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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4,
+October, 1864, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864
+       Devoted To Literature And National Policy
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 18, 2007 [EBook #23537]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
+
+DEVOTED TO
+
+LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
+
+
+VOL. VI.--OCTOBER, 1864.--No. IV.
+
+
+
+
+SOME USES OF A CIVIL WAR.
+
+
+War is a great evil. We may confess that, at the start. The Peace
+Society has the argument its own way. The bloody field, the mangled
+dying, hoof-trampled into the reeking sod, the groans, and cries, and
+curses, the wrath, and hate, and madness, the horror and the hell of a
+great battle, are things no rhetoric can ever make lovely.
+
+The poet may weave his wreath of victory for the conqueror; the
+historian, with all the pomp of splendid imagery, may describe the
+heroism of the day of slaughter; but, after all, and none know this
+better than the men most familiar with it, a great battle is the most
+hateful and hellish sight that the sun looks on in all his courses.
+
+And the actual battle is only a part. The curse goes far beyond the
+field of combat. The trampled dead and dying are but a tithe of the
+actual sufferers. There are desolate homes, far away, where want changes
+sorrow into madness. Wives wail by hearthstones where the household
+fires have died into cold ashes forever more. Like Rachel, mothers weep
+for the proud boys that lie stark beneath the pitiless stars. Under a
+thousand roofs--cottage roofs and palace roofs--little children ask for
+'father.' The pattering feet shall never run to meet, upon the
+threshold, _his_ feet, who lies stiffening in the bloody trench far
+away!
+
+There are added horrors in _civil war_. These forms, crushed and torn
+out of all human semblance, are our brothers. These wailing widows,
+these small fatherless ones speak our mother language, utter their pain
+in the tongue of our own wives and children. Victory seems barely better
+than defeat, when it is victory over our own blood. The scars we carve
+with steel or burn with powder across the shuddering land, are scars on
+the dear face of the Motherland we love. These blackened roof-trees,
+they are the homes of our kindred. These cities, where shells are
+bursting through crumbling wall and flaming spire, they are cities of
+our own fair land, perhaps the brightest jewels in her crown.
+
+Ay! men do well to pray for _peace!_ With suppliant palms outstretched
+to the pitying God, they do well to cry, as in the ancient litany, 'Give
+peace in our time, O Lord!' Let the husbandman go forth in the furrow.
+Let the cattle come lowing to the stalls at evening. Let bleating
+flocks whiten all the uplands. Let harvest hymns be sung, while groaning
+wagons drag to bursting barns their mighty weight of sheaves. Let mill
+wheels turn their dripping rounds by every stream. Let sails whiten
+along every river. Let the smoke of a million peaceful hearths rise like
+incense in the morning. Let the shouts of happy children, at their play,
+ring down ten thousand valleys in the summer day's decline. Over all the
+blessed land, asleep beneath the shadow of the Almighty hand, let the
+peace of God rest in benediction! 'Give _peace_ in our time, O Lord!'
+
+And yet the final clause to, every human prayer must be 'Thy will be
+done!' There are things better far than peace. There are things more
+loathely and more terrible than, the horror of battle and 'garments
+rolled in blood.' Peace is blessed, but if you have peace with hell, how
+about the blessedness? A covenant with evil is not the sort of agreement
+that will bring comfort. A truce with Satan is not the thing that it
+will do to trust. There are things in this world, without which the
+prayer for peace is 'a witch's prayer,' read backward to a curse.
+
+That is to say, whether peace is good depends entirely on the further
+question, With whom are you at peace? Whether war is evil depends on the
+other question, With whom are you at war? In one most serious and
+substantial point of view, human life is a battle, which, for the
+individual, ends only with death, and, for the race, only with the Final
+Consummation. The tenure of our place and right, as children of God, is
+that we fight evil to the bitter end. 'The Prince of Peace' Himself came
+'not to send peace,' in this war, 'but a sword.'
+
+We may venture, then, to say that there are some wars which are not all
+evil. They are terrible, but terrible like the hurricane, which sweeps
+away the pestilence; terrible like the earthquake, on whose night of
+terror God builds a thousand years of blooming plenty; terrible like the
+volcano, whose ashes are clothed by the purple vintages and yellow
+harvests of a hundred generations. The strong powers of nature are as
+beneficent as strong. The destroying powers are also creating powers.
+Life sits upon the sepulchre, and sings over buried Death through all
+nature and all time. War, too, has its compensations.
+
+For years, amid the world's rages, _we_ had peace. The only war we had,
+at all events, was one of our own seeking, and a mere playing at war.
+Many of us thought it would be so always. We believed we had discovered
+a method of settling all the world's difficulties without blows. The
+peace people had their jubilee. They talked about the advance of
+intelligence, and the softening power of civilization. They placed war
+among the forgotten horrors of a dead barbarism. They proved that
+commerce had rendered war impossible, because it had made it against
+self-interest. They talked about reason and persuasion, and moral
+influences. They asked, 'Why not settle all troubles in a grand world's
+congress, some huge palaver and paradise of speechmakers, where it will
+be all talk and voting and no blows?' Why not, indeed? How easy to
+'resolve' this poor, blind, struggling world of ours into a bit of
+heaven, you see, and so end our troubles! How easy to vote these poor,
+stupid, blundering brothers of ours into angels, in some great
+parliament of eloquent philosophers, and govern them thereafter on that
+basis!
+
+Now, resolutions and speeches and grand palavers are nice things, in
+their way, _to play with_, but, on the whole, it is best to get down to
+the hard fact if one really wants to work and prosper. And the hard fact
+is, that Adam's sons are not yet cherubs, nor their homestead, among the
+stars, just yet an outlying field of paradise. It is a planet whose
+private affairs are badly muddled. Its tenants for life are a
+quarrelsome, ill-tempered, unruly set of creatures altogether. As things
+go, they will break each others' heads sometimes. It is very
+unreasonable. I can see that. But men are not always reasonable. It is
+not for their own interest. I can see that too. But how often does
+interest, the best and highest, raise an impregnable barrier against
+passion or even caprice?
+
+We must take men as they are, and the world as we find it, to get a
+secure ground for attempting the reformation of either. And as men are,
+and as I find the world, at present, I meet Wrong, and find it armed to
+resist Right. The Wrong will not yield to persuasion, it will not
+surrender to reason. It comes straight on, coarse, brutal, devilish,
+caring not a straw for peace rhetoric or Quaker gravity, for persuasion
+or interest. It strikes straight down at right or justice. It tries to
+hammer them to atoms, and trample them with swinish hoofs into the mire.
+Now what am I to do? To stand peaceably by and see this thing done,
+while I study new tropes and invent new metaphors to _persuade_? Is that
+my business, to waste the godlike gift of human speech on this mad brute
+or devil?
+
+With wise pains and thoughtful labor, I clear my little spot of this
+stubborn soil. I hedge and plant my small vineyard. It begins, after
+much care, to yield me some fruit. I get a little corn and a little
+wine, to comfort me and mine. I have good hope that, as the years go by,
+I shall gather more. I trust, at last, my purple vintages may gladden
+many hearts of men, my rich olives make many faces shine. But some day,
+from the yet untamed forest, bursts the wild boar, and rushes on my
+hedge, and will break through to trample down my vineyard before mine
+eyes. And I am only to _argue_ with him! I am to cast the pearls of
+human reason and persuasion at his feet to stop him! Nay, rather, am I
+not to seize the first sufficient weapon that comes to hand, unloose the
+dogs upon him, and drive him to his lair again, or, better, bring his
+head in triumph home?
+
+It is true, there are wars where this parable will not apply. There are
+capricious wars, wars undertaken for no fit cause, wars with scarce a
+principle on either side. Such have often been _king's wars_, begun in
+folly, conducted in vanity, ended in shame, wars for the ambition of
+some crowned scoundrel, who rides a patient people till he drives them
+mad. And even such wars have their uses. They are not wholly evil.
+Alexander's, the maddest wars of all, and those of his successors, the
+most stupid and brutal ever fought, even they had their uses. Our war
+with poor Mexico, even Louis Bonaparte's, was not wholly evil.
+
+But there are wars, again, that are not capricious, that are simply
+necessary, unavoidable, as life, death, or judgment, wars where the
+choice is to see right trampled out of sight or to fight for it, where
+truth and justice are crushed unless the sword be grasped and used,
+where law and civilization and Christianity are assailed by savagery,
+brutality, and devilishness, and only the true bullet and the cold steel
+are received in the discussion. These are the Peoples' wars. In them
+nations arm. Generations swarm to their battle fields. They are
+landmarks in the world's advancement. For victories in them men sing _Te
+Deums_ throughout the ages. The heroes, who fell in them, loom through
+the haze of time like demigods.
+
+On the plains of Tours, when the Moslem tide, that swept on to overwhelm
+in ruin Christian Europe, was met, and stemmed, and turned by Charles
+Martel, and, breaking into foam against the iron breasts of his stalwart
+Franks, was whirled away into the darkness like spray before the
+tempest, the _Hammer-man_ did a work that day that, till the end of
+time, a world will thank Heaven for, as _he_ thanked it in the hour of
+victory.
+
+And when his greater grandson, creator, guide, and guardian of modern
+civilization, paced with restless, ever-present steps, around the
+borders of that small world of light which he had built up, half
+blindly, in the overwhelming dark, and with two-handed blows beat back,
+with the iron mace of Germany, the savage assaults of Saracen and
+Sclave, of black Dane and brutal Wendt, and smote on till he died
+smiting, for order, and law, and faith, and so saved Europe, and, let us
+humbly hope, his own rude but true soul _alive_! are not the thanks of
+all the world well due, that Karl der Grosse was no non-resistant, but a
+great, broad-shouldered, royal soldier, who wore the imperial purple by
+right of a moat imperial sword?
+
+There are wars like these, that, as the world goes, are inevitable. Some
+wrong undertakes to rule. Some lie challenges sovereignty. Some mere
+brutality or heathenism faces order, civilization, and law. There is no
+choice in the matter _then_. The wrong, the lie, the brutality, the
+barbarism _must go down_. If they listen to reason, well. If they can be
+only preached or lectured into dying peaceably, and getting quietly
+buried, it is an excellent consummation. If they do not, if they try
+conclusions, as they are far more apt to do, if they come on with brute
+force, there is no alternative. They must be met by force. They must get
+the only persuasion that can influence them--hard knocks, and plenty of
+them, well delivered, straight at the heart.
+
+Wars so undertaken, under a divine necessity, and with a divine sadness,
+too, by a patient people, whose business is not brutal fighting, but
+peaceful working, wars of this sort, in the world's long history, are
+scarce evils at all, and, even in the day of their wrath, bring
+compensative blessings. They may be fierce and terrible, they may bring
+wretchedness and ruin, they may 'demoralize' armies and people, they may
+be dreadful evils, and leave long trails of desolation, but they are
+none the less wars for victories in which men will return thanks while
+the world shall stand. The men who fall in such wars, receive the
+benedictions of their kind. The people that, with patient pain, stands
+and fights in them, bleeding drop by drop, and conquering or dying, inch
+by inch, but never yielding, because it feels the deathless value of
+_the cause_, the brave, calm people, who so fight is crowned forever on
+the earth.
+
+From our paradise of a lamb-like world this nation was awakened, three
+years ago, by a cannon shot across Charleston harbor. The fools who
+fired it knew not what they did, perhaps. They thought to open fire on a
+poor old fort and its handful of a garrison. They _did_ open fire on
+civilization, on order, on law, on the world's progress, on the hopes of
+man. There, at last, we were brought face to face with hard facts. Talk,
+in Congress, or out, was at an end. Voting and balloting, and
+speech-making were ruled out of order. We had administered the country,
+so far, by that machinery. It was puffed away at one discharge of glazed
+powder. The cannon alone could get a hearing. The bullet and the bayonet
+were the only arguments. No matter how it might end, we were forced to
+accept the challenge. No matter how utterly we might hate war, we were
+forced to try the last old persuasive--the naked sword.
+
+I cannot see how any honest and sensible man can now look back and see
+any other course possible. Could we stand by and see our house beaten
+into blackened ruin over our heads? Were we to talk 'peace,' and use
+'moral suasion' in the mouth of shotted cannon? Were we prepared to see
+the Constitution and the law, bought by long years of toil and blood,
+torn to tatters by the caprice of ambitious madmen? Fighting became a
+simple duty in an hour! There was no escape. What a pity that so many
+beautiful peace speeches (Charles Sumner's very eloquent ones among the
+rest!) should have been proved mere froth and wasted paper rags by one
+short telegram!
+
+So the great evil came to _us_, as it has come to all nations, as we
+believe it _must_ come, from what we now see, to every nation that will
+be great and strong. The land, for a time, staggered under the blow.
+Men's souls for an hour were struck dumb, so sudden was it, so unlocked
+for. As duty became clearer, we awaked at last to the fact that was at
+our doors. We turned to deal with it, as the best nations always do,
+cheerfully and hopefully. We have made mistakes and great ones. We have
+blundered fearfully. That was to have been expected. But we have gone
+on, nevertheless, steadfastly, patiently. That was also to have been
+expected. For three years and over, this has been our business. We have
+indeed carried on some commerce, and some manufactures, and some
+agriculture, but our main work has been fighting. The rest have been
+subsidiary to that. And the land groans and pants with this bloody toil.
+It clothes itself in mourning and darkens its streets, and desolates its
+homes, and bleeds its life drops slowly in its patient agony. But it
+never falters. It has accepted the appointed work. It sees no outlook
+yet, no chance for the bells to ring out peace over the roar of cannon,
+and it stands at its post bleeding, but wrestling still.
+
+Has there been nothing gained, however? For the terrible outlay is there
+yet no return? Has the war been evil and only evil so far, even granting
+that we do not finally succeed, according to our wish? The present
+writer does not think so. He believes there have been gains already, and
+great gains, not merely the gains that may be summed in the advance of
+forces, in territory recovered, in cities taken, in enemies defeated,
+but gains which, though not visible like these, are no less real and
+vastly more valuable, gains which add to the nation's moral power, and
+educate it for the future. He leaves to others the consideration of the
+material gain, and desires to hint, at least, at this other, which is
+much more likely to be slighted or perhaps forgotten.
+
+He has said enough to show that he does not like this slaughtering
+business in any shape. He is sure that the sooner it is ended the
+better. He has had its bloody consequences brought, in their most
+fearful form, to his own heart and home, but he has a fixed faith,
+nevertheless, that any duty, conscientiously undertaken, any duty from
+which there is no honorable or honest escape, must, if faithfully
+performed, obtain its meet reward. And believing that this business of
+war has been undertaken by the mass of the people of these United States
+in all simplicity of heart and honesty of purpose, as an unavoidable and
+hard necessity, he also believes they will get their honest wages for
+the doing it. He believes, too, that the day of recompense is not
+entirely delayed; that benefits, large and excellent, have already
+resulted to the nation. He sees already visible uses, which, to some
+extent at least, should comfort and sustain a people, even under the
+awful curse and agony of a civil war. He writes to show these uses to
+others, that they too may take heart and hope, when the days are
+darkest.
+
+In the first place, this war is, at last, our _national independence_.
+To be sure, we read of a war carried on by our fathers to secure that
+boon. They paid a large price for it, and they got it, and got all
+nations to acknowledge they deserved it, including the great nation they
+fought with. It was their _political_ independence only. It secured
+nothing beyond that. _Morally_ we were not independent. _Socially_, we
+were not independent. There was a time, we can all remember it, when we
+literally trembled before every cockney that strangled innocent
+aspirates at their birth. We had not secured our moral independence of
+Europe, and particularly not of our own kindred and people. We literally
+crouched at the feet of England, and begged for recognition like a poor,
+disowned relation. We scarcely knew what was right till England told us.
+We dare not accept a thing as wise, proper, or becoming till we had
+heard her verdict. What will England say? How will they think of this
+across the water? In all emergencies these were the questions thought,
+at least, if not spoken. We lived in perpetual terror of transatlantic
+opinion. Some cockney came to visit us. He might be a fool, a puppy, an
+intolerably bore, an infinite ass. It made no difference. He rode our
+consciousness like a nightmare. He and his note book dominated free
+America. 'What does he think of us? What will he say of us?' We actually
+grovelled before the creature, more than once begging for his good word,
+his kindly forbearance, his pity for our faults and failures. 'We know
+we are wicked, for we are republicans, O serene John! We are sinful, for
+we have no parish beadle. We are no better than the publicans, for we
+have no workhouse. We are altogether sinners, for we have no lord. It is
+also a sad truth that there are people among us who have been seen to
+eat with a knife, and but very few that could say, '_H_old _H_ingland,'
+with the true London aspiration. But be merciful notwithstanding. We beg
+pardon for all our faults. We recognize thy great kindness in coming
+among such barbarians. We will treat thee kindly as we can, and copy thy
+manners as closely as we can, and so try to improve ourselves. Do not,
+therefore, for the present, annihilate us with the indignation of thy
+outraged virtue. Have a touch of pity for us unfortunate and degenerate
+Americans!'
+
+That supplication is hardly an exaggeration. It was utterly shameful,
+the position we took in this matter of deference to English opinion. No
+people ever more grossly imposed upon themselves. We had an ideal
+England, which we almost worshipped, whose good opinion we coveted like
+the praise of a good conscience. We bowed before her word, as the child
+bows to the rebuke of a mother he reverences. She was Shakspeare's
+England, Raleigh's England, Sidney's England, the England of heroes and
+bards and sages, our grand old Mother, who had sat crowned among the
+nations for a thousand years. We were proud to claim even remote
+relationship with the Island Queen. We were proud to speak her tongue,
+to reënact her laws, to read her sages, to sing her songs, to claim her
+ancient glory as partly our own. England, the stormy cradle of our
+nation, the sullen mistress of the angry western seas, our hearts went
+out to her, across the ocean, across the years, across war, across
+injustice, and went out still in love and reverence. We never dreamed
+that our ideal England was dead and buried, that the actual England was
+not the marble goddess of our idolatry, but a poor Brummagem image,
+coarse lacquer-ware and tawdry paint! We never dreamed that the queenly
+mother of heroes was nursing 'shopkeepers' now, with only shopkeepers'
+ethics, 'pawnbrokers' morality'!
+
+At last our eyes are opened. To-day we stand a self-centred nation. We
+have seen so much of English consistency, of English nobleness, we have
+so learned to prize English honor and English generosity, that there is
+not a living American, North or South, who values English opinion, on
+any point of national right, duty, or manliness, above the idle
+whistling of the wind. Who considers it of the slightest consequence now
+what England may think on any matter American? Who has the curiosity to
+ask after an English opinion?
+
+This much the war has done for us. We are at last a _nation_. We have
+found a conscience of our own. We have been forced to stand on our own
+national sense of right and wrong. We are independent morally as well as
+politically, in opinion as well as in government. We shall never turn
+our eyes again across the sea to ask what any there may say or think of
+us. We have found that perhaps we do not understand them. We have
+certainly found that they do not understand us. We have taken the stand
+which every great people is obliged to take soon or late. We are
+sufficient for ourselves. Our own national conscience, our own sense of
+right and duty, our own public sentiment is our guide henceforth. By
+that we stand or fall. By that, and that only, will we consent that men
+should judge us. We are a grown-up nation from this time forth. We
+answer for ourselves to humanity and the future. We decide all causes at
+our own judgment seat.
+
+And there is another good, perhaps larger than this, which we have won,
+a good which contains and justifies this moral, national independence:
+We have been baptized at last into the family of great nations, by that
+red baptism which, from the first, has been the required initiation into
+that august brotherhood.
+
+It seems to be the invariable law, of earthly life at least, that
+humanity can advance only by the road of suffering. It is so with
+individuals. There is no spiritual growth without pain. Prosperity alone
+never makes a grand character. Purple and fine linen never clothe the
+hero. There are powers and gifts in the soul of man that only come to
+life and action in some day of bitterness. There are wells in the heart,
+whose crystal waters lie in darkness till some earthquake shakes the
+man's nature to its centre, bursts the fountain open, and lets the
+cooling waters out to refresh a parched land. There are seeds of noblest
+fruits that lie latent in the soul, till some storm of sorrow shakes
+down tears to moisten, and some burning sun of scorching pain sends heat
+to warm them into a harvest of blessings.
+
+By trouble met and patiently mastered, by suffering endured and
+conquered, by trials tested and overcome, so only does a man's soul grow
+to manliness.
+
+Now a nation is made up of single men. The law holds for the mass as for
+the individuals. It took a thousand years of toil, and war, and
+suffering, to make the Europe that we have. It took a thousand years of
+wrestle for the very life itself, to build Rome before. To be sure, we
+inherited all that this past of agony had bought the world. For us Rome
+had lived, fought, toiled, and fallen. For us Celt, Saxon, Norman had
+wrought and striven. We started with the accumulated capital of a
+hundred generations. It was perhaps natural to suppose we might escape
+the hard necessity of our fathers. We might surely profit by their
+dear-bought experience. The wrecks, strewn along the shores, would be
+effectual warnings to our gallant vessel on the dangerous seas where
+they had sailed. In peace, plenty, and prosperity, we might be carried
+to the highest reach of national greatness.
+
+Nay! never, unless we give the lie to all the world's experience! There
+never was a great nation yet nursed on pap, and swathed in silk. Storms
+broke around its rude cradle instead. The tempests rocked the stalwart
+child. The dragons came to strangle the baby Hercules in his swaddling
+clothes. The magnificent commerce, the increasing manufactures, the
+teeming soil, the wealth fast accumulating, they would never have made
+us, after all, a great people. They would have eaten the manhood out of
+us at last. We were becoming selfish, self-indulgent, sybaritic rapidly.
+The nation's muscle was softening, its heart was hardening. If we were
+to become a great nation, we needed more than commerce, more than
+plenty, more than rapid riches, more than a comfortable, indulgent life.
+If we were to be one of the world's great peoples, a people to dig deep
+and build strong, a people whose name and fame the world was to accept
+as a part of itself, we must look to pay the price inflexibly demanded
+at every people's hand, and count it out in sweat drops, tear drops,
+blood drops, to the last unit.
+
+We have been patiently counting out this costly currency for three slow
+years. I pity the moral outlook of the man who does not see that we have
+received largely of our purchase.
+
+From a nation whom the world believed, and whom itself believed, to be
+sunk in hopeless mammon worship, we have risen to be a nation that pours
+out its wealth like water for a noble purpose. Never again will 'the
+almighty dollar' be called America's divinity. We were sinking fast to
+low aims and selfish purposes, and wise men groaned at national
+degeneracy. The summons came, and millions leaped to offer all they had,
+to fling fortune, limb, and life on the altar of an unselfish cause. The
+dead manhood of the nation sprang to life at the call. We proved the
+redness of the old faithful, manly blood, to be as bright as ever.
+
+I know we hear men talk of the demoralization produced by war. There is
+a great deal they can say eloquently on that side. Drunkenness,
+licentiousness, lawlessness, they say are produced by it, already to an
+extent fearful to consider. And scoundrels are using the land's
+necessities for their own selfish purposes, and fattening on its blood.
+These things are all true, and a great deal more of the same sort
+beside. And it may be well at times, with good purpose, to consider
+them. But it is not well to consider them alone, and speak of them as
+the only moral results of the war. No! by the ten thousands who have
+died for the grand idea of National Unity, by the unselfish heroes who
+have thrown themselves, a living wall, before the parricidal hands of
+traitors, who have perished that the land they loved beyond life might
+not perish, by the example and the memory they have left in ten thousand
+homes, which their death has consecrated for the nation's reverence by
+_their_ lives and deaths, we protest against the one-sided view that
+looks only on the moral _evil_ of the struggle!
+
+The truth is, there are war vices and war virtues. There are peace vices
+and there are peace virtues. Decorous quiet, orderly habits, sober
+conduct, attention to business, these are the good things demanded by
+society in peace. And they may consist with meanness, selfishness,
+cowardice, and utter unmanliness. The round-stomached, prosperous man,
+with his ships, shops, and factories, is very anxious for the
+cultivation of these virtues. He does not like to be disturbed o'
+nights. He wants his street to be quiet and orderly. He wants to be left
+undisturbed to prosecute his prosperous business. He measures virtue by
+the aid it offers for that end. Peace vices, the cankers that gnaw a
+nation's heart, greed, self-seeking luxury, epicurean self-indulgence,
+hardness to growing ignorance, want, and suffering, indifference to all
+high purposes, spiritual _coma_ and deadness, these do not disturb him.
+They are rotting the nation to its marrow, but they do not stand in the
+way of his money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. To be
+sure, sometimes, across his torpid brain and heart may echo some harsh
+expressions, from those stern old Hebrew prophets, about these things.
+But he has a very comfortable pew, in a very soporific church, and he is
+only half awake, and the echo dies away and leaves no sign. _He_ is just
+the man to tell us all about the demoralization of war.
+
+Now quietness and good order, sober, discreet, self-seeking, decorous
+epicureanism and the rest, are not precisely the virtues that will save
+a people. There are certain old foundation virtues of another kind,
+which are the only safe substratum for national or personal salvation.
+These are courage--hard, muscular, manly courage--fortitude, patience,
+obedience to discipline, self-denial, self-sacrifice, veracity of
+purpose, and such like. These rough old virtues must lie at the base of
+all right character. You may add, as ornaments to your edifice, as
+frieze, cornices, and capitals to the pillars, refinements, and
+courtesies, and gentleness, and so on. But the foundation must rest on
+the rude granite blocks we have mentioned, or your gingerbread erection
+will go down in the first storm.
+
+And the simple fact is that peace has a tendency to eat out just these
+foundation virtues. They are _war_ virtues; just the things called out
+by a life-and-death battle for some good cause. In these virtues we
+claim the land has grown. The national character has deepened and
+intensified in these. We have strengthened anew these rocky foundations
+of a nation's greatness. Men lapped in luxury have patiently bowed to
+toil and weariness. Men living in self-indulgence have shaken off their
+sloth, and roused the old slumbering fearlessness of their race. Men,
+living for selfish ends, have been penetrated by the light of a great
+purpose, and have risen to the loftiness of human duty. Men, who shrank
+from pain as the sorest evil, have voluntarily accepted pain, and borne
+it with a fortitude we once believed lost from among mankind; and, over
+all, the flaming light of a worthy cause that men might worthily live
+for and worthily die for, has led the thousands of the land out of their
+narrow lives, and low endeavors, to the clear mountain heights of
+sacrifice! We stand now, a courageous, patient, steadfast, unselfish
+people before all the world. We stand, a people that has taken its life
+in its hand for a purely unselfish cause. We have won our place in the
+foremost rank of nations, not on our wealth, our numbers, or our
+prosperity, but on the truer test of our manhood, truth, and
+steadfastness. We stand justified at the bar of our own conscience, for
+national pride and self-reliance, as we shall infallibly be justified at
+the bar of the world.
+
+Is this lifting up of a great people nothing? Is this placing of twenty
+millions on the clear ground of unselfish duty, as life's motive,
+nothing? Is there one of us, to-day, who is not prouder of his nation
+and its character, in the midst of its desperate tug for life, than he
+ever was in the day of its envied prosperity? And when he considers how
+the nation has answered to its hard necessity, how it has borne itself
+in its sore trial, is he not clear of all doubt about its vitality and
+continuance? And is that, also, nothing?
+
+But besides this education in the stern, rude, heroic virtues that prop
+a people's life, there has been an education in some others, which,
+though apparently opposed, are really kindred. Unselfish courage is
+noble, but always with the highest courage there lives a great pity and
+tenderness. The brave man is always soft hearted. The most courageous
+people are the tenderest people. The highest manhood dwells with the
+highest womanhood.
+
+So the heart of the nation has been touched and softened, while its
+muscles have been steeled. While it has grasped the sword, it has
+grasped it weeping in infinite pity. It has recognized the truth of
+human brotherhood as it never did before. All ranks have been drawn
+together in mutual sympathy. All barriers, that hedge brethren apart,
+have been broken down in the common suffering.
+
+News comes, to-day, that a great battle has been fought, and wounded
+thousands of our brothers need aid and care. You tell the news in any
+city or hamlet in the land, and hands are opened, purses emptied, stores
+ransacked for comforts for the suffering, and gentle women, in
+hundreds, are ready to tend them as they would their own. Is this no
+gain? Is it nothing that the selfishness of us all has been broken up as
+by an earthquake, and that kindness, charity, and pity to the sick and
+needy have become the law of our lives? Count the millions that have
+streamed forth from a people whose heart has been touched by a common
+suffering, in kindness to wounded and sick soldiers and to their needy
+families! Benevolence has become the atmosphere of the land.
+
+Four years ago we could not have believed it. That the voluntary charity
+of Americans would count by millions yearly, would flow out in a steady,
+deep, increasing tide, that giving would be the rule, free, glad giving,
+and refusing the marked exception, the world would not have believed it,
+_we_ would not have believed it ourselves. Is this nothing?
+
+We will think more of each other also for all this. We will love and
+honor each other better. Under the awful pressure of the Hand that lies
+upon us so heavily, we are brought into closer knowledge and closer
+sympathy. The blows of battle are welding us into one. Fragments of all
+people, and all races, cast here by the waves, and strangers to each
+other, with a hundred repulsions and separations, even to language,
+religions, and morals, the furnace heat of our trial is fusing all parts
+into one strong, united whole. We are driven and drawn together by the
+sore need that is upon us, and as Americans are forgetting all else. The
+civil war is making us _a people_--the American People. We are no longer
+'the loose sweepings of all lands,' as they called us. We are one, now,
+brethren all in the sacrament of a great sorrow.
+
+And is this nothing?
+
+And these goods and gains are permanent. They do not belong to this
+generation only, or to this time exclusively. After all, the nation is
+mainly an educator. These things remain, as parts of its moral influence
+in moulding and training. And here is their infinite value.
+Independence, courage, patience, fortitude, nobleness, self-sacrifice,
+and tenderness become the national ethics. These things are pressed home
+on all growing minds. Coming generations are to be educated in these, by
+the example of the present. We are stamping these things, as the
+essentials of the national character, on the ages to come.
+
+A thousand years of prosperity will have no power of this kind. What is
+there in Chinese history to elevate a Chinaman? What high, heroic
+experience to educate him, in her long centuries of ignoble peace? The
+training power of a nation is acquired always in the crises of its
+history. In the day when it rises to fight for its life, the typal men,
+who give it the lasting models of its excellence, spring forth too for
+recognition. The examples of these days of our own crisis will remain
+forever to influence the children of our people. We may be thankful, in
+our deepest sorrow, that we are leaving them no example of cowardice or
+meanness, that we give them a record to read of the courage, endurance,
+and manliness of the men that begat them, that the stamp of national
+character we leave to teach them is one of which a brave, free people
+need never be ashamed, that, in the troubles they may be called to face,
+we leave them, as the national and tried cure for _all_ troubles, the
+bold, true heart, the willing hand, the strong arm, and faith in the
+Lord of Hosts. Shiloh, Stone River, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, and
+a hundred others, are the heroic names that will educate our
+grandchildren, as Bunker Hill, Yorktown, and Saratoga have educated
+ourselves. Who will say that a heritage of heroism and truth and loyalty
+like this, to leave to the land we love, is nothing? Who can count the
+price that will sum its value?
+
+Here, at least, are some of the gains of our civil war. We seek not to
+penetrate the councils of the Omniscient, or guess His purposes, though
+we may humbly hope there are vaster things than these in store for
+humanity and the world as the results of the struggle. Believing that He
+governs still, that He reigns on the James, as He reigned on the Jordan,
+that _He_ decides the end, and not President Lincoln or Jefferson Davis,
+and not General Grant or General Lee, we have firm faith that this awful
+struggle is no brute fight of beasts or ruffians, but a grand world's
+war of heroes. We believe He will justify His government in the end, and
+make this struggle praise Him, in the blessed days that are to come. But
+we leave all those dim results unguessed at, as we leave the purposes of
+the war itself unmentioned, and the ends which justify us in fighting
+on. Men, by this time, have made up their minds, once for all, on these
+last points. The nation has chosen, and in its own conscience, let
+others think as they may, accepts the responsibility cheerfully.
+
+It is enough to indicate, as we have done, some _real_, though
+immaterial, results already attained, results which, to the philosopher
+or thoughtful statesman, are worth a very large outlay. They do not,
+indeed, remove the horror of war, they do not ask us not to seek peace,
+they do not dry the tears, or hide the blood of the contest, but they do
+show us that war is no unmixed evil, that even honest, faithful war-work
+is acceptable work, and will be paid for.
+
+They declare that, after all, war is a means of moral training, that
+'Carnage' may be, as the gentlest of poets wrote, 'God's daughter,' that
+battles may be blessings to be thankful for in the long march of time.
+They bring to our consciousness, once more, the fact that a Great
+Battle, amid all its horror, wrath, and blood, is something sacred
+still, an earthly shadow of that Unseen Battle which has stormed through
+time, between the hosts of Light and Darkness. They declare again, to
+the nation, that old truth, without which the nation perishes and man
+rots, that to die in some good cause is the noblest thing a man can do
+on earth. They bid us bend in hope beneath the awful hand of the GOD OF
+BATTLES, and do our appointed work patiently, bravely, loyally, till
+_He_ brings the end. They tell us that not work only, but heroic
+fighting, also, is a worship accepted at His seat. They bid us be
+thankful, as for the most sacred of all gifts, that thousands, in this
+loyal land of ours, have had the high grace, given from above,
+
+  'To search through all they felt and saw,
+  The springs of life, the depths of awe,
+  And reach _the law within the law_:
+
+  'To pass, when Life her light withdraws,
+  Not void of righteous self-applause,
+  Nor in a merely selfish cause--
+
+  'In some good cause, not in their own,
+  To perish, _wept for_, _honored_, _known_,
+  And like a warrior overthrown.'
+
+
+
+
+PROVERBS.
+
+
+Violets and lilies-of-the-valley are seen in a vale.
+
+Family jars should be filled with honey.
+
+All are not lambs that gambol on the green.
+
+Ask the 'whys,' and be wise.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNDIVINE COMEDY--A POLISH DRAMA.
+
+Dedicated to Mary.
+
+PART II.
+
+  'Du Gemisch von Koth und Feuer!'
+  'Thou compound of clay and fire!'
+
+
+Why, O child! art thou not, like other children, riding gayly about on
+sticks for horses, playing with toys, torturing flies, or impaling
+butterflies on pins, that the brilliant circles of their dying pangs may
+amuse thy young soul? Why dost thou never romp and sport upon the grassy
+turf, pilfer sugarplums and sweetmeats, and wet the letters of thy
+picture book from A to Z with sudden tears?
+
+Infant king of flies, moths, and grasshoppers; of cowslips, daisies, and
+of kingcups; of tops, hoops, and kites; little friend of Punch and
+puppets; robber of birds' nests, and outlaw of petty mischiefs--son of
+the poet, tell me, why art thou so unlike a child--so like an angel?
+
+What strange meaning lies in the blue depths of thy dreamy eyes? Why do
+they seek the ground as if weighed down by the shadows of their drooping
+lashes; and why is their latent fire so gloomed by mournful memories,
+although they have only watched the early violets of a few springs? Why
+sinks thy broad head heavily down upon thy tiny hands, while thy pallid
+temples bend under the weight of thine infant thoughts, like snowdrops
+burdened with the dew of night?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And when thy pale cheek floods with sudden crimson, and, tossing back
+thy golden curls, thou gazest sadly into the depths of the sky--tell me,
+infant, what seest thou there, and with whom holdest thou communion? For
+then the light and subtile wrinkles weave their living mesh across thy
+spotless brow, like silken threads untwining by an unseen power from
+viewless coils, and thine eyes sparkle, freighted with mystic meanings,
+which none are able to interpret! Then thy grandam calls in vain,
+'George, George!' and weeps, for thou heedest her not, and she fears
+thou dost not love her! Friends and relations then appeal to thee in
+vain, for thou seemest not to hear or know them! Thy father is silent
+and looks sad; tears fill his anxious eyes, falling coldly back into his
+troubled heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The physician comes, puts his finger on thy pulse, counts its changeful
+beats, and says thy nerves are out of order.
+
+Thy old godfather brings thee sugarplums, strokes thy pale cheeks, and
+tells thee thou must be a statesman in thy native land.
+
+The professor passes his hand over thy broad brow, and declares thou
+will have talent for the abstract sciences.
+
+The beggar, whom thou never passest without casting a coin in his
+tattered hat, promises thee a beautiful wife, and a heavenly crown.
+
+The soldier, raising thee high in the air, declares thou wilt yet be a
+great general.
+
+The wandering gypsy looks into thy tender face, traces the lines upon
+thy little hand, but will not tell their hidden meaning; she gazes sadly
+on thee, and then sighing turns away; she says nothing, and refuses to
+take the proffered coin.
+
+The magnetizer makes his passes over thee, presses his fingers on thine
+eyes, and circles thy face, but mutters suddenly an oath, for he is
+himself growing sleepy; he feels like kneeling down before thee, as
+before a holy image. Then thou growest angry, and stampest with thy tiny
+feet; and when thy father comes, thou seemest to him a little Lucifer;
+and in his picture of the Day of Judgment, he paints thee thus among the
+infant demons, the young spirits of evil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile thou growest apace, becoming ever more and more beautiful, not
+in the childish beauty of rose bloom and snow, but in the loveliness of
+wondrous and mysterious thoughts, which flow to thee from other worlds;
+and though thy languid eyes droop wearily their fringes, though thy
+cheek is pale, and thy breast bent and contracted, yet all who meet thee
+stop to gaze, exclaiming: '_What a little angel!_'
+
+If the dying flowers had a living soul inspired from heaven; if, in
+place of dewdrops, each drooping leaf were bent to earth with the
+thought of an angel, such flowers would resemble thee, fair child!
+
+And thus, before the fall, they may, perchance, have bloomed in
+Paradise!
+
+     A graveyard. The Man and George are seen sitting by a grave, over
+     which stands a gothic monument, with arches, pillars, and mimic
+     towers.
+
+THE MAN. Take off thy hat, George, kneel, and pray for thy mother's
+soul!
+
+GEORGE. Hail, Mary, full of grace! Mary, Queen of Heaven, Lady of all
+that blooms on earth, that scents the fields, that paints the fringes of
+the streams ...
+
+THE MAN. Why changest thou the words of the prayer? Pray for thy mother
+as thou hast been taught to do; for thy dear mother, George, who
+perished in her youth, just ten years ago this very day and hour.
+
+GEORGE. Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee! I know that
+thou art blessed among the angels, and as thou glidest softly through
+them, each one plucks a rainbow from his wings to cast under thy feet,
+and thou floatest softly on upon them as if borne by waves....
+
+THE MAN. George!
+
+GEORGE. Be not angry with me, father! these words _force_ themselves
+into my mind; they pain me so dreadfully in my head, that I must say
+them....
+
+THE MAN. Rise, George. Such prayers will never reach God!
+
+Thou art not thinking of thy mother; thou dost not love her!
+
+GEORGE. I love her. I see mamma very often.
+
+THE MAN. Where, my son?
+
+GEORGE. In dreams--yet not exactly in dreams, but just as I am going to
+sleep. I saw her yesterday.
+
+THE MAN. What do you mean, George?
+
+GEORGE. She looked so pale and thin!
+
+THE MAN. Has she ever spoken to you, darling?
+
+GEORGE. She goes wandering up and down--through an immense Dark--she
+roams about entirely alone, so white and so pale! She sang to me
+yesterday. I will tell thee the words of her song:
+
+    'I wander through the universe,
+      I search through infinite space,
+    I press through Chaos, Darkness,
+      To bring thee light and grace;
+    I listen to the angels' song
+      To catch the heavenly tone;
+    Seek every form of beauty,
+      To bring to thee, mine own!
+
+    'I seek from greatest spirits,
+      From those of lower might,
+    Rainbow colors, depth of shadow,
+      Burning contrasts, dark and bright;
+    Rhythmed music, hues from Eden,
+      Floating through the heavenly bars;
+    Sages' wisdom, seraphs' loving,
+      Mystic glories from the stars--
+  That thou mayst be a Poet, richly gifted from above
+  To win thy father's fiery heart, and _keep_ his _changeful love_!'
+
+Thou seest, dear father, that my mother does speak to me, and that I
+remember, word for word, what she says to me; indeed I am telling you
+no lie.
+
+THE MAN (_leaning against one of the pillars of the tomb_). Mary! wilt
+thou destroy thine own son, and burden my Soul with the ruin of both?...
+
+But what folly! She is calm and tranquil now in heaven, as she was pure
+and sweet on earth. My poor boy only dreams ...
+
+GEORGE. I hear mamma's voice now, father!
+
+THE MAN. From whence comes it, my son?
+
+GEORGE. From between the two elms before us glittering in the sunset.
+Listen!
+
+    'I pour through thy spirit
+      Music and might;
+    I wreathe thy pale forehead
+      With halos of light;
+    Though blind, I can show thee
+      Blest forms from above,
+    Floating far through the spaces
+      Of infinite love,
+  Which the angels in heaven and men on the earth
+  Call Beauty. I've sought since the day of thy birth
+
+    To waken thy spirit,
+      My darling, my own,
+    That the hopes of thy father
+      May rest on his son!
+    That his love, warm and glowing,
+      Unchanging may shine;
+    And his heart, infant poet,
+      _Forever be thine!_'
+
+THE MAN. Can a blessed spirit be mad? Do the last thoughts of the dying
+pursue them into their eternal homes?
+
+Can insanity be a part of immortality?... O Mary! Mary!
+
+GEORGE. Mamma's voice is growing weaker and weaker; it is dying away now
+close by the wall of the charnel house. Hark! hark! she is still
+repeating:
+
+  'That his love, warm and glowing,
+    Unchanging may shine;
+  And his heart, little poet,
+    _Forever be thine!_'
+
+THE MAN. O God! have mercy upon our unfortunate child, whom in Thine
+anger Thou hast doomed to madness and to an early death! Have pity on
+the innocent creature Thou hast Thyself called into being! Rob him not
+of reason! Ruin not the living temple Thou hast built--the shrine of the
+soul! Oh look down upon my agony, and deliver not this young angel up to
+hell! Me Thou hast at least armed with strength to endure the dizzying
+throng of thoughts, passions, longings, yearnings--but him! Thou hast
+given him a frame fragile as the frailest web of the spider, and every
+great thought rends and frays it. O Lord! my God! have mercy!
+
+I have not had one tranquil hour for the last ten years. Thou hast
+placed me among men who may have envied my position, who may have wished
+me well, or who would have conferred benefits upon me--but I have been
+alone! alone!
+
+Thou hast sent storms of agony upon me, mingled with wrongs, dreams,
+hopes, thoughts, aspirations, and yearnings for the infinite! Thy grace
+shines upon my intellect, but reaches not my heart!
+
+Have mercy, God! Suffer me to love my son in peace, that thus
+reconciliation may be planted between the created and the Creator!...
+
+Cross thyself now, my son, and come with me.
+
+Eternal rest be with the dead!
+
+     Exit with George
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     A public square. Ladies and gentlemen. A Philosophe. The Man.
+
+PHILOSOPHE. I repeat to you, that it is my irresistible conviction that
+the hour has come for the emancipation of negroes and women.
+
+THE MAN. I agree with you fully.
+
+PHILOSOPHE. And as a change so great in the constitution of society,
+both in general and particular, stands so immediately before us, I
+deduce from such a revolution the complete destruction of old forms and
+formulas, and the regeneration of the whole human family.
+
+THE MAN. Do you really think so?
+
+PHILOSOPHE. Just as our earth, by a sudden change in the inclination of
+its axis, might rotate more obliquely ...
+
+THE MAN. Do you see this hollow tree?
+
+PHILOSOPHE. With tufts of new leaves sprouting forth from the lower
+branches?
+
+THE MAN. Yes. How much longer do you think it can continue to stand?
+
+PHILOSOPHE. I cannot tell; perhaps a year or two longer.
+
+THE MAN. Its roots are rapidly rotting out, and yet it still puts forth
+a few green leaves.
+
+PHILOSOPHE. What inference do you deduce from that?
+
+THE MAN. Nothing--only that it is rotting out in spite of its few green
+leaves; falling daily into dust and ashes; and that it will not bear the
+tool of the moulder!
+
+And yet it is your type, the type of your followers, of your theories,
+of the times in which we live....
+
+     They pass on out of sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     A mountain pass.
+
+THE MAN. I have labored many years to discover the final results of
+knowledge, pleasure, thought, passion, and have only succeeded in
+finding a deep and empty grave in my own heart!
+
+I have indeed learned to know most things by their names--the feelings,
+for example; but I _feel_ nothing, neither desires, faith, nor love. Two
+dim forebodings alone stir in the desert of my soul--the one, that my
+son is hopelessly blind; the other, that the society in which I have
+grown up is in the pangs of dissolution; I suffer as God enjoys, in
+myself only, and for myself alone....
+
+VOICE OF THE GUARDIAN ANGEL. Love the sick, the hungry, the wretched!
+Love thy neighbor, thy poor neighbor, as thyself, and thou shalt be
+redeemed!
+
+THE MAN. Who speaks?
+
+MEPHISTOPHILES. Your humble servant. I often astonish travellers by my
+marvellous natural gifts: I am a ventriloquist.
+
+THE MAN. I have certainly seen a face like that before in an engraving.
+
+MEPHISTOPHILES (_aside_). The count has truly a good memory.
+
+THE MAN. Blessed be Christ Jesus!
+
+MEPHISTOPHILES. Forever and ever, amen!--(_Muttering as he disappears
+behind a rock_:) Curses on thee, and thy stupidity!
+
+THE MAN. My poor son! through the sins of thy father and the madness of
+thy mother, thou art doomed to perpetual darkness--blind! Living only in
+dreams and visions, thou art never destined to attain maturity! Thou art
+but the shadow of a passing angel, flitting rapidly over the earth, and
+melting into the infinite of ...
+
+Ha! what an immense eagle that is fluttering just there where the
+stranger disappeared behind the rocks!
+
+THE EAGLE. Hail! I greet thee! hail!
+
+THE MAN. He is as black as night; he flies nearer; the whirring of his
+vast wings stirs me like the whistling hail of bullets in the fight.
+
+THE EAGLE. Draw the sword of thy fathers, and combat for their power,
+their fame!
+
+THE MAN. His wide wings spread above me; he gazes into my eyes with the
+charm of the rattlesnake--Ha! I understand thee!
+
+THE EAGLE. Despair not! Yield not now, nor ever! Thy enemies, thy
+miserable enemies, will fall to dust before thee!
+
+THE MAN. Going?... Farewell, then, among the rocks, behind which thou
+vanishest!... Whatever thou mayst be, delusion or truth, victory or
+ruin, I trust in thee, herald of fame, harbinger of glory!
+
+Spirit of the mighty Past, come to my aid! and even if thou hast already
+returned to the bosom of God, quit it--and come to me! Inspire me with
+the ancient heroism! Become in me, force, thought, action!
+
+     Stooping to the ground, he turns up and throws aside a viper.
+
+Curses upon thee, loathsome reptile! Even as thou diest, crushed and
+writhing, and nature breathes no sigh for thy fate, so will the
+destroyers of the Past perish in the abyss of nothingness, leaving no
+trace, and awakening no regret.
+
+None of the countless clouds of heaven will pause one moment in their
+flight to look upon the thronging hosts of men now gathering to kill and
+slaughter!
+
+First they--then I--
+
+Boundless vault of blue, so softly pouring round the earth! the earth is
+a sick child, gnashing her teeth, weeping, struggling, sobbing; but thou
+hearest her not, nor tremblest, flowing in silence ever gently on, calm
+in thine own infinity!
+
+Farewell forever, O mother nature! Henceforth I must wander among men! I
+must combat with my brethren!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     A chamber. The Man. George. A Physician.
+
+THE MAN. No one has as yet been of the least service to him; my last
+hopes are placed in you.
+
+PHYSICIAN. You do me much honor.
+
+THE MAN. Tell me your opinion of the case.
+
+GEORGE. I can neither see you, my father, nor the gentleman to whom you
+speak. Dark or black webs float before my eyes, and again something like
+a snake seems to crawl across them. Sometimes a golden cloud stands
+before them, flies up, and then falls down upon them, and a rainbow
+springs out of it; but there is no pain--they never hurt me--I do not
+suffer, father.
+
+PHYSICIAN. Come here, George, in the shade. How old are you?
+
+     He looks steadily into the eyes of the boy.
+
+THE MAN. He is fourteen years old.
+
+PHYSICIAN. Now turn your eyes directly to the light, to the window.
+
+THE MAN. What do you say, doctor?
+
+PHYSICIAN. The eyelids are beautifully formed, the white perfectly pure,
+the blue deep, the veins in good order, the muscles strong.
+
+     To George.
+
+You may laugh at all this, George. You will be perfectly well; as well
+as I am.
+
+     To the Man (aside).
+
+There is no hope. Look at the pupils yourself, count; there is not the
+least susceptibility to the light; there is a paralysis of the optic
+nerve.
+
+GEORGE. Everything looks to me as if covered with black clouds.
+
+THE MAN. Yes, they are open, blue, lifeless, dead!
+
+GEORGE. When I shut my eyelids I can see _more_ than when my eyes are
+open.
+
+PHYSICIAN. His mind is precocious; it is rapidly consuming his body. We
+must guard him against an attack of catalepsy.
+
+THE MAN (_leading the doctor aside_). Save him, doctor, and the half of
+my estate is yours!
+
+PHYSICIAN. A disorganization cannot be reorganized.
+
+     He takes up his hat and cane.
+
+Pardon me, count, but I can remain here no longer; I am forced now to
+visit a patient whom I am to couch for cataract.
+
+THE MAN. For God's sake, do not desert us!
+
+PHYSICIAN. Perhaps you have some curiosity to know the name of this
+malady?...
+
+THE MAN. Speak! is there no hope?
+
+PHYSICIAN. It is called, from the Greek, _amaurosis_.
+
+     Exit Physician.
+
+THE MAN (_pressing his son to his heart_). But you can still see a
+little, George?
+
+GEORGE. I can _hear your voice_, father!
+
+THE MAN. Try if you can see. Look out of the window; the sun is shining
+brightly, the sky is clear.
+
+GEORGE. I see crowds of forms circling between the pupils of my eyes and
+my eyelids--faces I have often seen before, the leaves of books I have
+read before....
+
+THE MAN. Then you really do still see?
+
+GEORGE. Yes, with the _eyes of my spirit--but the eyes of my body have
+gone out forever_.
+
+THE MAN (_falls on his knees as if to pray; pauses, and exclaims
+bitterly_:) Before _whom_ shall I kneel--to whom pray--to whom complain
+of the unjust doom crushing my innocent child?
+
+     He rises from his knees.
+
+It is best to bear all in silence--God laughs at our prayers--Satan
+mocks at our curses--
+
+A VOICE. But thy son is a Poet--and what wouldst thou more?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     The Physician and Godfather.
+
+GODFATHER. It is certainly a great misfortune to be blind.
+
+PHYSICIAN. And at his age a very unusual one.
+
+GODFATHER. His frame was always very fragile, and his mother died
+somewhat--so--so ...
+
+PHYSICIAN. How did she die?
+
+GODFATHER. A little so ... you understand ... not quite in her right
+mind.
+
+THE MAN (_entering_). I pray you, pardon my intrusion at so late an
+hour, but for the last night or two my son has wakened up at twelve
+o'clock, left his bed, and talked in his sleep.
+
+Will you have the kindness to follow me, and watch him to-night?
+
+PHYSICIAN. I will go to him immediately; I am very much interested in
+the observation of such phenomena.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     Relations, Godfather, Physician, the Man, a Nurse--assembled in the
+     sleeping apartment of George Stanislaus.
+
+FIRST RELATION. Hush! hush! be quiet!
+
+SECOND RELATION. He is awake, but neither sees nor hears us.
+
+PHYSICIAN. I beg that you will all remain perfectly silent.
+
+GODFATHER. This seems to be a most extraordinary malady.
+
+GEORGE (_rising from his seat_). God! O God!
+
+FIRST RELATION. How lightly he treads!
+
+SECOND RELATION. Look! he clasps his thin hands across his breast.
+
+THIRD RELATION. His eyelids are motionless; he does not move his lips,
+but what a sharp and thrilling shriek!
+
+NURSE. Christ, shield him!
+
+GEORGE. Depart from me, Darkness! I am a child of light and song, and
+what hast thou to do with me? What dost thou desire from me?
+
+I do not yield myself to thee, although my sight has flown away upon the
+wings of the wind, and is flitting restlessly about through infinite
+space: it will return to me--my eyes will open with a flash of
+flame--and I will see the universe!
+
+GODFATHER. He talks exactly as his mother did; he does not know what he
+is saying, I think his condition very critical.
+
+PHYSICIAN. He is in great danger.
+
+NURSE. Holy Mother of God! take my eyes, and give them to the poor boy!
+
+GEORGE. My mother, I entreat thee! O mother, send me thoughts and
+images, that I may create within myself a world like the one I have lost
+forever!
+
+FIRST RELATION. Do you think, brother, it will be necessary to call a
+family consultation?
+
+SECOND RELATION. Be silent!
+
+GEORGE. Thou answerest me not, my mother!
+
+O mother, do not desert me!
+
+PHYSICIAN (_to the Man_). It is my duty to tell you the truth.
+
+GODFATHER. Yes, to tell the truth is the duty and virtue of a physician!
+
+PHYSICIAN. Your son is suffering from incipient insanity, connected with
+an extraordinary excitability of the nervous system, which sometimes
+occasions, if I may so express myself, the strange phenomenon of
+sleeping and waking at the same time, as in the case now before us.
+
+THE MAN (_aside_). He reads to me thy sentence, O my God!
+
+PHYSICIAN. Give me pen, ink, and paper.
+
+     He writes a prescription.
+
+THE MAN. I think it best you should all now retire; George needs rest.
+
+SEVERAL VOICES. Good night! good night! good night!
+
+GEORGE (_waking suddenly_). Are they wishing me good night, father?
+
+They should rather speak of a long, unbroken, eternal night, but of no
+good one, of no happy dawn for me....
+
+THE MAN. Lean on me, George. Let me support you to the bed.
+
+GEORGE. What does all this mean, father?
+
+THE MAN. Cover yourself up, and go quietly to sleep. The doctor says you
+will regain your sight.
+
+GEORGE. I feel so very unwell, father; strange voices roused me from my
+sleep, and I saw mamma standing in a field of lilies....
+
+     He falls asleep.
+
+THE MAN. Bless thee! bless thee, my poor boy!
+
+I can give thee nothing but a blessing; neither happiness, nor light,
+nor fame are in my gift. The stormy hour of struggle approaches, when I
+must combat with the _few_ against the _many_.
+
+Tortured infant! what is then to become of thee, alone, helpless, blind,
+surrounded by a thousand dangers? Child, yet Poet, poor Singer without a
+hearer, with thy soul in heaven, and thy frail, suffering body still
+fettered to the earth--what is to be thy doom? Alas, miserable infant!
+thou most unfortunate of all the angels! my son! my son!
+
+     He buries his face in his hands.
+
+NURSE (_knocking at the door_). The doctor desires to see his excellency
+as soon as convenient.
+
+THE MAN. My good Katharine, watch faithfully and tenderly over my poor
+son!
+
+     Exit.
+
+
+
+
+THE NORTH CAROLINA CONSCRIPT.
+
+Ballads of the War.
+
+
+  He lay on the field of Antietam,
+    As the sun sank low in the west,
+  And the life from his heart was ebbing
+    Through a ghastly wound in his breast.
+
+  All around were the dead and the dying--
+    A pitiful sight to see--
+  And afar, in the vapory distance,
+    Were the flying hosts of Lee.
+
+  He raised himself on his elbow,
+    And wistfully gazed around;
+  Till he spied far off a soldier
+    Threading the death-strewn ground.
+
+  'Come here to me, Union soldier,
+    Come here to me where I lie;
+  I've a word to say to you, soldier;
+    I must say it before I die.'
+
+  The soldier came at his bidding.
+    He raised his languid head:
+  'From the hills of North Carolina
+    They forced me hither,' he said.
+
+  'Though I stood in the ranks of the rebels,
+    And carried yon traitorous gun,
+  I have never been false to my country,
+    For I fired not a shot, not one.
+
+  'Here I stood while the balls rained around me,
+    Unmoved as yon mountain crag--
+  Still true to our glorious Union,
+    Still true to the dear old flag!'
+
+  Brave soldier of North Carolina!
+    True patriot hero wert thou!
+  Let the laurel that garlands Antietam,
+    Spare a leaf for thy lowly brow![A]
+
+[Footnote A: From an incident narrated in the newspaper account of the
+battle of Antietam. The reader will be reminded by it of Mrs. Browning's
+'Forced Recruit at Solferino.']
+
+
+
+
+DOES THE MOON REVOLVE ON ITS AXIS?
+
+
+As this question has elicited considerable discussion, at various times,
+the following may be considered in elucidation.
+
+A revolution on an axis is simply that of a body turning entirely round
+upon its own centre. The only centre around which the moon performs a
+revolution is very far from its own proper axis, being situated at the
+centre of the earth, the focus of its orbit, and as it has no other
+rotating motion around the earth, it cannot revolve on its own central
+axis.
+
+A body fixed in position, or pierced and held by a rod, cannot revolve
+upon its centre, and when swung round by this rod or handle, performs
+only a revolution in orbit, as does the moon. The moon, during the
+process of forming a solid crust, by the constant attraction of the
+earth upon one side, only, became elongated, by calculation, about
+thirty miles (from its centre as a round body) toward the earth;
+consequently, by its form, like the body pierced with a rod, is
+transfixed by its gravitation, and, therefore, cannot revolve upon its
+own central axis.
+
+The difference of axial revolution of a wheel or globe, is simply that
+the former turns upon an actual and the latter upon an imaginary axle,
+placed at its centre, Now, by way of analogy, fasten, immovably, a ball
+upon the rim of a revolving wheel, and then judge whether the ball can
+perform one simultaneous revolution on its own axis, in the same time
+that it performs a revolution in orbit, made by one complete turn of the
+wheel; and if not (which is assuredly the case, for it is fixed
+immovably), then neither can the moon perform such revolution on its
+axis, in the same time that it makes one revolution in orbit; because,
+like the ball immovably fixed upon the rim of the wheel, it, too, is
+transfixed by gravitation, from its very form, as if pierced with a rod,
+whose other extremity is attached to the centre of the earth, its only
+proper focus of motion, and, therefore, cannot revolve upon its own
+central axis.
+
+A balloon elongated on one side, and carrying ballast on that side,
+would be like the moon in form, and when suspended in air, like the
+moon, too, in having its heaviest matter always toward the centre of the
+earth. Now let this balloon go entirely round the earth: it will, like
+the moon, continue to present the weightiest, elongated side always
+toward the centre of the earth; it, consequently, like the moon, cannot
+revolve upon its own central axis, as gravitation alone would prevent
+this anomaly, in both cases.
+
+As well might it be said that a horse, harnessed to a beam, and going
+round a ring, or an imprisoned stone swung round in a sling, make each
+one simultaneous revolution on their axes, when their very positions are
+a sufficient refutation! or that the balls in an orrery, attached
+immovably to the ends of their respective rods, and turning with them
+(merely to show revolutions in orbits), perform each a simultaneous
+revolution on their axis, when such claim would be simply ridiculous,
+since the only revolution, in each case, has its focus outside of the
+ball, therefore orbital only; and so, too, with the moon, whose motion
+is precisely analogous, and prejudice alone can retain such an
+unphilosophical hypothesis as its _axial_ revolution.
+
+
+
+
+LUNAR CHARACTERISTICS.
+
+
+The moon, in consequence of its orbital revolution, having no connecting
+axial motion, has always presented but one side to the earth, so that in
+process of forming a crust, from its incipient molten state, it became,
+by the constant attraction of the earth upon one side, elongated toward
+our globe, now generally admitted to be by calculation about thirty
+miles, and proved by photographs, which also show an elongation. The
+necessary consequence of this constant attraction upon one side, has
+been not only to intensify volcanic action there, by the continued
+effect of gravitation, so long as its interior remained in a molten
+state, but from the same reasoning, to confine all such volcanic action
+exclusively to this side of the moon. Thus we have the reason for the
+violently disrupted state which that luminary presents to the telescopic
+observer, exceeding any analogy to be found upon our globe, as the
+earth's axial motion has prevented any similar concentrated action upon
+any particular part of its surface, either from solar or lunar
+attraction. Another marked effect of the elongation of the moon toward
+the earth has been to elevate its visible side high above its atmosphere
+(which would have enveloped it as a round body), and in consequence into
+an intensely cold region, producing congelation, in the form of frost
+and snow, which necessarily envelop its entire visible surface. These
+effects took place while yet the crust was thin and frequently disrupted
+by volcanic action, and wherever such action took place, the fiery
+matter ejected necessarily dissolved the contiguous masses of frost and
+snow, and these floods of water, as soon as they receded from the fiery
+element, were immediately converted into lengthened ridges of ice,
+diverging from the mountain summits like streams of lava. Hence many of
+the apparent lava streams are but ridges of ice, and in consequence,
+depending upon the angle of reflection (determined by the age of the
+moon, which is but its relative position between the sun and earth), all
+observers are struck with the brilliancy of the reflected light from
+many of those long lines of ridges.
+
+The general surface of the moon presents to the telescopic observer just
+that drear, cold, and chalk-like aspect, which our snow-clad mountains
+exhibit when the angle of reflection is similar to that in which we
+behold the lunar surface. In consequence, its mild light is due to the
+myriads of sparkling crystals, which diffusively reflect the rays of the
+sun.
+
+As an attentive observer of the moon, I have been much puzzled to know
+why none of the hosts of observers, or scientific treatises, have taken
+this rational view of such necessary condition of the moon, deduced from
+the main facts of its original formation, here named and generally
+conceded. In the place of which, we still have stereotyped, in many late
+editions on astronomy, the names and localities of numerous seas and
+lakes, which advancing knowledge should long since have discarded.
+
+Besides the above conclusions, which necessitate a snowy covering to the
+moon, none of the planets exhibit that drear white, except the poles of
+Mars, which are admitted to be snow by all astronomers, as we see them
+come and go with the appropriate seasons of that planet; whereas the
+continents of Mars appear dark, as analogously they do upon our earth,
+under the same solar effulgence. The analogy of sunlight, when reflected
+from our lofty mountains (at say thirty or forty miles distant) not
+covered with snow, viewed under the most favorable circumstances of
+brilliant light and the best angle of reflection, with no more of
+intervening atmosphere, always present sombre tints; whether viewed with
+the unaided eye or through a telescope. Such analogy clearly proves that
+no objects short of an absolute white could present such an appearance
+as light does upon lunar objects, viewed with high powers, in which the
+same drear white remains, without any greater concentration of light (as
+we can see objects in the moon whose diameter is five hundred feet) than
+is presented to our unaided eye from our own mountain masses. In viewing
+the moon with high powers, there is, in fact, a much greater amount of
+visible atmosphere intervening than can possibly apply in beholding
+objects on our earth, at even a few miles' distance, since if we look at
+lunar objects with a power of one thousand times, our atmosphere is thus
+magnified a thousand times also.
+
+The main physical features of the visible half of the moon, with a good
+telescopic power, present an enormously elevated table land, traversed,
+here and there, with slightly elevated long ridges, and the general
+surface largely pitted with almost innumerable deep cusps or valleys, of
+every size, from a quarter of a mile to full thirty miles in diameter;
+generally circular and surrounded with elevated ridges, some rising to
+lofty jagged summits above the surrounding plain. These ridges, on their
+inner sides, show separate terraces and mural precipices, while their
+outer slopes display deeply scarred ravines and long spurs at their
+bases. These cusps, or deep valleys, are the craters of extinct
+volcanoes, and in their centres have generally one or two isolated
+sub-mountain peaks, occasionally with divided summits, which were the
+centres of expiring volcanic action, similar to those that exist in our
+own volcanic regions. Besides which the Lunar Apennines, so called,
+present to the eye a long range of mountains with serrated summits, on
+one side gradually sloped, with terraces, spurs, and ravines, and the
+other side mostly precipitous, casting long shadows, which clearly
+define the forms of their summits--all these objects presenting the same
+dead white everywhere.
+
+Doubtless the farther side of the moon, which has not been subject to
+the same elongating or elevating process, nor the above-named causes for
+volcanic disruption, presents a climate and vegetation fitted for the
+abode of sentient beings. This side alone presenting an aspect of
+extreme desolation, far surpassing our polar regions.
+
+It is generally stated in astronomical works, that shadows projected
+from lunar objects are intensely black, owing, it is stated, to there
+being no reflecting atmosphere; whereas in my long-continued habit of
+observation, those shadows appear no more black than those on our earth,
+when they fall on contrasting snowy surfaces. The reason for which, in
+the absence of a lunar atmosphere, to render light diffusive, is the
+brilliant reflection from snow crystals, upon all contiguous objects,
+which lie in an angle to receive the same, and in consequence I have
+often observed the forms of objects not directly illuminated by the sun.
+
+The occasional apparent retention of a star on the limb of the moon,
+just before or after an occultation, seen by some observers, and thus
+evidencing the existence of some atmosphere, is doubtless due to the
+slight oscillations of the moon, by which we see a trifle more than half
+of that body, during which the atmosphere of its opposite side slightly
+impinges upon this.
+
+
+
+
+A GLANCE AT PRUSSIAN POLITICS.
+
+_PART II._
+
+
+We come now to the beginning of the present stage in the development of
+constitutional government in Prussia. It will have been noticed that the
+promises of Frederick William III. were not that he would grant a
+strictly popular constitution. His intention was that the different
+estates of the realm should be represented in the proposed national
+diet, the constitution recognizing a difference in the dignity of the
+different classes of inhabitants, and giving to each a share in the
+national government proportionate to its dignity. His son, at his
+coronation, promised to maintain the efficiency of the ordinances of
+June 5, 1823, and to secure a further development of the principles of
+this (so-called) constitution. Encouraged by this assurance, the
+Liberals labored to secure from him the full realization of their hopes.
+Frederick William IV. was just the man with whom such exertions could be
+used with good hope of success. He was intelligent enough to be fully
+conscious of the fact and the significance of the popular request for a
+constitution, and, though of course personally disinclined to reduce his
+power to a nullity, he had yet not a strong will, and had no wish to
+involve himself in a conflict with his subjects. Accordingly, in 1841,
+he convoked a diet in each province, and proposed the appointment of
+committees from the estates, who should act as counsel to the king when
+the provincial diets were not in session. These diets in subsequent
+sessions discussed the subject of a national diet, and proposed to the
+king the execution of the order issued in 1815. At length, February 8,
+1847, he issued a royal charter, introducing, in fact, what had so often
+and so long before been promised, a constitution. The substance of the
+charter was that, as often as the Government should need to contract a
+loan, or introduce new taxes, or increase existing taxes, the diets of
+the provinces should be convoked to a national diet; that the committees
+of the provincial diets (as appointed in 1842) should be henceforth
+periodically, as one body, convoked; that to the diet, and, when it was
+not in session, to the committee, should be conveyed the right to have a
+_deciding_ voice in the above-mentioned cases. April 11, 1847, the diet
+assembled for the first time; January 17, 1848, the united committee of
+the estates.
+
+How long the nation would have remained contented with this concession
+to the request for a national representation under ordinary
+circumstances, is quite uncertain. In point of fact, this constitution
+hardly lived long enough to be christened with the name. Early in 1848
+the French Revolution startled all Europe--most of all, the monarchs.
+They knew how inflammable the masses were; they soon saw that the masses
+were inflamed, and that nothing but the most vigorous measures would
+secure their thrones from overthrow. Frederick William Was not slow to
+see the danger, and take steps to guard Prussia against an imitation of
+the Parisian insurrection. On the 14th of March he issued an order
+summoning the diet to meet at Berlin on the 27th of April. Four days
+later he issued another edict ordering the diet to convene still
+earlier, on the 2d of April. This proclamation is a characteristic
+document. It was issued on the day of the Berlin revolution. It was an
+hour of the most critical moment. There was no time for long
+deliberation, and little hope for the preservation of royalty, unless
+something decided was done at once. He might have tried the experiment
+of violently resisting the insurgents; but this was not in accordance
+with his character. He preferred rather to resign something than to run
+the risk of losing all. Accordingly he yielded. In this proclamation,
+after alluding to the occasion of it, he publishes his earnest desire
+for the union of Germany against the common danger. 'First of all,' he
+says, 'we desire that Germany be transformed from a confederation of
+states (_Staatenbund_) to one federal state (_Bundesstaat_).' He
+proposes a reorganization of the articles of union in which other
+representatives besides the princes should take part; a common army;
+freedom of trade; freedom of emigration from one state to another;
+common weights, measures, and coins; freedom of the press--in short, all
+that the most enthusiastic advocate of German unity could have asked. At
+the same time was published a law repealing the censorship of the press.
+On the 21st of the same month he put forth an address, entitled 'To my
+people and to the German nation.' In this, after saying that there was
+no security against the threatening dangers except in the closest union
+of the German princes and peoples, under one head, he adds: 'I assume
+to-day this leadership for this time of danger. My people, undismayed by
+the danger, will not abandon me, and Germany will confidingly attach
+itself to me. I have to-day adopted the old German colors, and put
+myself and my people under the venerable banner of the German Empire.
+Henceforth Prussia passes over into Germany.' But all this was more
+easily said than done. Whatever the German people may have wished, the
+other German rulers could not so easily overcome their jealousies. The
+extreme of the danger passed by, and with it this urgent demand for a
+united Germany.
+
+But the diet came together. The king laid before it the outline of a
+constitution, the most important provisions of which were that there
+should be guaranteed to all the right to hold meetings without first
+securing consent from the police; civil rights to all, irrespective of
+religious belief; a national parliament, whose assent should be
+essential to the making of all laws. These propositions were approved by
+the diet, which now advised the king to call together a national
+assembly of delegates, elected by the people, to agree with him upon a
+constitution. This was done; the assembly met on the 22d of May, and was
+opened by the king in person. He laid before the delegates the draught
+of a constitution, which they referred to a committee, by whom it was
+elaborated, and on the 26th of July reported to the assembly. The
+deliberation which followed had, by the 9th of November, resulted only
+in fixing the preamble and the first four articles. At this time an
+order came to the assembly from the king, requiring the members to
+adjourn to the 27th, and then come together, not at Berlin, but
+Brandenburg. The reason of this was that the assembly manifested too
+much of an inclination to infringe on the royal prerogatives, and that
+its place of meeting was surrounded by people who sought by threats,
+and, in some cases, by violence, to intimidate the members. The king was
+now the less inclined to be, or seem to be, controlled by such
+terrorism, as the fury of the revolutionary storm was now spent; the
+militia had been summoned to arms; and had not hesitated to obey the
+call. The troops, under the lead of Field-Marshal Wrangel, were
+collected about Berlin. The majority of the National Assembly, which had
+refused to obey the royal order to adjourn to Brandenburg, and was
+proceeding independently in the prosecution of its deliberations
+respecting the constitution, was compelled, by military force, to
+dissolve. Part of them then went to Brandenburg, and, not succeeding in
+carrying a motion to adjourn till December 4, went out in a body,
+leaving the assembly without a quorum. The king now thought himself
+justified in concluding that nothing was to be hoped from the labors of
+this body, and therefore, on the 5th of December, dissolved it.
+
+Some kings, under these circumstances, might have been inclined to have
+nothing more to do with constitution making. If we mistake not, the
+present king, with his present spirit, would have thought it right to
+make the turbulent character of the convention and of the masses a
+pretext for withholding from them the power to stamp their character on
+the national institutions. Such a course might probably have been
+pursued. The king had control of the army. The excesses of the Liberals
+began to produce a reaction. The National Assembly, during its session
+in Berlin, after it had been adjourned by the king, had resolved that
+the royal ministry had no right to impose taxes so long as the assembly
+was unable peaceably to pursue its deliberations, and designed, by
+giving this resolution the form of a law, to lead the people in this
+manner to break loose from the Government. This attempt to usurp
+authority was doomed to be disappointed. The assembly, having
+overstepped its prerogatives, lost its influence. The king found himself
+again in possession of the reins of power. It rested with him to punish
+the temerity of the people by tightening the reins, or on his own
+authority, without the coöperation of any assembly, to give the nation a
+constitution. To take the former course he had not the courage, even if
+he had wished to do so; besides, he doubtless saw clearly enough that,
+though such a policy might succeed for a time, it would ultimately lead
+to another outbreak. He had, too, no great confidence in his power to
+win toward his person the popular favor. With all his talents and
+amiable traits, he had not the princely faculty of knowing how to
+inspire the people with a sense of his excellences, and was conscious of
+this defect. He chose not unnecessarily to increase an estrangement
+which had already been to him a source of such deep mortification. He
+therefore issued, on the 5th of December, immediately after dissolving
+the National Assembly, a constitution substantially the same as that
+which still exists, with the statement prefixed that it should not go
+into operation until after being revised. This revision was to be made
+at the first session of the two chambers, to be elected in accordance
+with an election law issued on the next day.
+
+The two chambers met February 26, 1849. After a session of two months,
+during which the lower chamber showed a disposition to modify the
+constitution more than was agreeable to the king, the upper chamber was
+ordered to adjourn, the lower was dissolved, and a new election ordered.
+The new Parliament met August 7. The revision was completed on the last
+of January, 1850. On the 6th of February, the king, in the presence of
+his ministers and of both chambers, swore to observe the constitution.
+Before doing so, he made an address, in which he explained his position,
+alluding in a regretful strain to the scenes of violence in the midst of
+which the constitution had been drawn up, expressing his gratitude to
+the chambers for their assistance in perfecting the hastily executed
+work, calling upon them to stand by him in opposition to all who might
+be disposed to make the liberty granted by the king a screen for hiding
+their wicked designs against the king, and declaring: 'In Prussia, the
+king must rule; and I do not rule because it is a pleasure, God knows,
+but because it is God's ordinance; therefore, I _will reign_. A free
+people under a free king--that was my watchword ten years ago; it is the
+same to-day, and shall be the same as long as I live.' The ministers and
+the members of the two chambers, after the king had sworn to support
+the constitution, took the same oath, and in addition one of loyalty to
+the king. The new government was inaugurated. Prussia had become a
+limited monarchy.
+
+It is at this point appropriate to take a general view of the Prussian
+constitution itself. It has been variously amended since 1850, but not
+changed in any essential features; without dwelling on these amendments,
+therefore, we consider it as it now stands.
+
+As to the king: he is, as such, wholly irresponsible. He cannot be
+called to account for any act which he does in his capacity as monarch.
+But his ministers may be impeached. They have to assume and bear the
+responsibility of all royal acts. None of these acts are valid unless
+signed by one or more of the ministers. To the king is intrusted all
+executive power; the command of the army; the unconditioned right of
+appointing and dismissing his ministers, of declaring war and concluding
+peace, of conferring honors and titles, of convoking the national diet,
+closing its sessions, proroguing and dissolving it. He _must_, however,
+annually call the Houses together between November 1 and the middle of
+January, and cannot adjourn them for a longer period than thirty days,
+nor more than once during a session, except with their own consent.
+Without the assent of the diet he cannot make treaties with foreign
+countries nor rule over foreign territory. He has no independent
+legislative power, except so far as this is implied in his right to
+provide for the execution of the laws, and, when the diet is not in
+session, in case the preservation of the public safety or any uncommon
+exigency urgently demands immediate action. All such acts, however,
+must, at the next session of the Houses, be laid before them for
+approval.
+
+The ministry consists of nine members, under the presidency of the
+minister of foreign affairs; besides him are the ministers of finance,
+of war, of justice, of worship (religious, educational, and medicinal
+affairs), of the interior (police and statistical affairs), of trade and
+public works (post office, railroad affairs, etc.), of agricultural
+affairs, and of the royal house (matters relating to the private
+property of the royal family). The supervision exercised by the ministry
+over the various interests of the land is much more immediate and
+general than that of the President's cabinet in the United States. Now,
+however, their authority in these matters is of course conditioned by
+the constitution and the laws. The ministers are allowed to enter either
+House at pleasure, and must always be heard when they wish to speak. On
+the other hand, either House can demand the presence of the ministers.
+
+The legislative power is vested in the king and the two Houses of
+Parliament. The consent of all is necessary to the passing of every law.
+These Houses (at first called First and Second Chambers, now House of
+Lords and House of Delegates--_Herrenhaus_ and _Abgeordnetenhaus_) must
+both be convoked or prorogued at the same time. In general a law may be
+first proposed by the king or by either of the Houses. But financial
+laws must first be discussed by the House of Delegates; and the budget,
+as it comes from the lower to the upper House, cannot be amended by the
+latter, but must be adopted or rejected as a whole.
+
+The House of Lords is made up of various classes of persons, all
+originally designated by the king, though in the case of some the office
+is hereditary. They represent the nobility, the cities, the wealth, and
+the learning of the land. Each of the five universities furnishes a
+member. The king has the right to honor any one at pleasure, as a reward
+for distinguished services, with a seat in this body. Of course, as the
+members hold office for life, and hold their office by the royal favor,
+it may generally be expected to be a tolerably conservative body, and to
+vote in accordance with the wishes of the king.
+
+The House of Delegates consists of three hundred and fifty-two members,
+elected by the people, but not directly. They are chosen, like our
+Presidents, by electors, who are directly chosen by the people. Two
+hundred and fifty inhabitants are entitled to one elector. Every man
+from the age of twenty-five is allowed to vote unless prohibited for
+specific reasons. But strict equality in the right of suffrage is not
+granted. The voters of each district are divided into three classes, the
+first of which is made up of so many of the largest taxpayers as
+together pay a third of the taxes; the second, of so many of the next
+richest as pay another third; the last class, of the remainder. Each of
+these divisions votes separately, and each elects a third part of the
+electors. The House of Delegates is chosen once in three years, unless
+in the mean time the king dissolves it, in which case a new election
+must take place at once.
+
+As to the rights of Prussians in general, the constitution provides that
+all in the eye of the law are equal. The old distinctions of classes
+still exists: there are still nobles, with the titles prince, count, and
+baron; but the special privileges which they formerly enjoyed are not
+secured to them by the constitution. The king can honor any one with the
+rank of nobility; but the name is the most that can be conferred. In
+most cases the right of primogeniture does not prevail, so that the
+aristocracy of Prussia is of much less consequence than that of England.
+The poverty which so often results from the division of the estates of
+nobles has led to the establishment of numerous so-called
+_Fräuleinstifter_--charitable foundations for such a support of poor
+female members of noble families as becomes their rank. Many of these
+institutions were formerly nunneries. It is further provided by the
+constitution that public offices shall be open to all; that personal
+freedom and the inviolability of private property and dwellings shall be
+secured; that all shall enjoy the right of petition, perfect freedom of
+speech, the liberty of forming organizations for the accomplishment of
+any legal object; that a censorship of the press can in no case be
+exercised, and that no limitation of the freedom of the press can be
+introduced except by due process of law; that civil and political rights
+shall not be affected by religious belief, and that the right of filling
+ecclesiastical offices shall not belong to the state. Only 'in case of
+war or insurrection, and of consequent imminent danger,' has the
+Government a right to infringe on the above specified immunities of the
+citizens and the press.
+
+The foregoing is all that need be given in order to convey a general
+idea of what the Prussian constitution is. It is in its provisions so
+specific and clear, that one would hardly expect that disputes
+respecting its meaning could have reached the height of bitterness which
+has characterized discussions of its most fundamental principles. The
+explanation of this fact is to be sought in the mode of the introduction
+of the constitution itself. The English constitution has been the growth
+of centuries; the Prussian, of a day. The latter, moreover, was not,
+like ours, the fundamental law of a new nation, but a constitution
+designed to introduce a radical change in the form of a government
+which, during many centuries, had been acquiring a fixed character. It
+undertook to remodel at one stroke the whole political system. Not
+indeed as though there had been no sort of preparation for this change.
+The general advance in national culture, the general anticipation of the
+change, as well as the actual approaches toward it in the administrative
+measures of Frederick the Great and Frederick William III., paved the
+way for the introduction of a popular element in the Government.
+Nevertheless, the actual, formal introduction itself was sudden. The
+constitution was not, in the specific form which it took, the result of
+experience and experiment. And, as all history shows, attempts to fix or
+reconstruct social systems on merely theoretical principles are liable
+to fail, because they cannot foresee and provide for all the
+contingencies which may interfere with the application of the theories.
+Moreover, in the case of Prussia, as not in that of the United States,
+the constitution was not made by the people for themselves, but given to
+them by a power standing over against them. There was, therefore, not
+only a possibility, as in any case there might be, that the instrument
+could be variously interpreted on account of the different modes of
+thinking and difference of personal interests, which always affect men's
+opinions; but there was here almost a certainty that this would be the
+case on account of the gulf of separation which, in spite of all the
+bridges which often are built over it, divides a monarch, especially an
+absolute, hereditary monarch, from his subjects. In the case before us,
+it is certain that the king conceded more than he wished to concede, and
+that the people received less than they wished to receive. That they
+should agree in their understanding of the constitution is therefore not
+at all to be expected. The most that the well wishers of the land could
+have hoped was that the misunderstandings would not be radical, and that
+in the way of practical experience the defects of the constitution might
+be detected and remedied, and the mutual relations of the rulers and the
+ruled become mutually understood and peacefully acquiesced in.
+
+What the Prussian Conservatives so often insist on, viz., that a
+constitutional government should have been gradually developed, not
+suddenly substituted for a form of government radically different, is
+therefore by no means without truth. Whether we are to conclude that the
+fault has been in the process not beginning sooner, or merely in its
+being too rapid, is perhaps a question in which we and they might
+disagree. On the supposition that the present state of intelligence
+furnishes a sufficient basis for a constitutional government, it would
+seem as though the last fifty years has been a period long enough in
+which to put it into successful operation. All that the present
+generation know of politics has certainly been learned within that time:
+if the mere practical exercise of political rights is all that is needed
+in order to develop the new system, there might at least an excellent
+beginning have been made long before 1850. When we consider, therefore,
+that the Government, after taking the initiatory steps in promoting this
+development, stopped short, and rather showed a disposition to
+discourage it entirely, these clamors of the Conservatives must seem
+somewhat out of taste. To Americans especially, who can accommodate
+themselves to changes, even though they may be somewhat sudden, such
+pleas for more time and a more gradual process may appear affected, if
+not puerile. It must be remembered, however, that to a genuine German
+nothing is more precious than a process of development. Whatever is not
+the result of a due course of _Entwickelung_, is a suspicious object.
+Anything which seems to break abruptly in upon the prescribed course is
+abnormal. Whatever is produced before the embryonic process is complete
+is necessarily a monster, from which nothing good can be hoped. The same
+idea is often advanced by the Conservatives in another form. The
+Liberals, they say, are trying to break loose from _history_. A
+prominent professor, in an address before an assembly of clergymen in
+Berlin, defined the principle of democracy to be this: 'The majority is
+subject to no law but its own will; it is therefore limited by no
+historically acquired rights; history has no rights over against the
+sovereign will of the present generation.' By historically acquired
+rights is meant in particular the right of William I. to rule
+independently because his predecessors did so. By what right the great
+elector robbed the nobles of their prerogatives, and how, in case he did
+wrong in thus disregarding _their_ 'historically acquired rights,' this
+wrong itself, by being continued two hundred years, becomes, in its
+turn, an acquired right, is not explained in the address to which we
+allude. The principal fault to be found with such reasoning as this of
+the Prussian Conservatives, is that it is altogether too vague and
+abstract. There can be no development without something new; there can
+be, in social affairs, nothing new without some sort of innovation.
+Innovation, as such, can therefore not be condemned without condemning
+development. Moreover, development, as the organic growth of a political
+body, is something which takes care of itself, or rather is cared for by
+a higher wisdom than man's. To object to a proposed measure nothing more
+weighty than that it will not tend to develop the national history, has
+little meaning, and should have no force. The only question in such a
+case which men have to consider is whether the change is justified by
+the fundamental principles of right, be it that those principles have
+hitherto been observed or not.
+
+What makes the arguments of the Conservatives all the more impertinent,
+however, is the fact that the question is no longer whether the
+constitution ought to be introduced, but whether, being introduced, it
+shall be observed. This is for the stiff royalists not so pleasant a
+question. Prussia _is_ a constitutional monarchy; the king has taken an
+oath to rule in accordance with the constitution. It may be, undoubtedly
+is, true that none of the kings have wished the existence of just such a
+limit to their power; but shall they therefore try to evade the
+obligation which they have assumed? The Conservatives dare not say that
+the constitution ought to be violated, for that would look too much like
+the abandonment of their fundamental principle; they also hardly venture
+to say that they would prefer to have the king again strictly absolute,
+for that would look like favoring regression more than conservatism. Yet
+many have the conviction that an absolute monarchy would be preferable
+to the present, while the arguments of all have little force except as
+they tend to the same conclusion. The point of controversy between them
+and their opponents is often represented as being essentially this:
+Shall the king of Prussia be made as powerless as the queen of England?
+Against such a degradation of the dignity of the house of Hohenzollern
+all the convictions and prejudices of the royalists revolt. Such a
+surrender of all personal power, they say, and say truly, was not
+designed by Frederick William IV. when he gave the constitution; to ask
+the king, therefore, in all his measures to be determined by the House
+of Delegates, is an unconstitutional demand. It is specially provided
+that the _king_ shall appoint and dismiss his own ministers; to ask him,
+therefore, to remove them simply because they are unacceptable to the
+House of Delegates, is to interfere with the royal prerogatives. The
+command of the army and the declaration of war belong only to the king;
+to binder him, therefore, in his efforts to maintain the efficiency of
+the army, or in his purposes to wage war or abstain from it, is an
+overstepping of the limits prescribed to the people's representatives.
+
+We have here hinted at the principal elements in the controversy between
+the opposing political parties of Prussia. It is not our object to enter
+into the details of the various strifes which have agitated the land
+during the last sis years, but only to sketch their general character.
+The query naturally arises, when one takes a view of the whole period,
+which has elapsed since the constitution was introduced, why the contest
+did not begin sooner. The explanation is to be found in the fact that
+until the present king began to rule, the Liberals in general did not
+vote at the elections. It will be remembered that the previous king
+absolutely refused to deal with the assembly which met early in 1849 to
+consider the constitution, and ordered a new election. At this election
+the Liberals saw that, if they reflected the old members, another
+dissolution would follow, and they therefore mostly staid away from the
+polls. Afterward, when the constitution had been formally adopted, the
+Government showed a determination to put down all liberal movements;
+consequently the Liberals made no special attempts to move. The
+Parliament was conservative, and so there was no occasion for strife
+between it and the king. Not till William I. became regent in place of
+his incapacitated brother, in 1859, did the struggle begin. The policy
+of the previous prime minister Manteuffel had produced general
+discontent. The people were ready to move, if an occasion was offered.
+It is therefore not to be wondered at that, when the new sovereign
+announced his purpose to pursue a more liberal course than his brother,
+the Liberal party raised its head, and sought to make itself felt. The
+new ministry was liberal, and for a while it seemed as though a new
+order of things had begun. But this was of short duration. The House of
+Delegates, consisting in great part of Liberals (or, to speak more
+strictly, of _Fortschrittsmänner_--Progress men--_Liberal_ being the
+designation of a third party holding a middle course between the two
+extremes, a party, however, naturally tending to resolve itself into the
+others, and now nearly extinct) urged the Government to adopt its
+radical measures. The king began to fear that, if he yielded to all the
+wishes of the House, he would lose his proper dignity and authority. He
+therefore began to pursue a different policy: the more urgently the
+delegates insisted on liberal measures, the less inclined was the king
+to regard their wishes. He had wished himself to take the lead in
+inaugurating the new era; as soon as others, more ambitious, went ahead
+of him, he took the lead again, by turning around and pulling in the
+opposite direction. The principal topics on which the difference was
+most decided were the ecclesiastical and the financial relations of the
+Government. Although the constitution provides for the perfect freedom
+of the church from the state, the union still existed, and indeed still
+exists. The House of Delegates attempted to induce the Government to
+carry out this provision of the constitution. There is no doubt that the
+motive of many of these attempts to divide church and state is a
+positive hostility to Christianity. The partial success which has
+followed them, viz., the securing of charter rights for other religious
+denominations than the Evangelical Church (_i.e._, the Union Church,
+consisting of what were formerly Lutheran and Reformed churches, but in
+1817 united, and forming now together the established church), has given
+some prominence to the so-called _Freiegemeinden_, organizations of
+freethinkers, who, though so destitute of positive religious belief that
+in one case, when an attempt was made to adopt a creed, an insuperable
+obstacle was met in discussing the first article, viz., on the existence
+of God, yet meet periodically and call themselves religious
+congregations. There are, moreover, many others, regular members of the
+established church, who have no interest in religious matters, and would
+for that reason like to be freed from the fetters which now hold them.
+There are, however, many among the best and most discreet Christians
+who, for the good of the church, wish to see it weaned from the breast
+of the state. But the great majority of the clergy, especially of the
+consistories (the members of which are appointed by the Government,
+mediately, however, now, through the _Oberkirchenrath_), are decidedly
+opposed to the separation; and, as they speak for the churches, the
+provision of the constitution allowing the separation is a dead letter.
+There is no denying that, if it were now to be fully carried out, the
+consequences to the church might be, for a time at least, disastrous.
+The people have always been used to the present system; they would
+hardly know how to act on any other. Moreover, a large majority of the
+church members are destitute of active piety; to put the interests of
+religion into the hands of such men would seem to be a dangerous
+experiment. Especially is it true of the mercantile classes, of those
+who are pecuniarily best able to maintain religious institutions, that
+they are in general indifferent to religious things. This being the
+case, one cannot be surprised at the reluctance of those in
+ecclesiastical authority to desire the support of the state to be
+withdrawn. Neverheless it cannot but widen the chasm between the
+established church and the freethinkers, that the former urges upon the
+Government to continue a policy which is plainly inconsistent with the
+constitution, and that the Government yields to the urging.
+
+A more vital point in the controversy between the king and the Liberals
+was the disposition of the finances. The House of Delegates, in the
+session lasting from January 14 to March 11, 1862, insisted on a more
+minute specification than the ministry had given of the use to be made
+of the moneys to be appropriated. The king at length, wearied with their
+importunity, dissolved the House, upon which a new election followed in
+the next month. The excitement was great. The Government seems to have
+hoped for a favorable result, at least for a diminution of the Liberal
+majority. The Minister of the Interior issued a communication to all
+officials, announcing that they would be expected to vote in favor of
+the Government. A similar notification was made to the universities, but
+was protested against. Most of the consistories summoned the clergymen
+to labor to secure a vote in favor of the king. But in spite of all
+these exertions, the new House, like the other, contained an
+overwhelming majority of Progress men. At the beginning of the new
+session in May, however, both parties seemed more yielding than before.
+Attention was given less to questions of general character, more to
+matters of practical concern. But at last the schism developed itself
+again. The king had determined to reorganize and enlarge the army, to
+which end larger appropriations were needed than usual. The military
+budget put the requisite sum at 37,779,043 thalers (about twenty-five
+million dollars); the House voted 31,932,940, rejecting the proposition
+of the minister by a vote of three hundred and eight to eleven. A change
+in the ministry followed, but not a change such as would be expected in
+England--just the opposite. At the dissolution of the previous House the
+Liberal ministry had given place to a more conservative one; now this
+conservative one gave place to one still more conservative, Herr von
+Bismarck became Minister of State. The House then voted that the
+appropriations must be determined by the House, else every use made by
+the Government of the national funds would be unconstitutional. The
+king's answer to this was an order closing the session. A new session
+began early in 1863. The same controversy was renewed. The king had
+introduced his new military scheme; he had used, under the plea of stern
+necessity, money not voted by Parliament. He declared that the good of
+the country required it, and demanded anew that the House make the
+requisite appropriation. But the House was not to be moved. So far from
+wishing an increase of the military expenses, the Liberal party favored
+a reduction of the term of service from three to two years. The king
+affirmed that he knew better what the interests of the nation required,
+and, as the head of the army, he must do what his best judgment dictated
+respecting its condition. Thus the session passed without anything of
+consequence being accomplished. The House of Lords rejected the budget
+as it came from the other chamber, and the delegates would not retreat.
+Consequently another dead lock was the result. The mutual bitterness
+increased. Minister von Bismarck, a man of considerable talent, but not
+of spotless character, and exceedingly offensive in his bearing toward
+his opponents, became so odious that the delegates seemed ready to
+reject any proposition coming from him, whether good or bad. They tried
+to induce the king to remove him. But this was like the wind trying to
+blow off the traveller's coat. Instead of being moved by such
+demonstrations to dismiss the premier, the king manifested in the most
+express manner his dissatisfaction with such attempts of the House to
+interfere with his prerogatives. One might think that he had resolved to
+retain Bismarck out of pure spite, though he might personally be ever so
+much inclined to drop him. The controversy became more and more one of
+opposing wills. May 22, the House voted an address to the king, stating
+its views of the state of the country, the rights of the House, etc.,
+and expressing the conviction that this majesty had been misinformed by
+his counsellors of the true state of public feeling. The king replied to
+the address a few days later, stating that he knew what he was doing and
+what was for the good of the people; that the House was to blame for the
+fruitlessness of the session; that the House had unconstitutionally
+attempted to control him in respect to the ministry and foreign affairs;
+that he did not need to be informed by the House what public sentiment
+was, since Prussia's kings were accustomed to live among and for the
+people; and that, a further continuance of the session being manifestly
+useless, it should close on the next day. Accordingly it was closed
+without the passage of any sort of appropriation bill, and the
+Government, as before, ruled practically without a diet.
+
+We do not propose to arbitrate between the affirmations of the
+Conservatives, on the one hand, that the _animus_ of the opposition was
+a spirit of disloyalty toward the Government, an unprincipled and
+unconstitutional striving to subvert the foundations of royalty, and
+introduce a substantially democratic form of government, and the
+complaints of the opposition, on the other hand, that the ministry was
+trying to domineer over the House of Delegates, and reduce its practical
+power to a nullity. We may safely assume that there is some truth in
+both statements. Where the dispute is chiefly respecting motives, it
+must always be difficult to find the exact truth. In behalf of the
+Conservatives, however, it may be said that the Liberals have
+undoubtedly been aiming at a greater limitation of the royal power than
+the constitution was designed by its author to establish. Frederick
+William IV. proposed to rule _in connection with_ the representatives of
+the people. The idea of becoming a mere instrument for the execution of
+their wishes, was odious to him, and is odious to his successor. That
+such a reduction of the kingly office, however, is desired and designed
+by many of the Progress party, is hardly to be questioned. But, on the
+other hand, it is hard to see, in case the present policy of the
+Government is carried through, what other function the diet will
+eventually have than simply that of advising the king and acting as his
+mere instrument, whenever he lays his plans and asks for the money
+necessary for their execution. This certainly cannot accord with the
+article of the constitution which declares that the legislative power
+shall be 'jointly' (_gemeinschaftlich_) exercised by the king and the
+two Houses.
+
+It is all the less necessary to consider particularly the character of
+the measures proposed and opposed, and the personal motives of the
+prominent actors in the present strife, inasmuch as the parties
+themselves are fighting no longer respecting special, subordinate
+questions, but respecting the fundamental principle of the Government,
+the mutual relation which, under the constitution, king and people are
+to sustain to each other. From this point of view it is not difficult to
+pass judgment on the general merits of the case. If we inquire where, if
+at all, the constitution has been formally violated, there can be no
+doubt that the breach has been on the side of the Government. That the
+consent of the diet is necessary to the validity act fixing the use of
+the public moneys, is expressly stated in the constitution. That the
+Government, for a series of years, has appropriated the funds according
+to its own will, without obtaining that consent, is an undeniable matter
+of fact. It is true that the king and his ministers do not acknowledge
+that this is a violation of the constitution, claiming that the duty of
+the king to provide in cases of exigency for the maintenance of the
+public weal, authorizes him, in the exigency which the obstinacy of the
+delegates has brought about, to act on his own responsibility. The
+Government must exist, they say, and to this end money must be had; if
+the House will not grant it, we must take it. That this is a mere
+quibble, especially as the exigency can be as easily ascribed to the
+obstinacy of the king as to that of the delegates, may be affirmed by
+Liberals with perfect confidence, when, as is actually the case, all
+candid Conservatives, even those of the strictest kind, confess that
+_formally_, at least, the king has acted unconstitutionally. And, though
+in respect to the financial question, they may justify this course while
+confessing its illegality, it is not so easy to do so in reference to
+the press law made by the king four days after closing the session of
+the diet. This law established a censorship of the press, which was
+aimed especially against all attacks in the newspapers on the policy
+of the Government, the plea being that the Liberal papers were
+disturbing the public peace and exciting a democratic spirit. The
+unconstitutionality of this act was as palpable as its folly. Only in
+case of war or insurrection is any such restriction allowed at all; the
+wildest imagination could hardly have declared either war or
+insurrection to be then existing. Moreover, even in case of such an
+exigency, the king has a right to limit the freedom of the press only
+when the diet is not in session and the urgency is too great to make it
+safe to wait for it to assemble. But in this call it is manifest not
+only that the king was not anxious to have the coöperation of the
+Houses, but that he positively wished _not_ to have it. No one imagines
+that he conceived the whole idea of enacting the law _after_ he had
+prorogued the diet; certainly nothing new in the line of public danger
+had arisen in those four days to justify the measure. Besides, he knew
+that the House of Delegates would not have approved it. It was, in fact,
+directly aimed at their supporters. A plainer attack on their
+constitutional rights could hardly have been made.
+
+But the delegates were sent home, so that they were now not able to
+disturb the country by their debates. The Conservatives rejoiced in
+this, seeming to think that the only real evil under which the country
+was suffering was the 'gabbling' of the members of the diet. Moreover,
+the press law, unwise and unconstitutional as many of the Conservatives
+themselves considered and pronounced it, was in force, so that the
+editorial demagogues also were under bit and bridle. It was hoped that
+now quiet would be restored. The German diet at Frankfort-on-the-Maine
+turned public attention for a time from the more purely internal
+Prussian politics. But this was a very insufficient diversion. In fact,
+the course of William I., in utterly refusing to have anything to do
+with the proposed remodelling of the articles of confederation, the
+object of which was to effect a firmer union of the German States,
+although no Prussian had the utmost confidence in the sincerity of the
+Austrian emperor, yet ran counter to the wishes of the Liberals, and
+even of many Conservatives. The same feeling which fifty years ago gave
+rise to the _Burschenschaft_ displayed itself unmistakably in the
+enthusiasm with which Francis Joseph's invitation was welcomed by the
+Germans in general. The king of Prussia did not dare to declare against
+the proposed measure itself. Acknowledging the need of a revision of the
+articles, he yet declined to take part in the diet, simply because, as
+he said, before the princes themselves came together for so important a
+deliberation, some preliminary negotiations should have taken place.
+There is little reason to doubt, however, that his real motive was a
+fear lest, if he should commit himself to the cause of German union, he
+would seem to be working in the interests of the Liberals. For, as of
+old, so now, the most enthusiastic advocates of a consolidation of the
+German States are the most inclined to anti-monarchical principles;
+naturally enough, since a firm union of states, utterly distinct from
+each other, save as their rulers choose to unite themselves, while yet
+each ruler in his own land is independent of the others, and each has
+always reason to be jealous of the other, is an impossibility. This
+jealousy was conspicuous in the case of Prussia and Austria during the
+session of this special diet, in the summer of 1863. It was shared in
+Prussia not only by the king and his special political friends, but by
+many of the Liberals. It was perhaps in the hope that the national
+feeling had received a healthful impulse by the developments of
+Austria's ambition to obtain once more the hegemony of Germany, that the
+king soon after _dissolved_ the House of Delegates, which in June he had
+prorogued. A new election was appointed for October 20. Most strenuous
+efforts were made by the Government to secure as favorable a result as
+possible. Clergymen were enjoined by the Minister of Instruction to use
+their influence in behalf of the Government. Officials were notified
+that they would be expected to vote for Conservative candidates, a hint
+which in Prussia cannot be so lightly regarded as here, since voting
+there is done _viva voce_. But, in spite of all these exertions, the
+Progress men in the new House were as overwhelmingly in the majority as
+before. On assembling, they reelected the former president, Grabow, by a
+vote of two hundred and twenty-four to forty. And the same old strife
+began anew.
+
+So little, then, had been accomplished by attempts forcibly to put down
+the opposition party. Many newspapers had received the third and last
+warning for publishing articles of an incendiary character, though none,
+so far as we know, were actually suspended; a professor in Königsberg
+had been deposed for presiding at a meeting of Liberals; a professor in
+Berlin had been imprisoned for publishing a pamphlet against the policy
+of the Government. There were even intimations that, unless the
+opposition yielded, the king would suspend the constitution, and
+dispense entirely with the coöperation of the Parliament. But whether or
+not this was ever thought of, he showed none of this disposition at the
+opening of the session. His speech, though containing no concessions,
+was mild and conciliatory in tone. Perhaps he saw that a threatening
+course could not succeed, and was intending to pursue another. He
+declared his purpose to suggest an amendment to the constitution
+providing for such cases of disagreement between the two Houses as had
+hitherto obstructed the legislation. This was afterward done. It was
+proposed that, whenever no agreement could be secured respecting the
+appropriations, the amount should be the same as that of the foregoing
+year. This, however, was not approved by the House of Delegates. The
+same disagreement occurred as at the previous sessions, intensified now
+by the increased demands of the Government on account of the threatened
+war in Schleswig-Holstein. A loan of twelve million thalers was
+proposed; but the House refused utterly to authorize it unless it could
+be known what was the use to be made of it. This information Minister
+Bismarck would not give. The dispute grew more and more sharp. The old
+causes of discussion were increased by the fact that Prussia, in
+reference to the disputed succession in Schleswig-Holstein, set itself
+against the popular wish to have the duchy absolutely separated from
+Denmark and put under the rule of the prince of Augustenburg. In fact,
+in this particular, whatever may be thought elsewhere respecting the
+merits of the war which soon after broke out, the policy of the
+Government was nearly as odious to most Conservatives as to the
+Liberals. They said, the king should have put himself at the head of the
+national, the German demand for the permanent relief of their fellow
+Germans in Schleswig-Holstein; he should have taken the cause out of the
+sphere of party politics; thus he might have regained his popularity and
+united his people. This is quite possible; but it is certain that he did
+not take this course. He seemed to regard the movement in favor of
+Prince Frederick's claims to the duchy as a democratic movement. It was
+so called by the more violent Conservatives. The king, after failing to
+take the lead, could not now, consistently with his determination to be
+independent, fall in with the crowd; this would seem like yielding to
+pressure. Besides, he felt probably more than the Prussian people in
+general the binding force of the London treaty. Yet, as a German, he
+could not be content to ignore the claims of the German inhabitants of
+the duchy; there was, therefore, no course left but to make hostile
+demonstrations against Denmark. The pretext was not an unfair one. The
+November constitution, by which Denmark, immediately after the accession
+of the protocol prince, the present king, Christian IX., proposed to
+incorporate Schleswig, was a violation of treaty obligations. The Danish
+Government was required to retract its course. It refused, and war
+followed. What will be the result of it, what even the Prussian
+Government wishes to be the result of it, is a matter of uncertainty.
+Suspicions of a secret treaty between it and Austria find easy credence,
+according to which, as is supposed, nothing but their mutual
+aggrandizement is aimed at. Certain it is that none even of the best
+informed pretend to know definitely what is designed, nor be confident
+that the design, whatever it is, will be executed. Yet for the time a
+certain degree of enthusiasm has been of course awakened in all by the
+successful advance of Prussian troops through Schleswig, and the
+indefinite hope is cherished that somehow, even in spite of the apparent
+policy of the Government, the war will result in rescuing the duchy
+entirely from the Danish grasp. Thus, temporarily at least, the popular
+mind is again diverted from internal politics; and perhaps the
+Government was moved as much by a desire to effect this diversion as by
+any other motive. The decided schism between Prussia and Austria on the
+one hand, and the smaller German States on the other, a schism in which
+the majority of the people even in Prussia and Austria side with the
+smaller states, favors the notion that these two powers dislike heartily
+to enter into a movement whose motive and end is mainly the promotion of
+German unity at the expense of monarchical principles. For, however much
+of subtlety may be exhibited in proving that the prince of Augustenburg
+is the rightful heir to the duchy, the real source of the German
+interest in the matter is sympathy with their fellow Germans, who, as is
+not to be doubted, have been in various ways, especially in respect to
+the use of the German language in schools and churches, abused and
+irritated by the Danish Government. The death of the late king of
+Denmark was only made the occasion for seeking the desired relief.
+Fifteen years ago the same thing was done without any such occasion. But
+it would be the extreme of inconsistency for the Prussian Government to
+help directly and ostensibly a movement which, whatever name it may
+bear, is essentially a rebellion: if there are Germans in
+Schleswig-Holstein, so are there Poles in Poland.
+
+But, although, for the time being, the excitement of actual war silences
+the murmurs of the Progress party, the substantial occasion for them is
+not removed. On the contrary, there is reason to expect that the contest
+will become still more earnest. Only one turn of events can avert this:
+the separation of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark in consequence of the
+present war. If this is not the result, if nothing more is accomplished
+than the restoration of the duchy to its former condition, the king will
+lose the support of many Conservatives, and be still more bitterly
+opposed by the Liberals. In addition to this is to be considered that
+the war is carried on in spite of the refusal of the diet to authorize
+the requisite loan; that, moreover, after vainly seeking to secure this
+vote from the delegates, Minister Bismarck, in the name of the king,
+prorogued the diet on the 25th of January, 1864, telling the Delegates
+plainly that the money must be had, and accordingly that, if its use
+were not regularly authorized, it must be taken by the Government
+without such authority. His spirit may be gathered from a single remark
+among the many bitter things which he had to say in the closing days of
+the session: 'In order to gain your confidence, one must give one's self
+up to you; what then would the ministers in future be but Parliamentary
+ministers? To this condition, please God, we shall not be reduced.' The
+spirit of the delegates is expressed in the question of one of their
+number: 'Why does the Minister of State ask us to authorize the loan, if
+he has no need of our consent--if we have not the right to say _No_?'
+Brilliant successes of the Prussian arms, accomplishing substantially
+the result for which the German people are all earnestly longing, may
+restore the Government to temporary favor, and weaken the Progress
+party; otherwise, as many Conservatives themselves confess, the king
+will have paralyzed the arms of his own friends.
+
+What is to be the end of this conflict between the Prussian Government
+and the Prussian people? Without attempting to play the prophet's part,
+we close by mentioning some considerations which must be taken into
+account in forming a judgment. Although we have little doubt that the
+present policy of the Government will not be permanently adhered to, we
+do not anticipate any speedy or violent rupture. The case is in many
+respects parallel to that of the quarrel between Charles I. and his
+Parliaments; but the points of difference are sufficient to warrant the
+expectation of a somewhat different result. Especially these: Charles
+had no army of such size and efficiency that he could bid defiance to
+the demands of his Parliament; on the contrary, the Prussian army is, in
+times of peace, two hundred thousand strong, and can, in case of need,
+be at once trebled; moreover, soldiers must take an oath of allegiance
+to the king, not, however, to the constitution. Of this army the king is
+the head, and with it under his control he can feel tolerably secure
+against the danger of a popular outbreak. Again, the English
+revolutionists had little to fear from Continental interference;
+Prussia, on the contrary, is so situated that a revolution there could
+hardly fail to provoke neighboring monarchies to assist in putting it
+down. There is no such oppression weighing the people down that they
+would be willing to run this risk in an attempt to remove it. Again, the
+Liberals hope, and not without reason, that they will eventually secure
+what they wish by peaceable means. There is little doubt that, if they
+pursue a moderate course, neither resorting to violence nor threatening
+to do so, themselves avoiding all violations of the constitution, while
+compelling the Government, in case it will not yield, to commit such
+violations openly, their cause will gradually grow so strong that the
+king will ultimately see the hopelessness of longer resisting it. Or,
+once more, even if the present king, whose self-will is such that he may
+possibly persevere in his present course through his reign, does not
+yield, it is understood that the heir apparent is inclined to adopt a
+more liberal policy whenever he ascends the throne, an event which
+cannot be very long distant. Were he supposed fully to sympathize with
+his father, the danger of a violent solution of the difficulty would be
+greater. But, as the case stands, it may not be considered strange if
+the conflict lasts several years longer without undergoing any essential
+modification.
+
+There is no prospect that the dissension will be ended by mutual
+concessions. This might be done, if mutual confidence existed between
+the contending parties; but of such confidence there is a total lack. So
+great is the estrangement that the original occasion of it is lost sight
+of. Neither party cares so much about securing the success of its
+favorite measures as about defeating the measures of its opponent.
+Either the possibility of such a relation of the king to the Parliament
+was not entertained when the constitution was drawn up, or it is a great
+deficiency that no provision was made for it; or (as we should prefer to
+say) the difficulty may have been foreseen and yet no provision have
+been made for it, simply because none could have been made consistently
+with Frederick William IV.'s maxim, 'A free people under a free king'--a
+maxim which sounds well, but which, when the people are bent on going in
+one way and the king in another, is difficult to reconcile with the
+requirement of the constitution that both must go in the same way. In a
+republic, where the legislature and chief magistrate are both chosen
+representatives of one people, no protracted disagreement between them
+is possible. In a monarchy where a ministry, which has lost the
+confidence of the legislature, resigns its place to another, the danger
+is hardly greater. But in a monarchy whose constitution provides that
+king and people shall rule jointly, yet both act freely and
+independently, nothing but the most paradisiacal state of humanity could
+secure mutual satisfaction and continued harmony. Prussia is now
+demonstrating to the world that, if the people of a nation are to have
+in the national legislation anything more than an advisory power, they
+must have a determining power. To say that the king shall have the
+unrestricted right of declaring and making war, and at the same time
+that no money can be used without the free consent of Parliament, is
+almost fit to be called an Irish bull. Such mutual freedom is impossible
+except when king and Parliament perfectly agree in reference to the war
+itself. But, if this agreement exists, there is either no need of a
+Parliament or no need of a king. It makes little difference how the
+constitution is worded in this particular, nor even what was intended by
+the author of this provision. What is in itself an intrinsic
+contradiction cannot be carried out in practice. Whether any formal
+change is made in the constitution or not, a different mode of
+interpreting it, a different conception of the relation of monarch to
+subject, must become current, if the constitution is to be a working
+instrument. Prussia must become again practically an absolute monarchy
+or a constitutional monarchy like England. Nor is there much doubt which
+of these possibilities will be realized. And not the least among the
+causes which will hasten the final triumph of Liberalism there, is the
+exhibition of the strength of republicanism here, while undergoing its
+present trial. When one observes how many of the more violent Prussian
+Conservatives openly sympathize with the rebels, and most of the others
+fail to do so only because they dislike slavery; when one sees, on the
+other hand, how anxiously the Prussian Liberals are waiting and hoping
+for the complete demonstration of the ability of our Government to
+outride the storm which has threatened its destruction, the cause in
+which we are engaged becomes invested with a new sacredness. Our success
+will not only secure the blessings of a free Government to the
+succeeding generations of this land, but will give a stimulus to free
+principles in every part of the globe. If 'Freedom shrieked when
+Kosciuszko fell' at the hands of despotism, a longer and sadder wail
+would mark the fall of American republicanism, wounded and slain in the
+house of its friends.
+
+
+
+
+'YE KNOW NOT WHAT YE ASK.'
+
+
+  One morn in spring, when earth lay robed
+    In resurrection bloom,
+  I turned away my tear-veiled eyes,
+    Feeling the glow but gloom,
+  And asked my God one boon I craved,
+    Or earth were living tomb.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  One autumn morn, when all the world
+    In ripened glory lay,
+  I turned to God my shining eyes,
+    And praised Him for that day,
+  When asking _curses_ with my lips,
+    He turned His ear away.
+
+
+
+
+COMING UP AT SHILOH.
+
+
+The rain, which had been falling steadily since shortly after midnight,
+ceased at daybreak. The morning dawned slowly and moodily, above the
+wooded hilltops that rose steeply from the farther bank of the creek
+close by, right over against the cornfield, in which, on the preceding
+evening, we had comfortably pitched our camp. The bugle wound an early
+reveille; then came the call to strike tents, though one half of the
+brigade was yet busy in hurried preparations for breakfast, and
+presently the assembly sounded. We were on the march again by the time
+the sun would have liked to greet us with his broad, level-thrown smile
+for 'good morning,' if the sky had been clear and open enough, instead
+of covered, as it was on this damp, chilly April morning, with dull,
+sullen masses of cloud that seemed still nursing their ill humor and
+bent on having another outbreak. The road was heavy; an old, worn
+stage-coach road, of a slippery, treacherous clay, which the trampings
+of our advanced regiments speedily kneaded into a tough, stiff dough,
+forming a track that was enough to try the wind and bottom of the best.
+For some miles, too, the route was otherwise a difficult one--hilly, and
+leading by two or three tedious crossings in single file over fords,
+where now were rushing turbid, swollen streams, gorging and overflowing
+their banks everywhere in the channels, which nine months out of the
+twelve give passage to innocent brooklets only, that the natives of
+these parts may cross barefoot without wetting an ankle. Spite of these
+drawbacks, the men were in fine spirits; for this was the end of our
+weary march from Nashville, and we were sure now of a few days' rest and
+quiet.
+
+A few minutes after midday we reached Savannah, and were ordered at once
+into camp. By this time the sky had cleared, the sun was shining
+brightly, though, as it seemed, with an effort; the wind, which had been
+freshening ever since morning, was blowing strong and settled from out
+the blue west, and the earth was drying rapidly. The Sixth Ohio and a
+comrade regiment of the Tenth Brigade pitched their tents in an old and
+well-cleared camping ground, on a gently sloping rise looking toward the
+town from the southeastward; a little too far from the river to quite
+take in, in its prospect, the landing with its flotilla of transports
+and the gunboats which they told us were lying there, yet not so far but
+we could easily discern the smoke floating up black and dense from the
+boats' chimney stacks, and hear the long-drawn, labored puffs of the
+escape pipes, and the shrill signals of the steam whistles. Altogether
+our camping ground was eligible, dry, and pleasant.
+
+It was on Saturday, the fifth day of April, 1862, that the Fourth
+division, being the advance corps of the Army of the Ohio, came thus to
+Savannah, and so was brought within actual supporting distance of the
+forces under General Grant at Pittsburg Landing, twelve miles up the
+farther bank of the Tennessee. General Crittenden's division encamped
+that evening three hours' march behind us. Still farther in the rear
+were coming in succession the divisions of McCook, Wood, and Thomas. It
+was well that such reënforcements were at hand; otherwise, unless we
+disregarded the best-established laws of probabilities in deciding the
+question, the Army of the Tennessee was even then a doomed one, and the
+story of Shiloh must have gone to the world a sad, tragic tale of the
+most crushing defeat which had ever fallen upon an army since the days
+of Waterloo. No mean service, then, was rendered the national cause, and
+all which that cause will stand out as the embodiment of, in all the
+ages to come, when Shiloh was saved, and Treason was forced to turn,
+faint, and stagger away from the field to which it had rushed with a
+fiend's exultant eagerness, having there met only its own discomture.
+The meed due for that service is a coronal of glory, that may never,
+probably, be claimed as the desert of any _one_ individual exclusively;
+nor is it likely that the epitaph, enchiselled upon whose tombstone
+soever it might be, 'Here lies the saviour of Shiloh,' would pass one
+hour unchallenged. Yet impartial history can scarcely be at fault in
+recognizing as preëminent the part taken by one officer, in the events,
+whose results, at least, permit so much of eulogy to be written, with
+other significance than merely that of a wretched burlesque. That
+officer was General Nelson, the commander of our own division.
+Iron-nerved, indomitable, willfull, disdainful of pleasing with studied
+phrase of unmeant compliment, but with a great, manly heart beating
+strong in his bosom, and a nature grandly earnest, brave, and true--with
+the very foremost of Kentucky's loyal sons will ever stand the name of
+General William Nelson.
+
+Our column had marched from Nashville out on the Franklin turnpike,
+nearly three weeks previous. General McCook, as the senior divisional
+commander, had claimed the advance, and had held it in our march through
+that beautiful, cultivated garden spot of Middle Tennessee, as far as
+Columbia, a distance of nearly fifty miles. Here the turnpike and the
+railroad bridges over Duck river had both been destroyed by the rebels
+in their forlorn retreat from the northward. To replace the former even
+with a tottering wooden structure, was a work of time and labor.
+Meanwhile the army waited wearily, General Nelson chafed at the delay,
+and the rebel leaders Beauregard and Sidney Johnston were concentrating
+their forces at Corinth with ominous celerity. It was their purpose to
+crush, at one blow, so suddenly and so surely dealt that succor should
+be impossible, the National army, which had established itself on the
+borders of one of the southernmost States of the Confederacy, and was
+menacing lines of communication of prime necessity to their maintenance
+of the defensive line within which those commanders had withdrawn their
+discomfited armies. At length, one evening, on dress parade, there were
+read 'General orders, headquarters Fourth division,' for a march at
+daylight the next morning. Some days would yet be required to complete
+the bridge, but permission had been wrung from the 'commanding general'
+to cross the river by fording, and comically minute the detailed
+instructions of that order were for accomplishing the feat.
+
+So on Saturday, the twenty-ninth of March, we passed over Duck river.
+Other divisions immediately followed. By his importunity and
+characteristic energy, General Nelson had thus secured for us the
+advance for the seventy-five miles that remained of the march, and,
+incalculably more than this, had gained days of precious time for the
+entire army. How many hours later the Army of the Ohio might have
+appeared at Shiloh in season to stay the tide of disaster and rescue the
+field at last, let those tell who can recall the scenes of that awful
+Sabbath day there on the banks of the Tennessee.
+
+General Grant had established his headquarters at Savannah, and there
+immediately upon our arrival our commander reported his division. Long
+before night, camp rumors had complacently decided our disposition for
+the present. Three days at Savannah to allow the other corps of our army
+to come up with us, and then, by one more easy stage, we could all move
+together up to Pittsburg Landing, and take position beside the Army of
+the Tennessee. It was a very comfortable programme, and not the least of
+its recommendations was the earnest of its faithful carrying out, which
+appeared in the unusual regard to mathematical precision that our
+officers had shown in 'laying off camp,' and the painstaking care they
+had required on our part in establishing it.
+
+There was but an inconsiderable force here, composed for the most part
+of new troops from two or three States of the Northwest. I remember,
+especially, one regiment from Wisconsin, made up of great, brawny,
+awkward fellows--backwoodsmen and lumbermen chiefly--who followed us to
+Shiloh on the next evening, and through the whole of Monday fought and
+suffered like heroes, as they were. Our first inquiries, quite
+naturally, were concerning our comrade army, and the enemy confronting
+it at Corinth. Varied and incongruous enough was the information that we
+gleaned, and in some details requiring a simple credulity that nine
+months of active campaigning had quite jostled and worried out of us. It
+seemed settled, however, that our comrades up the river were a host
+formidable in numbers and of magnificent armament and _material_;
+altogether very well able to take care of themselves, at least until we
+could join them at our leisure.
+
+There were some things which, if we had more carefully considered them,
+might, perhaps, have abated somewhat this pleasant conviction of
+security. The enemy had lately grown wonderfully bold and
+venturesome--skirmishing with picket outposts, bullying reconnoitring
+parties, and picking quarrels upon unconscionably slight provocation
+almost daily. He had even challenged our gunboats, disputing the passage
+up the river in an artillery duello at the Bluffs, not far above the
+Landing, whose hoarse, sullen rumbling had reached us where we were
+resting on that Thursday afternoon, at the distance of thirty miles back
+toward Nashville. But, then, on how few fields had Southern chivalry
+ever yet ventured to attack; how seldom, but when fairly cornered, had
+its champions deemed discretion _not_ the better part of valor! What
+other possibility was there which was not more likely to become an
+actuality than that the enemy would here dare to assume the aggressive?
+Who that had the least regard for the dramatic proprieties, could ever
+assign to him any other part in the tragedy than one whose featliest
+display of skill and dexterity should be exhibited in executing the
+movements of guard and parry, and whose noblest performance should be to
+stand at bay, resolutely contending upon a hopeless field to meet a
+Spartan death? So we cast aside all serious thought of immediate danger
+at Pittsburg Landing, the sanguine temperaments pronouncing these
+demonstrations of a foe who had shown our army only his heels all the
+way from Bowling Green and Fort Donelson, really diverting from their
+very audacity.
+
+At sunset, the Sixth held dress parade--the first since our march from
+Columbia; but I, on duty that day as one of the 'reserve guard,' was
+merely a looker-on. I was never prouder of the old regiment; it went
+through with the manual of arms so well--and then there were so many
+spectators present from other regiments. Orders were given to prepare
+for a thorough inspection of arms and equipments at ten o'clock on the
+next morning, then parade was dismissed, and so the day ended. The wind
+died away, and the night deepened, cool, tranquil, starlit, on a camp of
+weary soldiery, where contentment and good will ruled for the hour over
+all.
+
+Beautifully clear and calm the Sabbath morning dawned, April 6th, 1862;
+rather chilly, indeed, for it was yet in the budding time of spring. But
+the sky was so blue and cloudless, the air so still, and all nature lay
+smiling so serene and fair in the glad sunshine--it was a day such as
+that whereon the Creator may have looked upon the new-born earth, and
+'saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good;' a day
+as if chosen from all its fellows and consecrated to a hallowed quiet,
+the blessedness of prayer and thanksgiving, praise and worship.
+
+Hardly a man in our division, I believe, but awoke that morning with a
+happy consciousness of long hours that this day were to be his own, and
+a clear idea of just how he should improve them. My programme was the
+general one, and simple enough it was. First, of course, to make ready
+for inspection, and, that ceremony well gotten through with, to enact
+the familiar performance of every man his own washerwoman and
+seamstress: the remainder of the day should be devoted to the soldier's
+sacred delight of correspondence--to completing a letter to Wynne, begun
+back at Columbia, and writing home. Out by the smouldering fire, where
+the cooks of our mess had prepared breakfast nearly two hours before, I
+was busily at work furbishing with the new dust-fine ashes the brasses
+of my accoutrements, when the boom of cannon burst on the air, rolling
+heavily from away to the southward up from what we knew must be the
+neighborhood of the camps at Pittsburg Landing. It was after seven
+o'clock. The sun was mounting over the scrubby oak copse behind our
+camp, and the day grew warm apace. Another and still another explosion
+followed in quick succession.
+
+What could it mean? Only the gunboats, some suggested, shelling
+guerillas out of the woods somewhere along the river bank. Impossible;
+too near, too far to the right, for that. It could hardly be artillery
+practice merely; for to-day was the Sabbath. And the youngest soldier
+among us knew better than to give those rapid, furious volleys the
+interpretation of a formal military salute. Could it really be--battle?
+
+Every man almost was out and listening intently. Louder and fiercer the
+reports came, though still irregular. Now and then, in the intervals, a
+low, quick crepitation reached us, an undertone that no soldier could
+fail to recognize as distant musketry. Ominous sounds they were,
+portending--what? What, indeed, if not actual battle? If a battle, then
+certainly an attack by the enemy. Were our comrades up at the Landing
+prepared for it?
+
+The first cannon had been fired scarcely ten minutes, when General
+Nelson rode by toward headquarters, down in the busiest part of the
+town, aides and orderlies following upon the gallop. Presently came
+orders:
+
+'Three days' rations in haversacks, strike tents, and pack up. Be ready
+to move at a moment's notice. They are fighting up at the Landing.'
+
+There was no need for further urging. By ten o'clock every disposition
+for the march had been completed. Nearly three long hours more we waited
+with feverish anxiety for the final command to start, while the roar of
+that deathly strife fell distantly upon our ears almost without
+intermission, and a hundred wild rumors swept through the camp. General
+Grant had gone up the river on a gunboat soon after the cannonading
+began. It was not long after midday when we struck tents, were furnished
+with a new supply of cartridges and caps for our Enfields, and waited
+several minutes longer. At length, however, the column formed, and,
+though still without orders, except those which its immediate commander
+had assumed the responsibility to give, the Fourth division was on the
+march for Shiloh. The Tenth brigade had, as usual, the advance, and, in
+our regular turn, the Sixth came the third regiment in the column. We
+had just cleared the camping grounds, I well remember, when General
+Nelson rode leisurely down the line, his eye taking note with the quiet
+glance of the real soldier of every minutia of equipments and appearance
+generally. Some natures seem to find in antagonism and conflict their
+native element, their chief good--yet more, almost as much a necessity
+of their moral organism as to their animal being is the air they
+breathe. Such a nature was Nelson's. His face to-day wore that
+characteristic expression by which every man of his command learned to
+graduate his expectation of an action; it was the very picture of
+satisfaction and good humor. He wheeled his horse half around as the
+rear of our brigade passed him, and a blander tone of command I never
+heard than when, in his rapid, authoritative manner, he rang out:
+
+'Now, gentlemen, keep the column well closed up!' and passed on toward
+the next brigade.
+
+Gentlemen! how oddly the title comes to sound in the ears of a soldier!
+
+From Savannah to the Tennessee, directly opposite Pittsburg Landing, is,
+by the course we took, perhaps ten miles. The route was only a narrow
+wagon-path through the woods and bottoms bordering the river, and the
+wisdom was soon apparent which had beforehand secured the services of a
+native as guide. Most of the latter half of the distance was through a
+low, slimy swamp land, giving rank growth to an almost continuous forest
+of sycamore, cottonwood, and other trees which love a damp, alluvial
+soil, whose massive trunks were yet foul and unsightly with filth and
+scum deposited by the receding waters at the subsidence of the river's
+great spring freshet a month before. Stagnant ponds and mimic lagoons
+lay all about us and in our very pathway, some of the deeper ones,
+however, rudely bridged. Very rapid progress was impossible. It had
+already been found necessary to send our artillery back to Savannah,
+whence it would have to be brought up on the transports. The afternoon
+wore on, warm and sultry, and the atmosphere in those dank woods felt
+close, aguish, and unwholesome. Not a breath of air stirred to refresh
+the heated forms winding in long, continuous line along the dark boles
+of the trees, through whose branches and leafless twigs the sunlight
+streamed in little broken gleams of yellow brightness, and made a
+curious checkerwork of sheen and shadow on all beneath. Burdened as we
+were with knapsacks and twenty extra rounds of ammunition, the march
+grew more and more laborious. But the noise of battle was sharpening
+more significantly every few minutes now, and the men pushed forward. It
+was no child's game going on ahead of us. We _might_ be needed.
+
+We _were_ needed. A loud, tumultuous cheer from the Thirty-sixth Indiana
+came surging down through the ranks of the Twenty-fourth Ohio to our own
+regiment, and away back beyond to the Twenty-second and Nineteenth
+brigades in the rear. 'Forward!' and we were off on the double quick.
+General Nelson was at the head of the column; there a courier had met
+him--so at least runs the tradition--with urgent orders to hasten up the
+reënforcements: the enemy were pressing hard for the Landing. Unmindful
+of all impediments--trees and fallen logs, shallow ponds and slippery
+mire shoetop deep; now again moderating our pace to the route step to
+recover breath and strength; even halting impatiently for a few minutes
+now and then, while the advance cleared itself from some entanglement of
+the way--so the remainder of our march continued. It seemed a long way
+to the Landing, the battle dinning on our ears at every step. At length
+it sounded directly ahead of us, close at hand; and looking forward out
+through the treetops, a good eye could easily discover a dark cloud of
+smoke hanging low in mid air, as though it sought to hide from the light
+of heaven the deeds that were being done beneath it. Suddenly we
+debouched into a level cornfield, extending quite to the river's verge.
+The clearing was not a wide one, and the farther bank of the Tennessee
+was in plain sight--the landings, the bluff, and the woods above
+stretching away out and back beyond.
+
+What a panorama! The river directly before us was hidden by a narrow
+belt of chaparral and the drift that had lodged along the banks, but the
+smoke stacks of three or four transports were visible above the weed
+stalks and bushes, and the course of one or two more could be traced by
+a distant, trailing line of smoke as they steamed down toward Savannah.
+The opposite bank rises from the river a steep acclivity, perhaps a
+hundred and fifty feet in perpendicular height, down whose sides of
+brownish yellow clay narrow roadways showed out to the landings below.
+Cresting the bluff, woods overlooked the whole, and shut in the scene
+far as the eye could follow the windings of the Tennessee. In their
+depths, the battle was raging with unabated fury. A short distance up
+the river, though completely hidden from view by an intervening bend,
+the gunboats were at work, and even our unpractised ears could easily
+distinguish the heavy boom of their great thirty-two pounders in the
+midst of all that blaze of battle and the storm of artillery explosions.
+Glorious old Tyler and Lexington! primitive, ungainly, weather-beaten,
+wooden craft, but the salvation, in this crisis hour of the fight, of
+our out-numbered and wellnigh borne-down left. A signal party, stationed
+a little above the upper landing and halfway up the bluff, was
+communicating in the mystic language of the code with another upon our
+side the river. What messages were those little party-colored flags
+exchanging, with their curious devices of stripes and squares and
+triangles, their combinations and figures in numberless variety, as they
+were waved up and down and to and fro in rapid, ever-shifting pantomime?
+The steep bank was covered with a swaying, restless mass of
+blue-uniformed men, too distant to be distinctly discriminated, yet
+certainly numbering thousands. 'Reserves!' a dozen voices cried at once,
+and the next moment came the wonder that our march had been so hurried,
+when whole brigades, as it seemed, could thus be held in idle waiting.
+We were soon undeceived.
+
+Out into the cornfield filed the column, up the river, and nearly
+parallel to it, halting a little below the upper one of the two
+principal landings. Here there was a further delaying for ferriage.
+
+'Stack arms; every man fill his canteen, then come right back to the
+ranks!'
+
+Not to the Tennessee for water--there was no time to go so far--but
+close at hand, at a pond, or little bayou of the river; and, returning
+to the line of stacks, a few more long, unquiet minutes in waiting,
+speculation, and eager gazing toward the battle. And then we saw what
+was that dark, turbulent multitude over the river: oh, shame! a confused
+rabble, composed chiefly of men whose places were rightly on the field,
+but who had turned and fled away from the fight to seek safety under the
+coverture of that bluff.
+
+Forward again, and the regiment moved, with frequent little aggravating
+halts, up to the point on the river where the Thirty-sixth Indiana had
+already embarked, and were now being ferried over. The Twenty-fourth
+Ohio crossed at the lower landing. There were a number of country folk
+here, clad in the coarse, rusty homespun common in the South, whose
+intense anxiety to see every movement visible on the farther side of the
+river kept them unquietly shifting their positions continually. One of
+these worthies was hailed from our company:
+
+'Say, old fellow! how's the fight going on over there?'
+
+He was an old and somewhat diminutive specimen, grizzle haired, and
+stoop shouldered, but yellow and withered from the effects of sun and
+tobacco rather than the burden of years. For a moment he hesitated, as
+though guarding his reply, and then, with a sidelong glance of the eyes,
+answered slowly:
+
+'Well, it aren't hardly decided yet, I reckon; but they're a drivin'
+your folks--some.'
+
+Evidently he believed that our army had been badly beaten. The emphatic
+rejoinder, 'D--d old secesh!' was the sole thanks his information
+brought him: the characterization, aside from the accented epithet, was
+doubtless a just one, but for all that his words were in no wise
+encouraging.
+
+A minute later we passed a sergeant, whose uniform and bright-red
+chevrons showed that he was attached to some volunteer battery. He was
+mounted upon a large, powerful horse, and seemed a man of considerable
+ability.
+
+'Do the rebels fight well over there?' demanded a voice from the column
+a half dozen files ahead of me.
+
+'Guess they do! Anyway, _fit_ well enough to take our battery from
+us--every gun, and some of the caissons.'
+
+Another soldier met us, unencumbered with blouse or coat of any kind,
+his accoutrements well adjusted over his gray flannel shirt, and his
+rifle sloped carelessly back over his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot,
+and his face, all begrimed with smoke and gunpowder, wore an expression
+haggard, gaunt, and very weary. He was a sharpshooter, he told us,
+belonging to some Missouri regiment, and had been out skirmishing almost
+ever since daylight, with not a mouthful to eat since the evening
+before. His cartridges--and he showed us his empty cartridge-box--had
+given out the second time, and he was 'used up.' In his hat and clothes
+were several bullet holes; but he had been hit but once, he said, and
+then by only a spent buckshot.
+
+'Boys, I'm glad you're come,' he said. 'It's a fact, they _have_ whipped
+us so far; but I guess we've got 'em all right _now_. How many of
+Buell's army can come up to-night?'
+
+A hurried, many-voiced reply, and hastening on past a heterogeneous
+collection of soldiery--couriers, cavalry-men, malingerers, stragglers,
+a few of the slightly wounded, and camp followers of all sorts--we
+quickly reached the river's brink. The boat was lying close below.
+Twenty feet down the crumbling bank, slipping, or swinging down by the
+roots and twigs of friendly bushes, the regiment lost but little time in
+embarking. The horses of our field officers were somehow got on board,
+and, with crowded decks, the little steamer headed for the landing right
+over against us. Two or three boats were there hugging the shore, quiet
+and motionless, and there were still more at the lower landing. One or
+two of these the deck hands pointed out to us as magazine boats,
+freighted with precious stores of ammunition, and the remainder were
+now, of necessity, being used as hospital boats. The wounded had quite
+filled these latter, and several hundred more of the day's victims had
+already been sent down the river to Savannah. One of the gunboats, fresh
+from its glorious work up beyond the bend, shortly came in sight, moving
+slowly down stream, as though reconnoitring the bank for some inlet up
+which its crashing broadsides could be poured with deadliest effect, if
+the enemy should again appear in sight.
+
+An informal command to land was given us presently, but many had already
+anticipated it. How terribly significant becomes the simple mechanism of
+loading a rifle when one knows that it is at once the earnest of deadly
+battle and the preparation for it! The few details which we could gather
+from the deck hands concerning the fight were meagre and unsatisfactory.
+They told us of disaster that befell our army in the morning, and which
+it seemed very doubtful if the afternoon had yet seen remedied; and
+their testimony was borne out by evidences to which our own unwilling
+senses were the sufficient witnesses. The roar of battle sounded
+appallingly near, and two or three of our guns were in vigorous play
+upon the enemy so close on the crest of the bluff that every flash could
+be seen distinctly. Several shells from the enemy's artillery swept by,
+cleaving the air many feet above us with that peculiar, fierce, rushing
+noise, which no one, I believe, can hear for the first time without a
+quickened beating of the heart and an instinctive impulse of dismay and
+awe.
+
+At the landing--but how shall I attempt, in words only, to set that
+picture forth? The next day's fight was my first experience in actual
+battle, except so much of bushwacking as five months in Western Virginia
+had brought us, but those hours have no such place in my memory as have
+the scenes and sounds of this evening at the landing. I have never yet
+seen told in print the half of that sad, sickening story. Wagons, teams,
+and led horses, quartermaster's stores of every description, bales of
+forage, caissons--all the paraphernalia of a magnificently appointed
+army--were scattered in promiscuous disorder along the bluff-side. Over
+and all about the fragmentary heaps thousands of panic-stricken wretches
+swarmed from the river's edge far up toward the top of the steep; a mob
+in uniform, wherein all arms of the service and wellnigh every
+grade--for even gilt shoulder-straps and scarlet sashes did not lack a
+shameful representation there--were commingled in utter, distracted
+confusion; a heaving, surging herd of humanity, smitten with a very
+frenzy of fright and despair, every sense of manly pride, of honor, and
+duty, completely paralyzed, and dead to every feeling save the most
+abject, pitiful terror. A number of officers could be distinguished amid
+the tumult, performing, with violent gesticulations, the pantomimic
+accompaniments of shouting incoherent commands, mingled with threats and
+entreaties. There was a little drummer boy, I remember, too, standing in
+his shirt sleeves and pounding his drum furiously, though to what
+purpose we could none of us divine. Men were there in every stage of
+partial uniform and equipment; many were hatless and coatless, and few
+still retained their muskets and their accoutrements complete. Some
+stood wringing their hands, and rending the air with their cries and
+lamentations, while others, in the dumb agony of fear, cowered behind
+the object that was nearest them in the direction of the enemy, though
+but the crouching form of a comrade. Terror had concentrated every
+faculty upon two ideas, and all else seemed forgotten: danger and death
+were behind and pressing close upon them; on the other side of the
+river, whither their eyes were turned imploringly, there was the hope of
+escape and an opportunity for further flight.
+
+Meanwhile, louder than all the din and clamor else, swelled the roar of
+cannon and the sharp, continuous rattle of musketry up in the woods
+above. There, other thousands of our comrades--many thousands more they
+were, thank God!--were maintaining an unequal struggle, in which to
+further yield, they knew, would be their inevitable destruction. Brave,
+gallant fellows! more illustrious record than they made who here stood
+and fought through all these terrible Sabbath hours need no soldier
+crave. There has been a noble redemption, too, of the disgrace which
+Shiloh fastened on those poor, trembling fugitives by the riverside.
+That disgrace was not an enduring one. On many a red and stubborn battle
+field those same men have proudly vindicated their real manhood, and in
+maturer military experience have fought their way to a renown abundantly
+enough, and more than enough, to cover the derelictions of raw,
+untrained, and not too skilfully directed soldiery.
+
+There was a rush for the boat when we neared the landing, and some,
+wading out breast deep into the stream, were kept off only at the point
+of the bayonet. Close by the water's edge grew a clump of sycamores. Up
+into one of these and far out on a projecting limb, one scared wretch
+had climbed, and, as the boat rounded to, poised himself for a leap upon
+the hurricane deck; but the venture seemed too perilous, and he was
+forced to give it up in despair. The plank was quickly thrown out,
+guards were stationed to keep the passage clear, and we ran ashore.
+Until now there had been few demonstrations of enthusiasm, but here an
+eager outburst of shouts and cheers broke forth that wellnigh drowned
+the thunderings of battle. The regiment did not wait to form on the
+beach, the men, as they debarked, rushing up the bank by one of the
+winding roadways. The gaping crowd parted right and left, and poured
+upon us at every step a torrent of queries and ejaculations. 'It's no
+use;' 'gone up;' 'cut all to pieces;' 'the last man left in my
+company;'--so, on all sides, smote upon our ears the tidings of ill.
+Fewer, but cheery and reassuring, were the welcomes: 'Glad you've come;'
+'good for you;' 'go in, boys;' 'give it to 'em, Buckeyes'--which came to
+us in manly tones, now and then from the lines as we passed.
+
+We gained the summit of the bluff. A few hundred yards ahead they were
+fighting; we could hear the cheering plainly, and the woods echoed our
+own in response. The Thirty-sixth Indiana had already been pushed
+forward toward the extreme left of our line, and were even now in
+action. General Nelson had crossed half an hour earlier. The junior
+member of his staff had had a saddle shot from under him by a chance
+shell from the enemy, to the serious detriment of a fine dress coat, but
+he himself marvellously escaping untouched. Two field pieces were at
+work close upon our left, firing directly over the heads of our men in
+front; only a random firing at best, and I was glad when an aide-de-camp
+galloped down and put a stop to the infernal din. Amid this scene of
+indescribable excitement and confusion, the regiment rapidly formed. Our
+knapsacks--were we going into action with their encumbrance? The order
+was shouted to unsling and pile them in the rear, one man from each
+company being detailed to guard them. It was scarcely more than a
+minute's work, and we formed again. A great Valkyrian chorus of shouts
+swelled out suddenly along the line, and, looking up, I saw General
+Nelson sitting on his big bay in front of the colors, his hat lifted
+from his brow, and his features all aglow with an expression of
+satisfaction and indomitable purpose. He was speaking, but Company B was
+on the left of the regiment, and, in the midst of the storms of huzzas
+pealing on every side, I could not catch a single word. Then I heard the
+commands, 'Fix bayonets! trail arms! forward!' and at the double-quick
+we swept on, up through the stumps and underbrush which abounded in this
+part of the wood, to the support of the Thirty-sixth Indiana. A few
+score rods were gained, and we halted to recover breath and perfect
+another allignment. The firing in our front materially slackened, and
+presently we learned that the last infuriate charge of the enemy upon
+our left had been beaten back. We could rest where we lay, 'until
+further orders.' The sun sank behind the rise off to our right, a broad,
+murky red disk, in a dense, leaden-hued haze; such a sunset as in
+springtime is a certain betokening of rain. By this time cannonading had
+entirely ceased, and likewise all musketry, save only a feeble, dropping
+fire upon our right. Those sounds shortly died away, and the battle for
+this day was over. Night fell and spread its funereal pall over a field
+on which, almost without cessation since the dawn of daylight, had raged
+a conflict which, for its desperation and carnage, had yet had no
+parallel in American history.
+
+On that field, freely and generously had been poured of the nation's
+best blood, and many a nameless hero had sealed with his life a sublime
+devotion far surpassing the noblest essay of eulogy and all the
+extolments which rhetoric may recount. Thank God, those sacrifices had
+not been wholly fruitless! The Army of the Tennessee, although at most
+precious cost, had succeeded in staying those living waves of Southern
+treason until the Army of the Ohio could come up, and Shiloh was saved.
+The next day saw those waves rolled back in a broken, crimson current,
+whose ebb ceased only when the humiliated enemy rested safe within his
+fortifications at Corinth.
+
+
+
+
+ÆNONE:
+
+A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+With Sergius there was seldom any interval between impulse and action.
+Now, without giving time for explanation, he made one bound to where
+Cleotos stood; and, before the startled Greek had time to drop the
+slender fingers which he had raised to his lips, the stroke of the
+infuriated master's hand descended upon his head, and he fell senseless
+at Ænone's feet, with one arm resting upon the lounge behind her.
+
+'Is my honor of so little worth that a common slave should be allowed to
+rob me of it?' Sergius exclaimed, turning to Ænone in such a storm of
+passion that, for the moment, it seemed as though the next blow would
+descend upon her.
+
+Strangely enough, though she had ever been used to tremble at his
+slightest frown, and though now, in his anger, there might even be
+actual danger to her life, she felt, for the moment, no fear. Her
+sympathy for the bleeding victim at her feet, of whose sad plight she
+had been the innocent cause, and whose perils had probably as yet only
+commenced--her consciousness that a crisis in her life had come,
+demanding all her fortitude--her indignation that upon such slight
+foundation she should thus be accused of falsity and shame--all combined
+to create in her an unlooked-for calmness. Added to this was the
+delusive impression that, as nothing had occurred which could not be
+explained, her lord's anger would not be likely to prolong itself at the
+expense of his returning sense of justice. What, indeed, could he have
+witnessed which she could not account for with a single word? It was
+true that within the past hour she had innocently and dreamily bestowed
+upon the Greek caresses which might easily have been misunderstood; and
+that all the while, the door having been partly open, a person standing
+outside and concealed by the obscure gloom of the antechamber, could
+have covertly witnessed whatever had transpired within. But Ænone knew
+that whatever might be her husband's other faults, he was not capable of
+countenancing the self-imposed degradation of espionage. Nor, even had
+it been otherwise, could he have been able, if his jealousy was once
+aroused by any passing incident, to control his impatient anger
+sufficiently to await other developments. At the most, therefore, he
+must merely, while passing, have chanced to witness the gesture of
+mingled emotion and affection with which Cleotos had bidden her
+farewell. Surely that was a matter which would require but little
+explanation.
+
+'Do you not hear me?' cried Sergius, glaring with wild passion from her
+to Cleotos and back again to her. 'Was it necessary that my honor should
+be placed in a slave's keeping? Was there no one of noble birth with
+whom you could be false, but that you must bring this deeper degradation
+upon my name?'
+
+Ænone drew herself up with mingled scorn and indignation. His anger,
+which at another time would have crushed her, now passed almost
+unheeded; for the sense of injury resulting from his cruel taunt and
+from his readiness, upon such slight foundation, to believe her guilty,
+gave her strength to combat him. The words of self-justification and of
+reproach toward him were at her lips, ready to break forth in
+unaccustomed force. In another moment the torrent of her indignant
+protestations would have burst upon him. Already his angry look began to
+quail before the steadfast earnestness of her responsive gaze. But all
+at once her tongue refused its utterance, her face turned ghastly pale,
+and her knees seemed to sink beneath her.
+
+For, upon glancing one side, she beheld the gaze of Leta fixedly
+fastened upon her over Sergius's shoulder. In the sparkle of those
+burning eyes and in the curve of those half-parted lips, there appeared
+no longer any vestige of the former pretended sympathy or affection.
+There was now malice, scorn, and hatred--all those expressions which,
+from time to time, had separately excited doubt and dread, now combining
+themselves into one exulting glance of open triumph, disdainful of
+further concealment, since at last the long-sought purpose seemed
+attained. Ænone turned away with a sickening, heart-breaking feeling
+that she was now lost, indeed. It was no mystery, any longer, that the
+slave girl must have listened at the open door, and have cunningly
+contrived that her master should appear at such time as seemed most
+opportune for her purposes. And how must every unconscious action, every
+innocent saying have been noted down in the tablets of that crafty mind!
+What explanation, indeed, could be given of those trivial caresses now
+so surely magnified and distorted into evidences of degrading
+criminality?
+
+Faint at heart, Ænone turned away--unable longer to look upon that face
+so exultant with the consciousness of a long-sought purpose achieved.
+Rather would she prefer to encounter the angry gaze of her lord.
+Terrible as his look was to her, she felt that, at the last, pity might
+be found in him, if she could only succeed in making him listen to and
+understand the whole story. But what mercy or release from jealous and
+vindictive persecution could she hope to gain from the plotting Greek
+girl, who had no pity in her heart, and who, even if she were so
+disposed, could not, now that matters had progressed so far, dare to
+surrender the life-and-death struggle? Alas! neither in the face of her
+lord could she now see anything but settled, unforgiving pitilessness;
+for though, for an instant, he had quailed before her gaze, yet when she
+had, in turn, faltered at the sight of Leta, he deemed it a new proof of
+guilt, and his suspended reproaches broke forth with renewed violence.
+
+'Am I to have no answer?' he cried, seizing her by the arm. 'Having lost
+all, are you now too poor-spirited to confess?'
+
+'There is nothing for me to confess. Nor, if there had been, would I
+deign to speak before that woman,' she answered with desperation, and
+pointing toward Leta. 'What does she here? How, in her presence, can you
+dare talk of sin--you who have so cruelly wronged me? And has all
+manliness left you, that you should ask me to open my heart to you in
+the presence of a slave; one, too, who has pursued me for weeks with her
+treacherous hate, and now stands gloating over the misery which she has
+brought upon me? I tell you that I have said or done nothing which I
+cannot justify; but that neither will I deign to explain aught to any
+but yourself alone.'
+
+'The same old excuse!' retorted Sergius. 'No harm done--nothing which
+cannot be accounted for in all innocence; and yet, upon some poor
+pretence of wounded pride, that easy explanation will not be vouchsafed!
+And all the while the damning proof and author of the guilt lies before
+me!'
+
+With that he extended his foot, and touched the senseless body of
+Cleotos--striking it carelessly, and not too gently. The effect of the
+speech and action was to arouse still more actively the energetic
+impulses of Ænone--but not, alas! to that bold display of conscious
+innocence with which, a moment before, she had threatened to sweep aside
+his insinuations, and make good her justification. She was now rather
+driven into a passion of reckless daring--believing that her fate was
+prejudged and forestalled--caring but little what might happen to
+her--wishing only to give way to her most open impulses, let the
+consequences be what they might. Therefore, in yielding to that spirit
+of defiance, she did the thing which of all others harmed her most,
+since its immediate and natural result was to give greater cogency to
+the suspicions against her. Stooping down and resting herself upon the
+lounge, she raised the head of the still senseless Cleotos upon her lap,
+and began tenderly to wipe his lips, from a wound in which a slight
+stream of blood had begun to ooze.
+
+'He and I are innocent,' she said. 'I have treated him as a brother,
+that is all. It is years ago that I met him first, and then he was still
+more to me than now. He is now poor and in misery, and I cannot abandon
+him. Had he been in your place, and you in his, he would not have thus,
+without proof, condemned you, and then have insulted your lifeless
+body.'
+
+For a moment Sergius stood aghast. Excuse and pleading he was prepared
+to hear. Recriminations would not have surprised him, for he knew that
+his own course would not bear investigation, and nothing, therefore,
+could be more natural than that she should attempt to defend herself by
+becoming the assailant in turn. But that she should thus defy
+him--before his eyes should bestow endearments upon a slave, the partner
+of her apparent guilt, and with whom she acknowledged having had an
+intimacy years before, was too astounding for him at first to
+understand. Then recovering himself, he cried aloud:
+
+'Is this to be borne? Ho, there, Drumo! Meros! all of you! Take this
+wretch and cast him into the prison! See that he does not escape, on
+your lives! He shall feed the lions to-morrow! By the gods, he shall
+feed the lions! Bear him away! Let me not see him again till I see his
+blood lapped up in the arena. Away with him, I say!'
+
+As the first cry of Sergius rang through the halls, the armor bearer
+appeared at the door; and before many more seconds had elapsed, other
+slaves, armed and unarmed, swarmed forth from different courts and
+passages, until the antechamber was filled with them. None of them knew
+what had happened, but they saw that, in some way, Cleotos had incurred
+the anger of his master, and lay stunned and bleeding before them. To
+obey was the work of a moment. The giant Drumo, stooping down, wound his
+arm around the body of Cleotos, hoisted him upon his broad shoulder, and
+stalked out of the room. The other slaves followed. Ænone, who, in the
+delirium of her defiance, might have tried to resist, was overpowered by
+her own attendants, who also had flocked in at Sergius's call, and now
+gently forced her from the room. And in a moment more, Sergius was left
+alone with Leta.
+
+She, crouching in a dark corner of the room, awaited her opportunity to
+say the words which she dared not say while he was in this storm of wild
+passion; he, thinking himself entirely alone, stalked up and down like a
+caged tiger, muttering curses upon himself, upon Ænone, upon the slave,
+upon all who directly or indirectly had been concerned in his supposed
+disgrace. Let it not be forgotten that, though at first he had acted
+hastily and upon slight foundation of proof, and had cruelly wounded her
+spirit by abhorrent insinuations, without giving time or opportunity for
+her to explain herself, she had afterward given way to an insane
+impulse, and had so conducted herself as to fix the suspicion of guilt
+upon herself almost ineffaceably. What further proof could he need?
+While, with false lips, she had denied all, had she not, at the same
+time, lavished tender caresses upon the vile slave?
+
+Then, too, what had he not himself done to add to the sting of his
+disgrace? Convinced of her guilt, he should have quietly put her away,
+and the truth would have leaked out only little by little, so as to be
+stripped of half of its mortification. But he had called up his slaves.
+They had entered upon the scene, and would guess at everything, if they
+did not know it already! The mouths of menials could not be stopped.
+To-morrow all Rome would know that the imperator Sergius, whose wife had
+been the wonder of the whole city for her virtue and constancy, had been
+deceived by her, and for a low-born slave! Herein, for the moment,
+seemed to lie half the disgrace. Had it been a man of rank and celebrity
+like himself--but a slave! And how would he dare to look the world in
+the face--he who had been proud of his wife's unsullied reputation, even
+when he had most neglected her, and who had so often boasted over his
+happy lot to those who, having the reputation of being less fortunate,
+had complacently submitted themselves to bear with indifference a
+disgrace which, at that age, seemed to be almost the universal doom!
+
+Frantically revolving these matters, he raged up and down the apartment
+for some moments, while Leta watched him from her obscure corner. When
+would it be time for her to advance and try her art of soothing? Not
+yet; for while that paroxysm of rage lasted, he would be as likely to
+strike her as to listen. Once he approached within a few feet of her,
+and, as she believed herself observed, she trembled and crouched behind
+a vase. He had not seen her, but his eye fell upon the vase, and with
+one blow he rolled it off its pedestal, and let it fall shattered upon,
+the marble floor. Was it simply because the costly toy stood in his way?
+Or was it that he remembered it had been a favorite of Ænone? One
+fragment of the vase, leaping up, struck Leta upon the foot and wounded
+her, but she dared not cry out. She rather crouched closer behind the
+empty pedestal, and drew a long breath of relief as, after a moment, he
+turned away.
+
+At last the violence of his passion seemed to have expended itself, and
+he sank upon the lounge, and, burying his face in his hands, abandoned
+himself to more composed reflection. Now was the time for her to
+approach. And yet she would not address herself directly to him, but
+would rather let him, in some accidental manner, detect her presence.
+Upon a small table stood a bronze lamp with a little pitcher of olive
+oil beside it. The wicks were already in the sockets, and she had only
+to pour in the oil. This she did noiselessly, as one who has no thought
+of anything beyond the discharge of an accustomed duty. Then she lighted
+the wicks and stealthily looked up to see whether he had yet observed
+her.
+
+The lamp somewhat brightened the obscurity of the room, sending even a
+faint glimmer into the farther corners, but he took no notice of it.
+Perhaps he may have moved his head a little toward the light, but that
+was all. Otherwise there was no apparent change or interruption in his
+deep, troubled thought. Then Leta moved the table with the lamp upon it
+a few paces toward him, so that the soft light could fall more directly
+upon his face. Still no change. Then she softly approached and bent over
+him.
+
+What could he be thinking of? Could he be feeling aught but regret that
+he had thrown away years of his life upon one who had betrayed him so
+grossly at the end? Was he not telling himself how, upon the morrow, he
+would put her away, with all ceremony, forever? And might he not be
+reflecting that, Ænone once gone, there would be a vacant place to be
+filled at his table? Would he not wish that it should be occupied
+without delay, if only to show the world how little his misfortune had
+affected him? And who more worthy to fill it than the one whose
+fascinations over him had made it empty? Was not this, then, the time
+for her to attract his notice, before other thoughts and interests could
+come between her and him?
+
+Softly she touched him upon the arm; and, like an unchained lion, he
+sprang up and stared her in the face. There was a terrible look upon his
+features, making her recoil in dismay. Was that the affectionate gaze
+with which she had expected to be greeted? Was that the outward
+indication of the pleasing resolves with which her eager fancy had
+invested his mind?
+
+Never had she been more mistaken than in her conceptions of his
+thoughts. In them there was for herself not one kindly impulse; but for
+the wife whom he had deemed so erring, there was much that was akin to
+regret, if not to returning affection. The violence of his passion had
+been so exhausting, that something like a reaction had come. A new
+contradiction seemed developing itself in his nature. This man, who a
+few minutes before had prejudged her guilty, because he had seen the
+lips of a grateful slave pressed against her hand, now, after having
+seen her so aroused and indifferent to reputation as to defend that
+slave in her arms, and claim him for at least a friend and brother,
+began to wonder whether she might not really be innocent. She had
+confessed to nothing--she had asserted her blamelessness--she had never
+been known to waver from the truth; might she not have been able to
+explain her actions? With his regret for having, in such hasty passion,
+so compromised her before the world that no explanation could henceforth
+shield her from invidious slander, he now began to feel sorrow for
+having so roughly used her. Whether she was false or not--whether or not
+he now loved her--was it any the less true that she had once been
+constant and loved by him, and did the memories of that time, not so
+very long ago, bring no answering emotion to his heart? Who, after all,
+had ever so worshipped him? And must he now really lose her? Might it
+not be that he had been made the victim of some conspiracy, aided by
+fortuitous elements?
+
+It was just at this point, when, in his thoughts, he was stumbling near
+the truth, that the touch of Leta's hand aroused him; and in that
+instant her possible agency in the matter flashed upon him like a new
+revelation. She saw the tiger-like look which he fastened upon her, and
+she recoiled, perceiving at once that she had chosen an inopportune
+moment to speak to him. But it was now too late to recede.
+
+'Well?' he demanded.
+
+'I have lighted the lamp,' she faltered forth. 'I knew not that I should
+disturb you. Have you further commands for me?'
+
+Still his fierce gaze fixed upon her; but now with a little more of the
+composure of searching inquiry.
+
+'It is you who have brought all this destruction and misery upon me,' he
+said at length. 'From one step unto another, even to this end, I
+recognize your work. I was a weak fool not to have seen it before.'
+
+'Is it about my mistress that you speak?' she responded. 'Is it my fault
+that she has been untrue?'
+
+'If she is false, what need to have told me of it? Was it that the
+knowledge of it would make me more happy? And did I give it into the
+hands of my own slaves to watch over my honor? Is it a part of your duty
+that for weeks you should have played the spy upon herself and me, so as
+to bring her secret faults to light?'
+
+She stood silent before him, not less amazed at his lingering fondness
+for his wife than at his reproaches against herself.
+
+'How know I that she is guilty at all?' he said, continuing the train of
+thought into which his doubts and his better nature had led him. 'I must
+feel all this for certain. How do I know but what you have brought it
+about by some cunning intrigue for your own purposes? Speak!'
+
+For Leta to stop now was destruction. Though to go on might bring no
+profit to her, yet her safety depended upon closing forever the path of
+reconciliation toward which his mind seemed to stray. And step by step,
+shrouding as far as possible her own agency, she spread out before him
+that basis of fact upon which she so well knew how to erect a false
+superstructure. She told him how the intimacy of Ænone and Cleotos had
+led her to keep watch--how Ænone had once confessed having had a lover
+in the days of her obscurity and poverty--how that this Greek was that
+same lover--and how improbable it was that he could have been domiciled
+in that house by chance, or for any other purpose than that of being in
+a situation to renew former intimacies. She told how, after long
+suspicion, she had settled this identity of the former lover with the
+slave--and how she had seen them, in the twilight of that very day,
+standing near the window and addressing each other endearingly by their
+own familiar names. As Sergius listened, the evident truthfulness of the
+facts gradually impressed themselves upon him; and no longer doubting
+his disgrace, he closed his heart against all further hope and charity
+and affection. The pleasant past no longer whispered its memories to his
+heart--those were now stifled and dead.
+
+'And what reward for all this do you demand?' he hissed forth, seizing
+Leta by the arm, 'For of course you have not thus dogged her steps day
+after day, without expectation of recompense from me.'
+
+Did he mean this--that she was capable of asking reward? Or was he
+cunningly trying her nature, to see whether she might prove worthy of
+the great recompense which she had promised herself? It was almost too
+much now to expect; but her heart beat fast as she saw or fancied she
+saw some strange significance in the gaze which he fastened upon her.
+Babbling incoherently, she told how she did not wish reward--how she had
+done it all for love of him--how she would be content to serve him for
+life, with no other recompense than his smile--and the like. Still that
+gaze was fastened upon her with penetrating power, more and more
+confusing her, and again she babbled forth the same old expressions of
+disinterested attachment. How it was that at last he understood her
+secret thoughts and aspirations, she knew not. Certainly she had not
+spoken, or even seemed to hint about them. But whether she betrayed
+herself by some glance of the eye or tremor of the voice, or whether
+some instinct had enabled him to read her, of a sudden he burst into a
+wild, hollow laugh of disdain, threw her from him, and cried, with
+unutterable contempt:
+
+'This, then, was the purpose of all! This is what you dreamed of! That
+you, a slave--an hour's plaything--could so mistake a word or two of
+transient love-making as to fancy that you could ever be anything beyond
+what you are now! Poor fool that thou art!--Oho, Drumo!'
+
+The giant entered the room, and Leta again drew back into the closest
+obscurity she could find, not knowing what punishment her audacity was
+about to draw upon her. But worse, perhaps, than any other punishment,
+was the discovery that Sergius had already forgotten her; or rather,
+that he thought so little about her as to be able to dismiss her and her
+pretensions with a single contemptuous rebuke. He had called his armor
+bearer for another purpose than to speak of her. A new phase had passed
+over his burdened and excited mind. He could not endure that solitude,
+with ever-present disagreeable reflection. And since his disgrace must,
+sooner or later, be known, he would brave it out by being himself the
+first to publish it.
+
+'Is it not to-morrow that the games begin?'
+
+'Yes, master,' responded the armor bearer.
+
+'And does it not--it seems to me that I promised to my friends a banquet
+upon the previous night. If I did not, I meant to have done so. Go,
+therefore, and bid them at once come hither! Tell the poet Emilius--and
+Bassus--and the rest. You know all whom I would have. Let them know that
+I hold revel here, and that not one must dare to stay away! Tell my
+cooks to prepare a feast for the gods! Go! Despatch!'
+
+The giant grinned his knowledge of all that his master's tastes would
+require, and left the room to prepare for his errand. And in a moment
+more Sergius also departed, without another thought of the Greek girl,
+who stood shrinking from his notice in the shadow of the farthest
+corner.
+
+
+
+
+APHORISMS.--NO. XII.
+
+
+Knowledge and Action.--It is a common fault of our humanity, when not
+sunk too low in the scale of intellect, to seek knowledge rather than
+attempt any laborious application of it. We love to add to our stock of
+ideas, facts, or even notions of things, provided moderate pains will
+suffice; but to put our knowledge in practice is too often esteemed
+servile, or eschewed as mere drudgery. Useful activities flatter pride,
+and gratify the imagination, too little. But of what avail, ordinarily,
+is the possession of truth, unless as light to direct us in the ways of
+beneficent labor, for ourselves and for our fellow men? There are,
+indeed, objects of knowledge which elevate the soul in the mere act of
+contemplation; but, in most cases, if what we learn is brought into no
+definite relation to the practice of life, the acquisition is barren,
+and the labor of making it apparently a loss of time and strength.
+
+This is no censure upon the course of learning as a process of mental
+discipline; for this in itself is one of the most productive forms of
+human activity.
+
+
+
+
+EXCUSE.
+
+
+    Song, they say, should be a king,
+  Crowned and throned by lightning-legions
+    Only they may dare to sing
+    Who can hear their voices ring
+  Through the echoing thunder-regions.
+
+    Yet, below the mountain's crest,
+  Chime the valley-bells to heaven;
+    If we may not grasp the best,
+    Deeper, closer, be our quest
+  For the good that Fate has given.
+
+    Parching in its fever pain,
+  Many a tortured life is thirsting
+    For a cooling draught to drain,
+    Though it flash no purple vein
+  From the mellow grape-heart bursting.
+
+    Must our sun-struck gaze despise
+  Starry isles in light embosomed?
+    Must we close our scornful eyes
+    Where the valley lily lies,
+  Just because the rose has blossomed?
+
+    Though the lark, God's perfect strain,
+  Steep his song in sunlit splendor;
+    Though the nightingale's sweet pain
+    With divine despair, enchain
+  Dew-soft darks in silence tender;
+
+    Not the less, from Song's excess,
+  Sings the blackbird late and early:
+    Nor the bobolink's trill the less
+    Laughs for very happiness,
+  Gurgling through its gateways pearly.
+
+    Though we reach not heavenly heights,
+  Where the sun-crowned souls sit peerless,
+    Let us wing our farthest flights
+    Underneath the lower lights;--
+  Soar and sing, unfettered, fearless--
+
+    Sings as bubbling water flows--
+  Sing as smiles the summer sunny.
+    Royal is the perfect rose,
+    Yet, from many a bud that blows,
+  Bees may drain a drop of honey.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN WOMEN.
+
+
+A great deal has been said and written in this age and country on the
+subject of what is technically called _woman's rights_; and, in the
+course of such agitation, many good and true things have been thought
+out and made available to the bettering of her condition, besides many
+foolish and impracticable, arising from a too grasping desire for a
+wider and more exciting sphere of effort, as well as from a palpable
+misapprehension of their own nature and their legitimate sphere, which
+prevails quite extensively among women. The pioneers of the rights of
+woman have done a good work, however, and may well be pardoned wherein
+they have gone beyond what might be fairly and profitably demanded for
+our sex. They have called the public attention to the subject, and have
+enlisted the thoughts and the services of many earnest men as well as
+women in their cause; thus provoking that inquiry which will eventually
+lead to the finding of the whole truth concerning woman, her rights,
+privileges, duties. And for this, in common with the pioneers in every
+cause that has for its object the amelioration and advantage of any
+class of human beings, they deserve the thanks of all. That there should
+be some ultraists, who would not know where to stop in the extravagant
+and unsuitable claims they urge, was to be expected. This should not
+blind our eyes to the lawful claims of woman upon society, nor is it
+sufficient to throw ridicule upon a movement which has, in this day,
+indeed, borne its full share of obloquy from the careless, the
+thoughtless, the too conservative, all of whom are alike clogs upon the
+wheel of human progress.
+
+This is not the age nor ours the people to shun the fair discussion of
+any question, much less one which commends itself as of practical
+importance. This American people has proved, by the calm and patient
+consideration it has accorded to the advocates of woman's rights, that
+it has reached that lofty point in the progress of society at which
+woman is regarded as a positive quantity in the problem which society is
+working out, and it marks an era in the history of the sex, prophetic of
+the full enjoyment of _all_ the rights which are hers by nature, or may
+be hers by favor. I think that in this country, at least, woman has been
+put upon a very clear and unobstructed path, with many encouragements to
+go on in the highest course of improvement of which she is capable.
+There seems to be a general disposition to investigate, and to allow her
+the rights she claims--rights of education, of labor, of property, of a
+fair competition in any suitable field of enterprise; so that she bids
+fair to become as self-supporting, independent, and intelligent as she
+desires. It is true that much is still said of the jealousy and
+selfishness of men, leading them to monopolize most of the sources of
+profitable effort to their own use, thus cramping the sphere of woman,
+and making her dependent and isolated.
+
+Now, it is very much a question with me whether, after all, the failure,
+so far, to secure these fancied rights, is not quite as much the result
+of woman's backwardness and inefficiency as of man's jealous and greedy
+monopoly; whether the greatest obstacle does not lie in the adverse
+opinions prevailing among women themselves. According to my observation,
+as fast as women have proved themselves adapted to compete with men in
+any particular field, their brothers have forthwith striven to make the
+path easy and pleasant for them.
+
+But there is a natural and necessary jealousy excited when women attempt
+to go out of the beaten track, and establish new conditions and
+resources for themselves--a jealousy which has its source in the
+instinctive feeling of civilized society, that the standard of womanhood
+must not be lowered; that its safety and progressive well-being depend
+upon the immaculate preservation of that pure and graceful ideal of
+womanhood which every true man wishes to see guarded with a vestal
+precision. And society will pause, thoughtfully to consider, before the
+stamp of its approbation is affixed to any mode of development by which
+that lofty ideal would suffer. Anything which tends in the least to
+unsex, to unsphere woman, by so much works with a reflex influence on
+man and on society, and produces in both a gradual and dangerous
+deterioration. And self-preservation is the first instinct of society as
+well as of the individual being. Man, and the eternal and infinite order
+of the world, require that woman keep her proper place, and that she
+demand nothing which, granted, would introduce confusion and disorder
+among the social forces.
+
+But it is not so much of woman's rights that I would speak. I am not
+afraid but that she will possess these in due time, as fast as her
+nature and true place and mission in the world come to be more fully
+understood. I am far more anxious that she should come into such more
+perfect understanding.
+
+Woman has always been a puzzle, an enigma, to man. When, in the pride of
+his anatomical skill, he has essayed to make her his study, thinking to
+master the secret of her curious physical being, he has been forced to
+stop short of his purpose, dumb and blind in the presence of that
+wondrous complexity that no science of his own can master; and no
+casuist has yet solved the _why_ of her equally wonderful and complex
+mental and spiritual being. They have made Reason, cold, critical,
+judge, the test; but the fine, delicate essence of her real being has
+always eluded it. When Love seeks the solution--the large, generous
+Love, that is one day to sit as the judge of all things, supreme over
+purblind human Reason--then _she_ will be understood, for she will yield
+to the asking of that all-seeing One. This will be when the world is
+ripe for the advent of woman, who shall rule through love, the highest
+rule of all. Slowly, slowly, though surely, is the world ascending,
+through the wondrous secret chain of _influences_ binding her to the
+moral order of the universe, to the height of this supernal law of love;
+and there, in that new and holy kingdom, woman's crown and sceptre await
+her.
+
+But who shall say that a glimmer of this future royal beauty and glory
+has yet dawned upon her?
+
+If man has misunderstood woman, she has none the less misunderstood
+herself. Indeed, her feet have for ages been treading debatable ground,
+that has shaken beneath her through the clashings of man's ignorance and
+her own vague, restless clamors and aimlessness. She has felt the
+stirrings within of that real being she was created, but has never dared
+to assert herself, or, to speak more truly, has only known to assert
+herself in the wrong direction. False voices there have been without
+number, but not even yet has true womanhood been able, in spite of its
+irrepressible longings, to utter that clear, free, elevated speech that
+shall yet stir the keenest pulses of the world.
+
+As it is, the world has nearly outgrown the petty jealousy, the cool
+assumption of inferiority, the flippant criticism of her weaknesses, the
+insulting catering to her foibles, with which woman has been accustomed
+to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the
+ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as
+much relative importance as man; that without her he will in vain
+aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and
+regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that
+wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all
+oppression and injustice practised upon her has been sure in the end to
+rebound upon himself. If there is one thing more than another which, at
+any given period and in any particular nation, has pointed to the true
+state of society along the scale of advancement, it has been the degree
+of woman's elevation; the undercurrents of history have all set steadily
+and significantly in the direction of the truth, which the world has
+been slow to accept and make use of, indeed, that society nears
+perfection only in the proportion in which woman has been honored and
+enfranchised; in which she has had opportunity and encouragement to work
+and act in her own proper and lawful sphere.
+
+Those who have gone the farthest in claiming special rights for woman
+have generally based their demands upon a virtual abandonment of the
+idea of _sex_, except in a physical sense. Here is a primary,
+fundamental error. There is unquestionably a sex of mind, of soul, and
+he who ignores or denies this is, it seems to me, studying his subject
+without the key which alone will unlock it.
+
+Another error which many of the advocates of _woman's rights_ have
+fallen into, is that of assuming that those conditions are weaknesses,
+disabilities, which God and nature have attested to be her crowning
+glory and power. Or, rather, this second error results naturally and
+most logically from the still more vital one of assuming that her sphere
+is intended to be no way different from man's.
+
+And still another, equally false and mischievous, would place her in
+antagonism to man upon the question of comparative excellence and of
+precedence in the scale of being.
+
+A brief analysis of some of the points of difference between the mind
+masculine and the mind feminine will show the futility of confounding
+the two, or of drawing any useless or invidious comparisons. They are as
+distinct in their normal action as any two things can well be. I begin,
+then, by dividing our whole conscious human life into two comprehensive
+departments, expressed by the generic terms, thought--feeling;
+reflection--spontaneity; knowledge--emotion; perception--reception;
+reason or intellect--affection or heart. The intelligent being unites
+these conditions--he is supreme in but one. Man reasons--woman feels;
+man analyzes--woman generalizes; man reaches his conclusions by
+induction--woman seizes hers by intuition. There is just the difference,
+_in kind_, between a man's mind and a woman's that there is between that
+of a man of genius and a man of talent. Genius grasps the idea, and
+works from it outward; talent moulds the form in which the already
+created idea may be embodied. Genius is creative, comprehensive,
+intuitive, all-seeing; talent is acute, one-sided, cumulative,
+inductive. The men of genius will ever be found to be gifted with this
+_womanly_ quality of mind--the power of seizing truth, ideas, with the
+heart and soul, through love, rather than with the understanding,
+through reason.
+
+Woman understands faith, or the taking things on trust; she has no love
+for that logical process of thought whereby, step by step, man delights
+to prove a fact in nature or law with mathematical precision and
+certainty. With the hard details and closely connected steps which make
+up the body of any science, mathematical, physical, or metaphysical, she
+has no patience. Her mind is not receptive of formulas or syllogisms.
+She comprehends results, but is incurious as to causes. She knows what
+love or benevolence means, under its triple form of charity, mercy,
+magnanimity, which, like a sea, surrounds the universe; she has no idea
+of law and justice, which are the eternal pillars thereof. If man feels
+or loves, it is because his reason is convinced; woman's affections go
+beyond reason, and without its aid, into the clear realm of ultimate
+belief. This is why there are so few skeptics in religious things among
+our sex. Woman's mental and spiritual constitution render belief or
+faith easy and natural. She is receptive in all the parts of her being.
+
+I conclude, therefore, that in the outer world of fact, of
+demonstration, of volitions and knowledges, of tangible proofs and
+causalities, of positive and logical effects of reason, of all outward
+and material processes, man is supreme; while in that finer, higher,
+more subtile sphere of intuitions, loves, faiths, spiritual convictions,
+which overtop our actual life, and lead it up from grossness to glory,
+woman is the oracle and priestess. In the basic qualities of our nature
+man is stronger--woman, in those which, in grace, beauty, and sweetness,
+taper nicely toward its apex.
+
+But are the two spheres therefore at war? By no means. Are they at all
+independent of each other? Are they not rather conjoined indissolubly?
+It is a fatal mistake which places an antagonism between the two. There
+should be between them harmony as sweet as that which moves the
+concentric rings of Saturn. Untaught by the presence and inspiration of
+woman, man becomes a cold, dry petrifaction, constantly obeying the
+centripetal force of his being, and adoring _self_. Without his basal
+firmness and strength, woman, in whom the centrifugal force is stronger,
+remains a weak, vacillating, impulsive creature, feebly swayed by the
+tides of emotion, lacking self-poise, and aimless and vagrant.
+
+But teach her to reason--man to feel; open up to her the sources of
+knowledge, and cause him to learn the times of the tides of affection;
+cultivate her intellect and his heart, and in the healthy action and
+reaction consequent upon such a balance of forces, you have the true
+relationship established between the sexes, the relationship which the
+Creator pronounced perfect in the beginning.
+
+It will be seen that while I attribute to woman a certain superiority
+both of nature and function, as to the highest part of the nature common
+to both, I at the same time assert her inferiority in what may be called
+its fundamental attributes, those which lie nearest to the constant and
+successful prosecution of mundane affairs, and, consequently, I also
+establish the fact of her absolute and inevitable dependence in such
+sense on man. But do I thus degrade her, or in effect annul this
+asserted superiority? Because man, and the strength, amplitude, and
+stability of his more practical nature, form a sure basis upon which she
+may rest, do I any the less make her the very crown and perfection of
+God's human handiwork? Assuredly not. The truth is, if, instead of
+making comparison where, from the nature of the case, comparison is
+almost precluded, so great is the difference between them, I were to say
+that each is the complement or counterpart of the other, and that,
+alone, each is but a half sphere, and imperfectly rounded at that, I
+should more nearly approach to accuracy. To make the perfect whole which
+the Creator had in His idea, the two halves must be united. And so I
+dignify the oldest of human institutions--marriage. I accord to it the
+very perfection of wisdom, beauty, utility, adaptation. I am aware that
+in so speaking I hold to an old-fashioned belief, and tread
+incontinently, not only on a notion afloat among some of the
+_strong-minded_ of my sex at the present day, that this institution is
+nothing more nor less than an engine of selfish and despotic power on
+the one hand, and of slavish subjection on the other; but on the more
+moderate idea that it is not desirable for all women, nor even for a
+majority. But I still think that this state of union is the most
+natural, beneficent, satisfying condition possible for all of both
+sexes--the condition most conducive to the highest, widest, happiest
+development of the individual man or woman, especially the latter, for
+it is through marriage only, through the beautiful and sacred wifehood
+and motherhood which that institution guarantees in purity and holiness,
+that woman's highest nature finds scope and opportunity. And I make no
+exceptions. On the contrary, I should say that the exceptions which
+might occur should invariably be counted as misfortunes. Not that many
+good, true, noble women do not live and die unmarried. _Circumstances_,
+that inflexible arbiter of human life, as it often seems, may strangely
+turn into wide and unaccustomed channels the love, the devotion, the
+energy, the self-sacrifice, that, in their pure, strong action, make
+woman's best development, and so the world, the needy people of the
+world, humanity at large, may receive the immediate benediction of it.
+Let no woman who, alone it may be, goes steadfastly on her way of duty
+and self-abnegation, think she has lived in vain because the special lot
+of woman has been denied her. If not happiness, which comes from content
+and satisfaction, yet there is something higher, diviner still, arising
+from duty done and trials endured--blessedness. But such exceptions do
+not, I conceive, invalidate the general fact that marriage was intended
+to be the channel for the vast aggregate of human happiness and
+improvement. I speak of marriage as it should be, as it might be, as it
+will one day be, when men and women have acquainted themselves with the
+laws, physical and spiritual, which were intended to adjust these unions
+between the sexes in a harmonious manner, according to natural
+sympathies and affinities; laws, infallible, inherent in the individual
+constitution, and which, if understood and enforced, would obviate much
+of the sin, misfortune, and misery in the earth. It is a great and
+curious question, how much of the pain, suffering, and evil so rife
+among men, is due to the one-sided, blindfold, inconsiderate, and
+unsuitable marriages every day taking place; filling the homes of the
+land with discontent, bickerings, disorder, and continual strife, from
+the jostling together of antipathetic elements; cursing society with the
+influences derived from character formed and nurtured in such pestilent
+domestic atmospheres; and sending out thousands of unhealthy,
+misorganized, wrongly educated beings, the fruit of these _dis_unions,
+to work ill both to themselves and their race. The world has much yet to
+learn with regard to the conditions necessary to a true and legitimate
+marriage of the sexes. There are thousands of illegal unions that have
+been blessed by church and magistrate, which yet carry only ban in their
+train. Whether read literally or not, the old, old story of the
+temptation and the fall has a significance not often dreamed of in
+respect to this question of marriage. It was a disturbance of the pure
+and perfect allegiance of each to the other, no less than a fall from
+the intimate communion of both with the Father of spirits. And a thicker
+darkness rests over the means whereby the institution of marriage may be
+rescued from its degradation, and man and woman be reinstated in the
+loyalty they owe to each other, than over the means by which the
+creature may make himself acceptable to the offended Creator; inasmuch
+as the former is left, without any special revelation, to the slow
+process of thought among men, to the workings of experience and the
+results of observation. And these laws are age-long in their evolutions.
+But when men and women have learned to look within themselves, have
+turned an intelligent eye upon the necessities of their threefold
+being, and when they recognize the God-made laws regulating these
+necessities, and have begun to mate themselves accordingly, the world
+will have received a powerful impulse toward its promised millennial
+epoch.
+
+Such, then, being, in brief, the relation of woman to man, it is
+necessary to inquire, as pertinent to my subject, not so much whether
+man gives her all the rights within his own sphere which she may
+beneficially claim, but whether she has yet understood the weight and
+significance of her own position in the scale of being, and has
+exercised all the rights consequent therefrom. To know is far easier
+than to live according to knowledge. It is to be feared that women
+themselves have but a poor appreciation of the ideal of true womanhood.
+Oh, is it not time this ideal should be worthily understood? Has not
+poor suffering humanity borne the burden of its woes long enough, and
+will not woman help to lift it from the tired, stooping shoulders? For
+she may. How? Simply by working out her own divinely appointed mission.
+And is this not broad and absorbing enough? See what are some of its
+objects of influence and endeavors. First, here are the very faintest
+beginnings of intelligent existence to impress and mould--the embryos of
+character to stamp. And who knows how important this moulding and
+stamping may be? To go farther back still: Who knows what indelible
+constitution may be, is, fixed upon the individual organism, for better,
+for worse, by the authors of its life, that, if evil, no training, no
+education, no work of grace, not even omnipotence, can expunge or alter?
+This motherhood of woman, in its awful sanctity and mystery, in its
+bearings upon the immortality of personal identity, is a fearful
+dignity. Therein consists the first and chief claim of Woman to honor
+and reverence. She who has been a mother has measured the profoundest as
+well as the most exalted experience of which humanity is susceptible.
+Let her see to it that she honor herself.
+
+Here is the white and plastic tablet of the new-born soul. Let woman
+fear and tremble to write on that, for the writing shall confront her
+forever. Like the Roman Pilate, _what she has written, she has written_.
+Here are the purblind human instincts to direct and culture; the
+vagrant, unbridled hosts of the spontaneous emotions to be tutored and
+restrained; the affections and the tastes to be trained toward the true,
+the beautiful, and the good; the warring passions to be curbed and
+disciplined; in short, the whole glorious domain of the heart and soul,
+the moral and spiritual nature, is to be surveyed, studied, swayed by
+that potential agency which woman possesses in a very eminent
+degree--personal influence. By this agency, informed and vitalized by
+love, she becomes the great educator in the great school of life, in the
+family, in society, in the world. Women do not sufficiently appreciate
+the importance of their work as the architects of character.
+_Character!_ That, after all, is the man, the enduring individual, the
+real _I_, to whom the Creator has said, _Live forever_! Character is
+simply what education and habit make of a person, starting from the
+foundation of his inherited organic idiosyncrasies. It is a result--the
+work of time and countless shapings and impressings. It is not what a
+man thinks of himself, nor what others think of him, but _what he really
+is in the sight of God, his Maker_. This is what shall come out, at
+last, from the obscurations and uncertainties of this lower atmosphere
+into the clear, truthful light of eternity; shall cast off the devices,
+the flimsy pretences, the temporary shows, the convenient disguises, of
+this mortal life of mixed substance and shadow, and stand a bare, naked,
+unclothed fact of being before itself, the universe, and God. Alas! what
+multitudes of real dwarfs go out every day, 'unhouseled,' into that
+searching light of eternity.
+
+To be the builder of a fair and comely character; to chisel out a work
+that shall please the eye of God Himself, in whose estimation Beauty,
+being His own attribute, is a most holy thing; to see that work of
+beauty take its place in the well-filled gallery of eternity, and to
+know that it is your own immortal monument--is this not scope enough,
+honor enough, praise and glory enough? If women would but rise to the
+height of their real mission, and faithfully and earnestly assume the
+rights and fulfil the duties which God has specially devolved upon them,
+they would so lead man and society up to a higher point that the claims
+they put forth need not be discussed for an hour; because, then, having
+proved their adaptability to make good use of every lawful right,
+society, which in the end always adjusts its forces properly and
+instinctively, will have tacitly fallen into the necessity or the
+feasibility of granting them.
+
+Let man erect his scientific formulas, his schools of philosophy, his
+structures of reason and thought; let him bid the giant forces of nature
+go in harness for his schemes of improvement or aggrandizement; and by
+all means let the intellect of woman be cultivated to comprehend
+intelligently the marvels of man's work; let her, if she will, measure
+the stellar distances, study the mechanical principles or the learned
+professions, make a picture or write a book; and there have been women,
+true and noble women, who have done all these, women who have proved
+themselves capable of as high attainments, as keen and subtile thought
+as man; but let her never for such as these abdicate her own nobler
+work, neglecting the greater for the less. If a woman has a special
+gift, let her exercise it; if she has a particular mission, let her work
+it out. Few women, though, are of this elect class. I do not despise,
+but rather encourage, natural gifts. But I would have women never forget
+that it is not for what they may possibly add to the sum of human
+knowledge that the world values them, primarily. _That_ some man is as
+likely to do as not; but what women fail to do in their own peculiar
+sphere, _no man can possibly do_.
+
+When I aver that woman was intended to be a predominant influence in the
+world through her moral and spiritual being, principally, I must not be
+understood as depreciating the value to her of mere subjective
+knowledge. So far from this, I believe that her means of acquiring
+knowledge of all kinds should be limited only by her capacity. The more
+her intellect is enlightened and disciplined, the better will she be
+qualified to exert that refining, elevating influence which is expected
+of her. There can be no beauty without the element of strength; there
+can be no love worth the name without knowledge. Were her sense of
+justice, her logical powers, her reflective faculties carefully trained
+and exercised, her peculiar womanly graces of soul would shine with
+tenfold lustre. I mean, simply, that knowledge is specially valuable to
+her objectively--as a means, and the best means, to the highest end of
+her being, which is concrete rather than abstract.
+
+Briefly, I say, then, it is in the great departments of ethics, of
+æsthetics, of religious and spiritual things, that woman is a vital
+power in human life.
+
+I have thrown out these general preliminary thoughts concerning the
+nature of woman, and her relations to man and to society, chiefly with
+reference to a phase of the subject which has not seemed to engage the
+attention either of women themselves or of those who assume to advocate
+their cause. It is the important consideration whether, in a free and
+republican land, woman holds any certain and special relation toward the
+Government. In other words, have American women any vital share or
+interest in this grand, free Government of ours? With all the emphasis
+of a profound conviction, I, answer, _Yes_. Such a touching and intimate
+interest as no women ever had before in any Government under the sun.
+And why?
+
+_Because the principles embodied in and represented by it have made her
+what she is, and they alone can make her what she hopes to be._
+
+If it be true that the position of woman in society is a sure test of
+its civilization, then is our American society already in the van of
+progress. Nowhere else in the world is woman so free, so respected, so
+obeyed, so beloved; nowhere else is the ideal of womanhood so
+chivalrously worshipped and protected. In the spirit of our political
+theory, that no class of society is to be regarded as permanently and
+necessarily disabled from progress and elevation--to which, in our
+practice, we have hitherto made but _one_ wicked and shameful
+exception--and under the influence of the powerful tendency of our
+system to _individualism_, woman has been allowed a freedom heretofore
+unparalleled, and _onward and upward_ is still the word.
+
+I do not claim perfection for our system. But I say we have the germs of
+the healthiest national development. All that remains is to carry
+forward those germs to maturity, and let them show their legitimate
+results unhampered. That is what we want, what we claim. Society here is
+unformed, in the rough. We lack the outward grace and polish belonging
+only to old societies. We shall yet attain these, as well as some other
+desirable things; but I believe that in no other country in the world is
+there so much genuine, delicate, universal devotion manifested for woman
+as among the Americans. Have you seen a boy of fourteen, shy, awkward,
+uncouth in manner, rough in speech, but with a great, tender heart
+thumping in his bosom? And did you know of the idolatrous worship he
+could not wholly conceal for some fair, sweet, good girl older than
+himself, a woman, even--a worship, which was not love, if love be other
+than a high and tender sentiment, but which was capable of filling his
+being to overflow with its glory and richness? I liken our American
+chivalry to this. And it is this instinctive natural politeness of our
+men toward women that, as much as anything else, keeps us from being
+rude and unrefined while yet in our first adolescence.
+
+I am aware that, hitherto, the South has laid claim to the lion's share
+of this gallant spirit, as it has of many other polite and social
+qualities. But we do not so readily now, as a few years ago, yield to
+these Southern assumptions. We know now for just how much they stand.
+And we know, too, in the better light of this hour, that it is not
+possible for a very high and pure ideal of womanhood to be conceived in
+the atmosphere of a system which, as slavery does, persistently, on
+principle, and on a large scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no
+matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the
+greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which
+stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and
+with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breath turns to commit
+the direst offences against the peace and purity of womanhood; but that
+true and hearty, though simple and unostentatious, reverence for the
+sex, that teaches men to regard all women as worthy of freedom, respect,
+and protection, simply by virtue of their womanhood. I say not that this
+chivalry is a Southern, but that it is an _American_ trait. As such I am
+proud of it.
+
+But does this high and honored place they hold in the hearts of their
+countrymen devolve no corresponding responsibility upon American women?
+Is it not a momentous inquiry how far they fall short of the high and
+commanding standard of thought and action demanded of them in order to
+meet this heavy obligation? It seems to me that the time is fully ripe
+for the clearer perception of the fact, that because women are not men,
+it does not follow that they are not in an important sense citizens. And
+this, without any reference to the question whether they should be
+permitted to vote and to legislate; though, as to the former, I do not
+know of a single valid objection to the exercise of the privilege, while
+there are several weighing in its favor; and as to the latter, it seems
+to me that one single consideration would forever, under the present
+constitution of things, debar her from a share in direct and positive
+legislation. It is as follows: The central idea of all properly
+constituted society, without which society would be an incoherent chaos,
+and governments themselves but the impotent lords of anarchy and
+misrule, is _the home_. Of the home, woman, from the very nature of the
+case, is the inspiriting genius, the ever-present and ever-watchful
+guardian. And the home, with its purities, its sanctities, its
+retiracies, its reticences, is far removed from the noise and wranglings
+of popular assemblies, the loud ambitions and selfish chicaneries of
+political arenas. The very foundation, pivotal ideas of human nature
+would be undermined by such publicity. The value of the home, as the
+nursery of whatever is pure, lovely, holy in the human soul, rests
+absolutely on the preservation of the modest purity and grace of woman.
+
+How, then, is woman's influence as a citizen in a republican land to be
+exercised, if she be excluded from positive legislation? I answer, by
+the moral effect of her personal influence in the formation of mind and
+character; by her work as the great educator in the home and in society.
+If hers be not a moral and spiritual influence, it is none at all for
+good. And of all the powers for good in a republic, this is the
+strongest, most beneficent, did woman rightly comprehend the issue.
+
+The purity, safety, and perpetuity of a free government rest,
+ultimately, not so much on forms of law, on precedents, on the
+ascendency of this or that party or administration, but on the
+intelligence, morality, and devotion to freedom of the people. What
+should woman care to legislate, when she may wield such an engine of
+power as education puts into her hands; when she may mould the minds and
+inspire the souls of those who are to be the future legislators; when
+she may, even now, put forth a direct and immediate influence upon those
+who are the legislators of the present time? For her influence on
+society is twofold, direct and reflex, present and prospective; it is
+the most powerful known, the most subtile and secret and determining,
+viz., _personal_ influence.
+
+To this end, therefore, that she may influence in the right direction,
+women need to inform themselves, to acquire a knowledge of the
+principles on which our system rests, and to become thoroughly imbued
+with their spirit. This will necessitate an acquaintance with the nature
+and details of our political creed, of which our women, especially, are
+lamentably ignorant. How many out of every hundred, do you suppose, have
+even read the Constitution, for instance? You may say that the majority
+of men have never studied it either, even of the voters. I admit the
+fact. There is a terrible lack of information among even men on public
+subjects. But I think this: if women were to educate themselves and
+their children, all whom they influence, indeed, to make these subjects
+a matter of _personal interest_, instead of regarding them as foreign
+matters, well enough for lawyers and politicians, perhaps, to
+understand, or for those who expect to fill office, but of no manner of
+importance to a person in strictly private life, this ignorance would
+come to an end. This shifting of personal responsibility by the great
+majority is the bane of our system. The truth is, no one, in a
+republican government, can lead an absolutely private career. As one who
+exercises the elective franchise, or one who influences the same, be it
+man or woman, there is no dodging the responsibility of citizenship. A
+better State of information on public affairs, also, will induce a
+correct conception of a certain class of ideas which, more than any
+others, perhaps, tend to strengthen, deepen, broaden, solidify the
+mental powers--ideas of absolute law and justice. As I have before said,
+the female mind is deficient in this particular.
+
+To understand their government and institutions, then, is the first step
+in the attainment of the standard demanded of American women; or, in
+other words, an increase of political knowledge--a more thorough
+political education.
+
+Another step is, the enlargement and strengthening of their patriotism.
+The former step, too, will conduce to this, and be its natural
+consequence. I do not mean alone that loose and vagrant sentiment which
+commonly passes for patriotism, which is aroused at some particular
+occasion and slumbers the rest of the time; which is spasmodic,
+temporary, impulsive, and devoid of principle; but that love of country
+founded on knowledge and conviction; a living faith of the heart based
+upon duty and principle; and which is, therefore, all-pervading,
+abiding, intelligent, governing thought and action, and conforming the
+life to the inner spirit. That sort of patriotism that lives as well in
+peace time as in war time; that makes the heart throb as sympathetically
+in behalf of country every day in the year as on the Fourth of July;
+that leads us to conform our habits of life and thought to the spirit of
+our institution and policy; that makes us as jealous of the honor, the
+consistent greatness of our country when all men speak well of her, as
+when her foes are bent upon her destruction. This _habit of mind_ is
+what I mean, rather than any transient emotion of heart; an enlightened
+and habitual spirit of patriotism.
+
+I give American women all credit due them for the patriotic temper they
+have evinced since this war began. I say that never have women showed
+more loyalty and zeal for country than the women of the North. Let
+sanitary fairs and commissions, let soldiers' aid societies from one end
+of the land to the other, and in every nook and corner of it, let our
+hospitals everywhere attest this heartfelt love and devotion on the part
+of our women. It is a noble spectacle, and my heart thrills at the
+thought of it. We have many noble ones who will stand in history along
+with England's Florence Nightingale and the 'Mother of the Gracchi,'
+those eternally fair and tender women, fit for the love and worship of
+the race. The want is not in the feeling of patriotism, but in the
+habitual principle and duty of the same. Since the war began, the fire
+has not slackened. But how was it before the war, and how will it be
+after it?
+
+To prove what I say, let me dwell a moment on two or three of the most
+prominent faults of our women, pronounced such by all the world. Of
+these, the most mischievous and glaring, the most ruinous in thousands
+of cases, is _extravagance_. Wastefulness is almost become a trait of
+our society. American women, especially, are profuse and lavish of money
+in dress, in equipage, in furniture, in houses, in entertainments, in
+every particular of life. Everywhere this foolish and wasteful use of
+money challenges the surprise and sarcasm of the observant foreign
+tourist through our country. Perhaps the largeness and immensity of our
+land, its resources and material, as well as the wonderful national
+advance we have already made, tends to cultivate in our people a feeling
+of profusion and a habit of extravagant display; but it is not in
+sympathy either with our creed or our profession.
+
+Were the money thus heedlessly expended made for them by slaves whom
+they had from infancy been taught to regard as created solely to make
+money for them to use and enjoy, this extravagant waste of money, while
+none the less selfish and inexcusable, would appear to grow
+spontaneously out of the arbitrary rule of slavery; or, if it had
+descended to them by legal or ancestral inheritance, there might be some
+show of reason for using it carelessly, though very small sense in so
+doing. But in a land where labor is the universal law; where, if a man
+makes money, he must work and sweat for its possession; when fortunes do
+not arise by magic, but must be built up slowly, painfully, at the
+expense of the nerve and sinew, the brain and heart of the builders, and
+these builders, not slaves, but our fathers, husbands, brothers; when a
+close attention to money-making is rapidly becoming a national badge,
+and is in danger of eating out entirely what is of infinitely more value
+than wealth--a high national integrity and conscience--and of sinking
+the immaterial and intellectual in the material and sensual; in such
+circumstances as these, I say, and under such temptations and dangers,
+it is a sin, an unnatural crime, to squander what costs so dear.
+
+Volumes might be written upon the frightful consequences of this
+extravagance in money matters, this living too fast and beyond their
+means, of which American women, especially, are guilty. Great financial
+crises, in which colossal schemes burst like bubbles, and vast estates
+are swallowed up like pebbles in the sea; commercial bankruptcies, in
+which honorable names are bandied on the lips of common rumor, and white
+reputations blackened by public suspicion; minds, that started in life
+with pure and honest principles, determined to win fortune by the
+straight path of rectitude, gradually growing distorted, gradually
+letting go of truth, honor, uprightness, and ending by enthroning gold
+in the place made vacant by the departed virtues; hearts, that were once
+responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that
+throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill
+through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and
+hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven,
+good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial
+success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager
+but fading eyes fixed earthward, dustward!
+
+Oh, it is a fearful thought that woman's extravagant desires and demands
+may thus kill all that is best and highest in those who should be her
+nearest and dearest. Yet, if this wide-spread evil of wastefulness is to
+be checked, it must be begun in the home, and by its guardian, woman.
+There is a movement lately inaugurated, looking to retrenchment in the
+matter of unnecessary expenditure, which, if it is to be regarded other
+than as a temporary expedient, is worthy of the patriotic enthusiasm
+which called it forth. I allude to the dress-reform movement made by the
+loyal women of the great Northern cities. The _spirit_ of this movement
+I could wish to see illustrated both during the continuance of and after
+the war. It is this economical habit of mind for the sake of patriotic
+principle, that I regard as a great step in the attainment of the
+desired standard for American women.
+
+Another plain fault of our women, and one which in a measure is the
+cause of the fault above noticed, is the wild chase after and copying of
+European fashions. We are accused of being a nation of copyists. This is
+more than half true. And why we should be, I cannot understand. Are we
+_never_ to have anything original, American? Are we always to be
+content to be servile imitators of Europe in our art, literature,
+social life, everything, except mere mechanical invention? I am thankful
+that we are beginning to have an art, a literature, of our very own. Let
+us also have a _fashion_, that shall be, distinctively, if not entirely,
+American. There is surely enough of us, of our splendid country, our
+institutions, our theories, our brave, free people, to build for
+ourselves, from our own foundation, and with our own material. But
+American Women have yet to inspire society with this patriotic ambition.
+
+Not what is becoming or suitable to her, but what is _the fashion_, does
+the American woman buy; not what she can afford to purchase, but what
+her neighbors have, is too commonly the criterion. This constant pursuit
+of Fashion, with her incessant changes, this emulation of their
+neighbors in the manifold ways in which money and time can be alike
+wasted, and not the necessary and sacred duties of home, the personal
+attention and effort which the majority of American women have to give
+to their household affairs, produce that _lack of time_ that is offered
+as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is
+which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the
+mind blank and nerveless except when thus superficially excited.
+
+This duty of _self-culture_ I would notice as one of the demands of the
+times upon American women in the attainment of the proposed standard. A
+wide, liberal, generous self-culture, of intellect, of taste, of
+conscience, for the sake of the better fulfilment of the mission to
+which, as an American citizen, every woman in the land is called. We do
+not begin to realize this. It is a great defect in our social system,
+that, when a woman has left school and settled down in life, she
+considers it the signal for her to quit all mental acquisition except
+what she may gather from her desultory reading, and, henceforth, her
+family and her immediate neighborhood absorb her whole soul under
+ordinary circumstances. The great majority of our countrywomen thus grow
+careworn, narrow-minded, self-absorbed. Now this is not right--it is not
+necessary. A woman's first, most important duty is in her home; but this
+need not clip the wings of her spirit, so that thought and affection
+cannot go out into the great world, and feel themselves a part of its
+restless, throbbing, many-sided life; brain and heart need not stagnate,
+even if busy, work-a-day life does claim her first endeavors. Indeed,
+the great danger to our women is not so much that they will become
+trifling and frivolous, as that they will become narrow-minded and
+selfish.
+
+But these vices of extravagance and excessive devotion to fashion, of
+which I have spoken, are due, largely, to a still more radical defect in
+our social education. I mean its _anti-republican spirit_. This is our
+crowning absurdity. We are good democrats--in theory. It is a pity that
+our practice does not bear out our theory, for the sake of the homely
+virtue of consistency. To a great many otherwise sensible people our
+simple republican ways are distasteful, and they are apt to look with,
+admiring, envious eyes on the conventional life of foreign lords, not
+considering how burdened with forms it is, and full of the selfishness,
+the pride and arrogance of the privileged and titled few, at the bitter
+expense of the suffering, untitled many. The aping of aristocratic
+pretensions has been a much-ridiculed foible of American women. It is
+certain that American society needs republicanizing in all its grades.
+We have widely departed from the simplicity of the early days and of the
+founders of the republic, in social life, just as in our political
+course we had suffered the vital essence of our organic law to become a
+dead thing, and the whole machinery of the Government to work reversely
+to its intention. And the cause has been the same in each case. The
+spirit of a government and the theories embodying it are the reflection
+of the social condition of a given age and people, so that the one will
+never be of a higher order than the other; while it is, also, equally
+true, that the best and most advanced political theories may be suffered
+to languish in operation, or become wholly dormant, from the influence
+of social causes. Thus it was that the demoralising effect of human
+slavery did, up to the time of the great shock which the nation received
+in the spring of 1861--a shock which galvanized it into life, and sent
+the before vitiated blood coursing hotly, and, at last, healthfully
+through all the veins and arteries of the national body--persistently
+encroach alike upon Government and society. The slime of that serpent
+was over everything in the North as well as the South, and if it did not
+kill out the popular virtue and patriotism as completely here as there,
+where it is intimately interwoven with the life of the people, the
+difference is due to that very cause, as well as to the inextinguishable
+vitality that God has conferred on the genius of human liberty, so that
+when betrayed, hunted, starved, outlawed, she yet seeks some impregnable
+fastness, and subsists on manna from the Divine Hand. This, then, is the
+fourth step in the attainment of the true ideal of character for
+American women--_the effort to renew society in the actual simplicity of
+our republican institutions_. Women, American women, should hold dear as
+anything in life the preservation and purity of those blessed
+institutions, guaranteeing to them as they do all their eminent
+privileges, and founded as they are on that emancipating genius of
+Christianity, which, through every age, has pointed a finger of hope,
+love, encouragement to woman as a chief instrument in the world's
+promised elevation and enfranchisement.
+
+While dwelling upon the faults of American women, I would at the same
+time do full credit to their virtues. I believe that they occupy as high
+a place as any women in the world, even a higher. But I trust that they
+will rise to the height of the demands which the changed times and the
+exigencies of the situation are pressing upon them, and will continue to
+press. This war has clearly and forcibly eliminated truths and
+principles which the long rule of the slave power had wellnigh eclipsed;
+it has been a very spear of Ithuriel, at whose keen touch men and
+principles start up in their real, not their simulated character. During
+its three years of progress, the national education has been advanced
+beyond computation. When it is over, things, ideas, will not go back to
+the old standpoint. Then will arise the new conditions, demands,
+possibilities. If there is one truth that has been unmistakably
+developed by the war, it is the controlling moral power and sanction
+which a free government derives from woman. And this has been shown not
+only in the influence for good which the loyal women of the North have
+contributed for the aid of the Government, but with equal power in the
+influence for evil which the Southern women have exerted for its
+destruction. I suppose it is true that this war for slavery has received
+its strongest, fiercest continuing impulses from the women of the South.
+Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm, the persistency, the heroic
+endurance, the self-sacrifice they have manifested. Only had it been in
+a good cause!
+
+Just here let me say a word in behalf of these Southern women. There is
+a disposition on the part of the Northern public, forming their opinion
+from the instances of fierce spite and vindictiveness, of furious scorn
+and hatred, which have been chronicled in the reports of army
+correspondents and in the sensation items of the newspapers, to regard
+them as little short of demons in female shape. All this is naturally
+working a corresponding dislike and ill-feeling among the masses North.
+To such I would say: These Southern sisters are not demons, but made of
+the same flesh and blood, and passions and affections as yourselves. The
+difference between you is purely one of circumstances and training, of
+locality--above all, of education and institutions. It is as true that
+_institutions are second nature_ as that _habit_ is.
+
+The peculiar faults of Southern women they share with their Northern
+sisters, only in a vastly enhanced degree; and besides these, they have
+others, born of and nurtured by that terrible slavery system under whose
+black shadow they live and die. Their idleness, their lack of neatness
+and order, their dependence, their quick and sometimes cruel passions,
+their unreason, their contempt of inferiors, their vanity and arrogance,
+their ignorance, their lightness and superficiality, are all the
+outgrowth of its diabolical influences. They are, in fact, no more idle,
+thriftless, passionate, or supercilious, than Northern women would be in
+similar circumstances. It is too much the habit among the unreflecting,
+in judging of the Southern masses in their hostile attitude toward their
+lawful Government, to give less weight than it deserves to the necessary
+and inevitable tendency upon the mind and character of such an
+institution as African slavery; and to let the blame be of a personal
+and revengeful nature, which should fall most heavily on the sin itself,
+the dire crime against God and society, against himself and his fellow
+man, which the individual is all his life taught is no crime but a
+positive good. This slavery is woman's peculiar curse, bearing almost
+equally with its deadly, hideous weight on the white woman of the
+dominant class as upon the black slave woman. And yet how deluded they
+are! If that curse does come to an utter end in the South, as it surely
+will, I shall hail, as one of the grandest results of its extinction,
+next to the justice due the oppressed people of color, the emancipation
+of the white women of that fair land, all of them, slaveholders and
+non-slaveholders, from an influence too withering and deadly for
+language to depict. Oh, when shall that scapegoat, slavery, with its
+failures and losses and shortcomings, its frauds and sins and woes, be
+sent off into the wilderness of non-existence, to be heard from
+nevermore? God speed the hour!
+
+But with all their faults, they have many and shining virtues. Though
+the ideal of a Southern woman commonly received at the North and abroad,
+is not true to the life, being neither so perfect nor so imperfect as
+their eulogists, on the one hand, and their detractors, on the other,
+would fain make it to be, there is yet much, very much, to elicit both
+love and admiration in her character.
+
+The Southern female mind is precocious, brilliant, impressible, ardent,
+impulsive, fanciful. The quickness of parts of many girls of fifteen is
+astonishing. I used often to think, what splendid women they would make,
+with the training and facilities of our Northern home and school
+education. But, as it was, they went under a cloud at seventeen,
+marrying early, and either sinking into the inanition of plantation
+life, or having their minds dissipated in a vain and frivolous round of
+idle and selfish gayeties. I compare their intellects to a rich tropical
+plant, which blossoms gorgeously and early, but rarely fruitens. The
+Southern women are, for the most part, a capable but undeveloped race of
+beings. With their precocity, like the exuberance of their vegetation,
+and with their quick, impassioned feelings, like their storm-freighted
+air, always bearing latent lightning in its bosom, they might become a
+something rich, rare, and admirable; but, never bringing thought up to
+the point of reflection; never learning self-control, nor the necessity
+of holding passion in abeyance; never getting beyond the degrading
+influence of intercourse with a race whose stolidity and servility, the
+inevitable result of their condition, on the one hand, are both the
+cause and effect of the habit of irresponsible power and selfish
+disregard of right fostered in the ruling class, on the other--what
+could be expected of them but to become splendid abortions?
+
+There is another consideration in connection with the excessive war
+spirit they have evinced, which may help to account for it. I have often
+had occasion to notice the habit the educated class of Southern women
+have of conversing familiarly with their male friends and relatives on
+political subjects, and to contrast it with the almost total reticence
+of Northern women on subjects of public interest. This, of course,
+induces a more immediate and personal interest in them, and the more
+intimate one's interest in a subject, the more easily enthusiasm is
+aroused toward it.
+
+Now, the very head and front, the bone and marrow of Southern politics
+for more than three decades, has been--slavery, and plans for its
+aggrandizement and perpetuation. _That_ has been the ulterior object of
+all the past vociferations about _State rights_ and _Southern rights_.
+Slavery is country, practically, with them, and as it lay at the root of
+their society, and its check or its extinction would, in their false
+view, overturn society itself, it was easy for the scheming, cunning
+leaders of the slave faction to adroitly transfer this enthusiasm, and
+to raise the watchword, which never yet among any people has been raised
+in vain, _Your homes and firesides_! When ever did women hear that cry
+unmoved?
+
+When _country_, that grand idea and object of human hope, pride, and
+affection, had degenerated into a section; and when a false and
+miserable _institution_, from its very nature terribly intimate with the
+life of society, became the most substantial feature of that section;
+what wonder if the war has at last, whatever it might have been at
+first, come to the complexion of a contest for home and fireside with
+the masses of the people, with the majority of the Southern women?
+
+The magnificent dreams and projects, too, of a great slave empire, that
+should swallow up territory after territory, and astonish the world with
+its wealth, power, and splendor, which were fused into life in the
+brains of the great apostles of slavery and secession, had their
+influence on minds which, like the minds of the Southern women, have a
+natural, innate love for the gorgeous, the splendid, the profuse, and
+showy; minds ambitious of, and accustomed to, rule, and impatient of
+control; minds already glazed over with the influence of the lying
+assertion, proved to their uncritical, passionate judgment by all the
+sophistical arguments of which their religious and political guides were
+capable, that slavery is the very best possible condition for the black
+man, and the relation of master the only true and natural one for the
+white. I say, I do not wonder at the Southern women so much. I pity them
+infinitely. Just think what they have been educated to believe, and then
+say if there is not something sadly splendid in the very spirit of
+endurance, of defiance, of sacrifice, however wrong and mistaken, they
+have shown. I pity them profoundly, for they are drinking to the lees
+the cup of suffering, of deprivation, of humiliation, of bitter loss,
+and stern retribution. And the end is not yet. Deeper chagrin and
+humiliation must be theirs; more loss, more devastation, more death, and
+ruin, before their proud hopes and visions are utterly crushed out of
+life. Oh, are _they_ not being educated, too, as well as we of the
+North?
+
+When I think of all the grace, loveliness, and generosity of the many
+Southern women I have known and loved; when I recall the admirable
+qualities which distinguished them, the grace of manner, the social
+tact and address, the intellectual sprightliness, the openness and
+hospitality of soul, the kindliness and sympathy of heart, the Christian
+gentleness and charity; I can but say to my Northern sisters, These
+deluded women of the South would, in themselves, be worthy of your
+esteem and love, could the demon of secession and slavery once be
+exorcised. And I believe that when it is, and the poor, rent South sits
+clothed and in her right mind, subdued through sheer exhaustion of
+strength, and so made fit for the healthy recuperation that is one day
+to begin, the cause of our beloved country, and of humanity through this
+country, will have no more generous or loving supporters, ay, none so
+enthusiastic and devoted as they. I glory in the anticipation of the
+time when the ardent, impulsive, demonstrative South shall even lead the
+colder North in the manifestation of a genuine patriotism, worthy of the
+land and nation that calls it forth. We shall then have gained _a
+country_, indeed, instead of being, as heretofore, several sections of a
+country.
+
+The consistent moulding of society in the spirit of our political ideas
+is essential to securing us the respect of the world, and to vindicating
+the principles, themselves, on which having built, they are our sole
+claim to such honor and respect. As long as we fail so to do, we may be
+the wonder, and we are likely to be the jest of the onlooking world, but
+we never can be what we ought to be, its admired and beloved model. It
+seems to me there is less danger now than formerly of our failure in
+this important respect. The dangers, the expenses, the burdens, and
+losses of this fearful civil war will surely create in the hearts of the
+people everywhere, North and South, a revivified if not a new-born love
+for, and appreciation of, republican principles, and will teach them
+where the most insidious danger to them lies; not from open foes,
+foreign or domestic; not from anything inherent in those free
+principles; but from a cause exceedingly paradoxical: a democratic
+people leaving to a party, to a section, the Government which should be
+their very own; the virtue and intelligence of the nation absenting
+themselves from the national councils, thus making way for corruption
+and fraud to enter in an overwhelming flood; one half of the nation
+rocking its conscience to sleep with the false lullaby of commercial
+greatness and material prosperity, and the other, left to do the
+governing, with seemingly no conscience at all, going to work with
+satanic directness and acuteness, to undermine the principles thus left
+without a guardian, and to inject the black blood of slavery into the
+veins of the body politic, till the name _democracy_ became a misnomer
+the most wretched, a sarcasm the most touching. I do not imagine we
+shall ever again go back to that. It must be that, in future, the
+American people will grow into the habit of demanding that an
+enlightened, patriotic statesmanship shall rule, instead of an
+unprincipled demagoguism. Also, that they will attend to it that better
+men are sent to Washington; men chosen because they represent most
+nearly the great national ideas and interests, which the people will
+require shall absorb legislation rather than any sectional institution
+whatever; and not because, primarily, they are the subservient idols of
+this or that party. It must be that, hereafter, party will be less and
+the nation more. Of course, parties will exist, necessarily; but if this
+great American people, having carried on to perfect success this war
+against a stupendous rebellion, and having gone through the school of
+knowledge and experience it has been to them, can again settle down into
+the mere political jobbery into which governmental affairs had
+deteriorated before the earthquake of war stirred up the dregs of
+things, it would be an instance of fruitless expenditure of means and
+life, and of self-stultification, too pitiful for words--such an
+instance as the world has not yet seen, thanks to the ordained
+progression of the world.
+
+When peace returns to the land once more; when the fierce fever of blood
+and strife is quelled; when the vague fears and uncertainties of this
+period of transition are over, and the keen pangs and bloody sweat of
+the nation's new birth are all past--what will be the position of this
+American people? I tremble to contemplate it. It will be much like what
+I imagine the condition of a freed, redeemed soul to be, just escaped
+the thraldom, perplexity, and sin of this lower life, and entered on a
+purer, higher, freer plane of existence. Then comes reconstruction,
+reorganization, a getting acquainted with the new order of things, and
+the new duties and experiences to which it will give rise; then will be
+discoveries of new truths, and new applications of old; old errors and
+superstitions have been renounced, and facts and principles which have
+long lain in abeyance, smothered under a weight of neglect and
+unappreciation, will start into fresh magnitude. And, withal, will come
+a sense of the reality and security there is in this great change, and
+of infinite relief and blessedness therein, such as I suppose attends
+every change from a lower to a higher condition, from darkness to light,
+from cloud, mystery, and trouble, to the white air of peace and the
+clear shining of the sun of knowledge.
+
+_Then_, think of the career that lies ahead of this regenerated nation.
+This war, fearful and costly as it is, was needed, to rouse men and
+women to the conviction that there is something more in a people's life
+than can be counted in dollars and cents; and that their strength
+consists not alone in commercial superiority or material development,
+but, principally, in virtue, justice, righteousness. It was needed, to
+give the lie to that impious and infidel assumption of the South that
+_Cotton is king_, and to prove that the God of this heaven-protected
+land is a true and jealous God, who will not give his glory to Baal. It
+was needed, to arrest the nation in the fearful mechanical tendency it
+was assuming, whereby it was near denying the most holy and vital
+principles of its being; and it was needed, to warm and quicken the
+almost dead patriotism of the masses, and to educate them anew in the
+high and pure sentiments they had suffered to be forgotten, and, in
+forgetting which, many another ration has gone to irretrievable decay
+and ruin.
+
+I trust in God that this people have not suffered many things in vain,
+and that the time is dawning when we shall be a _nation_ indeed, a
+Christian nation, built upon those eternal ideas of truth, justice,
+right, charity, holiness, which would make us the ideal nation of the
+earth, dwelling securely under the very smile and benediction of
+Jehovah.
+
+In this time of which I speak, the people will see that to be a _nation_
+we must not be merely servile imitators of Old World ideas, but must
+develop our own _American ideas_ in every department of government and
+society; thus, eventually, building up a national structure which shall,
+which need, yield to none, but may take precedence of all.
+
+We are too young, as yet, to have become such a nation, with its
+distinctive and separate features, each clearly marked and
+self-illustrating; but _not_ too young to understand the necessity of
+working out our own special plan of civilization. As the American nation
+did not follow the course of all others, by mounting from almost
+impalpable beginnings up through successive stages to an assured
+position of national influence and greatness; so need we not imitate
+them in waiting for gray hairs to see ourselves possessed of a distinct
+national character. As we did not have to go through the slow, age-long
+process of originating, of developing ideas, principles, but took them
+ready made, a legacy from the experience of all the foregoing ages; and
+as our business is to apply these ideas to the problem we are set to
+solve, not for ourselves alone, but for the world's peoples, for
+aggregate humanity, so should we be neither laggard nor lukewarm in
+fulfilling this high trust, this 'manifest destiny.' In the developing
+of our special American ideas we have a great work before us--a work but
+begun, as yet. There is an American art--an American literature--an
+American society, as well as an American Government, to be shaped out of
+the abundant material we possess, and compacted into the enduring
+edifice of national renown. For what is national character, but ideas
+crystallized in institutions? Until we have done this--given permanency
+to our special ideas in our institutions--we are a nation in embryo; our
+manhood exists only in prophecy.
+
+To assist in this mighty work is the duty and privilege of American
+women. What higher ambition could actuate their endeavors--what nobler
+meed of glory win their aspirations?
+
+O ye women, dear American sisters, whoever you are, who have offered up
+your husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, on the red altar of your country,
+that so that country may be rescued from the foes that seek her honor
+and life; who have labored and toiled and spent your efforts in
+supplying the needs of her brave defenders; whose hearts and prayers are
+all for the success of our holy cause; who are glad with an infinite joy
+at her successes, and who are sorry with profoundest grief at her
+defeats; complete, I implore you, the sacrifice already begun, and give
+to your regenerated country, in the very dawn of the new day which is to
+see her start afresh upon the shining track of national glory,
+yourselves, your best energies, and affections. Love liberty--love
+justice--love simplicity--love truth and consistency. See to it that the
+cause of republican freedom suffer not its greatest drawback from your
+failure to lead society up to the point to which you have the power to
+educate it. By your office as the natural leaders and educators of
+society; by your mission as the friends and helpers of all who suffer;
+by your high privilege as the ordained helpmate of man in the work,
+under God and His truth, of evangelizing the world, and lifting it out
+of its sin and sorrow; by your obligations to the glorious principles of
+Christian republicanism; and by your hopes of complete ultimate
+enfranchisement, I adjure you. The world has need of you, the erring,
+sin-struck world. Your country, even now struggling in the throes of its
+later birth, has desperate need of you. Man has need of you; already are
+being woven between the long-estranged sexes new and indissoluble bonds
+of union,--sympathies, beautiful, infinite, deathless; and, with a
+pleased and tender smile of recognition across the continent, he hails
+you _helper_! Your era dawns in sad and sombre seeming, indeed, in a
+land deluged with fraternal blood; but yours are all who need, all who
+sin, all who suffer. Shall the progress of humanity wait upon your
+supineness, or neglect, or refusal? Or shall the era now beginning,
+through you speedily culminate into the bright, perfect day of your
+country's redemption, and thus lead progress and salvation throughout
+the nations of the earth? Never were women so near the attainment of
+woman's possibilities as we American women; never so near the
+realization of that beautiful ideal which has ever shaped the dreams and
+colored the visions of mankind, making Woman the brightest star of man's
+love and worship.
+
+Will she realize the dream--will she justify the worship? That is the
+question that concerns her now.
+
+
+
+
+A WREN'S SONG.
+
+
+It is not often in these dark days that I can sleep as I used to do
+before the flood came and swept away all that my soul held dear; but
+last night, I was so weary in body with a long journey, that I fell
+asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, and slept on until the
+early morning sun came in through the open window, and woke me with its
+gentle touch. The air was sweet with spring fragrance, and the first
+sound that came to my awakened ears was the song of a little wren, a
+little wren who sang even as to-day in the days of my youth and joy,
+whose nest is built over the window that was so often a frame for that
+dearest-loved face. The song brought with it the recollection of all the
+little songster had outlived--the love, hope, and fear that had sprung
+up and grown and died, since I had first heard his warbling. And I broke
+into those quiet tears that are now my only expression of a grief too
+familiar to be passionate.
+
+To-day is the first of June--a year to-day since all was over!
+
+Three years ago, this very day, was to have been my wedding day. June
+and its roses were made for lovers, as surely as May, with its May
+flowers and little lilies, is the month of Mary the Blessèd. I had
+always wished to be married in June, and circumstances combined to
+render that time more convenient than any other. My love affair had been
+a long one, and had met with no obstacles. Our families had always been
+intimate, and I remember _him_ a boy of fourteen, when he first came to
+live in the house opposite. At sixteen he went to West Point, and when
+he came home in his furlough year, I was fifteen. We were both in
+Washington until August; it was a long session; his father was in
+Congress, and so was mine. Edward Mayne had nothing to do that summer,
+and I never had much to occupy me; we saw each other every day, and so
+we fell in love. The heads of both families saw all, smiled a little,
+and teased a good deal; but no one interfered. My mother said it gave me
+occupation and amusement, and helped me to pass the long summer
+evenings, which I thought charming, and every one else thought a bore.
+It was called a childish flirtation, and when he went back to the
+Academy, and I to school, the thing dropped out of notice, and was soon
+forgotten.
+
+But not by us. We remembered each other, and, each in our different
+lives, we were constant to our early love. And so it came to pass that,
+when he came back again, after graduating, we were very glad to see each
+other; the old intercourse was renewed, and the old feeling showed
+itself stronger for the lapse of years. No one interfered with us; the
+intimacy between our families had continued, and when we went to the
+seaside for the hot months, the Maynes went to the same place; and in
+August Edward had a leave, and came down to join them. I think he would
+have come if they had not been there, but that makes no difference now.
+One moonlit night, at the end of August, with the waves at our feet
+sounding their infinite secret, I promised to marry him; and as we
+parted that night at the door of our cottage, I looked at the
+silver-streaked waters, and said to him that neither the broad sea of
+death nor the stormy sea of life should ever part my soul from his. I
+have kept my word.
+
+So we were engaged to be married, and were as happy as two young lovers
+ought to be. Both families were delighted, my father only stipulating
+that the marriage should not take place immediately. But that we felt no
+hardship, as Edward was stationed in Washington; and everything in the
+future looked as bright as everything in the past had ever been. We were
+sure of a happy winter, and hoped for a gay one, and we had both, though
+the cloud that had first appeared when the little wren began his summer
+song, had grown larger and darker day by day, until the signs of storm
+were no longer to be overlooked, and the fearful prophesied that the day
+of peace was over. Still I never dreamed of the difference it would make
+to me.
+
+New Tear's Eve it was decided that we should be married on the first of
+June. As the clock struck twelve, and the last footfall of the old year
+died away, Edward put out his hand to take mine, and said:
+
+'A happy New Tear it will surely be to us, my Laura, for we shall spend
+more than half of it together;' and I echoed his 'happy New Year'
+without a dread. I knew the storm was coming; I feared its fury; but I
+thought myself too secure, too near a haven to be lost; how could I know
+that the brave ship was destined to go down in sight of land?
+
+And yet I might have known it. For I came from the North, which was, and
+is my home; and he was a Southern man. His family owned property and
+slaves in Georgia; and, though Mr. Mayne's political career had
+prevented their living there much, they considered it their home. One of
+the sons, who was married, lived on the plantation, and managed it well;
+the slaves were comparatively happy, and there were strong ties between
+them, their master and his family. My sister, who was delicate, had
+spent a winter in Florida, and I had accompanied her there. On our way
+home we paid a visit to the Mayne plantation; my sister enjoyed herself
+very much there, and was pro-slavery from that time; I was then sixteen,
+and had always hated it, and what with my fears of snakes, and my
+dislike of the black servants, whom I thought either inefficient or
+impertinent, and my unconquerable liking for freedom, I was not so
+fascinated. Edward Mayne himself did not like a planter's life, and he
+thought slavery an evil, but an evil inherited and past curing. He
+argued that the disease was not mortal and endurable, and that it would
+kill the country to use the knife. His youngest sister and I were the
+only two who ever discussed the subject; she talked a great deal of
+nonsense, and probably I did, too; and as she always lost her temper, I
+thought it wiser to let the subject drop, especially as I did not think
+about it a great deal, and it annoyed Edward to have any coolness
+between Georgy and me, and he himself never discussed the topic. We were
+both very young and very happy, too young and thoughtless to care much
+for any great question, so we sang our little song of happiness, and its
+music filled our ears until it was no longer possible not to hear the
+tumult of the world without.
+
+The first day of January was our last day of perfect peace. Those who
+had not thought of the question before had now to answer what part they
+meant to take. People discussed less what States would secede, and more
+what they would themselves do, and many who are now most firm on one
+side or the other were then agitated by doubt and indecision. Events did
+not tarry for individual minds. We all know the story now; I need not
+repeat it. Still my future seemed unchanged, and I went to New York the
+third of January to order my wedding clothes, but I stayed only three or
+four days; I was restless for the continued excitement of Washington.
+The day I came back Mississippi seceded, and with it went Mr. Davis. I
+heard him make that farewell speech which so few listened to unmoved,
+and at which I cried bitterly. I went to say good by to him, though I
+could not say God speed, for already I was beginning to know that I had
+principles, and which side they were on. As we parted, he said, in that
+courteous way that has made so many bow at his shrine:
+
+'We shall have you in the South very soon, Miss Laura,' and I did not
+say no; but the mist lifted suddenly before my eyes, and I saw the rock
+on which my life was to split, and that no striving against the stream
+would avail me aught. Still I said nothing, and the days flew swiftly by
+on restless wings; days so full of excitement that they seemed to take
+years with them in their flight.
+
+It was a lovely morning in February; the air had already a May softness
+in it, and the crocuses were bright in the grounds of the Capitol, when
+Edward and I went to take our favorite walk, and there, in sight of the
+broad river which is now a world-known name of division, he told me he
+had made up his mind to leave the army; that there might be fighting,
+and he could not fight against his own people, whom he believed to be in
+the right; that he thought it more honorable to resign at that moment
+than to wait until the hour of need. I could not oppose him, for I knew
+he thought he was doing his duty. I remembered how different his
+opinions were from mine, and that his whole system of education had
+trained him in dissimilar ideas of right from those held in the North.
+Georgia was his country, for which he lived, and for which he thought he
+ought to die, if need were. The shackles of inherited prejudices
+trammelled his spirit, as they might have trammelled the spirit of a
+wiser man, who could have shaken them off in the end; but my lover was
+not wide-minded, and had not the clear sight that sees over and beyond
+these petty lives of ours that are as nothing in the way of a great
+principle and a God-bidden struggle; his eyes saw only what they had
+been taught to see--his home, in its greenness and beauty, not the dank
+soul-malaria, to which, alas! so many of us are acclimated.
+
+He resigned, and his resignation was accepted without delay or
+difficulty, as were all resignations in those days. The spring began to
+break in all its glory, and the grass grew green in Virginia, on fields
+that were trampled and bloody before that battle summer was over. The
+little wren sang again its song. This year a song of promise--of promise
+never to be fulfilled!
+
+For the news of Sumter came, and the North rose with a cry, and my heart
+leaped up within me with a thrill stronger and deeper and more masterful
+than any mere personal feeling can ever give; a feeling that rules my
+soul to-day even as it ruled in that first excited hour.
+
+Edward went South, and I let him go alone. I could not, I would not go
+with him. I had no sympathy, no tenderness, scarcely forgiveness for the
+men who had brought the evil upon us. We parted lovers, hoping for days
+of peace, and sure of reunion when those days should come; and every
+night and every morning I prayed for him; but first I prayed for the
+safety of my country, and the victory of our cause.
+
+Time crept on. The battle of Bull Run was fought; he was engaged in it,
+and for many, many days I never knew whether he was living or dead. In
+the autumn I heard he had been ordered West, and that winter was a time
+of anxious days and restless nights. I never heard _from_ him, and I did
+not think it fair to write; occasionally I heard _of_ him through an
+aunt of his, who lived in Maryland, but she was gall and bitterness
+itself on the political question, and never let me know anything she
+could possibly keep from me. So my life passed in fruitless wondering
+and bitter suspense; I never saw a soldier without thinking of Edward,
+and my dreams showed him to me wounded, ill, or dying. No; the dead may
+make their voices heard across the gulf that parts us from them, but not
+the absent, or his soul would have heard my 'exceeding loud and bitter
+cry,' and hearing, must have come.
+
+I must not dwell on this. The days rolled on, and spring brightened the
+air, the grass was green again, the dying hope in my heart revived, and
+I listened again to the wren's song, and thought it yet promised a
+summer for my life. But that was the year of the Peninsular campaign,
+and the dying leaves fell on the graves of our bravest and brightest,
+and the autumn wind sighed a lamentation in our ears, and our hearts
+were mourning bitterly for the defeats of the summer, and no less
+bitterly for the dear-bought glory of Antietam. And winter came again:
+hope fled with the swallows, and my youth began to leave me.
+
+In the late autumn I went to New York, to pay a visit to a friend. One
+night I went with my brother to the theatre. The play was stupid, and
+the _entr'actes_ were long. In the middle of the second act, while some
+horrible nonsense was being talked upon the stage, I looked around the
+theatre, and saw no face I had ever seen before, when a lady near me
+moved her fan, and, a little distance beyond her, I saw--with a start I
+saw--the face that was never long absent from my thoughts. Changed and
+older, and brown and bearded; but I knew him; and he knew me, and
+smiled; and there was no doubt in my mind. I was not even surprised. But
+to the sickness of sudden joy soon succeeded the sickness of
+apprehension. What brought him there? And what would be done to him if
+he were discovered? How could I see him and speak to him? Oh! could it
+be possible that we might not meet more nearly! I wonder I did not die
+during that quarter of an hour. I turned and looked at my brother; his
+eyes were fixed upon the stage, and he was as curiously unmoved as if
+the world were still steady and firm beneath my feet.
+
+I did not look at Edward again; I feared to betray him; and the green
+curtain fell, and my brother said, if I did not mind being left alone
+for a few minutes, he would go. He left me, and Edward came to me, and
+once more I saw him, and once more I heard his voice. He stayed only one
+moment, only long enough to make an appointment with me for the next
+morning, and then he left the theatre. The people around us thought
+probably that he was a casual acquaintance, if indeed they thought about
+it at all; and when my brother came back, he found me looking listless
+and bored, and apologized for having been detained.
+
+I had--and still have, thank God!--a friend in whom I trusted; to her I
+had recourse, and it was by her help that I was enabled to keep my
+appointment. Only those who have known the pain of such a parting can
+ever hope to know the joy of such a meeting. I would like to make the
+rest of this as short as possible. Edward had run the blockade to see
+me; he had been to Washington, had stayed there three days, had heard of
+my absence, obtained my address, and followed me to New York; he had
+waited until twilight, when he had come to look at the house where I was
+staying; as he was walking slowly on the opposite side of the street, he
+had seen me come out with my brother, and had followed us to the
+theatre. He had trusted to his long beard and the cropping of his curly
+head as the most effectual disguise, and so far no one had recognized
+him. The only people who had known of his being in Washington were the
+friends with whom he stayed, the tailor who had sold him his clothes,
+who had a son with Stuart's cavalry, and the girl, my old school friend,
+who had given him my address, whom he went to see in the dusk hours of
+the afternoon, and who had hospitably received him in the coal
+cellar--which struck me, at the moment, as an infallible method of
+arousing suspicion. He wanted me to return with him, or to marry him
+and follow him by flag of truce; he was sure Providence had made his way
+smooth on purpose to effect our union. His arguments were perhaps not
+very logical, but they almost convinced me of what I wished to believe.
+I was willing to bear the anger of my family, but could not think of
+again undergoing the wear and tear of separation. I promised to let him
+know my decision early the next morning; I think I should have gone with
+him, but that evening we were telegraphed to return to Washington--my
+father had been stricken down by apoplexy; and my brother and I went
+home in the night train. Edward knew the reason, for he read my father's
+death in the morning's newspaper.
+
+Three weeks afterward I had a letter from Edward Mayne by flag of truce;
+that was the week before Fredericksburg; and then the agony again began.
+It did not last very long. In the early spring came Chancellorsville,
+and there Edward was slightly wounded and taken prisoner; he was removed
+to the hospital at Point Lookout; his aunt went to nurse him, but I did
+not go; he was doing very well, and I thought it was wiser not. And one
+day in May--ah! that day!--I was looking out of my window, and I see now
+the blue sky, the little white clouds, the roses, and the ivied wall
+that I saw when my mother came in and said Mrs. Daingerfield had come to
+take me to Edward, who was very ill and anxious to see me. I remember
+how the blood seemed to sink away from my heart, and for a moment I
+thought I was going to die; but in another moment I knew that I should
+live. I was eager and excited, and not unhappy, from that time until the
+end was at hand.
+
+I had never been in a hospital before, and there was a long ward full of
+men, who all looked to me as if they were dying, through which I passed
+to reach the room in which Edward Mayne lay alone. He heard me coming,
+and, as I opened the door, he raised himself in bed and put out his hand
+to me....
+
+That night the dreadful pain left him, and his aunt said he seemed
+brighter and more hopeful; but when the surgeon saw him in the morning,
+he shook his head. When the sun set, Edward knew that he should never
+again see its evening glories. Into that dark, still room came a greater
+than Solomon, and as the dread shadow of his wings fell on my life, I
+hushed my prayers and tears. We sat and watched and waited; and there
+came back a feeble strength into the worn frame, and he told us what he
+wished. He said that perhaps he had been wrong, but he had thought
+himself right; at least, he had given his life for his faith, and soon,
+soon he would know all. Then he asked them to leave him alone with me
+for a little while, and when they came back into the room, nothing
+remained of him but the cast-off mortality. The sun was rising in the
+east, but his soul was far beyond it; and the sunlight came in and
+kissed the quiet pale face, that looked so peaceful and so happy there
+could be no lamentation over it.
+
+That day came his parole; the parole which we had so exerted ourselves
+to obtain that he might go home to get well; and now it had found him
+far beyond the captivity of bar or flesh--a freed spirit, 'gone up on
+high.'
+
+The kindness of the Government induced us to ask one more favor, which
+was granted us. They let us take him home to Washington and bury him in
+the place he had always wished to be buried in; and some Confederate
+prisoners were given permission to attend his funeral. So he was buried
+as a soldier should be buried, borne to the grave by his comrades, and
+mourned by the woman dearest to him. He lies now on the sunniest slope
+in that green graveyard, where the waters rush near his resting place,
+and the trees make a shade for the daisies that brighten above him.
+
+He died as the sun rose on the first of June; we buried him early on the
+morning of the fifth. That night I left Washington, glad that it was to
+be no longer my place of residence, glad that my family would soon
+follow me to make another home where I could be stung by no
+associations. The old house passed into the hands of my elder sister,
+who is married to a Congressman from the West. But during this winter I
+have been so often homesick, and this early spring has been so chill and
+bleak compared with the May days of Washington, that I was fain to come
+back for a brief hour; and I have chosen to come in these last May days,
+that the first of June might find me here, true to the memory of the
+past.
+
+There is nothing left of the old days; the place is changed from what it
+once was; the streets swarm with soldiers and strange faces; the houses
+are used by Government, or are dwelt in by strangers; there is scarcely
+a trace in this Sodom of the Sodom before the flood. No, there is
+nothing left for me now, of the things I used to know, except the little
+wren, whose song broke my heart this morning; and there is nothing here
+for me to care for, except that young grave in Georgetown, whose white
+cross bears but the initials and the date. I must now try to make myself
+a new life elsewhere, and to-morrow I go forth, shaking off the dust
+that soils my garments; hoping for the promise of the rainbow in this
+storm--and sure of the strength that will not fail me. O world! be
+better than thy wont to thy poor, weary child! O earth! be kindly to a
+bruised reed! O hope! thou wilt not leave me till the end--the end for
+which I wait.
+
+
+
+
+WORD-STILTS
+
+
+If the reader is so favored as to possess a copy of the 'Comparative
+Physiognomy' of Dr. James W. Redfield (a work long out of market, and
+which never had much of a sale), he may find in a chapter concerning the
+likeness between certain men and parrots some wise remarks on ridiculous
+eccentricities in literature. 'In inferior minds,' says the Doctor,'the
+love of originality shows itself in oddity.' 'There is many a sober
+innovator,' he continues, farther on,' whose delight it is to ponder
+
+     'O'er many a volume of forgotten lore,'
+
+that he may not be supposed to make use of the humdrum literature of the
+day; who introduces obsolete words and coins new ones, and makes a
+patchwork of all languages; makes use of execrable phrases, and invents
+a style that may be called his own.' The Doctor compares these writers
+to parrots.
+
+Now it is a well-known peculiarity of parrots that they have a passion
+for perching themselves in places where they will be on a level with the
+heads of the superior race whose utterances they imitate. The perch a
+parrot affects is almost always an altitude of about six feet, or the
+height of the tallest men. They feel their inferiority keenly if you
+leave them to hop about on the floor. It occurs to us that nothing could
+please a parrot more, if it could be, than a pair of stilts on which it
+could hop comfortably.
+
+The literary parrot, more fortunate than his feathered fellow, finds
+stilts in words--obsolete words, such as men do not use in common
+intercourse with their fellows. Modern rhymesters more and more affect
+this thing. Every day sees some _outre_ old word resurrected from its
+burial of rubbish, and set in the trochaics and spondees of love songs
+and sonnets. Dabblers in literature, who would walk unseen, pigmies
+among a race of giants, get on their word-stilts, and straightway the
+ear-tickled critics and the unconsciously nose-led public join in pæans
+of applause. Sage men, who do not exactly see through the thing, nod
+their heads approvingly, and remark: 'Something in that fellow!' And the
+delighted ladies, prone as the dear creatures often are to be pleased
+with jingle that they don't understand, exclaim: 'A'n't he delightful!'
+
+The lamented Professor Alexander once produced a very excellent poem,
+which contained only words of a single syllable, forcibly illustrating
+the power of simple language. We should be glad to reproduce it here, by
+way of contrapose to our own accompanying poem, but cannot now recall it
+to memory in its completeness. Any child, who could talk as we all talk
+in our families, could read and understand fully the poem to which I
+refer. But ask any child to read the lines we have hammered out below,
+and tell you what they mean! Nay, ask any man to do it, and see if he
+_can_ do it. Probably not one in a hundred usual readers, could 'read
+and translate' the word-stilts with which we have trammelled our poetic
+feet, except with the aid of patient and repeated communion with his
+English dictionary. There are, however, no words employed here which may
+not be found in the standard dictionaries of our tongue.
+
+To it:
+
+
+THE POET INVOKETH HIS MUSE.
+
+  Come, ethel muse, with fluxion tip my pen,
+    For rutilant dignotion would I earn;
+  As rhetor wise depeint me unto men:
+    A thing or two I ghess they'll have to learn
+  Ere they percipience can claim of what I'm up
+    To, in macrology so very sharp as this;
+  Off food oxygian hid them come and sup,
+    Until, from very weariness, they all dehisce.
+
+
+THE POET SEEKETH THE READER'S FORBEARANCE.
+
+  Delitigate me not, O reader mine,
+    If here you find not all like flies succinous;
+  My hand is porrect--kindly take't in thine,
+    While modestly my caput is declinous;
+  Nor think that I sugescent motives have,
+    In asking thee to read my chevisance.
+  I weet it is depectible--but do not rave,
+    Nor despumate on me with look askance.
+
+  Existimation greatly I desire;
+    'Tis so expetible I have sad fears
+  That, excandescent, you will not esquire
+    My meaning; see, I madefy my cheek with tears,
+  On my bent knees implore forbearance kind;
+    Be not retose in haught; I know 'tis sad,
+  But get your Webster down, and you will find
+    That he's to blame, not I--so don't get mad!
+
+
+THE POET COMMENCETH TO SING.
+
+  The morning dawned. The rorid earth upon,
+    Old Sol looked down, to do his work siccate,
+  My sneek I raised to greet the ethe sun,
+    And sauntering forth passed out my garden gate.
+  A blithe specht sat on yon declinous tree
+    Bent on delection to its bark extern;
+  A merle anear observed (it seemed to me)
+    The work, in hopes to make owse how to learn.
+
+  A drove of kee passed by; I made a stond,
+    For fast as kee how could my old legs travel?
+  But--immorigerous brutes!--with feet immund
+    They seemed to try my broadcloth garb to javel.
+  The semblance of a mumper then I wore,
+    Though a faldisdory before I might have graced;
+  Eftsoons I found, when standing flames before,
+    The mud to siccate, it was soon erased.
+
+
+If we should turn our attention studiously to this line of literary
+effort, we feel encouraged to believe that our success in a field of
+late so popular would be marked, and that we should obtain a degree of
+fame herein, beside which that of the moat shining light in the stilted
+firmament would pale its ray. But so long as God gives us the glorious
+privilege of emulating the stars, we shall not seek to win a place among
+the 'tallow dips' of parrot-poetry.
+
+
+
+
+A GREAT SOCIAL PROBLEM.
+
+
+MY DEAR CONTINENTAL:
+
+When the meteorological question was despatched, ladies have long had a
+habit of calling upon their servants to furnish them with small talk;
+high wages, huge appetites, daintiness, laziness, breakage,
+impertinence, are fruitful topics which they daily treat exhaustively;
+always arriving at the hopeless conclusion: 'Did you ever hear of
+anything like it?' and 'I wonder what we are coming to!'
+
+Is it not possible that we may be coming to--no servants at all? To me
+the signs seem to point that way. Cobbett said that in America public
+servant means master: he might add, if he were writing now, and so does
+private servant. Each house is divided against itself into two camps;
+hostile, though perhaps not in open war with each other: and Camp
+Kitchen has the advantage of position. Above stairs uneasy sits the
+employer, timid, conciliating, temporizing; seeing as little as he can,
+and overlooking half he sees; ready to change his habits and to subdue
+his tastes to suit the whims of the _enemigos pagados_, as the Spaniards
+call them, he has under his roof. Below stairs lounge the lordly
+employés (a charming newspaper neologism for hotel waiters, street
+sweepers, and railway porters), defiant, aggressive, and perfectly aware
+that they are masters of the situation. Daily they become more like the
+two Ganymedes of Griffith's boarding house: he called them Tide and
+Tide--because they waited on no man. They have long ceased to be hewers
+of wood and drawers of water, and yet they accomplish less than before
+the era of modern improvements. It appears to be a law of domestic
+economy that work is inversely as the increase of wages. Nowadays, if a
+housekeeper visits a prison, he envies the whiteness of the floors and
+the brightness of the coppers he sees there, and thinks, with a sigh,
+how well it might be for his _subscalaneans_, if they could be made to
+take a course of neatness for a few months in some such an institution.
+
+Vain wish! The future is theirs, and they know it. Their services will
+become gradually more worthless, until we shall find them only in grand
+establishments: mere appendages kept for fashion and for show; as
+useless as the rudimental legs of a snake, which he has apparently only
+to indicate the distinguished class in animated nature he may claim to
+belong to. We shall live to say, as Perrault sang:
+
+  'J'aperçus l'ombre d'un cocher
+  Tenant l'ombre d'une brosse
+  Nettoyant l'ombre d'un carrosse.'
+
+Alas! I fear that even these shadows of servants will one day vanish and
+disappear from us altogether.
+
+Time was when classes in society were as well defined as races still
+are. The currents ran side by side, and never intermingled. Some were
+born to furnish the blessings of life, and others to enjoy them. Some to
+wait, and others to be waited upon. The producing class accepted their
+destiny cheerfully, believed in their 'betters,' and were proud to serve
+them. The last eighty years have pretty much broken down these
+comfortable boundary lines between men. The feudal retainer, who was
+ready to give his life for his lord, the clever valet, who took kicks
+and caning as a matter of course when his master was in liquor or had
+lost at cards, even the old family servants, are species as extinct as
+the Siberian elephant, or the cave bear, or the dodo. And now the
+advance of the Union armies southward has destroyed the last lingering
+type of the servant post: the faithful black.
+
+In this country there never was much distinction of classes. The
+unwillingness of New England _help_ to admit of any superiority on the
+part of their masters has furnished many amusing stories. Later, when
+the Irish element penetrated into every kitchen, farmyard, and stable,
+floating off the native born into higher stations, service became
+limited to immigrants and to negroes. But the immigrant soon learned the
+popular motto, 'I'm as good as you are,' and only remained a serving man
+until he could save enough money to set up for himself: not a difficult
+matter in the United States; and never so easy as at this moment. The
+demands of the Government for soldiers and for supplies threaten us with
+a _labor famine_ in spite of the large immigration. In Europe labor is
+scarce and in demand. Commerce, manufactures, colonization have outrun
+the supply. Wages have doubled in England and in France within the last
+twenty years, and are rising. With increase of wages comes always
+decrease of subordination. The knowledge of reading, now becoming
+general, and exercised almost exclusively in cheap and worthless
+newspapers, and the progress of the democratic movement, which for good
+or for evil is destined to extend itself over the whole earth, make the
+working classes restless and discontented. They chafe under restraints
+as unavoidable as illness or death. What floods of nonsense have we not
+seen poured out about the conflict between labor and capital? It is the
+old fable over again: the strife of the members against the belly.
+
+Gradually has sprung up the feeling that it is degrading to be a
+servant; a terrible lion in the path of the quiet housekeeper in search
+of _assistants_. There may arise some day a purer and a wiser state of
+society, wherein the relation of master and man will be satisfactory to
+both. A merchant exercises a much sharper control over his clerk than
+over any servant in his house, and it is cheerfully submitted to. The
+soldier, who is worse paid and worse fed than a servant, is a mere
+puppet in the hands of his officers, obliged to obey the nod of twenty
+masters, and to do any work he may be ordered to, without the noble
+privilege of 'giving notice;' and yet there is never any difficulty in
+obtaining a reasonable supply of soldiers--because clerks and soldiers
+do not think themselves degraded by their positions, and servants _do_.
+It may be a prejudice, but it is one which drives hundreds of women, who
+might be fat and comfortable, to starve themselves over needlework in
+hovels; and often to prefer downright vice, if they can hope to conceal
+it, to virtue and a home in a respectable family. Any logic, you
+perceive, is quite powerless against a prejudice of this size and
+strength.
+
+But is it altogether a prejudice? Is it not a sound view of that
+condition of life?
+
+I confess that it has long been a matter of surprise to me that men
+should be found willing to hire themselves out for domestic service in a
+country where bread and meat may so easily be obtained in other ways,
+and where even independent manual labor is so often considered
+derogatory to the dignity of the native born. To do our dirty work that
+it disgusts us to do for ourselves, to stand behind our chairs at table,
+to obey our whims and caprices, to have never a moment they can call
+their own, to keep down their temper when we lose ours, to be compelled
+to ask for permission to go out for a walk, seems to me a sad existence
+even with good food and wages.
+
+The fact is, my dear CONTINENTAL, that the relation between master and
+servant has to be readjusted to suit the times. Indeed it is readjusting
+itself. We see the signs, although we may not perceive their
+significance. Our life is a dream. I use this venerable saying in
+another sense than the one generally intended by it: I mean that we live
+half our lives, if not more, in the imagination; and that the
+imagination of every-day people is a dream made up of feelings brought
+together from the habits, theories, and prejudices of the past of all
+lands and all nations of men. The reality that was once in them has long
+since been out of them; yet these vague and shadowy fancies are
+all-powerful and govern our actions. So that morally we go about like
+maskers in the carnival, dressed in the old clothes of our ancestors.
+With this difference, that most of us do not see how shabby and
+threadbare they are, and how unsuited to our present wants. And the few
+who do see this have an inbred fondness for the old romantic rags, and
+wear some of them in spite of their better judgment. Our moneyed class
+cling in particular to the dream of an aristocracy, and love to look
+down upon somebody. The man who made his fortune yesterday calls
+to-day's lucky fellow a _nouveau riche_ and a _parvenu_. The counter
+jumper who has snatched his thousands from a sudden rise in stocks, is
+sure to invest some of his winnings in the tatters of feudalism, sports
+a coat of arms on his carriage, has liveries, talks of his honor as a
+gentleman, and expects from his servants the same respect that a baron
+of the Middle Ages received from his hinds. It is a dream of most
+baseless fabric. John and Thomas, with their dislike of the word
+servant, their surliness and their impudence, swing too far, perhaps, in
+the other direction, but they are more in unison with the spirit of the
+age than their masters. I have seen an ardent democrat, who had roared
+equal rights from many a stump, furious with the impertinence of a
+waiter, whose answer, if it had come from an equal, he would scarcely
+have noticed. And was not the waiter a man and a fellow voter? What
+distinction of class have we in this country? It is true that the
+property qualification we have discarded in our political system we have
+retained as our test of social position. Indeed, no abstract rights of
+man can make up the difference between rich and poor. But Fortune is
+nowhere so blind nor so busy in twirling her wheel; and our two classes
+are so apt to change places, that frequently the only difference between
+the master and the footman who stands behind him, is the difference of
+capital. And Europe is treading the same democratic path as ourselves,
+limping along after us as fast as her old legs will carry her. The time
+will come when the class from which we have so long enlisted recruits
+for our _batteries de cuisine_ will find some other career better suited
+to their expanded views.
+
+What then? Do you suggest that we may lay a hand upon the colored
+element, after the example of our honored President? But
+
+  'While flares the epaulette like flambeau
+  On Corporal Cuff and Ensign Sambo,'
+
+can you expect either of these distinguished officers to leave the
+service of the United States for ours? What with intelligent
+contrabandism, emancipation, the right of suffrage, and the right to
+ride in omnibuses, we fear that their domestic usefulness will be sadly
+impaired.
+
+Oh for machinery! automaton flunkies, requiring only to be wound up and
+kept oiled! What a housekeeping Utopia! Thomson foreshadowed a home
+paradise of this kind when he wrote the 'Castle of Indolence:'
+
+  'You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed,
+  Fair ranged the dishes rose and thick the glasses played.'
+
+But as yet invention has furnished no reapers and mowers for within
+doors. We have only dumb waiters; poor, creaking things, that break and
+split, like their flesh-and-blood namesakes, and distribute the smell of
+the kitchen throughout the house. Heine once proposed a society to
+ameliorate the condition of the rich. He must have meant a model
+intelligence office. I wish it had been established, for we may all need
+its aid.
+
+What are we to do when we come to the last of the servants? Darwin says
+that the _Formica rufescens_ would perish without its slaves; we are
+almost as dependent as these confederate ants. Our social civilization
+is based upon servants. Certainly, the refinements of life, as we
+understand it, could not exist Without them, and it is difficult to see
+how any business of magnitude could be carried on. Briareus himself
+could not take care of a large country place, with its stables, barns,
+horses, cattle, and crops, even if Mrs. B. had the same physical
+advantages, and was willing to help him. Must we tempt them back by
+still larger salaries, or increase their social consideration, telling
+them, as a certain clergyman once said of his order, that 'they are
+supported, and not hired'?--changing the word help, as we have servant,
+into household officer or assistant manager, or adopt a Chinese
+euphemism, such as steward of the table or governor of the kitchen?
+Fourier does something of this kind; in his system the class names of
+young scullions are cherubs and seraphs! Or shall we adopt the
+coöperative plan of Mill and others, and offer John an interest in the
+family--say, possibly, the position of resident son-in-law after ten
+years of honesty, sobriety, and industry--with a seat at table in the
+mean while? Or must all the work be done by women, and a proprietor have
+to seal his Biddies _more sanctorum_ in Utah? Or might not poor
+relations, now confessedly nuisances, be made useful in this way? Some
+marquis asked Sophie Arnould why she did not discharge her stupid
+porter? 'I have often thought of it,' she answered, '_mais que voulez
+vous, c'est mon père_.'
+
+These resources failing, we must drop to the simplest form of existence:
+hut, hovel, or shanty; where my lord digs and is dirty, and her
+ladyship, guiltless of Italian, French, and the grand piano, cooks,
+scrubs, darns, and keeps the peace between the pigs and the children. Or
+else we must come to socialism, in the shape of Brook Farm communities,
+or _phalanstères à la Fourier_, or, worse than either, to mammoth
+hotels. American tastes incline that way. There we may live in huge
+gilded pens, as characterless as sheep in the flock, attended upon by
+waiters, chambermaids, and cooks, who will have a share in the profits,
+and consequently will be happy to do anything to increase the income of
+their house.
+
+I see no other remedy, and I offer this great social problem to the
+serious thoughts of your readers.
+
+  Yours ever, G. V.
+
+
+
+
+APHORISMS.--NO. XIII.
+
+
+It was a frequent exclamation of Herder the Great: 'Oh, my life, that
+has failed of its ends!' and many of us, no doubt, find ourselves
+disposed to indulge in the same lament. But it deserves careful
+attention; no man's life fails of its true end unless through some
+grievous moral fault of his own.
+
+The true end of life is that we may 'glorify God, and enjoy Him
+forever.' How this may be attained, as far as outward circumstances or
+activities are concerned, we can hardly judge for ourselves: but there
+is one sure test; and that is in the duties of our station. If we
+honestly perform them, and especially as under the teachings of the
+gospel of Christ, there can be no real and permanent failure. We shall
+have done what we were set to do upon the earth; and with this we may
+well be content.
+
+
+
+
+OUR GREAT AMERICA.
+
+
+The republican government of the United States, when first originated by
+the fathers of the commonwealth, was regarded by the old fossil
+despotisms with secret dread and a strange foreboding; and neither the
+ridicule which they heaped upon it, nor the professed contempt wherewith
+its name was bandied from throne to throne, could wholly mask their
+trepidation. They looked upon it, in the privacy of their chambers, as
+the challenge of a mighty rebellion of the people against all kingly
+rule and administration; they saw in it the embodiment of those popular
+ideas of freedom, equality, and self-government, which for so many
+centuries had been struggling for adequate utterance in England and
+France, and they knew that the success of this sublime experiment must
+eventually break asunder the colossal bones of the European monarchies,
+and establish the new-born democracy upon their ruins.
+
+That they saw truly and judged wisely in these respects, the history of
+modern Europe, and the current revolutions of our time, bear ample
+testimony. There is no luck nor chance in human events, but all things
+follow each other in the legitimate sequences of law. The American
+republic is no bastard, but a true son and heir of the ages; and sprang
+forth in all its bravery and promise from the mammoth loins of the very
+despotism which disowns and denounces it.
+
+We have a full and perfect faith in the mission of this republic, which
+breaks open a new seal in the apocalypse of government, and unfolds a
+new phase in the destiny of mankind. Feudalism has had a sufficient
+trial, and, on the whole, has done its work well. After the
+dismemberment of the Roman Empire, we do not see how it was possible for
+society to have assumed any other form than that of kings and princes
+for rulers, and the people for passive and more or less obedient
+subjects. It was a great problem to be resolved how society should exist
+at all, and history gives us the solution of it. Despotism in politics
+and authority in religion was the grand, primal, leading, and executive
+idea of it. What learning and culture existed was confined to the guild
+of the ecclesiastics, and they, for the most part, ruled the rulers as
+well as the people, by _virtue of their intelligence_. It required many
+centuries to usher in the dawn of unfettered thought, and generate the
+idea of liberty. And when at last the epoch of Protestantism arrived,
+and Luther, who was the exponent and historical embodiment of it,
+gathered to its armories the spiritual forces then extant in Europe, and
+overthrew therewith the immemorial supremacy of kings and priests over
+the bodies and souls of men, he made all subsequent history possible,
+and was the planter of nations, and the founder of yet undeveloped
+civilizations.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: A doubtful assertion. We, the children of the Puritans, and
+educated in their views and prejudices, have still many lessons to learn
+in the school of charily. It was not 'Luther who rendered subsequent
+history possible,' but the ever onward growth of humanity itself. Luther
+had no broader views of liberty of conscience than the church with which
+he struggled. Mr. Hallam says: 'It has been often said that the
+essential principle of Protestantism and that for which the struggle was
+made, was something different from all we have mentioned: a perpetual
+freedom from all authority in religious belief, or what goes by the name
+of private judgment. But to look more nearly at what occurred, this
+permanent independence was not much asserted, and still less acted upon.
+The Reformation was a _change of masters_, a voluntary one, no doubt, in
+those _who had any choice_, and in this sense an exercise, for the time,
+of their personal judgment. But no one having gone over to the
+Confession of Augsburg or that of Zurich, was deemed at liberty to
+modify these creeds at his pleasure. He might, of course, become an
+Anabaptist or Arian, but he was not the less a heretic in doing so than
+if he had continued in the Church of Rome. By what light a Protestant
+was to steer, might be a problem which at that time, as ever since, it
+would perplex a theologian to decide: but in practice, the law of the
+land which established one exclusive mode of faith, was the only safe,
+as, in ordinary circumstances, it was, upon the whole, the most eligible
+guide.' Speaking, in another place, of the causes which brought about
+the decline of Protestantism, etc., Mr. Hallam says: 'We ought to reckon
+also among the principal causes of this change, those perpetual
+disputes, those irreconcilable animosities, that bigotry, above all, and
+persecuting spirit, which were exhibited in the Lutheran and Calvinistic
+churches. Each began with a common principle--the necessity of an
+orthodox faith. But this orthodoxy meant nothing more than their _own_
+belief as opposed to that of their adversaries; a belief acknowledged to
+be fallible, yet maintained as certain; rejecting authority with one
+breath and appealing to it in the next, and claiming to rest on sure
+proofs of reason and Scripture, which their opponents were ready with
+just as much confidence to invalidate.'
+
+Luther was one of the many reformers who, feeling the necessity of
+freedom for themselves, never dream of according it to others. His
+self-hold, his 'me,' was masterful, and led him far astray from the
+inevitable logic of his perilous position. His 'I-ness' was so supreme
+that he mistook his own convictions for the truths of the Most High--a
+common mistake among reformers! He did not feel the sovereignty of man
+with regard to his fellow man, his positive inalienable right to deal
+with his God alone in matters of faith and religious conviction. The
+golden rule of our Master, 'Do as you would be done by,' seems simple
+and self-evident, and yet it is a late fruit in the garden of human
+culture. Mr. Roscoe says: 'When Luther was engaged in his opposition to
+the Church of Rome, he asserted the right of private judgment with the
+confidence and courage of a martyr. But no sooner had he freed his
+followers from the chains of papal domination, than he forget other in
+many respects equally intolerable: and it was the employment of his
+latter years to counteract the beneficial effects produced by his former
+labors.'
+
+Any system which saps the foundation of religious liberty, which forces
+itself between man and his Maker, cannot guarantee to us one of the main
+objects of all free governments--security in the pursuit of happiness.
+The Reformation did not give us religious freedom, therefore it did not
+give or suggest to us our democratic institutions. All that is true and
+pure in them springs from the very heart of Christianity itself. 'Where
+the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.' Much of the manifestation
+of the philosophy of freedom depends on individual character. Pope
+Alexander III., A.D. 1167, writes: 'Nature having made no slaves, all
+men have an equal right to liberty.' Luther, in 1524, says to the German
+peasants; 'You wish to emancipate yourselves from slavery, but slavery
+is as old as the world. Abraham had slaves, and St. Paul established
+rules for those whom the laws of nations reduced to that state.' Many of
+our modern priests reëcho these sentiments! Guizot says: 'The
+emancipation of the human mind and _absolute_ monarchy triumphed
+simultaneously.' The truth is we want a philosophical history of the
+Reformation, written neither from a Catholic, Protestant, nor infidel
+point of view, that we may rightly estimate what we lost, what gained in
+its wild storms. In judging this, we should not quite forget that it was
+the Catholic Lord Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in
+1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of
+_universal toleration_, while the Puritans were persecuting in New
+England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught
+set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means
+eternal Progress, and its path is onward.--ED. CON.]
+
+It would, however, be by no means difficult, were it in accordance with
+our present design and purpose, to show that the first germ of
+republican liberty sprang into life amid the sedges and savage marshes
+of uncultivated ages, far remote even from the discovery of America, and
+trace it through successive rebellions, both of a political and
+religious character, from and before the times of Wycliffe, down to
+Oliver Cromwell and George Washington; for all through English history
+it has left a broad red mark behind it, like the auroral pathway of a
+conqueror. The first man who prayed without book, and denied the
+authority of the church over the human soul, as the brave Loilards did,
+was the pioneer of Protestantism and the father of all the births which
+ushered this mighty epoch upon the stage of the world; Protestantism,
+which means so much and includes so many vast emprises--establishing for
+freedom so grand a battle ground, and for philosophy and learning so
+wide and magnificent a dominion.
+
+The same spirit which made nonconformists of the first seekers and
+worshippers of God apart from the churches and cathedrals of Rome, in
+the sublimer cathedrals of nature, when the Roman hierarchy was master
+of Europe--made republicans also of the first rebels who resisted the
+tyranny of kings. Political and religious liberty are the two sides of
+the democrat idea, and have always marched hand in hand together. They
+culminated in England during the Commonwealth, and became thenceforth
+the base and dome of popular government.
+
+The republic of America was born of this idea, and is the last great
+birth of Protestantism, big already with the destinies of mankind. Here,
+upon this mighty platform, these destinies, as we believe, have to be
+wrought out by their final issues, and close the drama of human
+development. All things are possible for America under the beneficent
+institutions and laws of the republic, now that the hideous skeleton of
+black slavery is to pollute the soil no more nor make brother war
+against brother any more on account of it; and at no distant period the
+awful conflict which at present shakes the earth with the thunder of its
+clashing and embattled hosts, shall give lasting place to the
+interchanges of commerce and the peaceful enterprises of civil life.
+
+It was impossible that American society could hold together with this
+accursed African vulture eating at its heart. Nor could the aristocratic
+idea of the South, which slavery had interwoven through every fibre of
+the people, through all the forms of its social condition, and into all
+its State laws and institutions, exist side by side with the democratic
+idea of the North, without an inevitable conflict sooner or later. The
+present war is but a renewal of the old battles which make up the sum of
+history, between liberty and despotism, civilization and barbarism. No
+one can doubt in whose hands will be the victory; and happy will the
+result be for future generations.
+
+Hitherto we have exhibited to the world the amazing spectacle of a
+republic which, proclaiming the freedom and equality of every one of its
+subjects, holds four millions of men in a terrible and appalling
+bondage. So frightful a mockery of freedom, perpetrated in her great
+name, and sanctioned by tradition and the authority of law, could not,
+ought not, be suffered to grin its ghastly laughter in the face of the
+world. And when the hour was ripe, and the doomsday of the monstrous
+iniquity was proclaimed aloud by the dreadful Nemesis of God, the people
+of the free North clothed themselves in the majesty of the nation, and
+rose as one man to sweep it from the soil in whirlwinds of fire and
+wrath.
+
+Slavery has been an unmitigated curse to America in every one of its
+aspects and especially to the South, out of which it has eaten, with its
+revengeful and retributive teeth, all the vitalities and grandeurs of
+character which belong to the uncorrupted Anglo-Saxon race. It has
+destroyed all the incentives to industry, all self-reliance, and
+enterprise, and the sterner virtues and moralities of life. It has put a
+ban upon trade and manufactures, and a premium upon indolence. The white
+population--the poor white trash, as the very negroes call them--are
+ignorant, brutal, and live in the squalor of savages. It has driven
+literature and poetry, art and science, from its soil, and robbed
+religion of all its humanity and beauty. Worse than this, if worse
+be possible, it has darkened with the shadow of its apparition the
+minds of the Southerners themselves, and defaced their highest
+attributes--confounding within them the great cardinal distinctions
+between right and wrong, until, abandoned by Heaven, they were given
+over to their own lusts, and to a belief in the lie which they had
+created under the very ribs of the republic.
+
+We do not speak this as partisans, nor in any spirit of enmity against
+the South as a political faction. It is the fact which concerns us, and
+which we deal with as history, and not here and now in any other sense.
+Nor do we blame the Southern aristocracy for riding so long on the black
+horse, which has at last thrown and killed them. For proud and insolent
+as they have ever shown themselves in their bearing toward the North,
+they were in reality mere pawns on the chessboard of Fate, necessary
+tools in working out the game of civilization on this continent. Who can
+calculate the sum of the divine forces which the institution of slavery,
+and its blasphemous reversion of the commands of the Decalogue, and all
+its cruel outrages and inhuman crimes, have awakened in the souls of the
+freemen of the North? The loathsomeness of its example and the infernal
+malice of its designs against liberty and truth, righteousness and
+justice, and whatsoever holy principles in life and government the
+saints, martyrs, and apostles of the ages have won for us, by their
+agony and bloody sweat upon scaffolds and funeral pyres--regarding them
+as a cheap purchase, though paid for by such high and costly
+sacrifices--these appalling instances, we say, have at last produced so
+powerful a reaction in the national mind that millions of men have
+marshalled themselves into avenging armies to rid the earth of their
+presence.
+
+That, too, was fated and necessary, and a part of the predestined
+programme. The nation could not progress with this corrupting monster in
+its pathway; and the battle between them has not come an hour too soon.
+The monster must be exterminated, and that, too, without mercy and
+without compassion, as the sworn and implacable enemy both of God and
+man. Otherwise this glorious country, which has so long worn the garland
+and surging robe of liberty, will become a dungeon of desolation from
+the Atlantic to the Pacific, resounding only with the shrieks of
+mandrakes and the clank of chains.
+
+This obstruction removed, there is, as we said above, no height of
+greatness which the American people may not reach. Then, and then only,
+shall we begin to consolidate ourselves into a nation, with a distinct
+organon of principles, feelings, and loyalties, to which the mighty
+heart and brain of the people shall throb and vibrate in pulsations of
+sublime unity. At present we are only a people in the making, and very
+few there are calling themselves Americans who have any idea of what
+America is and means in relation to history. By and by we shall all
+apprehend the riddle more wisely, and be more worthy of the great name
+we bear.
+
+In the meanwhile it is no marvel that we are not a homogeneous people.
+Our time has not come for that, and may yet lie afar off in the shadowy
+centuries. Consider how and through what alien sources we have
+multiplied the original population of the associated colonies as they
+existed when our fathers raised them to a nationality. There is not a
+nation in all Europe, to say nothing of Asia and the islands, which is
+not represented in our blood and does not form a part of our lineage. It
+is true that the old type predominates, and that we have the virtues and
+the vices of the Anglo-Saxons in us; but we are far too individual at
+present, Celt and Dane and Spaniard and Teuton, and all the rest of our
+motley humanities, will have to be fused into one great Anglo-American
+race, before we can call ourselves a distinct nation. It took England
+many centuries to accomplish this work, and fashion herself into the
+plastic form and comeliness of her present unity and proportion. We, who
+work at high pressure and make haste in our begettings and growth, can
+scarcely hope to make a national sculpture at all commensurate with the
+genius of the people and the continent, in one or two or even half a
+dozen generations; for we cannot coerce the laws of nature, although it
+is quite certain, from what we have done, that we can perform anything
+within the range of possible achievement.
+
+We have all the elements within and around us necessary to constitute a
+great people. We started on our career with a long background of
+experience to guide and to warn us. We saw what Europe had done for
+civilization with her long roll of kings and priests, her despotic
+governments, and her unequal laws--the people in most cases ciphers, and
+in all cases ignorant and enslaved--with no room for expansion, and
+little or no hope of political or social betterment; every inch of
+liberty, in every direction, which they had gained, wrung from their
+oppressors piecemeal, in bloody throes of agony.
+
+Our fathers had not the best materials out of which to build up a
+republic; neither, in all cases, were they themselves sufficiently ripe
+for the experiment. They had the old leaven of European prejudice
+largely intermingled in their minds and character. They could not help,
+it is true, their original make, nor the fashioning which their age,
+time, and circumstances had put upon them. All this has to be taken into
+the estimate of any philosophical judgment respecting their
+performances. But they had learned from the past to trust the present,
+and to span the future with rainbows of hope. They stood face to face
+with the people, and each looked into the others' eyes and read there
+the grounds and sureties of an immortal triumph. Instead, therefore, of
+resting the supreme power of government in the hands of a person, or a
+class, making the former a monarch, and creating the other an
+aristocracy, those grand magistrates and senators of human liberty who
+framed the Constitution of the new American Nation, made the nation its
+own sovereign, and clothed it with the authority and majesty of
+self-government.
+
+A venture so daring, and of an audacity so Titanic and sublime, seemed
+at that time and long afterward to require the wisdom and omnipotence of
+gods to guide it over the breakers, and steer it into the calm waters of
+intelligent government. All the world, except the handful of thinkers
+and enthusiasts scattered here and there over Europe, was against it,
+mocked at its bravery and aspirations, and sincerely hoped and believed
+that some great and sudden calamity would dissolve it like a baleful
+enchantment. But the hope of the republic was in the people, and they
+justified the fathers and the institution.
+
+Here, therefore, was opened in all the directions of human inquiry and
+action a new world of hope and promise. The people were no longer bound
+by old traditions, nor clogged by any formulas of state religions, nor
+hampered by the dicta of philosophical authority. Their minds were free
+to choose or to reject whatever propositions were presented to them from
+the wide region of speculation and belief. The Constitution was the only
+instrument which prescribed laws and principles for their unconditional
+acceptance and guidance; and this was a thing of their own choice, the
+charter and seal of their liberties, to which they rendered a cheerful
+and grateful obedience.
+
+With this mighty security for a platform, they pursued their daily
+avocations in peace, trusting their own souls, and working out the
+problem of republican society, with a most healthy unconsciousness.
+Sincere and earnest, they troubled themselves with no social theories,
+no visions of Utopia, nor dreams of Paradise and El Dorados, leaving the
+spirit which animated them to build up the architecture of its own
+_cultus_, with an unexpressed but perfect faith in the final justice and
+satisfaction of results.
+
+Religion, therefore, and politics--literature, learning, and art--trade,
+commerce, manufactures, agriculture--and the amenities of society and
+manners, were allowed to develop themselves in their own way, without
+reference to rule and preconcerted dogmas. Hence the peculiarities which
+mark the institutions of America--their utter freedom from cant and the
+shows and pageantry of state. Bank, titles, and caste were abolished;
+and the enormous gulfs which separate the European man from the European
+lordling were bridged over by Equality with the solid virtues of
+humanity.
+
+What a stride was here taken over time and space, and the historic
+records of man, in the fossil formations of the Old World during the
+ante-American periods! It had come at last, this long-prophesied reign
+of Apollo and the Muses, of freedom and the rights of man. Afar off, on
+the summits of imaginative mountains, were beheld, through twilight
+vistas of night and chaos, the proud ruins of dead monarchies, and the
+cruel forms of extinct tyrannies and oppressions, crowned and mitred no
+more; whose mandates had once made the nations tremble, and before whose
+judgment seats Mercy pleaded in vain, and Justice muffled up her face
+and sat dumb and weeping in the dust. Over the wolds of their desolation
+hyenas prowled, snuffing the noisome air as for a living prey; ghouls
+and vampyres shrieked in hellish chorus, as they tore up forgotten
+graves; and all manner of hateful and obscure things crawled familiarly
+in and out of palaces and holy places, as if they were the ghosts of the
+former inhabitants; and, high above them all, in the bloody light of the
+setting sun, wheeled kites and choughs and solitary vultures; owls and
+dismal bats flitting, ever and anon, athwart the shadows of their grim
+processions.
+
+No matter that this vision was in reality but the symbolism of
+imagination and poetry, that Europe was not dead, but alive with the
+struggling vitalities of good and evil, and all those contending forces
+out of which American freedom was born--the vision itself was not the
+less true, either as feeling or insight; for Europe was now literally
+cut adrift from America, and the hopes and aspirations of the young
+republic were entirely different from hers, and removed altogether from
+the plane of her orbit and action.
+
+The liberalists and thinkers of the age expected great things from a
+people thus fortunately conditioned and circumstanced. For the first
+time in modern history a genuine democratic government was inaugurated
+and fairly put upon its trial. The horizon of thought was now to be
+pushed back far beyond the old frontiers into the very regions of the
+infinite; and a universal liberty was to prevail throughout the length
+and breadth of the land. No more dead formalities, nor slavish
+submissions, but new and fuller life, self-reliance, self-development,
+and the freest individuality. Gladly the people accepted the
+propositions and principles of their national existence. Not a doubt
+anywhere of the result; no faltering, no looking back; but brave hearts,
+everywhere, and bold fronts, and conquering souls. Before them, through
+the mists of the starry twilight, loomed the mountain peaks and shadowy
+seas of the unventured and unknown future; and thitherward they pressed
+with undaunted steps, and with a haughty and sublime defiance of
+obstructions and dangers; fearing God, doing their best, and leaving the
+issue in His hands.
+
+We know now, after nearly a hundred years of trial, what that issue in
+the main is, and whitherward it still tends. During that little
+breathing time, which, compared with the life of other nations, is but a
+gasp in the record, what unspeakable triumphs have been accomplished!
+Nearly a whole continent has been reclaimed from the savage and the wild
+beasts, and the all-conquering American has paved the wilderness, east,
+west, north, and south, with high roads--dug canals into its hidden
+recesses, connected the great Gulf with the far-off West by a vast
+network of railways and telegraphs--planted cities and villages
+everywhere, and fashioned the routes of civilization; bound Cape Race to
+the Crescent City and the Atlantic to the Pacific, sending human
+thoughts, winged with lightning, across thousands of miles of plains and
+mountains and rivers, and making neighborly the most distant peoples and
+the most widely sundered States of the mighty Union. Let any man try to
+estimate the value of this immense contribution to human history and
+happiness; let him try to measure the vast extent of empire which it
+covers, and sum up the mighty expenditure of physical and intellectual
+labor which has conquered those savage wilds, and converted them into
+blooming cornfields and orchards; which has built these miraculous
+cities by the sea, and made their harbors populous with native ships and
+the marine of every nation under heaven; those busy inland cities, the
+hives of manufacturing industry and the marts of a commerce which
+extends over all the regions of civilization, from the rising to the
+setting sun; those innumerable towns of the great corn-growing
+districts; those pleasant hamlets and pastoral homes which fringe the
+forest, and girdle the mountains as with the arms of human affection and
+the passion of love; those mills on the far-off rivers, whose creaking
+machinery and revolving wheels are the prelude of a yet unborn, but
+rapidly approaching civility, and whose music, heard by the right ears,
+is of the divinest depth and diapason, and in full concord with the
+immeasurable orchestra of triumph and rejoicing which the nation
+celebrates in the perpetual marches of her starry progress.
+
+No man can compass this vast dominion, and no intellect can plumb its
+soundings or prophesy of its upshot. Who could have foretold what has
+already happened on this continent, had he stood with the Pilgrim
+Fathers on Plymouth Rock, that memorable day of the landing? Looking
+back to that great epoch in American history, we have no dim regions of
+antiquity to traverse, no mythic periods as of Memnon and the Nile, but
+a mere modern landscape, so to speak, shut in by less than two
+centuries. And yet what unspeakable things are included in that brief
+period! If we have made such vast strides and so rapid a development in
+those few years of our national life, with the heterogeneous and
+unmalleable materials with which we had to deal, converting the filth of
+Europe into grass and flowers for the decoration of the republic, what
+may we not achieve hereafter, when this dreadful war is over, and the
+negro question is adjusted, and the sundered States are reunited, and
+the Western wilderness is clothed with the glory of a perfect
+cultivation, and the genius of the people, no longer trammelled by
+Southern despotism, shall have free room to wing its flight over the
+immeasurable future?
+
+There will be no likeness, in any mirror of the past, to the American
+civilization that is to be. New manners, customs, thinkings, literature,
+art, and life, will mark our progress and attest the mission of the
+nation. We are fast outgrowing the ideas and influences of that brave
+company of Puritans out of whose loins our beginning proceeded; and
+already each man goes alone, insular, self-reliant, and self-sustained.
+We owe the Puritans a large debt, but it is altogether a pretty fiction
+to call them the founders of American civilization. They helped to lay
+in the foundation stones of that early society, and kept them together
+by cementing them with their love of religious truth and liberty, so far
+as they understood these primal elements of a state; and we are likewise
+their debtors for the integrity which they put into their laws and
+government. But it is too high a demand to claim for them that they were
+the founders of the republic, and the originators of those great ideas
+which are embodied in our institutions and literature.
+
+They came to this country with no very enlarged notions, either of
+religion or freedom, although they were perfectly sincere in their
+professions of regard for both; and it was this very sincerity which
+gave solidity and permanence to their colonies. We suppose we may repeat
+what history has made notorious respecting them, that they were, both in
+belief and civil practice, very narrow and limited in their
+outlooks--by no means given to intellectual speculations--and with but
+little faith in the intellect itself--which, indeed, was proscribed as a
+sort of outlaw when it stood upon its own authority, outside the pale of
+_their_ church. The religion which they established had its origin in
+the reign of Elizabeth, and was a sort of revived Lollardism, which last
+dated as far back as Wycliffe, long before the Reformation. They thought
+they could worship God in conventicles, and in the great open-air
+cathedrals of nature, with quite as much purity of motive and heavenly
+acceptance as in regularly consecrated churches, and that the right of
+praying and preaching was inalienable, and secured to all godly men by
+the charter and seal of Calvary.
+
+They had no idea, however, of non-conformity which was not based upon an
+orthodox creed, upon _their_ creed, as they subscribed it on Plymouth
+Rock. They fled from persecution themselves, and sought freedom for
+themselves in the barren regions of our dear and now hospitable New
+England; and they, in their simplicity and good faith before God, sought
+to organize a system of civil and religious polity which should incrust
+all future generations, and harden them into a fossil state of perpetual
+orthodoxy.
+
+They were a stern, implacable race, these early fathers, in all that
+related to belief, and the discipline of moral conduct; and we owe many
+of the granite securities which lie at the bottom of our social life and
+government to this harsh and unyielding sternness. It held the framework
+of the colonies together until they were consolidated into the United
+States, and until the modern culture of the people relaxed it into a
+universal liberty of thought and worship.
+
+The Puritans, however, had no notion of such a result to their teachings
+and labors; and would have looked with pious horror upon them if they
+could have beheld them in some Agrippa's mirror of the future.
+
+The truth--unpalatable as it may be--is simply this about the Puritans:
+they were narrow-minded, bigoted, and furious at times with the spirit
+of persecution; sincerely so, it is true, and believing they did God
+service; but that does not alter the fact. They had no conception
+of the meaning of liberty--and especially of religious liberty as a
+development of Protestantism. Their idea of it was liberty for
+themselves--persecution to all who differed from them; and this, too,
+for Christ's sake, in order that the lost sheep might be brought back,
+if possible, to their bleak and comfortless folds. They could not help
+it; they meant no wrong by it, and the evil which they thus did was good
+in the making, and sprang from the bleeding heart of an infinite love.
+
+We like them, nevertheless; and cannot choose but like them, thinking it
+generous and loving to invest them with as much poetry as we can command
+from the wardrobes of the imagination. But we can never forgive them--in
+critical moods--for their inhuman, although strictly logical persecution
+of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, who represented in his
+person all the liberal-thoughts-men, both in religion and speculation,
+then existing on this continent.
+
+This man of capacious intellect and most humane heart was hunted by them
+out of the associated colonies, as if he had been some ferocious beast
+of prey, because he differed from them in his religious opinions; and
+this drove him to found a state in accordance with the most liberal
+interpretation of Christianity. He had more than once, by his influence
+with the Indians, saved them from a general massacre; but their
+theological hate of him was so intense that they would not allow him to
+pass through their territories on a necessary journey; and once, on his
+return from England, where he had been negotiating with ministers for
+their benefit, they capped the climax of their bigoted ingratitude by
+refusing him permission even to land on their soil, lest his holy feet
+should pollute it.
+
+It is a little too much, therefore, to say that all our ideas of liberty
+and religion have sprung from this stout race of persecutors. They were
+pioneers for us, bu nothing more. Our progress has been the untying of
+their old cords of mental oppression, and the undoing of many things
+which they had set up. This was so much rubbish to be moved out of the
+path of the nation, and by no means aids to its advancement, except as
+provocatives. What we now are, we have become by our own culture and
+development, and by the inflowing of those great modern ideas which have
+affected all the world, and helped to build up its civilization into
+such stately proportions.
+
+Puritanism, as it then existed in its exclusive power, is, to all
+intents and purposes, dead upon this continent. The form of it still
+lingers in our midst, it is true, and in the Protestant parts of Europe
+its ritual survives, and pious hearts, which would be pious in spite of
+it, still cling to its dead corpse as if it were alive, and kindle their
+sacred fires upon the altar of its wellnigh forsaken sanctuaries. We
+should count it no gain to us, however--the extinction of this old and
+venerable faith--if we had no high and certain assurance that a nobler
+and sublimer religion was reserved for our consolation and guidance. We
+cannot afford, in one sense, to give up even the semblances and shows of
+religion, and these will survive until the new dayspring from on high
+shall supersede the necessity of their existence. 'Take care,' said
+Goethe, in some such words as these, 'lest, in letting the dead forms of
+religion go, you sacrifice all reverence and worship, and thus lose
+religion itself!' There is great danger of this in the transition state
+of human thought and speculation which marks the present crisis of
+American history. We are not a religious people, and shall not present
+any development of that sort until the intellectual reaction which has
+set in among us against the old modes and organons of belief has
+exhausted the tests of its crucibles, and reduced the dross to a
+residuum of gold which shall form the basis of a new and sacred
+currency, acceptable to all men for the highest interchanges.
+
+In the mean while we must work out the problem of this religion of the
+future in any and all ways which lie open to us--doubting nothing of the
+final issues. The wildest theories of Millerites, Spiritists,
+Naturalists, and Supernaturalists, are all genuine products of the time,
+and of the spirit of man struggling upward to this solution--blindly
+struggling, it is true, but gradually approaching the light of the
+far-off truth, as the twilight monsters of geology gradually approached
+the far-off birth of man, who came at last, and redeemed the savage
+progressive, the apparent wild unreason of the terrestrial creation.
+
+It is more than probable that this great fratricidal war with which we
+are now struggling, will prove, in its results, of the very highest
+service to the nation, and make us all both better and wiser men than we
+were before. We have already gained by it many notable experiences, and
+it has put our wisdom, and our foolishness also, to the test. It has
+both humbled and exalted our pride. It has cut away from the national
+character all those inane excrescences of vanity and brag which
+judicious people everywhere, who were friendly to us, could not choose
+but lament to see us exercise at such large discretion. It has brought
+us face to face with realities the most terrible the world has ever
+beheld. It has measured our strength and our weakness, and has developed
+within us the mightiest intellectual and physical resources. All the wit
+and virtue which go to make up a great people have been proven in a
+hundred times and ways during the war, to exist in us. Courage,
+forethought, endurance, self-sacrifice, magnaminity, and a noble sense
+of honor, are a few of the virtues which we have cropped from the bloody
+harvest of the battle field.
+
+It is true that wicked men are among us--for when did a company, godly
+or otherwise, engage in any work, and Satan did not also fling his
+wallet over his shoulder and set out with them for evil purposes of his
+own?--but after all, these are but a small minority, and their efforts
+to ruin the republic and bring defeat and dishonor upon the Federal
+arms, have not yet proved to be of a very formidable nature. These, the
+enemies of America, though her native-born sons, the people can afford
+to treat with the contempt which they merit. For the rest, this war will
+make us a nation, and bind us together with bonds as strong as those of
+the old European nationalities. It will make us great, and loving
+patriots also; and root out from among us a vast amount of sham and
+political fraud, to the great bettering of society.
+
+We shall have reason in many ways to bless its coming and its
+consequences. It was indeed just as necessary to our future national
+life and happiness as the bursting out of a volcano is to the general
+safety of the earth. It will destroy slavery for ever, and thus relieve
+us from the great contention which has so long and so bitterly occupied
+the lives of our public men and the thoughts of the world. In reality,
+we have never yet given republicanism a fair trial upon this continent.
+With that dreadful curse and crime of slavery tearing at its heart and
+brain, how was it possible for equality and self-government to be
+anything else but a delusion and a mockery? This cleared out of our
+pathway, and we have enough virtue, intelligence, and wealth of physical
+resources in the land to realize the prophecy and the hope of all noble
+thinkers and believes on the planet, and place America first and
+foremost among the nations--the richest, the wisest, the best, and the
+bravest.
+
+
+
+
+LONGING
+
+
+The corruption of a noble disposition is invariably from some false
+charm of fancy or imagination which has over-mastered the mind with its
+powerful magic and carried away the will captive. It is some perverted
+apprehension or illusory power of the infinite which causes a man who
+has once fallen a prey to any strong passion to devote all his energies,
+thoughts, and feelings to _one_ object, or to surrender himself, heart
+and soul, to the despotic tyranny of some favorite pursuit. For man's
+natural longing after the infinite, even when showing itself in his
+passions and feelings, cannot, where genuine, be satisfied with any
+earthly object or sensual gratification or external possession. When,
+however, this pursuit, keeping itself free from all delusions of sense,
+really directs its endeavor toward the infinite, and only to what is
+truly such, it can never rest or be stationary. Ever advancing, step by
+step, it ever rises higher and higher. This pure feeling of endless
+longing, with the dim memories of eternal love ever surging through the
+soul, are the heavenward--bearing wings which bear it ever on toward
+God. Longing is man's intuition of enternity!--SCHLEGEL.
+
+
+
+
+THE LESSON OF THE HOUR.
+
+
+  I.
+
+  Strong in faith for the future,
+    Drawing our hope from the past,
+  Manfully standing to battle,
+    However may blow the blast:
+  Onward still pressing undaunted,
+    Let the foe be strong as he may,
+  Though the sky be dark as midnight,
+    Remembering the dawn of day.
+
+
+  II.
+
+  Strong in the cause of freedom,
+    Bold for the sake of right,
+  Watchful and ready always,
+    Alert by day and night:
+  With a sword for the foe of freedom,
+    From whatever side he come,
+  The same for the open foeman
+    And the traitorous friend at home.
+
+
+  III.
+
+  Strong with the arm uplifted,
+    And nerved with God's own might,
+  In an age of glory living
+    In a holy cause to fight:
+  And whilom catching music
+    Of the future's minstrelsy,
+  As those who strike for freedom
+    Blows that can never die.
+
+
+  IV.
+
+  Strong, though the world may threaten,
+    Though thrones may totter down,
+  And in many an Old World palace,
+    Uneasy sits the crown:
+  Not for the present only
+    Is the war we wage to-day,
+  But the sound shall echo ever
+    When we shall have passed away.
+
+
+  V.
+
+  Strong--'tis an age of glory,
+    And worth a thousand years
+  Of petty, weak disputings,
+    Of ambitious hopes and fears:
+  And we, if we learn the lesson
+    All-glorious and sublime,
+  Shall go down to future ages
+    As heroes for all time.
+
+
+  VI.
+
+  Strong--not in human boasting,
+    But with high and holy will,
+  The means of a mighty Worker
+    His purpose to fulfil:
+  O patient warriors, watchers--
+    A thousandfold your power
+  If ye read with prayerful purpose
+    The Lesson of the Hour.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS CHARACTER AND RELATION TO OTHER
+LANGUAGES.
+
+_ARTICLE ONE._
+
+THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH.
+
+
+The CONTINENTAL for May contained an article, written by Stephen Pearl
+Andrews, entitled: A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS POSSIBILITY, SCIENTIFIC
+NECESSITY, AND APPROPRIATE CHARACTERISTICS. Although then treated
+hypothetically, or as something not impossible of achievement _in the
+future_, a Language constructed upon the method therein briefly and
+generally explained, is, in fact, substantially completed at the present
+time. It is one of the developments of a new and vast scientific
+discovery--comprising the Fundamental Principles of all Thought and
+Being, and the Law of Analogy--on which Mr. Andrews has bestowed the
+name of UNIVERSOLOGY. The public announcement of this discovery,
+together with a general statement of its character, has been recently
+made in the columns of a leading literary paper--_The Home Journal._
+
+Although the principle involved in the Language discussed in the article
+referred to is wholly different from that upon which all former attempts
+at the construction of a common method of lingual communication have
+been based; and although such merely mechanical _inventions_ were
+therein distinguished from a Language _discovered as existing in the
+nature of things_; several criticisms, emanating from high literary
+quarters, indicate that there is still much misunderstanding as to the
+real nature of a Universal Language framed upon the principles of
+Analogy between Sense and Sound. This misunderstanding seems most
+prevalent in respect to the two points relating directly to the
+practical utility of such a Lingual Organ. It is assumed that a Language
+so constituted must be wholly different in its material and structure
+from any now existing, and that the latter would have to be abandoned as
+soon as the former was adopted. It is supposed, therefore, that in
+order to introduce the SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, the people must be
+induced to learn something entirely new, and to forsake for it their old
+and cherished Mother-tongues. The accomplishment of such an undertaking
+is naturally regarded as highly improbable, if not impossible.
+
+It is also supposed that every word of the Language is to be determined
+in accordance with exact scientific formulas;--a process which, if
+employed, would, as is conceived, give a stiff, inflexible, monotonous,
+and cramped character to the Language itself; and would be wanting in
+that profusion of synonymes which gives an artistic and life-like
+character to the lingual growths of the past.
+
+Both of these objections arise, as we shall hereafter see, from an
+erroneous impression of the nature of Language based on Analogy, coupled
+with a misconception of the real character and constituents of existing
+Languages. It is the purpose of the present papers to correct these
+false notions. In order to do so--and, what is essential to this, to
+present a clear exposition of the true character of the Language under
+consideration, and of its relations to the Lingual Structures of the
+past and present--it is necessary to give a preliminary examination to
+the fundamental question of the Origin of Speech. By means of this
+examination we shall come to understand that the existence and general
+use of a Universal Language with the elements of which Nature has
+herself furnished us, would not involve the abrupt or total abandonment
+of the Tongues now commonly employed; but, on the contrary, while
+preserving all that is substantially valuable in each, would enable us
+to acquire a knowledge of them with a facility which Comparative
+Philology, as now developed, lays no claim to impart.
+
+How, then, did Language originate? In setting out to answer this
+question, Professor Max Müller says, in his _Lectures on the Science of
+Language_:[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal
+Institution of Great Britain, in April, May, and June, 1861, by Max
+Müller, M. A. From the second London edition, revised. New York: Charles
+Scribner, 124 Grand street. 1862.]
+
+     'If we were asked the riddle how images of the eye and all the
+     sensations of our senses could be represented by sounds, nay, could
+     be so embodied in sounds as to express thought and to excite
+     thought, we should probably give it up as the question of a madman,
+     who, mixing up the most heterogeneous subjects, attempted to change
+     color and sound into thought. Yet this is the riddle we have now to
+     solve.
+
+     'It is quite clear that we have no means of solving the problem of
+     the origin of language _historically_, or of explaining it as a
+     matter of fact which happened once in a certain locality and at a
+     certain time. History does not begin till long after mankind had
+     acquired the power of language, and even the most ancient
+     traditions are silent as to the manner in which man came in
+     possession of his earliest thoughts and words. Nothing, no doubt,
+     would be more interesting than to know from historical documents
+     the exact process by which the first man began to lisp his first
+     words, and thus to be rid forever of all the theories on the origin
+     of speech. But this knowledge is denied us; and, if it had been
+     otherwise, we should probably be quite unable to understand those
+     primitive events in the history of the human mind. We are told that
+     the first man was the son of God, that God created him in His own
+     image, formed him of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
+     nostrils the breath of life. These are simple facts, and to be
+     accepted as such; if we begin to reason on them, the edge of the
+     human understanding glances off. Our mind is so constituted that it
+     cannot apprehend the absolute beginning or the absolute end of
+     anything. If we tried to conceive the first man created as a child,
+     and gradually unfolding his physical and mental powers, we could
+     not understand his living for _one_ day without supernatural aid.
+     If, on the contrary, we tried to conceive the first man created
+     full-grown in body and mind; the conception of an effect without a
+     cause, of a full-grown mind without a previous growth, would
+     equally transcend our reasoning powers. It is the same with the
+     first beginnings of language. Theologians who claim for language a
+     divine origin, ... when they enter into any details as to the
+     manner in which they suppose Deity to have compiled a dictionary
+     and grammar in order to teach them to the first man, as a
+     schoolmaster teaches the deaf and dumb, ... have explained no more
+     than how the first man might have learnt a language, if there was a
+     language ready made for him. How that language was made would
+     remain as great a mystery as ever. Philosophers, on the contrary,
+     who imagine that the first man, though left to himself, would
+     gradually have emerged from a state of mutism and have invented
+     words for every new conception that arose in his mind, forget that
+     man could not, by his own power, have acquired _the faculty_ of
+     speech, which is the distinctive character of mankind, unattained
+     and unattainable by the mute creation. It shows a want of
+     appreciation as to the real bearings of our problem, if
+     philosophers appeal to the fact that children are born without
+     language, and gradually emerge from mutism to the full command of
+     articulate speech.... Children, in learning to speak, do not invent
+     language. Language is there ready made for them. It has been there
+     for thousands of years. They acquire the use of a language, and, as
+     they grow up, they may acquire the use of a second and a third. It
+     is useless to inquire whether infants, left to themselves, would
+     invent a language.... All we know for certain is, that an English
+     child, if left to itself, would never begin to speak English, and
+     that history supplies no instance of any language having thus been
+     invented....
+
+     'Speech is a specific faculty of man. It distinguishes man from all
+     other creatures; and if we wish to acquire more definite ideas as
+     to the real nature of human speech, all we can do is to compare man
+     with those animals that seem to come nearest to him, and thus to
+     try to discover what he shares in common with these animals, and
+     what is peculiar to him, and to him alone. After we have discovered
+     this we may proceed to inquire into the conditions under which
+     speech becomes possible, and we shall then have done all that we
+     can do, considering that the instruments of our knowledge,
+     wonderful as they are, are yet too weak to carry us into all the
+     regions to which we may soar on the wings of our imagination.'
+
+As the result of a comparison of the human with the animal kingdom,
+Professor Müller remarks that, 'no one can doubt that certain animals
+possess all the physical acquirements for articulate speech. There is no
+letter of the alphabet which a parrot will not learn to pronounce. The
+fact, therefore, that the parrot is without a language of his own, must
+be explained by a difference between the _mental_, not between the
+_physical_ faculties of the animal and man; and it is by a comparison of
+the mental faculties alone, such as we find them in man and brutes, that
+we may hope to discover what constitutes the indispensable qualification
+for language, a qualification to be found in man alone, and in no other
+creature on earth.'
+
+Of mental faculties, the author whose ideas we are stating, claims a
+large share for the higher animals. 'These animals have _sensation_,
+_perception_, _memory_, _will_, and _intellect_, only we must restrict
+intellect to the comparing or interlacing of single perceptions.' But
+man transcends in his mental powers the barriers of the brute intellect
+at a point which coincides with the starting-point of language. And in
+this coincidence Professor Müller endeavors to find a sufficiently
+fundamental explanation of the problem of the origin of language.
+
+In reference to this point of coincidence, he quotes Locke as saying
+that, 'the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect
+distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the
+faculties of brutes do by no means attain to,' and then adds:
+
+     'If Locke is right in considering the having of general ideas as
+     the distinguishing feature between man and brutes, and, if we
+     ourselves are right in pointing to language as the one palpable
+     distinction between the two, it would seem to follow that language
+     is the outward sign and realization of that inward faculty which
+     is called the faculty of abstraction, but which is better known to
+     us by the homely name of reason.
+
+     'Let us now look back to the result of former lectures. It was
+     this: After we had explained everything in the growth of language
+     that can be explained, there remained in the end, as the only
+     inexplicable residuum, what we called _roots_. These roots formed
+     the constituent elements of all languages.... What, then, are these
+     roots?'
+
+Two theories have been started to solve this problem: the Onomatopoetic,
+according to which roots are imitations of sounds; and the
+Interjectional, which regards them as involuntary ejaculations. Having
+discussed these theories, and taken the position that, although there
+are roots in every language which are respectively imitations of sounds
+and involuntary exclamations, it is, nevertheless, impossible to regard
+any considerable number of roots, and much less, all roots, as
+originating from these sources, the distinguished Philologist announces
+as the true theory, that every root 'expresses a general, not an
+individual, idea;' just the opposite of what he deems would be the case
+if the Onomatopoetic and Interjectional theories explained the origin of
+speech.
+
+Some paragraphs are then devoted to the examination of the merits of a
+controversy which has existed among philosophers as to
+
+     'whether language originated in general appellations, or in proper
+     names. It is the question of the _primum cognitum_, and its
+     consideration will help us perhaps in discovering the true nature
+     of the root, or the _primum appellatum_. Some philosophers, among
+     whom I may mention Locke, Condillac, Adam Smith, Dr. Brown, and,
+     with some qualification, Dugald Stewart, maintain that all terms,
+     as at first employed, are expressive of individual objects. I quote
+     from Adam Smith. 'The assignation,' he says, 'of particular names
+     to denote particular objects, that is, the institution of nouns
+     substantive, would probably be one of the first steps toward the
+     formation of language.... The particular cave whose covering
+     sheltered them from the weather, the particular tree whose fruit
+     relieved their hunger, the particular fountain whose water allayed
+     their thirst, would first be denominated by the words _cave_,
+     _tree_, _fountain_, or by whatever other appellations they might
+     think proper, in that primitive jargon, to mark them. Afterward,
+     when the more enlarged experience of these savages had led them to
+     observe, and their necessary occasions obliged them to make mention
+     of, other caves, and other trees, and other fountains, they would
+     naturally bestow upon each of those new objects the same name by
+     which they had been accustomed to express the similar object they
+     were first acquainted with.''
+
+This view of the primitive formation of thought and language, is
+diametrically opposed to the theory held by Leibnitz, who maintained
+that 'general terms are necessary for the essential constitution of
+languages.' 'Children,' he says, 'and those who know but little of the
+language which they attempt to speak, or little of the subject on which
+they would employ it, make use of general terms, as _thing_, _plant_,
+_animal_, instead of using proper names, of which they are destitute.
+And it is certain that all proper or individual names have been
+originally appellative or general.'
+
+Notwithstanding the contradictory and seemingly antagonistic nature of
+these positions, Professor Müller shows that they are not
+irreconcilable.
+
+     'Adam Smith is no doubt right, when he says that the first
+     individual cave which is called cave, gave the name to all other
+     caves; ... and the history of almost every substantive might be
+     cited in support of his view. But Leibnitz is equally right when,
+     in looking beyond the first emergence of such names as cave, town,
+     or palace, he asks how such names could have arisen. Let us take
+     the Latin names of cave. A cave in Latin is called _antrum_,
+     _cavea_, _spelunca_. Now _antrum_ means really the same as
+     _internum_. Antar, in Sanskrit means _between_ or _within_.
+     _Antrum_, therefore, meant originally what is within or inside the
+     earth or anything else. It is clear, therefore, that such a name
+     could not have been given to any individual cave, unless the
+     general idea of being within, or inwardness, had been present in
+     the mind. This general idea once formed, and once expressed by the
+     pronominal root _an_ or _antar_, the process of naming is clear and
+     intelligible. The place where the savage could live safe from rain
+     and from the sudden attacks of wild beasts, a natural hollow in the
+     rock, he would call his _within_, his _antrum_; and afterward
+     similar places, whether dug in the earth or cut in a tree, would be
+     designated by the same name ... Let us take another word for cave,
+     which is _cavea_ or _caverna_. Here again Adam Smith would be
+     perfectly right in maintaining that this name, when first given,
+     was applied to one particular cave, and was afterward extended to
+     other caves. But Leibnitz would be equally right in maintaining
+     that in order to call even the first hollow _cavea_, it was
+     necessary that the general idea of hollow should have been formed
+     in the mind, and should have received its vocal expression _cav_
+     ...
+
+     _'The first thing really known is the general. It is through it
+     that we know and name afterward individual objects of which any
+     general idea can be predicated, and it is only in the third stage
+     that these individual objects, thus known and named, become again
+     the representatives of whole classes, and their names or proper
+     names are raised into appellatives.'_
+
+The italics in the last paragraph are my own.
+
+But the name of a thing, runs the argument, meant originally that by
+which we know a thing. And how do we know things? Knowing is more than
+perceiving by our senses, which convey to us information about single
+things only. 'To _know_ is more than to feel, than to perceive, more
+than to remember, more than to compare. We know a thing if we are able
+to bring it, and [or?] any part of it, under more general ideas.' The
+facts of nature are perceived by our senses; the thoughts of nature, to
+borrow an expression of Oersted's, can be conceived by our reason only.
+The first step toward this real knowledge is the '_naming of a thing_,
+or the making a thing knowable;' and it is this step which separates man
+forever from all other animals. For all naming is classification,
+bringing the individual under the general; and whatever we know, whether
+empirically or scientifically, we know it only by means of our general
+ideas. Other animals have sensation, perception, memory, and, in a
+certain sense, intellect; but all these, in the animal, are conversant
+with single objects only. Man has, in addition to these, reason, and it
+is his reason only that is conversant with general ideas.
+
+     'At the very point where man parts company with the brute world, at
+     the first flash of reason as the manifestation of the light within
+     us, there we see the true genius of language. Analyze any word you
+     like, and you will find that it expressed a general idea peculiar
+     to the individual to which the name belongs. What is the meaning of
+     moon?--the measurer. What is the meaning of sun?--the begetter ...
+
+     'If the serpent is called in Sanskrit _sarpa_, it is because it was
+     conceived under the general idea of creeping, an idea expressed by
+     the word _srip_. But the serpent was also called _ahi_ in Sanskrit,
+     in Greek _echis_ or _echidna_, in Latin _anguis_. This name is
+     derived from quite a different root and idea. The root is _ah_ in
+     Sanskrit, or _anh_, which means to press together, to choke, to
+     throttle. Here the distinguishing mark from which the serpent was
+     named was his throttling, and _ahi_ meant serpent, as expressing
+     the general idea of throttler. It is a curious root this _anh_, and
+     it still lives in several modern words. In Latin it appears as
+     _ango_, _anxi_, _anctum_, to strangle, in _angina_, quinsy, in
+     _angor_, suffocation. But _angor_ meant not only quinsy or
+     compression of the neck; it assumed a moral import, and signifies
+     anguish or anxiety. The two adjectives _angustus_, narrow, and
+     _anxius_, uneasy, both come from the same source. In Greek the root
+     retained its natural and material meaning; in _eggys_, near, and
+     _echis_, serpent, throttler. But in Sanskrit it was chosen with
+     great truth as the proper name for sin. Evil no doubt presented
+     itself under various aspects to the human mind, and its names are
+     many; but none so expressive as those derived from our root _anh_,
+     to throttle. _Anhas_ in Sanskrit means sin, but it does so only
+     because it meant originally throttling--the consciousness of sin
+     being like the grasp of the assassin on the throat of his victim
+     ... This _anhas_ is the same word as the Greek _agos_, sin ... The
+     English _anguish_ is from the French _angoisse_, the Italian
+     _angoscia_, a corruption of the Latin _angustiæ_, a strait ... _Mâ_
+     in Sanskrit means to measure, from which we had the name of the
+     moon. _Man_, a derivative root, means to think. From this we have
+     the Sanskrit _manu_, originally thinker, then man. In the later
+     Sanskrit we find derivatives, such as _mânava_, _mânusha_,
+     _manushya_, all expressing man. In Gothic we find both _man_ and
+     _mannisks_, the modern German _mann_ and _mensch_.'
+
+And now we are brought by the author of _The Science of Language_ to the
+great question to which the foregoing is merely preparatory, to the
+fundamental consideration of Philological research: 'How can sound
+express thought? How did roots become the signs of general ideas? How
+was the abstract idea of measuring expressed by _mâ_, the idea of
+thinking by _man_? How did _gâ_ come to mean going, _sthâ_ standing,
+_sad_ sitting, _dâ_ giving, _mar_ dying, _char_ walking, _kar_ doing?'
+Here is his answer:
+
+     'The four or five hundred roots which remain as the constituent
+     elements in different families of languages are not interjections,
+     nor are they imitations. They are _phonetic types_, produced by a
+     power inherent in nature. They exist, as Plato would say, by
+     nature; though with Plato we should add that, when we say by
+     nature, we mean by the hand of God. There is a law which runs
+     through nearly the whole of nature, that everything which is struck
+     rings. Each substance has its peculiar ring. We can tell the more
+     or less perfect structure of metals by their vibrations, by the
+     answer which they give. Gold rings differently from tin, wood rings
+     differently from stone; and different sounds are produced according
+     to the nature of each percussion. It was the same with man, the
+     most highly organized of nature's works. Man, in his primitive and
+     perfect state, was not only endowed, like the brute, with the power
+     of expressing his sensations by interjections, and his perceptions
+     by onomatopoieia. He possessed likewise the faculty of giving more
+     articulate expression to the rational conceptions of his mind. That
+     faculty was not of his own making. It was an instinct, an instinct
+     of the mind as irresistible as any other instinct. So far as
+     language is the production of that instinct, it belongs to the
+     realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as he ceases to want them.
+     His senses become fainter when, as in the case of scent, they
+     become useless. Thus the creative faculty which gave to each
+     conception, as it thrilled for the first time through the brain, a
+     phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled.
+     The number of these _phonetic types_ must have been almost infinite
+     in the beginning, and it was only through the same process of
+     _natural elimination_ which we observed in the early history of
+     words, that clusters of roots, more or less synonymous, were
+     gradually reduced to one definite type.'
+
+Professor Max Müller occupies a commanding position in the foremost rank
+of the students of Philology. His work on _The Science of Language_,
+from which the preceding discussion of the Origin of Speech is taken,
+is, so far as I am aware, the latest volume treating of the problem in
+question which has issued from what is commonly regarded as high
+authority in the department of Language. It is to that volume,
+therefore, that we are to look for the last word of elucidation which
+the Comparative Philologist can furnish respecting it. And it is for
+this reason--in order that we might have before us the results of the
+latest research of the schools--that the exposition of the Origin of
+Language given in the work referred to has been so fully stated.
+
+Where, then, does this explanation of the problem leave us? Does it go
+to the bottom of the matter? Is it sufficiently distinct and
+satisfactory? In brief, does it give us any clear understanding of the
+Origin of Speech? Does it not rather leave us at the crucial point of
+the whole inquiry, with the essence and core of the subject untouched
+and shrouded in mystery? Some indefinite hundreds of roots, obtained, it
+is assumed, by means of some indescribable and unknown mental instinct!
+This is the sober and contented answer of Philology to the investigator
+who would know of the Sources of Language, and its constituent elements.
+But of the component parts of these roots--the true and fundamental
+constituent elements of Speech, without a knowledge of which there can
+be no basic and conclusive comprehension of the meaning of roots--and of
+the nature of the method by which these elements become expressive of
+thoughts or ideas, there is no word. Language, as it now rests in the
+hands of the Comparative Philologists, is in the same state that
+Chemistry was when Earth, Air, Fire, and Water were supposed to be the
+ultimate constituent elements of Matter, ere a single real ultimate
+element was known as such. But Chemistry, _as a science_, had no
+existence prior to the discovery of the simple constituents of Physical
+creation. In like manner, a _Science_ of Language must be founded on a
+knowledge of the nature and _meaning_ of the simple elements of Speech.
+Until this knowledge is in our possession it is only on the outskirts of
+the subject that we are able to tread. Roots are, it is true, the actual
+bases of Language, so far as its concrete, working, or synthetical
+structure is concerned; in the same sense that _compound_ substances are
+the main constituents found in the Universe as it really and naturally
+exists. But, although the proportion of simple chemical elements, in the
+real constitution of things, is small, as compared with that of compound
+substances; yet it is only by our ability to separate compound
+substances into these elements that we arrive at an understanding of
+their true character and place in the realm of Matter. So it is only by
+our ability to analyze roots--the compound constituents of
+Language--into the prime elements which have, except rarely, no
+distinctive and individual embodiment in it, that we can hope to gain a
+clear comprehension of the nature of Language itself, or of its most
+primitive concrete or composite foundations.
+
+Comparative Philology furnishes us with admirable guidance--so far as it
+goes. But we do not wish to stop at the terminus which it seems to
+consider a satisfactory one. The final answer it offers us, we do not
+regard as final. We gladly accept the analysis of Language down to its
+Roots. But we wish to analyze Roots also. That the Moon derives its name
+from being regarded as the _Measurer_ of time; and Man, from the notion
+of _thinking_; that an (_anh_) is a widely-diffused root, signifying
+_pressure_; and that _gâ_ denotes _going_; with similar expositions, is
+valuable information, and takes us a great way toward the goal of our
+seeking. But the question of questions relating to Language is not
+answered by it. Why should the abstract idea of measuring be expressed
+by _mâ_; and that of thinking by _man_? How did _an_ come to signify
+pressure; and _gâ_, going? Is there any special relationship between
+these roots and the ideas which they respectively indicate? Or was it by
+chance merely that they were adopted in connection with each other?
+Might _dâ_ just as meet have been taken to denote doing, and _kar_,
+giving, as _vice versa_? Has the root _an_ any distinguishing
+characteristics peculiarly fitting it to suggest _choking_ or
+_pressure_? Or might that notion have been equally well expressed by
+_sthâ_?
+
+It is at this fundamental stage of the investigation, whence a true
+_Science_ of Language must take its departure, that the labors and
+disclosures of Comparative Philology cease; leaving the problem of the
+Origin of Language involved in the same state of unintelligibility with
+which it has always been surrounded. It is just at this point, however,
+that the SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE previously noticed begins its
+developments. By means of its assistance we may hope, therefore, to
+arrive at a satisfactory solution of the problem in question, and,
+through this solution, at a clear understanding of the more specific
+objects of our present inquiry. Before approaching this main object--the
+exposition of the general character of the NEW SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL
+LANGUAGE and its relations to existing Tongues--and still in aid of that
+purpose, I must offer some further comments upon the excerpts already
+made from 'The Science of Language;' and upon a few other points which
+remain to be extracted from that work.
+
+Of the four or five hundred roots which remain, the insoluble residuum
+(so thought by Professor Müller) of Language, after eliminating the
+immense mass of variable and soluble material, he says: 1. That 'they
+are _phonetic types_ produced by a power inherent in human nature;' 2.
+'Man, in his primitive and perfect state, was not only endowed like the
+brute with the power of expressing his sensations by interjections, and
+his perceptions by onomatopoieia [mere imitation of sound]. He possessed
+_likewise_ the power of giving _more articulate_ expression to the
+_rational conceptions of his mind_.' The italics here are, again, my
+own, introduced for more emphasis and more ready reference to the
+central thought of the writer. 3. 'That faculty was not of his own
+making. It was an instinct, an instinct of the mind, as irresistible as
+any other instinct. So far as language is the production of that
+instinct, it belongs to the realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as
+he ceases to want them. His senses become fainter when, as in the case
+of scent, they become useless. Thus the creative faculty which gave to
+each conception, as it thrilled for the first time through the brain, a
+phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled.' 4.
+'The number of these _phonetic types_ [root-syllables] must have been
+almost infinite in the beginning, and it was only through the same
+process of _natural elimination_ which we observed in the early history
+of words, that clusters of roots more or less synonymous, were gradually
+reduced to one definite type.'
+
+Professor Müller, in stopping with root-syllables (to the number of four
+or five hundred), as the _least_ or ultimate elements to which Language
+can be reduced, has, naturally enough, and along with all Comparative
+Philologists hitherto, committed the error of _insufficient analysis_;
+an error of precisely the same kind which the founders of Syllabic
+Alphabets have committed, as compared with the work of Cadmus, or any
+founder of a veritable alphabet. The true and radical analysis carries
+us back in both cases to the _Primitive Individual Sounds_, the Vowels
+and Consonants of which Language is composed.
+
+It is clear enough that the analysis must be carried to the very
+ultimate in order to reach the true foundation for an effective and
+sufficient alphabetic _Representation_ of Language. Precisely the same
+necessity is upon us in order that we may lay a secure and adequate
+foundation for a _True Science of Language_. This will explain more
+fully what was meant in a preceding paragraph, when it was stated that
+the labors of Mr. Andrews begin, in this department of Language, just
+where the labors of the whole school of Comparative Philologists have
+ended. He first completes the analysis of Language, by going down and
+back to the Phonetic _Elements_, the ulterior roots, the Vowels and
+Consonants of Language. Then by putting Nature to the crucial test, so
+to speak, to compel her to disclose the hidden meaning with which each
+of these absolute (ultimate) Elements of Speech is inherently laden, he
+discovers--what might readily be an _à priori_ conception--that these
+_Elements_, and not any compound root-syllables whatsoever, are the true
+'_Phonetic Types_,' representative in Nature of '_the Rational
+Conceptions_ of the human mind.'
+
+The ultimate Rational Conceptions of the Human Mind are confessedly,
+among all Philosophers of the Mind, not four or five hundred, but like
+the Alphabetic Sounds of Language, a mere handful in number. Precisely
+how many they are and how they are best distributed has not been agreed
+upon. Aristotle classed them as _Ten_. Kant tells us there are _Twelve_
+only of the Categories of the Understanding. Spencer, while finding the
+Ultimate of Ultimates in the idea of _Force_ alone, admits its immediate
+expansion into this handful of Primitive Conceptions, but without
+attempting their inventory or classification. The discoverer of
+UNIVERSOLOGY, first settling and establishing the fact that the Elements
+of Sound in Speech are the natural Phonetic Types, equal in number to
+the inventory of the Primitive Rational Conceptions of the Human Mind,
+is then enabled to work the new discovery backward, and, by the aid of
+the classifications which Nature herself has clearly introduced among
+these Sounds (into Vowels, Consonants, Liquids, etc.), to arrive at a
+classification of all the Primitive Rational Conceptions, which cannot
+fail to be completely satisfactory and final. The same discovery leads,
+therefore, to the reconstruction of the Science of Language, on the one
+hand, and of Ontology, the Science of the highest Metaphysical domain,
+on the other.
+
+But, again, it is one of the demonstrations of UNIVERSOLOGY that all
+careers, that of the development of the Human Mind among others, pass
+through three Successive Stages correspondential with each other in the
+different domains of Being. As respects the Mind, these are: 1.
+_Intuitional_ (or Instinctive); 2. _Intellectual_ (or Reflective); and
+3. _Composite_ (or Integral). It is another of these demonstrations that
+the Intuitional (_Unismal_) development of Mind, and the Intellectual
+(_Duismal_), proceed in opposite courses or directions; so that the
+highest _Intellectual_ development reaches and investigates _in its own
+way_ just those questions with which the _Intuitional_ development
+('Instinct,' as Professor Müller denominates it) began; and which, in
+the very earliest times, it disposed of in _its_ appropriate way _as if_
+finally.
+
+By this means, the road having been passed over completely in both
+directions, the way is prepared for the inauguration of the third or
+Integral Stage, which consists in putting the road intelligently to all
+its possible uses.
+
+To apply these statements to the instance before us, for the elucidation
+both of the statements themselves and of the matter to be expounded; it
+is the _test labor_ of the highest _Intellectual_ development to come
+back upon precisely those recondite points of knowledge which the
+nascent _Intuition_ of the race felt or 'smelt' out blindly; and, by the
+sight of the Mind's eye, to arrive more lucidly at the understanding of
+the same subject. Not that the nature of the Understanding by any two
+senses or faculties is ever the same; but that each has _its own method_
+of cognizing the same general field of investigation. It is the
+_re-investigation_, _intellectually_, of the Relationship of the (true,
+not the pseudo) _Phonetic Types_ with the Fundamental Rational
+Conceptions of the Human Mind, which is the first step taken by Mr.
+Andrews, in laying the basis for the new and coming stage of the
+development of the Science of Language.
+
+It is the completion of this Intellectually Analytical process which
+offers the _point of incipency_ for the new and immense Lingual
+Structure of the future, and the ultimate virtual unification of Human
+Speech. It may be quite true, as Professor Müller affirms, that the
+Instinctual Development of Language--by which _we_ mean the whole
+Lingual History of the Past, with the exception of our present very
+imperfect Scientific nomenclatures--has never proved adequate to the
+introduction of a single new _root_, since the 'Instinct' exhausted
+itself, as he says, in the nascent effort. But it is a pure assumption,
+when he supposes, for that reason, that the informed Human Intellect of
+the Future will not be competent to constitute thousands of them. It is
+just as legitimate as would have been the assumption in the infancy of
+Chemistry, that because Nature never _synthetized_ in _her_ laboratory
+more than a few simple salts, the modern chemist would never be able to
+produce any one of the two thousand salts now known to him. This kind of
+assumption is the common error of the expounders of existing science, as
+contrasted with the bolder originality of discoverers.
+
+But, again, though it is true that the _Intuitional_ (or Instinctual)
+faculty of man has, in a manner, declined, as in the case of the sense
+of Smell, while the _Intellect_ (the Analogue of the Eye) has been
+developed, still it is assuming too much to say that it utterly fails us
+even yet. It remains, like the sense of Smell, an important helper even
+in our present investigations. Professor Müller should not, because he
+may happen to have a cold, affirm that nobody smells anything any more.
+To explain what I mean in this respect, the following extract may serve
+as a text:
+
+     'It is curious to observe how apt we are to deceive ourselves when
+     we once adopt this system of Onomatopoieia. Who does not imagine
+     that he hears in the word 'thunder' an imitation of the rolling and
+     rumbling noise which the old Germans ascribed to their god Thor
+     playing at nine-pins? Yet _thunder_ is clearly the same word as the
+     Latin _tonitru_. The root is _tan_, to stretch. From this root
+     _tan_ we have in Greek _tonos_, our tone, _tone_ being produced by
+     the stretching and vibrating of cords. In Sanskrit the sound
+     thunder is expressed by the same root _tan_; but in the derivatives
+     _tanyu_, _tanyatu_, and _tanayitnu_, thundering, we perceive no
+     trace of the rumbling noise which we imagined we perceived in the
+     Latin _tonitru_ and the English _thunder_. The very same root
+     _tan_, to stretch, yields some derivatives which are anything but
+     rough and noisy. The English _tender_, the French _tendre_, the
+     Latin _tener_ are derived from it. Like _tenuis_, the Sanskrit
+     _tanu_, the English _thin_, _tener_ meant originally what was
+     extended over a larger surface, then _thin_, then _delicate_. The
+     relationship betwixt _tender_, _thin_, and _thunder_ would be hard
+     to establish if the original conception of thunder had really been
+     its rumbling noise.
+
+     'Who does not imagine that he hears something sweet in the French
+     _sucre_, _sucré_? Yet sugar came from India, and it is there called
+     _'sarkhara_, which is anything but sweet sounding. This _'sarkhara_
+     is the same word as _sugar_; it was called in Latin _saccharum_,
+     and we still speak of _saccharine_ juice, which is sugar juice.'
+
+It may appear, on a closer inspection at this point, that it is
+Professor Müller who is deceived, and not the common verdict, both in
+respect to the question whether such words as _thunder_, _sucré_, etc.,
+really do or do not have some inherent and organic relation in the Human
+Mind to the ideas of rumbling noise and sweetness respectively; and in
+respect to the value and significance of the fact. He has, it would
+seem, confounded two separate and distinct questions. 1st. Is there such
+a relation between the sound and the sense? and 2d. Were these words
+introduced into speech because of that resemblance?
+
+In respect to the latter of these questions, Professor Müller's answer,
+so far as the word _thunder_ is concerned, is rather in favor of an
+affirmative answer than against it. So far from its being 'hard to
+establish the relationship betwixt _tender_, _thin_, and _thunder_,' on
+the hypothesis that 'the original conception of thunder had really been
+its rumbling noise; 'it is just as easy to establish this relationship
+as it is to show the connection between the root _tan_, to stretch, and
+its derivatives _tonos_, _tone_, _tendre_, _tener_, _thin_, and
+_delicate_;--an undertaking which Professor Müller finds no difficulty
+whatever in accomplishing.
+
+The idea of _stretching_ signified by the original root _tan_ has no
+_direct_ or _immediate_ connection with any of the conceptions expressed
+by the derivative words. But by stretching an object it is diminished in
+_breadth_ and _depth_, while it increases in _length_; hence it becomes
+_thinner_; so that the Mind readily makes the transition from the
+primitive conception of _stretch_ to that of _thinness_, indicated by
+the English word, and by the Sanskrit _tanu_, and the Latin _tener_,
+_tenuis_. _Thinness_, again, is allied to _slimness_, _slenderness_,
+_fineness_, etc.; ideas which are involved in the conception of
+_delicate_, and furnish an easy transition to it.
+
+But it is also from the notion of _stretching_, though in a still less
+direct manner, that we gain an idea of sound as conveyed by musical
+tones; '_tone_,' as Professor Müller remarks, 'being produced by the
+_stretching_ and vibrating of cords.' Still further: if we cause a heavy
+piece of cord to vibrate, or, what is better, the bass string of a
+violin or guitar, or strike a very low key on the piano, and pronounce
+the word _tone_ in a full voice at the same time, the remarkable
+similarity of the two sounds thus produced will be clearly apparent.
+Thus the root _tan_, to stretch, becomes also expressive of the idea of
+_sound_ as seen in the words _tonos_, _tone_, _tonitru_, _thunder_, etc.
+But what is especially to be noticed is this: that in those derivatives
+of _tan_, to stretch, which are _not_ indicative of ideas of sound (as
+_tenuis_, thin, etc.), the sounds of the words do _not_ cause us to
+imagine that we hear the imitation of noise; while in those derivatives
+which _are_ expressive of it, we not only imagine that we _do_ hear it,
+but, in the case of _tonos_ and _tone_ at least, have an instance in
+which we _know_ that the word employed to convey the idea is a
+proximately perfect representation of the sound out of which the idea
+arose. Even in _tanyu_, _tanyatu_, _tanayitnu_, thundering, in which
+Professor Müller affirms that 'we perceive no trace of the rumbling
+noise which we imagined we perceived in the Latin _tonitru_ and the
+English _thunder_'--although he seems to admit that it is perceptible in
+the Sanskrit word for thunder expressed by the same root _tan_--the
+reason why we cannot trace it may be because of the terminations, which,
+as it were, absorb the sound that is there, although less obviously, in
+the _tan_, or shade it off so that it becomes diluted and hardly
+traceable.
+
+Vowel Sounds are so fluctuating and evanescent that they go for
+comparatively little in questions of Etymology. _Tan_ is equivalent to
+T--n; the place of the dash being filled by any vowel. _T_ is readily
+replaced by _th_ or _d_, and _n_ by _ng_; as is known to every
+Philological student. The object, which in English we call _tin_, and
+its name, are peculiar and important in this connection, as combining
+the two ideas in question: 1st, that of outstretched surface or
+_thinness_; and, 2d, that of a persistent tendency to give forth just
+that species of sound which we call, by a slight shade of difference in
+the form of the word, a _din_. The Latin _tintinnabulum_, a little bell,
+and the English _tinkle_, the sound made by a little bell, are among the
+words which are readily recognized as having a natural relation to a
+certain trivial variety of sound. The English _ding-dong_ and
+_ding-dong-bell_ are well-known imitations of sound; and are, at the
+same time, etymologically, mere modifications of the root under
+consideration. As _tone_ and _strain_ or _stretch_ are related in idea,
+as seen in the case of musical notes or tones, is it not as probable
+that the original root-word of which _tan_, _ton_, _thun_, _tin_, _din_,
+_ding_, _dong_, etc., are mere variations, took its rise from the
+imitation of sound, as it is that the fact of _strain_ or _stretch_ was
+the first to be observed and to obtain the name from which, afterward
+and accidentally, so to speak, were derived words which confessedly
+have a relation in their own sound to other and external sounds, as in
+the case of thunder, musical tone, the sheet of tin, and the bell? Is it
+not, in fact, more probable?
+
+In respect to the question whether _sucre_ and _sucré_ were introduced
+into Language because of their resemblance to the idea of sweetness,
+Professor Müller gives a valid negative answer. He shows that the word
+is derived from the Sanskrit _'sarkhara_, 'which,' as he says, 'is
+anything but sweet sounding.'
+
+The question whether the words under consideration (_sucre_, _sucré_)
+are really sweet-sounding words, Professor Müller decides by implication
+in the affirmative, and, perhaps, quite unconsciously, by the very act
+of contrasting them with another word which, as he affirms, is not at
+all sweet sounding.
+
+But this is by far the more important point than that of the mere
+historical genesis of the word; and a point which really touches vitally
+the whole question of the nature and Origin of Language.
+
+How should any word be either _sweet-sounding_ or _not sweet-sounding_?
+Sound is a something which has no _taste_, and sweetness is a something
+which makes no _noise_. Now the very gist and crux of this whole
+question of Language consists in confounding or not confounding a case
+like this with _mere_ Onomatopoieia, or the direct and simple imitation
+of one sound by another. All that Professor Müller says against the
+Origin of Language in this 'bow-wow' way is exceedingly well said; and
+it is important that it should be said. But unconsciously he is now
+confounding with the Bow-wow, something else and totally different; and
+something which is just as vital and profound in regard to the whole
+question of the origin and true basis of the reconstruction of Language,
+as the thing with which he confounds it is trivial and superficial.
+
+The point is so important that I beg the reader's best attention to it,
+in order that he may become fully seized of the idea.
+
+I can imitate very closely the buzz of a bee, by forcing the breath
+through my nearly-touching teeth. A mimic can imitate the natural sounds
+of many animals, and other sounds heard in Nature. This _mere imitation_
+is what Lingual Scholars have dignified by the high-sounding and rather
+repulsive technicality, _Onomatopoieia_. In the early and simple period
+of Lingual Science much has been made, in striving to account for the
+Origin of Language, of this faculty of imitation, and of the fact that
+there are undoubtedly certain words in every language consisting of such
+imitations. It is against this simple and superficial theory that
+Professor Müller has argued so well. But in these words _sucre_,
+_sucré_, incautiously included by him as instances of the same thing, we
+are in the presence of a very different problem. To imitate one sound by
+another sound is a mere simple, external, and trivial imitation;
+onomatopoieia, and nothing more than that. But to imitate a _sound_, by
+a _taste_, or to recognize that such an imitation has occurred, is a
+testimony to the existence of that recondite and all-important _echo of
+likeness_ through domains of Being themselves the most unlike, which we
+call ANALOGY.
+
+That we do recognize such _analogy_ or _correspondence of meaning_, that
+Professor Müller himself does so, is admitted when he tells us that
+another form of the words in question is 'not at all sweet-sounding.' It
+is not in this perception, therefore, that we deceive ourselves, but
+only in supposing that these particular words came to mean sugar,
+_because_ they were sweet-sounding. That there is this perception of the
+analogy in question is again confessed by the fact that we have the same
+feeling in respect to the German _süsse_, sweet; while the English words
+_sugar_ and _sweet_, notwithstanding any greater familiarity of
+association, do not convey the same ideas in the same marked degree.
+The words _mellifluous_ (honey-flowing) and _melody_ (honey-sound) are
+themselves standing witnesses in behalf of the existence of the same
+perception. The fact that we instinctually speak of a _sweet_ voice, is
+another witness.
+
+If, then, there is an echo of likeness (real analogy) between these two
+unlike spheres of Thought and Being, _Sound_ and _Taste_, may there not
+be precisely a similar echo through other and all spheres; so that there
+shall be a Something in Number, in Form, in Chemical Constitution, in
+the Properties of Mind, in Ultimate Rational Conceptions, in fine, that
+echoes to this idea, which, by a stretch of the powers of Language, we
+call _sweet_, both in respect to Sound and Taste? May it not have been
+precisely this Something and the other handful of primitive Somethings,
+each with its multitudinous echoes, that the _Nascent Intuition_ of the
+race laid hold of and availed itself of _irreflectively_ for laying the
+foundations of Speech? Again, may it not happen that the _Reflective
+Intellect_ should in turn discover _intelligently_ (or _reflectively_)
+just that _underlying_ system of Analogy which the primitive Instinct
+was competent to appreciate unintelligently; and, by the greater
+clearness of this intelligent perception, be able to elevate the Science
+of Language, and found it upon a new and constructive, instead of upon
+this merely instinctual plane? To all these questions the
+Universologists return an affirmative answer. They go farther, and aver
+that this great intellectual undertaking is now fully achieved, and is
+only awaiting the opportunity for elaborate demonstration and
+promulgation.
+
+A word further on this subject. To pronounce the words _sucre_, _sucré_,
+_süsse_, the lips are necessarily pinched or perked up, in a certain
+exquisite way, as if we were sucking something very gratifying to the
+taste. This consideration carries us over to the further analogy with
+_shapes_ or _forms_, and, hence, with the Organic or Mechanical
+production of sounds; another grand element, the main one, in fact, of
+the whole investigation.
+
+Among the infinite contingencies of the origin and successive
+modifications of words, it is very possible that the word _'sarkhara_,
+although meaning sugar in a particular tongue, may not have primarily
+related to its property of sweetness; and that, therefore, its phonetic
+form should not be accordant with that property. It may have meant the
+_cane-plant_, for instance, before its sweetness was known. Then it is
+possible that a derivative and modified form of the same word should
+happen to drift into that precise phonetic; form which is accordant with
+that property. But the marvel, and the point of importance is, that so
+soon as this happens, the 'instinct' of the race, even that of Professor
+Müller himself, remains good enough to recognize the fact. 'Who does not
+imagine,' he says, 'that he hears something sweet in the French _sucre_,
+_sucré_?' But why do we all imagine that we hear what does not exist?
+The uniformity of the imagination proves it to be a _real_ perception.
+If the universal consciousness of mankind be not valid evidence, where
+shall we hope to find it?
+
+The consideration of Analogy as existing between the Ultimate Elements
+of Sound and Ultimate Rational Conceptions will be the subject of the
+next paper.
+
+
+
+
+FLOWER ODORS.
+
+
+There is a sheltered nook in a certain garden, where, on a sunny spring
+morning, the passer-by inhales with startled pleasure the very soul of
+the 'sweet south,' and, stooping down, far in among brown and crackling
+leaves, lo the blue hoods of English violets! The fragrance of the
+violet! What flower scent is like it? Does not the subtle
+sweetness--half caught, half lost upon the wind--at times sweep over one
+a vague and thrilling tenderness, an exquisite emotion, partly grief and
+partly mild delight?
+
+The violet is the poet's darling, perhaps because its frail breath seems
+to waft from out the delicate blue petals the rare imaginings native to
+a poet's soul.
+
+May it not be that thus, in the eloquence of perfume, it is but
+rendering to him who can best respond thereto, a revelation of its inner
+essences?--showing, to him who can comprehend the sign, a reason why it
+grows.
+
+Is this too fanciful? Certainly the violet was not made in vain--and in
+the Eternal Correspondence known to higher intelligences than our own,
+there surely must exist a grand and beautiful Flower lore, wherein each
+blossom has an individual word to speak, a lesson to unfold, by form and
+coloring, and, more than all, by exhaled fragrance.
+
+Doubtless there is a mystery here too deep for us in this gross world to
+wholly understand; but can we not search after knowledge? Would we not
+like to grasp an enjoyment less merely of the senses from the geranium's
+balm and the mayflower's spice?
+
+And notice here how strongly association binds us by the sense of
+smell--the sense so closely connected with the brain that, through its
+instrumentality, the mind, it is said, is quickest reached, is soonest
+moved. So that when perfumes quiver through us, are we oftenest
+constrained to blush and smile, or shrink and shiver. Perhaps through
+perfumes also memory knocks the loudest on our heart-doors; until it has
+come to pass that unto scented handkerchief or withering leaf has been
+given full power to fire the eye or blanch the cheek; while from secret
+drawers one starts appalled at flower breaths, stifling, shut up long
+ago. The sprays themselves might drop unheeded down--dead with the young
+hopes that laid them there--but the old-time emotion wraps one yet in
+that undying--ah, how sickening! fragrance.
+
+So in the very nature of the task proposed is couched assistance, since
+thus to the breath of the flowers does association lend its own
+interpretation, driving deep the sharpest stings or dropping down the
+richest consolation through the most humble plants. But is this the end
+of the matter? Is there not, apart from all that our personal interest
+may discover, in each flower an unchanging address all its own--an
+unvaried salutation proffered ever to the world at large? Why is a
+passion wafted through a nosegay? What purifies the air around a lily?
+And why are bridal robes rich with orange blooms?
+
+Surely poetry and tradition have but here divined certain truths,
+omnipotent behind a veil, and recognized their symbols in these chosen
+blossoms?
+
+But if the flowers are truly types, how should they be interpreted?
+
+There are hints laid in their very structure and outer semblance, hints
+afforded also by art and romance from time immemorial; and all these,
+suggestions of the hidden wisdom, must be gathered patiently and wrought
+out to a fuller clearness, through careful attention to the intuitions
+of one's own awakened imagination.
+
+But what expression can be found for the _soul_ of a flower--for the
+evanescent odor that floats upon us only with the dimmest mists of
+meaning?
+
+In a novel of a few years since, a people dwelling in Mid Africa are
+described as skilled in the acts of a singular civilization, and
+especial mention is made of an instrument analogous to an organ, but
+which evoked perfumes instead of musical sounds. A curious idea, but
+possibly giving the nearest representation to be made of the effect of
+odor: by its help, then, by regarding flowers as instruments whose
+fragrant utterances might be as well conveyed in music, we may be able
+to translate aright the effluence that stirs beyond the reach of speech.
+
+Let us now try to distinguish, if only for a pleasant pastime, some few
+favorite strains in those wonderful, _unheard_ melodies with which our
+gardens ring.
+
+Hear first the roses. The beautiful blush rose, opening fresh and rosy
+on a dewy June morning, echoes gleefully the birds' 'secret jargoning.'
+
+The saffron tea-rose is an exotic of exotics, and the daintiest of fine
+ladies bears it in her jewelled fingers to the opera, and there imbues
+it with the languid ecstasy of an Italian melody. The aroma, floating
+round those creamy buds, vibrates to the impassioned agony of artistic
+luxury--to the pleasurable pain that dies away in rippling undulations
+of the tones.
+
+But the red rose is dyed deep with simpler passion. War notes are hers,
+but not trumpet tongued, as they pour from out the fiery cactus. No; it
+is as if a woman's heart thrilled through the red rose to sadden the
+reveille for country and for God!--an irrepressible undertone of
+mourning surging over the anguish that must surely come.
+
+Love songs belong, too, to the damask rose, but love still set to
+martial chords, wrung, as it were, from heroes' wives, in a rapture of
+patriotic sacrifice.
+
+The white roses are St. Cecilia's, and swell to organ strains; all but
+that whitest rose, so wan and fragile, which haunts old shady gardens,
+and never seems to have been there when all things were in their prime,
+but to have blossomed out of the surrounding decay and fading
+loveliness. From its bowed head falls drearily upon the ear a low lament
+over the departed life it would commemorate.
+
+With roses comes the honeysuckle--the real New England one--brimful of
+nutmeg; and the sweetbriar, piquant with a _L'Allegro_ strain left by
+Milton. Then the laburnum, which, dripping gold, drips honey likewise,
+and the locust clusters, and the wistaria, dropping lusciousness.
+
+These are all joy-bells evidently, outbursts of the bliss of nature, but
+the garb of the wistaria is more sober than her brilliant sisters, whose
+attire is bright and shining.
+
+There are flowers that seem set to sacred music. Lilies, white and
+sweet, which, from the Lily of the Annunciation to the lily of the
+valley, are hallowed by every reverent fancy; for
+
+  'In the beauty of the lilies
+  Christ was born across the sea.'
+
+And the little white verbena, which recalls, in some mystic way, the old
+Puritan tune, 'Naomi,' whose words of calm submission are so closely
+interwoven with one's earliest religious faith.
+
+But in contrast to this meek northern saint of a flower, there is a
+southern flush of oleander bloom, that pours out hymns of mystical
+devotion, overflowing with the exuberant vitality, glowing with the
+intense fervor, of the Tropics.
+
+There are flowers, also, the burden of whose odorous airs is sensibly of
+this world only, earthy, sensuous. Such are the cape jessamine and the
+narcissus, alike glistening in satin raiment, and alike distilling
+aromatic essence. Something akin to the waltzes of Strauss, one might
+fancy, is the music suited to their mood.
+
+And the night-blooming cercus--that uncanny white witch of a creature,
+with its petals moulded in wax or ivory, its golden-brown
+leaf-sheathings, and its unequalled emerald (is it a tint, or is it but
+a shadow?) far down within the lovely cup, with that overpowering
+voluptuous odor, burdening the atmosphere, permeating the innermost
+fibres of sensation, steeping the soul in lethargy! What more fit
+exponent can there be for this weird plant's expression than the song of
+the serpent-charmer, the singing which can root the feet unto the ground
+and stay the flowing of the impetuous blood?
+
+But carnations have a wide-awake aspect, which brings one back to
+every-day life again. Their pleasant pungency is like a bugle note. They
+seem glad to start the nerves of human beings.
+
+The tulips have taken the sun home to them. Deep down in their hearts
+you smell it, while you listen to a cheery carol welling up from the
+comfort warm within.
+
+The pond lilies likewise breathe forth the inspiration of the sun. And
+they chant in their pure home thanksgivings therefore, happy songs of
+chaste praise.
+
+These are flowers which _look_ their fragrance; but there are those that
+startle by the contrast between their outer being and their inner
+spirit.
+
+What an intoxicating draught the obscure heliotrope offers! One thinks
+of Heloise in the garments of a nun. The arbutus, also, and the dear
+daphne-cups, plain, unnoticeable little things, remind one of the
+nightingales, so insignificant in their appearance, so peerless in their
+gushes of delicious breath.
+
+The demure Quaker is like the peculiar fragrance of the mignonette. It
+is hard to believe so many people really like mignonette as profess to
+do so, it has such a caviare-to-the-general odor. The popular taste here
+would seem really guided by a fashion of fastidiousness. But the lemon
+verbena--which, if not a flower, is so high-bred an herb that it
+deserves to be considered one--one can easily see why that is valued.
+What a refined, _spirituelle_ smell it has? Hypatia might have worn it,
+or Lady Jane Grey--or better still, Mrs. Browning's Lady Geraldine might
+have plucked it in the pauses of the 'woodland singing' the poet tells
+of.
+
+Nature is very liberal in all things; and we have coarse and
+disagreeable flower odors, supplied by peonies, marigolds, the gay
+bouvardia, and a still more odious greenhouse flower--a yellowish,
+toadlike thing, which those who have once known will never forget, and
+for which perhaps they can supply a name. If odor be the flower's
+expression of its soul, what rude and evil tenants must dwell within
+those luckless mansions!
+
+But if a flower's soul speaks through odor, what of scentless blossoms?
+Are they dumb or dead? Some may be too young to speak--as the infantile
+anemones, daisies, and innocents.
+
+Perhaps some are thus most meet for symbols of the dead; the stately,
+frozen calla, which seems a fit trophy, bound with laurel leaves, to lay
+upon a soldier's bier; and the snow-cold camelia, whose stony
+sculpturing is the very emblem for those white features whence God has
+drained away the life.
+
+But, camelias warmed with color, fuchsias, abutilons, the cultivated
+azalia (the wild one has a scent), asters, and a host of other loved and
+lovely flowers--why are they deprived of language?
+
+Perhaps they _have_ a fragrance, felt by subtler senses than we mortals
+own. But, at least, if they must now appear as mute, we may yet hope
+that in a more spiritual existence we shall behold their very doubles,
+gifted with a novel charm, a captivating perfume, we cannot conceive of
+here. For in the vast harmony of the universe one cannot believe there
+can be any floral instruments whose strings are never to be awakened.
+
+It _has_ been but the pastime of a half hour that we have given to the
+flower odors, when an ever-widening field for speculation lies before
+us. But imagination droops exhausted, baffled by the innumerable
+enchanting riddles still to solve. And this must now suffice.
+
+If it serve to excite any dormant thought in the more ingenious mind of
+another--if it be able to call out the learned conceits of some scholar,
+or the delicate symbolisms of some dreamer, it has done its work.
+
+The hand that has thus far guided the pen, to dally with a subject all
+the dearer because so generally disregarded, will now gladly yield it to
+the control of a fresher fancy, a truer observation.
+
+
+
+
+LOCOMOTION.
+
+
+The utilitarian spirit of the age is strikingly exhibited in the intense
+desire to diminish the quantity of time necessary to pass from one spot
+of the earth's surface to another, and to communicate almost
+instantaneously with a remote distance. The great triumphs of genius,
+within the last half century, have been accomplished within the domain
+of commerce. And in contemplating the progress which has ensued, it is a
+cause of humiliation that, as in the case of other great discoveries, so
+many centuries have elapsed, during which the powers of steam, an
+element almost constantly within the observation of man, were, although
+perceived, unemployed. But reflection upon the nature of man, and his
+slow advancement in the great path of fact and science, will at once
+hush the expression of our wondering regret over the past, while a
+nobler occupation for the mind offers itself in speculation upon the
+future. The plank road, the canal, the steamboat, and the railway, are
+all the productions of the last few years. At the close of the last
+century, with the exception of a few military roads inherited from the
+Romans, and the roads of the same description constructed by Napoleon,
+the means of communication between distant parts was almost entirely
+confined to inland seas and the larger rivers. It is for this reason
+that the maritime cities and provinces attained such disproportionate
+wealth.
+
+The invention of _chariots_, and the manner of harnessing horses to draw
+them, is ascribed to Ericthonius of Athens, B.C. 1486. The chariots of
+the ancients were like our _phaetons_, and drawn by one horse. The
+invention of the _chaise_, or calash, is ascribed to Augustus Cæsar,
+about A.D. 7. Postchaises were introduced by Trajan about A.D. 100.
+_Carriages_ were known in France in the reign of Henry II., A.D. 1547;
+there were but three in Paris in 1550; they were of rude construction.
+Henry IV. had one, but it was without straps or springs. A strong
+cob-horse (_haquenée_) was let for short journeys; latterly these were
+harnessed to a plain vehicle, called _coche-a-haquenée_: hence the name,
+_hackney coach_. They were first let for hire in Paris, in 1650, at the
+Hotel Fiacre. They were known in England in 1555, but not the art of
+making them. When first manufactured in England, during the reign of
+Elizabeth, they were called _whirlicotes_. The duke of Buckingham, in
+1619, drove six horses, and the duke of Northumberland, in rivalry,
+drove eight. _Cabs_ are also of Parisian origin, where the driver sat in
+the inside; but the aristocratic tastes of the English suggested the
+propriety of compelling the driver to be seated outside. _Omnibuses_
+also originated in Paris, and were introduced into London in 1827, by
+an enterprising coach proprietor named Shillaber. They were introduced
+into New York, in 1828, by Kipp & Brown. _Horse railroads_ were
+introduced into New York, in 1851, upon the Sixth Avenue.
+
+In 1660 there were but six _stage coaches_ in England; two days were
+occupied in passing from London to Oxford, fifty-four miles. In 1669, it
+was announced that a vehicle, described as the _flying coach_, would
+perform the whole journey between sunrise and sunset. It excited as much
+interest as the opening of a new railway in our time. The Newcastle
+_Courant_, of October 11th, 1812, advertises 'that all that desire to
+pass from Edinborough to London, or from London to Edinborough, or any
+place on that road, let them repair to Mr. John Baillie's, at the Coach
+and Horses, at the head of Cannongate, Edinborough, every other
+Saturday; or to the Black Swan, in Holborn, every other Monday; at both
+of which places they may be received in a stage coach, which performs
+the whole journey in _thirteen days, without any stoppage_ (_if God
+permit_), having eighty able horses to perform the whole stage--each
+passenger paying £4 10s. for the whole journey. The coach sets out at
+six in the morning.' And it was not until 1825 that a daily line of
+stage coaches was established between the two cities, accomplishing the
+distance in forty-six hours. And even so late as 1835 there were only
+seven coaches which ran daily.
+
+In 1743, Benjamin Franklin, postmaster of Philadelphia, in an
+advertisement, dated April 14th, announces 'that the northern post will
+set out for New York on Thursdays, at three o'clock in the afternoon,
+till Christmas. The southern post sets out next Monday for Annapolis,
+and continues going every fortnight during the summer season.' In 1773,
+Josiah Quincy, father and grandfather of the mayors of that name, of
+Boston, spent thirty-three days upon a journey from Georgetown, South
+Carolina, to Philadelphia. In 1775, General Washington was eleven days
+going from Philadelphia to Boston; upon his arrival at Watertown the
+citizens turned out and congratulated him upon the _speed_ of his
+journey! Fifty years ago the regular mail time, between New York and
+Albany, was eight days. Even as late as 1824, the United States mail was
+thirty-two days in passing from Portland to New Orleans. The news of the
+death of Napoleon Bonaparte, at St. Helena, May 5th, 1821, reached New
+York on the fifteenth day of August.
+
+Canals were known to the ancients, and have been used, in a small way,
+by all nations, particularly the Dutch. But the world did not awake to
+their importance until 1817, when the State of New York entered upon the
+Erie Canal project, which was completed in 1825. The introduction of
+steamboats for river navigation, and of locomotives upon railways, have
+superseded canals, and invested them with an air of antiquity. It was
+not until 1807 that Robert Fulton put his first vessel in operation on
+the Hudson River.
+
+To the American steamship Savannah, built by Croker & Fickett, at
+Corlear's Hook, New York, is universally conceded the honor of being the
+first steam-propelled vessel that ever crossed the Atlantic ocean. She
+was three hundred and eighty tons burden, ship-rigged, and was equipped
+with a horizontal engine, placed between decks, with boilers in the
+hold. She was built through the agency of Captain Moses Rogers, by a
+company of gentlemen, with a view of selling her to the emperor of
+Russia. She sailed from New York in 1819, and went first to Savannah;
+thence she proceeded direct to Liverpool, where she arrived after a
+passage of eighteen days, during seven of which she was under steam. As
+it was nearly or quite impossible to carry sufficient fuel for the
+voyage, during pleasant weather the wheels were removed, and canvas
+substituted. At Liverpool she was visited by many persons of
+distinction, and afterward departed for Elsinore, on her way to St.
+Petersburg. She was not, however, sold as expected, and next touched at
+Copenhagen, where Captain Rogers was offered one hundred thousand
+dollars for her by the king of Sweden; but the offer was declined. She
+then sailed for home, putting into Elsington, on the coast of Norway.
+From the latter place she was twenty-two days in reaching Savannah. On
+account of the high price of fuel, she carried no steam on the return
+passage, and the wheels were taken off. Upon the completion of the
+voyage, she was purchased by Captain Nathaniel Holdredge, divested of
+her steam apparatus, and run as a packet between Savannah and New York.
+She subsequently went ashore on Long Island, and broke up. Sixty
+thousand dollars were sunk in the transaction. Captain Rogers died a few
+years ago on the Pee Dee river, North Carolina. He is believed to be the
+first man that ran a steamboat to Philadelphia or Baltimore. The mate
+was named Stephen Rogers, and was living a few years ago at New London,
+Connecticut.
+
+The first railway in England was between Stockton and Darlington; and
+the first locomotive built in the world was used upon that road, and is
+still in existence, being preserved at Darlington depot, upon a platform
+erected for the purpose; the date 1825 is engraved upon its plate. The
+first railway charter in the United States was granted March 4th, 1826,
+to Thomas H. Perkins and others, 'to convey granite from the ledges in
+Quincy to tidewater in that town.' The first railway in the United
+States upon which passengers were conveyed, was the Baltimore and Ohio,
+which was opened December 28, 1829, to Ellicott's Mills, thirteen miles
+from Baltimore. A single horse was attached to two of Winan's carriages,
+containing forty-one persons, which were drawn, with ease, eleven miles
+per hour. The South Carolina Railway, from Charleston to Hamburg, was
+the first constructed in the United States with a view to use _steam_
+instead of _animal_ power. The first locomotive constructed in the
+United States was built for this road. It was named the _Best Friend_,
+and afterward changed to _Phoenix_. It was built at the West Point
+foundery by the Messrs. Kemble, under the direction of E.L. Miller, Esq.
+Its performance was tested on the 9th December, 1830, and exceeded
+expectations. To Mr. Miller, therefore, belongs the honor of planning
+and constructing the first locomotive operated in the United States.
+This road was the first to carry the United States mail, and, when
+completed, October 2d, 1833, one hundred and thirty-seven miles in
+length, was the longest railway in the world. The number of miles of
+railway in operation in the United States, at the present time, is
+thirty-two thousand; and the number of passengers conveyed upon them in
+1863 was one hundred millions. Railways did not cross the Mississippi
+river until 1851. The number of miles of railway in the world is
+seventy-two thousand; and the amount of steamboat tonnage is five
+millions of tons.
+
+Yet more astonishing than the railway is the magnetic telegraph, whose
+exploits are literally miraculous, annihilating space and time. The
+extremities of the globe are brought into immediate contact; the
+merchant, the friend, or the lover converses with whom he wishes, though
+thousands of miles apart, as if they occupied the same parlor; and the
+speech uttered in Washington to-day may be read in San Francisco three
+hours before it is delivered. Could the wires be extended around the
+globe, we should be able to hear the news one day before it occurred.
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+     NAOMI TORRENTE: The History of a Woman. By GERTRUDE F. DE VINGUT.
+     'Every dream of love argues a reality in the world of supreme
+     beauty. Believe all that thy heart prompts, for everything that it
+     seeks, exists.'--_Plato_. New York: John Bradburn (late M.
+     Doolady), publisher, 49 Walker street.
+
+
+Who could look on the fair high face, facing our title page, and have
+the heart to criticize the revelations of its soul? Naomi is a book of
+feeling, passion, and considerable, if not yet mature, power. It is
+dedicated to Sr. Dn. Juan Clemente Zenea, editor of _La Charanga_,
+Havana. Our authoress says in her dedication: 'It is to you, therefore;
+and those who like you have deeply felt, that the history of a woman's
+soul-life will prove more interesting than the mere narrative of the
+chances and occurrences that make up the every-day natural existence.'
+Naomi is a woman of artistic genius and passionate character, becalmed
+in the stagnation of conventional life, who, throwing off the fetters of
+an uncongenial and inconsiderate marriage, attempts to find happiness
+and independence in the cultivation of her own powers. She is eminently
+successful as prima donna, is brilliant and self-sustained--but fails to
+attain the imagined happiness, the Love-Eden so fervently sought.
+
+
+     MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS. By the Author of 'The Queen of the
+     Country,' 'The Challenge,' etc. 'Queen Rose of the Rosebud garden
+     of girls.'--_Tennyson_. Loring, publisher, 314 Washington street,
+     Boston. 1864.
+
+A novel of domestic life, in which the plot, apparently simple, is yet
+artistic and skilfully managed. The thread of life of the bridesmaids is
+held with that of the bride, the development of character, distinctly
+marked in each, progresses through a series of natural events, until the
+young people reach the point of life when impulse settles into
+principle, amiability into virtue, generosity into self-abnegation, and
+we feel that each may now be safely left to life as it is, that
+circumstance can no longer mould character, and are willing to leave
+them, certain they will henceforth remain true to themselves, and to
+those whose happiness may depend upon them, whatever else may betide.
+The bride is a pure, sweet, generous woman, but the character of the
+book is decidedly Lotty. Childish, petite, and indulged, she is yet
+magnanimous, brave, and self-sacrificing; fiery, fearless, and frank,
+she is still patient, forbearing, and reticent; we love her as child,
+while we soon learn to venerate her as woman. She and her docile
+bloodhound, Bear, form pictures full of magic contrast, groups of which
+we never tire. The cordiality and heartiness of her admiring relatives,
+the Beauvilliers, are contagious; we live for the time in their life,
+and grow stronger as we read. The book is charming. Its moral is
+unexceptionable, its characters well drawn, its plot and incidents
+simple and natural, and its interest sustained from beginning to end.
+
+
+     ENOCH ARDEN, etc. By ALFRED TENNYSON, D.C.L., Poet Laureate.
+     Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1864.
+
+Tennyson has so many devoted admirers, that this volume cannot fail to
+receive due attention. The principal poem therein, Enoch Arden, is one
+of touching pathos and simplicity. Three children, Enoch Arden, Philip
+Ray, and Annie Lee, grew up together on the British coast a hundred
+years ago. Both youths loved Annie: she loved and married Enoch. They
+live happily together until three children are born to the house: then
+poverty threatens, and Arden leaves home to provide for the loved ones.
+He is cast away on an island, is not heard, from for ten years, and
+Annie reluctantly consents to marry Philip, who has been a father to her
+children during their long orphanage. Arden returns at last to his
+native village, so old, gray, and broken, that no one recognizes him.
+He hears how true his wife had been to him until all hope had died away,
+and how Philip cared for her peace, and cherished his children. The
+wretched man resolves to bear his grief in silence, and never to bring
+agony and shame to a peaceful home by disclosing his return. He does
+this in a spirit of Christian self-abnegation, lives near the
+unconscious darlings of his heart, earns his frugal living, watching
+round, but never entering the lost Paradise of his youth. He dies, and
+only at the hour of death, reveals to Annie how he had lived and loved.
+The _theme_ of this tale has often been taken before. It has been
+elaborated with passion and power in the 'Homeward Bound' of Adelaide
+Procter, a poetess too little known among us.
+
+There is great purity of delineation and conception in Enoch Arden. The
+characters stand out real and palpable in their statuesque simplicity.
+There is agony enough, but neither impatience nor sin. The epithets are
+well chosen; but the usual wildering sensuousness of Tennyson's glowing
+imagery is subdued and tender throughout the progress of this melancholy
+tale.
+
+'Aylmer's Field,' about the same length, is a poem of more stormy mould.
+It hurls fierce rebukes at family pride, and just censures at tyrannical
+parents.
+
+The volume contains many shorter poems, some of which are already
+familiar to our readers.
+
+
+     AZARIAN: An Episode. By HARRIET ELIZABETH PRESCOTT, Author of 'The
+     Amber Gods,' etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
+
+We like 'Azarian' better than any work we have yet seen from Miss
+Prescott. Ruth Yetton, the heroine, is so truly feminine, she might
+serve as a type of half our innocent maidens from sixteen to twenty.
+Azarian is real and drawn to the life, a hero who has his counterpart in
+every civilized city; a man of _savoir-vivre_, glittering and
+attractive, but selfish, inconsequent, frivolous, and deadly to the
+peace of those who love him. Miss Prescott's style is elaborate and
+florid, frequently of rare beauty, always giving evidence of culture and
+scholarship. Do we find fault with the hundred-leaved rose? Her fancy is
+luxuriant, of more power than her imagination. Her descriptions of
+flowers in the volume before us are accurate and tenderly beautiful. She
+knows them all, and evidently loves them well. Nor are the fragile
+blossoms of the trees less dear to her. She reads their secrets, and
+treasures them in her heart. She paints them with her glowing words, and
+placing our old darlings before us again, exultingly points out their
+hidden charms.
+
+
+     THE FOREST ARCADIA OF NORTHERN NEW YORK: Embracing a View of its
+     Mineral, Agricultural, and Timber Resources. Boston: Published by
+     T.O.H.P. Burnham. New York: Oliver S. Felt. 1864.
+
+The author of this pleasant, unpretending little book visited the 'great
+wilderness of Northern New York, which lies in St. Lawrence county, on
+the western slope of the Adirondack Mountains. It forms part of an
+extensive plateau, embracing an area of many thousand square miles, and
+is elevated from fifteen to eighteen hundred feet above the sea. The
+mineral resources of the plateau are of great value, immense ranges of
+magnetic iron traverse the country, and there are indications of more
+valuable minerals in a few localities. Of its agricultural importance
+too much cannot be said. The soil is rich and strong, peculiarly adapted
+to the grazing of cattle. The climate is that of the hill country of New
+England.'
+
+The reader will see from this extract of what the book treats. The
+volume is pleasantly and simply written, imparts considerable
+information with respect to the region which it describes, is redolent
+of spicy forest breath, and brings before us Indian, deer, and beaver.
+
+
+     RHODE ISLAND IN THE REBELLION. By EDWIN W. STONE, of the First
+     Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery. Providence: George H.
+     Whitney. 1864.
+
+'These Letters were written amid camp scenes and on the march,' says our
+author, 'under circumstances unfavorable to literary composition, and
+were intended for private perusal alone. Portions of them appeared in
+the _Providence Journal_, and were received with a favor alike
+unexpected and gratifying. Numerous requests having been made that they
+should be gathered up as a Rhode Island contribution to the history of
+the War of the Rebellion, the author, with unaffected distrust of
+himself, has yielded to the judgment of others. While the aim has been
+to show the honorable position of the State in an unhappy war, it has
+also been the design to present a comprehensive view of the consecutive
+campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, with the fortunes of which several
+of the Rhode Island regiments and most of the batteries have, for longer
+or shorter periods, been identified.'
+
+It is a noble record for Rhode Island, and a valuable contribution to
+the history of the war. It deals with facts, not polities or prejudices.
+We think every loyal State should prepare such a volume. A simple and
+reliable statement of what she has herself done, a sketch of her heroes
+of all ranks and parties, of her batteries, regiments, and companies, of
+her commandants and the battles in which her troops bore part, should be
+therein contained. This would lead to noble emulation among the States
+struggling for a common cause, and would be of great value both to State
+and general history. We look upon this book as a beginning in the right
+way. Such national records of nobly borne suffering and deeds of glory
+would be truly Books of Honor.
+
+
+     ROBINSON'S MATHEMATICAL SERIES: Arithmetical Examples; or, Test
+     Exercises for the Use of Advanced Classes. New York: Ivison,
+     Phinney, Blakeman & Co., 48 & 50 Walker street. Chicago: S.C.
+     Griggs & Co., 39 & 41 Lake street. 1864.
+
+This book was issued to meet the demand in advanced schools for a larger
+number of carefully prepared and practical examples for review and drill
+exercises than are furnished from ordinary text books, and may be used
+in connection with any other books on this subject. 'The examples are
+designed to test the pupil's judgment; to bring into use his knowledge
+of the theory and applications of numbers; to cultivate habits of
+patient investigation and self-reliance; to test the truth and accuracy
+of his own processes by proof--the only test he will have to depend on
+in the real business transactions of afterlife; in a word, to make him
+independent of all text books, of written rules and analyses.'
+
+
+     A LATIN GRAMMAR FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. By ALBERT HARKNESS, Ph.
+     D., Professor in Brown University, Author of 'A First Latin Book,'
+     'A Second Latin Book,' 'A First Greek Book,' etc. New York: D.
+     Appleton & Co., 443 & 445 Broadway.
+
+Prof. Harkness's Grammar will be welcomed both by teacher and student.
+Our author is a man of great experience in the subjects of which he
+treats, and we doubt not he has supplied a general want in the work
+before us, and furnished a true grammar of the Latin tongue, worthy of
+adoption in all our educational institutions.
+
+
+     RITA: An Autobiography. By HAMILTON AIDE, Author of 'Confidences,'
+     'Carr of Carrlyon,' 'Mr. and Mrs. Faulconbridge,' etc. Boston:
+     Published by T.O.P. Burnham. New York: Oliver S. Felt.
+
+This novel is the autobiography of a young English girl, thrown by her
+father, a man of high birth, but worthless character, into the vicious
+influences of corrupt English and French society. The story is one of a
+constant struggle between these base examples on the one hand, and a
+strong sense of right and justice on the other. The plot is original and
+quite elaborate, and the interest well sustained. The character of the
+unprincipled, heartless, gambling father is well drawn, as well as that
+of the weak but self-sacrificing mother. Some of the scenes evince
+considerable power.
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S TABLE
+
+
+Readers of THE CONTINENTAL, your servant and faithful caterer has been a
+sad idler and vagrant for the last month, thinking more of his own
+pleasures than of your needs and requirements. Forgive him, he is again
+a working bee and seeking honey for your hives. Have patience, irate
+correspondents; we have absconded with no manuscripts, and are again at
+our desk to give bland answers to curt missives.
+
+We have been among the Adirondacks; congratulate us right heartily
+thereon! We have traversed pathless primeval forests of larches,
+balsams, white pines, and sugar maples; we have floated upon lakes
+lovely enough to have mirrored Paradise; we have clambered down
+waterfalls whose broken drops turned into diamonds as they fell; have
+scaled mountains and seen earth in its glory, and looked clear up into
+the infinite blue of the eye of God.
+
+We have seen the gleaming trout, changeful as a prisoned rainbow, lured
+from his cool stream; and the poor deer chased from his forest home by
+savage dogs and cruel men, driven into crystal lakes, lassoed there with
+ropes, throats cut with dull knives, and backs broken with flying balls.
+Immortal Shakspeare! had thy lines no power to awaken pity for
+frightened fawn and flying doe? Did they not see
+
+  'The wretched animal heave forth such groans
+  That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
+  Almost to bursting; while the big round tears
+  Coursed one another down his innocent nose
+  In Piteous chase?'
+
+Alas, 'poor hairy fool!' why should they seek thee in thy mountain
+homes?
+
+We have sat by the side of fair fragile country girls, and heard the
+experiences of the stout pioneers of civilization. We have tried to keep
+step with city maidens, shorn of ridiculous hoops and trailing trains.
+We nave known them trip up the great sides of Tahawus, press through the
+trunked and bouldered horrors of Indian Pass, float over Lake Placid,
+and scale the long steep slide up the crest of White Face. Lovely as
+dreams and light as clouds, no toil stayed them, no danger appalled;
+panther, wolf, and bear stories were told in vain by lazy brothers and
+reluctant lovers; on they went in their restless search for beauty,
+their Turkish dress and scarlet tunics gleaming through the trees, to
+the delight of the old mountain guides, who chuckled over their
+Camilla-like exploits, and laughed, as they plucked the fragrant boughs
+for their spicy couch, over the ignorance and awkwardness of their lazy
+city beaux. These fair Dians shoot no deer, nor lure the springing
+trout. We blessed them as they went their thymy way.
+
+We have sat in the hut of the farmer, the skiff of the oarsman, the
+parlor of the host of the inn; tried wagons, stages, and buck-board
+conveyances; we have disputed no bill, been subjected to no extortion,
+and, save the death of the 'hairy fools,' known no sorrow. We have sat
+by the grave of old John Brown, seen the glorious view from his simple
+home, heard his strange generosity extolled by his political enemies,
+and think we understand better than of old the sublime madness of his
+fanaticism. We have returned to our labor with a new love of country, a
+deeper sense of responsibility, of the worth of our institutions, and of
+the glory yet to be in 'Our Great America.' What a land to live and die
+for! Every drop of martyr blood poured upon it but makes it dearer to
+the heart.
+
+
+
+
+PEERLESS COLUMBIA.
+
+
+_A National Song._
+
+            God of our Fathers,
+              Smile on our land!
+            Lo, the storm gathers--
+              Stretch forth Thy hand!
+
+  _Chorus._--Shield us and guard us from mountain to sea!
+            Make the homes happy where manhood is free!
+
+            Brave is our nation,
+              Hopeful and young;
+            High is her station
+              Countries among.
+
+  _Chorus._--Holy our banner! from mountain to sea
+            Floating in splendor o'er homes ever free.
+
+            Proud is our story,
+              Written in light;
+            Stars tell its glory,
+              Victory, might.
+
+  _Chorus._--Peerless Columbia! from mountain to sea
+            Throbs every pulse through the heart of the free.
+
+            Up with our banner!
+              Hope in each fold--
+            Stout hearts will man her,
+              Millions untold.
+
+  _Chorus._--Millions now greet her from mountain to sea,
+            Hope of the toil-worn! blest Flag of the free!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following thoughts on some of the uses subserved by Art, are from
+the pen of the Rev. J. Byington Smith. There is so much truth in their
+suggestions, that we heartily commend them to our readers.
+
+
+ART AS A MEANS OF HOME-CULTURE.
+
+BY J. BYINGTON SMITH.
+
+Art is closely allied to nature in giving impress to character. The
+scenery by which a people is surrounded, will modify and almost control
+its mode of being. The soft, rich landscapes of Italy enervate, while
+the rough mountainous country of the North imparts force and vigor.
+Mountains and seas are nature's healthful stimulants. Man grows in their
+vastness and is energized in their strength. Whatever may be the scenery
+of a people, it will mirror itself in the mind, and stamp its impress
+upon character.
+
+Art reproduces nature, arranging its illimitable stores in closer unity,
+idealizing its charms, and bringing into nearer view its symmetry and
+beauty. Bearing its lessons from afar, it colors the glowing canvas and
+chisels the stone to awaken the impressions it designs to make on the
+human soul. Thus art, like nature, becomes a means of culture. When the
+Lombards wished to give hardihood and system to the enervated body and
+enfeebled mind of the people, they covered their churches with the
+sculptured representation of vigorous bodily exercises, such as war and
+hunting. In the great church of St. Mark, at Venice, people were taught
+the history of the Scriptures by means of imagery; a picture on the
+walls being more easily read than a chapter. Such walls were styled the
+poor man's Bible.
+
+A picture reveals at a single glance that which we would be otherwise
+forced to glean by a slow process from the scattered material furnished
+by the printed page; hence the delight taken in illustrations, the
+importance of pictorial instruction for the young, and the almost
+universal demand for the illustrated publications of the day.
+
+The teaching of art through painting, sculpture, and engraving, finds
+its way into our homes, and while lessons may be duly read from books
+and then laid aside, the lessons in the niche or on the wall repeat
+themselves hour by hour, and day by day, looking even into the pure eyes
+of infancy, and aiding in the formation of the character of every child
+subjected to their ceaseless influence. Their power is none the less
+because they never break the home-silence; they mould the young life and
+stamp their impress upon it. How important then that all such objects
+should be chosen, not only as treasures of artistic beauty, but for
+their power to elevate and ennoble character.
+
+How often will you find in the room of the scholar, the studio of the
+artist, the picture or bust of some old master in art or letters, as if
+the occupant were conscious of the incentive such presence offered to
+his own efforts--the guardian genius of the spot.
+
+In the study of one of the old divines might have been seen a painted
+eye, gazing forever down upon him, to render him sensible of the
+presence of the All-Seeing--to stamp the 'Thou God seest me' upon the
+very tablets of his heart.
+
+A child is not so readily tempted into sin when surrounded by pure and
+beautiful imagery, or when gentle loving eyes are looking down upon him.
+On the other hand, the walls of the degraded are lined with amorous and
+obscene images, that vicious habits and debased tastes may find their
+suitable incentives.
+
+A window shade bearing the design of a little girl issuing, basket in
+hand, from the door of a humble cottage, to relieve the wants of a poor
+blind beggar, will certainly take its place among the early developments
+of the children growing up under its influence, and in their simple
+charity they may be found, basket in hand, looking out for real or
+fancied beggars. Such lessons are never lost. In a parlor which I often
+frequent is a picture of a Sabbath scene: an aged grand-sire is seated
+by a table on which lies an open Bible, a bright-eyed boy is opposite,
+his father and mother on either side, a little shy girl is on the knee
+of the old man, all are listening reverently to the holy Word of God,
+books and a vase of gay flowers are on the table, green boughs fill the
+great old-fashioned fireplace. The whole picture wears an air of
+serenity and calm happiness, and is an impressive plea that we 'remember
+and keep holy the Sabbath day'--and we verily believe that such a
+picture will do more to influence our children to love the Sabbath, than
+any amount of parental restraint or lectures on moral obligation.
+
+There is another picture in the same quiet room: 'The Mother's Dream.'
+She is worn with watching, and lies dreaming beside the couch of the
+child. Rays of light open a bright pathway into the skies, while an
+angel is bearing the spirit child along it up to heaven. We think such a
+picture is worth more to familiarize childhood with death and
+resurrection, and will leave a sweeter and more lasting impression upon
+the young soul, than the most learned dissertation or simplest
+explanation.
+
+Landscape painting exerts a mellowing influence, and leads to the
+observation and love of nature, while historical pictures stimulate
+research, and nerve the mind to deeds of heroism and virtue.
+
+The influence of pictures in forming character and shaping the course of
+life is illustrated with peculiar power in the history of the sons of a
+quiet family in the interior, who all insisted upon going to sea. The
+parents were grieved that none of their boys would remain at home to
+care for the homestead, and be the comfort of their declining years.
+They expressed their disappointment to a friend then on a visit to them,
+and wondered what could have induced the boys, one after the other, to
+embrace a life so full of storm and danger. Directly over the open
+fireplace hung a picture of a vessel with fluttering, snowy sails,
+tossing and rocking amid the bright, green, yeasty waves. The friend saw
+it, read the mystery, and quietly inquired how long it had been there.
+'Since we commenced housekeeping,' was the unconscious reply. Not
+wishing to wound them, he was silent, and concealed his thoughts in his
+own breast, but the solution of the choice of life in the absent ones
+was clear enough to him: _that picture had sent them off, one after
+another, to sea_.
+
+How careful we should then be in surrounding youth and childhood with
+pure, elevating objects of art, as means of constant home-culture! We
+know we shall be told, 'This is all very good, but we cannot afford it.'
+Let us reason together. Can you not deduct something from your elaborate
+furniture, your expensive dress, and devote it to models, lithographs,
+or paintings? Subtract but the half from these luxuries and devote the
+sum to designs of art, and you will contribute doubly to the
+attractiveness and pleasantness of your home. Where we cannot hope to
+possess the original masterpiece, we may have photographic or
+lithographic copies, which are within the compass of very humble means.
+You will freely toss away five dollars in useless embroidery or surplus
+furniture, and it would buy you a lithograph of Raphael's immortal
+picture, giving the results of a whole age of artistic culture, or a
+photograph of Cheney's Madonna and Child, bearing the very spirit of the
+original, or a plaster cast of noble statuary, the original of which
+could not be obtained for any namable sum--and yet you say you cannot
+afford works of art!
+
+There is surely nothing you can afford better than to make your home
+attractive, and to introduce therein every available means of mental and
+moral culture. If you cannot afford to make home lovely, others will
+succeed in making dangerous places attractive to your children. There
+are spots enough kept light and picturesque, perilously fascinating to
+those whose homes boast no attractions. It will likely cost you far more
+in money, more surely in heart-anguish and sorrow, to have your children
+entertained in these places full of snares, where corrupt art lavishes
+her designs with unsparing hand, to vitiate the young imagination and
+debase the mind, than to exalt her in her chaste and ennobling power in
+the sanctuary of your homes, as one of the means of home-culture,
+stimulating to virtue and stamping the character with genuine worth.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4,
+October, 1864, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY ***
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Continental Monthly, Volume VI. Issue IV. by Various.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4,
+October, 1864, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864
+       Devoted To Literature And National Policy
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 18, 2007 [EBook #23537]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2>The</h2>
+
+<h1>CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:</h1>
+
+<h4>DEVOTED TO</h4>
+
+<h2>Literature and National Policy</h2>
+
+
+<h3>VOL. VI.&mdash;October, 1864&mdash;No. IV.</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="95%" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#SOME_USES_OF_A_CIVIL_WAR">SOME USES OF A CIVIL WAR.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PROVERBS">PROVERBS.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_UNDIVINE_COMEDY_A_POLISH_DRAMA">THE UNDIVINE COMEDY&mdash;A POLISH DRAMA.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_NORTH_CAROLINA_CONSCRIPT">THE NORTH CAROLINA CONSCRIPT.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#DOES_THE_MOON_REVOLVE_ON_ITS_AXIS">DOES THE MOON REVOLVE ON ITS AXIS?</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LUNAR_CHARACTERISTICS">LUNAR CHARACTERISTICS.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_GLANCE_AT_PRUSSIAN_POLITICS">A GLANCE AT PRUSSIAN POLITICS.&mdash;PART 11.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#YE_KNOW_NOT_WHAT_YE_ASK">'YE KNOW NOT WHAT YE ASK.'</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#COMING_UP_AT_SHILOH">COMING UP AT SHILOH.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AENONE">&AElig;NONE:&mdash;A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#APHORISMS_NO_XII">APHORISMS.&mdash;NO. XII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#EXCUSE">EXCUSE.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#AMERICAN_WOMEN">AMERICAN WOMEN.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_WRENS_SONG">A WREN'S SONG.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#WORD-STILTS">WORD-STILTS</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#A_GREAT_SOCIAL_PROBLEM">A GREAT SOCIAL PROBLEM.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#Aphorisms_NO_XIII">APHORISMS.&mdash;NO. XIII.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#OUR_GREAT_AMERICA">OUR GREAT AMERICA.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LONGING">LONGING</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_LESSON_OF_THE_HOUR">THE LESSON OF THE HOUR.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#THE_SCIENTIFIC_UNIVERSAL_LANGUAGE_ITS_CHARACTER_AND_RELATION_TO_OTHER">THE SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS CHARACTER AND RELATION TO OTHER LANGUAGES.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#FLOWER_ODORS">FLOWER ODORS.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LOCOMOTION">LOCOMOTION.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#LITERARY_NOTICES">LITERARY NOTICES.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#EDITORS_TABLE">EDITOR'S TABLE</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SOME_USES_OF_A_CIVIL_WAR" id="SOME_USES_OF_A_CIVIL_WAR"></a>SOME USES OF A CIVIL WAR.</h2>
+
+<p>War is a great evil. We may confess that, at the start. The Peace
+Society has the argument its own way. The bloody field, the mangled
+dying, hoof-trampled into the reeking sod, the groans, and cries, and
+curses, the wrath, and hate, and madness, the horror and the hell of a
+great battle, are things no rhetoric can ever make lovely.</p>
+
+<p>The poet may weave his wreath of victory for the conqueror; the
+historian, with all the pomp of splendid imagery, may describe the
+heroism of the day of slaughter; but, after all, and none know this
+better than the men most familiar with it, a great battle is the most
+hateful and hellish sight that the sun looks on in all his courses.</p>
+
+<p>And the actual battle is only a part. The curse goes far beyond the
+field of combat. The trampled dead and dying are but a tithe of the
+actual sufferers. There are desolate homes, far away, where want changes
+sorrow into madness. Wives wail by hearthstones where the household
+fires have died into cold ashes forever more. Like Rachel, mothers weep
+for the proud boys that lie stark beneath the pitiless stars. Under a
+thousand roofs&mdash;cottage roofs and palace roofs&mdash;little children ask for
+'father.' The pattering feet shall never run to meet, upon the
+threshold, <i>his</i> feet, who lies stiffening in the bloody trench far
+away!</p>
+
+<p>There are added horrors in <i>civil war</i>. These forms, crushed and torn
+out of all human semblance, are our brothers. These wailing widows,
+these small fatherless ones speak our mother language, utter their pain
+in the tongue of our own wives and children. Victory seems barely better
+than defeat, when it is victory over our own blood. The scars we carve
+with steel or burn with powder across the shuddering land, are scars on
+the dear face of the Motherland we love. These blackened roof-trees,
+they are the homes of our kindred. These cities, where shells are
+bursting through crumbling wall and flaming spire, they are cities of
+our own fair land, perhaps the brightest jewels in her crown.</p>
+
+<p>Ay! men do well to pray for <i>peace!</i> With suppliant palms outstretched
+to the pitying God, they do well to cry, as in the ancient litany, 'Give
+peace in our time, O Lord!' Let the husbandman go forth in the furrow.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>Let the cattle come lowing to the stalls at evening. Let bleating
+flocks whiten all the uplands. Let harvest hymns be sung, while groaning
+wagons drag to bursting barns their mighty weight of sheaves. Let mill
+wheels turn their dripping rounds by every stream. Let sails whiten
+along every river. Let the smoke of a million peaceful hearths rise like
+incense in the morning. Let the shouts of happy children, at their play,
+ring down ten thousand valleys in the summer day's decline. Over all the
+blessed land, asleep beneath the shadow of the Almighty hand, let the
+peace of God rest in benediction! 'Give <i>peace</i> in our time, O Lord!'</p>
+
+<p>And yet the final clause to, every human prayer must be 'Thy will be
+done!' There are things better far than peace. There are things more
+loathely and more terrible than, the horror of battle and 'garments
+rolled in blood.' Peace is blessed, but if you have peace with hell, how
+about the blessedness? A covenant with evil is not the sort of agreement
+that will bring comfort. A truce with Satan is not the thing that it
+will do to trust. There are things in this world, without which the
+prayer for peace is 'a witch's prayer,' read backward to a curse.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, whether peace is good depends entirely on the further
+question, With whom are you at peace? Whether war is evil depends on the
+other question, With whom are you at war? In one most serious and
+substantial point of view, human life is a battle, which, for the
+individual, ends only with death, and, for the race, only with the Final
+Consummation. The tenure of our place and right, as children of God, is
+that we fight evil to the bitter end. 'The Prince of Peace' Himself came
+'not to send peace,' in this war, 'but a sword.'</p>
+
+<p>We may venture, then, to say that there are some wars which are not all
+evil. They are terrible, but terrible like the hurricane, which sweeps
+away the pestilence; terrible like the earthquake, on whose night of
+terror God builds a thousand years of blooming plenty; terrible like the
+volcano, whose ashes are clothed by the purple vintages and yellow
+harvests of a hundred generations. The strong powers of nature are as
+beneficent as strong. The destroying powers are also creating powers.
+Life sits upon the sepulchre, and sings over buried Death through all
+nature and all time. War, too, has its compensations.</p>
+
+<p>For years, amid the world's rages, <i>we</i> had peace. The only war we had,
+at all events, was one of our own seeking, and a mere playing at war.
+Many of us thought it would be so always. We believed we had discovered
+a method of settling all the world's difficulties without blows. The
+peace people had their jubilee. They talked about the advance of
+intelligence, and the softening power of civilization. They placed war
+among the forgotten horrors of a dead barbarism. They proved that
+commerce had rendered war impossible, because it had made it against
+self-interest. They talked about reason and persuasion, and moral
+influences. They asked, 'Why not settle all troubles in a grand world's
+congress, some huge palaver and paradise of speechmakers, where it will
+be all talk and voting and no blows?' Why not, indeed? How easy to
+'resolve' this poor, blind, struggling world of ours into a bit of
+heaven, you see, and so end our troubles! How easy to vote these poor,
+stupid, blundering brothers of ours into angels, in some great
+parliament of eloquent philosophers, and govern them thereafter on that
+basis!</p>
+
+<p>Now, resolutions and speeches and grand palavers are nice things, in
+their way, <i>to play with</i>, but, on the whole, it is best to get down to
+the hard fact if one really wants to work and prosper. And the hard fact
+is, that Adam's sons are not yet cherubs, nor their homestead, among the
+stars, just yet an outlying field of paradise. It is a planet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> whose
+private affairs are badly muddled. Its tenants for life are a
+quarrelsome, ill-tempered, unruly set of creatures altogether. As things
+go, they will break each others' heads sometimes. It is very
+unreasonable. I can see that. But men are not always reasonable. It is
+not for their own interest. I can see that too. But how often does
+interest, the best and highest, raise an impregnable barrier against
+passion or even caprice?</p>
+
+<p>We must take men as they are, and the world as we find it, to get a
+secure ground for attempting the reformation of either. And as men are,
+and as I find the world, at present, I meet Wrong, and find it armed to
+resist Right. The Wrong will not yield to persuasion, it will not
+surrender to reason. It comes straight on, coarse, brutal, devilish,
+caring not a straw for peace rhetoric or Quaker gravity, for persuasion
+or interest. It strikes straight down at right or justice. It tries to
+hammer them to atoms, and trample them with swinish hoofs into the mire.
+Now what am I to do? To stand peaceably by and see this thing done,
+while I study new tropes and invent new metaphors to <i>persuade</i>? Is that
+my business, to waste the godlike gift of human speech on this mad brute
+or devil?</p>
+
+<p>With wise pains and thoughtful labor, I clear my little spot of this
+stubborn soil. I hedge and plant my small vineyard. It begins, after
+much care, to yield me some fruit. I get a little corn and a little
+wine, to comfort me and mine. I have good hope that, as the years go by,
+I shall gather more. I trust, at last, my purple vintages may gladden
+many hearts of men, my rich olives make many faces shine. But some day,
+from the yet untamed forest, bursts the wild boar, and rushes on my
+hedge, and will break through to trample down my vineyard before mine
+eyes. And I am only to <i>argue</i> with him! I am to cast the pearls of
+human reason and persuasion at his feet to stop him! Nay, rather, am I
+not to seize the first sufficient weapon that comes to hand, unloose the
+dogs upon him, and drive him to his lair again, or, better, bring his
+head in triumph home?</p>
+
+<p>It is true, there are wars where this parable will not apply. There are
+capricious wars, wars undertaken for no fit cause, wars with scarce a
+principle on either side. Such have often been <i>king's wars</i>, begun in
+folly, conducted in vanity, ended in shame, wars for the ambition of
+some crowned scoundrel, who rides a patient people till he drives them
+mad. And even such wars have their uses. They are not wholly evil.
+Alexander's, the maddest wars of all, and those of his successors, the
+most stupid and brutal ever fought, even they had their uses. Our war
+with poor Mexico, even Louis Bonaparte's, was not wholly evil.</p>
+
+<p>But there are wars, again, that are not capricious, that are simply
+necessary, unavoidable, as life, death, or judgment, wars where the
+choice is to see right trampled out of sight or to fight for it, where
+truth and justice are crushed unless the sword be grasped and used,
+where law and civilization and Christianity are assailed by savagery,
+brutality, and devilishness, and only the true bullet and the cold steel
+are received in the discussion. These are the Peoples' wars. In them
+nations arm. Generations swarm to their battle fields. They are
+landmarks in the world's advancement. For victories in them men sing <i>Te
+Deums</i> throughout the ages. The heroes, who fell in them, loom through
+the haze of time like demigods.</p>
+
+<p>On the plains of Tours, when the Moslem tide, that swept on to overwhelm
+in ruin Christian Europe, was met, and stemmed, and turned by Charles
+Martel, and, breaking into foam against the iron breasts of his stalwart
+Franks, was whirled away into the darkness like spray before the
+tempest, the <i>Hammer-man</i> did a work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> that day that, till the end of
+time, a world will thank Heaven for, as <i>he</i> thanked it in the hour of
+victory.</p>
+
+<p>And when his greater grandson, creator, guide, and guardian of modern
+civilization, paced with restless, ever-present steps, around the
+borders of that small world of light which he had built up, half
+blindly, in the overwhelming dark, and with two-handed blows beat back,
+with the iron mace of Germany, the savage assaults of Saracen and
+Sclave, of black Dane and brutal Wendt, and smote on till he died
+smiting, for order, and law, and faith, and so saved Europe, and, let us
+humbly hope, his own rude but true soul <i>alive</i>! are not the thanks of
+all the world well due, that Karl der Grosse was no non-resistant, but a
+great, broad-shouldered, royal soldier, who wore the imperial purple by
+right of a moat imperial sword?</p>
+
+<p>There are wars like these, that, as the world goes, are inevitable. Some
+wrong undertakes to rule. Some lie challenges sovereignty. Some mere
+brutality or heathenism faces order, civilization, and law. There is no
+choice in the matter <i>then</i>. The wrong, the lie, the brutality, the
+barbarism <i>must go down</i>. If they listen to reason, well. If they can be
+only preached or lectured into dying peaceably, and getting quietly
+buried, it is an excellent consummation. If they do not, if they try
+conclusions, as they are far more apt to do, if they come on with brute
+force, there is no alternative. They must be met by force. They must get
+the only persuasion that can influence them&mdash;hard knocks, and plenty of
+them, well delivered, straight at the heart.</p>
+
+<p>Wars so undertaken, under a divine necessity, and with a divine sadness,
+too, by a patient people, whose business is not brutal fighting, but
+peaceful working, wars of this sort, in the world's long history, are
+scarce evils at all, and, even in the day of their wrath, bring
+compensative blessings. They may be fierce and terrible, they may bring
+wretchedness and ruin, they may 'demoralize' armies and people, they may
+be dreadful evils, and leave long trails of desolation, but they are
+none the less wars for victories in which men will return thanks while
+the world shall stand. The men who fall in such wars, receive the
+benedictions of their kind. The people that, with patient pain, stands
+and fights in them, bleeding drop by drop, and conquering or dying, inch
+by inch, but never yielding, because it feels the deathless value of
+<i>the cause</i>, the brave, calm people, who so fight is crowned forever on
+the earth.</p>
+
+<p>From our paradise of a lamb-like world this nation was awakened, three
+years ago, by a cannon shot across Charleston harbor. The fools who
+fired it knew not what they did, perhaps. They thought to open fire on a
+poor old fort and its handful of a garrison. They <i>did</i> open fire on
+civilization, on order, on law, on the world's progress, on the hopes of
+man. There, at last, we were brought face to face with hard facts. Talk,
+in Congress, or out, was at an end. Voting and balloting, and
+speech-making were ruled out of order. We had administered the country,
+so far, by that machinery. It was puffed away at one discharge of glazed
+powder. The cannon alone could get a hearing. The bullet and the bayonet
+were the only arguments. No matter how it might end, we were forced to
+accept the challenge. No matter how utterly we might hate war, we were
+forced to try the last old persuasive&mdash;the naked sword.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot see how any honest and sensible man can now look back and see
+any other course possible. Could we stand by and see our house beaten
+into blackened ruin over our heads? Were we to talk 'peace,' and use
+'moral suasion' in the mouth of shotted cannon? Were we prepared to see
+the Constitution and the law, bought by long years of toil and blood,
+torn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> to tatters by the caprice of ambitious madmen? Fighting became a
+simple duty in an hour! There was no escape. What a pity that so many
+beautiful peace speeches (Charles Sumner's very eloquent ones among the
+rest!) should have been proved mere froth and wasted paper rags by one
+short telegram!</p>
+
+<p>So the great evil came to <i>us</i>, as it has come to all nations, as we
+believe it <i>must</i> come, from what we now see, to every nation that will
+be great and strong. The land, for a time, staggered under the blow.
+Men's souls for an hour were struck dumb, so sudden was it, so unlocked
+for. As duty became clearer, we awaked at last to the fact that was at
+our doors. We turned to deal with it, as the best nations always do,
+cheerfully and hopefully. We have made mistakes and great ones. We have
+blundered fearfully. That was to have been expected. But we have gone
+on, nevertheless, steadfastly, patiently. That was also to have been
+expected. For three years and over, this has been our business. We have
+indeed carried on some commerce, and some manufactures, and some
+agriculture, but our main work has been fighting. The rest have been
+subsidiary to that. And the land groans and pants with this bloody toil.
+It clothes itself in mourning and darkens its streets, and desolates its
+homes, and bleeds its life drops slowly in its patient agony. But it
+never falters. It has accepted the appointed work. It sees no outlook
+yet, no chance for the bells to ring out peace over the roar of cannon,
+and it stands at its post bleeding, but wrestling still.</p>
+
+<p>Has there been nothing gained, however? For the terrible outlay is there
+yet no return? Has the war been evil and only evil so far, even granting
+that we do not finally succeed, according to our wish? The present
+writer does not think so. He believes there have been gains already, and
+great gains, not merely the gains that may be summed in the advance of
+forces, in territory recovered, in cities taken, in enemies defeated,
+but gains which, though not visible like these, are no less real and
+vastly more valuable, gains which add to the nation's moral power, and
+educate it for the future. He leaves to others the consideration of the
+material gain, and desires to hint, at least, at this other, which is
+much more likely to be slighted or perhaps forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>He has said enough to show that he does not like this slaughtering
+business in any shape. He is sure that the sooner it is ended the
+better. He has had its bloody consequences brought, in their most
+fearful form, to his own heart and home, but he has a fixed faith,
+nevertheless, that any duty, conscientiously undertaken, any duty from
+which there is no honorable or honest escape, must, if faithfully
+performed, obtain its meet reward. And believing that this business of
+war has been undertaken by the mass of the people of these United States
+in all simplicity of heart and honesty of purpose, as an unavoidable and
+hard necessity, he also believes they will get their honest wages for
+the doing it. He believes, too, that the day of recompense is not
+entirely delayed; that benefits, large and excellent, have already
+resulted to the nation. He sees already visible uses, which, to some
+extent at least, should comfort and sustain a people, even under the
+awful curse and agony of a civil war. He writes to show these uses to
+others, that they too may take heart and hope, when the days are
+darkest.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, this war is, at last, our <i>national independence</i>.
+To be sure, we read of a war carried on by our fathers to secure that
+boon. They paid a large price for it, and they got it, and got all
+nations to acknowledge they deserved it, including the great nation they
+fought with. It was their <i>political</i> independence only. It secured
+nothing beyond that. <i>Morally</i> we were not independent. <i>Socially</i>, we
+were not independent. There was a time, we can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> all remember it, when we
+literally trembled before every cockney that strangled innocent
+aspirates at their birth. We had not secured our moral independence of
+Europe, and particularly not of our own kindred and people. We literally
+crouched at the feet of England, and begged for recognition like a poor,
+disowned relation. We scarcely knew what was right till England told us.
+We dare not accept a thing as wise, proper, or becoming till we had
+heard her verdict. What will England say? How will they think of this
+across the water? In all emergencies these were the questions thought,
+at least, if not spoken. We lived in perpetual terror of transatlantic
+opinion. Some cockney came to visit us. He might be a fool, a puppy, an
+intolerably bore, an infinite ass. It made no difference. He rode our
+consciousness like a nightmare. He and his note book dominated free
+America. 'What does he think of us? What will he say of us?' We actually
+grovelled before the creature, more than once begging for his good word,
+his kindly forbearance, his pity for our faults and failures. 'We know
+we are wicked, for we are republicans, O serene John! We are sinful, for
+we have no parish beadle. We are no better than the publicans, for we
+have no workhouse. We are altogether sinners, for we have no lord. It is
+also a sad truth that there are people among us who have been seen to
+eat with a knife, and but very few that could say, '<i>H</i>old <i>H</i>ingland,'
+with the true London aspiration. But be merciful notwithstanding. We beg
+pardon for all our faults. We recognize thy great kindness in coming
+among such barbarians. We will treat thee kindly as we can, and copy thy
+manners as closely as we can, and so try to improve ourselves. Do not,
+therefore, for the present, annihilate us with the indignation of thy
+outraged virtue. Have a touch of pity for us unfortunate and degenerate
+Americans!'</p>
+
+<p>That supplication is hardly an exaggeration. It was utterly shameful,
+the position we took in this matter of deference to English opinion. No
+people ever more grossly imposed upon themselves. We had an ideal
+England, which we almost worshipped, whose good opinion we coveted like
+the praise of a good conscience. We bowed before her word, as the child
+bows to the rebuke of a mother he reverences. She was Shakspeare's
+England, Raleigh's England, Sidney's England, the England of heroes and
+bards and sages, our grand old Mother, who had sat crowned among the
+nations for a thousand years. We were proud to claim even remote
+relationship with the Island Queen. We were proud to speak her tongue,
+to re&euml;nact her laws, to read her sages, to sing her songs, to claim her
+ancient glory as partly our own. England, the stormy cradle of our
+nation, the sullen mistress of the angry western seas, our hearts went
+out to her, across the ocean, across the years, across war, across
+injustice, and went out still in love and reverence. We never dreamed
+that our ideal England was dead and buried, that the actual England was
+not the marble goddess of our idolatry, but a poor Brummagem image,
+coarse lacquer-ware and tawdry paint! We never dreamed that the queenly
+mother of heroes was nursing 'shopkeepers' now, with only shopkeepers'
+ethics, 'pawnbrokers' morality'!</p>
+
+<p>At last our eyes are opened. To-day we stand a self-centred nation. We
+have seen so much of English consistency, of English nobleness, we have
+so learned to prize English honor and English generosity, that there is
+not a living American, North or South, who values English opinion, on
+any point of national right, duty, or manliness, above the idle
+whistling of the wind. Who considers it of the slightest consequence now
+what England may think on any matter American? Who has the curiosity to
+ask after an English opinion?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This much the war has done for us. We are at last a <i>nation</i>. We have
+found a conscience of our own. We have been forced to stand on our own
+national sense of right and wrong. We are independent morally as well as
+politically, in opinion as well as in government. We shall never turn
+our eyes again across the sea to ask what any there may say or think of
+us. We have found that perhaps we do not understand them. We have
+certainly found that they do not understand us. We have taken the stand
+which every great people is obliged to take soon or late. We are
+sufficient for ourselves. Our own national conscience, our own sense of
+right and duty, our own public sentiment is our guide henceforth. By
+that we stand or fall. By that, and that only, will we consent that men
+should judge us. We are a grown-up nation from this time forth. We
+answer for ourselves to humanity and the future. We decide all causes at
+our own judgment seat.</p>
+
+<p>And there is another good, perhaps larger than this, which we have won,
+a good which contains and justifies this moral, national independence:
+We have been baptized at last into the family of great nations, by that
+red baptism which, from the first, has been the required initiation into
+that august brotherhood.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to be the invariable law, of earthly life at least, that
+humanity can advance only by the road of suffering. It is so with
+individuals. There is no spiritual growth without pain. Prosperity alone
+never makes a grand character. Purple and fine linen never clothe the
+hero. There are powers and gifts in the soul of man that only come to
+life and action in some day of bitterness. There are wells in the heart,
+whose crystal waters lie in darkness till some earthquake shakes the
+man's nature to its centre, bursts the fountain open, and lets the
+cooling waters out to refresh a parched land. There are seeds of noblest
+fruits that lie latent in the soul, till some storm of sorrow shakes
+down tears to moisten, and some burning sun of scorching pain sends heat
+to warm them into a harvest of blessings.</p>
+
+<p>By trouble met and patiently mastered, by suffering endured and
+conquered, by trials tested and overcome, so only does a man's soul grow
+to manliness.</p>
+
+<p>Now a nation is made up of single men. The law holds for the mass as for
+the individuals. It took a thousand years of toil, and war, and
+suffering, to make the Europe that we have. It took a thousand years of
+wrestle for the very life itself, to build Rome before. To be sure, we
+inherited all that this past of agony had bought the world. For us Rome
+had lived, fought, toiled, and fallen. For us Celt, Saxon, Norman had
+wrought and striven. We started with the accumulated capital of a
+hundred generations. It was perhaps natural to suppose we might escape
+the hard necessity of our fathers. We might surely profit by their
+dear-bought experience. The wrecks, strewn along the shores, would be
+effectual warnings to our gallant vessel on the dangerous seas where
+they had sailed. In peace, plenty, and prosperity, we might be carried
+to the highest reach of national greatness.</p>
+
+<p>Nay! never, unless we give the lie to all the world's experience! There
+never was a great nation yet nursed on pap, and swathed in silk. Storms
+broke around its rude cradle instead. The tempests rocked the stalwart
+child. The dragons came to strangle the baby Hercules in his swaddling
+clothes. The magnificent commerce, the increasing manufactures, the
+teeming soil, the wealth fast accumulating, they would never have made
+us, after all, a great people. They would have eaten the manhood out of
+us at last. We were becoming selfish, self-indulgent, sybaritic rapidly.
+The nation's muscle was softening, its heart was hardening. If we were
+to become a great nation, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> needed more than commerce, more than
+plenty, more than rapid riches, more than a comfortable, indulgent life.
+If we were to be one of the world's great peoples, a people to dig deep
+and build strong, a people whose name and fame the world was to accept
+as a part of itself, we must look to pay the price inflexibly demanded
+at every people's hand, and count it out in sweat drops, tear drops,
+blood drops, to the last unit.</p>
+
+<p>We have been patiently counting out this costly currency for three slow
+years. I pity the moral outlook of the man who does not see that we have
+received largely of our purchase.</p>
+
+<p>From a nation whom the world believed, and whom itself believed, to be
+sunk in hopeless mammon worship, we have risen to be a nation that pours
+out its wealth like water for a noble purpose. Never again will 'the
+almighty dollar' be called America's divinity. We were sinking fast to
+low aims and selfish purposes, and wise men groaned at national
+degeneracy. The summons came, and millions leaped to offer all they had,
+to fling fortune, limb, and life on the altar of an unselfish cause. The
+dead manhood of the nation sprang to life at the call. We proved the
+redness of the old faithful, manly blood, to be as bright as ever.</p>
+
+<p>I know we hear men talk of the demoralization produced by war. There is
+a great deal they can say eloquently on that side. Drunkenness,
+licentiousness, lawlessness, they say are produced by it, already to an
+extent fearful to consider. And scoundrels are using the land's
+necessities for their own selfish purposes, and fattening on its blood.
+These things are all true, and a great deal more of the same sort
+beside. And it may be well at times, with good purpose, to consider
+them. But it is not well to consider them alone, and speak of them as
+the only moral results of the war. No! by the ten thousands who have
+died for the grand idea of National Unity, by the unselfish heroes who
+have thrown themselves, a living wall, before the parricidal hands of
+traitors, who have perished that the land they loved beyond life might
+not perish, by the example and the memory they have left in ten thousand
+homes, which their death has consecrated for the nation's reverence by
+<i>their</i> lives and deaths, we protest against the one-sided view that
+looks only on the moral <i>evil</i> of the struggle!</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, there are war vices and war virtues. There are peace vices
+and there are peace virtues. Decorous quiet, orderly habits, sober
+conduct, attention to business, these are the good things demanded by
+society in peace. And they may consist with meanness, selfishness,
+cowardice, and utter unmanliness. The round-stomached, prosperous man,
+with his ships, shops, and factories, is very anxious for the
+cultivation of these virtues. He does not like to be disturbed o'
+nights. He wants his street to be quiet and orderly. He wants to be left
+undisturbed to prosecute his prosperous business. He measures virtue by
+the aid it offers for that end. Peace vices, the cankers that gnaw a
+nation's heart, greed, self-seeking luxury, epicurean self-indulgence,
+hardness to growing ignorance, want, and suffering, indifference to all
+high purposes, spiritual <i>coma</i> and deadness, these do not disturb him.
+They are rotting the nation to its marrow, but they do not stand in the
+way of his money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. To be
+sure, sometimes, across his torpid brain and heart may echo some harsh
+expressions, from those stern old Hebrew prophets, about these things.
+But he has a very comfortable pew, in a very soporific church, and he is
+only half awake, and the echo dies away and leaves no sign. <i>He</i> is just
+the man to tell us all about the demoralization of war.</p>
+
+<p>Now quietness and good order, sober, discreet, self-seeking, decorous
+epicureanism and the rest, are not precise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>ly the virtues that will save
+a people. There are certain old foundation virtues of another kind,
+which are the only safe substratum for national or personal salvation.
+These are courage&mdash;hard, muscular, manly courage&mdash;fortitude, patience,
+obedience to discipline, self-denial, self-sacrifice, veracity of
+purpose, and such like. These rough old virtues must lie at the base of
+all right character. You may add, as ornaments to your edifice, as
+frieze, cornices, and capitals to the pillars, refinements, and
+courtesies, and gentleness, and so on. But the foundation must rest on
+the rude granite blocks we have mentioned, or your gingerbread erection
+will go down in the first storm.</p>
+
+<p>And the simple fact is that peace has a tendency to eat out just these
+foundation virtues. They are <i>war</i> virtues; just the things called out
+by a life-and-death battle for some good cause. In these virtues we
+claim the land has grown. The national character has deepened and
+intensified in these. We have strengthened anew these rocky foundations
+of a nation's greatness. Men lapped in luxury have patiently bowed to
+toil and weariness. Men living in self-indulgence have shaken off their
+sloth, and roused the old slumbering fearlessness of their race. Men,
+living for selfish ends, have been penetrated by the light of a great
+purpose, and have risen to the loftiness of human duty. Men, who shrank
+from pain as the sorest evil, have voluntarily accepted pain, and borne
+it with a fortitude we once believed lost from among mankind; and, over
+all, the flaming light of a worthy cause that men might worthily live
+for and worthily die for, has led the thousands of the land out of their
+narrow lives, and low endeavors, to the clear mountain heights of
+sacrifice! We stand now, a courageous, patient, steadfast, unselfish
+people before all the world. We stand, a people that has taken its life
+in its hand for a purely unselfish cause. We have won our place in the
+foremost rank of nations, not on our wealth, our numbers, or our
+prosperity, but on the truer test of our manhood, truth, and
+steadfastness. We stand justified at the bar of our own conscience, for
+national pride and self-reliance, as we shall infallibly be justified at
+the bar of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Is this lifting up of a great people nothing? Is this placing of twenty
+millions on the clear ground of unselfish duty, as life's motive,
+nothing? Is there one of us, to-day, who is not prouder of his nation
+and its character, in the midst of its desperate tug for life, than he
+ever was in the day of its envied prosperity? And when he considers how
+the nation has answered to its hard necessity, how it has borne itself
+in its sore trial, is he not clear of all doubt about its vitality and
+continuance? And is that, also, nothing?</p>
+
+<p>But besides this education in the stern, rude, heroic virtues that prop
+a people's life, there has been an education in some others, which,
+though apparently opposed, are really kindred. Unselfish courage is
+noble, but always with the highest courage there lives a great pity and
+tenderness. The brave man is always soft hearted. The most courageous
+people are the tenderest people. The highest manhood dwells with the
+highest womanhood.</p>
+
+<p>So the heart of the nation has been touched and softened, while its
+muscles have been steeled. While it has grasped the sword, it has
+grasped it weeping in infinite pity. It has recognized the truth of
+human brotherhood as it never did before. All ranks have been drawn
+together in mutual sympathy. All barriers, that hedge brethren apart,
+have been broken down in the common suffering.</p>
+
+<p>News comes, to-day, that a great battle has been fought, and wounded
+thousands of our brothers need aid and care. You tell the news in any
+city or hamlet in the land, and hands are opened, purses emptied, stores
+ransacked for comforts for the suffering,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> and gentle women, in
+hundreds, are ready to tend them as they would their own. Is this no
+gain? Is it nothing that the selfishness of us all has been broken up as
+by an earthquake, and that kindness, charity, and pity to the sick and
+needy have become the law of our lives? Count the millions that have
+streamed forth from a people whose heart has been touched by a common
+suffering, in kindness to wounded and sick soldiers and to their needy
+families! Benevolence has become the atmosphere of the land.</p>
+
+<p>Four years ago we could not have believed it. That the voluntary charity
+of Americans would count by millions yearly, would flow out in a steady,
+deep, increasing tide, that giving would be the rule, free, glad giving,
+and refusing the marked exception, the world would not have believed it,
+<i>we</i> would not have believed it ourselves. Is this nothing?</p>
+
+<p>We will think more of each other also for all this. We will love and
+honor each other better. Under the awful pressure of the Hand that lies
+upon us so heavily, we are brought into closer knowledge and closer
+sympathy. The blows of battle are welding us into one. Fragments of all
+people, and all races, cast here by the waves, and strangers to each
+other, with a hundred repulsions and separations, even to language,
+religions, and morals, the furnace heat of our trial is fusing all parts
+into one strong, united whole. We are driven and drawn together by the
+sore need that is upon us, and as Americans are forgetting all else. The
+civil war is making us <i>a people</i>&mdash;the American People. We are no longer
+'the loose sweepings of all lands,' as they called us. We are one, now,
+brethren all in the sacrament of a great sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>And is this nothing?</p>
+
+<p>And these goods and gains are permanent. They do not belong to this
+generation only, or to this time exclusively. After all, the nation is
+mainly an educator. These things remain, as parts of its moral influence
+in moulding and training. And here is their infinite value.
+Independence, courage, patience, fortitude, nobleness, self-sacrifice,
+and tenderness become the national ethics. These things are pressed home
+on all growing minds. Coming generations are to be educated in these, by
+the example of the present. We are stamping these things, as the
+essentials of the national character, on the ages to come.</p>
+
+<p>A thousand years of prosperity will have no power of this kind. What is
+there in Chinese history to elevate a Chinaman? What high, heroic
+experience to educate him, in her long centuries of ignoble peace? The
+training power of a nation is acquired always in the crises of its
+history. In the day when it rises to fight for its life, the typal men,
+who give it the lasting models of its excellence, spring forth too for
+recognition. The examples of these days of our own crisis will remain
+forever to influence the children of our people. We may be thankful, in
+our deepest sorrow, that we are leaving them no example of cowardice or
+meanness, that we give them a record to read of the courage, endurance,
+and manliness of the men that begat them, that the stamp of national
+character we leave to teach them is one of which a brave, free people
+need never be ashamed, that, in the troubles they may be called to face,
+we leave them, as the national and tried cure for <i>all</i> troubles, the
+bold, true heart, the willing hand, the strong arm, and faith in the
+Lord of Hosts. Shiloh, Stone River, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, and
+a hundred others, are the heroic names that will educate our
+grandchildren, as Bunker Hill, Yorktown, and Saratoga have educated
+ourselves. Who will say that a heritage of heroism and truth and loyalty
+like this, to leave to the land we love, is nothing? Who can count the
+price that will sum its value?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here, at least, are some of the gains of our civil war. We seek not to
+penetrate the councils of the Omniscient, or guess His purposes, though
+we may humbly hope there are vaster things than these in store for
+humanity and the world as the results of the struggle. Believing that He
+governs still, that He reigns on the James, as He reigned on the Jordan,
+that <i>He</i> decides the end, and not President Lincoln or Jefferson Davis,
+and not General Grant or General Lee, we have firm faith that this awful
+struggle is no brute fight of beasts or ruffians, but a grand world's
+war of heroes. We believe He will justify His government in the end, and
+make this struggle praise Him, in the blessed days that are to come. But
+we leave all those dim results unguessed at, as we leave the purposes of
+the war itself unmentioned, and the ends which justify us in fighting
+on. Men, by this time, have made up their minds, once for all, on these
+last points. The nation has chosen, and in its own conscience, let
+others think as they may, accepts the responsibility cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>It is enough to indicate, as we have done, some <i>real</i>, though
+immaterial, results already attained, results which, to the philosopher
+or thoughtful statesman, are worth a very large outlay. They do not,
+indeed, remove the horror of war, they do not ask us not to seek peace,
+they do not dry the tears, or hide the blood of the contest, but they do
+show us that war is no unmixed evil, that even honest, faithful war-work
+is acceptable work, and will be paid for.</p>
+
+<p>They declare that, after all, war is a means of moral training, that
+'Carnage' may be, as the gentlest of poets wrote, 'God's daughter,' that
+battles may be blessings to be thankful for in the long march of time.
+They bring to our consciousness, once more, the fact that a Great
+Battle, amid all its horror, wrath, and blood, is something sacred
+still, an earthly shadow of that Unseen Battle which has stormed through
+time, between the hosts of Light and Darkness. They declare again, to
+the nation, that old truth, without which the nation perishes and man
+rots, that to die in some good cause is the noblest thing a man can do
+on earth. They bid us bend in hope beneath the awful hand of the <span class="smcap">God of
+Battles</span>, and do our appointed work patiently, bravely, loyally, till
+<i>He</i> brings the end. They tell us that not work only, but heroic
+fighting, also, is a worship accepted at His seat. They bid us be
+thankful, as for the most sacred of all gifts, that thousands, in this
+loyal land of ours, have had the high grace, given from above,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To search through all they felt and saw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The springs of life, the depths of awe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And reach <i>the law within the law</i>:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To pass, when Life her light withdraws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not void of righteous self-applause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor in a merely selfish cause&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In some good cause, not in their own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To perish, <i>wept for</i>, <i>honored</i>, <i>known</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And like a warrior overthrown.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PROVERBS" id="PROVERBS"></a>PROVERBS.</h2>
+
+<p>Violets and lilies-of-the-valley are seen in a vale.</p>
+
+<p>Family jars should be filled with honey.</p>
+
+<p>All are not lambs that gambol on the green.</p>
+
+<p>Ask the 'whys,' and be wise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_UNDIVINE_COMEDY_A_POLISH_DRAMA" id="THE_UNDIVINE_COMEDY_A_POLISH_DRAMA"></a>THE UNDIVINE COMEDY&mdash;A POLISH DRAMA.</h2>
+
+<h3>Dedicated to Mary.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>PART II.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Du Gemisch von Koth und Feuer!'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Thou compound of clay and fire!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>Why, O child! art thou not, like other children, riding gayly about on
+sticks for horses, playing with toys, torturing flies, or impaling
+butterflies on pins, that the brilliant circles of their dying pangs may
+amuse thy young soul? Why dost thou never romp and sport upon the grassy
+turf, pilfer sugarplums and sweetmeats, and wet the letters of thy
+picture book from A to Z with sudden tears?</p>
+
+<p>Infant king of flies, moths, and grasshoppers; of cowslips, daisies, and
+of kingcups; of tops, hoops, and kites; little friend of Punch and
+puppets; robber of birds' nests, and outlaw of petty mischiefs&mdash;son of
+the poet, tell me, why art thou so unlike a child&mdash;so like an angel?</p>
+
+<p>What strange meaning lies in the blue depths of thy dreamy eyes? Why do
+they seek the ground as if weighed down by the shadows of their drooping
+lashes; and why is their latent fire so gloomed by mournful memories,
+although they have only watched the early violets of a few springs? Why
+sinks thy broad head heavily down upon thy tiny hands, while thy pallid
+temples bend under the weight of thine infant thoughts, like snowdrops
+burdened with the dew of night?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>And when thy pale cheek floods with sudden crimson, and, tossing back
+thy golden curls, thou gazest sadly into the depths of the sky&mdash;tell me,
+infant, what seest thou there, and with whom holdest thou communion? For
+then the light and subtile wrinkles weave their living mesh across thy
+spotless brow, like silken threads untwining by an unseen power from
+viewless coils, and thine eyes sparkle, freighted with mystic meanings,
+which none are able to interpret! Then thy grandam calls in vain,
+'George, George!' and weeps, for thou heedest her not, and she fears
+thou dost not love her! Friends and relations then appeal to thee in
+vain, for thou seemest not to hear or know them! Thy father is silent
+and looks sad; tears fill his anxious eyes, falling coldly back into his
+troubled heart.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The physician comes, puts his finger on thy pulse, counts its changeful
+beats, and says thy nerves are out of order.</p>
+
+<p>Thy old godfather brings thee sugarplums, strokes thy pale cheeks, and
+tells thee thou must be a statesman in thy native land.</p>
+
+<p>The professor passes his hand over thy broad brow, and declares thou
+will have talent for the abstract sciences.</p>
+
+<p>The beggar, whom thou never passest without casting a coin in his
+tattered hat, promises thee a beautiful wife, and a heavenly crown.</p>
+
+<p>The soldier, raising thee high in the air, declares thou wilt yet be a
+great general.</p>
+
+<p>The wandering gypsy looks into thy tender face, traces the lines upon
+thy little hand, but will not tell their hidden meaning; she gazes sadly
+on thee, and then sighing turns away; she says nothing, and refuses to
+take the proffered coin.</p>
+
+<p>The magnetizer makes his passes over thee, presses his fingers on thine
+eyes, and circles thy face, but mutters suddenly an oath, for he is
+himself growing sleepy; he feels like kneeling down before thee, as
+before a holy image. Then thou growest angry, and stampest with thy tiny
+feet; and when thy father comes, thou seemest to him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> a little Lucifer;
+and in his picture of the Day of Judgment, he paints thee thus among the
+infant demons, the young spirits of evil.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Meanwhile thou growest apace, becoming ever more and more beautiful, not
+in the childish beauty of rose bloom and snow, but in the loveliness of
+wondrous and mysterious thoughts, which flow to thee from other worlds;
+and though thy languid eyes droop wearily their fringes, though thy
+cheek is pale, and thy breast bent and contracted, yet all who meet thee
+stop to gaze, exclaiming: '<i>What a little angel!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>If the dying flowers had a living soul inspired from heaven; if, in
+place of dewdrops, each drooping leaf were bent to earth with the
+thought of an angel, such flowers would resemble thee, fair child!</p>
+
+<p>And thus, before the fall, they may, perchance, have bloomed in
+Paradise!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>A graveyard. The Man and George are seen sitting by a grave, over
+which stands a gothic monument, with arches, pillars, and mimic
+towers.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Take off thy hat, George, kneel, and pray for thy mother's
+soul!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. Hail, Mary, full of grace! Mary, Queen of Heaven, Lady of all
+that blooms on earth, that scents the fields, that paints the fringes of
+the streams ...</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Why changest thou the words of the prayer? Pray for thy mother
+as thou hast been taught to do; for thy dear mother, George, who
+perished in her youth, just ten years ago this very day and hour.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee! I know that
+thou art blessed among the angels, and as thou glidest softly through
+them, each one plucks a rainbow from his wings to cast under thy feet,
+and thou floatest softly on upon them as if borne by waves....</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. George!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. Be not angry with me, father! these words <i>force</i> themselves
+into my mind; they pain me so dreadfully in my head, that I must say
+them....</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Rise, George. Such prayers will never reach God!</p>
+
+<p>Thou art not thinking of thy mother; thou dost not love her!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. I love her. I see mamma very often.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Where, my son?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. In dreams&mdash;yet not exactly in dreams, but just as I am going to
+sleep. I saw her yesterday.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. What do you mean, George?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. She looked so pale and thin!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Has she ever spoken to you, darling?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. She goes wandering up and down&mdash;through an immense Dark&mdash;she
+roams about entirely alone, so white and so pale! She sang to me
+yesterday. I will tell thee the words of her song:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I wander through the universe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I search through infinite space,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I press through Chaos, Darkness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To bring thee light and grace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I listen to the angels' song<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To catch the heavenly tone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seek every form of beauty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To bring to thee, mine own!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I seek from greatest spirits,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From those of lower might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rainbow colors, depth of shadow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Burning contrasts, dark and bright;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rhythmed music, hues from Eden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Floating through the heavenly bars;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sages' wisdom, seraphs' loving,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mystic glories from the stars&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thou mayst be a Poet, richly gifted from above<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To win thy father's fiery heart, and <i>keep</i> his <i>changeful love</i>!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thou seest, dear father, that my mother does speak to me, and that I
+remember, word for word, what she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> says to me; indeed I am telling you
+no lie.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span> (<i>leaning against one of the pillars of the tomb</i>). Mary! wilt
+thou destroy thine own son, and burden my Soul with the ruin of both?...</p>
+
+<p>But what folly! She is calm and tranquil now in heaven, as she was pure
+and sweet on earth. My poor boy only dreams ...</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. I hear mamma's voice now, father!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. From whence comes it, my son?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. <i>From between the two elms before us glittering in the sunset.</i>
+Listen!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I pour through thy spirit<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Music and might;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wreathe thy pale forehead<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With halos of light;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though blind, I can show thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blest forms from above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Floating far through the spaces<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of infinite love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which the angels in heaven and men on the earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Call Beauty. I've sought since the day of thy birth<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To waken thy spirit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My darling, my own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the hopes of thy father<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May rest on his son!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That his love, warm and glowing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unchanging may shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his heart, infant poet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Forever be thine</i>!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Can a blessed spirit be mad? Do the last thoughts of the dying
+pursue them into their eternal homes?</p>
+
+<p>Can insanity be a part of immortality?... O Mary! Mary!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. Mamma's voice is growing weaker and weaker; it is dying away now
+close by the wall of the charnel house. Hark! hark! she is still
+repeating:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'That his love, warm and glowing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unchanging may shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And his heart, little poet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Forever be thine</i>!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. O God! have mercy upon our unfortunate child, whom in Thine
+anger Thou hast doomed to madness and to an early death! Have pity on
+the innocent creature Thou hast Thyself called into being! Rob him not
+of reason! Ruin not the living temple Thou hast built&mdash;the shrine of the
+soul! Oh look down upon my agony, and deliver not this young angel up to
+hell! Me Thou hast at least armed with strength to endure the dizzying
+throng of thoughts, passions, longings, yearnings&mdash;but him! Thou hast
+given him a frame fragile as the frailest web of the spider, and every
+great thought rends and frays it. O Lord! my God! have mercy!</p>
+
+<p>I have not had one tranquil hour for the last ten years. Thou hast
+placed me among men who may have envied my position, who may have wished
+me well, or who would have conferred benefits upon me&mdash;but I have been
+alone! alone!</p>
+
+<p>Thou hast sent storms of agony upon me, mingled with wrongs, dreams,
+hopes, thoughts, aspirations, and yearnings for the infinite! Thy grace
+shines upon my intellect, but reaches not my heart!</p>
+
+<p>Have mercy, God! Suffer me to love my son in peace, that thus
+reconciliation may be planted between the created and the Creator!...</p>
+
+<p>Cross thyself now, my son, and come with me.</p>
+
+<p>Eternal rest be with the dead!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Exit with George</i></p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>A public square. Ladies and gentlemen. A Philosophe. The Man</i>.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Philosophe</span>. I repeat to you, that it is my irresistible conviction that
+the hour has come for the emancipation of negroes and women.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. I agree with you fully.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Philosophe</span>. And as a change so great in the constitution of society,
+both in general and particular, stands so immediately before us, I
+deduce from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> such a revolution the complete destruction of old forms and
+formulas, and the regeneration of the whole human family.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Do you really think so?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Philosophe</span>. Just as our earth, by a sudden change in the inclination of
+its axis, might rotate more obliquely ...</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Do you see this hollow tree?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Philosophe</span>. With tufts of new leaves sprouting forth from the lower
+branches?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Yes. How much longer do you think it can continue to stand?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Philosophe</span>. I cannot tell; perhaps a year or two longer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Its roots are rapidly rotting out, and yet it still puts forth
+a few green leaves.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Philosophe</span>. What inference do you deduce from that?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Nothing&mdash;only that it is rotting out in spite of its few green
+leaves; falling daily into dust and ashes; and that it will not bear the
+tool of the moulder!</p>
+
+<p>And yet it is your type, the type of your followers, of your theories,
+of the times in which we live....</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>They pass on out of sight.</i></p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>A mountain pass.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. I have labored many years to discover the final results of
+knowledge, pleasure, thought, passion, and have only succeeded in
+finding a deep and empty grave in my own heart!</p>
+
+<p>I have indeed learned to know most things by their names&mdash;the feelings,
+for example; but I <i>feel</i> nothing, neither desires, faith, nor love. Two
+dim forebodings alone stir in the desert of my soul&mdash;the one, that my
+son is hopelessly blind; the other, that the society in which I have
+grown up is in the pangs of dissolution; I suffer as God enjoys, in
+myself only, and for myself alone....</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Voice of the Guardian Angel</span>. Love the sick, the hungry, the wretched!
+Love thy neighbor, thy poor neighbor, as thyself, and thou shalt be
+redeemed!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Who speaks?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mephistophiles</span>. Your humble servant. I often astonish travellers by my
+marvellous natural gifts: I am a ventriloquist.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. I have certainly seen a face like that before in an engraving.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mephistophiles</span> (<i>aside</i>). The count has truly a good memory.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Blessed be Christ Jesus!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mephistophiles</span>. Forever and ever, amen!&mdash;(<i>Muttering as he disappears
+behind a rock</i>:) Curses on thee, and thy stupidity!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. My poor son! through the sins of thy father and the madness of
+thy mother, thou art doomed to perpetual darkness&mdash;blind! Living only in
+dreams and visions, thou art never destined to attain maturity! Thou art
+but the shadow of a passing angel, flitting rapidly over the earth, and
+melting into the infinite of ...</p>
+
+<p>Ha! what an immense eagle that is fluttering just there where the
+stranger disappeared behind the rocks!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Eagle</span>. Hail! I greet thee! hail!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. He is as black as night; he flies nearer; the whirring of his
+vast wings stirs me like the whistling hail of bullets in the fight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Eagle</span>. Draw the sword of thy fathers, and combat for their power,
+their fame!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. His wide wings spread above me; he gazes into my eyes with the
+charm of the rattlesnake&mdash;Ha! I understand thee!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Eagle</span>. Despair not! Yield not now, nor ever! Thy enemies, thy
+miserable enemies, will fall to dust before thee!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Going?... Farewell, then, among the rocks, behind which thou
+vanishest!... Whatever thou mayst be, delusion or truth, victory or
+ruin, I trust in thee, herald of fame, harbinger of glory!</p>
+
+<p>Spirit of the mighty Past, come to my aid! and even if thou hast already
+returned to the bosom of God, quit it&mdash;and come to me! Inspire me with
+the ancient heroism! Become in me, force, thought, action!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Stooping to the ground, he turns up and throws aside a viper.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Curses upon thee, loathsome reptile! Even as thou diest, crushed and
+writhing, and nature breathes no sigh for thy fate, so will the
+destroyers of the Past perish in the abyss of nothingness, leaving no
+trace, and awakening no regret.</p>
+
+<p>None of the countless clouds of heaven will pause one moment in their
+flight to look upon the thronging hosts of men now gathering to kill and
+slaughter!</p>
+
+<p>First they&mdash;then I&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Boundless vault of blue, so softly pouring round the earth! the earth is
+a sick child, gnashing her teeth, weeping, struggling, sobbing; but thou
+hearest her not, nor tremblest, flowing in silence ever gently on, calm
+in thine own infinity!</p>
+
+<p>Farewell forever, O mother nature! Henceforth I must wander among men! I
+must combat with my brethren!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>A chamber. The Man. George. A Physician.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. No one has as yet been of the least service to him; my last
+hopes are placed in you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. You do me much honor.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Tell me your opinion of the case.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. I can neither see you, my father, nor the gentleman to whom you
+speak. Dark or black webs float before my eyes, and again something like
+a snake seems to crawl across them. Sometimes a golden cloud stands
+before them, flies up, and then falls down upon them, and a rainbow
+springs out of it; but there is no pain&mdash;they never hurt me&mdash;I do not
+suffer, father.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. Come here, George, in the shade. How old are you?</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>He looks steadily into the eyes of the boy.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. He is fourteen years old.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. Now turn your eyes directly to the light, to the window.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. What do you say, doctor?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. The eyelids are beautifully formed, the white perfectly pure,
+the blue deep, the veins in good order, the muscles strong.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>To George.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>You may laugh at all this, George. You will be perfectly well; as well
+as I am.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>To the Man</i> (<i>aside</i>).</p></div>
+
+<p>There is no hope. Look at the pupils yourself, count; there is not the
+least susceptibility to the light; there is a paralysis of the optic
+nerve.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. Everything looks to me as if covered with black clouds.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Yes, they are open, blue, lifeless, dead!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. When I shut my eyelids I can see <i>more</i> than when my eyes are
+open.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. His mind is precocious; it is rapidly consuming his body. We
+must guard him against an attack of catalepsy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span> (<i>leading the doctor aside</i>). Save him, doctor, and the half of
+my estate is yours!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. A disorganization cannot be reorganized.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>He takes up his hat and cane.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Pardon me, count, but I can remain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> here no longer; I am forced now to
+visit a patient whom I am to couch for cataract.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. For God's sake, do not desert us!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. Perhaps you have some curiosity to know the name of this
+malady?...</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Speak! is there no hope?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. It is called, from the Greek, <i>amaurosis</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Exit Physician.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span> (<i>pressing his son to his heart</i>). But you can still see a
+little, George?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. I can <i>hear your voice</i>, father!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Try if you can see. Look out of the window; the sun is shining
+brightly, the sky is clear.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. I see crowds of forms circling between the pupils of my eyes and
+my eyelids&mdash;faces I have often seen before, the leaves of books I have
+read before....</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Then you really do still see?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. Yes, with the <i>eyes of my spirit&mdash;but the eyes of my body have
+gone out forever</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span> (<i>falls on his knees as if to pray; pauses, and exclaims
+bitterly</i>:) Before <i>whom</i> shall I kneel&mdash;to whom pray&mdash;to whom complain
+of the unjust doom crushing my innocent child?</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>He rises from his knees.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>It is best to bear all in silence&mdash;God laughs at our prayers&mdash;Satan
+mocks at our curses&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A Voice</span>. But thy son is a Poet&mdash;and what wouldst thou more?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The Physician and Godfather.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Godfather</span>. It is certainly a great misfortune to be blind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. And at his age a very unusual one.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Godfather</span>. His frame was always very fragile, and his mother died
+somewhat&mdash;so&mdash;so ...</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. How did she die?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Godfather</span>. A little so ... you understand ... not quite in her right
+mind.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span> (<i>entering</i>). I pray you, pardon my intrusion at so late an
+hour, but for the last night or two my son has wakened up at twelve
+o'clock, left his bed, and talked in his sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Will you have the kindness to follow me, and watch him to-night?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. I will go to him immediately; I am very much interested in
+the observation of such phenomena.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Relations, Godfather, Physician, the Man, a Nurse&mdash;assembled in the
+sleeping apartment of George Stanislaus.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Relation</span>. Hush! hush! be quiet!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Relation</span>. He is awake, but neither sees nor hears us.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. I beg that you will all remain perfectly silent.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Godfather</span>. This seems to be a most extraordinary malady.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span> (<i>rising from his seat</i>). God! O God!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Relation</span>. How lightly he treads!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Relation</span>. Look! he clasps his thin hands across his breast.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Third Relation</span>. His eyelids are motionless; he does not move his lips,
+but what a sharp and thrilling shriek!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nurse</span>. Christ, shield him!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. Depart from me, Darkness! I am a child of light and song, and
+what hast thou to do with me? What dost thou desire from me?</p>
+
+<p>I do not yield myself to thee, although my sight has flown away upon the
+wings of the wind, and is flitting restlessly about through infinite
+space:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> it will return to me&mdash;my eyes will open with a flash of
+flame&mdash;and I will see the universe!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Godfather</span>. He talks exactly as his mother did; he does not know what he
+is saying, I think his condition very critical.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. He is in great danger.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nurse</span>. Holy Mother of God! take my eyes, and give them to the poor boy!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. My mother, I entreat thee! O mother, send me thoughts and
+images, that I may create within myself a world like the one I have lost
+forever!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">First Relation</span>. Do you think, brother, it will be necessary to call a
+family consultation?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Second Relation</span>. Be silent!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. Thou answerest me not, my mother!</p>
+
+<p>O mother, do not desert me!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span> (<i>to the Man</i>). It is my duty to tell you the truth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Godfather</span>. Yes, to tell the truth is the duty and virtue of a physician!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. Your son is suffering from incipient insanity, connected with
+an extraordinary excitability of the nervous system, which sometimes
+occasions, if I may so express myself, the strange phenomenon of
+sleeping and waking at the same time, as in the case now before us.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span> (<i>aside</i>). He reads to me thy sentence, O my God!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Physician</span>. Give me pen, ink, and paper.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>He writes a prescription.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. I think it best you should all now retire; George needs rest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Several Voices</span>. Good night! good night! good night!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span> (<i>waking suddenly</i>). Are they wishing me good night, father?</p>
+
+<p>They should rather speak of a long, unbroken, eternal night, but of no
+good one, of no happy dawn for me....</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Lean on me, George. Let me support you to the bed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. What does all this mean, father?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Cover yourself up, and go quietly to sleep. The doctor says you
+will regain your sight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">George</span>. I feel so very unwell, father; strange voices roused me from my
+sleep, and I saw mamma standing in a field of lilies....</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>He falls asleep.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. Bless thee! bless thee, my poor boy!</p>
+
+<p>I can give thee nothing but a blessing; neither happiness, nor light,
+nor fame are in my gift. The stormy hour of struggle approaches, when I
+must combat with the <i>few</i> against the <i>many</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Tortured infant! what is then to become of thee, alone, helpless, blind,
+surrounded by a thousand dangers? Child, yet Poet, poor Singer without a
+hearer, with thy soul in heaven, and thy frail, suffering body still
+fettered to the earth&mdash;what is to be thy doom? Alas, miserable infant!
+thou most unfortunate of all the angels! my son! my son!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>He buries his face in his hands.</i></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nurse</span> (<i>knocking at the door</i>). The doctor desires to see his excellency
+as soon as convenient.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The Man</span>. My good Katharine, watch faithfully and tenderly over my poor
+son!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Exit.</i></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_NORTH_CAROLINA_CONSCRIPT" id="THE_NORTH_CAROLINA_CONSCRIPT"></a>THE NORTH CAROLINA CONSCRIPT.</h2>
+
+<h3>Ballads of the War.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He lay on the field of Antietam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the sun sank low in the west,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the life from his heart was ebbing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through a ghastly wound in his breast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All around were the dead and the dying&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pitiful sight to see&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And afar, in the vapory distance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were the flying hosts of Lee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He raised himself on his elbow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wistfully gazed around;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till he spied far off a soldier<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Threading the death-strewn ground.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Come here to me, Union soldier,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come here to me where I lie;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I've a word to say to you, soldier;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I must say it before I die.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The soldier came at his bidding.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He raised his languid head:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'From the hills of North Carolina<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They forced me hither,' he said.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Though I stood in the ranks of the rebels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And carried yon traitorous gun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I have never been false to my country,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I fired not a shot, not one.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Here I stood while the balls rained around me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unmoved as yon mountain crag&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still true to our glorious Union,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still true to the dear old flag!'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Brave soldier of North Carolina!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">True patriot hero wert thou!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the laurel that garlands Antietam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spare a leaf for thy lowly brow!<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="DOES_THE_MOON_REVOLVE_ON_ITS_AXIS" id="DOES_THE_MOON_REVOLVE_ON_ITS_AXIS"></a>DOES THE MOON REVOLVE ON ITS AXIS?</h2>
+
+
+<p>As this question has elicited considerable discussion, at various times,
+the following may be considered in elucidation.</p>
+
+<p>A revolution on an axis is simply that of a body turning entirely round
+upon its own centre. The only centre around which the moon performs a
+revolution is very far from its own proper axis, being situated at the
+centre of the earth, the focus of its orbit, and as it has no other
+rotating motion around the earth, it cannot revolve on its own central
+axis.</p>
+
+<p>A body fixed in position, or pierced and held by a rod, cannot revolve
+upon its centre, and when swung round by this rod or handle, performs
+only a revolution in orbit, as does the moon. The moon, during the
+process of forming a solid crust, by the constant attraction of the
+earth upon one side, only, became elongated, by calculation, about
+thirty miles (from its centre as a round body) toward the earth;
+consequently, by its form, like the body pierced with a rod, is
+transfixed by its gravitation, and, therefore, cannot revolve upon its
+own central axis.</p>
+
+<p>The difference of axial revolution of a wheel or globe, is simply that
+the former turns upon an actual and the latter upon an imaginary axle,
+placed at its centre, Now, by way of analogy, fasten, immovably, a ball
+upon the rim of a revolving wheel, and then judge whether the ball can
+perform one simultaneous revolution on its own axis, in the same time
+that it performs a revolution in orbit, made by one complete turn of the
+wheel; and if not (which is assuredly the case, for it is fixed
+immovably), then neither can the moon perform such revolution on its
+axis, in the same time that it makes one revolution in orbit; because,
+like the ball immovably fixed upon the rim of the wheel, it, too, is
+transfixed by gravitation, from its very form, as if pierced with a rod,
+whose other extremity is attached to the centre of the earth, its only
+proper focus of motion, and, therefore, cannot revolve upon its own
+central axis.</p>
+
+<p>A balloon elongated on one side, and carrying ballast on that side,
+would be like the moon in form, and when suspended in air, like the
+moon, too, in having its heaviest matter always toward the centre of the
+earth. Now let this balloon go entirely round the earth: it will, like
+the moon, continue to present the weightiest, elongated side always
+toward the centre of the earth; it, consequently, like the moon, cannot
+revolve upon its own central axis, as gravitation alone would prevent
+this anomaly, in both cases.</p>
+
+<p>As well might it be said that a horse, harnessed to a beam, and going
+round a ring, or an imprisoned stone swung round in a sling, make each
+one simultaneous revolution on their axes, when their very positions are
+a sufficient refutation! or that the balls in an orrery, attached
+immovably to the ends of their respective rods, and turning with them
+(merely to show revolutions in orbits), perform each a simultaneous
+revolution on their axis, when such claim would be simply ridiculous,
+since the only revolution, in each case, has its focus outside of the
+ball, therefore orbital only; and so, too, with the moon, whose motion
+is precisely analogous, and prejudice alone can retain such an
+unphilosophical hypothesis as its <i>axial</i> revolution.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LUNAR_CHARACTERISTICS" id="LUNAR_CHARACTERISTICS"></a>LUNAR CHARACTERISTICS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The moon, in consequence of its orbital revolution, having no connecting
+axial motion, has always presented but one side to the earth, so that in
+process of forming a crust, from its incipient molten state, it became,
+by the constant attraction of the earth upon one side, elongated toward
+our globe, now generally admitted to be by calculation about thirty
+miles, and proved by photographs, which also show an elongation. The
+necessary consequence of this constant attraction upon one side, has
+been not only to intensify volcanic action there, by the continued
+effect of gravitation, so long as its interior remained in a molten
+state, but from the same reasoning, to confine all such volcanic action
+exclusively to this side of the moon. Thus we have the reason for the
+violently disrupted state which that luminary presents to the telescopic
+observer, exceeding any analogy to be found upon our globe, as the
+earth's axial motion has prevented any similar concentrated action upon
+any particular part of its surface, either from solar or lunar
+attraction. Another marked effect of the elongation of the moon toward
+the earth has been to elevate its visible side high above its atmosphere
+(which would have enveloped it as a round body), and in consequence into
+an intensely cold region, producing congelation, in the form of frost
+and snow, which necessarily envelop its entire visible surface. These
+effects took place while yet the crust was thin and frequently disrupted
+by volcanic action, and wherever such action took place, the fiery
+matter ejected necessarily dissolved the contiguous masses of frost and
+snow, and these floods of water, as soon as they receded from the fiery
+element, were immediately converted into lengthened ridges of ice,
+diverging from the mountain summits like streams of lava. Hence many of
+the apparent lava streams are but ridges of ice, and in consequence,
+depending upon the angle of reflection (determined by the age of the
+moon, which is but its relative position between the sun and earth), all
+observers are struck with the brilliancy of the reflected light from
+many of those long lines of ridges.</p>
+
+<p>The general surface of the moon presents to the telescopic observer just
+that drear, cold, and chalk-like aspect, which our snow-clad mountains
+exhibit when the angle of reflection is similar to that in which we
+behold the lunar surface. In consequence, its mild light is due to the
+myriads of sparkling crystals, which diffusively reflect the rays of the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>As an attentive observer of the moon, I have been much puzzled to know
+why none of the hosts of observers, or scientific treatises, have taken
+this rational view of such necessary condition of the moon, deduced from
+the main facts of its original formation, here named and generally
+conceded. In the place of which, we still have stereotyped, in many late
+editions on astronomy, the names and localities of numerous seas and
+lakes, which advancing knowledge should long since have discarded.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the above conclusions, which necessitate a snowy covering to the
+moon, none of the planets exhibit that drear white, except the poles of
+Mars, which are admitted to be snow by all astronomers, as we see them
+come and go with the appropriate seasons of that planet; whereas the
+continents of Mars appear dark, as analogously they do upon our earth,
+under the same solar effulgence. The analogy of sunlight, when reflected
+from our lofty mountains (at say thirty or forty miles distant) not
+covered with snow, viewed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> under the most favorable circumstances of
+brilliant light and the best angle of reflection, with no more of
+intervening atmosphere, always present sombre tints; whether viewed with
+the unaided eye or through a telescope. Such analogy clearly proves that
+no objects short of an absolute white could present such an appearance
+as light does upon lunar objects, viewed with high powers, in which the
+same drear white remains, without any greater concentration of light (as
+we can see objects in the moon whose diameter is five hundred feet) than
+is presented to our unaided eye from our own mountain masses. In viewing
+the moon with high powers, there is, in fact, a much greater amount of
+visible atmosphere intervening than can possibly apply in beholding
+objects on our earth, at even a few miles' distance, since if we look at
+lunar objects with a power of one thousand times, our atmosphere is thus
+magnified a thousand times also.</p>
+
+<p>The main physical features of the visible half of the moon, with a good
+telescopic power, present an enormously elevated table land, traversed,
+here and there, with slightly elevated long ridges, and the general
+surface largely pitted with almost innumerable deep cusps or valleys, of
+every size, from a quarter of a mile to full thirty miles in diameter;
+generally circular and surrounded with elevated ridges, some rising to
+lofty jagged summits above the surrounding plain. These ridges, on their
+inner sides, show separate terraces and mural precipices, while their
+outer slopes display deeply scarred ravines and long spurs at their
+bases. These cusps, or deep valleys, are the craters of extinct
+volcanoes, and in their centres have generally one or two isolated
+sub-mountain peaks, occasionally with divided summits, which were the
+centres of expiring volcanic action, similar to those that exist in our
+own volcanic regions. Besides which the Lunar Apennines, so called,
+present to the eye a long range of mountains with serrated summits, on
+one side gradually sloped, with terraces, spurs, and ravines, and the
+other side mostly precipitous, casting long shadows, which clearly
+define the forms of their summits&mdash;all these objects presenting the same
+dead white everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless the farther side of the moon, which has not been subject to
+the same elongating or elevating process, nor the above-named causes for
+volcanic disruption, presents a climate and vegetation fitted for the
+abode of sentient beings. This side alone presenting an aspect of
+extreme desolation, far surpassing our polar regions.</p>
+
+<p>It is generally stated in astronomical works, that shadows projected
+from lunar objects are intensely black, owing, it is stated, to there
+being no reflecting atmosphere; whereas in my long-continued habit of
+observation, those shadows appear no more black than those on our earth,
+when they fall on contrasting snowy surfaces. The reason for which, in
+the absence of a lunar atmosphere, to render light diffusive, is the
+brilliant reflection from snow crystals, upon all contiguous objects,
+which lie in an angle to receive the same, and in consequence I have
+often observed the forms of objects not directly illuminated by the sun.</p>
+
+<p>The occasional apparent retention of a star on the limb of the moon,
+just before or after an occultation, seen by some observers, and thus
+evidencing the existence of some atmosphere, is doubtless due to the
+slight oscillations of the moon, by which we see a trifle more than half
+of that body, during which the atmosphere of its opposite side slightly
+impinges upon this.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_GLANCE_AT_PRUSSIAN_POLITICS" id="A_GLANCE_AT_PRUSSIAN_POLITICS"></a>A GLANCE AT PRUSSIAN POLITICS.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>PART II.</i></h3>
+
+
+<p>We come now to the beginning of the present stage in the development of
+constitutional government in Prussia. It will have been noticed that the
+promises of Frederick William III. were not that he would grant a
+strictly popular constitution. His intention was that the different
+estates of the realm should be represented in the proposed national
+diet, the constitution recognizing a difference in the dignity of the
+different classes of inhabitants, and giving to each a share in the
+national government proportionate to its dignity. His son, at his
+coronation, promised to maintain the efficiency of the ordinances of
+June 5, 1823, and to secure a further development of the principles of
+this (so-called) constitution. Encouraged by this assurance, the
+Liberals labored to secure from him the full realization of their hopes.
+Frederick William IV. was just the man with whom such exertions could be
+used with good hope of success. He was intelligent enough to be fully
+conscious of the fact and the significance of the popular request for a
+constitution, and, though of course personally disinclined to reduce his
+power to a nullity, he had yet not a strong will, and had no wish to
+involve himself in a conflict with his subjects. Accordingly, in 1841,
+he convoked a diet in each province, and proposed the appointment of
+committees from the estates, who should act as counsel to the king when
+the provincial diets were not in session. These diets in subsequent
+sessions discussed the subject of a national diet, and proposed to the
+king the execution of the order issued in 1815. At length, February 8,
+1847, he issued a royal charter, introducing, in fact, what had so often
+and so long before been promised, a constitution. The substance of the
+charter was that, as often as the Government should need to contract a
+loan, or introduce new taxes, or increase existing taxes, the diets of
+the provinces should be convoked to a national diet; that the committees
+of the provincial diets (as appointed in 1842) should be henceforth
+periodically, as one body, convoked; that to the diet, and, when it was
+not in session, to the committee, should be conveyed the right to have a
+<i>deciding</i> voice in the above-mentioned cases. April 11, 1847, the diet
+assembled for the first time; January 17, 1848, the united committee of
+the estates.</p>
+
+<p>How long the nation would have remained contented with this concession
+to the request for a national representation under ordinary
+circumstances, is quite uncertain. In point of fact, this constitution
+hardly lived long enough to be christened with the name. Early in 1848
+the French Revolution startled all Europe&mdash;most of all, the monarchs.
+They knew how inflammable the masses were; they soon saw that the masses
+were inflamed, and that nothing but the most vigorous measures would
+secure their thrones from overthrow. Frederick William Was not slow to
+see the danger, and take steps to guard Prussia against an imitation of
+the Parisian insurrection. On the 14th of March he issued an order
+summoning the diet to meet at Berlin on the 27th of April. Four days
+later he issued another edict ordering the diet to convene still
+earlier, on the 2d of April. This proclamation is a characteristic
+document. It was issued on the day of the Berlin revolution. It was an
+hour of the most critical moment. There was no time for long
+deliberation, and little hope for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> the preservation of royalty, unless
+something decided was done at once. He might have tried the experiment
+of violently resisting the insurgents; but this was not in accordance
+with his character. He preferred rather to resign something than to run
+the risk of losing all. Accordingly he yielded. In this proclamation,
+after alluding to the occasion of it, he publishes his earnest desire
+for the union of Germany against the common danger. 'First of all,' he
+says, 'we desire that Germany be transformed from a confederation of
+states (<i>Staatenbund</i>) to one federal state (<i>Bundesstaat</i>).' He
+proposes a reorganization of the articles of union in which other
+representatives besides the princes should take part; a common army;
+freedom of trade; freedom of emigration from one state to another;
+common weights, measures, and coins; freedom of the press&mdash;in short, all
+that the most enthusiastic advocate of German unity could have asked. At
+the same time was published a law repealing the censorship of the press.
+On the 21st of the same month he put forth an address, entitled 'To my
+people and to the German nation.' In this, after saying that there was
+no security against the threatening dangers except in the closest union
+of the German princes and peoples, under one head, he adds: 'I assume
+to-day this leadership for this time of danger. My people, undismayed by
+the danger, will not abandon me, and Germany will confidingly attach
+itself to me. I have to-day adopted the old German colors, and put
+myself and my people under the venerable banner of the German Empire.
+Henceforth Prussia passes over into Germany.' But all this was more
+easily said than done. Whatever the German people may have wished, the
+other German rulers could not so easily overcome their jealousies. The
+extreme of the danger passed by, and with it this urgent demand for a
+united Germany.</p>
+
+<p>But the diet came together. The king laid before it the outline of a
+constitution, the most important provisions of which were that there
+should be guaranteed to all the right to hold meetings without first
+securing consent from the police; civil rights to all, irrespective of
+religious belief; a national parliament, whose assent should be
+essential to the making of all laws. These propositions were approved by
+the diet, which now advised the king to call together a national
+assembly of delegates, elected by the people, to agree with him upon a
+constitution. This was done; the assembly met on the 22d of May, and was
+opened by the king in person. He laid before the delegates the draught
+of a constitution, which they referred to a committee, by whom it was
+elaborated, and on the 26th of July reported to the assembly. The
+deliberation which followed had, by the 9th of November, resulted only
+in fixing the preamble and the first four articles. At this time an
+order came to the assembly from the king, requiring the members to
+adjourn to the 27th, and then come together, not at Berlin, but
+Brandenburg. The reason of this was that the assembly manifested too
+much of an inclination to infringe on the royal prerogatives, and that
+its place of meeting was surrounded by people who sought by threats,
+and, in some cases, by violence, to intimidate the members. The king was
+now the less inclined to be, or seem to be, controlled by such
+terrorism, as the fury of the revolutionary storm was now spent; the
+militia had been summoned to arms; and had not hesitated to obey the
+call. The troops, under the lead of Field-Marshal Wrangel, were
+collected about Berlin. The majority of the National Assembly, which had
+refused to obey the royal order to adjourn to Brandenburg, and was
+proceeding independently in the prosecution of its deliberations
+respecting the constitution, was compelled, by military force, to
+dissolve. Part of them then went to Brandenburg, and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> not succeeding in
+carrying a motion to adjourn till December 4, went out in a body,
+leaving the assembly without a quorum. The king now thought himself
+justified in concluding that nothing was to be hoped from the labors of
+this body, and therefore, on the 5th of December, dissolved it.</p>
+
+<p>Some kings, under these circumstances, might have been inclined to have
+nothing more to do with constitution making. If we mistake not, the
+present king, with his present spirit, would have thought it right to
+make the turbulent character of the convention and of the masses a
+pretext for withholding from them the power to stamp their character on
+the national institutions. Such a course might probably have been
+pursued. The king had control of the army. The excesses of the Liberals
+began to produce a reaction. The National Assembly, during its session
+in Berlin, after it had been adjourned by the king, had resolved that
+the royal ministry had no right to impose taxes so long as the assembly
+was unable peaceably to pursue its deliberations, and designed, by
+giving this resolution the form of a law, to lead the people in this
+manner to break loose from the Government. This attempt to usurp
+authority was doomed to be disappointed. The assembly, having
+overstepped its prerogatives, lost its influence. The king found himself
+again in possession of the reins of power. It rested with him to punish
+the temerity of the people by tightening the reins, or on his own
+authority, without the co&ouml;peration of any assembly, to give the nation a
+constitution. To take the former course he had not the courage, even if
+he had wished to do so; besides, he doubtless saw clearly enough that,
+though such a policy might succeed for a time, it would ultimately lead
+to another outbreak. He had, too, no great confidence in his power to
+win toward his person the popular favor. With all his talents and
+amiable traits, he had not the princely faculty of knowing how to
+inspire the people with a sense of his excellences, and was conscious of
+this defect. He chose not unnecessarily to increase an estrangement
+which had already been to him a source of such deep mortification. He
+therefore issued, on the 5th of December, immediately after dissolving
+the National Assembly, a constitution substantially the same as that
+which still exists, with the statement prefixed that it should not go
+into operation until after being revised. This revision was to be made
+at the first session of the two chambers, to be elected in accordance
+with an election law issued on the next day.</p>
+
+<p>The two chambers met February 26, 1849. After a session of two months,
+during which the lower chamber showed a disposition to modify the
+constitution more than was agreeable to the king, the upper chamber was
+ordered to adjourn, the lower was dissolved, and a new election ordered.
+The new Parliament met August 7. The revision was completed on the last
+of January, 1850. On the 6th of February, the king, in the presence of
+his ministers and of both chambers, swore to observe the constitution.
+Before doing so, he made an address, in which he explained his position,
+alluding in a regretful strain to the scenes of violence in the midst of
+which the constitution had been drawn up, expressing his gratitude to
+the chambers for their assistance in perfecting the hastily executed
+work, calling upon them to stand by him in opposition to all who might
+be disposed to make the liberty granted by the king a screen for hiding
+their wicked designs against the king, and declaring: 'In Prussia, the
+king must rule; and I do not rule because it is a pleasure, God knows,
+but because it is God's ordinance; therefore, I <i>will reign</i>. A free
+people under a free king&mdash;that was my watchword ten years ago; it is the
+same to-day, and shall be the same as long as I live.' The ministers and
+the members of the two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span> chambers, after the king had sworn to support
+the constitution, took the same oath, and in addition one of loyalty to
+the king. The new government was inaugurated. Prussia had become a
+limited monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>It is at this point appropriate to take a general view of the Prussian
+constitution itself. It has been variously amended since 1850, but not
+changed in any essential features; without dwelling on these amendments,
+therefore, we consider it as it now stands.</p>
+
+<p>As to the king: he is, as such, wholly irresponsible. He cannot be
+called to account for any act which he does in his capacity as monarch.
+But his ministers may be impeached. They have to assume and bear the
+responsibility of all royal acts. None of these acts are valid unless
+signed by one or more of the ministers. To the king is intrusted all
+executive power; the command of the army; the unconditioned right of
+appointing and dismissing his ministers, of declaring war and concluding
+peace, of conferring honors and titles, of convoking the national diet,
+closing its sessions, proroguing and dissolving it. He <i>must</i>, however,
+annually call the Houses together between November 1 and the middle of
+January, and cannot adjourn them for a longer period than thirty days,
+nor more than once during a session, except with their own consent.
+Without the assent of the diet he cannot make treaties with foreign
+countries nor rule over foreign territory. He has no independent
+legislative power, except so far as this is implied in his right to
+provide for the execution of the laws, and, when the diet is not in
+session, in case the preservation of the public safety or any uncommon
+exigency urgently demands immediate action. All such acts, however,
+must, at the next session of the Houses, be laid before them for
+approval.</p>
+
+<p>The ministry consists of nine members, under the presidency of the
+minister of foreign affairs; besides him are the ministers of finance,
+of war, of justice, of worship (religious, educational, and medicinal
+affairs), of the interior (police and statistical affairs), of trade and
+public works (post office, railroad affairs, etc.), of agricultural
+affairs, and of the royal house (matters relating to the private
+property of the royal family). The supervision exercised by the ministry
+over the various interests of the land is much more immediate and
+general than that of the President's cabinet in the United States. Now,
+however, their authority in these matters is of course conditioned by
+the constitution and the laws. The ministers are allowed to enter either
+House at pleasure, and must always be heard when they wish to speak. On
+the other hand, either House can demand the presence of the ministers.</p>
+
+<p>The legislative power is vested in the king and the two Houses of
+Parliament. The consent of all is necessary to the passing of every law.
+These Houses (at first called First and Second Chambers, now House of
+Lords and House of Delegates&mdash;<i>Herrenhaus</i> and <i>Abgeordnetenhaus</i>) must
+both be convoked or prorogued at the same time. In general a law may be
+first proposed by the king or by either of the Houses. But financial
+laws must first be discussed by the House of Delegates; and the budget,
+as it comes from the lower to the upper House, cannot be amended by the
+latter, but must be adopted or rejected as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Lords is made up of various classes of persons, all
+originally designated by the king, though in the case of some the office
+is hereditary. They represent the nobility, the cities, the wealth, and
+the learning of the land. Each of the five universities furnishes a
+member. The king has the right to honor any one at pleasure, as a reward
+for distinguished services, with a seat in this body. Of course, as the
+members hold office for life, and hold their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> office by the royal favor,
+it may generally be expected to be a tolerably conservative body, and to
+vote in accordance with the wishes of the king.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Delegates consists of three hundred and fifty-two members,
+elected by the people, but not directly. They are chosen, like our
+Presidents, by electors, who are directly chosen by the people. Two
+hundred and fifty inhabitants are entitled to one elector. Every man
+from the age of twenty-five is allowed to vote unless prohibited for
+specific reasons. But strict equality in the right of suffrage is not
+granted. The voters of each district are divided into three classes, the
+first of which is made up of so many of the largest taxpayers as
+together pay a third of the taxes; the second, of so many of the next
+richest as pay another third; the last class, of the remainder. Each of
+these divisions votes separately, and each elects a third part of the
+electors. The House of Delegates is chosen once in three years, unless
+in the mean time the king dissolves it, in which case a new election
+must take place at once.</p>
+
+<p>As to the rights of Prussians in general, the constitution provides that
+all in the eye of the law are equal. The old distinctions of classes
+still exists: there are still nobles, with the titles prince, count, and
+baron; but the special privileges which they formerly enjoyed are not
+secured to them by the constitution. The king can honor any one with the
+rank of nobility; but the name is the most that can be conferred. In
+most cases the right of primogeniture does not prevail, so that the
+aristocracy of Prussia is of much less consequence than that of England.
+The poverty which so often results from the division of the estates of
+nobles has led to the establishment of numerous so-called
+<i>Fr&auml;uleinstifter</i>&mdash;charitable foundations for such a support of poor
+female members of noble families as becomes their rank. Many of these
+institutions were formerly nunneries. It is further provided by the
+constitution that public offices shall be open to all; that personal
+freedom and the inviolability of private property and dwellings shall be
+secured; that all shall enjoy the right of petition, perfect freedom of
+speech, the liberty of forming organizations for the accomplishment of
+any legal object; that a censorship of the press can in no case be
+exercised, and that no limitation of the freedom of the press can be
+introduced except by due process of law; that civil and political rights
+shall not be affected by religious belief, and that the right of filling
+ecclesiastical offices shall not belong to the state. Only 'in case of
+war or insurrection, and of consequent imminent danger,' has the
+Government a right to infringe on the above specified immunities of the
+citizens and the press.</p>
+
+<p>The foregoing is all that need be given in order to convey a general
+idea of what the Prussian constitution is. It is in its provisions so
+specific and clear, that one would hardly expect that disputes
+respecting its meaning could have reached the height of bitterness which
+has characterized discussions of its most fundamental principles. The
+explanation of this fact is to be sought in the mode of the introduction
+of the constitution itself. The English constitution has been the growth
+of centuries; the Prussian, of a day. The latter, moreover, was not,
+like ours, the fundamental law of a new nation, but a constitution
+designed to introduce a radical change in the form of a government
+which, during many centuries, had been acquiring a fixed character. It
+undertook to remodel at one stroke the whole political system. Not
+indeed as though there had been no sort of preparation for this change.
+The general advance in national culture, the general anticipation of the
+change, as well as the actual approaches toward it in the administrative
+measures of Frederick the Great and Frederick William III., paved the
+way for the introduction of a popular element<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span> in the Government.
+Nevertheless, the actual, formal introduction itself was sudden. The
+constitution was not, in the specific form which it took, the result of
+experience and experiment. And, as all history shows, attempts to fix or
+reconstruct social systems on merely theoretical principles are liable
+to fail, because they cannot foresee and provide for all the
+contingencies which may interfere with the application of the theories.
+Moreover, in the case of Prussia, as not in that of the United States,
+the constitution was not made by the people for themselves, but given to
+them by a power standing over against them. There was, therefore, not
+only a possibility, as in any case there might be, that the instrument
+could be variously interpreted on account of the different modes of
+thinking and difference of personal interests, which always affect men's
+opinions; but there was here almost a certainty that this would be the
+case on account of the gulf of separation which, in spite of all the
+bridges which often are built over it, divides a monarch, especially an
+absolute, hereditary monarch, from his subjects. In the case before us,
+it is certain that the king conceded more than he wished to concede, and
+that the people received less than they wished to receive. That they
+should agree in their understanding of the constitution is therefore not
+at all to be expected. The most that the well wishers of the land could
+have hoped was that the misunderstandings would not be radical, and that
+in the way of practical experience the defects of the constitution might
+be detected and remedied, and the mutual relations of the rulers and the
+ruled become mutually understood and peacefully acquiesced in.</p>
+
+<p>What the Prussian Conservatives so often insist on, viz., that a
+constitutional government should have been gradually developed, not
+suddenly substituted for a form of government radically different, is
+therefore by no means without truth. Whether we are to conclude that the
+fault has been in the process not beginning sooner, or merely in its
+being too rapid, is perhaps a question in which we and they might
+disagree. On the supposition that the present state of intelligence
+furnishes a sufficient basis for a constitutional government, it would
+seem as though the last fifty years has been a period long enough in
+which to put it into successful operation. All that the present
+generation know of politics has certainly been learned within that time:
+if the mere practical exercise of political rights is all that is needed
+in order to develop the new system, there might at least an excellent
+beginning have been made long before 1850. When we consider, therefore,
+that the Government, after taking the initiatory steps in promoting this
+development, stopped short, and rather showed a disposition to
+discourage it entirely, these clamors of the Conservatives must seem
+somewhat out of taste. To Americans especially, who can accommodate
+themselves to changes, even though they may be somewhat sudden, such
+pleas for more time and a more gradual process may appear affected, if
+not puerile. It must be remembered, however, that to a genuine German
+nothing is more precious than a process of development. Whatever is not
+the result of a due course of <i>Entwickelung</i>, is a suspicious object.
+Anything which seems to break abruptly in upon the prescribed course is
+abnormal. Whatever is produced before the embryonic process is complete
+is necessarily a monster, from which nothing good can be hoped. The same
+idea is often advanced by the Conservatives in another form. The
+Liberals, they say, are trying to break loose from <i>history</i>. A
+prominent professor, in an address before an assembly of clergymen in
+Berlin, defined the principle of democracy to be this: 'The majority is
+subject to no law but its own will; it is therefore limited by no
+historically acquired rights; his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>tory has no rights over against the
+sovereign will of the present generation.' By historically acquired
+rights is meant in particular the right of William I. to rule
+independently because his predecessors did so. By what right the great
+elector robbed the nobles of their prerogatives, and how, in case he did
+wrong in thus disregarding <i>their</i> 'historically acquired rights,' this
+wrong itself, by being continued two hundred years, becomes, in its
+turn, an acquired right, is not explained in the address to which we
+allude. The principal fault to be found with such reasoning as this of
+the Prussian Conservatives, is that it is altogether too vague and
+abstract. There can be no development without something new; there can
+be, in social affairs, nothing new without some sort of innovation.
+Innovation, as such, can therefore not be condemned without condemning
+development. Moreover, development, as the organic growth of a political
+body, is something which takes care of itself, or rather is cared for by
+a higher wisdom than man's. To object to a proposed measure nothing more
+weighty than that it will not tend to develop the national history, has
+little meaning, and should have no force. The only question in such a
+case which men have to consider is whether the change is justified by
+the fundamental principles of right, be it that those principles have
+hitherto been observed or not.</p>
+
+<p>What makes the arguments of the Conservatives all the more impertinent,
+however, is the fact that the question is no longer whether the
+constitution ought to be introduced, but whether, being introduced, it
+shall be observed. This is for the stiff royalists not so pleasant a
+question. Prussia <i>is</i> a constitutional monarchy; the king has taken an
+oath to rule in accordance with the constitution. It may be, undoubtedly
+is, true that none of the kings have wished the existence of just such a
+limit to their power; but shall they therefore try to evade the
+obligation which they have assumed? The Conservatives dare not say that
+the constitution ought to be violated, for that would look too much like
+the abandonment of their fundamental principle; they also hardly venture
+to say that they would prefer to have the king again strictly absolute,
+for that would look like favoring regression more than conservatism. Yet
+many have the conviction that an absolute monarchy would be preferable
+to the present, while the arguments of all have little force except as
+they tend to the same conclusion. The point of controversy between them
+and their opponents is often represented as being essentially this:
+Shall the king of Prussia be made as powerless as the queen of England?
+Against such a degradation of the dignity of the house of Hohenzollern
+all the convictions and prejudices of the royalists revolt. Such a
+surrender of all personal power, they say, and say truly, was not
+designed by Frederick William IV. when he gave the constitution; to ask
+the king, therefore, in all his measures to be determined by the House
+of Delegates, is an unconstitutional demand. It is specially provided
+that the <i>king</i> shall appoint and dismiss his own ministers; to ask him,
+therefore, to remove them simply because they are unacceptable to the
+House of Delegates, is to interfere with the royal prerogatives. The
+command of the army and the declaration of war belong only to the king;
+to binder him, therefore, in his efforts to maintain the efficiency of
+the army, or in his purposes to wage war or abstain from it, is an
+overstepping of the limits prescribed to the people's representatives.</p>
+
+<p>We have here hinted at the principal elements in the controversy between
+the opposing political parties of Prussia. It is not our object to enter
+into the details of the various strifes which have agitated the land
+during the last sis years, but only to sketch their general character.
+The query naturally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span> arises, when one takes a view of the whole period,
+which has elapsed since the constitution was introduced, why the contest
+did not begin sooner. The explanation is to be found in the fact that
+until the present king began to rule, the Liberals in general did not
+vote at the elections. It will be remembered that the previous king
+absolutely refused to deal with the assembly which met early in 1849 to
+consider the constitution, and ordered a new election. At this election
+the Liberals saw that, if they reflected the old members, another
+dissolution would follow, and they therefore mostly staid away from the
+polls. Afterward, when the constitution had been formally adopted, the
+Government showed a determination to put down all liberal movements;
+consequently the Liberals made no special attempts to move. The
+Parliament was conservative, and so there was no occasion for strife
+between it and the king. Not till William I. became regent in place of
+his incapacitated brother, in 1859, did the struggle begin. The policy
+of the previous prime minister Manteuffel had produced general
+discontent. The people were ready to move, if an occasion was offered.
+It is therefore not to be wondered at that, when the new sovereign
+announced his purpose to pursue a more liberal course than his brother,
+the Liberal party raised its head, and sought to make itself felt. The
+new ministry was liberal, and for a while it seemed as though a new
+order of things had begun. But this was of short duration. The House of
+Delegates, consisting in great part of Liberals (or, to speak more
+strictly, of <i>Fortschrittsm&auml;nner</i>&mdash;Progress men&mdash;<i>Liberal</i> being the
+designation of a third party holding a middle course between the two
+extremes, a party, however, naturally tending to resolve itself into the
+others, and now nearly extinct) urged the Government to adopt its
+radical measures. The king began to fear that, if he yielded to all the
+wishes of the House, he would lose his proper dignity and authority. He
+therefore began to pursue a different policy: the more urgently the
+delegates insisted on liberal measures, the less inclined was the king
+to regard their wishes. He had wished himself to take the lead in
+inaugurating the new era; as soon as others, more ambitious, went ahead
+of him, he took the lead again, by turning around and pulling in the
+opposite direction. The principal topics on which the difference was
+most decided were the ecclesiastical and the financial relations of the
+Government. Although the constitution provides for the perfect freedom
+of the church from the state, the union still existed, and indeed still
+exists. The House of Delegates attempted to induce the Government to
+carry out this provision of the constitution. There is no doubt that the
+motive of many of these attempts to divide church and state is a
+positive hostility to Christianity. The partial success which has
+followed them, viz., the securing of charter rights for other religious
+denominations than the Evangelical Church (<i>i.e.</i>, the Union Church,
+consisting of what were formerly Lutheran and Reformed churches, but in
+1817 united, and forming now together the established church), has given
+some prominence to the so-called <i>Freiegemeinden</i>, organizations of
+freethinkers, who, though so destitute of positive religious belief that
+in one case, when an attempt was made to adopt a creed, an insuperable
+obstacle was met in discussing the first article, viz., on the existence
+of God, yet meet periodically and call themselves religious
+congregations. There are, moreover, many others, regular members of the
+established church, who have no interest in religious matters, and would
+for that reason like to be freed from the fetters which now hold them.
+There are, however, many among the best and most discreet Christians
+who, for the good of the church, wish to see it weaned from the breast
+of the state. But the great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> majority of the clergy, especially of the
+consistories (the members of which are appointed by the Government,
+mediately, however, now, through the <i>Oberkirchenrath</i>), are decidedly
+opposed to the separation; and, as they speak for the churches, the
+provision of the constitution allowing the separation is a dead letter.
+There is no denying that, if it were now to be fully carried out, the
+consequences to the church might be, for a time at least, disastrous.
+The people have always been used to the present system; they would
+hardly know how to act on any other. Moreover, a large majority of the
+church members are destitute of active piety; to put the interests of
+religion into the hands of such men would seem to be a dangerous
+experiment. Especially is it true of the mercantile classes, of those
+who are pecuniarily best able to maintain religious institutions, that
+they are in general indifferent to religious things. This being the
+case, one cannot be surprised at the reluctance of those in
+ecclesiastical authority to desire the support of the state to be
+withdrawn. Neverheless it cannot but widen the chasm between the
+established church and the freethinkers, that the former urges upon the
+Government to continue a policy which is plainly inconsistent with the
+constitution, and that the Government yields to the urging.</p>
+
+<p>A more vital point in the controversy between the king and the Liberals
+was the disposition of the finances. The House of Delegates, in the
+session lasting from January 14 to March 11, 1862, insisted on a more
+minute specification than the ministry had given of the use to be made
+of the moneys to be appropriated. The king at length, wearied with their
+importunity, dissolved the House, upon which a new election followed in
+the next month. The excitement was great. The Government seems to have
+hoped for a favorable result, at least for a diminution of the Liberal
+majority. The Minister of the Interior issued a communication to all
+officials, announcing that they would be expected to vote in favor of
+the Government. A similar notification was made to the universities, but
+was protested against. Most of the consistories summoned the clergymen
+to labor to secure a vote in favor of the king. But in spite of all
+these exertions, the new House, like the other, contained an
+overwhelming majority of Progress men. At the beginning of the new
+session in May, however, both parties seemed more yielding than before.
+Attention was given less to questions of general character, more to
+matters of practical concern. But at last the schism developed itself
+again. The king had determined to reorganize and enlarge the army, to
+which end larger appropriations were needed than usual. The military
+budget put the requisite sum at 37,779,043 thalers (about twenty-five
+million dollars); the House voted 31,932,940, rejecting the proposition
+of the minister by a vote of three hundred and eight to eleven. A change
+in the ministry followed, but not a change such as would be expected in
+England&mdash;just the opposite. At the dissolution of the previous House the
+Liberal ministry had given place to a more conservative one; now this
+conservative one gave place to one still more conservative, Herr von
+Bismarck became Minister of State. The House then voted that the
+appropriations must be determined by the House, else every use made by
+the Government of the national funds would be unconstitutional. The
+king's answer to this was an order closing the session. A new session
+began early in 1863. The same controversy was renewed. The king had
+introduced his new military scheme; he had used, under the plea of stern
+necessity, money not voted by Parliament. He declared that the good of
+the country required it, and demanded anew that the House make the
+requisite appropriation. But the House was not to be moved. So<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span> far from
+wishing an increase of the military expenses, the Liberal party favored
+a reduction of the term of service from three to two years. The king
+affirmed that he knew better what the interests of the nation required,
+and, as the head of the army, he must do what his best judgment dictated
+respecting its condition. Thus the session passed without anything of
+consequence being accomplished. The House of Lords rejected the budget
+as it came from the other chamber, and the delegates would not retreat.
+Consequently another dead lock was the result. The mutual bitterness
+increased. Minister von Bismarck, a man of considerable talent, but not
+of spotless character, and exceedingly offensive in his bearing toward
+his opponents, became so odious that the delegates seemed ready to
+reject any proposition coming from him, whether good or bad. They tried
+to induce the king to remove him. But this was like the wind trying to
+blow off the traveller's coat. Instead of being moved by such
+demonstrations to dismiss the premier, the king manifested in the most
+express manner his dissatisfaction with such attempts of the House to
+interfere with his prerogatives. One might think that he had resolved to
+retain Bismarck out of pure spite, though he might personally be ever so
+much inclined to drop him. The controversy became more and more one of
+opposing wills. May 22, the House voted an address to the king, stating
+its views of the state of the country, the rights of the House, etc.,
+and expressing the conviction that this majesty had been misinformed by
+his counsellors of the true state of public feeling. The king replied to
+the address a few days later, stating that he knew what he was doing and
+what was for the good of the people; that the House was to blame for the
+fruitlessness of the session; that the House had unconstitutionally
+attempted to control him in respect to the ministry and foreign affairs;
+that he did not need to be informed by the House what public sentiment
+was, since Prussia's kings were accustomed to live among and for the
+people; and that, a further continuance of the session being manifestly
+useless, it should close on the next day. Accordingly it was closed
+without the passage of any sort of appropriation bill, and the
+Government, as before, ruled practically without a diet.</p>
+
+<p>We do not propose to arbitrate between the affirmations of the
+Conservatives, on the one hand, that the <i>animus</i> of the opposition was
+a spirit of disloyalty toward the Government, an unprincipled and
+unconstitutional striving to subvert the foundations of royalty, and
+introduce a substantially democratic form of government, and the
+complaints of the opposition, on the other hand, that the ministry was
+trying to domineer over the House of Delegates, and reduce its practical
+power to a nullity. We may safely assume that there is some truth in
+both statements. Where the dispute is chiefly respecting motives, it
+must always be difficult to find the exact truth. In behalf of the
+Conservatives, however, it may be said that the Liberals have
+undoubtedly been aiming at a greater limitation of the royal power than
+the constitution was designed by its author to establish. Frederick
+William IV. proposed to rule <i>in connection with</i> the representatives of
+the people. The idea of becoming a mere instrument for the execution of
+their wishes, was odious to him, and is odious to his successor. That
+such a reduction of the kingly office, however, is desired and designed
+by many of the Progress party, is hardly to be questioned. But, on the
+other hand, it is hard to see, in case the present policy of the
+Government is carried through, what other function the diet will
+eventually have than simply that of advising the king and acting as his
+mere instrument, whenever he lays his plans and asks for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> the money
+necessary for their execution. This certainly cannot accord with the
+article of the constitution which declares that the legislative power
+shall be 'jointly' (<i>gemeinschaftlich</i>) exercised by the king and the
+two Houses.</p>
+
+<p>It is all the less necessary to consider particularly the character of
+the measures proposed and opposed, and the personal motives of the
+prominent actors in the present strife, inasmuch as the parties
+themselves are fighting no longer respecting special, subordinate
+questions, but respecting the fundamental principle of the Government,
+the mutual relation which, under the constitution, king and people are
+to sustain to each other. From this point of view it is not difficult to
+pass judgment on the general merits of the case. If we inquire where, if
+at all, the constitution has been formally violated, there can be no
+doubt that the breach has been on the side of the Government. That the
+consent of the diet is necessary to the validity act fixing the use of
+the public moneys, is expressly stated in the constitution. That the
+Government, for a series of years, has appropriated the funds according
+to its own will, without obtaining that consent, is an undeniable matter
+of fact. It is true that the king and his ministers do not acknowledge
+that this is a violation of the constitution, claiming that the duty of
+the king to provide in cases of exigency for the maintenance of the
+public weal, authorizes him, in the exigency which the obstinacy of the
+delegates has brought about, to act on his own responsibility. The
+Government must exist, they say, and to this end money must be had; if
+the House will not grant it, we must take it. That this is a mere
+quibble, especially as the exigency can be as easily ascribed to the
+obstinacy of the king as to that of the delegates, may be affirmed by
+Liberals with perfect confidence, when, as is actually the case, all
+candid Conservatives, even those of the strictest kind, confess that
+<i>formally</i>, at least, the king has acted unconstitutionally. And, though
+in respect to the financial question, they may justify this course while
+confessing its illegality, it is not so easy to do so in reference to
+the press law made by the king four days after closing the session of
+the diet. This law established a censorship of the press, which was
+aimed especially against all attacks in the newspapers on the policy of
+the Government, the plea being that the Liberal papers were disturbing
+the public peace and exciting a democratic spirit. The
+unconstitutionality of this act was as palpable as its folly. Only in
+case of war or insurrection is any such restriction allowed at all; the
+wildest imagination could hardly have declared either war or
+insurrection to be then existing. Moreover, even in case of such an
+exigency, the king has a right to limit the freedom of the press only
+when the diet is not in session and the urgency is too great to make it
+safe to wait for it to assemble. But in this call it is manifest not
+only that the king was not anxious to have the co&ouml;peration of the
+Houses, but that he positively wished <i>not</i> to have it. No one imagines
+that he conceived the whole idea of enacting the law <i>after</i> he had
+prorogued the diet; certainly nothing new in the line of public danger
+had arisen in those four days to justify the measure. Besides, he knew
+that the House of Delegates would not have approved it. It was, in fact,
+directly aimed at their supporters. A plainer attack on their
+constitutional rights could hardly have been made.</p>
+
+<p>But the delegates were sent home, so that they were now not able to
+disturb the country by their debates. The Conservatives rejoiced in
+this, seeming to think that the only real evil under which the country
+was suffering was the 'gabbling' of the members of the diet. Moreover,
+the press law, unwise and unconstitutional as many of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> the Conservatives
+themselves considered and pronounced it, was in force, so that the
+editorial demagogues also were under bit and bridle. It was hoped that
+now quiet would be restored. The German diet at Frankfort-on-the-Maine
+turned public attention for a time from the more purely internal
+Prussian politics. But this was a very insufficient diversion. In fact,
+the course of William I., in utterly refusing to have anything to do
+with the proposed remodelling of the articles of confederation, the
+object of which was to effect a firmer union of the German States,
+although no Prussian had the utmost confidence in the sincerity of the
+Austrian emperor, yet ran counter to the wishes of the Liberals, and
+even of many Conservatives. The same feeling which fifty years ago gave
+rise to the <i>Burschenschaft</i> displayed itself unmistakably in the
+enthusiasm with which Francis Joseph's invitation was welcomed by the
+Germans in general. The king of Prussia did not dare to declare against
+the proposed measure itself. Acknowledging the need of a revision of the
+articles, he yet declined to take part in the diet, simply because, as
+he said, before the princes themselves came together for so important a
+deliberation, some preliminary negotiations should have taken place.
+There is little reason to doubt, however, that his real motive was a
+fear lest, if he should commit himself to the cause of German union, he
+would seem to be working in the interests of the Liberals. For, as of
+old, so now, the most enthusiastic advocates of a consolidation of the
+German States are the most inclined to anti-monarchical principles;
+naturally enough, since a firm union of states, utterly distinct from
+each other, save as their rulers choose to unite themselves, while yet
+each ruler in his own land is independent of the others, and each has
+always reason to be jealous of the other, is an impossibility. This
+jealousy was conspicuous in the case of Prussia and Austria during the
+session of this special diet, in the summer of 1863. It was shared in
+Prussia not only by the king and his special political friends, but by
+many of the Liberals. It was perhaps in the hope that the national
+feeling had received a healthful impulse by the developments of
+Austria's ambition to obtain once more the hegemony of Germany, that the
+king soon after <i>dissolved</i> the House of Delegates, which in June he had
+prorogued. A new election was appointed for October 20. Most strenuous
+efforts were made by the Government to secure as favorable a result as
+possible. Clergymen were enjoined by the Minister of Instruction to use
+their influence in behalf of the Government. Officials were notified
+that they would be expected to vote for Conservative candidates, a hint
+which in Prussia cannot be so lightly regarded as here, since voting
+there is done <i>viva voce</i>. But, in spite of all these exertions, the
+Progress men in the new House were as overwhelmingly in the majority as
+before. On assembling, they reelected the former president, Grabow, by a
+vote of two hundred and twenty-four to forty. And the same old strife
+began anew.</p>
+
+<p>So little, then, had been accomplished by attempts forcibly to put down
+the opposition party. Many newspapers had received the third and last
+warning for publishing articles of an incendiary character, though none,
+so far as we know, were actually suspended; a professor in K&ouml;nigsberg
+had been deposed for presiding at a meeting of Liberals; a professor in
+Berlin had been imprisoned for publishing a pamphlet against the policy
+of the Government. There were even intimations that, unless the
+opposition yielded, the king would suspend the constitution, and
+dispense entirely with the co&ouml;peration of the Parliament. But whether or
+not this was ever thought of, he showed none of this disposition at the
+opening of the session. His speech, though containing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> no concessions,
+was mild and conciliatory in tone. Perhaps he saw that a threatening
+course could not succeed, and was intending to pursue another. He
+declared his purpose to suggest an amendment to the constitution
+providing for such cases of disagreement between the two Houses as had
+hitherto obstructed the legislation. This was afterward done. It was
+proposed that, whenever no agreement could be secured respecting the
+appropriations, the amount should be the same as that of the foregoing
+year. This, however, was not approved by the House of Delegates. The
+same disagreement occurred as at the previous sessions, intensified now
+by the increased demands of the Government on account of the threatened
+war in Schleswig-Holstein. A loan of twelve million thalers was
+proposed; but the House refused utterly to authorize it unless it could
+be known what was the use to be made of it. This information Minister
+Bismarck would not give. The dispute grew more and more sharp. The old
+causes of discussion were increased by the fact that Prussia, in
+reference to the disputed succession in Schleswig-Holstein, set itself
+against the popular wish to have the duchy absolutely separated from
+Denmark and put under the rule of the prince of Augustenburg. In fact,
+in this particular, whatever may be thought elsewhere respecting the
+merits of the war which soon after broke out, the policy of the
+Government was nearly as odious to most Conservatives as to the
+Liberals. They said, the king should have put himself at the head of the
+national, the German demand for the permanent relief of their fellow
+Germans in Schleswig-Holstein; he should have taken the cause out of the
+sphere of party politics; thus he might have regained his popularity and
+united his people. This is quite possible; but it is certain that he did
+not take this course. He seemed to regard the movement in favor of
+Prince Frederick's claims to the duchy as a democratic movement. It was
+so called by the more violent Conservatives. The king, after failing to
+take the lead, could not now, consistently with his determination to be
+independent, fall in with the crowd; this would seem like yielding to
+pressure. Besides, he felt probably more than the Prussian people in
+general the binding force of the London treaty. Yet, as a German, he
+could not be content to ignore the claims of the German inhabitants of
+the duchy; there was, therefore, no course left but to make hostile
+demonstrations against Denmark. The pretext was not an unfair one. The
+November constitution, by which Denmark, immediately after the accession
+of the protocol prince, the present king, Christian IX., proposed to
+incorporate Schleswig, was a violation of treaty obligations. The Danish
+Government was required to retract its course. It refused, and war
+followed. What will be the result of it, what even the Prussian
+Government wishes to be the result of it, is a matter of uncertainty.
+Suspicions of a secret treaty between it and Austria find easy credence,
+according to which, as is supposed, nothing but their mutual
+aggrandizement is aimed at. Certain it is that none even of the best
+informed pretend to know definitely what is designed, nor be confident
+that the design, whatever it is, will be executed. Yet for the time a
+certain degree of enthusiasm has been of course awakened in all by the
+successful advance of Prussian troops through Schleswig, and the
+indefinite hope is cherished that somehow, even in spite of the apparent
+policy of the Government, the war will result in rescuing the duchy
+entirely from the Danish grasp. Thus, temporarily at least, the popular
+mind is again diverted from internal politics; and perhaps the
+Government was moved as much by a desire to effect this diversion as by
+any other motive. The decided schism between Prussia<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> and Austria on the
+one hand, and the smaller German States on the other, a schism in which
+the majority of the people even in Prussia and Austria side with the
+smaller states, favors the notion that these two powers dislike heartily
+to enter into a movement whose motive and end is mainly the promotion of
+German unity at the expense of monarchical principles. For, however much
+of subtlety may be exhibited in proving that the prince of Augustenburg
+is the rightful heir to the duchy, the real source of the German
+interest in the matter is sympathy with their fellow Germans, who, as is
+not to be doubted, have been in various ways, especially in respect to
+the use of the German language in schools and churches, abused and
+irritated by the Danish Government. The death of the late king of
+Denmark was only made the occasion for seeking the desired relief.
+Fifteen years ago the same thing was done without any such occasion. But
+it would be the extreme of inconsistency for the Prussian Government to
+help directly and ostensibly a movement which, whatever name it may
+bear, is essentially a rebellion: if there are Germans in
+Schleswig-Holstein, so are there Poles in Poland.</p>
+
+<p>But, although, for the time being, the excitement of actual war silences
+the murmurs of the Progress party, the substantial occasion for them is
+not removed. On the contrary, there is reason to expect that the contest
+will become still more earnest. Only one turn of events can avert this:
+the separation of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark in consequence of the
+present war. If this is not the result, if nothing more is accomplished
+than the restoration of the duchy to its former condition, the king will
+lose the support of many Conservatives, and be still more bitterly
+opposed by the Liberals. In addition to this is to be considered that
+the war is carried on in spite of the refusal of the diet to authorize
+the requisite loan; that, moreover, after vainly seeking to secure this
+vote from the delegates, Minister Bismarck, in the name of the king,
+prorogued the diet on the 25th of January, 1864, telling the Delegates
+plainly that the money must be had, and accordingly that, if its use
+were not regularly authorized, it must be taken by the Government
+without such authority. His spirit may be gathered from a single remark
+among the many bitter things which he had to say in the closing days of
+the session: 'In order to gain your confidence, one must give one's self
+up to you; what then would the ministers in future be but Parliamentary
+ministers? To this condition, please God, we shall not be reduced.' The
+spirit of the delegates is expressed in the question of one of their
+number: 'Why does the Minister of State ask us to authorize the loan, if
+he has no need of our consent&mdash;if we have not the right to say <i>No</i>?'
+Brilliant successes of the Prussian arms, accomplishing substantially
+the result for which the German people are all earnestly longing, may
+restore the Government to temporary favor, and weaken the Progress
+party; otherwise, as many Conservatives themselves confess, the king
+will have paralyzed the arms of his own friends.</p>
+
+<p>What is to be the end of this conflict between the Prussian Government
+and the Prussian people? Without attempting to play the prophet's part,
+we close by mentioning some considerations which must be taken into
+account in forming a judgment. Although we have little doubt that the
+present policy of the Government will not be permanently adhered to, we
+do not anticipate any speedy or violent rupture. The case is in many
+respects parallel to that of the quarrel between Charles I. and his
+Parliaments; but the points of difference are sufficient to warrant the
+expectation of a somewhat different result. Especially these: Charles
+had no army of such size and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> efficiency that he could bid defiance to
+the demands of his Parliament; on the contrary, the Prussian army is, in
+times of peace, two hundred thousand strong, and can, in case of need,
+be at once trebled; moreover, soldiers must take an oath of allegiance
+to the king, not, however, to the constitution. Of this army the king is
+the head, and with it under his control he can feel tolerably secure
+against the danger of a popular outbreak. Again, the English
+revolutionists had little to fear from Continental interference;
+Prussia, on the contrary, is so situated that a revolution there could
+hardly fail to provoke neighboring monarchies to assist in putting it
+down. There is no such oppression weighing the people down that they
+would be willing to run this risk in an attempt to remove it. Again, the
+Liberals hope, and not without reason, that they will eventually secure
+what they wish by peaceable means. There is little doubt that, if they
+pursue a moderate course, neither resorting to violence nor threatening
+to do so, themselves avoiding all violations of the constitution, while
+compelling the Government, in case it will not yield, to commit such
+violations openly, their cause will gradually grow so strong that the
+king will ultimately see the hopelessness of longer resisting it. Or,
+once more, even if the present king, whose self-will is such that he may
+possibly persevere in his present course through his reign, does not
+yield, it is understood that the heir apparent is inclined to adopt a
+more liberal policy whenever he ascends the throne, an event which
+cannot be very long distant. Were he supposed fully to sympathize with
+his father, the danger of a violent solution of the difficulty would be
+greater. But, as the case stands, it may not be considered strange if
+the conflict lasts several years longer without undergoing any essential
+modification.</p>
+
+<p>There is no prospect that the dissension will be ended by mutual
+concessions. This might be done, if mutual confidence existed between
+the contending parties; but of such confidence there is a total lack. So
+great is the estrangement that the original occasion of it is lost sight
+of. Neither party cares so much about securing the success of its
+favorite measures as about defeating the measures of its opponent.
+Either the possibility of such a relation of the king to the Parliament
+was not entertained when the constitution was drawn up, or it is a great
+deficiency that no provision was made for it; or (as we should prefer to
+say) the difficulty may have been foreseen and yet no provision have
+been made for it, simply because none could have been made consistently
+with Frederick William IV.'s maxim, 'A free people under a free king'&mdash;a
+maxim which sounds well, but which, when the people are bent on going in
+one way and the king in another, is difficult to reconcile with the
+requirement of the constitution that both must go in the same way. In a
+republic, where the legislature and chief magistrate are both chosen
+representatives of one people, no protracted disagreement between them
+is possible. In a monarchy where a ministry, which has lost the
+confidence of the legislature, resigns its place to another, the danger
+is hardly greater. But in a monarchy whose constitution provides that
+king and people shall rule jointly, yet both act freely and
+independently, nothing but the most paradisiacal state of humanity could
+secure mutual satisfaction and continued harmony. Prussia is now
+demonstrating to the world that, if the people of a nation are to have
+in the national legislation anything more than an advisory power, they
+must have a determining power. To say that the king shall have the
+unrestricted right of declaring and making war, and at the same time
+that no money can be used without the free consent of Parliament, is
+almost fit to be called an Irish bull. Such mutual freedom is impossible
+except when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> king and Parliament perfectly agree in reference to the war
+itself. But, if this agreement exists, there is either no need of a
+Parliament or no need of a king. It makes little difference how the
+constitution is worded in this particular, nor even what was intended by
+the author of this provision. What is in itself an intrinsic
+contradiction cannot be carried out in practice. Whether any formal
+change is made in the constitution or not, a different mode of
+interpreting it, a different conception of the relation of monarch to
+subject, must become current, if the constitution is to be a working
+instrument. Prussia must become again practically an absolute monarchy
+or a constitutional monarchy like England. Nor is there much doubt which
+of these possibilities will be realized. And not the least among the
+causes which will hasten the final triumph of Liberalism there, is the
+exhibition of the strength of republicanism here, while undergoing its
+present trial. When one observes how many of the more violent Prussian
+Conservatives openly sympathize with the rebels, and most of the others
+fail to do so only because they dislike slavery; when one sees, on the
+other hand, how anxiously the Prussian Liberals are waiting and hoping
+for the complete demonstration of the ability of our Government to
+outride the storm which has threatened its destruction, the cause in
+which we are engaged becomes invested with a new sacredness. Our success
+will not only secure the blessings of a free Government to the
+succeeding generations of this land, but will give a stimulus to free
+principles in every part of the globe. If 'Freedom shrieked when
+Kosciuszko fell' at the hands of despotism, a longer and sadder wail
+would mark the fall of American republicanism, wounded and slain in the
+house of its friends.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="YE_KNOW_NOT_WHAT_YE_ASK" id="YE_KNOW_NOT_WHAT_YE_ASK"></a>'YE KNOW NOT WHAT YE ASK.'</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One morn in spring, when earth lay robed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In resurrection bloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I turned away my tear-veiled eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feeling the glow but gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And asked my God one boon I craved,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or earth were living tomb.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr style="width: 15%; margin-left: 6em; margin-top: 1.3em; margin-bottom: 1.3em;" />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One autumn morn, when all the world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In ripened glory lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I turned to God my shining eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And praised Him for that day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When asking <i>curses</i> with my lips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He turned His ear away.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="COMING_UP_AT_SHILOH" id="COMING_UP_AT_SHILOH"></a>COMING UP AT SHILOH.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The rain, which had been falling steadily since shortly after midnight,
+ceased at daybreak. The morning dawned slowly and moodily, above the
+wooded hilltops that rose steeply from the farther bank of the creek
+close by, right over against the cornfield, in which, on the preceding
+evening, we had comfortably pitched our camp. The bugle wound an early
+reveille; then came the call to strike tents, though one half of the
+brigade was yet busy in hurried preparations for breakfast, and
+presently the assembly sounded. We were on the march again by the time
+the sun would have liked to greet us with his broad, level-thrown smile
+for 'good morning,' if the sky had been clear and open enough, instead
+of covered, as it was on this damp, chilly April morning, with dull,
+sullen masses of cloud that seemed still nursing their ill humor and
+bent on having another outbreak. The road was heavy; an old, worn
+stage-coach road, of a slippery, treacherous clay, which the trampings
+of our advanced regiments speedily kneaded into a tough, stiff dough,
+forming a track that was enough to try the wind and bottom of the best.
+For some miles, too, the route was otherwise a difficult one&mdash;hilly, and
+leading by two or three tedious crossings in single file over fords,
+where now were rushing turbid, swollen streams, gorging and overflowing
+their banks everywhere in the channels, which nine months out of the
+twelve give passage to innocent brooklets only, that the natives of
+these parts may cross barefoot without wetting an ankle. Spite of these
+drawbacks, the men were in fine spirits; for this was the end of our
+weary march from Nashville, and we were sure now of a few days' rest and
+quiet.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes after midday we reached Savannah, and were ordered at once
+into camp. By this time the sky had cleared, the sun was shining
+brightly, though, as it seemed, with an effort; the wind, which had been
+freshening ever since morning, was blowing strong and settled from out
+the blue west, and the earth was drying rapidly. The Sixth Ohio and a
+comrade regiment of the Tenth Brigade pitched their tents in an old and
+well-cleared camping ground, on a gently sloping rise looking toward the
+town from the southeastward; a little too far from the river to quite
+take in, in its prospect, the landing with its flotilla of transports
+and the gunboats which they told us were lying there, yet not so far but
+we could easily discern the smoke floating up black and dense from the
+boats' chimney stacks, and hear the long-drawn, labored puffs of the
+escape pipes, and the shrill signals of the steam whistles. Altogether
+our camping ground was eligible, dry, and pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>It was on Saturday, the fifth day of April, 1862, that the Fourth
+division, being the advance corps of the Army of the Ohio, came thus to
+Savannah, and so was brought within actual supporting distance of the
+forces under General Grant at Pittsburg Landing, twelve miles up the
+farther bank of the Tennessee. General Crittenden's division encamped
+that evening three hours' march behind us. Still farther in the rear
+were coming in succession the divisions of McCook, Wood, and Thomas. It
+was well that such re&euml;nforcements were at hand; otherwise, unless we
+disregarded the best-established laws of probabilities in deciding the
+question, the Army of the Tennessee was even then a doomed one, and the
+story of Shiloh must have gone to the world a sad, tragic tale of the
+most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> crushing defeat which had ever fallen upon an army since the days
+of Waterloo. No mean service, then, was rendered the national cause, and
+all which that cause will stand out as the embodiment of, in all the
+ages to come, when Shiloh was saved, and Treason was forced to turn,
+faint, and stagger away from the field to which it had rushed with a
+fiend's exultant eagerness, having there met only its own discomture.
+The meed due for that service is a coronal of glory, that may never,
+probably, be claimed as the desert of any <i>one</i> individual exclusively;
+nor is it likely that the epitaph, enchiselled upon whose tombstone
+soever it might be, 'Here lies the saviour of Shiloh,' would pass one
+hour unchallenged. Yet impartial history can scarcely be at fault in
+recognizing as pre&euml;minent the part taken by one officer, in the events,
+whose results, at least, permit so much of eulogy to be written, with
+other significance than merely that of a wretched burlesque. That
+officer was General Nelson, the commander of our own division.
+Iron-nerved, indomitable, willfull, disdainful of pleasing with studied
+phrase of unmeant compliment, but with a great, manly heart beating
+strong in his bosom, and a nature grandly earnest, brave, and true&mdash;with the very foremost of Kentucky's loyal sons will ever stand the name
+of General William Nelson.</p>
+
+<p>Our column had marched from Nashville out on the Franklin turnpike,
+nearly three weeks previous. General McCook, as the senior divisional
+commander, had claimed the advance, and had held it in our march through
+that beautiful, cultivated garden spot of Middle Tennessee, as far as
+Columbia, a distance of nearly fifty miles. Here the turnpike and the
+railroad bridges over Duck river had both been destroyed by the rebels
+in their forlorn retreat from the northward. To replace the former even
+with a tottering wooden structure, was a work of time and labor.
+Meanwhile the army waited wearily, General Nelson chafed at the delay,
+and the rebel leaders Beauregard and Sidney Johnston were concentrating
+their forces at Corinth with ominous celerity. It was their purpose to
+crush, at one blow, so suddenly and so surely dealt that succor should
+be impossible, the National army, which had established itself on the
+borders of one of the southernmost States of the Confederacy, and was
+menacing lines of communication of prime necessity to their maintenance
+of the defensive line within which those commanders had withdrawn their
+discomfited armies. At length, one evening, on dress parade, there were
+read 'General orders, headquarters Fourth division,' for a march at
+daylight the next morning. Some days would yet be required to complete
+the bridge, but permission had been wrung from the 'commanding general'
+to cross the river by fording, and comically minute the detailed
+instructions of that order were for accomplishing the feat.</p>
+
+<p>So on Saturday, the twenty-ninth of March, we passed over Duck river.
+Other divisions immediately followed. By his importunity and
+characteristic energy, General Nelson had thus secured for us the
+advance for the seventy-five miles that remained of the march, and,
+incalculably more than this, had gained days of precious time for the
+entire army. How many hours later the Army of the Ohio might have
+appeared at Shiloh in season to stay the tide of disaster and rescue the
+field at last, let those tell who can recall the scenes of that awful
+Sabbath day there on the banks of the Tennessee.</p>
+
+<p>General Grant had established his headquarters at Savannah, and there
+immediately upon our arrival our commander reported his division. Long
+before night, camp rumors had complacently decided our disposition for
+the present. Three days at Savannah to allow the other corps of our army
+to come up with us, and then, by one more easy stage, we could all move
+together up to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> Pittsburg Landing, and take position beside the Army of
+the Tennessee. It was a very comfortable programme, and not the least of
+its recommendations was the earnest of its faithful carrying out, which
+appeared in the unusual regard to mathematical precision that our
+officers had shown in 'laying off camp,' and the painstaking care they
+had required on our part in establishing it.</p>
+
+<p>There was but an inconsiderable force here, composed for the most part
+of new troops from two or three States of the Northwest. I remember,
+especially, one regiment from Wisconsin, made up of great, brawny,
+awkward fellows&mdash;backwoodsmen and lumbermen chiefly&mdash;who followed us to
+Shiloh on the next evening, and through the whole of Monday fought and
+suffered like heroes, as they were. Our first inquiries, quite
+naturally, were concerning our comrade army, and the enemy confronting
+it at Corinth. Varied and incongruous enough was the information that we
+gleaned, and in some details requiring a simple credulity that nine
+months of active campaigning had quite jostled and worried out of us. It
+seemed settled, however, that our comrades up the river were a host
+formidable in numbers and of magnificent armament and <i>material</i>;
+altogether very well able to take care of themselves, at least until we
+could join them at our leisure.</p>
+
+<p>There were some things which, if we had more carefully considered them,
+might, perhaps, have abated somewhat this pleasant conviction of
+security. The enemy had lately grown wonderfully bold and
+venturesome&mdash;skirmishing with picket outposts, bullying reconnoitring
+parties, and picking quarrels upon unconscionably slight provocation
+almost daily. He had even challenged our gunboats, disputing the passage
+up the river in an artillery duello at the Bluffs, not far above the
+Landing, whose hoarse, sullen rumbling had reached us where we were
+resting on that Thursday afternoon, at the distance of thirty miles back
+toward Nashville. But, then, on how few fields had Southern chivalry
+ever yet ventured to attack; how seldom, but when fairly cornered, had
+its champions deemed discretion <i>not</i> the better part of valor! What
+other possibility was there which was not more likely to become an
+actuality than that the enemy would here dare to assume the aggressive?
+Who that had the least regard for the dramatic proprieties, could ever
+assign to him any other part in the tragedy than one whose featliest
+display of skill and dexterity should be exhibited in executing the
+movements of guard and parry, and whose noblest performance should be to
+stand at bay, resolutely contending upon a hopeless field to meet a
+Spartan death? So we cast aside all serious thought of immediate danger
+at Pittsburg Landing, the sanguine temperaments pronouncing these
+demonstrations of a foe who had shown our army only his heels all the
+way from Bowling Green and Fort Donelson, really diverting from their
+very audacity.</p>
+
+<p>At sunset, the Sixth held dress parade&mdash;the first since our march from
+Columbia; but I, on duty that day as one of the 'reserve guard,' was
+merely a looker-on. I was never prouder of the old regiment; it went
+through with the manual of arms so well&mdash;and then there were so many
+spectators present from other regiments. Orders were given to prepare
+for a thorough inspection of arms and equipments at ten o'clock on the
+next morning, then parade was dismissed, and so the day ended. The wind
+died away, and the night deepened, cool, tranquil, starlit, on a camp of
+weary soldiery, where contentment and good will ruled for the hour over
+all.</p>
+
+<p>Beautifully clear and calm the Sabbath morning dawned, April 6th, 1862;
+rather chilly, indeed, for it was yet in the budding time of spring. But
+the sky was so blue and cloudless, the air so still, and all nature lay
+smiling so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> serene and fair in the glad sunshine&mdash;it was a day such as
+that whereon the Creator may have looked upon the new-born earth, and
+'saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good;' a day
+as if chosen from all its fellows and consecrated to a hallowed quiet,
+the blessedness of prayer and thanksgiving, praise and worship.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly a man in our division, I believe, but awoke that morning with a
+happy consciousness of long hours that this day were to be his own, and
+a clear idea of just how he should improve them. My programme was the
+general one, and simple enough it was. First, of course, to make ready
+for inspection, and, that ceremony well gotten through with, to enact
+the familiar performance of every man his own washerwoman and
+seamstress: the remainder of the day should be devoted to the soldier's
+sacred delight of correspondence&mdash;to completing a letter to Wynne, begun
+back at Columbia, and writing home. Out by the smouldering fire, where
+the cooks of our mess had prepared breakfast nearly two hours before, I
+was busily at work furbishing with the new dust-fine ashes the brasses
+of my accoutrements, when the boom of cannon burst on the air, rolling
+heavily from away to the southward up from what we knew must be the
+neighborhood of the camps at Pittsburg Landing. It was after seven
+o'clock. The sun was mounting over the scrubby oak copse behind our
+camp, and the day grew warm apace. Another and still another explosion
+followed in quick succession.</p>
+
+<p>What could it mean? Only the gunboats, some suggested, shelling
+guerillas out of the woods somewhere along the river bank. Impossible;
+too near, too far to the right, for that. It could hardly be artillery
+practice merely; for to-day was the Sabbath. And the youngest soldier
+among us knew better than to give those rapid, furious volleys the
+interpretation of a formal military salute. Could it really be&mdash;battle?</p>
+
+<p>Every man almost was out and listening intently. Louder and fiercer the
+reports came, though still irregular. Now and then, in the intervals, a
+low, quick crepitation reached us, an undertone that no soldier could
+fail to recognize as distant musketry. Ominous sounds they were,
+portending&mdash;what? What, indeed, if not actual battle? If a battle, then
+certainly an attack by the enemy. Were our comrades up at the Landing
+prepared for it?</p>
+
+<p>The first cannon had been fired scarcely ten minutes, when General
+Nelson rode by toward headquarters, down in the busiest part of the
+town, aides and orderlies following upon the gallop. Presently came
+orders:</p>
+
+<p>'Three days' rations in haversacks, strike tents, and pack up. Be ready
+to move at a moment's notice. They are fighting up at the Landing.'</p>
+
+<p>There was no need for further urging. By ten o'clock every disposition
+for the march had been completed. Nearly three long hours more we waited
+with feverish anxiety for the final command to start, while the roar of
+that deathly strife fell distantly upon our ears almost without
+intermission, and a hundred wild rumors swept through the camp. General
+Grant had gone up the river on a gunboat soon after the cannonading
+began. It was not long after midday when we struck tents, were furnished
+with a new supply of cartridges and caps for our Enfields, and waited
+several minutes longer. At length, however, the column formed, and,
+though still without orders, except those which its immediate commander
+had assumed the responsibility to give, the Fourth division was on the
+march for Shiloh. The Tenth brigade had, as usual, the advance, and, in
+our regular turn, the Sixth came the third regiment in the column. We
+had just cleared the camping grounds, I well remember, when General
+Nelson rode leisurely down the line, his eye taking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> note with the quiet
+glance of the real soldier of every minutia of equipments and appearance
+generally. Some natures seem to find in antagonism and conflict their
+native element, their chief good&mdash;yet more, almost as much a necessity
+of their moral organism as to their animal being is the air they
+breathe. Such a nature was Nelson's. His face to-day wore that
+characteristic expression by which every man of his command learned to
+graduate his expectation of an action; it was the very picture of
+satisfaction and good humor. He wheeled his horse half around as the
+rear of our brigade passed him, and a blander tone of command I never
+heard than when, in his rapid, authoritative manner, he rang out:</p>
+
+<p>'Now, gentlemen, keep the column well closed up!' and passed on toward
+the next brigade.</p>
+
+<p>Gentlemen! how oddly the title comes to sound in the ears of a soldier!</p>
+
+<p>From Savannah to the Tennessee, directly opposite Pittsburg Landing, is,
+by the course we took, perhaps ten miles. The route was only a narrow
+wagon-path through the woods and bottoms bordering the river, and the
+wisdom was soon apparent which had beforehand secured the services of a
+native as guide. Most of the latter half of the distance was through a
+low, slimy swamp land, giving rank growth to an almost continuous forest
+of sycamore, cottonwood, and other trees which love a damp, alluvial
+soil, whose massive trunks were yet foul and unsightly with filth and
+scum deposited by the receding waters at the subsidence of the river's
+great spring freshet a month before. Stagnant ponds and mimic lagoons
+lay all about us and in our very pathway, some of the deeper ones,
+however, rudely bridged. Very rapid progress was impossible. It had
+already been found necessary to send our artillery back to Savannah,
+whence it would have to be brought up on the transports. The afternoon
+wore on, warm and sultry, and the atmosphere in those dank woods felt
+close, aguish, and unwholesome. Not a breath of air stirred to refresh
+the heated forms winding in long, continuous line along the dark boles
+of the trees, through whose branches and leafless twigs the sunlight
+streamed in little broken gleams of yellow brightness, and made a
+curious checkerwork of sheen and shadow on all beneath. Burdened as we
+were with knapsacks and twenty extra rounds of ammunition, the march
+grew more and more laborious. But the noise of battle was sharpening
+more significantly every few minutes now, and the men pushed forward. It
+was no child's game going on ahead of us. We <i>might</i> be needed.</p>
+
+<p>We <i>were</i> needed. A loud, tumultuous cheer from the Thirty-sixth Indiana
+came surging down through the ranks of the Twenty-fourth Ohio to our own
+regiment, and away back beyond to the Twenty-second and Nineteenth
+brigades in the rear. 'Forward!' and we were off on the double quick.
+General Nelson was at the head of the column; there a courier had met
+him&mdash;so at least runs the tradition&mdash;with urgent orders to hasten up the
+re&euml;nforcements: the enemy were pressing hard for the Landing. Unmindful
+of all impediments&mdash;trees and fallen logs, shallow ponds and slippery
+mire shoetop deep; now again moderating our pace to the route step to
+recover breath and strength; even halting impatiently for a few minutes
+now and then, while the advance cleared itself from some entanglement of
+the way&mdash;so the remainder of our march continued. It seemed a long way
+to the Landing, the battle dinning on our ears at every step. At length
+it sounded directly ahead of us, close at hand; and looking forward out
+through the treetops, a good eye could easily discover a dark cloud of
+smoke hanging low in mid air, as though it sought to hide from the light
+of heaven the deeds that were being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> done beneath it. Suddenly we
+debouched into a level cornfield, extending quite to the river's verge.
+The clearing was not a wide one, and the farther bank of the Tennessee
+was in plain sight&mdash;the landings, the bluff, and the woods above
+stretching away out and back beyond.</p>
+
+<p>What a panorama! The river directly before us was hidden by a narrow
+belt of chaparral and the drift that had lodged along the banks, but the
+smoke stacks of three or four transports were visible above the weed
+stalks and bushes, and the course of one or two more could be traced by
+a distant, trailing line of smoke as they steamed down toward Savannah.
+The opposite bank rises from the river a steep acclivity, perhaps a
+hundred and fifty feet in perpendicular height, down whose sides of
+brownish yellow clay narrow roadways showed out to the landings below.
+Cresting the bluff, woods overlooked the whole, and shut in the scene
+far as the eye could follow the windings of the Tennessee. In their
+depths, the battle was raging with unabated fury. A short distance up
+the river, though completely hidden from view by an intervening bend,
+the gunboats were at work, and even our unpractised ears could easily
+distinguish the heavy boom of their great thirty-two pounders in the
+midst of all that blaze of battle and the storm of artillery explosions.
+Glorious old Tyler and Lexington! primitive, ungainly, weather-beaten,
+wooden craft, but the salvation, in this crisis hour of the fight, of
+our out-numbered and wellnigh borne-down left. A signal party, stationed
+a little above the upper landing and halfway up the bluff, was
+communicating in the mystic language of the code with another upon our
+side the river. What messages were those little party-colored flags
+exchanging, with their curious devices of stripes and squares and
+triangles, their combinations and figures in numberless variety, as they
+were waved up and down and to and fro in rapid, ever-shifting pantomime?
+The steep bank was covered with a swaying, restless mass of
+blue-uniformed men, too distant to be distinctly discriminated, yet
+certainly numbering thousands. 'Reserves!' a dozen voices cried at once,
+and the next moment came the wonder that our march had been so hurried,
+when whole brigades, as it seemed, could thus be held in idle waiting.
+We were soon undeceived.</p>
+
+<p>Out into the cornfield filed the column, up the river, and nearly
+parallel to it, halting a little below the upper one of the two
+principal landings. Here there was a further delaying for ferriage.</p>
+
+<p>'Stack arms; every man fill his canteen, then come right back to the
+ranks!'</p>
+
+<p>Not to the Tennessee for water&mdash;there was no time to go so far&mdash;but
+close at hand, at a pond, or little bayou of the river; and, returning
+to the line of stacks, a few more long, unquiet minutes in waiting,
+speculation, and eager gazing toward the battle. And then we saw what
+was that dark, turbulent multitude over the river: oh, shame! a confused
+rabble, composed chiefly of men whose places were rightly on the field,
+but who had turned and fled away from the fight to seek safety under the
+coverture of that bluff.</p>
+
+<p>Forward again, and the regiment moved, with frequent little aggravating
+halts, up to the point on the river where the Thirty-sixth Indiana had
+already embarked, and were now being ferried over. The Twenty-fourth
+Ohio crossed at the lower landing. There were a number of country folk
+here, clad in the coarse, rusty homespun common in the South, whose
+intense anxiety to see every movement visible on the farther side of the
+river kept them unquietly shifting their positions continually. One of
+these worthies was hailed from our company:</p>
+
+<p>'Say, old fellow! how's the fight going on over there?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was an old and somewhat diminutive specimen, grizzle haired, and
+stoop shouldered, but yellow and withered from the effects of sun and
+tobacco rather than the burden of years. For a moment he hesitated, as
+though guarding his reply, and then, with a sidelong glance of the eyes,
+answered slowly:</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it aren't hardly decided yet, I reckon; but they're a drivin'
+your folks&mdash;some.'</p>
+
+<p>Evidently he believed that our army had been badly beaten. The emphatic
+rejoinder, 'D&mdash;d old secesh!' was the sole thanks his information
+brought him: the characterization, aside from the accented epithet, was
+doubtless a just one, but for all that his words were in no wise
+encouraging.</p>
+
+<p>A minute later we passed a sergeant, whose uniform and bright-red
+chevrons showed that he was attached to some volunteer battery. He was
+mounted upon a large, powerful horse, and seemed a man of considerable
+ability.</p>
+
+<p>'Do the rebels fight well over there?' demanded a voice from the column
+a half dozen files ahead of me.</p>
+
+<p>'Guess they do! Anyway, <i>fit</i> well enough to take our battery from
+us&mdash;every gun, and some of the caissons.'</p>
+
+<p>Another soldier met us, unencumbered with blouse or coat of any kind,
+his accoutrements well adjusted over his gray flannel shirt, and his
+rifle sloped carelessly back over his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot,
+and his face, all begrimed with smoke and gunpowder, wore an expression
+haggard, gaunt, and very weary. He was a sharpshooter, he told us,
+belonging to some Missouri regiment, and had been out skirmishing almost
+ever since daylight, with not a mouthful to eat since the evening
+before. His cartridges&mdash;and he showed us his empty cartridge-box&mdash;had
+given out the second time, and he was 'used up.' In his hat and clothes
+were several bullet holes; but he had been hit but once, he said, and
+then by only a spent buckshot.</p>
+
+<p>'Boys, I'm glad you're come,' he said. 'It's a fact, they <i>have</i> whipped
+us so far; but I guess we've got 'em all right <i>now</i>. How many of
+Buell's army can come up to-night?'</p>
+
+<p>A hurried, many-voiced reply, and hastening on past a heterogeneous
+collection of soldiery&mdash;couriers, cavalry-men, malingerers, stragglers,
+a few of the slightly wounded, and camp followers of all sorts&mdash;we
+quickly reached the river's brink. The boat was lying close below.
+Twenty feet down the crumbling bank, slipping, or swinging down by the
+roots and twigs of friendly bushes, the regiment lost but little time in
+embarking. The horses of our field officers were somehow got on board,
+and, with crowded decks, the little steamer headed for the landing right
+over against us. Two or three boats were there hugging the shore, quiet
+and motionless, and there were still more at the lower landing. One or
+two of these the deck hands pointed out to us as magazine boats,
+freighted with precious stores of ammunition, and the remainder were
+now, of necessity, being used as hospital boats. The wounded had quite
+filled these latter, and several hundred more of the day's victims had
+already been sent down the river to Savannah. One of the gunboats, fresh
+from its glorious work up beyond the bend, shortly came in sight, moving
+slowly down stream, as though reconnoitring the bank for some inlet up
+which its crashing broadsides could be poured with deadliest effect, if
+the enemy should again appear in sight.</p>
+
+<p>An informal command to land was given us presently, but many had already
+anticipated it. How terribly significant becomes the simple mechanism of
+loading a rifle when one knows that it is at once the earnest of deadly
+battle and the preparation for it! The few details which we could gather
+from the deck hands concerning the fight were meagre and unsatisfactory.
+They told us of disaster that befell our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> army in the morning, and which
+it seemed very doubtful if the afternoon had yet seen remedied; and
+their testimony was borne out by evidences to which our own unwilling
+senses were the sufficient witnesses. The roar of battle sounded
+appallingly near, and two or three of our guns were in vigorous play
+upon the enemy so close on the crest of the bluff that every flash could
+be seen distinctly. Several shells from the enemy's artillery swept by,
+cleaving the air many feet above us with that peculiar, fierce, rushing
+noise, which no one, I believe, can hear for the first time without a
+quickened beating of the heart and an instinctive impulse of dismay and
+awe.</p>
+
+<p>At the landing&mdash;but how shall I attempt, in words only, to set that
+picture forth? The next day's fight was my first experience in actual
+battle, except so much of bushwacking as five months in Western Virginia
+had brought us, but those hours have no such place in my memory as have
+the scenes and sounds of this evening at the landing. I have never yet
+seen told in print the half of that sad, sickening story. Wagons, teams,
+and led horses, quartermaster's stores of every description, bales of
+forage, caissons&mdash;all the paraphernalia of a magnificently appointed
+army&mdash;were scattered in promiscuous disorder along the bluff-side. Over
+and all about the fragmentary heaps thousands of panic-stricken wretches
+swarmed from the river's edge far up toward the top of the steep; a mob
+in uniform, wherein all arms of the service and wellnigh every
+grade&mdash;for even gilt shoulder-straps and scarlet sashes did not lack a
+shameful representation there&mdash;were commingled in utter, distracted
+confusion; a heaving, surging herd of humanity, smitten with a very
+frenzy of fright and despair, every sense of manly pride, of honor, and
+duty, completely paralyzed, and dead to every feeling save the most
+abject, pitiful terror. A number of officers could be distinguished amid
+the tumult, performing, with violent gesticulations, the pantomimic
+accompaniments of shouting incoherent commands, mingled with threats and
+entreaties. There was a little drummer boy, I remember, too, standing in
+his shirt sleeves and pounding his drum furiously, though to what
+purpose we could none of us divine. Men were there in every stage of
+partial uniform and equipment; many were hatless and coatless, and few
+still retained their muskets and their accoutrements complete. Some
+stood wringing their hands, and rending the air with their cries and
+lamentations, while others, in the dumb agony of fear, cowered behind
+the object that was nearest them in the direction of the enemy, though
+but the crouching form of a comrade. Terror had concentrated every
+faculty upon two ideas, and all else seemed forgotten: danger and death
+were behind and pressing close upon them; on the other side of the
+river, whither their eyes were turned imploringly, there was the hope of
+escape and an opportunity for further flight.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, louder than all the din and clamor else, swelled the roar of
+cannon and the sharp, continuous rattle of musketry up in the woods
+above. There, other thousands of our comrades&mdash;many thousands more they
+were, thank God!&mdash;were maintaining an unequal struggle, in which to
+further yield, they knew, would be their inevitable destruction. Brave,
+gallant fellows! more illustrious record than they made who here stood
+and fought through all these terrible Sabbath hours need no soldier
+crave. There has been a noble redemption, too, of the disgrace which
+Shiloh fastened on those poor, trembling fugitives by the riverside.
+That disgrace was not an enduring one. On many a red and stubborn battle
+field those same men have proudly vindicated their real manhood, and in
+maturer military experience have fought their way to a renown abundantly
+enough, and more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> than enough, to cover the derelictions of raw,
+untrained, and not too skilfully directed soldiery.</p>
+
+<p>There was a rush for the boat when we neared the landing, and some,
+wading out breast deep into the stream, were kept off only at the point
+of the bayonet. Close by the water's edge grew a clump of sycamores. Up
+into one of these and far out on a projecting limb, one scared wretch
+had climbed, and, as the boat rounded to, poised himself for a leap upon
+the hurricane deck; but the venture seemed too perilous, and he was
+forced to give it up in despair. The plank was quickly thrown out,
+guards were stationed to keep the passage clear, and we ran ashore.
+Until now there had been few demonstrations of enthusiasm, but here an
+eager outburst of shouts and cheers broke forth that wellnigh drowned
+the thunderings of battle. The regiment did not wait to form on the
+beach, the men, as they debarked, rushing up the bank by one of the
+winding roadways. The gaping crowd parted right and left, and poured
+upon us at every step a torrent of queries and ejaculations. 'It's no
+use;' 'gone up;' 'cut all to pieces;' 'the last man left in my
+company;'&mdash;so, on all sides, smote upon our ears the tidings of ill.
+Fewer, but cheery and reassuring, were the welcomes: 'Glad you've come;'
+'good for you;' 'go in, boys;' 'give it to 'em, Buckeyes'&mdash;which came to
+us in manly tones, now and then from the lines as we passed.</p>
+
+<p>We gained the summit of the bluff. A few hundred yards ahead they were
+fighting; we could hear the cheering plainly, and the woods echoed our
+own in response. The Thirty-sixth Indiana had already been pushed
+forward toward the extreme left of our line, and were even now in
+action. General Nelson had crossed half an hour earlier. The junior
+member of his staff had had a saddle shot from under him by a chance
+shell from the enemy, to the serious detriment of a fine dress coat, but
+he himself marvellously escaping untouched. Two field pieces were at
+work close upon our left, firing directly over the heads of our men in
+front; only a random firing at best, and I was glad when an aide-de-camp
+galloped down and put a stop to the infernal din. Amid this scene of
+indescribable excitement and confusion, the regiment rapidly formed. Our
+knapsacks&mdash;were we going into action with their encumbrance? The order
+was shouted to unsling and pile them in the rear, one man from each
+company being detailed to guard them. It was scarcely more than a
+minute's work, and we formed again. A great Valkyrian chorus of shouts
+swelled out suddenly along the line, and, looking up, I saw General
+Nelson sitting on his big bay in front of the colors, his hat lifted
+from his brow, and his features all aglow with an expression of
+satisfaction and indomitable purpose. He was speaking, but Company B was
+on the left of the regiment, and, in the midst of the storms of huzzas
+pealing on every side, I could not catch a single word. Then I heard the
+commands, 'Fix bayonets! trail arms! forward!' and at the double-quick
+we swept on, up through the stumps and underbrush which abounded in this
+part of the wood, to the support of the Thirty-sixth Indiana. A few
+score rods were gained, and we halted to recover breath and perfect
+another allignment. The firing in our front materially slackened, and
+presently we learned that the last infuriate charge of the enemy upon
+our left had been beaten back. We could rest where we lay, 'until
+further orders.' The sun sank behind the rise off to our right, a broad,
+murky red disk, in a dense, leaden-hued haze; such a sunset as in
+springtime is a certain betokening of rain. By this time cannonading had
+entirely ceased, and likewise all musketry, save only a feeble, dropping
+fire upon our right. Those sounds shortly died away, and the battle for
+this day was over. Night fell and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> spread its funereal pall over a field
+on which, almost without cessation since the dawn of daylight, had raged
+a conflict which, for its desperation and carnage, had yet had no
+parallel in American history.</p>
+
+<p>On that field, freely and generously had been poured of the nation's
+best blood, and many a nameless hero had sealed with his life a sublime
+devotion far surpassing the noblest essay of eulogy and all the
+extolments which rhetoric may recount. Thank God, those sacrifices had
+not been wholly fruitless! The Army of the Tennessee, although at most
+precious cost, had succeeded in staying those living waves of Southern
+treason until the Army of the Ohio could come up, and Shiloh was saved.
+The next day saw those waves rolled back in a broken, crimson current,
+whose ebb ceased only when the humiliated enemy rested safe within his
+fortifications at Corinth.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AENONE" id="AENONE"></a>&AElig;NONE:</h2>
+
+<h3>A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+<p>With Sergius there was seldom any interval between impulse and action.
+Now, without giving time for explanation, he made one bound to where
+Cleotos stood; and, before the startled Greek had time to drop the
+slender fingers which he had raised to his lips, the stroke of the
+infuriated master's hand descended upon his head, and he fell senseless
+at &AElig;none's feet, with one arm resting upon the lounge behind her.</p>
+
+<p>'Is my honor of so little worth that a common slave should be allowed to
+rob me of it?' Sergius exclaimed, turning to &AElig;none in such a storm of
+passion that, for the moment, it seemed as though the next blow would
+descend upon her.</p>
+
+<p>Strangely enough, though she had ever been used to tremble at his
+slightest frown, and though now, in his anger, there might even be
+actual danger to her life, she felt, for the moment, no fear. Her
+sympathy for the bleeding victim at her feet, of whose sad plight she
+had been the innocent cause, and whose perils had probably as yet only
+commenced&mdash;her consciousness that a crisis in her life had come,
+demanding all her fortitude&mdash;her indignation that upon such slight
+foundation she should thus be accused of falsity and shame&mdash;all combined
+to create in her an unlooked-for calmness. Added to this was the
+delusive impression that, as nothing had occurred which could not be
+explained, her lord's anger would not be likely to prolong itself at the
+expense of his returning sense of justice. What, indeed, could he have
+witnessed which she could not account for with a single word? It was
+true that within the past hour she had innocently and dreamily bestowed
+upon the Greek caresses which might easily have been misunderstood; and
+that all the while, the door having been partly open, a person standing
+outside and concealed by the obscure gloom of the antechamber, could
+have covertly witnessed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> whatever had transpired within. But &AElig;none knew
+that whatever might be her husband's other faults, he was not capable of
+countenancing the self-imposed degradation of espionage. Nor, even had
+it been otherwise, could he have been able, if his jealousy was once
+aroused by any passing incident, to control his impatient anger
+sufficiently to await other developments. At the most, therefore, he
+must merely, while passing, have chanced to witness the gesture of
+mingled emotion and affection with which Cleotos had bidden her
+farewell. Surely that was a matter which would require but little
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you not hear me?' cried Sergius, glaring with wild passion from her
+to Cleotos and back again to her. 'Was it necessary that my honor should
+be placed in a slave's keeping? Was there no one of noble birth with
+whom you could be false, but that you must bring this deeper degradation
+upon my name?'</p>
+
+<p>&AElig;none drew herself up with mingled scorn and indignation. His anger,
+which at another time would have crushed her, now passed almost
+unheeded; for the sense of injury resulting from his cruel taunt and
+from his readiness, upon such slight foundation, to believe her guilty,
+gave her strength to combat him. The words of self-justification and of
+reproach toward him were at her lips, ready to break forth in
+unaccustomed force. In another moment the torrent of her indignant
+protestations would have burst upon him. Already his angry look began to
+quail before the steadfast earnestness of her responsive gaze. But all
+at once her tongue refused its utterance, her face turned ghastly pale,
+and her knees seemed to sink beneath her.</p>
+
+<p>For, upon glancing one side, she beheld the gaze of Leta fixedly
+fastened upon her over Sergius's shoulder. In the sparkle of those
+burning eyes and in the curve of those half-parted lips, there appeared
+no longer any vestige of the former pretended sympathy or affection.
+There was now malice, scorn, and hatred&mdash;all those expressions which,
+from time to time, had separately excited doubt and dread, now combining
+themselves into one exulting glance of open triumph, disdainful of
+further concealment, since at last the long-sought purpose seemed
+attained. &AElig;none turned away with a sickening, heart-breaking feeling
+that she was now lost, indeed. It was no mystery, any longer, that the
+slave girl must have listened at the open door, and have cunningly
+contrived that her master should appear at such time as seemed most
+opportune for her purposes. And how must every unconscious action, every
+innocent saying have been noted down in the tablets of that crafty mind!
+What explanation, indeed, could be given of those trivial caresses now
+so surely magnified and distorted into evidences of degrading
+criminality?</p>
+
+<p>Faint at heart, &AElig;none turned away&mdash;unable longer to look upon that face
+so exultant with the consciousness of a long-sought purpose achieved.
+Rather would she prefer to encounter the angry gaze of her lord.
+Terrible as his look was to her, she felt that, at the last, pity might
+be found in him, if she could only succeed in making him listen to and
+understand the whole story. But what mercy or release from jealous and
+vindictive persecution could she hope to gain from the plotting Greek
+girl, who had no pity in her heart, and who, even if she were so
+disposed, could not, now that matters had progressed so far, dare to
+surrender the life-and-death struggle? Alas! neither in the face of her
+lord could she now see anything but settled, unforgiving pitilessness;
+for though, for an instant, he had quailed before her gaze, yet when she
+had, in turn, faltered at the sight of Leta, he deemed it a new proof of
+guilt, and his suspended reproaches broke forth with renewed violence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Am I to have no answer?' he cried, seizing her by the arm. 'Having lost
+all, are you now too poor-spirited to confess?'</p>
+
+<p>'There is nothing for me to confess. Nor, if there had been, would I
+deign to speak before that woman,' she answered with desperation, and
+pointing toward Leta. 'What does she here? How, in her presence, can you
+dare talk of sin&mdash;you who have so cruelly wronged me? And has all
+manliness left you, that you should ask me to open my heart to you in
+the presence of a slave; one, too, who has pursued me for weeks with her
+treacherous hate, and now stands gloating over the misery which she has
+brought upon me? I tell you that I have said or done nothing which I
+cannot justify; but that neither will I deign to explain aught to any
+but yourself alone.'</p>
+
+<p>'The same old excuse!' retorted Sergius. 'No harm done&mdash;nothing which
+cannot be accounted for in all innocence; and yet, upon some poor
+pretence of wounded pride, that easy explanation will not be vouchsafed!
+And all the while the damning proof and author of the guilt lies before
+me!'</p>
+
+<p>With that he extended his foot, and touched the senseless body of
+Cleotos&mdash;striking it carelessly, and not too gently. The effect of the
+speech and action was to arouse still more actively the energetic
+impulses of &AElig;none&mdash;but not, alas! to that bold display of conscious
+innocence with which, a moment before, she had threatened to sweep aside
+his insinuations, and make good her justification. She was now rather
+driven into a passion of reckless daring&mdash;believing that her fate was
+prejudged and forestalled&mdash;caring but little what might happen to
+her&mdash;wishing only to give way to her most open impulses, let the
+consequences be what they might. Therefore, in yielding to that spirit
+of defiance, she did the thing which of all others harmed her most,
+since its immediate and natural result was to give greater cogency to
+the suspicions against her. Stooping down and resting herself upon the
+lounge, she raised the head of the still senseless Cleotos upon her lap,
+and began tenderly to wipe his lips, from a wound in which a slight
+stream of blood had begun to ooze.</p>
+
+<p>'He and I are innocent,' she said. 'I have treated him as a brother,
+that is all. It is years ago that I met him first, and then he was still
+more to me than now. He is now poor and in misery, and I cannot abandon
+him. Had he been in your place, and you in his, he would not have thus,
+without proof, condemned you, and then have insulted your lifeless
+body.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Sergius stood aghast. Excuse and pleading he was prepared
+to hear. Recriminations would not have surprised him, for he knew that
+his own course would not bear investigation, and nothing, therefore,
+could be more natural than that she should attempt to defend herself by
+becoming the assailant in turn. But that she should thus defy
+him&mdash;before his eyes should bestow endearments upon a slave, the partner
+of her apparent guilt, and with whom she acknowledged having had an
+intimacy years before, was too astounding for him at first to
+understand. Then recovering himself, he cried aloud:</p>
+
+<p>'Is this to be borne? Ho, there, Drumo! Meros! all of you! Take this
+wretch and cast him into the prison! See that he does not escape, on
+your lives! He shall feed the lions to-morrow! By the gods, he shall
+feed the lions! Bear him away! Let me not see him again till I see his
+blood lapped up in the arena. Away with him, I say!'</p>
+
+<p>As the first cry of Sergius rang through the halls, the armor bearer
+appeared at the door; and before many more seconds had elapsed, other
+slaves, armed and unarmed, swarmed forth from different courts and
+passages, until the antechamber was filled with them. None of them knew
+what had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> happened, but they saw that, in some way, Cleotos had incurred
+the anger of his master, and lay stunned and bleeding before them. To
+obey was the work of a moment. The giant Drumo, stooping down, wound his
+arm around the body of Cleotos, hoisted him upon his broad shoulder, and
+stalked out of the room. The other slaves followed. &AElig;none, who, in the
+delirium of her defiance, might have tried to resist, was overpowered by
+her own attendants, who also had flocked in at Sergius's call, and now
+gently forced her from the room. And in a moment more, Sergius was left
+alone with Leta.</p>
+
+<p>She, crouching in a dark corner of the room, awaited her opportunity to
+say the words which she dared not say while he was in this storm of wild
+passion; he, thinking himself entirely alone, stalked up and down like a
+caged tiger, muttering curses upon himself, upon &AElig;none, upon the slave,
+upon all who directly or indirectly had been concerned in his supposed
+disgrace. Let it not be forgotten that, though at first he had acted
+hastily and upon slight foundation of proof, and had cruelly wounded her
+spirit by abhorrent insinuations, without giving time or opportunity for
+her to explain herself, she had afterward given way to an insane
+impulse, and had so conducted herself as to fix the suspicion of guilt
+upon herself almost ineffaceably. What further proof could he need?
+While, with false lips, she had denied all, had she not, at the same
+time, lavished tender caresses upon the vile slave?</p>
+
+<p>Then, too, what had he not himself done to add to the sting of his
+disgrace? Convinced of her guilt, he should have quietly put her away,
+and the truth would have leaked out only little by little, so as to be
+stripped of half of its mortification. But he had called up his slaves.
+They had entered upon the scene, and would guess at everything, if they
+did not know it already! The mouths of menials could not be stopped.
+To-morrow all Rome would know that the imperator Sergius, whose wife had
+been the wonder of the whole city for her virtue and constancy, had been
+deceived by her, and for a low-born slave! Herein, for the moment,
+seemed to lie half the disgrace. Had it been a man of rank and celebrity
+like himself&mdash;but a slave! And how would he dare to look the world in
+the face&mdash;he who had been proud of his wife's unsullied reputation, even
+when he had most neglected her, and who had so often boasted over his
+happy lot to those who, having the reputation of being less fortunate,
+had complacently submitted themselves to bear with indifference a
+disgrace which, at that age, seemed to be almost the universal doom!</p>
+
+<p>Frantically revolving these matters, he raged up and down the apartment
+for some moments, while Leta watched him from her obscure corner. When
+would it be time for her to advance and try her art of soothing? Not
+yet; for while that paroxysm of rage lasted, he would be as likely to
+strike her as to listen. Once he approached within a few feet of her,
+and, as she believed herself observed, she trembled and crouched behind
+a vase. He had not seen her, but his eye fell upon the vase, and with
+one blow he rolled it off its pedestal, and let it fall shattered upon,
+the marble floor. Was it simply because the costly toy stood in his way?
+Or was it that he remembered it had been a favorite of &AElig;none? One
+fragment of the vase, leaping up, struck Leta upon the foot and wounded
+her, but she dared not cry out. She rather crouched closer behind the
+empty pedestal, and drew a long breath of relief as, after a moment, he
+turned away.</p>
+
+<p>At last the violence of his passion seemed to have expended itself, and
+he sank upon the lounge, and, burying his face in his hands, abandoned
+himself to more composed reflection. Now was the time for her to
+approach. And yet she would not address herself di<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>rectly to him, but
+would rather let him, in some accidental manner, detect her presence.
+Upon a small table stood a bronze lamp with a little pitcher of olive
+oil beside it. The wicks were already in the sockets, and she had only
+to pour in the oil. This she did noiselessly, as one who has no thought
+of anything beyond the discharge of an accustomed duty. Then she lighted
+the wicks and stealthily looked up to see whether he had yet observed
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The lamp somewhat brightened the obscurity of the room, sending even a
+faint glimmer into the farther corners, but he took no notice of it.
+Perhaps he may have moved his head a little toward the light, but that
+was all. Otherwise there was no apparent change or interruption in his
+deep, troubled thought. Then Leta moved the table with the lamp upon it
+a few paces toward him, so that the soft light could fall more directly
+upon his face. Still no change. Then she softly approached and bent over
+him.</p>
+
+<p>What could he be thinking of? Could he be feeling aught but regret that
+he had thrown away years of his life upon one who had betrayed him so
+grossly at the end? Was he not telling himself how, upon the morrow, he
+would put her away, with all ceremony, forever? And might he not be
+reflecting that, &AElig;none once gone, there would be a vacant place to be
+filled at his table? Would he not wish that it should be occupied
+without delay, if only to show the world how little his misfortune had
+affected him? And who more worthy to fill it than the one whose
+fascinations over him had made it empty? Was not this, then, the time
+for her to attract his notice, before other thoughts and interests could
+come between her and him?</p>
+
+<p>Softly she touched him upon the arm; and, like an unchained lion, he
+sprang up and stared her in the face. There was a terrible look upon his
+features, making her recoil in dismay. Was that the affectionate gaze
+with which she had expected to be greeted? Was that the outward
+indication of the pleasing resolves with which her eager fancy had
+invested his mind?</p>
+
+<p>Never had she been more mistaken than in her conceptions of his
+thoughts. In them there was for herself not one kindly impulse; but for
+the wife whom he had deemed so erring, there was much that was akin to
+regret, if not to returning affection. The violence of his passion had
+been so exhausting, that something like a reaction had come. A new
+contradiction seemed developing itself in his nature. This man, who a
+few minutes before had prejudged her guilty, because he had seen the
+lips of a grateful slave pressed against her hand, now, after having
+seen her so aroused and indifferent to reputation as to defend that
+slave in her arms, and claim him for at least a friend and brother,
+began to wonder whether she might not really be innocent. She had
+confessed to nothing&mdash;she had asserted her blamelessness&mdash;she had never
+been known to waver from the truth; might she not have been able to
+explain her actions? With his regret for having, in such hasty passion,
+so compromised her before the world that no explanation could henceforth
+shield her from invidious slander, he now began to feel sorrow for
+having so roughly used her. Whether she was false or not&mdash;whether or not
+he now loved her&mdash;was it any the less true that she had once been
+constant and loved by him, and did the memories of that time, not so
+very long ago, bring no answering emotion to his heart? Who, after all,
+had ever so worshipped him? And must he now really lose her? Might it
+not be that he had been made the victim of some conspiracy, aided by
+fortuitous elements?</p>
+
+<p>It was just at this point, when, in his thoughts, he was stumbling near
+the truth, that the touch of Leta's hand aroused him; and in that
+instant her possible agency in the matter flashed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> upon him like a new
+revelation. She saw the tiger-like look which he fastened upon her, and
+she recoiled, perceiving at once that she had chosen an inopportune
+moment to speak to him. But it was now too late to recede.</p>
+
+<p>'Well?' he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>'I have lighted the lamp,' she faltered forth. 'I knew not that I should
+disturb you. Have you further commands for me?'</p>
+
+<p>Still his fierce gaze fixed upon her; but now with a little more of the
+composure of searching inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>'It is you who have brought all this destruction and misery upon me,' he
+said at length. 'From one step unto another, even to this end, I
+recognize your work. I was a weak fool not to have seen it before.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it about my mistress that you speak?' she responded. 'Is it my fault
+that she has been untrue?'</p>
+
+<p>'If she is false, what need to have told me of it? Was it that the
+knowledge of it would make me more happy? And did I give it into the
+hands of my own slaves to watch over my honor? Is it a part of your duty
+that for weeks you should have played the spy upon herself and me, so as
+to bring her secret faults to light?'</p>
+
+<p>She stood silent before him, not less amazed at his lingering fondness
+for his wife than at his reproaches against herself.</p>
+
+<p>'How know I that she is guilty at all?' he said, continuing the train of
+thought into which his doubts and his better nature had led him. 'I must
+feel all this for certain. How do I know but what you have brought it
+about by some cunning intrigue for your own purposes? Speak!'</p>
+
+<p>For Leta to stop now was destruction. Though to go on might bring no
+profit to her, yet her safety depended upon closing forever the path of
+reconciliation toward which his mind seemed to stray. And step by step,
+shrouding as far as possible her own agency, she spread out before him
+that basis of fact upon which she so well knew how to erect a false
+superstructure. She told him how the intimacy of &AElig;none and Cleotos had
+led her to keep watch&mdash;how &AElig;none had once confessed having had a lover
+in the days of her obscurity and poverty&mdash;how that this Greek was that
+same lover&mdash;and how improbable it was that he could have been domiciled
+in that house by chance, or for any other purpose than that of being in
+a situation to renew former intimacies. She told how, after long
+suspicion, she had settled this identity of the former lover with the
+slave&mdash;and how she had seen them, in the twilight of that very day,
+standing near the window and addressing each other endearingly by their
+own familiar names. As Sergius listened, the evident truthfulness of the
+facts gradually impressed themselves upon him; and no longer doubting
+his disgrace, he closed his heart against all further hope and charity
+and affection. The pleasant past no longer whispered its memories to his
+heart&mdash;those were now stifled and dead.</p>
+
+<p>'And what reward for all this do you demand?' he hissed forth, seizing
+Leta by the arm, 'For of course you have not thus dogged her steps day
+after day, without expectation of recompense from me.'</p>
+
+<p>Did he mean this&mdash;that she was capable of asking reward? Or was he
+cunningly trying her nature, to see whether she might prove worthy of
+the great recompense which she had promised herself? It was almost too
+much now to expect; but her heart beat fast as she saw or fancied she
+saw some strange significance in the gaze which he fastened upon her.
+Babbling incoherently, she told how she did not wish reward&mdash;how she had
+done it all for love of him&mdash;how she would be content to serve him for
+life, with no other recompense than his smile&mdash;and the like. Still that
+gaze was fastened upon her with penetrating power, more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> and more
+confusing her, and again she babbled forth the same old expressions of
+disinterested attachment. How it was that at last he understood her
+secret thoughts and aspirations, she knew not. Certainly she had not
+spoken, or even seemed to hint about them. But whether she betrayed
+herself by some glance of the eye or tremor of the voice, or whether
+some instinct had enabled him to read her, of a sudden he burst into a
+wild, hollow laugh of disdain, threw her from him, and cried, with
+unutterable contempt:</p>
+
+<p>'This, then, was the purpose of all! This is what you dreamed of! That
+you, a slave&mdash;an hour's plaything&mdash;could so mistake a word or two of
+transient love-making as to fancy that you could ever be anything beyond
+what you are now! Poor fool that thou art!&mdash;Oho, Drumo!'</p>
+
+<p>The giant entered the room, and Leta again drew back into the closest
+obscurity she could find, not knowing what punishment her audacity was
+about to draw upon her. But worse, perhaps, than any other punishment,
+was the discovery that Sergius had already forgotten her; or rather,
+that he thought so little about her as to be able to dismiss her and her
+pretensions with a single contemptuous rebuke. He had called his armor
+bearer for another purpose than to speak of her. A new phase had passed
+over his burdened and excited mind. He could not endure that solitude,
+with ever-present disagreeable reflection. And since his disgrace must,
+sooner or later, be known, he would brave it out by being himself the
+first to publish it.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it not to-morrow that the games begin?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, master,' responded the armor bearer.</p>
+
+<p>'And does it not&mdash;it seems to me that I promised to my friends a banquet
+upon the previous night. If I did not, I meant to have done so. Go,
+therefore, and bid them at once come hither! Tell the poet Emilius&mdash;and
+Bassus&mdash;and the rest. You know all whom I would have. Let them know that
+I hold revel here, and that not one must dare to stay away! Tell my
+cooks to prepare a feast for the gods! Go! Despatch!'</p>
+
+<p>The giant grinned his knowledge of all that his master's tastes would
+require, and left the room to prepare for his errand. And in a moment
+more Sergius also departed, without another thought of the Greek girl,
+who stood shrinking from his notice in the shadow of the farthest
+corner.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="APHORISMS_NO_XII" id="APHORISMS_NO_XII"></a>APHORISMS.&mdash;NO. XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Knowledge and Action.&mdash;It is a common fault of our humanity, when not
+sunk too low in the scale of intellect, to seek knowledge rather than
+attempt any laborious application of it. We love to add to our stock of
+ideas, facts, or even notions of things, provided moderate pains will
+suffice; but to put our knowledge in practice is too often esteemed
+servile, or eschewed as mere drudgery. Useful activities flatter pride,
+and gratify the imagination, too little. But of what avail, ordinarily,
+is the possession of truth, unless as light to direct us in the ways of
+beneficent labor, for ourselves and for our fellow men? There are,
+indeed, objects of knowledge which elevate the soul in the mere act of
+contemplation; but, in most cases, if what we learn is brought into no
+definite relation to the practice of life, the acquisition is barren,
+and the labor of making it apparently a loss of time and strength.</p>
+
+<p>This is no censure upon the course of learning as a process of mental
+discipline; for this in itself is one of the most productive forms of
+human activity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EXCUSE" id="EXCUSE"></a>EXCUSE.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Song, they say, should be a king,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crowned and throned by lightning-legions<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only they may dare to sing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who can hear their voices ring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the echoing thunder-regions.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yet, below the mountain's crest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chime the valley-bells to heaven;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If we may not grasp the best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deeper, closer, be our quest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the good that Fate has given.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Parching in its fever pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Many a tortured life is thirsting<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a cooling draught to drain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though it flash no purple vein<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the mellow grape-heart bursting.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Must our sun-struck gaze despise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Starry isles in light embosomed?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must we close our scornful eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the valley lily lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just because the rose has blossomed?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though the lark, God's perfect strain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Steep his song in sunlit splendor;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the nightingale's sweet pain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With divine despair, enchain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dew-soft darks in silence tender;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not the less, from Song's excess,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sings the blackbird late and early:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor the bobolink's trill the less<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laughs for very happiness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gurgling through its gateways pearly.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though we reach not heavenly heights,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the sun-crowned souls sit peerless,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let us wing our farthest flights<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Underneath the lower lights;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soar and sing, unfettered, fearless&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sings as bubbling water flows&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sing as smiles the summer sunny.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Royal is the perfect rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet, from many a bud that blows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bees may drain a drop of honey.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AMERICAN_WOMEN" id="AMERICAN_WOMEN"></a>AMERICAN WOMEN.</h2>
+
+
+<p>A great deal has been said and written in this age and country on the
+subject of what is technically called <i>woman's rights</i>; and, in the
+course of such agitation, many good and true things have been thought
+out and made available to the bettering of her condition, besides many
+foolish and impracticable, arising from a too grasping desire for a
+wider and more exciting sphere of effort, as well as from a palpable
+misapprehension of their own nature and their legitimate sphere, which
+prevails quite extensively among women. The pioneers of the rights of
+woman have done a good work, however, and may well be pardoned wherein
+they have gone beyond what might be fairly and profitably demanded for
+our sex. They have called the public attention to the subject, and have
+enlisted the thoughts and the services of many earnest men as well as
+women in their cause; thus provoking that inquiry which will eventually
+lead to the finding of the whole truth concerning woman, her rights,
+privileges, duties. And for this, in common with the pioneers in every
+cause that has for its object the amelioration and advantage of any
+class of human beings, they deserve the thanks of all. That there should
+be some ultraists, who would not know where to stop in the extravagant
+and unsuitable claims they urge, was to be expected. This should not
+blind our eyes to the lawful claims of woman upon society, nor is it
+sufficient to throw ridicule upon a movement which has, in this day,
+indeed, borne its full share of obloquy from the careless, the
+thoughtless, the too conservative, all of whom are alike clogs upon the
+wheel of human progress.</p>
+
+<p>This is not the age nor ours the people to shun the fair discussion of
+any question, much less one which commends itself as of practical
+importance. This American people has proved, by the calm and patient
+consideration it has accorded to the advocates of woman's rights, that
+it has reached that lofty point in the progress of society at which
+woman is regarded as a positive quantity in the problem which society is
+working out, and it marks an era in the history of the sex, prophetic of
+the full enjoyment of <i>all</i> the rights which are hers by nature, or may
+be hers by favor. I think that in this country, at least, woman has been
+put upon a very clear and unobstructed path, with many encouragements to
+go on in the highest course of improvement of which she is capable.
+There seems to be a general disposition to investigate, and to allow her
+the rights she claims&mdash;rights of education, of labor, of property, of a
+fair competition in any suitable field of enterprise; so that she bids
+fair to become as self-supporting, independent, and intelligent as she
+desires. It is true that much is still said of the jealousy and
+selfishness of men, leading them to monopolize most of the sources of
+profitable effort to their own use, thus cramping the sphere of woman,
+and making her dependent and isolated.</p>
+
+<p>Now, it is very much a question with me whether, after all, the failure,
+so far, to secure these fancied rights, is not quite as much the result
+of woman's backwardness and inefficiency as of man's jealous and greedy
+monopoly; whether the greatest obstacle does not lie in the adverse
+opinions prevailing among women themselves. According to my observation,
+as fast as women have proved themselves adapted to compete with men in
+any particular field, their brothers have forthwith striven to make the
+path easy and pleasant for them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But there is a natural and necessary jealousy excited when women attempt
+to go out of the beaten track, and establish new conditions and
+resources for themselves&mdash;a jealousy which has its source in the
+instinctive feeling of civilized society, that the standard of womanhood
+must not be lowered; that its safety and progressive well-being depend
+upon the immaculate preservation of that pure and graceful ideal of
+womanhood which every true man wishes to see guarded with a vestal
+precision. And society will pause, thoughtfully to consider, before the
+stamp of its approbation is affixed to any mode of development by which
+that lofty ideal would suffer. Anything which tends in the least to
+unsex, to unsphere woman, by so much works with a reflex influence on
+man and on society, and produces in both a gradual and dangerous
+deterioration. And self-preservation is the first instinct of society as
+well as of the individual being. Man, and the eternal and infinite order
+of the world, require that woman keep her proper place, and that she
+demand nothing which, granted, would introduce confusion and disorder
+among the social forces.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not so much of woman's rights that I would speak. I am not
+afraid but that she will possess these in due time, as fast as her
+nature and true place and mission in the world come to be more fully
+understood. I am far more anxious that she should come into such more
+perfect understanding.</p>
+
+<p>Woman has always been a puzzle, an enigma, to man. When, in the pride of
+his anatomical skill, he has essayed to make her his study, thinking to
+master the secret of her curious physical being, he has been forced to
+stop short of his purpose, dumb and blind in the presence of that
+wondrous complexity that no science of his own can master; and no
+casuist has yet solved the <i>why</i> of her equally wonderful and complex
+mental and spiritual being. They have made Reason, cold, critical,
+judge, the test; but the fine, delicate essence of her real being has
+always eluded it. When Love seeks the solution&mdash;the large, generous
+Love, that is one day to sit as the judge of all things, supreme over
+purblind human Reason&mdash;then <i>she</i> will be understood, for she will yield
+to the asking of that all-seeing One. This will be when the world is
+ripe for the advent of woman, who shall rule through love, the highest
+rule of all. Slowly, slowly, though surely, is the world ascending,
+through the wondrous secret chain of <i>influences</i> binding her to the
+moral order of the universe, to the height of this supernal law of love;
+and there, in that new and holy kingdom, woman's crown and sceptre await
+her.</p>
+
+<p>But who shall say that a glimmer of this future royal beauty and glory
+has yet dawned upon her?</p>
+
+<p>If man has misunderstood woman, she has none the less misunderstood
+herself. Indeed, her feet have for ages been treading debatable ground,
+that has shaken beneath her through the clashings of man's ignorance and
+her own vague, restless clamors and aimlessness. She has felt the
+stirrings within of that real being she was created, but has never dared
+to assert herself, or, to speak more truly, has only known to assert
+herself in the wrong direction. False voices there have been without
+number, but not even yet has true womanhood been able, in spite of its
+irrepressible longings, to utter that clear, free, elevated speech that
+shall yet stir the keenest pulses of the world.</p>
+
+<p>As it is, the world has nearly outgrown the petty jealousy, the cool
+assumption of inferiority, the flippant criticism of her weaknesses, the
+insulting catering to her foibles, with which woman has been accustomed
+to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the
+ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as
+much relative importance as man; that without her he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> will in vain
+aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and
+regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that
+wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all
+oppression and injustice practised upon her has been sure in the end to
+rebound upon himself. If there is one thing more than another which, at
+any given period and in any particular nation, has pointed to the true
+state of society along the scale of advancement, it has been the degree
+of woman's elevation; the undercurrents of history have all set steadily
+and significantly in the direction of the truth, which the world has
+been slow to accept and make use of, indeed, that society nears
+perfection only in the proportion in which woman has been honored and
+enfranchised; in which she has had opportunity and encouragement to work
+and act in her own proper and lawful sphere.</p>
+
+<p>Those who have gone the farthest in claiming special rights for woman
+have generally based their demands upon a virtual abandonment of the
+idea of <i>sex</i>, except in a physical sense. Here is a primary,
+fundamental error. There is unquestionably a sex of mind, of soul, and
+he who ignores or denies this is, it seems to me, studying his subject
+without the key which alone will unlock it.</p>
+
+<p>Another error which many of the advocates of <i>woman's rights</i> have
+fallen into, is that of assuming that those conditions are weaknesses,
+disabilities, which God and nature have attested to be her crowning
+glory and power. Or, rather, this second error results naturally and
+most logically from the still more vital one of assuming that her sphere
+is intended to be no way different from man's.</p>
+
+<p>And still another, equally false and mischievous, would place her in
+antagonism to man upon the question of comparative excellence and of
+precedence in the scale of being.</p>
+
+<p>A brief analysis of some of the points of difference between the mind
+masculine and the mind feminine will show the futility of confounding
+the two, or of drawing any useless or invidious comparisons. They are as
+distinct in their normal action as any two things can well be. I begin,
+then, by dividing our whole conscious human life into two comprehensive
+departments, expressed by the generic terms, thought&mdash;feeling;
+reflection&mdash;spontaneity; knowledge&mdash;emotion; perception&mdash;reception;
+reason or intellect&mdash;affection or heart. The intelligent being unites
+these conditions&mdash;he is supreme in but one. Man reasons&mdash;woman feels;
+man analyzes&mdash;woman generalizes; man reaches his conclusions by
+induction&mdash;woman seizes hers by intuition. There is just the difference,
+<i>in kind</i>, between a man's mind and a woman's that there is between that
+of a man of genius and a man of talent. Genius grasps the idea, and
+works from it outward; talent moulds the form in which the already
+created idea may be embodied. Genius is creative, comprehensive,
+intuitive, all-seeing; talent is acute, one-sided, cumulative,
+inductive. The men of genius will ever be found to be gifted with this
+<i>womanly</i> quality of mind&mdash;the power of seizing truth, ideas, with the
+heart and soul, through love, rather than with the understanding,
+through reason.</p>
+
+<p>Woman understands faith, or the taking things on trust; she has no love
+for that logical process of thought whereby, step by step, man delights
+to prove a fact in nature or law with mathematical precision and
+certainty. With the hard details and closely connected steps which make
+up the body of any science, mathematical, physical, or metaphysical, she
+has no patience. Her mind is not receptive of formulas or syllogisms.
+She comprehends results, but is incurious as to causes. She knows what
+love or benevolence means, under its triple form of charity, mercy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>
+magnanimity, which, like a sea, surrounds the universe; she has no idea
+of law and justice, which are the eternal pillars thereof. If man feels
+or loves, it is because his reason is convinced; woman's affections go
+beyond reason, and without its aid, into the clear realm of ultimate
+belief. This is why there are so few skeptics in religious things among
+our sex. Woman's mental and spiritual constitution render belief or
+faith easy and natural. She is receptive in all the parts of her being.</p>
+
+<p>I conclude, therefore, that in the outer world of fact, of
+demonstration, of volitions and knowledges, of tangible proofs and
+causalities, of positive and logical effects of reason, of all outward
+and material processes, man is supreme; while in that finer, higher,
+more subtile sphere of intuitions, loves, faiths, spiritual convictions,
+which overtop our actual life, and lead it up from grossness to glory,
+woman is the oracle and priestess. In the basic qualities of our nature
+man is stronger&mdash;woman, in those which, in grace, beauty, and sweetness,
+taper nicely toward its apex.</p>
+
+<p>But are the two spheres therefore at war? By no means. Are they at all
+independent of each other? Are they not rather conjoined indissolubly?
+It is a fatal mistake which places an antagonism between the two. There
+should be between them harmony as sweet as that which moves the
+concentric rings of Saturn. Untaught by the presence and inspiration of
+woman, man becomes a cold, dry petrifaction, constantly obeying the
+centripetal force of his being, and adoring <i>self</i>. Without his basal
+firmness and strength, woman, in whom the centrifugal force is stronger,
+remains a weak, vacillating, impulsive creature, feebly swayed by the
+tides of emotion, lacking self-poise, and aimless and vagrant.</p>
+
+<p>But teach her to reason&mdash;man to feel; open up to her the sources of
+knowledge, and cause him to learn the times of the tides of affection;
+cultivate her intellect and his heart, and in the healthy action and
+reaction consequent upon such a balance of forces, you have the true
+relationship established between the sexes, the relationship which the
+Creator pronounced perfect in the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen that while I attribute to woman a certain superiority
+both of nature and function, as to the highest part of the nature common
+to both, I at the same time assert her inferiority in what may be called
+its fundamental attributes, those which lie nearest to the constant and
+successful prosecution of mundane affairs, and, consequently, I also
+establish the fact of her absolute and inevitable dependence in such
+sense on man. But do I thus degrade her, or in effect annul this
+asserted superiority? Because man, and the strength, amplitude, and
+stability of his more practical nature, form a sure basis upon which she
+may rest, do I any the less make her the very crown and perfection of
+God's human handiwork? Assuredly not. The truth is, if, instead of
+making comparison where, from the nature of the case, comparison is
+almost precluded, so great is the difference between them, I were to say
+that each is the complement or counterpart of the other, and that,
+alone, each is but a half sphere, and imperfectly rounded at that, I
+should more nearly approach to accuracy. To make the perfect whole which
+the Creator had in His idea, the two halves must be united. And so I
+dignify the oldest of human institutions&mdash;marriage. I accord to it the
+very perfection of wisdom, beauty, utility, adaptation. I am aware that
+in so speaking I hold to an old-fashioned belief, and tread
+incontinently, not only on a notion afloat among some of the
+<i>strong-minded</i> of my sex at the present day, that this institution is
+nothing more nor less than an engine of selfish and despotic power on
+the one hand, and of slavish subjection on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> other; but on the more
+moderate idea that it is not desirable for all women, nor even for a
+majority. But I still think that this state of union is the most
+natural, beneficent, satisfying condition possible for all of both
+sexes&mdash;the condition most conducive to the highest, widest, happiest
+development of the individual man or woman, especially the latter, for
+it is through marriage only, through the beautiful and sacred wifehood
+and motherhood which that institution guarantees in purity and holiness,
+that woman's highest nature finds scope and opportunity. And I make no
+exceptions. On the contrary, I should say that the exceptions which
+might occur should invariably be counted as misfortunes. Not that many
+good, true, noble women do not live and die unmarried. <i>Circumstances</i>,
+that inflexible arbiter of human life, as it often seems, may strangely
+turn into wide and unaccustomed channels the love, the devotion, the
+energy, the self-sacrifice, that, in their pure, strong action, make
+woman's best development, and so the world, the needy people of the
+world, humanity at large, may receive the immediate benediction of it.
+Let no woman who, alone it may be, goes steadfastly on her way of duty
+and self-abnegation, think she has lived in vain because the special lot
+of woman has been denied her. If not happiness, which comes from content
+and satisfaction, yet there is something higher, diviner still, arising
+from duty done and trials endured&mdash;blessedness. But such exceptions do
+not, I conceive, invalidate the general fact that marriage was intended
+to be the channel for the vast aggregate of human happiness and
+improvement. I speak of marriage as it should be, as it might be, as it
+will one day be, when men and women have acquainted themselves with the
+laws, physical and spiritual, which were intended to adjust these unions
+between the sexes in a harmonious manner, according to natural
+sympathies and affinities; laws, infallible, inherent in the individual
+constitution, and which, if understood and enforced, would obviate much
+of the sin, misfortune, and misery in the earth. It is a great and
+curious question, how much of the pain, suffering, and evil so rife
+among men, is due to the one-sided, blindfold, inconsiderate, and
+unsuitable marriages every day taking place; filling the homes of the
+land with discontent, bickerings, disorder, and continual strife, from
+the jostling together of antipathetic elements; cursing society with the
+influences derived from character formed and nurtured in such pestilent
+domestic atmospheres; and sending out thousands of unhealthy,
+misorganized, wrongly educated beings, the fruit of these <i>dis</i>unions,
+to work ill both to themselves and their race. The world has much yet to
+learn with regard to the conditions necessary to a true and legitimate
+marriage of the sexes. There are thousands of illegal unions that have
+been blessed by church and magistrate, which yet carry only ban in their
+train. Whether read literally or not, the old, old story of the
+temptation and the fall has a significance not often dreamed of in
+respect to this question of marriage. It was a disturbance of the pure
+and perfect allegiance of each to the other, no less than a fall from
+the intimate communion of both with the Father of spirits. And a thicker
+darkness rests over the means whereby the institution of marriage may be
+rescued from its degradation, and man and woman be reinstated in the
+loyalty they owe to each other, than over the means by which the
+creature may make himself acceptable to the offended Creator; inasmuch
+as the former is left, without any special revelation, to the slow
+process of thought among men, to the workings of experience and the
+results of observation. And these laws are age-long in their evolutions.
+But when men and women have learned to look within themselves, have
+turned an intelligent eye upon the necessities of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> their threefold
+being, and when they recognize the God-made laws regulating these
+necessities, and have begun to mate themselves accordingly, the world
+will have received a powerful impulse toward its promised millennial
+epoch.</p>
+
+<p>Such, then, being, in brief, the relation of woman to man, it is
+necessary to inquire, as pertinent to my subject, not so much whether
+man gives her all the rights within his own sphere which she may
+beneficially claim, but whether she has yet understood the weight and
+significance of her own position in the scale of being, and has
+exercised all the rights consequent therefrom. To know is far easier
+than to live according to knowledge. It is to be feared that women
+themselves have but a poor appreciation of the ideal of true womanhood.
+Oh, is it not time this ideal should be worthily understood? Has not
+poor suffering humanity borne the burden of its woes long enough, and
+will not woman help to lift it from the tired, stooping shoulders? For
+she may. How? Simply by working out her own divinely appointed mission.
+And is this not broad and absorbing enough? See what are some of its
+objects of influence and endeavors. First, here are the very faintest
+beginnings of intelligent existence to impress and mould&mdash;the embryos of
+character to stamp. And who knows how important this moulding and
+stamping may be? To go farther back still: Who knows what indelible
+constitution may be, is, fixed upon the individual organism, for better,
+for worse, by the authors of its life, that, if evil, no training, no
+education, no work of grace, not even omnipotence, can expunge or alter?
+This motherhood of woman, in its awful sanctity and mystery, in its
+bearings upon the immortality of personal identity, is a fearful
+dignity. Therein consists the first and chief claim of Woman to honor
+and reverence. She who has been a mother has measured the profoundest as
+well as the most exalted experience of which humanity is susceptible.
+Let her see to it that she honor herself.</p>
+
+<p>Here is the white and plastic tablet of the new-born soul. Let woman
+fear and tremble to write on that, for the writing shall confront her
+forever. Like the Roman Pilate, <i>what she has written, she has written</i>.
+Here are the purblind human instincts to direct and culture; the
+vagrant, unbridled hosts of the spontaneous emotions to be tutored and
+restrained; the affections and the tastes to be trained toward the true,
+the beautiful, and the good; the warring passions to be curbed and
+disciplined; in short, the whole glorious domain of the heart and soul,
+the moral and spiritual nature, is to be surveyed, studied, swayed by
+that potential agency which woman possesses in a very eminent
+degree&mdash;personal influence. By this agency, informed and vitalized by
+love, she becomes the great educator in the great school of life, in the
+family, in society, in the world. Women do not sufficiently appreciate
+the importance of their work as the architects of character.
+<i>Character!</i> That, after all, is the man, the enduring individual, the
+real <i>I</i>, to whom the Creator has said, <i>Live forever</i>! Character is
+simply what education and habit make of a person, starting from the
+foundation of his inherited organic idiosyncrasies. It is a result&mdash;the
+work of time and countless shapings and impressings. It is not what a
+man thinks of himself, nor what others think of him, but <i>what he really
+is in the sight of God, his Maker</i>. This is what shall come out, at
+last, from the obscurations and uncertainties of this lower atmosphere
+into the clear, truthful light of eternity; shall cast off the devices,
+the flimsy pretences, the temporary shows, the convenient disguises, of
+this mortal life of mixed substance and shadow, and stand a bare, naked,
+unclothed fact of being before itself, the universe, and God. Alas! what
+multitudes of real dwarfs go out every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> day, 'unhouseled,' into that
+searching light of eternity.</p>
+
+<p>To be the builder of a fair and comely character; to chisel out a work
+that shall please the eye of God Himself, in whose estimation Beauty,
+being His own attribute, is a most holy thing; to see that work of
+beauty take its place in the well-filled gallery of eternity, and to
+know that it is your own immortal monument&mdash;is this not scope enough,
+honor enough, praise and glory enough? If women would but rise to the
+height of their real mission, and faithfully and earnestly assume the
+rights and fulfil the duties which God has specially devolved upon them,
+they would so lead man and society up to a higher point that the claims
+they put forth need not be discussed for an hour; because, then, having
+proved their adaptability to make good use of every lawful right,
+society, which in the end always adjusts its forces properly and
+instinctively, will have tacitly fallen into the necessity or the
+feasibility of granting them.</p>
+
+<p>Let man erect his scientific formulas, his schools of philosophy, his
+structures of reason and thought; let him bid the giant forces of nature
+go in harness for his schemes of improvement or aggrandizement; and by
+all means let the intellect of woman be cultivated to comprehend
+intelligently the marvels of man's work; let her, if she will, measure
+the stellar distances, study the mechanical principles or the learned
+professions, make a picture or write a book; and there have been women,
+true and noble women, who have done all these, women who have proved
+themselves capable of as high attainments, as keen and subtile thought
+as man; but let her never for such as these abdicate her own nobler
+work, neglecting the greater for the less. If a woman has a special
+gift, let her exercise it; if she has a particular mission, let her work
+it out. Few women, though, are of this elect class. I do not despise,
+but rather encourage, natural gifts. But I would have women never forget
+that it is not for what they may possibly add to the sum of human
+knowledge that the world values them, primarily. <i>That</i> some man is as
+likely to do as not; but what women fail to do in their own peculiar
+sphere, <i>no man can possibly do</i>.</p>
+
+<p>When I aver that woman was intended to be a predominant influence in the
+world through her moral and spiritual being, principally, I must not be
+understood as depreciating the value to her of mere subjective
+knowledge. So far from this, I believe that her means of acquiring
+knowledge of all kinds should be limited only by her capacity. The more
+her intellect is enlightened and disciplined, the better will she be
+qualified to exert that refining, elevating influence which is expected
+of her. There can be no beauty without the element of strength; there
+can be no love worth the name without knowledge. Were her sense of
+justice, her logical powers, her reflective faculties carefully trained
+and exercised, her peculiar womanly graces of soul would shine with
+tenfold lustre. I mean, simply, that knowledge is specially valuable to
+her objectively&mdash;as a means, and the best means, to the highest end of
+her being, which is concrete rather than abstract.</p>
+
+<p>Briefly, I say, then, it is in the great departments of ethics, of
+&aelig;sthetics, of religious and spiritual things, that woman is a vital
+power in human life.</p>
+
+<p>I have thrown out these general preliminary thoughts concerning the
+nature of woman, and her relations to man and to society, chiefly with
+reference to a phase of the subject which has not seemed to engage the
+attention either of women themselves or of those who assume to advocate
+their cause. It is the important consideration whether, in a free and
+republican land, woman holds any certain and special relation toward the
+Government. In other words, have American women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> any vital share or
+interest in this grand, free Government of ours? With all the emphasis
+of a profound conviction, I, answer, <i>Yes</i>. Such a touching and intimate
+interest as no women ever had before in any Government under the sun.
+And why?</p>
+
+<p><i>Because the principles embodied in and represented by it have made her
+what she is, and they alone can make her what she hopes to be.</i></p>
+
+<p>If it be true that the position of woman in society is a sure test of
+its civilization, then is our American society already in the van of
+progress. Nowhere else in the world is woman so free, so respected, so
+obeyed, so beloved; nowhere else is the ideal of womanhood so
+chivalrously worshipped and protected. In the spirit of our political
+theory, that no class of society is to be regarded as permanently and
+necessarily disabled from progress and elevation&mdash;to which, in our
+practice, we have hitherto made but <i>one</i> wicked and shameful
+exception&mdash;and under the influence of the powerful tendency of our
+system to <i>individualism</i>, woman has been allowed a freedom heretofore
+unparalleled, and <i>onward and upward</i> is still the word.</p>
+
+<p>I do not claim perfection for our system. But I say we have the germs of
+the healthiest national development. All that remains is to carry
+forward those germs to maturity, and let them show their legitimate
+results unhampered. That is what we want, what we claim. Society here is
+unformed, in the rough. We lack the outward grace and polish belonging
+only to old societies. We shall yet attain these, as well as some other
+desirable things; but I believe that in no other country in the world is
+there so much genuine, delicate, universal devotion manifested for woman
+as among the Americans. Have you seen a boy of fourteen, shy, awkward,
+uncouth in manner, rough in speech, but with a great, tender heart
+thumping in his bosom? And did you know of the idolatrous worship he
+could not wholly conceal for some fair, sweet, good girl older than
+himself, a woman, even&mdash;a worship, which was not love, if love be other
+than a high and tender sentiment, but which was capable of filling his
+being to overflow with its glory and richness? I liken our American
+chivalry to this. And it is this instinctive natural politeness of our
+men toward women that, as much as anything else, keeps us from being
+rude and unrefined while yet in our first adolescence.</p>
+
+<p>I am aware that, hitherto, the South has laid claim to the lion's share
+of this gallant spirit, as it has of many other polite and social
+qualities. But we do not so readily now, as a few years ago, yield to
+these Southern assumptions. We know now for just how much they stand.
+And we know, too, in the better light of this hour, that it is not
+possible for a very high and pure ideal of womanhood to be conceived in
+the atmosphere of a system which, as slavery does, persistently, on
+principle, and on a large scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no
+matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the
+greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which
+stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and
+with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breath turns to commit
+the direst offences against the peace and purity of womanhood; but that
+true and hearty, though simple and unostentatious, reverence for the
+sex, that teaches men to regard all women as worthy of freedom, respect,
+and protection, simply by virtue of their womanhood. I say not that this
+chivalry is a Southern, but that it is an <i>American</i> trait. As such I am
+proud of it.</p>
+
+<p>But does this high and honored place they hold in the hearts of their
+countrymen devolve no corresponding responsibility upon American women?
+Is it not a momentous inquiry how far they fall short of the high and
+com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span>manding standard of thought and action demanded of them in order to
+meet this heavy obligation? It seems to me that the time is fully ripe
+for the clearer perception of the fact, that because women are not men,
+it does not follow that they are not in an important sense citizens. And
+this, without any reference to the question whether they should be
+permitted to vote and to legislate; though, as to the former, I do not
+know of a single valid objection to the exercise of the privilege, while
+there are several weighing in its favor; and as to the latter, it seems
+to me that one single consideration would forever, under the present
+constitution of things, debar her from a share in direct and positive
+legislation. It is as follows: The central idea of all properly
+constituted society, without which society would be an incoherent chaos,
+and governments themselves but the impotent lords of anarchy and
+misrule, is <i>the home</i>. Of the home, woman, from the very nature of the
+case, is the inspiriting genius, the ever-present and ever-watchful
+guardian. And the home, with its purities, its sanctities, its
+retiracies, its reticences, is far removed from the noise and wranglings
+of popular assemblies, the loud ambitions and selfish chicaneries of
+political arenas. The very foundation, pivotal ideas of human nature
+would be undermined by such publicity. The value of the home, as the
+nursery of whatever is pure, lovely, holy in the human soul, rests
+absolutely on the preservation of the modest purity and grace of woman.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, is woman's influence as a citizen in a republican land to be
+exercised, if she be excluded from positive legislation? I answer, by
+the moral effect of her personal influence in the formation of mind and
+character; by her work as the great educator in the home and in society.
+If hers be not a moral and spiritual influence, it is none at all for
+good. And of all the powers for good in a republic, this is the
+strongest, most beneficent, did woman rightly comprehend the issue.</p>
+
+<p>The purity, safety, and perpetuity of a free government rest,
+ultimately, not so much on forms of law, on precedents, on the
+ascendency of this or that party or administration, but on the
+intelligence, morality, and devotion to freedom of the people. What
+should woman care to legislate, when she may wield such an engine of
+power as education puts into her hands; when she may mould the minds and
+inspire the souls of those who are to be the future legislators; when
+she may, even now, put forth a direct and immediate influence upon those
+who are the legislators of the present time? For her influence on
+society is twofold, direct and reflex, present and prospective; it is
+the most powerful known, the most subtile and secret and determining,
+viz., <i>personal</i> influence.</p>
+
+<p>To this end, therefore, that she may influence in the right direction,
+women need to inform themselves, to acquire a knowledge of the
+principles on which our system rests, and to become thoroughly imbued
+with their spirit. This will necessitate an acquaintance with the nature
+and details of our political creed, of which our women, especially, are
+lamentably ignorant. How many out of every hundred, do you suppose, have
+even read the Constitution, for instance? You may say that the majority
+of men have never studied it either, even of the voters. I admit the
+fact. There is a terrible lack of information among even men on public
+subjects. But I think this: if women were to educate themselves and
+their children, all whom they influence, indeed, to make these subjects
+a matter of <i>personal interest</i>, instead of regarding them as foreign
+matters, well enough for lawyers and politicians, perhaps, to
+understand, or for those who expect to fill office, but of no manner of
+importance to a person in strictly private life, this ignorance would
+come to an end. This shifting of personal respon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>sibility by the great
+majority is the bane of our system. The truth is, no one, in a
+republican government, can lead an absolutely private career. As one who
+exercises the elective franchise, or one who influences the same, be it
+man or woman, there is no dodging the responsibility of citizenship. A
+better State of information on public affairs, also, will induce a
+correct conception of a certain class of ideas which, more than any
+others, perhaps, tend to strengthen, deepen, broaden, solidify the
+mental powers&mdash;ideas of absolute law and justice. As I have before said,
+the female mind is deficient in this particular.</p>
+
+<p>To understand their government and institutions, then, is the first step
+in the attainment of the standard demanded of American women; or, in
+other words, an increase of political knowledge&mdash;a more thorough
+political education.</p>
+
+<p>Another step is, the enlargement and strengthening of their patriotism.
+The former step, too, will conduce to this, and be its natural
+consequence. I do not mean alone that loose and vagrant sentiment which
+commonly passes for patriotism, which is aroused at some particular
+occasion and slumbers the rest of the time; which is spasmodic,
+temporary, impulsive, and devoid of principle; but that love of country
+founded on knowledge and conviction; a living faith of the heart based
+upon duty and principle; and which is, therefore, all-pervading,
+abiding, intelligent, governing thought and action, and conforming the
+life to the inner spirit. That sort of patriotism that lives as well in
+peace time as in war time; that makes the heart throb as sympathetically
+in behalf of country every day in the year as on the Fourth of July;
+that leads us to conform our habits of life and thought to the spirit of
+our institution and policy; that makes us as jealous of the honor, the
+consistent greatness of our country when all men speak well of her, as
+when her foes are bent upon her destruction. This <i>habit of mind</i> is
+what I mean, rather than any transient emotion of heart; an enlightened
+and habitual spirit of patriotism.</p>
+
+<p>I give American women all credit due them for the patriotic temper they
+have evinced since this war began. I say that never have women showed
+more loyalty and zeal for country than the women of the North. Let
+sanitary fairs and commissions, let soldiers' aid societies from one end
+of the land to the other, and in every nook and corner of it, let our
+hospitals everywhere attest this heartfelt love and devotion on the part
+of our women. It is a noble spectacle, and my heart thrills at the
+thought of it. We have many noble ones who will stand in history along
+with England's Florence Nightingale and the 'Mother of the Gracchi,'
+those eternally fair and tender women, fit for the love and worship of
+the race. The want is not in the feeling of patriotism, but in the
+habitual principle and duty of the same. Since the war began, the fire
+has not slackened. But how was it before the war, and how will it be
+after it?</p>
+
+<p>To prove what I say, let me dwell a moment on two or three of the most
+prominent faults of our women, pronounced such by all the world. Of
+these, the most mischievous and glaring, the most ruinous in thousands
+of cases, is <i>extravagance</i>. Wastefulness is almost become a trait of
+our society. American women, especially, are profuse and lavish of money
+in dress, in equipage, in furniture, in houses, in entertainments, in
+every particular of life. Everywhere this foolish and wasteful use of
+money challenges the surprise and sarcasm of the observant foreign
+tourist through our country. Perhaps the largeness and immensity of our
+land, its resources and material, as well as the wonderful national
+advance we have already made, tends to cultivate in our people a feeling
+of profusion and a habit of extravagant dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>play; but it is not in
+sympathy either with our creed or our profession.</p>
+
+<p>Were the money thus heedlessly expended made for them by slaves whom
+they had from infancy been taught to regard as created solely to make
+money for them to use and enjoy, this extravagant waste of money, while
+none the less selfish and inexcusable, would appear to grow
+spontaneously out of the arbitrary rule of slavery; or, if it had
+descended to them by legal or ancestral inheritance, there might be some
+show of reason for using it carelessly, though very small sense in so
+doing. But in a land where labor is the universal law; where, if a man
+makes money, he must work and sweat for its possession; when fortunes do
+not arise by magic, but must be built up slowly, painfully, at the
+expense of the nerve and sinew, the brain and heart of the builders, and
+these builders, not slaves, but our fathers, husbands, brothers; when a
+close attention to money-making is rapidly becoming a national badge,
+and is in danger of eating out entirely what is of infinitely more value
+than wealth&mdash;a high national integrity and conscience&mdash;and of sinking
+the immaterial and intellectual in the material and sensual; in such
+circumstances as these, I say, and under such temptations and dangers,
+it is a sin, an unnatural crime, to squander what costs so dear.</p>
+
+<p>Volumes might be written upon the frightful consequences of this
+extravagance in money matters, this living too fast and beyond their
+means, of which American women, especially, are guilty. Great financial
+crises, in which colossal schemes burst like bubbles, and vast estates
+are swallowed up like pebbles in the sea; commercial bankruptcies, in
+which honorable names are bandied on the lips of common rumor, and white
+reputations blackened by public suspicion; minds, that started in life
+with pure and honest principles, determined to win fortune by the
+straight path of rectitude, gradually growing distorted, gradually
+letting go of truth, honor, uprightness, and ending by enthroning gold
+in the place made vacant by the departed virtues; hearts, that were once
+responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that
+throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill
+through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and
+hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven,
+good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial
+success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager
+but fading eyes fixed earthward, dustward!</p>
+
+<p>Oh, it is a fearful thought that woman's extravagant desires and demands
+may thus kill all that is best and highest in those who should be her
+nearest and dearest. Yet, if this wide-spread evil of wastefulness is to
+be checked, it must be begun in the home, and by its guardian, woman.
+There is a movement lately inaugurated, looking to retrenchment in the
+matter of unnecessary expenditure, which, if it is to be regarded other
+than as a temporary expedient, is worthy of the patriotic enthusiasm
+which called it forth. I allude to the dress-reform movement made by the
+loyal women of the great Northern cities. The <i>spirit</i> of this movement
+I could wish to see illustrated both during the continuance of and after
+the war. It is this economical habit of mind for the sake of patriotic
+principle, that I regard as a great step in the attainment of the
+desired standard for American women.</p>
+
+<p>Another plain fault of our women, and one which in a measure is the
+cause of the fault above noticed, is the wild chase after and copying of
+European fashions. We are accused of being a nation of copyists. This is
+more than half true. And why we should be, I cannot understand. Are we
+<i>never</i> to have anything original, American? Are we always to be
+con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>tent to be servile imitators of Europe in our art, literature,
+social life, everything, except mere mechanical invention? I am thankful
+that we are beginning to have an art, a literature, of our very own. Let
+us also have a <i>fashion</i>, that shall be, distinctively, if not entirely,
+American. There is surely enough of us, of our splendid country, our
+institutions, our theories, our brave, free people, to build for
+ourselves, from our own foundation, and with our own material. But
+American Women have yet to inspire society with this patriotic ambition.</p>
+
+<p>Not what is becoming or suitable to her, but what is <i>the fashion</i>, does
+the American woman buy; not what she can afford to purchase, but what
+her neighbors have, is too commonly the criterion. This constant pursuit
+of Fashion, with her incessant changes, this emulation of their
+neighbors in the manifold ways in which money and time can be alike
+wasted, and not the necessary and sacred duties of home, the personal
+attention and effort which the majority of American women have to give
+to their household affairs, produce that <i>lack of time</i> that is offered
+as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is
+which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the
+mind blank and nerveless except when thus superficially excited.</p>
+
+<p>This duty of <i>self-culture</i> I would notice as one of the demands of the
+times upon American women in the attainment of the proposed standard. A
+wide, liberal, generous self-culture, of intellect, of taste, of
+conscience, for the sake of the better fulfilment of the mission to
+which, as an American citizen, every woman in the land is called. We do
+not begin to realize this. It is a great defect in our social system,
+that, when a woman has left school and settled down in life, she
+considers it the signal for her to quit all mental acquisition except
+what she may gather from her desultory reading, and, henceforth, her
+family and her immediate neighborhood absorb her whole soul under
+ordinary circumstances. The great majority of our countrywomen thus grow
+careworn, narrow-minded, self-absorbed. Now this is not right&mdash;it is not
+necessary. A woman's first, most important duty is in her home; but this
+need not clip the wings of her spirit, so that thought and affection
+cannot go out into the great world, and feel themselves a part of its
+restless, throbbing, many-sided life; brain and heart need not stagnate,
+even if busy, work-a-day life does claim her first endeavors. Indeed,
+the great danger to our women is not so much that they will become
+trifling and frivolous, as that they will become narrow-minded and
+selfish.</p>
+
+<p>But these vices of extravagance and excessive devotion to fashion, of
+which I have spoken, are due, largely, to a still more radical defect in
+our social education. I mean its <i>anti-republican spirit</i>. This is our
+crowning absurdity. We are good democrats&mdash;in theory. It is a pity that
+our practice does not bear out our theory, for the sake of the homely
+virtue of consistency. To a great many otherwise sensible people our
+simple republican ways are distasteful, and they are apt to look with,
+admiring, envious eyes on the conventional life of foreign lords, not
+considering how burdened with forms it is, and full of the selfishness,
+the pride and arrogance of the privileged and titled few, at the bitter
+expense of the suffering, untitled many. The aping of aristocratic
+pretensions has been a much-ridiculed foible of American women. It is
+certain that American society needs republicanizing in all its grades.
+We have widely departed from the simplicity of the early days and of the
+founders of the republic, in social life, just as in our political
+course we had suffered the vital essence of our organic law to become a
+dead thing, and the whole machinery of the Government to work reversely
+to its intention. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> the cause has been the same in each case. The
+spirit of a government and the theories embodying it are the reflection
+of the social condition of a given age and people, so that the one will
+never be of a higher order than the other; while it is, also, equally
+true, that the best and most advanced political theories may be suffered
+to languish in operation, or become wholly dormant, from the influence
+of social causes. Thus it was that the demoralising effect of human
+slavery did, up to the time of the great shock which the nation received
+in the spring of 1861&mdash;a shock which galvanized it into life, and sent
+the before vitiated blood coursing hotly, and, at last, healthfully
+through all the veins and arteries of the national body&mdash;persistently
+encroach alike upon Government and society. The slime of that serpent
+was over everything in the North as well as the South, and if it did not
+kill out the popular virtue and patriotism as completely here as there,
+where it is intimately interwoven with the life of the people, the
+difference is due to that very cause, as well as to the inextinguishable
+vitality that God has conferred on the genius of human liberty, so that
+when betrayed, hunted, starved, outlawed, she yet seeks some impregnable
+fastness, and subsists on manna from the Divine Hand. This, then, is the
+fourth step in the attainment of the true ideal of character for
+American women&mdash;<i>the effort to renew society in the actual simplicity of
+our republican institutions</i>. Women, American women, should hold dear as
+anything in life the preservation and purity of those blessed
+institutions, guaranteeing to them as they do all their eminent
+privileges, and founded as they are on that emancipating genius of
+Christianity, which, through every age, has pointed a finger of hope,
+love, encouragement to woman as a chief instrument in the world's
+promised elevation and enfranchisement.</p>
+
+<p>While dwelling upon the faults of American women, I would at the same
+time do full credit to their virtues. I believe that they occupy as high
+a place as any women in the world, even a higher. But I trust that they
+will rise to the height of the demands which the changed times and the
+exigencies of the situation are pressing upon them, and will continue to
+press. This war has clearly and forcibly eliminated truths and
+principles which the long rule of the slave power had wellnigh eclipsed;
+it has been a very spear of Ithuriel, at whose keen touch men and
+principles start up in their real, not their simulated character. During
+its three years of progress, the national education has been advanced
+beyond computation. When it is over, things, ideas, will not go back to
+the old standpoint. Then will arise the new conditions, demands,
+possibilities. If there is one truth that has been unmistakably
+developed by the war, it is the controlling moral power and sanction
+which a free government derives from woman. And this has been shown not
+only in the influence for good which the loyal women of the North have
+contributed for the aid of the Government, but with equal power in the
+influence for evil which the Southern women have exerted for its
+destruction. I suppose it is true that this war for slavery has received
+its strongest, fiercest continuing impulses from the women of the South.
+Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm, the persistency, the heroic
+endurance, the self-sacrifice they have manifested. Only had it been in
+a good cause!</p>
+
+<p>Just here let me say a word in behalf of these Southern women. There is
+a disposition on the part of the Northern public, forming their opinion
+from the instances of fierce spite and vindictiveness, of furious scorn
+and hatred, which have been chronicled in the reports of army
+correspondents and in the sensation items of the newspapers, to regard
+them as little short of demons in female shape. All this is naturally
+work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>ing a corresponding dislike and ill-feeling among the masses North.
+To such I would say: These Southern sisters are not demons, but made of
+the same flesh and blood, and passions and affections as yourselves. The
+difference between you is purely one of circumstances and training, of
+locality&mdash;above all, of education and institutions. It is as true that
+<i>institutions are second nature</i> as that <i>habit</i> is.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar faults of Southern women they share with their Northern
+sisters, only in a vastly enhanced degree; and besides these, they have
+others, born of and nurtured by that terrible slavery system under whose
+black shadow they live and die. Their idleness, their lack of neatness
+and order, their dependence, their quick and sometimes cruel passions,
+their unreason, their contempt of inferiors, their vanity and arrogance,
+their ignorance, their lightness and superficiality, are all the
+outgrowth of its diabolical influences. They are, in fact, no more idle,
+thriftless, passionate, or supercilious, than Northern women would be in
+similar circumstances. It is too much the habit among the unreflecting,
+in judging of the Southern masses in their hostile attitude toward their
+lawful Government, to give less weight than it deserves to the necessary
+and inevitable tendency upon the mind and character of such an
+institution as African slavery; and to let the blame be of a personal
+and revengeful nature, which should fall most heavily on the sin itself,
+the dire crime against God and society, against himself and his fellow
+man, which the individual is all his life taught is no crime but a
+positive good. This slavery is woman's peculiar curse, bearing almost
+equally with its deadly, hideous weight on the white woman of the
+dominant class as upon the black slave woman. And yet how deluded they
+are! If that curse does come to an utter end in the South, as it surely
+will, I shall hail, as one of the grandest results of its extinction,
+next to the justice due the oppressed people of color, the emancipation
+of the white women of that fair land, all of them, slaveholders and
+non-slaveholders, from an influence too withering and deadly for
+language to depict. Oh, when shall that scapegoat, slavery, with its
+failures and losses and shortcomings, its frauds and sins and woes, be
+sent off into the wilderness of non-existence, to be heard from
+nevermore? God speed the hour!</p>
+
+<p>But with all their faults, they have many and shining virtues. Though
+the ideal of a Southern woman commonly received at the North and abroad,
+is not true to the life, being neither so perfect nor so imperfect as
+their eulogists, on the one hand, and their detractors, on the other,
+would fain make it to be, there is yet much, very much, to elicit both
+love and admiration in her character.</p>
+
+<p>The Southern female mind is precocious, brilliant, impressible, ardent,
+impulsive, fanciful. The quickness of parts of many girls of fifteen is
+astonishing. I used often to think, what splendid women they would make,
+with the training and facilities of our Northern home and school
+education. But, as it was, they went under a cloud at seventeen,
+marrying early, and either sinking into the inanition of plantation
+life, or having their minds dissipated in a vain and frivolous round of
+idle and selfish gayeties. I compare their intellects to a rich tropical
+plant, which blossoms gorgeously and early, but rarely fruitens. The
+Southern women are, for the most part, a capable but undeveloped race of
+beings. With their precocity, like the exuberance of their vegetation,
+and with their quick, impassioned feelings, like their storm-freighted
+air, always bearing latent lightning in its bosom, they might become a
+something rich, rare, and admirable; but, never bringing thought up to
+the point of reflection; never learning self-control, nor the necessity
+of holding passion in abeyance; never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> getting beyond the degrading
+influence of intercourse with a race whose stolidity and servility, the
+inevitable result of their condition, on the one hand, are both the
+cause and effect of the habit of irresponsible power and selfish
+disregard of right fostered in the ruling class, on the other&mdash;what
+could be expected of them but to become splendid abortions?</p>
+
+<p>There is another consideration in connection with the excessive war
+spirit they have evinced, which may help to account for it. I have often
+had occasion to notice the habit the educated class of Southern women
+have of conversing familiarly with their male friends and relatives on
+political subjects, and to contrast it with the almost total reticence
+of Northern women on subjects of public interest. This, of course,
+induces a more immediate and personal interest in them, and the more
+intimate one's interest in a subject, the more easily enthusiasm is
+aroused toward it.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the very head and front, the bone and marrow of Southern politics
+for more than three decades, has been&mdash;slavery, and plans for its
+aggrandizement and perpetuation. <i>That</i> has been the ulterior object of
+all the past vociferations about <i>State rights</i> and <i>Southern rights</i>.
+Slavery is country, practically, with them, and as it lay at the root of
+their society, and its check or its extinction would, in their false
+view, overturn society itself, it was easy for the scheming, cunning
+leaders of the slave faction to adroitly transfer this enthusiasm, and
+to raise the watchword, which never yet among any people has been raised
+in vain, <i>Your homes and firesides</i>! When ever did women hear that cry
+unmoved?</p>
+
+<p>When <i>country</i>, that grand idea and object of human hope, pride, and
+affection, had degenerated into a section; and when a false and
+miserable <i>institution</i>, from its very nature terribly intimate with the
+life of society, became the most substantial feature of that section;
+what wonder if the war has at last, whatever it might have been at
+first, come to the complexion of a contest for home and fireside with
+the masses of the people, with the majority of the Southern women?</p>
+
+<p>The magnificent dreams and projects, too, of a great slave empire, that
+should swallow up territory after territory, and astonish the world with
+its wealth, power, and splendor, which were fused into life in the
+brains of the great apostles of slavery and secession, had their
+influence on minds which, like the minds of the Southern women, have a
+natural, innate love for the gorgeous, the splendid, the profuse, and
+showy; minds ambitious of, and accustomed to, rule, and impatient of
+control; minds already glazed over with the influence of the lying
+assertion, proved to their uncritical, passionate judgment by all the
+sophistical arguments of which their religious and political guides were
+capable, that slavery is the very best possible condition for the black
+man, and the relation of master the only true and natural one for the
+white. I say, I do not wonder at the Southern women so much. I pity them
+infinitely. Just think what they have been educated to believe, and then
+say if there is not something sadly splendid in the very spirit of
+endurance, of defiance, of sacrifice, however wrong and mistaken, they
+have shown. I pity them profoundly, for they are drinking to the lees
+the cup of suffering, of deprivation, of humiliation, of bitter loss,
+and stern retribution. And the end is not yet. Deeper chagrin and
+humiliation must be theirs; more loss, more devastation, more death, and
+ruin, before their proud hopes and visions are utterly crushed out of
+life. Oh, are <i>they</i> not being educated, too, as well as we of the
+North?</p>
+
+<p>When I think of all the grace, loveliness, and generosity of the many
+Southern women I have known and loved; when I recall the admirable
+qualities which distinguished them, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span> grace of manner, the social
+tact and address, the intellectual sprightliness, the openness and
+hospitality of soul, the kindliness and sympathy of heart, the Christian
+gentleness and charity; I can but say to my Northern sisters, These
+deluded women of the South would, in themselves, be worthy of your
+esteem and love, could the demon of secession and slavery once be
+exorcised. And I believe that when it is, and the poor, rent South sits
+clothed and in her right mind, subdued through sheer exhaustion of
+strength, and so made fit for the healthy recuperation that is one day
+to begin, the cause of our beloved country, and of humanity through this
+country, will have no more generous or loving supporters, ay, none so
+enthusiastic and devoted as they. I glory in the anticipation of the
+time when the ardent, impulsive, demonstrative South shall even lead the
+colder North in the manifestation of a genuine patriotism, worthy of the
+land and nation that calls it forth. We shall then have gained <i>a
+country</i>, indeed, instead of being, as heretofore, several sections of a
+country.</p>
+
+<p>The consistent moulding of society in the spirit of our political ideas
+is essential to securing us the respect of the world, and to vindicating
+the principles, themselves, on which having built, they are our sole
+claim to such honor and respect. As long as we fail so to do, we may be
+the wonder, and we are likely to be the jest of the onlooking world, but
+we never can be what we ought to be, its admired and beloved model. It
+seems to me there is less danger now than formerly of our failure in
+this important respect. The dangers, the expenses, the burdens, and
+losses of this fearful civil war will surely create in the hearts of the
+people everywhere, North and South, a revivified if not a new-born love
+for, and appreciation of, republican principles, and will teach them
+where the most insidious danger to them lies; not from open foes,
+foreign or domestic; not from anything inherent in those free
+principles; but from a cause exceedingly paradoxical: a democratic
+people leaving to a party, to a section, the Government which should be
+their very own; the virtue and intelligence of the nation absenting
+themselves from the national councils, thus making way for corruption
+and fraud to enter in an overwhelming flood; one half of the nation
+rocking its conscience to sleep with the false lullaby of commercial
+greatness and material prosperity, and the other, left to do the
+governing, with seemingly no conscience at all, going to work with
+satanic directness and acuteness, to undermine the principles thus left
+without a guardian, and to inject the black blood of slavery into the
+veins of the body politic, till the name <i>democracy</i> became a misnomer
+the most wretched, a sarcasm the most touching. I do not imagine we
+shall ever again go back to that. It must be that, in future, the
+American people will grow into the habit of demanding that an
+enlightened, patriotic statesmanship shall rule, instead of an
+unprincipled demagoguism. Also, that they will attend to it that better
+men are sent to Washington; men chosen because they represent most
+nearly the great national ideas and interests, which the people will
+require shall absorb legislation rather than any sectional institution
+whatever; and not because, primarily, they are the subservient idols of
+this or that party. It must be that, hereafter, party will be less and
+the nation more. Of course, parties will exist, necessarily; but if this
+great American people, having carried on to perfect success this war
+against a stupendous rebellion, and having gone through the school of
+knowledge and experience it has been to them, can again settle down into
+the mere political jobbery into which governmental affairs had
+deteriorated before the earthquake of war stirred up the dregs of
+things, it would be an instance of fruitless ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span>penditure of means and
+life, and of self-stultification, too pitiful for words&mdash;such an
+instance as the world has not yet seen, thanks to the ordained
+progression of the world.</p>
+
+<p>When peace returns to the land once more; when the fierce fever of blood
+and strife is quelled; when the vague fears and uncertainties of this
+period of transition are over, and the keen pangs and bloody sweat of
+the nation's new birth are all past&mdash;what will be the position of this
+American people? I tremble to contemplate it. It will be much like what
+I imagine the condition of a freed, redeemed soul to be, just escaped
+the thraldom, perplexity, and sin of this lower life, and entered on a
+purer, higher, freer plane of existence. Then comes reconstruction,
+reorganization, a getting acquainted with the new order of things, and
+the new duties and experiences to which it will give rise; then will be
+discoveries of new truths, and new applications of old; old errors and
+superstitions have been renounced, and facts and principles which have
+long lain in abeyance, smothered under a weight of neglect and
+unappreciation, will start into fresh magnitude. And, withal, will come
+a sense of the reality and security there is in this great change, and
+of infinite relief and blessedness therein, such as I suppose attends
+every change from a lower to a higher condition, from darkness to light,
+from cloud, mystery, and trouble, to the white air of peace and the
+clear shining of the sun of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p><i>Then</i>, think of the career that lies ahead of this regenerated nation.
+This war, fearful and costly as it is, was needed, to rouse men and
+women to the conviction that there is something more in a people's life
+than can be counted in dollars and cents; and that their strength
+consists not alone in commercial superiority or material development,
+but, principally, in virtue, justice, righteousness. It was needed, to
+give the lie to that impious and infidel assumption of the South that
+<i>Cotton is king</i>, and to prove that the God of this heaven-protected
+land is a true and jealous God, who will not give his glory to Baal. It
+was needed, to arrest the nation in the fearful mechanical tendency it
+was assuming, whereby it was near denying the most holy and vital
+principles of its being; and it was needed, to warm and quicken the
+almost dead patriotism of the masses, and to educate them anew in the
+high and pure sentiments they had suffered to be forgotten, and, in
+forgetting which, many another ration has gone to irretrievable decay
+and ruin.</p>
+
+<p>I trust in God that this people have not suffered many things in vain,
+and that the time is dawning when we shall be a <i>nation</i> indeed, a
+Christian nation, built upon those eternal ideas of truth, justice,
+right, charity, holiness, which would make us the ideal nation of the
+earth, dwelling securely under the very smile and benediction of
+Jehovah.</p>
+
+<p>In this time of which I speak, the people will see that to be a <i>nation</i>
+we must not be merely servile imitators of Old World ideas, but must
+develop our own <i>American ideas</i> in every department of government and
+society; thus, eventually, building up a national structure which shall,
+which need, yield to none, but may take precedence of all.</p>
+
+<p>We are too young, as yet, to have become such a nation, with its
+distinctive and separate features, each clearly marked and
+self-illustrating; but <i>not</i> too young to understand the necessity of
+working out our own special plan of civilization. As the American nation
+did not follow the course of all others, by mounting from almost
+impalpable beginnings up through successive stages to an assured
+position of national influence and greatness; so need we not imitate
+them in waiting for gray hairs to see ourselves possessed of a distinct
+national character. As we did not have to go through the slow, age-long
+process of originating, of de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span>veloping ideas, principles, but took them
+ready made, a legacy from the experience of all the foregoing ages; and
+as our business is to apply these ideas to the problem we are set to
+solve, not for ourselves alone, but for the world's peoples, for
+aggregate humanity, so should we be neither laggard nor lukewarm in
+fulfilling this high trust, this 'manifest destiny.' In the developing
+of our special American ideas we have a great work before us&mdash;a work but
+begun, as yet. There is an American art&mdash;an American literature&mdash;an
+American society, as well as an American Government, to be shaped out of
+the abundant material we possess, and compacted into the enduring
+edifice of national renown. For what is national character, but ideas
+crystallized in institutions? Until we have done this&mdash;given permanency
+to our special ideas in our institutions&mdash;we are a nation in embryo; our
+manhood exists only in prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>To assist in this mighty work is the duty and privilege of American
+women. What higher ambition could actuate their endeavors&mdash;what nobler
+meed of glory win their aspirations?</p>
+
+<p>O ye women, dear American sisters, whoever you are, who have offered up
+your husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, on the red altar of your country,
+that so that country may be rescued from the foes that seek her honor
+and life; who have labored and toiled and spent your efforts in
+supplying the needs of her brave defenders; whose hearts and prayers are
+all for the success of our holy cause; who are glad with an infinite joy
+at her successes, and who are sorry with profoundest grief at her
+defeats; complete, I implore you, the sacrifice already begun, and give
+to your regenerated country, in the very dawn of the new day which is to
+see her start afresh upon the shining track of national glory,
+yourselves, your best energies, and affections. Love liberty&mdash;love
+justice&mdash;love simplicity&mdash;love truth and consistency. See to it that the
+cause of republican freedom suffer not its greatest drawback from your
+failure to lead society up to the point to which you have the power to
+educate it. By your office as the natural leaders and educators of
+society; by your mission as the friends and helpers of all who suffer;
+by your high privilege as the ordained helpmate of man in the work,
+under God and His truth, of evangelizing the world, and lifting it out
+of its sin and sorrow; by your obligations to the glorious principles of
+Christian republicanism; and by your hopes of complete ultimate
+enfranchisement, I adjure you. The world has need of you, the erring,
+sin-struck world. Your country, even now struggling in the throes of its
+later birth, has desperate need of you. Man has need of you; already are
+being woven between the long-estranged sexes new and indissoluble bonds
+of union,&mdash;sympathies, beautiful, infinite, deathless; and, with a
+pleased and tender smile of recognition across the continent, he hails
+you <i>helper</i>! Your era dawns in sad and sombre seeming, indeed, in a
+land deluged with fraternal blood; but yours are all who need, all who
+sin, all who suffer. Shall the progress of humanity wait upon your
+supineness, or neglect, or refusal? Or shall the era now beginning,
+through you speedily culminate into the bright, perfect day of your
+country's redemption, and thus lead progress and salvation throughout
+the nations of the earth? Never were women so near the attainment of
+woman's possibilities as we American women; never so near the
+realization of that beautiful ideal which has ever shaped the dreams and
+colored the visions of mankind, making Woman the brightest star of man's
+love and worship.</p>
+
+<p>Will she realize the dream&mdash;will she justify the worship? That is the
+question that concerns her now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_WRENS_SONG" id="A_WRENS_SONG"></a>A WREN'S SONG.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It is not often in these dark days that I can sleep as I used to do
+before the flood came and swept away all that my soul held dear; but
+last night, I was so weary in body with a long journey, that I fell
+asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, and slept on until the
+early morning sun came in through the open window, and woke me with its
+gentle touch. The air was sweet with spring fragrance, and the first
+sound that came to my awakened ears was the song of a little wren, a
+little wren who sang even as to-day in the days of my youth and joy,
+whose nest is built over the window that was so often a frame for that
+dearest-loved face. The song brought with it the recollection of all the
+little songster had outlived&mdash;the love, hope, and fear that had sprung
+up and grown and died, since I had first heard his warbling. And I broke
+into those quiet tears that are now my only expression of a grief too
+familiar to be passionate.</p>
+
+<p>To-day is the first of June&mdash;a year to-day since all was over!</p>
+
+<p>Three years ago, this very day, was to have been my wedding day. June
+and its roses were made for lovers, as surely as May, with its May
+flowers and little lilies, is the month of Mary the Bless&egrave;d. I had
+always wished to be married in June, and circumstances combined to
+render that time more convenient than any other. My love affair had been
+a long one, and had met with no obstacles. Our families had always been
+intimate, and I remember <i>him</i> a boy of fourteen, when he first came to
+live in the house opposite. At sixteen he went to West Point, and when
+he came home in his furlough year, I was fifteen. We were both in
+Washington until August; it was a long session; his father was in
+Congress, and so was mine. Edward Mayne had nothing to do that summer,
+and I never had much to occupy me; we saw each other every day, and so
+we fell in love. The heads of both families saw all, smiled a little,
+and teased a good deal; but no one interfered. My mother said it gave me
+occupation and amusement, and helped me to pass the long summer
+evenings, which I thought charming, and every one else thought a bore.
+It was called a childish flirtation, and when he went back to the
+Academy, and I to school, the thing dropped out of notice, and was soon
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>But not by us. We remembered each other, and, each in our different
+lives, we were constant to our early love. And so it came to pass that,
+when he came back again, after graduating, we were very glad to see each
+other; the old intercourse was renewed, and the old feeling showed
+itself stronger for the lapse of years. No one interfered with us; the
+intimacy between our families had continued, and when we went to the
+seaside for the hot months, the Maynes went to the same place; and in
+August Edward had a leave, and came down to join them. I think he would
+have come if they had not been there, but that makes no difference now.
+One moonlit night, at the end of August, with the waves at our feet
+sounding their infinite secret, I promised to marry him; and as we
+parted that night at the door of our cottage, I looked at the
+silver-streaked waters, and said to him that neither the broad sea of
+death nor the stormy sea of life should ever part my soul from his. I
+have kept my word.</p>
+
+<p>So we were engaged to be married, and were as happy as two young lovers
+ought to be. Both families were delighted, my father only stipulating
+that the marriage should not take place immediately. But that we felt no
+hard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>ship, as Edward was stationed in Washington; and everything in the
+future looked as bright as everything in the past had ever been. We were
+sure of a happy winter, and hoped for a gay one, and we had both, though
+the cloud that had first appeared when the little wren began his summer
+song, had grown larger and darker day by day, until the signs of storm
+were no longer to be overlooked, and the fearful prophesied that the day
+of peace was over. Still I never dreamed of the difference it would make
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>New Tear's Eve it was decided that we should be married on the first of
+June. As the clock struck twelve, and the last footfall of the old year
+died away, Edward put out his hand to take mine, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'A happy New Tear it will surely be to us, my Laura, for we shall spend
+more than half of it together;' and I echoed his 'happy New Year'
+without a dread. I knew the storm was coming; I feared its fury; but I
+thought myself too secure, too near a haven to be lost; how could I know
+that the brave ship was destined to go down in sight of land?</p>
+
+<p>And yet I might have known it. For I came from the North, which was, and
+is my home; and he was a Southern man. His family owned property and
+slaves in Georgia; and, though Mr. Mayne's political career had
+prevented their living there much, they considered it their home. One of
+the sons, who was married, lived on the plantation, and managed it well;
+the slaves were comparatively happy, and there were strong ties between
+them, their master and his family. My sister, who was delicate, had
+spent a winter in Florida, and I had accompanied her there. On our way
+home we paid a visit to the Mayne plantation; my sister enjoyed herself
+very much there, and was pro-slavery from that time; I was then sixteen,
+and had always hated it, and what with my fears of snakes, and my
+dislike of the black servants, whom I thought either inefficient or
+impertinent, and my unconquerable liking for freedom, I was not so
+fascinated. Edward Mayne himself did not like a planter's life, and he
+thought slavery an evil, but an evil inherited and past curing. He
+argued that the disease was not mortal and endurable, and that it would
+kill the country to use the knife. His youngest sister and I were the
+only two who ever discussed the subject; she talked a great deal of
+nonsense, and probably I did, too; and as she always lost her temper, I
+thought it wiser to let the subject drop, especially as I did not think
+about it a great deal, and it annoyed Edward to have any coolness
+between Georgy and me, and he himself never discussed the topic. We were
+both very young and very happy, too young and thoughtless to care much
+for any great question, so we sang our little song of happiness, and its
+music filled our ears until it was no longer possible not to hear the
+tumult of the world without.</p>
+
+<p>The first day of January was our last day of perfect peace. Those who
+had not thought of the question before had now to answer what part they
+meant to take. People discussed less what States would secede, and more
+what they would themselves do, and many who are now most firm on one
+side or the other were then agitated by doubt and indecision. Events did
+not tarry for individual minds. We all know the story now; I need not
+repeat it. Still my future seemed unchanged, and I went to New York the
+third of January to order my wedding clothes, but I stayed only three or
+four days; I was restless for the continued excitement of Washington.
+The day I came back Mississippi seceded, and with it went Mr. Davis. I
+heard him make that farewell speech which so few listened to unmoved,
+and at which I cried bitterly. I went to say good by to him, though I
+could not say God speed, for already I was beginning to know that I had
+principles, and which side they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span> were on. As we parted, he said, in that
+courteous way that has made so many bow at his shrine:</p>
+
+<p>'We shall have you in the South very soon, Miss Laura,' and I did not
+say no; but the mist lifted suddenly before my eyes, and I saw the rock
+on which my life was to split, and that no striving against the stream
+would avail me aught. Still I said nothing, and the days flew swiftly by
+on restless wings; days so full of excitement that they seemed to take
+years with them in their flight.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely morning in February; the air had already a May softness
+in it, and the crocuses were bright in the grounds of the Capitol, when
+Edward and I went to take our favorite walk, and there, in sight of the
+broad river which is now a world-known name of division, he told me he
+had made up his mind to leave the army; that there might be fighting,
+and he could not fight against his own people, whom he believed to be in
+the right; that he thought it more honorable to resign at that moment
+than to wait until the hour of need. I could not oppose him, for I knew
+he thought he was doing his duty. I remembered how different his
+opinions were from mine, and that his whole system of education had
+trained him in dissimilar ideas of right from those held in the North.
+Georgia was his country, for which he lived, and for which he thought he
+ought to die, if need were. The shackles of inherited prejudices
+trammelled his spirit, as they might have trammelled the spirit of a
+wiser man, who could have shaken them off in the end; but my lover was
+not wide-minded, and had not the clear sight that sees over and beyond
+these petty lives of ours that are as nothing in the way of a great
+principle and a God-bidden struggle; his eyes saw only what they had
+been taught to see&mdash;his home, in its greenness and beauty, not the dank
+soul-malaria, to which, alas! so many of us are acclimated.</p>
+
+<p>He resigned, and his resignation was accepted without delay or
+difficulty, as were all resignations in those days. The spring began to
+break in all its glory, and the grass grew green in Virginia, on fields
+that were trampled and bloody before that battle summer was over. The
+little wren sang again its song. This year a song of promise&mdash;of promise
+never to be fulfilled!</p>
+
+<p>For the news of Sumter came, and the North rose with a cry, and my heart
+leaped up within me with a thrill stronger and deeper and more masterful
+than any mere personal feeling can ever give; a feeling that rules my
+soul to-day even as it ruled in that first excited hour.</p>
+
+<p>Edward went South, and I let him go alone. I could not, I would not go
+with him. I had no sympathy, no tenderness, scarcely forgiveness for the
+men who had brought the evil upon us. We parted lovers, hoping for days
+of peace, and sure of reunion when those days should come; and every
+night and every morning I prayed for him; but first I prayed for the
+safety of my country, and the victory of our cause.</p>
+
+<p>Time crept on. The battle of Bull Run was fought; he was engaged in it,
+and for many, many days I never knew whether he was living or dead. In
+the autumn I heard he had been ordered West, and that winter was a time
+of anxious days and restless nights. I never heard <i>from</i> him, and I did
+not think it fair to write; occasionally I heard <i>of</i> him through an
+aunt of his, who lived in Maryland, but she was gall and bitterness
+itself on the political question, and never let me know anything she
+could possibly keep from me. So my life passed in fruitless wondering
+and bitter suspense; I never saw a soldier without thinking of Edward,
+and my dreams showed him to me wounded, ill, or dying. No; the dead may
+make their voices heard across the gulf that parts us from them, but not
+the absent, or his soul would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> have heard my 'exceeding loud and bitter
+cry,' and hearing, must have come.</p>
+
+<p>I must not dwell on this. The days rolled on, and spring brightened the
+air, the grass was green again, the dying hope in my heart revived, and
+I listened again to the wren's song, and thought it yet promised a
+summer for my life. But that was the year of the Peninsular campaign,
+and the dying leaves fell on the graves of our bravest and brightest,
+and the autumn wind sighed a lamentation in our ears, and our hearts
+were mourning bitterly for the defeats of the summer, and no less
+bitterly for the dear-bought glory of Antietam. And winter came again:
+hope fled with the swallows, and my youth began to leave me.</p>
+
+<p>In the late autumn I went to New York, to pay a visit to a friend. One
+night I went with my brother to the theatre. The play was stupid, and
+the <i>entr'actes</i> were long. In the middle of the second act, while some
+horrible nonsense was being talked upon the stage, I looked around the
+theatre, and saw no face I had ever seen before, when a lady near me
+moved her fan, and, a little distance beyond her, I saw&mdash;with a start I
+saw&mdash;the face that was never long absent from my thoughts. Changed and
+older, and brown and bearded; but I knew him; and he knew me, and
+smiled; and there was no doubt in my mind. I was not even surprised. But
+to the sickness of sudden joy soon succeeded the sickness of
+apprehension. What brought him there? And what would be done to him if
+he were discovered? How could I see him and speak to him? Oh! could it
+be possible that we might not meet more nearly! I wonder I did not die
+during that quarter of an hour. I turned and looked at my brother; his
+eyes were fixed upon the stage, and he was as curiously unmoved as if
+the world were still steady and firm beneath my feet.</p>
+
+<p>I did not look at Edward again; I feared to betray him; and the green
+curtain fell, and my brother said, if I did not mind being left alone
+for a few minutes, he would go. He left me, and Edward came to me, and
+once more I saw him, and once more I heard his voice. He stayed only one
+moment, only long enough to make an appointment with me for the next
+morning, and then he left the theatre. The people around us thought
+probably that he was a casual acquaintance, if indeed they thought about
+it at all; and when my brother came back, he found me looking listless
+and bored, and apologized for having been detained.</p>
+
+<p>I had&mdash;and still have, thank God!&mdash;a friend in whom I trusted; to her I
+had recourse, and it was by her help that I was enabled to keep my
+appointment. Only those who have known the pain of such a parting can
+ever hope to know the joy of such a meeting. I would like to make the
+rest of this as short as possible. Edward had run the blockade to see
+me; he had been to Washington, had stayed there three days, had heard of
+my absence, obtained my address, and followed me to New York; he had
+waited until twilight, when he had come to look at the house where I was
+staying; as he was walking slowly on the opposite side of the street, he
+had seen me come out with my brother, and had followed us to the
+theatre. He had trusted to his long beard and the cropping of his curly
+head as the most effectual disguise, and so far no one had recognized
+him. The only people who had known of his being in Washington were the
+friends with whom he stayed, the tailor who had sold him his clothes,
+who had a son with Stuart's cavalry, and the girl, my old school friend,
+who had given him my address, whom he went to see in the dusk hours of
+the afternoon, and who had hospitably received him in the coal
+cellar&mdash;which struck me, at the moment, as an infallible method of
+arousing suspicion. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> wanted me to return with him, or to marry him
+and follow him by flag of truce; he was sure Providence had made his way
+smooth on purpose to effect our union. His arguments were perhaps not
+very logical, but they almost convinced me of what I wished to believe.
+I was willing to bear the anger of my family, but could not think of
+again undergoing the wear and tear of separation. I promised to let him
+know my decision early the next morning; I think I should have gone with
+him, but that evening we were telegraphed to return to Washington&mdash;my
+father had been stricken down by apoplexy; and my brother and I went
+home in the night train. Edward knew the reason, for he read my father's
+death in the morning's newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>Three weeks afterward I had a letter from Edward Mayne by flag of truce;
+that was the week before Fredericksburg; and then the agony again began.
+It did not last very long. In the early spring came Chancellorsville,
+and there Edward was slightly wounded and taken prisoner; he was removed
+to the hospital at Point Lookout; his aunt went to nurse him, but I did
+not go; he was doing very well, and I thought it was wiser not. And one
+day in May&mdash;ah! that day!&mdash;I was looking out of my window, and I see now
+the blue sky, the little white clouds, the roses, and the ivied wall
+that I saw when my mother came in and said Mrs. Daingerfield had come to
+take me to Edward, who was very ill and anxious to see me. I remember
+how the blood seemed to sink away from my heart, and for a moment I
+thought I was going to die; but in another moment I knew that I should
+live. I was eager and excited, and not unhappy, from that time until the
+end was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>I had never been in a hospital before, and there was a long ward full of
+men, who all looked to me as if they were dying, through which I passed
+to reach the room in which Edward Mayne lay alone. He heard me coming,
+and, as I opened the door, he raised himself in bed and put out his hand
+to me....</p>
+
+<p>That night the dreadful pain left him, and his aunt said he seemed
+brighter and more hopeful; but when the surgeon saw him in the morning,
+he shook his head. When the sun set, Edward knew that he should never
+again see its evening glories. Into that dark, still room came a greater
+than Solomon, and as the dread shadow of his wings fell on my life, I
+hushed my prayers and tears. We sat and watched and waited; and there
+came back a feeble strength into the worn frame, and he told us what he
+wished. He said that perhaps he had been wrong, but he had thought
+himself right; at least, he had given his life for his faith, and soon,
+soon he would know all. Then he asked them to leave him alone with me
+for a little while, and when they came back into the room, nothing
+remained of him but the cast-off mortality. The sun was rising in the
+east, but his soul was far beyond it; and the sunlight came in and
+kissed the quiet pale face, that looked so peaceful and so happy there
+could be no lamentation over it.</p>
+
+<p>That day came his parole; the parole which we had so exerted ourselves
+to obtain that he might go home to get well; and now it had found him
+far beyond the captivity of bar or flesh&mdash;a freed spirit, 'gone up on
+high.'</p>
+
+<p>The kindness of the Government induced us to ask one more favor, which
+was granted us. They let us take him home to Washington and bury him in
+the place he had always wished to be buried in; and some Confederate
+prisoners were given permission to attend his funeral. So he was buried
+as a soldier should be buried, borne to the grave by his comrades, and
+mourned by the woman dearest to him. He lies now on the sunniest slope
+in that green graveyard, where the waters rush near his resting place,
+and the trees make a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> shade for the daisies that brighten above him.</p>
+
+<p>He died as the sun rose on the first of June; we buried him early on the
+morning of the fifth. That night I left Washington, glad that it was to
+be no longer my place of residence, glad that my family would soon
+follow me to make another home where I could be stung by no
+associations. The old house passed into the hands of my elder sister,
+who is married to a Congressman from the West. But during this winter I
+have been so often homesick, and this early spring has been so chill and
+bleak compared with the May days of Washington, that I was fain to come
+back for a brief hour; and I have chosen to come in these last May days,
+that the first of June might find me here, true to the memory of the
+past.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing left of the old days; the place is changed from what it
+once was; the streets swarm with soldiers and strange faces; the houses
+are used by Government, or are dwelt in by strangers; there is scarcely
+a trace in this Sodom of the Sodom before the flood. No, there is
+nothing left for me now, of the things I used to know, except the little
+wren, whose song broke my heart this morning; and there is nothing here
+for me to care for, except that young grave in Georgetown, whose white
+cross bears but the initials and the date. I must now try to make myself
+a new life elsewhere, and to-morrow I go forth, shaking off the dust
+that soils my garments; hoping for the promise of the rainbow in this
+storm&mdash;and sure of the strength that will not fail me. O world! be
+better than thy wont to thy poor, weary child! O earth! be kindly to a
+bruised reed! O hope! thou wilt not leave me till the end&mdash;the end for
+which I wait.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="WORD-STILTS" id="WORD-STILTS"></a>WORD-STILTS</h2>
+
+
+<p>If the reader is so favored as to possess a copy of the 'Comparative
+Physiognomy' of Dr. James W. Redfield (a work long out of market, and
+which never had much of a sale), he may find in a chapter concerning the
+likeness between certain men and parrots some wise remarks on ridiculous
+eccentricities in literature. 'In inferior minds,' says the Doctor,'the
+love of originality shows itself in oddity.' 'There is many a sober
+innovator,' he continues, farther on,' whose delight it is to ponder</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'O'er many a volume of forgotten lore,'</p></div>
+
+<p>that he may not be supposed to make use of the humdrum literature of the
+day; who introduces obsolete words and coins new ones, and makes a
+patchwork of all languages; makes use of execrable phrases, and invents
+a style that may be called his own.' The Doctor compares these writers
+to parrots.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is a well-known peculiarity of parrots that they have a passion
+for perching themselves in places where they will be on a level with the
+heads of the superior race whose utterances they imitate. The perch a
+parrot affects is almost always an altitude of about six feet, or the
+height of the tallest men. They feel their inferiority keenly if you
+leave them to hop about on the floor. It occurs to us that nothing could
+please a parrot more, if it could be, than a pair of stilts on which it
+could hop comfortably.</p>
+
+<p>The literary parrot, more fortunate than his feathered fellow, finds
+stilts in words&mdash;obsolete words, such as men do not use in common
+intercourse with their fellows. Modern rhymesters more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> and more affect
+this thing. Every day sees some <i>outre</i> old word resurrected from its
+burial of rubbish, and set in the trochaics and spondees of love songs
+and sonnets. Dabblers in literature, who would walk unseen, pigmies
+among a race of giants, get on their word-stilts, and straightway the
+ear-tickled critics and the unconsciously nose-led public join in p&aelig;ans
+of applause. Sage men, who do not exactly see through the thing, nod
+their heads approvingly, and remark: 'Something in that fellow!' And the
+delighted ladies, prone as the dear creatures often are to be pleased
+with jingle that they don't understand, exclaim: 'A'n't he delightful!'</p>
+
+<p>The lamented Professor Alexander once produced a very excellent poem,
+which contained only words of a single syllable, forcibly illustrating
+the power of simple language. We should be glad to reproduce it here, by
+way of contrapose to our own accompanying poem, but cannot now recall it
+to memory in its completeness. Any child, who could talk as we all talk
+in our families, could read and understand fully the poem to which I
+refer. But ask any child to read the lines we have hammered out below,
+and tell you what they mean! Nay, ask any man to do it, and see if he
+<i>can</i> do it. Probably not one in a hundred usual readers, could 'read
+and translate' the word-stilts with which we have trammelled our poetic
+feet, except with the aid of patient and repeated communion with his
+English dictionary. There are, however, no words employed here which may
+not be found in the standard dictionaries of our tongue.</p>
+
+<p>To it:</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE POET INVOKETH HIS MUSE.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Come, ethel muse, with fluxion tip my pen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For rutilant dignotion would I earn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As rhetor wise depeint me unto men:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thing or two I ghess they'll have to learn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere they percipience can claim of what I'm up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To, in macrology so very sharp as this;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Off food oxygian hid them come and sup,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Until, from very weariness, they all dehisce.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h4>THE POET SEEKETH THE READER'S FORBEARANCE.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Delitigate me not, O reader mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If here you find not all like flies succinous;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My hand is porrect&mdash;kindly take't in thine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While modestly my caput is declinous;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor think that I sugescent motives have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In asking thee to read my chevisance.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I weet it is depectible&mdash;but do not rave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor despumate on me with look askance.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Existimation greatly I desire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis so expetible I have sad fears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That, excandescent, you will not esquire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My meaning; see, I madefy my cheek with tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On my bent knees implore forbearance kind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be not retose in haught; I know 'tis sad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But get your Webster down, and you will find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That he's to blame, not I&mdash;so don't get mad!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h4>THE POET COMMENCETH TO SING.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The morning dawned. The rorid earth upon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Old Sol looked down, to do his work siccate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My sneek I raised to greet the ethe sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sauntering forth passed out my garden gate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A blithe specht sat on yon declinous tree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bent on delection to its bark extern;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A merle anear observed (it seemed to me)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The work, in hopes to make owse how to learn.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A drove of kee passed by; I made a stond,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For fast as kee how could my old legs travel?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But&mdash;immorigerous brutes!&mdash;with feet immund<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They seemed to try my broadcloth garb to javel.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The semblance of a mumper then I wore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though a faldisdory before I might have graced;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eftsoons I found, when standing flames before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mud to siccate, it was soon erased.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>If we should turn our attention studiously to this line of literary
+effort, we feel encouraged to believe that our success in a field of
+late so popular would be marked, and that we should obtain a degree of
+fame herein, beside which that of the moat shining light in the stilted
+firmament would pale its ray. But so long as God gives us the glorious
+privilege of emulating the stars, we shall not seek to win a place among
+the 'tallow dips' of parrot-poetry.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_GREAT_SOCIAL_PROBLEM" id="A_GREAT_SOCIAL_PROBLEM"></a>A GREAT SOCIAL PROBLEM.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My dear Continental</span>:</p>
+
+<p>When the meteorological question was despatched, ladies have long had a
+habit of calling upon their servants to furnish them with small talk;
+high wages, huge appetites, daintiness, laziness, breakage,
+impertinence, are fruitful topics which they daily treat exhaustively;
+always arriving at the hopeless conclusion: 'Did you ever hear of
+anything like it?' and 'I wonder what we are coming to!'</p>
+
+<p>Is it not possible that we may be coming to&mdash;no servants at all? To me
+the signs seem to point that way. Cobbett said that in America public
+servant means master: he might add, if he were writing now, and so does
+private servant. Each house is divided against itself into two camps;
+hostile, though perhaps not in open war with each other: and Camp
+Kitchen has the advantage of position. Above stairs uneasy sits the
+employer, timid, conciliating, temporizing; seeing as little as he can,
+and overlooking half he sees; ready to change his habits and to subdue
+his tastes to suit the whims of the <i>enemigos pagados</i>, as the Spaniards
+call them, he has under his roof. Below stairs lounge the lordly
+employ&eacute;s (a charming newspaper neologism for hotel waiters, street
+sweepers, and railway porters), defiant, aggressive, and perfectly aware
+that they are masters of the situation. Daily they become more like the
+two Ganymedes of Griffith's boarding house: he called them Tide and
+Tide&mdash;because they waited on no man. They have long ceased to be hewers
+of wood and drawers of water, and yet they accomplish less than before
+the era of modern improvements. It appears to be a law of domestic
+economy that work is inversely as the increase of wages. Nowadays, if a
+housekeeper visits a prison, he envies the whiteness of the floors and
+the brightness of the coppers he sees there, and thinks, with a sigh,
+how well it might be for his <i>subscalaneans</i>, if they could be made to
+take a course of neatness for a few months in some such an institution.</p>
+
+<p>Vain wish! The future is theirs, and they know it. Their services will
+become gradually more worthless, until we shall find them only in grand
+establishments: mere appendages kept for fashion and for show; as
+useless as the rudimental legs of a snake, which he has apparently only
+to indicate the distinguished class in animated nature he may claim to
+belong to. We shall live to say, as Perrault sang:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'J'aper&ccedil;us l'ombre d'un cocher<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tenant l'ombre d'une brosse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nettoyant l'ombre d'un carrosse.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Alas! I fear that even these shadows of servants will one day vanish and
+disappear from us altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Time was when classes in society were as well defined as races still
+are. The currents ran side by side, and never intermingled. Some were
+born to furnish the blessings of life, and others to enjoy them. Some to
+wait, and others to be waited upon. The producing class accepted their
+destiny cheerfully, believed in their 'betters,' and were proud to serve
+them. The last eighty years have pretty much broken down these
+comfortable boundary lines between men. The feudal retainer, who was
+ready to give his life for his lord, the clever valet, who took kicks
+and caning as a matter of course when his master was in liquor or had
+lost at cards, even the old family servants, are species as extinct as
+the Siberian elephant, or the cave bear, or the dodo. And now the
+advance of the Union armies southward has destroyed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> last lingering
+type of the servant post: the faithful black.</p>
+
+<p>In this country there never was much distinction of classes. The
+unwillingness of New England <i>help</i> to admit of any superiority on the
+part of their masters has furnished many amusing stories. Later, when
+the Irish element penetrated into every kitchen, farmyard, and stable,
+floating off the native born into higher stations, service became
+limited to immigrants and to negroes. But the immigrant soon learned the
+popular motto, 'I'm as good as you are,' and only remained a serving man
+until he could save enough money to set up for himself: not a difficult
+matter in the United States; and never so easy as at this moment. The
+demands of the Government for soldiers and for supplies threaten us with
+a <i>labor famine</i> in spite of the large immigration. In Europe labor is
+scarce and in demand. Commerce, manufactures, colonization have outrun
+the supply. Wages have doubled in England and in France within the last
+twenty years, and are rising. With increase of wages comes always
+decrease of subordination. The knowledge of reading, now becoming
+general, and exercised almost exclusively in cheap and worthless
+newspapers, and the progress of the democratic movement, which for good
+or for evil is destined to extend itself over the whole earth, make the
+working classes restless and discontented. They chafe under restraints
+as unavoidable as illness or death. What floods of nonsense have we not
+seen poured out about the conflict between labor and capital? It is the
+old fable over again: the strife of the members against the belly.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually has sprung up the feeling that it is degrading to be a
+servant; a terrible lion in the path of the quiet housekeeper in search
+of <i>assistants</i>. There may arise some day a purer and a wiser state of
+society, wherein the relation of master and man will be satisfactory to
+both. A merchant exercises a much sharper control over his clerk than
+over any servant in his house, and it is cheerfully submitted to. The
+soldier, who is worse paid and worse fed than a servant, is a mere
+puppet in the hands of his officers, obliged to obey the nod of twenty
+masters, and to do any work he may be ordered to, without the noble
+privilege of 'giving notice;' and yet there is never any difficulty in
+obtaining a reasonable supply of soldiers&mdash;because clerks and soldiers
+do not think themselves degraded by their positions, and servants <i>do</i>.
+It may be a prejudice, but it is one which drives hundreds of women, who
+might be fat and comfortable, to starve themselves over needlework in
+hovels; and often to prefer downright vice, if they can hope to conceal
+it, to virtue and a home in a respectable family. Any logic, you
+perceive, is quite powerless against a prejudice of this size and
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>But is it altogether a prejudice? Is it not a sound view of that
+condition of life?</p>
+
+<p>I confess that it has long been a matter of surprise to me that men
+should be found willing to hire themselves out for domestic service in a
+country where bread and meat may so easily be obtained in other ways,
+and where even independent manual labor is so often considered
+derogatory to the dignity of the native born. To do our dirty work that
+it disgusts us to do for ourselves, to stand behind our chairs at table,
+to obey our whims and caprices, to have never a moment they can call
+their own, to keep down their temper when we lose ours, to be compelled
+to ask for permission to go out for a walk, seems to me a sad existence
+even with good food and wages.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, my dear <span class="smcap">Continental</span>, that the relation between master and
+servant has to be readjusted to suit the times. Indeed it is readjusting
+itself. We see the signs, although we may not perceive their
+significance. Our life is a dream. I use this venerable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> saying in
+another sense than the one generally intended by it: I mean that we live
+half our lives, if not more, in the imagination; and that the
+imagination of every-day people is a dream made up of feelings brought
+together from the habits, theories, and prejudices of the past of all
+lands and all nations of men. The reality that was once in them has long
+since been out of them; yet these vague and shadowy fancies are
+all-powerful and govern our actions. So that morally we go about like
+maskers in the carnival, dressed in the old clothes of our ancestors.
+With this difference, that most of us do not see how shabby and
+threadbare they are, and how unsuited to our present wants. And the few
+who do see this have an inbred fondness for the old romantic rags, and
+wear some of them in spite of their better judgment. Our moneyed class
+cling in particular to the dream of an aristocracy, and love to look
+down upon somebody. The man who made his fortune yesterday calls
+to-day's lucky fellow a <i>nouveau riche</i> and a <i>parvenu</i>. The counter
+jumper who has snatched his thousands from a sudden rise in stocks, is
+sure to invest some of his winnings in the tatters of feudalism, sports
+a coat of arms on his carriage, has liveries, talks of his honor as a
+gentleman, and expects from his servants the same respect that a baron
+of the Middle Ages received from his hinds. It is a dream of most
+baseless fabric. John and Thomas, with their dislike of the word
+servant, their surliness and their impudence, swing too far, perhaps, in
+the other direction, but they are more in unison with the spirit of the
+age than their masters. I have seen an ardent democrat, who had roared
+equal rights from many a stump, furious with the impertinence of a
+waiter, whose answer, if it had come from an equal, he would scarcely
+have noticed. And was not the waiter a man and a fellow voter? What
+distinction of class have we in this country? It is true that the
+property qualification we have discarded in our political system we have
+retained as our test of social position. Indeed, no abstract rights of
+man can make up the difference between rich and poor. But Fortune is
+nowhere so blind nor so busy in twirling her wheel; and our two classes
+are so apt to change places, that frequently the only difference between
+the master and the footman who stands behind him, is the difference of
+capital. And Europe is treading the same democratic path as ourselves,
+limping along after us as fast as her old legs will carry her. The time
+will come when the class from which we have so long enlisted recruits
+for our <i>batteries de cuisine</i> will find some other career better suited
+to their expanded views.</p>
+
+<p>What then? Do you suggest that we may lay a hand upon the colored
+element, after the example of our honored President? But</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'While flares the epaulette like flambeau<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Corporal Cuff and Ensign Sambo,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>can you expect either of these distinguished officers to leave the
+service of the United States for ours? What with intelligent
+contrabandism, emancipation, the right of suffrage, and the right to
+ride in omnibuses, we fear that their domestic usefulness will be sadly
+impaired.</p>
+
+<p>Oh for machinery! automaton flunkies, requiring only to be wound up and
+kept oiled! What a housekeeping Utopia! Thomson foreshadowed a home
+paradise of this kind when he wrote the 'Castle of Indolence:'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair ranged the dishes rose and thick the glasses played.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But as yet invention has furnished no reapers and mowers for within
+doors. We have only dumb waiters; poor, creaking things, that break and
+split, like their flesh-and-blood namesakes, and distribute the smell of
+the kitchen throughout the house. Heine once pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span>posed a society to
+ameliorate the condition of the rich. He must have meant a model
+intelligence office. I wish it had been established, for we may all need
+its aid.</p>
+
+<p>What are we to do when we come to the last of the servants? Darwin says
+that the <i>Formica rufescens</i> would perish without its slaves; we are
+almost as dependent as these confederate ants. Our social civilization
+is based upon servants. Certainly, the refinements of life, as we
+understand it, could not exist Without them, and it is difficult to see
+how any business of magnitude could be carried on. Briareus himself
+could not take care of a large country place, with its stables, barns,
+horses, cattle, and crops, even if Mrs. B. had the same physical
+advantages, and was willing to help him. Must we tempt them back by
+still larger salaries, or increase their social consideration, telling
+them, as a certain clergyman once said of his order, that 'they are
+supported, and not hired'?&mdash;changing the word help, as we have servant,
+into household officer or assistant manager, or adopt a Chinese
+euphemism, such as steward of the table or governor of the kitchen?
+Fourier does something of this kind; in his system the class names of
+young scullions are cherubs and seraphs! Or shall we adopt the
+co&ouml;perative plan of Mill and others, and offer John an interest in the
+family&mdash;say, possibly, the position of resident son-in-law after ten
+years of honesty, sobriety, and industry&mdash;with a seat at table in the
+mean while? Or must all the work be done by women, and a proprietor have
+to seal his Biddies <i>more sanctorum</i> in Utah? Or might not poor
+relations, now confessedly nuisances, be made useful in this way? Some
+marquis asked Sophie Arnould why she did not discharge her stupid
+porter? 'I have often thought of it,' she answered, '<i>mais que voulez
+vous, c'est mon p&egrave;re</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>These resources failing, we must drop to the simplest form of existence:
+hut, hovel, or shanty; where my lord digs and is dirty, and her
+ladyship, guiltless of Italian, French, and the grand piano, cooks,
+scrubs, darns, and keeps the peace between the pigs and the children. Or
+else we must come to socialism, in the shape of Brook Farm communities,
+or <i>phalanst&egrave;res &agrave; la Fourier</i>, or, worse than either, to mammoth
+hotels. American tastes incline that way. There we may live in huge
+gilded pens, as characterless as sheep in the flock, attended upon by
+waiters, chambermaids, and cooks, who will have a share in the profits,
+and consequently will be happy to do anything to increase the income of
+their house.</p>
+
+<p>I see no other remedy, and I offer this great social problem to the
+serious thoughts of your readers.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yours ever, G. V.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Aphorisms_NO_XIII" id="Aphorisms_NO_XIII"></a>APHORISMS.&mdash;NO. XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was a frequent exclamation of Herder the Great: 'Oh, my life, that
+has failed of its ends!' and many of us, no doubt, find ourselves
+disposed to indulge in the same lament. But it deserves careful
+attention; no man's life fails of its true end unless through some
+grievous moral fault of his own.</p>
+
+<p>The true end of life is that we may 'glorify God, and enjoy Him
+forever.' How this may be attained, as far as outward circumstances or
+activities are concerned, we can hardly judge for ourselves: but there
+is one sure test; and that is in the duties of our station. If we
+honestly perform them, and especially as under the teachings of the
+gospel of Christ, there can be no real and permanent failure. We shall
+have done what we were set to do upon the earth; and with this we may
+well be content.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="OUR_GREAT_AMERICA" id="OUR_GREAT_AMERICA"></a>OUR GREAT AMERICA.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The republican government of the United States, when first originated by
+the fathers of the commonwealth, was regarded by the old fossil
+despotisms with secret dread and a strange foreboding; and neither the
+ridicule which they heaped upon it, nor the professed contempt wherewith
+its name was bandied from throne to throne, could wholly mask their
+trepidation. They looked upon it, in the privacy of their chambers, as
+the challenge of a mighty rebellion of the people against all kingly
+rule and administration; they saw in it the embodiment of those popular
+ideas of freedom, equality, and self-government, which for so many
+centuries had been struggling for adequate utterance in England and
+France, and they knew that the success of this sublime experiment must
+eventually break asunder the colossal bones of the European monarchies,
+and establish the new-born democracy upon their ruins.</p>
+
+<p>That they saw truly and judged wisely in these respects, the history of
+modern Europe, and the current revolutions of our time, bear ample
+testimony. There is no luck nor chance in human events, but all things
+follow each other in the legitimate sequences of law. The American
+republic is no bastard, but a true son and heir of the ages; and sprang
+forth in all its bravery and promise from the mammoth loins of the very
+despotism which disowns and denounces it.</p>
+
+<p>We have a full and perfect faith in the mission of this republic, which
+breaks open a new seal in the apocalypse of government, and unfolds a
+new phase in the destiny of mankind. Feudalism has had a sufficient
+trial, and, on the whole, has done its work well. After the
+dismemberment of the Roman Empire, we do not see how it was possible for
+society to have assumed any other form than that of kings and princes
+for rulers, and the people for passive and more or less obedient
+subjects. It was a great problem to be resolved how society should exist
+at all, and history gives us the solution of it. Despotism in politics
+and authority in religion was the grand, primal, leading, and executive
+idea of it. What learning and culture existed was confined to the guild
+of the ecclesiastics, and they, for the most part, ruled the rulers as
+well as the people, by <i>virtue of their intelligence</i>. It required many
+centuries to usher in the dawn of unfettered thought, and generate the
+idea of liberty. And when at last the epoch of Protestantism arrived,
+and Luther, who was the exponent and historical embodiment of it,
+gathered to its armories the spiritual forces then extant in Europe, and
+overthrew therewith the immemorial supremacy of kings and priests over
+the bodies and souls of men, he made all subsequent history possible,
+and was the planter of nations, and the founder of yet undeveloped
+civilizations.<a name="FNanchor_A_2" id="FNanchor_A_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span></p>
+<p>It would, however, be by no means difficult, were it in accordance with
+our present design and purpose, to show that the first germ of
+republican liberty sprang into life amid the sedges and savage marshes
+of uncultivated ages, far remote even from the discovery of America, and
+trace it through successive rebellions, both of a political and
+religious character, from and before the times of Wycliffe, down to
+Oliver Cromwell and George Washington; for all through English history
+it has left a broad red mark behind it, like the auroral pathway of a
+conqueror. The first man who prayed without book, and denied the
+authority of the church over the human soul, as the brave Loilards did,
+was the pioneer of Protestantism and the father of all the births which
+ushered this mighty epoch upon the stage of the world; Protestantism,
+which means so much and includes so many vast emprises&mdash;establishing for
+freedom so grand a battle ground, and for philosophy and learning so
+wide and magnificent a dominion.</p>
+
+<p>The same spirit which made nonconformists of the first seekers and
+worshippers of God apart from the churches and cathedrals of Rome, in
+the sublimer cathedrals of nature, when the Roman hierarchy was master
+of Europe&mdash;made republicans also of the first rebels who resisted the
+tyranny of kings. Political and religious liberty are the two sides of
+the democrat idea, and have always marched hand in hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> together. They
+culminated in England during the Commonwealth, and became thenceforth
+the base and dome of popular government.</p>
+
+<p>The republic of America was born of this idea, and is the last great
+birth of Protestantism, big already with the destinies of mankind. Here,
+upon this mighty platform, these destinies, as we believe, have to be
+wrought out by their final issues, and close the drama of human
+development. All things are possible for America under the beneficent
+institutions and laws of the republic, now that the hideous skeleton of
+black slavery is to pollute the soil no more nor make brother war
+against brother any more on account of it; and at no distant period the
+awful conflict which at present shakes the earth with the thunder of its
+clashing and embattled hosts, shall give lasting place to the
+interchanges of commerce and the peaceful enterprises of civil life.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible that American society could hold together with this
+accursed African vulture eating at its heart. Nor could the aristocratic
+idea of the South, which slavery had interwoven through every fibre of
+the people, through all the forms of its social condition, and into all
+its State laws and institutions, exist side by side with the democratic
+idea of the North, without an inevitable conflict sooner or later. The
+present war is but a renewal of the old battles which make up the sum of
+history, between liberty and despotism, civilization and barbarism. No
+one can doubt in whose hands will be the victory; and happy will the
+result be for future generations.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto we have exhibited to the world the amazing spectacle of a
+republic which, proclaiming the freedom and equality of every one of its
+subjects, holds four millions of men in a terrible and appalling
+bondage. So frightful a mockery of freedom, perpetrated in her great
+name, and sanctioned by tradition and the authority of law, could not,
+ought not, be suffered to grin its ghastly laughter in the face of the
+world. And when the hour was ripe, and the doomsday of the monstrous
+iniquity was proclaimed aloud by the dreadful Nemesis of God, the people
+of the free North clothed themselves in the majesty of the nation, and
+rose as one man to sweep it from the soil in whirlwinds of fire and
+wrath.</p>
+
+<p>Slavery has been an unmitigated curse to America in every one of its
+aspects and especially to the South, out of which it has eaten, with its
+revengeful and retributive teeth, all the vitalities and grandeurs of
+character which belong to the uncorrupted Anglo-Saxon race. It has
+destroyed all the incentives to industry, all self-reliance, and
+enterprise, and the sterner virtues and moralities of life. It has put a
+ban upon trade and manufactures, and a premium upon indolence. The white
+population&mdash;the poor white trash, as the very negroes call them&mdash;are
+ignorant, brutal, and live in the squalor of savages. It has driven
+literature and poetry, art and science, from its soil, and robbed
+religion of all its humanity and beauty. Worse than this, if worse be
+possible, it has darkened with the shadow of its apparition the minds of
+the Southerners themselves, and defaced their highest
+attributes&mdash;confounding within them the great cardinal distinctions
+between right and wrong, until, abandoned by Heaven, they were given
+over to their own lusts, and to a belief in the lie which they had
+created under the very ribs of the republic.</p>
+
+<p>We do not speak this as partisans, nor in any spirit of enmity against
+the South as a political faction. It is the fact which concerns us, and
+which we deal with as history, and not here and now in any other sense.
+Nor do we blame the Southern aristocracy for riding so long on the black
+horse, which has at last thrown and killed them. For proud and insolent
+as they have ever shown themselves in their bearing toward the North,
+they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span> in reality mere pawns on the chessboard of Fate, necessary
+tools in working out the game of civilization on this continent. Who can
+calculate the sum of the divine forces which the institution of slavery,
+and its blasphemous reversion of the commands of the Decalogue, and all
+its cruel outrages and inhuman crimes, have awakened in the souls of the
+freemen of the North? The loathsomeness of its example and the infernal
+malice of its designs against liberty and truth, righteousness and
+justice, and whatsoever holy principles in life and government the
+saints, martyrs, and apostles of the ages have won for us, by their
+agony and bloody sweat upon scaffolds and funeral pyres&mdash;regarding them
+as a cheap purchase, though paid for by such high and costly
+sacrifices&mdash;these appalling instances, we say, have at last produced so
+powerful a reaction in the national mind that millions of men have
+marshalled themselves into avenging armies to rid the earth of their
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>That, too, was fated and necessary, and a part of the predestined
+programme. The nation could not progress with this corrupting monster in
+its pathway; and the battle between them has not come an hour too soon.
+The monster must be exterminated, and that, too, without mercy and
+without compassion, as the sworn and implacable enemy both of God and
+man. Otherwise this glorious country, which has so long worn the garland
+and surging robe of liberty, will become a dungeon of desolation from
+the Atlantic to the Pacific, resounding only with the shrieks of
+mandrakes and the clank of chains.</p>
+
+<p>This obstruction removed, there is, as we said above, no height of
+greatness which the American people may not reach. Then, and then only,
+shall we begin to consolidate ourselves into a nation, with a distinct
+organon of principles, feelings, and loyalties, to which the mighty
+heart and brain of the people shall throb and vibrate in pulsations of
+sublime unity. At present we are only a people in the making, and very
+few there are calling themselves Americans who have any idea of what
+America is and means in relation to history. By and by we shall all
+apprehend the riddle more wisely, and be more worthy of the great name
+we bear.</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile it is no marvel that we are not a homogeneous people.
+Our time has not come for that, and may yet lie afar off in the shadowy
+centuries. Consider how and through what alien sources we have
+multiplied the original population of the associated colonies as they
+existed when our fathers raised them to a nationality. There is not a
+nation in all Europe, to say nothing of Asia and the islands, which is
+not represented in our blood and does not form a part of our lineage. It
+is true that the old type predominates, and that we have the virtues and
+the vices of the Anglo-Saxons in us; but we are far too individual at
+present, Celt and Dane and Spaniard and Teuton, and all the rest of our
+motley humanities, will have to be fused into one great Anglo-American
+race, before we can call ourselves a distinct nation. It took England
+many centuries to accomplish this work, and fashion herself into the
+plastic form and comeliness of her present unity and proportion. We, who
+work at high pressure and make haste in our begettings and growth, can
+scarcely hope to make a national sculpture at all commensurate with the
+genius of the people and the continent, in one or two or even half a
+dozen generations; for we cannot coerce the laws of nature, although it
+is quite certain, from what we have done, that we can perform anything
+within the range of possible achievement.</p>
+
+<p>We have all the elements within and around us necessary to constitute a
+great people. We started on our career with a long background of
+experience to guide and to warn us. We saw what Europe had done for
+civiliza<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span>tion with her long roll of kings and priests, her despotic
+governments, and her unequal laws&mdash;the people in most cases ciphers, and
+in all cases ignorant and enslaved&mdash;with no room for expansion, and
+little or no hope of political or social betterment; every inch of
+liberty, in every direction, which they had gained, wrung from their
+oppressors piecemeal, in bloody throes of agony.</p>
+
+<p>Our fathers had not the best materials out of which to build up a
+republic; neither, in all cases, were they themselves sufficiently ripe
+for the experiment. They had the old leaven of European prejudice
+largely intermingled in their minds and character. They could not help,
+it is true, their original make, nor the fashioning which their age,
+time, and circumstances had put upon them. All this has to be taken into
+the estimate of any philosophical judgment respecting their
+performances. But they had learned from the past to trust the present,
+and to span the future with rainbows of hope. They stood face to face
+with the people, and each looked into the others' eyes and read there
+the grounds and sureties of an immortal triumph. Instead, therefore, of
+resting the supreme power of government in the hands of a person, or a
+class, making the former a monarch, and creating the other an
+aristocracy, those grand magistrates and senators of human liberty who
+framed the Constitution of the new American Nation, made the nation its
+own sovereign, and clothed it with the authority and majesty of
+self-government.</p>
+
+<p>A venture so daring, and of an audacity so Titanic and sublime, seemed
+at that time and long afterward to require the wisdom and omnipotence of
+gods to guide it over the breakers, and steer it into the calm waters of
+intelligent government. All the world, except the handful of thinkers
+and enthusiasts scattered here and there over Europe, was against it,
+mocked at its bravery and aspirations, and sincerely hoped and believed
+that some great and sudden calamity would dissolve it like a baleful
+enchantment. But the hope of the republic was in the people, and they
+justified the fathers and the institution.</p>
+
+<p>Here, therefore, was opened in all the directions of human inquiry and
+action a new world of hope and promise. The people were no longer bound
+by old traditions, nor clogged by any formulas of state religions, nor
+hampered by the dicta of philosophical authority. Their minds were free
+to choose or to reject whatever propositions were presented to them from
+the wide region of speculation and belief. The Constitution was the only
+instrument which prescribed laws and principles for their unconditional
+acceptance and guidance; and this was a thing of their own choice, the
+charter and seal of their liberties, to which they rendered a cheerful
+and grateful obedience.</p>
+
+<p>With this mighty security for a platform, they pursued their daily
+avocations in peace, trusting their own souls, and working out the
+problem of republican society, with a most healthy unconsciousness.
+Sincere and earnest, they troubled themselves with no social theories,
+no visions of Utopia, nor dreams of Paradise and El Dorados, leaving the
+spirit which animated them to build up the architecture of its own
+<i>cultus</i>, with an unexpressed but perfect faith in the final justice and
+satisfaction of results.</p>
+
+<p>Religion, therefore, and politics&mdash;literature, learning, and art&mdash;trade,
+commerce, manufactures, agriculture&mdash;and the amenities of society and
+manners, were allowed to develop themselves in their own way, without
+reference to rule and preconcerted dogmas. Hence the peculiarities which
+mark the institutions of America&mdash;their utter freedom from cant and the
+shows and pageantry of state. Bank, titles, and caste were abolished;
+and the enormous gulfs which separate the European man from the European
+lordling were bridged over by Equality with the solid virtues of
+humanity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What a stride was here taken over time and space, and the historic
+records of man, in the fossil formations of the Old World during the
+ante-American periods! It had come at last, this long-prophesied reign
+of Apollo and the Muses, of freedom and the rights of man. Afar off, on
+the summits of imaginative mountains, were beheld, through twilight
+vistas of night and chaos, the proud ruins of dead monarchies, and the
+cruel forms of extinct tyrannies and oppressions, crowned and mitred no
+more; whose mandates had once made the nations tremble, and before whose
+judgment seats Mercy pleaded in vain, and Justice muffled up her face
+and sat dumb and weeping in the dust. Over the wolds of their desolation
+hyenas prowled, snuffing the noisome air as for a living prey; ghouls
+and vampyres shrieked in hellish chorus, as they tore up forgotten
+graves; and all manner of hateful and obscure things crawled familiarly
+in and out of palaces and holy places, as if they were the ghosts of the
+former inhabitants; and, high above them all, in the bloody light of the
+setting sun, wheeled kites and choughs and solitary vultures; owls and
+dismal bats flitting, ever and anon, athwart the shadows of their grim
+processions.</p>
+
+<p>No matter that this vision was in reality but the symbolism of
+imagination and poetry, that Europe was not dead, but alive with the
+struggling vitalities of good and evil, and all those contending forces
+out of which American freedom was born&mdash;the vision itself was not the
+less true, either as feeling or insight; for Europe was now literally
+cut adrift from America, and the hopes and aspirations of the young
+republic were entirely different from hers, and removed altogether from
+the plane of her orbit and action.</p>
+
+<p>The liberalists and thinkers of the age expected great things from a
+people thus fortunately conditioned and circumstanced. For the first
+time in modern history a genuine democratic government was inaugurated
+and fairly put upon its trial. The horizon of thought was now to be
+pushed back far beyond the old frontiers into the very regions of the
+infinite; and a universal liberty was to prevail throughout the length
+and breadth of the land. No more dead formalities, nor slavish
+submissions, but new and fuller life, self-reliance, self-development,
+and the freest individuality. Gladly the people accepted the
+propositions and principles of their national existence. Not a doubt
+anywhere of the result; no faltering, no looking back; but brave hearts,
+everywhere, and bold fronts, and conquering souls. Before them, through
+the mists of the starry twilight, loomed the mountain peaks and shadowy
+seas of the unventured and unknown future; and thitherward they pressed
+with undaunted steps, and with a haughty and sublime defiance of
+obstructions and dangers; fearing God, doing their best, and leaving the
+issue in His hands.</p>
+
+<p>We know now, after nearly a hundred years of trial, what that issue in
+the main is, and whitherward it still tends. During that little
+breathing time, which, compared with the life of other nations, is but a
+gasp in the record, what unspeakable triumphs have been accomplished!
+Nearly a whole continent has been reclaimed from the savage and the wild
+beasts, and the all-conquering American has paved the wilderness, east,
+west, north, and south, with high roads&mdash;dug canals into its hidden
+recesses, connected the great Gulf with the far-off West by a vast
+network of railways and telegraphs&mdash;planted cities and villages
+everywhere, and fashioned the routes of civilization; bound Cape Race to
+the Crescent City and the Atlantic to the Pacific, sending human
+thoughts, winged with lightning, across thousands of miles of plains and
+mountains and rivers, and making neighborly the most distant peoples and
+the most widely sundered States of the mighty Union. Let any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> man try to
+estimate the value of this immense contribution to human history and
+happiness; let him try to measure the vast extent of empire which it
+covers, and sum up the mighty expenditure of physical and intellectual
+labor which has conquered those savage wilds, and converted them into
+blooming cornfields and orchards; which has built these miraculous
+cities by the sea, and made their harbors populous with native ships and
+the marine of every nation under heaven; those busy inland cities, the
+hives of manufacturing industry and the marts of a commerce which
+extends over all the regions of civilization, from the rising to the
+setting sun; those innumerable towns of the great corn-growing
+districts; those pleasant hamlets and pastoral homes which fringe the
+forest, and girdle the mountains as with the arms of human affection and
+the passion of love; those mills on the far-off rivers, whose creaking
+machinery and revolving wheels are the prelude of a yet unborn, but
+rapidly approaching civility, and whose music, heard by the right ears,
+is of the divinest depth and diapason, and in full concord with the
+immeasurable orchestra of triumph and rejoicing which the nation
+celebrates in the perpetual marches of her starry progress.</p>
+
+<p>No man can compass this vast dominion, and no intellect can plumb its
+soundings or prophesy of its upshot. Who could have foretold what has
+already happened on this continent, had he stood with the Pilgrim
+Fathers on Plymouth Rock, that memorable day of the landing? Looking
+back to that great epoch in American history, we have no dim regions of
+antiquity to traverse, no mythic periods as of Memnon and the Nile, but
+a mere modern landscape, so to speak, shut in by less than two
+centuries. And yet what unspeakable things are included in that brief
+period! If we have made such vast strides and so rapid a development in
+those few years of our national life, with the heterogeneous and
+unmalleable materials with which we had to deal, converting the filth of
+Europe into grass and flowers for the decoration of the republic, what
+may we not achieve hereafter, when this dreadful war is over, and the
+negro question is adjusted, and the sundered States are reunited, and
+the Western wilderness is clothed with the glory of a perfect
+cultivation, and the genius of the people, no longer trammelled by
+Southern despotism, shall have free room to wing its flight over the
+immeasurable future?</p>
+
+<p>There will be no likeness, in any mirror of the past, to the American
+civilization that is to be. New manners, customs, thinkings, literature,
+art, and life, will mark our progress and attest the mission of the
+nation. We are fast outgrowing the ideas and influences of that brave
+company of Puritans out of whose loins our beginning proceeded; and
+already each man goes alone, insular, self-reliant, and self-sustained.
+We owe the Puritans a large debt, but it is altogether a pretty fiction
+to call them the founders of American civilization. They helped to lay
+in the foundation stones of that early society, and kept them together
+by cementing them with their love of religious truth and liberty, so far
+as they understood these primal elements of a state; and we are likewise
+their debtors for the integrity which they put into their laws and
+government. But it is too high a demand to claim for them that they were
+the founders of the republic, and the originators of those great ideas
+which are embodied in our institutions and literature.</p>
+
+<p>They came to this country with no very enlarged notions, either of
+religion or freedom, although they were perfectly sincere in their
+professions of regard for both; and it was this very sincerity which
+gave solidity and permanence to their colonies. We suppose we may repeat
+what history has made notorious respecting them, that they were, both in
+belief and civil practice, very narrow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span> and limited in their
+outlooks&mdash;by no means given to intellectual speculations&mdash;and with but
+little faith in the intellect itself&mdash;which, indeed, was proscribed as a
+sort of outlaw when it stood upon its own authority, outside the pale of
+<i>their</i> church. The religion which they established had its origin in
+the reign of Elizabeth, and was a sort of revived Lollardism, which last
+dated as far back as Wycliffe, long before the Reformation. They thought
+they could worship God in conventicles, and in the great open-air
+cathedrals of nature, with quite as much purity of motive and heavenly
+acceptance as in regularly consecrated churches, and that the right of
+praying and preaching was inalienable, and secured to all godly men by
+the charter and seal of Calvary.</p>
+
+<p>They had no idea, however, of non-conformity which was not based upon an
+orthodox creed, upon <i>their</i> creed, as they subscribed it on Plymouth
+Rock. They fled from persecution themselves, and sought freedom for
+themselves in the barren regions of our dear and now hospitable New
+England; and they, in their simplicity and good faith before God, sought
+to organize a system of civil and religious polity which should incrust
+all future generations, and harden them into a fossil state of perpetual
+orthodoxy.</p>
+
+<p>They were a stern, implacable race, these early fathers, in all that
+related to belief, and the discipline of moral conduct; and we owe many
+of the granite securities which lie at the bottom of our social life and
+government to this harsh and unyielding sternness. It held the framework
+of the colonies together until they were consolidated into the United
+States, and until the modern culture of the people relaxed it into a
+universal liberty of thought and worship.</p>
+
+<p>The Puritans, however, had no notion of such a result to their teachings
+and labors; and would have looked with pious horror upon them if they
+could have beheld them in some Agrippa's mirror of the future.</p>
+
+<p>The truth&mdash;unpalatable as it may be&mdash;is simply this about the Puritans:
+they were narrow-minded, bigoted, and furious at times with the spirit
+of persecution; sincerely so, it is true, and believing they did God
+service; but that does not alter the fact. They had no conception of the
+meaning of liberty&mdash;and especially of religious liberty as a development
+of Protestantism. Their idea of it was liberty for
+themselves&mdash;persecution to all who differed from them; and this, too,
+for Christ's sake, in order that the lost sheep might be brought back,
+if possible, to their bleak and comfortless folds. They could not help
+it; they meant no wrong by it, and the evil which they thus did was good
+in the making, and sprang from the bleeding heart of an infinite love.</p>
+
+<p>We like them, nevertheless; and cannot choose but like them, thinking it
+generous and loving to invest them with as much poetry as we can command
+from the wardrobes of the imagination. But we can never forgive them&mdash;in
+critical moods&mdash;for their inhuman, although strictly logical persecution
+of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, who represented in his
+person all the liberal-thoughts-men, both in religion and speculation,
+then existing on this continent.</p>
+
+<p>This man of capacious intellect and most humane heart was hunted by them
+out of the associated colonies, as if he had been some ferocious beast
+of prey, because he differed from them in his religious opinions; and
+this drove him to found a state in accordance with the most liberal
+interpretation of Christianity. He had more than once, by his influence
+with the Indians, saved them from a general massacre; but their
+theological hate of him was so intense that they would not allow him to
+pass through their territories on a necessary journey; and once, on his
+return from England, where he had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> negotiating with ministers for
+their benefit, they capped the climax of their bigoted ingratitude by
+refusing him permission even to land on their soil, lest his holy feet
+should pollute it.</p>
+
+<p>It is a little too much, therefore, to say that all our ideas of liberty
+and religion have sprung from this stout race of persecutors. They were
+pioneers for us, bu nothing more. Our progress has been the untying of
+their old cords of mental oppression, and the undoing of many things
+which they had set up. This was so much rubbish to be moved out of the
+path of the nation, and by no means aids to its advancement, except as
+provocatives. What we now are, we have become by our own culture and
+development, and by the inflowing of those great modern ideas which have
+affected all the world, and helped to build up its civilization into
+such stately proportions.</p>
+
+<p>Puritanism, as it then existed in its exclusive power, is, to all
+intents and purposes, dead upon this continent. The form of it still
+lingers in our midst, it is true, and in the Protestant parts of Europe
+its ritual survives, and pious hearts, which would be pious in spite of
+it, still cling to its dead corpse as if it were alive, and kindle their
+sacred fires upon the altar of its wellnigh forsaken sanctuaries. We
+should count it no gain to us, however&mdash;the extinction of this old and
+venerable faith&mdash;if we had no high and certain assurance that a nobler
+and sublimer religion was reserved for our consolation and guidance. We
+cannot afford, in one sense, to give up even the semblances and shows of
+religion, and these will survive until the new dayspring from on high
+shall supersede the necessity of their existence. 'Take care,' said
+Goethe, in some such words as these, 'lest, in letting the dead forms of
+religion go, you sacrifice all reverence and worship, and thus lose
+religion itself!' There is great danger of this in the transition state
+of human thought and speculation which marks the present crisis of
+American history. We are not a religious people, and shall not present
+any development of that sort until the intellectual reaction which has
+set in among us against the old modes and organons of belief has
+exhausted the tests of its crucibles, and reduced the dross to a
+residuum of gold which shall form the basis of a new and sacred
+currency, acceptable to all men for the highest interchanges.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean while we must work out the problem of this religion of the
+future in any and all ways which lie open to us&mdash;doubting nothing of the
+final issues. The wildest theories of Millerites, Spiritists,
+Naturalists, and Supernaturalists, are all genuine products of the time,
+and of the spirit of man struggling upward to this solution&mdash;blindly
+struggling, it is true, but gradually approaching the light of the
+far-off truth, as the twilight monsters of geology gradually approached
+the far-off birth of man, who came at last, and redeemed the savage
+progressive, the apparent wild unreason of the terrestrial creation.</p>
+
+<p>It is more than probable that this great fratricidal war with which we
+are now struggling, will prove, in its results, of the very highest
+service to the nation, and make us all both better and wiser men than we
+were before. We have already gained by it many notable experiences, and
+it has put our wisdom, and our foolishness also, to the test. It has
+both humbled and exalted our pride. It has cut away from the national
+character all those inane excrescences of vanity and brag which
+judicious people everywhere, who were friendly to us, could not choose
+but lament to see us exercise at such large discretion. It has brought
+us face to face with realities the most terrible the world has ever
+beheld. It has measured our strength and our weakness, and has developed
+within us the mightiest intellectual and physical resources. All the wit
+and virtue which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> go to make up a great people have been proven in a
+hundred times and ways during the war, to exist in us. Courage,
+forethought, endurance, self-sacrifice, magnaminity, and a noble sense
+of honor, are a few of the virtues which we have cropped from the bloody
+harvest of the battle field.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that wicked men are among us&mdash;for when did a company, godly
+or otherwise, engage in any work, and Satan did not also fling his
+wallet over his shoulder and set out with them for evil purposes of his
+own?&mdash;but after all, these are but a small minority, and their efforts
+to ruin the republic and bring defeat and dishonor upon the Federal
+arms, have not yet proved to be of a very formidable nature. These, the
+enemies of America, though her native-born sons, the people can afford
+to treat with the contempt which they merit. For the rest, this war will
+make us a nation, and bind us together with bonds as strong as those of
+the old European nationalities. It will make us great, and loving
+patriots also; and root out from among us a vast amount of sham and
+political fraud, to the great bettering of society.</p>
+
+<p>We shall have reason in many ways to bless its coming and its
+consequences. It was indeed just as necessary to our future national
+life and happiness as the bursting out of a volcano is to the general
+safety of the earth. It will destroy slavery for ever, and thus relieve
+us from the great contention which has so long and so bitterly occupied
+the lives of our public men and the thoughts of the world. In reality,
+we have never yet given republicanism a fair trial upon this continent.
+With that dreadful curse and crime of slavery tearing at its heart and
+brain, how was it possible for equality and self-government to be
+anything else but a delusion and a mockery? This cleared out of our
+pathway, and we have enough virtue, intelligence, and wealth of physical
+resources in the land to realize the prophecy and the hope of all noble
+thinkers and believes on the planet, and place America first and
+foremost among the nations&mdash;the richest, the wisest, the best, and the
+bravest.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LONGING" id="LONGING"></a>LONGING</h2>
+
+
+<p>The corruption of a noble disposition is invariably from some false
+charm of fancy or imagination which has over-mastered the mind with its
+powerful magic and carried away the will captive. It is some perverted
+apprehension or illusory power of the infinite which causes a man who
+has once fallen a prey to any strong passion to devote all his energies,
+thoughts, and feelings to <i>one</i> object, or to surrender himself, heart
+and soul, to the despotic tyranny of some favorite pursuit. For man's
+natural longing after the infinite, even when showing itself in his
+passions and feelings, cannot, where genuine, be satisfied with any
+earthly object or sensual gratification or external possession. When,
+however, this pursuit, keeping itself free from all delusions of sense,
+really directs its endeavor toward the infinite, and only to what is
+truly such, it can never rest or be stationary. Ever advancing, step by
+step, it ever rises higher and higher. This pure feeling of endless
+longing, with the dim memories of eternal love ever surging through the
+soul, are the heavenward&mdash;bearing wings which bear it ever on toward
+God. Longing is man's intuition of enternity!&mdash;<span class="smcap">Schlegel</span>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_LESSON_OF_THE_HOUR" id="THE_LESSON_OF_THE_HOUR"></a>THE LESSON OF THE HOUR.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strong in faith for the future,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drawing our hope from the past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Manfully standing to battle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">However may blow the blast:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Onward still pressing undaunted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the foe be strong as he may,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the sky be dark as midnight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Remembering the dawn of day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="i0">II.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strong in the cause of freedom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bold for the sake of right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Watchful and ready always,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alert by day and night:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a sword for the foe of freedom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From whatever side he come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The same for the open foeman<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the traitorous friend at home.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="i0">III.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strong with the arm uplifted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nerved with God's own might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In an age of glory living<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In a holy cause to fight:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whilom catching music<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the future's minstrelsy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As those who strike for freedom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blows that can never die.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="i0">IV.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strong, though the world may threaten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though thrones may totter down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in many an Old World palace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uneasy sits the crown:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not for the present only<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is the war we wage to-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the sound shall echo ever<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When we shall have passed away.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="i0">V.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strong&mdash;'tis an age of glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And worth a thousand years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of petty, weak disputings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of ambitious hopes and fears:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And we, if we learn the lesson<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All-glorious and sublime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall go down to future ages<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As heroes for all time.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+
+<span class="i0">VI.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Strong&mdash;not in human boasting,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with high and holy will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The means of a mighty Worker<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His purpose to fulfil:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O patient warriors, watchers&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A thousandfold your power<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If ye read with prayerful purpose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Lesson of the Hour.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_SCIENTIFIC_UNIVERSAL_LANGUAGE_ITS_CHARACTER_AND_RELATION_TO_OTHER" id="THE_SCIENTIFIC_UNIVERSAL_LANGUAGE_ITS_CHARACTER_AND_RELATION_TO_OTHER"></a>THE SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE:<br />ITS CHARACTER AND RELATION TO OTHER LANGUAGES.</h2>
+
+
+<h3><i>ARTICLE ONE.</i></h3>
+
+<h3>THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The <span class="smcap">Continental</span> for May contained an article, written by Stephen Pearl
+Andrews, entitled: <span class="smcap">A Universal Language: its Possibility, Scientific
+Necessity, and Appropriate Characteristics</span>. Although then treated
+hypothetically, or as something not impossible of achievement <i>in the
+future</i>, a Language constructed upon the method therein briefly and
+generally explained, is, in fact, substantially completed at the present
+time. It is one of the developments of a new and vast scientific
+discovery&mdash;comprising the Fundamental Principles of all Thought and
+Being, and the Law of Analogy&mdash;on which Mr. Andrews has bestowed the
+name of <span class="smcap">Universology</span>. The public announcement of this discovery,
+together with a general statement of its character, has been recently
+made in the columns of a leading literary paper&mdash;<i>The Home Journal</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Although the principle involved in the Language discussed in the article
+referred to is wholly different from that upon which all former attempts
+at the construction of a common method of lingual communication have
+been based; and although such merely mechanical <i>inventions</i> were
+therein distinguished from a Language <i>discovered as existing in the
+nature of things</i>; several criticisms, emanating from high literary
+quarters, indicate that there is still much misunderstanding as to the
+real nature of a Universal Language framed upon the principles of
+Analogy between Sense and Sound. This misunderstanding seems most
+prevalent in respect to the two points relating directly to the
+practical utility of such a Lingual Organ. It is assumed that a Language
+so constituted must be wholly different in its material and structure
+from any now existing, and that the latter would have to be abandoned as
+soon as the former was adopted. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span> is supposed, therefore, that in
+order to introduce the <span class="smcap">Scientific Universal Language</span>, the people must be
+induced to learn something entirely new, and to forsake for it their old
+and cherished Mother-tongues. The accomplishment of such an undertaking
+is naturally regarded as highly improbable, if not impossible.</p>
+
+<p>It is also supposed that every word of the Language is to be determined
+in accordance with exact scientific formulas;&mdash;a process which, if
+employed, would, as is conceived, give a stiff, inflexible, monotonous,
+and cramped character to the Language itself; and would be wanting in
+that profusion of synonymes which gives an artistic and life-like
+character to the lingual growths of the past.</p>
+
+<p>Both of these objections arise, as we shall hereafter see, from an
+erroneous impression of the nature of Language based on Analogy, coupled
+with a misconception of the real character and constituents of existing
+Languages. It is the purpose of the present papers to correct these
+false notions. In order to do so&mdash;and, what is essential to this, to
+present a clear exposition of the true character of the Language under
+consideration, and of its relations to the Lingual Structures of the
+past and present&mdash;it is necessary to give a preliminary examination to
+the fundamental question of the Origin of Speech. By means of this
+examination we shall come to understand that the existence and general
+use of a Universal Language with the elements of which Nature has
+herself furnished us, would not involve the abrupt or total abandonment
+of the Tongues now commonly employed; but, on the contrary, while
+preserving all that is substantially valuable in each, would enable us
+to acquire a knowledge of them with a facility which Comparative
+Philology, as now developed, lays no claim to impart.</p>
+
+<p>How, then, did Language originate? In setting out to answer this
+question, Professor Max M&uuml;ller says, in his <i>Lectures on the Science of
+Language</i>:<a name="FNanchor_A_3" id="FNanchor_A_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></p>
+
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If we were asked the riddle how images of the eye and all the
+sensations of our senses could be represented by sounds, nay, could
+be so embodied in sounds as to express thought and to excite
+thought, we should probably give it up as the question of a madman,
+who, mixing up the most heterogeneous subjects, attempted to change
+color and sound into thought. Yet this is the riddle we have now to
+solve.</p>
+
+<p>'It is quite clear that we have no means of solving the problem of
+the origin of language <i>historically</i>, or of explaining it as a
+matter of fact which happened once in a certain locality and at a
+certain time. History does not begin till long after mankind had
+acquired the power of language, and even the most ancient
+traditions are silent as to the manner in which man came in
+possession of his earliest thoughts and words. Nothing, no doubt,
+would be more interesting than to know from historical documents
+the exact process by which the first man began to lisp his first
+words, and thus to be rid forever of all the theories on the origin
+of speech. But this knowledge is denied us; and, if it had been
+otherwise, we should probably be quite unable to understand those
+primitive events in the history of the human mind. We are told that
+the first man was the son of God, that God created him in His own
+image, formed him of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
+nostrils the breath of life. These are simple facts, and to be
+accepted as such; if we begin to reason on them, the edge of the
+human understanding glances off. Our mind is so constituted that it
+cannot apprehend the absolute beginning or the absolute end of
+anything. If we tried to conceive the first man created as a child,
+and gradually unfolding his physical and mental powers, we could
+not understand his living for <i>one</i> day without supernatural aid.
+If, on the contrary, we tried to conceive the first man created
+full-grown in body and mind; the conception of an effect without a
+cause, of a full-grown mind without a previous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span> growth, would
+equally transcend our reasoning powers. It is the same with the
+first beginnings of language. Theologians who claim for language a
+divine origin, ... when they enter into any details as to the
+manner in which they suppose Deity to have compiled a dictionary
+and grammar in order to teach them to the first man, as a
+schoolmaster teaches the deaf and dumb, ... have explained no more
+than how the first man might have learnt a language, if there was a
+language ready made for him. How that language was made would
+remain as great a mystery as ever. Philosophers, on the contrary,
+who imagine that the first man, though left to himself, would
+gradually have emerged from a state of mutism and have invented
+words for every new conception that arose in his mind, forget that
+man could not, by his own power, have acquired <i>the faculty</i> of
+speech, which is the distinctive character of mankind, unattained
+and unattainable by the mute creation. It shows a want of
+appreciation as to the real bearings of our problem, if
+philosophers appeal to the fact that children are born without
+language, and gradually emerge from mutism to the full command of
+articulate speech.... Children, in learning to speak, do not invent
+language. Language is there ready made for them. It has been there
+for thousands of years. They acquire the use of a language, and, as
+they grow up, they may acquire the use of a second and a third. It
+is useless to inquire whether infants, left to themselves, would
+invent a language.... All we know for certain is, that an English
+child, if left to itself, would never begin to speak English, and
+that history supplies no instance of any language having thus been
+invented....</p>
+
+<p>'Speech is a specific faculty of man. It distinguishes man from all
+other creatures; and if we wish to acquire more definite ideas as
+to the real nature of human speech, all we can do is to compare man
+with those animals that seem to come nearest to him, and thus to
+try to discover what he shares in common with these animals, and
+what is peculiar to him, and to him alone. After we have discovered
+this we may proceed to inquire into the conditions under which
+speech becomes possible, and we shall then have done all that we
+can do, considering that the instruments of our knowledge,
+wonderful as they are, are yet too weak to carry us into all the
+regions to which we may soar on the wings of our imagination.'</p></div>
+
+<p>As the result of a comparison of the human with the animal kingdom,
+Professor M&uuml;ller remarks that, 'no one can doubt that certain animals
+possess all the physical acquirements for articulate speech. There is no
+letter of the alphabet which a parrot will not learn to pronounce. The
+fact, therefore, that the parrot is without a language of his own, must
+be explained by a difference between the <i>mental</i>, not between the
+<i>physical</i> faculties of the animal and man; and it is by a comparison of
+the mental faculties alone, such as we find them in man and brutes, that
+we may hope to discover what constitutes the indispensable qualification
+for language, a qualification to be found in man alone, and in no other
+creature on earth.'</p>
+
+<p>Of mental faculties, the author whose ideas we are stating, claims a
+large share for the higher animals. 'These animals have <i>sensation</i>,
+<i>perception</i>, <i>memory</i>, <i>will</i>, and <i>intellect</i>, only we must restrict
+intellect to the comparing or interlacing of single perceptions.' But
+man transcends in his mental powers the barriers of the brute intellect
+at a point which coincides with the starting-point of language. And in
+this coincidence Professor M&uuml;ller endeavors to find a sufficiently
+fundamental explanation of the problem of the origin of language.</p>
+
+<p>In reference to this point of coincidence, he quotes Locke as saying
+that, 'the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect
+distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the
+faculties of brutes do by no means attain to,' and then adds:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'If Locke is right in considering the having of general ideas as
+the distinguishing feature between man and brutes, and, if we
+ourselves are right in pointing to language as the one palpable
+distinction between the two, it would seem to follow that language
+is the outward sign and realization of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> that inward faculty which
+is called the faculty of abstraction, but which is better known to
+us by the homely name of reason.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us now look back to the result of former lectures. It was
+this: After we had explained everything in the growth of language
+that can be explained, there remained in the end, as the only
+inexplicable residuum, what we called <i>roots</i>. These roots formed
+the constituent elements of all languages.... What, then, are these
+roots?'</p></div>
+
+<p>Two theories have been started to solve this problem: the Onomatopoetic,
+according to which roots are imitations of sounds; and the
+Interjectional, which regards them as involuntary ejaculations. Having
+discussed these theories, and taken the position that, although there
+are roots in every language which are respectively imitations of sounds
+and involuntary exclamations, it is, nevertheless, impossible to regard
+any considerable number of roots, and much less, all roots, as
+originating from these sources, the distinguished Philologist announces
+as the true theory, that every root 'expresses a general, not an
+individual, idea;' just the opposite of what he deems would be the case
+if the Onomatopoetic and Interjectional theories explained the origin of
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>Some paragraphs are then devoted to the examination of the merits of a
+controversy which has existed among philosophers as to</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'whether language originated in general appellations, or in proper
+names. It is the question of the <i>primum cognitum</i>, and its
+consideration will help us perhaps in discovering the true nature
+of the root, or the <i>primum appellatum</i>. Some philosophers, among
+whom I may mention Locke, Condillac, Adam Smith, Dr. Brown, and,
+with some qualification, Dugald Stewart, maintain that all terms,
+as at first employed, are expressive of individual objects. I quote
+from Adam Smith. 'The assignation,' he says, 'of particular names
+to denote particular objects, that is, the institution of nouns
+substantive, would probably be one of the first steps toward the
+formation of language.... The particular cave whose covering
+sheltered them from the weather, the particular tree whose fruit
+relieved their hunger, the particular fountain whose water allayed
+their thirst, would first be denominated by the words <i>cave</i>,
+<i>tree</i>, <i>fountain</i>, or by whatever other appellations they might
+think proper, in that primitive jargon, to mark them. Afterward,
+when the more enlarged experience of these savages had led them to
+observe, and their necessary occasions obliged them to make mention
+of, other caves, and other trees, and other fountains, they would
+naturally bestow upon each of those new objects the same name by
+which they had been accustomed to express the similar object they
+were first acquainted with.''</p></div>
+
+<p>This view of the primitive formation of thought and language, is
+diametrically opposed to the theory held by Leibnitz, who maintained
+that 'general terms are necessary for the essential constitution of
+languages.' 'Children,' he says, 'and those who know but little of the
+language which they attempt to speak, or little of the subject on which
+they would employ it, make use of general terms, as <i>thing</i>, <i>plant</i>,
+<i>animal</i>, instead of using proper names, of which they are destitute.
+And it is certain that all proper or individual names have been
+originally appellative or general.'</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the contradictory and seemingly antagonistic nature of
+these positions, Professor M&uuml;ller shows that they are not
+irreconcilable.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Adam Smith is no doubt right, when he says that the first
+individual cave which is called cave, gave the name to all other
+caves; ... and the history of almost every substantive might be
+cited in support of his view. But Leibnitz is equally right when,
+in looking beyond the first emergence of such names as cave, town,
+or palace, he asks how such names could have arisen. Let us take
+the Latin names of cave. A cave in Latin is called <i>antrum</i>,
+<i>cavea</i>, <i>spelunca</i>. Now <i>antrum</i> means really the same as
+<i>internum</i>. Antar, in Sanskrit means <i>between</i> or <i>within</i>.
+<i>Antrum</i>, therefore, meant originally what is within or inside the
+earth or anything else.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> It is clear, therefore, that such a name
+could not have been given to any individual cave, unless the
+general idea of being within, or inwardness, had been present in
+the mind. This general idea once formed, and once expressed by the
+pronominal root <i>an</i> or <i>antar</i>, the process of naming is clear and
+intelligible. The place where the savage could live safe from rain
+and from the sudden attacks of wild beasts, a natural hollow in the
+rock, he would call his <i>within</i>, his <i>antrum</i>; and afterward
+similar places, whether dug in the earth or cut in a tree, would be
+designated by the same name ... Let us take another word for cave,
+which is <i>cavea</i> or <i>caverna</i>. Here again Adam Smith would be
+perfectly right in maintaining that this name, when first given,
+was applied to one particular cave, and was afterward extended to
+other caves. But Leibnitz would be equally right in maintaining
+that in order to call even the first hollow <i>cavea</i>, it was
+necessary that the general idea of hollow should have been formed
+in the mind, and should have received its vocal expression <i>cav</i>
+...</p>
+
+<p><i>'The first thing really known is the general. It is through it
+that we know and name afterward individual objects of which any
+general idea can be predicated, and it is only in the third stage
+that these individual objects, thus known and named, become again
+the representatives of whole classes, and their names or proper
+names are raised into appellatives.'</i></p></div>
+
+<p>The italics in the last paragraph are my own.</p>
+
+<p>But the name of a thing, runs the argument, meant originally that by
+which we know a thing. And how do we know things? Knowing is more than
+perceiving by our senses, which convey to us information about single
+things only. 'To <i>know</i> is more than to feel, than to perceive, more
+than to remember, more than to compare. We know a thing if we are able
+to bring it, and [or?] any part of it, under more general ideas.' The
+facts of nature are perceived by our senses; the thoughts of nature, to
+borrow an expression of Oersted's, can be conceived by our reason only.
+The first step toward this real knowledge is the '<i>naming of a thing</i>,
+or the making a thing knowable;' and it is this step which separates man
+forever from all other animals. For all naming is classification,
+bringing the individual under the general; and whatever we know, whether
+empirically or scientifically, we know it only by means of our general
+ideas. Other animals have sensation, perception, memory, and, in a
+certain sense, intellect; but all these, in the animal, are conversant
+with single objects only. Man has, in addition to these, reason, and it
+is his reason only that is conversant with general ideas.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'At the very point where man parts company with the brute world, at
+the first flash of reason as the manifestation of the light within
+us, there we see the true genius of language. Analyze any word you
+like, and you will find that it expressed a general idea peculiar
+to the individual to which the name belongs. What is the meaning of
+moon?&mdash;the measurer. What is the meaning of sun?&mdash;the begetter ...</p>
+
+<p>'If the serpent is called in Sanskrit <i>sarpa</i>, it is because it was
+conceived under the general idea of creeping, an idea expressed by
+the word <i>srip</i>. But the serpent was also called <i>ahi</i> in Sanskrit,
+in Greek <i>echis</i> or <i>echidna</i>, in Latin <i>anguis</i>. This name is
+derived from quite a different root and idea. The root is <i>ah</i> in
+Sanskrit, or <i>anh</i>, which means to press together, to choke, to
+throttle. Here the distinguishing mark from which the serpent was
+named was his throttling, and <i>ahi</i> meant serpent, as expressing
+the general idea of throttler. It is a curious root this <i>anh</i>, and
+it still lives in several modern words. In Latin it appears as
+<i>ango</i>, <i>anxi</i>, <i>anctum</i>, to strangle, in <i>angina</i>, quinsy, in
+<i>angor</i>, suffocation. But <i>angor</i> meant not only quinsy or
+compression of the neck; it assumed a moral import, and signifies
+anguish or anxiety. The two adjectives <i>angustus</i>, narrow, and
+<i>anxius</i>, uneasy, both come from the same source. In Greek the root
+retained its natural and material meaning; in <i>eggys</i>, near, and
+<i>echis</i>, serpent, throttler. But in Sanskrit it was chosen with
+great truth as the proper name for sin. Evil no doubt presented
+itself under various aspects to the human mind, and its names are
+many; but none so expressive as those derived from our root <i>anh</i>,
+to throttle. <i>Anhas</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> in Sanskrit means sin, but it does so only
+because it meant originally throttling&mdash;the consciousness of sin
+being like the grasp of the assassin on the throat of his victim
+... This <i>anhas</i> is the same word as the Greek <i>agos</i>, sin ... The
+English <i>anguish</i> is from the French <i>angoisse</i>, the Italian
+<i>angoscia</i>, a corruption of the Latin <i>angusti&aelig;</i>, a strait ... <i>M&acirc;</i>
+in Sanskrit means to measure, from which we had the name of the
+moon. <i>Man</i>, a derivative root, means to think. From this we have
+the Sanskrit <i>manu</i>, originally thinker, then man. In the later
+Sanskrit we find derivatives, such as <i>m&acirc;nava</i>, <i>m&acirc;nusha</i>,
+<i>manushya</i>, all expressing man. In Gothic we find both <i>man</i> and
+<i>mannisks</i>, the modern German <i>mann</i> and <i>mensch</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<p>And now we are brought by the author of <i>The Science of Language</i> to the
+great question to which the foregoing is merely preparatory, to the
+fundamental consideration of Philological research: 'How can sound
+express thought? How did roots become the signs of general ideas? How
+was the abstract idea of measuring expressed by <i>m&acirc;</i>, the idea of
+thinking by <i>man</i>? How did <i>g&acirc;</i> come to mean going, <i>sth&acirc;</i> standing,
+<i>sad</i> sitting, <i>d&acirc;</i> giving, <i>mar</i> dying, <i>char</i> walking, <i>kar</i> doing?'
+Here is his answer:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The four or five hundred roots which remain as the constituent
+elements in different families of languages are not interjections,
+nor are they imitations. They are <i>phonetic types</i>, produced by a
+power inherent in nature. They exist, as Plato would say, by
+nature; though with Plato we should add that, when we say by
+nature, we mean by the hand of God. There is a law which runs
+through nearly the whole of nature, that everything which is struck
+rings. Each substance has its peculiar ring. We can tell the more
+or less perfect structure of metals by their vibrations, by the
+answer which they give. Gold rings differently from tin, wood rings
+differently from stone; and different sounds are produced according
+to the nature of each percussion. It was the same with man, the
+most highly organized of nature's works. Man, in his primitive and
+perfect state, was not only endowed, like the brute, with the power
+of expressing his sensations by interjections, and his perceptions
+by onomatopoieia. He possessed likewise the faculty of giving more
+articulate expression to the rational conceptions of his mind. That
+faculty was not of his own making. It was an instinct, an instinct
+of the mind as irresistible as any other instinct. So far as
+language is the production of that instinct, it belongs to the
+realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as he ceases to want them.
+His senses become fainter when, as in the case of scent, they
+become useless. Thus the creative faculty which gave to each
+conception, as it thrilled for the first time through the brain, a
+phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled.
+The number of these <i>phonetic types</i> must have been almost infinite
+in the beginning, and it was only through the same process of
+<i>natural elimination</i> which we observed in the early history of
+words, that clusters of roots, more or less synonymous, were
+gradually reduced to one definite type.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Professor Max M&uuml;ller occupies a commanding position in the foremost rank
+of the students of Philology. His work on <i>The Science of Language</i>,
+from which the preceding discussion of the Origin of Speech is taken,
+is, so far as I am aware, the latest volume treating of the problem in
+question which has issued from what is commonly regarded as high
+authority in the department of Language. It is to that volume,
+therefore, that we are to look for the last word of elucidation which
+the Comparative Philologist can furnish respecting it. And it is for
+this reason&mdash;in order that we might have before us the results of the
+latest research of the schools&mdash;that the exposition of the Origin of
+Language given in the work referred to has been so fully stated.</p>
+
+<p>Where, then, does this explanation of the problem leave us? Does it go
+to the bottom of the matter? Is it sufficiently distinct and
+satisfactory? In brief, does it give us any clear understanding of the
+Origin of Speech? Does it not rather leave us at the crucial point of
+the whole inquiry, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span> the essence and core of the subject untouched
+and shrouded in mystery? Some indefinite hundreds of roots, obtained, it
+is assumed, by means of some indescribable and unknown mental instinct!
+This is the sober and contented answer of Philology to the investigator
+who would know of the Sources of Language, and its constituent elements.
+But of the component parts of these roots&mdash;the true and fundamental
+constituent elements of Speech, without a knowledge of which there can
+be no basic and conclusive comprehension of the meaning of roots&mdash;and of
+the nature of the method by which these elements become expressive of
+thoughts or ideas, there is no word. Language, as it now rests in the
+hands of the Comparative Philologists, is in the same state that
+Chemistry was when Earth, Air, Fire, and Water were supposed to be the
+ultimate constituent elements of Matter, ere a single real ultimate
+element was known as such. But Chemistry, <i>as a science</i>, had no
+existence prior to the discovery of the simple constituents of Physical
+creation. In like manner, a <i>Science</i> of Language must be founded on a
+knowledge of the nature and <i>meaning</i> of the simple elements of Speech.
+Until this knowledge is in our possession it is only on the outskirts of
+the subject that we are able to tread. Roots are, it is true, the actual
+bases of Language, so far as its concrete, working, or synthetical
+structure is concerned; in the same sense that <i>compound</i> substances are
+the main constituents found in the Universe as it really and naturally
+exists. But, although the proportion of simple chemical elements, in the
+real constitution of things, is small, as compared with that of compound
+substances; yet it is only by our ability to separate compound
+substances into these elements that we arrive at an understanding of
+their true character and place in the realm of Matter. So it is only by
+our ability to analyze roots&mdash;the compound constituents of
+Language&mdash;into the prime elements which have, except rarely, no
+distinctive and individual embodiment in it, that we can hope to gain a
+clear comprehension of the nature of Language itself, or of its most
+primitive concrete or composite foundations.</p>
+
+<p>Comparative Philology furnishes us with admirable guidance&mdash;so far as it
+goes. But we do not wish to stop at the terminus which it seems to
+consider a satisfactory one. The final answer it offers us, we do not
+regard as final. We gladly accept the analysis of Language down to its
+Roots. But we wish to analyze Roots also. That the Moon derives its name
+from being regarded as the <i>Measurer</i> of time; and Man, from the notion
+of <i>thinking</i>; that an (<i>anh</i>) is a widely-diffused root, signifying
+<i>pressure</i>; and that <i>g&acirc;</i> denotes <i>going</i>; with similar expositions, is
+valuable information, and takes us a great way toward the goal of our
+seeking. But the question of questions relating to Language is not
+answered by it. Why should the abstract idea of measuring be expressed
+by <i>m&acirc;</i>; and that of thinking by <i>man</i>? How did <i>an</i> come to signify
+pressure; and <i>g&acirc;</i>, going? Is there any special relationship between
+these roots and the ideas which they respectively indicate? Or was it by
+chance merely that they were adopted in connection with each other?
+Might <i>d&acirc;</i> just as meet have been taken to denote doing, and <i>kar</i>,
+giving, as <i>vice versa</i>? Has the root <i>an</i> any distinguishing
+characteristics peculiarly fitting it to suggest <i>choking</i> or
+<i>pressure</i>? Or might that notion have been equally well expressed by
+<i>sth&acirc;</i>?</p>
+
+<p>It is at this fundamental stage of the investigation, whence a true
+<i>Science</i> of Language must take its departure, that the labors and
+disclosures of Comparative Philology cease; leaving the problem of the
+Origin of Language involved in the same state of unintelligibility with
+which it has always been surrounded. It is just at this point, however,
+that the <span class="smcap">Scientific Universal Language<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span></span> previously noticed begins its
+developments. By means of its assistance we may hope, therefore, to
+arrive at a satisfactory solution of the problem in question, and,
+through this solution, at a clear understanding of the more specific
+objects of our present inquiry. Before approaching this main object&mdash;the
+exposition of the general character of the <span class="smcap">New Scientific Universal
+Language</span> and its relations to existing Tongues&mdash;and still in aid of that
+purpose, I must offer some further comments upon the excerpts already
+made from 'The Science of Language;' and upon a few other points which
+remain to be extracted from that work.</p>
+
+<p>Of the four or five hundred roots which remain, the insoluble residuum
+(so thought by Professor M&uuml;ller) of Language, after eliminating the
+immense mass of variable and soluble material, he says: 1. That 'they
+are <i>phonetic types</i> produced by a power inherent in human nature;' 2.
+'Man, in his primitive and perfect state, was not only endowed like the
+brute with the power of expressing his sensations by interjections, and
+his perceptions by onomatopoieia [mere imitation of sound]. He possessed
+<i>likewise</i> the power of giving <i>more articulate</i> expression to the
+<i>rational conceptions of his mind</i>.' The italics here are, again, my
+own, introduced for more emphasis and more ready reference to the
+central thought of the writer. 3. 'That faculty was not of his own
+making. It was an instinct, an instinct of the mind, as irresistible as
+any other instinct. So far as language is the production of that
+instinct, it belongs to the realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as
+he ceases to want them. His senses become fainter when, as in the case
+of scent, they become useless. Thus the creative faculty which gave to
+each conception, as it thrilled for the first time through the brain, a
+phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled.' 4.
+'The number of these <i>phonetic types</i> [root-syllables] must have been
+almost infinite in the beginning, and it was only through the same
+process of <i>natural elimination</i> which we observed in the early history
+of words, that clusters of roots more or less synonymous, were gradually
+reduced to one definite type.'</p>
+
+<p>Professor M&uuml;ller, in stopping with root-syllables (to the number of four
+or five hundred), as the <i>least</i> or ultimate elements to which Language
+can be reduced, has, naturally enough, and along with all Comparative
+Philologists hitherto, committed the error of <i>insufficient analysis</i>;
+an error of precisely the same kind which the founders of Syllabic
+Alphabets have committed, as compared with the work of Cadmus, or any
+founder of a veritable alphabet. The true and radical analysis carries
+us back in both cases to the <i>Primitive Individual Sounds</i>, the Vowels
+and Consonants of which Language is composed.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear enough that the analysis must be carried to the very
+ultimate in order to reach the true foundation for an effective and
+sufficient alphabetic <i>Representation</i> of Language. Precisely the same
+necessity is upon us in order that we may lay a secure and adequate
+foundation for a <i>True Science of Language</i>. This will explain more
+fully what was meant in a preceding paragraph, when it was stated that
+the labors of Mr. Andrews begin, in this department of Language, just
+where the labors of the whole school of Comparative Philologists have
+ended. He first completes the analysis of Language, by going down and
+back to the Phonetic <i>Elements</i>, the ulterior roots, the Vowels and
+Consonants of Language. Then by putting Nature to the crucial test, so
+to speak, to compel her to disclose the hidden meaning with which each
+of these absolute (ultimate) Elements of Speech is inherently laden, he
+discovers&mdash;what might readily be an <i>&agrave; priori</i> conception&mdash;that these
+<i>Elements</i>, and not any compound root-syllables whatsoever, are the true
+'<i>Phonetic Types</i>,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> representative in Nature of '<i>the Rational
+Conceptions</i> of the human mind.'</p>
+
+<p>The ultimate Rational Conceptions of the Human Mind are confessedly,
+among all Philosophers of the Mind, not four or five hundred, but like
+the Alphabetic Sounds of Language, a mere handful in number. Precisely
+how many they are and how they are best distributed has not been agreed
+upon. Aristotle classed them as <i>Ten</i>. Kant tells us there are <i>Twelve</i>
+only of the Categories of the Understanding. Spencer, while finding the
+Ultimate of Ultimates in the idea of <i>Force</i> alone, admits its immediate
+expansion into this handful of Primitive Conceptions, but without
+attempting their inventory or classification. The discoverer of
+<span class="smcap">Universology</span>, first settling and establishing the fact that the Elements
+of Sound in Speech are the natural Phonetic Types, equal in number to
+the inventory of the Primitive Rational Conceptions of the Human Mind,
+is then enabled to work the new discovery backward, and, by the aid of
+the classifications which Nature herself has clearly introduced among
+these Sounds (into Vowels, Consonants, Liquids, etc.), to arrive at a
+classification of all the Primitive Rational Conceptions, which cannot
+fail to be completely satisfactory and final. The same discovery leads,
+therefore, to the reconstruction of the Science of Language, on the one
+hand, and of Ontology, the Science of the highest Metaphysical domain,
+on the other.</p>
+
+<p>But, again, it is one of the demonstrations of <span class="smcap">Universology</span> that all
+careers, that of the development of the Human Mind among others, pass
+through three Successive Stages correspondential with each other in the
+different domains of Being. As respects the Mind, these are: 1.
+<i>Intuitional</i> (or Instinctive); 2. <i>Intellectual</i> (or Reflective); and
+3. <i>Composite</i> (or Integral). It is another of these demonstrations that
+the Intuitional (<i>Unismal</i>) development of Mind, and the Intellectual
+(<i>Duismal</i>), proceed in opposite courses or directions; so that the
+highest <i>Intellectual</i> development reaches and investigates <i>in its own
+way</i> just those questions with which the <i>Intuitional</i> development
+('Instinct,' as Professor M&uuml;ller denominates it) began; and which, in
+the very earliest times, it disposed of in <i>its</i> appropriate way <i>as if</i>
+finally.</p>
+
+<p>By this means, the road having been passed over completely in both
+directions, the way is prepared for the inauguration of the third or
+Integral Stage, which consists in putting the road intelligently to all
+its possible uses.</p>
+
+<p>To apply these statements to the instance before us, for the elucidation
+both of the statements themselves and of the matter to be expounded; it
+is the <i>test labor</i> of the highest <i>Intellectual</i> development to come
+back upon precisely those recondite points of knowledge which the
+nascent <i>Intuition</i> of the race felt or 'smelt' out blindly; and, by the
+sight of the Mind's eye, to arrive more lucidly at the understanding of
+the same subject. Not that the nature of the Understanding by any two
+senses or faculties is ever the same; but that each has <i>its own method</i>
+of cognizing the same general field of investigation. It is the
+<i>re-investigation</i>, <i>intellectually</i>, of the Relationship of the (true,
+not the pseudo) <i>Phonetic Types</i> with the Fundamental Rational
+Conceptions of the Human Mind, which is the first step taken by Mr.
+Andrews, in laying the basis for the new and coming stage of the
+development of the Science of Language.</p>
+
+<p>It is the completion of this Intellectually Analytical process which
+offers the <i>point of incipency</i> for the new and immense Lingual
+Structure of the future, and the ultimate virtual unification of Human
+Speech. It may be quite true, as Professor M&uuml;ller affirms, that the
+Instinctual Development of Language&mdash;by which <i>we</i> mean the whole
+Lingual History of the Past, with the exception of our present very
+imperfect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> Scientific nomenclatures&mdash;has never proved adequate to the
+introduction of a single new <i>root</i>, since the 'Instinct' exhausted
+itself, as he says, in the nascent effort. But it is a pure assumption,
+when he supposes, for that reason, that the informed Human Intellect of
+the Future will not be competent to constitute thousands of them. It is
+just as legitimate as would have been the assumption in the infancy of
+Chemistry, that because Nature never <i>synthetized</i> in <i>her</i> laboratory
+more than a few simple salts, the modern chemist would never be able to
+produce any one of the two thousand salts now known to him. This kind of
+assumption is the common error of the expounders of existing science, as
+contrasted with the bolder originality of discoverers.</p>
+
+<p>But, again, though it is true that the <i>Intuitional</i> (or Instinctual)
+faculty of man has, in a manner, declined, as in the case of the sense
+of Smell, while the <i>Intellect</i> (the Analogue of the Eye) has been
+developed, still it is assuming too much to say that it utterly fails us
+even yet. It remains, like the sense of Smell, an important helper even
+in our present investigations. Professor M&uuml;ller should not, because he
+may happen to have a cold, affirm that nobody smells anything any more.
+To explain what I mean in this respect, the following extract may serve
+as a text:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It is curious to observe how apt we are to deceive ourselves when
+we once adopt this system of Onomatopoieia. Who does not imagine
+that he hears in the word 'thunder' an imitation of the rolling and
+rumbling noise which the old Germans ascribed to their god Thor
+playing at nine-pins? Yet <i>thunder</i> is clearly the same word as the
+Latin <i>tonitru</i>. The root is <i>tan</i>, to stretch. From this root
+<i>tan</i> we have in Greek <i>tonos</i>, our tone, <i>tone</i> being produced by
+the stretching and vibrating of cords. In Sanskrit the sound
+thunder is expressed by the same root <i>tan</i>; but in the derivatives
+<i>tanyu</i>, <i>tanyatu</i>, and <i>tanayitnu</i>, thundering, we perceive no
+trace of the rumbling noise which we imagined we perceived in the
+Latin <i>tonitru</i> and the English <i>thunder</i>. The very same root
+<i>tan</i>, to stretch, yields some derivatives which are anything but
+rough and noisy. The English <i>tender</i>, the French <i>tendre</i>, the
+Latin <i>tener</i> are derived from it. Like <i>tenuis</i>, the Sanskrit
+<i>tanu</i>, the English <i>thin</i>, <i>tener</i> meant originally what was
+extended over a larger surface, then <i>thin</i>, then <i>delicate</i>. The
+relationship betwixt <i>tender</i>, <i>thin</i>, and <i>thunder</i> would be hard
+to establish if the original conception of thunder had really been
+its rumbling noise.</p>
+
+<p>'Who does not imagine that he hears something sweet in the French
+<i>sucre</i>, <i>sucr&eacute;</i>? Yet sugar came from India, and it is there called
+<i>'sarkhara</i>, which is anything but sweet sounding. This <i>'sarkhara</i>
+is the same word as <i>sugar</i>; it was called in Latin <i>saccharum</i>,
+and we still speak of <i>saccharine</i> juice, which is sugar juice.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It may appear, on a closer inspection at this point, that it is
+Professor M&uuml;ller who is deceived, and not the common verdict, both in
+respect to the question whether such words as <i>thunder</i>, <i>sucr&eacute;</i>, etc.,
+really do or do not have some inherent and organic relation in the Human
+Mind to the ideas of rumbling noise and sweetness respectively; and in
+respect to the value and significance of the fact. He has, it would
+seem, confounded two separate and distinct questions. 1st. Is there such
+a relation between the sound and the sense? and 2d. Were these words
+introduced into speech because of that resemblance?</p>
+
+<p>In respect to the latter of these questions, Professor M&uuml;ller's answer,
+so far as the word <i>thunder</i> is concerned, is rather in favor of an
+affirmative answer than against it. So far from its being 'hard to
+establish the relationship betwixt <i>tender</i>, <i>thin</i>, and <i>thunder</i>,' on
+the hypothesis that 'the original conception of thunder had really been
+its rumbling noise; 'it is just as easy to establish this relationship
+as it is to show the connection between the root <i>tan</i>, to stretch, and
+its derivatives <i>tonos</i>, <i>tone</i>, <i>tendre</i>, <i>tener</i>, <i>thin</i>, and
+<i>delicate</i>;&mdash;an undertaking which Professor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> M&uuml;ller finds no difficulty
+whatever in accomplishing.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of <i>stretching</i> signified by the original root <i>tan</i> has no
+<i>direct</i> or <i>immediate</i> connection with any of the conceptions expressed
+by the derivative words. But by stretching an object it is diminished in
+<i>breadth</i> and <i>depth</i>, while it increases in <i>length</i>; hence it becomes
+<i>thinner</i>; so that the Mind readily makes the transition from the
+primitive conception of <i>stretch</i> to that of <i>thinness</i>, indicated by
+the English word, and by the Sanskrit <i>tanu</i>, and the Latin <i>tener</i>,
+<i>tenuis</i>. <i>Thinness</i>, again, is allied to <i>slimness</i>, <i>slenderness</i>,
+<i>fineness</i>, etc.; ideas which are involved in the conception of
+<i>delicate</i>, and furnish an easy transition to it.</p>
+
+<p>But it is also from the notion of <i>stretching</i>, though in a still less
+direct manner, that we gain an idea of sound as conveyed by musical
+tones; '<i>tone</i>,' as Professor M&uuml;ller remarks, 'being produced by the
+<i>stretching</i> and vibrating of cords.' Still further: if we cause a heavy
+piece of cord to vibrate, or, what is better, the bass string of a
+violin or guitar, or strike a very low key on the piano, and pronounce
+the word <i>tone</i> in a full voice at the same time, the remarkable
+similarity of the two sounds thus produced will be clearly apparent.
+Thus the root <i>tan</i>, to stretch, becomes also expressive of the idea of
+<i>sound</i> as seen in the words <i>tonos</i>, <i>tone</i>, <i>tonitru</i>, <i>thunder</i>, etc.
+But what is especially to be noticed is this: that in those derivatives
+of <i>tan</i>, to stretch, which are <i>not</i> indicative of ideas of sound (as
+<i>tenuis</i>, thin, etc.), the sounds of the words do <i>not</i> cause us to
+imagine that we hear the imitation of noise; while in those derivatives
+which <i>are</i> expressive of it, we not only imagine that we <i>do</i> hear it,
+but, in the case of <i>tonos</i> and <i>tone</i> at least, have an instance in
+which we <i>know</i> that the word employed to convey the idea is a
+proximately perfect representation of the sound out of which the idea
+arose. Even in <i>tanyu</i>, <i>tanyatu</i>, <i>tanayitnu</i>, thundering, in which
+Professor M&uuml;ller affirms that 'we perceive no trace of the rumbling
+noise which we imagined we perceived in the Latin <i>tonitru</i> and the
+English <i>thunder</i>'&mdash;although he seems to admit that it is perceptible in
+the Sanskrit word for thunder expressed by the same root <i>tan</i>&mdash;the
+reason why we cannot trace it may be because of the terminations, which,
+as it were, absorb the sound that is there, although less obviously, in
+the <i>tan</i>, or shade it off so that it becomes diluted and hardly
+traceable.</p>
+
+<p>Vowel Sounds are so fluctuating and evanescent that they go for
+comparatively little in questions of Etymology. <i>Tan</i> is equivalent to
+T&mdash;n; the place of the dash being filled by any vowel. <i>T</i> is readily
+replaced by <i>th</i> or <i>d</i>, and <i>n</i> by <i>ng</i>; as is known to every
+Philological student. The object, which in English we call <i>tin</i>, and
+its name, are peculiar and important in this connection, as combining
+the two ideas in question: 1st, that of outstretched surface or
+<i>thinness</i>; and, 2d, that of a persistent tendency to give forth just
+that species of sound which we call, by a slight shade of difference in
+the form of the word, a <i>din</i>. The Latin <i>tintinnabulum</i>, a little bell,
+and the English <i>tinkle</i>, the sound made by a little bell, are among the
+words which are readily recognized as having a natural relation to a
+certain trivial variety of sound. The English <i>ding-dong</i> and
+<i>ding-dong-bell</i> are well-known imitations of sound; and are, at the
+same time, etymologically, mere modifications of the root under
+consideration. As <i>tone</i> and <i>strain</i> or <i>stretch</i> are related in idea,
+as seen in the case of musical notes or tones, is it not as probable
+that the original root-word of which <i>tan</i>, <i>ton</i>, <i>thun</i>, <i>tin</i>, <i>din</i>,
+<i>ding</i>, <i>dong</i>, etc., are mere variations, took its rise from the
+imitation of sound, as it is that the fact of <i>strain</i> or <i>stretch</i> was
+the first to be observed and to obtain the name from which, afterward
+and accidentally, so to speak, were derived words which confessedly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span>
+have a relation in their own sound to other and external sounds, as in
+the case of thunder, musical tone, the sheet of tin, and the bell? Is it
+not, in fact, more probable?</p>
+
+<p>In respect to the question whether <i>sucre</i> and <i>sucr&eacute;</i> were introduced
+into Language because of their resemblance to the idea of sweetness,
+Professor M&uuml;ller gives a valid negative answer. He shows that the word
+is derived from the Sanskrit <i>'sarkhara</i>, 'which,' as he says, 'is
+anything but sweet sounding.'</p>
+
+<p>The question whether the words under consideration (<i>sucre</i>, <i>sucr&eacute;</i>)
+are really sweet-sounding words, Professor M&uuml;ller decides by implication
+in the affirmative, and, perhaps, quite unconsciously, by the very act
+of contrasting them with another word which, as he affirms, is not at
+all sweet sounding.</p>
+
+<p>But this is by far the more important point than that of the mere
+historical genesis of the word; and a point which really touches vitally
+the whole question of the nature and Origin of Language.</p>
+
+<p>How should any word be either <i>sweet-sounding</i> or <i>not sweet-sounding</i>?
+Sound is a something which has no <i>taste</i>, and sweetness is a something
+which makes no <i>noise</i>. Now the very gist and crux of this whole
+question of Language consists in confounding or not confounding a case
+like this with <i>mere</i> Onomatopoieia, or the direct and simple imitation
+of one sound by another. All that Professor M&uuml;ller says against the
+Origin of Language in this 'bow-wow' way is exceedingly well said; and
+it is important that it should be said. But unconsciously he is now
+confounding with the Bow-wow, something else and totally different; and
+something which is just as vital and profound in regard to the whole
+question of the origin and true basis of the reconstruction of Language,
+as the thing with which he confounds it is trivial and superficial.</p>
+
+<p>The point is so important that I beg the reader's best attention to it,
+in order that he may become fully seized of the idea.</p>
+
+<p>I can imitate very closely the buzz of a bee, by forcing the breath
+through my nearly-touching teeth. A mimic can imitate the natural sounds
+of many animals, and other sounds heard in Nature. This <i>mere imitation</i>
+is what Lingual Scholars have dignified by the high-sounding and rather
+repulsive technicality, <i>Onomatopoieia</i>. In the early and simple period
+of Lingual Science much has been made, in striving to account for the
+Origin of Language, of this faculty of imitation, and of the fact that
+there are undoubtedly certain words in every language consisting of such
+imitations. It is against this simple and superficial theory that
+Professor M&uuml;ller has argued so well. But in these words <i>sucre</i>,
+<i>sucr&eacute;</i>, incautiously included by him as instances of the same thing, we
+are in the presence of a very different problem. To imitate one sound by
+another sound is a mere simple, external, and trivial imitation;
+onomatopoieia, and nothing more than that. But to imitate a <i>sound</i>, by
+a <i>taste</i>, or to recognize that such an imitation has occurred, is a
+testimony to the existence of that recondite and all-important <i>echo of
+likeness</i> through domains of Being themselves the most unlike, which we
+call <span class="smcap">Analogy</span>.</p>
+
+<p>That we do recognize such <i>analogy</i> or <i>correspondence of meaning</i>, that
+Professor M&uuml;ller himself does so, is admitted when he tells us that
+another form of the words in question is 'not at all sweet-sounding.' It
+is not in this perception, therefore, that we deceive ourselves, but
+only in supposing that these particular words came to mean sugar,
+<i>because</i> they were sweet-sounding. That there is this perception of the
+analogy in question is again confessed by the fact that we have the same
+feeling in respect to the German <i>s&uuml;sse</i>, sweet; while the English words
+<i>sugar</i> and <i>sweet</i>, notwithstanding any greater familiarity of
+association, do not con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span>vey the same ideas in the same marked degree.
+The words <i>mellifluous</i> (honey-flowing) and <i>melody</i> (honey-sound) are
+themselves standing witnesses in behalf of the existence of the same
+perception. The fact that we instinctually speak of a <i>sweet</i> voice, is
+another witness.</p>
+
+<p>If, then, there is an echo of likeness (real analogy) between these two
+unlike spheres of Thought and Being, <i>Sound</i> and <i>Taste</i>, may there not
+be precisely a similar echo through other and all spheres; so that there
+shall be a Something in Number, in Form, in Chemical Constitution, in
+the Properties of Mind, in Ultimate Rational Conceptions, in fine, that
+echoes to this idea, which, by a stretch of the powers of Language, we
+call <i>sweet</i>, both in respect to Sound and Taste? May it not have been
+precisely this Something and the other handful of primitive Somethings,
+each with its multitudinous echoes, that the <i>Nascent Intuition</i> of the
+race laid hold of and availed itself of <i>irreflectively</i> for laying the
+foundations of Speech? Again, may it not happen that the <i>Reflective
+Intellect</i> should in turn discover <i>intelligently</i> (or <i>reflectively</i>)
+just that <i>underlying</i> system of Analogy which the primitive Instinct
+was competent to appreciate unintelligently; and, by the greater
+clearness of this intelligent perception, be able to elevate the Science
+of Language, and found it upon a new and constructive, instead of upon
+this merely instinctual plane? To all these questions the
+Universologists return an affirmative answer. They go farther, and aver
+that this great intellectual undertaking is now fully achieved, and is
+only awaiting the opportunity for elaborate demonstration and
+promulgation.</p>
+
+<p>A word further on this subject. To pronounce the words <i>sucre</i>, <i>sucr&eacute;</i>,
+<i>s&uuml;sse</i>, the lips are necessarily pinched or perked up, in a certain
+exquisite way, as if we were sucking something very gratifying to the
+taste. This consideration carries us over to the further analogy with
+<i>shapes</i> or <i>forms</i>, and, hence, with the Organic or Mechanical
+production of sounds; another grand element, the main one, in fact, of
+the whole investigation.</p>
+
+<p>Among the infinite contingencies of the origin and successive
+modifications of words, it is very possible that the word <i>'sarkhara</i>,
+although meaning sugar in a particular tongue, may not have primarily
+related to its property of sweetness; and that, therefore, its phonetic
+form should not be accordant with that property. It may have meant the
+<i>cane-plant</i>, for instance, before its sweetness was known. Then it is
+possible that a derivative and modified form of the same word should
+happen to drift into that precise phonetic; form which is accordant with
+that property. But the marvel, and the point of importance is, that so
+soon as this happens, the 'instinct' of the race, even that of Professor
+M&uuml;ller himself, remains good enough to recognize the fact. 'Who does not
+imagine,' he says, 'that he hears something sweet in the French <i>sucre</i>,
+<i>sucr&eacute;</i>?' But why do we all imagine that we hear what does not exist?
+The uniformity of the imagination proves it to be a <i>real</i> perception.
+If the universal consciousness of mankind be not valid evidence, where
+shall we hope to find it?</p>
+
+<p>The consideration of Analogy as existing between the Ultimate Elements
+of Sound and Ultimate Rational Conceptions will be the subject of the
+next paper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FLOWER_ODORS" id="FLOWER_ODORS"></a>FLOWER ODORS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There is a sheltered nook in a certain garden, where, on a sunny spring
+morning, the passer-by inhales with startled pleasure the very soul of
+the 'sweet south,' and, stooping down, far in among brown and crackling
+leaves, lo the blue hoods of English violets! The fragrance of the
+violet! What flower scent is like it? Does not the subtle
+sweetness&mdash;half caught, half lost upon the wind&mdash;at times sweep over one
+a vague and thrilling tenderness, an exquisite emotion, partly grief and
+partly mild delight?</p>
+
+<p>The violet is the poet's darling, perhaps because its frail breath seems
+to waft from out the delicate blue petals the rare imaginings native to
+a poet's soul.</p>
+
+<p>May it not be that thus, in the eloquence of perfume, it is but
+rendering to him who can best respond thereto, a revelation of its inner
+essences?&mdash;showing, to him who can comprehend the sign, a reason why it
+grows.</p>
+
+<p>Is this too fanciful? Certainly the violet was not made in vain&mdash;and in
+the Eternal Correspondence known to higher intelligences than our own,
+there surely must exist a grand and beautiful Flower lore, wherein each
+blossom has an individual word to speak, a lesson to unfold, by form and
+coloring, and, more than all, by exhaled fragrance.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless there is a mystery here too deep for us in this gross world to
+wholly understand; but can we not search after knowledge? Would we not
+like to grasp an enjoyment less merely of the senses from the geranium's
+balm and the mayflower's spice?</p>
+
+<p>And notice here how strongly association binds us by the sense of
+smell&mdash;the sense so closely connected with the brain that, through its
+instrumentality, the mind, it is said, is quickest reached, is soonest
+moved. So that when perfumes quiver through us, are we oftenest
+constrained to blush and smile, or shrink and shiver. Perhaps through
+perfumes also memory knocks the loudest on our heart-doors; until it has
+come to pass that unto scented handkerchief or withering leaf has been
+given full power to fire the eye or blanch the cheek; while from secret
+drawers one starts appalled at flower breaths, stifling, shut up long
+ago. The sprays themselves might drop unheeded down&mdash;dead with the young
+hopes that laid them there&mdash;but the old-time emotion wraps one yet in
+that undying&mdash;ah, how sickening! fragrance.</p>
+
+<p>So in the very nature of the task proposed is couched assistance, since
+thus to the breath of the flowers does association lend its own
+interpretation, driving deep the sharpest stings or dropping down the
+richest consolation through the most humble plants. But is this the end
+of the matter? Is there not, apart from all that our personal interest
+may discover, in each flower an unchanging address all its own&mdash;an
+unvaried salutation proffered ever to the world at large? Why is a
+passion wafted through a nosegay? What purifies the air around a lily?
+And why are bridal robes rich with orange blooms?</p>
+
+<p>Surely poetry and tradition have but here divined certain truths,
+omnipotent behind a veil, and recognized their symbols in these chosen
+blossoms?</p>
+
+<p>But if the flowers are truly types, how should they be interpreted?</p>
+
+<p>There are hints laid in their very structure and outer semblance, hints
+afforded also by art and romance from time immemorial; and all these,
+suggestions of the hidden wisdom, must be gathered patiently and wrought
+out to a fuller clearness, through careful attention to the intuitions
+of one's own awakened imagination.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But what expression can be found for the <i>soul</i> of a flower&mdash;for the
+evanescent odor that floats upon us only with the dimmest mists of
+meaning?</p>
+
+<p>In a novel of a few years since, a people dwelling in Mid Africa are
+described as skilled in the acts of a singular civilization, and
+especial mention is made of an instrument analogous to an organ, but
+which evoked perfumes instead of musical sounds. A curious idea, but
+possibly giving the nearest representation to be made of the effect of
+odor: by its help, then, by regarding flowers as instruments whose
+fragrant utterances might be as well conveyed in music, we may be able
+to translate aright the effluence that stirs beyond the reach of speech.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now try to distinguish, if only for a pleasant pastime, some few
+favorite strains in those wonderful, <i>unheard</i> melodies with which our
+gardens ring.</p>
+
+<p>Hear first the roses. The beautiful blush rose, opening fresh and rosy
+on a dewy June morning, echoes gleefully the birds' 'secret jargoning.'</p>
+
+<p>The saffron tea-rose is an exotic of exotics, and the daintiest of fine
+ladies bears it in her jewelled fingers to the opera, and there imbues
+it with the languid ecstasy of an Italian melody. The aroma, floating
+round those creamy buds, vibrates to the impassioned agony of artistic
+luxury&mdash;to the pleasurable pain that dies away in rippling undulations
+of the tones.</p>
+
+<p>But the red rose is dyed deep with simpler passion. War notes are hers,
+but not trumpet tongued, as they pour from out the fiery cactus. No; it
+is as if a woman's heart thrilled through the red rose to sadden the
+reveille for country and for God!&mdash;an irrepressible undertone of
+mourning surging over the anguish that must surely come.</p>
+
+<p>Love songs belong, too, to the damask rose, but love still set to
+martial chords, wrung, as it were, from heroes' wives, in a rapture of
+patriotic sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>The white roses are St. Cecilia's, and swell to organ strains; all but
+that whitest rose, so wan and fragile, which haunts old shady gardens,
+and never seems to have been there when all things were in their prime,
+but to have blossomed out of the surrounding decay and fading
+loveliness. From its bowed head falls drearily upon the ear a low lament
+over the departed life it would commemorate.</p>
+
+<p>With roses comes the honeysuckle&mdash;the real New England one&mdash;brimful of
+nutmeg; and the sweetbriar, piquant with a <i>L'Allegro</i> strain left by
+Milton. Then the laburnum, which, dripping gold, drips honey likewise,
+and the locust clusters, and the wistaria, dropping lusciousness.</p>
+
+<p>These are all joy-bells evidently, outbursts of the bliss of nature, but
+the garb of the wistaria is more sober than her brilliant sisters, whose
+attire is bright and shining.</p>
+
+<p>There are flowers that seem set to sacred music. Lilies, white and
+sweet, which, from the Lily of the Annunciation to the lily of the
+valley, are hallowed by every reverent fancy; for</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In the beauty of the lilies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Christ was born across the sea.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the little white verbena, which recalls, in some mystic way, the old
+Puritan tune, 'Naomi,' whose words of calm submission are so closely
+interwoven with one's earliest religious faith.</p>
+
+<p>But in contrast to this meek northern saint of a flower, there is a
+southern flush of oleander bloom, that pours out hymns of mystical
+devotion, overflowing with the exuberant vitality, glowing with the
+intense fervor, of the Tropics.</p>
+
+<p>There are flowers, also, the burden of whose odorous airs is sensibly of
+this world only, earthy, sensuous. Such are the cape jessamine and the
+narcissus, alike glistening in satin raiment, and alike distilling
+aromatic essence. Something akin to the waltzes of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span> Strauss, one might
+fancy, is the music suited to their mood.</p>
+
+<p>And the night-blooming cercus&mdash;that uncanny white witch of a creature,
+with its petals moulded in wax or ivory, its golden-brown
+leaf-sheathings, and its unequalled emerald (is it a tint, or is it but
+a shadow?) far down within the lovely cup, with that overpowering
+voluptuous odor, burdening the atmosphere, permeating the innermost
+fibres of sensation, steeping the soul in lethargy! What more fit
+exponent can there be for this weird plant's expression than the song of
+the serpent-charmer, the singing which can root the feet unto the ground
+and stay the flowing of the impetuous blood?</p>
+
+<p>But carnations have a wide-awake aspect, which brings one back to
+every-day life again. Their pleasant pungency is like a bugle note. They
+seem glad to start the nerves of human beings.</p>
+
+<p>The tulips have taken the sun home to them. Deep down in their hearts
+you smell it, while you listen to a cheery carol welling up from the
+comfort warm within.</p>
+
+<p>The pond lilies likewise breathe forth the inspiration of the sun. And
+they chant in their pure home thanksgivings therefore, happy songs of
+chaste praise.</p>
+
+<p>These are flowers which <i>look</i> their fragrance; but there are those that
+startle by the contrast between their outer being and their inner
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>What an intoxicating draught the obscure heliotrope offers! One thinks
+of Heloise in the garments of a nun. The arbutus, also, and the dear
+daphne-cups, plain, unnoticeable little things, remind one of the
+nightingales, so insignificant in their appearance, so peerless in their
+gushes of delicious breath.</p>
+
+<p>The demure Quaker is like the peculiar fragrance of the mignonette. It
+is hard to believe so many people really like mignonette as profess to
+do so, it has such a caviare-to-the-general odor. The popular taste here
+would seem really guided by a fashion of fastidiousness. But the lemon
+verbena&mdash;which, if not a flower, is so high-bred an herb that it
+deserves to be considered one&mdash;one can easily see why that is valued.
+What a refined, <i>spirituelle</i> smell it has? Hypatia might have worn it,
+or Lady Jane Grey&mdash;or better still, Mrs. Browning's Lady Geraldine might
+have plucked it in the pauses of the 'woodland singing' the poet tells
+of.</p>
+
+<p>Nature is very liberal in all things; and we have coarse and
+disagreeable flower odors, supplied by peonies, marigolds, the gay
+bouvardia, and a still more odious greenhouse flower&mdash;a yellowish,
+toadlike thing, which those who have once known will never forget, and
+for which perhaps they can supply a name. If odor be the flower's
+expression of its soul, what rude and evil tenants must dwell within
+those luckless mansions!</p>
+
+<p>But if a flower's soul speaks through odor, what of scentless blossoms?
+Are they dumb or dead? Some may be too young to speak&mdash;as the infantile
+anemones, daisies, and innocents.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps some are thus most meet for symbols of the dead; the stately,
+frozen calla, which seems a fit trophy, bound with laurel leaves, to lay
+upon a soldier's bier; and the snow-cold camelia, whose stony
+sculpturing is the very emblem for those white features whence God has
+drained away the life.</p>
+
+<p>But, camelias warmed with color, fuchsias, abutilons, the cultivated
+azalia (the wild one has a scent), asters, and a host of other loved and
+lovely flowers&mdash;why are they deprived of language?</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps they <i>have</i> a fragrance, felt by subtler senses than we mortals
+own. But, at least, if they must now appear as mute, we may yet hope
+that in a more spiritual existence we shall behold their very doubles,
+gifted with a novel charm, a captivating perfume, we cannot conceive of
+here. For in the vast harmony of the universe one cannot believe there
+can be any floral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span> instruments whose strings are never to be awakened.</p>
+
+<p>It <i>has</i> been but the pastime of a half hour that we have given to the
+flower odors, when an ever-widening field for speculation lies before
+us. But imagination droops exhausted, baffled by the innumerable
+enchanting riddles still to solve. And this must now suffice.</p>
+
+<p>If it serve to excite any dormant thought in the more ingenious mind of
+another&mdash;if it be able to call out the learned conceits of some scholar,
+or the delicate symbolisms of some dreamer, it has done its work.</p>
+
+<p>The hand that has thus far guided the pen, to dally with a subject all
+the dearer because so generally disregarded, will now gladly yield it to
+the control of a fresher fancy, a truer observation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LOCOMOTION" id="LOCOMOTION"></a>LOCOMOTION.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The utilitarian spirit of the age is strikingly exhibited in the intense
+desire to diminish the quantity of time necessary to pass from one spot
+of the earth's surface to another, and to communicate almost
+instantaneously with a remote distance. The great triumphs of genius,
+within the last half century, have been accomplished within the domain
+of commerce. And in contemplating the progress which has ensued, it is a
+cause of humiliation that, as in the case of other great discoveries, so
+many centuries have elapsed, during which the powers of steam, an
+element almost constantly within the observation of man, were, although
+perceived, unemployed. But reflection upon the nature of man, and his
+slow advancement in the great path of fact and science, will at once
+hush the expression of our wondering regret over the past, while a
+nobler occupation for the mind offers itself in speculation upon the
+future. The plank road, the canal, the steamboat, and the railway, are
+all the productions of the last few years. At the close of the last
+century, with the exception of a few military roads inherited from the
+Romans, and the roads of the same description constructed by Napoleon,
+the means of communication between distant parts was almost entirely
+confined to inland seas and the larger rivers. It is for this reason
+that the maritime cities and provinces attained such disproportionate
+wealth.</p>
+
+<p>The invention of <i>chariots</i>, and the manner of harnessing horses to draw
+them, is ascribed to Ericthonius of Athens, <span class="smcap">B.C.</span> 1486. The chariots of
+the ancients were like our <i>phaetons</i>, and drawn by one horse. The
+invention of the <i>chaise</i>, or calash, is ascribed to Augustus C&aelig;sar,
+about <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 7. Postchaises were introduced by Trajan about <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 100.
+<i>Carriages</i> were known in France in the reign of Henry II., <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 1547;
+there were but three in Paris in 1550; they were of rude construction.
+Henry IV. had one, but it was without straps or springs. A strong
+cob-horse (<i>haquen&eacute;e</i>) was let for short journeys; latterly these were
+harnessed to a plain vehicle, called <i>coche-a-haquen&eacute;e</i>: hence the name,
+<i>hackney coach</i>. They were first let for hire in Paris, in 1650, at the
+Hotel Fiacre. They were known in England in 1555, but not the art of
+making them. When first manufactured in England, during the reign of
+Elizabeth, they were called <i>whirlicotes</i>. The duke of Buckingham, in
+1619, drove six horses, and the duke of Northumberland, in rivalry,
+drove eight. <i>Cabs</i> are also of Parisian origin, where the driver sat in
+the inside; but the aristocratic tastes of the English suggested the
+propriety of compelling the driver to be seated outside. <i>Omnibuses</i>
+also originated in Paris, and were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span> introduced into London in 1827, by
+an enterprising coach proprietor named Shillaber. They were introduced
+into New York, in 1828, by Kipp &amp; Brown. <i>Horse railroads</i> were
+introduced into New York, in 1851, upon the Sixth Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>In 1660 there were but six <i>stage coaches</i> in England; two days were
+occupied in passing from London to Oxford, fifty-four miles. In 1669, it
+was announced that a vehicle, described as the <i>flying coach</i>, would
+perform the whole journey between sunrise and sunset. It excited as much
+interest as the opening of a new railway in our time. The Newcastle
+<i>Courant</i>, of October 11th, 1812, advertises 'that all that desire to
+pass from Edinborough to London, or from London to Edinborough, or any
+place on that road, let them repair to Mr. John Baillie's, at the Coach
+and Horses, at the head of Cannongate, Edinborough, every other
+Saturday; or to the Black Swan, in Holborn, every other Monday; at both
+of which places they may be received in a stage coach, which performs
+the whole journey in <i>thirteen days, without any stoppage</i> (<i>if God
+permit</i>), having eighty able horses to perform the whole stage&mdash;each
+passenger paying &pound;4 10s. for the whole journey. The coach sets out at
+six in the morning.' And it was not until 1825 that a daily line of
+stage coaches was established between the two cities, accomplishing the
+distance in forty-six hours. And even so late as 1835 there were only
+seven coaches which ran daily.</p>
+
+<p>In 1743, Benjamin Franklin, postmaster of Philadelphia, in an
+advertisement, dated April 14th, announces 'that the northern post will
+set out for New York on Thursdays, at three o'clock in the afternoon,
+till Christmas. The southern post sets out next Monday for Annapolis,
+and continues going every fortnight during the summer season.' In 1773,
+Josiah Quincy, father and grandfather of the mayors of that name, of
+Boston, spent thirty-three days upon a journey from Georgetown, South
+Carolina, to Philadelphia. In 1775, General Washington was eleven days
+going from Philadelphia to Boston; upon his arrival at Watertown the
+citizens turned out and congratulated him upon the <i>speed</i> of his
+journey! Fifty years ago the regular mail time, between New York and
+Albany, was eight days. Even as late as 1824, the United States mail was
+thirty-two days in passing from Portland to New Orleans. The news of the
+death of Napoleon Bonaparte, at St. Helena, May 5th, 1821, reached New
+York on the fifteenth day of August.</p>
+
+<p>Canals were known to the ancients, and have been used, in a small way,
+by all nations, particularly the Dutch. But the world did not awake to
+their importance until 1817, when the State of New York entered upon the
+Erie Canal project, which was completed in 1825. The introduction of
+steamboats for river navigation, and of locomotives upon railways, have
+superseded canals, and invested them with an air of antiquity. It was
+not until 1807 that Robert Fulton put his first vessel in operation on
+the Hudson River.</p>
+
+<p>To the American steamship Savannah, built by Croker &amp; Fickett, at
+Corlear's Hook, New York, is universally conceded the honor of being the
+first steam-propelled vessel that ever crossed the Atlantic ocean. She
+was three hundred and eighty tons burden, ship-rigged, and was equipped
+with a horizontal engine, placed between decks, with boilers in the
+hold. She was built through the agency of Captain Moses Rogers, by a
+company of gentlemen, with a view of selling her to the emperor of
+Russia. She sailed from New York in 1819, and went first to Savannah;
+thence she proceeded direct to Liverpool, where she arrived after a
+passage of eighteen days, during seven of which she was under steam. As
+it was nearly or quite impossible to carry sufficient fuel for the
+voyage, during pleasant weather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span> the wheels were removed, and canvas
+substituted. At Liverpool she was visited by many persons of
+distinction, and afterward departed for Elsinore, on her way to St.
+Petersburg. She was not, however, sold as expected, and next touched at
+Copenhagen, where Captain Rogers was offered one hundred thousand
+dollars for her by the king of Sweden; but the offer was declined. She
+then sailed for home, putting into Elsington, on the coast of Norway.
+From the latter place she was twenty-two days in reaching Savannah. On
+account of the high price of fuel, she carried no steam on the return
+passage, and the wheels were taken off. Upon the completion of the
+voyage, she was purchased by Captain Nathaniel Holdredge, divested of
+her steam apparatus, and run as a packet between Savannah and New York.
+She subsequently went ashore on Long Island, and broke up. Sixty
+thousand dollars were sunk in the transaction. Captain Rogers died a few
+years ago on the Pee Dee river, North Carolina. He is believed to be the
+first man that ran a steamboat to Philadelphia or Baltimore. The mate
+was named Stephen Rogers, and was living a few years ago at New London,
+Connecticut.</p>
+
+<p>The first railway in England was between Stockton and Darlington; and
+the first locomotive built in the world was used upon that road, and is
+still in existence, being preserved at Darlington depot, upon a platform
+erected for the purpose; the date 1825 is engraved upon its plate. The
+first railway charter in the United States was granted March 4th, 1826,
+to Thomas H. Perkins and others, 'to convey granite from the ledges in
+Quincy to tidewater in that town.' The first railway in the United
+States upon which passengers were conveyed, was the Baltimore and Ohio,
+which was opened December 28, 1829, to Ellicott's Mills, thirteen miles
+from Baltimore. A single horse was attached to two of Winan's carriages,
+containing forty-one persons, which were drawn, with ease, eleven miles
+per hour. The South Carolina Railway, from Charleston to Hamburg, was
+the first constructed in the United States with a view to use <i>steam</i>
+instead of <i>animal</i> power. The first locomotive constructed in the
+United States was built for this road. It was named the <i>Best Friend</i>,
+and afterward changed to <i>Ph&oelig;nix</i>. It was built at the West Point
+foundery by the Messrs. Kemble, under the direction of E.L. Miller, Esq.
+Its performance was tested on the 9th December, 1830, and exceeded
+expectations. To Mr. Miller, therefore, belongs the honor of planning
+and constructing the first locomotive operated in the United States.
+This road was the first to carry the United States mail, and, when
+completed, October 2d, 1833, one hundred and thirty-seven miles in
+length, was the longest railway in the world. The number of miles of
+railway in operation in the United States, at the present time, is
+thirty-two thousand; and the number of passengers conveyed upon them in
+1863 was one hundred millions. Railways did not cross the Mississippi
+river until 1851. The number of miles of railway in the world is
+seventy-two thousand; and the amount of steamboat tonnage is five
+millions of tons.</p>
+
+<p>Yet more astonishing than the railway is the magnetic telegraph, whose
+exploits are literally miraculous, annihilating space and time. The
+extremities of the globe are brought into immediate contact; the
+merchant, the friend, or the lover converses with whom he wishes, though
+thousands of miles apart, as if they occupied the same parlor; and the
+speech uttered in Washington to-day may be read in San Francisco three
+hours before it is delivered. Could the wires be extended around the
+globe, we should be able to hear the news one day before it occurred.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LITERARY_NOTICES" id="LITERARY_NOTICES"></a>LITERARY NOTICES.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Naomi Torrente</span>: The History of a Woman. By <span class="smcap">Gertrude F. de Vingut</span>.
+'Every dream of love argues a reality in the world of supreme
+beauty. Believe all that thy heart prompts, for everything that it
+seeks, exists.'&mdash;<i>Plato</i>. New York: John Bradburn (late M.
+Doolady), publisher, 49 Walker street.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Who could look on the fair high face, facing our title page, and have
+the heart to criticize the revelations of its soul? Naomi is a book of
+feeling, passion, and considerable, if not yet mature, power. It is
+dedicated to Sr. Dn. Juan Clemente Zenea, editor of <i>La Charanga</i>,
+Havana. Our authoress says in her dedication: 'It is to you, therefore;
+and those who like you have deeply felt, that the history of a woman's
+soul-life will prove more interesting than the mere narrative of the
+chances and occurrences that make up the every-day natural existence.'
+Naomi is a woman of artistic genius and passionate character, becalmed
+in the stagnation of conventional life, who, throwing off the fetters of
+an uncongenial and inconsiderate marriage, attempts to find happiness
+and independence in the cultivation of her own powers. She is eminently
+successful as prima donna, is brilliant and self-sustained&mdash;but fails to
+attain the imagined happiness, the Love-Eden so fervently sought.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Margaret and Her Bridesmaids.</span> By the Author of 'The Queen of the
+Country,' 'The Challenge,' etc. 'Queen Rose of the Rosebud garden
+of girls.'&mdash;<i>Tennyson</i>. Loring, publisher, 314 Washington street,
+Boston. 1864.</p></div>
+
+<p>A novel of domestic life, in which the plot, apparently simple, is yet
+artistic and skilfully managed. The thread of life of the bridesmaids is
+held with that of the bride, the development of character, distinctly
+marked in each, progresses through a series of natural events, until the
+young people reach the point of life when impulse settles into
+principle, amiability into virtue, generosity into self-abnegation, and
+we feel that each may now be safely left to life as it is, that
+circumstance can no longer mould character, and are willing to leave
+them, certain they will henceforth remain true to themselves, and to
+those whose happiness may depend upon them, whatever else may betide.
+The bride is a pure, sweet, generous woman, but the character of the
+book is decidedly Lotty. Childish, petite, and indulged, she is yet
+magnanimous, brave, and self-sacrificing; fiery, fearless, and frank,
+she is still patient, forbearing, and reticent; we love her as child,
+while we soon learn to venerate her as woman. She and her docile
+bloodhound, Bear, form pictures full of magic contrast, groups of which
+we never tire. The cordiality and heartiness of her admiring relatives,
+the Beauvilliers, are contagious; we live for the time in their life,
+and grow stronger as we read. The book is charming. Its moral is
+unexceptionable, its characters well drawn, its plot and incidents
+simple and natural, and its interest sustained from beginning to end.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Enoch Arden</span>, etc. By <span class="smcap">Alfred Tennyson</span>, D.C.L., Poet Laureate.
+Boston: Ticknor &amp; Fields. 1864.</p></div>
+
+<p>Tennyson has so many devoted admirers, that this volume cannot fail to
+receive due attention. The principal poem therein, Enoch Arden, is one
+of touching pathos and simplicity. Three children, Enoch Arden, Philip
+Ray, and Annie Lee, grew up together on the British coast a hundred
+years ago. Both youths loved Annie: she loved and married Enoch. They
+live happily together until three children are born to the house: then
+poverty threatens, and Arden leaves home to provide for the loved ones.
+He is cast away on an island, is not heard, from for ten years, and
+Annie reluctantly consents to marry Philip, who has been a father to her
+children during their long orphanage. Arden returns at last to his
+native village, so old, gray, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span> broken, that no one recognizes him.
+He hears how true his wife had been to him until all hope had died away,
+and how Philip cared for her peace, and cherished his children. The
+wretched man resolves to bear his grief in silence, and never to bring
+agony and shame to a peaceful home by disclosing his return. He does
+this in a spirit of Christian self-abnegation, lives near the
+unconscious darlings of his heart, earns his frugal living, watching
+round, but never entering the lost Paradise of his youth. He dies, and
+only at the hour of death, reveals to Annie how he had lived and loved.
+The <i>theme</i> of this tale has often been taken before. It has been
+elaborated with passion and power in the 'Homeward Bound' of Adelaide
+Procter, a poetess too little known among us.</p>
+
+<p>There is great purity of delineation and conception in Enoch Arden. The
+characters stand out real and palpable in their statuesque simplicity.
+There is agony enough, but neither impatience nor sin. The epithets are
+well chosen; but the usual wildering sensuousness of Tennyson's glowing
+imagery is subdued and tender throughout the progress of this melancholy
+tale.</p>
+
+<p>'Aylmer's Field,' about the same length, is a poem of more stormy mould.
+It hurls fierce rebukes at family pride, and just censures at tyrannical
+parents.</p>
+
+<p>The volume contains many shorter poems, some of which are already
+familiar to our readers.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Azarian</span>: An Episode. By <span class="smcap">Harriet Elizabeth Prescott</span>, Author of 'The
+Amber Gods,' etc. Boston: Ticknor &amp; Fields.</p></div>
+
+<p>We like 'Azarian' better than any work we have yet seen from Miss
+Prescott. Ruth Yetton, the heroine, is so truly feminine, she might
+serve as a type of half our innocent maidens from sixteen to twenty.
+Azarian is real and drawn to the life, a hero who has his counterpart in
+every civilized city; a man of <i>savoir-vivre</i>, glittering and
+attractive, but selfish, inconsequent, frivolous, and deadly to the
+peace of those who love him. Miss Prescott's style is elaborate and
+florid, frequently of rare beauty, always giving evidence of culture and
+scholarship. Do we find fault with the hundred-leaved rose? Her fancy is
+luxuriant, of more power than her imagination. Her descriptions of
+flowers in the volume before us are accurate and tenderly beautiful. She
+knows them all, and evidently loves them well. Nor are the fragile
+blossoms of the trees less dear to her. She reads their secrets, and
+treasures them in her heart. She paints them with her glowing words, and
+placing our old darlings before us again, exultingly points out their
+hidden charms.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">The Forest Arcadia of Northern New York</span>: Embracing a View of its
+Mineral, Agricultural, and Timber Resources. Boston: Published by
+T.O.H.P. Burnham. New York: Oliver S. Felt. 1864.</p></div>
+
+<p>The author of this pleasant, unpretending little book visited the 'great
+wilderness of Northern New York, which lies in St. Lawrence county, on
+the western slope of the Adirondack Mountains. It forms part of an
+extensive plateau, embracing an area of many thousand square miles, and
+is elevated from fifteen to eighteen hundred feet above the sea. The
+mineral resources of the plateau are of great value, immense ranges of
+magnetic iron traverse the country, and there are indications of more
+valuable minerals in a few localities. Of its agricultural importance
+too much cannot be said. The soil is rich and strong, peculiarly adapted
+to the grazing of cattle. The climate is that of the hill country of New
+England.'</p>
+
+<p>The reader will see from this extract of what the book treats. The
+volume is pleasantly and simply written, imparts considerable
+information with respect to the region which it describes, is redolent
+of spicy forest breath, and brings before us Indian, deer, and beaver.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Rhode Island in the Rebellion.</span> By <span class="smcap">Edwin W. Stone</span>, of the First
+Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery. Providence: George H.
+Whitney. 1864.</p></div>
+
+<p>'These Letters were written amid camp scenes and on the march,' says our
+author, 'under circumstances unfavorable to literary composition, and
+were intended for private perusal alone. Portions of them appeared in
+the <i>Providence Journal</i>, and were received with a favor alike
+unexpected and gratifying. Numerous requests having been made that they
+should be gathered up as a Rhode Island contribution to the history of
+the War of the Rebellion, the author, with unaffected distrust of
+himself, has yielded to the judgment of others. While the aim has been
+to show the honorable position of the State in an un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span>happy war, it has
+also been the design to present a comprehensive view of the consecutive
+campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, with the fortunes of which several
+of the Rhode Island regiments and most of the batteries have, for longer
+or shorter periods, been identified.'</p>
+
+<p>It is a noble record for Rhode Island, and a valuable contribution to
+the history of the war. It deals with facts, not polities or prejudices.
+We think every loyal State should prepare such a volume. A simple and
+reliable statement of what she has herself done, a sketch of her heroes
+of all ranks and parties, of her batteries, regiments, and companies, of
+her commandants and the battles in which her troops bore part, should be
+therein contained. This would lead to noble emulation among the States
+struggling for a common cause, and would be of great value both to State
+and general history. We look upon this book as a beginning in the right
+way. Such national records of nobly borne suffering and deeds of glory
+would be truly Books of Honor.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Robinson's Mathematical Series</span>: Arithmetical Examples; or, Test
+Exercises for the Use of Advanced Classes. New York: Ivison,
+Phinney, Blakeman &amp; Co., 48 &amp; 50 Walker street. Chicago: S.C.
+Griggs &amp; Co., 39 &amp; 41 Lake street. 1864.</p></div>
+
+<p>This book was issued to meet the demand in advanced schools for a larger
+number of carefully prepared and practical examples for review and drill
+exercises than are furnished from ordinary text books, and may be used
+in connection with any other books on this subject. 'The examples are
+designed to test the pupil's judgment; to bring into use his knowledge
+of the theory and applications of numbers; to cultivate habits of
+patient investigation and self-reliance; to test the truth and accuracy
+of his own processes by proof&mdash;the only test he will have to depend on
+in the real business transactions of afterlife; in a word, to make him
+independent of all text books, of written rules and analyses.'</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges.</span> By <span class="smcap">Albert Harkness</span>, Ph.
+D., Professor in Brown University, Author of 'A First Latin Book,'
+'A Second Latin Book,' 'A First Greek Book,' etc. New York: D.
+Appleton &amp; Co., 443 &amp; 445 Broadway.</p></div>
+
+<p>Prof. Harkness's Grammar will be welcomed both by teacher and student.
+Our author is a man of great experience in the subjects of which he
+treats, and we doubt not he has supplied a general want in the work
+before us, and furnished a true grammar of the Latin tongue, worthy of
+adoption in all our educational institutions.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Rita</span>: An Autobiography. By <span class="smcap">Hamilton Aide</span>, Author of 'Confidences,'
+'Carr of Carrlyon,' 'Mr. and Mrs. Faulconbridge,' etc. Boston:
+Published by T.O.P. Burnham. New York: Oliver S. Felt.</p></div>
+
+<p>This novel is the autobiography of a young English girl, thrown by her
+father, a man of high birth, but worthless character, into the vicious
+influences of corrupt English and French society. The story is one of a
+constant struggle between these base examples on the one hand, and a
+strong sense of right and justice on the other. The plot is original and
+quite elaborate, and the interest well sustained. The character of the
+unprincipled, heartless, gambling father is well drawn, as well as that
+of the weak but self-sacrificing mother. Some of the scenes evince
+considerable power.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EDITORS_TABLE" id="EDITORS_TABLE"></a>EDITOR'S TABLE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Readers of <span class="smcap">The Continental</span>, your servant and faithful caterer has been a
+sad idler and vagrant for the last month, thinking more of his own
+pleasures than of your needs and requirements. Forgive him, he is again
+a working bee and seeking honey for your hives. Have patience, irate
+correspondents; we have absconded with no manuscripts, and are again at
+our desk to give bland answers to curt missives.</p>
+
+<p>We have been among the Adirondacks; congratulate us right heartily
+thereon! We have traversed pathless primeval forests of larches,
+balsams, white pines, and sugar maples; we have floated upon lakes
+lovely enough to have mirrored Paradise; we have clambered down
+waterfalls whose broken drops turned into diamonds as they fell; have
+scaled mountains and seen earth in its glory, and looked clear up into
+the infinite blue of the eye of God.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen the gleaming trout, changeful as a prisoned rainbow, lured
+from his cool stream; and the poor deer chased from his forest home by
+savage dogs and cruel men, driven into crystal lakes, lassoed there with
+ropes, throats cut with dull knives, and backs broken with flying balls.
+Immortal Shakspeare! had thy lines no power to awaken pity for
+frightened fawn and flying doe? Did they not see</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The wretched animal heave forth such groans<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Almost to bursting; while the big round tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Coursed one another down his innocent nose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Piteous chase?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Alas, 'poor hairy fool!' why should they seek thee in thy mountain
+homes?</p>
+
+<p>We have sat by the side of fair fragile country girls, and heard the
+experiences of the stout pioneers of civilization. We have tried to keep
+step with city maidens, shorn of ridiculous hoops and trailing trains.
+We nave known them trip up the great sides of Tahawus, press through the
+trunked and bouldered horrors of Indian Pass, float over Lake Placid,
+and scale the long steep slide up the crest of White Face. Lovely as
+dreams and light as clouds, no toil stayed them, no danger appalled;
+panther, wolf, and bear stories were told in vain by lazy brothers and
+reluctant lovers; on they went in their restless search for beauty,
+their Turkish dress and scarlet tunics gleaming through the trees, to
+the delight of the old mountain guides, who chuckled over their
+Camilla-like exploits, and laughed, as they plucked the fragrant boughs
+for their spicy couch, over the ignorance and awkwardness of their lazy
+city beaux. These fair Dians shoot no deer, nor lure the springing
+trout. We blessed them as they went their thymy way.</p>
+
+<p>We have sat in the hut of the farmer, the skiff of the oarsman, the
+parlor of the host of the inn; tried wagons, stages, and buck-board
+conveyances; we have disputed no bill, been subjected to no extortion,
+and, save the death of the 'hairy fools,' known no sorrow. We have sat
+by the grave of old John Brown, seen the glorious view from his simple
+home, heard his strange generosity extolled by his political enemies,
+and think we understand better than of old the sublime madness of his
+fanaticism. We have returned to our labor with a new love of country, a
+deeper sense of responsibility, of the worth of our institutions, and of
+the glory yet to be in 'Our Great America.' What a land to live and die
+for! Every drop of martyr blood poured upon it but makes it dearer to
+the heart.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h4>PEERLESS COLUMBIA.</h4>
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>A National Song.</i></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">God of our Fathers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Smile on our land!<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Lo, the storm gathers&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Stretch forth Thy hand!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Chorus</i>.&mdash;Shield us and guard us from mountain to sea!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make the homes happy where manhood is free!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Brave is our nation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Hopeful and young;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">High is her station<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Countries among.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Chorus</i>.&mdash;Holy our banner! from mountain to sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Floating in splendor o'er homes ever free.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Proud is our story,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Written in light;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Stars tell its glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Victory, might.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Chorus</i>.&mdash;Peerless Columbia! from mountain to sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Throbs every pulse through the heart of the free.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">Up with our banner!<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Hope in each fold&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Stout hearts will man her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">Millions untold.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Chorus</i>.&mdash;Millions now greet her from mountain to sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hope of the toil-worn! blest Flag of the free!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The following thoughts on some of the uses subserved by Art, are from
+the pen of the Rev. J. Byington Smith. There is so much truth in their
+suggestions, that we heartily commend them to our readers.</p>
+
+
+<h4>ART AS A MEANS OF HOME-CULTURE.</h4>
+
+<p class="center"><small>BY J. BYINGTON SMITH.</small></p>
+
+<p>Art is closely allied to nature in giving impress to character. The
+scenery by which a people is surrounded, will modify and almost control
+its mode of being. The soft, rich landscapes of Italy enervate, while
+the rough mountainous country of the North imparts force and vigor.
+Mountains and seas are nature's healthful stimulants. Man grows in their
+vastness and is energized in their strength. Whatever may be the scenery
+of a people, it will mirror itself in the mind, and stamp its impress
+upon character.</p>
+
+<p>Art reproduces nature, arranging its illimitable stores in closer unity,
+idealizing its charms, and bringing into nearer view its symmetry and
+beauty. Bearing its lessons from afar, it colors the glowing canvas and
+chisels the stone to awaken the impressions it designs to make on the
+human soul. Thus art, like nature, becomes a means of culture. When the
+Lombards wished to give hardihood and system to the enervated body and
+enfeebled mind of the people, they covered their churches with the
+sculptured representation of vigorous bodily exercises, such as war and
+hunting. In the great church of St. Mark, at Venice, people were taught
+the history of the Scriptures by means of imagery; a picture on the
+walls being more easily read than a chapter. Such walls were styled the
+poor man's Bible.</p>
+
+<p>A picture reveals at a single glance that which we would be otherwise
+forced to glean by a slow process from the scattered material furnished
+by the printed page; hence the delight taken in illustrations, the
+importance of pictorial instruction for the young, and the almost
+universal demand for the illustrated publications of the day.</p>
+
+<p>The teaching of art through painting, sculpture, and engraving, finds
+its way into our homes, and while lessons may be duly read from books
+and then laid aside, the lessons in the niche or on the wall repeat
+themselves hour by hour, and day by day, looking even into the pure eyes
+of infancy, and aiding in the formation of the character of every child
+subjected to their ceaseless influence. Their power is none the less
+because they never break the home-silence; they mould the young life and
+stamp their impress upon it. How important then that all such objects
+should be chosen, not only as treasures of artistic beauty, but for
+their power to elevate and ennoble character.</p>
+
+<p>How often will you find in the room of the scholar, the studio of the
+artist, the picture or bust of some old master in art or letters, as if
+the occupant were conscious of the incentive such presence offered to
+his own efforts&mdash;the guardian genius of the spot.</p>
+
+<p>In the study of one of the old divines might have been seen a painted
+eye, gazing forever down upon him, to render him sensible of the
+presence of the All-Seeing&mdash;to stamp the 'Thou God seest me' upon the
+very tablets of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>A child is not so readily tempted into sin when surrounded by pure and
+beautiful imagery, or when gentle loving eyes are looking down upon him.
+On the other hand, the walls of the degraded are lined with amorous and
+obscene images, that vicious habits and debased tastes may find their
+suitable incentives.</p>
+
+<p>A window shade bearing the design of a little girl issuing, basket in
+hand, from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span> door of a humble cottage, to relieve the wants of a poor
+blind beggar, will certainly take its place among the early developments
+of the children growing up under its influence, and in their simple
+charity they may be found, basket in hand, looking out for real or
+fancied beggars. Such lessons are never lost. In a parlor which I often
+frequent is a picture of a Sabbath scene: an aged grand-sire is seated
+by a table on which lies an open Bible, a bright-eyed boy is opposite,
+his father and mother on either side, a little shy girl is on the knee
+of the old man, all are listening reverently to the holy Word of God,
+books and a vase of gay flowers are on the table, green boughs fill the
+great old-fashioned fireplace. The whole picture wears an air of
+serenity and calm happiness, and is an impressive plea that we 'remember
+and keep holy the Sabbath day'&mdash;and we verily believe that such a
+picture will do more to influence our children to love the Sabbath, than
+any amount of parental restraint or lectures on moral obligation.</p>
+
+<p>There is another picture in the same quiet room: 'The Mother's Dream.'
+She is worn with watching, and lies dreaming beside the couch of the
+child. Rays of light open a bright pathway into the skies, while an
+angel is bearing the spirit child along it up to heaven. We think such a
+picture is worth more to familiarize childhood with death and
+resurrection, and will leave a sweeter and more lasting impression upon
+the young soul, than the most learned dissertation or simplest
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Landscape painting exerts a mellowing influence, and leads to the
+observation and love of nature, while historical pictures stimulate
+research, and nerve the mind to deeds of heroism and virtue.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of pictures in forming character and shaping the course of
+life is illustrated with peculiar power in the history of the sons of a
+quiet family in the interior, who all insisted upon going to sea. The
+parents were grieved that none of their boys would remain at home to
+care for the homestead, and be the comfort of their declining years.
+They expressed their disappointment to a friend then on a visit to them,
+and wondered what could have induced the boys, one after the other, to
+embrace a life so full of storm and danger. Directly over the open
+fireplace hung a picture of a vessel with fluttering, snowy sails,
+tossing and rocking amid the bright, green, yeasty waves. The friend saw
+it, read the mystery, and quietly inquired how long it had been there.
+'Since we commenced housekeeping,' was the unconscious reply. Not
+wishing to wound them, he was silent, and concealed his thoughts in his
+own breast, but the solution of the choice of life in the absent ones
+was clear enough to him: <i>that picture had sent them off, one after
+another, to sea</i>.</p>
+
+<p>How careful we should then be in surrounding youth and childhood with
+pure, elevating objects of art, as means of constant home-culture! We
+know we shall be told, 'This is all very good, but we cannot afford it.'
+Let us reason together. Can you not deduct something from your elaborate
+furniture, your expensive dress, and devote it to models, lithographs,
+or paintings? Subtract but the half from these luxuries and devote the
+sum to designs of art, and you will contribute doubly to the
+attractiveness and pleasantness of your home. Where we cannot hope to
+possess the original masterpiece, we may have photographic or
+lithographic copies, which are within the compass of very humble means.
+You will freely toss away five dollars in useless embroidery or surplus
+furniture, and it would buy you a lithograph of Raphael's immortal
+picture, giving the results of a whole age of artistic culture, or a
+photograph of Cheney's Madonna and Child, bearing the very spirit of the
+original, or a plaster cast of noble statuary, the original of which
+could not be obtained for any namable sum&mdash;and yet you say you cannot
+afford works of art!</p>
+
+<p>There is surely nothing you can afford better than to make your home
+attractive, and to introduce therein every available means of mental and
+moral culture. If you cannot afford to make home lovely, others will
+succeed in making dangerous places attractive to your children. There
+are spots enough kept light and picturesque, perilously fascinating to
+those whose homes boast no attractions. It will likely cost you far more
+in money, more surely in heart-anguish and sorrow, to have your children
+entertained in these places full of snares, where corrupt art lavishes
+her designs with unsparing hand, to vitiate the young imagination and
+debase the mind, than to exalt her in her chaste and ennobling power in
+the sanctuary of your homes, as one of the means of home-culture,
+stimulating to virtue and stamping the character with genuine worth.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> From an incident narrated in the newspaper account of the
+battle of Antietam. The reader will be reminded by it of Mrs. Browning's
+'Forced Recruit at Solferino.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_2" id="Footnote_A_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> A doubtful assertion. We, the children of the Puritans, and
+educated in their views and prejudices, have still many lessons to learn
+in the school of charily. It was not 'Luther who rendered subsequent
+history possible,' but the ever onward growth of humanity itself. Luther
+had no broader views of liberty of conscience than the church with which
+he struggled. Mr. Hallam says: 'It has been often said that the
+essential principle of Protestantism and that for which the struggle was
+made, was something different from all we have mentioned: a perpetual
+freedom from all authority in religious belief, or what goes by the name
+of private judgment. But to look more nearly at what occurred, this
+permanent independence was not much asserted, and still less acted upon.
+The Reformation was a <i>change of masters</i>, a voluntary one, no doubt, in
+those <i>who had any choice</i>, and in this sense an exercise, for the time,
+of their personal judgment. But no one having gone over to the
+Confession of Augsburg or that of Zurich, was deemed at liberty to
+modify these creeds at his pleasure. He might, of course, become an
+Anabaptist or Arian, but he was not the less a heretic in doing so than
+if he had continued in the Church of Rome. By what light a Protestant
+was to steer, might be a problem which at that time, as ever since, it
+would perplex a theologian to decide: but in practice, the law of the
+land which established one exclusive mode of faith, was the only safe,
+as, in ordinary circumstances, it was, upon the whole, the most eligible
+guide.' Speaking, in another place, of the causes which brought about
+the decline of Protestantism, etc., Mr. Hallam says: 'We ought to reckon
+also among the principal causes of this change, those perpetual
+disputes, those irreconcilable animosities, that bigotry, above all, and
+persecuting spirit, which were exhibited in the Lutheran and Calvinistic
+churches. Each began with a common principle&mdash;the necessity of an
+orthodox faith. But this orthodoxy meant nothing more than their <i>own</i>
+belief as opposed to that of their adversaries; a belief acknowledged to
+be fallible, yet maintained as certain; rejecting authority with one
+breath and appealing to it in the next, and claiming to rest on sure
+proofs of reason and Scripture, which their opponents were ready with
+just as much confidence to invalidate.'
+</p><p>
+Luther was one of the many reformers who, feeling the necessity of
+freedom for themselves, never dream of according it to others. His
+self-hold, his 'me,' was masterful, and led him far astray from the
+inevitable logic of his perilous position. His 'I-ness' was so supreme
+that he mistook his own convictions for the truths of the Most High&mdash;a
+common mistake among reformers! He did not feel the sovereignty of man
+with regard to his fellow man, his positive inalienable right to deal
+with his God alone in matters of faith and religious conviction. The
+golden rule of our Master, 'Do as you would be done by,' seems simple
+and self-evident, and yet it is a late fruit in the garden of human
+culture. Mr. Roscoe says: 'When Luther was engaged in his opposition to
+the Church of Rome, he asserted the right of private judgment with the
+confidence and courage of a martyr. But no sooner had he freed his
+followers from the chains of papal domination, than he forget other in
+many respects equally intolerable: and it was the employment of his
+latter years to counteract the beneficial effects produced by his former
+labors.'
+</p><p>
+Any system which saps the foundation of religious liberty, which forces
+itself between man and his Maker, cannot guarantee to us one of the main
+objects of all free governments&mdash;security in the pursuit of happiness.
+The Reformation did not give us religious freedom, therefore it did not
+give or suggest to us our democratic institutions. All that is true and
+pure in them springs from the very heart of Christianity itself. 'Where
+the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.' Much of the manifestation
+of the philosophy of freedom depends on individual character. Pope
+Alexander III., <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 1167, writes: 'Nature having made no slaves, all
+men have an equal right to liberty.' Luther, in 1524, says to the German
+peasants; 'You wish to emancipate yourselves from slavery, but slavery
+is as old as the world. Abraham had slaves, and St. Paul established
+rules for those whom the laws of nations reduced to that state.' Many of
+our modern priests re&euml;cho these sentiments! Guizot says: 'The
+emancipation of the human mind and <i>absolute</i> monarchy triumphed
+simultaneously.' The truth is we want a philosophical history of the
+Reformation, written neither from a Catholic, Protestant, nor infidel
+point of view, that we may rightly estimate what we lost, what gained in
+its wild storms. In judging this, we should not quite forget that it was
+the Catholic Lord Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in
+1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of
+<i>universal toleration</i>, while the Puritans were persecuting in New
+England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught
+set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means
+eternal Progress, and its path is onward.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ed. Con.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_3" id="Footnote_A_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal
+Institution of Great Britain, in April, May, and June, 1861, by Max
+M&uuml;ller, M. A. From the second London edition, revised. New York: Charles
+Scribner, 124 Grand street. 1862.</p></div></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4,
+October, 1864, by Various
+
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+</body>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8062 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4,
+October, 1864, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864
+       Devoted To Literature And National Policy
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 18, 2007 [EBook #23537]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
+
+DEVOTED TO
+
+LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
+
+
+VOL. VI.--OCTOBER, 1864.--No. IV.
+
+
+
+
+SOME USES OF A CIVIL WAR.
+
+
+War is a great evil. We may confess that, at the start. The Peace
+Society has the argument its own way. The bloody field, the mangled
+dying, hoof-trampled into the reeking sod, the groans, and cries, and
+curses, the wrath, and hate, and madness, the horror and the hell of a
+great battle, are things no rhetoric can ever make lovely.
+
+The poet may weave his wreath of victory for the conqueror; the
+historian, with all the pomp of splendid imagery, may describe the
+heroism of the day of slaughter; but, after all, and none know this
+better than the men most familiar with it, a great battle is the most
+hateful and hellish sight that the sun looks on in all his courses.
+
+And the actual battle is only a part. The curse goes far beyond the
+field of combat. The trampled dead and dying are but a tithe of the
+actual sufferers. There are desolate homes, far away, where want changes
+sorrow into madness. Wives wail by hearthstones where the household
+fires have died into cold ashes forever more. Like Rachel, mothers weep
+for the proud boys that lie stark beneath the pitiless stars. Under a
+thousand roofs--cottage roofs and palace roofs--little children ask for
+'father.' The pattering feet shall never run to meet, upon the
+threshold, _his_ feet, who lies stiffening in the bloody trench far
+away!
+
+There are added horrors in _civil war_. These forms, crushed and torn
+out of all human semblance, are our brothers. These wailing widows,
+these small fatherless ones speak our mother language, utter their pain
+in the tongue of our own wives and children. Victory seems barely better
+than defeat, when it is victory over our own blood. The scars we carve
+with steel or burn with powder across the shuddering land, are scars on
+the dear face of the Motherland we love. These blackened roof-trees,
+they are the homes of our kindred. These cities, where shells are
+bursting through crumbling wall and flaming spire, they are cities of
+our own fair land, perhaps the brightest jewels in her crown.
+
+Ay! men do well to pray for _peace!_ With suppliant palms outstretched
+to the pitying God, they do well to cry, as in the ancient litany, 'Give
+peace in our time, O Lord!' Let the husbandman go forth in the furrow.
+Let the cattle come lowing to the stalls at evening. Let bleating
+flocks whiten all the uplands. Let harvest hymns be sung, while groaning
+wagons drag to bursting barns their mighty weight of sheaves. Let mill
+wheels turn their dripping rounds by every stream. Let sails whiten
+along every river. Let the smoke of a million peaceful hearths rise like
+incense in the morning. Let the shouts of happy children, at their play,
+ring down ten thousand valleys in the summer day's decline. Over all the
+blessed land, asleep beneath the shadow of the Almighty hand, let the
+peace of God rest in benediction! 'Give _peace_ in our time, O Lord!'
+
+And yet the final clause to, every human prayer must be 'Thy will be
+done!' There are things better far than peace. There are things more
+loathely and more terrible than, the horror of battle and 'garments
+rolled in blood.' Peace is blessed, but if you have peace with hell, how
+about the blessedness? A covenant with evil is not the sort of agreement
+that will bring comfort. A truce with Satan is not the thing that it
+will do to trust. There are things in this world, without which the
+prayer for peace is 'a witch's prayer,' read backward to a curse.
+
+That is to say, whether peace is good depends entirely on the further
+question, With whom are you at peace? Whether war is evil depends on the
+other question, With whom are you at war? In one most serious and
+substantial point of view, human life is a battle, which, for the
+individual, ends only with death, and, for the race, only with the Final
+Consummation. The tenure of our place and right, as children of God, is
+that we fight evil to the bitter end. 'The Prince of Peace' Himself came
+'not to send peace,' in this war, 'but a sword.'
+
+We may venture, then, to say that there are some wars which are not all
+evil. They are terrible, but terrible like the hurricane, which sweeps
+away the pestilence; terrible like the earthquake, on whose night of
+terror God builds a thousand years of blooming plenty; terrible like the
+volcano, whose ashes are clothed by the purple vintages and yellow
+harvests of a hundred generations. The strong powers of nature are as
+beneficent as strong. The destroying powers are also creating powers.
+Life sits upon the sepulchre, and sings over buried Death through all
+nature and all time. War, too, has its compensations.
+
+For years, amid the world's rages, _we_ had peace. The only war we had,
+at all events, was one of our own seeking, and a mere playing at war.
+Many of us thought it would be so always. We believed we had discovered
+a method of settling all the world's difficulties without blows. The
+peace people had their jubilee. They talked about the advance of
+intelligence, and the softening power of civilization. They placed war
+among the forgotten horrors of a dead barbarism. They proved that
+commerce had rendered war impossible, because it had made it against
+self-interest. They talked about reason and persuasion, and moral
+influences. They asked, 'Why not settle all troubles in a grand world's
+congress, some huge palaver and paradise of speechmakers, where it will
+be all talk and voting and no blows?' Why not, indeed? How easy to
+'resolve' this poor, blind, struggling world of ours into a bit of
+heaven, you see, and so end our troubles! How easy to vote these poor,
+stupid, blundering brothers of ours into angels, in some great
+parliament of eloquent philosophers, and govern them thereafter on that
+basis!
+
+Now, resolutions and speeches and grand palavers are nice things, in
+their way, _to play with_, but, on the whole, it is best to get down to
+the hard fact if one really wants to work and prosper. And the hard fact
+is, that Adam's sons are not yet cherubs, nor their homestead, among the
+stars, just yet an outlying field of paradise. It is a planet whose
+private affairs are badly muddled. Its tenants for life are a
+quarrelsome, ill-tempered, unruly set of creatures altogether. As things
+go, they will break each others' heads sometimes. It is very
+unreasonable. I can see that. But men are not always reasonable. It is
+not for their own interest. I can see that too. But how often does
+interest, the best and highest, raise an impregnable barrier against
+passion or even caprice?
+
+We must take men as they are, and the world as we find it, to get a
+secure ground for attempting the reformation of either. And as men are,
+and as I find the world, at present, I meet Wrong, and find it armed to
+resist Right. The Wrong will not yield to persuasion, it will not
+surrender to reason. It comes straight on, coarse, brutal, devilish,
+caring not a straw for peace rhetoric or Quaker gravity, for persuasion
+or interest. It strikes straight down at right or justice. It tries to
+hammer them to atoms, and trample them with swinish hoofs into the mire.
+Now what am I to do? To stand peaceably by and see this thing done,
+while I study new tropes and invent new metaphors to _persuade_? Is that
+my business, to waste the godlike gift of human speech on this mad brute
+or devil?
+
+With wise pains and thoughtful labor, I clear my little spot of this
+stubborn soil. I hedge and plant my small vineyard. It begins, after
+much care, to yield me some fruit. I get a little corn and a little
+wine, to comfort me and mine. I have good hope that, as the years go by,
+I shall gather more. I trust, at last, my purple vintages may gladden
+many hearts of men, my rich olives make many faces shine. But some day,
+from the yet untamed forest, bursts the wild boar, and rushes on my
+hedge, and will break through to trample down my vineyard before mine
+eyes. And I am only to _argue_ with him! I am to cast the pearls of
+human reason and persuasion at his feet to stop him! Nay, rather, am I
+not to seize the first sufficient weapon that comes to hand, unloose the
+dogs upon him, and drive him to his lair again, or, better, bring his
+head in triumph home?
+
+It is true, there are wars where this parable will not apply. There are
+capricious wars, wars undertaken for no fit cause, wars with scarce a
+principle on either side. Such have often been _king's wars_, begun in
+folly, conducted in vanity, ended in shame, wars for the ambition of
+some crowned scoundrel, who rides a patient people till he drives them
+mad. And even such wars have their uses. They are not wholly evil.
+Alexander's, the maddest wars of all, and those of his successors, the
+most stupid and brutal ever fought, even they had their uses. Our war
+with poor Mexico, even Louis Bonaparte's, was not wholly evil.
+
+But there are wars, again, that are not capricious, that are simply
+necessary, unavoidable, as life, death, or judgment, wars where the
+choice is to see right trampled out of sight or to fight for it, where
+truth and justice are crushed unless the sword be grasped and used,
+where law and civilization and Christianity are assailed by savagery,
+brutality, and devilishness, and only the true bullet and the cold steel
+are received in the discussion. These are the Peoples' wars. In them
+nations arm. Generations swarm to their battle fields. They are
+landmarks in the world's advancement. For victories in them men sing _Te
+Deums_ throughout the ages. The heroes, who fell in them, loom through
+the haze of time like demigods.
+
+On the plains of Tours, when the Moslem tide, that swept on to overwhelm
+in ruin Christian Europe, was met, and stemmed, and turned by Charles
+Martel, and, breaking into foam against the iron breasts of his stalwart
+Franks, was whirled away into the darkness like spray before the
+tempest, the _Hammer-man_ did a work that day that, till the end of
+time, a world will thank Heaven for, as _he_ thanked it in the hour of
+victory.
+
+And when his greater grandson, creator, guide, and guardian of modern
+civilization, paced with restless, ever-present steps, around the
+borders of that small world of light which he had built up, half
+blindly, in the overwhelming dark, and with two-handed blows beat back,
+with the iron mace of Germany, the savage assaults of Saracen and
+Sclave, of black Dane and brutal Wendt, and smote on till he died
+smiting, for order, and law, and faith, and so saved Europe, and, let us
+humbly hope, his own rude but true soul _alive_! are not the thanks of
+all the world well due, that Karl der Grosse was no non-resistant, but a
+great, broad-shouldered, royal soldier, who wore the imperial purple by
+right of a moat imperial sword?
+
+There are wars like these, that, as the world goes, are inevitable. Some
+wrong undertakes to rule. Some lie challenges sovereignty. Some mere
+brutality or heathenism faces order, civilization, and law. There is no
+choice in the matter _then_. The wrong, the lie, the brutality, the
+barbarism _must go down_. If they listen to reason, well. If they can be
+only preached or lectured into dying peaceably, and getting quietly
+buried, it is an excellent consummation. If they do not, if they try
+conclusions, as they are far more apt to do, if they come on with brute
+force, there is no alternative. They must be met by force. They must get
+the only persuasion that can influence them--hard knocks, and plenty of
+them, well delivered, straight at the heart.
+
+Wars so undertaken, under a divine necessity, and with a divine sadness,
+too, by a patient people, whose business is not brutal fighting, but
+peaceful working, wars of this sort, in the world's long history, are
+scarce evils at all, and, even in the day of their wrath, bring
+compensative blessings. They may be fierce and terrible, they may bring
+wretchedness and ruin, they may 'demoralize' armies and people, they may
+be dreadful evils, and leave long trails of desolation, but they are
+none the less wars for victories in which men will return thanks while
+the world shall stand. The men who fall in such wars, receive the
+benedictions of their kind. The people that, with patient pain, stands
+and fights in them, bleeding drop by drop, and conquering or dying, inch
+by inch, but never yielding, because it feels the deathless value of
+_the cause_, the brave, calm people, who so fight is crowned forever on
+the earth.
+
+From our paradise of a lamb-like world this nation was awakened, three
+years ago, by a cannon shot across Charleston harbor. The fools who
+fired it knew not what they did, perhaps. They thought to open fire on a
+poor old fort and its handful of a garrison. They _did_ open fire on
+civilization, on order, on law, on the world's progress, on the hopes of
+man. There, at last, we were brought face to face with hard facts. Talk,
+in Congress, or out, was at an end. Voting and balloting, and
+speech-making were ruled out of order. We had administered the country,
+so far, by that machinery. It was puffed away at one discharge of glazed
+powder. The cannon alone could get a hearing. The bullet and the bayonet
+were the only arguments. No matter how it might end, we were forced to
+accept the challenge. No matter how utterly we might hate war, we were
+forced to try the last old persuasive--the naked sword.
+
+I cannot see how any honest and sensible man can now look back and see
+any other course possible. Could we stand by and see our house beaten
+into blackened ruin over our heads? Were we to talk 'peace,' and use
+'moral suasion' in the mouth of shotted cannon? Were we prepared to see
+the Constitution and the law, bought by long years of toil and blood,
+torn to tatters by the caprice of ambitious madmen? Fighting became a
+simple duty in an hour! There was no escape. What a pity that so many
+beautiful peace speeches (Charles Sumner's very eloquent ones among the
+rest!) should have been proved mere froth and wasted paper rags by one
+short telegram!
+
+So the great evil came to _us_, as it has come to all nations, as we
+believe it _must_ come, from what we now see, to every nation that will
+be great and strong. The land, for a time, staggered under the blow.
+Men's souls for an hour were struck dumb, so sudden was it, so unlocked
+for. As duty became clearer, we awaked at last to the fact that was at
+our doors. We turned to deal with it, as the best nations always do,
+cheerfully and hopefully. We have made mistakes and great ones. We have
+blundered fearfully. That was to have been expected. But we have gone
+on, nevertheless, steadfastly, patiently. That was also to have been
+expected. For three years and over, this has been our business. We have
+indeed carried on some commerce, and some manufactures, and some
+agriculture, but our main work has been fighting. The rest have been
+subsidiary to that. And the land groans and pants with this bloody toil.
+It clothes itself in mourning and darkens its streets, and desolates its
+homes, and bleeds its life drops slowly in its patient agony. But it
+never falters. It has accepted the appointed work. It sees no outlook
+yet, no chance for the bells to ring out peace over the roar of cannon,
+and it stands at its post bleeding, but wrestling still.
+
+Has there been nothing gained, however? For the terrible outlay is there
+yet no return? Has the war been evil and only evil so far, even granting
+that we do not finally succeed, according to our wish? The present
+writer does not think so. He believes there have been gains already, and
+great gains, not merely the gains that may be summed in the advance of
+forces, in territory recovered, in cities taken, in enemies defeated,
+but gains which, though not visible like these, are no less real and
+vastly more valuable, gains which add to the nation's moral power, and
+educate it for the future. He leaves to others the consideration of the
+material gain, and desires to hint, at least, at this other, which is
+much more likely to be slighted or perhaps forgotten.
+
+He has said enough to show that he does not like this slaughtering
+business in any shape. He is sure that the sooner it is ended the
+better. He has had its bloody consequences brought, in their most
+fearful form, to his own heart and home, but he has a fixed faith,
+nevertheless, that any duty, conscientiously undertaken, any duty from
+which there is no honorable or honest escape, must, if faithfully
+performed, obtain its meet reward. And believing that this business of
+war has been undertaken by the mass of the people of these United States
+in all simplicity of heart and honesty of purpose, as an unavoidable and
+hard necessity, he also believes they will get their honest wages for
+the doing it. He believes, too, that the day of recompense is not
+entirely delayed; that benefits, large and excellent, have already
+resulted to the nation. He sees already visible uses, which, to some
+extent at least, should comfort and sustain a people, even under the
+awful curse and agony of a civil war. He writes to show these uses to
+others, that they too may take heart and hope, when the days are
+darkest.
+
+In the first place, this war is, at last, our _national independence_.
+To be sure, we read of a war carried on by our fathers to secure that
+boon. They paid a large price for it, and they got it, and got all
+nations to acknowledge they deserved it, including the great nation they
+fought with. It was their _political_ independence only. It secured
+nothing beyond that. _Morally_ we were not independent. _Socially_, we
+were not independent. There was a time, we can all remember it, when we
+literally trembled before every cockney that strangled innocent
+aspirates at their birth. We had not secured our moral independence of
+Europe, and particularly not of our own kindred and people. We literally
+crouched at the feet of England, and begged for recognition like a poor,
+disowned relation. We scarcely knew what was right till England told us.
+We dare not accept a thing as wise, proper, or becoming till we had
+heard her verdict. What will England say? How will they think of this
+across the water? In all emergencies these were the questions thought,
+at least, if not spoken. We lived in perpetual terror of transatlantic
+opinion. Some cockney came to visit us. He might be a fool, a puppy, an
+intolerably bore, an infinite ass. It made no difference. He rode our
+consciousness like a nightmare. He and his note book dominated free
+America. 'What does he think of us? What will he say of us?' We actually
+grovelled before the creature, more than once begging for his good word,
+his kindly forbearance, his pity for our faults and failures. 'We know
+we are wicked, for we are republicans, O serene John! We are sinful, for
+we have no parish beadle. We are no better than the publicans, for we
+have no workhouse. We are altogether sinners, for we have no lord. It is
+also a sad truth that there are people among us who have been seen to
+eat with a knife, and but very few that could say, '_H_old _H_ingland,'
+with the true London aspiration. But be merciful notwithstanding. We beg
+pardon for all our faults. We recognize thy great kindness in coming
+among such barbarians. We will treat thee kindly as we can, and copy thy
+manners as closely as we can, and so try to improve ourselves. Do not,
+therefore, for the present, annihilate us with the indignation of thy
+outraged virtue. Have a touch of pity for us unfortunate and degenerate
+Americans!'
+
+That supplication is hardly an exaggeration. It was utterly shameful,
+the position we took in this matter of deference to English opinion. No
+people ever more grossly imposed upon themselves. We had an ideal
+England, which we almost worshipped, whose good opinion we coveted like
+the praise of a good conscience. We bowed before her word, as the child
+bows to the rebuke of a mother he reverences. She was Shakspeare's
+England, Raleigh's England, Sidney's England, the England of heroes and
+bards and sages, our grand old Mother, who had sat crowned among the
+nations for a thousand years. We were proud to claim even remote
+relationship with the Island Queen. We were proud to speak her tongue,
+to reenact her laws, to read her sages, to sing her songs, to claim her
+ancient glory as partly our own. England, the stormy cradle of our
+nation, the sullen mistress of the angry western seas, our hearts went
+out to her, across the ocean, across the years, across war, across
+injustice, and went out still in love and reverence. We never dreamed
+that our ideal England was dead and buried, that the actual England was
+not the marble goddess of our idolatry, but a poor Brummagem image,
+coarse lacquer-ware and tawdry paint! We never dreamed that the queenly
+mother of heroes was nursing 'shopkeepers' now, with only shopkeepers'
+ethics, 'pawnbrokers' morality'!
+
+At last our eyes are opened. To-day we stand a self-centred nation. We
+have seen so much of English consistency, of English nobleness, we have
+so learned to prize English honor and English generosity, that there is
+not a living American, North or South, who values English opinion, on
+any point of national right, duty, or manliness, above the idle
+whistling of the wind. Who considers it of the slightest consequence now
+what England may think on any matter American? Who has the curiosity to
+ask after an English opinion?
+
+This much the war has done for us. We are at last a _nation_. We have
+found a conscience of our own. We have been forced to stand on our own
+national sense of right and wrong. We are independent morally as well as
+politically, in opinion as well as in government. We shall never turn
+our eyes again across the sea to ask what any there may say or think of
+us. We have found that perhaps we do not understand them. We have
+certainly found that they do not understand us. We have taken the stand
+which every great people is obliged to take soon or late. We are
+sufficient for ourselves. Our own national conscience, our own sense of
+right and duty, our own public sentiment is our guide henceforth. By
+that we stand or fall. By that, and that only, will we consent that men
+should judge us. We are a grown-up nation from this time forth. We
+answer for ourselves to humanity and the future. We decide all causes at
+our own judgment seat.
+
+And there is another good, perhaps larger than this, which we have won,
+a good which contains and justifies this moral, national independence:
+We have been baptized at last into the family of great nations, by that
+red baptism which, from the first, has been the required initiation into
+that august brotherhood.
+
+It seems to be the invariable law, of earthly life at least, that
+humanity can advance only by the road of suffering. It is so with
+individuals. There is no spiritual growth without pain. Prosperity alone
+never makes a grand character. Purple and fine linen never clothe the
+hero. There are powers and gifts in the soul of man that only come to
+life and action in some day of bitterness. There are wells in the heart,
+whose crystal waters lie in darkness till some earthquake shakes the
+man's nature to its centre, bursts the fountain open, and lets the
+cooling waters out to refresh a parched land. There are seeds of noblest
+fruits that lie latent in the soul, till some storm of sorrow shakes
+down tears to moisten, and some burning sun of scorching pain sends heat
+to warm them into a harvest of blessings.
+
+By trouble met and patiently mastered, by suffering endured and
+conquered, by trials tested and overcome, so only does a man's soul grow
+to manliness.
+
+Now a nation is made up of single men. The law holds for the mass as for
+the individuals. It took a thousand years of toil, and war, and
+suffering, to make the Europe that we have. It took a thousand years of
+wrestle for the very life itself, to build Rome before. To be sure, we
+inherited all that this past of agony had bought the world. For us Rome
+had lived, fought, toiled, and fallen. For us Celt, Saxon, Norman had
+wrought and striven. We started with the accumulated capital of a
+hundred generations. It was perhaps natural to suppose we might escape
+the hard necessity of our fathers. We might surely profit by their
+dear-bought experience. The wrecks, strewn along the shores, would be
+effectual warnings to our gallant vessel on the dangerous seas where
+they had sailed. In peace, plenty, and prosperity, we might be carried
+to the highest reach of national greatness.
+
+Nay! never, unless we give the lie to all the world's experience! There
+never was a great nation yet nursed on pap, and swathed in silk. Storms
+broke around its rude cradle instead. The tempests rocked the stalwart
+child. The dragons came to strangle the baby Hercules in his swaddling
+clothes. The magnificent commerce, the increasing manufactures, the
+teeming soil, the wealth fast accumulating, they would never have made
+us, after all, a great people. They would have eaten the manhood out of
+us at last. We were becoming selfish, self-indulgent, sybaritic rapidly.
+The nation's muscle was softening, its heart was hardening. If we were
+to become a great nation, we needed more than commerce, more than
+plenty, more than rapid riches, more than a comfortable, indulgent life.
+If we were to be one of the world's great peoples, a people to dig deep
+and build strong, a people whose name and fame the world was to accept
+as a part of itself, we must look to pay the price inflexibly demanded
+at every people's hand, and count it out in sweat drops, tear drops,
+blood drops, to the last unit.
+
+We have been patiently counting out this costly currency for three slow
+years. I pity the moral outlook of the man who does not see that we have
+received largely of our purchase.
+
+From a nation whom the world believed, and whom itself believed, to be
+sunk in hopeless mammon worship, we have risen to be a nation that pours
+out its wealth like water for a noble purpose. Never again will 'the
+almighty dollar' be called America's divinity. We were sinking fast to
+low aims and selfish purposes, and wise men groaned at national
+degeneracy. The summons came, and millions leaped to offer all they had,
+to fling fortune, limb, and life on the altar of an unselfish cause. The
+dead manhood of the nation sprang to life at the call. We proved the
+redness of the old faithful, manly blood, to be as bright as ever.
+
+I know we hear men talk of the demoralization produced by war. There is
+a great deal they can say eloquently on that side. Drunkenness,
+licentiousness, lawlessness, they say are produced by it, already to an
+extent fearful to consider. And scoundrels are using the land's
+necessities for their own selfish purposes, and fattening on its blood.
+These things are all true, and a great deal more of the same sort
+beside. And it may be well at times, with good purpose, to consider
+them. But it is not well to consider them alone, and speak of them as
+the only moral results of the war. No! by the ten thousands who have
+died for the grand idea of National Unity, by the unselfish heroes who
+have thrown themselves, a living wall, before the parricidal hands of
+traitors, who have perished that the land they loved beyond life might
+not perish, by the example and the memory they have left in ten thousand
+homes, which their death has consecrated for the nation's reverence by
+_their_ lives and deaths, we protest against the one-sided view that
+looks only on the moral _evil_ of the struggle!
+
+The truth is, there are war vices and war virtues. There are peace vices
+and there are peace virtues. Decorous quiet, orderly habits, sober
+conduct, attention to business, these are the good things demanded by
+society in peace. And they may consist with meanness, selfishness,
+cowardice, and utter unmanliness. The round-stomached, prosperous man,
+with his ships, shops, and factories, is very anxious for the
+cultivation of these virtues. He does not like to be disturbed o'
+nights. He wants his street to be quiet and orderly. He wants to be left
+undisturbed to prosecute his prosperous business. He measures virtue by
+the aid it offers for that end. Peace vices, the cankers that gnaw a
+nation's heart, greed, self-seeking luxury, epicurean self-indulgence,
+hardness to growing ignorance, want, and suffering, indifference to all
+high purposes, spiritual _coma_ and deadness, these do not disturb him.
+They are rotting the nation to its marrow, but they do not stand in the
+way of his money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. To be
+sure, sometimes, across his torpid brain and heart may echo some harsh
+expressions, from those stern old Hebrew prophets, about these things.
+But he has a very comfortable pew, in a very soporific church, and he is
+only half awake, and the echo dies away and leaves no sign. _He_ is just
+the man to tell us all about the demoralization of war.
+
+Now quietness and good order, sober, discreet, self-seeking, decorous
+epicureanism and the rest, are not precisely the virtues that will save
+a people. There are certain old foundation virtues of another kind,
+which are the only safe substratum for national or personal salvation.
+These are courage--hard, muscular, manly courage--fortitude, patience,
+obedience to discipline, self-denial, self-sacrifice, veracity of
+purpose, and such like. These rough old virtues must lie at the base of
+all right character. You may add, as ornaments to your edifice, as
+frieze, cornices, and capitals to the pillars, refinements, and
+courtesies, and gentleness, and so on. But the foundation must rest on
+the rude granite blocks we have mentioned, or your gingerbread erection
+will go down in the first storm.
+
+And the simple fact is that peace has a tendency to eat out just these
+foundation virtues. They are _war_ virtues; just the things called out
+by a life-and-death battle for some good cause. In these virtues we
+claim the land has grown. The national character has deepened and
+intensified in these. We have strengthened anew these rocky foundations
+of a nation's greatness. Men lapped in luxury have patiently bowed to
+toil and weariness. Men living in self-indulgence have shaken off their
+sloth, and roused the old slumbering fearlessness of their race. Men,
+living for selfish ends, have been penetrated by the light of a great
+purpose, and have risen to the loftiness of human duty. Men, who shrank
+from pain as the sorest evil, have voluntarily accepted pain, and borne
+it with a fortitude we once believed lost from among mankind; and, over
+all, the flaming light of a worthy cause that men might worthily live
+for and worthily die for, has led the thousands of the land out of their
+narrow lives, and low endeavors, to the clear mountain heights of
+sacrifice! We stand now, a courageous, patient, steadfast, unselfish
+people before all the world. We stand, a people that has taken its life
+in its hand for a purely unselfish cause. We have won our place in the
+foremost rank of nations, not on our wealth, our numbers, or our
+prosperity, but on the truer test of our manhood, truth, and
+steadfastness. We stand justified at the bar of our own conscience, for
+national pride and self-reliance, as we shall infallibly be justified at
+the bar of the world.
+
+Is this lifting up of a great people nothing? Is this placing of twenty
+millions on the clear ground of unselfish duty, as life's motive,
+nothing? Is there one of us, to-day, who is not prouder of his nation
+and its character, in the midst of its desperate tug for life, than he
+ever was in the day of its envied prosperity? And when he considers how
+the nation has answered to its hard necessity, how it has borne itself
+in its sore trial, is he not clear of all doubt about its vitality and
+continuance? And is that, also, nothing?
+
+But besides this education in the stern, rude, heroic virtues that prop
+a people's life, there has been an education in some others, which,
+though apparently opposed, are really kindred. Unselfish courage is
+noble, but always with the highest courage there lives a great pity and
+tenderness. The brave man is always soft hearted. The most courageous
+people are the tenderest people. The highest manhood dwells with the
+highest womanhood.
+
+So the heart of the nation has been touched and softened, while its
+muscles have been steeled. While it has grasped the sword, it has
+grasped it weeping in infinite pity. It has recognized the truth of
+human brotherhood as it never did before. All ranks have been drawn
+together in mutual sympathy. All barriers, that hedge brethren apart,
+have been broken down in the common suffering.
+
+News comes, to-day, that a great battle has been fought, and wounded
+thousands of our brothers need aid and care. You tell the news in any
+city or hamlet in the land, and hands are opened, purses emptied, stores
+ransacked for comforts for the suffering, and gentle women, in
+hundreds, are ready to tend them as they would their own. Is this no
+gain? Is it nothing that the selfishness of us all has been broken up as
+by an earthquake, and that kindness, charity, and pity to the sick and
+needy have become the law of our lives? Count the millions that have
+streamed forth from a people whose heart has been touched by a common
+suffering, in kindness to wounded and sick soldiers and to their needy
+families! Benevolence has become the atmosphere of the land.
+
+Four years ago we could not have believed it. That the voluntary charity
+of Americans would count by millions yearly, would flow out in a steady,
+deep, increasing tide, that giving would be the rule, free, glad giving,
+and refusing the marked exception, the world would not have believed it,
+_we_ would not have believed it ourselves. Is this nothing?
+
+We will think more of each other also for all this. We will love and
+honor each other better. Under the awful pressure of the Hand that lies
+upon us so heavily, we are brought into closer knowledge and closer
+sympathy. The blows of battle are welding us into one. Fragments of all
+people, and all races, cast here by the waves, and strangers to each
+other, with a hundred repulsions and separations, even to language,
+religions, and morals, the furnace heat of our trial is fusing all parts
+into one strong, united whole. We are driven and drawn together by the
+sore need that is upon us, and as Americans are forgetting all else. The
+civil war is making us _a people_--the American People. We are no longer
+'the loose sweepings of all lands,' as they called us. We are one, now,
+brethren all in the sacrament of a great sorrow.
+
+And is this nothing?
+
+And these goods and gains are permanent. They do not belong to this
+generation only, or to this time exclusively. After all, the nation is
+mainly an educator. These things remain, as parts of its moral influence
+in moulding and training. And here is their infinite value.
+Independence, courage, patience, fortitude, nobleness, self-sacrifice,
+and tenderness become the national ethics. These things are pressed home
+on all growing minds. Coming generations are to be educated in these, by
+the example of the present. We are stamping these things, as the
+essentials of the national character, on the ages to come.
+
+A thousand years of prosperity will have no power of this kind. What is
+there in Chinese history to elevate a Chinaman? What high, heroic
+experience to educate him, in her long centuries of ignoble peace? The
+training power of a nation is acquired always in the crises of its
+history. In the day when it rises to fight for its life, the typal men,
+who give it the lasting models of its excellence, spring forth too for
+recognition. The examples of these days of our own crisis will remain
+forever to influence the children of our people. We may be thankful, in
+our deepest sorrow, that we are leaving them no example of cowardice or
+meanness, that we give them a record to read of the courage, endurance,
+and manliness of the men that begat them, that the stamp of national
+character we leave to teach them is one of which a brave, free people
+need never be ashamed, that, in the troubles they may be called to face,
+we leave them, as the national and tried cure for _all_ troubles, the
+bold, true heart, the willing hand, the strong arm, and faith in the
+Lord of Hosts. Shiloh, Stone River, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, and
+a hundred others, are the heroic names that will educate our
+grandchildren, as Bunker Hill, Yorktown, and Saratoga have educated
+ourselves. Who will say that a heritage of heroism and truth and loyalty
+like this, to leave to the land we love, is nothing? Who can count the
+price that will sum its value?
+
+Here, at least, are some of the gains of our civil war. We seek not to
+penetrate the councils of the Omniscient, or guess His purposes, though
+we may humbly hope there are vaster things than these in store for
+humanity and the world as the results of the struggle. Believing that He
+governs still, that He reigns on the James, as He reigned on the Jordan,
+that _He_ decides the end, and not President Lincoln or Jefferson Davis,
+and not General Grant or General Lee, we have firm faith that this awful
+struggle is no brute fight of beasts or ruffians, but a grand world's
+war of heroes. We believe He will justify His government in the end, and
+make this struggle praise Him, in the blessed days that are to come. But
+we leave all those dim results unguessed at, as we leave the purposes of
+the war itself unmentioned, and the ends which justify us in fighting
+on. Men, by this time, have made up their minds, once for all, on these
+last points. The nation has chosen, and in its own conscience, let
+others think as they may, accepts the responsibility cheerfully.
+
+It is enough to indicate, as we have done, some _real_, though
+immaterial, results already attained, results which, to the philosopher
+or thoughtful statesman, are worth a very large outlay. They do not,
+indeed, remove the horror of war, they do not ask us not to seek peace,
+they do not dry the tears, or hide the blood of the contest, but they do
+show us that war is no unmixed evil, that even honest, faithful war-work
+is acceptable work, and will be paid for.
+
+They declare that, after all, war is a means of moral training, that
+'Carnage' may be, as the gentlest of poets wrote, 'God's daughter,' that
+battles may be blessings to be thankful for in the long march of time.
+They bring to our consciousness, once more, the fact that a Great
+Battle, amid all its horror, wrath, and blood, is something sacred
+still, an earthly shadow of that Unseen Battle which has stormed through
+time, between the hosts of Light and Darkness. They declare again, to
+the nation, that old truth, without which the nation perishes and man
+rots, that to die in some good cause is the noblest thing a man can do
+on earth. They bid us bend in hope beneath the awful hand of the GOD OF
+BATTLES, and do our appointed work patiently, bravely, loyally, till
+_He_ brings the end. They tell us that not work only, but heroic
+fighting, also, is a worship accepted at His seat. They bid us be
+thankful, as for the most sacred of all gifts, that thousands, in this
+loyal land of ours, have had the high grace, given from above,
+
+  'To search through all they felt and saw,
+  The springs of life, the depths of awe,
+  And reach _the law within the law_:
+
+  'To pass, when Life her light withdraws,
+  Not void of righteous self-applause,
+  Nor in a merely selfish cause--
+
+  'In some good cause, not in their own,
+  To perish, _wept for_, _honored_, _known_,
+  And like a warrior overthrown.'
+
+
+
+
+PROVERBS.
+
+
+Violets and lilies-of-the-valley are seen in a vale.
+
+Family jars should be filled with honey.
+
+All are not lambs that gambol on the green.
+
+Ask the 'whys,' and be wise.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNDIVINE COMEDY--A POLISH DRAMA.
+
+Dedicated to Mary.
+
+PART II.
+
+  'Du Gemisch von Koth und Feuer!'
+  'Thou compound of clay and fire!'
+
+
+Why, O child! art thou not, like other children, riding gayly about on
+sticks for horses, playing with toys, torturing flies, or impaling
+butterflies on pins, that the brilliant circles of their dying pangs may
+amuse thy young soul? Why dost thou never romp and sport upon the grassy
+turf, pilfer sugarplums and sweetmeats, and wet the letters of thy
+picture book from A to Z with sudden tears?
+
+Infant king of flies, moths, and grasshoppers; of cowslips, daisies, and
+of kingcups; of tops, hoops, and kites; little friend of Punch and
+puppets; robber of birds' nests, and outlaw of petty mischiefs--son of
+the poet, tell me, why art thou so unlike a child--so like an angel?
+
+What strange meaning lies in the blue depths of thy dreamy eyes? Why do
+they seek the ground as if weighed down by the shadows of their drooping
+lashes; and why is their latent fire so gloomed by mournful memories,
+although they have only watched the early violets of a few springs? Why
+sinks thy broad head heavily down upon thy tiny hands, while thy pallid
+temples bend under the weight of thine infant thoughts, like snowdrops
+burdened with the dew of night?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And when thy pale cheek floods with sudden crimson, and, tossing back
+thy golden curls, thou gazest sadly into the depths of the sky--tell me,
+infant, what seest thou there, and with whom holdest thou communion? For
+then the light and subtile wrinkles weave their living mesh across thy
+spotless brow, like silken threads untwining by an unseen power from
+viewless coils, and thine eyes sparkle, freighted with mystic meanings,
+which none are able to interpret! Then thy grandam calls in vain,
+'George, George!' and weeps, for thou heedest her not, and she fears
+thou dost not love her! Friends and relations then appeal to thee in
+vain, for thou seemest not to hear or know them! Thy father is silent
+and looks sad; tears fill his anxious eyes, falling coldly back into his
+troubled heart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The physician comes, puts his finger on thy pulse, counts its changeful
+beats, and says thy nerves are out of order.
+
+Thy old godfather brings thee sugarplums, strokes thy pale cheeks, and
+tells thee thou must be a statesman in thy native land.
+
+The professor passes his hand over thy broad brow, and declares thou
+will have talent for the abstract sciences.
+
+The beggar, whom thou never passest without casting a coin in his
+tattered hat, promises thee a beautiful wife, and a heavenly crown.
+
+The soldier, raising thee high in the air, declares thou wilt yet be a
+great general.
+
+The wandering gypsy looks into thy tender face, traces the lines upon
+thy little hand, but will not tell their hidden meaning; she gazes sadly
+on thee, and then sighing turns away; she says nothing, and refuses to
+take the proffered coin.
+
+The magnetizer makes his passes over thee, presses his fingers on thine
+eyes, and circles thy face, but mutters suddenly an oath, for he is
+himself growing sleepy; he feels like kneeling down before thee, as
+before a holy image. Then thou growest angry, and stampest with thy tiny
+feet; and when thy father comes, thou seemest to him a little Lucifer;
+and in his picture of the Day of Judgment, he paints thee thus among the
+infant demons, the young spirits of evil.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile thou growest apace, becoming ever more and more beautiful, not
+in the childish beauty of rose bloom and snow, but in the loveliness of
+wondrous and mysterious thoughts, which flow to thee from other worlds;
+and though thy languid eyes droop wearily their fringes, though thy
+cheek is pale, and thy breast bent and contracted, yet all who meet thee
+stop to gaze, exclaiming: '_What a little angel!_'
+
+If the dying flowers had a living soul inspired from heaven; if, in
+place of dewdrops, each drooping leaf were bent to earth with the
+thought of an angel, such flowers would resemble thee, fair child!
+
+And thus, before the fall, they may, perchance, have bloomed in
+Paradise!
+
+     A graveyard. The Man and George are seen sitting by a grave, over
+     which stands a gothic monument, with arches, pillars, and mimic
+     towers.
+
+THE MAN. Take off thy hat, George, kneel, and pray for thy mother's
+soul!
+
+GEORGE. Hail, Mary, full of grace! Mary, Queen of Heaven, Lady of all
+that blooms on earth, that scents the fields, that paints the fringes of
+the streams ...
+
+THE MAN. Why changest thou the words of the prayer? Pray for thy mother
+as thou hast been taught to do; for thy dear mother, George, who
+perished in her youth, just ten years ago this very day and hour.
+
+GEORGE. Hail, Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee! I know that
+thou art blessed among the angels, and as thou glidest softly through
+them, each one plucks a rainbow from his wings to cast under thy feet,
+and thou floatest softly on upon them as if borne by waves....
+
+THE MAN. George!
+
+GEORGE. Be not angry with me, father! these words _force_ themselves
+into my mind; they pain me so dreadfully in my head, that I must say
+them....
+
+THE MAN. Rise, George. Such prayers will never reach God!
+
+Thou art not thinking of thy mother; thou dost not love her!
+
+GEORGE. I love her. I see mamma very often.
+
+THE MAN. Where, my son?
+
+GEORGE. In dreams--yet not exactly in dreams, but just as I am going to
+sleep. I saw her yesterday.
+
+THE MAN. What do you mean, George?
+
+GEORGE. She looked so pale and thin!
+
+THE MAN. Has she ever spoken to you, darling?
+
+GEORGE. She goes wandering up and down--through an immense Dark--she
+roams about entirely alone, so white and so pale! She sang to me
+yesterday. I will tell thee the words of her song:
+
+    'I wander through the universe,
+      I search through infinite space,
+    I press through Chaos, Darkness,
+      To bring thee light and grace;
+    I listen to the angels' song
+      To catch the heavenly tone;
+    Seek every form of beauty,
+      To bring to thee, mine own!
+
+    'I seek from greatest spirits,
+      From those of lower might,
+    Rainbow colors, depth of shadow,
+      Burning contrasts, dark and bright;
+    Rhythmed music, hues from Eden,
+      Floating through the heavenly bars;
+    Sages' wisdom, seraphs' loving,
+      Mystic glories from the stars--
+  That thou mayst be a Poet, richly gifted from above
+  To win thy father's fiery heart, and _keep_ his _changeful love_!'
+
+Thou seest, dear father, that my mother does speak to me, and that I
+remember, word for word, what she says to me; indeed I am telling you
+no lie.
+
+THE MAN (_leaning against one of the pillars of the tomb_). Mary! wilt
+thou destroy thine own son, and burden my Soul with the ruin of both?...
+
+But what folly! She is calm and tranquil now in heaven, as she was pure
+and sweet on earth. My poor boy only dreams ...
+
+GEORGE. I hear mamma's voice now, father!
+
+THE MAN. From whence comes it, my son?
+
+GEORGE. From between the two elms before us glittering in the sunset.
+Listen!
+
+    'I pour through thy spirit
+      Music and might;
+    I wreathe thy pale forehead
+      With halos of light;
+    Though blind, I can show thee
+      Blest forms from above,
+    Floating far through the spaces
+      Of infinite love,
+  Which the angels in heaven and men on the earth
+  Call Beauty. I've sought since the day of thy birth
+
+    To waken thy spirit,
+      My darling, my own,
+    That the hopes of thy father
+      May rest on his son!
+    That his love, warm and glowing,
+      Unchanging may shine;
+    And his heart, infant poet,
+      _Forever be thine!_'
+
+THE MAN. Can a blessed spirit be mad? Do the last thoughts of the dying
+pursue them into their eternal homes?
+
+Can insanity be a part of immortality?... O Mary! Mary!
+
+GEORGE. Mamma's voice is growing weaker and weaker; it is dying away now
+close by the wall of the charnel house. Hark! hark! she is still
+repeating:
+
+  'That his love, warm and glowing,
+    Unchanging may shine;
+  And his heart, little poet,
+    _Forever be thine!_'
+
+THE MAN. O God! have mercy upon our unfortunate child, whom in Thine
+anger Thou hast doomed to madness and to an early death! Have pity on
+the innocent creature Thou hast Thyself called into being! Rob him not
+of reason! Ruin not the living temple Thou hast built--the shrine of the
+soul! Oh look down upon my agony, and deliver not this young angel up to
+hell! Me Thou hast at least armed with strength to endure the dizzying
+throng of thoughts, passions, longings, yearnings--but him! Thou hast
+given him a frame fragile as the frailest web of the spider, and every
+great thought rends and frays it. O Lord! my God! have mercy!
+
+I have not had one tranquil hour for the last ten years. Thou hast
+placed me among men who may have envied my position, who may have wished
+me well, or who would have conferred benefits upon me--but I have been
+alone! alone!
+
+Thou hast sent storms of agony upon me, mingled with wrongs, dreams,
+hopes, thoughts, aspirations, and yearnings for the infinite! Thy grace
+shines upon my intellect, but reaches not my heart!
+
+Have mercy, God! Suffer me to love my son in peace, that thus
+reconciliation may be planted between the created and the Creator!...
+
+Cross thyself now, my son, and come with me.
+
+Eternal rest be with the dead!
+
+     Exit with George
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     A public square. Ladies and gentlemen. A Philosophe. The Man.
+
+PHILOSOPHE. I repeat to you, that it is my irresistible conviction that
+the hour has come for the emancipation of negroes and women.
+
+THE MAN. I agree with you fully.
+
+PHILOSOPHE. And as a change so great in the constitution of society,
+both in general and particular, stands so immediately before us, I
+deduce from such a revolution the complete destruction of old forms and
+formulas, and the regeneration of the whole human family.
+
+THE MAN. Do you really think so?
+
+PHILOSOPHE. Just as our earth, by a sudden change in the inclination of
+its axis, might rotate more obliquely ...
+
+THE MAN. Do you see this hollow tree?
+
+PHILOSOPHE. With tufts of new leaves sprouting forth from the lower
+branches?
+
+THE MAN. Yes. How much longer do you think it can continue to stand?
+
+PHILOSOPHE. I cannot tell; perhaps a year or two longer.
+
+THE MAN. Its roots are rapidly rotting out, and yet it still puts forth
+a few green leaves.
+
+PHILOSOPHE. What inference do you deduce from that?
+
+THE MAN. Nothing--only that it is rotting out in spite of its few green
+leaves; falling daily into dust and ashes; and that it will not bear the
+tool of the moulder!
+
+And yet it is your type, the type of your followers, of your theories,
+of the times in which we live....
+
+     They pass on out of sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     A mountain pass.
+
+THE MAN. I have labored many years to discover the final results of
+knowledge, pleasure, thought, passion, and have only succeeded in
+finding a deep and empty grave in my own heart!
+
+I have indeed learned to know most things by their names--the feelings,
+for example; but I _feel_ nothing, neither desires, faith, nor love. Two
+dim forebodings alone stir in the desert of my soul--the one, that my
+son is hopelessly blind; the other, that the society in which I have
+grown up is in the pangs of dissolution; I suffer as God enjoys, in
+myself only, and for myself alone....
+
+VOICE OF THE GUARDIAN ANGEL. Love the sick, the hungry, the wretched!
+Love thy neighbor, thy poor neighbor, as thyself, and thou shalt be
+redeemed!
+
+THE MAN. Who speaks?
+
+MEPHISTOPHILES. Your humble servant. I often astonish travellers by my
+marvellous natural gifts: I am a ventriloquist.
+
+THE MAN. I have certainly seen a face like that before in an engraving.
+
+MEPHISTOPHILES (_aside_). The count has truly a good memory.
+
+THE MAN. Blessed be Christ Jesus!
+
+MEPHISTOPHILES. Forever and ever, amen!--(_Muttering as he disappears
+behind a rock_:) Curses on thee, and thy stupidity!
+
+THE MAN. My poor son! through the sins of thy father and the madness of
+thy mother, thou art doomed to perpetual darkness--blind! Living only in
+dreams and visions, thou art never destined to attain maturity! Thou art
+but the shadow of a passing angel, flitting rapidly over the earth, and
+melting into the infinite of ...
+
+Ha! what an immense eagle that is fluttering just there where the
+stranger disappeared behind the rocks!
+
+THE EAGLE. Hail! I greet thee! hail!
+
+THE MAN. He is as black as night; he flies nearer; the whirring of his
+vast wings stirs me like the whistling hail of bullets in the fight.
+
+THE EAGLE. Draw the sword of thy fathers, and combat for their power,
+their fame!
+
+THE MAN. His wide wings spread above me; he gazes into my eyes with the
+charm of the rattlesnake--Ha! I understand thee!
+
+THE EAGLE. Despair not! Yield not now, nor ever! Thy enemies, thy
+miserable enemies, will fall to dust before thee!
+
+THE MAN. Going?... Farewell, then, among the rocks, behind which thou
+vanishest!... Whatever thou mayst be, delusion or truth, victory or
+ruin, I trust in thee, herald of fame, harbinger of glory!
+
+Spirit of the mighty Past, come to my aid! and even if thou hast already
+returned to the bosom of God, quit it--and come to me! Inspire me with
+the ancient heroism! Become in me, force, thought, action!
+
+     Stooping to the ground, he turns up and throws aside a viper.
+
+Curses upon thee, loathsome reptile! Even as thou diest, crushed and
+writhing, and nature breathes no sigh for thy fate, so will the
+destroyers of the Past perish in the abyss of nothingness, leaving no
+trace, and awakening no regret.
+
+None of the countless clouds of heaven will pause one moment in their
+flight to look upon the thronging hosts of men now gathering to kill and
+slaughter!
+
+First they--then I--
+
+Boundless vault of blue, so softly pouring round the earth! the earth is
+a sick child, gnashing her teeth, weeping, struggling, sobbing; but thou
+hearest her not, nor tremblest, flowing in silence ever gently on, calm
+in thine own infinity!
+
+Farewell forever, O mother nature! Henceforth I must wander among men! I
+must combat with my brethren!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     A chamber. The Man. George. A Physician.
+
+THE MAN. No one has as yet been of the least service to him; my last
+hopes are placed in you.
+
+PHYSICIAN. You do me much honor.
+
+THE MAN. Tell me your opinion of the case.
+
+GEORGE. I can neither see you, my father, nor the gentleman to whom you
+speak. Dark or black webs float before my eyes, and again something like
+a snake seems to crawl across them. Sometimes a golden cloud stands
+before them, flies up, and then falls down upon them, and a rainbow
+springs out of it; but there is no pain--they never hurt me--I do not
+suffer, father.
+
+PHYSICIAN. Come here, George, in the shade. How old are you?
+
+     He looks steadily into the eyes of the boy.
+
+THE MAN. He is fourteen years old.
+
+PHYSICIAN. Now turn your eyes directly to the light, to the window.
+
+THE MAN. What do you say, doctor?
+
+PHYSICIAN. The eyelids are beautifully formed, the white perfectly pure,
+the blue deep, the veins in good order, the muscles strong.
+
+     To George.
+
+You may laugh at all this, George. You will be perfectly well; as well
+as I am.
+
+     To the Man (aside).
+
+There is no hope. Look at the pupils yourself, count; there is not the
+least susceptibility to the light; there is a paralysis of the optic
+nerve.
+
+GEORGE. Everything looks to me as if covered with black clouds.
+
+THE MAN. Yes, they are open, blue, lifeless, dead!
+
+GEORGE. When I shut my eyelids I can see _more_ than when my eyes are
+open.
+
+PHYSICIAN. His mind is precocious; it is rapidly consuming his body. We
+must guard him against an attack of catalepsy.
+
+THE MAN (_leading the doctor aside_). Save him, doctor, and the half of
+my estate is yours!
+
+PHYSICIAN. A disorganization cannot be reorganized.
+
+     He takes up his hat and cane.
+
+Pardon me, count, but I can remain here no longer; I am forced now to
+visit a patient whom I am to couch for cataract.
+
+THE MAN. For God's sake, do not desert us!
+
+PHYSICIAN. Perhaps you have some curiosity to know the name of this
+malady?...
+
+THE MAN. Speak! is there no hope?
+
+PHYSICIAN. It is called, from the Greek, _amaurosis_.
+
+     Exit Physician.
+
+THE MAN (_pressing his son to his heart_). But you can still see a
+little, George?
+
+GEORGE. I can _hear your voice_, father!
+
+THE MAN. Try if you can see. Look out of the window; the sun is shining
+brightly, the sky is clear.
+
+GEORGE. I see crowds of forms circling between the pupils of my eyes and
+my eyelids--faces I have often seen before, the leaves of books I have
+read before....
+
+THE MAN. Then you really do still see?
+
+GEORGE. Yes, with the _eyes of my spirit--but the eyes of my body have
+gone out forever_.
+
+THE MAN (_falls on his knees as if to pray; pauses, and exclaims
+bitterly_:) Before _whom_ shall I kneel--to whom pray--to whom complain
+of the unjust doom crushing my innocent child?
+
+     He rises from his knees.
+
+It is best to bear all in silence--God laughs at our prayers--Satan
+mocks at our curses--
+
+A VOICE. But thy son is a Poet--and what wouldst thou more?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     The Physician and Godfather.
+
+GODFATHER. It is certainly a great misfortune to be blind.
+
+PHYSICIAN. And at his age a very unusual one.
+
+GODFATHER. His frame was always very fragile, and his mother died
+somewhat--so--so ...
+
+PHYSICIAN. How did she die?
+
+GODFATHER. A little so ... you understand ... not quite in her right
+mind.
+
+THE MAN (_entering_). I pray you, pardon my intrusion at so late an
+hour, but for the last night or two my son has wakened up at twelve
+o'clock, left his bed, and talked in his sleep.
+
+Will you have the kindness to follow me, and watch him to-night?
+
+PHYSICIAN. I will go to him immediately; I am very much interested in
+the observation of such phenomena.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     Relations, Godfather, Physician, the Man, a Nurse--assembled in the
+     sleeping apartment of George Stanislaus.
+
+FIRST RELATION. Hush! hush! be quiet!
+
+SECOND RELATION. He is awake, but neither sees nor hears us.
+
+PHYSICIAN. I beg that you will all remain perfectly silent.
+
+GODFATHER. This seems to be a most extraordinary malady.
+
+GEORGE (_rising from his seat_). God! O God!
+
+FIRST RELATION. How lightly he treads!
+
+SECOND RELATION. Look! he clasps his thin hands across his breast.
+
+THIRD RELATION. His eyelids are motionless; he does not move his lips,
+but what a sharp and thrilling shriek!
+
+NURSE. Christ, shield him!
+
+GEORGE. Depart from me, Darkness! I am a child of light and song, and
+what hast thou to do with me? What dost thou desire from me?
+
+I do not yield myself to thee, although my sight has flown away upon the
+wings of the wind, and is flitting restlessly about through infinite
+space: it will return to me--my eyes will open with a flash of
+flame--and I will see the universe!
+
+GODFATHER. He talks exactly as his mother did; he does not know what he
+is saying, I think his condition very critical.
+
+PHYSICIAN. He is in great danger.
+
+NURSE. Holy Mother of God! take my eyes, and give them to the poor boy!
+
+GEORGE. My mother, I entreat thee! O mother, send me thoughts and
+images, that I may create within myself a world like the one I have lost
+forever!
+
+FIRST RELATION. Do you think, brother, it will be necessary to call a
+family consultation?
+
+SECOND RELATION. Be silent!
+
+GEORGE. Thou answerest me not, my mother!
+
+O mother, do not desert me!
+
+PHYSICIAN (_to the Man_). It is my duty to tell you the truth.
+
+GODFATHER. Yes, to tell the truth is the duty and virtue of a physician!
+
+PHYSICIAN. Your son is suffering from incipient insanity, connected with
+an extraordinary excitability of the nervous system, which sometimes
+occasions, if I may so express myself, the strange phenomenon of
+sleeping and waking at the same time, as in the case now before us.
+
+THE MAN (_aside_). He reads to me thy sentence, O my God!
+
+PHYSICIAN. Give me pen, ink, and paper.
+
+     He writes a prescription.
+
+THE MAN. I think it best you should all now retire; George needs rest.
+
+SEVERAL VOICES. Good night! good night! good night!
+
+GEORGE (_waking suddenly_). Are they wishing me good night, father?
+
+They should rather speak of a long, unbroken, eternal night, but of no
+good one, of no happy dawn for me....
+
+THE MAN. Lean on me, George. Let me support you to the bed.
+
+GEORGE. What does all this mean, father?
+
+THE MAN. Cover yourself up, and go quietly to sleep. The doctor says you
+will regain your sight.
+
+GEORGE. I feel so very unwell, father; strange voices roused me from my
+sleep, and I saw mamma standing in a field of lilies....
+
+     He falls asleep.
+
+THE MAN. Bless thee! bless thee, my poor boy!
+
+I can give thee nothing but a blessing; neither happiness, nor light,
+nor fame are in my gift. The stormy hour of struggle approaches, when I
+must combat with the _few_ against the _many_.
+
+Tortured infant! what is then to become of thee, alone, helpless, blind,
+surrounded by a thousand dangers? Child, yet Poet, poor Singer without a
+hearer, with thy soul in heaven, and thy frail, suffering body still
+fettered to the earth--what is to be thy doom? Alas, miserable infant!
+thou most unfortunate of all the angels! my son! my son!
+
+     He buries his face in his hands.
+
+NURSE (_knocking at the door_). The doctor desires to see his excellency
+as soon as convenient.
+
+THE MAN. My good Katharine, watch faithfully and tenderly over my poor
+son!
+
+     Exit.
+
+
+
+
+THE NORTH CAROLINA CONSCRIPT.
+
+Ballads of the War.
+
+
+  He lay on the field of Antietam,
+    As the sun sank low in the west,
+  And the life from his heart was ebbing
+    Through a ghastly wound in his breast.
+
+  All around were the dead and the dying--
+    A pitiful sight to see--
+  And afar, in the vapory distance,
+    Were the flying hosts of Lee.
+
+  He raised himself on his elbow,
+    And wistfully gazed around;
+  Till he spied far off a soldier
+    Threading the death-strewn ground.
+
+  'Come here to me, Union soldier,
+    Come here to me where I lie;
+  I've a word to say to you, soldier;
+    I must say it before I die.'
+
+  The soldier came at his bidding.
+    He raised his languid head:
+  'From the hills of North Carolina
+    They forced me hither,' he said.
+
+  'Though I stood in the ranks of the rebels,
+    And carried yon traitorous gun,
+  I have never been false to my country,
+    For I fired not a shot, not one.
+
+  'Here I stood while the balls rained around me,
+    Unmoved as yon mountain crag--
+  Still true to our glorious Union,
+    Still true to the dear old flag!'
+
+  Brave soldier of North Carolina!
+    True patriot hero wert thou!
+  Let the laurel that garlands Antietam,
+    Spare a leaf for thy lowly brow![A]
+
+[Footnote A: From an incident narrated in the newspaper account of the
+battle of Antietam. The reader will be reminded by it of Mrs. Browning's
+'Forced Recruit at Solferino.']
+
+
+
+
+DOES THE MOON REVOLVE ON ITS AXIS?
+
+
+As this question has elicited considerable discussion, at various times,
+the following may be considered in elucidation.
+
+A revolution on an axis is simply that of a body turning entirely round
+upon its own centre. The only centre around which the moon performs a
+revolution is very far from its own proper axis, being situated at the
+centre of the earth, the focus of its orbit, and as it has no other
+rotating motion around the earth, it cannot revolve on its own central
+axis.
+
+A body fixed in position, or pierced and held by a rod, cannot revolve
+upon its centre, and when swung round by this rod or handle, performs
+only a revolution in orbit, as does the moon. The moon, during the
+process of forming a solid crust, by the constant attraction of the
+earth upon one side, only, became elongated, by calculation, about
+thirty miles (from its centre as a round body) toward the earth;
+consequently, by its form, like the body pierced with a rod, is
+transfixed by its gravitation, and, therefore, cannot revolve upon its
+own central axis.
+
+The difference of axial revolution of a wheel or globe, is simply that
+the former turns upon an actual and the latter upon an imaginary axle,
+placed at its centre, Now, by way of analogy, fasten, immovably, a ball
+upon the rim of a revolving wheel, and then judge whether the ball can
+perform one simultaneous revolution on its own axis, in the same time
+that it performs a revolution in orbit, made by one complete turn of the
+wheel; and if not (which is assuredly the case, for it is fixed
+immovably), then neither can the moon perform such revolution on its
+axis, in the same time that it makes one revolution in orbit; because,
+like the ball immovably fixed upon the rim of the wheel, it, too, is
+transfixed by gravitation, from its very form, as if pierced with a rod,
+whose other extremity is attached to the centre of the earth, its only
+proper focus of motion, and, therefore, cannot revolve upon its own
+central axis.
+
+A balloon elongated on one side, and carrying ballast on that side,
+would be like the moon in form, and when suspended in air, like the
+moon, too, in having its heaviest matter always toward the centre of the
+earth. Now let this balloon go entirely round the earth: it will, like
+the moon, continue to present the weightiest, elongated side always
+toward the centre of the earth; it, consequently, like the moon, cannot
+revolve upon its own central axis, as gravitation alone would prevent
+this anomaly, in both cases.
+
+As well might it be said that a horse, harnessed to a beam, and going
+round a ring, or an imprisoned stone swung round in a sling, make each
+one simultaneous revolution on their axes, when their very positions are
+a sufficient refutation! or that the balls in an orrery, attached
+immovably to the ends of their respective rods, and turning with them
+(merely to show revolutions in orbits), perform each a simultaneous
+revolution on their axis, when such claim would be simply ridiculous,
+since the only revolution, in each case, has its focus outside of the
+ball, therefore orbital only; and so, too, with the moon, whose motion
+is precisely analogous, and prejudice alone can retain such an
+unphilosophical hypothesis as its _axial_ revolution.
+
+
+
+
+LUNAR CHARACTERISTICS.
+
+
+The moon, in consequence of its orbital revolution, having no connecting
+axial motion, has always presented but one side to the earth, so that in
+process of forming a crust, from its incipient molten state, it became,
+by the constant attraction of the earth upon one side, elongated toward
+our globe, now generally admitted to be by calculation about thirty
+miles, and proved by photographs, which also show an elongation. The
+necessary consequence of this constant attraction upon one side, has
+been not only to intensify volcanic action there, by the continued
+effect of gravitation, so long as its interior remained in a molten
+state, but from the same reasoning, to confine all such volcanic action
+exclusively to this side of the moon. Thus we have the reason for the
+violently disrupted state which that luminary presents to the telescopic
+observer, exceeding any analogy to be found upon our globe, as the
+earth's axial motion has prevented any similar concentrated action upon
+any particular part of its surface, either from solar or lunar
+attraction. Another marked effect of the elongation of the moon toward
+the earth has been to elevate its visible side high above its atmosphere
+(which would have enveloped it as a round body), and in consequence into
+an intensely cold region, producing congelation, in the form of frost
+and snow, which necessarily envelop its entire visible surface. These
+effects took place while yet the crust was thin and frequently disrupted
+by volcanic action, and wherever such action took place, the fiery
+matter ejected necessarily dissolved the contiguous masses of frost and
+snow, and these floods of water, as soon as they receded from the fiery
+element, were immediately converted into lengthened ridges of ice,
+diverging from the mountain summits like streams of lava. Hence many of
+the apparent lava streams are but ridges of ice, and in consequence,
+depending upon the angle of reflection (determined by the age of the
+moon, which is but its relative position between the sun and earth), all
+observers are struck with the brilliancy of the reflected light from
+many of those long lines of ridges.
+
+The general surface of the moon presents to the telescopic observer just
+that drear, cold, and chalk-like aspect, which our snow-clad mountains
+exhibit when the angle of reflection is similar to that in which we
+behold the lunar surface. In consequence, its mild light is due to the
+myriads of sparkling crystals, which diffusively reflect the rays of the
+sun.
+
+As an attentive observer of the moon, I have been much puzzled to know
+why none of the hosts of observers, or scientific treatises, have taken
+this rational view of such necessary condition of the moon, deduced from
+the main facts of its original formation, here named and generally
+conceded. In the place of which, we still have stereotyped, in many late
+editions on astronomy, the names and localities of numerous seas and
+lakes, which advancing knowledge should long since have discarded.
+
+Besides the above conclusions, which necessitate a snowy covering to the
+moon, none of the planets exhibit that drear white, except the poles of
+Mars, which are admitted to be snow by all astronomers, as we see them
+come and go with the appropriate seasons of that planet; whereas the
+continents of Mars appear dark, as analogously they do upon our earth,
+under the same solar effulgence. The analogy of sunlight, when reflected
+from our lofty mountains (at say thirty or forty miles distant) not
+covered with snow, viewed under the most favorable circumstances of
+brilliant light and the best angle of reflection, with no more of
+intervening atmosphere, always present sombre tints; whether viewed with
+the unaided eye or through a telescope. Such analogy clearly proves that
+no objects short of an absolute white could present such an appearance
+as light does upon lunar objects, viewed with high powers, in which the
+same drear white remains, without any greater concentration of light (as
+we can see objects in the moon whose diameter is five hundred feet) than
+is presented to our unaided eye from our own mountain masses. In viewing
+the moon with high powers, there is, in fact, a much greater amount of
+visible atmosphere intervening than can possibly apply in beholding
+objects on our earth, at even a few miles' distance, since if we look at
+lunar objects with a power of one thousand times, our atmosphere is thus
+magnified a thousand times also.
+
+The main physical features of the visible half of the moon, with a good
+telescopic power, present an enormously elevated table land, traversed,
+here and there, with slightly elevated long ridges, and the general
+surface largely pitted with almost innumerable deep cusps or valleys, of
+every size, from a quarter of a mile to full thirty miles in diameter;
+generally circular and surrounded with elevated ridges, some rising to
+lofty jagged summits above the surrounding plain. These ridges, on their
+inner sides, show separate terraces and mural precipices, while their
+outer slopes display deeply scarred ravines and long spurs at their
+bases. These cusps, or deep valleys, are the craters of extinct
+volcanoes, and in their centres have generally one or two isolated
+sub-mountain peaks, occasionally with divided summits, which were the
+centres of expiring volcanic action, similar to those that exist in our
+own volcanic regions. Besides which the Lunar Apennines, so called,
+present to the eye a long range of mountains with serrated summits, on
+one side gradually sloped, with terraces, spurs, and ravines, and the
+other side mostly precipitous, casting long shadows, which clearly
+define the forms of their summits--all these objects presenting the same
+dead white everywhere.
+
+Doubtless the farther side of the moon, which has not been subject to
+the same elongating or elevating process, nor the above-named causes for
+volcanic disruption, presents a climate and vegetation fitted for the
+abode of sentient beings. This side alone presenting an aspect of
+extreme desolation, far surpassing our polar regions.
+
+It is generally stated in astronomical works, that shadows projected
+from lunar objects are intensely black, owing, it is stated, to there
+being no reflecting atmosphere; whereas in my long-continued habit of
+observation, those shadows appear no more black than those on our earth,
+when they fall on contrasting snowy surfaces. The reason for which, in
+the absence of a lunar atmosphere, to render light diffusive, is the
+brilliant reflection from snow crystals, upon all contiguous objects,
+which lie in an angle to receive the same, and in consequence I have
+often observed the forms of objects not directly illuminated by the sun.
+
+The occasional apparent retention of a star on the limb of the moon,
+just before or after an occultation, seen by some observers, and thus
+evidencing the existence of some atmosphere, is doubtless due to the
+slight oscillations of the moon, by which we see a trifle more than half
+of that body, during which the atmosphere of its opposite side slightly
+impinges upon this.
+
+
+
+
+A GLANCE AT PRUSSIAN POLITICS.
+
+_PART II._
+
+
+We come now to the beginning of the present stage in the development of
+constitutional government in Prussia. It will have been noticed that the
+promises of Frederick William III. were not that he would grant a
+strictly popular constitution. His intention was that the different
+estates of the realm should be represented in the proposed national
+diet, the constitution recognizing a difference in the dignity of the
+different classes of inhabitants, and giving to each a share in the
+national government proportionate to its dignity. His son, at his
+coronation, promised to maintain the efficiency of the ordinances of
+June 5, 1823, and to secure a further development of the principles of
+this (so-called) constitution. Encouraged by this assurance, the
+Liberals labored to secure from him the full realization of their hopes.
+Frederick William IV. was just the man with whom such exertions could be
+used with good hope of success. He was intelligent enough to be fully
+conscious of the fact and the significance of the popular request for a
+constitution, and, though of course personally disinclined to reduce his
+power to a nullity, he had yet not a strong will, and had no wish to
+involve himself in a conflict with his subjects. Accordingly, in 1841,
+he convoked a diet in each province, and proposed the appointment of
+committees from the estates, who should act as counsel to the king when
+the provincial diets were not in session. These diets in subsequent
+sessions discussed the subject of a national diet, and proposed to the
+king the execution of the order issued in 1815. At length, February 8,
+1847, he issued a royal charter, introducing, in fact, what had so often
+and so long before been promised, a constitution. The substance of the
+charter was that, as often as the Government should need to contract a
+loan, or introduce new taxes, or increase existing taxes, the diets of
+the provinces should be convoked to a national diet; that the committees
+of the provincial diets (as appointed in 1842) should be henceforth
+periodically, as one body, convoked; that to the diet, and, when it was
+not in session, to the committee, should be conveyed the right to have a
+_deciding_ voice in the above-mentioned cases. April 11, 1847, the diet
+assembled for the first time; January 17, 1848, the united committee of
+the estates.
+
+How long the nation would have remained contented with this concession
+to the request for a national representation under ordinary
+circumstances, is quite uncertain. In point of fact, this constitution
+hardly lived long enough to be christened with the name. Early in 1848
+the French Revolution startled all Europe--most of all, the monarchs.
+They knew how inflammable the masses were; they soon saw that the masses
+were inflamed, and that nothing but the most vigorous measures would
+secure their thrones from overthrow. Frederick William Was not slow to
+see the danger, and take steps to guard Prussia against an imitation of
+the Parisian insurrection. On the 14th of March he issued an order
+summoning the diet to meet at Berlin on the 27th of April. Four days
+later he issued another edict ordering the diet to convene still
+earlier, on the 2d of April. This proclamation is a characteristic
+document. It was issued on the day of the Berlin revolution. It was an
+hour of the most critical moment. There was no time for long
+deliberation, and little hope for the preservation of royalty, unless
+something decided was done at once. He might have tried the experiment
+of violently resisting the insurgents; but this was not in accordance
+with his character. He preferred rather to resign something than to run
+the risk of losing all. Accordingly he yielded. In this proclamation,
+after alluding to the occasion of it, he publishes his earnest desire
+for the union of Germany against the common danger. 'First of all,' he
+says, 'we desire that Germany be transformed from a confederation of
+states (_Staatenbund_) to one federal state (_Bundesstaat_).' He
+proposes a reorganization of the articles of union in which other
+representatives besides the princes should take part; a common army;
+freedom of trade; freedom of emigration from one state to another;
+common weights, measures, and coins; freedom of the press--in short, all
+that the most enthusiastic advocate of German unity could have asked. At
+the same time was published a law repealing the censorship of the press.
+On the 21st of the same month he put forth an address, entitled 'To my
+people and to the German nation.' In this, after saying that there was
+no security against the threatening dangers except in the closest union
+of the German princes and peoples, under one head, he adds: 'I assume
+to-day this leadership for this time of danger. My people, undismayed by
+the danger, will not abandon me, and Germany will confidingly attach
+itself to me. I have to-day adopted the old German colors, and put
+myself and my people under the venerable banner of the German Empire.
+Henceforth Prussia passes over into Germany.' But all this was more
+easily said than done. Whatever the German people may have wished, the
+other German rulers could not so easily overcome their jealousies. The
+extreme of the danger passed by, and with it this urgent demand for a
+united Germany.
+
+But the diet came together. The king laid before it the outline of a
+constitution, the most important provisions of which were that there
+should be guaranteed to all the right to hold meetings without first
+securing consent from the police; civil rights to all, irrespective of
+religious belief; a national parliament, whose assent should be
+essential to the making of all laws. These propositions were approved by
+the diet, which now advised the king to call together a national
+assembly of delegates, elected by the people, to agree with him upon a
+constitution. This was done; the assembly met on the 22d of May, and was
+opened by the king in person. He laid before the delegates the draught
+of a constitution, which they referred to a committee, by whom it was
+elaborated, and on the 26th of July reported to the assembly. The
+deliberation which followed had, by the 9th of November, resulted only
+in fixing the preamble and the first four articles. At this time an
+order came to the assembly from the king, requiring the members to
+adjourn to the 27th, and then come together, not at Berlin, but
+Brandenburg. The reason of this was that the assembly manifested too
+much of an inclination to infringe on the royal prerogatives, and that
+its place of meeting was surrounded by people who sought by threats,
+and, in some cases, by violence, to intimidate the members. The king was
+now the less inclined to be, or seem to be, controlled by such
+terrorism, as the fury of the revolutionary storm was now spent; the
+militia had been summoned to arms; and had not hesitated to obey the
+call. The troops, under the lead of Field-Marshal Wrangel, were
+collected about Berlin. The majority of the National Assembly, which had
+refused to obey the royal order to adjourn to Brandenburg, and was
+proceeding independently in the prosecution of its deliberations
+respecting the constitution, was compelled, by military force, to
+dissolve. Part of them then went to Brandenburg, and, not succeeding in
+carrying a motion to adjourn till December 4, went out in a body,
+leaving the assembly without a quorum. The king now thought himself
+justified in concluding that nothing was to be hoped from the labors of
+this body, and therefore, on the 5th of December, dissolved it.
+
+Some kings, under these circumstances, might have been inclined to have
+nothing more to do with constitution making. If we mistake not, the
+present king, with his present spirit, would have thought it right to
+make the turbulent character of the convention and of the masses a
+pretext for withholding from them the power to stamp their character on
+the national institutions. Such a course might probably have been
+pursued. The king had control of the army. The excesses of the Liberals
+began to produce a reaction. The National Assembly, during its session
+in Berlin, after it had been adjourned by the king, had resolved that
+the royal ministry had no right to impose taxes so long as the assembly
+was unable peaceably to pursue its deliberations, and designed, by
+giving this resolution the form of a law, to lead the people in this
+manner to break loose from the Government. This attempt to usurp
+authority was doomed to be disappointed. The assembly, having
+overstepped its prerogatives, lost its influence. The king found himself
+again in possession of the reins of power. It rested with him to punish
+the temerity of the people by tightening the reins, or on his own
+authority, without the cooeperation of any assembly, to give the nation a
+constitution. To take the former course he had not the courage, even if
+he had wished to do so; besides, he doubtless saw clearly enough that,
+though such a policy might succeed for a time, it would ultimately lead
+to another outbreak. He had, too, no great confidence in his power to
+win toward his person the popular favor. With all his talents and
+amiable traits, he had not the princely faculty of knowing how to
+inspire the people with a sense of his excellences, and was conscious of
+this defect. He chose not unnecessarily to increase an estrangement
+which had already been to him a source of such deep mortification. He
+therefore issued, on the 5th of December, immediately after dissolving
+the National Assembly, a constitution substantially the same as that
+which still exists, with the statement prefixed that it should not go
+into operation until after being revised. This revision was to be made
+at the first session of the two chambers, to be elected in accordance
+with an election law issued on the next day.
+
+The two chambers met February 26, 1849. After a session of two months,
+during which the lower chamber showed a disposition to modify the
+constitution more than was agreeable to the king, the upper chamber was
+ordered to adjourn, the lower was dissolved, and a new election ordered.
+The new Parliament met August 7. The revision was completed on the last
+of January, 1850. On the 6th of February, the king, in the presence of
+his ministers and of both chambers, swore to observe the constitution.
+Before doing so, he made an address, in which he explained his position,
+alluding in a regretful strain to the scenes of violence in the midst of
+which the constitution had been drawn up, expressing his gratitude to
+the chambers for their assistance in perfecting the hastily executed
+work, calling upon them to stand by him in opposition to all who might
+be disposed to make the liberty granted by the king a screen for hiding
+their wicked designs against the king, and declaring: 'In Prussia, the
+king must rule; and I do not rule because it is a pleasure, God knows,
+but because it is God's ordinance; therefore, I _will reign_. A free
+people under a free king--that was my watchword ten years ago; it is the
+same to-day, and shall be the same as long as I live.' The ministers and
+the members of the two chambers, after the king had sworn to support
+the constitution, took the same oath, and in addition one of loyalty to
+the king. The new government was inaugurated. Prussia had become a
+limited monarchy.
+
+It is at this point appropriate to take a general view of the Prussian
+constitution itself. It has been variously amended since 1850, but not
+changed in any essential features; without dwelling on these amendments,
+therefore, we consider it as it now stands.
+
+As to the king: he is, as such, wholly irresponsible. He cannot be
+called to account for any act which he does in his capacity as monarch.
+But his ministers may be impeached. They have to assume and bear the
+responsibility of all royal acts. None of these acts are valid unless
+signed by one or more of the ministers. To the king is intrusted all
+executive power; the command of the army; the unconditioned right of
+appointing and dismissing his ministers, of declaring war and concluding
+peace, of conferring honors and titles, of convoking the national diet,
+closing its sessions, proroguing and dissolving it. He _must_, however,
+annually call the Houses together between November 1 and the middle of
+January, and cannot adjourn them for a longer period than thirty days,
+nor more than once during a session, except with their own consent.
+Without the assent of the diet he cannot make treaties with foreign
+countries nor rule over foreign territory. He has no independent
+legislative power, except so far as this is implied in his right to
+provide for the execution of the laws, and, when the diet is not in
+session, in case the preservation of the public safety or any uncommon
+exigency urgently demands immediate action. All such acts, however,
+must, at the next session of the Houses, be laid before them for
+approval.
+
+The ministry consists of nine members, under the presidency of the
+minister of foreign affairs; besides him are the ministers of finance,
+of war, of justice, of worship (religious, educational, and medicinal
+affairs), of the interior (police and statistical affairs), of trade and
+public works (post office, railroad affairs, etc.), of agricultural
+affairs, and of the royal house (matters relating to the private
+property of the royal family). The supervision exercised by the ministry
+over the various interests of the land is much more immediate and
+general than that of the President's cabinet in the United States. Now,
+however, their authority in these matters is of course conditioned by
+the constitution and the laws. The ministers are allowed to enter either
+House at pleasure, and must always be heard when they wish to speak. On
+the other hand, either House can demand the presence of the ministers.
+
+The legislative power is vested in the king and the two Houses of
+Parliament. The consent of all is necessary to the passing of every law.
+These Houses (at first called First and Second Chambers, now House of
+Lords and House of Delegates--_Herrenhaus_ and _Abgeordnetenhaus_) must
+both be convoked or prorogued at the same time. In general a law may be
+first proposed by the king or by either of the Houses. But financial
+laws must first be discussed by the House of Delegates; and the budget,
+as it comes from the lower to the upper House, cannot be amended by the
+latter, but must be adopted or rejected as a whole.
+
+The House of Lords is made up of various classes of persons, all
+originally designated by the king, though in the case of some the office
+is hereditary. They represent the nobility, the cities, the wealth, and
+the learning of the land. Each of the five universities furnishes a
+member. The king has the right to honor any one at pleasure, as a reward
+for distinguished services, with a seat in this body. Of course, as the
+members hold office for life, and hold their office by the royal favor,
+it may generally be expected to be a tolerably conservative body, and to
+vote in accordance with the wishes of the king.
+
+The House of Delegates consists of three hundred and fifty-two members,
+elected by the people, but not directly. They are chosen, like our
+Presidents, by electors, who are directly chosen by the people. Two
+hundred and fifty inhabitants are entitled to one elector. Every man
+from the age of twenty-five is allowed to vote unless prohibited for
+specific reasons. But strict equality in the right of suffrage is not
+granted. The voters of each district are divided into three classes, the
+first of which is made up of so many of the largest taxpayers as
+together pay a third of the taxes; the second, of so many of the next
+richest as pay another third; the last class, of the remainder. Each of
+these divisions votes separately, and each elects a third part of the
+electors. The House of Delegates is chosen once in three years, unless
+in the mean time the king dissolves it, in which case a new election
+must take place at once.
+
+As to the rights of Prussians in general, the constitution provides that
+all in the eye of the law are equal. The old distinctions of classes
+still exists: there are still nobles, with the titles prince, count, and
+baron; but the special privileges which they formerly enjoyed are not
+secured to them by the constitution. The king can honor any one with the
+rank of nobility; but the name is the most that can be conferred. In
+most cases the right of primogeniture does not prevail, so that the
+aristocracy of Prussia is of much less consequence than that of England.
+The poverty which so often results from the division of the estates of
+nobles has led to the establishment of numerous so-called
+_Fraeuleinstifter_--charitable foundations for such a support of poor
+female members of noble families as becomes their rank. Many of these
+institutions were formerly nunneries. It is further provided by the
+constitution that public offices shall be open to all; that personal
+freedom and the inviolability of private property and dwellings shall be
+secured; that all shall enjoy the right of petition, perfect freedom of
+speech, the liberty of forming organizations for the accomplishment of
+any legal object; that a censorship of the press can in no case be
+exercised, and that no limitation of the freedom of the press can be
+introduced except by due process of law; that civil and political rights
+shall not be affected by religious belief, and that the right of filling
+ecclesiastical offices shall not belong to the state. Only 'in case of
+war or insurrection, and of consequent imminent danger,' has the
+Government a right to infringe on the above specified immunities of the
+citizens and the press.
+
+The foregoing is all that need be given in order to convey a general
+idea of what the Prussian constitution is. It is in its provisions so
+specific and clear, that one would hardly expect that disputes
+respecting its meaning could have reached the height of bitterness which
+has characterized discussions of its most fundamental principles. The
+explanation of this fact is to be sought in the mode of the introduction
+of the constitution itself. The English constitution has been the growth
+of centuries; the Prussian, of a day. The latter, moreover, was not,
+like ours, the fundamental law of a new nation, but a constitution
+designed to introduce a radical change in the form of a government
+which, during many centuries, had been acquiring a fixed character. It
+undertook to remodel at one stroke the whole political system. Not
+indeed as though there had been no sort of preparation for this change.
+The general advance in national culture, the general anticipation of the
+change, as well as the actual approaches toward it in the administrative
+measures of Frederick the Great and Frederick William III., paved the
+way for the introduction of a popular element in the Government.
+Nevertheless, the actual, formal introduction itself was sudden. The
+constitution was not, in the specific form which it took, the result of
+experience and experiment. And, as all history shows, attempts to fix or
+reconstruct social systems on merely theoretical principles are liable
+to fail, because they cannot foresee and provide for all the
+contingencies which may interfere with the application of the theories.
+Moreover, in the case of Prussia, as not in that of the United States,
+the constitution was not made by the people for themselves, but given to
+them by a power standing over against them. There was, therefore, not
+only a possibility, as in any case there might be, that the instrument
+could be variously interpreted on account of the different modes of
+thinking and difference of personal interests, which always affect men's
+opinions; but there was here almost a certainty that this would be the
+case on account of the gulf of separation which, in spite of all the
+bridges which often are built over it, divides a monarch, especially an
+absolute, hereditary monarch, from his subjects. In the case before us,
+it is certain that the king conceded more than he wished to concede, and
+that the people received less than they wished to receive. That they
+should agree in their understanding of the constitution is therefore not
+at all to be expected. The most that the well wishers of the land could
+have hoped was that the misunderstandings would not be radical, and that
+in the way of practical experience the defects of the constitution might
+be detected and remedied, and the mutual relations of the rulers and the
+ruled become mutually understood and peacefully acquiesced in.
+
+What the Prussian Conservatives so often insist on, viz., that a
+constitutional government should have been gradually developed, not
+suddenly substituted for a form of government radically different, is
+therefore by no means without truth. Whether we are to conclude that the
+fault has been in the process not beginning sooner, or merely in its
+being too rapid, is perhaps a question in which we and they might
+disagree. On the supposition that the present state of intelligence
+furnishes a sufficient basis for a constitutional government, it would
+seem as though the last fifty years has been a period long enough in
+which to put it into successful operation. All that the present
+generation know of politics has certainly been learned within that time:
+if the mere practical exercise of political rights is all that is needed
+in order to develop the new system, there might at least an excellent
+beginning have been made long before 1850. When we consider, therefore,
+that the Government, after taking the initiatory steps in promoting this
+development, stopped short, and rather showed a disposition to
+discourage it entirely, these clamors of the Conservatives must seem
+somewhat out of taste. To Americans especially, who can accommodate
+themselves to changes, even though they may be somewhat sudden, such
+pleas for more time and a more gradual process may appear affected, if
+not puerile. It must be remembered, however, that to a genuine German
+nothing is more precious than a process of development. Whatever is not
+the result of a due course of _Entwickelung_, is a suspicious object.
+Anything which seems to break abruptly in upon the prescribed course is
+abnormal. Whatever is produced before the embryonic process is complete
+is necessarily a monster, from which nothing good can be hoped. The same
+idea is often advanced by the Conservatives in another form. The
+Liberals, they say, are trying to break loose from _history_. A
+prominent professor, in an address before an assembly of clergymen in
+Berlin, defined the principle of democracy to be this: 'The majority is
+subject to no law but its own will; it is therefore limited by no
+historically acquired rights; history has no rights over against the
+sovereign will of the present generation.' By historically acquired
+rights is meant in particular the right of William I. to rule
+independently because his predecessors did so. By what right the great
+elector robbed the nobles of their prerogatives, and how, in case he did
+wrong in thus disregarding _their_ 'historically acquired rights,' this
+wrong itself, by being continued two hundred years, becomes, in its
+turn, an acquired right, is not explained in the address to which we
+allude. The principal fault to be found with such reasoning as this of
+the Prussian Conservatives, is that it is altogether too vague and
+abstract. There can be no development without something new; there can
+be, in social affairs, nothing new without some sort of innovation.
+Innovation, as such, can therefore not be condemned without condemning
+development. Moreover, development, as the organic growth of a political
+body, is something which takes care of itself, or rather is cared for by
+a higher wisdom than man's. To object to a proposed measure nothing more
+weighty than that it will not tend to develop the national history, has
+little meaning, and should have no force. The only question in such a
+case which men have to consider is whether the change is justified by
+the fundamental principles of right, be it that those principles have
+hitherto been observed or not.
+
+What makes the arguments of the Conservatives all the more impertinent,
+however, is the fact that the question is no longer whether the
+constitution ought to be introduced, but whether, being introduced, it
+shall be observed. This is for the stiff royalists not so pleasant a
+question. Prussia _is_ a constitutional monarchy; the king has taken an
+oath to rule in accordance with the constitution. It may be, undoubtedly
+is, true that none of the kings have wished the existence of just such a
+limit to their power; but shall they therefore try to evade the
+obligation which they have assumed? The Conservatives dare not say that
+the constitution ought to be violated, for that would look too much like
+the abandonment of their fundamental principle; they also hardly venture
+to say that they would prefer to have the king again strictly absolute,
+for that would look like favoring regression more than conservatism. Yet
+many have the conviction that an absolute monarchy would be preferable
+to the present, while the arguments of all have little force except as
+they tend to the same conclusion. The point of controversy between them
+and their opponents is often represented as being essentially this:
+Shall the king of Prussia be made as powerless as the queen of England?
+Against such a degradation of the dignity of the house of Hohenzollern
+all the convictions and prejudices of the royalists revolt. Such a
+surrender of all personal power, they say, and say truly, was not
+designed by Frederick William IV. when he gave the constitution; to ask
+the king, therefore, in all his measures to be determined by the House
+of Delegates, is an unconstitutional demand. It is specially provided
+that the _king_ shall appoint and dismiss his own ministers; to ask him,
+therefore, to remove them simply because they are unacceptable to the
+House of Delegates, is to interfere with the royal prerogatives. The
+command of the army and the declaration of war belong only to the king;
+to binder him, therefore, in his efforts to maintain the efficiency of
+the army, or in his purposes to wage war or abstain from it, is an
+overstepping of the limits prescribed to the people's representatives.
+
+We have here hinted at the principal elements in the controversy between
+the opposing political parties of Prussia. It is not our object to enter
+into the details of the various strifes which have agitated the land
+during the last sis years, but only to sketch their general character.
+The query naturally arises, when one takes a view of the whole period,
+which has elapsed since the constitution was introduced, why the contest
+did not begin sooner. The explanation is to be found in the fact that
+until the present king began to rule, the Liberals in general did not
+vote at the elections. It will be remembered that the previous king
+absolutely refused to deal with the assembly which met early in 1849 to
+consider the constitution, and ordered a new election. At this election
+the Liberals saw that, if they reflected the old members, another
+dissolution would follow, and they therefore mostly staid away from the
+polls. Afterward, when the constitution had been formally adopted, the
+Government showed a determination to put down all liberal movements;
+consequently the Liberals made no special attempts to move. The
+Parliament was conservative, and so there was no occasion for strife
+between it and the king. Not till William I. became regent in place of
+his incapacitated brother, in 1859, did the struggle begin. The policy
+of the previous prime minister Manteuffel had produced general
+discontent. The people were ready to move, if an occasion was offered.
+It is therefore not to be wondered at that, when the new sovereign
+announced his purpose to pursue a more liberal course than his brother,
+the Liberal party raised its head, and sought to make itself felt. The
+new ministry was liberal, and for a while it seemed as though a new
+order of things had begun. But this was of short duration. The House of
+Delegates, consisting in great part of Liberals (or, to speak more
+strictly, of _Fortschrittsmaenner_--Progress men--_Liberal_ being the
+designation of a third party holding a middle course between the two
+extremes, a party, however, naturally tending to resolve itself into the
+others, and now nearly extinct) urged the Government to adopt its
+radical measures. The king began to fear that, if he yielded to all the
+wishes of the House, he would lose his proper dignity and authority. He
+therefore began to pursue a different policy: the more urgently the
+delegates insisted on liberal measures, the less inclined was the king
+to regard their wishes. He had wished himself to take the lead in
+inaugurating the new era; as soon as others, more ambitious, went ahead
+of him, he took the lead again, by turning around and pulling in the
+opposite direction. The principal topics on which the difference was
+most decided were the ecclesiastical and the financial relations of the
+Government. Although the constitution provides for the perfect freedom
+of the church from the state, the union still existed, and indeed still
+exists. The House of Delegates attempted to induce the Government to
+carry out this provision of the constitution. There is no doubt that the
+motive of many of these attempts to divide church and state is a
+positive hostility to Christianity. The partial success which has
+followed them, viz., the securing of charter rights for other religious
+denominations than the Evangelical Church (_i.e._, the Union Church,
+consisting of what were formerly Lutheran and Reformed churches, but in
+1817 united, and forming now together the established church), has given
+some prominence to the so-called _Freiegemeinden_, organizations of
+freethinkers, who, though so destitute of positive religious belief that
+in one case, when an attempt was made to adopt a creed, an insuperable
+obstacle was met in discussing the first article, viz., on the existence
+of God, yet meet periodically and call themselves religious
+congregations. There are, moreover, many others, regular members of the
+established church, who have no interest in religious matters, and would
+for that reason like to be freed from the fetters which now hold them.
+There are, however, many among the best and most discreet Christians
+who, for the good of the church, wish to see it weaned from the breast
+of the state. But the great majority of the clergy, especially of the
+consistories (the members of which are appointed by the Government,
+mediately, however, now, through the _Oberkirchenrath_), are decidedly
+opposed to the separation; and, as they speak for the churches, the
+provision of the constitution allowing the separation is a dead letter.
+There is no denying that, if it were now to be fully carried out, the
+consequences to the church might be, for a time at least, disastrous.
+The people have always been used to the present system; they would
+hardly know how to act on any other. Moreover, a large majority of the
+church members are destitute of active piety; to put the interests of
+religion into the hands of such men would seem to be a dangerous
+experiment. Especially is it true of the mercantile classes, of those
+who are pecuniarily best able to maintain religious institutions, that
+they are in general indifferent to religious things. This being the
+case, one cannot be surprised at the reluctance of those in
+ecclesiastical authority to desire the support of the state to be
+withdrawn. Neverheless it cannot but widen the chasm between the
+established church and the freethinkers, that the former urges upon the
+Government to continue a policy which is plainly inconsistent with the
+constitution, and that the Government yields to the urging.
+
+A more vital point in the controversy between the king and the Liberals
+was the disposition of the finances. The House of Delegates, in the
+session lasting from January 14 to March 11, 1862, insisted on a more
+minute specification than the ministry had given of the use to be made
+of the moneys to be appropriated. The king at length, wearied with their
+importunity, dissolved the House, upon which a new election followed in
+the next month. The excitement was great. The Government seems to have
+hoped for a favorable result, at least for a diminution of the Liberal
+majority. The Minister of the Interior issued a communication to all
+officials, announcing that they would be expected to vote in favor of
+the Government. A similar notification was made to the universities, but
+was protested against. Most of the consistories summoned the clergymen
+to labor to secure a vote in favor of the king. But in spite of all
+these exertions, the new House, like the other, contained an
+overwhelming majority of Progress men. At the beginning of the new
+session in May, however, both parties seemed more yielding than before.
+Attention was given less to questions of general character, more to
+matters of practical concern. But at last the schism developed itself
+again. The king had determined to reorganize and enlarge the army, to
+which end larger appropriations were needed than usual. The military
+budget put the requisite sum at 37,779,043 thalers (about twenty-five
+million dollars); the House voted 31,932,940, rejecting the proposition
+of the minister by a vote of three hundred and eight to eleven. A change
+in the ministry followed, but not a change such as would be expected in
+England--just the opposite. At the dissolution of the previous House the
+Liberal ministry had given place to a more conservative one; now this
+conservative one gave place to one still more conservative, Herr von
+Bismarck became Minister of State. The House then voted that the
+appropriations must be determined by the House, else every use made by
+the Government of the national funds would be unconstitutional. The
+king's answer to this was an order closing the session. A new session
+began early in 1863. The same controversy was renewed. The king had
+introduced his new military scheme; he had used, under the plea of stern
+necessity, money not voted by Parliament. He declared that the good of
+the country required it, and demanded anew that the House make the
+requisite appropriation. But the House was not to be moved. So far from
+wishing an increase of the military expenses, the Liberal party favored
+a reduction of the term of service from three to two years. The king
+affirmed that he knew better what the interests of the nation required,
+and, as the head of the army, he must do what his best judgment dictated
+respecting its condition. Thus the session passed without anything of
+consequence being accomplished. The House of Lords rejected the budget
+as it came from the other chamber, and the delegates would not retreat.
+Consequently another dead lock was the result. The mutual bitterness
+increased. Minister von Bismarck, a man of considerable talent, but not
+of spotless character, and exceedingly offensive in his bearing toward
+his opponents, became so odious that the delegates seemed ready to
+reject any proposition coming from him, whether good or bad. They tried
+to induce the king to remove him. But this was like the wind trying to
+blow off the traveller's coat. Instead of being moved by such
+demonstrations to dismiss the premier, the king manifested in the most
+express manner his dissatisfaction with such attempts of the House to
+interfere with his prerogatives. One might think that he had resolved to
+retain Bismarck out of pure spite, though he might personally be ever so
+much inclined to drop him. The controversy became more and more one of
+opposing wills. May 22, the House voted an address to the king, stating
+its views of the state of the country, the rights of the House, etc.,
+and expressing the conviction that this majesty had been misinformed by
+his counsellors of the true state of public feeling. The king replied to
+the address a few days later, stating that he knew what he was doing and
+what was for the good of the people; that the House was to blame for the
+fruitlessness of the session; that the House had unconstitutionally
+attempted to control him in respect to the ministry and foreign affairs;
+that he did not need to be informed by the House what public sentiment
+was, since Prussia's kings were accustomed to live among and for the
+people; and that, a further continuance of the session being manifestly
+useless, it should close on the next day. Accordingly it was closed
+without the passage of any sort of appropriation bill, and the
+Government, as before, ruled practically without a diet.
+
+We do not propose to arbitrate between the affirmations of the
+Conservatives, on the one hand, that the _animus_ of the opposition was
+a spirit of disloyalty toward the Government, an unprincipled and
+unconstitutional striving to subvert the foundations of royalty, and
+introduce a substantially democratic form of government, and the
+complaints of the opposition, on the other hand, that the ministry was
+trying to domineer over the House of Delegates, and reduce its practical
+power to a nullity. We may safely assume that there is some truth in
+both statements. Where the dispute is chiefly respecting motives, it
+must always be difficult to find the exact truth. In behalf of the
+Conservatives, however, it may be said that the Liberals have
+undoubtedly been aiming at a greater limitation of the royal power than
+the constitution was designed by its author to establish. Frederick
+William IV. proposed to rule _in connection with_ the representatives of
+the people. The idea of becoming a mere instrument for the execution of
+their wishes, was odious to him, and is odious to his successor. That
+such a reduction of the kingly office, however, is desired and designed
+by many of the Progress party, is hardly to be questioned. But, on the
+other hand, it is hard to see, in case the present policy of the
+Government is carried through, what other function the diet will
+eventually have than simply that of advising the king and acting as his
+mere instrument, whenever he lays his plans and asks for the money
+necessary for their execution. This certainly cannot accord with the
+article of the constitution which declares that the legislative power
+shall be 'jointly' (_gemeinschaftlich_) exercised by the king and the
+two Houses.
+
+It is all the less necessary to consider particularly the character of
+the measures proposed and opposed, and the personal motives of the
+prominent actors in the present strife, inasmuch as the parties
+themselves are fighting no longer respecting special, subordinate
+questions, but respecting the fundamental principle of the Government,
+the mutual relation which, under the constitution, king and people are
+to sustain to each other. From this point of view it is not difficult to
+pass judgment on the general merits of the case. If we inquire where, if
+at all, the constitution has been formally violated, there can be no
+doubt that the breach has been on the side of the Government. That the
+consent of the diet is necessary to the validity act fixing the use of
+the public moneys, is expressly stated in the constitution. That the
+Government, for a series of years, has appropriated the funds according
+to its own will, without obtaining that consent, is an undeniable matter
+of fact. It is true that the king and his ministers do not acknowledge
+that this is a violation of the constitution, claiming that the duty of
+the king to provide in cases of exigency for the maintenance of the
+public weal, authorizes him, in the exigency which the obstinacy of the
+delegates has brought about, to act on his own responsibility. The
+Government must exist, they say, and to this end money must be had; if
+the House will not grant it, we must take it. That this is a mere
+quibble, especially as the exigency can be as easily ascribed to the
+obstinacy of the king as to that of the delegates, may be affirmed by
+Liberals with perfect confidence, when, as is actually the case, all
+candid Conservatives, even those of the strictest kind, confess that
+_formally_, at least, the king has acted unconstitutionally. And, though
+in respect to the financial question, they may justify this course while
+confessing its illegality, it is not so easy to do so in reference to
+the press law made by the king four days after closing the session of
+the diet. This law established a censorship of the press, which was
+aimed especially against all attacks in the newspapers on the policy
+of the Government, the plea being that the Liberal papers were
+disturbing the public peace and exciting a democratic spirit. The
+unconstitutionality of this act was as palpable as its folly. Only in
+case of war or insurrection is any such restriction allowed at all; the
+wildest imagination could hardly have declared either war or
+insurrection to be then existing. Moreover, even in case of such an
+exigency, the king has a right to limit the freedom of the press only
+when the diet is not in session and the urgency is too great to make it
+safe to wait for it to assemble. But in this call it is manifest not
+only that the king was not anxious to have the cooeperation of the
+Houses, but that he positively wished _not_ to have it. No one imagines
+that he conceived the whole idea of enacting the law _after_ he had
+prorogued the diet; certainly nothing new in the line of public danger
+had arisen in those four days to justify the measure. Besides, he knew
+that the House of Delegates would not have approved it. It was, in fact,
+directly aimed at their supporters. A plainer attack on their
+constitutional rights could hardly have been made.
+
+But the delegates were sent home, so that they were now not able to
+disturb the country by their debates. The Conservatives rejoiced in
+this, seeming to think that the only real evil under which the country
+was suffering was the 'gabbling' of the members of the diet. Moreover,
+the press law, unwise and unconstitutional as many of the Conservatives
+themselves considered and pronounced it, was in force, so that the
+editorial demagogues also were under bit and bridle. It was hoped that
+now quiet would be restored. The German diet at Frankfort-on-the-Maine
+turned public attention for a time from the more purely internal
+Prussian politics. But this was a very insufficient diversion. In fact,
+the course of William I., in utterly refusing to have anything to do
+with the proposed remodelling of the articles of confederation, the
+object of which was to effect a firmer union of the German States,
+although no Prussian had the utmost confidence in the sincerity of the
+Austrian emperor, yet ran counter to the wishes of the Liberals, and
+even of many Conservatives. The same feeling which fifty years ago gave
+rise to the _Burschenschaft_ displayed itself unmistakably in the
+enthusiasm with which Francis Joseph's invitation was welcomed by the
+Germans in general. The king of Prussia did not dare to declare against
+the proposed measure itself. Acknowledging the need of a revision of the
+articles, he yet declined to take part in the diet, simply because, as
+he said, before the princes themselves came together for so important a
+deliberation, some preliminary negotiations should have taken place.
+There is little reason to doubt, however, that his real motive was a
+fear lest, if he should commit himself to the cause of German union, he
+would seem to be working in the interests of the Liberals. For, as of
+old, so now, the most enthusiastic advocates of a consolidation of the
+German States are the most inclined to anti-monarchical principles;
+naturally enough, since a firm union of states, utterly distinct from
+each other, save as their rulers choose to unite themselves, while yet
+each ruler in his own land is independent of the others, and each has
+always reason to be jealous of the other, is an impossibility. This
+jealousy was conspicuous in the case of Prussia and Austria during the
+session of this special diet, in the summer of 1863. It was shared in
+Prussia not only by the king and his special political friends, but by
+many of the Liberals. It was perhaps in the hope that the national
+feeling had received a healthful impulse by the developments of
+Austria's ambition to obtain once more the hegemony of Germany, that the
+king soon after _dissolved_ the House of Delegates, which in June he had
+prorogued. A new election was appointed for October 20. Most strenuous
+efforts were made by the Government to secure as favorable a result as
+possible. Clergymen were enjoined by the Minister of Instruction to use
+their influence in behalf of the Government. Officials were notified
+that they would be expected to vote for Conservative candidates, a hint
+which in Prussia cannot be so lightly regarded as here, since voting
+there is done _viva voce_. But, in spite of all these exertions, the
+Progress men in the new House were as overwhelmingly in the majority as
+before. On assembling, they reelected the former president, Grabow, by a
+vote of two hundred and twenty-four to forty. And the same old strife
+began anew.
+
+So little, then, had been accomplished by attempts forcibly to put down
+the opposition party. Many newspapers had received the third and last
+warning for publishing articles of an incendiary character, though none,
+so far as we know, were actually suspended; a professor in Koenigsberg
+had been deposed for presiding at a meeting of Liberals; a professor in
+Berlin had been imprisoned for publishing a pamphlet against the policy
+of the Government. There were even intimations that, unless the
+opposition yielded, the king would suspend the constitution, and
+dispense entirely with the cooeperation of the Parliament. But whether or
+not this was ever thought of, he showed none of this disposition at the
+opening of the session. His speech, though containing no concessions,
+was mild and conciliatory in tone. Perhaps he saw that a threatening
+course could not succeed, and was intending to pursue another. He
+declared his purpose to suggest an amendment to the constitution
+providing for such cases of disagreement between the two Houses as had
+hitherto obstructed the legislation. This was afterward done. It was
+proposed that, whenever no agreement could be secured respecting the
+appropriations, the amount should be the same as that of the foregoing
+year. This, however, was not approved by the House of Delegates. The
+same disagreement occurred as at the previous sessions, intensified now
+by the increased demands of the Government on account of the threatened
+war in Schleswig-Holstein. A loan of twelve million thalers was
+proposed; but the House refused utterly to authorize it unless it could
+be known what was the use to be made of it. This information Minister
+Bismarck would not give. The dispute grew more and more sharp. The old
+causes of discussion were increased by the fact that Prussia, in
+reference to the disputed succession in Schleswig-Holstein, set itself
+against the popular wish to have the duchy absolutely separated from
+Denmark and put under the rule of the prince of Augustenburg. In fact,
+in this particular, whatever may be thought elsewhere respecting the
+merits of the war which soon after broke out, the policy of the
+Government was nearly as odious to most Conservatives as to the
+Liberals. They said, the king should have put himself at the head of the
+national, the German demand for the permanent relief of their fellow
+Germans in Schleswig-Holstein; he should have taken the cause out of the
+sphere of party politics; thus he might have regained his popularity and
+united his people. This is quite possible; but it is certain that he did
+not take this course. He seemed to regard the movement in favor of
+Prince Frederick's claims to the duchy as a democratic movement. It was
+so called by the more violent Conservatives. The king, after failing to
+take the lead, could not now, consistently with his determination to be
+independent, fall in with the crowd; this would seem like yielding to
+pressure. Besides, he felt probably more than the Prussian people in
+general the binding force of the London treaty. Yet, as a German, he
+could not be content to ignore the claims of the German inhabitants of
+the duchy; there was, therefore, no course left but to make hostile
+demonstrations against Denmark. The pretext was not an unfair one. The
+November constitution, by which Denmark, immediately after the accession
+of the protocol prince, the present king, Christian IX., proposed to
+incorporate Schleswig, was a violation of treaty obligations. The Danish
+Government was required to retract its course. It refused, and war
+followed. What will be the result of it, what even the Prussian
+Government wishes to be the result of it, is a matter of uncertainty.
+Suspicions of a secret treaty between it and Austria find easy credence,
+according to which, as is supposed, nothing but their mutual
+aggrandizement is aimed at. Certain it is that none even of the best
+informed pretend to know definitely what is designed, nor be confident
+that the design, whatever it is, will be executed. Yet for the time a
+certain degree of enthusiasm has been of course awakened in all by the
+successful advance of Prussian troops through Schleswig, and the
+indefinite hope is cherished that somehow, even in spite of the apparent
+policy of the Government, the war will result in rescuing the duchy
+entirely from the Danish grasp. Thus, temporarily at least, the popular
+mind is again diverted from internal politics; and perhaps the
+Government was moved as much by a desire to effect this diversion as by
+any other motive. The decided schism between Prussia and Austria on the
+one hand, and the smaller German States on the other, a schism in which
+the majority of the people even in Prussia and Austria side with the
+smaller states, favors the notion that these two powers dislike heartily
+to enter into a movement whose motive and end is mainly the promotion of
+German unity at the expense of monarchical principles. For, however much
+of subtlety may be exhibited in proving that the prince of Augustenburg
+is the rightful heir to the duchy, the real source of the German
+interest in the matter is sympathy with their fellow Germans, who, as is
+not to be doubted, have been in various ways, especially in respect to
+the use of the German language in schools and churches, abused and
+irritated by the Danish Government. The death of the late king of
+Denmark was only made the occasion for seeking the desired relief.
+Fifteen years ago the same thing was done without any such occasion. But
+it would be the extreme of inconsistency for the Prussian Government to
+help directly and ostensibly a movement which, whatever name it may
+bear, is essentially a rebellion: if there are Germans in
+Schleswig-Holstein, so are there Poles in Poland.
+
+But, although, for the time being, the excitement of actual war silences
+the murmurs of the Progress party, the substantial occasion for them is
+not removed. On the contrary, there is reason to expect that the contest
+will become still more earnest. Only one turn of events can avert this:
+the separation of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark in consequence of the
+present war. If this is not the result, if nothing more is accomplished
+than the restoration of the duchy to its former condition, the king will
+lose the support of many Conservatives, and be still more bitterly
+opposed by the Liberals. In addition to this is to be considered that
+the war is carried on in spite of the refusal of the diet to authorize
+the requisite loan; that, moreover, after vainly seeking to secure this
+vote from the delegates, Minister Bismarck, in the name of the king,
+prorogued the diet on the 25th of January, 1864, telling the Delegates
+plainly that the money must be had, and accordingly that, if its use
+were not regularly authorized, it must be taken by the Government
+without such authority. His spirit may be gathered from a single remark
+among the many bitter things which he had to say in the closing days of
+the session: 'In order to gain your confidence, one must give one's self
+up to you; what then would the ministers in future be but Parliamentary
+ministers? To this condition, please God, we shall not be reduced.' The
+spirit of the delegates is expressed in the question of one of their
+number: 'Why does the Minister of State ask us to authorize the loan, if
+he has no need of our consent--if we have not the right to say _No_?'
+Brilliant successes of the Prussian arms, accomplishing substantially
+the result for which the German people are all earnestly longing, may
+restore the Government to temporary favor, and weaken the Progress
+party; otherwise, as many Conservatives themselves confess, the king
+will have paralyzed the arms of his own friends.
+
+What is to be the end of this conflict between the Prussian Government
+and the Prussian people? Without attempting to play the prophet's part,
+we close by mentioning some considerations which must be taken into
+account in forming a judgment. Although we have little doubt that the
+present policy of the Government will not be permanently adhered to, we
+do not anticipate any speedy or violent rupture. The case is in many
+respects parallel to that of the quarrel between Charles I. and his
+Parliaments; but the points of difference are sufficient to warrant the
+expectation of a somewhat different result. Especially these: Charles
+had no army of such size and efficiency that he could bid defiance to
+the demands of his Parliament; on the contrary, the Prussian army is, in
+times of peace, two hundred thousand strong, and can, in case of need,
+be at once trebled; moreover, soldiers must take an oath of allegiance
+to the king, not, however, to the constitution. Of this army the king is
+the head, and with it under his control he can feel tolerably secure
+against the danger of a popular outbreak. Again, the English
+revolutionists had little to fear from Continental interference;
+Prussia, on the contrary, is so situated that a revolution there could
+hardly fail to provoke neighboring monarchies to assist in putting it
+down. There is no such oppression weighing the people down that they
+would be willing to run this risk in an attempt to remove it. Again, the
+Liberals hope, and not without reason, that they will eventually secure
+what they wish by peaceable means. There is little doubt that, if they
+pursue a moderate course, neither resorting to violence nor threatening
+to do so, themselves avoiding all violations of the constitution, while
+compelling the Government, in case it will not yield, to commit such
+violations openly, their cause will gradually grow so strong that the
+king will ultimately see the hopelessness of longer resisting it. Or,
+once more, even if the present king, whose self-will is such that he may
+possibly persevere in his present course through his reign, does not
+yield, it is understood that the heir apparent is inclined to adopt a
+more liberal policy whenever he ascends the throne, an event which
+cannot be very long distant. Were he supposed fully to sympathize with
+his father, the danger of a violent solution of the difficulty would be
+greater. But, as the case stands, it may not be considered strange if
+the conflict lasts several years longer without undergoing any essential
+modification.
+
+There is no prospect that the dissension will be ended by mutual
+concessions. This might be done, if mutual confidence existed between
+the contending parties; but of such confidence there is a total lack. So
+great is the estrangement that the original occasion of it is lost sight
+of. Neither party cares so much about securing the success of its
+favorite measures as about defeating the measures of its opponent.
+Either the possibility of such a relation of the king to the Parliament
+was not entertained when the constitution was drawn up, or it is a great
+deficiency that no provision was made for it; or (as we should prefer to
+say) the difficulty may have been foreseen and yet no provision have
+been made for it, simply because none could have been made consistently
+with Frederick William IV.'s maxim, 'A free people under a free king'--a
+maxim which sounds well, but which, when the people are bent on going in
+one way and the king in another, is difficult to reconcile with the
+requirement of the constitution that both must go in the same way. In a
+republic, where the legislature and chief magistrate are both chosen
+representatives of one people, no protracted disagreement between them
+is possible. In a monarchy where a ministry, which has lost the
+confidence of the legislature, resigns its place to another, the danger
+is hardly greater. But in a monarchy whose constitution provides that
+king and people shall rule jointly, yet both act freely and
+independently, nothing but the most paradisiacal state of humanity could
+secure mutual satisfaction and continued harmony. Prussia is now
+demonstrating to the world that, if the people of a nation are to have
+in the national legislation anything more than an advisory power, they
+must have a determining power. To say that the king shall have the
+unrestricted right of declaring and making war, and at the same time
+that no money can be used without the free consent of Parliament, is
+almost fit to be called an Irish bull. Such mutual freedom is impossible
+except when king and Parliament perfectly agree in reference to the war
+itself. But, if this agreement exists, there is either no need of a
+Parliament or no need of a king. It makes little difference how the
+constitution is worded in this particular, nor even what was intended by
+the author of this provision. What is in itself an intrinsic
+contradiction cannot be carried out in practice. Whether any formal
+change is made in the constitution or not, a different mode of
+interpreting it, a different conception of the relation of monarch to
+subject, must become current, if the constitution is to be a working
+instrument. Prussia must become again practically an absolute monarchy
+or a constitutional monarchy like England. Nor is there much doubt which
+of these possibilities will be realized. And not the least among the
+causes which will hasten the final triumph of Liberalism there, is the
+exhibition of the strength of republicanism here, while undergoing its
+present trial. When one observes how many of the more violent Prussian
+Conservatives openly sympathize with the rebels, and most of the others
+fail to do so only because they dislike slavery; when one sees, on the
+other hand, how anxiously the Prussian Liberals are waiting and hoping
+for the complete demonstration of the ability of our Government to
+outride the storm which has threatened its destruction, the cause in
+which we are engaged becomes invested with a new sacredness. Our success
+will not only secure the blessings of a free Government to the
+succeeding generations of this land, but will give a stimulus to free
+principles in every part of the globe. If 'Freedom shrieked when
+Kosciuszko fell' at the hands of despotism, a longer and sadder wail
+would mark the fall of American republicanism, wounded and slain in the
+house of its friends.
+
+
+
+
+'YE KNOW NOT WHAT YE ASK.'
+
+
+  One morn in spring, when earth lay robed
+    In resurrection bloom,
+  I turned away my tear-veiled eyes,
+    Feeling the glow but gloom,
+  And asked my God one boon I craved,
+    Or earth were living tomb.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  One autumn morn, when all the world
+    In ripened glory lay,
+  I turned to God my shining eyes,
+    And praised Him for that day,
+  When asking _curses_ with my lips,
+    He turned His ear away.
+
+
+
+
+COMING UP AT SHILOH.
+
+
+The rain, which had been falling steadily since shortly after midnight,
+ceased at daybreak. The morning dawned slowly and moodily, above the
+wooded hilltops that rose steeply from the farther bank of the creek
+close by, right over against the cornfield, in which, on the preceding
+evening, we had comfortably pitched our camp. The bugle wound an early
+reveille; then came the call to strike tents, though one half of the
+brigade was yet busy in hurried preparations for breakfast, and
+presently the assembly sounded. We were on the march again by the time
+the sun would have liked to greet us with his broad, level-thrown smile
+for 'good morning,' if the sky had been clear and open enough, instead
+of covered, as it was on this damp, chilly April morning, with dull,
+sullen masses of cloud that seemed still nursing their ill humor and
+bent on having another outbreak. The road was heavy; an old, worn
+stage-coach road, of a slippery, treacherous clay, which the trampings
+of our advanced regiments speedily kneaded into a tough, stiff dough,
+forming a track that was enough to try the wind and bottom of the best.
+For some miles, too, the route was otherwise a difficult one--hilly, and
+leading by two or three tedious crossings in single file over fords,
+where now were rushing turbid, swollen streams, gorging and overflowing
+their banks everywhere in the channels, which nine months out of the
+twelve give passage to innocent brooklets only, that the natives of
+these parts may cross barefoot without wetting an ankle. Spite of these
+drawbacks, the men were in fine spirits; for this was the end of our
+weary march from Nashville, and we were sure now of a few days' rest and
+quiet.
+
+A few minutes after midday we reached Savannah, and were ordered at once
+into camp. By this time the sky had cleared, the sun was shining
+brightly, though, as it seemed, with an effort; the wind, which had been
+freshening ever since morning, was blowing strong and settled from out
+the blue west, and the earth was drying rapidly. The Sixth Ohio and a
+comrade regiment of the Tenth Brigade pitched their tents in an old and
+well-cleared camping ground, on a gently sloping rise looking toward the
+town from the southeastward; a little too far from the river to quite
+take in, in its prospect, the landing with its flotilla of transports
+and the gunboats which they told us were lying there, yet not so far but
+we could easily discern the smoke floating up black and dense from the
+boats' chimney stacks, and hear the long-drawn, labored puffs of the
+escape pipes, and the shrill signals of the steam whistles. Altogether
+our camping ground was eligible, dry, and pleasant.
+
+It was on Saturday, the fifth day of April, 1862, that the Fourth
+division, being the advance corps of the Army of the Ohio, came thus to
+Savannah, and so was brought within actual supporting distance of the
+forces under General Grant at Pittsburg Landing, twelve miles up the
+farther bank of the Tennessee. General Crittenden's division encamped
+that evening three hours' march behind us. Still farther in the rear
+were coming in succession the divisions of McCook, Wood, and Thomas. It
+was well that such reenforcements were at hand; otherwise, unless we
+disregarded the best-established laws of probabilities in deciding the
+question, the Army of the Tennessee was even then a doomed one, and the
+story of Shiloh must have gone to the world a sad, tragic tale of the
+most crushing defeat which had ever fallen upon an army since the days
+of Waterloo. No mean service, then, was rendered the national cause, and
+all which that cause will stand out as the embodiment of, in all the
+ages to come, when Shiloh was saved, and Treason was forced to turn,
+faint, and stagger away from the field to which it had rushed with a
+fiend's exultant eagerness, having there met only its own discomture.
+The meed due for that service is a coronal of glory, that may never,
+probably, be claimed as the desert of any _one_ individual exclusively;
+nor is it likely that the epitaph, enchiselled upon whose tombstone
+soever it might be, 'Here lies the saviour of Shiloh,' would pass one
+hour unchallenged. Yet impartial history can scarcely be at fault in
+recognizing as preeminent the part taken by one officer, in the events,
+whose results, at least, permit so much of eulogy to be written, with
+other significance than merely that of a wretched burlesque. That
+officer was General Nelson, the commander of our own division.
+Iron-nerved, indomitable, willfull, disdainful of pleasing with studied
+phrase of unmeant compliment, but with a great, manly heart beating
+strong in his bosom, and a nature grandly earnest, brave, and true--with
+the very foremost of Kentucky's loyal sons will ever stand the name of
+General William Nelson.
+
+Our column had marched from Nashville out on the Franklin turnpike,
+nearly three weeks previous. General McCook, as the senior divisional
+commander, had claimed the advance, and had held it in our march through
+that beautiful, cultivated garden spot of Middle Tennessee, as far as
+Columbia, a distance of nearly fifty miles. Here the turnpike and the
+railroad bridges over Duck river had both been destroyed by the rebels
+in their forlorn retreat from the northward. To replace the former even
+with a tottering wooden structure, was a work of time and labor.
+Meanwhile the army waited wearily, General Nelson chafed at the delay,
+and the rebel leaders Beauregard and Sidney Johnston were concentrating
+their forces at Corinth with ominous celerity. It was their purpose to
+crush, at one blow, so suddenly and so surely dealt that succor should
+be impossible, the National army, which had established itself on the
+borders of one of the southernmost States of the Confederacy, and was
+menacing lines of communication of prime necessity to their maintenance
+of the defensive line within which those commanders had withdrawn their
+discomfited armies. At length, one evening, on dress parade, there were
+read 'General orders, headquarters Fourth division,' for a march at
+daylight the next morning. Some days would yet be required to complete
+the bridge, but permission had been wrung from the 'commanding general'
+to cross the river by fording, and comically minute the detailed
+instructions of that order were for accomplishing the feat.
+
+So on Saturday, the twenty-ninth of March, we passed over Duck river.
+Other divisions immediately followed. By his importunity and
+characteristic energy, General Nelson had thus secured for us the
+advance for the seventy-five miles that remained of the march, and,
+incalculably more than this, had gained days of precious time for the
+entire army. How many hours later the Army of the Ohio might have
+appeared at Shiloh in season to stay the tide of disaster and rescue the
+field at last, let those tell who can recall the scenes of that awful
+Sabbath day there on the banks of the Tennessee.
+
+General Grant had established his headquarters at Savannah, and there
+immediately upon our arrival our commander reported his division. Long
+before night, camp rumors had complacently decided our disposition for
+the present. Three days at Savannah to allow the other corps of our army
+to come up with us, and then, by one more easy stage, we could all move
+together up to Pittsburg Landing, and take position beside the Army of
+the Tennessee. It was a very comfortable programme, and not the least of
+its recommendations was the earnest of its faithful carrying out, which
+appeared in the unusual regard to mathematical precision that our
+officers had shown in 'laying off camp,' and the painstaking care they
+had required on our part in establishing it.
+
+There was but an inconsiderable force here, composed for the most part
+of new troops from two or three States of the Northwest. I remember,
+especially, one regiment from Wisconsin, made up of great, brawny,
+awkward fellows--backwoodsmen and lumbermen chiefly--who followed us to
+Shiloh on the next evening, and through the whole of Monday fought and
+suffered like heroes, as they were. Our first inquiries, quite
+naturally, were concerning our comrade army, and the enemy confronting
+it at Corinth. Varied and incongruous enough was the information that we
+gleaned, and in some details requiring a simple credulity that nine
+months of active campaigning had quite jostled and worried out of us. It
+seemed settled, however, that our comrades up the river were a host
+formidable in numbers and of magnificent armament and _material_;
+altogether very well able to take care of themselves, at least until we
+could join them at our leisure.
+
+There were some things which, if we had more carefully considered them,
+might, perhaps, have abated somewhat this pleasant conviction of
+security. The enemy had lately grown wonderfully bold and
+venturesome--skirmishing with picket outposts, bullying reconnoitring
+parties, and picking quarrels upon unconscionably slight provocation
+almost daily. He had even challenged our gunboats, disputing the passage
+up the river in an artillery duello at the Bluffs, not far above the
+Landing, whose hoarse, sullen rumbling had reached us where we were
+resting on that Thursday afternoon, at the distance of thirty miles back
+toward Nashville. But, then, on how few fields had Southern chivalry
+ever yet ventured to attack; how seldom, but when fairly cornered, had
+its champions deemed discretion _not_ the better part of valor! What
+other possibility was there which was not more likely to become an
+actuality than that the enemy would here dare to assume the aggressive?
+Who that had the least regard for the dramatic proprieties, could ever
+assign to him any other part in the tragedy than one whose featliest
+display of skill and dexterity should be exhibited in executing the
+movements of guard and parry, and whose noblest performance should be to
+stand at bay, resolutely contending upon a hopeless field to meet a
+Spartan death? So we cast aside all serious thought of immediate danger
+at Pittsburg Landing, the sanguine temperaments pronouncing these
+demonstrations of a foe who had shown our army only his heels all the
+way from Bowling Green and Fort Donelson, really diverting from their
+very audacity.
+
+At sunset, the Sixth held dress parade--the first since our march from
+Columbia; but I, on duty that day as one of the 'reserve guard,' was
+merely a looker-on. I was never prouder of the old regiment; it went
+through with the manual of arms so well--and then there were so many
+spectators present from other regiments. Orders were given to prepare
+for a thorough inspection of arms and equipments at ten o'clock on the
+next morning, then parade was dismissed, and so the day ended. The wind
+died away, and the night deepened, cool, tranquil, starlit, on a camp of
+weary soldiery, where contentment and good will ruled for the hour over
+all.
+
+Beautifully clear and calm the Sabbath morning dawned, April 6th, 1862;
+rather chilly, indeed, for it was yet in the budding time of spring. But
+the sky was so blue and cloudless, the air so still, and all nature lay
+smiling so serene and fair in the glad sunshine--it was a day such as
+that whereon the Creator may have looked upon the new-born earth, and
+'saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good;' a day
+as if chosen from all its fellows and consecrated to a hallowed quiet,
+the blessedness of prayer and thanksgiving, praise and worship.
+
+Hardly a man in our division, I believe, but awoke that morning with a
+happy consciousness of long hours that this day were to be his own, and
+a clear idea of just how he should improve them. My programme was the
+general one, and simple enough it was. First, of course, to make ready
+for inspection, and, that ceremony well gotten through with, to enact
+the familiar performance of every man his own washerwoman and
+seamstress: the remainder of the day should be devoted to the soldier's
+sacred delight of correspondence--to completing a letter to Wynne, begun
+back at Columbia, and writing home. Out by the smouldering fire, where
+the cooks of our mess had prepared breakfast nearly two hours before, I
+was busily at work furbishing with the new dust-fine ashes the brasses
+of my accoutrements, when the boom of cannon burst on the air, rolling
+heavily from away to the southward up from what we knew must be the
+neighborhood of the camps at Pittsburg Landing. It was after seven
+o'clock. The sun was mounting over the scrubby oak copse behind our
+camp, and the day grew warm apace. Another and still another explosion
+followed in quick succession.
+
+What could it mean? Only the gunboats, some suggested, shelling
+guerillas out of the woods somewhere along the river bank. Impossible;
+too near, too far to the right, for that. It could hardly be artillery
+practice merely; for to-day was the Sabbath. And the youngest soldier
+among us knew better than to give those rapid, furious volleys the
+interpretation of a formal military salute. Could it really be--battle?
+
+Every man almost was out and listening intently. Louder and fiercer the
+reports came, though still irregular. Now and then, in the intervals, a
+low, quick crepitation reached us, an undertone that no soldier could
+fail to recognize as distant musketry. Ominous sounds they were,
+portending--what? What, indeed, if not actual battle? If a battle, then
+certainly an attack by the enemy. Were our comrades up at the Landing
+prepared for it?
+
+The first cannon had been fired scarcely ten minutes, when General
+Nelson rode by toward headquarters, down in the busiest part of the
+town, aides and orderlies following upon the gallop. Presently came
+orders:
+
+'Three days' rations in haversacks, strike tents, and pack up. Be ready
+to move at a moment's notice. They are fighting up at the Landing.'
+
+There was no need for further urging. By ten o'clock every disposition
+for the march had been completed. Nearly three long hours more we waited
+with feverish anxiety for the final command to start, while the roar of
+that deathly strife fell distantly upon our ears almost without
+intermission, and a hundred wild rumors swept through the camp. General
+Grant had gone up the river on a gunboat soon after the cannonading
+began. It was not long after midday when we struck tents, were furnished
+with a new supply of cartridges and caps for our Enfields, and waited
+several minutes longer. At length, however, the column formed, and,
+though still without orders, except those which its immediate commander
+had assumed the responsibility to give, the Fourth division was on the
+march for Shiloh. The Tenth brigade had, as usual, the advance, and, in
+our regular turn, the Sixth came the third regiment in the column. We
+had just cleared the camping grounds, I well remember, when General
+Nelson rode leisurely down the line, his eye taking note with the quiet
+glance of the real soldier of every minutia of equipments and appearance
+generally. Some natures seem to find in antagonism and conflict their
+native element, their chief good--yet more, almost as much a necessity
+of their moral organism as to their animal being is the air they
+breathe. Such a nature was Nelson's. His face to-day wore that
+characteristic expression by which every man of his command learned to
+graduate his expectation of an action; it was the very picture of
+satisfaction and good humor. He wheeled his horse half around as the
+rear of our brigade passed him, and a blander tone of command I never
+heard than when, in his rapid, authoritative manner, he rang out:
+
+'Now, gentlemen, keep the column well closed up!' and passed on toward
+the next brigade.
+
+Gentlemen! how oddly the title comes to sound in the ears of a soldier!
+
+From Savannah to the Tennessee, directly opposite Pittsburg Landing, is,
+by the course we took, perhaps ten miles. The route was only a narrow
+wagon-path through the woods and bottoms bordering the river, and the
+wisdom was soon apparent which had beforehand secured the services of a
+native as guide. Most of the latter half of the distance was through a
+low, slimy swamp land, giving rank growth to an almost continuous forest
+of sycamore, cottonwood, and other trees which love a damp, alluvial
+soil, whose massive trunks were yet foul and unsightly with filth and
+scum deposited by the receding waters at the subsidence of the river's
+great spring freshet a month before. Stagnant ponds and mimic lagoons
+lay all about us and in our very pathway, some of the deeper ones,
+however, rudely bridged. Very rapid progress was impossible. It had
+already been found necessary to send our artillery back to Savannah,
+whence it would have to be brought up on the transports. The afternoon
+wore on, warm and sultry, and the atmosphere in those dank woods felt
+close, aguish, and unwholesome. Not a breath of air stirred to refresh
+the heated forms winding in long, continuous line along the dark boles
+of the trees, through whose branches and leafless twigs the sunlight
+streamed in little broken gleams of yellow brightness, and made a
+curious checkerwork of sheen and shadow on all beneath. Burdened as we
+were with knapsacks and twenty extra rounds of ammunition, the march
+grew more and more laborious. But the noise of battle was sharpening
+more significantly every few minutes now, and the men pushed forward. It
+was no child's game going on ahead of us. We _might_ be needed.
+
+We _were_ needed. A loud, tumultuous cheer from the Thirty-sixth Indiana
+came surging down through the ranks of the Twenty-fourth Ohio to our own
+regiment, and away back beyond to the Twenty-second and Nineteenth
+brigades in the rear. 'Forward!' and we were off on the double quick.
+General Nelson was at the head of the column; there a courier had met
+him--so at least runs the tradition--with urgent orders to hasten up the
+reenforcements: the enemy were pressing hard for the Landing. Unmindful
+of all impediments--trees and fallen logs, shallow ponds and slippery
+mire shoetop deep; now again moderating our pace to the route step to
+recover breath and strength; even halting impatiently for a few minutes
+now and then, while the advance cleared itself from some entanglement of
+the way--so the remainder of our march continued. It seemed a long way
+to the Landing, the battle dinning on our ears at every step. At length
+it sounded directly ahead of us, close at hand; and looking forward out
+through the treetops, a good eye could easily discover a dark cloud of
+smoke hanging low in mid air, as though it sought to hide from the light
+of heaven the deeds that were being done beneath it. Suddenly we
+debouched into a level cornfield, extending quite to the river's verge.
+The clearing was not a wide one, and the farther bank of the Tennessee
+was in plain sight--the landings, the bluff, and the woods above
+stretching away out and back beyond.
+
+What a panorama! The river directly before us was hidden by a narrow
+belt of chaparral and the drift that had lodged along the banks, but the
+smoke stacks of three or four transports were visible above the weed
+stalks and bushes, and the course of one or two more could be traced by
+a distant, trailing line of smoke as they steamed down toward Savannah.
+The opposite bank rises from the river a steep acclivity, perhaps a
+hundred and fifty feet in perpendicular height, down whose sides of
+brownish yellow clay narrow roadways showed out to the landings below.
+Cresting the bluff, woods overlooked the whole, and shut in the scene
+far as the eye could follow the windings of the Tennessee. In their
+depths, the battle was raging with unabated fury. A short distance up
+the river, though completely hidden from view by an intervening bend,
+the gunboats were at work, and even our unpractised ears could easily
+distinguish the heavy boom of their great thirty-two pounders in the
+midst of all that blaze of battle and the storm of artillery explosions.
+Glorious old Tyler and Lexington! primitive, ungainly, weather-beaten,
+wooden craft, but the salvation, in this crisis hour of the fight, of
+our out-numbered and wellnigh borne-down left. A signal party, stationed
+a little above the upper landing and halfway up the bluff, was
+communicating in the mystic language of the code with another upon our
+side the river. What messages were those little party-colored flags
+exchanging, with their curious devices of stripes and squares and
+triangles, their combinations and figures in numberless variety, as they
+were waved up and down and to and fro in rapid, ever-shifting pantomime?
+The steep bank was covered with a swaying, restless mass of
+blue-uniformed men, too distant to be distinctly discriminated, yet
+certainly numbering thousands. 'Reserves!' a dozen voices cried at once,
+and the next moment came the wonder that our march had been so hurried,
+when whole brigades, as it seemed, could thus be held in idle waiting.
+We were soon undeceived.
+
+Out into the cornfield filed the column, up the river, and nearly
+parallel to it, halting a little below the upper one of the two
+principal landings. Here there was a further delaying for ferriage.
+
+'Stack arms; every man fill his canteen, then come right back to the
+ranks!'
+
+Not to the Tennessee for water--there was no time to go so far--but
+close at hand, at a pond, or little bayou of the river; and, returning
+to the line of stacks, a few more long, unquiet minutes in waiting,
+speculation, and eager gazing toward the battle. And then we saw what
+was that dark, turbulent multitude over the river: oh, shame! a confused
+rabble, composed chiefly of men whose places were rightly on the field,
+but who had turned and fled away from the fight to seek safety under the
+coverture of that bluff.
+
+Forward again, and the regiment moved, with frequent little aggravating
+halts, up to the point on the river where the Thirty-sixth Indiana had
+already embarked, and were now being ferried over. The Twenty-fourth
+Ohio crossed at the lower landing. There were a number of country folk
+here, clad in the coarse, rusty homespun common in the South, whose
+intense anxiety to see every movement visible on the farther side of the
+river kept them unquietly shifting their positions continually. One of
+these worthies was hailed from our company:
+
+'Say, old fellow! how's the fight going on over there?'
+
+He was an old and somewhat diminutive specimen, grizzle haired, and
+stoop shouldered, but yellow and withered from the effects of sun and
+tobacco rather than the burden of years. For a moment he hesitated, as
+though guarding his reply, and then, with a sidelong glance of the eyes,
+answered slowly:
+
+'Well, it aren't hardly decided yet, I reckon; but they're a drivin'
+your folks--some.'
+
+Evidently he believed that our army had been badly beaten. The emphatic
+rejoinder, 'D--d old secesh!' was the sole thanks his information
+brought him: the characterization, aside from the accented epithet, was
+doubtless a just one, but for all that his words were in no wise
+encouraging.
+
+A minute later we passed a sergeant, whose uniform and bright-red
+chevrons showed that he was attached to some volunteer battery. He was
+mounted upon a large, powerful horse, and seemed a man of considerable
+ability.
+
+'Do the rebels fight well over there?' demanded a voice from the column
+a half dozen files ahead of me.
+
+'Guess they do! Anyway, _fit_ well enough to take our battery from
+us--every gun, and some of the caissons.'
+
+Another soldier met us, unencumbered with blouse or coat of any kind,
+his accoutrements well adjusted over his gray flannel shirt, and his
+rifle sloped carelessly back over his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot,
+and his face, all begrimed with smoke and gunpowder, wore an expression
+haggard, gaunt, and very weary. He was a sharpshooter, he told us,
+belonging to some Missouri regiment, and had been out skirmishing almost
+ever since daylight, with not a mouthful to eat since the evening
+before. His cartridges--and he showed us his empty cartridge-box--had
+given out the second time, and he was 'used up.' In his hat and clothes
+were several bullet holes; but he had been hit but once, he said, and
+then by only a spent buckshot.
+
+'Boys, I'm glad you're come,' he said. 'It's a fact, they _have_ whipped
+us so far; but I guess we've got 'em all right _now_. How many of
+Buell's army can come up to-night?'
+
+A hurried, many-voiced reply, and hastening on past a heterogeneous
+collection of soldiery--couriers, cavalry-men, malingerers, stragglers,
+a few of the slightly wounded, and camp followers of all sorts--we
+quickly reached the river's brink. The boat was lying close below.
+Twenty feet down the crumbling bank, slipping, or swinging down by the
+roots and twigs of friendly bushes, the regiment lost but little time in
+embarking. The horses of our field officers were somehow got on board,
+and, with crowded decks, the little steamer headed for the landing right
+over against us. Two or three boats were there hugging the shore, quiet
+and motionless, and there were still more at the lower landing. One or
+two of these the deck hands pointed out to us as magazine boats,
+freighted with precious stores of ammunition, and the remainder were
+now, of necessity, being used as hospital boats. The wounded had quite
+filled these latter, and several hundred more of the day's victims had
+already been sent down the river to Savannah. One of the gunboats, fresh
+from its glorious work up beyond the bend, shortly came in sight, moving
+slowly down stream, as though reconnoitring the bank for some inlet up
+which its crashing broadsides could be poured with deadliest effect, if
+the enemy should again appear in sight.
+
+An informal command to land was given us presently, but many had already
+anticipated it. How terribly significant becomes the simple mechanism of
+loading a rifle when one knows that it is at once the earnest of deadly
+battle and the preparation for it! The few details which we could gather
+from the deck hands concerning the fight were meagre and unsatisfactory.
+They told us of disaster that befell our army in the morning, and which
+it seemed very doubtful if the afternoon had yet seen remedied; and
+their testimony was borne out by evidences to which our own unwilling
+senses were the sufficient witnesses. The roar of battle sounded
+appallingly near, and two or three of our guns were in vigorous play
+upon the enemy so close on the crest of the bluff that every flash could
+be seen distinctly. Several shells from the enemy's artillery swept by,
+cleaving the air many feet above us with that peculiar, fierce, rushing
+noise, which no one, I believe, can hear for the first time without a
+quickened beating of the heart and an instinctive impulse of dismay and
+awe.
+
+At the landing--but how shall I attempt, in words only, to set that
+picture forth? The next day's fight was my first experience in actual
+battle, except so much of bushwacking as five months in Western Virginia
+had brought us, but those hours have no such place in my memory as have
+the scenes and sounds of this evening at the landing. I have never yet
+seen told in print the half of that sad, sickening story. Wagons, teams,
+and led horses, quartermaster's stores of every description, bales of
+forage, caissons--all the paraphernalia of a magnificently appointed
+army--were scattered in promiscuous disorder along the bluff-side. Over
+and all about the fragmentary heaps thousands of panic-stricken wretches
+swarmed from the river's edge far up toward the top of the steep; a mob
+in uniform, wherein all arms of the service and wellnigh every
+grade--for even gilt shoulder-straps and scarlet sashes did not lack a
+shameful representation there--were commingled in utter, distracted
+confusion; a heaving, surging herd of humanity, smitten with a very
+frenzy of fright and despair, every sense of manly pride, of honor, and
+duty, completely paralyzed, and dead to every feeling save the most
+abject, pitiful terror. A number of officers could be distinguished amid
+the tumult, performing, with violent gesticulations, the pantomimic
+accompaniments of shouting incoherent commands, mingled with threats and
+entreaties. There was a little drummer boy, I remember, too, standing in
+his shirt sleeves and pounding his drum furiously, though to what
+purpose we could none of us divine. Men were there in every stage of
+partial uniform and equipment; many were hatless and coatless, and few
+still retained their muskets and their accoutrements complete. Some
+stood wringing their hands, and rending the air with their cries and
+lamentations, while others, in the dumb agony of fear, cowered behind
+the object that was nearest them in the direction of the enemy, though
+but the crouching form of a comrade. Terror had concentrated every
+faculty upon two ideas, and all else seemed forgotten: danger and death
+were behind and pressing close upon them; on the other side of the
+river, whither their eyes were turned imploringly, there was the hope of
+escape and an opportunity for further flight.
+
+Meanwhile, louder than all the din and clamor else, swelled the roar of
+cannon and the sharp, continuous rattle of musketry up in the woods
+above. There, other thousands of our comrades--many thousands more they
+were, thank God!--were maintaining an unequal struggle, in which to
+further yield, they knew, would be their inevitable destruction. Brave,
+gallant fellows! more illustrious record than they made who here stood
+and fought through all these terrible Sabbath hours need no soldier
+crave. There has been a noble redemption, too, of the disgrace which
+Shiloh fastened on those poor, trembling fugitives by the riverside.
+That disgrace was not an enduring one. On many a red and stubborn battle
+field those same men have proudly vindicated their real manhood, and in
+maturer military experience have fought their way to a renown abundantly
+enough, and more than enough, to cover the derelictions of raw,
+untrained, and not too skilfully directed soldiery.
+
+There was a rush for the boat when we neared the landing, and some,
+wading out breast deep into the stream, were kept off only at the point
+of the bayonet. Close by the water's edge grew a clump of sycamores. Up
+into one of these and far out on a projecting limb, one scared wretch
+had climbed, and, as the boat rounded to, poised himself for a leap upon
+the hurricane deck; but the venture seemed too perilous, and he was
+forced to give it up in despair. The plank was quickly thrown out,
+guards were stationed to keep the passage clear, and we ran ashore.
+Until now there had been few demonstrations of enthusiasm, but here an
+eager outburst of shouts and cheers broke forth that wellnigh drowned
+the thunderings of battle. The regiment did not wait to form on the
+beach, the men, as they debarked, rushing up the bank by one of the
+winding roadways. The gaping crowd parted right and left, and poured
+upon us at every step a torrent of queries and ejaculations. 'It's no
+use;' 'gone up;' 'cut all to pieces;' 'the last man left in my
+company;'--so, on all sides, smote upon our ears the tidings of ill.
+Fewer, but cheery and reassuring, were the welcomes: 'Glad you've come;'
+'good for you;' 'go in, boys;' 'give it to 'em, Buckeyes'--which came to
+us in manly tones, now and then from the lines as we passed.
+
+We gained the summit of the bluff. A few hundred yards ahead they were
+fighting; we could hear the cheering plainly, and the woods echoed our
+own in response. The Thirty-sixth Indiana had already been pushed
+forward toward the extreme left of our line, and were even now in
+action. General Nelson had crossed half an hour earlier. The junior
+member of his staff had had a saddle shot from under him by a chance
+shell from the enemy, to the serious detriment of a fine dress coat, but
+he himself marvellously escaping untouched. Two field pieces were at
+work close upon our left, firing directly over the heads of our men in
+front; only a random firing at best, and I was glad when an aide-de-camp
+galloped down and put a stop to the infernal din. Amid this scene of
+indescribable excitement and confusion, the regiment rapidly formed. Our
+knapsacks--were we going into action with their encumbrance? The order
+was shouted to unsling and pile them in the rear, one man from each
+company being detailed to guard them. It was scarcely more than a
+minute's work, and we formed again. A great Valkyrian chorus of shouts
+swelled out suddenly along the line, and, looking up, I saw General
+Nelson sitting on his big bay in front of the colors, his hat lifted
+from his brow, and his features all aglow with an expression of
+satisfaction and indomitable purpose. He was speaking, but Company B was
+on the left of the regiment, and, in the midst of the storms of huzzas
+pealing on every side, I could not catch a single word. Then I heard the
+commands, 'Fix bayonets! trail arms! forward!' and at the double-quick
+we swept on, up through the stumps and underbrush which abounded in this
+part of the wood, to the support of the Thirty-sixth Indiana. A few
+score rods were gained, and we halted to recover breath and perfect
+another allignment. The firing in our front materially slackened, and
+presently we learned that the last infuriate charge of the enemy upon
+our left had been beaten back. We could rest where we lay, 'until
+further orders.' The sun sank behind the rise off to our right, a broad,
+murky red disk, in a dense, leaden-hued haze; such a sunset as in
+springtime is a certain betokening of rain. By this time cannonading had
+entirely ceased, and likewise all musketry, save only a feeble, dropping
+fire upon our right. Those sounds shortly died away, and the battle for
+this day was over. Night fell and spread its funereal pall over a field
+on which, almost without cessation since the dawn of daylight, had raged
+a conflict which, for its desperation and carnage, had yet had no
+parallel in American history.
+
+On that field, freely and generously had been poured of the nation's
+best blood, and many a nameless hero had sealed with his life a sublime
+devotion far surpassing the noblest essay of eulogy and all the
+extolments which rhetoric may recount. Thank God, those sacrifices had
+not been wholly fruitless! The Army of the Tennessee, although at most
+precious cost, had succeeded in staying those living waves of Southern
+treason until the Army of the Ohio could come up, and Shiloh was saved.
+The next day saw those waves rolled back in a broken, crimson current,
+whose ebb ceased only when the humiliated enemy rested safe within his
+fortifications at Corinth.
+
+
+
+
+AENONE:
+
+A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+With Sergius there was seldom any interval between impulse and action.
+Now, without giving time for explanation, he made one bound to where
+Cleotos stood; and, before the startled Greek had time to drop the
+slender fingers which he had raised to his lips, the stroke of the
+infuriated master's hand descended upon his head, and he fell senseless
+at AEnone's feet, with one arm resting upon the lounge behind her.
+
+'Is my honor of so little worth that a common slave should be allowed to
+rob me of it?' Sergius exclaimed, turning to AEnone in such a storm of
+passion that, for the moment, it seemed as though the next blow would
+descend upon her.
+
+Strangely enough, though she had ever been used to tremble at his
+slightest frown, and though now, in his anger, there might even be
+actual danger to her life, she felt, for the moment, no fear. Her
+sympathy for the bleeding victim at her feet, of whose sad plight she
+had been the innocent cause, and whose perils had probably as yet only
+commenced--her consciousness that a crisis in her life had come,
+demanding all her fortitude--her indignation that upon such slight
+foundation she should thus be accused of falsity and shame--all combined
+to create in her an unlooked-for calmness. Added to this was the
+delusive impression that, as nothing had occurred which could not be
+explained, her lord's anger would not be likely to prolong itself at the
+expense of his returning sense of justice. What, indeed, could he have
+witnessed which she could not account for with a single word? It was
+true that within the past hour she had innocently and dreamily bestowed
+upon the Greek caresses which might easily have been misunderstood; and
+that all the while, the door having been partly open, a person standing
+outside and concealed by the obscure gloom of the antechamber, could
+have covertly witnessed whatever had transpired within. But AEnone knew
+that whatever might be her husband's other faults, he was not capable of
+countenancing the self-imposed degradation of espionage. Nor, even had
+it been otherwise, could he have been able, if his jealousy was once
+aroused by any passing incident, to control his impatient anger
+sufficiently to await other developments. At the most, therefore, he
+must merely, while passing, have chanced to witness the gesture of
+mingled emotion and affection with which Cleotos had bidden her
+farewell. Surely that was a matter which would require but little
+explanation.
+
+'Do you not hear me?' cried Sergius, glaring with wild passion from her
+to Cleotos and back again to her. 'Was it necessary that my honor should
+be placed in a slave's keeping? Was there no one of noble birth with
+whom you could be false, but that you must bring this deeper degradation
+upon my name?'
+
+AEnone drew herself up with mingled scorn and indignation. His anger,
+which at another time would have crushed her, now passed almost
+unheeded; for the sense of injury resulting from his cruel taunt and
+from his readiness, upon such slight foundation, to believe her guilty,
+gave her strength to combat him. The words of self-justification and of
+reproach toward him were at her lips, ready to break forth in
+unaccustomed force. In another moment the torrent of her indignant
+protestations would have burst upon him. Already his angry look began to
+quail before the steadfast earnestness of her responsive gaze. But all
+at once her tongue refused its utterance, her face turned ghastly pale,
+and her knees seemed to sink beneath her.
+
+For, upon glancing one side, she beheld the gaze of Leta fixedly
+fastened upon her over Sergius's shoulder. In the sparkle of those
+burning eyes and in the curve of those half-parted lips, there appeared
+no longer any vestige of the former pretended sympathy or affection.
+There was now malice, scorn, and hatred--all those expressions which,
+from time to time, had separately excited doubt and dread, now combining
+themselves into one exulting glance of open triumph, disdainful of
+further concealment, since at last the long-sought purpose seemed
+attained. AEnone turned away with a sickening, heart-breaking feeling
+that she was now lost, indeed. It was no mystery, any longer, that the
+slave girl must have listened at the open door, and have cunningly
+contrived that her master should appear at such time as seemed most
+opportune for her purposes. And how must every unconscious action, every
+innocent saying have been noted down in the tablets of that crafty mind!
+What explanation, indeed, could be given of those trivial caresses now
+so surely magnified and distorted into evidences of degrading
+criminality?
+
+Faint at heart, AEnone turned away--unable longer to look upon that face
+so exultant with the consciousness of a long-sought purpose achieved.
+Rather would she prefer to encounter the angry gaze of her lord.
+Terrible as his look was to her, she felt that, at the last, pity might
+be found in him, if she could only succeed in making him listen to and
+understand the whole story. But what mercy or release from jealous and
+vindictive persecution could she hope to gain from the plotting Greek
+girl, who had no pity in her heart, and who, even if she were so
+disposed, could not, now that matters had progressed so far, dare to
+surrender the life-and-death struggle? Alas! neither in the face of her
+lord could she now see anything but settled, unforgiving pitilessness;
+for though, for an instant, he had quailed before her gaze, yet when she
+had, in turn, faltered at the sight of Leta, he deemed it a new proof of
+guilt, and his suspended reproaches broke forth with renewed violence.
+
+'Am I to have no answer?' he cried, seizing her by the arm. 'Having lost
+all, are you now too poor-spirited to confess?'
+
+'There is nothing for me to confess. Nor, if there had been, would I
+deign to speak before that woman,' she answered with desperation, and
+pointing toward Leta. 'What does she here? How, in her presence, can you
+dare talk of sin--you who have so cruelly wronged me? And has all
+manliness left you, that you should ask me to open my heart to you in
+the presence of a slave; one, too, who has pursued me for weeks with her
+treacherous hate, and now stands gloating over the misery which she has
+brought upon me? I tell you that I have said or done nothing which I
+cannot justify; but that neither will I deign to explain aught to any
+but yourself alone.'
+
+'The same old excuse!' retorted Sergius. 'No harm done--nothing which
+cannot be accounted for in all innocence; and yet, upon some poor
+pretence of wounded pride, that easy explanation will not be vouchsafed!
+And all the while the damning proof and author of the guilt lies before
+me!'
+
+With that he extended his foot, and touched the senseless body of
+Cleotos--striking it carelessly, and not too gently. The effect of the
+speech and action was to arouse still more actively the energetic
+impulses of AEnone--but not, alas! to that bold display of conscious
+innocence with which, a moment before, she had threatened to sweep aside
+his insinuations, and make good her justification. She was now rather
+driven into a passion of reckless daring--believing that her fate was
+prejudged and forestalled--caring but little what might happen to
+her--wishing only to give way to her most open impulses, let the
+consequences be what they might. Therefore, in yielding to that spirit
+of defiance, she did the thing which of all others harmed her most,
+since its immediate and natural result was to give greater cogency to
+the suspicions against her. Stooping down and resting herself upon the
+lounge, she raised the head of the still senseless Cleotos upon her lap,
+and began tenderly to wipe his lips, from a wound in which a slight
+stream of blood had begun to ooze.
+
+'He and I are innocent,' she said. 'I have treated him as a brother,
+that is all. It is years ago that I met him first, and then he was still
+more to me than now. He is now poor and in misery, and I cannot abandon
+him. Had he been in your place, and you in his, he would not have thus,
+without proof, condemned you, and then have insulted your lifeless
+body.'
+
+For a moment Sergius stood aghast. Excuse and pleading he was prepared
+to hear. Recriminations would not have surprised him, for he knew that
+his own course would not bear investigation, and nothing, therefore,
+could be more natural than that she should attempt to defend herself by
+becoming the assailant in turn. But that she should thus defy
+him--before his eyes should bestow endearments upon a slave, the partner
+of her apparent guilt, and with whom she acknowledged having had an
+intimacy years before, was too astounding for him at first to
+understand. Then recovering himself, he cried aloud:
+
+'Is this to be borne? Ho, there, Drumo! Meros! all of you! Take this
+wretch and cast him into the prison! See that he does not escape, on
+your lives! He shall feed the lions to-morrow! By the gods, he shall
+feed the lions! Bear him away! Let me not see him again till I see his
+blood lapped up in the arena. Away with him, I say!'
+
+As the first cry of Sergius rang through the halls, the armor bearer
+appeared at the door; and before many more seconds had elapsed, other
+slaves, armed and unarmed, swarmed forth from different courts and
+passages, until the antechamber was filled with them. None of them knew
+what had happened, but they saw that, in some way, Cleotos had incurred
+the anger of his master, and lay stunned and bleeding before them. To
+obey was the work of a moment. The giant Drumo, stooping down, wound his
+arm around the body of Cleotos, hoisted him upon his broad shoulder, and
+stalked out of the room. The other slaves followed. AEnone, who, in the
+delirium of her defiance, might have tried to resist, was overpowered by
+her own attendants, who also had flocked in at Sergius's call, and now
+gently forced her from the room. And in a moment more, Sergius was left
+alone with Leta.
+
+She, crouching in a dark corner of the room, awaited her opportunity to
+say the words which she dared not say while he was in this storm of wild
+passion; he, thinking himself entirely alone, stalked up and down like a
+caged tiger, muttering curses upon himself, upon AEnone, upon the slave,
+upon all who directly or indirectly had been concerned in his supposed
+disgrace. Let it not be forgotten that, though at first he had acted
+hastily and upon slight foundation of proof, and had cruelly wounded her
+spirit by abhorrent insinuations, without giving time or opportunity for
+her to explain herself, she had afterward given way to an insane
+impulse, and had so conducted herself as to fix the suspicion of guilt
+upon herself almost ineffaceably. What further proof could he need?
+While, with false lips, she had denied all, had she not, at the same
+time, lavished tender caresses upon the vile slave?
+
+Then, too, what had he not himself done to add to the sting of his
+disgrace? Convinced of her guilt, he should have quietly put her away,
+and the truth would have leaked out only little by little, so as to be
+stripped of half of its mortification. But he had called up his slaves.
+They had entered upon the scene, and would guess at everything, if they
+did not know it already! The mouths of menials could not be stopped.
+To-morrow all Rome would know that the imperator Sergius, whose wife had
+been the wonder of the whole city for her virtue and constancy, had been
+deceived by her, and for a low-born slave! Herein, for the moment,
+seemed to lie half the disgrace. Had it been a man of rank and celebrity
+like himself--but a slave! And how would he dare to look the world in
+the face--he who had been proud of his wife's unsullied reputation, even
+when he had most neglected her, and who had so often boasted over his
+happy lot to those who, having the reputation of being less fortunate,
+had complacently submitted themselves to bear with indifference a
+disgrace which, at that age, seemed to be almost the universal doom!
+
+Frantically revolving these matters, he raged up and down the apartment
+for some moments, while Leta watched him from her obscure corner. When
+would it be time for her to advance and try her art of soothing? Not
+yet; for while that paroxysm of rage lasted, he would be as likely to
+strike her as to listen. Once he approached within a few feet of her,
+and, as she believed herself observed, she trembled and crouched behind
+a vase. He had not seen her, but his eye fell upon the vase, and with
+one blow he rolled it off its pedestal, and let it fall shattered upon,
+the marble floor. Was it simply because the costly toy stood in his way?
+Or was it that he remembered it had been a favorite of AEnone? One
+fragment of the vase, leaping up, struck Leta upon the foot and wounded
+her, but she dared not cry out. She rather crouched closer behind the
+empty pedestal, and drew a long breath of relief as, after a moment, he
+turned away.
+
+At last the violence of his passion seemed to have expended itself, and
+he sank upon the lounge, and, burying his face in his hands, abandoned
+himself to more composed reflection. Now was the time for her to
+approach. And yet she would not address herself directly to him, but
+would rather let him, in some accidental manner, detect her presence.
+Upon a small table stood a bronze lamp with a little pitcher of olive
+oil beside it. The wicks were already in the sockets, and she had only
+to pour in the oil. This she did noiselessly, as one who has no thought
+of anything beyond the discharge of an accustomed duty. Then she lighted
+the wicks and stealthily looked up to see whether he had yet observed
+her.
+
+The lamp somewhat brightened the obscurity of the room, sending even a
+faint glimmer into the farther corners, but he took no notice of it.
+Perhaps he may have moved his head a little toward the light, but that
+was all. Otherwise there was no apparent change or interruption in his
+deep, troubled thought. Then Leta moved the table with the lamp upon it
+a few paces toward him, so that the soft light could fall more directly
+upon his face. Still no change. Then she softly approached and bent over
+him.
+
+What could he be thinking of? Could he be feeling aught but regret that
+he had thrown away years of his life upon one who had betrayed him so
+grossly at the end? Was he not telling himself how, upon the morrow, he
+would put her away, with all ceremony, forever? And might he not be
+reflecting that, AEnone once gone, there would be a vacant place to be
+filled at his table? Would he not wish that it should be occupied
+without delay, if only to show the world how little his misfortune had
+affected him? And who more worthy to fill it than the one whose
+fascinations over him had made it empty? Was not this, then, the time
+for her to attract his notice, before other thoughts and interests could
+come between her and him?
+
+Softly she touched him upon the arm; and, like an unchained lion, he
+sprang up and stared her in the face. There was a terrible look upon his
+features, making her recoil in dismay. Was that the affectionate gaze
+with which she had expected to be greeted? Was that the outward
+indication of the pleasing resolves with which her eager fancy had
+invested his mind?
+
+Never had she been more mistaken than in her conceptions of his
+thoughts. In them there was for herself not one kindly impulse; but for
+the wife whom he had deemed so erring, there was much that was akin to
+regret, if not to returning affection. The violence of his passion had
+been so exhausting, that something like a reaction had come. A new
+contradiction seemed developing itself in his nature. This man, who a
+few minutes before had prejudged her guilty, because he had seen the
+lips of a grateful slave pressed against her hand, now, after having
+seen her so aroused and indifferent to reputation as to defend that
+slave in her arms, and claim him for at least a friend and brother,
+began to wonder whether she might not really be innocent. She had
+confessed to nothing--she had asserted her blamelessness--she had never
+been known to waver from the truth; might she not have been able to
+explain her actions? With his regret for having, in such hasty passion,
+so compromised her before the world that no explanation could henceforth
+shield her from invidious slander, he now began to feel sorrow for
+having so roughly used her. Whether she was false or not--whether or not
+he now loved her--was it any the less true that she had once been
+constant and loved by him, and did the memories of that time, not so
+very long ago, bring no answering emotion to his heart? Who, after all,
+had ever so worshipped him? And must he now really lose her? Might it
+not be that he had been made the victim of some conspiracy, aided by
+fortuitous elements?
+
+It was just at this point, when, in his thoughts, he was stumbling near
+the truth, that the touch of Leta's hand aroused him; and in that
+instant her possible agency in the matter flashed upon him like a new
+revelation. She saw the tiger-like look which he fastened upon her, and
+she recoiled, perceiving at once that she had chosen an inopportune
+moment to speak to him. But it was now too late to recede.
+
+'Well?' he demanded.
+
+'I have lighted the lamp,' she faltered forth. 'I knew not that I should
+disturb you. Have you further commands for me?'
+
+Still his fierce gaze fixed upon her; but now with a little more of the
+composure of searching inquiry.
+
+'It is you who have brought all this destruction and misery upon me,' he
+said at length. 'From one step unto another, even to this end, I
+recognize your work. I was a weak fool not to have seen it before.'
+
+'Is it about my mistress that you speak?' she responded. 'Is it my fault
+that she has been untrue?'
+
+'If she is false, what need to have told me of it? Was it that the
+knowledge of it would make me more happy? And did I give it into the
+hands of my own slaves to watch over my honor? Is it a part of your duty
+that for weeks you should have played the spy upon herself and me, so as
+to bring her secret faults to light?'
+
+She stood silent before him, not less amazed at his lingering fondness
+for his wife than at his reproaches against herself.
+
+'How know I that she is guilty at all?' he said, continuing the train of
+thought into which his doubts and his better nature had led him. 'I must
+feel all this for certain. How do I know but what you have brought it
+about by some cunning intrigue for your own purposes? Speak!'
+
+For Leta to stop now was destruction. Though to go on might bring no
+profit to her, yet her safety depended upon closing forever the path of
+reconciliation toward which his mind seemed to stray. And step by step,
+shrouding as far as possible her own agency, she spread out before him
+that basis of fact upon which she so well knew how to erect a false
+superstructure. She told him how the intimacy of AEnone and Cleotos had
+led her to keep watch--how AEnone had once confessed having had a lover
+in the days of her obscurity and poverty--how that this Greek was that
+same lover--and how improbable it was that he could have been domiciled
+in that house by chance, or for any other purpose than that of being in
+a situation to renew former intimacies. She told how, after long
+suspicion, she had settled this identity of the former lover with the
+slave--and how she had seen them, in the twilight of that very day,
+standing near the window and addressing each other endearingly by their
+own familiar names. As Sergius listened, the evident truthfulness of the
+facts gradually impressed themselves upon him; and no longer doubting
+his disgrace, he closed his heart against all further hope and charity
+and affection. The pleasant past no longer whispered its memories to his
+heart--those were now stifled and dead.
+
+'And what reward for all this do you demand?' he hissed forth, seizing
+Leta by the arm, 'For of course you have not thus dogged her steps day
+after day, without expectation of recompense from me.'
+
+Did he mean this--that she was capable of asking reward? Or was he
+cunningly trying her nature, to see whether she might prove worthy of
+the great recompense which she had promised herself? It was almost too
+much now to expect; but her heart beat fast as she saw or fancied she
+saw some strange significance in the gaze which he fastened upon her.
+Babbling incoherently, she told how she did not wish reward--how she had
+done it all for love of him--how she would be content to serve him for
+life, with no other recompense than his smile--and the like. Still that
+gaze was fastened upon her with penetrating power, more and more
+confusing her, and again she babbled forth the same old expressions of
+disinterested attachment. How it was that at last he understood her
+secret thoughts and aspirations, she knew not. Certainly she had not
+spoken, or even seemed to hint about them. But whether she betrayed
+herself by some glance of the eye or tremor of the voice, or whether
+some instinct had enabled him to read her, of a sudden he burst into a
+wild, hollow laugh of disdain, threw her from him, and cried, with
+unutterable contempt:
+
+'This, then, was the purpose of all! This is what you dreamed of! That
+you, a slave--an hour's plaything--could so mistake a word or two of
+transient love-making as to fancy that you could ever be anything beyond
+what you are now! Poor fool that thou art!--Oho, Drumo!'
+
+The giant entered the room, and Leta again drew back into the closest
+obscurity she could find, not knowing what punishment her audacity was
+about to draw upon her. But worse, perhaps, than any other punishment,
+was the discovery that Sergius had already forgotten her; or rather,
+that he thought so little about her as to be able to dismiss her and her
+pretensions with a single contemptuous rebuke. He had called his armor
+bearer for another purpose than to speak of her. A new phase had passed
+over his burdened and excited mind. He could not endure that solitude,
+with ever-present disagreeable reflection. And since his disgrace must,
+sooner or later, be known, he would brave it out by being himself the
+first to publish it.
+
+'Is it not to-morrow that the games begin?'
+
+'Yes, master,' responded the armor bearer.
+
+'And does it not--it seems to me that I promised to my friends a banquet
+upon the previous night. If I did not, I meant to have done so. Go,
+therefore, and bid them at once come hither! Tell the poet Emilius--and
+Bassus--and the rest. You know all whom I would have. Let them know that
+I hold revel here, and that not one must dare to stay away! Tell my
+cooks to prepare a feast for the gods! Go! Despatch!'
+
+The giant grinned his knowledge of all that his master's tastes would
+require, and left the room to prepare for his errand. And in a moment
+more Sergius also departed, without another thought of the Greek girl,
+who stood shrinking from his notice in the shadow of the farthest
+corner.
+
+
+
+
+APHORISMS.--NO. XII.
+
+
+Knowledge and Action.--It is a common fault of our humanity, when not
+sunk too low in the scale of intellect, to seek knowledge rather than
+attempt any laborious application of it. We love to add to our stock of
+ideas, facts, or even notions of things, provided moderate pains will
+suffice; but to put our knowledge in practice is too often esteemed
+servile, or eschewed as mere drudgery. Useful activities flatter pride,
+and gratify the imagination, too little. But of what avail, ordinarily,
+is the possession of truth, unless as light to direct us in the ways of
+beneficent labor, for ourselves and for our fellow men? There are,
+indeed, objects of knowledge which elevate the soul in the mere act of
+contemplation; but, in most cases, if what we learn is brought into no
+definite relation to the practice of life, the acquisition is barren,
+and the labor of making it apparently a loss of time and strength.
+
+This is no censure upon the course of learning as a process of mental
+discipline; for this in itself is one of the most productive forms of
+human activity.
+
+
+
+
+EXCUSE.
+
+
+    Song, they say, should be a king,
+  Crowned and throned by lightning-legions
+    Only they may dare to sing
+    Who can hear their voices ring
+  Through the echoing thunder-regions.
+
+    Yet, below the mountain's crest,
+  Chime the valley-bells to heaven;
+    If we may not grasp the best,
+    Deeper, closer, be our quest
+  For the good that Fate has given.
+
+    Parching in its fever pain,
+  Many a tortured life is thirsting
+    For a cooling draught to drain,
+    Though it flash no purple vein
+  From the mellow grape-heart bursting.
+
+    Must our sun-struck gaze despise
+  Starry isles in light embosomed?
+    Must we close our scornful eyes
+    Where the valley lily lies,
+  Just because the rose has blossomed?
+
+    Though the lark, God's perfect strain,
+  Steep his song in sunlit splendor;
+    Though the nightingale's sweet pain
+    With divine despair, enchain
+  Dew-soft darks in silence tender;
+
+    Not the less, from Song's excess,
+  Sings the blackbird late and early:
+    Nor the bobolink's trill the less
+    Laughs for very happiness,
+  Gurgling through its gateways pearly.
+
+    Though we reach not heavenly heights,
+  Where the sun-crowned souls sit peerless,
+    Let us wing our farthest flights
+    Underneath the lower lights;--
+  Soar and sing, unfettered, fearless--
+
+    Sings as bubbling water flows--
+  Sing as smiles the summer sunny.
+    Royal is the perfect rose,
+    Yet, from many a bud that blows,
+  Bees may drain a drop of honey.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN WOMEN.
+
+
+A great deal has been said and written in this age and country on the
+subject of what is technically called _woman's rights_; and, in the
+course of such agitation, many good and true things have been thought
+out and made available to the bettering of her condition, besides many
+foolish and impracticable, arising from a too grasping desire for a
+wider and more exciting sphere of effort, as well as from a palpable
+misapprehension of their own nature and their legitimate sphere, which
+prevails quite extensively among women. The pioneers of the rights of
+woman have done a good work, however, and may well be pardoned wherein
+they have gone beyond what might be fairly and profitably demanded for
+our sex. They have called the public attention to the subject, and have
+enlisted the thoughts and the services of many earnest men as well as
+women in their cause; thus provoking that inquiry which will eventually
+lead to the finding of the whole truth concerning woman, her rights,
+privileges, duties. And for this, in common with the pioneers in every
+cause that has for its object the amelioration and advantage of any
+class of human beings, they deserve the thanks of all. That there should
+be some ultraists, who would not know where to stop in the extravagant
+and unsuitable claims they urge, was to be expected. This should not
+blind our eyes to the lawful claims of woman upon society, nor is it
+sufficient to throw ridicule upon a movement which has, in this day,
+indeed, borne its full share of obloquy from the careless, the
+thoughtless, the too conservative, all of whom are alike clogs upon the
+wheel of human progress.
+
+This is not the age nor ours the people to shun the fair discussion of
+any question, much less one which commends itself as of practical
+importance. This American people has proved, by the calm and patient
+consideration it has accorded to the advocates of woman's rights, that
+it has reached that lofty point in the progress of society at which
+woman is regarded as a positive quantity in the problem which society is
+working out, and it marks an era in the history of the sex, prophetic of
+the full enjoyment of _all_ the rights which are hers by nature, or may
+be hers by favor. I think that in this country, at least, woman has been
+put upon a very clear and unobstructed path, with many encouragements to
+go on in the highest course of improvement of which she is capable.
+There seems to be a general disposition to investigate, and to allow her
+the rights she claims--rights of education, of labor, of property, of a
+fair competition in any suitable field of enterprise; so that she bids
+fair to become as self-supporting, independent, and intelligent as she
+desires. It is true that much is still said of the jealousy and
+selfishness of men, leading them to monopolize most of the sources of
+profitable effort to their own use, thus cramping the sphere of woman,
+and making her dependent and isolated.
+
+Now, it is very much a question with me whether, after all, the failure,
+so far, to secure these fancied rights, is not quite as much the result
+of woman's backwardness and inefficiency as of man's jealous and greedy
+monopoly; whether the greatest obstacle does not lie in the adverse
+opinions prevailing among women themselves. According to my observation,
+as fast as women have proved themselves adapted to compete with men in
+any particular field, their brothers have forthwith striven to make the
+path easy and pleasant for them.
+
+But there is a natural and necessary jealousy excited when women attempt
+to go out of the beaten track, and establish new conditions and
+resources for themselves--a jealousy which has its source in the
+instinctive feeling of civilized society, that the standard of womanhood
+must not be lowered; that its safety and progressive well-being depend
+upon the immaculate preservation of that pure and graceful ideal of
+womanhood which every true man wishes to see guarded with a vestal
+precision. And society will pause, thoughtfully to consider, before the
+stamp of its approbation is affixed to any mode of development by which
+that lofty ideal would suffer. Anything which tends in the least to
+unsex, to unsphere woman, by so much works with a reflex influence on
+man and on society, and produces in both a gradual and dangerous
+deterioration. And self-preservation is the first instinct of society as
+well as of the individual being. Man, and the eternal and infinite order
+of the world, require that woman keep her proper place, and that she
+demand nothing which, granted, would introduce confusion and disorder
+among the social forces.
+
+But it is not so much of woman's rights that I would speak. I am not
+afraid but that she will possess these in due time, as fast as her
+nature and true place and mission in the world come to be more fully
+understood. I am far more anxious that she should come into such more
+perfect understanding.
+
+Woman has always been a puzzle, an enigma, to man. When, in the pride of
+his anatomical skill, he has essayed to make her his study, thinking to
+master the secret of her curious physical being, he has been forced to
+stop short of his purpose, dumb and blind in the presence of that
+wondrous complexity that no science of his own can master; and no
+casuist has yet solved the _why_ of her equally wonderful and complex
+mental and spiritual being. They have made Reason, cold, critical,
+judge, the test; but the fine, delicate essence of her real being has
+always eluded it. When Love seeks the solution--the large, generous
+Love, that is one day to sit as the judge of all things, supreme over
+purblind human Reason--then _she_ will be understood, for she will yield
+to the asking of that all-seeing One. This will be when the world is
+ripe for the advent of woman, who shall rule through love, the highest
+rule of all. Slowly, slowly, though surely, is the world ascending,
+through the wondrous secret chain of _influences_ binding her to the
+moral order of the universe, to the height of this supernal law of love;
+and there, in that new and holy kingdom, woman's crown and sceptre await
+her.
+
+But who shall say that a glimmer of this future royal beauty and glory
+has yet dawned upon her?
+
+If man has misunderstood woman, she has none the less misunderstood
+herself. Indeed, her feet have for ages been treading debatable ground,
+that has shaken beneath her through the clashings of man's ignorance and
+her own vague, restless clamors and aimlessness. She has felt the
+stirrings within of that real being she was created, but has never dared
+to assert herself, or, to speak more truly, has only known to assert
+herself in the wrong direction. False voices there have been without
+number, but not even yet has true womanhood been able, in spite of its
+irrepressible longings, to utter that clear, free, elevated speech that
+shall yet stir the keenest pulses of the world.
+
+As it is, the world has nearly outgrown the petty jealousy, the cool
+assumption of inferiority, the flippant criticism of her weaknesses, the
+insulting catering to her foibles, with which woman has been accustomed
+to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the
+ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as
+much relative importance as man; that without her he will in vain
+aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and
+regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that
+wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all
+oppression and injustice practised upon her has been sure in the end to
+rebound upon himself. If there is one thing more than another which, at
+any given period and in any particular nation, has pointed to the true
+state of society along the scale of advancement, it has been the degree
+of woman's elevation; the undercurrents of history have all set steadily
+and significantly in the direction of the truth, which the world has
+been slow to accept and make use of, indeed, that society nears
+perfection only in the proportion in which woman has been honored and
+enfranchised; in which she has had opportunity and encouragement to work
+and act in her own proper and lawful sphere.
+
+Those who have gone the farthest in claiming special rights for woman
+have generally based their demands upon a virtual abandonment of the
+idea of _sex_, except in a physical sense. Here is a primary,
+fundamental error. There is unquestionably a sex of mind, of soul, and
+he who ignores or denies this is, it seems to me, studying his subject
+without the key which alone will unlock it.
+
+Another error which many of the advocates of _woman's rights_ have
+fallen into, is that of assuming that those conditions are weaknesses,
+disabilities, which God and nature have attested to be her crowning
+glory and power. Or, rather, this second error results naturally and
+most logically from the still more vital one of assuming that her sphere
+is intended to be no way different from man's.
+
+And still another, equally false and mischievous, would place her in
+antagonism to man upon the question of comparative excellence and of
+precedence in the scale of being.
+
+A brief analysis of some of the points of difference between the mind
+masculine and the mind feminine will show the futility of confounding
+the two, or of drawing any useless or invidious comparisons. They are as
+distinct in their normal action as any two things can well be. I begin,
+then, by dividing our whole conscious human life into two comprehensive
+departments, expressed by the generic terms, thought--feeling;
+reflection--spontaneity; knowledge--emotion; perception--reception;
+reason or intellect--affection or heart. The intelligent being unites
+these conditions--he is supreme in but one. Man reasons--woman feels;
+man analyzes--woman generalizes; man reaches his conclusions by
+induction--woman seizes hers by intuition. There is just the difference,
+_in kind_, between a man's mind and a woman's that there is between that
+of a man of genius and a man of talent. Genius grasps the idea, and
+works from it outward; talent moulds the form in which the already
+created idea may be embodied. Genius is creative, comprehensive,
+intuitive, all-seeing; talent is acute, one-sided, cumulative,
+inductive. The men of genius will ever be found to be gifted with this
+_womanly_ quality of mind--the power of seizing truth, ideas, with the
+heart and soul, through love, rather than with the understanding,
+through reason.
+
+Woman understands faith, or the taking things on trust; she has no love
+for that logical process of thought whereby, step by step, man delights
+to prove a fact in nature or law with mathematical precision and
+certainty. With the hard details and closely connected steps which make
+up the body of any science, mathematical, physical, or metaphysical, she
+has no patience. Her mind is not receptive of formulas or syllogisms.
+She comprehends results, but is incurious as to causes. She knows what
+love or benevolence means, under its triple form of charity, mercy,
+magnanimity, which, like a sea, surrounds the universe; she has no idea
+of law and justice, which are the eternal pillars thereof. If man feels
+or loves, it is because his reason is convinced; woman's affections go
+beyond reason, and without its aid, into the clear realm of ultimate
+belief. This is why there are so few skeptics in religious things among
+our sex. Woman's mental and spiritual constitution render belief or
+faith easy and natural. She is receptive in all the parts of her being.
+
+I conclude, therefore, that in the outer world of fact, of
+demonstration, of volitions and knowledges, of tangible proofs and
+causalities, of positive and logical effects of reason, of all outward
+and material processes, man is supreme; while in that finer, higher,
+more subtile sphere of intuitions, loves, faiths, spiritual convictions,
+which overtop our actual life, and lead it up from grossness to glory,
+woman is the oracle and priestess. In the basic qualities of our nature
+man is stronger--woman, in those which, in grace, beauty, and sweetness,
+taper nicely toward its apex.
+
+But are the two spheres therefore at war? By no means. Are they at all
+independent of each other? Are they not rather conjoined indissolubly?
+It is a fatal mistake which places an antagonism between the two. There
+should be between them harmony as sweet as that which moves the
+concentric rings of Saturn. Untaught by the presence and inspiration of
+woman, man becomes a cold, dry petrifaction, constantly obeying the
+centripetal force of his being, and adoring _self_. Without his basal
+firmness and strength, woman, in whom the centrifugal force is stronger,
+remains a weak, vacillating, impulsive creature, feebly swayed by the
+tides of emotion, lacking self-poise, and aimless and vagrant.
+
+But teach her to reason--man to feel; open up to her the sources of
+knowledge, and cause him to learn the times of the tides of affection;
+cultivate her intellect and his heart, and in the healthy action and
+reaction consequent upon such a balance of forces, you have the true
+relationship established between the sexes, the relationship which the
+Creator pronounced perfect in the beginning.
+
+It will be seen that while I attribute to woman a certain superiority
+both of nature and function, as to the highest part of the nature common
+to both, I at the same time assert her inferiority in what may be called
+its fundamental attributes, those which lie nearest to the constant and
+successful prosecution of mundane affairs, and, consequently, I also
+establish the fact of her absolute and inevitable dependence in such
+sense on man. But do I thus degrade her, or in effect annul this
+asserted superiority? Because man, and the strength, amplitude, and
+stability of his more practical nature, form a sure basis upon which she
+may rest, do I any the less make her the very crown and perfection of
+God's human handiwork? Assuredly not. The truth is, if, instead of
+making comparison where, from the nature of the case, comparison is
+almost precluded, so great is the difference between them, I were to say
+that each is the complement or counterpart of the other, and that,
+alone, each is but a half sphere, and imperfectly rounded at that, I
+should more nearly approach to accuracy. To make the perfect whole which
+the Creator had in His idea, the two halves must be united. And so I
+dignify the oldest of human institutions--marriage. I accord to it the
+very perfection of wisdom, beauty, utility, adaptation. I am aware that
+in so speaking I hold to an old-fashioned belief, and tread
+incontinently, not only on a notion afloat among some of the
+_strong-minded_ of my sex at the present day, that this institution is
+nothing more nor less than an engine of selfish and despotic power on
+the one hand, and of slavish subjection on the other; but on the more
+moderate idea that it is not desirable for all women, nor even for a
+majority. But I still think that this state of union is the most
+natural, beneficent, satisfying condition possible for all of both
+sexes--the condition most conducive to the highest, widest, happiest
+development of the individual man or woman, especially the latter, for
+it is through marriage only, through the beautiful and sacred wifehood
+and motherhood which that institution guarantees in purity and holiness,
+that woman's highest nature finds scope and opportunity. And I make no
+exceptions. On the contrary, I should say that the exceptions which
+might occur should invariably be counted as misfortunes. Not that many
+good, true, noble women do not live and die unmarried. _Circumstances_,
+that inflexible arbiter of human life, as it often seems, may strangely
+turn into wide and unaccustomed channels the love, the devotion, the
+energy, the self-sacrifice, that, in their pure, strong action, make
+woman's best development, and so the world, the needy people of the
+world, humanity at large, may receive the immediate benediction of it.
+Let no woman who, alone it may be, goes steadfastly on her way of duty
+and self-abnegation, think she has lived in vain because the special lot
+of woman has been denied her. If not happiness, which comes from content
+and satisfaction, yet there is something higher, diviner still, arising
+from duty done and trials endured--blessedness. But such exceptions do
+not, I conceive, invalidate the general fact that marriage was intended
+to be the channel for the vast aggregate of human happiness and
+improvement. I speak of marriage as it should be, as it might be, as it
+will one day be, when men and women have acquainted themselves with the
+laws, physical and spiritual, which were intended to adjust these unions
+between the sexes in a harmonious manner, according to natural
+sympathies and affinities; laws, infallible, inherent in the individual
+constitution, and which, if understood and enforced, would obviate much
+of the sin, misfortune, and misery in the earth. It is a great and
+curious question, how much of the pain, suffering, and evil so rife
+among men, is due to the one-sided, blindfold, inconsiderate, and
+unsuitable marriages every day taking place; filling the homes of the
+land with discontent, bickerings, disorder, and continual strife, from
+the jostling together of antipathetic elements; cursing society with the
+influences derived from character formed and nurtured in such pestilent
+domestic atmospheres; and sending out thousands of unhealthy,
+misorganized, wrongly educated beings, the fruit of these _dis_unions,
+to work ill both to themselves and their race. The world has much yet to
+learn with regard to the conditions necessary to a true and legitimate
+marriage of the sexes. There are thousands of illegal unions that have
+been blessed by church and magistrate, which yet carry only ban in their
+train. Whether read literally or not, the old, old story of the
+temptation and the fall has a significance not often dreamed of in
+respect to this question of marriage. It was a disturbance of the pure
+and perfect allegiance of each to the other, no less than a fall from
+the intimate communion of both with the Father of spirits. And a thicker
+darkness rests over the means whereby the institution of marriage may be
+rescued from its degradation, and man and woman be reinstated in the
+loyalty they owe to each other, than over the means by which the
+creature may make himself acceptable to the offended Creator; inasmuch
+as the former is left, without any special revelation, to the slow
+process of thought among men, to the workings of experience and the
+results of observation. And these laws are age-long in their evolutions.
+But when men and women have learned to look within themselves, have
+turned an intelligent eye upon the necessities of their threefold
+being, and when they recognize the God-made laws regulating these
+necessities, and have begun to mate themselves accordingly, the world
+will have received a powerful impulse toward its promised millennial
+epoch.
+
+Such, then, being, in brief, the relation of woman to man, it is
+necessary to inquire, as pertinent to my subject, not so much whether
+man gives her all the rights within his own sphere which she may
+beneficially claim, but whether she has yet understood the weight and
+significance of her own position in the scale of being, and has
+exercised all the rights consequent therefrom. To know is far easier
+than to live according to knowledge. It is to be feared that women
+themselves have but a poor appreciation of the ideal of true womanhood.
+Oh, is it not time this ideal should be worthily understood? Has not
+poor suffering humanity borne the burden of its woes long enough, and
+will not woman help to lift it from the tired, stooping shoulders? For
+she may. How? Simply by working out her own divinely appointed mission.
+And is this not broad and absorbing enough? See what are some of its
+objects of influence and endeavors. First, here are the very faintest
+beginnings of intelligent existence to impress and mould--the embryos of
+character to stamp. And who knows how important this moulding and
+stamping may be? To go farther back still: Who knows what indelible
+constitution may be, is, fixed upon the individual organism, for better,
+for worse, by the authors of its life, that, if evil, no training, no
+education, no work of grace, not even omnipotence, can expunge or alter?
+This motherhood of woman, in its awful sanctity and mystery, in its
+bearings upon the immortality of personal identity, is a fearful
+dignity. Therein consists the first and chief claim of Woman to honor
+and reverence. She who has been a mother has measured the profoundest as
+well as the most exalted experience of which humanity is susceptible.
+Let her see to it that she honor herself.
+
+Here is the white and plastic tablet of the new-born soul. Let woman
+fear and tremble to write on that, for the writing shall confront her
+forever. Like the Roman Pilate, _what she has written, she has written_.
+Here are the purblind human instincts to direct and culture; the
+vagrant, unbridled hosts of the spontaneous emotions to be tutored and
+restrained; the affections and the tastes to be trained toward the true,
+the beautiful, and the good; the warring passions to be curbed and
+disciplined; in short, the whole glorious domain of the heart and soul,
+the moral and spiritual nature, is to be surveyed, studied, swayed by
+that potential agency which woman possesses in a very eminent
+degree--personal influence. By this agency, informed and vitalized by
+love, she becomes the great educator in the great school of life, in the
+family, in society, in the world. Women do not sufficiently appreciate
+the importance of their work as the architects of character.
+_Character!_ That, after all, is the man, the enduring individual, the
+real _I_, to whom the Creator has said, _Live forever_! Character is
+simply what education and habit make of a person, starting from the
+foundation of his inherited organic idiosyncrasies. It is a result--the
+work of time and countless shapings and impressings. It is not what a
+man thinks of himself, nor what others think of him, but _what he really
+is in the sight of God, his Maker_. This is what shall come out, at
+last, from the obscurations and uncertainties of this lower atmosphere
+into the clear, truthful light of eternity; shall cast off the devices,
+the flimsy pretences, the temporary shows, the convenient disguises, of
+this mortal life of mixed substance and shadow, and stand a bare, naked,
+unclothed fact of being before itself, the universe, and God. Alas! what
+multitudes of real dwarfs go out every day, 'unhouseled,' into that
+searching light of eternity.
+
+To be the builder of a fair and comely character; to chisel out a work
+that shall please the eye of God Himself, in whose estimation Beauty,
+being His own attribute, is a most holy thing; to see that work of
+beauty take its place in the well-filled gallery of eternity, and to
+know that it is your own immortal monument--is this not scope enough,
+honor enough, praise and glory enough? If women would but rise to the
+height of their real mission, and faithfully and earnestly assume the
+rights and fulfil the duties which God has specially devolved upon them,
+they would so lead man and society up to a higher point that the claims
+they put forth need not be discussed for an hour; because, then, having
+proved their adaptability to make good use of every lawful right,
+society, which in the end always adjusts its forces properly and
+instinctively, will have tacitly fallen into the necessity or the
+feasibility of granting them.
+
+Let man erect his scientific formulas, his schools of philosophy, his
+structures of reason and thought; let him bid the giant forces of nature
+go in harness for his schemes of improvement or aggrandizement; and by
+all means let the intellect of woman be cultivated to comprehend
+intelligently the marvels of man's work; let her, if she will, measure
+the stellar distances, study the mechanical principles or the learned
+professions, make a picture or write a book; and there have been women,
+true and noble women, who have done all these, women who have proved
+themselves capable of as high attainments, as keen and subtile thought
+as man; but let her never for such as these abdicate her own nobler
+work, neglecting the greater for the less. If a woman has a special
+gift, let her exercise it; if she has a particular mission, let her work
+it out. Few women, though, are of this elect class. I do not despise,
+but rather encourage, natural gifts. But I would have women never forget
+that it is not for what they may possibly add to the sum of human
+knowledge that the world values them, primarily. _That_ some man is as
+likely to do as not; but what women fail to do in their own peculiar
+sphere, _no man can possibly do_.
+
+When I aver that woman was intended to be a predominant influence in the
+world through her moral and spiritual being, principally, I must not be
+understood as depreciating the value to her of mere subjective
+knowledge. So far from this, I believe that her means of acquiring
+knowledge of all kinds should be limited only by her capacity. The more
+her intellect is enlightened and disciplined, the better will she be
+qualified to exert that refining, elevating influence which is expected
+of her. There can be no beauty without the element of strength; there
+can be no love worth the name without knowledge. Were her sense of
+justice, her logical powers, her reflective faculties carefully trained
+and exercised, her peculiar womanly graces of soul would shine with
+tenfold lustre. I mean, simply, that knowledge is specially valuable to
+her objectively--as a means, and the best means, to the highest end of
+her being, which is concrete rather than abstract.
+
+Briefly, I say, then, it is in the great departments of ethics, of
+aesthetics, of religious and spiritual things, that woman is a vital
+power in human life.
+
+I have thrown out these general preliminary thoughts concerning the
+nature of woman, and her relations to man and to society, chiefly with
+reference to a phase of the subject which has not seemed to engage the
+attention either of women themselves or of those who assume to advocate
+their cause. It is the important consideration whether, in a free and
+republican land, woman holds any certain and special relation toward the
+Government. In other words, have American women any vital share or
+interest in this grand, free Government of ours? With all the emphasis
+of a profound conviction, I, answer, _Yes_. Such a touching and intimate
+interest as no women ever had before in any Government under the sun.
+And why?
+
+_Because the principles embodied in and represented by it have made her
+what she is, and they alone can make her what she hopes to be._
+
+If it be true that the position of woman in society is a sure test of
+its civilization, then is our American society already in the van of
+progress. Nowhere else in the world is woman so free, so respected, so
+obeyed, so beloved; nowhere else is the ideal of womanhood so
+chivalrously worshipped and protected. In the spirit of our political
+theory, that no class of society is to be regarded as permanently and
+necessarily disabled from progress and elevation--to which, in our
+practice, we have hitherto made but _one_ wicked and shameful
+exception--and under the influence of the powerful tendency of our
+system to _individualism_, woman has been allowed a freedom heretofore
+unparalleled, and _onward and upward_ is still the word.
+
+I do not claim perfection for our system. But I say we have the germs of
+the healthiest national development. All that remains is to carry
+forward those germs to maturity, and let them show their legitimate
+results unhampered. That is what we want, what we claim. Society here is
+unformed, in the rough. We lack the outward grace and polish belonging
+only to old societies. We shall yet attain these, as well as some other
+desirable things; but I believe that in no other country in the world is
+there so much genuine, delicate, universal devotion manifested for woman
+as among the Americans. Have you seen a boy of fourteen, shy, awkward,
+uncouth in manner, rough in speech, but with a great, tender heart
+thumping in his bosom? And did you know of the idolatrous worship he
+could not wholly conceal for some fair, sweet, good girl older than
+himself, a woman, even--a worship, which was not love, if love be other
+than a high and tender sentiment, but which was capable of filling his
+being to overflow with its glory and richness? I liken our American
+chivalry to this. And it is this instinctive natural politeness of our
+men toward women that, as much as anything else, keeps us from being
+rude and unrefined while yet in our first adolescence.
+
+I am aware that, hitherto, the South has laid claim to the lion's share
+of this gallant spirit, as it has of many other polite and social
+qualities. But we do not so readily now, as a few years ago, yield to
+these Southern assumptions. We know now for just how much they stand.
+And we know, too, in the better light of this hour, that it is not
+possible for a very high and pure ideal of womanhood to be conceived in
+the atmosphere of a system which, as slavery does, persistently, on
+principle, and on a large scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no
+matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the
+greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which
+stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and
+with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breath turns to commit
+the direst offences against the peace and purity of womanhood; but that
+true and hearty, though simple and unostentatious, reverence for the
+sex, that teaches men to regard all women as worthy of freedom, respect,
+and protection, simply by virtue of their womanhood. I say not that this
+chivalry is a Southern, but that it is an _American_ trait. As such I am
+proud of it.
+
+But does this high and honored place they hold in the hearts of their
+countrymen devolve no corresponding responsibility upon American women?
+Is it not a momentous inquiry how far they fall short of the high and
+commanding standard of thought and action demanded of them in order to
+meet this heavy obligation? It seems to me that the time is fully ripe
+for the clearer perception of the fact, that because women are not men,
+it does not follow that they are not in an important sense citizens. And
+this, without any reference to the question whether they should be
+permitted to vote and to legislate; though, as to the former, I do not
+know of a single valid objection to the exercise of the privilege, while
+there are several weighing in its favor; and as to the latter, it seems
+to me that one single consideration would forever, under the present
+constitution of things, debar her from a share in direct and positive
+legislation. It is as follows: The central idea of all properly
+constituted society, without which society would be an incoherent chaos,
+and governments themselves but the impotent lords of anarchy and
+misrule, is _the home_. Of the home, woman, from the very nature of the
+case, is the inspiriting genius, the ever-present and ever-watchful
+guardian. And the home, with its purities, its sanctities, its
+retiracies, its reticences, is far removed from the noise and wranglings
+of popular assemblies, the loud ambitions and selfish chicaneries of
+political arenas. The very foundation, pivotal ideas of human nature
+would be undermined by such publicity. The value of the home, as the
+nursery of whatever is pure, lovely, holy in the human soul, rests
+absolutely on the preservation of the modest purity and grace of woman.
+
+How, then, is woman's influence as a citizen in a republican land to be
+exercised, if she be excluded from positive legislation? I answer, by
+the moral effect of her personal influence in the formation of mind and
+character; by her work as the great educator in the home and in society.
+If hers be not a moral and spiritual influence, it is none at all for
+good. And of all the powers for good in a republic, this is the
+strongest, most beneficent, did woman rightly comprehend the issue.
+
+The purity, safety, and perpetuity of a free government rest,
+ultimately, not so much on forms of law, on precedents, on the
+ascendency of this or that party or administration, but on the
+intelligence, morality, and devotion to freedom of the people. What
+should woman care to legislate, when she may wield such an engine of
+power as education puts into her hands; when she may mould the minds and
+inspire the souls of those who are to be the future legislators; when
+she may, even now, put forth a direct and immediate influence upon those
+who are the legislators of the present time? For her influence on
+society is twofold, direct and reflex, present and prospective; it is
+the most powerful known, the most subtile and secret and determining,
+viz., _personal_ influence.
+
+To this end, therefore, that she may influence in the right direction,
+women need to inform themselves, to acquire a knowledge of the
+principles on which our system rests, and to become thoroughly imbued
+with their spirit. This will necessitate an acquaintance with the nature
+and details of our political creed, of which our women, especially, are
+lamentably ignorant. How many out of every hundred, do you suppose, have
+even read the Constitution, for instance? You may say that the majority
+of men have never studied it either, even of the voters. I admit the
+fact. There is a terrible lack of information among even men on public
+subjects. But I think this: if women were to educate themselves and
+their children, all whom they influence, indeed, to make these subjects
+a matter of _personal interest_, instead of regarding them as foreign
+matters, well enough for lawyers and politicians, perhaps, to
+understand, or for those who expect to fill office, but of no manner of
+importance to a person in strictly private life, this ignorance would
+come to an end. This shifting of personal responsibility by the great
+majority is the bane of our system. The truth is, no one, in a
+republican government, can lead an absolutely private career. As one who
+exercises the elective franchise, or one who influences the same, be it
+man or woman, there is no dodging the responsibility of citizenship. A
+better State of information on public affairs, also, will induce a
+correct conception of a certain class of ideas which, more than any
+others, perhaps, tend to strengthen, deepen, broaden, solidify the
+mental powers--ideas of absolute law and justice. As I have before said,
+the female mind is deficient in this particular.
+
+To understand their government and institutions, then, is the first step
+in the attainment of the standard demanded of American women; or, in
+other words, an increase of political knowledge--a more thorough
+political education.
+
+Another step is, the enlargement and strengthening of their patriotism.
+The former step, too, will conduce to this, and be its natural
+consequence. I do not mean alone that loose and vagrant sentiment which
+commonly passes for patriotism, which is aroused at some particular
+occasion and slumbers the rest of the time; which is spasmodic,
+temporary, impulsive, and devoid of principle; but that love of country
+founded on knowledge and conviction; a living faith of the heart based
+upon duty and principle; and which is, therefore, all-pervading,
+abiding, intelligent, governing thought and action, and conforming the
+life to the inner spirit. That sort of patriotism that lives as well in
+peace time as in war time; that makes the heart throb as sympathetically
+in behalf of country every day in the year as on the Fourth of July;
+that leads us to conform our habits of life and thought to the spirit of
+our institution and policy; that makes us as jealous of the honor, the
+consistent greatness of our country when all men speak well of her, as
+when her foes are bent upon her destruction. This _habit of mind_ is
+what I mean, rather than any transient emotion of heart; an enlightened
+and habitual spirit of patriotism.
+
+I give American women all credit due them for the patriotic temper they
+have evinced since this war began. I say that never have women showed
+more loyalty and zeal for country than the women of the North. Let
+sanitary fairs and commissions, let soldiers' aid societies from one end
+of the land to the other, and in every nook and corner of it, let our
+hospitals everywhere attest this heartfelt love and devotion on the part
+of our women. It is a noble spectacle, and my heart thrills at the
+thought of it. We have many noble ones who will stand in history along
+with England's Florence Nightingale and the 'Mother of the Gracchi,'
+those eternally fair and tender women, fit for the love and worship of
+the race. The want is not in the feeling of patriotism, but in the
+habitual principle and duty of the same. Since the war began, the fire
+has not slackened. But how was it before the war, and how will it be
+after it?
+
+To prove what I say, let me dwell a moment on two or three of the most
+prominent faults of our women, pronounced such by all the world. Of
+these, the most mischievous and glaring, the most ruinous in thousands
+of cases, is _extravagance_. Wastefulness is almost become a trait of
+our society. American women, especially, are profuse and lavish of money
+in dress, in equipage, in furniture, in houses, in entertainments, in
+every particular of life. Everywhere this foolish and wasteful use of
+money challenges the surprise and sarcasm of the observant foreign
+tourist through our country. Perhaps the largeness and immensity of our
+land, its resources and material, as well as the wonderful national
+advance we have already made, tends to cultivate in our people a feeling
+of profusion and a habit of extravagant display; but it is not in
+sympathy either with our creed or our profession.
+
+Were the money thus heedlessly expended made for them by slaves whom
+they had from infancy been taught to regard as created solely to make
+money for them to use and enjoy, this extravagant waste of money, while
+none the less selfish and inexcusable, would appear to grow
+spontaneously out of the arbitrary rule of slavery; or, if it had
+descended to them by legal or ancestral inheritance, there might be some
+show of reason for using it carelessly, though very small sense in so
+doing. But in a land where labor is the universal law; where, if a man
+makes money, he must work and sweat for its possession; when fortunes do
+not arise by magic, but must be built up slowly, painfully, at the
+expense of the nerve and sinew, the brain and heart of the builders, and
+these builders, not slaves, but our fathers, husbands, brothers; when a
+close attention to money-making is rapidly becoming a national badge,
+and is in danger of eating out entirely what is of infinitely more value
+than wealth--a high national integrity and conscience--and of sinking
+the immaterial and intellectual in the material and sensual; in such
+circumstances as these, I say, and under such temptations and dangers,
+it is a sin, an unnatural crime, to squander what costs so dear.
+
+Volumes might be written upon the frightful consequences of this
+extravagance in money matters, this living too fast and beyond their
+means, of which American women, especially, are guilty. Great financial
+crises, in which colossal schemes burst like bubbles, and vast estates
+are swallowed up like pebbles in the sea; commercial bankruptcies, in
+which honorable names are bandied on the lips of common rumor, and white
+reputations blackened by public suspicion; minds, that started in life
+with pure and honest principles, determined to win fortune by the
+straight path of rectitude, gradually growing distorted, gradually
+letting go of truth, honor, uprightness, and ending by enthroning gold
+in the place made vacant by the departed virtues; hearts, that were once
+responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that
+throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill
+through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and
+hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven,
+good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial
+success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager
+but fading eyes fixed earthward, dustward!
+
+Oh, it is a fearful thought that woman's extravagant desires and demands
+may thus kill all that is best and highest in those who should be her
+nearest and dearest. Yet, if this wide-spread evil of wastefulness is to
+be checked, it must be begun in the home, and by its guardian, woman.
+There is a movement lately inaugurated, looking to retrenchment in the
+matter of unnecessary expenditure, which, if it is to be regarded other
+than as a temporary expedient, is worthy of the patriotic enthusiasm
+which called it forth. I allude to the dress-reform movement made by the
+loyal women of the great Northern cities. The _spirit_ of this movement
+I could wish to see illustrated both during the continuance of and after
+the war. It is this economical habit of mind for the sake of patriotic
+principle, that I regard as a great step in the attainment of the
+desired standard for American women.
+
+Another plain fault of our women, and one which in a measure is the
+cause of the fault above noticed, is the wild chase after and copying of
+European fashions. We are accused of being a nation of copyists. This is
+more than half true. And why we should be, I cannot understand. Are we
+_never_ to have anything original, American? Are we always to be
+content to be servile imitators of Europe in our art, literature,
+social life, everything, except mere mechanical invention? I am thankful
+that we are beginning to have an art, a literature, of our very own. Let
+us also have a _fashion_, that shall be, distinctively, if not entirely,
+American. There is surely enough of us, of our splendid country, our
+institutions, our theories, our brave, free people, to build for
+ourselves, from our own foundation, and with our own material. But
+American Women have yet to inspire society with this patriotic ambition.
+
+Not what is becoming or suitable to her, but what is _the fashion_, does
+the American woman buy; not what she can afford to purchase, but what
+her neighbors have, is too commonly the criterion. This constant pursuit
+of Fashion, with her incessant changes, this emulation of their
+neighbors in the manifold ways in which money and time can be alike
+wasted, and not the necessary and sacred duties of home, the personal
+attention and effort which the majority of American women have to give
+to their household affairs, produce that _lack of time_ that is offered
+as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is
+which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the
+mind blank and nerveless except when thus superficially excited.
+
+This duty of _self-culture_ I would notice as one of the demands of the
+times upon American women in the attainment of the proposed standard. A
+wide, liberal, generous self-culture, of intellect, of taste, of
+conscience, for the sake of the better fulfilment of the mission to
+which, as an American citizen, every woman in the land is called. We do
+not begin to realize this. It is a great defect in our social system,
+that, when a woman has left school and settled down in life, she
+considers it the signal for her to quit all mental acquisition except
+what she may gather from her desultory reading, and, henceforth, her
+family and her immediate neighborhood absorb her whole soul under
+ordinary circumstances. The great majority of our countrywomen thus grow
+careworn, narrow-minded, self-absorbed. Now this is not right--it is not
+necessary. A woman's first, most important duty is in her home; but this
+need not clip the wings of her spirit, so that thought and affection
+cannot go out into the great world, and feel themselves a part of its
+restless, throbbing, many-sided life; brain and heart need not stagnate,
+even if busy, work-a-day life does claim her first endeavors. Indeed,
+the great danger to our women is not so much that they will become
+trifling and frivolous, as that they will become narrow-minded and
+selfish.
+
+But these vices of extravagance and excessive devotion to fashion, of
+which I have spoken, are due, largely, to a still more radical defect in
+our social education. I mean its _anti-republican spirit_. This is our
+crowning absurdity. We are good democrats--in theory. It is a pity that
+our practice does not bear out our theory, for the sake of the homely
+virtue of consistency. To a great many otherwise sensible people our
+simple republican ways are distasteful, and they are apt to look with,
+admiring, envious eyes on the conventional life of foreign lords, not
+considering how burdened with forms it is, and full of the selfishness,
+the pride and arrogance of the privileged and titled few, at the bitter
+expense of the suffering, untitled many. The aping of aristocratic
+pretensions has been a much-ridiculed foible of American women. It is
+certain that American society needs republicanizing in all its grades.
+We have widely departed from the simplicity of the early days and of the
+founders of the republic, in social life, just as in our political
+course we had suffered the vital essence of our organic law to become a
+dead thing, and the whole machinery of the Government to work reversely
+to its intention. And the cause has been the same in each case. The
+spirit of a government and the theories embodying it are the reflection
+of the social condition of a given age and people, so that the one will
+never be of a higher order than the other; while it is, also, equally
+true, that the best and most advanced political theories may be suffered
+to languish in operation, or become wholly dormant, from the influence
+of social causes. Thus it was that the demoralising effect of human
+slavery did, up to the time of the great shock which the nation received
+in the spring of 1861--a shock which galvanized it into life, and sent
+the before vitiated blood coursing hotly, and, at last, healthfully
+through all the veins and arteries of the national body--persistently
+encroach alike upon Government and society. The slime of that serpent
+was over everything in the North as well as the South, and if it did not
+kill out the popular virtue and patriotism as completely here as there,
+where it is intimately interwoven with the life of the people, the
+difference is due to that very cause, as well as to the inextinguishable
+vitality that God has conferred on the genius of human liberty, so that
+when betrayed, hunted, starved, outlawed, she yet seeks some impregnable
+fastness, and subsists on manna from the Divine Hand. This, then, is the
+fourth step in the attainment of the true ideal of character for
+American women--_the effort to renew society in the actual simplicity of
+our republican institutions_. Women, American women, should hold dear as
+anything in life the preservation and purity of those blessed
+institutions, guaranteeing to them as they do all their eminent
+privileges, and founded as they are on that emancipating genius of
+Christianity, which, through every age, has pointed a finger of hope,
+love, encouragement to woman as a chief instrument in the world's
+promised elevation and enfranchisement.
+
+While dwelling upon the faults of American women, I would at the same
+time do full credit to their virtues. I believe that they occupy as high
+a place as any women in the world, even a higher. But I trust that they
+will rise to the height of the demands which the changed times and the
+exigencies of the situation are pressing upon them, and will continue to
+press. This war has clearly and forcibly eliminated truths and
+principles which the long rule of the slave power had wellnigh eclipsed;
+it has been a very spear of Ithuriel, at whose keen touch men and
+principles start up in their real, not their simulated character. During
+its three years of progress, the national education has been advanced
+beyond computation. When it is over, things, ideas, will not go back to
+the old standpoint. Then will arise the new conditions, demands,
+possibilities. If there is one truth that has been unmistakably
+developed by the war, it is the controlling moral power and sanction
+which a free government derives from woman. And this has been shown not
+only in the influence for good which the loyal women of the North have
+contributed for the aid of the Government, but with equal power in the
+influence for evil which the Southern women have exerted for its
+destruction. I suppose it is true that this war for slavery has received
+its strongest, fiercest continuing impulses from the women of the South.
+Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm, the persistency, the heroic
+endurance, the self-sacrifice they have manifested. Only had it been in
+a good cause!
+
+Just here let me say a word in behalf of these Southern women. There is
+a disposition on the part of the Northern public, forming their opinion
+from the instances of fierce spite and vindictiveness, of furious scorn
+and hatred, which have been chronicled in the reports of army
+correspondents and in the sensation items of the newspapers, to regard
+them as little short of demons in female shape. All this is naturally
+working a corresponding dislike and ill-feeling among the masses North.
+To such I would say: These Southern sisters are not demons, but made of
+the same flesh and blood, and passions and affections as yourselves. The
+difference between you is purely one of circumstances and training, of
+locality--above all, of education and institutions. It is as true that
+_institutions are second nature_ as that _habit_ is.
+
+The peculiar faults of Southern women they share with their Northern
+sisters, only in a vastly enhanced degree; and besides these, they have
+others, born of and nurtured by that terrible slavery system under whose
+black shadow they live and die. Their idleness, their lack of neatness
+and order, their dependence, their quick and sometimes cruel passions,
+their unreason, their contempt of inferiors, their vanity and arrogance,
+their ignorance, their lightness and superficiality, are all the
+outgrowth of its diabolical influences. They are, in fact, no more idle,
+thriftless, passionate, or supercilious, than Northern women would be in
+similar circumstances. It is too much the habit among the unreflecting,
+in judging of the Southern masses in their hostile attitude toward their
+lawful Government, to give less weight than it deserves to the necessary
+and inevitable tendency upon the mind and character of such an
+institution as African slavery; and to let the blame be of a personal
+and revengeful nature, which should fall most heavily on the sin itself,
+the dire crime against God and society, against himself and his fellow
+man, which the individual is all his life taught is no crime but a
+positive good. This slavery is woman's peculiar curse, bearing almost
+equally with its deadly, hideous weight on the white woman of the
+dominant class as upon the black slave woman. And yet how deluded they
+are! If that curse does come to an utter end in the South, as it surely
+will, I shall hail, as one of the grandest results of its extinction,
+next to the justice due the oppressed people of color, the emancipation
+of the white women of that fair land, all of them, slaveholders and
+non-slaveholders, from an influence too withering and deadly for
+language to depict. Oh, when shall that scapegoat, slavery, with its
+failures and losses and shortcomings, its frauds and sins and woes, be
+sent off into the wilderness of non-existence, to be heard from
+nevermore? God speed the hour!
+
+But with all their faults, they have many and shining virtues. Though
+the ideal of a Southern woman commonly received at the North and abroad,
+is not true to the life, being neither so perfect nor so imperfect as
+their eulogists, on the one hand, and their detractors, on the other,
+would fain make it to be, there is yet much, very much, to elicit both
+love and admiration in her character.
+
+The Southern female mind is precocious, brilliant, impressible, ardent,
+impulsive, fanciful. The quickness of parts of many girls of fifteen is
+astonishing. I used often to think, what splendid women they would make,
+with the training and facilities of our Northern home and school
+education. But, as it was, they went under a cloud at seventeen,
+marrying early, and either sinking into the inanition of plantation
+life, or having their minds dissipated in a vain and frivolous round of
+idle and selfish gayeties. I compare their intellects to a rich tropical
+plant, which blossoms gorgeously and early, but rarely fruitens. The
+Southern women are, for the most part, a capable but undeveloped race of
+beings. With their precocity, like the exuberance of their vegetation,
+and with their quick, impassioned feelings, like their storm-freighted
+air, always bearing latent lightning in its bosom, they might become a
+something rich, rare, and admirable; but, never bringing thought up to
+the point of reflection; never learning self-control, nor the necessity
+of holding passion in abeyance; never getting beyond the degrading
+influence of intercourse with a race whose stolidity and servility, the
+inevitable result of their condition, on the one hand, are both the
+cause and effect of the habit of irresponsible power and selfish
+disregard of right fostered in the ruling class, on the other--what
+could be expected of them but to become splendid abortions?
+
+There is another consideration in connection with the excessive war
+spirit they have evinced, which may help to account for it. I have often
+had occasion to notice the habit the educated class of Southern women
+have of conversing familiarly with their male friends and relatives on
+political subjects, and to contrast it with the almost total reticence
+of Northern women on subjects of public interest. This, of course,
+induces a more immediate and personal interest in them, and the more
+intimate one's interest in a subject, the more easily enthusiasm is
+aroused toward it.
+
+Now, the very head and front, the bone and marrow of Southern politics
+for more than three decades, has been--slavery, and plans for its
+aggrandizement and perpetuation. _That_ has been the ulterior object of
+all the past vociferations about _State rights_ and _Southern rights_.
+Slavery is country, practically, with them, and as it lay at the root of
+their society, and its check or its extinction would, in their false
+view, overturn society itself, it was easy for the scheming, cunning
+leaders of the slave faction to adroitly transfer this enthusiasm, and
+to raise the watchword, which never yet among any people has been raised
+in vain, _Your homes and firesides_! When ever did women hear that cry
+unmoved?
+
+When _country_, that grand idea and object of human hope, pride, and
+affection, had degenerated into a section; and when a false and
+miserable _institution_, from its very nature terribly intimate with the
+life of society, became the most substantial feature of that section;
+what wonder if the war has at last, whatever it might have been at
+first, come to the complexion of a contest for home and fireside with
+the masses of the people, with the majority of the Southern women?
+
+The magnificent dreams and projects, too, of a great slave empire, that
+should swallow up territory after territory, and astonish the world with
+its wealth, power, and splendor, which were fused into life in the
+brains of the great apostles of slavery and secession, had their
+influence on minds which, like the minds of the Southern women, have a
+natural, innate love for the gorgeous, the splendid, the profuse, and
+showy; minds ambitious of, and accustomed to, rule, and impatient of
+control; minds already glazed over with the influence of the lying
+assertion, proved to their uncritical, passionate judgment by all the
+sophistical arguments of which their religious and political guides were
+capable, that slavery is the very best possible condition for the black
+man, and the relation of master the only true and natural one for the
+white. I say, I do not wonder at the Southern women so much. I pity them
+infinitely. Just think what they have been educated to believe, and then
+say if there is not something sadly splendid in the very spirit of
+endurance, of defiance, of sacrifice, however wrong and mistaken, they
+have shown. I pity them profoundly, for they are drinking to the lees
+the cup of suffering, of deprivation, of humiliation, of bitter loss,
+and stern retribution. And the end is not yet. Deeper chagrin and
+humiliation must be theirs; more loss, more devastation, more death, and
+ruin, before their proud hopes and visions are utterly crushed out of
+life. Oh, are _they_ not being educated, too, as well as we of the
+North?
+
+When I think of all the grace, loveliness, and generosity of the many
+Southern women I have known and loved; when I recall the admirable
+qualities which distinguished them, the grace of manner, the social
+tact and address, the intellectual sprightliness, the openness and
+hospitality of soul, the kindliness and sympathy of heart, the Christian
+gentleness and charity; I can but say to my Northern sisters, These
+deluded women of the South would, in themselves, be worthy of your
+esteem and love, could the demon of secession and slavery once be
+exorcised. And I believe that when it is, and the poor, rent South sits
+clothed and in her right mind, subdued through sheer exhaustion of
+strength, and so made fit for the healthy recuperation that is one day
+to begin, the cause of our beloved country, and of humanity through this
+country, will have no more generous or loving supporters, ay, none so
+enthusiastic and devoted as they. I glory in the anticipation of the
+time when the ardent, impulsive, demonstrative South shall even lead the
+colder North in the manifestation of a genuine patriotism, worthy of the
+land and nation that calls it forth. We shall then have gained _a
+country_, indeed, instead of being, as heretofore, several sections of a
+country.
+
+The consistent moulding of society in the spirit of our political ideas
+is essential to securing us the respect of the world, and to vindicating
+the principles, themselves, on which having built, they are our sole
+claim to such honor and respect. As long as we fail so to do, we may be
+the wonder, and we are likely to be the jest of the onlooking world, but
+we never can be what we ought to be, its admired and beloved model. It
+seems to me there is less danger now than formerly of our failure in
+this important respect. The dangers, the expenses, the burdens, and
+losses of this fearful civil war will surely create in the hearts of the
+people everywhere, North and South, a revivified if not a new-born love
+for, and appreciation of, republican principles, and will teach them
+where the most insidious danger to them lies; not from open foes,
+foreign or domestic; not from anything inherent in those free
+principles; but from a cause exceedingly paradoxical: a democratic
+people leaving to a party, to a section, the Government which should be
+their very own; the virtue and intelligence of the nation absenting
+themselves from the national councils, thus making way for corruption
+and fraud to enter in an overwhelming flood; one half of the nation
+rocking its conscience to sleep with the false lullaby of commercial
+greatness and material prosperity, and the other, left to do the
+governing, with seemingly no conscience at all, going to work with
+satanic directness and acuteness, to undermine the principles thus left
+without a guardian, and to inject the black blood of slavery into the
+veins of the body politic, till the name _democracy_ became a misnomer
+the most wretched, a sarcasm the most touching. I do not imagine we
+shall ever again go back to that. It must be that, in future, the
+American people will grow into the habit of demanding that an
+enlightened, patriotic statesmanship shall rule, instead of an
+unprincipled demagoguism. Also, that they will attend to it that better
+men are sent to Washington; men chosen because they represent most
+nearly the great national ideas and interests, which the people will
+require shall absorb legislation rather than any sectional institution
+whatever; and not because, primarily, they are the subservient idols of
+this or that party. It must be that, hereafter, party will be less and
+the nation more. Of course, parties will exist, necessarily; but if this
+great American people, having carried on to perfect success this war
+against a stupendous rebellion, and having gone through the school of
+knowledge and experience it has been to them, can again settle down into
+the mere political jobbery into which governmental affairs had
+deteriorated before the earthquake of war stirred up the dregs of
+things, it would be an instance of fruitless expenditure of means and
+life, and of self-stultification, too pitiful for words--such an
+instance as the world has not yet seen, thanks to the ordained
+progression of the world.
+
+When peace returns to the land once more; when the fierce fever of blood
+and strife is quelled; when the vague fears and uncertainties of this
+period of transition are over, and the keen pangs and bloody sweat of
+the nation's new birth are all past--what will be the position of this
+American people? I tremble to contemplate it. It will be much like what
+I imagine the condition of a freed, redeemed soul to be, just escaped
+the thraldom, perplexity, and sin of this lower life, and entered on a
+purer, higher, freer plane of existence. Then comes reconstruction,
+reorganization, a getting acquainted with the new order of things, and
+the new duties and experiences to which it will give rise; then will be
+discoveries of new truths, and new applications of old; old errors and
+superstitions have been renounced, and facts and principles which have
+long lain in abeyance, smothered under a weight of neglect and
+unappreciation, will start into fresh magnitude. And, withal, will come
+a sense of the reality and security there is in this great change, and
+of infinite relief and blessedness therein, such as I suppose attends
+every change from a lower to a higher condition, from darkness to light,
+from cloud, mystery, and trouble, to the white air of peace and the
+clear shining of the sun of knowledge.
+
+_Then_, think of the career that lies ahead of this regenerated nation.
+This war, fearful and costly as it is, was needed, to rouse men and
+women to the conviction that there is something more in a people's life
+than can be counted in dollars and cents; and that their strength
+consists not alone in commercial superiority or material development,
+but, principally, in virtue, justice, righteousness. It was needed, to
+give the lie to that impious and infidel assumption of the South that
+_Cotton is king_, and to prove that the God of this heaven-protected
+land is a true and jealous God, who will not give his glory to Baal. It
+was needed, to arrest the nation in the fearful mechanical tendency it
+was assuming, whereby it was near denying the most holy and vital
+principles of its being; and it was needed, to warm and quicken the
+almost dead patriotism of the masses, and to educate them anew in the
+high and pure sentiments they had suffered to be forgotten, and, in
+forgetting which, many another ration has gone to irretrievable decay
+and ruin.
+
+I trust in God that this people have not suffered many things in vain,
+and that the time is dawning when we shall be a _nation_ indeed, a
+Christian nation, built upon those eternal ideas of truth, justice,
+right, charity, holiness, which would make us the ideal nation of the
+earth, dwelling securely under the very smile and benediction of
+Jehovah.
+
+In this time of which I speak, the people will see that to be a _nation_
+we must not be merely servile imitators of Old World ideas, but must
+develop our own _American ideas_ in every department of government and
+society; thus, eventually, building up a national structure which shall,
+which need, yield to none, but may take precedence of all.
+
+We are too young, as yet, to have become such a nation, with its
+distinctive and separate features, each clearly marked and
+self-illustrating; but _not_ too young to understand the necessity of
+working out our own special plan of civilization. As the American nation
+did not follow the course of all others, by mounting from almost
+impalpable beginnings up through successive stages to an assured
+position of national influence and greatness; so need we not imitate
+them in waiting for gray hairs to see ourselves possessed of a distinct
+national character. As we did not have to go through the slow, age-long
+process of originating, of developing ideas, principles, but took them
+ready made, a legacy from the experience of all the foregoing ages; and
+as our business is to apply these ideas to the problem we are set to
+solve, not for ourselves alone, but for the world's peoples, for
+aggregate humanity, so should we be neither laggard nor lukewarm in
+fulfilling this high trust, this 'manifest destiny.' In the developing
+of our special American ideas we have a great work before us--a work but
+begun, as yet. There is an American art--an American literature--an
+American society, as well as an American Government, to be shaped out of
+the abundant material we possess, and compacted into the enduring
+edifice of national renown. For what is national character, but ideas
+crystallized in institutions? Until we have done this--given permanency
+to our special ideas in our institutions--we are a nation in embryo; our
+manhood exists only in prophecy.
+
+To assist in this mighty work is the duty and privilege of American
+women. What higher ambition could actuate their endeavors--what nobler
+meed of glory win their aspirations?
+
+O ye women, dear American sisters, whoever you are, who have offered up
+your husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, on the red altar of your country,
+that so that country may be rescued from the foes that seek her honor
+and life; who have labored and toiled and spent your efforts in
+supplying the needs of her brave defenders; whose hearts and prayers are
+all for the success of our holy cause; who are glad with an infinite joy
+at her successes, and who are sorry with profoundest grief at her
+defeats; complete, I implore you, the sacrifice already begun, and give
+to your regenerated country, in the very dawn of the new day which is to
+see her start afresh upon the shining track of national glory,
+yourselves, your best energies, and affections. Love liberty--love
+justice--love simplicity--love truth and consistency. See to it that the
+cause of republican freedom suffer not its greatest drawback from your
+failure to lead society up to the point to which you have the power to
+educate it. By your office as the natural leaders and educators of
+society; by your mission as the friends and helpers of all who suffer;
+by your high privilege as the ordained helpmate of man in the work,
+under God and His truth, of evangelizing the world, and lifting it out
+of its sin and sorrow; by your obligations to the glorious principles of
+Christian republicanism; and by your hopes of complete ultimate
+enfranchisement, I adjure you. The world has need of you, the erring,
+sin-struck world. Your country, even now struggling in the throes of its
+later birth, has desperate need of you. Man has need of you; already are
+being woven between the long-estranged sexes new and indissoluble bonds
+of union,--sympathies, beautiful, infinite, deathless; and, with a
+pleased and tender smile of recognition across the continent, he hails
+you _helper_! Your era dawns in sad and sombre seeming, indeed, in a
+land deluged with fraternal blood; but yours are all who need, all who
+sin, all who suffer. Shall the progress of humanity wait upon your
+supineness, or neglect, or refusal? Or shall the era now beginning,
+through you speedily culminate into the bright, perfect day of your
+country's redemption, and thus lead progress and salvation throughout
+the nations of the earth? Never were women so near the attainment of
+woman's possibilities as we American women; never so near the
+realization of that beautiful ideal which has ever shaped the dreams and
+colored the visions of mankind, making Woman the brightest star of man's
+love and worship.
+
+Will she realize the dream--will she justify the worship? That is the
+question that concerns her now.
+
+
+
+
+A WREN'S SONG.
+
+
+It is not often in these dark days that I can sleep as I used to do
+before the flood came and swept away all that my soul held dear; but
+last night, I was so weary in body with a long journey, that I fell
+asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, and slept on until the
+early morning sun came in through the open window, and woke me with its
+gentle touch. The air was sweet with spring fragrance, and the first
+sound that came to my awakened ears was the song of a little wren, a
+little wren who sang even as to-day in the days of my youth and joy,
+whose nest is built over the window that was so often a frame for that
+dearest-loved face. The song brought with it the recollection of all the
+little songster had outlived--the love, hope, and fear that had sprung
+up and grown and died, since I had first heard his warbling. And I broke
+into those quiet tears that are now my only expression of a grief too
+familiar to be passionate.
+
+To-day is the first of June--a year to-day since all was over!
+
+Three years ago, this very day, was to have been my wedding day. June
+and its roses were made for lovers, as surely as May, with its May
+flowers and little lilies, is the month of Mary the Blessed. I had
+always wished to be married in June, and circumstances combined to
+render that time more convenient than any other. My love affair had been
+a long one, and had met with no obstacles. Our families had always been
+intimate, and I remember _him_ a boy of fourteen, when he first came to
+live in the house opposite. At sixteen he went to West Point, and when
+he came home in his furlough year, I was fifteen. We were both in
+Washington until August; it was a long session; his father was in
+Congress, and so was mine. Edward Mayne had nothing to do that summer,
+and I never had much to occupy me; we saw each other every day, and so
+we fell in love. The heads of both families saw all, smiled a little,
+and teased a good deal; but no one interfered. My mother said it gave me
+occupation and amusement, and helped me to pass the long summer
+evenings, which I thought charming, and every one else thought a bore.
+It was called a childish flirtation, and when he went back to the
+Academy, and I to school, the thing dropped out of notice, and was soon
+forgotten.
+
+But not by us. We remembered each other, and, each in our different
+lives, we were constant to our early love. And so it came to pass that,
+when he came back again, after graduating, we were very glad to see each
+other; the old intercourse was renewed, and the old feeling showed
+itself stronger for the lapse of years. No one interfered with us; the
+intimacy between our families had continued, and when we went to the
+seaside for the hot months, the Maynes went to the same place; and in
+August Edward had a leave, and came down to join them. I think he would
+have come if they had not been there, but that makes no difference now.
+One moonlit night, at the end of August, with the waves at our feet
+sounding their infinite secret, I promised to marry him; and as we
+parted that night at the door of our cottage, I looked at the
+silver-streaked waters, and said to him that neither the broad sea of
+death nor the stormy sea of life should ever part my soul from his. I
+have kept my word.
+
+So we were engaged to be married, and were as happy as two young lovers
+ought to be. Both families were delighted, my father only stipulating
+that the marriage should not take place immediately. But that we felt no
+hardship, as Edward was stationed in Washington; and everything in the
+future looked as bright as everything in the past had ever been. We were
+sure of a happy winter, and hoped for a gay one, and we had both, though
+the cloud that had first appeared when the little wren began his summer
+song, had grown larger and darker day by day, until the signs of storm
+were no longer to be overlooked, and the fearful prophesied that the day
+of peace was over. Still I never dreamed of the difference it would make
+to me.
+
+New Tear's Eve it was decided that we should be married on the first of
+June. As the clock struck twelve, and the last footfall of the old year
+died away, Edward put out his hand to take mine, and said:
+
+'A happy New Tear it will surely be to us, my Laura, for we shall spend
+more than half of it together;' and I echoed his 'happy New Year'
+without a dread. I knew the storm was coming; I feared its fury; but I
+thought myself too secure, too near a haven to be lost; how could I know
+that the brave ship was destined to go down in sight of land?
+
+And yet I might have known it. For I came from the North, which was, and
+is my home; and he was a Southern man. His family owned property and
+slaves in Georgia; and, though Mr. Mayne's political career had
+prevented their living there much, they considered it their home. One of
+the sons, who was married, lived on the plantation, and managed it well;
+the slaves were comparatively happy, and there were strong ties between
+them, their master and his family. My sister, who was delicate, had
+spent a winter in Florida, and I had accompanied her there. On our way
+home we paid a visit to the Mayne plantation; my sister enjoyed herself
+very much there, and was pro-slavery from that time; I was then sixteen,
+and had always hated it, and what with my fears of snakes, and my
+dislike of the black servants, whom I thought either inefficient or
+impertinent, and my unconquerable liking for freedom, I was not so
+fascinated. Edward Mayne himself did not like a planter's life, and he
+thought slavery an evil, but an evil inherited and past curing. He
+argued that the disease was not mortal and endurable, and that it would
+kill the country to use the knife. His youngest sister and I were the
+only two who ever discussed the subject; she talked a great deal of
+nonsense, and probably I did, too; and as she always lost her temper, I
+thought it wiser to let the subject drop, especially as I did not think
+about it a great deal, and it annoyed Edward to have any coolness
+between Georgy and me, and he himself never discussed the topic. We were
+both very young and very happy, too young and thoughtless to care much
+for any great question, so we sang our little song of happiness, and its
+music filled our ears until it was no longer possible not to hear the
+tumult of the world without.
+
+The first day of January was our last day of perfect peace. Those who
+had not thought of the question before had now to answer what part they
+meant to take. People discussed less what States would secede, and more
+what they would themselves do, and many who are now most firm on one
+side or the other were then agitated by doubt and indecision. Events did
+not tarry for individual minds. We all know the story now; I need not
+repeat it. Still my future seemed unchanged, and I went to New York the
+third of January to order my wedding clothes, but I stayed only three or
+four days; I was restless for the continued excitement of Washington.
+The day I came back Mississippi seceded, and with it went Mr. Davis. I
+heard him make that farewell speech which so few listened to unmoved,
+and at which I cried bitterly. I went to say good by to him, though I
+could not say God speed, for already I was beginning to know that I had
+principles, and which side they were on. As we parted, he said, in that
+courteous way that has made so many bow at his shrine:
+
+'We shall have you in the South very soon, Miss Laura,' and I did not
+say no; but the mist lifted suddenly before my eyes, and I saw the rock
+on which my life was to split, and that no striving against the stream
+would avail me aught. Still I said nothing, and the days flew swiftly by
+on restless wings; days so full of excitement that they seemed to take
+years with them in their flight.
+
+It was a lovely morning in February; the air had already a May softness
+in it, and the crocuses were bright in the grounds of the Capitol, when
+Edward and I went to take our favorite walk, and there, in sight of the
+broad river which is now a world-known name of division, he told me he
+had made up his mind to leave the army; that there might be fighting,
+and he could not fight against his own people, whom he believed to be in
+the right; that he thought it more honorable to resign at that moment
+than to wait until the hour of need. I could not oppose him, for I knew
+he thought he was doing his duty. I remembered how different his
+opinions were from mine, and that his whole system of education had
+trained him in dissimilar ideas of right from those held in the North.
+Georgia was his country, for which he lived, and for which he thought he
+ought to die, if need were. The shackles of inherited prejudices
+trammelled his spirit, as they might have trammelled the spirit of a
+wiser man, who could have shaken them off in the end; but my lover was
+not wide-minded, and had not the clear sight that sees over and beyond
+these petty lives of ours that are as nothing in the way of a great
+principle and a God-bidden struggle; his eyes saw only what they had
+been taught to see--his home, in its greenness and beauty, not the dank
+soul-malaria, to which, alas! so many of us are acclimated.
+
+He resigned, and his resignation was accepted without delay or
+difficulty, as were all resignations in those days. The spring began to
+break in all its glory, and the grass grew green in Virginia, on fields
+that were trampled and bloody before that battle summer was over. The
+little wren sang again its song. This year a song of promise--of promise
+never to be fulfilled!
+
+For the news of Sumter came, and the North rose with a cry, and my heart
+leaped up within me with a thrill stronger and deeper and more masterful
+than any mere personal feeling can ever give; a feeling that rules my
+soul to-day even as it ruled in that first excited hour.
+
+Edward went South, and I let him go alone. I could not, I would not go
+with him. I had no sympathy, no tenderness, scarcely forgiveness for the
+men who had brought the evil upon us. We parted lovers, hoping for days
+of peace, and sure of reunion when those days should come; and every
+night and every morning I prayed for him; but first I prayed for the
+safety of my country, and the victory of our cause.
+
+Time crept on. The battle of Bull Run was fought; he was engaged in it,
+and for many, many days I never knew whether he was living or dead. In
+the autumn I heard he had been ordered West, and that winter was a time
+of anxious days and restless nights. I never heard _from_ him, and I did
+not think it fair to write; occasionally I heard _of_ him through an
+aunt of his, who lived in Maryland, but she was gall and bitterness
+itself on the political question, and never let me know anything she
+could possibly keep from me. So my life passed in fruitless wondering
+and bitter suspense; I never saw a soldier without thinking of Edward,
+and my dreams showed him to me wounded, ill, or dying. No; the dead may
+make their voices heard across the gulf that parts us from them, but not
+the absent, or his soul would have heard my 'exceeding loud and bitter
+cry,' and hearing, must have come.
+
+I must not dwell on this. The days rolled on, and spring brightened the
+air, the grass was green again, the dying hope in my heart revived, and
+I listened again to the wren's song, and thought it yet promised a
+summer for my life. But that was the year of the Peninsular campaign,
+and the dying leaves fell on the graves of our bravest and brightest,
+and the autumn wind sighed a lamentation in our ears, and our hearts
+were mourning bitterly for the defeats of the summer, and no less
+bitterly for the dear-bought glory of Antietam. And winter came again:
+hope fled with the swallows, and my youth began to leave me.
+
+In the late autumn I went to New York, to pay a visit to a friend. One
+night I went with my brother to the theatre. The play was stupid, and
+the _entr'actes_ were long. In the middle of the second act, while some
+horrible nonsense was being talked upon the stage, I looked around the
+theatre, and saw no face I had ever seen before, when a lady near me
+moved her fan, and, a little distance beyond her, I saw--with a start I
+saw--the face that was never long absent from my thoughts. Changed and
+older, and brown and bearded; but I knew him; and he knew me, and
+smiled; and there was no doubt in my mind. I was not even surprised. But
+to the sickness of sudden joy soon succeeded the sickness of
+apprehension. What brought him there? And what would be done to him if
+he were discovered? How could I see him and speak to him? Oh! could it
+be possible that we might not meet more nearly! I wonder I did not die
+during that quarter of an hour. I turned and looked at my brother; his
+eyes were fixed upon the stage, and he was as curiously unmoved as if
+the world were still steady and firm beneath my feet.
+
+I did not look at Edward again; I feared to betray him; and the green
+curtain fell, and my brother said, if I did not mind being left alone
+for a few minutes, he would go. He left me, and Edward came to me, and
+once more I saw him, and once more I heard his voice. He stayed only one
+moment, only long enough to make an appointment with me for the next
+morning, and then he left the theatre. The people around us thought
+probably that he was a casual acquaintance, if indeed they thought about
+it at all; and when my brother came back, he found me looking listless
+and bored, and apologized for having been detained.
+
+I had--and still have, thank God!--a friend in whom I trusted; to her I
+had recourse, and it was by her help that I was enabled to keep my
+appointment. Only those who have known the pain of such a parting can
+ever hope to know the joy of such a meeting. I would like to make the
+rest of this as short as possible. Edward had run the blockade to see
+me; he had been to Washington, had stayed there three days, had heard of
+my absence, obtained my address, and followed me to New York; he had
+waited until twilight, when he had come to look at the house where I was
+staying; as he was walking slowly on the opposite side of the street, he
+had seen me come out with my brother, and had followed us to the
+theatre. He had trusted to his long beard and the cropping of his curly
+head as the most effectual disguise, and so far no one had recognized
+him. The only people who had known of his being in Washington were the
+friends with whom he stayed, the tailor who had sold him his clothes,
+who had a son with Stuart's cavalry, and the girl, my old school friend,
+who had given him my address, whom he went to see in the dusk hours of
+the afternoon, and who had hospitably received him in the coal
+cellar--which struck me, at the moment, as an infallible method of
+arousing suspicion. He wanted me to return with him, or to marry him
+and follow him by flag of truce; he was sure Providence had made his way
+smooth on purpose to effect our union. His arguments were perhaps not
+very logical, but they almost convinced me of what I wished to believe.
+I was willing to bear the anger of my family, but could not think of
+again undergoing the wear and tear of separation. I promised to let him
+know my decision early the next morning; I think I should have gone with
+him, but that evening we were telegraphed to return to Washington--my
+father had been stricken down by apoplexy; and my brother and I went
+home in the night train. Edward knew the reason, for he read my father's
+death in the morning's newspaper.
+
+Three weeks afterward I had a letter from Edward Mayne by flag of truce;
+that was the week before Fredericksburg; and then the agony again began.
+It did not last very long. In the early spring came Chancellorsville,
+and there Edward was slightly wounded and taken prisoner; he was removed
+to the hospital at Point Lookout; his aunt went to nurse him, but I did
+not go; he was doing very well, and I thought it was wiser not. And one
+day in May--ah! that day!--I was looking out of my window, and I see now
+the blue sky, the little white clouds, the roses, and the ivied wall
+that I saw when my mother came in and said Mrs. Daingerfield had come to
+take me to Edward, who was very ill and anxious to see me. I remember
+how the blood seemed to sink away from my heart, and for a moment I
+thought I was going to die; but in another moment I knew that I should
+live. I was eager and excited, and not unhappy, from that time until the
+end was at hand.
+
+I had never been in a hospital before, and there was a long ward full of
+men, who all looked to me as if they were dying, through which I passed
+to reach the room in which Edward Mayne lay alone. He heard me coming,
+and, as I opened the door, he raised himself in bed and put out his hand
+to me....
+
+That night the dreadful pain left him, and his aunt said he seemed
+brighter and more hopeful; but when the surgeon saw him in the morning,
+he shook his head. When the sun set, Edward knew that he should never
+again see its evening glories. Into that dark, still room came a greater
+than Solomon, and as the dread shadow of his wings fell on my life, I
+hushed my prayers and tears. We sat and watched and waited; and there
+came back a feeble strength into the worn frame, and he told us what he
+wished. He said that perhaps he had been wrong, but he had thought
+himself right; at least, he had given his life for his faith, and soon,
+soon he would know all. Then he asked them to leave him alone with me
+for a little while, and when they came back into the room, nothing
+remained of him but the cast-off mortality. The sun was rising in the
+east, but his soul was far beyond it; and the sunlight came in and
+kissed the quiet pale face, that looked so peaceful and so happy there
+could be no lamentation over it.
+
+That day came his parole; the parole which we had so exerted ourselves
+to obtain that he might go home to get well; and now it had found him
+far beyond the captivity of bar or flesh--a freed spirit, 'gone up on
+high.'
+
+The kindness of the Government induced us to ask one more favor, which
+was granted us. They let us take him home to Washington and bury him in
+the place he had always wished to be buried in; and some Confederate
+prisoners were given permission to attend his funeral. So he was buried
+as a soldier should be buried, borne to the grave by his comrades, and
+mourned by the woman dearest to him. He lies now on the sunniest slope
+in that green graveyard, where the waters rush near his resting place,
+and the trees make a shade for the daisies that brighten above him.
+
+He died as the sun rose on the first of June; we buried him early on the
+morning of the fifth. That night I left Washington, glad that it was to
+be no longer my place of residence, glad that my family would soon
+follow me to make another home where I could be stung by no
+associations. The old house passed into the hands of my elder sister,
+who is married to a Congressman from the West. But during this winter I
+have been so often homesick, and this early spring has been so chill and
+bleak compared with the May days of Washington, that I was fain to come
+back for a brief hour; and I have chosen to come in these last May days,
+that the first of June might find me here, true to the memory of the
+past.
+
+There is nothing left of the old days; the place is changed from what it
+once was; the streets swarm with soldiers and strange faces; the houses
+are used by Government, or are dwelt in by strangers; there is scarcely
+a trace in this Sodom of the Sodom before the flood. No, there is
+nothing left for me now, of the things I used to know, except the little
+wren, whose song broke my heart this morning; and there is nothing here
+for me to care for, except that young grave in Georgetown, whose white
+cross bears but the initials and the date. I must now try to make myself
+a new life elsewhere, and to-morrow I go forth, shaking off the dust
+that soils my garments; hoping for the promise of the rainbow in this
+storm--and sure of the strength that will not fail me. O world! be
+better than thy wont to thy poor, weary child! O earth! be kindly to a
+bruised reed! O hope! thou wilt not leave me till the end--the end for
+which I wait.
+
+
+
+
+WORD-STILTS
+
+
+If the reader is so favored as to possess a copy of the 'Comparative
+Physiognomy' of Dr. James W. Redfield (a work long out of market, and
+which never had much of a sale), he may find in a chapter concerning the
+likeness between certain men and parrots some wise remarks on ridiculous
+eccentricities in literature. 'In inferior minds,' says the Doctor,'the
+love of originality shows itself in oddity.' 'There is many a sober
+innovator,' he continues, farther on,' whose delight it is to ponder
+
+     'O'er many a volume of forgotten lore,'
+
+that he may not be supposed to make use of the humdrum literature of the
+day; who introduces obsolete words and coins new ones, and makes a
+patchwork of all languages; makes use of execrable phrases, and invents
+a style that may be called his own.' The Doctor compares these writers
+to parrots.
+
+Now it is a well-known peculiarity of parrots that they have a passion
+for perching themselves in places where they will be on a level with the
+heads of the superior race whose utterances they imitate. The perch a
+parrot affects is almost always an altitude of about six feet, or the
+height of the tallest men. They feel their inferiority keenly if you
+leave them to hop about on the floor. It occurs to us that nothing could
+please a parrot more, if it could be, than a pair of stilts on which it
+could hop comfortably.
+
+The literary parrot, more fortunate than his feathered fellow, finds
+stilts in words--obsolete words, such as men do not use in common
+intercourse with their fellows. Modern rhymesters more and more affect
+this thing. Every day sees some _outre_ old word resurrected from its
+burial of rubbish, and set in the trochaics and spondees of love songs
+and sonnets. Dabblers in literature, who would walk unseen, pigmies
+among a race of giants, get on their word-stilts, and straightway the
+ear-tickled critics and the unconsciously nose-led public join in paeans
+of applause. Sage men, who do not exactly see through the thing, nod
+their heads approvingly, and remark: 'Something in that fellow!' And the
+delighted ladies, prone as the dear creatures often are to be pleased
+with jingle that they don't understand, exclaim: 'A'n't he delightful!'
+
+The lamented Professor Alexander once produced a very excellent poem,
+which contained only words of a single syllable, forcibly illustrating
+the power of simple language. We should be glad to reproduce it here, by
+way of contrapose to our own accompanying poem, but cannot now recall it
+to memory in its completeness. Any child, who could talk as we all talk
+in our families, could read and understand fully the poem to which I
+refer. But ask any child to read the lines we have hammered out below,
+and tell you what they mean! Nay, ask any man to do it, and see if he
+_can_ do it. Probably not one in a hundred usual readers, could 'read
+and translate' the word-stilts with which we have trammelled our poetic
+feet, except with the aid of patient and repeated communion with his
+English dictionary. There are, however, no words employed here which may
+not be found in the standard dictionaries of our tongue.
+
+To it:
+
+
+THE POET INVOKETH HIS MUSE.
+
+  Come, ethel muse, with fluxion tip my pen,
+    For rutilant dignotion would I earn;
+  As rhetor wise depeint me unto men:
+    A thing or two I ghess they'll have to learn
+  Ere they percipience can claim of what I'm up
+    To, in macrology so very sharp as this;
+  Off food oxygian hid them come and sup,
+    Until, from very weariness, they all dehisce.
+
+
+THE POET SEEKETH THE READER'S FORBEARANCE.
+
+  Delitigate me not, O reader mine,
+    If here you find not all like flies succinous;
+  My hand is porrect--kindly take't in thine,
+    While modestly my caput is declinous;
+  Nor think that I sugescent motives have,
+    In asking thee to read my chevisance.
+  I weet it is depectible--but do not rave,
+    Nor despumate on me with look askance.
+
+  Existimation greatly I desire;
+    'Tis so expetible I have sad fears
+  That, excandescent, you will not esquire
+    My meaning; see, I madefy my cheek with tears,
+  On my bent knees implore forbearance kind;
+    Be not retose in haught; I know 'tis sad,
+  But get your Webster down, and you will find
+    That he's to blame, not I--so don't get mad!
+
+
+THE POET COMMENCETH TO SING.
+
+  The morning dawned. The rorid earth upon,
+    Old Sol looked down, to do his work siccate,
+  My sneek I raised to greet the ethe sun,
+    And sauntering forth passed out my garden gate.
+  A blithe specht sat on yon declinous tree
+    Bent on delection to its bark extern;
+  A merle anear observed (it seemed to me)
+    The work, in hopes to make owse how to learn.
+
+  A drove of kee passed by; I made a stond,
+    For fast as kee how could my old legs travel?
+  But--immorigerous brutes!--with feet immund
+    They seemed to try my broadcloth garb to javel.
+  The semblance of a mumper then I wore,
+    Though a faldisdory before I might have graced;
+  Eftsoons I found, when standing flames before,
+    The mud to siccate, it was soon erased.
+
+
+If we should turn our attention studiously to this line of literary
+effort, we feel encouraged to believe that our success in a field of
+late so popular would be marked, and that we should obtain a degree of
+fame herein, beside which that of the moat shining light in the stilted
+firmament would pale its ray. But so long as God gives us the glorious
+privilege of emulating the stars, we shall not seek to win a place among
+the 'tallow dips' of parrot-poetry.
+
+
+
+
+A GREAT SOCIAL PROBLEM.
+
+
+MY DEAR CONTINENTAL:
+
+When the meteorological question was despatched, ladies have long had a
+habit of calling upon their servants to furnish them with small talk;
+high wages, huge appetites, daintiness, laziness, breakage,
+impertinence, are fruitful topics which they daily treat exhaustively;
+always arriving at the hopeless conclusion: 'Did you ever hear of
+anything like it?' and 'I wonder what we are coming to!'
+
+Is it not possible that we may be coming to--no servants at all? To me
+the signs seem to point that way. Cobbett said that in America public
+servant means master: he might add, if he were writing now, and so does
+private servant. Each house is divided against itself into two camps;
+hostile, though perhaps not in open war with each other: and Camp
+Kitchen has the advantage of position. Above stairs uneasy sits the
+employer, timid, conciliating, temporizing; seeing as little as he can,
+and overlooking half he sees; ready to change his habits and to subdue
+his tastes to suit the whims of the _enemigos pagados_, as the Spaniards
+call them, he has under his roof. Below stairs lounge the lordly
+employes (a charming newspaper neologism for hotel waiters, street
+sweepers, and railway porters), defiant, aggressive, and perfectly aware
+that they are masters of the situation. Daily they become more like the
+two Ganymedes of Griffith's boarding house: he called them Tide and
+Tide--because they waited on no man. They have long ceased to be hewers
+of wood and drawers of water, and yet they accomplish less than before
+the era of modern improvements. It appears to be a law of domestic
+economy that work is inversely as the increase of wages. Nowadays, if a
+housekeeper visits a prison, he envies the whiteness of the floors and
+the brightness of the coppers he sees there, and thinks, with a sigh,
+how well it might be for his _subscalaneans_, if they could be made to
+take a course of neatness for a few months in some such an institution.
+
+Vain wish! The future is theirs, and they know it. Their services will
+become gradually more worthless, until we shall find them only in grand
+establishments: mere appendages kept for fashion and for show; as
+useless as the rudimental legs of a snake, which he has apparently only
+to indicate the distinguished class in animated nature he may claim to
+belong to. We shall live to say, as Perrault sang:
+
+  'J'apercus l'ombre d'un cocher
+  Tenant l'ombre d'une brosse
+  Nettoyant l'ombre d'un carrosse.'
+
+Alas! I fear that even these shadows of servants will one day vanish and
+disappear from us altogether.
+
+Time was when classes in society were as well defined as races still
+are. The currents ran side by side, and never intermingled. Some were
+born to furnish the blessings of life, and others to enjoy them. Some to
+wait, and others to be waited upon. The producing class accepted their
+destiny cheerfully, believed in their 'betters,' and were proud to serve
+them. The last eighty years have pretty much broken down these
+comfortable boundary lines between men. The feudal retainer, who was
+ready to give his life for his lord, the clever valet, who took kicks
+and caning as a matter of course when his master was in liquor or had
+lost at cards, even the old family servants, are species as extinct as
+the Siberian elephant, or the cave bear, or the dodo. And now the
+advance of the Union armies southward has destroyed the last lingering
+type of the servant post: the faithful black.
+
+In this country there never was much distinction of classes. The
+unwillingness of New England _help_ to admit of any superiority on the
+part of their masters has furnished many amusing stories. Later, when
+the Irish element penetrated into every kitchen, farmyard, and stable,
+floating off the native born into higher stations, service became
+limited to immigrants and to negroes. But the immigrant soon learned the
+popular motto, 'I'm as good as you are,' and only remained a serving man
+until he could save enough money to set up for himself: not a difficult
+matter in the United States; and never so easy as at this moment. The
+demands of the Government for soldiers and for supplies threaten us with
+a _labor famine_ in spite of the large immigration. In Europe labor is
+scarce and in demand. Commerce, manufactures, colonization have outrun
+the supply. Wages have doubled in England and in France within the last
+twenty years, and are rising. With increase of wages comes always
+decrease of subordination. The knowledge of reading, now becoming
+general, and exercised almost exclusively in cheap and worthless
+newspapers, and the progress of the democratic movement, which for good
+or for evil is destined to extend itself over the whole earth, make the
+working classes restless and discontented. They chafe under restraints
+as unavoidable as illness or death. What floods of nonsense have we not
+seen poured out about the conflict between labor and capital? It is the
+old fable over again: the strife of the members against the belly.
+
+Gradually has sprung up the feeling that it is degrading to be a
+servant; a terrible lion in the path of the quiet housekeeper in search
+of _assistants_. There may arise some day a purer and a wiser state of
+society, wherein the relation of master and man will be satisfactory to
+both. A merchant exercises a much sharper control over his clerk than
+over any servant in his house, and it is cheerfully submitted to. The
+soldier, who is worse paid and worse fed than a servant, is a mere
+puppet in the hands of his officers, obliged to obey the nod of twenty
+masters, and to do any work he may be ordered to, without the noble
+privilege of 'giving notice;' and yet there is never any difficulty in
+obtaining a reasonable supply of soldiers--because clerks and soldiers
+do not think themselves degraded by their positions, and servants _do_.
+It may be a prejudice, but it is one which drives hundreds of women, who
+might be fat and comfortable, to starve themselves over needlework in
+hovels; and often to prefer downright vice, if they can hope to conceal
+it, to virtue and a home in a respectable family. Any logic, you
+perceive, is quite powerless against a prejudice of this size and
+strength.
+
+But is it altogether a prejudice? Is it not a sound view of that
+condition of life?
+
+I confess that it has long been a matter of surprise to me that men
+should be found willing to hire themselves out for domestic service in a
+country where bread and meat may so easily be obtained in other ways,
+and where even independent manual labor is so often considered
+derogatory to the dignity of the native born. To do our dirty work that
+it disgusts us to do for ourselves, to stand behind our chairs at table,
+to obey our whims and caprices, to have never a moment they can call
+their own, to keep down their temper when we lose ours, to be compelled
+to ask for permission to go out for a walk, seems to me a sad existence
+even with good food and wages.
+
+The fact is, my dear CONTINENTAL, that the relation between master and
+servant has to be readjusted to suit the times. Indeed it is readjusting
+itself. We see the signs, although we may not perceive their
+significance. Our life is a dream. I use this venerable saying in
+another sense than the one generally intended by it: I mean that we live
+half our lives, if not more, in the imagination; and that the
+imagination of every-day people is a dream made up of feelings brought
+together from the habits, theories, and prejudices of the past of all
+lands and all nations of men. The reality that was once in them has long
+since been out of them; yet these vague and shadowy fancies are
+all-powerful and govern our actions. So that morally we go about like
+maskers in the carnival, dressed in the old clothes of our ancestors.
+With this difference, that most of us do not see how shabby and
+threadbare they are, and how unsuited to our present wants. And the few
+who do see this have an inbred fondness for the old romantic rags, and
+wear some of them in spite of their better judgment. Our moneyed class
+cling in particular to the dream of an aristocracy, and love to look
+down upon somebody. The man who made his fortune yesterday calls
+to-day's lucky fellow a _nouveau riche_ and a _parvenu_. The counter
+jumper who has snatched his thousands from a sudden rise in stocks, is
+sure to invest some of his winnings in the tatters of feudalism, sports
+a coat of arms on his carriage, has liveries, talks of his honor as a
+gentleman, and expects from his servants the same respect that a baron
+of the Middle Ages received from his hinds. It is a dream of most
+baseless fabric. John and Thomas, with their dislike of the word
+servant, their surliness and their impudence, swing too far, perhaps, in
+the other direction, but they are more in unison with the spirit of the
+age than their masters. I have seen an ardent democrat, who had roared
+equal rights from many a stump, furious with the impertinence of a
+waiter, whose answer, if it had come from an equal, he would scarcely
+have noticed. And was not the waiter a man and a fellow voter? What
+distinction of class have we in this country? It is true that the
+property qualification we have discarded in our political system we have
+retained as our test of social position. Indeed, no abstract rights of
+man can make up the difference between rich and poor. But Fortune is
+nowhere so blind nor so busy in twirling her wheel; and our two classes
+are so apt to change places, that frequently the only difference between
+the master and the footman who stands behind him, is the difference of
+capital. And Europe is treading the same democratic path as ourselves,
+limping along after us as fast as her old legs will carry her. The time
+will come when the class from which we have so long enlisted recruits
+for our _batteries de cuisine_ will find some other career better suited
+to their expanded views.
+
+What then? Do you suggest that we may lay a hand upon the colored
+element, after the example of our honored President? But
+
+  'While flares the epaulette like flambeau
+  On Corporal Cuff and Ensign Sambo,'
+
+can you expect either of these distinguished officers to leave the
+service of the United States for ours? What with intelligent
+contrabandism, emancipation, the right of suffrage, and the right to
+ride in omnibuses, we fear that their domestic usefulness will be sadly
+impaired.
+
+Oh for machinery! automaton flunkies, requiring only to be wound up and
+kept oiled! What a housekeeping Utopia! Thomson foreshadowed a home
+paradise of this kind when he wrote the 'Castle of Indolence:'
+
+  'You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed,
+  Fair ranged the dishes rose and thick the glasses played.'
+
+But as yet invention has furnished no reapers and mowers for within
+doors. We have only dumb waiters; poor, creaking things, that break and
+split, like their flesh-and-blood namesakes, and distribute the smell of
+the kitchen throughout the house. Heine once proposed a society to
+ameliorate the condition of the rich. He must have meant a model
+intelligence office. I wish it had been established, for we may all need
+its aid.
+
+What are we to do when we come to the last of the servants? Darwin says
+that the _Formica rufescens_ would perish without its slaves; we are
+almost as dependent as these confederate ants. Our social civilization
+is based upon servants. Certainly, the refinements of life, as we
+understand it, could not exist Without them, and it is difficult to see
+how any business of magnitude could be carried on. Briareus himself
+could not take care of a large country place, with its stables, barns,
+horses, cattle, and crops, even if Mrs. B. had the same physical
+advantages, and was willing to help him. Must we tempt them back by
+still larger salaries, or increase their social consideration, telling
+them, as a certain clergyman once said of his order, that 'they are
+supported, and not hired'?--changing the word help, as we have servant,
+into household officer or assistant manager, or adopt a Chinese
+euphemism, such as steward of the table or governor of the kitchen?
+Fourier does something of this kind; in his system the class names of
+young scullions are cherubs and seraphs! Or shall we adopt the
+cooeperative plan of Mill and others, and offer John an interest in the
+family--say, possibly, the position of resident son-in-law after ten
+years of honesty, sobriety, and industry--with a seat at table in the
+mean while? Or must all the work be done by women, and a proprietor have
+to seal his Biddies _more sanctorum_ in Utah? Or might not poor
+relations, now confessedly nuisances, be made useful in this way? Some
+marquis asked Sophie Arnould why she did not discharge her stupid
+porter? 'I have often thought of it,' she answered, '_mais que voulez
+vous, c'est mon pere_.'
+
+These resources failing, we must drop to the simplest form of existence:
+hut, hovel, or shanty; where my lord digs and is dirty, and her
+ladyship, guiltless of Italian, French, and the grand piano, cooks,
+scrubs, darns, and keeps the peace between the pigs and the children. Or
+else we must come to socialism, in the shape of Brook Farm communities,
+or _phalansteres a la Fourier_, or, worse than either, to mammoth
+hotels. American tastes incline that way. There we may live in huge
+gilded pens, as characterless as sheep in the flock, attended upon by
+waiters, chambermaids, and cooks, who will have a share in the profits,
+and consequently will be happy to do anything to increase the income of
+their house.
+
+I see no other remedy, and I offer this great social problem to the
+serious thoughts of your readers.
+
+  Yours ever, G. V.
+
+
+
+
+APHORISMS.--NO. XIII.
+
+
+It was a frequent exclamation of Herder the Great: 'Oh, my life, that
+has failed of its ends!' and many of us, no doubt, find ourselves
+disposed to indulge in the same lament. But it deserves careful
+attention; no man's life fails of its true end unless through some
+grievous moral fault of his own.
+
+The true end of life is that we may 'glorify God, and enjoy Him
+forever.' How this may be attained, as far as outward circumstances or
+activities are concerned, we can hardly judge for ourselves: but there
+is one sure test; and that is in the duties of our station. If we
+honestly perform them, and especially as under the teachings of the
+gospel of Christ, there can be no real and permanent failure. We shall
+have done what we were set to do upon the earth; and with this we may
+well be content.
+
+
+
+
+OUR GREAT AMERICA.
+
+
+The republican government of the United States, when first originated by
+the fathers of the commonwealth, was regarded by the old fossil
+despotisms with secret dread and a strange foreboding; and neither the
+ridicule which they heaped upon it, nor the professed contempt wherewith
+its name was bandied from throne to throne, could wholly mask their
+trepidation. They looked upon it, in the privacy of their chambers, as
+the challenge of a mighty rebellion of the people against all kingly
+rule and administration; they saw in it the embodiment of those popular
+ideas of freedom, equality, and self-government, which for so many
+centuries had been struggling for adequate utterance in England and
+France, and they knew that the success of this sublime experiment must
+eventually break asunder the colossal bones of the European monarchies,
+and establish the new-born democracy upon their ruins.
+
+That they saw truly and judged wisely in these respects, the history of
+modern Europe, and the current revolutions of our time, bear ample
+testimony. There is no luck nor chance in human events, but all things
+follow each other in the legitimate sequences of law. The American
+republic is no bastard, but a true son and heir of the ages; and sprang
+forth in all its bravery and promise from the mammoth loins of the very
+despotism which disowns and denounces it.
+
+We have a full and perfect faith in the mission of this republic, which
+breaks open a new seal in the apocalypse of government, and unfolds a
+new phase in the destiny of mankind. Feudalism has had a sufficient
+trial, and, on the whole, has done its work well. After the
+dismemberment of the Roman Empire, we do not see how it was possible for
+society to have assumed any other form than that of kings and princes
+for rulers, and the people for passive and more or less obedient
+subjects. It was a great problem to be resolved how society should exist
+at all, and history gives us the solution of it. Despotism in politics
+and authority in religion was the grand, primal, leading, and executive
+idea of it. What learning and culture existed was confined to the guild
+of the ecclesiastics, and they, for the most part, ruled the rulers as
+well as the people, by _virtue of their intelligence_. It required many
+centuries to usher in the dawn of unfettered thought, and generate the
+idea of liberty. And when at last the epoch of Protestantism arrived,
+and Luther, who was the exponent and historical embodiment of it,
+gathered to its armories the spiritual forces then extant in Europe, and
+overthrew therewith the immemorial supremacy of kings and priests over
+the bodies and souls of men, he made all subsequent history possible,
+and was the planter of nations, and the founder of yet undeveloped
+civilizations.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: A doubtful assertion. We, the children of the Puritans, and
+educated in their views and prejudices, have still many lessons to learn
+in the school of charily. It was not 'Luther who rendered subsequent
+history possible,' but the ever onward growth of humanity itself. Luther
+had no broader views of liberty of conscience than the church with which
+he struggled. Mr. Hallam says: 'It has been often said that the
+essential principle of Protestantism and that for which the struggle was
+made, was something different from all we have mentioned: a perpetual
+freedom from all authority in religious belief, or what goes by the name
+of private judgment. But to look more nearly at what occurred, this
+permanent independence was not much asserted, and still less acted upon.
+The Reformation was a _change of masters_, a voluntary one, no doubt, in
+those _who had any choice_, and in this sense an exercise, for the time,
+of their personal judgment. But no one having gone over to the
+Confession of Augsburg or that of Zurich, was deemed at liberty to
+modify these creeds at his pleasure. He might, of course, become an
+Anabaptist or Arian, but he was not the less a heretic in doing so than
+if he had continued in the Church of Rome. By what light a Protestant
+was to steer, might be a problem which at that time, as ever since, it
+would perplex a theologian to decide: but in practice, the law of the
+land which established one exclusive mode of faith, was the only safe,
+as, in ordinary circumstances, it was, upon the whole, the most eligible
+guide.' Speaking, in another place, of the causes which brought about
+the decline of Protestantism, etc., Mr. Hallam says: 'We ought to reckon
+also among the principal causes of this change, those perpetual
+disputes, those irreconcilable animosities, that bigotry, above all, and
+persecuting spirit, which were exhibited in the Lutheran and Calvinistic
+churches. Each began with a common principle--the necessity of an
+orthodox faith. But this orthodoxy meant nothing more than their _own_
+belief as opposed to that of their adversaries; a belief acknowledged to
+be fallible, yet maintained as certain; rejecting authority with one
+breath and appealing to it in the next, and claiming to rest on sure
+proofs of reason and Scripture, which their opponents were ready with
+just as much confidence to invalidate.'
+
+Luther was one of the many reformers who, feeling the necessity of
+freedom for themselves, never dream of according it to others. His
+self-hold, his 'me,' was masterful, and led him far astray from the
+inevitable logic of his perilous position. His 'I-ness' was so supreme
+that he mistook his own convictions for the truths of the Most High--a
+common mistake among reformers! He did not feel the sovereignty of man
+with regard to his fellow man, his positive inalienable right to deal
+with his God alone in matters of faith and religious conviction. The
+golden rule of our Master, 'Do as you would be done by,' seems simple
+and self-evident, and yet it is a late fruit in the garden of human
+culture. Mr. Roscoe says: 'When Luther was engaged in his opposition to
+the Church of Rome, he asserted the right of private judgment with the
+confidence and courage of a martyr. But no sooner had he freed his
+followers from the chains of papal domination, than he forget other in
+many respects equally intolerable: and it was the employment of his
+latter years to counteract the beneficial effects produced by his former
+labors.'
+
+Any system which saps the foundation of religious liberty, which forces
+itself between man and his Maker, cannot guarantee to us one of the main
+objects of all free governments--security in the pursuit of happiness.
+The Reformation did not give us religious freedom, therefore it did not
+give or suggest to us our democratic institutions. All that is true and
+pure in them springs from the very heart of Christianity itself. 'Where
+the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.' Much of the manifestation
+of the philosophy of freedom depends on individual character. Pope
+Alexander III., A.D. 1167, writes: 'Nature having made no slaves, all
+men have an equal right to liberty.' Luther, in 1524, says to the German
+peasants; 'You wish to emancipate yourselves from slavery, but slavery
+is as old as the world. Abraham had slaves, and St. Paul established
+rules for those whom the laws of nations reduced to that state.' Many of
+our modern priests reecho these sentiments! Guizot says: 'The
+emancipation of the human mind and _absolute_ monarchy triumphed
+simultaneously.' The truth is we want a philosophical history of the
+Reformation, written neither from a Catholic, Protestant, nor infidel
+point of view, that we may rightly estimate what we lost, what gained in
+its wild storms. In judging this, we should not quite forget that it was
+the Catholic Lord Baltimore and Catholic colonists of Maryland who in
+1648 first proclaimed on these shores the glorious principle of
+_universal toleration_, while the Puritans were persecuting in New
+England and the Episcopalians in Virginia. 'Nothing extenuate nor aught
+set down in malice,' should be the rule of our souls. Humanity means
+eternal Progress, and its path is onward.--ED. CON.]
+
+It would, however, be by no means difficult, were it in accordance with
+our present design and purpose, to show that the first germ of
+republican liberty sprang into life amid the sedges and savage marshes
+of uncultivated ages, far remote even from the discovery of America, and
+trace it through successive rebellions, both of a political and
+religious character, from and before the times of Wycliffe, down to
+Oliver Cromwell and George Washington; for all through English history
+it has left a broad red mark behind it, like the auroral pathway of a
+conqueror. The first man who prayed without book, and denied the
+authority of the church over the human soul, as the brave Loilards did,
+was the pioneer of Protestantism and the father of all the births which
+ushered this mighty epoch upon the stage of the world; Protestantism,
+which means so much and includes so many vast emprises--establishing for
+freedom so grand a battle ground, and for philosophy and learning so
+wide and magnificent a dominion.
+
+The same spirit which made nonconformists of the first seekers and
+worshippers of God apart from the churches and cathedrals of Rome, in
+the sublimer cathedrals of nature, when the Roman hierarchy was master
+of Europe--made republicans also of the first rebels who resisted the
+tyranny of kings. Political and religious liberty are the two sides of
+the democrat idea, and have always marched hand in hand together. They
+culminated in England during the Commonwealth, and became thenceforth
+the base and dome of popular government.
+
+The republic of America was born of this idea, and is the last great
+birth of Protestantism, big already with the destinies of mankind. Here,
+upon this mighty platform, these destinies, as we believe, have to be
+wrought out by their final issues, and close the drama of human
+development. All things are possible for America under the beneficent
+institutions and laws of the republic, now that the hideous skeleton of
+black slavery is to pollute the soil no more nor make brother war
+against brother any more on account of it; and at no distant period the
+awful conflict which at present shakes the earth with the thunder of its
+clashing and embattled hosts, shall give lasting place to the
+interchanges of commerce and the peaceful enterprises of civil life.
+
+It was impossible that American society could hold together with this
+accursed African vulture eating at its heart. Nor could the aristocratic
+idea of the South, which slavery had interwoven through every fibre of
+the people, through all the forms of its social condition, and into all
+its State laws and institutions, exist side by side with the democratic
+idea of the North, without an inevitable conflict sooner or later. The
+present war is but a renewal of the old battles which make up the sum of
+history, between liberty and despotism, civilization and barbarism. No
+one can doubt in whose hands will be the victory; and happy will the
+result be for future generations.
+
+Hitherto we have exhibited to the world the amazing spectacle of a
+republic which, proclaiming the freedom and equality of every one of its
+subjects, holds four millions of men in a terrible and appalling
+bondage. So frightful a mockery of freedom, perpetrated in her great
+name, and sanctioned by tradition and the authority of law, could not,
+ought not, be suffered to grin its ghastly laughter in the face of the
+world. And when the hour was ripe, and the doomsday of the monstrous
+iniquity was proclaimed aloud by the dreadful Nemesis of God, the people
+of the free North clothed themselves in the majesty of the nation, and
+rose as one man to sweep it from the soil in whirlwinds of fire and
+wrath.
+
+Slavery has been an unmitigated curse to America in every one of its
+aspects and especially to the South, out of which it has eaten, with its
+revengeful and retributive teeth, all the vitalities and grandeurs of
+character which belong to the uncorrupted Anglo-Saxon race. It has
+destroyed all the incentives to industry, all self-reliance, and
+enterprise, and the sterner virtues and moralities of life. It has put a
+ban upon trade and manufactures, and a premium upon indolence. The white
+population--the poor white trash, as the very negroes call them--are
+ignorant, brutal, and live in the squalor of savages. It has driven
+literature and poetry, art and science, from its soil, and robbed
+religion of all its humanity and beauty. Worse than this, if worse
+be possible, it has darkened with the shadow of its apparition the
+minds of the Southerners themselves, and defaced their highest
+attributes--confounding within them the great cardinal distinctions
+between right and wrong, until, abandoned by Heaven, they were given
+over to their own lusts, and to a belief in the lie which they had
+created under the very ribs of the republic.
+
+We do not speak this as partisans, nor in any spirit of enmity against
+the South as a political faction. It is the fact which concerns us, and
+which we deal with as history, and not here and now in any other sense.
+Nor do we blame the Southern aristocracy for riding so long on the black
+horse, which has at last thrown and killed them. For proud and insolent
+as they have ever shown themselves in their bearing toward the North,
+they were in reality mere pawns on the chessboard of Fate, necessary
+tools in working out the game of civilization on this continent. Who can
+calculate the sum of the divine forces which the institution of slavery,
+and its blasphemous reversion of the commands of the Decalogue, and all
+its cruel outrages and inhuman crimes, have awakened in the souls of the
+freemen of the North? The loathsomeness of its example and the infernal
+malice of its designs against liberty and truth, righteousness and
+justice, and whatsoever holy principles in life and government the
+saints, martyrs, and apostles of the ages have won for us, by their
+agony and bloody sweat upon scaffolds and funeral pyres--regarding them
+as a cheap purchase, though paid for by such high and costly
+sacrifices--these appalling instances, we say, have at last produced so
+powerful a reaction in the national mind that millions of men have
+marshalled themselves into avenging armies to rid the earth of their
+presence.
+
+That, too, was fated and necessary, and a part of the predestined
+programme. The nation could not progress with this corrupting monster in
+its pathway; and the battle between them has not come an hour too soon.
+The monster must be exterminated, and that, too, without mercy and
+without compassion, as the sworn and implacable enemy both of God and
+man. Otherwise this glorious country, which has so long worn the garland
+and surging robe of liberty, will become a dungeon of desolation from
+the Atlantic to the Pacific, resounding only with the shrieks of
+mandrakes and the clank of chains.
+
+This obstruction removed, there is, as we said above, no height of
+greatness which the American people may not reach. Then, and then only,
+shall we begin to consolidate ourselves into a nation, with a distinct
+organon of principles, feelings, and loyalties, to which the mighty
+heart and brain of the people shall throb and vibrate in pulsations of
+sublime unity. At present we are only a people in the making, and very
+few there are calling themselves Americans who have any idea of what
+America is and means in relation to history. By and by we shall all
+apprehend the riddle more wisely, and be more worthy of the great name
+we bear.
+
+In the meanwhile it is no marvel that we are not a homogeneous people.
+Our time has not come for that, and may yet lie afar off in the shadowy
+centuries. Consider how and through what alien sources we have
+multiplied the original population of the associated colonies as they
+existed when our fathers raised them to a nationality. There is not a
+nation in all Europe, to say nothing of Asia and the islands, which is
+not represented in our blood and does not form a part of our lineage. It
+is true that the old type predominates, and that we have the virtues and
+the vices of the Anglo-Saxons in us; but we are far too individual at
+present, Celt and Dane and Spaniard and Teuton, and all the rest of our
+motley humanities, will have to be fused into one great Anglo-American
+race, before we can call ourselves a distinct nation. It took England
+many centuries to accomplish this work, and fashion herself into the
+plastic form and comeliness of her present unity and proportion. We, who
+work at high pressure and make haste in our begettings and growth, can
+scarcely hope to make a national sculpture at all commensurate with the
+genius of the people and the continent, in one or two or even half a
+dozen generations; for we cannot coerce the laws of nature, although it
+is quite certain, from what we have done, that we can perform anything
+within the range of possible achievement.
+
+We have all the elements within and around us necessary to constitute a
+great people. We started on our career with a long background of
+experience to guide and to warn us. We saw what Europe had done for
+civilization with her long roll of kings and priests, her despotic
+governments, and her unequal laws--the people in most cases ciphers, and
+in all cases ignorant and enslaved--with no room for expansion, and
+little or no hope of political or social betterment; every inch of
+liberty, in every direction, which they had gained, wrung from their
+oppressors piecemeal, in bloody throes of agony.
+
+Our fathers had not the best materials out of which to build up a
+republic; neither, in all cases, were they themselves sufficiently ripe
+for the experiment. They had the old leaven of European prejudice
+largely intermingled in their minds and character. They could not help,
+it is true, their original make, nor the fashioning which their age,
+time, and circumstances had put upon them. All this has to be taken into
+the estimate of any philosophical judgment respecting their
+performances. But they had learned from the past to trust the present,
+and to span the future with rainbows of hope. They stood face to face
+with the people, and each looked into the others' eyes and read there
+the grounds and sureties of an immortal triumph. Instead, therefore, of
+resting the supreme power of government in the hands of a person, or a
+class, making the former a monarch, and creating the other an
+aristocracy, those grand magistrates and senators of human liberty who
+framed the Constitution of the new American Nation, made the nation its
+own sovereign, and clothed it with the authority and majesty of
+self-government.
+
+A venture so daring, and of an audacity so Titanic and sublime, seemed
+at that time and long afterward to require the wisdom and omnipotence of
+gods to guide it over the breakers, and steer it into the calm waters of
+intelligent government. All the world, except the handful of thinkers
+and enthusiasts scattered here and there over Europe, was against it,
+mocked at its bravery and aspirations, and sincerely hoped and believed
+that some great and sudden calamity would dissolve it like a baleful
+enchantment. But the hope of the republic was in the people, and they
+justified the fathers and the institution.
+
+Here, therefore, was opened in all the directions of human inquiry and
+action a new world of hope and promise. The people were no longer bound
+by old traditions, nor clogged by any formulas of state religions, nor
+hampered by the dicta of philosophical authority. Their minds were free
+to choose or to reject whatever propositions were presented to them from
+the wide region of speculation and belief. The Constitution was the only
+instrument which prescribed laws and principles for their unconditional
+acceptance and guidance; and this was a thing of their own choice, the
+charter and seal of their liberties, to which they rendered a cheerful
+and grateful obedience.
+
+With this mighty security for a platform, they pursued their daily
+avocations in peace, trusting their own souls, and working out the
+problem of republican society, with a most healthy unconsciousness.
+Sincere and earnest, they troubled themselves with no social theories,
+no visions of Utopia, nor dreams of Paradise and El Dorados, leaving the
+spirit which animated them to build up the architecture of its own
+_cultus_, with an unexpressed but perfect faith in the final justice and
+satisfaction of results.
+
+Religion, therefore, and politics--literature, learning, and art--trade,
+commerce, manufactures, agriculture--and the amenities of society and
+manners, were allowed to develop themselves in their own way, without
+reference to rule and preconcerted dogmas. Hence the peculiarities which
+mark the institutions of America--their utter freedom from cant and the
+shows and pageantry of state. Bank, titles, and caste were abolished;
+and the enormous gulfs which separate the European man from the European
+lordling were bridged over by Equality with the solid virtues of
+humanity.
+
+What a stride was here taken over time and space, and the historic
+records of man, in the fossil formations of the Old World during the
+ante-American periods! It had come at last, this long-prophesied reign
+of Apollo and the Muses, of freedom and the rights of man. Afar off, on
+the summits of imaginative mountains, were beheld, through twilight
+vistas of night and chaos, the proud ruins of dead monarchies, and the
+cruel forms of extinct tyrannies and oppressions, crowned and mitred no
+more; whose mandates had once made the nations tremble, and before whose
+judgment seats Mercy pleaded in vain, and Justice muffled up her face
+and sat dumb and weeping in the dust. Over the wolds of their desolation
+hyenas prowled, snuffing the noisome air as for a living prey; ghouls
+and vampyres shrieked in hellish chorus, as they tore up forgotten
+graves; and all manner of hateful and obscure things crawled familiarly
+in and out of palaces and holy places, as if they were the ghosts of the
+former inhabitants; and, high above them all, in the bloody light of the
+setting sun, wheeled kites and choughs and solitary vultures; owls and
+dismal bats flitting, ever and anon, athwart the shadows of their grim
+processions.
+
+No matter that this vision was in reality but the symbolism of
+imagination and poetry, that Europe was not dead, but alive with the
+struggling vitalities of good and evil, and all those contending forces
+out of which American freedom was born--the vision itself was not the
+less true, either as feeling or insight; for Europe was now literally
+cut adrift from America, and the hopes and aspirations of the young
+republic were entirely different from hers, and removed altogether from
+the plane of her orbit and action.
+
+The liberalists and thinkers of the age expected great things from a
+people thus fortunately conditioned and circumstanced. For the first
+time in modern history a genuine democratic government was inaugurated
+and fairly put upon its trial. The horizon of thought was now to be
+pushed back far beyond the old frontiers into the very regions of the
+infinite; and a universal liberty was to prevail throughout the length
+and breadth of the land. No more dead formalities, nor slavish
+submissions, but new and fuller life, self-reliance, self-development,
+and the freest individuality. Gladly the people accepted the
+propositions and principles of their national existence. Not a doubt
+anywhere of the result; no faltering, no looking back; but brave hearts,
+everywhere, and bold fronts, and conquering souls. Before them, through
+the mists of the starry twilight, loomed the mountain peaks and shadowy
+seas of the unventured and unknown future; and thitherward they pressed
+with undaunted steps, and with a haughty and sublime defiance of
+obstructions and dangers; fearing God, doing their best, and leaving the
+issue in His hands.
+
+We know now, after nearly a hundred years of trial, what that issue in
+the main is, and whitherward it still tends. During that little
+breathing time, which, compared with the life of other nations, is but a
+gasp in the record, what unspeakable triumphs have been accomplished!
+Nearly a whole continent has been reclaimed from the savage and the wild
+beasts, and the all-conquering American has paved the wilderness, east,
+west, north, and south, with high roads--dug canals into its hidden
+recesses, connected the great Gulf with the far-off West by a vast
+network of railways and telegraphs--planted cities and villages
+everywhere, and fashioned the routes of civilization; bound Cape Race to
+the Crescent City and the Atlantic to the Pacific, sending human
+thoughts, winged with lightning, across thousands of miles of plains and
+mountains and rivers, and making neighborly the most distant peoples and
+the most widely sundered States of the mighty Union. Let any man try to
+estimate the value of this immense contribution to human history and
+happiness; let him try to measure the vast extent of empire which it
+covers, and sum up the mighty expenditure of physical and intellectual
+labor which has conquered those savage wilds, and converted them into
+blooming cornfields and orchards; which has built these miraculous
+cities by the sea, and made their harbors populous with native ships and
+the marine of every nation under heaven; those busy inland cities, the
+hives of manufacturing industry and the marts of a commerce which
+extends over all the regions of civilization, from the rising to the
+setting sun; those innumerable towns of the great corn-growing
+districts; those pleasant hamlets and pastoral homes which fringe the
+forest, and girdle the mountains as with the arms of human affection and
+the passion of love; those mills on the far-off rivers, whose creaking
+machinery and revolving wheels are the prelude of a yet unborn, but
+rapidly approaching civility, and whose music, heard by the right ears,
+is of the divinest depth and diapason, and in full concord with the
+immeasurable orchestra of triumph and rejoicing which the nation
+celebrates in the perpetual marches of her starry progress.
+
+No man can compass this vast dominion, and no intellect can plumb its
+soundings or prophesy of its upshot. Who could have foretold what has
+already happened on this continent, had he stood with the Pilgrim
+Fathers on Plymouth Rock, that memorable day of the landing? Looking
+back to that great epoch in American history, we have no dim regions of
+antiquity to traverse, no mythic periods as of Memnon and the Nile, but
+a mere modern landscape, so to speak, shut in by less than two
+centuries. And yet what unspeakable things are included in that brief
+period! If we have made such vast strides and so rapid a development in
+those few years of our national life, with the heterogeneous and
+unmalleable materials with which we had to deal, converting the filth of
+Europe into grass and flowers for the decoration of the republic, what
+may we not achieve hereafter, when this dreadful war is over, and the
+negro question is adjusted, and the sundered States are reunited, and
+the Western wilderness is clothed with the glory of a perfect
+cultivation, and the genius of the people, no longer trammelled by
+Southern despotism, shall have free room to wing its flight over the
+immeasurable future?
+
+There will be no likeness, in any mirror of the past, to the American
+civilization that is to be. New manners, customs, thinkings, literature,
+art, and life, will mark our progress and attest the mission of the
+nation. We are fast outgrowing the ideas and influences of that brave
+company of Puritans out of whose loins our beginning proceeded; and
+already each man goes alone, insular, self-reliant, and self-sustained.
+We owe the Puritans a large debt, but it is altogether a pretty fiction
+to call them the founders of American civilization. They helped to lay
+in the foundation stones of that early society, and kept them together
+by cementing them with their love of religious truth and liberty, so far
+as they understood these primal elements of a state; and we are likewise
+their debtors for the integrity which they put into their laws and
+government. But it is too high a demand to claim for them that they were
+the founders of the republic, and the originators of those great ideas
+which are embodied in our institutions and literature.
+
+They came to this country with no very enlarged notions, either of
+religion or freedom, although they were perfectly sincere in their
+professions of regard for both; and it was this very sincerity which
+gave solidity and permanence to their colonies. We suppose we may repeat
+what history has made notorious respecting them, that they were, both in
+belief and civil practice, very narrow and limited in their
+outlooks--by no means given to intellectual speculations--and with but
+little faith in the intellect itself--which, indeed, was proscribed as a
+sort of outlaw when it stood upon its own authority, outside the pale of
+_their_ church. The religion which they established had its origin in
+the reign of Elizabeth, and was a sort of revived Lollardism, which last
+dated as far back as Wycliffe, long before the Reformation. They thought
+they could worship God in conventicles, and in the great open-air
+cathedrals of nature, with quite as much purity of motive and heavenly
+acceptance as in regularly consecrated churches, and that the right of
+praying and preaching was inalienable, and secured to all godly men by
+the charter and seal of Calvary.
+
+They had no idea, however, of non-conformity which was not based upon an
+orthodox creed, upon _their_ creed, as they subscribed it on Plymouth
+Rock. They fled from persecution themselves, and sought freedom for
+themselves in the barren regions of our dear and now hospitable New
+England; and they, in their simplicity and good faith before God, sought
+to organize a system of civil and religious polity which should incrust
+all future generations, and harden them into a fossil state of perpetual
+orthodoxy.
+
+They were a stern, implacable race, these early fathers, in all that
+related to belief, and the discipline of moral conduct; and we owe many
+of the granite securities which lie at the bottom of our social life and
+government to this harsh and unyielding sternness. It held the framework
+of the colonies together until they were consolidated into the United
+States, and until the modern culture of the people relaxed it into a
+universal liberty of thought and worship.
+
+The Puritans, however, had no notion of such a result to their teachings
+and labors; and would have looked with pious horror upon them if they
+could have beheld them in some Agrippa's mirror of the future.
+
+The truth--unpalatable as it may be--is simply this about the Puritans:
+they were narrow-minded, bigoted, and furious at times with the spirit
+of persecution; sincerely so, it is true, and believing they did God
+service; but that does not alter the fact. They had no conception
+of the meaning of liberty--and especially of religious liberty as a
+development of Protestantism. Their idea of it was liberty for
+themselves--persecution to all who differed from them; and this, too,
+for Christ's sake, in order that the lost sheep might be brought back,
+if possible, to their bleak and comfortless folds. They could not help
+it; they meant no wrong by it, and the evil which they thus did was good
+in the making, and sprang from the bleeding heart of an infinite love.
+
+We like them, nevertheless; and cannot choose but like them, thinking it
+generous and loving to invest them with as much poetry as we can command
+from the wardrobes of the imagination. But we can never forgive them--in
+critical moods--for their inhuman, although strictly logical persecution
+of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, who represented in his
+person all the liberal-thoughts-men, both in religion and speculation,
+then existing on this continent.
+
+This man of capacious intellect and most humane heart was hunted by them
+out of the associated colonies, as if he had been some ferocious beast
+of prey, because he differed from them in his religious opinions; and
+this drove him to found a state in accordance with the most liberal
+interpretation of Christianity. He had more than once, by his influence
+with the Indians, saved them from a general massacre; but their
+theological hate of him was so intense that they would not allow him to
+pass through their territories on a necessary journey; and once, on his
+return from England, where he had been negotiating with ministers for
+their benefit, they capped the climax of their bigoted ingratitude by
+refusing him permission even to land on their soil, lest his holy feet
+should pollute it.
+
+It is a little too much, therefore, to say that all our ideas of liberty
+and religion have sprung from this stout race of persecutors. They were
+pioneers for us, bu nothing more. Our progress has been the untying of
+their old cords of mental oppression, and the undoing of many things
+which they had set up. This was so much rubbish to be moved out of the
+path of the nation, and by no means aids to its advancement, except as
+provocatives. What we now are, we have become by our own culture and
+development, and by the inflowing of those great modern ideas which have
+affected all the world, and helped to build up its civilization into
+such stately proportions.
+
+Puritanism, as it then existed in its exclusive power, is, to all
+intents and purposes, dead upon this continent. The form of it still
+lingers in our midst, it is true, and in the Protestant parts of Europe
+its ritual survives, and pious hearts, which would be pious in spite of
+it, still cling to its dead corpse as if it were alive, and kindle their
+sacred fires upon the altar of its wellnigh forsaken sanctuaries. We
+should count it no gain to us, however--the extinction of this old and
+venerable faith--if we had no high and certain assurance that a nobler
+and sublimer religion was reserved for our consolation and guidance. We
+cannot afford, in one sense, to give up even the semblances and shows of
+religion, and these will survive until the new dayspring from on high
+shall supersede the necessity of their existence. 'Take care,' said
+Goethe, in some such words as these, 'lest, in letting the dead forms of
+religion go, you sacrifice all reverence and worship, and thus lose
+religion itself!' There is great danger of this in the transition state
+of human thought and speculation which marks the present crisis of
+American history. We are not a religious people, and shall not present
+any development of that sort until the intellectual reaction which has
+set in among us against the old modes and organons of belief has
+exhausted the tests of its crucibles, and reduced the dross to a
+residuum of gold which shall form the basis of a new and sacred
+currency, acceptable to all men for the highest interchanges.
+
+In the mean while we must work out the problem of this religion of the
+future in any and all ways which lie open to us--doubting nothing of the
+final issues. The wildest theories of Millerites, Spiritists,
+Naturalists, and Supernaturalists, are all genuine products of the time,
+and of the spirit of man struggling upward to this solution--blindly
+struggling, it is true, but gradually approaching the light of the
+far-off truth, as the twilight monsters of geology gradually approached
+the far-off birth of man, who came at last, and redeemed the savage
+progressive, the apparent wild unreason of the terrestrial creation.
+
+It is more than probable that this great fratricidal war with which we
+are now struggling, will prove, in its results, of the very highest
+service to the nation, and make us all both better and wiser men than we
+were before. We have already gained by it many notable experiences, and
+it has put our wisdom, and our foolishness also, to the test. It has
+both humbled and exalted our pride. It has cut away from the national
+character all those inane excrescences of vanity and brag which
+judicious people everywhere, who were friendly to us, could not choose
+but lament to see us exercise at such large discretion. It has brought
+us face to face with realities the most terrible the world has ever
+beheld. It has measured our strength and our weakness, and has developed
+within us the mightiest intellectual and physical resources. All the wit
+and virtue which go to make up a great people have been proven in a
+hundred times and ways during the war, to exist in us. Courage,
+forethought, endurance, self-sacrifice, magnaminity, and a noble sense
+of honor, are a few of the virtues which we have cropped from the bloody
+harvest of the battle field.
+
+It is true that wicked men are among us--for when did a company, godly
+or otherwise, engage in any work, and Satan did not also fling his
+wallet over his shoulder and set out with them for evil purposes of his
+own?--but after all, these are but a small minority, and their efforts
+to ruin the republic and bring defeat and dishonor upon the Federal
+arms, have not yet proved to be of a very formidable nature. These, the
+enemies of America, though her native-born sons, the people can afford
+to treat with the contempt which they merit. For the rest, this war will
+make us a nation, and bind us together with bonds as strong as those of
+the old European nationalities. It will make us great, and loving
+patriots also; and root out from among us a vast amount of sham and
+political fraud, to the great bettering of society.
+
+We shall have reason in many ways to bless its coming and its
+consequences. It was indeed just as necessary to our future national
+life and happiness as the bursting out of a volcano is to the general
+safety of the earth. It will destroy slavery for ever, and thus relieve
+us from the great contention which has so long and so bitterly occupied
+the lives of our public men and the thoughts of the world. In reality,
+we have never yet given republicanism a fair trial upon this continent.
+With that dreadful curse and crime of slavery tearing at its heart and
+brain, how was it possible for equality and self-government to be
+anything else but a delusion and a mockery? This cleared out of our
+pathway, and we have enough virtue, intelligence, and wealth of physical
+resources in the land to realize the prophecy and the hope of all noble
+thinkers and believes on the planet, and place America first and
+foremost among the nations--the richest, the wisest, the best, and the
+bravest.
+
+
+
+
+LONGING
+
+
+The corruption of a noble disposition is invariably from some false
+charm of fancy or imagination which has over-mastered the mind with its
+powerful magic and carried away the will captive. It is some perverted
+apprehension or illusory power of the infinite which causes a man who
+has once fallen a prey to any strong passion to devote all his energies,
+thoughts, and feelings to _one_ object, or to surrender himself, heart
+and soul, to the despotic tyranny of some favorite pursuit. For man's
+natural longing after the infinite, even when showing itself in his
+passions and feelings, cannot, where genuine, be satisfied with any
+earthly object or sensual gratification or external possession. When,
+however, this pursuit, keeping itself free from all delusions of sense,
+really directs its endeavor toward the infinite, and only to what is
+truly such, it can never rest or be stationary. Ever advancing, step by
+step, it ever rises higher and higher. This pure feeling of endless
+longing, with the dim memories of eternal love ever surging through the
+soul, are the heavenward--bearing wings which bear it ever on toward
+God. Longing is man's intuition of enternity!--SCHLEGEL.
+
+
+
+
+THE LESSON OF THE HOUR.
+
+
+  I.
+
+  Strong in faith for the future,
+    Drawing our hope from the past,
+  Manfully standing to battle,
+    However may blow the blast:
+  Onward still pressing undaunted,
+    Let the foe be strong as he may,
+  Though the sky be dark as midnight,
+    Remembering the dawn of day.
+
+
+  II.
+
+  Strong in the cause of freedom,
+    Bold for the sake of right,
+  Watchful and ready always,
+    Alert by day and night:
+  With a sword for the foe of freedom,
+    From whatever side he come,
+  The same for the open foeman
+    And the traitorous friend at home.
+
+
+  III.
+
+  Strong with the arm uplifted,
+    And nerved with God's own might,
+  In an age of glory living
+    In a holy cause to fight:
+  And whilom catching music
+    Of the future's minstrelsy,
+  As those who strike for freedom
+    Blows that can never die.
+
+
+  IV.
+
+  Strong, though the world may threaten,
+    Though thrones may totter down,
+  And in many an Old World palace,
+    Uneasy sits the crown:
+  Not for the present only
+    Is the war we wage to-day,
+  But the sound shall echo ever
+    When we shall have passed away.
+
+
+  V.
+
+  Strong--'tis an age of glory,
+    And worth a thousand years
+  Of petty, weak disputings,
+    Of ambitious hopes and fears:
+  And we, if we learn the lesson
+    All-glorious and sublime,
+  Shall go down to future ages
+    As heroes for all time.
+
+
+  VI.
+
+  Strong--not in human boasting,
+    But with high and holy will,
+  The means of a mighty Worker
+    His purpose to fulfil:
+  O patient warriors, watchers--
+    A thousandfold your power
+  If ye read with prayerful purpose
+    The Lesson of the Hour.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS CHARACTER AND RELATION TO OTHER
+LANGUAGES.
+
+_ARTICLE ONE._
+
+THE ORIGIN OF SPEECH.
+
+
+The CONTINENTAL for May contained an article, written by Stephen Pearl
+Andrews, entitled: A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS POSSIBILITY, SCIENTIFIC
+NECESSITY, AND APPROPRIATE CHARACTERISTICS. Although then treated
+hypothetically, or as something not impossible of achievement _in the
+future_, a Language constructed upon the method therein briefly and
+generally explained, is, in fact, substantially completed at the present
+time. It is one of the developments of a new and vast scientific
+discovery--comprising the Fundamental Principles of all Thought and
+Being, and the Law of Analogy--on which Mr. Andrews has bestowed the
+name of UNIVERSOLOGY. The public announcement of this discovery,
+together with a general statement of its character, has been recently
+made in the columns of a leading literary paper--_The Home Journal._
+
+Although the principle involved in the Language discussed in the article
+referred to is wholly different from that upon which all former attempts
+at the construction of a common method of lingual communication have
+been based; and although such merely mechanical _inventions_ were
+therein distinguished from a Language _discovered as existing in the
+nature of things_; several criticisms, emanating from high literary
+quarters, indicate that there is still much misunderstanding as to the
+real nature of a Universal Language framed upon the principles of
+Analogy between Sense and Sound. This misunderstanding seems most
+prevalent in respect to the two points relating directly to the
+practical utility of such a Lingual Organ. It is assumed that a Language
+so constituted must be wholly different in its material and structure
+from any now existing, and that the latter would have to be abandoned as
+soon as the former was adopted. It is supposed, therefore, that in
+order to introduce the SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, the people must be
+induced to learn something entirely new, and to forsake for it their old
+and cherished Mother-tongues. The accomplishment of such an undertaking
+is naturally regarded as highly improbable, if not impossible.
+
+It is also supposed that every word of the Language is to be determined
+in accordance with exact scientific formulas;--a process which, if
+employed, would, as is conceived, give a stiff, inflexible, monotonous,
+and cramped character to the Language itself; and would be wanting in
+that profusion of synonymes which gives an artistic and life-like
+character to the lingual growths of the past.
+
+Both of these objections arise, as we shall hereafter see, from an
+erroneous impression of the nature of Language based on Analogy, coupled
+with a misconception of the real character and constituents of existing
+Languages. It is the purpose of the present papers to correct these
+false notions. In order to do so--and, what is essential to this, to
+present a clear exposition of the true character of the Language under
+consideration, and of its relations to the Lingual Structures of the
+past and present--it is necessary to give a preliminary examination to
+the fundamental question of the Origin of Speech. By means of this
+examination we shall come to understand that the existence and general
+use of a Universal Language with the elements of which Nature has
+herself furnished us, would not involve the abrupt or total abandonment
+of the Tongues now commonly employed; but, on the contrary, while
+preserving all that is substantially valuable in each, would enable us
+to acquire a knowledge of them with a facility which Comparative
+Philology, as now developed, lays no claim to impart.
+
+How, then, did Language originate? In setting out to answer this
+question, Professor Max Mueller says, in his _Lectures on the Science of
+Language_:[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal
+Institution of Great Britain, in April, May, and June, 1861, by Max
+Mueller, M. A. From the second London edition, revised. New York: Charles
+Scribner, 124 Grand street. 1862.]
+
+     'If we were asked the riddle how images of the eye and all the
+     sensations of our senses could be represented by sounds, nay, could
+     be so embodied in sounds as to express thought and to excite
+     thought, we should probably give it up as the question of a madman,
+     who, mixing up the most heterogeneous subjects, attempted to change
+     color and sound into thought. Yet this is the riddle we have now to
+     solve.
+
+     'It is quite clear that we have no means of solving the problem of
+     the origin of language _historically_, or of explaining it as a
+     matter of fact which happened once in a certain locality and at a
+     certain time. History does not begin till long after mankind had
+     acquired the power of language, and even the most ancient
+     traditions are silent as to the manner in which man came in
+     possession of his earliest thoughts and words. Nothing, no doubt,
+     would be more interesting than to know from historical documents
+     the exact process by which the first man began to lisp his first
+     words, and thus to be rid forever of all the theories on the origin
+     of speech. But this knowledge is denied us; and, if it had been
+     otherwise, we should probably be quite unable to understand those
+     primitive events in the history of the human mind. We are told that
+     the first man was the son of God, that God created him in His own
+     image, formed him of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
+     nostrils the breath of life. These are simple facts, and to be
+     accepted as such; if we begin to reason on them, the edge of the
+     human understanding glances off. Our mind is so constituted that it
+     cannot apprehend the absolute beginning or the absolute end of
+     anything. If we tried to conceive the first man created as a child,
+     and gradually unfolding his physical and mental powers, we could
+     not understand his living for _one_ day without supernatural aid.
+     If, on the contrary, we tried to conceive the first man created
+     full-grown in body and mind; the conception of an effect without a
+     cause, of a full-grown mind without a previous growth, would
+     equally transcend our reasoning powers. It is the same with the
+     first beginnings of language. Theologians who claim for language a
+     divine origin, ... when they enter into any details as to the
+     manner in which they suppose Deity to have compiled a dictionary
+     and grammar in order to teach them to the first man, as a
+     schoolmaster teaches the deaf and dumb, ... have explained no more
+     than how the first man might have learnt a language, if there was a
+     language ready made for him. How that language was made would
+     remain as great a mystery as ever. Philosophers, on the contrary,
+     who imagine that the first man, though left to himself, would
+     gradually have emerged from a state of mutism and have invented
+     words for every new conception that arose in his mind, forget that
+     man could not, by his own power, have acquired _the faculty_ of
+     speech, which is the distinctive character of mankind, unattained
+     and unattainable by the mute creation. It shows a want of
+     appreciation as to the real bearings of our problem, if
+     philosophers appeal to the fact that children are born without
+     language, and gradually emerge from mutism to the full command of
+     articulate speech.... Children, in learning to speak, do not invent
+     language. Language is there ready made for them. It has been there
+     for thousands of years. They acquire the use of a language, and, as
+     they grow up, they may acquire the use of a second and a third. It
+     is useless to inquire whether infants, left to themselves, would
+     invent a language.... All we know for certain is, that an English
+     child, if left to itself, would never begin to speak English, and
+     that history supplies no instance of any language having thus been
+     invented....
+
+     'Speech is a specific faculty of man. It distinguishes man from all
+     other creatures; and if we wish to acquire more definite ideas as
+     to the real nature of human speech, all we can do is to compare man
+     with those animals that seem to come nearest to him, and thus to
+     try to discover what he shares in common with these animals, and
+     what is peculiar to him, and to him alone. After we have discovered
+     this we may proceed to inquire into the conditions under which
+     speech becomes possible, and we shall then have done all that we
+     can do, considering that the instruments of our knowledge,
+     wonderful as they are, are yet too weak to carry us into all the
+     regions to which we may soar on the wings of our imagination.'
+
+As the result of a comparison of the human with the animal kingdom,
+Professor Mueller remarks that, 'no one can doubt that certain animals
+possess all the physical acquirements for articulate speech. There is no
+letter of the alphabet which a parrot will not learn to pronounce. The
+fact, therefore, that the parrot is without a language of his own, must
+be explained by a difference between the _mental_, not between the
+_physical_ faculties of the animal and man; and it is by a comparison of
+the mental faculties alone, such as we find them in man and brutes, that
+we may hope to discover what constitutes the indispensable qualification
+for language, a qualification to be found in man alone, and in no other
+creature on earth.'
+
+Of mental faculties, the author whose ideas we are stating, claims a
+large share for the higher animals. 'These animals have _sensation_,
+_perception_, _memory_, _will_, and _intellect_, only we must restrict
+intellect to the comparing or interlacing of single perceptions.' But
+man transcends in his mental powers the barriers of the brute intellect
+at a point which coincides with the starting-point of language. And in
+this coincidence Professor Mueller endeavors to find a sufficiently
+fundamental explanation of the problem of the origin of language.
+
+In reference to this point of coincidence, he quotes Locke as saying
+that, 'the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect
+distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the
+faculties of brutes do by no means attain to,' and then adds:
+
+     'If Locke is right in considering the having of general ideas as
+     the distinguishing feature between man and brutes, and, if we
+     ourselves are right in pointing to language as the one palpable
+     distinction between the two, it would seem to follow that language
+     is the outward sign and realization of that inward faculty which
+     is called the faculty of abstraction, but which is better known to
+     us by the homely name of reason.
+
+     'Let us now look back to the result of former lectures. It was
+     this: After we had explained everything in the growth of language
+     that can be explained, there remained in the end, as the only
+     inexplicable residuum, what we called _roots_. These roots formed
+     the constituent elements of all languages.... What, then, are these
+     roots?'
+
+Two theories have been started to solve this problem: the Onomatopoetic,
+according to which roots are imitations of sounds; and the
+Interjectional, which regards them as involuntary ejaculations. Having
+discussed these theories, and taken the position that, although there
+are roots in every language which are respectively imitations of sounds
+and involuntary exclamations, it is, nevertheless, impossible to regard
+any considerable number of roots, and much less, all roots, as
+originating from these sources, the distinguished Philologist announces
+as the true theory, that every root 'expresses a general, not an
+individual, idea;' just the opposite of what he deems would be the case
+if the Onomatopoetic and Interjectional theories explained the origin of
+speech.
+
+Some paragraphs are then devoted to the examination of the merits of a
+controversy which has existed among philosophers as to
+
+     'whether language originated in general appellations, or in proper
+     names. It is the question of the _primum cognitum_, and its
+     consideration will help us perhaps in discovering the true nature
+     of the root, or the _primum appellatum_. Some philosophers, among
+     whom I may mention Locke, Condillac, Adam Smith, Dr. Brown, and,
+     with some qualification, Dugald Stewart, maintain that all terms,
+     as at first employed, are expressive of individual objects. I quote
+     from Adam Smith. 'The assignation,' he says, 'of particular names
+     to denote particular objects, that is, the institution of nouns
+     substantive, would probably be one of the first steps toward the
+     formation of language.... The particular cave whose covering
+     sheltered them from the weather, the particular tree whose fruit
+     relieved their hunger, the particular fountain whose water allayed
+     their thirst, would first be denominated by the words _cave_,
+     _tree_, _fountain_, or by whatever other appellations they might
+     think proper, in that primitive jargon, to mark them. Afterward,
+     when the more enlarged experience of these savages had led them to
+     observe, and their necessary occasions obliged them to make mention
+     of, other caves, and other trees, and other fountains, they would
+     naturally bestow upon each of those new objects the same name by
+     which they had been accustomed to express the similar object they
+     were first acquainted with.''
+
+This view of the primitive formation of thought and language, is
+diametrically opposed to the theory held by Leibnitz, who maintained
+that 'general terms are necessary for the essential constitution of
+languages.' 'Children,' he says, 'and those who know but little of the
+language which they attempt to speak, or little of the subject on which
+they would employ it, make use of general terms, as _thing_, _plant_,
+_animal_, instead of using proper names, of which they are destitute.
+And it is certain that all proper or individual names have been
+originally appellative or general.'
+
+Notwithstanding the contradictory and seemingly antagonistic nature of
+these positions, Professor Mueller shows that they are not
+irreconcilable.
+
+     'Adam Smith is no doubt right, when he says that the first
+     individual cave which is called cave, gave the name to all other
+     caves; ... and the history of almost every substantive might be
+     cited in support of his view. But Leibnitz is equally right when,
+     in looking beyond the first emergence of such names as cave, town,
+     or palace, he asks how such names could have arisen. Let us take
+     the Latin names of cave. A cave in Latin is called _antrum_,
+     _cavea_, _spelunca_. Now _antrum_ means really the same as
+     _internum_. Antar, in Sanskrit means _between_ or _within_.
+     _Antrum_, therefore, meant originally what is within or inside the
+     earth or anything else. It is clear, therefore, that such a name
+     could not have been given to any individual cave, unless the
+     general idea of being within, or inwardness, had been present in
+     the mind. This general idea once formed, and once expressed by the
+     pronominal root _an_ or _antar_, the process of naming is clear and
+     intelligible. The place where the savage could live safe from rain
+     and from the sudden attacks of wild beasts, a natural hollow in the
+     rock, he would call his _within_, his _antrum_; and afterward
+     similar places, whether dug in the earth or cut in a tree, would be
+     designated by the same name ... Let us take another word for cave,
+     which is _cavea_ or _caverna_. Here again Adam Smith would be
+     perfectly right in maintaining that this name, when first given,
+     was applied to one particular cave, and was afterward extended to
+     other caves. But Leibnitz would be equally right in maintaining
+     that in order to call even the first hollow _cavea_, it was
+     necessary that the general idea of hollow should have been formed
+     in the mind, and should have received its vocal expression _cav_
+     ...
+
+     _'The first thing really known is the general. It is through it
+     that we know and name afterward individual objects of which any
+     general idea can be predicated, and it is only in the third stage
+     that these individual objects, thus known and named, become again
+     the representatives of whole classes, and their names or proper
+     names are raised into appellatives.'_
+
+The italics in the last paragraph are my own.
+
+But the name of a thing, runs the argument, meant originally that by
+which we know a thing. And how do we know things? Knowing is more than
+perceiving by our senses, which convey to us information about single
+things only. 'To _know_ is more than to feel, than to perceive, more
+than to remember, more than to compare. We know a thing if we are able
+to bring it, and [or?] any part of it, under more general ideas.' The
+facts of nature are perceived by our senses; the thoughts of nature, to
+borrow an expression of Oersted's, can be conceived by our reason only.
+The first step toward this real knowledge is the '_naming of a thing_,
+or the making a thing knowable;' and it is this step which separates man
+forever from all other animals. For all naming is classification,
+bringing the individual under the general; and whatever we know, whether
+empirically or scientifically, we know it only by means of our general
+ideas. Other animals have sensation, perception, memory, and, in a
+certain sense, intellect; but all these, in the animal, are conversant
+with single objects only. Man has, in addition to these, reason, and it
+is his reason only that is conversant with general ideas.
+
+     'At the very point where man parts company with the brute world, at
+     the first flash of reason as the manifestation of the light within
+     us, there we see the true genius of language. Analyze any word you
+     like, and you will find that it expressed a general idea peculiar
+     to the individual to which the name belongs. What is the meaning of
+     moon?--the measurer. What is the meaning of sun?--the begetter ...
+
+     'If the serpent is called in Sanskrit _sarpa_, it is because it was
+     conceived under the general idea of creeping, an idea expressed by
+     the word _srip_. But the serpent was also called _ahi_ in Sanskrit,
+     in Greek _echis_ or _echidna_, in Latin _anguis_. This name is
+     derived from quite a different root and idea. The root is _ah_ in
+     Sanskrit, or _anh_, which means to press together, to choke, to
+     throttle. Here the distinguishing mark from which the serpent was
+     named was his throttling, and _ahi_ meant serpent, as expressing
+     the general idea of throttler. It is a curious root this _anh_, and
+     it still lives in several modern words. In Latin it appears as
+     _ango_, _anxi_, _anctum_, to strangle, in _angina_, quinsy, in
+     _angor_, suffocation. But _angor_ meant not only quinsy or
+     compression of the neck; it assumed a moral import, and signifies
+     anguish or anxiety. The two adjectives _angustus_, narrow, and
+     _anxius_, uneasy, both come from the same source. In Greek the root
+     retained its natural and material meaning; in _eggys_, near, and
+     _echis_, serpent, throttler. But in Sanskrit it was chosen with
+     great truth as the proper name for sin. Evil no doubt presented
+     itself under various aspects to the human mind, and its names are
+     many; but none so expressive as those derived from our root _anh_,
+     to throttle. _Anhas_ in Sanskrit means sin, but it does so only
+     because it meant originally throttling--the consciousness of sin
+     being like the grasp of the assassin on the throat of his victim
+     ... This _anhas_ is the same word as the Greek _agos_, sin ... The
+     English _anguish_ is from the French _angoisse_, the Italian
+     _angoscia_, a corruption of the Latin _angustiae_, a strait ... _Ma_
+     in Sanskrit means to measure, from which we had the name of the
+     moon. _Man_, a derivative root, means to think. From this we have
+     the Sanskrit _manu_, originally thinker, then man. In the later
+     Sanskrit we find derivatives, such as _manava_, _manusha_,
+     _manushya_, all expressing man. In Gothic we find both _man_ and
+     _mannisks_, the modern German _mann_ and _mensch_.'
+
+And now we are brought by the author of _The Science of Language_ to the
+great question to which the foregoing is merely preparatory, to the
+fundamental consideration of Philological research: 'How can sound
+express thought? How did roots become the signs of general ideas? How
+was the abstract idea of measuring expressed by _ma_, the idea of
+thinking by _man_? How did _ga_ come to mean going, _stha_ standing,
+_sad_ sitting, _da_ giving, _mar_ dying, _char_ walking, _kar_ doing?'
+Here is his answer:
+
+     'The four or five hundred roots which remain as the constituent
+     elements in different families of languages are not interjections,
+     nor are they imitations. They are _phonetic types_, produced by a
+     power inherent in nature. They exist, as Plato would say, by
+     nature; though with Plato we should add that, when we say by
+     nature, we mean by the hand of God. There is a law which runs
+     through nearly the whole of nature, that everything which is struck
+     rings. Each substance has its peculiar ring. We can tell the more
+     or less perfect structure of metals by their vibrations, by the
+     answer which they give. Gold rings differently from tin, wood rings
+     differently from stone; and different sounds are produced according
+     to the nature of each percussion. It was the same with man, the
+     most highly organized of nature's works. Man, in his primitive and
+     perfect state, was not only endowed, like the brute, with the power
+     of expressing his sensations by interjections, and his perceptions
+     by onomatopoieia. He possessed likewise the faculty of giving more
+     articulate expression to the rational conceptions of his mind. That
+     faculty was not of his own making. It was an instinct, an instinct
+     of the mind as irresistible as any other instinct. So far as
+     language is the production of that instinct, it belongs to the
+     realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as he ceases to want them.
+     His senses become fainter when, as in the case of scent, they
+     become useless. Thus the creative faculty which gave to each
+     conception, as it thrilled for the first time through the brain, a
+     phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled.
+     The number of these _phonetic types_ must have been almost infinite
+     in the beginning, and it was only through the same process of
+     _natural elimination_ which we observed in the early history of
+     words, that clusters of roots, more or less synonymous, were
+     gradually reduced to one definite type.'
+
+Professor Max Mueller occupies a commanding position in the foremost rank
+of the students of Philology. His work on _The Science of Language_,
+from which the preceding discussion of the Origin of Speech is taken,
+is, so far as I am aware, the latest volume treating of the problem in
+question which has issued from what is commonly regarded as high
+authority in the department of Language. It is to that volume,
+therefore, that we are to look for the last word of elucidation which
+the Comparative Philologist can furnish respecting it. And it is for
+this reason--in order that we might have before us the results of the
+latest research of the schools--that the exposition of the Origin of
+Language given in the work referred to has been so fully stated.
+
+Where, then, does this explanation of the problem leave us? Does it go
+to the bottom of the matter? Is it sufficiently distinct and
+satisfactory? In brief, does it give us any clear understanding of the
+Origin of Speech? Does it not rather leave us at the crucial point of
+the whole inquiry, with the essence and core of the subject untouched
+and shrouded in mystery? Some indefinite hundreds of roots, obtained, it
+is assumed, by means of some indescribable and unknown mental instinct!
+This is the sober and contented answer of Philology to the investigator
+who would know of the Sources of Language, and its constituent elements.
+But of the component parts of these roots--the true and fundamental
+constituent elements of Speech, without a knowledge of which there can
+be no basic and conclusive comprehension of the meaning of roots--and of
+the nature of the method by which these elements become expressive of
+thoughts or ideas, there is no word. Language, as it now rests in the
+hands of the Comparative Philologists, is in the same state that
+Chemistry was when Earth, Air, Fire, and Water were supposed to be the
+ultimate constituent elements of Matter, ere a single real ultimate
+element was known as such. But Chemistry, _as a science_, had no
+existence prior to the discovery of the simple constituents of Physical
+creation. In like manner, a _Science_ of Language must be founded on a
+knowledge of the nature and _meaning_ of the simple elements of Speech.
+Until this knowledge is in our possession it is only on the outskirts of
+the subject that we are able to tread. Roots are, it is true, the actual
+bases of Language, so far as its concrete, working, or synthetical
+structure is concerned; in the same sense that _compound_ substances are
+the main constituents found in the Universe as it really and naturally
+exists. But, although the proportion of simple chemical elements, in the
+real constitution of things, is small, as compared with that of compound
+substances; yet it is only by our ability to separate compound
+substances into these elements that we arrive at an understanding of
+their true character and place in the realm of Matter. So it is only by
+our ability to analyze roots--the compound constituents of
+Language--into the prime elements which have, except rarely, no
+distinctive and individual embodiment in it, that we can hope to gain a
+clear comprehension of the nature of Language itself, or of its most
+primitive concrete or composite foundations.
+
+Comparative Philology furnishes us with admirable guidance--so far as it
+goes. But we do not wish to stop at the terminus which it seems to
+consider a satisfactory one. The final answer it offers us, we do not
+regard as final. We gladly accept the analysis of Language down to its
+Roots. But we wish to analyze Roots also. That the Moon derives its name
+from being regarded as the _Measurer_ of time; and Man, from the notion
+of _thinking_; that an (_anh_) is a widely-diffused root, signifying
+_pressure_; and that _ga_ denotes _going_; with similar expositions, is
+valuable information, and takes us a great way toward the goal of our
+seeking. But the question of questions relating to Language is not
+answered by it. Why should the abstract idea of measuring be expressed
+by _ma_; and that of thinking by _man_? How did _an_ come to signify
+pressure; and _ga_, going? Is there any special relationship between
+these roots and the ideas which they respectively indicate? Or was it by
+chance merely that they were adopted in connection with each other?
+Might _da_ just as meet have been taken to denote doing, and _kar_,
+giving, as _vice versa_? Has the root _an_ any distinguishing
+characteristics peculiarly fitting it to suggest _choking_ or
+_pressure_? Or might that notion have been equally well expressed by
+_stha_?
+
+It is at this fundamental stage of the investigation, whence a true
+_Science_ of Language must take its departure, that the labors and
+disclosures of Comparative Philology cease; leaving the problem of the
+Origin of Language involved in the same state of unintelligibility with
+which it has always been surrounded. It is just at this point, however,
+that the SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE previously noticed begins its
+developments. By means of its assistance we may hope, therefore, to
+arrive at a satisfactory solution of the problem in question, and,
+through this solution, at a clear understanding of the more specific
+objects of our present inquiry. Before approaching this main object--the
+exposition of the general character of the NEW SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL
+LANGUAGE and its relations to existing Tongues--and still in aid of that
+purpose, I must offer some further comments upon the excerpts already
+made from 'The Science of Language;' and upon a few other points which
+remain to be extracted from that work.
+
+Of the four or five hundred roots which remain, the insoluble residuum
+(so thought by Professor Mueller) of Language, after eliminating the
+immense mass of variable and soluble material, he says: 1. That 'they
+are _phonetic types_ produced by a power inherent in human nature;' 2.
+'Man, in his primitive and perfect state, was not only endowed like the
+brute with the power of expressing his sensations by interjections, and
+his perceptions by onomatopoieia [mere imitation of sound]. He possessed
+_likewise_ the power of giving _more articulate_ expression to the
+_rational conceptions of his mind_.' The italics here are, again, my
+own, introduced for more emphasis and more ready reference to the
+central thought of the writer. 3. 'That faculty was not of his own
+making. It was an instinct, an instinct of the mind, as irresistible as
+any other instinct. So far as language is the production of that
+instinct, it belongs to the realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as
+he ceases to want them. His senses become fainter when, as in the case
+of scent, they become useless. Thus the creative faculty which gave to
+each conception, as it thrilled for the first time through the brain, a
+phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled.' 4.
+'The number of these _phonetic types_ [root-syllables] must have been
+almost infinite in the beginning, and it was only through the same
+process of _natural elimination_ which we observed in the early history
+of words, that clusters of roots more or less synonymous, were gradually
+reduced to one definite type.'
+
+Professor Mueller, in stopping with root-syllables (to the number of four
+or five hundred), as the _least_ or ultimate elements to which Language
+can be reduced, has, naturally enough, and along with all Comparative
+Philologists hitherto, committed the error of _insufficient analysis_;
+an error of precisely the same kind which the founders of Syllabic
+Alphabets have committed, as compared with the work of Cadmus, or any
+founder of a veritable alphabet. The true and radical analysis carries
+us back in both cases to the _Primitive Individual Sounds_, the Vowels
+and Consonants of which Language is composed.
+
+It is clear enough that the analysis must be carried to the very
+ultimate in order to reach the true foundation for an effective and
+sufficient alphabetic _Representation_ of Language. Precisely the same
+necessity is upon us in order that we may lay a secure and adequate
+foundation for a _True Science of Language_. This will explain more
+fully what was meant in a preceding paragraph, when it was stated that
+the labors of Mr. Andrews begin, in this department of Language, just
+where the labors of the whole school of Comparative Philologists have
+ended. He first completes the analysis of Language, by going down and
+back to the Phonetic _Elements_, the ulterior roots, the Vowels and
+Consonants of Language. Then by putting Nature to the crucial test, so
+to speak, to compel her to disclose the hidden meaning with which each
+of these absolute (ultimate) Elements of Speech is inherently laden, he
+discovers--what might readily be an _a priori_ conception--that these
+_Elements_, and not any compound root-syllables whatsoever, are the true
+'_Phonetic Types_,' representative in Nature of '_the Rational
+Conceptions_ of the human mind.'
+
+The ultimate Rational Conceptions of the Human Mind are confessedly,
+among all Philosophers of the Mind, not four or five hundred, but like
+the Alphabetic Sounds of Language, a mere handful in number. Precisely
+how many they are and how they are best distributed has not been agreed
+upon. Aristotle classed them as _Ten_. Kant tells us there are _Twelve_
+only of the Categories of the Understanding. Spencer, while finding the
+Ultimate of Ultimates in the idea of _Force_ alone, admits its immediate
+expansion into this handful of Primitive Conceptions, but without
+attempting their inventory or classification. The discoverer of
+UNIVERSOLOGY, first settling and establishing the fact that the Elements
+of Sound in Speech are the natural Phonetic Types, equal in number to
+the inventory of the Primitive Rational Conceptions of the Human Mind,
+is then enabled to work the new discovery backward, and, by the aid of
+the classifications which Nature herself has clearly introduced among
+these Sounds (into Vowels, Consonants, Liquids, etc.), to arrive at a
+classification of all the Primitive Rational Conceptions, which cannot
+fail to be completely satisfactory and final. The same discovery leads,
+therefore, to the reconstruction of the Science of Language, on the one
+hand, and of Ontology, the Science of the highest Metaphysical domain,
+on the other.
+
+But, again, it is one of the demonstrations of UNIVERSOLOGY that all
+careers, that of the development of the Human Mind among others, pass
+through three Successive Stages correspondential with each other in the
+different domains of Being. As respects the Mind, these are: 1.
+_Intuitional_ (or Instinctive); 2. _Intellectual_ (or Reflective); and
+3. _Composite_ (or Integral). It is another of these demonstrations that
+the Intuitional (_Unismal_) development of Mind, and the Intellectual
+(_Duismal_), proceed in opposite courses or directions; so that the
+highest _Intellectual_ development reaches and investigates _in its own
+way_ just those questions with which the _Intuitional_ development
+('Instinct,' as Professor Mueller denominates it) began; and which, in
+the very earliest times, it disposed of in _its_ appropriate way _as if_
+finally.
+
+By this means, the road having been passed over completely in both
+directions, the way is prepared for the inauguration of the third or
+Integral Stage, which consists in putting the road intelligently to all
+its possible uses.
+
+To apply these statements to the instance before us, for the elucidation
+both of the statements themselves and of the matter to be expounded; it
+is the _test labor_ of the highest _Intellectual_ development to come
+back upon precisely those recondite points of knowledge which the
+nascent _Intuition_ of the race felt or 'smelt' out blindly; and, by the
+sight of the Mind's eye, to arrive more lucidly at the understanding of
+the same subject. Not that the nature of the Understanding by any two
+senses or faculties is ever the same; but that each has _its own method_
+of cognizing the same general field of investigation. It is the
+_re-investigation_, _intellectually_, of the Relationship of the (true,
+not the pseudo) _Phonetic Types_ with the Fundamental Rational
+Conceptions of the Human Mind, which is the first step taken by Mr.
+Andrews, in laying the basis for the new and coming stage of the
+development of the Science of Language.
+
+It is the completion of this Intellectually Analytical process which
+offers the _point of incipency_ for the new and immense Lingual
+Structure of the future, and the ultimate virtual unification of Human
+Speech. It may be quite true, as Professor Mueller affirms, that the
+Instinctual Development of Language--by which _we_ mean the whole
+Lingual History of the Past, with the exception of our present very
+imperfect Scientific nomenclatures--has never proved adequate to the
+introduction of a single new _root_, since the 'Instinct' exhausted
+itself, as he says, in the nascent effort. But it is a pure assumption,
+when he supposes, for that reason, that the informed Human Intellect of
+the Future will not be competent to constitute thousands of them. It is
+just as legitimate as would have been the assumption in the infancy of
+Chemistry, that because Nature never _synthetized_ in _her_ laboratory
+more than a few simple salts, the modern chemist would never be able to
+produce any one of the two thousand salts now known to him. This kind of
+assumption is the common error of the expounders of existing science, as
+contrasted with the bolder originality of discoverers.
+
+But, again, though it is true that the _Intuitional_ (or Instinctual)
+faculty of man has, in a manner, declined, as in the case of the sense
+of Smell, while the _Intellect_ (the Analogue of the Eye) has been
+developed, still it is assuming too much to say that it utterly fails us
+even yet. It remains, like the sense of Smell, an important helper even
+in our present investigations. Professor Mueller should not, because he
+may happen to have a cold, affirm that nobody smells anything any more.
+To explain what I mean in this respect, the following extract may serve
+as a text:
+
+     'It is curious to observe how apt we are to deceive ourselves when
+     we once adopt this system of Onomatopoieia. Who does not imagine
+     that he hears in the word 'thunder' an imitation of the rolling and
+     rumbling noise which the old Germans ascribed to their god Thor
+     playing at nine-pins? Yet _thunder_ is clearly the same word as the
+     Latin _tonitru_. The root is _tan_, to stretch. From this root
+     _tan_ we have in Greek _tonos_, our tone, _tone_ being produced by
+     the stretching and vibrating of cords. In Sanskrit the sound
+     thunder is expressed by the same root _tan_; but in the derivatives
+     _tanyu_, _tanyatu_, and _tanayitnu_, thundering, we perceive no
+     trace of the rumbling noise which we imagined we perceived in the
+     Latin _tonitru_ and the English _thunder_. The very same root
+     _tan_, to stretch, yields some derivatives which are anything but
+     rough and noisy. The English _tender_, the French _tendre_, the
+     Latin _tener_ are derived from it. Like _tenuis_, the Sanskrit
+     _tanu_, the English _thin_, _tener_ meant originally what was
+     extended over a larger surface, then _thin_, then _delicate_. The
+     relationship betwixt _tender_, _thin_, and _thunder_ would be hard
+     to establish if the original conception of thunder had really been
+     its rumbling noise.
+
+     'Who does not imagine that he hears something sweet in the French
+     _sucre_, _sucre_? Yet sugar came from India, and it is there called
+     _'sarkhara_, which is anything but sweet sounding. This _'sarkhara_
+     is the same word as _sugar_; it was called in Latin _saccharum_,
+     and we still speak of _saccharine_ juice, which is sugar juice.'
+
+It may appear, on a closer inspection at this point, that it is
+Professor Mueller who is deceived, and not the common verdict, both in
+respect to the question whether such words as _thunder_, _sucre_, etc.,
+really do or do not have some inherent and organic relation in the Human
+Mind to the ideas of rumbling noise and sweetness respectively; and in
+respect to the value and significance of the fact. He has, it would
+seem, confounded two separate and distinct questions. 1st. Is there such
+a relation between the sound and the sense? and 2d. Were these words
+introduced into speech because of that resemblance?
+
+In respect to the latter of these questions, Professor Mueller's answer,
+so far as the word _thunder_ is concerned, is rather in favor of an
+affirmative answer than against it. So far from its being 'hard to
+establish the relationship betwixt _tender_, _thin_, and _thunder_,' on
+the hypothesis that 'the original conception of thunder had really been
+its rumbling noise; 'it is just as easy to establish this relationship
+as it is to show the connection between the root _tan_, to stretch, and
+its derivatives _tonos_, _tone_, _tendre_, _tener_, _thin_, and
+_delicate_;--an undertaking which Professor Mueller finds no difficulty
+whatever in accomplishing.
+
+The idea of _stretching_ signified by the original root _tan_ has no
+_direct_ or _immediate_ connection with any of the conceptions expressed
+by the derivative words. But by stretching an object it is diminished in
+_breadth_ and _depth_, while it increases in _length_; hence it becomes
+_thinner_; so that the Mind readily makes the transition from the
+primitive conception of _stretch_ to that of _thinness_, indicated by
+the English word, and by the Sanskrit _tanu_, and the Latin _tener_,
+_tenuis_. _Thinness_, again, is allied to _slimness_, _slenderness_,
+_fineness_, etc.; ideas which are involved in the conception of
+_delicate_, and furnish an easy transition to it.
+
+But it is also from the notion of _stretching_, though in a still less
+direct manner, that we gain an idea of sound as conveyed by musical
+tones; '_tone_,' as Professor Mueller remarks, 'being produced by the
+_stretching_ and vibrating of cords.' Still further: if we cause a heavy
+piece of cord to vibrate, or, what is better, the bass string of a
+violin or guitar, or strike a very low key on the piano, and pronounce
+the word _tone_ in a full voice at the same time, the remarkable
+similarity of the two sounds thus produced will be clearly apparent.
+Thus the root _tan_, to stretch, becomes also expressive of the idea of
+_sound_ as seen in the words _tonos_, _tone_, _tonitru_, _thunder_, etc.
+But what is especially to be noticed is this: that in those derivatives
+of _tan_, to stretch, which are _not_ indicative of ideas of sound (as
+_tenuis_, thin, etc.), the sounds of the words do _not_ cause us to
+imagine that we hear the imitation of noise; while in those derivatives
+which _are_ expressive of it, we not only imagine that we _do_ hear it,
+but, in the case of _tonos_ and _tone_ at least, have an instance in
+which we _know_ that the word employed to convey the idea is a
+proximately perfect representation of the sound out of which the idea
+arose. Even in _tanyu_, _tanyatu_, _tanayitnu_, thundering, in which
+Professor Mueller affirms that 'we perceive no trace of the rumbling
+noise which we imagined we perceived in the Latin _tonitru_ and the
+English _thunder_'--although he seems to admit that it is perceptible in
+the Sanskrit word for thunder expressed by the same root _tan_--the
+reason why we cannot trace it may be because of the terminations, which,
+as it were, absorb the sound that is there, although less obviously, in
+the _tan_, or shade it off so that it becomes diluted and hardly
+traceable.
+
+Vowel Sounds are so fluctuating and evanescent that they go for
+comparatively little in questions of Etymology. _Tan_ is equivalent to
+T--n; the place of the dash being filled by any vowel. _T_ is readily
+replaced by _th_ or _d_, and _n_ by _ng_; as is known to every
+Philological student. The object, which in English we call _tin_, and
+its name, are peculiar and important in this connection, as combining
+the two ideas in question: 1st, that of outstretched surface or
+_thinness_; and, 2d, that of a persistent tendency to give forth just
+that species of sound which we call, by a slight shade of difference in
+the form of the word, a _din_. The Latin _tintinnabulum_, a little bell,
+and the English _tinkle_, the sound made by a little bell, are among the
+words which are readily recognized as having a natural relation to a
+certain trivial variety of sound. The English _ding-dong_ and
+_ding-dong-bell_ are well-known imitations of sound; and are, at the
+same time, etymologically, mere modifications of the root under
+consideration. As _tone_ and _strain_ or _stretch_ are related in idea,
+as seen in the case of musical notes or tones, is it not as probable
+that the original root-word of which _tan_, _ton_, _thun_, _tin_, _din_,
+_ding_, _dong_, etc., are mere variations, took its rise from the
+imitation of sound, as it is that the fact of _strain_ or _stretch_ was
+the first to be observed and to obtain the name from which, afterward
+and accidentally, so to speak, were derived words which confessedly
+have a relation in their own sound to other and external sounds, as in
+the case of thunder, musical tone, the sheet of tin, and the bell? Is it
+not, in fact, more probable?
+
+In respect to the question whether _sucre_ and _sucre_ were introduced
+into Language because of their resemblance to the idea of sweetness,
+Professor Mueller gives a valid negative answer. He shows that the word
+is derived from the Sanskrit _'sarkhara_, 'which,' as he says, 'is
+anything but sweet sounding.'
+
+The question whether the words under consideration (_sucre_, _sucre_)
+are really sweet-sounding words, Professor Mueller decides by implication
+in the affirmative, and, perhaps, quite unconsciously, by the very act
+of contrasting them with another word which, as he affirms, is not at
+all sweet sounding.
+
+But this is by far the more important point than that of the mere
+historical genesis of the word; and a point which really touches vitally
+the whole question of the nature and Origin of Language.
+
+How should any word be either _sweet-sounding_ or _not sweet-sounding_?
+Sound is a something which has no _taste_, and sweetness is a something
+which makes no _noise_. Now the very gist and crux of this whole
+question of Language consists in confounding or not confounding a case
+like this with _mere_ Onomatopoieia, or the direct and simple imitation
+of one sound by another. All that Professor Mueller says against the
+Origin of Language in this 'bow-wow' way is exceedingly well said; and
+it is important that it should be said. But unconsciously he is now
+confounding with the Bow-wow, something else and totally different; and
+something which is just as vital and profound in regard to the whole
+question of the origin and true basis of the reconstruction of Language,
+as the thing with which he confounds it is trivial and superficial.
+
+The point is so important that I beg the reader's best attention to it,
+in order that he may become fully seized of the idea.
+
+I can imitate very closely the buzz of a bee, by forcing the breath
+through my nearly-touching teeth. A mimic can imitate the natural sounds
+of many animals, and other sounds heard in Nature. This _mere imitation_
+is what Lingual Scholars have dignified by the high-sounding and rather
+repulsive technicality, _Onomatopoieia_. In the early and simple period
+of Lingual Science much has been made, in striving to account for the
+Origin of Language, of this faculty of imitation, and of the fact that
+there are undoubtedly certain words in every language consisting of such
+imitations. It is against this simple and superficial theory that
+Professor Mueller has argued so well. But in these words _sucre_,
+_sucre_, incautiously included by him as instances of the same thing, we
+are in the presence of a very different problem. To imitate one sound by
+another sound is a mere simple, external, and trivial imitation;
+onomatopoieia, and nothing more than that. But to imitate a _sound_, by
+a _taste_, or to recognize that such an imitation has occurred, is a
+testimony to the existence of that recondite and all-important _echo of
+likeness_ through domains of Being themselves the most unlike, which we
+call ANALOGY.
+
+That we do recognize such _analogy_ or _correspondence of meaning_, that
+Professor Mueller himself does so, is admitted when he tells us that
+another form of the words in question is 'not at all sweet-sounding.' It
+is not in this perception, therefore, that we deceive ourselves, but
+only in supposing that these particular words came to mean sugar,
+_because_ they were sweet-sounding. That there is this perception of the
+analogy in question is again confessed by the fact that we have the same
+feeling in respect to the German _suesse_, sweet; while the English words
+_sugar_ and _sweet_, notwithstanding any greater familiarity of
+association, do not convey the same ideas in the same marked degree.
+The words _mellifluous_ (honey-flowing) and _melody_ (honey-sound) are
+themselves standing witnesses in behalf of the existence of the same
+perception. The fact that we instinctually speak of a _sweet_ voice, is
+another witness.
+
+If, then, there is an echo of likeness (real analogy) between these two
+unlike spheres of Thought and Being, _Sound_ and _Taste_, may there not
+be precisely a similar echo through other and all spheres; so that there
+shall be a Something in Number, in Form, in Chemical Constitution, in
+the Properties of Mind, in Ultimate Rational Conceptions, in fine, that
+echoes to this idea, which, by a stretch of the powers of Language, we
+call _sweet_, both in respect to Sound and Taste? May it not have been
+precisely this Something and the other handful of primitive Somethings,
+each with its multitudinous echoes, that the _Nascent Intuition_ of the
+race laid hold of and availed itself of _irreflectively_ for laying the
+foundations of Speech? Again, may it not happen that the _Reflective
+Intellect_ should in turn discover _intelligently_ (or _reflectively_)
+just that _underlying_ system of Analogy which the primitive Instinct
+was competent to appreciate unintelligently; and, by the greater
+clearness of this intelligent perception, be able to elevate the Science
+of Language, and found it upon a new and constructive, instead of upon
+this merely instinctual plane? To all these questions the
+Universologists return an affirmative answer. They go farther, and aver
+that this great intellectual undertaking is now fully achieved, and is
+only awaiting the opportunity for elaborate demonstration and
+promulgation.
+
+A word further on this subject. To pronounce the words _sucre_, _sucre_,
+_suesse_, the lips are necessarily pinched or perked up, in a certain
+exquisite way, as if we were sucking something very gratifying to the
+taste. This consideration carries us over to the further analogy with
+_shapes_ or _forms_, and, hence, with the Organic or Mechanical
+production of sounds; another grand element, the main one, in fact, of
+the whole investigation.
+
+Among the infinite contingencies of the origin and successive
+modifications of words, it is very possible that the word _'sarkhara_,
+although meaning sugar in a particular tongue, may not have primarily
+related to its property of sweetness; and that, therefore, its phonetic
+form should not be accordant with that property. It may have meant the
+_cane-plant_, for instance, before its sweetness was known. Then it is
+possible that a derivative and modified form of the same word should
+happen to drift into that precise phonetic; form which is accordant with
+that property. But the marvel, and the point of importance is, that so
+soon as this happens, the 'instinct' of the race, even that of Professor
+Mueller himself, remains good enough to recognize the fact. 'Who does not
+imagine,' he says, 'that he hears something sweet in the French _sucre_,
+_sucre_?' But why do we all imagine that we hear what does not exist?
+The uniformity of the imagination proves it to be a _real_ perception.
+If the universal consciousness of mankind be not valid evidence, where
+shall we hope to find it?
+
+The consideration of Analogy as existing between the Ultimate Elements
+of Sound and Ultimate Rational Conceptions will be the subject of the
+next paper.
+
+
+
+
+FLOWER ODORS.
+
+
+There is a sheltered nook in a certain garden, where, on a sunny spring
+morning, the passer-by inhales with startled pleasure the very soul of
+the 'sweet south,' and, stooping down, far in among brown and crackling
+leaves, lo the blue hoods of English violets! The fragrance of the
+violet! What flower scent is like it? Does not the subtle
+sweetness--half caught, half lost upon the wind--at times sweep over one
+a vague and thrilling tenderness, an exquisite emotion, partly grief and
+partly mild delight?
+
+The violet is the poet's darling, perhaps because its frail breath seems
+to waft from out the delicate blue petals the rare imaginings native to
+a poet's soul.
+
+May it not be that thus, in the eloquence of perfume, it is but
+rendering to him who can best respond thereto, a revelation of its inner
+essences?--showing, to him who can comprehend the sign, a reason why it
+grows.
+
+Is this too fanciful? Certainly the violet was not made in vain--and in
+the Eternal Correspondence known to higher intelligences than our own,
+there surely must exist a grand and beautiful Flower lore, wherein each
+blossom has an individual word to speak, a lesson to unfold, by form and
+coloring, and, more than all, by exhaled fragrance.
+
+Doubtless there is a mystery here too deep for us in this gross world to
+wholly understand; but can we not search after knowledge? Would we not
+like to grasp an enjoyment less merely of the senses from the geranium's
+balm and the mayflower's spice?
+
+And notice here how strongly association binds us by the sense of
+smell--the sense so closely connected with the brain that, through its
+instrumentality, the mind, it is said, is quickest reached, is soonest
+moved. So that when perfumes quiver through us, are we oftenest
+constrained to blush and smile, or shrink and shiver. Perhaps through
+perfumes also memory knocks the loudest on our heart-doors; until it has
+come to pass that unto scented handkerchief or withering leaf has been
+given full power to fire the eye or blanch the cheek; while from secret
+drawers one starts appalled at flower breaths, stifling, shut up long
+ago. The sprays themselves might drop unheeded down--dead with the young
+hopes that laid them there--but the old-time emotion wraps one yet in
+that undying--ah, how sickening! fragrance.
+
+So in the very nature of the task proposed is couched assistance, since
+thus to the breath of the flowers does association lend its own
+interpretation, driving deep the sharpest stings or dropping down the
+richest consolation through the most humble plants. But is this the end
+of the matter? Is there not, apart from all that our personal interest
+may discover, in each flower an unchanging address all its own--an
+unvaried salutation proffered ever to the world at large? Why is a
+passion wafted through a nosegay? What purifies the air around a lily?
+And why are bridal robes rich with orange blooms?
+
+Surely poetry and tradition have but here divined certain truths,
+omnipotent behind a veil, and recognized their symbols in these chosen
+blossoms?
+
+But if the flowers are truly types, how should they be interpreted?
+
+There are hints laid in their very structure and outer semblance, hints
+afforded also by art and romance from time immemorial; and all these,
+suggestions of the hidden wisdom, must be gathered patiently and wrought
+out to a fuller clearness, through careful attention to the intuitions
+of one's own awakened imagination.
+
+But what expression can be found for the _soul_ of a flower--for the
+evanescent odor that floats upon us only with the dimmest mists of
+meaning?
+
+In a novel of a few years since, a people dwelling in Mid Africa are
+described as skilled in the acts of a singular civilization, and
+especial mention is made of an instrument analogous to an organ, but
+which evoked perfumes instead of musical sounds. A curious idea, but
+possibly giving the nearest representation to be made of the effect of
+odor: by its help, then, by regarding flowers as instruments whose
+fragrant utterances might be as well conveyed in music, we may be able
+to translate aright the effluence that stirs beyond the reach of speech.
+
+Let us now try to distinguish, if only for a pleasant pastime, some few
+favorite strains in those wonderful, _unheard_ melodies with which our
+gardens ring.
+
+Hear first the roses. The beautiful blush rose, opening fresh and rosy
+on a dewy June morning, echoes gleefully the birds' 'secret jargoning.'
+
+The saffron tea-rose is an exotic of exotics, and the daintiest of fine
+ladies bears it in her jewelled fingers to the opera, and there imbues
+it with the languid ecstasy of an Italian melody. The aroma, floating
+round those creamy buds, vibrates to the impassioned agony of artistic
+luxury--to the pleasurable pain that dies away in rippling undulations
+of the tones.
+
+But the red rose is dyed deep with simpler passion. War notes are hers,
+but not trumpet tongued, as they pour from out the fiery cactus. No; it
+is as if a woman's heart thrilled through the red rose to sadden the
+reveille for country and for God!--an irrepressible undertone of
+mourning surging over the anguish that must surely come.
+
+Love songs belong, too, to the damask rose, but love still set to
+martial chords, wrung, as it were, from heroes' wives, in a rapture of
+patriotic sacrifice.
+
+The white roses are St. Cecilia's, and swell to organ strains; all but
+that whitest rose, so wan and fragile, which haunts old shady gardens,
+and never seems to have been there when all things were in their prime,
+but to have blossomed out of the surrounding decay and fading
+loveliness. From its bowed head falls drearily upon the ear a low lament
+over the departed life it would commemorate.
+
+With roses comes the honeysuckle--the real New England one--brimful of
+nutmeg; and the sweetbriar, piquant with a _L'Allegro_ strain left by
+Milton. Then the laburnum, which, dripping gold, drips honey likewise,
+and the locust clusters, and the wistaria, dropping lusciousness.
+
+These are all joy-bells evidently, outbursts of the bliss of nature, but
+the garb of the wistaria is more sober than her brilliant sisters, whose
+attire is bright and shining.
+
+There are flowers that seem set to sacred music. Lilies, white and
+sweet, which, from the Lily of the Annunciation to the lily of the
+valley, are hallowed by every reverent fancy; for
+
+  'In the beauty of the lilies
+  Christ was born across the sea.'
+
+And the little white verbena, which recalls, in some mystic way, the old
+Puritan tune, 'Naomi,' whose words of calm submission are so closely
+interwoven with one's earliest religious faith.
+
+But in contrast to this meek northern saint of a flower, there is a
+southern flush of oleander bloom, that pours out hymns of mystical
+devotion, overflowing with the exuberant vitality, glowing with the
+intense fervor, of the Tropics.
+
+There are flowers, also, the burden of whose odorous airs is sensibly of
+this world only, earthy, sensuous. Such are the cape jessamine and the
+narcissus, alike glistening in satin raiment, and alike distilling
+aromatic essence. Something akin to the waltzes of Strauss, one might
+fancy, is the music suited to their mood.
+
+And the night-blooming cercus--that uncanny white witch of a creature,
+with its petals moulded in wax or ivory, its golden-brown
+leaf-sheathings, and its unequalled emerald (is it a tint, or is it but
+a shadow?) far down within the lovely cup, with that overpowering
+voluptuous odor, burdening the atmosphere, permeating the innermost
+fibres of sensation, steeping the soul in lethargy! What more fit
+exponent can there be for this weird plant's expression than the song of
+the serpent-charmer, the singing which can root the feet unto the ground
+and stay the flowing of the impetuous blood?
+
+But carnations have a wide-awake aspect, which brings one back to
+every-day life again. Their pleasant pungency is like a bugle note. They
+seem glad to start the nerves of human beings.
+
+The tulips have taken the sun home to them. Deep down in their hearts
+you smell it, while you listen to a cheery carol welling up from the
+comfort warm within.
+
+The pond lilies likewise breathe forth the inspiration of the sun. And
+they chant in their pure home thanksgivings therefore, happy songs of
+chaste praise.
+
+These are flowers which _look_ their fragrance; but there are those that
+startle by the contrast between their outer being and their inner
+spirit.
+
+What an intoxicating draught the obscure heliotrope offers! One thinks
+of Heloise in the garments of a nun. The arbutus, also, and the dear
+daphne-cups, plain, unnoticeable little things, remind one of the
+nightingales, so insignificant in their appearance, so peerless in their
+gushes of delicious breath.
+
+The demure Quaker is like the peculiar fragrance of the mignonette. It
+is hard to believe so many people really like mignonette as profess to
+do so, it has such a caviare-to-the-general odor. The popular taste here
+would seem really guided by a fashion of fastidiousness. But the lemon
+verbena--which, if not a flower, is so high-bred an herb that it
+deserves to be considered one--one can easily see why that is valued.
+What a refined, _spirituelle_ smell it has? Hypatia might have worn it,
+or Lady Jane Grey--or better still, Mrs. Browning's Lady Geraldine might
+have plucked it in the pauses of the 'woodland singing' the poet tells
+of.
+
+Nature is very liberal in all things; and we have coarse and
+disagreeable flower odors, supplied by peonies, marigolds, the gay
+bouvardia, and a still more odious greenhouse flower--a yellowish,
+toadlike thing, which those who have once known will never forget, and
+for which perhaps they can supply a name. If odor be the flower's
+expression of its soul, what rude and evil tenants must dwell within
+those luckless mansions!
+
+But if a flower's soul speaks through odor, what of scentless blossoms?
+Are they dumb or dead? Some may be too young to speak--as the infantile
+anemones, daisies, and innocents.
+
+Perhaps some are thus most meet for symbols of the dead; the stately,
+frozen calla, which seems a fit trophy, bound with laurel leaves, to lay
+upon a soldier's bier; and the snow-cold camelia, whose stony
+sculpturing is the very emblem for those white features whence God has
+drained away the life.
+
+But, camelias warmed with color, fuchsias, abutilons, the cultivated
+azalia (the wild one has a scent), asters, and a host of other loved and
+lovely flowers--why are they deprived of language?
+
+Perhaps they _have_ a fragrance, felt by subtler senses than we mortals
+own. But, at least, if they must now appear as mute, we may yet hope
+that in a more spiritual existence we shall behold their very doubles,
+gifted with a novel charm, a captivating perfume, we cannot conceive of
+here. For in the vast harmony of the universe one cannot believe there
+can be any floral instruments whose strings are never to be awakened.
+
+It _has_ been but the pastime of a half hour that we have given to the
+flower odors, when an ever-widening field for speculation lies before
+us. But imagination droops exhausted, baffled by the innumerable
+enchanting riddles still to solve. And this must now suffice.
+
+If it serve to excite any dormant thought in the more ingenious mind of
+another--if it be able to call out the learned conceits of some scholar,
+or the delicate symbolisms of some dreamer, it has done its work.
+
+The hand that has thus far guided the pen, to dally with a subject all
+the dearer because so generally disregarded, will now gladly yield it to
+the control of a fresher fancy, a truer observation.
+
+
+
+
+LOCOMOTION.
+
+
+The utilitarian spirit of the age is strikingly exhibited in the intense
+desire to diminish the quantity of time necessary to pass from one spot
+of the earth's surface to another, and to communicate almost
+instantaneously with a remote distance. The great triumphs of genius,
+within the last half century, have been accomplished within the domain
+of commerce. And in contemplating the progress which has ensued, it is a
+cause of humiliation that, as in the case of other great discoveries, so
+many centuries have elapsed, during which the powers of steam, an
+element almost constantly within the observation of man, were, although
+perceived, unemployed. But reflection upon the nature of man, and his
+slow advancement in the great path of fact and science, will at once
+hush the expression of our wondering regret over the past, while a
+nobler occupation for the mind offers itself in speculation upon the
+future. The plank road, the canal, the steamboat, and the railway, are
+all the productions of the last few years. At the close of the last
+century, with the exception of a few military roads inherited from the
+Romans, and the roads of the same description constructed by Napoleon,
+the means of communication between distant parts was almost entirely
+confined to inland seas and the larger rivers. It is for this reason
+that the maritime cities and provinces attained such disproportionate
+wealth.
+
+The invention of _chariots_, and the manner of harnessing horses to draw
+them, is ascribed to Ericthonius of Athens, B.C. 1486. The chariots of
+the ancients were like our _phaetons_, and drawn by one horse. The
+invention of the _chaise_, or calash, is ascribed to Augustus Caesar,
+about A.D. 7. Postchaises were introduced by Trajan about A.D. 100.
+_Carriages_ were known in France in the reign of Henry II., A.D. 1547;
+there were but three in Paris in 1550; they were of rude construction.
+Henry IV. had one, but it was without straps or springs. A strong
+cob-horse (_haquenee_) was let for short journeys; latterly these were
+harnessed to a plain vehicle, called _coche-a-haquenee_: hence the name,
+_hackney coach_. They were first let for hire in Paris, in 1650, at the
+Hotel Fiacre. They were known in England in 1555, but not the art of
+making them. When first manufactured in England, during the reign of
+Elizabeth, they were called _whirlicotes_. The duke of Buckingham, in
+1619, drove six horses, and the duke of Northumberland, in rivalry,
+drove eight. _Cabs_ are also of Parisian origin, where the driver sat in
+the inside; but the aristocratic tastes of the English suggested the
+propriety of compelling the driver to be seated outside. _Omnibuses_
+also originated in Paris, and were introduced into London in 1827, by
+an enterprising coach proprietor named Shillaber. They were introduced
+into New York, in 1828, by Kipp & Brown. _Horse railroads_ were
+introduced into New York, in 1851, upon the Sixth Avenue.
+
+In 1660 there were but six _stage coaches_ in England; two days were
+occupied in passing from London to Oxford, fifty-four miles. In 1669, it
+was announced that a vehicle, described as the _flying coach_, would
+perform the whole journey between sunrise and sunset. It excited as much
+interest as the opening of a new railway in our time. The Newcastle
+_Courant_, of October 11th, 1812, advertises 'that all that desire to
+pass from Edinborough to London, or from London to Edinborough, or any
+place on that road, let them repair to Mr. John Baillie's, at the Coach
+and Horses, at the head of Cannongate, Edinborough, every other
+Saturday; or to the Black Swan, in Holborn, every other Monday; at both
+of which places they may be received in a stage coach, which performs
+the whole journey in _thirteen days, without any stoppage_ (_if God
+permit_), having eighty able horses to perform the whole stage--each
+passenger paying L4 10s. for the whole journey. The coach sets out at
+six in the morning.' And it was not until 1825 that a daily line of
+stage coaches was established between the two cities, accomplishing the
+distance in forty-six hours. And even so late as 1835 there were only
+seven coaches which ran daily.
+
+In 1743, Benjamin Franklin, postmaster of Philadelphia, in an
+advertisement, dated April 14th, announces 'that the northern post will
+set out for New York on Thursdays, at three o'clock in the afternoon,
+till Christmas. The southern post sets out next Monday for Annapolis,
+and continues going every fortnight during the summer season.' In 1773,
+Josiah Quincy, father and grandfather of the mayors of that name, of
+Boston, spent thirty-three days upon a journey from Georgetown, South
+Carolina, to Philadelphia. In 1775, General Washington was eleven days
+going from Philadelphia to Boston; upon his arrival at Watertown the
+citizens turned out and congratulated him upon the _speed_ of his
+journey! Fifty years ago the regular mail time, between New York and
+Albany, was eight days. Even as late as 1824, the United States mail was
+thirty-two days in passing from Portland to New Orleans. The news of the
+death of Napoleon Bonaparte, at St. Helena, May 5th, 1821, reached New
+York on the fifteenth day of August.
+
+Canals were known to the ancients, and have been used, in a small way,
+by all nations, particularly the Dutch. But the world did not awake to
+their importance until 1817, when the State of New York entered upon the
+Erie Canal project, which was completed in 1825. The introduction of
+steamboats for river navigation, and of locomotives upon railways, have
+superseded canals, and invested them with an air of antiquity. It was
+not until 1807 that Robert Fulton put his first vessel in operation on
+the Hudson River.
+
+To the American steamship Savannah, built by Croker & Fickett, at
+Corlear's Hook, New York, is universally conceded the honor of being the
+first steam-propelled vessel that ever crossed the Atlantic ocean. She
+was three hundred and eighty tons burden, ship-rigged, and was equipped
+with a horizontal engine, placed between decks, with boilers in the
+hold. She was built through the agency of Captain Moses Rogers, by a
+company of gentlemen, with a view of selling her to the emperor of
+Russia. She sailed from New York in 1819, and went first to Savannah;
+thence she proceeded direct to Liverpool, where she arrived after a
+passage of eighteen days, during seven of which she was under steam. As
+it was nearly or quite impossible to carry sufficient fuel for the
+voyage, during pleasant weather the wheels were removed, and canvas
+substituted. At Liverpool she was visited by many persons of
+distinction, and afterward departed for Elsinore, on her way to St.
+Petersburg. She was not, however, sold as expected, and next touched at
+Copenhagen, where Captain Rogers was offered one hundred thousand
+dollars for her by the king of Sweden; but the offer was declined. She
+then sailed for home, putting into Elsington, on the coast of Norway.
+From the latter place she was twenty-two days in reaching Savannah. On
+account of the high price of fuel, she carried no steam on the return
+passage, and the wheels were taken off. Upon the completion of the
+voyage, she was purchased by Captain Nathaniel Holdredge, divested of
+her steam apparatus, and run as a packet between Savannah and New York.
+She subsequently went ashore on Long Island, and broke up. Sixty
+thousand dollars were sunk in the transaction. Captain Rogers died a few
+years ago on the Pee Dee river, North Carolina. He is believed to be the
+first man that ran a steamboat to Philadelphia or Baltimore. The mate
+was named Stephen Rogers, and was living a few years ago at New London,
+Connecticut.
+
+The first railway in England was between Stockton and Darlington; and
+the first locomotive built in the world was used upon that road, and is
+still in existence, being preserved at Darlington depot, upon a platform
+erected for the purpose; the date 1825 is engraved upon its plate. The
+first railway charter in the United States was granted March 4th, 1826,
+to Thomas H. Perkins and others, 'to convey granite from the ledges in
+Quincy to tidewater in that town.' The first railway in the United
+States upon which passengers were conveyed, was the Baltimore and Ohio,
+which was opened December 28, 1829, to Ellicott's Mills, thirteen miles
+from Baltimore. A single horse was attached to two of Winan's carriages,
+containing forty-one persons, which were drawn, with ease, eleven miles
+per hour. The South Carolina Railway, from Charleston to Hamburg, was
+the first constructed in the United States with a view to use _steam_
+instead of _animal_ power. The first locomotive constructed in the
+United States was built for this road. It was named the _Best Friend_,
+and afterward changed to _Phoenix_. It was built at the West Point
+foundery by the Messrs. Kemble, under the direction of E.L. Miller, Esq.
+Its performance was tested on the 9th December, 1830, and exceeded
+expectations. To Mr. Miller, therefore, belongs the honor of planning
+and constructing the first locomotive operated in the United States.
+This road was the first to carry the United States mail, and, when
+completed, October 2d, 1833, one hundred and thirty-seven miles in
+length, was the longest railway in the world. The number of miles of
+railway in operation in the United States, at the present time, is
+thirty-two thousand; and the number of passengers conveyed upon them in
+1863 was one hundred millions. Railways did not cross the Mississippi
+river until 1851. The number of miles of railway in the world is
+seventy-two thousand; and the amount of steamboat tonnage is five
+millions of tons.
+
+Yet more astonishing than the railway is the magnetic telegraph, whose
+exploits are literally miraculous, annihilating space and time. The
+extremities of the globe are brought into immediate contact; the
+merchant, the friend, or the lover converses with whom he wishes, though
+thousands of miles apart, as if they occupied the same parlor; and the
+speech uttered in Washington to-day may be read in San Francisco three
+hours before it is delivered. Could the wires be extended around the
+globe, we should be able to hear the news one day before it occurred.
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+     NAOMI TORRENTE: The History of a Woman. By GERTRUDE F. DE VINGUT.
+     'Every dream of love argues a reality in the world of supreme
+     beauty. Believe all that thy heart prompts, for everything that it
+     seeks, exists.'--_Plato_. New York: John Bradburn (late M.
+     Doolady), publisher, 49 Walker street.
+
+
+Who could look on the fair high face, facing our title page, and have
+the heart to criticize the revelations of its soul? Naomi is a book of
+feeling, passion, and considerable, if not yet mature, power. It is
+dedicated to Sr. Dn. Juan Clemente Zenea, editor of _La Charanga_,
+Havana. Our authoress says in her dedication: 'It is to you, therefore;
+and those who like you have deeply felt, that the history of a woman's
+soul-life will prove more interesting than the mere narrative of the
+chances and occurrences that make up the every-day natural existence.'
+Naomi is a woman of artistic genius and passionate character, becalmed
+in the stagnation of conventional life, who, throwing off the fetters of
+an uncongenial and inconsiderate marriage, attempts to find happiness
+and independence in the cultivation of her own powers. She is eminently
+successful as prima donna, is brilliant and self-sustained--but fails to
+attain the imagined happiness, the Love-Eden so fervently sought.
+
+
+     MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS. By the Author of 'The Queen of the
+     Country,' 'The Challenge,' etc. 'Queen Rose of the Rosebud garden
+     of girls.'--_Tennyson_. Loring, publisher, 314 Washington street,
+     Boston. 1864.
+
+A novel of domestic life, in which the plot, apparently simple, is yet
+artistic and skilfully managed. The thread of life of the bridesmaids is
+held with that of the bride, the development of character, distinctly
+marked in each, progresses through a series of natural events, until the
+young people reach the point of life when impulse settles into
+principle, amiability into virtue, generosity into self-abnegation, and
+we feel that each may now be safely left to life as it is, that
+circumstance can no longer mould character, and are willing to leave
+them, certain they will henceforth remain true to themselves, and to
+those whose happiness may depend upon them, whatever else may betide.
+The bride is a pure, sweet, generous woman, but the character of the
+book is decidedly Lotty. Childish, petite, and indulged, she is yet
+magnanimous, brave, and self-sacrificing; fiery, fearless, and frank,
+she is still patient, forbearing, and reticent; we love her as child,
+while we soon learn to venerate her as woman. She and her docile
+bloodhound, Bear, form pictures full of magic contrast, groups of which
+we never tire. The cordiality and heartiness of her admiring relatives,
+the Beauvilliers, are contagious; we live for the time in their life,
+and grow stronger as we read. The book is charming. Its moral is
+unexceptionable, its characters well drawn, its plot and incidents
+simple and natural, and its interest sustained from beginning to end.
+
+
+     ENOCH ARDEN, etc. By ALFRED TENNYSON, D.C.L., Poet Laureate.
+     Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1864.
+
+Tennyson has so many devoted admirers, that this volume cannot fail to
+receive due attention. The principal poem therein, Enoch Arden, is one
+of touching pathos and simplicity. Three children, Enoch Arden, Philip
+Ray, and Annie Lee, grew up together on the British coast a hundred
+years ago. Both youths loved Annie: she loved and married Enoch. They
+live happily together until three children are born to the house: then
+poverty threatens, and Arden leaves home to provide for the loved ones.
+He is cast away on an island, is not heard, from for ten years, and
+Annie reluctantly consents to marry Philip, who has been a father to her
+children during their long orphanage. Arden returns at last to his
+native village, so old, gray, and broken, that no one recognizes him.
+He hears how true his wife had been to him until all hope had died away,
+and how Philip cared for her peace, and cherished his children. The
+wretched man resolves to bear his grief in silence, and never to bring
+agony and shame to a peaceful home by disclosing his return. He does
+this in a spirit of Christian self-abnegation, lives near the
+unconscious darlings of his heart, earns his frugal living, watching
+round, but never entering the lost Paradise of his youth. He dies, and
+only at the hour of death, reveals to Annie how he had lived and loved.
+The _theme_ of this tale has often been taken before. It has been
+elaborated with passion and power in the 'Homeward Bound' of Adelaide
+Procter, a poetess too little known among us.
+
+There is great purity of delineation and conception in Enoch Arden. The
+characters stand out real and palpable in their statuesque simplicity.
+There is agony enough, but neither impatience nor sin. The epithets are
+well chosen; but the usual wildering sensuousness of Tennyson's glowing
+imagery is subdued and tender throughout the progress of this melancholy
+tale.
+
+'Aylmer's Field,' about the same length, is a poem of more stormy mould.
+It hurls fierce rebukes at family pride, and just censures at tyrannical
+parents.
+
+The volume contains many shorter poems, some of which are already
+familiar to our readers.
+
+
+     AZARIAN: An Episode. By HARRIET ELIZABETH PRESCOTT, Author of 'The
+     Amber Gods,' etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
+
+We like 'Azarian' better than any work we have yet seen from Miss
+Prescott. Ruth Yetton, the heroine, is so truly feminine, she might
+serve as a type of half our innocent maidens from sixteen to twenty.
+Azarian is real and drawn to the life, a hero who has his counterpart in
+every civilized city; a man of _savoir-vivre_, glittering and
+attractive, but selfish, inconsequent, frivolous, and deadly to the
+peace of those who love him. Miss Prescott's style is elaborate and
+florid, frequently of rare beauty, always giving evidence of culture and
+scholarship. Do we find fault with the hundred-leaved rose? Her fancy is
+luxuriant, of more power than her imagination. Her descriptions of
+flowers in the volume before us are accurate and tenderly beautiful. She
+knows them all, and evidently loves them well. Nor are the fragile
+blossoms of the trees less dear to her. She reads their secrets, and
+treasures them in her heart. She paints them with her glowing words, and
+placing our old darlings before us again, exultingly points out their
+hidden charms.
+
+
+     THE FOREST ARCADIA OF NORTHERN NEW YORK: Embracing a View of its
+     Mineral, Agricultural, and Timber Resources. Boston: Published by
+     T.O.H.P. Burnham. New York: Oliver S. Felt. 1864.
+
+The author of this pleasant, unpretending little book visited the 'great
+wilderness of Northern New York, which lies in St. Lawrence county, on
+the western slope of the Adirondack Mountains. It forms part of an
+extensive plateau, embracing an area of many thousand square miles, and
+is elevated from fifteen to eighteen hundred feet above the sea. The
+mineral resources of the plateau are of great value, immense ranges of
+magnetic iron traverse the country, and there are indications of more
+valuable minerals in a few localities. Of its agricultural importance
+too much cannot be said. The soil is rich and strong, peculiarly adapted
+to the grazing of cattle. The climate is that of the hill country of New
+England.'
+
+The reader will see from this extract of what the book treats. The
+volume is pleasantly and simply written, imparts considerable
+information with respect to the region which it describes, is redolent
+of spicy forest breath, and brings before us Indian, deer, and beaver.
+
+
+     RHODE ISLAND IN THE REBELLION. By EDWIN W. STONE, of the First
+     Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery. Providence: George H.
+     Whitney. 1864.
+
+'These Letters were written amid camp scenes and on the march,' says our
+author, 'under circumstances unfavorable to literary composition, and
+were intended for private perusal alone. Portions of them appeared in
+the _Providence Journal_, and were received with a favor alike
+unexpected and gratifying. Numerous requests having been made that they
+should be gathered up as a Rhode Island contribution to the history of
+the War of the Rebellion, the author, with unaffected distrust of
+himself, has yielded to the judgment of others. While the aim has been
+to show the honorable position of the State in an unhappy war, it has
+also been the design to present a comprehensive view of the consecutive
+campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, with the fortunes of which several
+of the Rhode Island regiments and most of the batteries have, for longer
+or shorter periods, been identified.'
+
+It is a noble record for Rhode Island, and a valuable contribution to
+the history of the war. It deals with facts, not polities or prejudices.
+We think every loyal State should prepare such a volume. A simple and
+reliable statement of what she has herself done, a sketch of her heroes
+of all ranks and parties, of her batteries, regiments, and companies, of
+her commandants and the battles in which her troops bore part, should be
+therein contained. This would lead to noble emulation among the States
+struggling for a common cause, and would be of great value both to State
+and general history. We look upon this book as a beginning in the right
+way. Such national records of nobly borne suffering and deeds of glory
+would be truly Books of Honor.
+
+
+     ROBINSON'S MATHEMATICAL SERIES: Arithmetical Examples; or, Test
+     Exercises for the Use of Advanced Classes. New York: Ivison,
+     Phinney, Blakeman & Co., 48 & 50 Walker street. Chicago: S.C.
+     Griggs & Co., 39 & 41 Lake street. 1864.
+
+This book was issued to meet the demand in advanced schools for a larger
+number of carefully prepared and practical examples for review and drill
+exercises than are furnished from ordinary text books, and may be used
+in connection with any other books on this subject. 'The examples are
+designed to test the pupil's judgment; to bring into use his knowledge
+of the theory and applications of numbers; to cultivate habits of
+patient investigation and self-reliance; to test the truth and accuracy
+of his own processes by proof--the only test he will have to depend on
+in the real business transactions of afterlife; in a word, to make him
+independent of all text books, of written rules and analyses.'
+
+
+     A LATIN GRAMMAR FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. By ALBERT HARKNESS, Ph.
+     D., Professor in Brown University, Author of 'A First Latin Book,'
+     'A Second Latin Book,' 'A First Greek Book,' etc. New York: D.
+     Appleton & Co., 443 & 445 Broadway.
+
+Prof. Harkness's Grammar will be welcomed both by teacher and student.
+Our author is a man of great experience in the subjects of which he
+treats, and we doubt not he has supplied a general want in the work
+before us, and furnished a true grammar of the Latin tongue, worthy of
+adoption in all our educational institutions.
+
+
+     RITA: An Autobiography. By HAMILTON AIDE, Author of 'Confidences,'
+     'Carr of Carrlyon,' 'Mr. and Mrs. Faulconbridge,' etc. Boston:
+     Published by T.O.P. Burnham. New York: Oliver S. Felt.
+
+This novel is the autobiography of a young English girl, thrown by her
+father, a man of high birth, but worthless character, into the vicious
+influences of corrupt English and French society. The story is one of a
+constant struggle between these base examples on the one hand, and a
+strong sense of right and justice on the other. The plot is original and
+quite elaborate, and the interest well sustained. The character of the
+unprincipled, heartless, gambling father is well drawn, as well as that
+of the weak but self-sacrificing mother. Some of the scenes evince
+considerable power.
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S TABLE
+
+
+Readers of THE CONTINENTAL, your servant and faithful caterer has been a
+sad idler and vagrant for the last month, thinking more of his own
+pleasures than of your needs and requirements. Forgive him, he is again
+a working bee and seeking honey for your hives. Have patience, irate
+correspondents; we have absconded with no manuscripts, and are again at
+our desk to give bland answers to curt missives.
+
+We have been among the Adirondacks; congratulate us right heartily
+thereon! We have traversed pathless primeval forests of larches,
+balsams, white pines, and sugar maples; we have floated upon lakes
+lovely enough to have mirrored Paradise; we have clambered down
+waterfalls whose broken drops turned into diamonds as they fell; have
+scaled mountains and seen earth in its glory, and looked clear up into
+the infinite blue of the eye of God.
+
+We have seen the gleaming trout, changeful as a prisoned rainbow, lured
+from his cool stream; and the poor deer chased from his forest home by
+savage dogs and cruel men, driven into crystal lakes, lassoed there with
+ropes, throats cut with dull knives, and backs broken with flying balls.
+Immortal Shakspeare! had thy lines no power to awaken pity for
+frightened fawn and flying doe? Did they not see
+
+  'The wretched animal heave forth such groans
+  That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
+  Almost to bursting; while the big round tears
+  Coursed one another down his innocent nose
+  In Piteous chase?'
+
+Alas, 'poor hairy fool!' why should they seek thee in thy mountain
+homes?
+
+We have sat by the side of fair fragile country girls, and heard the
+experiences of the stout pioneers of civilization. We have tried to keep
+step with city maidens, shorn of ridiculous hoops and trailing trains.
+We nave known them trip up the great sides of Tahawus, press through the
+trunked and bouldered horrors of Indian Pass, float over Lake Placid,
+and scale the long steep slide up the crest of White Face. Lovely as
+dreams and light as clouds, no toil stayed them, no danger appalled;
+panther, wolf, and bear stories were told in vain by lazy brothers and
+reluctant lovers; on they went in their restless search for beauty,
+their Turkish dress and scarlet tunics gleaming through the trees, to
+the delight of the old mountain guides, who chuckled over their
+Camilla-like exploits, and laughed, as they plucked the fragrant boughs
+for their spicy couch, over the ignorance and awkwardness of their lazy
+city beaux. These fair Dians shoot no deer, nor lure the springing
+trout. We blessed them as they went their thymy way.
+
+We have sat in the hut of the farmer, the skiff of the oarsman, the
+parlor of the host of the inn; tried wagons, stages, and buck-board
+conveyances; we have disputed no bill, been subjected to no extortion,
+and, save the death of the 'hairy fools,' known no sorrow. We have sat
+by the grave of old John Brown, seen the glorious view from his simple
+home, heard his strange generosity extolled by his political enemies,
+and think we understand better than of old the sublime madness of his
+fanaticism. We have returned to our labor with a new love of country, a
+deeper sense of responsibility, of the worth of our institutions, and of
+the glory yet to be in 'Our Great America.' What a land to live and die
+for! Every drop of martyr blood poured upon it but makes it dearer to
+the heart.
+
+
+
+
+PEERLESS COLUMBIA.
+
+
+_A National Song._
+
+            God of our Fathers,
+              Smile on our land!
+            Lo, the storm gathers--
+              Stretch forth Thy hand!
+
+  _Chorus._--Shield us and guard us from mountain to sea!
+            Make the homes happy where manhood is free!
+
+            Brave is our nation,
+              Hopeful and young;
+            High is her station
+              Countries among.
+
+  _Chorus._--Holy our banner! from mountain to sea
+            Floating in splendor o'er homes ever free.
+
+            Proud is our story,
+              Written in light;
+            Stars tell its glory,
+              Victory, might.
+
+  _Chorus._--Peerless Columbia! from mountain to sea
+            Throbs every pulse through the heart of the free.
+
+            Up with our banner!
+              Hope in each fold--
+            Stout hearts will man her,
+              Millions untold.
+
+  _Chorus._--Millions now greet her from mountain to sea,
+            Hope of the toil-worn! blest Flag of the free!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following thoughts on some of the uses subserved by Art, are from
+the pen of the Rev. J. Byington Smith. There is so much truth in their
+suggestions, that we heartily commend them to our readers.
+
+
+ART AS A MEANS OF HOME-CULTURE.
+
+BY J. BYINGTON SMITH.
+
+Art is closely allied to nature in giving impress to character. The
+scenery by which a people is surrounded, will modify and almost control
+its mode of being. The soft, rich landscapes of Italy enervate, while
+the rough mountainous country of the North imparts force and vigor.
+Mountains and seas are nature's healthful stimulants. Man grows in their
+vastness and is energized in their strength. Whatever may be the scenery
+of a people, it will mirror itself in the mind, and stamp its impress
+upon character.
+
+Art reproduces nature, arranging its illimitable stores in closer unity,
+idealizing its charms, and bringing into nearer view its symmetry and
+beauty. Bearing its lessons from afar, it colors the glowing canvas and
+chisels the stone to awaken the impressions it designs to make on the
+human soul. Thus art, like nature, becomes a means of culture. When the
+Lombards wished to give hardihood and system to the enervated body and
+enfeebled mind of the people, they covered their churches with the
+sculptured representation of vigorous bodily exercises, such as war and
+hunting. In the great church of St. Mark, at Venice, people were taught
+the history of the Scriptures by means of imagery; a picture on the
+walls being more easily read than a chapter. Such walls were styled the
+poor man's Bible.
+
+A picture reveals at a single glance that which we would be otherwise
+forced to glean by a slow process from the scattered material furnished
+by the printed page; hence the delight taken in illustrations, the
+importance of pictorial instruction for the young, and the almost
+universal demand for the illustrated publications of the day.
+
+The teaching of art through painting, sculpture, and engraving, finds
+its way into our homes, and while lessons may be duly read from books
+and then laid aside, the lessons in the niche or on the wall repeat
+themselves hour by hour, and day by day, looking even into the pure eyes
+of infancy, and aiding in the formation of the character of every child
+subjected to their ceaseless influence. Their power is none the less
+because they never break the home-silence; they mould the young life and
+stamp their impress upon it. How important then that all such objects
+should be chosen, not only as treasures of artistic beauty, but for
+their power to elevate and ennoble character.
+
+How often will you find in the room of the scholar, the studio of the
+artist, the picture or bust of some old master in art or letters, as if
+the occupant were conscious of the incentive such presence offered to
+his own efforts--the guardian genius of the spot.
+
+In the study of one of the old divines might have been seen a painted
+eye, gazing forever down upon him, to render him sensible of the
+presence of the All-Seeing--to stamp the 'Thou God seest me' upon the
+very tablets of his heart.
+
+A child is not so readily tempted into sin when surrounded by pure and
+beautiful imagery, or when gentle loving eyes are looking down upon him.
+On the other hand, the walls of the degraded are lined with amorous and
+obscene images, that vicious habits and debased tastes may find their
+suitable incentives.
+
+A window shade bearing the design of a little girl issuing, basket in
+hand, from the door of a humble cottage, to relieve the wants of a poor
+blind beggar, will certainly take its place among the early developments
+of the children growing up under its influence, and in their simple
+charity they may be found, basket in hand, looking out for real or
+fancied beggars. Such lessons are never lost. In a parlor which I often
+frequent is a picture of a Sabbath scene: an aged grand-sire is seated
+by a table on which lies an open Bible, a bright-eyed boy is opposite,
+his father and mother on either side, a little shy girl is on the knee
+of the old man, all are listening reverently to the holy Word of God,
+books and a vase of gay flowers are on the table, green boughs fill the
+great old-fashioned fireplace. The whole picture wears an air of
+serenity and calm happiness, and is an impressive plea that we 'remember
+and keep holy the Sabbath day'--and we verily believe that such a
+picture will do more to influence our children to love the Sabbath, than
+any amount of parental restraint or lectures on moral obligation.
+
+There is another picture in the same quiet room: 'The Mother's Dream.'
+She is worn with watching, and lies dreaming beside the couch of the
+child. Rays of light open a bright pathway into the skies, while an
+angel is bearing the spirit child along it up to heaven. We think such a
+picture is worth more to familiarize childhood with death and
+resurrection, and will leave a sweeter and more lasting impression upon
+the young soul, than the most learned dissertation or simplest
+explanation.
+
+Landscape painting exerts a mellowing influence, and leads to the
+observation and love of nature, while historical pictures stimulate
+research, and nerve the mind to deeds of heroism and virtue.
+
+The influence of pictures in forming character and shaping the course of
+life is illustrated with peculiar power in the history of the sons of a
+quiet family in the interior, who all insisted upon going to sea. The
+parents were grieved that none of their boys would remain at home to
+care for the homestead, and be the comfort of their declining years.
+They expressed their disappointment to a friend then on a visit to them,
+and wondered what could have induced the boys, one after the other, to
+embrace a life so full of storm and danger. Directly over the open
+fireplace hung a picture of a vessel with fluttering, snowy sails,
+tossing and rocking amid the bright, green, yeasty waves. The friend saw
+it, read the mystery, and quietly inquired how long it had been there.
+'Since we commenced housekeeping,' was the unconscious reply. Not
+wishing to wound them, he was silent, and concealed his thoughts in his
+own breast, but the solution of the choice of life in the absent ones
+was clear enough to him: _that picture had sent them off, one after
+another, to sea_.
+
+How careful we should then be in surrounding youth and childhood with
+pure, elevating objects of art, as means of constant home-culture! We
+know we shall be told, 'This is all very good, but we cannot afford it.'
+Let us reason together. Can you not deduct something from your elaborate
+furniture, your expensive dress, and devote it to models, lithographs,
+or paintings? Subtract but the half from these luxuries and devote the
+sum to designs of art, and you will contribute doubly to the
+attractiveness and pleasantness of your home. Where we cannot hope to
+possess the original masterpiece, we may have photographic or
+lithographic copies, which are within the compass of very humble means.
+You will freely toss away five dollars in useless embroidery or surplus
+furniture, and it would buy you a lithograph of Raphael's immortal
+picture, giving the results of a whole age of artistic culture, or a
+photograph of Cheney's Madonna and Child, bearing the very spirit of the
+original, or a plaster cast of noble statuary, the original of which
+could not be obtained for any namable sum--and yet you say you cannot
+afford works of art!
+
+There is surely nothing you can afford better than to make your home
+attractive, and to introduce therein every available means of mental and
+moral culture. If you cannot afford to make home lovely, others will
+succeed in making dangerous places attractive to your children. There
+are spots enough kept light and picturesque, perilously fascinating to
+those whose homes boast no attractions. It will likely cost you far more
+in money, more surely in heart-anguish and sorrow, to have your children
+entertained in these places full of snares, where corrupt art lavishes
+her designs with unsparing hand, to vitiate the young imagination and
+debase the mind, than to exalt her in her chaste and ennobling power in
+the sanctuary of your homes, as one of the means of home-culture,
+stimulating to virtue and stamping the character with genuine worth.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4,
+October, 1864, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY ***
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