and luxuriant walnut-trees embower
+the roads. It was near to Moulins, on the way hither, through the
+pleasant Bourbonnois, that Tristram Shandy met with the poor,
+half-crazed Maria, piping her evening service to the Virgin.
+
+And at that thought I must do no less than pull down my "Tristram
+Shandy," (on which the dust of years has accumulated,) and read again
+that tender story of the lorn maiden, with her attendant goat, and her
+hair caught up in a silken fillet, and her shepherd's pipe, from which
+she pours out a low, plaintive wail upon the evening air.
+
+It is not a little singular that a British author should have supplied
+the only Arcadian resident of all this Arcadian region. The Abbe Delille
+was, indeed, born hereabout, within sight of the bold Puy de Dome, and
+within marketing-distance of the beautiful Clermont. But there is very
+little that is Arcadian, in freshness or simplicity, in either the
+"Gardens" or the other verse of Delille.
+
+Out of his own mouth (the little green-backed book, my boy) I will
+condemn him:--
+
+    "Ce n'est plus cette simple et rustique deesse
+    Qui suit ses vieilles lois; c'est une enchanteresse
+    Qui, la baguette en main, par des hardis travaux
+    Fait naitre des aspects et des tresors nouveaux,
+    Compose un sol plus riche et des races plus belles,
+    Fertilise les monts, dompte les rocs rebelles."
+
+The _baguette_ of Delille is no shepherd's crook; it has more the
+fashion of a drumstick,--_baguette de tambour_.
+
+If I follow on southward to Provence, whither I am borne upon the scuds
+of rain over Turner's pictures, and the pretty Bourbonnois, and the
+green mountains of Auvergne, I find all the characteristic literature of
+that land of olives is only of love or war: the vines, the
+olive-orchards, and the yellow hill-sides pass for nothing. And if I
+read an old _Sirvente_ of the Troubadours, beginning with a certain
+redolence of the fields, all this yields presently to knights, and
+steeds caparisoned,--
+
+    "Cavalliers ab cavals armatz."
+
+It is smooth reading, and is attributed to Bertrand de Born,[3] who
+lived in the time when even the lion-hearted King Richard turned his
+brawny fingers to the luting of a song. Let us listen:--
+
+    "The beautiful spring delights me well,
+      When flowers and leaves are growing;
+    And it pleases my heart to hear the swell
+      Of the birds' sweet chorus flowing
+        In the echoing wood;
+    And I love to see, all scattered around,
+    Pavilions and tents on the martial ground;
+        And my spirit finds it good
+    To see, on the level plains beyond,
+    Gay knights and steeds caparisoned."
+
+[Footnote 3: M. Raynouard, _Poesies de Troubadours_, II. 209.]
+
+But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse,
+the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a
+sturdy clang of battle, that would not discredit our own times:--
+
+    "I tell you that nothing my soul can cheer,
+      Or banqueting or reposing,
+    Like the onset cry of 'Charge them!' rung
+      From each side, as in battle closing;
+        Where the horses neigh,
+    And the call to 'aid' is echoing loud,
+    And there, on the earth, the lowly and proud
+        In the foss together lie,
+    And yonder is piled the mingled heap
+    Of the brave that scaled the trenches steep.
+
+    "Barons! your castles in safety place,
+      Your cities and villages, too,
+    Before ye haste to the battle-scene:
+      And Papiol! quickly go,
+    And tell the lord of 'Yes and No'
+    That peace already too long hath been!"[4]
+
+[Footnote 4: I cannot forbear taking a bit of margin to print the
+closing stanzas of the original, which carry the clash of sabres in
+their very sound.
+
+    "Ie us dic que tan no m' a sabor
+      Manjars ni beure ni dormir
+    Cum a quant aug cridar: A lor!
+      D'ambas las partz; et aug agnir
+        Cavals voitz per l'ombratge,
+    Et aug cridar: Aidatz! Aidatz!
+    E vei cazer per los fossatz
+        Paucs e grans per l'erbatge,
+    E vei los mortz que pels costatz
+    An los tronsons outre passatz.
+
+      "Baros, metetz et gatge
+      Castels e vilas e ciutatz,
+      Enans q' usquecs no us guerreiatz.
+
+      "Papiol, d'agradatge
+      Ad _Oc e No_ t' en vai viatz,
+      Dic li que trop estan en patz."
+
+It would seem that the men of that time, like men of most times, bore a
+considerable contempt for people who said "Yes" one day, and "No" the
+next.]
+
+I am on my way to Italy, (it may as well be confessed,) where I had
+fully intended to open my rainy day's work; but Turner has kept me, and
+then Auvergne, and then the brisk battle-song of a Troubadour.
+
+When I was upon the Cajano farm of Lorenzo the Magnificent, during my
+last "spell of wet," it was uncourteous not to refer to the pleasant
+commemorative poem of "Ambra," which Lorenzo himself wrote, and which,
+whatever may be said against the conception and conduct of it, shows in
+its opening stanzas that the great Medici was as appreciative of rural
+images--fir-boughs with loaded snows, thick cypresses in which late
+birds lurked, sharp-leaved junipers, and sturdy pines fighting the
+wind--as ever he had been of antique jewels, or of the rhythm of such as
+Politiano. And if I have spoken slightingly of this latter poet, it was
+only in contrast with Virgil, and in view of his strained Latinity. When
+he is himself, and wraps his fancies only in his own sparkling Tuscan,
+we forget his classic frigidities, and his quarrels with Madonna
+Clarice, and are willing to confess that no pen of his time was dipped
+with such a relishing _gusto_ into the colors of the hyacinths and
+trembling pansies, and into all the blandishments of a gushing and
+wanton spring.[5]
+
+
+[Footnote 5: See Wm. Parr Greswell's _Memoirs of Politiano_, with
+translations.]
+
+But classical affectation was the fashion of that day. A certain
+Bolognese noble, Bero by name, wrote ten Latin books on rural affairs:
+Tiraboschi says he never saw them; neither have I. Another scholar,
+Pietro da Barga, who astonished his teachers by his wonderful
+proficiency at the age of twelve, and who was afterward guest of the
+French ambassador in Venice, wrote a poem on rural matters, to which,
+with an exaggerated classicism, he gave the Greek name of
+"_Cynegeticon_"; and about the same time Giuseppe Voltolina composed
+three books on kitchen-gardening. I name these writers only out of
+sympathy with their topics: I would not advise the reading of them: it
+would involve a long journey and scrupulous search to find them, through
+I know not what out-of-the-way libraries; and if found, no essentially
+new facts or theories could be counted on which are not covered by the
+treatise of Crescenzi. The Pisans or Venetians may possibly have
+introduced a few new plants from the East; the example of the Medici may
+have suggested some improvements in the arrangement of forcing-houses,
+or the outlay of villas; but in all that regarded general husbandry,
+Crescenzi was still the man.
+
+I linger about this period, and the writers of this time, because I
+snuff here and there among them the perfume of a country bouquet, which
+carries the odor of the fields with it, and transports me to the
+"empurpled hill-sides" of Tuscany. Shall I name Sannazaro, with his
+"Arcadia"?--a dead book now,--or "Amyntas," who, before he is tall
+enough to steal apples from the lowest boughs, (so sings Tasso,) plunges
+head and ears in love with Sylvia, the fine daughter of Montano, who has
+a store of cattle, "_richissimo d'armenti_"?
+
+Then there is Rucellai, who, under the pontificate of Leo X., came to
+be Governor of the Castle of Sant' Angelo, and yet has left a poem of
+fifteen hundred lines devoted to Bees. In his suggestions for the
+allaying of a civil war among these winged people, he is quite beyond
+either Virgil or Columella or Mr. Lincoln. "Pluck some leafy branch," he
+says, "and with it sprinkle the contending factions with either honey or
+sweet grape-juice, and you shall see them instantly forego their
+strife":--
+
+            "The two warring bands joyful unite,
+    And foe embraces foe: each with its lips
+    Licking the others' wings, feet, arms, and breast,
+    Whereon the luscious mixture hath been shed,
+    And all inebriate with delight."
+
+So the Swiss,[6] he continues, when they fall out among themselves, are
+appeased by some grave old gentleman, who says a few pleasant words, and
+orders up a good stoop of sweet wine, in which all parties presently dip
+their beards, and laugh and embrace and make peace, and so forget
+outrage. It may have been the sixteenth-century way of closing a battle.
+
+[Footnote 6:
+    "Come quando nei Suizzeri si muove
+    Sedizione, e che si grida a l' arme;
+    Se qualche nom grave allor si leva in piede
+    E comincia a parlar con dolce lingua,
+    Mitiga i petti barbari e feroci;
+    E intanto fa portare ondanti vasi
+    Pieni di dolci ed odorati vini;
+    Ahora ognun le labbra e 'l mento immerge
+    Ne' le spumanti tazze," etc.
+]
+
+Guarini, with all his affectations, has little prettinesses which charm
+like the chirping of a bird;--as where he paints (in the very first
+scene of the "Pastor Fido") the little sparrow flitting from fir to
+beech, and from beech to myrtle, and twittering, "How I love! how I
+love!" And the bird-mate ("_il suo dolce desio_") twitters in reply,
+"How I love, how I love, too!" "_Ardo d' amore anch' io._"
+
+Messer Pietro Bembo was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine
+him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a
+flower,--except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward
+the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who
+wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and
+learned; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castlian: but nobody reads him; he
+has only a little crypt in the "Autori Diversi." I think of him as I
+think of fine women who must always rustle in brocade embossed with hard
+jewels, and who never win the triumphs that belong to a charming morning
+_deshabille_ with only the added improvisation of a rose.
+
+In his "Asolani" Bembo gives a very full and minute description of the
+gardens at Asolo, which relieved the royal retirement of Caterina, the
+Queen of Cyprus. Nothing could be more admirable than the situation:
+there were skirts of mountain which were covered, and are still covered,
+with oaks; there were grottos in the sides of cliffs, and water so
+disposed--in jets, in pools inclosed by marble, and among rocks--as to
+counterfeit all the wildness of Nature; there was the same stately array
+of cypresses, and of clipped hedges, which had belonged to the villas of
+Pliny; temples were decorated with blazing frescoes, to which, I dare
+say, Carpaccio may have lent a hand, if not that wild rake, Giorgione.
+Here the pretty Queen, with eight thousand gold ducats a year, (whatever
+that amount may have been,) and some seventy odd retainers, held her
+court; and here Bembo, a dashing young fellow at that time of seven or
+eight and twenty, became a party to those disquisitions on Love, and to
+those recitations of song, part of which he has recorded in the
+"Asolani." I am sorry to say, the beauty of the place, so far as regards
+its artificial features, is now all gone. The hall, which may have
+served as the presence-chamber of the Queen, was only a few years since
+doing service as a farmer's barn; and the traces of a Diana and an
+Apollo were still coloring the wall under which a few cows were
+crunching their clover-hay.
+
+All the gardening of Italy at that period, as, indeed, at almost all
+times, depended very much upon architectural accessories: colonnades and
+wall-veil with frescoes make a large part of Italian gardening to this
+day. The Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore, and the Borghese Garden at
+Rome, are fair types. And as I recall the sunny vistas of this last, and
+the noontide loungings upon the marble seats, counting white flecks of
+statues amid the green of cypresses, and watching the shadow which some
+dense-topped pine flings upon a marble flight of steps or a marble
+balustrade, I cannot sneer at the Italian gardening, or wish it were
+other than it is. The art-life of Italy is the crowning and the
+overlapping life. The Campagna seems only a bit of foreground to carry
+the leaping arches of the aqueducts, and to throw the hills of Tivoli
+and Albano to a purple distance. The farmers (_fattori_) who gallop
+across the fields, in rough sheepskin wrappers, and upon scurvy-looking
+ponies, are more picturesque than thrifty; and if I gallop in company
+with one of them to his home upon the farther edge of the Campagna,
+(which is an allowable wet-day fancy,) I shall find a tall stone house
+smeared over roughly with plaster, and its ground-floor devoted to a
+crazy cart, a pony, a brace of cows, and a few goats; a rude court is
+walled in adjoining the house, where a few pigs are grunting. Ascending
+an oaken stair-way within the door, I come upon the living-room of the
+_fattore_; the beams overhead are begrimed with smoke, and garnished
+here and there with flitches of bacon; a scant fire of fagots is
+struggling into blaze upon an open hearth; and on a low table bare of
+either cloth or cleanliness, there waits him his supper of _polenta_,
+which is nothing more or less than our plain boiled Indian-pudding. Add
+to this a red-eyed dog, that seems to be a savage representative of a
+Scotch colley,--a lean, wrinkled, dark-faced woman, who is unwinding the
+bandages from a squalling _Bambino_,--a mixed odor of garlic and of
+goats, that is quickened with an ammoniacal pungency,--and you may form
+some idea of the home of a small Roman farmer in our day. It falls away
+from the standard of Cato; and so does the man.
+
+He takes his twenty or thirty acres, upon shares, from some wealthy
+proprietor of Rome, whose estate may possibly cover a square mile or two
+of territory. He sells vegetables, poultry, a little grain, a few curds,
+and possibly a butt or two of sour wine. He is a type of a great many
+who lived within the limits of the old Papal territory; whether he and
+they have dropped their musty sheepskins and shaken off their unthrift
+under the new government, I cannot say.
+
+Around Bologna, indeed, there was a better race of farmers: the
+intervening thrift of Tuscany had always its influence. The meadows of
+Terni, too, which are watered by the Velino, bear three full crops of
+grass in the season; the valley of the Clitumnus is like a miniature of
+the Genesee; and around Perugia the crimson-tasselled clovers, in the
+season of their bloom, give to the fields the beauty of a garden.
+
+The old Duke of Tuscany, before he became soured by his political
+mishaps, was a great patron of agricultural improvements. He had
+princely farms in the neighborhood both of his capital and of Pisa. Of
+the latter I cannot speak from personal observation; but the dairy-farm,
+_Cascina_, near to Florence, can hardly have been much inferior to the
+Cajano property of the great Lorenzo. The stables were admirably
+arranged, and of permanent character; the neatness was equal to that of
+the dairies of Holland. The Swiss cows, of a pretty dun-color, were kept
+stalled, and luxuriously fed upon freshly cut ray-grass, clover, or
+vetches, with an occasional sprinkling of meal; the calves were
+invariably reared by hand; and the average _per diem_ of milk,
+throughout the season, was stated at fourteen quarts; and I think
+Madonna Clarice never strained more than this into the cheese-tubs of
+Ambra. I trust the burghers of Florence, and the new _Gonfaloniere_,
+whoever he may be, will not forget the dun cows of the Cascina, or their
+baitings with the tender vetches.
+
+The redemption of the waste marshlands in the Val di Chiana by the
+engineering skill of Fossombroni, and the consequent restoration of many
+thousands of acres which seemed hopelessly lost to fertility, is a
+result of which the Medici would hardly have dreamed, and which would do
+credit to any age or country.
+
+About the better-cultivated portions of Lombardy there is an almost
+regal look. The roads are straight, and of most admirable construction.
+Lines of trees lift their stateliness on either side, and carry trailing
+festoons of vines. On both sides streams of water are flowing in
+artificial canals, interrupted here and there by cross sluices and
+gates, by means of which any or all of the fields can be laid under
+water at pleasure, so that old meadows return three and four cuttings of
+grass in the year. There are patches of Indian-corn which are equal to
+any that can be seen on the Miami; hemp and flax appear at intervals,
+and upon the lower lands rice. The barns are huge in size, and are
+raised from the ground upon columns of masonry.
+
+I have a dapper little note-book of travel, from which these facts are
+mainly taken; and at the head of one of its pages I observe an old
+ink-sketch of a few trees, with festoons of vines between. It is
+yellowed now, and poor always; for I am but a dabbler at such things.
+Yet it brings back, clearly and briskly, the broad stretch of Lombard
+meadows, the smooth Macadam, the gleaming canals of water, the white
+finials of Milan Cathedral shining somewhere in the distance, the
+thrushes, as in the "Pastor Fido," filling all the morning air with
+their sweet
+
+    "Ardo d' amore! ardo d' amore!"
+
+the dewy clover-lots, looking like wavy silken plush, the green glitter
+of mulberry-leaves, and the beggar in steeple-crowned hat, who says,
+"_Grazia_," and "_A rivedervi!_" as I drop him a few kreutzers, and
+rattle away to the North, and out of Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+About the year 1570, a certain Conrad Heresbach, who was Councillor to
+the Duke of Cleves, (brother to that unfortunate Anne of Cleves who was
+one of the wife-victims of Henry VIII.,) wrote four Latin books on
+rustic affairs, which were translated by Barnaby Googe, a Lincolnshire
+farmer and poet, who was in his day gentleman-pensioner to Queen
+Elizabeth. Our friend Barnaby introduces his translation in this
+style:--"I haue thought it meet (good Reader) for thy further profit &
+pleasure, to put into English these foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected
+& set forth by Master Conrade Heresbatch, a great & a learned Counceller
+of the Duke of Cleues: not thinking it reason, though I haue altered &
+increased his worke, _with mine owne readings & obseruations_, joined
+with the experience of sundry my friends, to take from him (as diuers in
+the like case haue done) the honour & glory of his owne trauaile:
+Neither is it my minde, that this either his doings or mine, should
+deface, or any waves darken the good enterprise, or painfull trauailes
+of such our countrymen, of England, as haue plentifully written of this
+matter: but always haue, & do giue them the reuerence & honour due to so
+vertuous, & well disposed Gentlemen, namely, _Master Fitz herbert_, &
+_Master Tusser_: whose workes may, in my fancie, without any
+presumption, compare with any, either _Varro_, _Columella_, or
+_Palladius_ of _Rome_."
+
+The work is written in the form of a dialogue, the parties being Cono, a
+country-gentleman, Metella, his wife, Rigo, a courtier, and Hermes, a
+servant. The first book relates to tillage, and farm-practice in
+general; the second, to orcharding, gardens, and woods; the third, to
+cattle; and the fourth, to fowl, fish, and bees. He had evidently been
+an attentive reader of the older authors I have discussed, and his
+citations from them are abundant. He had also opportunity for every-day
+observation in a region which, besides being one of the most fertile,
+was probably at that time the most highly cultivated in Europe; and his
+work may be regarded as the most important contribution to agricultural
+literature since the days of Crescenzi. He reaffirms, indeed, many of
+the old fables of the Latinists,--respects the force of proper
+incantations, has abiding faith in "the moon being aloft" in time of
+sowing, and insists that the medlar can be grafted on the pine, and the
+cherry upon the fir. Rue, he tells us, "will prosper the better for
+being stolen"; and "If you breake to powder the horne of a Ram & sowe it
+watrying it well, it is thought it will come to be good Sperage"
+(Asparagus). He assures us that he has grafted the pear successfully
+when in full bloom; and furthermore, that he has seen apples which have
+been kept sound for three years.
+
+Upon the last page are some rules for purchasing land, which I suspect
+are to be attributed to the poet of Lincolnshire, rather than to
+Heresbach. They are as good as they were then; and the poetry none the
+worse:--
+
+    "First see that the land be clear
+    In title of the seller;
+    And that it stand in danger
+    Of no woman's dowrie;
+    See whether the tenure be bond or free,
+    And release of every fee of fee;
+    See that the seller be of age,
+    And that it lie not in mortgage;
+    Whether ataile be thereof found,
+    And whether it stand in statute bound;
+    Consider what service longeth thereto,
+    And what quit rent thereout must goe;
+    And if it become of a wedded woman,
+    Think thou then on covert baron;
+    And if thou may in any wise,
+    Make thy charter in warrantise,
+    To thee, thine heyres, assignes also;
+    Thus should a wise purchaser doe."
+
+The learned Lipsius was a contemporary of Councillor Heresbach, and
+although his orthodoxy was somewhat questionable, and his Calvinism
+somewhat stretchy, there can be no doubt of the honest rural love which
+belongs to some of his letters, and especially to this smack of verse (I
+dare not say poetry) with which he closes his _Eighth (Cent. I.)_
+
+    "Vitam si liceat mihi
+    Formare arbitriis meis:
+    Non fasces cupiam aut opes,
+    Non clarus niveis equis
+    Captiva agmina traxerim.
+      In solis habitem locis,
+    Hortos possideam atque agros,
+    Illic ad strepitus aquae
+    Musarum studiis fruar.
+      Sic cum fata mihi ultima
+    Pernerit Lachesis mea;
+    Tranquillus moriar senex."
+
+And with this I will have done with a dead language; for I am come to a
+period now when I can garnish my talk with the flowers of good old
+English gardens. At the very thought of them, I seem to hear the royal
+captive James pouring madrigals through the window of his Windsor
+prison,--
+
+    "the hymnis consecrat
+    Of lovis use, now soft, now loud among,
+    That all the gardens and the wallis rung."
+
+And through the "Dreme" of Chaucer I seem to see the great plain of
+Woodstock stretching away under my view, all white and green, "green
+y-powdered with daisy." Upon the half-ploughed land, lying yonder veiled
+so tenderly with the mist and the rain, I could take oath to the very
+spot where five hundred years ago the plowman of Chaucer, all "forswat,"
+
+    "plucked up his plowe
+    Whan midsomer mone was comen in
+    And shoke off shear, and coulter off drowe,
+    And honged his harnis on a pinne,
+    And said his beasts should ete enowe
+    And lie in grasse up to the chin."
+
+But Chaucer was no farmer, or he would have known it to be bad husbandry
+(even for poetry) to allow cattle steaming from the plough to lie down
+in grass of that height.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Anthony Fitz-herbert is the first duly accredited writer on British
+husbandry. There are some few earlier ones, it is true,--a certain
+"Mayster Groshede, Bysshop of Lyncoln," and a Henri Calcoensis, among
+them. Indeed, Mr. Donaldson, who has compiled a bibliography of British
+farm-writers, and who once threatened a poem on kindred subjects, has
+the effrontery to include Lord Littleton. Now I have a respect for Lord
+Littleton, and for Coke on Littleton, but it is tempered with some early
+experiences in a lawyer's office, and some later experiences of the
+legal profession; he may have written well upon "Tenures," but he had
+not enough of tenderness even for a teasel.
+
+I think it worthy of remark, in view of the mixed complexion which I
+have given to these wet-day studies, that the oldest printed copy of
+that sweet ballad of the "Nut Browne Mayde" has come to us in a
+Chronicle of 1503, which contains also a chapter upon "the crafte of
+graffynge & plantynge & alterynge of fruyts." What could be happier than
+the conjunction of the knight of "the grenwode tree" with a good chapter
+on "graffynge"?
+
+Fitz-herbert's work is entitled a "Boke of Husbandrie," and counts,
+among other headings of discourse, the following:--
+
+"Whether is better a plough of horses or a plough of oxen."
+
+"To cary out dounge & mucke, & to spreade it."
+
+"The fyrste furryng of the falowes."
+
+"To make a ewe to love hir lambe."
+
+"To bye lean cattel."
+
+"A shorte information for a young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve."
+
+"What the wyfe oughte to dooe generally."
+
+(_seq._) "To kepe measure in spendynge."
+
+"What be God's commandments."
+
+By all which it may be seen that Sir Anthony took as broad a view of
+husbandry as did Xenophon.
+
+Among other advices to the "young gentyleman that entendeth to thryve"
+he counsels him to rise betime in the morning, and if "he fynde any
+horses, mares, swyne, shepe, beastes in his pastures that be not his
+own; or fynde a gap in his hedge, or any water standynge in his pasture
+uppon his grasse, whereby he may take double herte, bothe losse of his
+grasse, & rotting of his shepe, & calves; or if he fyndeth or seeth
+anything that is amisse, & wold be amended, let him take out his tables
+& wryte the defautes; & when he commeth home to dinner, supper, or at
+nyght, then let him call his bayley, & soo shewe him the defautes. For
+this," says he, "used I to doo x or xi yeres or more; & yf he cannot
+wryte, lette him nycke the defautes uppon a stycke."
+
+Sir Anthony is gracious to the wife, but he is not tender; and it may be
+encouraging to country-housewives nowadays to see what service was
+expected of their mothers in the days of Henry VIII.
+
+"It is a wives occupacion to winow al maner of cornes, to make malte,
+wash & wring, to make hey, to shere corne, & in time of neede to helpe
+her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or donge carte, dryve the plough,
+to lode hay corne & such other. Also to go or ride to the market to sell
+butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekens, kapons, hennes, pygges, gees & al
+maner of corne. And also to bye al maner of necessary thinges belonging
+to a household, & to make a true rekening & accompt to her husband what
+she hath receyved & what she hathe payed. And yf the husband go to
+market to bye or sell as they ofte do, he then to shew his wife in lyke
+maner. For if one of them should use to disceive the other, he
+disceyveth himselfe, & he is not lyke to thryve, & therfore they must be
+true ether to other."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I come next to Master Tusser,--poet, farmer, chorister, vagabond,
+happily dead at last, and with a tomb whereon some wag wrote this:--
+
+    "Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,
+    Thou teaching thrift, thyself could never thrive;
+    So, like the whetstone, many men are wont
+    To sharpen others when themselves are blunt."
+
+I cannot help considering poor Tusser's example one of warning to all
+poetically inclined farmers.
+
+He was born at a little village in the County of Essex. Having a good
+voice, he came early in life to be installed as singer at Wallingford
+College; and showing here a great proficiency, he was shortly after
+impressed for the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral. Afterward he was for
+some time at Eton, where he had the ill-luck to receive some fifty-four
+stripes for his shortcomings in Latin; thence he goes to Trinity
+College, Cambridge, where he lives "in clover." It appears that he had
+some connections at Court, through whose influence he was induced to go
+up to London, where he remained some ten years,--possibly as
+singer,--but finally left in great disgust at the vices of the town, and
+commenced as farmer in Suffolk,--
+
+           "To moil and to toil
+    With loss and pain, to little gain,
+            To cram Sir Knave";--
+
+from which I fancy that he had a hard landlord, and but little sturdy
+resolution. Thence he goes to Ipswich, or its neighborhood, with no
+better experience. Afterward we hear of him with a second wife at
+Dereham Abbey; but his wife is young and sharp-tempered, and his
+landlord a screw: so he does not thrive here, but goes to Norwich and
+commences chorister again; but presently takes another farm in
+Fairstead, Essex, where it would seem he eked out a support by
+collecting tithes for the parson. But he says,--
+
+           "I spyed, if parson died,
+    (All hope in vain,) to hope for gain
+            I might go dance."
+
+Possibly he did go dance: he certainly left the tithe-business, and
+after settling in one more home, from which he ran to escape the plague,
+we find him returned to London, to die,--where he was buried in the
+Poultry.
+
+There are good points in his poem, showing close observation, good
+sense, and excellent judgment. His rules of farm-practice are entirely
+safe and judicious, and make one wonder how the man who could give such
+capital advice could make so capital a failure. In the secret lies all
+the philosophy of the difference between knowledge and practice. The
+instance is not without its modern support: I have the honor of
+acquaintance with several gentlemen who lay down charming rules for
+successful husbandry, every time they pay the country a visit; and yet
+even their poultry-account is always largely against the constipated
+hens.
+
+What is specially remarkable about Tusser is his air of entire
+resignation amid all manner of vicissitudes: he does not seem to count
+his hardships either wonderful or intolerable or unmerited. He tells us
+of the thrashing he had at Eton, (fifty-four licks,) without greatly
+impugning the head-master; and his shiftlessness in life makes us
+strongly suspect that he deserved it all.
+
+Fuller, in his "Worthies," says Tusser "spread his bread with all sorts
+of butter, yet none would stick thereon." In short, though the poet
+wrote well on farm-practice, he certainly was not a good exemplar of
+farm-successes. With all his excellent notions about sowing and reaping,
+and rising with the lark, I should look for a little more of stirring
+mettle and of dogged resolution in a man to be recommended as a tenant.
+I cannot help thinking less of him as a farmer than as a kind-hearted
+poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too
+porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve: yet taking
+life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a
+rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and
+looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision:--
+
+    "To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low,
+    But how, and how suddenly, few be that know,
+    What carry we, then, but a sheet to the grave,
+    (To cover this carcass,) of all that we have?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of
+English authors, "the most ingenious husbandman of his age."[7] He is
+elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had two
+estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin's Lane. He was an
+enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries,
+corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful
+experiments within his own grounds. In speaking of that "rare and
+peerless plant, the grape," he insists upon the wholesomeness of the
+wines he made from his Bednall-Greene garden: "And if," he says, "any
+exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am
+content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe
+any true skill in the judgment of high country wines: although for their
+better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now
+almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these
+wines) gaue this sentence upon them: that he neuer drank any better new
+wine in France."
+
+[Footnote 7: Latter part of sixteenth century; and was living, according
+to Johnson, as late as 1606.]
+
+I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the
+speech of the ambassador; French ambassadors are always so complaisant!
+
+Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that
+"delicate Knight," Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by
+a sight of a cherry-tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had
+gone by in England. "This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or
+couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then
+with a scoope or horne, as the heat of the weather required: and so, by
+witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew
+both great, and were very long before they had gotten their perfect
+cherrie-colour: and when he was assured of her Majestie's comming, he
+remoued the Tent, and a few sunny daies brought them to their full
+maturities."
+
+These notices are to be found in his "Flores Paradise." Another work,
+entitled "Dyuers Soyles for manuring pasture & arable land," enumerates,
+in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new
+matters (in that day) as "salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth,
+moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust,
+soap-boilers ashes, and marle." But what I think particularly commends
+him to notice, and makes him worthy to be enrolled among the pioneers,
+is his little tract upon "The Setting of Corne."[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: This is not mentioned either by Felton in his _Portraits_,
+etc., or by Johnson in his _History of Gardening_. Donaldson gives the
+title, and the headings of the chapters.]
+
+In this he anticipates the system of "dibbling" grain, which,
+notwithstanding, is spoken of by writers within half a century[9] as a
+new thing; and which, it is needless to say, still prevails extensively
+in many parts of England. If the tract alluded to be indeed the work of
+Sir Hugh Platt, it antedates very many of the suggestions and
+improvements which are usually accorded to Tull. The latter, indeed,
+proposed the drill, and repeated tillage; but certain advantages, before
+unconsidered, such as increased tillering of individual plants, economy
+of seed, and facility of culture, are common to both systems. Sir Hugh,
+in consecutive chapters, shows how the discovery came about; "why the
+corne shootes into so many eares"; how the ground is to be dug for the
+new practice; and what are the several instruments for making the holes
+and covering the grain.
+
+[Footnote 9: See Young, _Annals of Agriculture_, Vol. III. p. 219, _et
+seq._]
+
+I cannot take a more courteous leave of this worthy gentleman than by
+giving his own _envoi_ to the most considerable of his books:--"Thus,
+gentle Reader, having acquainted thee with my long, costly, and
+laborious collections, not written at Adventure, or by an imaginary
+conceit in a Scholler's private studie, but wrung out of the earth, by
+the painfull hand of experience: and having also given thee a touch of
+Nature, whom no man as yet ever durst send naked into the worlde without
+her veyle: and Expecting, by thy good entertainement of these, some
+encouragement for higher and deeper discoveries hereafter, I leave thee
+to the God of Nature, from whom all the true light of Nature
+proceedeth."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gervase Markham must have been a roistering gallant about the time that
+Sir Hugh was conducting his experiments on "Soyles"; for, in 1591, he
+had the honor to be dangerously wounded in a duel which he fought in
+behalf of the Countess of Shrewsbury; there are also some painful rumors
+current (in old books) in regard to his habits in early life, which
+weaken somewhat our trust in him as a quiet country counsellor. I
+suspect, that, up to mature life, at any rate, he knew much more about
+the sparring of a game-cock than the making of capons. Yet he wrote
+books upon the proper care of beasts and fowls, as well as upon almost
+every subject connected with husbandry. And that these were good books,
+or at least in large demand, we have in evidence the memorandum of a
+promise which some griping bookseller extorted from him, under date of
+July, 1617:--
+
+"I, Gervase Markham, of London, Gent, do promise hereafter never to
+write any more book or books to be printed of the diseases or cures of
+any cattle, as horse, oxe, cowe, sheepe, swine and goates, &c. In
+witness whereof, I have hereunto sett my hand, the 24th day of Julie.
+
+"GERVIS MARKHAM."
+
+He seems to have been a man of some literary accomplishments, and one
+who knew how to turn them to account. He translated the "Maison
+Rustique" of Liebault, and had some hand in the concoction of one or two
+poems which kindled the ire of the Puritan clergy. There is no doubt but
+he was an adroit bookmaker; and the value of his labors, in respect to
+practical husbandry, was due chiefly to his art of arranging,
+compacting, and illustrating the maxims and practices already received.
+His observations upon diseases of cattle and upon horsemanship were
+doubtless based on experimental knowledge; for he was a rare and ardent
+sportsman, and possessed all a sportsman's keenness in the detection of
+infirmities.
+
+I suspect, moreover, that there were substantial grounds for that
+acquaintance with gastronomy shown in the "Country Housewife." In this
+book, after discoursing upon cookery and great feasts, he gives the
+details of a "humble feast of a proportion which any good man may keep
+in his family."
+
+"As thus:--first, a shield of brawn with mustard; secondly, a boyl'd
+capon; thirdly, a boyl'd piece of beef; fourthly, a chine of beef
+rosted; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted; sixthly, a pig rosted;
+seventhly chewits baked; eighthly, a goose rosted; ninthly, a swan
+rosted; tenthly, a turkey rosted; eleventh, a haunch of venison rosted;
+twelfth, a pasty of venison; thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the
+belly; fourteenth, an olive pye; the fifteenth, a couple of capons; the
+sixteenth, a custard or dowsets."
+
+This is what Master Gervase calls a frugal dinner, for the entertainment
+of a worthy friend; is it any wonder that he wrote about "Country
+Contentments"?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My chapter is nearly full; and a burst of sunshine is flaming over all
+the land under my eye; and yet I am but just entered upon the period of
+English literary history which is most rich in rural illustration. The
+mere backs of the books relating thereto, as my glance ranges over them,
+where they stand in tidy platoon, start a delightfully confused picture
+to my mind.
+
+I think it possible that Sir Hugh Platt may some day entertain at his
+Bednall-Greene garden the worshipful Francis Bacon, who is living down
+at Twickenham, and who is a thriving lawyer, and has written essays,
+which Sir Hugh must know,--in which he discourses shrewdly upon gardens,
+as well as many kindred matters; and through his wide correspondence,
+Sir Hugh must probably have heard of certain new herbs which have been
+brought home from Virginia and the Roanoke, and very possibly he is
+making trial of a tobacco-plant in his garden, to be submitted some day
+to his friend, the French Ambassador.
+
+I can fancy Gervase Markham "making a night of it" with those rollicking
+bachelors, Beaumont and Fletcher, at the "Mermaid," or going with them
+to the Globe Theatre to see two Warwickshire brothers, Edmund and Will
+Shakspeare, who are on the boards there,--the latter taking the part of
+Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's play of "Every Man in his Humour." His
+friends say that this Will has parts.
+
+Then there is the fiery and dashing Sir Philip Sidney, who threatened to
+thrust a dagger into the heart of poor Molyneux, his father's steward,
+for opening private letters (which poor Molyneux never did); and Sir
+Philip knows all about poetry and the ancients; and in virtue of his
+knowledges, he writes a terribly magniloquent and tedious "Arcadia,"
+which, when he comes to die gallantly in battle, is admired and read
+everywhere: nowadays it rests mostly on the shelf. But the memory of his
+generous and noble spirit is far livelier than his book. It was through
+him, and his friendship, probably, that the poet Spenser was gifted by
+the Queen with a fine farm of three thousand acres among the Bally-Howra
+hills of Ireland.
+
+And it was here that Sir Walter Raleigh, that "shepherd of the sea,"
+visited the poet, and found him seated
+
+                    "amongst the coolly shade
+    Of the green alders, by the Mulla's shore."
+
+Did the gallant privateer possibly talk with the farmer about the
+introduction of that new esculent, the potato? Did they talk tobacco?
+Did Colin Clout have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep, or
+upon the probable "clip" of the year?
+
+Nothing of this; but
+
+    "He pip'd, I sung; and when he sung, I pip'd:
+    By chaunge of tunes each making other merry."
+
+The lines would make a fair argument of the poet's bucolic life. I have
+a strong faith that his farming was of the higgledy-piggledy order; I do
+not believe that he could have set a plough into the sod, or have made a
+good "cast" of barley. It is certain, that, when the Tyrone rebels
+burned him out of Kilcolman Castle, he took no treasure with him but his
+Elizabeth and the two babes; and the only treasures he left were the
+ashes of the dear child whose face shone on him there for the last
+time,--
+
+          "bright with many a curl
+    That clustered round her head."
+
+I wish I could love his "Shepherd's Calendar"; but I cannot. Abounding
+art of language, exquisite fancies, delicacies innumerable there may be;
+but there is no exhilarating air from the mountains, no crisp breezes,
+no songs that make the welkin ring, no river that champs the bit, no
+sky-piercing falcon.
+
+And as for the "Faery Queene," if I must confess it, I can never read
+far without a sense of suffocation from the affluence of its beauties.
+It is a marvellously fair sea and broad,--with tender winds blowing over
+it, and all the ripples are iris-hued; but you long for some brave blast
+that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from
+its lifted waters, and drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming
+curlew.
+
+In short, I can never read far in Spenser without taking a rest--as we
+farmers lean upon our spades, when the digging is in unctuous fat soil
+that lifts heavily.
+
+And so I leave the matter,--with the "Faery Queene" in my thought, and
+leaning on my spade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CIVIC BANQUETS.
+
+
+It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Englishman will be able to
+reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the
+earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take
+his appetite along with him, (which it seems to me hardly possible to
+believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition,) the
+immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during
+which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not
+an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of
+dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest
+characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened
+itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with
+Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and
+ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting
+the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely less
+complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy.
+Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which
+his sombre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to
+conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for
+the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was
+of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a
+delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents
+the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at
+Adam's dinner-table, and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only
+because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more
+acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English
+taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and
+poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately
+implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though
+still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of
+virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in
+midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which,
+elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges
+of Tartarus.
+
+Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a
+kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon
+the table; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due
+reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such
+reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest
+abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty
+years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and
+indulging a vigorous appetite; whereas an American has generally lost
+the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the
+earliest decline of life; and thenceforward he makes little account of
+his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my
+countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too
+much to affirm, that, on this side of the water, people never dine. At
+any rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material
+requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in
+America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and
+our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a
+happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of
+culture which we have attained.
+
+It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen
+know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of
+the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that
+particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often
+present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which,
+while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were
+thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It
+could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal
+enjoyment, because out of the very perfection of that lower bliss there
+had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the
+master-pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible,
+a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension,
+vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to
+recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set
+of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special
+fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table (only
+eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by
+the delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a
+little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle,
+delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most
+exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through
+which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was
+worth a heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achievement,--the
+production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect
+taste,--the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening
+for this hour, since man first began to eat and to moisten his food with
+wine,--must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other
+beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no
+better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill
+Coffee-House, unless the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach,
+is ready to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony
+in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch
+of well-according minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the
+guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our
+part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted and tumultuous place we find
+it, a beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner.
+
+The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main
+object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those
+public or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly
+prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in
+matters of peace or war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of
+roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these
+festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all
+considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient
+times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen of
+to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic
+hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place
+have long held their sessions; and always, in convenient contiguity,
+there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fireplace, where an ox might
+lie roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern
+cookery may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St.
+Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient
+banqueting-room that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to
+the description of it.
+
+In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three
+famous spires of Coventry, you behold a mediaeval edifice, in the
+basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have
+above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone
+pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of a cathedral. Passing
+up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as
+ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad
+and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained
+glass, on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another
+window at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient panes
+constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some
+of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries.
+Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though
+it was noonday when I last saw it, the panelling of black oak, and some
+faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault
+of the roof above, made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into
+more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the
+dress of Henry VI.'s time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is
+regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of
+that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in
+history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily
+into the old stitch-work of their substance, when you try to make them
+out. Coats-of-arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have
+been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them,
+or by women with dish-clouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating
+hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and spiders' webs.
+Full-length portraits of several English kings, Charles II. being the
+earliest, hang on the walls; and on the dais, or elevated part of the
+floor, stands an antique chair of state, which more than one royal
+character is traditionally said to have occupied while feasting here
+with their loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person
+of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable,
+reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned
+New-England kitchens.
+
+Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a
+single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in
+shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to
+be seen. At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that
+they are carved with figures of angels, and doubtless many other
+devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness
+that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall,
+opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which
+glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a
+row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It
+impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing
+untouched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable
+precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the
+artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that, if
+she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good
+people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I
+have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference
+of the scene from my own mind to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid
+idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with; insomuch
+that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the
+door-way, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately
+dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling
+a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping
+majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery,
+while the rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound
+beneath,--why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar
+with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger
+from a far country which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing
+pages is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinners, this
+reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the
+English character; since, from, the earliest recognizable period, we
+find them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnificently as
+their palaces or cathedrals.
+
+I know not whether the hall just described is still used for festive
+purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor are so. For
+example, there is Barber-Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old
+room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls.
+It is also enriched with Holbein's master-piece, representing a grave
+assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits, (with such extensive
+beards that methinks one-half of the company might have been profitably
+occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir
+Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of
+cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have
+a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many other pictures of
+distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of
+the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but
+darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not
+my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the
+reader; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of
+stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where
+there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by
+respectable citizens, who would never dream of claiming any privilege of
+rank outside of their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the
+warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets
+or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and
+lined with crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the hall,
+there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table,
+comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the
+gift of some jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude of less
+noticeable vessels, two Loving-Cups, very elaborately wrought in silver
+gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups,
+including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although
+the bowl-part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which,
+when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected
+to drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand adown a
+long table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may
+hereafter have occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a
+liberty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official
+dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large English seaport where
+I spent several years.
+
+The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and,
+inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Worship probably
+assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished
+personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's
+incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling
+among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A
+miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable
+ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion
+being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest
+wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what
+not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what
+it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political
+hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine,
+without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than accords with
+English taste.
+
+The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present
+took place during assize time, and included among the guests the judges
+and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town-Hall at seven
+o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed
+footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom
+it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the
+reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the
+course of these transmissions; so that I had the advantage of making my
+entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company,
+but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and
+put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very
+affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my
+nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost
+invariably be to an individual American, without ever bating a jot of
+his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new
+acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease; and, in requital
+of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company
+in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing
+silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been
+half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment.
+
+There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers
+of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the
+mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, with
+whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky
+over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and
+mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out,
+with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and
+wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the
+military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume.
+It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had
+seen, my honest impression about them was, that they were a heavy and
+homely set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and
+behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity
+with the national character than I then possessed always to detect the
+good-breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still
+farther advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure; for the
+comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his
+body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and
+his stomach to assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to
+that metropolis of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the
+atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance
+of succulent food) gets red and mottled, and develops at least one
+additional chin, with a promise of more; so that, finally, a stranger
+recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take
+time and a little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with
+an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit
+of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic point of view. It
+seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as
+he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully
+exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments: he
+had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out
+of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned
+to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren
+among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual
+propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit
+being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman
+smart, (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few,)
+you make him a monster: his best aspect is that of ponderous
+respectability.
+
+To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied that not merely the
+Suffolk bar, but the bar of any inland county in New England, might show
+a set of thin-visaged, green-spectacled men, looking wretchedly worn,
+sallow with the intemperate use of strong coffee, deeply wrinkled across
+the forehead, and grimly furrowed about the month, with whom these
+heavy-cheeked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they must
+needs be, would stand very little chance in a professional contest. How
+that matter might turn out I am unqualified to decide. But I state these
+results of my earliest glimpses of Englishmen, not for what they are
+worth, but because I ultimately gave them up as worth little or nothing.
+In course of time, I came to the conclusion that Englishmen of all ages
+are a rather good-looking people, dress in admirable taste from their
+own point of view, and, under a surface never silken to the touch, have
+a refinement of manners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a
+separate endowment,--that is to say, if the individual himself be a man
+of station, and has had gentlemen for his father and grandfather. The
+sturdy Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third
+generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, have their own
+proprieties. The only value of my criticisms, therefore, lay in their
+exemplifying the proneness of a traveller to measure one people by the
+distinctive characteristics of another,--as English writers invariably
+measure us, and take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly,
+instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we may
+be in conformity.
+
+In due time we were summoned to the table, and went thither in no solemn
+procession, but with a good deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and
+scrambling for places when we reached our destination. The legal
+gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indecorous zeal, which I
+never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The dining-hall was of
+noble size, and, like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously
+painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There was a splendid
+table-service, and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain
+clothes, and others wearing the town-livery, richly decorated with
+gold-lace, and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming
+young-manhood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was certainly
+an agreeable spectacle to look up and down the long vista of earnest
+faces, and behold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an
+important business in hand, and so determined to be equal to the
+occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I hardly know what can be prettier
+than a snow-white table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central
+decoration, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of
+Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artistically folded napkin
+at each plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in short, that comes
+before the first mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of
+artificial light, without which a dinner of made-dishes looks spectral,
+and the simplest viands are the best. Printed bills-of-fare were
+distributed, representing an abundant feast, no part of which appeared
+on the table until called for in separate plates. I have entirely
+forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there is
+a pervading commonplace and identicalness in the composition of
+extensive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supplying a
+hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. It was
+suggested to me that certain juicy old gentlemen had a private
+understanding what to call for, and that it would be good policy in a
+stranger to follow in their footsteps through the feast. I did not care
+to do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out of Camacho's
+caldron, any sort of pot-luck at such a table would be sure to suit my
+purpose; so I chose a dish or two on my own judgment, and, getting
+through my labors betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the Englishmen
+toil onward to the end.
+
+They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely; for I observed that
+they seldom took Hock, and let the Champagne bubble slowly away out of
+the goblet, solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily
+before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however,
+did not seem so exquisite, and certainly was not so various, as that to
+which many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate acquaintance
+with rare vintage: does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very
+much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his life-long
+friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a moment, and
+reaping the reward of his constancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only
+so much gout as he deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the
+measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass too often.
+Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate habitual imprudences of that
+kind, though, in my opinion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could
+carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of
+their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes
+sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if
+it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our
+temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous
+disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England.
+I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the
+very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the
+memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir
+John Linkwater, or Drinkwater,--but I think the jolly old knight could
+hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last,--while
+sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to
+the clerk. "Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the most
+indifferent fact in the world, "I was drunk last night. There are my
+five shillings."
+
+During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with the
+gentlemen on either side of me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with
+great unction on the social standing of the judges. Representing the
+dignity and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during
+assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, of the
+Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes,
+and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they are the greatest
+men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to
+enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal dinner, a
+judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm
+and take the Queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company with
+some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occasions, it appeared
+to me that the judges are fully conscious of their paramount claims to
+respect, and take rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial
+inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if it
+be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a similar
+characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he
+needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with his
+nature from its original germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it
+obtrusively in the faces of innocent by-standers.
+
+My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth
+in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn
+visage, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the
+machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and
+let slip few opportunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be
+passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly-featured
+table-fellow might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me with a
+surly sort of kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then
+began a conversation that abounded, on his part, with sturdy sense, and,
+somehow or other, brought me closer to him than I had yet stood to an
+Englishman. I should hardly have taken him to be an educated man,
+certainly not a scholar of accurate training; and yet he seemed to have
+all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at
+command. My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of English
+characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse him, or perhaps
+both. Under the mollifying influences of abundance of meat and drink, he
+grew very gracious, (not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe
+his evidently genuine good-will,) and by-and-by expressed a wish for
+further acquaintance, asking me to call at his rooms in London and
+inquire for Sergeant Wilkins,--throwing out the name forcibly, as if he
+had no occasion to be ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's retort to
+Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar announcement,--"Of what regiment,
+pray, Sir?"--and fancied that the same question might not have been
+quite amiss, if applied to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard
+of him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English bar, a
+rough customer, and a terribly strong champion in criminal cases; and it
+caused me more regret than might have been expected, on so slight an
+acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death announced
+in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qualities, he possessed, I
+think, the most attractive one of all,--thorough manhood.
+
+After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decanters were set before
+the Mayor, who sent them forth on their outward voyage, full freighted
+with Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors,
+methought, the latter found least acceptance among the guests. When
+every man had filled his glass, his Worship stood up and proposed a
+toast. It was, of course, "Our gracious Sovereign," or words to that
+effect; and immediately a band of musicians, whose preliminary tootings
+and thrummings I had already heard behind me, struck up "God save the
+Queen," and the whole company rose with one impulse to assist in singing
+that famous national anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had
+ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the active
+influence of the sentiment of Loyalty; for, though we call ourselves
+loyal to our country and institutions, and prove it by our readiness to
+shed blood and sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as
+cold and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in
+motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's system, a force similar
+to that of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human
+hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood,--at present,
+in the flesh and blood of a woman,--and manages to combine love, awe,
+and intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to embody his
+mother, his wife, his children, the whole idea of kindred, in a single
+person, and make her the representative of his country and its laws. We
+Americans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table; and yet, I
+fancy, we lose some very agreeable titillations of the heart in
+consequence of our proud perogative of caring no more about our
+President than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in
+a cornfield.
+
+But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather ludicrously, to
+see this party of stout middle-aged and elderly gentlemen, in the
+fulness of meat and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening with
+wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old
+stanzas from the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which two
+organs, in the English interior arrangement, lie closer together than in
+ours. The song seemed to me the rudest old ditty in the world; but I
+could not wonder at its universal acceptance and indestructible
+popularity, considering how inimitably it expresses the national faith
+and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness of England, the
+Almighty's consequent respect and partiality for that redoubtable little
+island, and His presumed readiness to strengthen its defence against the
+contumacious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or
+republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English to the very last
+prejudice, could not write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding
+that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of every pitch
+between rolling thunder and the squeak of a cartwheel, and that the
+strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of
+them, I determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the triumphant
+roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to the first Lady in the land,
+whose guest, in the largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly,
+my first tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I purpose not to
+sing any more, unless it be "Hail Columbia" on the restoration of the
+Union) were poured freely forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The
+Sergeant smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, and the
+other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinced grave
+approbation of so suitable a tribute to English superiority; and we
+finished our stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind.
+
+Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions and interests
+of the country, and speeches in response to each were made by
+individuals whom the Mayor designated or the company called for. None of
+them impressed me with a very high idea of English postprandial oratory.
+It is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and shapeless utterances most
+Englishmen are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything
+like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there, and
+ultimately getting out what they want to say, and generally with a
+result of sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as
+if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that
+this was almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious
+of public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his
+countrymen distrust him. They dislike smartness. The stronger and
+heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of
+commonplace running through them; and any rough, yet never vulgar force
+of expression, such as would knock an opponent down, if it hit him, only
+it must not be too personal, is altogether to their taste; but a studied
+neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, they cannot
+abide. They do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of
+malice aforethought, that is, unless he be a nobleman, (as, for example,
+Lord Stanley, of the Derby family,) who, as an hereditary legislator and
+necessarily a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery
+in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, and, if
+I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as likely to applaud theirs
+as our own. When an English speaker sits down, you feel that you have
+been listening to a real man, and not to an actor; his sentiments have a
+wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this apparent
+naturalness is as much an art as what we expend in rounding a sentence
+or elaborating a peroration.
+
+It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that nobody in England
+seems to feel any shyness about shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable
+ideas out of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, nobody
+did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little Major of
+Artillery, who responded for the Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a
+terribly hesitating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not,
+would rather have been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have
+said a word. Not his own mouth, but the cannon's, was this poor Major's
+proper organ of utterance.
+
+While I was thus amiably occupied in criticizing my fellow-guests, the
+Mayor had got up to propose another toast; and listening rather
+inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a
+drift in his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively
+towards Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving
+a decanter of Port towards me, "it is your turn next"; and seeing in my
+face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he
+kindly added,--"It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the
+purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being the
+case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best, if I said
+nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving
+the Mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might
+possibly be brought into my present predicament; but I had dismissed the
+idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover,
+as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not
+keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an
+earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need
+rise to speak. Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably,--and,
+indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of
+his wordy wanderings find no end.
+
+If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to
+desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker
+quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it
+does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I,
+in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently
+rose to speak. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me
+whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I
+should unhesitatingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really
+nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal
+worse, any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out
+that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such
+as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time
+pressed; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the
+United States and highly complimentary to their distinguished
+representative at that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering;
+and the band struck up "Hail Columbia," "Old Hundred," or "God save the
+Queen" over again, for anything that I should have known or cared. When
+the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant, during
+which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and
+rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a
+speech. The guests rattled on the table, and cried, "Hear!" most
+vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous
+world, had come the long-expected moment when one golden word was to be
+spoken; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit
+of an effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and must, and
+should do to utter.
+
+Well; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most
+was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a
+declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other
+person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech: a
+prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went
+on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great
+applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won
+from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone
+had enabled me to speak at all. "It was handsomely done!" quoth Sergeant
+Wilkins; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under
+fire.
+
+I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and there forever,
+but was often placed in a similar or worse position, and compelled to
+meet it as I best might; for this was one of the necessities of an
+office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which
+I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not
+shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various.
+Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by
+heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot
+every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as
+well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points
+in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of
+Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any
+considerable proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I
+would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I
+was much embarrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better with a
+large one,--the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect,
+which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality and tosses
+him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one.
+Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of
+going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I
+had little or nothing to say; whereas, if I came to the scratch in
+perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would have been horrible,
+it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my
+poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expression
+to sentiments which an instant before looked as vague and far-off as the
+clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may have
+been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the
+chief requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many of the others,
+if he deems it worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains
+on an object which the most accomplished orators, I suspect, have not
+found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it
+must be a remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception
+of truth when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural
+sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him,
+when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may
+make it ten times as acceptable to the audience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too
+wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted description of a Lord-Mayor's
+dinner at the Mansion-House in London. I should have preferred the
+annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good-fortune to witness it.
+Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular
+dinners, and gladly accepted it,--taking the precaution, nevertheless,
+though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a
+mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence,
+and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to
+open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful
+hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented
+myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion-House, at half-past six
+o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous
+apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion-House
+was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is
+a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his
+traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed,
+however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious
+Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of life-long integrity
+was a seat in the Lord-Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real
+dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do,
+sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted
+and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only
+second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the
+Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants
+of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were
+mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the
+early days of our country; so that the Lord-Mayor was a potentate of
+huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be
+hardly second to the prime-minister of the throne. The true great men of
+the city now appear to have aims beyond city-greatness, connecting
+themselves with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the
+aristocracy of the country.
+
+In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a
+livery of blue and buff, in which they looked wonderfully like American
+Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery
+than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There
+were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should have taken to be
+military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver
+epaulets; but they turned out to be officers of the Lord-Mayor's
+household, and were now employed in assigning to the guests the places
+which they were respectively to occupy at the dinner-table. Our names
+(for I had included myself in a little group of friends) were announced;
+and ascending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the door-way of the
+first reception-room, where, also, we had the advantage of a
+presentation to the Lady-Mayoress. As this distinguished couple retired
+into private life at the termination of their year of office, it is
+inadmissible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the manners
+and bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position of
+respectable mediocrity into one of preeminent dignity within their own
+sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to
+the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on
+the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an
+exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater
+than that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the
+outward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have
+been correctly informed, the Lord-Mayor's salary is exactly double that
+of the President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate
+to his necessary expenditure.
+
+There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide
+folding-doors; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be
+venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as
+spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid
+fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers
+and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them
+celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I
+recollect none preeminently distinguished in either department. But it
+is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for
+example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face
+to face, thus to bring them together, under genial auspices, in
+connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be
+the Lord-Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether,
+during his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every man of
+noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his
+Lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued; but it seemed to me
+that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which
+the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among
+different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society,
+however, I presume that the Lord-Mayor's card does not often seek out
+modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the
+bore, and doubtful about the honor.
+
+One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met with at any other
+public or partially public dinner, was the presence of ladies. No doubt,
+they were principally the wives and daughters of city-magnates; and if
+we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satirical
+poems, the city of London has always been famous for the beauty of its
+women and the reciprocal attractions between them and the men of
+quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither and thither through
+those crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying certain
+heterodox opinions which I had inbibed, in my Transatlantic newness and
+rawness, as regarded the delicate character and frequent occurrence of
+English beauty. To state the entire truth, (being, at this period, some
+years old in English life,) my taste, I fear, had long since begun to be
+deteriorated by acquaintance with other models of feminine loveliness
+than it was my happiness to know in America. I often found, or seemed to
+find, if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear
+countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagreness, (Heaven
+forbid that I should call it scrawniness!) a deficiency of physical
+development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material
+make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of voice,--all which
+characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more
+sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because I was
+sometimes driven to a half-acknowledgment, that the English ladies,
+looked at from a lower point of view, were perhaps a little finer
+animals than they. The advantages of the latter, if any they could
+really be said to have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of
+clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a
+pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in
+exchange for half a hundred-weight of human clay!
+
+At a given signal we all found our way into an immense room, called the
+Egyptian Hall, I know not why, except that the architecture was classic,
+and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the
+Pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we entered, and a
+brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables, extending
+the whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between them, occupying
+nearly its entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre
+or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accompaniments
+of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the
+Lord-Mayor's chaplain implored a blessing on the food,--a ceremony which
+the English never omit, at a great dinner or a small one, yet consider,
+I fear, not so much a religious rite as a sort of preliminary relish
+before the soup.
+
+The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of which, in
+accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls,
+in spite of the otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed,
+judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that
+there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the
+capacity of the soup-tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I
+partook of it but once, and then only in accordance with the wise maxim,
+always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its indigenous
+site; and the very fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the
+Lord-Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox customs which
+people follow for half a century without knowing why, to drink a sip of
+rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently
+well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for
+the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in
+a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque
+border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English
+and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive
+reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be
+carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is
+attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy,
+yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby
+the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes, instead
+of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as
+a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder
+that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of
+butcher's-meat, do not generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism
+of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to
+nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic
+appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even
+an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things
+enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away
+wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden
+him,--a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part
+of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding
+high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a
+wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially
+nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my
+memory as completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had
+clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals, inspiriting us
+to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen
+supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with
+little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a
+to-morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case,
+a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner.
+
+Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, sat a young lady
+in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because
+not only the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character,
+would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be
+drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a
+picture-frame, or the covers of a romance: not that I had ever met with
+her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an
+apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and
+picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too
+apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to
+gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in
+the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly
+attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline
+of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that
+you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to
+speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became
+aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery.
+There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child
+would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife
+(the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom
+overshadowing her fair young brow) travelling in their honey-moon, and
+dining, among other distinguished strangers, at the Lord-Mayor's table.
+
+After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife and fork came the
+dessert; and at the point of the festival where finger-glasses are
+usually introduced, a large silver basin was carried round to the
+guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped the ends of our
+napkins and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of that
+heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems
+to be an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the Lord-Mayor's
+table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar.
+
+During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient custom, the
+origin or purport of which I do not remember to have heard, there stood
+a man in armor, with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's chair.
+When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, still another
+official personage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a
+solemn and sonorous proclamation, (in which he enumerated the principal
+guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several baronets, and plenty
+of generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the
+illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears,) ending
+in some such style as this: "and other gentlemen and ladies, here
+present, the Lord-Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,"--giving a
+sort of sentimental twang to the two words,--"and sends it round among
+you!" And forthwith the loving-cup--several of them, indeed, on each
+side of the tables--came slowly down with all the antique ceremony.
+
+The fashion of it is thus. The Lord-Mayor, standing up and taking the
+covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his elbow, who
+likewise rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which
+being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and
+receives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next
+neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a
+draught, after which the third person goes through a similar manoeuvre
+with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find
+themselves inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one complicated
+chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I examined it critically,
+both inside and out, and perceived it to be an antique and richly
+ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about a quart of wine.
+Considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our
+lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully
+moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of wine
+being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the company
+had more than barely touched the silver rim before passing it to their
+neighbors,--a degree of abstinence that might be accounted for by a
+fastidious repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or possibly by
+a disapprobation of the liquor. Being curious to know all about these
+important matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever
+they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving-cup,
+and had no occasion for another,--ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor
+original quality, largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened.
+It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial drink,
+and could never have been intended for any better purpose.
+
+The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches
+neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of
+table-eloquence which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to
+each new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of
+state, gave awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor was
+about to propose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof,
+together with some accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate
+tune, and the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such
+or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what
+not, was going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor's toast;
+then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of
+trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments; and finally the doomed
+individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and
+proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his
+maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got
+every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most
+seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a
+book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in
+England.
+
+The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion, but
+all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to
+say absurd. Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits
+into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into
+a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious libations of Sherry and
+old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to
+speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so
+refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of
+these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their
+substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen
+a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should
+undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt
+nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent
+expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I
+imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his
+ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard
+matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a
+rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of
+modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid,
+in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to
+come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they
+come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by
+way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine
+and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another.
+
+Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a
+circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much
+interrupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my
+condition had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the
+brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close proximity with three
+very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored
+name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write
+it; another, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste,
+kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such
+happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in
+England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me
+good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, camp, and country,
+which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the
+kind of help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not
+had a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt
+safer or cozier at anybody's fireside, even my own, than at the
+dinner-table of the Lord-Mayor.
+
+Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lordship got up and
+proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon "the literary and
+commercial"--I question whether those two adjectives were ever before
+married by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would not live
+together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord--"the literary and
+commercial attainments of an eminent gentleman there present," and then
+went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Great
+Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country. Those
+bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great
+nations, throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured that that
+whole honorable company would join him in the expression of a fervent
+wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both sides of the
+Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry
+and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of
+nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously
+announced that Mr. So-and-so would now respond to his Right Honorable
+Lordship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish
+for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause,
+and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall.
+
+All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord-Mayor's part, after
+beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe-conduct; and it seemed
+very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his
+dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion-House wine, and go
+away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship
+had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have
+taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the
+matter to have been somewhat as follows.
+
+All England, just then, was in one of those singular fits of panic
+excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as that
+emotion,) which, in consequence of the homogeneous character of the
+people, their intense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas
+in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and
+individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and unreasoning than any
+similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American
+public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of
+it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong,
+are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North,
+at the commencement of this war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion
+only because it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just
+as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand people out of
+their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We
+were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to
+the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is
+nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as
+this characteristic. They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind
+of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always
+looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers
+of international law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the
+world, with themselves at the head, to combine for the purpose of
+putting us into a stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so
+powerful, (and when one man feels it, a million do,) that it resembles
+the passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you see the
+whole crop bending and swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate
+stalk tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad companions.
+At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of
+sentiment and expression. You have the whole country in each man; and
+not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a
+reasonable ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the
+world--our own country and France--that can put England into this
+singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely
+well-to-do, most anxious for the preservation of the cumbrous and
+moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and
+incompetent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of
+trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when
+that prosperity is really threatened.
+
+If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign side of any
+international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that
+there was very little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from
+the simple circumstance that their own Government had positively not an
+inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of
+the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a
+justification for incurring war. It was no such perilous juncture as
+exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or
+plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the
+first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a
+mere diplomatic squabble, which the British ministers, with the politic
+generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official
+subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an
+ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government
+(for God had not denied us an administration of Statesmen then) had
+retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a
+cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them with no
+pretence whatever for active resentment.
+
+Now the Lord-Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War
+was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so
+insignificant an American as myself, who might be made to harp on the
+rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and
+interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace
+where there was no peace, in however weak an utterance. And possibly his
+Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to
+be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and
+far-famed dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on the grand
+result. Thus, when the Lord-Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a
+piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser
+Curtius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of
+discord between England and America, and, on my ignominious demur, had
+resolved to shove me in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope
+of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his
+Lordship. He meant well by all parties,--himself, who would share the
+glory, and me, who ought to have desired nothing better than such an
+heroic opportunity,--his own country, which would continue to get cotton
+and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything that men work with
+and wear.
+
+As soon as the Lord-Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it
+gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas.
+I never thought of listening to the speech, because I knew it all
+beforehand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it
+would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned to
+one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable
+flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest,
+to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once
+afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angel for enabling me to flounder
+ashore again, He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to
+the Lord-Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his
+office was held--at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm
+in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or
+no--was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if I
+liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily
+slide off into the momentous subject of the relations between England
+and America, to which his Lordship had made such weighty allusion.
+
+Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three
+friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or
+perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and
+suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a
+position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage
+policy here to close the sketch, leaving myself still erect in so heroic
+an attitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE.
+
+
+I shall pass lightly over the Permian and Triassic epochs, as being more
+nearly related in their organic forms to the Carboniferous epoch, with
+which we are already somewhat familiar, while in those next in
+succession, the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs, the later conditions of
+animal life begin to be already foreshadowed. But though less
+significant for us in the present stage of our discussion, it must not
+be supposed that the Permian and Triassic epochs were unimportant in the
+physical and organic history of Europe. A glance at any geological map
+of Europe will show the reader how the Belgian island stretched
+gradually in a southwesterly direction during the Permian epoch,
+approaching the coast of France by slowly increasing accumulations, and
+thus filling the Burgundian channel; a wide border of Permian deposits
+around the coal-field of Great Britain marks the increase of this region
+also during the same time, and a very extensive tract of a like
+character is to be seen in Russia. The latter is, however, still under
+doubt and discussion among geologists, and more recent investigations
+tend to show that this Russian region, supposed at first to be
+exclusively Permian, is at least in part Triassic.
+
+With the coming in of the Triassic epoch began the great deposits of Red
+Sandstone, Muschel-Kalk, and Keuper, in Central Europe. They united the
+Belgian island to the region of the Vosges and the Black Forest, while
+they also filled to a great extent the channel between Belgium and the
+Bohemian island. Thus the land slowly gained upon the Triassic ocean,
+shutting it within ever-narrowing limits, and preparing the large inland
+seas so characteristic of the later Secondary times. The character of
+the organic world still retained a general resemblance to that of the
+Carboniferous epoch. Among Radiates, the Corals were more nearly allied
+to those of the earlier ages than to those of modern times, and Crinoids
+abounded still, though some of the higher Echinoderm types were already
+introduced. Among Mollusks, the lower Bivalves, that is, the Brachiopods
+and Bryozoa, still prevailed, while Ammonites continued to be very
+numerous, differing from the earlier ones chiefly in the ever-increasing
+complications of their inner partitions, which become so deeply
+involuted and cut upon their margins, before the type disappears, as to
+make an intricate tracery of very various patterns on the surface of
+these shells. The most conspicuous type of Articulates continues as
+before to be that of Crustacea; but Trilobites have finished their
+career, and the Lobster-like Crustacea make their appearance for the
+first time. It does not seem that the class of Insects has greatly
+increased since the Carboniferous epoch; and Worms are still as
+difficult to trace as ever, being chiefly known by the cases in which
+they sheltered themselves. Among Vertebrates, the Fishes still resemble
+those of the Carboniferous epoch, belonging principally to the
+Selachians and Ganoids. They have, however, approached somewhat toward a
+modern pattern, the lobes of the tail being more evenly cut, and their
+general outline more like that of common fishes. The gigantic marsh
+Reptiles have become far more numerous and various. They continue
+through several epochs, but may be said to reach their culminating point
+in the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits.
+
+I cannot pass over the Triassic epoch without some allusion to the
+so-called bird-tracks, so generally believed to mark the introduction of
+Birds at this time. It is true that in the deposits of the Trias there
+have been found many traces of footsteps, indicating a vast number of
+animals which, except for these footprints, remain unknown to us. In the
+sandstone of the Connecticut Valley they are found in extraordinary
+numbers, as if these animals, whatever they were, had been in the habit
+of frequenting that shore. They appear to have been very diversified;
+for some of the tracks are very large, others quite small, while some
+would seem, from the way in which the footsteps follow each other, to
+have been quadrupedal, and others bipedal. We can even measure the
+length of their strides, following the impressions which, from their
+succession in a continuous line, mark the walk of a single animal.[10]
+The fact that we find these footprints without any bones or other
+remains to indicate the animals by which they were made is accounted for
+by the mode of deposition of the sandstone. It is very unfavorable for
+the preservation of bones; but, being composed of minute sand mixed with
+mud, it affords an admirable substance for the reception of these
+impressions, which have been thus cast in a mould, as it were, and
+preserved through ages. These animals must have been large, when
+full-grown, for we find strides measuring six feet between, evidently
+belonging to the same animal. In the quadrupedal tracks, the front feet
+seem to have been smaller than the hind ones. Some of the tracks show
+four toes all turned forward, while in others three toes are turned
+forward and one backward. It happened that the first tracks found
+belonged to the latter class; and they very naturally gave rise to the
+idea that these impressions were made by birds, on account of this
+formation of the foot. This, however, is a mere inference; and since the
+inductive method is the only true one in science, it seems to me that we
+should turn to the facts we have in our possession for the explanation
+of these mysterious footprints, rather than endeavor to supply by
+assumption those which we have not. As there are no bones found in
+connection with these tracks, the only way to arrive at their true
+character, in the present state of our knowledge, is by comparing them
+with bones found in other localities in the deposits of the same period
+in the world's history. Now there have never been found in the Trias any
+remains of Birds, while it contains innumerable bones of Reptiles; and
+therefore I think that it is in the latter class that we shall
+eventually find the solution of this mystery.
+
+[Footnote 10: For all details respecting these tracks see Hitchcock's
+_Ichnology of New England_. Boston, 1858. 4to.]
+
+It is true that the bones of the Triassic Reptiles are scattered and
+disconnected; no complete skeleton has yet been discovered, nor has any
+foot been found; so that no direct comparison can be made with the
+steps. It is, however, my belief, from all we know of the character of
+the Animal Kingdom in those days, that these animals were reptilian, but
+combined, like so many of the early types, characters of their own class
+with those of higher animals yet to come. It seems to me probable, that,
+in those tracks where one toe is turned backward, the impression is made
+not by a toe, but by a heel, or by a long sole projecting backward; for
+it is not pointed, like those of the front toes, but is blunt. It is
+true that there is a division of joints in the toes, which seems in
+favor of the idea that they were those of Birds; for when the three toes
+are turned forward, there are two joints on the inner one, three on the
+middle, and four on the outer one, as in Birds. But this feature is not
+peculiar to Birds; it is found in Turtles also. The correspondence of
+these footprints with each other leaves no doubt that they were all by
+one kind of animal; for both the bipedal and the quadrupedal tracks have
+the same character. The only quadrupedal animals now known to us which
+walk on two legs are the Kangaroos. They raise themselves on their hind
+legs, using the front ones to bring their food to their mouth. They leap
+with the hind legs, sometimes bringing down their front feet to steady
+themselves after the spring, and making use also of their tails, to
+balance the body after leaping. In these tracks we find traces of a tail
+between the feet. I do not bring this forward as any evidence that these
+animals were allied to Kangaroos, since I believe that nothing is more
+injurious in science than assumptions which do not rest on a broad basis
+of facts; but I wish only to show that these tracks recall other animals
+besides Birds, with which they have been universally associated. And
+seeing, as we do, that so many of the early types prophesy future forms,
+it seems not improbable that they may have belonged to animals which
+combined with reptilian characters some birdlike features, and also some
+features of the earliest and lowest group of Mammalia, the Marsupials.
+To sum up my opinion respecting these footmarks, I believe that they
+were made by animals of a prophetic type, belonging to the class of
+Reptiles, and exhibiting many synthetic characters.
+
+The more closely we study past creations, the more impressive and
+significant do the synthetic types, presenting features of the higher
+classes under the guise of the lower ones, become. They hold the promise
+of the future. As the opening overture of an opera contains all the
+musical elements to be therein developed, so this living prelude of the
+Creative work comprises all the organic elements to be successively
+developed in the course of time. When Cuvier first saw the teeth of a
+Wealden Reptile, he pronounced them to be those of a Rhinoceros, so
+mammalian were they in their character. So, when Sommering first saw the
+remains of a Jurassic Pterodactyl, he pronounced them to be those of a
+Bird. These mistakes were not due to a superficial judgment in men who
+knew Nature so well, but to this prophetic character in the early types
+themselves, in which features were united never known to exist together
+in our days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Jurassic epoch, next in succession, was a very important one in the
+history of Europe. It completed the junction of several of the larger
+islands, filling the channel between the central plateau of France and
+the Belgian island, as well as that between the former and the island of
+Bretagne, so that France was now a sort of crescent of land holding a
+Jurassic sea in its centre, Bretagne and Belgium forming the two horns.
+This Jurassic basin or inland sea united England and France, and it may
+not be amiss to say a word here of its subsequent transformations.
+During the long succession of Jurassic periods, the deposits of that
+epoch, chiefly limestone and clays, with here and there a bed of sand,
+were accumulated at its bottom. Upon these followed the chalk deposits
+of the Cretaceous epoch, until the basin was gradually filled, and
+partially, at least, turned to dry land. But at the close of the
+Cretaceous epoch a fissure was formed, allowing the entrance of the sea
+at the western end, so that the constant washing of the tides and storms
+wore away the lower, softer deposits, leaving the overhanging chalk
+cliffs unsupported. These latter, as their support were undermined,
+crumbled down, thus widening the channel gradually. This process must,
+of course, have gone on more rapidly at the western end, where the sea
+rushed on with most force, till the channel was worn through to the
+German Ocean on the other side, and the sea then began to act with like
+power at both ends of the channel. This explains its form, wider at the
+western end, narrower between Dover and Calais, and widening again at
+the eastern extremity. This ancient basin, extending from the centre of
+France into England, is rich in the remains of a number of successive
+epochs. Around its margin we find the Jurassic deposits, showing that
+there must have been some changes of level which raised the shores and
+prevented later accumulations from covering them, while in the centre
+the Jurassic deposits are concealed by those of the Cretaceous epoch
+above them, these being also partially hidden under the later Tertiary
+beds. Let us see, then, what this inland sea has to tell us of the
+organic world in the Jurassic epoch.
+
+At that time the region where Lyme-Regis is now situated in modern
+England was an estuary on the shore of that ancient sea. About forty
+years ago a discovery of large and curious bones, belonging to some
+animal unknown to the scientific world, turned the attention of
+naturalists to this locality, and since then such a quantity and variety
+of such remains have been found in the neighborhood as to show that the
+Sharks, Whales, Porpoises, etc., of the present ocean are not more
+numerous and diversified than were the inhabitants of this old bay or
+inlet. Among these animals, the Ichthyosauri (Fish-Lizards) form one of
+the best-known and most prominent groups. They are chiefly found in the
+Lias, the lowest set of beds of the Jurassic deposits, and seem to have
+come in with the close of the Triassic epoch. It is greatly to be
+regretted that all that is known of the Triassic Reptiles antecedent to
+the Ichthyosauri still remains in the form of original papers, and is
+not yet embodied in text-books. They are quite as interesting, as
+curious, and as diversified as those of the Jurassic epoch, which are,
+however, much more extensively known, on account of the large
+collections of these animals belonging to the British Museum. It will be
+more easy to understand the structural relations of the latter, and
+their true position in the Animal Kingdom, when those which preceded
+them are better understood. One of the most remarkable and numerous of
+these Triassic Reptiles seems to have been an animal resembling, in the
+form of the head, and in the two articulating surfaces at the juncture
+of the head with the backbone, the Frogs and Salamanders, though its
+teeth are like those of a Crocodile. As yet nothing has been found of
+these animals except the head,--neither the backbone nor the limbs; so
+that little is known of their general structure.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1. An Ichthyosaurus.]
+
+The Ichthyosauri (Figure 1) must have been very large, seven or eight
+feet being the ordinary length, while specimens measuring from twenty to
+thirty feet are not uncommon. The large head is pointed, like that of
+the Porpoise; the jaws contain a number of conical teeth, of reptilian
+form and character; the eyeball was very large, as may be seen by the
+socket, and it was supported by pieces of bone, such as we find now only
+in the eyes of birds of prey and in the bony fishes. The ribs begin at
+the neck and continue to the tail, and there is no distinction between
+head and neck, as in most Reptiles, but a continuous outline, as in
+Fishes. They had four limbs, not divided into fingers, but forming mere
+paddles. Yet fingers seem to be hinted at in these paddles, though not
+developed, for the bones are in parallel rows, as if to mark what might
+be such a division. The back-bones are short, but very high, and the
+surfaces of articulation are hollow, conical cavities, as in Fishes,
+instead of ball-and-socket joints, as in Reptiles. The ribs are more
+complicated than in Vertebrates generally: they consist of several
+pieces, and the breast-bone is formed of a number of bones, making
+together quite an intricate bony net-work. There is only one living
+animal, the Crocodile, characterized by this peculiar structure of the
+breast-bone. The Ichthyosaurus is, indeed, one of the most remarkable of
+the synthetic types: by the shape of its head one would associate it
+with the Porpoises, while by its paddles and its long tail it reminds
+one of the whole group of Cetaceans to which the Porpoises belong; by
+its crocodilian teeth, its ribs, and its breast-bone, it seems allied to
+Reptiles; and by its uniform neck, not distinguished from the body, and
+the structure of the backbone, it recalls the Fishes.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2. A Plesiosaurus.]
+
+Another most curious member of this group is the Plesiosaurus, odd
+Saurian (Figure 2). By its disproportionately long and flexible neck,
+and its small, flat head, it unquestionably foreshadows the Serpents,
+while by the structure of the backbone, the limbs, and the tail, it is
+closely allied with the Ichthyosaurus. Its flappers are, however, more
+slender, less clumsy, and were, no doubt, adapted to more rapid motion
+than the fins of the Ichthyosaurus, while its tail is shorter in
+proportion to the whole length of the animal. It seems probable, from
+its general structure, that the Ichthyosaurus moved like a Fish, chiefly
+by the flapping of the tail, aided by the fins, while in the
+Plesiosaurus the tail must have been much less efficient as a locomotive
+organ, and the long, snake-like, flexible neck no doubt rendered the
+whole body more agile and rapid in its movements. In comparing the two,
+it may be said, that, as a whole, the Ichthyosaurus, though belonging by
+its structure to the class of Reptiles, has a closer external
+resemblance to the Fishes, while the Plesiosaurus is more decidedly
+reptilian in character. If there exists any animal in our waters, not
+yet known to naturalists, answering to the descriptions of the
+"Sea-Serpent," it must be closely allied to the Plesiosaurus. The
+occurrence in the fresh waters of North America of a Fish, the
+Lepidosteus, which is closely allied to the fossil Fishes found with the
+Plesiosaurus in the Jurassic beds, renders such a supposition probable.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3. A Pterodactylus.]
+
+Of all these strange old forms, so singularly uniting features of Fishes
+and Reptiles, none has given rise to more discussion than the
+Pterodactylus, (Figure 3,) another of the Saurian tribe, associated,
+however, with Birds by some naturalists, on account of its large
+wing-like appendages. From the extraordinary length of its anterior
+limbs, they have generally been described as wings, and the animal is
+usually represented as a flying Reptile. But if we consider its whole
+structure, this does not seem probable, and I believe it to have been an
+essentially aquatic animal, moving after the fashion of the Sea-Turtle.
+Its so-called wings resemble in structure the front paddles of the
+Sea-Turtles far more than the wings of a Bird; differing from them,
+indeed, only by the extraordinary length of the inner toe, while the
+outer ones are comparatively much shorter. But, notwithstanding this
+difference, the hand of the Pterodactylus is constructed like that of an
+aquatic swimming marine Reptile; and I believe, that, if we represent it
+with its long neck stretched upon the water, its large head furnished
+with powerful, well-armed jaws, ready to dive after the innumerable
+smaller animals living in the same ocean, we shall have a more natural
+picture of its habits than if we consider it as a flying animal, which
+it is generally supposed to have been. It has not the powerful
+breast-bone, with the large projecting keel along the middle line, such
+as exists in all the flying animals. Its breast-bone, on the contrary,
+is thin and flat, like that of the present Sea-Turtle; and if it moved
+through the water by the help of its long flappers, as the Sea-Turtle
+does now, it could well dispense with that powerful construction of the
+breast-bone so essential to all animals which fly through the air.
+Again, the powerful teeth, long and conical, placed at considerable
+intervals in the jaw, constitute a feature common to all predaceous
+aquatic animals, and would seem to have been utterly useless in a flying
+animal at that time, since there were no aerial beings of any size to
+prey upon. The Dragon-Flies found in the same deposits with the
+Pterodactylus were certainly not a game requiring so powerful a battery
+of attack.
+
+The Fishes of the Jurassic sea were exceedingly numerous, but were all
+of the Ganoid and Selachian tribes. It would weary the reader, were I to
+introduce here any detailed description of them, but they were as
+numerous and varied as those living in our present waters. There was the
+Hybodus, with the marked furrows on the spines and the strong hooks
+along their margin,--the huge Chimera, with its long whip, its curved
+bone over the back, and its parrot-like bill,--the Lepidotus, with its
+large square scales, its large head, its numerous rows of teeth, one
+within another, forming a powerful grinding apparatus,--the Microdon,
+with its round, flat body, its jaw paved with small grinding teeth,--the
+swift Aspidorhynchus, with its long, slender body and massive tail,
+enabling it to strike the water powerfully and dart forward with great
+rapidity. There were also a host of small Fishes, comparing with those
+above mentioned as our Perch, Herring, Smelts, etc., compare with our
+larger Fishes; but, whatever their size or form, all the Fishes of those
+days had the same hard scales fitting to each other by hooks, instead of
+the thin membranous scales overlapping each other at the edge, like the
+common Fishes of more modern times. The smaller Fishes, no doubt,
+afforded food to the larger ones, and to the aquatic Reptiles. Indeed,
+in parts of the intestines of the Ichthyosauri, and in their petrified
+excrements, have been found the scales and teeth of these smaller Fishes
+perfectly preserved. It is amazing that we can learn so much of the
+habits of life of these past creatures, and know even what was the food
+of animals existing countless ages before man was created.
+
+There are traces of Mammalia in the Jurassic deposits, but they were of
+those inferior kinds known now as Marsupials, and no complete specimens
+have yet been found.
+
+The Articulates were largely represented in this epoch. There were
+already in the vegetation a number of Gymnosperms, affording more
+favorable nourishment for Insects than the forests of earlier times; and
+we accordingly find that class in larger numbers than ever before,
+though still meagre in comparison with its present representation.
+Crustacea were numerous,--those of the Shrimp and Lobster kinds
+prevailing, though in some of the Lobsters we have the first advance
+towards the highest class of Crustacea in the expansion of the
+transverse diameter now so characteristic of the Crabs. Among Mollusks
+we have a host of gigantic Ammonites; and the naked Cephalopods, which
+were in later times to become the prominent representatives of that
+class, already begin to make their appearance. Among Radiates, some of
+the higher kinds of Echinoderms, the Ophiurans and Echinolds, take the
+place of the Crinoids, and the Acalephian Corals give way to the Astraean
+and Meandrina-like types, resembling the Reef-Builders of the present
+time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have spoken especially of the inhabitants of the Jurassic sea lying
+between England and France, because it was there that were first found
+the remains of some of the most remarkable and largest Jurassic animals.
+But wherever these deposits have been investigated, the remains
+contained in them reveal the same organic character, though, of course,
+we find the land Reptiles only where there happen to have been marshes,
+the aquatic Saurians wherever large estuaries or bays gave them an
+opportunity of coming in near shore, so that their bones were preserved
+in the accumulations of mud or clay constantly collecting in such
+localities,--the Crustacea, Shells, or Sea-Urchins on the old
+sea-beaches, the Corals in the neighborhood of coral reefs, and so on.
+In short, the distribution of animals then as now was in accordance with
+their nature and habits, and we shall seek vainly for them in the
+localities where they did not belong.
+
+But when I say that the character of the Jurassic animals is the same, I
+mean, that, wherever a Jurassic sea-shore occurs, be it in France,
+Germany, England, or elsewhere throughout the world, the Shells,
+Crustacea, or other animals found upon it have a special character, and
+are not to be confounded by any one thoroughly acquainted with these
+fossils with the Shells or Crustacea of any preceding or subsequent
+time,--that, where a Jurassic marsh exists, the land Reptiles inhabiting
+it are Jurassic, and neither Triassic nor Cretaceous,--that a Jurassic
+coral reef is built of Corals belonging as distinctly to the Jurassic
+creation as the Corals on the Florida reefs belong to the present
+creation,--that, where some Jurassic bay or inlet is disclosed to us
+with the Fishes anciently inhabiting it, they are as characteristic of
+their time as are the Fishes of Massachusetts Bay now.
+
+And not only so, but, while this unity of creation prevails throughout
+the entire epoch as a whole, there is the same variety of geographical
+distribution, the same circumscription of faunae within distinct
+zooelogical provinces, as at the present time. The Fishes of
+Massachusetts Bay are not the same as those of Chesapeake Bay, nor those
+of Chesapeake Bay the same as those of Pamlico Sound, nor those of
+Pamlico Sound the same as those of the Florida coast. This division of
+the surface of the earth into given areas within which certain
+combinations of animals and plants are confined is not peculiar to the
+present creation, but has prevailed in all times, though with
+ever-increasing diversity, as the surface of the earth itself assumed a
+greater variety of climatic conditions. D'Orbigny and others were
+mistaken in assuming that faunal differences have been introduced only
+in the last geological epochs. Besides these adjoining zooelogical faunae,
+each epoch is divided, as we have seen, into a number of periods,
+occupying successive levels one above another, and differing
+specifically from each other in time as zooelogical provinces differ from
+each other in space. In short, every epoch is to be looked upon from two
+points of view: as a unit, complete in itself, having one character
+throughout, and as a stage in the progressive history of the world,
+forming part of an organic whole.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the Jurassic epoch was ushered in by the upheaval of the Jura, so its
+close was marked by the upheaval of that system of mountains called the
+Cote d'Or. With this latter upheaval began the Cretaceous epoch, which
+we will examine with special reference to its subdivision into periods,
+since the periods in this epoch have been clearly distinguished, and
+investigated with especial care. I have alluded in the preceding article
+to the immediate contact of the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs in
+Switzerland, affording peculiar facilities for the direct comparison of
+their organic remains. But the Cretaceous deposits are well known, not
+only in this inland sea of ancient Switzerland, but in a number of
+European basins, in France, in the Pyrenees, on the Mediterranean
+shores, and also in Syria, Egypt, India, and Southern Africa, as well as
+on our own continent. In all these localities, the Cretaceous remains,
+like those of the Jurassic epoch, have one organic character, distinct
+and unique. This fact is especially significant, because the contact of
+their respective deposits is in many localities so immediate and
+continuous that it affords an admirable test for the development-theory.
+If this is the true mode of origin of animals, those of the later
+Jurassic beds must be the progenitors of those of the earlier Cretaceous
+deposits. Let us see now how far this agrees with our knowledge of the
+physiological laws of development.
+
+Take first the class of Fishes. We have seen that in the Jurassic
+periods there were none of our common Fishes, none corresponding to our
+Herring, Pickerel, Mackerel, and the like,--no Fishes, in short, with
+thin membranous scales, but that the class was represented exclusively
+by those with hard, flint-like scales. In the Cretaceous epoch, however,
+we come suddenly upon a horde of Fishes corresponding to our smaller
+common Fishes of the Pickerel and Herring tribes, but principally of the
+kinds found now in tropical waters; there are none like our Cods,
+Haddocks, etc., such as are found at present in the colder seas. The
+Fishes of the Jurassic epoch corresponding to our Sharks and Skates and
+Gar-Pikes still exist, but in much smaller proportion, while these more
+modern kinds are very numerous. Indeed, a classification of the
+Cretaceous Fishes would correspond very nearly to one founded on those
+now living. Shall we, then, suppose that the large reptilian Fishes of
+the Jurassic time began suddenly to lay numerous broods of these
+smaller, more modern, scaly Fishes? And shall we account for the
+diminution of the previous forms by supposing that in order to give a
+fair chance to the new kinds they brought them forth in large numbers,
+while they reproduced their own kind less abundantly? According to very
+careful estimates, if we accept this view, the progeny of the Jurassic
+Fishes must have borne a proportion of about ninety per cent, of
+entirely new types to some ten per cent, of those resembling the
+parents. One would like a fact or two on which to rest so very
+extraordinary a reversal of all known physiological laws of
+reproduction, but, unhappily, there is not one.
+
+Still more unaccountable, upon any theory of development according to
+ordinary laws of reproduction, are those unique, isolated types limited
+to a single epoch, or sometimes even to a single period. There are some
+very remarkable instances of this in the Cretaceous deposits. To make my
+statement clearer, I will say a word of the sequence of these deposits
+and their division into periods.
+
+These Cretaceous beds were at first divided only into three sets, called
+the Neocomian, or lower deposits, the Green-Sands, or middle deposits,
+and the Chalk, or upper deposits. The Neocomian, the lower division, was
+afterwards subdivided into three sets of beds, called the Lower, Middle,
+and Upper Neocomian by some geologists, the Valengian, Neocomian, and
+Urgonian by others. These three periods are not only traced in immediate
+succession, one above another, in the transverse cut before described,
+across the mountain of Chaumont, near Neufchatel, but they are also
+traced almost on one level along the plain at the foot of the Jura. It
+is evident that by some disturbance of the surface the eastern end of
+the range was raised slightly, lifting the lower or Valengian deposits
+out of the water, so that they remain uncovered, and the next set of
+deposits, the Neocomian, is accumulated along their base, while these in
+their turn are slightly raised, and the Urgonian beds are accumulated
+against them a little lower down. They follow each other from east to
+west in a narrower area, just as the Azoic, Silurian, and Devonian
+deposits follow each other from north to south in the northern part of
+the United States. The Cretaceous deposits have been intimately studied
+in various localities by different geologists, and are now subdivided
+into at least ten, or it may be fifteen or sixteen distinct periods, as
+they stand at present. This is, however, but the beginning of the work;
+and the recent investigations of the French geologist, Coquand, indicate
+that several of these periods at least are susceptible of further
+subdivision. I present here a table enumerating the periods of the
+Cretaceous epoch best known at present, in their sequence, because I
+want to show how sharply and in how arbitrary a manner, if I may so
+express it, new forms are introduced. The names are simply derived from
+the localities, or from some circumstances connected with the locality
+where each period has been studied.
+
+    _Table of Periods in the Cretaceous Epoch._
+
+      Maestrichtian } Chalk.
+      Senonian      }
+
+      Turonian      } Chalk Marl.
+      Cenomanian    }
+
+      Albian        }
+      Aptian        } Green Sands.
+      Rhodanian     }
+
+      Urgonian      }
+      Neocomian     } Wealden.
+      Valengian     }
+
+One of the most peculiar and distinct of those unique types alluded to
+above is that of the Rudistes, a singular Bivalve, in which the lower
+valve is very deep and conical, while the upper valve sets into to it as
+into a cup. The subjoined woodcut represents such a Bivalve. These
+Rudistes are found suddenly in the Urgonian deposits; there are none in
+the two preceding sets of beds; they disappear in the three following
+periods, and reappear again in great numbers in the Cenomanian,
+Turonian, and Senonian periods, and disappear again in the succeeding
+one. These can hardly be missed from any negligence or oversight in the
+examination of these deposits, for they are by no means rare. They are
+found always in great numbers, occupying crowded beds, like Oysters in
+the present time. So numerous are they, where they occur at all, that
+the deposits containing them are called by many naturalists the first,
+second, third, and fourth _bank_ of Rudistes. Which of the ordinary
+Bivalves, then, gave rise to this very remarkable form in the class,
+allowed it to die out, and revived it again at various intervals? This
+is by no means the only instance of the same kind. There are a number of
+types making their appearance suddenly, lasting during one period or
+during a succession of periods, and then disappearing forever, while
+others, like the Rudistes, come in, vanish, and reappear at a later
+time.
+
+[Illustration: Rudistes.]
+
+I am well aware that the advocates of the development-theory do not
+state their views as I have here presented them. On the contrary, they
+protest against any idea of sudden, violent, abrupt changes, and
+maintain that by slow and imperceptible modifications during immense
+periods of time these new types have been introduced without involving
+any infringement of the ordinary processes of development; and they
+account for the entire absence of corroborative facts in the past
+history of animals by what they call the "imperfection of the geological
+record." Now, while I admit that our knowledge of geology is still very
+incomplete, I assert that just where the direct sequence of geological
+deposits is needed for this evidence, we have it. The Jurassic beds,
+without a single modern scaly Fish, are in immediate contact with the
+Cretaceous beds, in which the Fishes of that kind are proportionately
+almost as numerous as they are now; and between these two sets of
+deposits there is not a trace of any transition or intermediate form to
+unite the reptilian Fishes of the Jurassic with the common Fishes of the
+Cretaceous times. Again, the Cretaceous beds in which the crowded banks
+of Rudistes, so singular and unique in form, first make their
+appearance, follow immediately upon those in which all the Bivalves are
+of an entirely different character. In short, the deposits of this year
+along any sea-coast or at the mouth of any of our rivers do not follow
+more directly upon those of last year than do these successive sets of
+beds of past ages follow upon each other. In making these statements, I
+do not forget the immense length of the geological periods; on the
+contrary, I fully accede to it, and believe that it is more likely to
+have been underrated than overstated. But let it be increased a
+thousand-fold, the fact remains, that these new types occur commonly at
+the dividing line where one period joins the next, just on the margin of
+both.
+
+For years I have collected daily among some of these deposits, and I
+know the Sea-Urchins, Corals, Fishes, Crustacea, and Shells of those old
+shores as well as I know those of Nahant Beach, and there is nothing
+more striking to a naturalist than the sudden, abrupt changes of species
+in passing from one to another. In the second set of Cretaceous beds,
+the Neocomian, there is found a little Terebratula (a small Bivalve
+Shell) in immense quantities: they may actually be collected by the
+bushel. Pass to the Urgonian beds, resting directly upon the Neocomian,
+and there is not one to be found, and an entirely new species comes in.
+There is a peculiar Spatangus (Sea-Urchin) found throughout the whole
+series of beds in which this Terebratula occurs. At the same moment that
+you miss the Shell, the Sea-Urchin disappears also, and another takes
+its place. Now, admitting for a moment that the later can have grown out
+of the earlier forms, I maintain, that, if this be so, the change is
+immediate, sudden, without any gradual transitions, and is, therefore,
+wholly inconsistent with all our known physiological laws, as well as
+with the transmutation-theory.
+
+There is a very singular group of Ammonites in the Cretaceous epoch,
+which, were it not for the suddenness of its appearance, might seem
+rather to favor the development-theory, from its great variety of
+closely allied forms. We have traced the Chambered Shells from the
+straight, simple ones of the earliest epochs up to the intricate and
+closely coiled forms of the Jurassic epoch. In the so-called Portland
+stone, belonging to the upper set of Jurassic beds, there is only one
+type of Ammonite; but in the Cretaceous beds, immediately above it,
+there set in a number of different genera and distinct species,
+including the most fantastic and seemingly abnormal forms. It is as if
+the close coil by which these shells had been characterized during the
+Middle Age had been suddenly broken up and decomposed into an endless
+variety of outlines. Some of these new types still retain the coil, but
+the whorls are much less compact than before, as in the Crioceras; in
+others, the direction of the coil is so changed as to make a spiral, as
+in the Turrilites; or the shell starts with a coil, then proceeds in a
+straight line, and changes to a curve again at the other extremity, as
+in the Ancyloceras, or in the Scaphites, in which the first coil is
+somewhat closer than in the Ancyloceras; or the tendency to a coil is
+reduced to a single curve, so as to give the shell the outline of a
+horn, as in the Toxoceras; or the coil is entirely lost, and the shell
+reduced to its primitive straight form, as in the Baculites, which,
+except for their undulating partitions, might be mistaken for the
+Orthoceratites of the Silurian and Devonian epochs. I have presented
+here but a few species of these extraordinary Cretaceous Ammonites, and,
+strange to say, with this breaking-up of the type into a number of
+fantastic and often contorted shapes, it disappears. It is singular that
+forms so unusual and so contrary to the previous regularity of this
+group should accompany its last stage of existence, and seem to shadow
+forth by their strange contortions the final dissolution of their type.
+When I look upon a collection of these old shells, I can never divest
+myself of an impression that the contortions of a death-struggle have
+been made the pattern of living types, and with that the whole group has
+ended.
+
+[Illustration: Crioceras.]
+
+[Illustration: Turrilites.]
+
+[Illustration: Ancyloceras.]
+
+[Illustration: Scaphites.]
+
+[Illustration: Toxoceras.]
+
+[Illustration: Baculites.]
+
+Now shall we infer that the compact, closely coiled Ammonites of the
+Jurassic deposits, while continuing their own kind, brought forth a
+variety of other kinds, and so distributed these new organic elements as
+to produce a large number of distinct genera and species? I confess that
+these ideas are so contrary to all I have learned from Nature in the
+course of a long life that I should be forced to renounce completely the
+results of my studies in Embryology and Palaeontology before I could
+adopt these new views of the origin of species. And while the
+distinguished originator of this theory is entitled to our highest
+respect for his scientific researches, yet it should not be forgotten
+that the most conclusive evidence brought forward by him and his
+adherents is of a negative character, drawn from a science in which they
+do not pretend to have made personal investigations, that of Geology,
+while the proofs they offer us from their own departments of science,
+those of Zooelogy and Botany, are derived from observations, still very
+incomplete, upon domesticated animals and cultivated plants, which can
+never be made a test of the origin of wild species.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: The advocates of the development-theory allude to the
+metamorphosis of animals and plants as supporting their view of a change
+of one species into another. They compare the passage of a common leaf
+into the calyx or crown-leaves in plants, or that of a larva into a
+perfect insect, to the passage of one species into another. The only
+objection to this argument seems to be, that, whereas Nature daily
+presents us myriads of examples of the one set of phenomena, showing it
+to be a norm, not a single instance of the other has ever been known to
+occur either in the animal or in the vegetable kingdom.]
+
+In my next article I shall show the relation between the Cretaceous and
+Tertiary epochs, and see whether there is any reason to believe that the
+gigantic Mammalia of more modern times were derived from the Reptiles of
+the Secondary age.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE-THROATED SPARROW.
+
+
+    Hark! 't is our Northern Nightingale that sings
+    In far-off, leafy cloisters, dark and cool,
+    Flinging his flute-notes bounding from the skies!
+
+    Thou wild musician of the mountain-streams,
+    Most tuneful minstrel of the forest-choirs,
+    Bird of all grace and harmony of soul,
+    Unseen, we hail thee for thy blissful voice!
+
+    Up in yon tremulous mist where morning wakes
+    Illimitable shadows from their dark abodes,
+    Or in this woodland glade tumultuous grown
+    With all the murmurous language of the trees,
+    No blither presence fills the vocal space.
+    The wandering rivulets dancing through the grass,
+    The gambols, low or loud, of insect-life,
+    The cheerful call of cattle in the vales,
+    Sweet natural sounds of the contented hours,--
+    All seem less jubilant when thy song begins.
+
+    Deep in the shade we lie and listen long;
+    For human converse well may pause, and man
+    Learn from such notes fresh hints of praise,
+    That upward swelling from thy grateful tribe
+    Circles the hills with melodies of joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE FLEUR-DE-LIS IN FLORIDA.
+
+    [In the July number of this magazine is a sketch of the attempt
+    of the Huguenots, under the auspices of Coligny, to found a
+    colony at Port Royal. Two years later, an attempt was made to
+    establish a Protestant community on the banks of the River St.
+    John's, in Florida. The following paper embodies the substance
+    of the letters and narratives of the actors in this striking
+    episode of American history.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+On the 25th of June, 1564, a French squadron anchored a second time off
+the mouth of the River of May. There were three vessels, the smallest of
+sixty tons, the largest of one hundred and twenty, all crowded with men.
+Rene de Laudonniere held command. He was of a noble race of Poitou,
+attached to the House of Chatillon, of which Coligny was the head;
+pious, we are told, and an excellent marine officer. An engraving,
+purporting to be his likeness, shows us a slender figure, leaning
+against the mast, booted to the thigh, with slouched hat and plume,
+slashed doublet, and short cloak. His thin oval face, with curled
+moustache and close-trimmed beard, wears a thoughtful and somewhat
+pensive look, as if already shadowed by the destiny that awaited him.
+
+The intervening year since Ribaut's voyage had been a dark and deadly
+year for France. From the peaceful solitude of the River of May, that
+voyager returned to a land reeking with slaughter. But the carnival of
+bigotry and hate had found a respite. The Peace of Amboise had been
+signed. The fierce monk choked down his venom; the soldier sheathed his
+sword; the assassin, his dagger; rival chiefs grasped hands, and masked
+their rancor under hollow smiles. The king and the queen-mother,
+helpless amid the storm of factions which threatened their destruction,
+smiled now on Conde, now on Guise,--gave ear to the Cardinal of
+Lorraine, or listened in secret to the emissaries of Theodore Beza.
+Coligny was again strong at Court. He used his opportunity, and
+solicited with success the means of renewing his enterprise of
+colonization. With pains and zeal, men were mustered for the work. In
+name, at least, they were all Huguenots; yet again, as before, the
+staple of the projected colony was unsound: soldiers, paid out of the
+royal treasury, hired artisans and tradesmen, joined with a swarm of
+volunteers from the young Huguenot noblesse, whose restless swords had
+rusted in their scabbards since the peace. The foundation-stone was left
+out. There were no tillers of the soil. Such, indeed, were rare among
+the Huguenots; for the dull peasants who guided the plough clung with
+blind tenacity to the ancient faith. Adventurous gentlemen, reckless
+soldiers, discontented tradesmen, all keen for novelty and heated with
+dreams of wealth,--these were they who would build for their country and
+their religion an empire beyond the sea.
+
+With a few officers and twelve soldiers, Laudonniere landed where Ribaut
+had landed before him; and as their boat neared the shore, they saw an
+Indian chief who ran to meet them, whooping and clamoring welcome from
+afar. It was Satouriona, the savage potentate who ruled some thirty
+villages around the lower St. John's and northward along the coast. With
+him came two stalwart sons, and behind trooped a host of tribesmen
+arrayed in smoke-tanned deerskins stained with wild devices in gaudy
+colors. They crowded around the voyagers with beaming visages and yelps
+of gratulation. The royal Satouriona could not contain the exuberance of
+his joy, since in the person of the French commander he recognized the
+brother of the Sun, descended from the skies to aid him against his
+great rival, Outina.
+
+Hard by stood the column of stone, graven with the fleur-de-lis,
+planted here on the former voyage. The Indians had crowned the mystic
+emblem with evergreens, and placed offerings of maize on the ground
+before it; for with an affectionate and reverent wonder they had ever
+remembered the steel-clad strangers whom, two summers before, John
+Ribaut had led to their shores.
+
+Five miles up the St. John's, or River of May, there stands, on the
+southern bank, a hill some forty feet high, boldly thrusting itself into
+the broad and lazy waters. It is now called St. John's Bluff. Thither
+the Frenchmen repaired, pushed through the dense semi-tropical forest,
+and climbed the steep acclivity. Thence they surveyed their Canaan.
+Beneath them moved the unruffled river, gliding around the reed-grown
+shores of marshy islands, the haunt of alligators, and betwixt the
+bordering expanse of wide, wet meadows, studded with island-like clumps
+of pine and palmetto, and bounded by the sunny verge of distant forests.
+Far on their right, seen by glimpses between the shaggy cedar-boughs,
+the glistening sea lay stretched along the horizon. Before, in hazy
+distance, the softened green of the woodlands was veined with the mazes
+of the countless interlacing streams that drain the watery region behind
+St. Mary's and Fernandina. To the left, the St. John's flowed gleaming
+betwixt verdant shores beyond whose portals lay the El Dorado of their
+dreams. "Briefly," writes Laudonniere, "the place is so pleasant that
+those which are melancholicke would be inforced to change their humour."
+
+A fresh surprise awaited them. The allotted span of mortal life was
+quadrupled in that benign climate. Laudonniere's lieutenant, Ottigny,
+ranging the neighboring forest with a party of soldiers, met a troop of
+Indians who invited him to their dwellings. Mounted on the back of a
+stout savage, who plunged with him through the deep marshes, and guided
+him by devious pathways through the tangled thickets, he arrived at
+length, and beheld a wondrous spectacle. In the lodge sat a venerable
+chief, who assured him that he was the father of five successive
+generations, and that he had lived two hundred and fifty years.
+Opposite, sat a still more ancient veteran, the father of the first,
+shrunken to a mere anatomy, and "seeming to be rather a dead carkeis
+than a living body." "Also," pursues the history, "his age was so great
+that the good man had lost his sight, and could not speak one onely word
+but with exceeding great paine." Despite his dismal condition, the
+visitor was told that he might expect to live in the course of Nature
+thirty or forty years more. As the two patriarchs sat face to face, half
+hidden with their streaming white hair, Ottigny and his credulous
+soldiers looked from one to the other, lost in wonder and admiration.
+
+Man and Nature alike seemed to mark the borders of the River of May as
+the site of the new colony; for here, around the Indian towns, the
+harvests of maize, beans, and pumpkins promised abundant food, while the
+river opened a ready way to the mines of gold and silver and the stores
+of barbaric wealth which glittered before the dreaming vision of the
+colonists. Yet, the better to content himself and his men, Laudonniere
+weighed anchor, and sailed for a time along the neighboring coasts.
+Returning, confirmed in his first impression, he set forth with a party
+of officers and soldiers to explore the borders of the chosen stream.
+The day was hot. The sun beat fiercely on the woollen caps and heavy
+doublets of the men, till at length they gained the shade of one of
+those deep forests of pine where the dead and sultry air is thick with
+resinous odors, and the earth, carpeted with fallen leaves, gives no
+sound beneath the foot. Yet, in the stillness, deer leaped up on all
+sides as they moved along. Then they emerged into sunlight. A broad
+meadow, a running brook, a lofty wall of encircling forests. The men
+called it the Vale of Laudonniere. The afternoon was spent, and the sun
+was near its setting, when they reached the bank of the river. They
+strewed the ground with boughs and leaves, and, stretched on that
+sylvan couch, slept the sleep of travel-worn and weary men.
+
+At daybreak they were roused by sound of trumpet. Men and officers
+joined their voices in a psalm, then betook themselves to their task.
+Their task was the building of a fort, and this was the chosen spot. It
+was a tract of dry ground on the brink of the river, immediately above
+St. John's Bluff. On the right was the bluff; on the left, a marsh; in
+front, the river; behind, the forest.
+
+Boats came up the stream with laborers, tents, provision, cannon, and
+tools. The engineers marked out the work in the form of a triangle; and,
+from the noble volunteer to the meanest artisan, all lent a hand to
+complete it. On the river side the defences were a palisade of timber.
+On the two other sides were a ditch, and a rampart of fascines, earth,
+and sods. At each angle was a bastion, in one of which was the magazine.
+Within was a spacious parade, and around it various buildings for
+lodging and storage. A large house with covered galleries was built on
+the side towards the river for Laudonniere and his officers. In honor of
+Charles IX the fort was named Fort Caroline.
+
+Meanwhile, Satouriona, "lord of all that country," as the narratives
+style him, was seized with misgivings, learning these mighty
+preparations. The work was but begun, and all was din and confusion
+around the incipient fort, when the startled Frenchmen saw the
+neighboring height of St. John's swarming with naked warriors. The
+prudent Laudonniere set his men in array, and for a season pick and
+spade were dropped for arquebuse and pike. The savage potentate
+descended to the camp. The artist Le Moyne, who saw him, drew his
+likeness from memory,--a tall, athletic figure, tattooed in token of his
+rank, plumed with feathers, hung with strings of beads, and girdled with
+tinkling pieces of metal which hung from the belt, his only garment. He
+came in regal state, a crowd of warriors around him, and, in advance, a
+troop of young Indians armed with spears. Twenty musicians followed,
+blowing a hideous discord through pipes of reeds. Arrived, he seated
+himself on the ground "like a monkey," as Le Moyne has it in the grave
+Latin of his "Brevis Narratio." A council followed, in which broken
+words were aided by signs and pantomime. A treaty of alliance was made,
+and Laudonniere had the folly to promise the chief that he would lend
+him aid against his enemies. Satouriona, well pleased, ordered his
+Indians to aid the French at their work. They obeyed with alacrity, and
+in two days the buildings of the fort were all thatched after the native
+fashion with leaves of the palmetto.
+
+A word touching these savages. In the peninsula of Florida were several
+distinct Indian confederacies, with three of which the French were
+brought into contact. The first was that of Satouriona. The next was the
+potent confederacy of the Thimagoa, under a chief called Outina, whose
+forty villages were scattered among the lakes and forests around the
+upper waters of this remarkable river. The third was that of "King
+Potanou," whose domain lay among the pine-barrens, cypress-swamps, and
+fertile hummocks, westward and northwestward of the St. John's. The
+three communities were at deadly enmity. Their social state was more
+advanced than that of the wandering hunter-tribes of the North. They
+were an agricultural people. Around all their villages were fields of
+maize, beans, and pumpkins. The harvest, due chiefly to the labor of the
+women, was gathered into a public granary, and on this they lived during
+three-fourths of the year, dispersing in winter to hunt among the
+forests.
+
+Their villages were clusters of huts thatched with palmetto. In the
+midst was the dwelling of the chief, much larger than the rest, and
+sometimes raised on an artificial mound. They were inclosed with
+palisades, and, strange to say, some of them were approached by wide
+avenues, artificially graded, and several hundred yards in length.
+Remains of them may still be seen, as may also the mounds in which the
+Floridians, like the Hurons and various other tribes, collected at
+stated intervals the bones of their dead.
+
+The most prominent feature of their religion was sun-worship, and, like
+other wild American tribes, they abounded in "medicine-men," who
+combined the functions of priest, physician, and necromancer.
+
+Social distinctions were sharply defined among them. Their chiefs, whose
+office was hereditary, sometimes exercised a power almost absolute. Each
+village had its chief, subordinate to the grand chief of the nation. In
+the language of the French narratives, they were all kings or lords,
+vassals of the great monarch Satouriona, Outina, or Potanou. All these
+tribes are now extinct, and it is difficult to ascertain with precision
+their tribal affinities. There can be no doubt that they were the
+authors of the mounds and other remains at present found in various
+parts of Florida.
+
+Their fort nearly finished, and their league made with Satouriona, the
+gold-hunting Huguenots were eager to spy out the secrets of the
+interior. To this end the lieutenant, Ottigny, went up the river in a
+sail-boat. With him were a few soldiers and two Indians, the latter
+going forth, says Laudonniere, as if bound to a wedding, keen for a
+fight with the hated Thimagoa, and exulting in the havoc to be wrought
+among them by the magic weapons of their white allies. They were doomed
+to grievous disappointment.
+
+The Sieur d'Ottigny spread his sail, and calmly glided up the dark
+waters of the St. John's. A scene fraught with strange interest to the
+naturalist and the lover of Nature. Here, two centuries later, the
+Bartrams, father and son, guided their skiff and kindled their nightly
+bivouac-fire; and here, too, roamed Audubon, with his sketch-book and
+his gun. Each alike has left the record of his wanderings, fresh as the
+woods and waters that inspired it. Slight, then, was the change since
+Ottigny, first of white men, steered his bark along the still breast of
+the virgin river. Before him, like a lake, the redundant waters spread
+far and wide; and along the low shores, or jutting points, or the
+waveless margin of deep and sheltered coves, towered wild, majestic
+forms of vegetable beauty. Here rose the magnolia, high above
+surrounding woods; but the gorgeous bloom had fallen, that a few weeks
+earlier studded the verdant dome with silver. From the edge of the
+bordering swamp the cypress reared its vast buttressed column and leafy
+canopy. From the rugged arms of oak and pine streamed the gray drapery
+of the long Spanish moss, swayed mournfully in the faintest breeze. Here
+were the tropical plumage of the palm, the dark green masses of the
+live-oak, the glistening verdure of wild orange-groves; and from out the
+shadowy thickets hung the wreaths of the jessamine and the scarlet
+trumpets of the bignonia.
+
+Nor less did the fruitful river teem with varied forms of animal life.
+From the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of
+many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on
+the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the
+alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his hideous length,
+or, sluggish and sullen, drifted past the boat, his grim head level with
+the surface, and each scale, each folding of his horny hide, distinctly
+visible, as, with the slow movement of distended paws, he balanced
+himself in the water. When, at sunset, they drew up their boat on the
+strand, and built their camp-fire under the arches of the woods, the
+shores resounded with the roaring of these colossal lizards; all night
+the forest rang with the whooping of the owls; and in the morning the
+sultry mists that wrapped the river were vocal, far and near, with the
+clamor of wild turkeys.
+
+Among such scenes, for twenty leagues, the adventurous sail moved on.
+Far to the right, beyond the silent waste of pines, lay the realm of
+the mighty Potanou. The Thimagoa towns were still above them on the
+river, when they saw three canoes of this people at no great distance in
+front. Forthwith the two Indians in the boat were fevered with
+excitement. With glittering eyes they snatched pike and sword, and
+prepared for fight; but the sage Ottigny, bearing slowly down on the
+strangers, gave them time to run their craft ashore and escape to the
+woods. Then, landing, he approached the canoes, placed in them a few
+trinkets, and withdrew to a distance. The fugitives took heart, and,
+step by step, returned. An amicable intercourse was opened, with
+assurances of friendship on the part of the French, a procedure viewed
+by Satouriona's Indians with unspeakable disgust and ire.
+
+The ice thus broken, Ottigny returned to Fort Caroline; and a fortnight
+later, an officer named Vasseur sailed up the river to pursue the
+adventure: for the French, thinking that the nation of the Thimagoa lay
+betwixt them and the gold-mines, would by no means quarrel with them,
+and Laudonniere repented him already of his rash pledge to Satouriona.
+
+As Vasseur moved on, two Indians hailed him from the shore, inviting him
+to their dwellings. He accepted their guidance, and presently saw before
+him the cornfields and palisades of an Indian town. Led through the
+wondering crowd to the lodge of the chief, Mollua, Vasseur and his
+followers were seated in the place of honor and plentifully regaled with
+fish and bread. The repast over, Mollua began his discourse. He told
+them that he was one of the forty vassal chiefs of the great Outina,
+lord of all the Thimagoa, whose warriors wore armor of gold and silver
+plate. He told them, too, of Potanou, his enemy, a mighty and redoubted
+prince; and of the two kings of the distant Appalachian Mountains, rich
+beyond utterance in gems and gold. While thus, with earnest pantomime
+and broken words, the chief discoursed with his guests, Vasseur, intent
+and eager, strove to follow his meaning; and no sooner did he hear of
+these Appalachian treasures than he promised to join Outina in war
+against the two potentates of the mountains. Hereupon the sagacious
+Mollua, well pleased, promised that each of Outina's vassal chiefs
+should requite their French allies with a heap of gold and silver two
+feet high. Thus, while Laudonniere stood pledged to Satouriona, Vasseur
+made alliance with his mortal enemy.
+
+Returning, he was met, near the fort, by one of Satouriona's chiefs, who
+questioned him touching his dealings with the Thimagoa. Vasseur replied,
+that he had set upon and routed them with incredible slaughter. But as
+the chief, seeming as yet unsatisfied, continued his inquiries, the
+sergeant, Francis la Caille, drew his sword, and, like Falstaff before
+him, re-enacted his deeds of valor, pursuing and thrusting at the
+imaginary Thimagoa as they fled before his fury. Whereat the chief, at
+length convinced, led the party to his lodge, and entertained them with
+a certain savory decoction with which the Indians were wont to regale
+those whom they delighted to honor.
+
+Elate at the promise of a French alliance, Satouriona had summoned his
+vassal chiefs to war. From the St. Mary's and the Satilla and the
+distant Altamaha, from every quarter of his woodland realm, they had
+mustered at his call. By the margin of the St. John's, the forest was
+alive with their bivouacs. Ten chiefs were here, and some five hundred
+men. And now, when all was ready, Satouriona reminded Laudonniere of his
+promise, and claimed its fulfilment; but the latter gave evasive answers
+and a virtual refusal. Stifling his rage, the chief prepared to go
+without him.
+
+Near the bank of the river, a fire was kindled, and two large vessels of
+water placed beside it. Here Satouriona took his stand. His chiefs
+crouched on the grass around him, and the savage visages of his five
+hundred warriors filled the outer circle, their long hair garnished with
+feathers, or covered with the heads and skins of wolves, panthers,
+bears, or eagles. Satouriona, looking towards the country of his enemy,
+distorted his features to a wild expression of rage and hate; then
+muttered to himself; then howled an invocation to his god, the sun; then
+besprinkled the assembly with water from one of the vessels, and,
+turning the other upon the fire, suddenly quenched it. "So," he cried,
+"may the blood of our enemies be poured out, and their lives
+extinguished!" and the concourse gave forth an explosion of responsive
+yells, till the shores resounded with the wolfish din.
+
+The rites over, they set forth, and in a few days returned exulting with
+thirteen prisoners and a number of scalps. The latter were hung on a
+pole before the royal lodge, and when night came, it brought with it a
+pandemonium of dancing and whooping, drumming and feasting.
+
+A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudonniere. Resolved, cost what
+it might, to make a friend of Outina, he conceived it a stroke of policy
+to send back to him two of the prisoners. In the morning he sent a
+soldier to Satouriona to demand them. The astonished chief gave a flat
+refusal, adding that he owed the French no favors, for they had
+shamefully broken faith with him. On this, Laudonniere, at the head of
+twenty soldiers, proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at the
+opening of the great lodge, entered with his arquebusiers, and seated
+himself without ceremony in the highest place. Here, to show his
+displeasure, he remained in silence for a half-hour. At length he spoke,
+renewing his demand. For some moments Satouriona made no reply, then
+coldly observed that the sight of so many armed men had frightened the
+prisoners away. Laudonniere grew peremptory, when the chiefs son,
+Athore, went out, and presently returned with the two Indians, whom the
+French led back to Fort Caroline.
+
+Satouriona dissembled, professed good-will, and sent presents to the
+fort; but the outrage rankled in his savage breast, and he never forgave
+it.
+
+Captain Vasseur, with Arlac, the ensign, a sergeant, and ten soldiers,
+embarked to bear the ill-gotten gift to Outina. Arrived, they were
+showered with thanks by that grateful potentate, who, hastening to avail
+himself of his new alliance, invited them to join in a raid against his
+neighbor, Potanou. To this end, Arlac and five soldiers remained, while
+Vasseur with the rest descended to Fort Caroline.
+
+The warriors were mustered, the dances were danced, and the songs were
+sung. Then the wild cohort took up its march. The wilderness through
+which they passed holds its distinctive features to this day,--the shady
+desert of the pine-barrens, where many a wanderer has miserably died,
+with haggard eye seeking in vain for clue or guidance in the pitiless,
+inexorable monotony. Yet the waste has its oases, the "hummocks," where
+the live-oaks are hung with long festoons of grape-vines,--where the air
+is sweet with woodland odors, and vocal with the song of birds. Then the
+deep cypress-swamp, where dark trunks rise like the columns of some vast
+sepulchre. Above, the impervious canopy of leaves; beneath, a black and
+root-encumbered slough. Perpetual moisture trickles down the clammy
+bark, while trunk and limb, distorted with strange shapes of vegetable
+disease, wear in the gloom a semblance grotesque and startling. Lifeless
+forms lean propped in wild disorder against the living, and from every
+rugged stem and lank limb outstretched hangs the dark drapery of the
+Spanish moss. The swamp is veiled in mourning. No breath, no voice. A
+deathly stillness, till the plunge of the alligator, lashing the waters
+of the black lagoon, resounds with hollow echo through the tomb-like
+solitude.
+
+Next, the broad sunlight and the wide savanna. Wading breast-deep in
+grass, they view the wavy sea of verdure, with headland and cape and
+far-reaching promontory, with distant coasts, hazy and dim, havens and
+shadowed coves, islands of the magnolia and the palm, high, impending
+shores of the mulberry and the elm, the ash, hickory, and maple. Here
+the rich _gordonia_, never out of bloom, sends down its thirsty roots to
+drink at the stealing brook. Here the _halesia_ hangs out its silvery
+bells, the purple clusters of the _wistaria_ droop from the supporting
+bough, and the coral blossoms of the _erythryna_ glow in the shade
+beneath. From tufted masses of sword-like leaves shoot up the tall
+spires of the _yucca_, heavy with pendent flowers, of pallid hue, like
+the moon, and from the grass gleams the blue eye of the starry _ixia_.
+
+Through forest, swamp, savanna, the valiant Frenchmen held their way. At
+first, Outina's Indians kept always in advance; but when they reached
+the hostile district, the modest warriors fell to the rear, resigning
+the post of honor to their French allies.
+
+An open country; a rude cultivation; the tall palisades of an Indian
+town. Their approach was seen, and the warriors of Potanou, nowise
+daunted, came swarming forth to meet them. But the sight of the bearded
+strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, the fall of their
+foremost chief, shot through the brain with the bullet of Arlac, filled
+them with consternation, and they fled headlong within their defences.
+The men of Thimagoa ran screeching in pursuit. Pell-mell, all entered
+the town together. Slaughter; pillage; flame. The work was done, and the
+band returned triumphant.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+In the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature France, cliques and
+parties, conspiracy and sedition, were fast stirring into life. Hopes
+had been dashed; wild expectations had come to nought. The adventurers
+had found, not conquest and gold, but a dull exile in a petty fort by a
+hot and sickly river, with hard labor, ill fare, prospective famine, and
+nothing to break the weary sameness but some passing canoe or floating
+alligator. Gathered in knots, they nursed each other's wrath, and
+inveighed against the commandant.
+
+Why are we put on half-rations, when he told us that provision should be
+made for a full year? Where are the reinforcements and supplies that he
+said should follow us from France? Why is he always closeted with
+Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that favorite, when we, men of blood as
+good as theirs, cannot gain his ear for a moment? And why has he sent La
+Roche Ferriere to make his fortune among the Indians, while we are kept
+here, digging at the works?
+
+Of La Roche Ferriere and his adventures, more hereafter. The young
+nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own
+expenses, in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in
+impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony--unlike the
+former Huguenot emigration to Brazil--was evidently subordinate. The
+adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith; yet
+there were not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva to
+complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers had been sent with them.
+The burden of all grievances was thrown upon Laudonniere, whose greatest
+errors seem to have arisen from weakness and a lack of judgment,--fatal
+defects in his position.
+
+The growing discontent was brought to a partial head by one Roquette,
+who gave out that by magic he had discovered a mine of gold and silver,
+high up the river, which would give each of them a share of ten thousand
+crowns, besides fifteen hundred thousand for the king. But for
+Laudonniere, he said, their fortunes would all be made. He found an ally
+in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonniere's confidants, who, still
+professing fast adherence to the interests of the latter, is charged by
+him with plotting against his life. Many of the soldiers were in the
+conspiracy. They made a flag of an old shirt, which they carried with
+them to the rampart when they went to their work, at the same time
+wearing their arms, and watching an opportunity to kill the commandant.
+About this time, overheating himself, he fell ill, and was confined to
+his quarters. On this, Genre made advances to the apothecary, urging him
+to put arsenic into his medicines; but the apothecary shrugged his
+shoulders. They next devised a scheme to blow him up, by hiding a keg of
+gunpowder under his bed; but here, too, they failed. Hints of Genre's
+machinations reaching the ears of Laudonniere, the culprit fled to the
+woods, whence he wrote repentant letters, with full confession, to his
+commander.
+
+Two of the ships meanwhile returned to France,--the third, the Breton,
+remaining at anchor opposite the fort. The malecontents took the
+opportunity to send home charges against Laudonniere of peculation,
+favoritism, and tyranny.
+
+Early in September, Captain Bourdet, apparently a private adventurer,
+had arrived from France with a small vessel. When he returned, about the
+tenth of November, Laudonniere persuaded him to carry home seven or
+eight of the malecontent soldiers. Bourdet left some of his sailors in
+their place. The exchange proved most disastrous. These pirates joined
+with others whom they had won over, stole Laudonniere's two pinnaces,
+and set forth on a plundering excursion to the West Indies. They took a
+small Spanish vessel off the coast of Cuba, but were soon compelled by
+famine to put into Havana and surrender themselves. Here, to make their
+peace with the authorities, they told all they knew of the position and
+purposes of their countrymen at Fort Caroline, and hence was forged the
+thunderbolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little colony.
+
+On a Sunday morning, Francis de la Caille came to Laudonniere's
+quarters, and, in the name of the whole company, requested him to come
+to the parade-ground. He complied, and, issuing forth, his inseparable
+Ottigny at his side, saw some thirty of his officers, soldiers, and
+gentlemen-volunteers waiting before the building with fixed and sombre
+countenance. La Caille, advancing, begged leave to read, in behalf of
+the rest, a paper which he held in his hand. It opened with
+protestations of duty and obedience; next came complaints of hard work,
+starvation, and broken promises, and a request that the petitioners
+should be allowed to embark in the vessel lying in the river, and cruise
+along the Spanish main in order to procure provision by purchase "or
+otherwise." In short, the flower of the company wished to turn
+buccaneers.
+
+Laudonniere refused, but assured them, that, so soon as the defences of
+the fort should be completed, a search should be begun in earnest for
+the Appalachian gold-mine, and that meanwhile two small vessels then
+building on the river should be sent along the coast to barter for
+provisions with the Indians. With this answer they were forced to
+content themselves; but the fermentation continued, and the plot
+thickened. Their spokesman, La Caille, however, seeing whither the
+affair tended, broke with them, and, beside Ottigny, Vasseur, and the
+brave Swiss, Arlac, was the only officer who held to his duty.
+
+A severe illness again seized Laudonniere and confined him to his bed.
+Improving their advantage, the malecontents gained over nearly all the
+best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of
+good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up
+a paper to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed
+the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le
+Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a hint from a friend that
+he had better change his quarters; upon which he warned La Caille, who
+escaped to the woods. It was late in the night. Fourneaux, with twenty
+men armed to the teeth, knocked fiercely at the commandant's door.
+Forcing an entrance, they wounded a gentleman who opposed them, and
+crowded around the sick man's bed. Fourneaux, armed with steel cap and
+cuirass, held his arquebuse to Laudonniere's breast, and demanded leave
+to go on a cruise among the Spanish islands. The latter kept his
+presence of mind, and remonstrated with some firmness; on which, with
+oaths and menaces, they dragged him from his bed, put him in fetters,
+carried him out to the gate of the fort, placed him in a boat, and rowed
+him to the ship anchored in the river.
+
+Two other gangs at the same time visited Ottigny and Arlac, whom they
+disarmed, and ordered to keep their rooms till the night following, on
+pain of death. Smaller parties were busied, meanwhile, in disarming all
+the loyal soldiers. The fort was completely in the hands of the
+conspirators. Fourneaux drew up a commission for his meditated
+West-India cruise, which he required Laudonniere to sign. The sick
+commandant, imprisoned in the ship, with one attendant, at first
+refused; but, receiving a message from the mutineers, that, if he did
+not comply, they would come on board and cut his throat, he at length
+yielded.
+
+The buccaneers now bestirred themselves to finish the two small vessels
+on which the carpenters had been for some time at work. In a fortnight
+they were ready for sea, armed and provided with the king's cannon,
+munitions, and stores. Trenchant, an excellent pilot, was forced to join
+the party. Their favorite object was the plunder of a certain church, on
+one of the Spanish islands, which they proposed to assail during the
+midnight mass of Christmas, whereby a triple end would be achieved:
+first, a rich booty; secondly, the punishment of idolatry; thirdly,
+vengeance on the arch-enemies of their party and their faith. They set
+sail on the eighth of December, taunting those who remained, calling
+them greenhorns, and threatening condign punishment, if, on their
+triumphant return, they should be refused free entrance to the fort.
+
+They were no sooner gone than the unfortunate Laudonniere was gladdened
+in his solitude by the approach of his fast friends, Ottigny and Arlac,
+who conveyed him to the fort, and reinstated him. The entire command was
+reorganized and new officers appointed. The colony was wofully depleted;
+but the bad blood had been drawn, and thenceforth all internal danger
+was at an end. In finishing the fort, in building two new vessels to
+replace those of which they had been robbed, and in various intercourse
+with the tribes far and near, the weeks passed until the twenty-fifth of
+March, when an Indian came in with the tidings that a vessel was
+hovering off the coast. Laudonniere sent to reconnoitre. The stranger
+lay anchored at the mouth of the river. She was a Spanish brigantine,
+manned by the returning mutineers, starving, downcast, and anxious to
+make terms. Yet, as their posture seemed not wholly pacific, Laudonniere
+sent down La Caille with thirty soldiers, concealed at the bottom of his
+little vessel. Seeing only two or three on deck, the pirates allowed her
+to come along-side; when, to their amazement, they were boarded and
+taken before they could snatch their arms. Discomfited, woebegone, and
+drunk, they were landed under a guard. Their story was soon told.
+Fortune had flattered them at the outset. On the coast of Cuba, they
+took a brigantine, with wine and stores. Embarking in her, they next
+fell in with a caravel, which they also captured. Landing at a village
+of Jamaica, they plundered and caroused for a week, and had hardly
+reembarked when they fell in with a small vessel having on board the
+governor of the island. She made desperate fight, but was taken at last,
+and with her a rich booty. They thought to put the governor to ransom;
+but the astute official deceived them, and, on pretence of negotiating
+for the sum demanded, together with certain apes and parrots, for which
+his captors had also bargained, contrived to send instructions to his
+wife. Whence it happened that at daybreak three armed vessels fell upon
+them, retook the prize, and captured or killed all the pirates but
+twenty-six, who, cutting the moorings of their brigantine, fled out to
+sea. Among these was the ringleader, Fourneaux, and, happily, the pilot,
+Trenchant. The latter, eager to return to Fort Caroline, whence he had
+been forcibly taken, succeeded during the night in bringing the vessel
+to the coast of Florida. Great were the wrath and consternation of the
+discomfited pirates, when they saw their dilemma; for, having no
+provision, they must either starve or seek succor at the fort. They
+chose the latter alternative, and bore away for the St. John's. A few
+casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternized
+by the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the wine
+mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, they
+enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another the
+commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and speeches on either
+side.
+
+"Say what you like," said one of them, after hearing the counsel for the
+defence, "but if Laudonniere does not hang us all, I will never call him
+an honest man."
+
+They had some hope of gaining provision from the Indians at the mouth of
+the river, and then patting to sea again; but this was frustrated by La
+Caille's sudden attack. A court-martial was called near Fort Caroline,
+and all were found guilty. Fourneaux and three others were sentenced to
+be hanged.
+
+"Comrades," said one of the condemned, appealing to the soldiers, "will
+you stand by and see us butchered?"
+
+"These," retorted Laudonniere, "are no comrades of mutineers and
+rebels."
+
+At the request of his followers, however, he commuted the sentence to
+shooting.
+
+A file of men; a rattling volley; and the debt of justice was paid. The
+bodies were hanged on gibbets at the river's mouth, and order reigned at
+Fort Caroline.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+While the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche Ferriere had been sent out as
+an agent or emissary among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold, and
+restless, he pushed his way from town to town, and pretended to have
+reached the mysterious mountains of Appalachee. He sent to the fort
+mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered with choice furs, arrows
+tipped with gold, wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and
+other trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named Grotaut took up the
+quest, and penetrated to the dominions of Hostaqua, who could muster
+three or four thousand warriors, and who promised with the aid of a
+hundred arquebusiers to conquer all the kings of the adjacent mountains,
+and subject them and their gold-mines to the rule of the French. A
+humbler adventurer was Peter Gamble, a robust and daring youth, who had
+been brought up in the household of Coligny, and was now a soldier under
+Laudonniere. The latter gave him leave to trade with the Indians, a
+privilege which he used so well that he grew rich with his traffic,
+became prime favorite with the chief of Edelano, married his daughter,
+and, in his absence, reigned in his stead. But, as his sway verged
+towards despotism, his subjects took offence, and beat out his brains
+with a hatchet.
+
+During the winter, Indians from the neighborhood of Cape Canaveral
+brought to the fort two Spaniards, wrecked fifteen years before on the
+southwestern extremity of the peninsula. They were clothed like the
+Indians,--in other words, were not clothed at all,--and their uncut hair
+streamed wildly down their backs. They brought strange tales of those
+among whom they had dwelt. They told of the King of Calos, on whose
+domains they had suffered wreck, a chief mighty in stature and in power.
+In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a
+hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent
+reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest, too, and a magician, with
+power over the elements. Each year he withdrew from the public gaze to
+hold converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each year
+he sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards whom the fortune of the
+sea had cast upon his shores. The name of the tribe is preserved in that
+of the River Caloosa. In close league with him was the mighty Oathcaqua,
+dwelling near Cape Canaveral, who gave his daughter, a maiden of
+wondrous beauty, in marriage to his great ally. But, as the bride, with
+her bridesmaids, was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen
+band, they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an
+island called Sarrope, in the midst of a great lake, who put the
+warriors to flight, bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness,
+espoused them all, and, as we are assured, "loved them above all
+measure."
+
+Outina, taught by Arlac the efficacy of the French fire-arms, begged for
+ten arquebusiers to aid him on a new raid among the villages of Potanou,
+again alluring his greedy allies by the assurance, that, thus
+reinforced, he would conquer for them a free access to the phantom
+gold-mines of Appalachec. Ottigny set forth on this fool's-errand with
+thrice the force demanded. Three hundred Thimagoa and thirty Frenchmen
+took up their march through the pine-barrens. Outina's conjurer was of
+the number, and had well-nigh ruined the enterprise. Kneeling on
+Ottigny's shield, that he might not touch the earth, with hideous
+grimaces, howlings, and contortions, he wrought himself into a prophetic
+frenzy, and proclaimed to the astounded warriors that to advance farther
+would be destruction. Outina was for instant retreat, but Ottigny's
+sarcasms shamed him into a show of courage. Again they moved forward,
+and soon encountered Potanou with all his host. Le Moyne drew a picture
+of the fight. In the foreground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with
+a gigantic savage, who, with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the
+plumed helmet of his foe; but the latter, with target raised to guard
+his head, darts under the arms of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him
+with his sword. The arquebuse did its work: panic, slaughter, and a
+plentiful harvest of scalps. But no persuasion could induce Outina to
+follow up his victory. He went home to dance around his trophies, and
+the French returned disgusted to Fort Caroline.
+
+And now, in ample measure, the French began to reap the harvest of their
+folly. Conquest, gold, military occupation,--such had been their aims.
+Not a rood of ground had been stirred with the spade. Their stores were
+consumed; the expected supplies had not come. The Indians, too, were
+hostile. Satouriona hated them as allies of his enemies; and his
+tribesmen, robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in
+their miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle neighbors, was their
+only hope.
+
+May-day came, the third anniversary of the day when Ribaut and his
+companions, full of delighted anticipations, had explored the flowery
+borders of the St. John's. Dire was the contrast; for, within the
+homesick precinct of Fort Caroline, a squalid band, dejected and worn,
+dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun-scorched area, or lay
+stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks. Some
+were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the
+meadows. One collected refuse fish-bones and pounded them into meal.
+Yet, giddy with weakness, their skin clinging to their bones, they
+dragged themselves in turn to the top of St. John's Bluff, straining
+their eyes across the sea to descry the anxiously expected sail.
+
+Had Coligny left them to perish? or had some new tempest of calamity,
+let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the
+watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection
+fell upon them, a dejection that would have sunk to despair, could their
+eyes have pierced the future.
+
+The Indians had left the neighborhood, but, from time to time, brought
+in meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at
+exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion,
+they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river,
+beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them.
+"Oftentimes," says Laudonniere, "our poor soldiers were constrained to
+give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish. If at any
+time they shewed unto the savages the excessive price which they tooke,
+these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly: If thou make
+so great account of thy marchandise, eat it, and we will eat our fish:
+then fell they out a laughing and mocked us with open throat."
+
+The spring wore away, and no relief appeared. One thought now engrossed
+the colonists, the thought of return to France. Vasseur's ship, the
+Breton, still remained in the river, and they had also the Spanish
+brigantine brought by the mutineers. But these vessels were
+insufficient, and they prepared to build a new one. The energy of
+reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted frames. Some gathered
+pitch in the pine forests; some made charcoal; some cut and sawed the
+timber. The maize began to ripen, and this brought some relief; but the
+Indians, exasperated and greedy, sold it with reluctance, and murdered
+two half-famished Frenchmen who gathered a handful in the fields.
+
+The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them two victories. The result
+was a churlish message and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an
+invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief, the plunder of whose
+villages would yield an ample supply. The offer was accepted. Ottigny
+and Vasseur set forth, but were grossly deceived, led against a
+different enemy, and sent back empty-handed and half-starved.
+
+Pale with famine and with rage, a crowd of soldiers beset Laudonniere,
+and fiercely demanded to be led against Outina to take him prisoner and
+extort from his fears the supplies which could not be looked for from
+his gratitude. The commandant was forced to comply. Those who could bear
+the weight of their armor put it on, embarked, to the number of fifty,
+in two barges, and sailed up the river under the commandant himself.
+Outina's landing reached, they marched inland, entered his village,
+surrounded his mud-plastered palace, seized him amid the yells and
+howlings of his subjects, and led him prisoner to their boats. Here,
+anchored in mid-stream, they demanded a supply of corn and beans as the
+price of his ransom.
+
+The alarm spread. Excited warriors, bedaubed with red, came thronging
+from all his villages. The forest along the shore was full of them; and
+troops of women gathered at the water's edge with moans, outcries, and
+gestures of despair. Yet no ransom was offered, since, reasoning from
+their own instincts, they never doubted, that, the price paid, the
+captive would be put to death.
+
+Laudonniere waited two days, then descended the river. In a rude chamber
+of Fort Caroline, pike in hand, the sentinel stood his guard, while
+before him crouched the captive chief, mute, impassive, brooding on his
+woes. His old enemy, Satouriona, keen as a hound on the scent of prey,
+tried, by great offers, to bribe Laudonniere to give the prisoner into
+his hands. Outina, however, was kindly treated, and assured of immediate
+freedom on payment of the ransom.
+
+Meanwhile his captivity was entailing dire affliction on his realm; for,
+despairing of his return, his subjects mustered to the election of a new
+chief. Party-strife ran high. Some were for a boy, his son, and some for
+an ambitious kinsman who coveted the vacant throne. Outina chafed in his
+prison, learning these dissensions, and, eager to convince his
+over-hasty subjects that their king still lived, he was so profuse of
+promises, that he was again embarked and carried up the river.
+
+At no great distance below Lake George, a small affluent of the St.
+John's gave access by water to a point within eighteen miles of Outina's
+principal town. The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and bearing also
+the royal captive, rowed up this little stream. Indians awaited them at
+the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and piteous prayers
+for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an ample supply of
+corn. As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonniere yielded,
+released the chief, and received in his place two hostages, who were
+fast bound in the boats. Ottigny and Arlac, with a strong detachment of
+arquebusiers, set forth to receive the promised supplies, for which,
+from the first, full payment in merchandise had been offered. Arrived at
+the village, they filed into the great central lodge, within whose dusky
+precincts were gathered the magnates of the tribe. Council-chamber,
+forum, banquet-hall, dancing-hall, palace, all in one, the royal
+dwelling could hold half the population in its capacious confines. Here
+the French made their abode. Their armor buckled, their
+arquebuse-matches lighted, they stood, or sat, or reclined on the
+earthen floor, with anxious eyes watching the strange, dim scene, half
+lighted by the daylight that streamed down through the hole at the apex
+of the roof. Tall, dark forms stalked to and fro, quivers at their
+backs, bows and arrows in their hands, while groups, crouched in the
+shadow beyond, eyed the hated guests with inscrutable visages, and
+malignant, sidelong eyes. Corn came in slowly, but warriors were
+mustering fast. The village without was full of them. The French
+officers grew anxious, and urged the chiefs to greater alacrity in
+collecting the promised ransom. The answer boded no good, "Our women are
+afraid, when they see the matches of your guns burning. Put them out,
+and they will bring the corn faster."
+
+Outina was nowhere to be seen. At length they learned that he was in one
+of the small huts adjacent. Several of the officers went to him,
+complaining of the slow payment of his ransom. The kindness of his
+captors at Fort Caroline seemed to have won his heart. He replied, that
+such was the rage of his subjects that he could no longer control
+them,--that the French were in danger,--and that he had seen arrows
+stuck in the ground by the side of the path, in token that war was
+declared. Their peril was thickening hourly, and Ottigny resolved to
+regain the boats while there was yet time.
+
+On the twenty-seventh of July, at nine in the morning, he set his men in
+order. Each shouldering a sack of corn, they marched through the rows of
+squalid huts that surrounded the great lodge, and out betwixt the
+interfolding extremities of the palisade that encircled the town. Before
+them stretched a wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long, flanked
+by a natural growth of trees,--one of those curious monuments of native
+industry to which allusion has been already made. Here Ottigny halted
+and formed his line of march. Arlac with eight matchlockmen was sent in
+advance, and flanking parties thrown into the woods on either side.
+Ottigny told his soldiers, that, if the Indians meant to attack them,
+they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. He was
+right. As Arlac's party reached the spot, the whole pack gave tongue at
+once. The war-whoop quavered through the startled air, and a tempest of
+stone-headed arrows clattered against the breastplates of the French, or
+tore, scorching like fire, through their unprotected limbs. They stood
+firm, and sent back their shot so steadily that several of the
+assailants were laid dead, and the rest, two or three hundred in number,
+gave way as Ottigny came up with his men.
+
+They moved on for a quarter of a mile through a country, as it seems,
+comparatively open; when again the war-cry pealed in front, and three
+hundred savages came bounding to the assault. Their whoops were echoed
+from the rear. It was the party whom Arlac had just repulsed, who,
+leaping and showering their arrows, were rushing on with a ferocity
+restrained only by their lack of courage. There was no panic. The men
+threw down their corn-bags, and took to their weapons. They blew their
+matches, and, under two excellent officers, stood well to their work.
+The Indians, on their part, showed a good discipline, after their
+fashion, and were perfectly under the control of their chiefs. With
+cries that imitated the yell of owls, the scream of cougars, and the
+howl of wolves, they ran up in successive bands, let fly their arrows,
+and instantly fell back, giving place to others. At the sight of the
+levelled arquebuse, they dropped flat on the earth. Whenever, sword in
+hand, the French charged upon them, they fled like foxes through the
+woods; and whenever the march was resumed, the arrows were showering
+again upon the flanks and rear of the retiring band. The soldiers coolly
+picked them up and broke them as they fell. Thus, beset with swarming
+savages, the handful of Frenchmen pushed their march till nightfall,
+fighting as they went.
+
+The Indians gradually drew off, and the forest was silent again. Two of
+the French had been killed and twenty-two wounded, several so severely
+that they were supported to the boats with the utmost difficulty. Of the
+corn, two bags only had been brought off.
+
+Famine and desperation now reigned at Fort Caroline. The Indians had
+killed two of the carpenters; hence long delay in the finishing of the
+new ship. They would not wait, but resolved to put to sea in the Breton
+and the brigantine. The problem was to find food for the voyage; for
+now, in their extremity, they roasted and ate snakes, a delicacy in
+which the neighborhood abounded.
+
+On the third of August, Laudonniere, perturbed and oppressed, was
+walking on the hill, when, looking seaward, he saw a sight that shot a
+thrill through his exhausted frame. A great ship was standing towards
+the river's mouth. Then another came in sight, and another, and another.
+He called the tidings to the fort below. Then languid forms rose and
+danced for joy, and voices, shrill with weakness, joined in wild
+laughter and acclamation.
+
+A doubt soon mingled with their joy. Who were the strangers? Were they
+the succors so long hoped in vain? or were they Spaniards bringing steel
+and fire? They were neither. The foremost was a stately ship, of seven
+hundred tons, a mighty burden at that day. She was named the Jesus; and
+with her were three smaller vessels, the Solomon, the Tiger, and the
+Swallow. Their commander was "a right worshipful and valiant
+knight,"--for so the record styles him,--a pious man and a prudent, to
+judge him by the orders he gave his crew, when, ten months before, he
+sailed out of Plymouth:--"Serve God daily, love one another, preserve
+your victuals, beware of fire, and keepe good companie." Nor were the
+crew unworthy the graces of their chief; for the devout chronicler of
+the voyage ascribes their deliverance from the perils of the seas to
+"the Almightie God, who never suffereth his Elect to perish."
+
+Who, then, were they, this chosen band, serenely conscious of a special
+Providential care? Apostles of the cross, bearing the word of peace to
+benighted heathendom? They were the pioneers of that detested traffic
+destined to inoculate with its black infection nations yet unborn,
+parent of discord and death, with the furies in their train, filling
+half a continent with the tramp of armies and the clash of fratricidal
+swords. Their chief was Sir John Hawkins, father of the English
+slave-trade.
+
+He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he bought and kidnapped a
+cargo of slaves. These he had sold to the jealous Spaniards of
+Hispaniola, forcing them, with sword, matchlock, and culverin, to grant
+him free trade, and then to sign testimonials that he had borne himself
+as became a peaceful merchant. Prospering greatly by this summary
+commerce, but distressed by the want of water, he had put into the River
+of May to obtain a supply.
+
+Among the rugged heroes of the British marine, Sir John stood in the
+front rank, and along with Drake, his relative, is extolled as "a man
+borne for the honour of the English name.... Neither did the West of
+England yeeld such an Indian Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean
+peeres, Hawkins and Drake." So writes the old chronicler, Purchas, and
+all England was of his thinking. A hardy seaman, a bold fighter,
+overbearing towards equals, but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath
+him, rude in speech, somewhat crafty withal, and avaricious, he buffeted
+his way to riches and fame, and died at last full of years and honor. As
+for the abject humanity stowed between the reeking decks of the ship
+Jesus, they were merely in his eyes so many black cattle tethered for
+the market. Queen Elizabeth had an interest in the venture, and received
+her share of the sugar, pearls, ginger, and hides which the vigorous
+measures of Sir John gained from his Spanish customers.
+
+Hawkins came up the river in a pinnace, and landed at Fort Caroline,
+"accompanied," says Laudonniere, "with gentlemen honorably apparelled,
+yet unarmed." Between the Huguenots and the English there was a double
+tie of sympathy. Both hated priests, and both hated Spaniards. Wakening
+from their apathetic misery, the starveling garrison hailed him as a
+deliverer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced, when he learned their purpose
+to abandon Florida; for, though, not to tempt his cupidity, they hid
+from him the secret of their Appalachian gold-mine, he coveted for his
+royal mistress the possession of this rich domain. He shook his head,
+however, when he saw the vessels in which they proposed to embark, and
+offered them all a free passage to France in his own ships. This, from
+obvious motives of honor and prudence, Laudonniere declined, upon which
+Hawkins offered to lend or sell to him one of his smaller vessels.
+
+Hereupon arose a great clamor. A mob of soldiers and artisans beset
+Laudonniere's chamber, threatening loudly to desert him, and take
+passage with Hawkins, unless the offer of the latter were accepted. The
+commandant accordingly resolved to buy the vessel. The generous slaver,
+whose reputed avarice nowise appears in the transaction, desired him to
+set his own price; and, in place of money, took the cannon of the fort,
+with other articles now useless to their late owners. He sent them, too,
+a gift of wine and biscuit, and supplied them with provision for the
+voyage, receiving in payment Laudonniere's note,--"for which," adds the
+latter, "I am until this present indebted to him." With a friendly
+leave-taking he returned to his ships and stood out to sea, leaving
+golden opinions among the grateful inmates of Fort Caroline.
+
+Before the English top-sails had sunk beneath the horizon, the colonists
+bestirred themselves to depart. In a few days their preparations were
+made. They waited only for a fair wind. It was long in coming, and
+meanwhile their troubled fortunes assumed a new phase.
+
+On the twenty-eighth of August, the two captains, Vasseur and Verdier,
+came in with tidings of an approaching squadron. Again the fort was wild
+with excitement. Friends or foes, French or Spaniards, succor or death:
+betwixt these were their hopes and fears divided. With the following
+morning, they saw seven barges rowing up the river, bristling with
+weapons and crowded with men in armor. The sentries on the bluff
+challenged, and received no answer. One of them fired at the advancing
+boats. Still no response. Laudonniere was almost defenceless. He had
+given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and only two field-pieces were
+left. They were levelled at the foremost boats, and the word was about
+to be given, when a voice from among the strangers called that they were
+French, commanded by John Ribaut.
+
+At the eleventh hour, the long-looked-for succors were come. Ribaut had
+been commissioned to sail with seven ships for Florida. A disorderly
+concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed with artisans and their families,
+and young nobles weary of a two-years' peace, were mustered at the port
+of Dieppe, and embarked, to the number of three hundred men, bearing
+with them all things thought necessary to a prosperous colony.
+
+No longer in dread of the Spaniards, the colonists saluted the
+new-comers with the cannon by which a moment before they had hoped to
+blow them out of the water. Laudonniere issued from his stronghold to
+welcome them, and regaled them with what cheer he might. Ribaut was
+present, conspicuous by his long beard, the astonishment of the Indians;
+and here, too, were officers, old friends of Laudonniere. Why, then, had
+they approached in the attitude of enemies? The mystery was soon
+explained; for they expressed to the commandant their pleasure at
+finding that the charges made against him had proved false. He begged to
+know more, on which Ribaut, taking him aside, told him that the
+returning ships had brought home letters filled with accusations of
+arrogance, tyranny, cruelty, and a purpose of establishing an
+independent command: accusations which he now saw to be unfounded, but
+which had been the occasion of his unusual and startling precaution. He
+gave him, too, a letter from the Admiral Coligny. In brief, but
+courteous terms, it required him to resign his command, and invited his
+return to France to clear his name from the imputations cast upon it.
+Ribaut warmly urged him to remain; but Laudonniere declined his friendly
+proposals.
+
+Worn in body and mind, mortified and wounded, he soon fell ill again. A
+peasant-woman attended him, brought over, he says, to nurse the sick and
+take charge of the poultry, and of whom Le Moyne also speaks as a
+servant, but who had been made the occasion of additional charges
+against him, most offensive to the austere Admiral.
+
+Stores were landed, tents were pitched, women and children were sent on
+shore, feathered Indians mingled in the throng, and the sunny borders of
+the River of May swarmed with busy life. "But, lo, how oftentimes
+misfortune doth search and pursue us, even then when we thinke to be at
+rest!" exclaims the unhappy Laudonniere. Behind the light and cheer of
+renovated hope, a cloud of blackest omen was gathering in the east.
+
+At half-past eleven on the night of Tuesday, the fourth of September,
+the crew of Ribaut's flag-ship, anchored on the still sea outside the
+bar, saw a huge hulk, grim with the throats of cannon, drifting towards
+them through the gloom; and from its stern rolled on the sluggish air
+the portentous banner of Spain.
+
+Here opens a wilder act of this eventful drama. At another day we shall
+lift the curtain on its fierce and bloody scenes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SEAWARD.
+
+TO ----.
+
+
+    How long it seems since that mild April night,
+      When, leaning from the window, you and I
+    Heard, clearly ringing from the shadowy bight,
+                 The loon's unearthly cry!
+
+    Southwest the wind blew; million little waves
+      Ran rippling round the point in mellow tune;
+    But mournful, like the voice of one who raves,
+                 That laughter of the loon.
+
+    We called to him, while blindly through the haze
+      Upclimbed the meagre moon behind us, slow,
+    So dim, the fleet of boats we scarce could trace,
+                 Moored lightly, just below.
+
+    We called, and, lo, he answered! Half in fear,
+      I sent the note back. Echoing rock and bay
+    Made melancholy music far and near;
+                 Slowly it died away.
+
+    That schooner, you remember? Flying ghost!
+      Her canvas catching every wandering beam,
+    Aerial, noiseless, past the glimmering coast
+                 She glided like a dream.
+
+    Would we were leaning from your window now,
+      Together calling to the eerie loon,
+    The fresh wind blowing care from either brow,
+                 This sumptuous night of June!
+
+    So many sighs load this sweet inland air,
+      'T is hard to breathe, nor can we find relief;
+    However lightly touched, we all must share
+                 The nobleness of grief.
+
+    But sighs are spent before they reach your ear,
+      Vaguely they mingle with the water's rune;
+    No sadder sound salutes you than the clear,
+                 Wild laughter of the loon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+SIDE-GLANCES AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY.
+
+
+It happened to me once to "assist" at the celebration of Class-Day at
+Harvard University. Class-Day is the peculiar institution of the Senior
+Class, and marks its completion of college study and release from
+college rules. It is also an institution peculiar, I believe, to
+Harvard, and I was somewhat curious to observe its ceremonials, besides
+feeling a not entirely _unawful_ interest in being introduced for the
+first time to the _arcana_ of that renowned Alma Mater.
+
+She has set up her Lares and Penates in a fine old grove, or a fine old
+grove and green have sprouted up around her, as the case may be. At all
+events, there is sufficient groundwork for any quantity of euphuism
+about "classic shades," "groves of Academe," _et cetera_. Trollope had
+his fling at the square brick buildings; but it was a fling that they
+richly deserved, for they are in very deed as ugly as it is possible to
+conceive,--angular, formal, stiff, windowy, bricky,--and the farther in
+you go, the worse it grows. Why, I pray to know, as the first inquiry
+suggested by Class-Day, is it necessary for boys' schools to be placed
+without the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the
+amenities of life that they can safely dispense with the conditions of
+amenity? When I entered those brick boxes, I felt as if I were going
+into a stable. Wood-work dingy, unpainted, gashed, scratched; windows
+dingy and dim; walls dingy and gray and smoked; everything unhomelike,
+unattractive, narrow, and rickety. Think, now, of taking a boy away from
+his home, from his mother and sisters, from carpets and curtains and all
+the softening influences of cultivated taste, and turning him loose with
+dozens of other boys into a congeries of pens like this! Who wonders
+that he comes out a boor? I felt a sinking at the heart in climbing up
+those narrow, uncouth staircases. We talk about education. We boast of
+having the finest system in the world. Harvard is, if not the most
+distinguished, certainly among the first institutions in the country;
+but, in my opinion, formed in the entry of the first Harvard house I
+entered, Harvard has not begun to hit the nail on the head. Education!
+Do you call it education, to put a boy into a hole, and work out of him
+a certain amount of mathematics, and work into him a certain number of
+languages? Is a man dressed, because one arm has a spotless wristband,
+unquestionable sleeve-buttons, a handsome sleeve, and a well-fitting
+glove at the end, while the man is out at the other elbow, patched on
+both knees, and down at the heels? Should we consider Nature a success,
+if she concerned herself only with carrying nutriment to the stomach,
+and left the heart and the lungs and the liver and the nerves to shift
+for themselves? Yet so do we, educating boys in these dens called
+colleges. We educate the mind, the memory, the intellectual faculties;
+but the manners, the courtesies, the social tastes, the greater part of
+what goes to make life happy and genial, not to say good, we leave out
+of view. People talk about the "awkward age" of boys,--the age in which
+their hands and feet trouble them, and in which they are a social burden
+to themselves and their friends. But one age need be no more awkward
+than another. I have seen boys that were gentlemen from the cradle to
+the grave,--almost; certainly from the time they ceased to be babies
+till they passed altogether out of my sight. Let boys have the
+associations, the culture, the training, and the treatment of gentlemen,
+and I do not believe there will be a single moment of their lives in
+which they will be clowns.
+
+And among the first necessities are the surroundings of a gentleman.
+When a man is grown up, he can live in a sty and not be a pig; but turn
+a horde of boys in, and when they come out they will root out. A man is
+strong and stiff. His inward, inherent power, toughened by exposure and
+fortified by knowledge, overmasters opposing circumstances. He can
+neglect the prickles and assume the rose of his position. He stands
+scornfully erect amid the grovelling influences that would pull him
+down. It may perhaps be, also, that here and there a boy, with a strong
+native predilection to refinement, shall be eclectic, and, with the
+water-lily's instinct, select from coarse contiguities only that which
+will nourish a delicate soul. But human nature in its infancy is usually
+a very susceptible material. It grows as it is trained. It will be rude,
+if it is left rude, and fine only as it is wrought finely. Educate a boy
+to tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and grimy to his
+grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the
+appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of
+the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am
+not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I
+would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot
+into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the
+heights of true manhood than the clumsiness of the clod, but I think it
+is just as near. I would have college rooms, college entrances, and all
+college domains cleanly and attractive. I would, in the first place,
+have every rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. I
+would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or
+bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden
+under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope
+matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put
+upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky,
+a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish his room
+handsomely, the furnishings will not shame the room and its vicinity. If
+he is poor and can provide but cheaply, he will still have a comely home
+provided for him by the Mater who then will be Alma to some purpose.
+
+Do you laugh at all this? So did Sarah laugh at the angels, but the
+angels had the right of it for all that.
+
+I am told that it would all be useless,--that the boys would deface and
+destroy, till the last state of the buildings would be worse than the
+first. I do not believe one word of it. It is inferred that they would
+deface, because they deface now. But what is it that they deface?
+Deformity. And who blames them? You see a rough board, and, by natural
+instinct, you dive into it with your jackknife. A base bare wall is a
+standing invitation to energetic and unruly pencils. Give the boys a
+little elegance and the tutors a little tact, and I do not believe there
+would be any trouble. If I had a thousand dollars,--as I did have once,
+but it is gone: shall I ever look upon its like again?--I would not be
+afraid to stake the whole of it upon the good behavior of college
+students,--that is, if I could have the managing of them. I would make
+them "a speech," when they came back at the end of one of their long
+vacations, telling them what had been done, why it had been done, and
+the objections that had been urged against doing it. Then I would put
+the matter entirely into their hands. I would appeal solely to their
+honor. I would repose in them so much confidence that they could by no
+possibility betray it. We don't trust people half enough. We hedge
+ourselves about with laws and locks and deeds and bonds, and neglect the
+weightier matters of inherent right and justice that lie in every bosom.
+
+It may be thought hardly polite to accept hospitality and then go away
+and inveigh against the hospital; but my animadversions, you will do me
+the justice to observe, are not aimed at my entertainers. I am marauding
+for, not against them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Oration and Poem form the first public features of Class-Day, but,
+arriving late, I could only eddy on the surge that swept around the
+door. Strains of distant eloquence would occasionally float musically to
+my ear; now and then a single word would steer clear of the thousands of
+heads and come into my port unharmed. Frequent waves of laughter beat
+and broke into the vestibule; but what is more "trying" to a frail
+temper than laughter in which one cannot join? So we tarried long enough
+to mark the fair faces and fine dresses, and then rambled under the old
+trees till the hour for the "collation" came; and this is the second
+point on which I purpose to dwell.
+
+Each member of the Senior Class prepares a banquet,--sometimes
+separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense varying from fifty to
+five hundred dollars,--to which he invites as many friends as he
+chooses, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and
+elegant as you find at ordinary evening parties, and the occasion is a
+merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be
+unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of
+seventy-five, in a country like America, it is quite probable that a
+certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such a custom
+necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must
+have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this
+elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience.
+The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met
+without strict economy and much parental and family sacrifice. And at
+the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be
+strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his
+feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for
+entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom.
+There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory
+_symposium_. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream
+beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as
+rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young
+men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth
+collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it
+involved personal sacrifice at home,--whether there was generally
+sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class, whether
+there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding, to make the
+omission of this party-giving unnoticeable or not unpleasant. I by no
+means say that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain
+their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing
+so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a
+fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and
+the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and
+worth or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the
+time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a
+distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore
+on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot
+comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and
+of which I have no tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. I think it
+is an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has
+any exaltation of life, any real elevation of character, any
+self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a shame. One may be
+annoyed at the inconveniences and impatient of the restraints of
+poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be thought poor, to
+resort to shifts, not for the sake of being comfortable or elegant, but
+of seeming to be above the necessity of shifts, is an indication of an
+inferior mind, whether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The man who
+does it shows that he has not in his own opinion character enough to
+stand alone. He must be supported by adventitious circumstances, or he
+must fall. Nobody, therefore, need ever expect to receive sympathy from
+me in recounting the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never can
+be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. People may attempt to do
+it, but their shafts have no barb. You turn it all into natural history.
+It is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something to be analyzed,
+classified, reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to
+be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your
+stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer
+from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you
+deserve to be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have
+become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live
+chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach
+maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding and depend upon their
+own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and
+prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of
+attainments and abilities. If I live a thousand years, I do not believe
+I shall ever do a more virtuous deed than I did long ago in staying at
+home for the sake of a quarter of a dollar when the rest of the school
+went to see Tom Thumb, the late bewritten bridegroom. I call it
+virtuous, because I had the quarter and could have gone, and could not
+explain the reason why I did not go. And though a senior class in
+Harvard College may reasonably be supposed to be beyond the eminent
+domain of Tom Thumb and quarter-dollars, the principle is precisely the
+same,--only the temptation, I suppose, is much stronger, as the stake is
+larger. Have they self-poise enough to refrain from these festive
+expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to
+refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have
+they nobility and generosity and largeness of soul enough, while
+abstaining themselves for conscience sake, to share in the plans and
+sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to
+look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at
+the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to
+selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence,
+and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there
+such a state of public opinion and usage in college that this custom is
+equally honored in the breach and in the observance?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began.
+The college green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became
+
+    "Embrouded ... as it were a mede
+    Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"--
+
+"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare
+charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without
+angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the
+scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of
+Arabian Nights. I think I may safely say I never saw so many
+well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame
+fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The
+distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual
+beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women,
+perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual
+ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly
+plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could
+have the full effect of costumes,--rich, majestic, floating, gossamery,
+impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely
+needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a
+dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the
+beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured
+activity,--
+
+    "A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved
+    By the soft wind of whispering silks."
+
+Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the
+Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet
+bliss-month among the Blumenthal Mountains.
+
+Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the
+green. Youth and gayety and beauty--and in summer we are all young and
+gay and beautiful--mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and
+velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and
+Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy
+summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil
+their faces there.
+
+Yet I must confess I wish men would not dance. It is the most unbecoming
+exercise which they can adopt. In women you have the sweep and wave of
+drapery, gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, sinuous
+movements, the fluency of pliant forms, the willowy bend and rebound of
+lithe and lovely suppleness. It is grace generic,--the sublime, the
+evanescent mysticism of motion, without use, without aim, except its own
+overflowing and all-sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it
+reminds me of that amusing French book called "Le Diable Boiteux," which
+has been or may be free-thinkingly translated, "The Devil on Two
+Sticks." In saying this, I design to cast no slur on the moral character
+of masculine dancers. It is unquestionably above reproach; but let an
+angel put on the black coat and trousers which constitute the
+"full-dress" of a modern gentleman, and therein antic through the
+"Lancers," and he would simply be ridiculous,--which is all I allege
+against Thomas, Richard, and Henry, Esq. A woman's dancing is gliding,
+swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute
+angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined: airy movements
+are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly
+outlined; and nothing is more incongruous, to my thinking, than this
+dancing, well portrayed in the contraband melody of
+
+    "Old Joe," etc.
+
+The feminine drapery conceals processes and gives results. The masculine
+absence of drapery reveals processes and thereby destroys results.
+
+Once upon a time, long before the Flood, the clergyman of a
+country-village, possessed with such a zeal as Paul bore record of
+concerning Israel, conceived it his duty to "make a note" of sundry
+young members of his flock who had met for a drive and a supper, with a
+dance fringed upon the outskirts. The fame thereof being noised abroad,
+a sturdy old farmer, with a good deal of shrewd sense and mother-wit in
+his brains, and a fine, indirect way of hitting the nail on the head
+with a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring village as to the
+facts of the case. "Yes," he said, surlily, "the young folks had a
+party, and got up a dance, and the minister was mad,--and I don't blame
+him,--he thinks nobody has any business to dance, unless he knows how
+better than they did!" It was a rather different _casus belli_ from that
+which the worthy clergyman would have preferred before a council; but it
+"meets my views" precisely as to the validity of the objections urged
+against dancing. I would have women dance, because it is the most
+beautiful thing in the world. I would have men dance, if it is
+necessary, in order to "set off" women, and to keep themselves out of
+mischief; but in point of grace, or elegance, or attractiveness, I
+should beg men to hold their peace--and their pumps.
+
+From my window overlooking the green, I was led away into some one or
+other of the several halls to see the "round dances"; and it was like
+going from Paradise to Pandemonium. From the pure and healthy lawn, all
+the purer for the pure and peaceful people pleasantly walking up and
+down in the sunshine and shade, or grouped in the numerous windows, like
+bouquets of rare tropical flowers,--from the green, rainbowed in vivid
+splendor, and alive with soft, tranquil motion, fair forms, and the
+flutter of beautiful and brilliant colors,--from the green, sanctified
+already by the pale faces of sick and wounded and maimed soldiers who
+had gone out from the shadows of those sheltering trees to draw the
+sword for country, and returned white wraiths of their vigorous youth,
+the sad vanguard of that great army of blessed martyrs who shall keep
+forever in the mind of this generation how costly and precious a thing
+is liberty, who shall lift our worldly age out of the plough of its
+material prosperity into the sublimity of suffering and sacrifice,--from
+suggestions and fancies and dreamy musing and "phantasms sweet," into
+the hall, where, for flower-scented summer air were thick clouds of
+fine, penetrating dust, and for lightly trooping fairies a jam of heated
+human beings, so that you shall hardly come nigh the dancers for the
+press; and when you have, with difficulty and many contortions and much
+apologizing, threaded the solid mass, piercing through the forest of
+fans,--what? An inclosure, but no more illusion.
+
+Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. Always. When it is prosecuted
+in the centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer
+day, it is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time.
+The blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the
+salient points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl
+that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in
+through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the
+whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this
+most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very _pose_ of the dance is
+profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate
+emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and
+justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of
+unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, and carelessly
+assumed by people who have but a casual and partial
+society-acquaintance. This I reckon profanity. This is levity the most
+culpable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of delicacy.
+
+That it is practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does
+not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A
+good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as
+you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not
+cleanse the waltz. It is of itself unclean.
+
+There were, besides, peculiar _desagrements_ on this occasion. How can
+people,--I could not help saying to myself,--how can people endure such
+proximity in such a sweltering heat? For, as I said, there was no
+illusion,--not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with Nymphs and
+Apollos. The boys were boys, appallingly young, full of healthful
+promise, but too much in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at
+ease in their situation,--indeed, very much _not_ at ease,--unmistakably
+warm, nervous, and uncomfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls, I
+dare say, under ordinary circumstances,--one was really lovely, with
+soft cheeks, long eyelashes, eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in
+her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,--but Venus
+herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight as
+they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowsy,--puff-balls revolving
+through an atmosphere of dust,--a maze of steaming, reeking human
+couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than
+Spartan fortitude.
+
+It was remarkable, and at the same time amusing, to observe the
+difference in the demeanor of the two sexes. The lions and the fawns
+seemed to have changed hearts,--perhaps they had. It was the boys that
+were nervous. The girls were unquailing. The boys were, however, heroic.
+They tried bravely to hide the fox and his gnawings; but traces were
+visible. They made desperate feint of being at the height of enjoyment
+and unconscious of spectators; but they had much modesty, for all that.
+The girls threw themselves into it _pugnis et calcibus_,--unshrinking,
+indefatigable.
+
+There is another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to
+consider. The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as
+objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French
+ballet-dancer. Not to put too fine a point on it, I mean that these
+girls' gyrations in the centre of their gyrating and centrifugal hoops
+make a most operatic drapery-display. I saw scores and scores of public
+waltzing-girls last summer, and among them all I saw but one who
+understood the art, or, at any rate, who practised the art, of avoiding
+an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light it is only
+flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight,
+it is not. Do I shock ears polite? I trust so. If the saying of shocking
+things might prevent the doing of shocking things, I should be well
+content. And is it an unpardonable sin for me to sit alone in my own
+room and write about what you go into a great hall, before hundreds of
+strange men and women, and do?
+
+I do not speak thus about waltzing because I like to say it; but ye have
+compelled me. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. I
+respect and revere woman, and I cannot see her destroying or debasing
+the impalpable fragrance and delicacy of her nature without feeling the
+shame and shudder in my own heart. Great is my boldness of speech
+towards you, because great is my glorying of you. Though I speak as a
+fool, yet as a fool receive me. My opinions may be rustic. They are at
+least honest; and may it not be that the first fresh impressions of an
+unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as likely to be natural and
+correct views as those which are the result of many afterthoughts, long
+use, and an experience of multifold fascinations, combined with the
+original producing cause? My opinions may be wrong, but they will do no
+harm; the penalty will rest alone on me: while, if they are right, they
+may serve as a nail or two to be fastened by the masters of assemblies.
+
+The funny part of Class-Day comes last,--not so very funny to tell, but
+amazingly funny to see,--only a wreath of bouquets fastened around the
+trunk of an old tree, perhaps eight or ten feet from the ground, and
+then the four classes range themselves around it in four circles with
+their hands fast locked together, the Freshman Class on the outside, the
+Senior Class within, grotesquely tricked out in vile old coats and
+"shocking bad hats." Then the two alternate classes go one way around
+the tree and the two others the opposite, pell-mell, harum-scarum,
+pushing and pulling, down and up again, only keeping fast hold of hands,
+singing, shouting, cheering _ad libitum_, _ad throatum_, (theirs,) _ad
+earsum_, (ours,) and going all the time in that din and yell and crowd
+and crash dear to the hearts of boys. At a given signal there is a
+pause, and the Senior Class make sudden charge upon the bouquets,
+huddling and hustling and crowding and jumping at the foot of the old
+tree; bubbling up on each other's shoulders into momentary prominence
+and prospect of success, and immediately disappearing ignominiously;
+making frantic grasps and clutches with a hundred long arms and eager
+outstretched hands, and finally succeeding, by shoulders and fists, in
+bringing the wreath away piecemeal; and then they give themselves up to
+mutual embraces, groans, laments, and all the enginery of pathetic
+affection in the last gasping throes of separation,--to the doleful
+tearing of hair and the rending of their fantastic garments. It is the
+personification of legalized rowdyism; and if young men would but
+confine themselves to such rowdyism as may be looked at and laughed at
+by their mothers and sisters, they would find life just as amusing and a
+thousand times more pure and profitable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It occurs to me here that there is one subject on which I desire to
+"give my views," though it is quite unconnected with Class-Day. But it
+is probable that in the whole course of my natural life it will never
+again happen to me to be writing about colleges, so I desire to say in
+this paper everything I have to say on the subject. I refer to the
+practice of "hazing," which is an abomination. If we should find it
+among hinds, a remnant of the barbarisms of the Dark Ages, blindly
+handed down by such slow-growing people as go to mill with their meal on
+one side of the saddle and a stone on the other to balance, as their
+fathers did, because it never occurred to their loggerheads to divide
+the meal into two parcels and make it balance itself, we should not be
+surprised; but hazing occurs among boys who have been accustomed to the
+circulation of ideas, boys old enough and intelligent enough to
+understand the difference between brutality and frolic, old enough to
+know what honor and courage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive how
+they should countenance a practice which entirely ignores and defies
+honor, and whose brutality has not a single redeeming feature. It has
+neither wisdom nor wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely
+the mirth of boyish frolic. A narrow range of stale practical jokes,
+lighted up by no gleam of originality, is transmitted from year to year
+with as much fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude
+allowed to clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its
+platitude, its one overpowering and fatal characteristic is its intense
+and essential cowardice. Cowardice is its head and front and bones and
+blood. One boy does not single out another boy of his own weight, and
+take his chances in a fair stand-up fight. But a party of Sophomores
+club together in such numbers as to render opposition useless, and
+pounce upon their victim unawares, as Brooks and his minions pounced
+upon Sumner, and as the Southern chivalry is given to doing. For sweet
+pity's sake, let this mode of warfare be monopolized by the Southern
+chivalry.
+
+The lame excuse is offered, that it does the Freshmen good,--takes the
+conceit out of them. But if there is any class in college so divested of
+conceit as to be justified in throwing stones, it is surely not the
+Sophomore Class. Moreover, whatever good it may do the sufferers, it
+does harm, and only harm, to the perpetrators; and neither the law nor
+the gospel requires a man to improve other people's characters at the
+expense of his own. Nobody can do a wrong without injuring himself; and
+no young man can do a mean, cowardly wrong like this without suffering
+severest injury. It is the very spirit of the slaveholder, a dastardly
+and detestable, a tyrannical and cruel spirit. If young men are so
+blinded by custom and habit that a meanness is not to them a meanness
+because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for the young
+men, and so much the worse for our country, whose sweat of blood attests
+the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If uprightness,
+if courage, if humanity and rectitude and the mind conscious to itself
+of right, are anything more than a name. Let the young men who mean to
+make time minister to life scorn and scotch and kill this debasing and
+stupid practice.
+
+And why is not some legitimate and wholesome safety-valve provided by
+authority to let off superabundant vitality, that boys may not, by the
+mere occasions of their own natures, be driven into wickedness?
+Class-Day is very well, but it comes only once a year, and what is
+needed is an opportunity for daily ebullition, so that each night may
+square its own account and forestall explosion. Why should there not be,
+for instance, a military department to every college, as well as a
+mathematical department? Why might not every college be a military
+normal school? The exuberance and riot of animal spirits, the young,
+adventurous strength and joy in being, would not only be kept from
+striking out as now in illegitimate, unworthy, and hurtful directions,
+but it would become the very basis and groundwork of useful purposes.
+Such exercise would be so promotive of health and discipline, it would
+so train and harmonize and _limber_ the physical powers, that the
+superior quality of study would, I doubt not, more than atone for
+whatever deficiency in quantity might result. And even suppose a little
+less attention should be given to Euclid and Homer, which is of the
+greater importance nowadays, an ear that can detect a false quantity in
+a Greek verse, or an eye that can sight a Rebel nine hundred yards off,
+and a hand that can pull a trigger and shoot him? Knowledge is power;
+but knowledge must sharpen its edges and polish its points, if it would
+be greatliest available in days like these. The knowledge that can plant
+batteries and plan campaigns, that is fertile in expedients and wise to
+baffle the foe, is just now the strongest power. Diagrams and
+first-aorists are good, and they who have fed on such meat have grown
+great, and done the State service in their generation; but these times
+demand new measures and new men. It is conceded that we shall probably
+be for many years a military nation. At least a generation of vigilance
+shall be the price of our liberty. And even of peace we can have no
+stronger assurance than a wise and wieldy readiness for war. Now the
+education of our unwarlike days is not adequate to the emergencies of
+this martial hour. We must be seasoned with something stronger than
+Attic salt, or we shall be cast out and trodden under foot of men. True,
+all education is worthy. Everything that exercises the mind fits it for
+its work; but professional education is indispensable to professional
+men. And the profession, _par excellence_, of every man of this
+generation is war. Country overrides all personal considerations.
+Lawyer, minister, what not, a man's first duty is the salvation of his
+country. When she calls, he must go; and before she calls, let him, if
+possible, prepare himself to serve her in the best manner. As things are
+now, college-boys are scarcely better than cow-boys for the army. Their
+costly education runs greatly to waste. It gives them no direct
+advantage over the clod who stumbles against a trisyllable. So far as it
+makes them better men, of course they are better soldiers; but for all
+of military education which their college gives them, they are fit only
+for privates, whose sole duty is to obey. They know nothing of military
+drill or tactics or strategy. The State cannot afford this waste. She
+cannot afford to lose the fruits of mental toil and discipline. She
+needs trained mind even more than trained muscle. It is harder to find
+brains than to find hands. The average mental endowment may be no higher
+in college than out; but granting it to be as high, the culture which it
+receives gives it immense advantage. The fruits of that culture,
+readiness, resources, comprehensiveness, should all be held in the
+service of the State. Military knowledge and practice should be imparted
+and enforced to utilize ability, and make it the instrument, not only of
+personal, but of national welfare. That education which gives men the
+advantage over others in the race of life should be so directed as to
+convey that advantage to country, when she stands in need. Every college
+might and should be made a nursery of athletes in mind and body,
+clear-eyed, stout-hearted, strong-limbed, cool-brained,--a nursery of
+soldiers, quick, self-possessed, brave and cautious and wary, ready in
+invention, skilful to command men and evolve from a mob an army,--a
+nursery of gentlemen, reminiscent of no lawless revels, midnight orgies,
+brutal outrages, launching out already attainted into an attainting
+world, but with many a memory of adventure, wild, it may be, and not
+over-wise, yet pure as a breeze from the hills,--banded and sworn
+
+    "To serve as model for the mighty world,
+    To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
+    To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
+    To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
+    To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
+    Not only to keep down the base in man,
+    But teach high thought, and amiable words.
+    And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
+    And love of truth, and all that makes a man."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+LOVE'S CHALLENGE.
+
+
+    I picked this trifle from the floor,
+       Unknowing from whose tender hand
+    It fell,--but now would fain restore
+       A thing which hath my heart unmanned.
+
+    I say unmanned, for 't is not now
+       A manly mood to dream of Love,
+    When each bold champion knits his brow,
+       And for War's gauntlet doffs his glove.
+
+    But we're exempt, and have no heart
+       Of wreak within us for the fray;
+    And therefore teach our souls the art
+       With life and life's concerns to play.
+
+    Yet, lady, trust me, 't is not all
+       In play that I proclaim intent,
+    When next thou lett'st thy gauntlet fall,
+       To take it as a challenge meant.
+
+    REPLY.
+
+    SIR CARPET-KNIGHT, who canst not fight,
+       Thy gallantries are not for me;
+    The man whom I with love requite
+       Must sing in a more martial key.
+
+    I have two brothers on the field,
+       And one beneath it,--none knows where;
+    And I shall keep my spirit steeled
+       To any save a soldier's prayer.
+
+    If thou have music in thy soul,
+       Yet hast no sinew for the strife,
+    Go teach thyself the war-drum's roll,
+       And woo me better with a fife!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+POLITICAL PROBLEMS, AND CONDITIONS OF PEACE.
+
+
+The relations existing between the Federal Government and the several
+States, and the reciprocal rights and powers of each, have never been
+settled, except in part. Upon matters of taxation and commerce, and the
+diversified questions that arise in times of peace, the decisions of the
+Supreme Court have marked the boundary-lines of State and Federal power
+with considerable clearness and precision. But all these questions are
+superficial and trivial, when compared with those which are coming up
+for decision out of the great struggle in which we are now engaged. The
+Southern Rebellion, greater than any recorded in history since the world
+began, must necessarily call for the exercise of all the powers with
+which the Government is clothed. And we need not be surprised, if, in
+resorting to the new measures which the great exigency of the new
+condition seems to require, it shall be found, after the storm has
+ceased and the clouds have rolled away, that in some things the
+Government has transcended its legitimate powers, while in others it has
+suffered, because fearing to use those which it really possesses. It is
+dependent in many things upon the States; and yet it is supreme over
+them all. There can be no Senate, as a branch either of the executive or
+of the legislative department, without the action of the States; and yet
+the Government emanates directly from the people. In defending itself
+against an armed rebellion of nearly half the States themselves,
+struggling for self-preservation, it may rightfully, as in other wars,
+grasp all the means within its reach. War makes its own methods, for all
+of which necessity is a sufficient plea. But when the defence shall have
+been made, when the attack is repelled, and the Rebellion shall have
+been fully suppressed, then will come the questions, What are the best
+means of restoration? and, How shall a recurrence of the evil be
+prevented?
+
+Though the Federal Government is one of limited powers, _the people_
+possess _all governmental powers_; and these are spoken of as powers
+_delegated_ and powers _reserved_. So far as these are reserved to _the
+people_, they may be exercised either through the _Federal Government_
+or the _State_. And the Federal Government, though limited in its
+powers, is restricted in _the subjects upon which it can act_, rather
+than in the _quantum_ of power it can exercise over those matters within
+its jurisdiction. Over those interests which are committed to its care
+it has all the powers incident to any other government in the
+world,--powers necessary by implication to accomplish the purpose
+intended. The construction of the grant in the Constitution is not to be
+critical and stringent, as if the people, by its adoption, were
+_selling_ power to a _stranger_,--but liberal, considering that they
+were enabling _their own agents_ to achieve a noble work for them.
+
+We have been accustomed to extol the wisdom of our fathers, in framing
+and establishing such a form of government; but our highest praises have
+been too small. We have hitherto had but a partial conception of their
+wisdom. We knew not the terrible test to which their work was to be
+exposed. After the long discipline of the Revolutionary War, and the
+experience of the weakness and impending anarchy of the Confederation,
+they understood, far better than we, the dangers to which every
+government is liable, from within and from without. And we are just now
+beginning to see, that, in the Constitution they adopted, they not only
+provided for the interests of peace, but for the dangers and emergencies
+of war. Brief sentences, hardly noticed before, now throw open their
+doors like a magazine of arms, ready for use in the hour of peril. And
+while we shall come out of this struggle, and the political contest
+that will follow it, without impairing any of the rights of the States,
+the Federal Government _restored_ will stand before the world in a
+majesty of strength of which we have before had no conception.
+
+The questions evolved by the war are already attracting public
+attention. It is well that they should do so. The peace and prosperity
+of the country in future years depend upon their solution. They are so
+interwoven that a mistake in regard to one may involve us in other
+errors. The power of the Government so to remove the cause of the
+present rebellion as to prevent its recurrence, if it have any such
+power, is one which it is imperatively bound to exercise,--else all the
+treasure and blood expended in quelling it will be wasted. Has it any
+such power? Can Slavery be exterminated? And can the Rebel States be
+held as conquests, and be restored only upon condition of being forever
+free? It is proposed briefly to discuss these questions.
+
+
+
+EMANCIPATION.
+
+
+There are those who believe that the President's Proclamation will cease
+to be of any force at the close of the war, and that no slaves will have
+any right to their freedom by it except such as may be actually
+liberated by the military authorities.
+
+There are others, who hold that the Proclamation has the force of
+law,--that by it every slave within the designated territory has now a
+legal right to his liberty,--and that, if the military power does not
+secure that right to him _during the war_, he may successfully appeal to
+the civil power _afterwards_.
+
+If the Proclamation is a law, it must be conceded, that, like all the
+laws of war, it will cease to be in force when the war is closed. But
+if, like a legislative act, it confers actual rights on the slaves,
+whether they are able to secure them in fact or not, then those _rights_
+are not lost, though the law cease to exist. On the other hand, if it
+confers no actual rights on any who are beyond its reach,--if it is
+merely an _offer_ of freedom to all who can come and receive it,--then
+those only who do receive it while the offer continues will have any
+rights by it when it has ceased to be in force.
+
+The position of Mr. Adams on this subject seems to have been
+misunderstood. When his remarks in Congress are carefully examined, it
+will be found that he did not claim that the proclamation of a military
+commander would operate, like a statute, to confer the right of freedom
+upon all the slaves in an invaded country. But he asserted a general
+principle of international law,--that the commander of an invading army
+is not bound to recognize the municipal laws of the country,--that he
+may treat all as freemen, though some are slaves. And he claimed, that,
+in case of a servile war in this country, our army would have a right to
+suppress the insurrection by giving freedom to the insurgents. In regard
+to the effect of such a proclamation upon those not liberated by the
+military power, he expressed no opinion.
+
+The precedents usually cited are not any more satisfactory. In Hayti,
+and in the South-American republics, emancipation became an established
+fact by the action of the civil power. In each case a proclamation by
+the military power was the initial step; but the consummation was
+attained by the fact that the same power afterwards became dominant in
+civil, as well as in military affairs.
+
+Conceding, then, that the Proclamation is but a declaration of the
+war-policy, designed and adapted to secure a still higher end,--the
+preservation and perpetuity of our free institutions,--it is still
+claimed that the Government has the right to pursue this policy until
+Slavery is abolished, _and forever prohibited_, within all the Rebel
+States.
+
+Though we speak of the Rebellion as an "insurrection," it has assumed
+such proportions that we are in a state of actual war. Nor does it make
+any difference that it is a _civil_ war. It has just been decided by
+the Supreme Court of the United States, _that we have the same rights
+against the people and States in rebellion_, by the law of nations, that
+we should have against _alien enemies_. The property of non-combatants
+is liable to confiscation, as _enemies'_ property; and it makes no
+difference that some of them are _personally_ loyal. All the inhabitants
+of the Rebel States have the rights of _enemies_ only. The recent cases
+of the Brilliant, Hiawatha, and Amy Warwick settle this beyond all
+question. There was some difference of opinion among the judges, but
+only on the question whether this condition _preceded_ the Act of
+Congress of July, 1861,--a majority holding that it did, commencing with
+the proclamation of the blockade. So that it cannot be denied that we
+may treat the Rebel States as _enemies_, and adopt all measures against
+them _which any belligerents engaged in a just war may adopt_.
+
+And no principle of the law of nations is more universally admitted than
+this,--that the party in the right, after the war is commenced, may
+continue to carry it on until the enemy shall submit to such terms as
+will be a sufficient indemnity for all the losses and expenses caused by
+it, _and will prevent another war in the future_. And to this end he may
+conquer and hold in subjection people and territory, until such terms
+are submitted to. And until then, the state of war continues. The right
+to impose such terms as will _secure peace in the future_ is one of the
+fundamental principles of international law.
+
+"Of the absolute international rights of States," says Mr. Wheaton, "one
+of the most essential and important, and that which lies at the
+foundation of all the rest, is _the right of self-preservation_. This
+right necessarily involves all other incidental rights which are
+essential as means to give effect to the principal end."
+
+"The end of a just war," says Vattel, "is to avenge, _or prevent_,
+injury."
+
+"If _the safety of the State_ lies at stake, our precaution and
+foresight cannot be extended too far. Must we delay to arrest our ruin
+until it has become inevitable?"
+
+"Where the end is lawful, he who has the right to pursue that end has,
+of course, a right to employ all the means necessary for its
+attainment."
+
+"When the conqueror has totally subdued a nation, he undoubtedly may, in
+the first place, do himself justice respecting the object which had
+given rise to the war, and indemnify himself for the expenses and
+damages sustained by it; he may, according to the exigency of the case,
+subject the nation to punishment by way of example; and he may, _if
+prudence require it, render her incapable of doing mischief with the
+same ease in future_."
+
+"Every nation," says Chancellor Kent, "has an undoubted right to provide
+for its own safety, and to take due precaution against _distant_, as
+well as impending danger."
+
+Our rights _as belligerents_, therefore, are ample for our security in
+time to come. The Rebel States will not cease to be enemies by being
+defeated and exhausted and disabled from continuing active hostilities.
+They have invoked the laws of war, and they must abide the decision of
+the tribunal to which they have appealed. We may hold them _as enemies_
+until they submit to such reasonable terms of peace as we may demand.
+Whether we shall require any indemnity for the vast expenditures and
+losses to which we have been subjected is a question of great magnitude;
+but it is of little importance compared with that of guarding against a
+recurrence of the Rebellion, by removing _the cause_ of it. It would be
+worse than madness to restore them to all their former rights under the
+government they have done their utmost to destroy, and at the same time
+permit them to retain a system that would surely involve us or our
+children in another struggle of the same kind.
+
+Slavery and freedom cannot permanently coexist under the same
+government. There is an inevitable, perpetual, irrepressible conflict
+between them. The present rebellion is but the culmination of this
+conflict, long existing,--transferred from social and political life to
+the camp and the battle-field. _In the new arena, we have all the rights
+of belligerents in an international war._ Slavery has taken the sword;
+let it perish by the sword. If we spare it, its wickedness will be
+exceeded by our folly. As victors, the world concedes our right to
+demand, for our own future peace, as the only terms of restoration, not
+only the abolition of Slavery in all the Rebel States, but its
+prohibition in all coming time. It cannot be, that, with the terrible
+lessons of these passing years, we shall be so utterly destitute of
+wisdom and prudence as to leave our children exposed to the dangers of
+another rebellion, after entailing upon them the vast burdens of this,
+by our national debt.
+
+It has been said, that, if Slavery should be abolished, the States could
+afterwards reestablish it. This is claimed, on the ground that every
+State may determine for itself the character of its own domestic
+institutions. The right to do so has been conceded to some of the new
+States.
+
+But it should be remembered that this right has been, to establish
+Slavery _by bringing in slaves from the old States_,--not by taking
+_citizens of the United States_, and reducing _them_ to slavery. If one
+such citizen can be enslaved, then can any other; and the very
+foundations of the Federal Government can be overturned by a State. For
+a government that cannot protect _its own citizens_ from loss of
+citizenship by being chattellized is no government at all.
+
+Citizenship is a reciprocal relation. The citizen owes allegiance; the
+government owes protection. When a person is naturalized, he takes the
+oath of allegiance. Does he got nothing in return? Can a State annul all
+the rights which the Federal Government has conferred? Then, indeed,
+would it be better for those who come to our shores to remain citizens
+of the old nations; for _they_ could protect them, but _we_ cannot.
+Then, to be a citizen of the United States--a privilege we had thought
+greater than that of Roman citizenship when that empire was in its
+glory--is a privilege which any State may annul at its pleasure!
+
+The power and position of a nation depend upon the number, wealth,
+intelligence, and power of its citizens. And the nation, in order to
+employ and develop its resources, must have free scope for the use of
+its powers. No State has a right to block the path of the United States,
+or in any way to "retard, impede, or burden it, in the execution of its
+powers." For this reason, if a citizen is wealthy enough to lend money
+to the Federal Government, a State cannot _tax his scrip_ to the amount
+of one cent. But, if the doctrine contended for by some is sound, then
+it may take _the citizen himself_, confiscate the whole of his property,
+blot out his citizenship, and make a chattel of him, and the Federal
+Government can afford him no protection! Among all the doctrines that
+Slavery has originated in this country, there is none more monstrous
+than this.
+
+But this is not a question of any practical importance at this time.
+There is no danger that Slavery will ever be tolerated where it has been
+once abolished. It may go into new fields; it seldom returns to those
+from which it has been driven. The institutions of learning and religion
+that follow in the path of freedom, if they find a congenial soil, are
+not likely to be supplanted by the dark and noxious exotics of ignorance
+and barbarism.
+
+And besides, as we have already seen, it is our right, as one of the
+conditions of restoration, to provide for the _perpetual prohibition_ of
+Slavery within the Rebel States. This, like the Ordinance of 1787, will
+stand as an insurmountable barrier in all time to come. And the security
+it will afford will be even more certain. For, while there may be a
+difference of opinion in regard to the effect of a law of Congress
+relating to existing Territories, there is no doubt that conditions
+imposed at the time upon the admission of new States, or the restoration
+of the Rebel States, will be of perpetual obligation.
+
+
+
+RIGHTS OF REBEL STATES.
+
+
+On this subject there are two theories, each of which has advocates
+among our most eminent statesmen.
+
+By some it is claimed that the Rebels have lost all rights as citizens
+of States, and are in the condition of the inhabitants of unorganized
+territories belonging to the United States,--and that, having forfeited
+their rights, they can never be restored to their former position,
+except by the consent of the Federal Government. This consent may be
+given by admitting them as new States, or restoring them as old,--the
+Government having the right in either case to annex terms and
+conditions.
+
+There are others who contend that the Rebel States, though in rebellion,
+have lost none of their rights as States,--that the moment they submit
+they may choose members of Congress and Presidential electors, and
+demand, and we must concede, the same position they formerly held. This
+theory has been partially recognized by the present Administration, but
+not to an extent that precludes the other from being adopted, if it is
+right.
+
+If the people of the States which have seceded, as soon as they submit,
+have an absolute right to resume their former position in the
+Government, with their present constitutions upholding Slavery, it
+certainly will be a great, if not an insurmountable, obstacle to the
+adoption of those measures which may be necessary to secure our peace in
+the future. That they have no such right, it is believed may be made
+perfectly clear.
+
+If we triumph, we shall have all the rights which, by the laws of
+nations, belong to conquerors in a just war. In a civil war, the rights
+of conquest may not be of the same nature as in a war between different
+nations; but that there are such rights in all wars has already been
+stated on the highest authority. If a province, having definite
+constitutional rights, revolts, and attempts to overthrow the power of
+the central government, it would be a strange doctrine, to claim, that,
+after being subdued, it had risked and lost nothing by the undertaking.
+No authority can be found to sustain such a proposition. A rebellion
+puts everything at risk. Any other doctrine would hold out encouragement
+to all wicked and rebellious spirits. If they revolt, they know that
+everything is staked upon the chances of success. Everything is lost by
+defeat. By the laws of war, long established among the nations,--laws
+which the Rebel States have themselves invoked,--if they fail, they will
+have no right to be restored, except upon such terms as our Government
+may prescribe. The right to make war, conferred by the Constitution,
+carries with it all the rights and powers incident to a war, necessary
+for its successful prosecution, and essential to prevent its recurrence.
+
+But without resorting to the extraordinary powers incident to a state of
+war, the same conclusion, in regard to the effect of a rebellion by a
+State Government, results from the relations which the States sustain to
+the Federal Government. Though they cannot escape its jurisdiction,
+their position, _as States_, is one which may be forfeited and lost.
+
+It has been objected that this doctrine is equivalent to a recognition
+of the right of Secession, because it concedes the power of any one
+State to withdraw from the Union. But the fallacy of this objection is
+easily demonstrated.
+
+The Federal Government does not emanate from the States, but directly
+from the people. The relation between them is that _of protection_ on
+the one hand and _allegiance_ on the other. This relation cannot be
+dissolved by either party, unless by voluntary or compulsory
+expatriation. It subsists alike in States and Territories, not being
+dependent upon any local government. The Rebels claim the right to
+dissolve this relation, and to become free from and independent of the
+Federal Government, though retaining the same territory as before. We
+deny any such right, and hold, that, though they may forfeit their
+rights _as a State_, they are still bound by, and under the jurisdiction
+of, the Federal Government. This jurisdiction, though absolute in all
+places, is not the same in all.
+
+In the District of Columbia, and in all unorganized territories, the
+jurisdiction of the Federal Government is exclusive in its _extent_, as
+well as in its _nature_. It must protect the inhabitants in _all_ their
+rights,--for there is no other power to protect them. They owe
+allegiance to it, and to no other.
+
+The inhabitants of the _organized_ territories, though under the general
+jurisdiction of the Federal Government, are, to some extent, under the
+jurisdiction of the Territorial Governments. Each is bound to protect
+them in certain things; they are bound to support and obey each in
+certain things.
+
+The people of a State are also under the absolute jurisdiction of the
+Federal Government in all matters embraced in the Constitution. They owe
+it unqualified allegiance and support in those things. But they are
+also, in some matters, under the jurisdiction of the State Government,
+and owe allegiance to that. There are many matters over which both have
+jurisdiction, and in which the citizens have a right to look to each, or
+both, for protection. The courts of each issue writs of _habeas corpus_,
+and give the citizens their liberty, unless there is legal cause for
+their custody or restraint.
+
+Now, if a State Government forfeits all right to the allegiance and
+support of its citizens, they are not thereby absolved from their
+allegiance to the Federal Government. On the contrary, the jurisdiction
+of the Federal Government is thereby enlarged; for it is then the only
+Government which the citizens are bound to obey. Take, for illustration,
+the State of Arkansas. By seceding, the State Government forfeited all
+claim to the obedience of the citizens. The inhabitants no longer owe it
+any allegiance. If loyal, they will not obey it, except as compelled by
+force. But they still owe allegiance to the United States Government.
+And there being no other Government which they are bound to obey, they
+are in the same condition as before the State was admitted into the
+Union, or any Territorial Government was organized.
+
+The same is true of South Carolina. For, though it was an independent
+State before the Constitution was adopted, its citizens voluntarily
+yielded up that position, and became subject to the Federal Government,
+claiming the privileges and assuming the liabilities of a higher
+citizenship. And if, by reason of its rebellion, their State Government
+has forfeited its claim upon them, and its right to rule over them, they
+owe no allegiance to any except the Government of the United States.
+
+But it is argued by some, that a State, once admitted into the Union,
+cannot forfeit its rights as a State under the Constitution, because it
+cannot, as such, be guilty of treason; that the inhabitants may all be
+traitors, and the State Government secede, and engage in a war against
+the Republic, and yet retain all its rights intact.
+
+A State, in the meaning of public law, has been defined to be a body of
+persons _united together_ in one community, for the defence of their
+rights. They do not constitute a State until _organized_. If the
+organization ceases to exist, they are no longer a State. If the State
+organization becomes despotic, and the inhabitants overthrow it by a
+revolution, it then ceases to exist. The people are remitted to their
+original rights, and must organize a new State.
+
+A State, as such, may be guilty of treason. Crimes may be committed by
+organized bodies of men. Corporations are often convicted, and punished
+by fines, or by a forfeiture of all corporate rights. And though we have
+no provision for putting a State on trial, it may, as a State, be
+guilty. Treason is defined by the Constitution to be "levying war
+against the United States." This is just what South Carolina, as a
+State, is doing. Not only the people, but _the State Government_, has
+revolted. The people owe it no allegiance. It is their duty, not to
+support, but to _oppose_ it. The Federal Government owes it no
+recognition. It has the right to destroy and exterminate it. A State
+Government in rebellion has no rights under the Constitution. _It is
+itself a rebellion_, and must necessarily cease to exist when the
+rebellion is suppressed.
+
+And when the State Government which has revolted shall be conquered and
+overthrown, there will then be no South Carolina in existence. If there
+were loyal people enough there, bond or free, to rise up and overthrow
+it, they would be no more bound to revive the old Constitution, with its
+tyrannical provisions, than were our fathers to return to the British
+Government. Such a revolution is inaugurated in that State, by loyal
+men, to overthrow the despotic power of the State Government. If the
+State Government had remained loyal, it might have called on the Federal
+Government. But by seceding it has justified the Federal Government in
+aiding or organizing a revolution against it, for its utter overthrow
+and extinction.
+
+It is true, indeed, the idea prevails that there is still, somehow, a
+State of South Carolina, besides that which is in rebellion. But the
+State must exist _in fact_, or it has no existence. There is no such
+thing as a merely theoretical State, separate and different from the
+actual. The revolted States are the same States that were once loyal.
+And when some loyal citizens in each of them, with the aid of the
+Federal Government, have overthrown and destroyed them, the ground will
+be cleared for the formation of new States, or the _reorganization_ of
+the old; and they may be admitted or restored, upon such conditions as
+may be deemed wise and prudent, to promote and secure the future peace
+and welfare of the whole country.
+
+There is no evidence that loyal persons in the Rebel States claim or
+desire to uphold the existence of those States, under their present
+constitutions, with the system of Slavery. But if there are any such
+persons, their wishes are not to override the interests of the Republic.
+It is their misfortune to reside in States that have revolted; and all
+their losses, pecuniary and political, are chargeable to those States,
+and not to the Federal Government. If they are so blind as to suppose
+that their losses will be increased by emancipation, _that_, also, will
+be chargeable to the rebellion of those States. _Their_ loyalty does not
+save those States from being treated as enemies; it does not prevent
+_their own_ condition from being determined by that of their States. As
+it is well known, a portion of their property has been confiscated by an
+Act of Congress, on the ground that they are, in part, responsible for
+the rebellion of those States. The theory, therefore, that such loyal
+men constitute loyal States, still existing, in distinction from the
+States that have rebelled, is utterly groundless. On this point we
+cannot do better than quote from the opinion of the Supreme Court of the
+United States in a case already referred to, sustaining the belligerent
+legislation of Congress.
+
+"In organizing this rebellion, _they have acted as States_, claiming to
+be sovereign over all persons and property within their respective
+limits, and claiming the right to absolve their citizens from their
+allegiance to the Federal Government. Several of these States have
+combined to form a new Confederacy, claiming to be acknowledged by the
+world as a sovereign State. Their right to do so is now being decided by
+wager of battle. The ports and territory of each of these States are
+held in hostility to the General Government. It is no loose, unorganized
+insurrection, having no defined boundary or possession. It has a
+boundary, marked by lines of bayonets, and which can be crossed only by
+force. South of this line is enemy's territory, because it is claimed
+and held in possession by an organized, hostile, and belligerent power.
+All persons residing within this territory, whose property may be used
+to increase the revenues of the hostile power, are in this contest
+liable to be treated as enemies."
+
+It is not to be presumed that Congress will do anything unnecessarily to
+add to the misfortunes of loyal men in the South. On the contrary, all
+that is being done is more directly for their benefit than for that of
+any other class of men. The vast expenditure of treasure and blood in
+this war is for the purpose of protecting them first of all, and
+restoring to them the blessings of a good government. And if it shall be
+found practicable to indemnify them for all losses, whether by
+emancipation or otherwise, no one will object.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The object of this article is to prove that the Government possesses
+ample power, according to the law of nations, to suppress the Rebellion,
+and secure the country against the danger of another, by Emancipation,
+through the military power; that, though Emancipation is a _policy_, and
+not a _law_, the war may be prosecuted until this end is accomplished,
+and Slavery in future forever prohibited; that, by secession and
+rebellion, the revolted States have forfeited all right to the
+allegiance of their citizens, who are thereby remitted to the condition
+and rights of citizens solely of the United States; and that the Federal
+Government, as well _under the Constitution_ as _by right of conquest_,
+may impose such terms upon the reorganization and restoration of those
+States as may be necessary to secure present safety, and avert danger in
+time to come. These views are presented in as brief and simple terms as
+possible, with the hope that they may be adopted by the people and by
+the Government. It is confidently believed, that, if the President and
+Congress will act in accordance with them, their acts will be fully
+sustained by the Supreme Court,--and that, the element and source of
+discord being at last entirely removed from the country, a career of
+peace and prosperity will then begin which shall be the admiration of
+the world.
+
+At this time we present a humiliating spectacle to other nations: nearly
+half of our national temple in ruins,--the work of blind folly and mad
+ambition. The people of the North claimed no right to tear it down, or
+even to repair it. But since the people of the South have risen in
+rebellion, let us believe that there is now an opportunity, nay, an
+imperative _necessity_, to remove from its foundations the rock of
+Oppression, that was sure to crumble in the refining fires of a
+Christian civilization, and establish in its place the stone of
+LIBERTY,--unchanging and eternal as its Author. Let us rejoice in the
+hope, already brightening into fruition, that out of these ruins our
+temple shall rise again, in a fresher beauty, a firmer strength, a
+brighter glory,--and above it again shall float the old flag, every star
+restored, henceforth to all, of every color and every race, the flag of
+the free.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+
+_Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39._ By FRANCES
+ANNE KEMBLE. New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+
+Those who remember the "Journal of a Residence in America," of Frances
+Anne Kemble, or, as she was universally and kindly called, Fanny
+Kemble,--a book long since out of print, and entirely out of the
+knowledge of our younger readers,--will not cease to wonder, as they
+close these thoughtful, tranquil, and tragical pages. The earlier
+journal was the dashing, fragmentary diary of a brilliant girl, half
+impatient of her own success in an art for which she was peculiarly
+gifted, yet the details of which were sincerely repugnant to her. It
+crackled and sparkled with _naive_ arrogance. It criticized a new world
+and fresh forms of civilization with the amusing petulance of a spoiled
+daughter of John Bull. It was flimsy, flippant, laughable, rollicking,
+vivid. It described scenes and persons, often with airy grace, often
+with profound and pensive feeling. It was the slightest of diaries,
+written in public for the public; but it was universally read, as its
+author had been universally sought and admired in the sphere of her art;
+and no one who knew anything of her truly, but knew what an incisive
+eye, what a large heart, what a candid and vigorous mind, what real
+humanity, generosity, and sympathy, characterized Miss Kemble.
+
+The dazzling phantasmagoria which life had been to the young actress was
+suddenly exchanged for the most practical acquaintance with its
+realities. She was married, left the stage, and as a wife and mother
+resided for a winter on the plantations of her husband upon the coast of
+Georgia. And now, after twenty-five years, the journal of her residence
+there is published. It has been wisely kept. For never could such a book
+speak with such power as at this moment. The tumult of the war will be
+forgotten, as you read, in the profound and appalled attention enforced
+by this remarkable revelation of the interior life of Slavery. The
+spirit, the character, and the purpose of the Rebellion are here laid
+bare. Its inevitability is equally apparent. The book is a permanent and
+most valuable chapter in our history; for it is the first ample, lucid,
+faithful, detailed account, from the actual head-quarters of a
+slave-plantation in this country, of the workings of the system,--its
+persistent, hopeless, helpless crushing of humanity in the slave, and
+the more fearful moral and mental dry-rot it generates in the master.
+
+We have had plenty of literature upon the subject. First of all, in
+spirit and comprehension, the masterly, careful, copious, and patient
+works of Mr. Olmsted. But he, like Arthur Young in France, was only an
+observer. He could be no more. "Uncle Tom," as its "Key" shows, and as
+Mrs. Kemble declares, was no less a faithful than the most famous
+witness against the system. But it was a novel. Then there was "American
+Slavery as it is," a work of authenticated facts, issued by the American
+Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, and the fearful mass of testimony
+incessantly published by the distinctively Abolition papers,
+periodicals, books, and orators, during the last quarter of a century.
+But the world was deaf. "They have made it a business. They select all
+the horrors. They accumulate exceptions." Such were the objections that
+limited the power of this tremendous battery. Meanwhile, also, it was
+answered. Foreign tourists were taken to "model plantations." They shed
+tears over the patriarchal benignity of this venerable and beautiful
+provision of Divine Providence for the spiritual training of our African
+fellow-creatures. The affection of "Mammy" for "Massa and Missis" was
+something unknown where hired labor prevailed. Graver voices took up the
+burden of the song. There was no pauperism in a slave-country. There
+were no prostitutes. It had its disadvantages, certainly; but what form
+of society, what system of labor has not? Besides, here it was. It was
+the interest of slaveholders to be kind. And what a blessing to bring
+the poor heathen from benighted Africa and pagan servitude to the
+ennobling influences of Slavery, as practised among Southwestern
+Christians in America, and "professors" in South Carolina and Georgia!
+See the Reverend Mr. Adams and Miss Murray _passim_. This was the
+answer made to the statements of the actual facts of the system, when it
+was found that the question had gone before public opinion, and would be
+decided upon its merits by that tribunal, all the panders, bullies,
+assassins, apologists, and chaplains of Slavery to the contrary
+notwithstanding. In fact, when that was once clearly perceived, the
+issue was no less visible; only whether it were to be reached by war or
+peace was not so plain.
+
+Yet in all this tremendous debate which resounds through the last thirty
+years of our history, rising and swelling until every other sound was
+lost in its imperious roar, one decisive voice was silent. It was
+precisely that which is heard in this book. General statements,
+harrowing details from those who had been slaveholders, and who had
+renounced Slavery, were sometimes made public. Indeed, the most cruel
+and necessary incidents, the hunting with blood-hounds, the branding,
+the maiming, the roasting, the whipping of pregnant women, could not be
+kept from knowledge. They blazed into print. But the public, hundreds of
+miles away, while it sighed and shuddered a little, resolved that such
+atrocities were exceptional. 'Twas a shocking pity, to be sure! Poor
+things! Women, too! Tut, tut!
+
+Now, at last, we have no general statement, no single, sickening
+incident, but the diary of the mistress of plantations of seven hundred
+slaves, living under the most favorable circumstances, upon the islands
+at the mouth of the Altamaha River, in Georgia. It is a journal, kept
+from day to day, of the actual ordinary life of the plantation, where
+the slaves belonged to educated, intelligent, and what are called the
+most respectable people,--not persons imbruted by exile among slaves
+upon solitary islands, but who had lived in large Northern cities and
+the most accomplished society, subject to all the influences of the
+highest civilization. It is the journal of a hearty, generous,
+clear-sighted woman, who went to the plantation, loving the master, and
+believing, that, though Slavery might be sad, it might also be
+mitigated, and the slave might be content. It is the record of ghastly
+undeceiving,--of the details of a system so wantonly, brutally, damnably
+unjust, inhuman, and degrading, that it blights the country, paralyzes
+civilization, and vitiates human nature itself. The brilliant girl of
+the earlier journal is the sobered and solemnized matron of this. The
+very magnitude of the misery that surrounds her, the traces of which
+everywhere sadden her eye and wring her heart, compel her to the
+simplest narration. There is no writing for effect. There is not a
+single "sensational" passage. The story is monotonous; for the wrong it
+describes is perpetual and unrelieved. "There is not a single natural
+right," she says, after some weeks' residence, "that is not taken away
+from these unfortunate people; and the worst of all is, that their
+condition does not appear to me, upon further observation of it, to be
+susceptible of even partial alleviation, as long as the fundamental
+evil, the Slavery itself, remains."
+
+As the mistress of the plantation, she was brought into constant
+intercourse with the slave-women; and no other account of this class is
+so thorough and plainly stated. So pitiful a tale was seldom told. It
+was a "model plantation"; but every day was darkened to the mistress by
+the appeals of these women and her observation of their condition. The
+heart of the reader sickens as hers despaired. To produce "little
+niggers" for Massa and Missis was the enforced ambition of these poor
+women. After the third week of confinement they were sent into the
+fields to work. If they lingered or complained, they were whipped. For
+beseeching the mistress to pray for some relief in their sad straits,
+they were also whipped. If their tasks were unperformed, or the driver
+lost his temper, they were whipped again. If they would not yield to the
+embrace of the overseer, they were whipped once more. How are they
+whipped? They are tied by the wrists to a beam or the branch of a tree,
+their feet barely touching the ground, so that they are utterly
+powerless to resist; their clothes are turned over their heads, and
+their backs scarred with a leathern thong, either by the driver himself,
+or by father, brother, husband, or lover, if the driver choose to order
+it. What a blessing for these poor heathen that they are brought to a
+Christian land! When a band of pregnant women came to their master to
+implore relief from overwork, he seemed "positively degraded" to his
+wife, as he stood urging them to do their allotted tasks. She began to
+fear lest she should cease to respect the man she loved; "for the
+details of slaveholding are so unmanly, letting alone every other
+consideration, that I know not how any one with the spirit of a man can
+condescend to them." The master gives a slave as a present to an
+overseer whose administration of the estate was agreeable to him. The
+slave is intelligent and capable, the husband of a wife and the father
+of children, and they are all fondly attached to each other. He
+passionately declares that he will kill himself rather than follow his
+new master and leave wife and children behind. Roused by the storm of
+grief, the wife opens the door of her room, and beholds her husband,
+with his arms folded, advising his slave "not to make a fuss about what
+there is no help for." The same master insists that there is no hardship
+or injustice in whipping a woman who asks his wife to intercede for her,
+but confesses that it is "disagreeable." At last he tells her that she
+must no longer fatigue him with the "stuff" and "trash" which "the
+niggers," who are "all d----d liars," make her believe, and
+henceforward closes his ears to all complaint.
+
+Yet this was a model plantation, and this was probably not a hard
+master, as masters go. "These are the conditions which can only be known
+to one who lives among them. Flagrant acts of cruelty may be rare, but
+this ineffable state of utter degradation, this really _beastly_
+existence, is the normal condition of these men and women; and of that
+no one seems to take heed, nor had I ever heard it described so as to
+form any adequate conception of it, till I found myself plunged into
+it.... Industry, man's crown of honor elsewhere, is here his badge of
+utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here
+surrounded,--pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance,
+squalor, dirt, and ineffable abasement."
+
+And yet this is the system which we have been in the habit of calling
+patriarchal, because the model masters said it was so, and trade was too
+prosperous to allow any difference with them! And these are the model
+masters, supported in luxury by all this unpaid labor and untold woe,
+these women-whippers and breeders of babies for sale, who have figured
+in our talk and imaginations as "the chivalry" and "gentlemen"! These
+are they to whom American society has koo-too'd, and in whose presence
+it has been ill-bred and uncourteous to say that every man has rights,
+that every laborer is worthy of his hire, that injustice is unjust, and
+uncleanness foul. No wonder that Russell, coming to New York, and
+finding the rich men and the political confederates of the conspirators
+declaring that the Government of the United States could not help
+itself, and that they would allow no interference with their Southern
+friends, sincerely believed what he wished to, and wrote to John Bull,
+whose round face was red with eager desire to hear it, that the
+Revolution was virtually accomplished. No wonder that the haughty
+slaveholders, smeared with sycophantic slime, at Newport, at Saratoga,
+in the "polite" and "conservative" Northern circles, believed what Mr.
+Hunter of Virginia told a Massachusetts delegate to the Peace
+Congress,--that there would be no serious trouble, and that the
+Montgomery Constitution would be readily adopted by the "conservative"
+sentiment of the North.
+
+Mrs. Kemble's book shows what the miserable magic is that enchants these
+Southern American citizens into people whose philosophy of society would
+disgrace the Dark Ages, and whose social system is that of Dahomey.
+
+The life that she describes upon the model plantation is the necessary
+life of Slavery everywhere,--injustice, ignorance, superstition, terror,
+degradation, brutality; and this is the system to which a great
+political party--counting upon the enervation of prosperity, the
+timidity of trade, the distance of the suffering, the legal quibbles,
+the moral sophisms, the hatred of ignorance, the jealousy of race, and
+the possession of power--has conspired to keep the nation blind and
+deaf, trusting that its mind was utterly obscured and its conscience
+wholly destroyed.
+
+But the nation is young, and of course the effort has ended in civil
+war. Slavery, industrially and politically, inevitably resists Christian
+civilization. The natural progress and development of men into a
+constantly higher manhood must cease, or this system, which strives to
+convert men into things, must give way. Its haughty instinct knows it,
+and therefore Slavery rebels. This Rebellion is simply the insurrection
+of Barbarism against Civilization. It would overthrow the Government,
+not for any wrong the Government has done, for that is not alleged. It
+knows that the people are the Government,--that the spirit of the people
+is progressive and intelligent,--and that there is no hope for permanent
+and expansive injustice, so long as the people freely discuss and
+decide. It would therefore establish a new Government, of which this
+meanest and most beastly despotism shall be the chief corner-stone. In a
+letter to C.G., in the appendix of her book, Mrs. Kemble sets this truth
+in the clearest light. But whoever would comprehend the real social
+scope of the Rebellion should ponder every page of the journal itself.
+It will show him that Slavery and rebellion to this Government are
+identical, not only in fact, but of necessity. It will teach him that
+the fierce battle between Slavery and the Government, once engaged, can
+end only in the destruction of one or the other.
+
+This is not a book which a woman like Mrs. Kemble publishes without a
+solemn sense of responsibility. A sadder book the human hand never
+wrote, nor one more likely to arrest the thoughts of all those in the
+world who watch our war and are yet not steeled to persuasion and
+conviction. An Englishwoman, she publishes it in England, which hates
+us, that a testimony which will not be doubted may be useful to the
+country in which she has lived so long, and with which her sweetest and
+saddest memories are forever associated. It is a noble service nobly
+done. The enthusiasm, the admiration, the affection, which in our day of
+seemingly cloudless prosperity greeted the brilliant girl, have been
+bountifully repaid by the true and timely words now spoken in our
+seeming adversity by the grave and thoughtful woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_An Historical Research respecting the Opinions of the Founders of the
+Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers._ Read
+before the Massachusetts Historical Society, August 14, 1862. By GEORGE
+LIVERMORE. Third Edition. Boston: A. Williams & Co.
+
+
+This Historical Research is one of the most valuable works that have
+been called out by the existing Rebellion. It is a thorough and candid
+exposition of the opinions of the founders of the Republic on negroes as
+slaves, as citizens, and as soldiers, and has done more, perhaps, than
+any other single essay to form the public opinion of the present time in
+respect to the position that the negro should rightfully hold in our
+State and our army. It has, therefore, and will retain, a double
+interest, as exhibiting and illustrating the opinions prevalent during
+the two most important periods of our history. It was first printed,
+several months since, for private distribution only. More than a
+thousand copies were thus distributed by its public-spirited author. By
+this means the attention of persons in positions of influence was more
+readily secured than it could have been, had the essay been published in
+the ordinary way. The manner in which the research was conducted, the
+evidence afforded by every page of the author's conscientious labor,
+impartial selection, and exhaustive investigation, won immediate
+confidence in his statements, while his obvious candor, fairness of
+judgment, and love of truth secured respect for his conclusions. The
+interest excited by the work extended to a wider circle than could be
+satisfied by any private issue, while its value became more and more
+evident, so that, after its publication in the Proceedings of the
+Massachusetts Historical Society, the permission of the author was
+obtained by the New-England Loyal Publication Society to issue the work
+in a form for general circulation.
+
+We are glad to assist, by our hearty commendation, the extension of the
+influence of this essay. It forms, as now issued, a handsome pamphlet of
+two hundred pages, with a full Table of Contents and a copious Index,
+and is for sale at a price which brings it within the means of every one
+who may wish to obtain it. It is a book which should be in the
+reading-room of every Loyal League throughout the country, and of every
+military hospital. Editors of the loyal press should be provided with
+it, as containing an arsenal of incontrovertible arguments with which to
+meet the false assertions by which the maligners of the negro race and
+the supporters of Slavery too often undertake to maintain their bad
+cause.
+
+Exhibiting, as Mr. Livermore's book does, the contrast between the
+opinions of the founders of the Republic and those professed by the
+would-be destroyers of the Republic, and showing, as it does, how far a
+large portion even of the people of the North have fallen away from the
+just and generous doctrine of the earlier time, it must lead every
+thoughtful reader to a deep sense of the need of a regeneration of the
+spirit of the nation, and to a confirmed conviction of the
+incompatibility of Slavery with national greatness and virtue. The
+Rebellion has taught us that the Republic is not safe while Slavery is
+permitted to exercise any political power. It ought to teach us also,
+that, as long as Slavery exists in any of the States, it will not cease
+to exercise political power, and that the only means to make the nation
+safe is utterly to abolish and destroy Slavery, wherever it is found
+within its limits. Nor is this all; the lesson of the Rebellion is but
+half learned, unless we resolve that henceforth there shall be no fatal
+division between our consciences, our principles, our theories, and our
+treatment of the black race, and unless we acknowledge their inalienable
+right to that justice by which alone the most ancient heavens and the
+most sacred institutions are fresh and strong.
+
+There is no better textbook for enforcing these lessons than Mr.
+Livermore's Research.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS
+
+RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+
+"Christopher North." A Memoir of John Wilson, late Professor of Moral
+Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Compiled from Family-Papers
+and other Sources. By his Daughter, Mrs. Gordon. With an Introduction by
+R. Shelton Mackenzie, D.C.L., Editor of the "Noctes Ambrosianae," etc.
+Complete in One Volume. New York. W.J. Widdleton. 8vo. pp. xii., 484.
+$2.00.
+
+Alphabetical Army-Register; giving the Names, Date of Present and
+Original Commissions, Rank, Place of Nativity, and from whence
+Appointed, of all the Officers of the United States Army, as shown by
+the Official Army-Register, May, 1863. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo.
+paper, pp. 64. 50 cts.
+
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:48:01 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:48:01 -0700
commit	09592a25a546e022781dcb771a7ca1b100e0192c (patch)
tree	2451c0a44f7c7ec9b69070fba8b4c894a812efca