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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24,
+Oct. 1859, by Various
+#24 in our series by Various
+
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+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9381]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 27, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. 4, NO. 24 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+
+VOL. IV.--OCTOBER, 1859.--NO. XXIV.
+
+
+
+DAILY BEAUTY.
+
+Toward the end of a city morning, that is, about four o'clock in the
+afternoon, Stanford Grey, and his guest, Daniel Tomes, paused in an
+argument which had engaged them earnestly for more than half an hour.
+What they had talked about it concerns us not to know. We take them as
+we find them, each leaning back in his chair, confirmed in the opinion
+that he had maintained, convinced only of his opponent's ability and
+rectitude of purpose, and enjoying the gradual subsidence of the
+excitement that accompanies the friendliest intellectual strife as
+surely as it does the gloved set-tos between those two "talented
+professors of the noble science of self-defence" who beat each other
+with stuffed buck-skin, at notably brief intervals, for the benefit of
+the widow and children of the late lamented Slippery Jim, or some other
+equally mysterious and eminent person.
+
+The room in which they sat was one of those third rooms on the first
+floor, by which city house-builders, self-styled architects, have made
+the second room useless except at night, in their endeavor to reconcile
+a desire for a multitude of apartments with the fancied necessity that
+compels some men to live where land costs five dollars the square foot.
+The various members of Mr. Grey's household designated this room by
+different names. The servants called it the library; Mrs. Grey and two
+small people, the delight and torment of her life, papa's study; and
+Grey himself spoke of it as his workshop, or his den. Against every
+stretch of wall a bookcase rose from floor to ceiling, upon the shelves
+of which the books stood closely packed in double ranks, the varied
+colors of the rows in sight wooing the eye by their harmonious
+arrangement. A pedestal in one corner supported a half-size copy of the
+Venus of Milo, that masterpiece of sculpture; in its faultless amplitude
+of form, its large life-giving loveliness, and its sweet dignity, the
+embodiment of the highest type of womanhood. In another corner stood a
+similar reduction of the Flying Mercury. Between the bookcases and over
+the mantel-piece hung prints;--most noticeable among them, Steinla's
+engraving of Raphael's Sistine Madonna, and Toschi's reproduction, in
+lines, of the luminous majesty of Correggio's St. Peter and St. Paul;
+and these were but specimens of the treasures inclosed in a huge
+portfolio that stood where the light fell favorably upon it. Opposite
+Grey's chair, when in its place, (it was then wheeled half round toward
+his guest,) a portrait of Raphael and one of Beethoven flanked a copy
+of the Avon bust of Shakespeare; and where the wallpaper peeped through
+this thick array of works of literature and art, it showed a tint of
+soft tea-green. In the middle of the room a large library-table groaned
+beneath a mass of books and papers, some of them arranged in formal
+order, others disarranged by present use into that irregular order which
+seems chaotic to every eye but one, while for that one the displacement
+of a single sheet would insure perplexity and loss of time. But neither
+spreading table nor towering cases seemed to afford their owner room
+enough to store his printed treasures. Books were everywhere. Below the
+windows the recesses were filled out with crowded shelves; the door of a
+closet, left ajar, showed that the place was packed with books, roughly
+or cheaply clad, and pamphlets. At the bottom of the cases, books
+stretched in serried files along the floor. Some had crept up upon the
+library-steps, as if, impatient to rejoin their companions, they were
+mounting to the shelves of their own accord. They invaded all accessible
+nooks and crannies of the room; big folios were bursting out from the
+larger gaps, and thin quartos trickling through chinks that otherwise
+would have been choked with dust; and even from the mouldings above the
+doors bracketed shelves thrust out, upon which rows of volumes perched,
+like penguins on a ledge of rock. In fact, books flocked there as
+martlets did to Macbeth's castle; there was "no jutty frieze or coigne
+of vantage" but a book had made it his "pendent bed,"--and it appeared
+"his procreant cradle" too; for the children, in calling the great
+folios "papa-books" and "mamma-books," seemed instinctively to have
+hit upon the only way of accounting for the rapid increase and
+multiplication of volumes in that apartment.
+
+Upon this scene the light fell, tempered by curtains, at the cheapness
+and simplicity of which a fashionable upholsterer would have sneered,
+but toward whose graceful folds, and soft, rich hues, the study-wearied
+eye turned ever gratefully. The two friends sat silently for some
+minutes in ruminative mood, till Grey, turning suddenly to Tomes,
+asked,--
+
+"What does Iago mean, when he says of Cassio,--
+
+'He hath a daily beauty in his life,
+That makes me ugly'?"
+
+"How can you ask the question?" Tomes replied; adding, after a moment's
+pause, "he means, more plainly than any other words can tell, that
+Cassio's truthful nature and manly bearing, his courtesy, which was the
+genuine gold of real kindness brought to its highest polish, and not a
+base alloy of selfishness and craft galvanized into a surface-semblance
+of such worth, his manifest reverence for and love of what was good and
+pure and noble, his charitable, generous, unenvious disposition, his
+sweetness of temper, and his gallantry, all of which found expression in
+face or action, made a character so lovely and so beautiful that every
+daily observer of them both found him, Iago, hateful and hideous by
+comparison."
+
+_Grey_. I suspected as much before I had the benefit of your comment;
+which, by the way, ran off your tongue as glibly as if you were one of
+the folk who profess Shakespeare, and you were threatening the world
+with an essay on Othello. But sometimes it has seemed to me as if these
+words meant more; Shakespeare's mental vision took in so much. Was the
+beauty of Cassio's life only a moral beauty?
+
+_Tomes_. For all we know, it was.
+
+_Grey_. I say, perhaps, or--No,--Cassio has seemed to me not more a
+gallant soldier and a generous spirit than a cultivated and accomplished
+gentleman; he, indeed, shows higher culture than any other character in
+the tragedy, as well as finer natural tastes; and I have thought that
+into the scope of this phrase, "daily beauty," Shakespeare took not
+only the honorable and lovely traits of moral nature, to which you, and
+perhaps the rest of the world with you, seem to limit it, but all the
+outward belongings and surroundings of the personage to whom it is
+applied. For these, indeed, were a part of his life, of him,--and went
+to make up, in no small measure, that daily beauty in which he presented
+so strong a contrast to Iago. Look at "mine Ancient" closely, and see,
+that, with all his subtle craft, he was a coarse-mannered brute, of
+gross tastes and grovelling nature, without a spark of gallantry, and as
+destitute of courtesy as of honor. We overrate his very subtlety; for
+we measure it by its effects, the woful and agonizing results it brings
+about; forgetting that these, like all results, or resultants, are the
+product of at least two forces,--the second, in this instance, being the
+unsuspecting and impetuous nature of Othello, Had Iago undertaken to
+deceive any other than such a man, he would have failed. Why, even
+simple-hearted Desdemona, who sees so little of him, suspects him; that
+poor goose, Roderigo, though blind with vanity and passion, again and
+again loses faith in him; and his wife knows him through and through.
+Believe me, he had no touch of gentleness, not one point of contact with
+the beautiful, in all his nature,--while Cassio's was filled up with
+gentleness and beauty, and all that is akin to them.
+
+_Tomes_. His weakness for wine and women among them?--But thanks for
+your commentary. I am quite eclipsed. On you go, too, in your old way,
+trying to make out that what is good is beautiful,--no, rather that
+what is beautiful is good.--Do you think that Peter and Paul were
+well-dressed? I don't believe that you would have listened to them, if
+they were not.
+
+_Grey_. I'm not sure about St. Peter,--or whether it was necessary or
+proper that he should have been well-dressed, in the general acceptation
+of the term. You forget that there is a beauty of fitness. Beside, I
+have listened, deferentially and with pleasure, to a fisherman in a red
+shirt, a woollen hat, and with his trousers tucked into cow-hide boots;
+and why should I not have listened to the great fisherman of Galilee,
+had it been my happy fortune to live within sound of his voice?
+
+_Tomes_. Ay, if it had been a fine voice, perhaps you might.
+
+_Grey_. But as to Saint Paul I have less doubt, or none. I believe that
+he appeared the gentleman of taste and culture that he was.
+
+_Tomes_. When he made tents? and when he lived at the house of one
+Simon, a tanner?
+
+_Grey_. Why not? What had those accidents of Paul's life to do with
+Paul, except as occasions which elicited the flexibility of his nature
+and the extent of his capacity and culture?
+
+_Tomes_. In making tents? Tent-making is an honest and a useful
+handicraft; but I am puzzled to discover how it would afford opportunity
+for the exhibition of the talents of such a man as Paul.
+
+_Grey_. Not his peculiar talents, perhaps; though, on that point, those
+who sat under the shadow of his canvas were better able to judge than we
+are. For a man will make tents none the worse for being a gentleman, a
+scholar, and a man of taste,--but, other things being equal, the better.
+Your general intelligence and culture enter into your ability to perform
+the humblest office of daily life. An educated man, who can use his
+hands, will make an anthracite coal-fire better and quicker after half
+a dozen trials than a raw Irish servant after a year's experience; and
+many a lady charges her housemaid with stupidity and obstinacy, because
+she fails again and again in the performance of some oft-explained task
+which to the mistress seems "so simple," when there is no obstinacy in
+the case, and only the stupidity of a poor neglected creature who had
+been taught nothing till she came to this country, not even to eat with
+decency, and, since she came, only to do the meanest chores. As to
+living with a tanner, I am no Brahmin, and believe that a man may not
+only live with a tanner, but be a tanner, and have all the culture, if
+not all the learning and the talent, of Simon's guest. Thomas Dowse
+pointed the way for many who will go much farther upon it than he did.
+
+_Tomes._ The tanners are obliged to you. But of what real use is that
+process of intellectual refinement upon which you set so high a value?
+How much better is discipline than culture! Of how much greater worth,
+to himself and to the world, is the man who by physical and mental
+training, the use of his muscles, the exercise of his faculties, the
+restraint of his appetites,--even those mental appetites which you call
+tastes,--has acquired vigor, endurance, self-reliance, self-control! Let
+a man be pure and honorable, do to others as he would have them do to
+him, and, in the words of the old Church of England Catechism, "learn
+and labor truly to get his own living in that state of life to which it
+has pleased God to call him," and what remains for him to do, and of
+time in which to do it, is of very small importance.
+
+_Grey._ You talk like what you are.
+
+_Tomes._ And that is----?
+
+_Grey._ Pardon me,--a cross between a Stoic and a Puritan:--morally, I
+mean.
+
+_Tomes._ Don't apologize. You might say many worse things of me, and few
+better. But telling me what I am does not disprove what I say.
+
+_Grey._ Do you not see? you cannot fail to see, that, after the labor of
+your human animal has supplied his mere animal needs, provided him with
+shelter, food, and clothes, he must set himself about something else.
+Having made life endurable, he will strive to make it comfortable,
+according to his notions of comfort. Comfort secured, he will seek
+pleasure; and among the earliest objects of his endeavors in this
+direction will be that form of pleasure which results from the
+embellishment of his external life; the craving that he then supplies
+being just as natural, that is, just as much an inevitable result of his
+organization, as that which first claimed his thought and labor.
+
+_Tomes._ A statement of your case entirely inconsistent with the facts
+that bear upon it What do you think of your red savage, who, making no
+_pro-vision_ for even his animal needs, but merely supplying them
+for the moment as he can, and living in squalor, filth, and extreme
+discomfort, yet daubs himself with grease and paint, and decorates
+his head with feathers, his neck with bear's claws, and his feat with
+gaudily-stained porcupine's quills? What of your black barbarian,
+whose daily life is a succession of unspeakable abominations, and who
+embellishes it by blackening his teeth, tattooing his skin, and wearing
+a huge ring in the gristle of his nose? Either of them will give up his
+daily food, and run the risk of starvation, for a glass bead or a
+brass button. This desire for ornament is plainly, then, no fruit of
+individual development, no sign of social progress; it has no relations
+whatever with them, but is merely a manifestation of that vanity, that
+lust of the eye and pride of life, which we are taught to believe
+inherent in all human nature, and which the savage exhibits according to
+his savageness, the civilized man according to his civilization.
+
+_Grey._ You're a sturdy fellow, Tomes, but not strong enough to draw
+that conclusion from those premises, and make it stay drawn. The savage
+does order his life in the preposterous manner which you have described;
+but he does it because he is a savage. He has not the wants of the
+civilized man, and therefore he does not wait to supply them before he
+seeks to gratify others. When man rises in the scale of civilization,
+his whole nature rises. You can't mount a ladder piecemeal; your head
+will go up first, unless you are an acrobat, and choose to go up feet
+foremost; but even if you are Gabriel Ravel, your whole body must needs
+ascend together. The savage is comfortable, not according to your
+notions of comfort, but according to his own. Comfort is not positive,
+but relative. If, with your present habits, you could be transported
+back only one hundred years to the best house in London,--a house
+provided with all that a princely revenue could then command,--you
+would find it, with all its splendor, very uncomfortable in many
+respects. The luxuries of one generation become the comforts of the
+next, the necessaries of life to the next; and what is comfort for any
+individual at any period depends on the manner in which he has been
+brought up. So, too, the savage decorates himself after his own savage
+tastes. His smoky wigwam or his filthy mud hut is no stronger evidence
+of his barbarous condition than his party-colored face, or the hoop of
+metal in his nose. Call this desire to enjoy the beauty of the world and
+to be a part of it the lust of the eye, or whatever name you please, you
+will find, that, with exceedingly rare exceptions, it is universal in
+the race, and that its gratification, although it may have an indirectly
+injurious effect on some individuals tends to harmonize and humanize
+mankind, to lift them above debasing pleasures, and to foster the finer
+social feelings by promoting the higher social enjoyments.
+
+_Tomes._ Yes; it makes Mrs. A. snub Mrs. B. because the B.-bonnet is
+within a hair's breadth's less danger of falling down her back, or
+is decorated with lace made by a poor bonnetless girl in one town of
+Europe, at a time when fashion has declared that it should bloom with
+flowers made by a poor shoeless girl in another: it instigates Mrs. C.
+to make a friendly call on Mrs. D. for the purpose of exulting over
+the inferior style in which her house is furnished: it tempts F. to
+overreach his business friend, or to embezzle his employer's money, that
+he may live in a house with a brown-stone front and give great dinners
+twice a month: and it sustains G. in his own eyes as he sits at F.'s
+table stimulating digestion by inward sneers at the vulgar fashion of
+the new man's plate or the awkwardness of his attendants: and perhaps,
+worse than all, it tempts H. to exhibit his pictures, and Mrs. I. to
+exhibit herself, "for the benefit of our charitable institutions," in
+order that the one may read fulsome eulogies of his munificence and his
+taste, and the other see a critical catalogue of the beauties of her
+person and her costume in all the daily papers. Such are the social
+benefits of what you call the desire to be a part of the world's beauty.
+
+_Grey._ Far from it! They have no relation to each other. You mistake
+the occasion for the cause, the means for the motive. Your alphabet is
+in fault. Such a set of vain, frivolous, dishonest, mean, hypocritical,
+and insufferably vulgar letters would be turned out of any respectable,
+well-bred spelling-book. Vanity, frivolity, dishonesty, meanness,
+hypocrisy, and vulgarity can be exhibited in all the affairs of life,
+not excepting those whose proper office is to sweeten and to beautify
+it; but it does not need all your logical faculty to discover that
+there is not, therefore, any connection between a pretty bonnet, or an
+elegantly furnished house, and the disposition to snub and sneer at
+those who are without them,--between dishonesty and the desire to live
+handsomely and hospitably,--between a cultivated taste for the fine arts
+and hypocrisy or a vulgar desire for notoriety and consequence.
+
+_Tomes._ Perhaps so. But they are very often in each other's company.
+
+_Grey._ And then, of course, the evil taints the reputation of the good,
+even with thinking men like you; and how much more with those who have
+your prejudices without your sense! But note well that they are not
+oftener in company--these tastes and vices--than honesty and meanness,
+good-nature and clownishness, sincerity and brutality, hospitality and
+debauchery, chastity and the absence of that virtue without which all
+others are as nothing. And let me remind you, by the way, that we of
+this age and generation make it our business, in fact, feel it our duty,
+to violate the injunction of the English Catechism, and get _out_ of
+that state of life in which we find ourselves, into a better, as soon
+as possible. And even old Mother Church does not insist upon content so
+strongly as you made her seem to do; she speaks of the state of life to
+which her catechumen "shall" be, not "has" been, called; and thus
+makes it possible for a dean to resolve to be content with a bishopric,
+and a bishop to muse upon the complete satisfaction with which he would
+grasp an archbishop's crosier, without forfeiture of orthodoxy.
+
+Tomes would doubtless have replied; but at this point the attention of
+the disputants was attracted by the rustle of silk; there was a light,
+quick tap at the glass-door which separated the den of books from the
+middle room, and before an answer could be given the emblazoned valves
+opened partly, and a sweet, decided voice asked, "Please, may we come
+in? or" (and the speaker opened the doors wide) "are you and Mr. Tomes
+so absorbed in construing a sentence in a book that nobody ever reads,
+that ladies must give place to lexicons?"
+
+"Enter, of course," cried Grey, "and save me from annihilation by
+Tomes's next reply, and both of us from our joint stupidity."
+
+And so Mrs. Grey entered, and there were salutations, and presentation
+of Mr. Tomes to Miss Laura Larches, and introduction to each other
+of the same gentleman and Mr. Carleton Key, who attended the ladies.
+Abandoning the only four chairs in the room to the others, Mrs. Grey
+sank down upon a hassock with a sigh of satisfaction, and was lost for
+a moment in the rising swell of silken-crested waves of crinoline.
+Emerging in another moment as far as the shoulders, she turned a look of
+intelligence and inquiry upon her husband, who said, "When you came in,
+Tomes and I were talking about"--
+
+_Mrs. Grey._ Something very important, I've no doubt; but we've your
+own confession that you were stupid, and I've no notion of permitting
+a relapse. You were doubtless discussing your favorite subject, Dante,
+who, as far as I can discover, was more a politician than a poet, and
+went to his _Inferno_ only for the pleasure of sending the opposite
+party there, and quartering them according to his notion of their
+deserts. But he and they are dead and buried long ago. Let them rest.
+We should much rather have you tell us whether his poor countrymen
+of to-day are to have their liberty when that ugly Emperor beats the
+Austrians; for beat them he surely will.
+
+_Grey._ That is a subject of great moment, and one in which I, perhaps,
+feel no less interest than you; but did you never think that the
+question, whether these thousands of Italians have liberty or even food
+to-day, is one of a few months', or, at most, a few years', concern,
+while the soul's experience of that one Italian who died more than five
+hundred years ago will be a fruitful theme forever?
+
+_Mrs. Grey._ Why, so it will! I never did think of that. And now I'll
+not think of it. Here we are just come from a wedding, and before you
+ask us how the bride looked, or even what she had on, you begin to talk
+to us about that grim old Florentine, who looks like a hard-featured
+Scotch woman in her husband's night-cap, and who wrote such a succession
+of frightful things! Where is all your interest in Kitty Jones? I've
+seen you talk to her by the half-hour, and heard you say she is a
+charming woman; and now she marries,--and you not only won't go to the
+wedding, but you don't ask a word about it.
+
+_Grey._ You seem to forget, Nelly, that I saw one wedding all through,
+and, indeed, bore as prominent a part in it as one of my downtrodden
+sex could aspire to; and as the Frenchman said, who went on an English
+fox-chase, _"Une fois, c'est assez;_ I am ver' satisfy." The marriage
+service I can read in ten minutes whenever I need its solace; rich
+morning-dresses are to be seen by scores in the Academy of Music at
+every _matinée,_ as garnish to Verdi's music; and as to Miss Kitty
+Jones, I am sure that she, like all brides, never looked so ill as she
+did to-day. I would do anything in my power to serve her, and would
+willingly walk a mile to have half an hour's chat with her; but to-day I
+could not serve her, nor could she talk with me; so why should I trouble
+myself about the matter? Had I gone, I should only have seen her
+flushed and nervous, her poor fresh-caught husband looking foolish and
+superfluous, and an uncomfortable crowd of over-dressed, ill-dressed
+people, engaged in analyzing her emotions, estimating the value of her
+wedding-presents, and criticizing each other's toilettes.
+
+_Mrs.Grey._ You're an unfeeling wretch!
+
+_Grey._ Of course I am. Any woman will break her neck to see two people,
+for whom she does not care a hair-pin, stand up, one in white and the
+other in black, and mumble a few words that she knows by heart, and then
+take position at the end of a room and have "society" paraded up to them
+by solemn little corporals with white favors, and then file off to the
+rear for rations of Périgord pie and Champagne.
+
+_Tomes._ Well said, Grey! Here's another of the many ways of wasting
+life by your embellishment of it.
+
+_Mr. Key._ I don't know precisely what Mr. Tomes means; but as to
+ill-dressed people, I'm sure that the set you meet at the Jones's are
+the best-dressed people in town; and I never saw in Paris more splendid
+toilettes than were there this morning.
+
+_Miss Larches._ Why, to be sure! What can Mr. Grey mean? There was Mrs.
+Oakum's gray and silver brocade, and Mrs. Cotton's _point-de-Venice_
+mantle, and Miss Prime and Miss Messe and Miss Middlings, who always
+dress exquisitely, and Mrs. Shinnurs Sharcke with that superb India
+shawl that must have cost two thousand dollars! What could be finer?
+
+_Mrs. Grey._ And then Mrs. Robinson Smith, celebrated as the
+best-dressed woman in town. Being a connection of the family, and so a
+sort of hostess, she wore no bonnet; and her dress, of the richest _gros
+d'Afrique_, had twenty-eight pinked and scalloped flounces, alternately
+one of white and three of as many graduated tints of green. So elegant
+and distinguished!
+
+_Grey._ Twenty-eight pinked and scalloped flounces of white and
+graduated tints of green! With her pale, sodden complexion, she must
+have looked like an enormous chicken-salad _mayonnaise._
+
+_Mrs. Grey [after a brief pause]._ Why, so she did! You good-for-nothing
+thing, you've spoiled the prettiest dress I ever saw, for me! It was
+quite my ideal; and now I never want to see it again.
+
+_Grey._ Your ideal must have been of marvellous beauty, to admit such a
+comparison,--and your preference most intelligently based, to be swept
+away by it!
+
+_Tomes._ Come, Grey, be fair. You know that merit has no immunity from
+ridicule.
+
+_Grey._ True; but no less true that ridicule does no real harm to
+merit. If this Mrs. Robinson Crusoe's gown had been truly beautiful, my
+ridiculous comparison could not have so entirely disenchanted my wife
+with it;--she, mind you, being supposed (for the sake of our argument
+only) to be a woman of sense and taste.
+
+_Mrs. Grey._ Accept my profoundest and most grateful curtsy,--on credit.
+It's too much trouble to rise and make it; and, to confess the truth, I
+can't; my foot has caught in my hoop. Help me, Laura.
+
+_[Disentanglement,--from which the gentlemen avert modest eyes, laughing
+the while.]_
+
+_Grey._ I do assure you, Nelly, that, until you leave off that
+monstrosity of steel and cordage, your sense and taste, so far as
+costume is concerned, must be taken on credit, as well as your curtsies.
+
+_Mrs. Grey._ Leave off my hoop? Would you have me look like a
+fright?--as slinky as if I had been drawn through a key-hole?
+
+_Miss Larches._ Leave off her hoop?
+
+_Mr. Key._ Be seen without a hoop? Why, what a guy a woman would look
+without a hoop! I suppose they do take them off at certain times, but
+then they are not visible to the naked eye.
+
+_Tomes._ Yes, Grey,--why take off her hoop? I don't care, you know, to
+have hoops worn. But worn or not worn, what difference does it make?
+
+_Grey_. All against me?--a fair representation of the general feeling
+on the momentous subject at this moment, I suppose. But ten years
+ago,--that's about a year after I first saw you, and a year before we
+were married, you remember, Nelly,--no lady wore a hoop; and had I said
+then that you looked like a fright, or, as Mr. Key phrases it, a guy, I
+should have belied my own opinion, and, I believe, given you no little
+pain.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Master Presumption, I'm responsible for none of your
+conceited notions; and if I were, it wasn't the fashion then to wear
+hoops,--and to be out of the fashion is to be a fright and a guy.
+
+_Miss Larches_. Yes, the fashion is always pretty.
+
+_Grey_. Is it, Miss Larches? Then it must always have been pretty. Let
+us see. Look you all here. In this small portfolio is a collection of
+prints which exhibits the fashions of France, Italy, and England, in
+more or less detail, for eight hundred years back.
+
+_Miss Larches_. Is there? Oh, that's charming! Do let us see them!
+
+_Grey_. With pleasure. But remember that I expect you to admire them
+all,--although I tell you that not one in ten of them is endurable, not
+one in fifty pretty, not one in a hundred beautiful.
+
+_Miss Larches_. Why, there aren't more than two or three hundred.
+
+_Grey_. About two hundred and fifty; and if you find more than two
+that fulfil all the conditions of beauty in costume, you will be more
+fortunate than I have been.
+
+_Miss Larches_ [_after a brief Inspection_]. Ah, Mr. Grey, how can you?
+Most of these are caricatures.
+
+_Grey_. Nothing of the sort. All veritable costumes, I assure you. Those
+from 1750 down, fashion-plates; the others, portraits.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. True, Laura. I've looked at them many a time, and thought
+how fearfully and wonderfully dresses have been made. Not to go back to
+those bristling horrors of the Middle Ages and the _renaissance_, look
+at this ball-dress of 1810: a night-gown without sleeves, made of two
+breadths of pink silk, very low in the neck, and _very_ short in the
+skirt.
+
+_Tomes_. And these were our modest grandmothers, of whom we hear so
+much! They went rather far in their search after the beautiful.
+
+_Grey_. Say, rather, in their revelation of it. That was, at least, an
+honest fashion, and men who married could not well complain that they
+had been deceived by concealment. But that tells nothing against the
+modesty of our grandmothers. What is modest in dress depends entirely on
+what is customary; and there is an immodesty that hides, as well as one
+that exposes. Unconsciousness is modesty's triple shelter against shame.
+See here, the dissolute Marguerite of Navarre, visible only at head and
+hands; the former from the chin upwards, the latter from the knuckles
+downwards; and here, _La belle Hamilton_, rightly named, as chaste as
+beautiful, and so modest in her carriage that she escaped the breath of
+scandal even in the court of Charles II., and yet with a gown (if
+gown it can be called) so loose about the bust and arms that the pink
+night-gown would blush crimson at it.
+
+_Tomes_. The ladies seem convinced, though puzzled; but that is because
+they don't detect your fallacy. You confound the woman and the fashion.
+An immodest woman may be modestly dressed; and if it is the fashion to
+be so, she most certainly will, unless she is able herself to set a
+fashion more suited to her taste. For usually a woman's care of her
+costume is in inverse proportion to that she takes of her character.
+
+_The Ladies [having a vague notion that "inverse proportion" means
+something horrible'_]. Mr. Tomes!
+
+_Grey_. Don't misapprehend my friend Daniel. On this occasion he has
+come to judgment upon a subject of which he knows so little that it is
+worse than nothing. I have reason to believe that he has a profound
+respect for one of you, and, being a bachelor, such exalted notions of
+your sex in general that he would not wantonly misjudge the humblest
+individual of it. His remark was but the fruit of such sheer innocence
+with regard to your charming sisterhood, that he has yet to learn that
+there is not a single member of it, who confesses to less than seventy
+years, to whom, even if she is black, deformed, and the meanest hireling
+household drudge, her dress, when she is to be seen of men, is not the
+object of a watchful solicitude at least next to that which she feels
+for her reputation. Among the sharpest of Douglas Jerrold's unmalicious
+witticisms was his saying, that Eve ate the apple that she might dress.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Eve's daughters--two of them, at least--are inexpressibly
+obliged to you for your defence of the sex against the valorous Tomes.
+Another time, pray, leave us to our fate. But, Laura, do look here! See
+these hideous peaked and horned head-dresses of the fifteenth century.
+That one looks like an Old-Dominion coffee-pot with wings. How
+frightful! how uncomfortable! how inconvenient! How could the women wear
+such things?
+
+_Miss Larches_. Perfectly ridiculous! How could they get into their
+carriages with those steeples on their heads? and how they must have
+been in the way at the opera!
+
+_Grey_. Miss Larches forgets. These head-dresses, monstrous as they are,
+are not exposed to the objection of being inconsistent with the habits
+of life of those who wore them, as so many of the fashions of later
+periods and of the present day are. There were no such vehicles as
+she is thinking of until more than a century after these stupendous
+head-dresses were worn, until which time ladies very rarely used even
+a covered wagon as a means of locomotion; and these steeple-crowned
+ladies, and many generations after them, had passed away before the
+performance of the first opera.
+
+_Miss Larches_. No carriages? Why, how did they go to parties? No opera?
+What did they do on winter evenings when there were no parties?
+
+_Grey_. They went to parties in the day-time on horseback; and on the
+days when there were no parties, of which there were a great many then,
+they gave themselves up to a very delightful mode of passing the time,
+when it is intelligently practised, known as staying at home.
+
+_Mr. Key_. What a bore!
+
+_Grey_. But don't confine your criticism of head-dresses to the
+fifteenth century. Look through the costumes of the three succeeding
+centuries, and see how often invention was taxed for artificial
+decorations of the head, equally elaborate and hideous. Anything but to
+have a head look like a head! anything but to have hair look like hair!
+See this lady of 1750, her hair drawn violently back from her forehead
+and piled up on a cushion nine inches high. She is plainly one of those
+lovely, warm-toned blondes whose hair is of that priceless red that
+makes all other tints look poor and sad; and so she defiles its
+exquisite texture with grease, and blanches out its wealth of color with
+flour. She might have gathered its gleaming waves into a ravishing knot
+behind her head; but no, she has four stiff, enormous curls, noisome
+with a mingled smell of hot iron, musk, and ambergris, hanging like
+rolls of parchment from the top of her cushion to below her ear. O' top
+of this elevation is mounted a wreath of gaudy artificial flowers, in
+its turn surmounted by four vast plumes, two yellow, one pink, one blue,
+from the midst of which shoot up two long feathers, one green and one
+red, while behind hangs down a greasy, floury mass gathered at the
+end into a club-like handle, which has some fitness for its place, in
+suggesting that it should be used to jerk the heap of hair, grease, and
+feathers from the head of the unfortunate who sustains it. Just think of
+it! that sweet creature must have given up at least two hours of every
+day to this disfigurement of her pretty head.
+
+_Tomes_. And I've no doubt she made a sensation in the ball-room or at
+court, in spite of all your ridicule, and so attained her purpose.
+
+_Grey_. Certainly she did; for she was so beautiful in person and
+alluring in manner, that even that head-dress, and the accompanying
+costume with which she was deformed, could not eclipse her charms for
+those who had become at all accustomed to the absurd disguise which she
+assumed. But it was the woman that was beautiful, not the costume; and
+the woman was so beautiful, in spite of the costume, that she was able
+to light up even its forbidding features with the reflection of her own
+loveliness. There have been countless similar cases since;--there are
+some now.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Miss Larches, doubtless, appreciates the approving glance
+of so severe a censor.
+
+_Grey_. And this head-dress _was_ open to the objection which Miss
+Larches brought against that which preceded it three centuries. These
+ladies were in each other's way at the opera; and while riding there
+in their coaches, they were obliged to sit with their heads out of the
+windows.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Their carriages must have been of great service when it
+rained!--But look at these stomachers, stiff with embroidery and jewels,
+and with points that reach half-way from the waist to the ground! See
+those enormous ruffs, standing out a quarter of a yard, and curving over
+so smoothly to their very edges! What a protection the fear of ruining
+those ruffs must have been against children, and--other troublesome
+creatures!
+
+_Grey_. It is true, that ruffs and stomachers seem to indicate great
+propriety of conduct, including an aversion to children and--other
+troublesome creatures; but students of the manners and morals of the
+period at which those articles of dress were worn do not find that the
+women who wore them differed much in their conduct, at least as to the
+other troublesome creatures, from the women who nowadays have revived
+one of the most unsightly and absurd traits of the costume of which
+ruffs and stomachers formed a part.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. What can you mean? Our fashion like that frightful rig?
+Why, see this portrait of Queen Elizabeth in full dress! What with
+stomacher and pointed waist and fardingale, and sticking in here and
+sticking out there, and ruffs and cuffs and ouches and jewels and
+puckers, she looks like a hideous flying insect with expanded wings,
+seen through a microscope,--not at all like a woman.
+
+_Grey_. And her costume is rivalled, if not outdone, by that of her
+critic, in the very peculiarity by which she is made to look most unlike
+a woman;--the straight line of the waist and the swelling curve below
+it, which meet in such a sharp, unmitigated angle. Look at the Venus
+yonder,--she is naked to the hips,--and see how utterly these lines
+misrepresent those of Nature. You will find no instance of such a
+contour as is formed by the meeting of these lines among all living
+creatures, except, perhaps, when a turtle thrusts his head and his tail
+out of his shell.
+
+_Miss Larches_. But there's a vase with just such an outline, that I
+have heard you admire a hundred times.
+
+_Grey_. True, Miss Larches; but a woman is not a vase;--more beautiful
+even than this, certainly more precious, perhaps almost as fragile, but
+still not a vase; and she shows as little taste in making herself look
+like a vase as some potters do in making vases that look like women.
+
+_Mr. Key_. But I thought it was decided that the female figure below the
+shoulders should be left to the imagination. Does Mr. Grey propose to
+substitute the charming reality of undisguised Nature?
+
+_Grey_. True, we do not attempt to define the female figure below the
+waist, at least; but although we may safely veil or even conceal Nature,
+we cannot misrepresent or outrage her, except at the cost of utter
+loss of beauty. The lines of drapery, or of any article of dress, must
+conform to those of that part of the figure which it conceals, or the
+effect will be deforming, monstrous.
+
+_Mr. Key._ Does Mr. Grey mean, to say that ladies nowadays' look
+monstrous and deformed?
+
+_Grey._ To a certain extent they do. But such is the influence of habit
+upon the eye, that we fully apprehend the effect of such incongruity as
+that of which I spoke only in the costumes of past generations, or when
+there is a very violent, instead of a gradual change in the fashion of
+our own day. Look at these full-length portraits of Catherine de Médicis
+and the Princess Marguerite, daughter of Francis the First.
+
+_The Ladies._ What frights!
+
+_Mrs. Grey._ No, not both; Marguerite's dress is pretty, in spite of
+those horrid sleeves sticking up so above her shoulders.
+
+_Grey._ You are right. Those sleeves, rising above the shoulders--as
+high as the ear in Catherine's costume, you will observe--are unsightly
+enough to nullify whatever beauty the costume might have in other
+points; though in her case they only complete the expression of the
+costume, which is a grim, unnatural stiffness. And the reason of the
+unsightliness of these sleeves is, that the outline which they present
+is directly opposed to that of Nature. No human shoulders bulge upward
+into great hemispherical excrescences nine inches high; and the peculiar
+sexual characteristic of this part of woman's figure is the gentle
+downward curve by which the lines of the shoulder pass into those of the
+arm. Our memory that such is the natural configuration of these parts
+enters, consciously or unconsciously, into our judgment of this costume,
+in which we see that Nature is deliberately departed from; and our
+condemnation of it in this particular respect is strengthened by the
+perception, at a glance, that great pains have been taken to make its
+outlines discordant with those of the part which they conceal. You
+qualified your censure of Marguerite's dress partly because, in her
+case, the slope of the shoulder is preserved until the very junction of
+the arm with the bust, and partly because her bust and waist are defined
+by her gown with a tolerably near approach to Nature, instead of being
+entirely concealed, as in the case of her sister-in-law, by stiff lines
+sloping outward on all sides to the ground, making the remorseless Queen
+look like an enormous extinguisher with a woman's head set on it. And
+these advantages of form in the Princess's costume are enhanced by
+its presentation of a fine contrast of rich color in unbroken masses,
+instead of the Queen's black velvet and white satin elaborately
+disfigured with embroidery, ermine, lace, and jewels. You were prompt
+in your condemnation of the fashion to which your eye had not been
+accustomed: now turn to the costume that you wear, and which you are in
+a manner compelled to wear; for I am not so visionary as to expect
+a woman, or even a man under sixty, to fly directly in the face of
+fashion, although her extravagant caprices may be gracefully disregarded
+by both sexes and all ages. Here are two fashion-plates of the last
+month,--[Footnote: March, 1869.] not magazine caricatures, mind you, or
+anything like it,--but from the first _modistes_ in Paris. Look at that
+shawled lady, with her back toward us. If you did not know that that is
+a shawl, and that the thing which surmounts it is a bonnet, you would
+not suspect the figure to be human. See; there is a slightly undulating
+slope at an angle of about sixty-five degrees from the crown of the head
+to the lowest hem of the skirt, so that the outline is that of a pyramid
+slightly rounded at the apex, and nearly as broad across the base as
+it is high. What is there of woman in such a figure? And this
+evening-dress; it suggests the enchantments in the stories of the Dark
+Ages, where knights encounter women who are women to the breasts and
+monsters below. From the head to as far as halfway down the waist, this
+figure is natural.
+
+_Mr. Key._ Under the circumstances it could hardly be otherwise. _Au
+naturel_, I should call it, except for the spice of a few flowers and a
+little lace.
+
+_Grey_. But from that point it begins to lose its semblance to a woman's
+shape, (as you will see by raising your eyes again to the Venus,) and
+after running two or three inches decidedly inward in a straight line,
+where it should turn outward with a gentle curve, its outlines break
+into a sharp angle, and it expands, with a sudden hyperbolical curve,
+into a monstrous and nameless figure that is not only unlike Nature, but
+has no relations whatever with Nature. The eye needs no cultivation,
+the brain no instruction, to perceive that such an outline cannot be
+produced by drapery upon a woman's form. It is clear, at a glance, that
+there is an artificial structure underneath that swelling skirt; that a
+scaffold, a framework, has been erected to support that dome of silk;
+and that the wearer is merely an automatic machine by which it is made
+to perambulate. A woman in this rig hangs in her skirts like a clapper
+in a bell; and I never meet one without being tempted to take her by the
+neck and ring her.
+
+_Mr. Key_. Those belles like ringing well enough, but not exactly of
+that kind.
+
+_Grey_. The costume is also faulty in two other most important respects:
+it is without pure, decided color of any tint, but is broken into
+patches and blotches of various mongrel hues,----
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Hear the man! that exquisite brocade!
+
+_Grey_.----and whatever effect it might otherwise have had, of form
+or color, would be entirely frittered away by the multitudinous and
+multiform trimmings with which it is bedizened; and it is without a
+girdle of any kind.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Oh, sweet Simplicity, hear and reward thy priest and
+prophet! What would your Highness have the woman wear?--a white muslin
+gown, with a blue sash, and a rose in her hair? That style went out on
+the day that Mesdames Shem, Ham, and Japhet left the ark.
+
+_Grey_. And well it might,--for evening-dress, at least No,--my taste,
+or, if you will permit me to say it, good taste, craves rich colors, and
+ample, flowing lines,--colors which require taste to be shown in their
+arrangement and adaptation, and forms which show invention and knowledge
+in their design. Your woman who dresses in white, and your man who wears
+plain black, are safe from impeachment of their taste, just as people
+who say nothing are secure against an exhibition of folly or ignorance.
+They are the mutes of costume, and contribute nothing to the chromatic
+harmony of the social circle. They succeed in nothing but the avoidance
+of positive offence.
+
+_Miss Larches_. Pray, then, Mr. Grey, what--shall--we--do? You have
+condemned enough, and told us what is wrong; can't you find in all this
+collection a single costume that is positively beautiful? and can't you
+tell us what is right, as well as what is wrong?
+
+_Grey_. Both,--and will. The first, at once; the last, if you continue
+to desire it. Here are two costumes, quite unlike in composition and
+effect, and yet both beautiful;--the first, the fashions of 1811 and
+1812 (for the variations, during that time, were so trifling, and in
+such unessential particulars, that the costume had but one character, as
+you will see by comparing the twenty-four plates for those years); the
+second, that worn by this peasant-girl of Normandy. Look first at the
+fashion-plates, and see the adaptation of that beautiful gown to all the
+purposes for which a gown is intended. How completely it clothes the
+entire figure, and with what ease and comfort to the wearer! There is
+not a line about it which indicates compression, or one expressive of
+that looseness and languishing abandonment that we remarked just now
+in the costume of _La belle Hamilton_. The entire person is concealed,
+except the tip of one foot, the hands, the head and throat, and just
+enough of the bust to confess the existence of its feminine charms,
+without exposing them; both limbs and trunk are amply draped; and yet
+how plainly it can be seen that there is a well-developed, untortured
+woman underneath those tissues! The waist, girdled in at the proper
+place, neither just beneath the breasts, as it was a few years before
+and after, nor just above the hips, as it has been for many years past,
+and as it was three hundred years ago, is of its natural size:--compare
+it with the Venus, and then look at those cruel cones, thrust, point
+downward, into mounds of silk and velvet, to which women adapted
+themselves about 1575, 1750, and 1830, and thence, with little
+mitigation, to the present day. How expressive the lines of one figure
+are of health, and grace, and bounteous fulness of life! and how poor,
+and sickly, and mean, and man-made the other creatures seem! See, too,
+in the former, that all the wearer's limbs are as free as air; she can
+even clasp her hands, with arms at full-length, above her head. Queen
+Bess, yonder, could do many things, but she could not do that; neither
+could your great-great-grandmothers, ladies, if they were people of the
+least pretensions to fashion, nor your mothers. Can you?
+
+[_Mrs. Grey, presuming upon her demi-toilette, with a look of arch
+defiance, lifts her hands quickly up above her head; but before they
+have approached each other, there is a sharp sound, as of rending and
+snapping; and, with a sudden flush and a little scream, she subsides
+into her crinoline_.]
+
+_Miss Larches_. Why, you foolish creature! you might have known you
+couldn't.
+
+_Mr. Key_. A most ignominious failure! Mr. Grey, you had better announce
+a course of lectures on costume, with illustrations from the life. Your
+subjects will cost you nothing.
+
+_Grey_. Except for silk- and mantua-making. I have no doubt that I could
+make such a course useful, and Mrs. Grey has shown that she could make
+it amusing. But we can get on very well as we are. Observe this figure
+again. Its chief beauty is, that the gown has, or seems to have, _no
+form of its own_; it adapts itself to the person, and, while that is
+entirely concealed, falls round it in lines of exquisite grace and
+softness, upon which the eye rests with untiring pleasure, and which,
+upon every movement of the wearer, must change only for others also
+beautiful. Notice also, that, although the gown forms an ample drapery,
+it yet follows the contour of the figure sufficiently to taper
+gracefully to the feet at the front, where it touches the floor lightly,
+and presents, as it should, the narrowest diameter of the whole
+figure,--not, contrary to Nature, (I beg pardon of your _modistes_,
+ladies,) the widest.
+
+_Tomes_. You needn't apologize so ceremoniously to the ladies; for
+you've involved yourself in a flagrant contradiction. You said that
+these two costumes were equally beautiful; and here's the lady of 1812
+with her dress all clinging in little wrinkles round her feet, while the
+peasant-girl's frock is wider at the bottom than it is anywhere else.
+
+_Grey_. A most profound and logical objection, 0 Daniel! which in due
+time shall be considered. But I am not now to be diverted from two other
+very important elements of the beauty of these costumes of 1811 and
+1812. They are in one or two, or, at most, three colors,--the tissues of
+the gowns, the outer garments, (when they are worn,) and the bonnets or
+head-dresses being of one unbroken tint; and they are almost entirely
+free from trimming, which appears only upon the principal seams and the
+edges of the garments, and then in very moderate quantity, though of
+rich quality.
+
+_Miss Larches_. Why, so it is! I should not have noticed that.
+
+_Grey_. You did not notice the lack of it, because it is not required to
+make the dress complete or give it character. It is only the presence
+of trimming that attracts attention; its absence is never felt in
+a well-designed costume.--Now turn to my pretty peasant-girl, who,
+although she is not in full holiday-costume, is unmistakably "dressed,"
+as ladies call it; for we see that she is going to some slight
+merry-making, as she carries in her hands the shoes which are to cover
+those stockingless feet. She, too, is entirely at her ease and
+unconscious of her costume, except for a shy suspicion that it becomes
+her, and she, it. Her waist is of its natural size and in its proper
+place. Her shoulders are covered, and her arms have free play; and
+although her bodice is cut rather low, the rising chemise and the
+falling kerchief redeem it from all objection on that score.
+
+_Tomes_. But how about the length, or rather the shortness, of that
+skirt? It seems to me to cry _excelsior_ to the pink night-gown.
+
+_Grey_. You are implacable as to this poor girl's petticoats. Don't you
+see that her arms are bare? and yet you make no objection. Now, a woman
+has legs as well as arms; and why, if it be the custom, should not one
+be seen as well as the other? That girl's grandmothers, to the tenth
+degree of greatness, wore skirts of just that length from their
+childhood to their dying day; and why should not she? She would as soon
+think of hiding her nose as her ankle; and why should she not? Besides,
+as you will see, her gown is not shorter than those our grandmothers
+wore, or our mothers, twenty-eight or thirty years ago; and that they
+were modest, which of us will deny? And now as to the width of these
+skirts. You will see that they reach only a little below the calf of
+the leg, and therefore it is both impossible and undesirable that
+they should fall so closely round the figure as in the case of the
+fashionable gowns of 1812 that we were just examining. And besides, in
+the case of our peasant-girl, we see that the lines of her gown are
+determined by the outline of her figure; and we also see her feet and
+the lower part of her legs. Her humanity is not extinguished, her means
+of locomotion are visible;--but in looking at a lady nowadays, we see
+nothing of the kind; from the waist down, she is a puzzle of silk and
+conic sections, a marvellous machine that moves in a mysterious way.
+See, again, how beautiful in color this peasant's costume is. The gown
+of a rich red, not glaring, but yet positive and pure; the apron, blue;
+she is a brunette, and so has wisely chosen to have that enviable
+little shawl or kerchief, the ends of which reach but just below her
+waist, of yellow; while that high head-dress, quaint and graceful, that
+serves her for a bonnet, and in fact is one, is of tender green.
+
+_Miss Larches_. She is not troubled with trimming.
+
+_Grey_. Not troubled with it; but she has it just where it should
+be,--on the bottom of her gown, which is edged with black,--in the
+flowered border of her kerchief,--on the edge of her bonnet, where there
+is a narrow line of yellow,--and in the lace or muslin ruffle of the
+cape which falls from it If she were a queen, or the wife of a Russian
+prince who owned thousands of girls like her, she might have trimming of
+greater cost and beauty, but not a shred more without deterioration
+of her costume, which, if she were court-lady to Eugenie and had the
+court-painter to help her, could not be in better taste.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. But, Stanford, don't you see? (just like a man!) you are
+charmed with these women, not with their dresses. These fashion-plates
+of fifty years ago are designed by very different hands from those which
+produce our niminy-piminy looking things,--by artists plainly; and your
+peasant-girl was seized upon by some errant knight of palette and brush,
+and painted for her beauty. These women are what you men call fine
+creatures. Their limbs are rounded and shapely, their figures full and
+lithe; they are what I've heard you say Homer calls Briseïs.
+
+_Grey_. White-armed, deep-bosomed?
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Yes; and their necks rise from their shoulders like ivory
+towers. Any costume will look beautiful on such women. But how are poor,
+puny, ill-made women to dress in such fashions? They could not wear
+those dresses without exhibiting all those personal defects which our
+present fashion conceals. It's all very fine for perfectly beautiful
+women to have such fashions; but it's very cruel to those who are not
+beautiful. Don't you remember, at Mrs. Clarkson's party, just before we
+were married, you, and half a dozen other men just like you, went round
+raving about Mrs. Horn, and how elegantly she was dressed? and when I
+saw her, I found she had on only a plain pale-blue silk dress, that
+couldn't have cost a penny more than twelve shillings a yard, and not a
+thing beside. All the women were turning up their noses at her.
+
+_Grey_. Because all the men were ready to bend down their heads to her?
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Yes.--No.--The upshot of it was, that the woman had the
+figure and complexion of Hebe, and this dress showed it and set it off;
+but the dress was nothing particular in itself.
+
+_Grey_. That is, I suppose, it was not particularly fanciful or
+costly;--no detriment to its beauty. But as to the beauty of these
+costumes depending on the beauty of the women who wear them, and their
+unsuitableness to the needs of women who are without beauty,--It is
+undeniably true, that, to be beautiful in any costume, a woman must
+be--beautiful. This may be very cruel, but there is no help for it.
+Color may enhance the beauty of complexion, as in the case of Mrs.
+Horn's blue dress; but as to form and material, the most elaborate, the
+most costly, even the most beautiful costume ever devised, cannot make
+the woman that wears it be other than she is, or seem so, except to
+people who do not look at her, but at her clothes. What did all the ugly
+women in 1811 and '12 do? and what have all the ugly peasant-girls in
+Normandy done for hundreds of years past? Do you suppose that their
+beautiful costume made them look any uglier than ugly women do now and
+here? Not a whit. Ugliness may be covered, but it cannot be concealed.
+And does the fashion of our day so kindly veil the personal defects in
+the interest of which you plead? At parties I have thought differently,
+and sorrowed for the owners of arms and busts and shoulders that
+inexorable fashion condemns on such occasions to an exposure which, to
+say the least, is in many cases needless. No,--by flying in the face of
+fashion, a woman attracts attention to her person, which can be done
+with impunity only by the beautiful; but do you not see that an ugly
+woman, by conforming to fashion, obtains no advantage over other women,
+ugly or beautiful, who also conform to it? and consequently, that a set
+fashion for all rigidly preserves the contrasts of unequally developed
+Nature? If there were no fashion to which all felt that they must
+conform at peril of singularity, then, indeed, there would be some help
+for the unfortunate; for each individual might adopt a costume suited to
+his or her peculiarities of person. Yet, even then, there could only be
+a mitigation or humoring of blemishes, not a remedy for them. There is
+no way of making deformity or imperfection beautiful.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. But, Stanford, there are times when----
+
+_Grey_. There are no times when woman's figure has not the charm
+of womanhood, unless she attempts to improve it by some monstrous
+contrivance of her own; no times when good taste and womanly tact cannot
+so drape it that it will possess some attraction peculiar to her sex.
+And were it not so, how irrational, how wrongful is it to extinguish, I
+will not say the beauty, but, in part, the very humanity of all women,
+at all times, for the sake of hiding for some women the sign of their
+perfected womanhood at certain times!
+
+_Mr. Key_. It certainly results in most astonishing surprises. In fact,
+I was quite stultified the other day, when Mrs. Novamater, who only a
+week before had been out yachting with me----
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Declined going again. That was not strange. I fear that you
+did not take good care of her.
+
+_Mr. Key_. I was not as tender of her as I might have been; but it was
+her fault, or that of my ignorance,--not really mine. But, Mr. Grey, why
+can't you boil all this talk down into an essay, or a paper, as you call
+it, for the "Oceanic"? You promised Miss Larches something of the sort
+just now. _Miss Larches_. Yes, Mr. Grey, do let us have it. We ladies
+would so like to have some masculine rules to dress by!
+
+_Tomes_. Don't confine your endeavors to one sex. Think what an
+achievement it would be to teach me how to dress!
+
+_Grey_. Unanimous, even in your irony! for I see that Mrs. Grey looks
+quizzical expectation. Well, I will. In fact, I'm as well prepared as
+a man whose health is drunk at a dinner given to him, and who is
+unexpectedly called upon for a speech,--or as Rosina, when Figaro begs
+for _un biglietio_ to Almaviva. [_Opens a drawer_.] _Eccolo quà_! Here
+is something not long enough or elaborate enough to be called an essay
+nowadays, though it might have borne the name in Bacon's time. I will
+read it to you. I call it
+
+
+
+
+THE RUDIMENTS OF DRESS.
+
+To dress the body is to put it into a right, proper, and becoming
+external condition. Comfort and decency are to be sought first in dress;
+next, fitness to the person and the condition of the wearer; last,
+beauty of form and color, and richness of material. But the last object
+is usually made the first, and thus all are perilled and often lost; for
+that which is not comfortable or decent or suitable cannot be completely
+beautiful. The two chief requisites of dress are easily attained. Only a
+sufficiency of suitable covering is necessary to them; and this varies
+according to climate and custom. The Hottentot has them both in his
+strip of cloth; the Esquimau, in his double case of skins over all
+except face and fingers;--the most elegant Parisian, the most prudish
+Shakeress, has no more.
+
+The two principal objects of covering the body being so easily
+attainable, the others are immediately, almost simultaneously sought;
+and dress rises at the outset into one of those mixed arts which seek to
+combine the useful and the beautiful, and which thus hold a middle place
+between mechanic art and fine art. But of these mixed arts, dress is the
+lowest and the least important: the lowest, because perfection in it is
+most easily arrived at,--being within the reach of persons whose minds
+are uninformed and frivolous, whose souls are sensual and grovelling,
+and whose taste has little culture,--as in the case of many American,
+and more French women, who have had a brief experience of metropolitan
+life: the least important, because it has no intellectual or even
+emotional significance, and is thus without the slightest aesthetic
+purpose, having for its end (as an art) only the transient, sensuous
+gratification of an individual, or, at most, of the comparatively few
+persons by whom he may be seen in the course of not more than a single
+day; for every renovation of the dress is, in its kind, a new work of
+Art. As men emerge from the savage state and acquire mechanic skill, the
+distaff, the spindle, and the loom produce the earliest fruits of their
+advancement, and dress is the first decorative art in which they reach
+perfection. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the most beautiful
+articles of clothing, the most tasteful and comfortable costumes, have
+not been produced by people who are classed as barbarous, or, at best,
+as half-civilized. What fabrics surpass the shawls of India in tint or
+texture? What garment is more graceful or more serviceable than the
+Mexican _poncho_, or the Peruvian _rebozo_? What Frenchman is so
+comfortably or so beautifully dressed as a wealthy unsophisticated
+Turk? There seems to be an instinct about dress, which, joined to the
+diffusion of wealth and the reduced price of all textile fabrics, has
+caused it to be no longer any criterion of culture, social position,
+breeding, or even taste, except as regards itself.
+
+Dress has, however, some importance in its relations to society and to
+the individual. It is always indicative of the temper of the time. This
+is notably true of the wanton ease of the costume of Charles the Second,
+and the meretricious artificiality of that of the middle of the last
+century. And in the deliberate double-skirted costliness of the female
+fashions of our own day,--fashions not intended for courts or wealthy
+aristocracies, but for everybody,--contrasted as they are with the
+sober-hued and unpretending habits which all men wear, and in which
+little more is sought than comfort and convenience, we have an
+expression of the laborious and the lavish spirit of the times,--the
+right hand gathering with painful, unremitting toil, the left scattering
+with splendid recklessness. Dress has an appreciable effect upon the
+mental condition of individuals, whatever their gravity or intelligence.
+There are few men not far advanced in years, and still fewer women, who
+do not feel more confidence in themselves, perhaps more self-respect,
+for the consciousness of being well-dressed, or, rather, when the
+knowledge that they are well-dressed relieves them of all consciousness
+upon the subject. To decide upon the costume which can secure this
+serene self-satisfaction is impossible. For to excellence in dress
+there are positive and relative conditions. A man cannot be positively
+well-dressed, whose costume does not suit the peculiarities of
+his person and position,--or relatively, whose exterior does not
+sufficiently conform to the fashion of his day (unless that should be
+very monstrous and ridiculous) to escape remark for eccentricity. The
+question is, therefore, complicated with the consideration of individual
+peculiarities and the fashion of the day, which are unknown and variable
+elements. But maxims of general application can be laid down, to which
+both fashions and individuals must conform at peril consequent upon
+violation of the laws of reason and beauty.
+
+The comfort and decency needful to dress--the Esquimau's double case of
+skins and the Hottentot's _cumberbund_--need not be insisted on; for
+maxims are not made for idiots. But dress should not only secure these
+points, but seem to secure them; for, as to others than the wearer of a
+dress, what difference is there between shivering and seeming to shiver,
+sweltering and seeming to swelter?
+
+Convenience, which is to be distinguished from mere bodily comfort,
+is the next essential of becoming dress. A man should not go
+partridge-shooting in a Spanish cloak; a woman should not enter an
+omnibus, that must carry twelve inside, with her skirts so expanded by
+steel ribs that the vehicle can comfortably hold but four of her,--or do
+the honors of a table in hanging-sleeves that threaten destruction to
+cups and saucers, and take toll of gravy from every dish that passes
+them. Hoops, borrowed by bankrupt invention from a bygone age to satisfy
+craving fickleness, suited the habits of their first wearers, who would
+as soon have swept the streets as driven through them, packed thirteen
+to the dozen, in a carriage common to every passenger who could pay six
+cents; and hanging-sleeves were fit for women who, instead of serving
+others, were served themselves by pages on the knee. No beauty of
+form or splendor of material in costume can compensate for manifest
+inconvenience to the wearer. It is partly from an intuitive recognition
+of this truth, that a gown which opens before seems, and is, more
+beautiful than one that opens behind. The lady's maid is invisible.
+
+No dress is tolerable, by good taste, which does not permit, and seem to
+permit, the easy performance of any movement proper to the wearer's age
+and condition in life. Such a costume openly defies the first law of
+the mixed arts,--fitness. Thus, the dress of children should be simple,
+loose, and, whatever the condition of their parents, inexpensive. Let
+them not, girls or boys, except on rare, formal occasions, be tormented
+with the toilette. Give them clean skins, twice a day; and, for the
+rest, clothes that will protect them from the weather as they exercise
+their inalienable right to roll upon the grass and play in the dirt, and
+which it will trouble no one to see torn or soiled. Do this, if you have
+a prince's revenue,--unless you would be vulgar. For, although you may
+be able to afford to cast jewels into the mire or break the Portland
+vase for your amusement, if you do so, you are a Goth. Jewels were
+not made for the mire, vases to be broken, or handsome clothes to be
+soiled and torn.
+
+Next to convenience is fitness to years and condition in life. A man can
+as soon, by taking thought, add a cubit to his stature as a woman take
+five years from her appearance by "dressing young." The attempt to make
+age look like youth only succeeds in depriving age of its peculiar and
+becoming beauty, and leaving it a bloated or a haggard sham.--Conditions
+of life have no political recognition, with us, yet they none the
+less exist. They are not higher and lower; they are different. The
+distinction between them is none the less real, that it is not written
+down, and they are not labelled. Reason and taste alike require that
+this difference should have outward expression. The abandonment of
+distinctive professional costume is associated with a movement of social
+progress, and so cannot be arrested; but it is much to be deplored in
+its effect upon the beauty, the keeping, and the harmonious contrast of
+external life.
+
+Of the absolute beauty of dress form is the most important element, as
+it is of all arts which appeal to the eye. The lines of costume should,
+in every part, conform to those of Nature, or be in harmony with them.
+"Papa," said a little boy, who saw his father for the first time in
+complete walking-costume, "what a high hat! Does your head go up to the
+top of it?" The question touched the cardinal point of form in costume.
+Unbroken, flowing lines are essential to the beauty of dress; and fixed
+angles are monstrous, except where Nature has placed them, at the
+junction of the limbs with the trunk. The general outlines of the figure
+should be indicated; and no long garment which flows from the shoulders
+downward is complete without a girdle.
+
+[Footnote: _Mr. Grey_ [_in parenthesis, and by way of illustration_].
+The fashion for ladies' full dress during several years, and but
+recently abandoned, with its straight line cutting pitilessly across the
+rounded forms of the shoulders and bust, and making women seem painfully
+squeezed upward out of their gowns,--its _berthe_, concealing both the
+union of the arms with the trunk and the flowing lines of that part of
+the person, and adding another discordant straight line (its lower edge)
+to the costume,--its long, ungirdled waist, wrought into peaks before
+and behind, and its gathered swell below, is an instance in point, of
+utter disregard of Nature and deliberate violation of harmony, and the
+consequent attainment of discord and absurdity in every particular.
+It is rivalled only by the dress-coat, which, with quite unimportant
+variations, has been worn by gentlemen for fifty years. The collar of
+this, when stiff and high, quite equals the _berthe_ in absurdity and
+ugliness; and the useless skirt is the converse in monstrosity to the
+hooped petticoat.]
+
+As to distinctive forms of costume for the sexes, long robes, concealing
+the person from the waist to considerably below the knee, are required
+by the female figure, if only to veil certain inherent defects,--if
+those peculiarities may be called defects, which adapt it to its proper
+functions and do not diminish its sexual attractiveness. Woman's figure
+having its centre of gravity low, its breadth at the hip great, and,
+from the smallness of her feet, its base narrow, her natural movement in
+a costume which does not conceal the action of the hip and knee-joints
+is unavoidably awkward, though none the less attractive to the eye of
+the other sex. [Footnote: For instance, the movements of ballet-dancers,
+except the very artificial ones of the feet and hands.]
+
+In color, the point of next importance, no fine effects of costume are
+to be attained without broad masses of pure and positive tints. These,
+however, may be enlivened with condimental garniture of broken and
+combined colors. But dresses striped, or, yet worse, plaided or
+checkered, are atrocious violations of good taste; indeed, party-colored
+costumes are worthy only of the fools and harlequins to whose official
+habits they were once set apart. The three primary, and the three
+secondary colors, red, yellow, and blue, orange, green, and purple,
+(though not in their highest intensity,) afford the best hues for
+costume, and are inexhaustible in their beautiful combinations.
+White and black have, in themselves, no costumal character; but they may
+be effectively used in combination with other colors. The various tints
+of so-called brown, that we find in Nature, may be employed with fine
+effect; but other colors, curiously sought out and without distinctive
+hue, have little beauty in themselves; and any richness of appearance
+which they may present is almost always due to the fabric to which they
+are imparted. Colors have harmonies and discords, like sounds, which
+must be carefully observed in composing a costume. Perception of these
+cannot be taught, more than perception of harmony in music; but, if
+possessed, it may be cultivated.
+
+Extrinsic ornament or trimming should be avoided, except to indicate
+completeness, as at a hem,--or to blend forms and colors, as soft lace
+at the throat or wrists. The essential beauty of costume is in its
+fitness, form, and color; and the effect of this beauty may be entirely
+frittered away by trimmings. These, however costly, are in themselves
+mere petty accessories to dress; and the use of them, except to define
+its chief terminal outlines, or soften their infringement upon the
+flesh, is a confession of weakness in the main points of the costume,
+and an indication of a depraved and trivial taste. When used, they
+should have beauty in themselves, which is attainable only by a clearly
+marked design. Thus, the exquisite delicacy of fabric in some kinds of
+lace does not compensate for the blotchy confusion of the shapeless
+flower-patterns worked upon it. Not that lace or any other ornamental
+fabric should imitate exactly the forms of flowers or other natural
+objects, but that the conventional forms should be beautiful in
+themselves and clearly traced in the pattern.--Akin to trimmings are all
+other appendages to dress,--jewels, or humbler articles; and as every
+part of dress should have a function, and fulfil it, and seem to do so,
+and should not seem to do that which it does not, these should never
+be worn unless they serve a useful purpose,--as a brooch, a button,
+a chain, a signet or guard ring,--or have significance,--as a
+wedding-ring, an epaulet, or an order. [Footnote: Thus, it is the office
+of a bonnet or a hat to protect the head and face; and so a sun-shade
+carried by the wearer of a bonnet is a confession that the bonnet is
+a worthless thing, worn only for show: but an umbrella is no such
+confession; because it is not the office of the hat or bonnet to shelter
+the whole person from sun or rain.] But the brooch and the button must
+fasten, the chain suspend, the ring bear a device, or they sink into
+pretentious, vulgar shams. And there must be keeping between these
+articles and their offices. To use, for instance, a massive golden, or,
+worse, gilded chain to support a cheap silver watch is to reverse the
+order of reason and good taste.
+
+The human head is the most beautiful object in Nature. It needs a
+covering at certain times; but to decorate it is superfluous; and any
+decoration, whether of flowers, or jewels, or the hair itself, that
+distorts its form or is in discord with its outlines, is an abomination.
+
+Perfumes are hardly a part of dress; yet, as an addition to it often
+made, they merit censure, with slight exception, as deliberate
+contrivances to attract attention to the person, by appealing to the
+lowest and most sensuous of the senses. Next to no perfume at all, a
+faint odor of roses, or of lavender, obtained by scattering the leaves
+of those plants in clothes-presses, or of the very best Cologne-water,
+is most pleasant.
+
+In its general expression, dress should be cheerful and enlivening, but,
+at least in the case of adults, not inconsistent with thoughtful
+earnestness. There is a radical and absurd incongruity between the real
+condition and the outward seeming of a man or woman who knows what life
+is, and purposes to discharge its duties, enjoy its joys, and bear its
+sorrows, and who is clad in a trivial, grotesque, or extravagant
+costume.--These, then, are the elementary requisites of dress: that it
+be comfortable and decent, convenient and suitable, beautiful in form
+and color, simple, genuine, harmonious with Nature and itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. All very fine, and, doubtless, very true, as well as
+sententious and profound. But hark you, Mr. Wiseman, to something not
+dreamt of in your philosophy! We women dress, not to be simple, genuine,
+and harmonious, or even to please you men, but to brave each other's
+criticism; and so, when the time comes to get our Fall things, Laura and
+I will go and ask what is the fashion, and wear what is the fashion, in
+spite of you and your rudiments and elements.
+
+_Grey_. I expected nothing else; and, indeed, I am not sure that in your
+present circumstances I should desire you to do otherwise, or, at most,
+to deviate more than slightly from the prevailing mode toward such
+remote points as simplicity, genuineness, and harmony. But if you were
+to set the fashion instead of following it, I should hope for better
+things.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. Fall things?
+
+_Tomes_. But society has little to hope for from you, who would brand
+callings and conditions with a distinctive costume. That was a part of
+the essay that surprised me much. For the mere sake of a picturesque
+variety, would you perpetuate the degradation of labor, the segregation
+of professions, and set up again one of the social barriers between man
+and man? Your doctrine is fitter for Hindostan than for America. This
+uniformity of costume, of which you complain, is the great outward and
+visible sign of the present political, and future social, equality of
+the race.
+
+_Grey_. You forget that the essay expressly recognizes, not only the
+connection between social progress and the abandonment of distinction
+in professional costume, but admits, perhaps somewhat hastily, that it
+cannot be arrested, and deplores it only on the score of the beauty and
+fitness of external life. If we must give up social progress or variety
+of costume, who could doubt which to choose? But I do not hesitate to
+assert that this uniform phase of costume is not a logical consequence
+of social advancement, that it is the result of vanity and petty pride,
+and in its spirit at variance with the very doctrine of equality,
+irrespective of occupation or condition, from which it seems to spring.
+For the carpenter, the smith, the physician, the lawyer, who, when not
+engaged in his calling, makes it a point not to be known as belonging to
+it, contemns it and puts it to open shame; and so this endeavor of all
+men to dress on every possible occasion in a uniform style unsuited to
+labor, so far from elevating labor, degrades it, and demoralizes the
+laborer. This is exemplified every day, and especially on Sunday, when
+nine-tenths of our population do all in their power, at cost of cash
+and stretch of credit, at sacrifice of future comfort and present
+self-respect and peace of mind, to look as unlike their real selves On
+other days as possible. Our very maid-servants, who were brought up
+shoeless, stockingless, and bonnetless, and who work day and night for
+a few dollars a month, spend those dollars in providing themselves with
+hoops, flounced silk dresses, and variegated bonnets for Sunday wearing.
+
+_Tomes_. Do you grudge the poor creatures their holiday and their
+holiday-dress?
+
+_Grey_. Far from it! Let them, let us all, have more holidays, and
+holiday-dresses as beautiful as may be. But I cannot see why a
+holiday-dress should be so entirely unlike the dress they wear on other
+days. I have a respect as well as an admiration for the white-capped,
+bonnetless head of the French maid, which I cannot feel for my own
+wife's nurse, when I meet her flaunting along the streets on Sunday
+afternoon in a bonnet which is a cheap and vulgar imitation of that
+which my wife wears, and really like it only in affording no protection
+to her head, and requiring huge pins to keep it in the place where
+a bonnet is least required. I have seen a farmer, whose worth,
+intelligence, and manly dignity found fitting expression in the dress
+that he daily wore, sacrifice this harmonious outward seeming in an
+hour, and sink into insignificance, if not vulgarity, by putting on a
+dress-coat and a shiny stove-pipe hat to go to meeting or to "York." A
+dress-coat and a fashionable hat are such hideous habits in themselves,
+that he must be unmistakably a man bred to wearing them, and on whom
+they sit easily, if not a well-looking and distinguished man, who can
+don them with impunity, especially if we have been accustomed to see him
+in a less exacting costume.
+
+_Mr. Key_. The very reason why every man will, at sacrifice of his
+comfort and his last five dollars, exercise his right to wear them
+whenever he can do so. But your idea of a beautiful costume, Mr. Grey,
+seems to be a blue, red, or yellow bag, or bolster-case, drawn over the
+head, mouth downwards, with a hole in the middle of the bottom for the
+neck and two at the corners for the arms, and bound about the waist with
+a cord; for I observe that you insist upon a girdle.
+
+_Grey_. I don't scout your pattern so much as you probably expected.
+Costumes worse in every respect have been often worn.--And the girdle?
+Is it not, in female dress, at least, the most charming accessory of
+costume? that which most defines the peculiar beauties of woman's form?
+that to which the tenderest associations cling? Its knot has ever had
+a sweet significance that makes it sacred. What token could a lover
+receive that he would prize so dearly as the girdle whose office he has
+so often envied? "That," cries Waller,--
+
+  "That which her slender waist confin'd
+  Shall now my joyful temples bind.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Give me but what this ribbon bound,
+  Take all the rest the sun goes round."
+
+Have women taste? and can they put off this cestus with which the least
+attractive of them puts on some of Venus's beauty? Have they sentiment?
+and can they discard so true a type of their tender power that its mere
+lengthening makes every man their servant?
+
+_Tomes_. Your bringing up the poets to your aid reminds me that you have
+the greatest of them against you, as to the importance of richness in
+dress. What do you say to Shakespeare's "Costly thy habit as thy purse
+can buy, but not expressed in fancy"?
+
+_Grey_. That it is often quoted as Shakespeare's advice in dress by
+people who know nothing else that he wrote, and who would have his
+support for their extravagance, when, in fact, we do not know what
+Shakespeare would have thought upon the subject, had he lived now. It is
+the advice of a worldly-minded old courtier to his son, given as a mere
+prudential maxim, at a time when, to make an impression and get on at
+court, a man had need to be richly dressed. That need has entirely
+passed away.
+
+_Miss Larches_. But, Mr. Grey, I remember your finding fault with
+the powder on the head-dress of that _marquise_ costume, because it
+concealed the red hair of the wearer. In such a case I should consider
+powder a blessing. Do you really admire red hair?
+
+_Grey_. When it is beautiful, I do, and prefer it to that of any other
+tint. I don't mean golden hair, or flaxen, or yellow, but red,--the
+color of dark red amber, or, nearer yet, of freshly cut copper. There is
+ugly red hair, as there is ugly hair of black and brown, and every other
+hue. It is not the mere name of the color of the hair that makes it
+beautiful or not, but its tint and texture. I have seen black hair that
+was hideous to the sight and repulsive to the touch,--other, also black,
+that charmed the eyes and wooed the fingers. Fashion has asserted
+herself even in this particular. There have been times when the really
+fortunate possessor of such brown tresses as Miss Larches's would have
+been deemed unfortunate. No troubadour would have sung her praises; or
+if he did, he would either have left her hair unpraised, or else lied
+and called it golden, meaning red, as we know by the illuminated books
+of the Middle Ages. Had she lived in Venice, that great school of color,
+two or three hundred years ago, in the days of Titian and Giorgione, its
+greatest masters, she would probably have sat upon a balcony with her
+locks drawn through a crownless broad-brimmed hat, and covered with dye,
+to remove some of their rich chestnut hue, and substitute a reddish
+tinge;--just as this lady is represented as doing in this Venetian book
+of costumes of that date.
+
+_Key_. Oh that two little nephews of mine, that the boys call Carroty
+Bill and Brickdust Ben, were here! How these comfortable words would
+edify them!
+
+_Grey_. I'm afraid not, if they understood me, or the poets, who, as
+well as the painters, are with me, Horace's Pyrrha had red hair,--
+
+  "Cui flavam religas comam
+  Simplex munditiis?"
+
+which, if Tomes will not be severely critical, I will translate,--
+
+  "For whom bind'st back thy amber hair
+  In neat simplicity?"
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. The poets are always raving about neat simplicity, or
+something else that is not the fashion. I suppose they sustain you in
+your condemnation of perfumes, too.
+
+_Tomes_. There I'm with Grey,--and the poets, too, I think.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. What say you, Mr. Key?
+
+_Tomes_. At least, Grey, [_turning to him_,] Plautus says, "_Mulier
+recte olet ubi nihil olet_" which you may translate for the ladies, if
+you choose. I always distrust a woman steeped in perfumes upon the very
+point as to which she seeks to impress me favorably.
+
+_Grey_ [_as if to himself and Tomes_]--
+
+  "Still to be powder'd, still perfum'd,
+  Lady, it is to be presum'd,
+  Though Art's hid causes are not found,
+  All is not sweet, all is not sound."
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. What is that you are having to yourselves, there?
+
+_Grey_. Only a verse or two _à-propos_ from rare Ben.
+
+_Mrs. Grey_. What do poets know about dress, even when they are
+poetesses? Look at your friend, the authoress of the "Willow Wreath."
+What a spook that woman is! Where does she get those dresses? I've often
+wondered--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here the glass door opened, and a neat, fresh-looking maid-servant said,
+"Please, Ma'am, dinner is served."
+
+_Grey_. Dinner! Have we been talking here two mortal hours? You'll
+all stop, of course: don't think of declining. Nelly blushes, yonder,
+doubtful, on "hospitable thoughts intent," I don't believe "our general
+mother," though she had Eden for her larder, heard Adam announce the
+Archangel's unexpected visit about dinner-time without a momentary qualm
+as to whether the peaches would go round twice. There'll be enough for
+Miss Larches and you, Nelly; and we gentlemen will beam smiles upon you
+as we mince our modest share. Let us go in. Mr. Key, will you commit
+yourself to Mrs. Grey? Miss Larches, will you lay aside your bonnet? Oh,
+it's off already! One can't see, unless one stands behind you; and
+I prefer the front view. Pray, take my arm. And, Tomes, keep at a
+respectful distance in the rear, for the safety of Miss Larches's
+skirts, or she will be for excluding you, if we should have a talk about
+another phase of Daily Beauty, or stay away herself; and neither of you
+could be spared.
+
+
+
+
+THE ARTIST-PRISONER.
+
+  Here, in this vacant cell of mine,
+  I picture and paint my Apennine.
+
+  In spite of walls and gyvéd wrist,
+  I gather my gold and amethyst.
+
+  The muffled footsteps' ebb and swell,
+  Immutable tramp of sentinel,
+
+  The clenchéd lip, the gaze of doom,
+  The hollow-resounding dungeon-gloom,
+
+  All fade and cease, as, mass and line,
+  I shadow the sweep of Apennine,
+
+  And from my olive palette take
+  The marvellous pigments, flake by flake.
+
+  With azure, pearl, and silver white,
+  The purple of bloom and malachite,
+
+  Ceiling, wall, and iron door,
+  When the grim guard goes, I picture o'er.
+
+  E'en where his shadow falls athwart
+  The sunlight of noon, I've a glory wrought,--
+
+  Have shaped the gloom and golden shine
+  To image my gleaming Apennine.
+
+  No cruel Alpine heights are there,
+  Dividing the depths of pallid air;
+
+  But sea-blue liftings, far and fine,
+  With driftings of pearl and coralline;
+
+  And domes of marble, every one
+  All ambered o'er by setting sun;--
+
+  Yes, marble realms, that, clear and high,
+  So float in the purple-azure sky,
+
+  We all have deemed them, o'er and o'er,
+  Miraculous isles of madrepore;
+
+  Nor marvel made that hither floods
+  Bore wonderful forms of hero-gods.
+  Oh, can you see, as spirit sees,
+  Yon silvery sheen of olive-trees?
+
+  To me a sound of murmuring doves
+  Comes wandering up from olive-groves,
+
+  And lingers near me, while I dwell
+  On yonder fair field of asphodel,
+
+  Half-lost in sultry songs of bees,
+  As, touching my chaliced anemones,
+
+  I prank their leaves with dusty sheen
+  To show where the golden bees have been.
+
+  On granite wall I paint the June
+  With emerald grape and wild festoon,--
+
+  Its chestnut-trees with open palms
+  Beseeching the sun for daily alms,--
+
+  In sloping valley, veiled with vines,
+  A violet path beneath the pines,--
+
+  The way one goes to find old Rome,
+  Its far away sign a purple dome.
+
+  But not for me the glittering shrine:
+  I worship my God in the Apennine!
+
+  To all save those of artist eyes,
+  The listeners to silent symphonies,
+
+  Only a cottage small is mine,
+  With poppied pasture, sombre pine.
+
+  But _they_ hear anthems, prayer, and bell,
+  And sometimes they hear an organ swell;
+
+  They see what seems--so saintly fair--
+  Madonna herself a-wandering there,
+
+  Bearing baby so divine
+  They speak of the Child in Palestine!
+
+  Yet I, who threw my palette down
+  To fight on the walls of yonder town,
+
+  Know them for wife and baby mine,
+  As, weeping, I trace them, line by line,
+  In far-off glen of Apennine!
+
+
+
+
+THE MINISTER'S WOOING.
+
+[Continued.]
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+A GUEST AT THE COTTAGE.
+
+Nothing is more striking, in the light and shadow of the human drama,
+than to compare the inner life and thoughts of elevated and silent
+natures with the thoughts and plans which those by whom they are
+surrounded have of and for them. Little thought Mary of any of the
+speculations that busied the friendly head of Miss Prissy, or that lay
+in the provident forecastings of her prudent mother. When a life into
+which all our life-nerves have run is cut suddenly away, there follows,
+after the first long bleeding is stanched, an internal paralysis of
+certain portions of our nature. It was so with Mary: the thousand fibres
+that bind youth and womanhood to earthly love and life were all in her
+as still as the grave, and only the spiritual and divine part of her
+being was active. Her hopes, desires, and aspirations were all such as
+she could have had in greater perfection as a disembodied spirit than as
+a mortal woman. The small stake for self which she had invested in
+life was gone,--and henceforward all personal matters were to her so
+indifferent that she scarce was conscious of a wish in relation to
+her own individual happiness. Through the sudden crush of a great
+affliction, she was in that state of self-abnegation to which the
+mystics brought themselves by fastings and self-imposed penances,--a
+state not purely healthy, nor realizing the divine ideal of a perfect
+human being made to exist in the relations of human life,--but one of
+those exceptional conditions, which, like the hours that often precede
+dissolution, seem to impart to the subject of them a peculiar aptitude
+for delicate and refined spiritual impressions. We could not afford to
+have it always night,--and we must think that the broad, gay morning
+light, when meadow-lark and robin and bobolink are singing in chorus
+with a thousand insects and the waving of a thousand breezes, is on the
+whole the most in accordance with the average wants of those who have
+a material life to live and material work to do. But then we reverence
+that clear-obscure of midnight, when everything is still and dewy;--then
+sing the nightingales, which cannot be heard by day; then shine the
+mysterious stars. So when all earthly voices are hushed in the soul, all
+earthly lights darkened, music and color float in from a higher sphere.
+
+No veiled nun, with her shrouded forehead and downcast eyes, ever moved
+about a convent with a spirit more utterly divided from the world, than
+Mary moved about her daily employments. Her care about the details of
+life seemed more than ever minute; she was always anticipating
+her mother in every direction, and striving by a thousand gentle
+preveniences to save her from fatigue and care; there was even a
+tenderness about her ministrations, as if the daughter had changed
+feelings and places with the mother.
+
+The Doctor, too, felt a change in her manner towards him, which, always
+considerate and kind, was now invested with a tender thoughtfulness and
+anxious solicitude to serve which often brought tears to his eyes.
+All the neighbors who had been in the habit of visiting at the house
+received from her, almost daily, in one little form or another, some
+proof of her thoughtful remembrance.
+
+She seemed in particular to attach herself to Mrs. Marvyn,--throwing her
+care around that fragile and wounded nature, as a generous vine will
+sometimes embrace with tender leaves and flowers a dying tree.
+
+But her heart seemed to have yearnings beyond even the circle of home
+and friends. She longed for the sorrowful and the afflicted,--she would
+go down to the forgotten and the oppressed,--and made herself the
+companion of the Doctor's secret walks and explorings among the poor
+victims of the slave-ships, and entered with zeal as teacher among his
+African catechumens.
+
+Nothing but the limits of bodily strength could confine her zeal to do
+and suffer for others; a river of love had suddenly been checked in her
+heart, and it needed all these channels to drain off the waters
+that must otherwise have drowned her in the suffocating agonies of
+repression.
+
+Sometimes, indeed, there would be a returning thrill of the old
+wound,--one of those overpowering moments when some turn in life brings
+back anew a great anguish. She would find unexpectedly in a book a mark
+that he had placed there,--or a turn in conversation would bring back
+a tone of his voice,--or she would see on some thoughtless young head
+curls just like those which were swaying to and fro down among the
+wavering seaweeds,--and then her heart gave one great throb of pain, and
+turned for relief to some immediate act of love to some living being.
+They who saw her in one of these moments felt a surging of her heart
+towards them, a moisture of the eye, a sense of some inexpressible
+yearning, and knew not from what pain that love was wrung, nor how that
+poor heart was seeking to still its own throbbings in blessing them.
+
+By what name shall we call this beautiful twilight, this night of
+the soul, so starry with heavenly mysteries? _Not_ happiness,--but
+blessedness. They who have it walk among men "as sorrowful, yet alway
+rejoicing,--as poor, yet making many rich,--as having nothing, and yet
+possessing all things."
+
+The Doctor, as we have seen, had always that reverential spirit towards
+women which accompanies a healthy and great nature; but in the constant
+converse which he now held with a beautiful being, from whom every
+particle of selfish feeling or mortal weakness seemed sublimed, he
+appeared to yield his soul up to her leading with a wondering humility,
+as to some fair, miraculous messenger of Heaven. All questions of
+internal experience, all delicate shadings of the spiritual history,
+with which his pastoral communings in his flock made him conversant, he
+brought to her to be resolved with the purest simplicity of trust.
+
+"She is one of the Lord's rarities," he said, one day, to Mrs.
+Scudder, "and I find it difficult to maintain the bounds of Christian
+faithfulness in talking with her. It is a charm of the Lord's hidden
+ones that they know not their own beauty; and God forbid that I should
+tempt a creature made so perfect by divine grace to self-exaltation,
+or lay my hand unadvisedly, as Uzzah did, upon the ark of God, by my
+inconsiderate praises!"
+
+"Well, Doctor," said Miss Prissy, who sat in the corner, sewing on the
+dove-colored silk, "I do wish you could come into one of our meetings
+and hear those blessed prayers. I don't think you nor anybody else ever
+heard anything like 'em."
+
+"I would, indeed, that I might with propriety enjoy the privilege," said
+the Doctor.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what," said Miss Prissy; "next week they're going
+to meet here; and I'll leave the door just ajar, and you can hear every
+word, just by standing in the entry."
+
+"Thank you, Madam," said the Doctor; "it would certainly be a blessed
+privilege, but I cannot persuade myself that such an act would be
+consistent with Christian propriety."
+
+"Ah, now do hear that good man!" said Miss Prissy, after he had left the
+room; "if he ha'n't got the making of a real gentleman in him, as well
+as a real Christian!--though I always did say, for my part, that a real
+Christian will be a gentleman. But I don't believe all the temptations
+in the world could stir that blessed man one jot or grain to do the
+least thing that he thinks is wrong or out of the way. Well, I must say,
+I never saw such a good man; he is the only man I ever saw good enough
+for our Mary." Another spring came round, and brought its roses, and the
+apple-trees blossomed for the third time since the commencement of our
+story; and the robins had rebuilt their nest, and began to lay their
+blue eggs in it; and Mary still walked her calm course, as a sanctified
+priestess of the great worship of sorrow. Many were the hearts now
+dependent on her, the spiritual histories, the threads of which were
+held in her loving hand,--many the souls burdened with sins, or
+oppressed with sorrow, who found in her bosom at once confessional and
+sanctuary. So many sought her prayers, that her hours of intercession
+were full, and often needed to be lengthened to embrace all for whom
+she would plead. United to the good Doctor by a constant friendship and
+fellowship, she had gradually grown accustomed to the more and more
+intimate manner in which he regarded her,--which had risen from a simple
+"dear child," and "dear Mary," to "dear friend," and at last "dearest of
+all friends," which he frequently called her, encouraged by the calm,
+confiding sweetness of those still, blue eyes, and that gentle smile,
+which came without one varying flutter of the pulse or the rising of the
+slightest flush on the marble cheek.
+
+One day a letter was brought in, postmarked "Philadelphia." It was from
+Madame de Frontignac; it was in French, and ran as follows:---
+
+"MY DEAR LITTLE WHITE ROSE:--
+
+"I am longing to see you once more, and before long [ shall be in
+Newport. Dear little Mary, I am sad, very sad;--the days seem all of
+them too long; and every morning I look out of my window and wonder why
+I was born. I am not so happy as I used to be, when I cared for nothing
+but to sing and smooth my feathers like the birds. That is the best kind
+of life for us women;--if we love anything better than our clothes, it
+is sure to bring us great sorrow. For all that, I can't help thinking it
+is very noble and beautiful to love;--love is very beautiful, but very,
+very sad. My poor dear little white cat, I should like to hold you a
+little while to my heart;--it is so cold all the time, and aches so, I
+wish I were dead; but then I am not good enough to die. The Abbe says,
+we must offer up our sorrow to God as a satisfaction for our sins. I
+have a good deal to offer, because my nature is strong and I can feel a
+great deal.
+
+"But I am very selfish, dear little Mary, to think only of myself, when
+I know how you must suffer. Ah! but you knew he loved you truly, the
+poor dear boy!--that is something. I pray daily for his soul; don't
+think it wrong of me; you know it is our religion;--we should all do our
+best for each other.
+
+"Remember me tenderly to Mrs. Marvyn. Poor mother!--the bleeding heart
+of the Mother of God alone can understand such sorrows.
+
+"I am coming in a week or two, and then I have many things to say to _ma
+belle rose blanche_; till then I kiss her little hands.
+
+
+
+
+"VIRGINIE DE FRONTIGNAC."
+
+One beautiful afternoon, not long after, a carriage stopped at the
+cottage, and Madame de Frontignac alighted. Mary was spinning in her
+garret-boudoir, and Mrs. Scudder was at that moment at a little distance
+from the house, sprinkling some linen, which was laid out to bleach on
+the green turf of the clothes-yard.
+
+Madame de Frontignac sent away the carriage, and ran up the stairway,
+pursuing the sound of Mary's spinning-wheel mingled with her song; and
+in a moment, throwing aside the curtain, she seized Mary in her arms,
+and kissed her on either cheek, laughing and crying both at once.
+
+"I knew where I should find you, _ma blanche_! I heard the wheel of my
+poor little princess! It's a good while since we spun together, _mimi_!
+Ah, Mary, darling, little do we know what we spin! life is hard and
+bitter, isn't it? Ah, how white your cheeks are, poor child!"
+
+Madame de Frontignac spoke with tears in her own eyes, passing her hand
+caressingly over the fair checks.
+
+"And you have grown pale, too, dear Madame," said Mary, looking up, and
+struck with the change in the once brilliant face.
+
+"Have I, _petite?_ I don't know why not. We women have secret places
+where our life runs out. At home I wear rouge; that makes all
+right;--but I don't put it on for you, Mary; you see me just as I am."
+
+Mary could not but notice the want of that brilliant color and roundness
+in the cheek, which once made so glowing a picture; the eyes seemed
+larger and tremulous with a pathetic depth, and around them those bluish
+circles that speak of languor and pain. Still, changed as she was,
+Madame de Frontignac seemed only more strikingly interesting and
+fascinating than ever. Still she had those thousand pretty movements,
+those nameless graces of manner, those wavering shades of expression,
+that irresistibly enchained the eye and the imagination,--true
+Frenchwoman as she was, always in one rainbow shimmer of fancy and
+feeling, like one of those cloud-spotted April days which give you
+flowers and rain, sun and shadow, and snatches of bird-singing all at
+once.
+
+"I have sent away my carriage, Mary, and come to stay with you. You want
+me--_n'est ce pas?_" she said, coaxingly, with her arms round Mary's
+neck; "if you don't, _tant pis!_ for I am the bad penny you English
+speak of,--you cannot get me off."
+
+"I am sure, dear friend," said Mary, earnestly, "we don't want to put
+you off."
+
+"I know it; you are true; you _mean_ what you say; you are all good real
+gold, down to your hearts; that is why I love you. But you, my poor
+Mary, your cheeks are very white; poor little heart, you suffer!"
+
+"No," said Mary; "I do not suffer now. Christ has given me the victory
+over sorrow."
+
+There was something sadly sublime in the manner in which this was
+said,--and something so sacred in the expression of Mary's face that
+Madame de Frontignac crossed herself, as she been wont before a shrine;
+and then said, "Sweet Mary, pray for me; I am not at peace; I cannot get
+the victory over sorrow."
+
+"What sorrow can you have?" said Mary,--"you, so beautiful, so rich, so
+admired, whom everybody must love?"
+
+"That is what I came to tell you; I came to confess to you. But you
+must sit down there" she said, placing Mary on a low seat in the
+garret-window; "and Virginie will sit here," she said, drawing a bundle
+of uncarded wool towards her, and sitting down at Mary's feet.
+
+"Dear Madame," said Mary, "let me get you a better seat."
+
+"No, no, _mignonne_, this is best; I want to lay my head in your
+lap";--and she took off her riding-hat with its streaming plume, and
+tossed it carelessly from her, and laid her head down on Mary's lap.
+"Now don't call me Madame any more. Do you know," she said, raising her
+head with a sudden brightening of cheek and eye, "do you know that there
+are two _mes_ to this person?--one is Virginie, and the other is
+Madame de Frontignac. Everybody in Philadelphia knows Madame de
+Frontignac:--she is very gay, very careless, very happy; she never has
+any serious hours, or any sad thoughts; she wears powder and diamonds,
+and dances all night, and never prays;--that is Madame. But Virginie is
+quite another thing. She is tired of all this,--tired of the balls, and
+the dancing, and the diamonds, and the beaux; and she likes true people,
+and would like to live very quiet with somebody that she loved. She is
+very unhappy; and she prays, too, sometimes, in a poor little way,--like
+the birds in your nest out there, who don't know much, but chipper and
+cry because they are hungry. This is your Virginie. Madame never comes
+here,--never call me Madame."
+
+"Dear Virginie," said Mary, "how I love you!"
+
+"Do you, Mary,--_bien sûr?_ You are my good angel! I felt a good impulse
+from you when I first saw you, and have always been stronger to do right
+when I got one of your pretty little letters. Oh, Mary, darling, I have
+been very foolish and very miserable, and sometimes tempted to be very,
+very bad! Oh, sometimes I thought I would not care for God or anything
+else!--it was very bad of me,--but I was like a foolish little fly
+caught in a spider's net before he knows it."
+
+Mary's eyes questioned her companion, with an expression of eager
+sympathy, somewhat blended with curiosity.
+
+"I can't make you understand me quite," said Madame de Frontignac,
+"unless I go back a good many years. You see, dear Mary, my dear angel
+mamma died when I was very little, and I was sent to be educated at the
+Sacré Coeur, in Paris. I was very happy and very good, in those days;
+the sisters loved me, and I loved them; and I used to be so pious, and
+loved God dearly. When I took my first communion, Sister Agatha prepared
+me. She was a true saint, and is in heaven now; and I remember, when I
+came to her, all dressed like a bride, with my white crown and white
+veil, that she looked at me so sadly, and said she hoped I would never
+love anybody better than God, and then I should be happy. I didn't think
+much of those words then; but, oh, I have since, many times! They used
+to tell me always that I had a husband who was away in the army, and who
+would come to marry me when I was seventeen, and that he would give me
+all sorts of beautiful things, and show me everything I wanted to see in
+the world, and that I must love and honor him.
+
+"Well, I was married at last; and Monsieur de Frontignac is a good brave
+man, although he seemed to me very old and sober; but he was always kind
+to me, and gave me nobody knows how many sets of jewelry, and let me
+do everything I wanted to, and so I liked him very much; but I thought
+there was no danger I should love him, or anybody else, better than God.
+I didn't _love_ anybody in those days; I only liked people, and some
+people more than others. All the men I saw professed to be lovers, and I
+liked to lead them about and see what foolish things I could make them
+do, because it pleased my vanity; but I laughed at the very idea of
+love.
+
+"Well, Mary, when we came to Philadelphia, I heard everybody speaking of
+Colonel Burr, and what a fascinating man he was; and I thought it would
+be a pretty thing to have him in my train,--and so I did all I could to
+charm him. I tried all my little arts,--and if it is a sin for us women
+to do such things, I am sure I have been punished for it. Mary, he was
+stronger than I was. These men, they are not satisfied with having the
+whole earth under their feet, and having all the strength and all the
+glory, but they must even take away our poor little reign;--it's too
+bad!
+
+"I can't tell you how it was; I didn't know myself; but it seemed to me
+that he took my very life away from me; and it--was all done before I
+knew it. He called himself my friend, my brother; he offered to teach me
+English; he read with me; and by-and-by he controlled my whole life. I,
+that used to be so haughty, so proud,-I, that used to laugh to think
+how independent I was of everybody,--I was entirely under his control,
+though I tried not to show it. I didn't well know where I was; for he
+talked friendship, and I talked friendship; he talked about sympathetic
+natures that are made for each other, and I thought how beautiful it all
+was; it was living in a new world. Monsieur de Frontignac was as much
+charmed with him as I was; he often told me that he was his best
+friend,--that he was his hero, his model man; and I thought,----oh,
+Mary, you would wonder to hear me say what I thought! I thought he was a
+Bayard, a Sully, a Montmorenci,--everything grand and noble and good.
+I loved him with a religion; I would have died for him; I sometimes
+thought how I might lay down my life to save his, like women I read of
+in history. I did not know myself; I was astonished I could feel so; and
+I did not dream that this could be wrong. How could I, when it made me
+feel more religious than anything in my whole life? Everything in the
+world seemed to grow sacred. I thought, if men could be so good and
+admirable, life was a holy thing, and not to be trifled with.
+
+"But our good Abbé is a faithful shepherd; and when I told him these
+things in confession, be told me I was in great danger,--danger of
+falling into mortal sin. Oh, Mary, it was as if the earth had opened
+under me! He told me, too, that this noble man, this man so dear, was a
+heretic, and that, if he died, he would go to dreadful pains. Oh, Mary,
+I dare not tell you half what he told me,--dreadful things that make me
+shiver when I think of them! And then he said that I must offer myself a
+sacrifice for him; that, if I would put down all this love, and overcome
+it, God would perhaps accept it as a satisfaction, and bring him into
+the True Church at last.
+
+"Then I began to try. Oh, Mary, we never know how we love till we try to
+unlove! It seemed like taking my heart out of my breast, and separating
+life from life. How can one do it? I wish any one would tell me. The
+Abbé said I must do it by prayer; but it seemed to me prayer only made
+me think the more of him.
+
+"But at last I had a great shock; everything broke up like a great,
+grand, noble dream,--and I waked out of it just as weak and wretched as
+one feels when one has overslept. Oh, Mary, I found I was mistaken in
+him,--all, all, wholly!"
+
+Madame de Frontignac laid her forehead on Mary's knee, and her long
+chestnut hair drooped down over her face.
+
+"He was going somewhere with my husband to explore, out in the regions
+of the Ohio, where he had some splendid schemes of founding a state; and
+I was all interest. And one day, as they were preparing, Monsieur de
+Frontignac gave me a quantity of papers to read and arrange, and among
+them was a part of a letter;--I never could imagine how it got there; it
+was from Burr to one of his confidential friends. I read it, at first,
+wondering what it meant, till I came to two or three sentences about
+me."
+
+Madame de Frontignac paused a moment, and then said, rising with sudden
+energy,--
+
+"Mary, that man never loved me; he cannot love; he does not know what
+love is. What I felt he cannot know; he cannot even dream of it, because
+he never felt anything like it. Such men never know us women; we are as
+high as heaven above them. It is true enough that my heart was wholly in
+his power,--but why? Because I adored him as something divine, incapable
+of dishonor, incapable of selfishness, incapable of even a thought that
+was not perfectly noble and heroic. If he had been all that, I should
+have been proud to be even a poor little flower that should exhale away
+to give him an hour's pleasure; I would have offered my whole life to
+God as a sacrifice for such a glorious soul;--and all this time, what
+was he thinking of me?
+
+"He was _using_ my feelings to carry his plans; he was admiring me like
+a picture; he was considering what he should do with me; and but for
+his interests with my husband, he would have tried his power to make me
+sacrifice this world and the next to his pleasure. But he does not know
+me. My mother was a Montmorenci, and I have the blood of her house in my
+veins; we are princesses;--we can give all; but he must be a god that we
+give it for."
+
+Mary's enchanted eye followed the beautiful narrator, as she enacted
+before her this poetry and tragedy of real life, so much beyond what
+dramatic art can ever furnish. Her eyes grew splendid in their depth
+and brilliancy; sometimes they were full of tears, and sometimes they
+flashed out like lightnings; her whole form seemed to be a plastic
+vehicle which translated every emotion of her soul; and Mary sat and
+looked at her with the intense absorption that one gives to the highest
+and deepest in Art or Nature.
+
+"_Enfin,--que faire_?" she said at last, suddenly stopping, and drooping
+in every limb. "Mary, I have lived on this dream so long!--never thought
+of anything else!--now all is gone, and what shall I do?  I think,
+Mary," she added, pointing to the nest in the tree, "I see my life in
+many things. My heart was once still and quiet, like the round little
+eggs that were in your nest;--now it has broken out of its shell, and
+cries with cold and hunger. I want my dream again,--I wish it all
+back,--or that my heart could go back into its shell. If I only could
+drop this year out of my life, and care for nothing, as I used to! I
+have tried to do that; I can't; I cannot get back where I was before."
+
+"_Would_ you do it, dear Virginie?" said Mary; "would you, if you
+could?"
+
+"It was very noble and sweet, all that," said Virginie; "it gave me
+higher thoughts than ever I had before; I think my feelings were
+beautiful;--but now they are like little birds that have no mother; they
+kill me with their crying."
+
+"Dear Virginie, there is a real Friend in heaven, who is all you can ask
+or think,--nobler, better, purer,--who cannot change, and cannot die,
+and who loved you and gave Himself for you."
+
+"You mean Jesus," said Virginie. "Ah, I know it; and I say the offices
+to him daily, but my heart is very wild and starts away from my words.
+I say, 'My God, I give myself to you!'--and after all, I don't give
+myself, and I don't feel comforted. Dear Mary, you must have suffered,
+too,--for you loved really,--I saw it;--when we feel a thing ourselves,
+we can see very quick the same in others;--and it was a dreadful blow
+to come so all at once."
+
+"Yes, it was," said Mary; "I thought I must die; but Christ has given me
+peace."
+
+These words were spoken with that long-breathed sigh with which
+we always speak of peace,--a sigh that told of storms and sorrows
+past,--the sighing of the wave that falls spent and broken on the shores
+of eternal rest.
+
+There was a little pause in the conversation, and then Virginie raised
+her head and spoke in a sprightlier lone.
+
+"Well, my little fairy cat, my white doe, I have come to you. Poor
+Virginie wants something to hold to her heart; let me have you," she
+said, throwing her arms round Mary.
+
+"Dear, dear Virginie, indeed you shall!" said Mary. "I will love you
+dearly, and pray for you. I always have prayed for you, ever since the
+first day I knew you."
+
+"I knew it,--I felt your prayers in my heart. Mary, I have many thoughts
+that I dare not tell to any one, lately,--but I cannot help feeling that
+some are real Christians who are not in the True Church. You are as true
+a saint as Saint Catharine; indeed, I always think of you when I think
+of our dear Lady; and yet they say there is no salvation out of the
+Church."
+
+This was a new view of the subject to Mary, who had grown up with the
+familiar idea that the Romish Church was Babylon and Antichrist, and
+who, during the conversation, had been revolving the same surmises with
+regard to her friend. She turned her grave, blue eyes on Madame
+de Frontignac with a somewhat surprised look, which melted into a
+half-smile. But the latter still went on with a puzzled air, as if
+trying to talk herself out of some mental perplexity.
+
+"Now, Burr is a heretic,--and more than that, he is an infidel; he has
+no religion in his heart,--I saw that often,--it made me tremble for
+him,--it ought to have put me on my guard. But you, dear Mary, you love
+Jesus as your life. I think you love him just as much as Sister Agatha,
+who was a saint. The Abbé says that there is nothing so dangerous as to
+begin to use our reason in religion,--that, if we once begin, we never
+know where it may carry us; but I can't help using mine a very little. I
+must think there are some saints that are not in the True Church."
+
+"All are one who love Christ," said Mary; "we are one in Him."
+
+"I should not dare to tell the Abbé," said Madame de Frontignac; and
+Mary queried in her heart, whether Dr. H. would feel satisfied that she
+could bring this wanderer to the fold of Christ without undertaking
+to batter down the walls of her creed; and yet, there they were, the
+Catholic and the Puritan, each strong in her respective faith, yet
+melting together in that embrace of love and sorrow, joined in the
+great communion of suffering. Mary took up her Testament, and read the
+fourteenth chapter of John:--
+
+"Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.
+In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have
+told you. I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go and prepare a
+place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where
+I am, there ye may be also."
+
+Mary read on through the chapter,--through the next wonderful prayer;
+her face grew solemnly transparent, as of an angel; for her soul was
+lifted from earth by the words, and walked with Christ far above all
+things, over that starry pavement where each footstep is on a world.
+
+The greatest moral effects are like those of music,--not wrought out by
+sharp-sided intellectual propositions, but melted in by a divine fusion,
+by words that have mysterious, indefinite fulness of meaning, made
+living by sweet voices, which seem to be the out-throbbings of angelic
+hearts. So one verse in the Bible read by a mother in some hour of
+tender prayer has a significance deeper and higher than the most
+elaborate of sermons, the most acute of arguments.
+
+Virginie Frontignac sat as one divinely enchanted, while that sweet
+voice read on; and when the silence fell between them, she gave a long
+sigh, as we do when sweet music stops. They heard between them the soft
+stir of summer leaves, the distant songs of birds, the breezy hum when
+the afternoon wind shivered through many branches, and the silver sea
+chimed in. Virginie rose at last, and kissed Mary on the forehead.
+
+"That is a beautiful book," she said, "and to read it all by one's self
+must be lovely. I cannot understand why it should be dangerous; it has
+not injured you.
+
+"Sweet saint," she added, "let me stay with you; you shall read to me
+every day. Do you know I came here to get you to take me? I want you to
+show me how to find peace where you do; will you let me be your sister?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mary, with a cheek brighter than it had been for
+many a day; her heart feeling a throb of more real human pleasure than
+for long months.
+
+"Will you get your mamma to let me stay?" said Virginie, with the
+bashfulness of a child; "haven't you a little place like yours, with
+white curtains and sanded floor, to give to poor little Virginie to
+learn to be good in?"
+
+"Why, do you really want to stay here with us," said Mary, "in this
+little house?"
+
+"Do I really?" said Virginie, mimicking her voice with a start of her
+old playfulness;--"_don't_ I really? Come now, _mimi_, coax the good
+mamma for me,--tell her I shall try to be very good. I shall help you
+with the spinning,--you know I spin beautifully,--and I shall make
+butter, and milk the cow, and set the table. Oh, I will be so useful,
+you can't spare me!"
+
+"I should love to have you dearly," said Mary, warmly; "but you would
+soon be dull for want of society here."
+
+"_Quelle idée! ma petite dróle!_" said the lady,--who, with the mobility
+of her nation, had already recovered some of the saucy mocking grace
+that was habitual to her, as she began teasing Mary with a thousand
+little childish motions. "Indeed, _mimi_, you must keep me hid up here,
+or may-be the wolf will find me and eat me up; who knows?"
+
+Mary looked at her with inquiring eyes.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, Mary,--I mean, that, when _he_ comes back to Philadelphia, he
+thinks he shall find me there; he thought I should stay while my husband
+was gone; and when he finds I am gone, he may come to Newport; and I
+never want to see him again without you;--you must let me stay with
+you."
+
+"Have you told him," said Mary, "what you think?"
+
+"I wrote to him, Mary,--but, oh, I can't trust my heart! I want so much
+to believe him, it kills me so to think evil of him, that it will never
+do for me to see him. If he looks at me with those eyes of his, I am all
+gone; I shall believe anything he tells me; he will draw me to him as a
+great magnet draws a poor little grain of steel."
+
+"But now you know his unworthiness, his baseness," said Mary, "I should
+think it would break all his power."
+
+"_Should_ you think so? Ah, Mary, we cannot unlove in a minute; love is
+a great while dying. I do not worship him now as I did. I know what he
+is. I know he is bad, and I am sorry for it. I should like to cover
+it from all the world,--even from you, Mary, since I see it makes you
+dislike him; it hurts me to hear any one else blame him. But sometimes I
+do so long to think I am mistaken, that I know, if I should see him, I
+should catch at anything he might tell me, as a drowning man at straws;
+I should shut my eyes, and think, after all, that it was all my fault,
+and ask a thousand pardons for all the evil he has done. No,--Mary, you
+must keep your blue eyes upon me, or I shall be gone."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Scudder's voice was heard, calling Mary below.
+
+"Go down now, darling, and tell mamma; make a good little talk to her,
+_ma reine_! Ah, you are queen here! all do as you say,--even the
+good priest there; you have a little hand, but it leads all; so go,
+_petite_."
+
+Mrs. Scudder was somewhat flurried and discomposed at the
+proposition;--there were the _pros_ and the _cons_ in her nature, such
+as we all have. In the first place, Madame de Frontignac belonged to
+high society,--and that was _pro_; for Mrs. Scudder prayed daily against
+worldly vanities, because she felt a little traitor in her heart that
+was ready to open its door to them, if not constantly talked down. In
+the second place, Madame de Frontignac was French,--there was a _con_;
+for Mrs. Scudder had enough of her father John Bull in her heart to have
+a very wary look-out on anything French. But then, in the third place,
+she was out of health and unhappy,--and there was a _pro_ again; for
+Mrs. Scudder was as kind and motherly a soul as ever breathed. But
+then she was a Catholic,--_con_. But the Doctor and Mary might convert
+her,--_pro_. And then Mary wanted her,--_pro_. And she was a pretty,
+bewitching, lovable creature,--_pro_.--The _pros_ had it; and it was
+agreed that Madame de Frontignac should be installed as proprietress of
+the spare chamber, and she sat down to the tea-table that evening in the
+great kitchen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+THE DECLARATION.
+
+The domesticating of Madame de Frontignac as an inmate of the cottage
+added a new element of vivacity to that still and unvaried life. One
+of the most beautiful traits of French nature is that fine gift of
+appreciation, which seizes at once the picturesque side of every
+condition of life, and finds in its own varied storehouse something to
+assort with it. As compared with the Anglo-Saxon, the French appear to
+be gifted with a _naïve_ childhood of nature, and to have the power that
+children have of gilding every scene of life with some of their own
+poetic fancies.
+
+Madame de Frontignac was in raptures with the sanded floor of her little
+room, which commanded, through the apple-boughs, a little morsel of a
+seaview. She could fancy it was a nymph's cave, she said.
+
+"Yes, _ma Marie_, I will play Calypso, and you shall play Telemachus,
+and Dr. H. shall be Mentor. Mentor was so very, very good!--only a
+little bit--_dull_," she said, pronouncing the last word with a wicked
+accent, and lifting her hands with a whimsical gesture like a naughty
+child who expects a correction.
+
+Mary could not but laugh; and as she laughed, more color rose in her
+waxen cheeks than for many days before.
+
+Madame de Frontignac looked as triumphant as a child who has made its
+mother laugh, and went on laying things out of her trunk into her
+drawers with a zeal that was quite amusing to see.
+
+"You see, _ma blanche_, I have left all Madame's clothes at
+Philadelphia, and brought only those that belong to Virginie,--no
+_tromperie_, no feathers, no gauzes, no diamonds,--only white dresses,
+and my straw hat _en bergère_, I brought one string of pearls that was
+my mother's; but pearls, you know, belong to the sea-nymphs. I will trim
+my hat with seaweed and buttercups together, and we will go out on
+the beach to-night and get some gold and silver shells to dress _mon
+miroir_."
+
+"Oh, I have ever so many now!" said Mary, running into her room, and
+coming back with a little bag.
+
+They both sat on the bed together, and began pouring them out,--Madame
+de Frontignac showering childish exclamations of delight.
+
+Suddenly Mary put her hand to her heart as if she had been struck with
+something; and Madame de Frontignac heard her say, in a low voice of
+sudden pain, "Oh, dear!"
+
+"What is it, _mimi?_" she said, looking up quickly.
+
+"Nothing," said Mary, turning her head.
+
+Madame de Frontignac looked down, and saw among the sea-treasures a
+necklace of Venetian shells, that she knew never grew on the shores of
+Newport. She held it up.
+
+"Ah, I see," she said. "He gave you this. Ah, _ma pauvrette_" she said,
+clasping Mary in her arms, "thy sorrow meets thee everywhere! May I be a
+comfort to thee!--just a little one!"
+
+"Dear, dear friend!" said Mary, weeping. "I know not how it is.
+Sometimes I think this sorrow is all gone; but then, for a moment, it
+comes back again. But I am at peace; it is all right, all right; I would
+not have it otherwise. But, oh, if he could have spoken one word to me
+before! He gave me this," she added, "when he came home from his first
+voyage to the Mediterranean. I did not know it was in this bag. I had
+looked for it everywhere."
+
+"Sister Agatha would have told you to make a rosary of it," said Madame
+de Frontignac; "but you pray without a rosary. It is all one," she
+added; "there will be a prayer for every shell, though you do not count
+them. But come, _ma chère_, get your bonnet, and let us go out on the
+beach."
+
+That evening, before going to bed, Mrs. Scudder came into Mary's room.
+Her manner was grave and tender; her eyes had tears in them; and
+although her usual habits were not caressing, she came to Mary and put
+her arms around her and kissed her. It was an unusual manner, and Mary's
+gentle eyes seemed to ask the reason of it.
+
+"My daughter," said her mother, "I have just had a long and very
+interesting talk with our dear good friend, the Doctor; ah, Mary, very
+few people know how good he is!"
+
+"True, mother," said Mary, warmly; "he is the best, the noblest, and yet
+the humblest man in the world."
+
+"You love him very much, do you not?" said her mother.
+
+"Very dearly," said Mary.
+
+"Mary, he has asked me, this evening, if you would be willing to be his
+wife."
+
+"His _wife_, mother?" said Mary, in the tone of one confused with a new
+and strange thought.
+
+"Yes, daughter; I have long seen that he was preparing to make you this
+proposal."
+
+"You have, mother?"
+
+"Yes, daughter; have you never thought of it?"
+
+"Never, mother."
+
+There was a long pause,--Mary standing, just as she had been
+interrupted, in her night toilette, with her long, light hair streaming
+down over her white dress, and the comb held mechanically in her hand.
+She sat down after a moment, and, clasping her hands over her knees,
+fixed her eyes intently on the floor; and there fell between the two a
+silence so profound, that the tickings of the clock in the next room
+seemed to knock upon the door. Mrs. Scudder sat with anxious eyes
+watching that silent face, pale as sculptured marble.
+
+"Well, Mary," she said at last.
+
+A deep sigh was the only answer. The violent throbbings of her heart
+could be seen undulating the long hair as the moaning sea tosses the
+rockweed.
+
+"My daughter," again said Mrs. Scudder.
+
+Mary gave a great sigh, like that of a sleeper awakening from a dream,
+and, looking at her mother, said,--
+
+"Do you suppose he really _loves_ me, mother?"
+
+"Indeed he does, Mary, as much as man ever loved woman!"
+
+"Does he indeed?" said Mary, relapsing into thoughtfulness.
+
+"And you love him, do you not?" said her mother.
+
+"Oh, yes, I love him."
+
+"You love him better than any man in the world, don't you?"
+
+"Oh, mother, mother! yes!" said Mary, throwing herself passionately
+forward, and bursting into sobs; "yes, there is no one else now that I
+love better,--no one!--no one!"
+
+"My darling! my daughter!" said Mrs. Scudder, coming and taking her in
+her arms.
+
+"Oh, mother, mother!" she said, sobbing distressfully, "let me cry, just
+for a little,--oh, mother, mother, mother!"
+
+What was there hidden under that despairing wail?--It was the parting of
+the last strand of the cord of youthful hope.
+
+Mrs. Scudder soothed and caressed her daughter, but maintained still in
+her breast a tender pertinacity of purpose, such as mothers will, who
+think they are conducting a child through some natural sorrow into a
+happier state.
+
+Mary was not one, either, to yield long to emotion of any kind. Her
+rigid education had taught her to look upon all such outbursts as a
+species of weakness, and she struggled for composure, and soon seemed
+entirety calm.
+
+"If he really loves me, mother, it would give him great pain, if I
+refused," said Mary, thoughtfully.
+
+"Certainly it would; and, Mary, you have allowed him to act as a very
+near friend for a long time; and it is quite natural that he should have
+hopes that you loved him."
+
+"I do love him, mother,--better than anybody in the world except you. Do
+you think that will do?"
+
+"Will do?" said her mother; "I don't understand you."
+
+"Why, is that loving enough to marry? I shall love him more, perhaps,
+after,--shall I, mother?"
+
+"Certainly you will; every one does."
+
+"I wish he did not want to marry me, mother," said Mary, after a pause.
+"I liked it a great deal better as we were before."
+
+"All girls feel so, Mary, at first; it is very natural."
+
+"Is that the way you felt about father, mother?"
+
+Mrs. Scudder's heart smote her when she thought of her own early
+love,--that great love that asked no questions,--that had no doubts,
+no fears, no hesitations,--nothing but one great, outsweeping impulse,
+which swallowed her life in that of another. She was silent; and after a
+moment, she said,--
+
+"I was of a different disposition from you, Mary. I was of a strong,
+wilful, positive nature. I either liked or disliked with all my might.
+And besides, Mary, there never was a man like your father."
+
+The matron uttered this first article in the great confession of woman's
+faith with the most unconscious simplicity.
+
+"Well, mother, I will do whatever is my duty. I want to be guided. If
+I can make that good man happy, and help him to do some good in the
+world--After all, life is short, and the great thing is to do for
+others."
+
+"I am sure, Mary, if you could have heard how he spoke, you would be
+sure you could make him happy. He had not spoken before, because he felt
+so unworthy of such a blessing; he said I was to tell you that he
+should love and honor you all the same, whether you could be his wife
+or not,--but that nothing this side of heaven would be so blessed a
+gift,--that it would make up for every trial that could possibly come
+upon him. And you know, Mary, he has a great many discouragements
+and trials;--people don't appreciate him; his efforts to do good are
+misunderstood and misconstrued; they look down on him, and despise him,
+and tell all sorts of evil things about him; and sometimes he gets quite
+discouraged."
+
+"Yes, mother, I will marry him," said Mary;--"yes, I will."
+
+"My darling daughter!" said Mrs. Scudder,--"this has been the hope of my
+life!"
+
+"Has it, mother?" said Mary, with a faint smile; "I shall make you
+happier, then?"
+
+"Yes, dear, you will. And think what a prospect of usefulness opens
+before you! You can take a position, as his wife, which will enable you
+to do even more good than you do now; and you will have the happiness
+of seeing, everyday, how much you comfort the hearts and encourage the
+hands of God's dear people."
+
+"Mother, I ought to be very glad I can do it," said Mary; "and I trust I
+am. God orders all things for the best."
+
+"Well, my child, sleep to-night, and to-morrow we will talk more about
+it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+SURPRISES.
+
+Mrs. Scudder kissed her daughter, and left her. After a moment's
+thought, Mary gathered the long silky folds of hair around her head, and
+knotted them for the night. Then leaning forward on her toilet-table,
+she folded her hands together, and stood regarding the reflection of
+herself in the mirror.
+
+Nothing is capable of more ghostly effect than such a silent, lonely
+contemplation of that mysterious image of ourselves which seems to look
+out of an infinite depth in the mirror, as if it were our own soul
+beckoning to us visibly from unknown regions. Those eyes look into our
+own with an expression sometimes vaguely sad and inquiring. The face
+wears weird and tremulous lights and shadows; it asks us mysterious
+questions, and troubles us with the suggestions of our relations to some
+dim unknown. The sad, blue eyes that gazed into Mary's had that look
+of calm initiation, of melancholy comprehension, peculiar to eyes made
+clairvoyant by "great and critical" sorrow. They seemed to say to her,
+"Fulfil thy mission; life is made for sacrifice; the flower must fall
+before fruit can perfect itself." A vague shuddering of mystery gave
+intensity to her reverie. It seemed as if those mirror-depths were
+another world; she heard the far-off dashing of sea-green waves; she
+felt a yearning impulse towards that dear soul gone out into the
+infinite unknown.
+
+Her word just passed had in her eyes all the sacred force of the most
+solemnly attested vow; and she felt as if that vow had shut some till
+then open door between her and him; she had a kind of shadowy sense of a
+throbbing and yearning nature that seemed to call on her,--that seemed
+surging towards her with an imperative, protesting force that shook her
+heart to its depths.
+
+Perhaps it is so, that souls, once intimately related, have ever after
+this a strange power of affecting each other,--a power that neither
+absence nor death can annul. How else can we interpret those mysterious
+hours in which the power of departed love seems to overshadow us, making
+our souls vital with such longings, with such wild throbbings, with such
+unutterable sighings, that a little more might burst the mortal bond? Is
+it not deep calling unto deep? the free soul singing outside the cage to
+her mate beating against the bars within?
+
+Mary even, for a moment, fancied that a voice called her name, and
+started, shivering. Then the habits of her positive and sensible
+education returned at once, and she came out of her reverie as one
+breaks from a dream, and lifted all these sad thoughts with one heavy
+sigh from her breast; and opening her Bible, she read: "They that trust
+in the Lord shall be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth
+forever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is
+round about his people from henceforth, even forever."
+
+Then she kneeled by her bedside, and offered her whole life a sacrifice
+to the loving God who had offered his life a sacrifice for her. She
+prayed for grace to be true to her promise,--to be faithful to the new
+relation she had accepted. She prayed that all vain regrets for the past
+might be taken away, and that her soul might vibrate without discord in
+unison with the will of Eternal Love. So praying, she rose calm,
+and with that clearness of spirit which follows an act of uttermost
+self-sacrifice; and so calmly she laid down and slept, with her two
+hands crossed upon her breast, her head slightly turned on the pillow,
+her cheek pale as marble, and her long dark lashes lying drooping, with
+a sweet expression, as if under that mystic veil of sleep the soul were
+seeing things forbidden to the waking eye. Only the gentlest heaving
+of the quiet breast told that the heavenly spirit within had not gone
+whither it was hourly aspiring to go.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Scudder had left Mary's room, and entered the Doctor's
+study, holding a candle in her hand. The good man was sitting alone in
+the dark, with his head bowed upon his Bible. When Mrs. Scudder entered,
+he rose, and regarded her wistfully, but did not speak. He had something
+just then in his heart for which he had no words; so he only looked as a
+man does who hopes and fears for the answer of a decisive question.
+
+Mrs. Scudder felt some of the natural reserve which becomes a matron
+coming charged with a gift in which lies the whole sacredness of her own
+existence, and which she puts from her hands with a jealous reverence.
+She therefore measured the man with her woman's and mother's eye, and
+said, with a little stateliness,--
+
+"My dear Sir, I come to tell you the result of my conversation with
+Mary."
+
+She made a little pause,--and the Doctor stood before her as humbly as
+if he had not weighed and measured the universe; because he knew,
+that, though he might weigh the mountains in scales and the hills in a
+balance, yet it was a far subtiler power which must possess him of one
+small woman's heart. In fact, he felt to himself like a great, awkward,
+clumsy, mountainous earthite asking of a white-robed angel to help him
+up a ladder of cloud. He was perfectly sure for the moment, that he was
+going to be refused; and he looked humbly firm,--he would take it like
+a man. His large blue eyes, generally so misty in their calm, had a
+resolute clearness, rather mournful than otherwise. Of course, no such
+celestial experience was going to happen to him.
+
+He cleared his throat, and said,--
+
+"Well, Madam?"
+
+Mrs. Scudder's womanly dignity was appeased; she reached out her hand,
+cheerfully, and said,--
+
+"_She has accepted_."
+
+The Doctor drew his hand suddenly away, turned quickly round, and walked
+to the window,--although, as it was ten o'clock at night and quite dark,
+there was evidently nothing to be seen there. He stood there, quietly,
+swallowing very hard, and raising his handkerchief several times to his
+eyes. There was enough went on under the black coat just then to make
+quite a little figure in a romance, if it had been uttered; but he
+belonged to a class who _lived_ romance, but never spoke it. In a few
+moments he returned to Mrs. Scudder, and said,--
+
+"I trust, dear Madam, that this very dear friend may never have reason
+to think me ungrateful for her wonderful goodness; and whatever sins
+my evil heart may lead me into, I _hope_ I may never fall so low as to
+forget the undeserved mercy of this hour. If ever I shrink from duty
+or murmur at trials, while so sweet a friend is mine, I shall be vile
+indeed."
+
+The Doctor, in general, viewed himself on the discouraging side, and
+had berated and snubbed himself all his life as a most flagitious and
+evil-disposed individual,--a person to be narrowly watched, and capable
+of breaking at any moment into the most flagrant iniquity; and therefore
+it was that he received his good fortune in so different a spirit from
+many of the lords of creation, in similar circumstances.
+
+"I am sensible," he added, "that a poor minister, without much power of
+eloquence, and commissioned of the Lord to speak unpopular truths, and
+whose worldly condition, in consequence, is never likely to be very
+prosperous,--that such an one could scarcely be deemed a suitable
+partner for so very beautiful a young woman, who might expect proposals,
+in a temporal point of view, of a much more advantageous nature; and I
+am therefore the more struck and overpowered with this blessed result."
+
+These last words caught in the Doctor's throat, as if he were
+overpowered in very deed.
+
+"In regard to _her_ happiness," said the Doctor, with a touch of awe in
+his voice, "I would not have presumed to become the guardian of it, were
+it not that I am persuaded it is assured by a Higher Power; for 'when
+he giveth quietness, who then can make trouble?' (Job, xxxiv. 29.) But
+I trust I may say no effort on my part shall be wanting to secure it."
+
+Mrs. Scudder was a mother, and had come to that stage in life where
+mothers always feel tears rising behind their smiles. She pressed the
+Doctor's hand silently, and they parted for the night.
+
+We know not how we can acquit ourselves to our friends of the great
+world for the details of such an unfashionable courtship, so well as by
+giving them, before they retire for the night, a dip into a more modish
+view of things.
+
+The Doctor was evidently green,--green in his faith, green in his
+simplicity, green in his general belief of the divine in woman, green in
+his particular humble faith in one small Puritan maiden, whom a knowing
+fellow might at least have maneuvered so skilfully as to break up her
+saintly superiority, discompose her, rout her ideas, and lead her up and
+down a swamp of hopes and fears and conjectures, till she was wholly
+bewildered and ready to take him at last--if he made up his mind to
+have her at all--as a great bargain, for which she was to be sensibly
+grateful.
+
+Yes, the Doctor was green,--_immortally_ green, as a cedar of Lebanon,
+which, waving its broad archangel wings over some fast-rooted eternal
+old solitude, and seeing from its sublime height the vastness of the
+universe, veils its kingly head with humility before God's infinite
+majesty.
+
+He has gone to bed now,--simple old soul!--first apologizing to Mrs.
+Scudder for having kept her up to so dissipated and unparalleled an hour
+as ten o'clock on his personal matters.
+
+Meanwhile our Asmodeus shall transport us to a handsomely furnished
+apartment in one of the most fashionable hotels of Philadelphia, where
+Colonel Aaron Burr, just returned from his trip to the then aboriginal
+wilds of Ohio, is seated before a table covered with maps, letters,
+books, and papers. His keen eye runs over the addresses of the letters,
+and he eagerly seizes one from Madame de Frontignac, and reads it; and
+as no one but ourselves is looking at him now, his face has no need
+to wear its habitual mask. First comes an expression of profound
+astonishment; then of chagrin and mortification; then of deepening
+concern; there were stops where the dark eyelashes flashed together, as
+if to brush a tear out of the view of the keen-sighted eyes; and then
+a red flush rose even to his forehead, and his delicate lips wore a
+sarcastic smile. He laid down the letter, and made one or two turns
+through the room.
+
+The man had felt the dashing against his own of a strong, generous,
+indignant woman's heart fully awakened, and speaking with that
+impassioned vigor with which a French regiment charges in battle. There
+were those picturesque, winged words, those condensed expressions, those
+subtile piercings of meaning, and, above all, that simple pathos, for
+which the French tongue has no superior; and for the moment the woman
+had the victory; she shook his heart. But Burr resembled the marvel
+with which chemists amuse themselves. His heart was a vase filled with
+boiling passions,--while his _will_, a still, cold, unmelted lump of
+ice, lay at the bottom.
+
+Self-denial is not peculiar to Christians. He who goes downward often
+puts forth as much force to kill a noble nature as another does to
+annihilate a sinful one. There was something in this letter so keen, so
+searching, so self-revealing, that it brought on one of those interior
+crises in which a man is convulsed with the struggle of two natures, the
+godlike and the demoniac, and from which he must pass out more wholly to
+the dominion of the one or the other.
+
+Nobody knew the true better than Burr. He _knew_ the godlike and the
+pure; he had _felt_ its beauty and its force to the very depths of his
+being, as the demoniac knew at once the fair Man of Nazareth; and even
+now he felt the voice within that said, "What have I to do with thee?"
+and the rending of a struggle of heavenly life with fast-coming eternal
+death.
+
+That letter had told him what he might be, and what he was. It was as if
+his dead mother's hand had held up before him a glass in which he saw
+himself white-robed and crowned, and so dazzling in purity that he
+loathed his present self.
+
+As he walked up and down the room perturbed, he sometimes wiped tears
+from his eyes, and then set his teeth and compressed his lips. At last
+his face grew calm and settled in its expression, his mouth wore a
+sardonic smile; he came and took the letter, and, folding it leisurely,
+laid it on the table, and put a heavy paperweight over it, as if to
+hold it down and bury it. Then drawing to himself some maps of new
+territories, he set himself vigorously to some columns of arithmetical
+calculations on the margin; and thus he worked for an hour or two, till
+his mind was as dry and his pulse as calm as a machine; then he drew the
+inkstand towards him, and scribbled hastily the following letter to
+his most confidential associate,--a letter which told no more of the
+conflict that preceded it than do the dry sands and the civil gossip of
+the sea-waves to-day of the storm and wreck of last week.
+
+"Dear ------. _Nous voici_--once more in Philadelphia. Our schemes in
+Ohio prosper. Frontignac remains there to superintend. He answers our
+purpose _passablement_. On the whole, I don't see that we could do
+better than retain him; he is, besides, a gentlemanly, agreeable person,
+and wholly devoted to me,--a point certainly not to be overlooked.
+
+"As to your railleries about the fair Madame, I must say, in justice
+both to her and myself, that any grace with which she has been pleased
+to honor me is not to be misconstrued. You are not to imagine any but
+the most Platonic of _liaisons_. She is as high-strung as an Arabian
+steed,--proud, heroic, romantic, and _French!_ and such must be
+permitted to take their own time and way, which we in our _gaucherie_
+can only humbly wonder at I have ever professed myself her abject slave,
+ready to follow any whim, and obeying the slightest signal of the
+jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting
+the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living on the most diluted
+moonshine, and spinning out elaborately all those charming and seraphic
+distinctions between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee with which these
+ecstatic creatures delight themselves in certain stages of _affaires du
+coeur_.
+
+"The last development, on the part of my goddess, is a fit of celestial
+anger, of the cause of which I am in the most innocent ignorance. She
+writes me three pages of French sublimities, writing as only a French
+woman can,--bids me an eternal adieu, and informs me she is going to
+Newport.
+
+"Of course the affair becomes stimulating. I am not to presume to dispute
+her sentence, or doubt a lady's perfect sincerity in wishing never to see
+me again; but yet I think I shall try to pacify the 'tantas in animis
+coelestibus iras.'
+
+"If a woman hates you, it is only her love turned wrong side out, and you
+may turn it back with due care. The pretty creatures know how becoming a
+_grande passion_ is, and take care to keep themselves in mind; a quarrel
+serves their turn, when all else fails.
+
+"To another point. I wish you to advertise S------, that his
+insinuations in regard to me in the 'Aurora' have been observed, and
+that I require that they be promptly retracted. He knows me well enough
+to attend to this hint. I am in earnest when I speak; if the word does
+nothing, the blow will come,--and if I strike once, no second blow will
+be needed. Yet I do not wish to get him on my hands needlessly; a duel
+and a love affair and hot weather, coming on together, might prove too
+much even for me.--N.B. Thermometer stands at 85. I am resolved on
+Newport next week.
+
+"Yours ever,
+
+"BURR.
+
+"P.S. I forgot to say, that, oddly enough, my goddess has gone and
+placed herself under the wing of the pretty Puritan I saw in Newport.
+Fancy the _mélange_! Could anything be more piquant?--that cart-load of
+goodness, the old Doctor, that sweet little saint, and Madame Faubourg
+St. Germain shaken up together! Fancy her listening with well-bred
+astonishment to a _critique_ on the doings of the unregenerate, or
+flirting that little jewelled fan of hers in Mrs. Scudder's square pew
+of a Sunday! Probably they will carry her to the weekly prayer-meeting,
+which of course she will contrive some fine French subtilty for
+admiring, and find _revissant_. I fancy I see it."
+
+When Burr had finished this letter, he had actually written himself into
+a sort of persuasion of its truth. When a finely constituted nature
+wishes to go into baseness, it has first to bribe itself. Evil is never
+embraced undisguised, as evil, but under some fiction which the mind
+accepts and with which it has the singular power of blinding itself
+in the face of daylight. The power of imposing on one's self is an
+essential preliminary to imposing on others. The man first argues
+himself down, and then he is ready to put the whole weight of his nature
+to deceiving others. This letter ran so smoothly, so plausibly, that it
+produced on the writer of it the effect of a work of fiction, which we
+_know_ to be unreal, but _feel_ to be true. Long habits of this kind of
+self-delusion in time produce a paralysis in the vital nerves of truth,
+so that one becomes habitually unable to see things in their verity, and
+realizes the awful words of Scripture,--"He feedeth on ashes; a deceived
+heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say,
+Is there not a lie in my right hand?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+THE BETROTHED.
+
+Between three and four the next morning, the robin in the nest above
+Mary's window stretched out his left wing, opened one eye, and gave
+a short and rather drowsy chirp, which broke up his night's rest and
+restored him to the full consciousness that he was a bird with wings
+and feathers, with a large apple-tree to live in, and all heaven for an
+estate,--and so, on these fortunate premises, he broke into a gush
+of singing, clear and loud, which Mary, without waking, heard in her
+slumbers.
+
+Scarcely conscious, she lay in that dim clairvoyant state, when the
+half-sleep of the outward senses permits a delicious dewy clearness
+of the soul, that perfect ethereal rest and freshness of faculties,
+comparable only to what we imagine of the spiritual state,--season
+of celestial enchantment, in which the heavy weight "of all this
+unintelligible world" drops off, and the soul, divinely charmed, nestles
+like a wind-tossed bird in the protecting bosom of the One All-Perfect,
+All-Beautiful. What visions then come to the inner eye have often no
+words corresponding in mortal vocabularies. The poet, the artist, and
+the prophet in such hours become possessed of divine certainties which
+all their lives they struggle with pencil or song or burning words to
+make evident to their fellows. The world around wonders; but they are
+unsatisfied, because they have seen the glory and know how inadequate
+the copy.
+
+And not merely to selectest spirits come these hours, but to those
+humbler poets, ungifted with utterance, who are among men as fountains
+sealed, whose song can be wrought out only by the harmony of deeds, the
+patient, pathetic melodies of tender endurance, or the heroic chant of
+undiscouraged labor. The poor slave-woman, last night parted from her
+only boy, and weary with the cotton-picking,--the captive pining in his
+cell,--the patient wife of the drunkard, saddened by a consciousness of
+the growing vileness of one so dear to her once,--the delicate spirit
+doomed to harsh and uncongenial surroundings,--all in such hours feel
+the soothings of a celestial harmony, the tenderness of more than a
+mother's love.
+
+It is by such seasons as these, more often than by reasonings or
+disputings, that doubts are resolved in the region of religious faith.
+The All-Father treats us as the mother does her "infant crying in the
+dark"; He does not reason with our fears, or demonstrate their fallacy,
+but draws us silently to His bosom, and we are at peace. Nay, there have
+been those, undoubtedly, who have known God falsely with the intellect,
+yet felt Him truly with the heart,--and there be many, principally among
+the unlettered little ones of Christ's flock, who positively know that
+much that is dogmatically propounded to them of their Redeemer is cold,
+barren, unsatisfying, and utterly false, who yet can give no account of
+their certainties better than that of the inspired fisherman, "We know
+Him, and have seen Him." It was in such hours as these that Mary's
+deadly fears for the soul of her beloved had passed all away,--passed
+out of her,--as if some warm, healing nature of tenderest vitality had
+drawn out of her heart all pain and coldness, and warmed it with the
+breath of an eternal summer.
+
+So, while the purple shadows spread their gauzy veils inwoven with fire
+along the sky, and the gloom of the sea broke out here and there into
+lines of light, and thousands of birds were answering to each other from
+apple-tree and meadow-grass and top of jagged rock, or trooping in bands
+hither and thither, like angels on loving messages, Mary lay there with
+the flickering light through the leaves fluttering over her face, and
+the glow of dawn warming the snow-white draperies of the bed and giving
+a tender rose-hue to the calm cheek. She lay half-conscious, smiling the
+while, as one who sleeps while the heart waketh, and who hears in dreams
+the voice of the One Eternally Beautiful and Beloved.
+
+Mrs. Scudder entered her room, and, thinking that she still slept, stood
+and looked down on her. She felt as one does who has parted with some
+precious possession, a sudden sense of its value coming over her; she
+queried in herself whether any living mortal were worthy of so perfect a
+gift; and nothing but a remembrance of the Doctor's prostrate humility
+at all reconciled her to the sacrifice she was making.
+
+"Mary, dear!" she said, bending over her, with an unusual infusion of
+emotion in her voice,--"darling child!"
+
+The arms moved instinctively, even before the eyes unclosed, and drew
+her mother down to her with a warm, clinging embrace. Love in Puritan
+families was often like latent caloric,--an all-pervading force, that
+affected no visible thermometer, shown chiefly by a noble silent
+confidence, a ready helpfulness, but seldom outbreathed in caresses;
+yet natures like Mary's always craved these outward demonstrations, and
+leaned towards them as a trailing vine sways to the nearest support. It
+was delightful for once fully to feel how much her mother loved her, as
+well as to know it.
+
+"Dear, precious mother! do you love me so very much?"
+
+"I live and breathe in you, Mary!" said Mrs. Scudder,--giving vent to
+herself in one of those trenchant shorthand expressions wherein positive
+natures incline to sum up everything, if they must speak at all.
+
+Mary held her mother silently to her breast, her heart shining through
+her face with a quiet radiance.
+
+"Do you feel happy this morning?" said Mrs. Scudder.
+
+"Very, very, very happy, mother!"
+
+"I am so glad to hear you say so!" said Mrs. Scudder,--who, to say the
+truth, had entertained many doubts on her pillow the night before.
+
+Mary began dressing herself in a state of calm exaltation. Every
+trembling leaf on the tree, every sunbeam, was like a living smile of
+God,--every fluttering breeze like His voice, full of encouragement and
+hope.
+
+"Mother, did you tell the Doctor what I said last night?"
+
+"I did, my darling."
+
+"Then, mother, I would like to see him a few moments alone."
+
+"Well, Mary, he is in his study, at his morning devotions."
+
+"That is just the time. I will go to him."
+
+The Doctor was sitting by the window; and the honest-hearted, motherly
+lilacs, abloom for the third time since our story began, were filling
+the air with their sweetness.
+
+Suddenly the door opened, and Mary entered, in her simple white
+short-gown and skirt, her eyes calmly radiant, and her whole manner
+having something serious and celestial. She came directly towards
+him and put out both her little hands, with a smile half-childlike,
+half-angelic; and the Doctor bowed his head and covered his face with
+his hands.
+
+"Dear friend," said Mary, kneeling and taking his hands, "if you want
+me, I am come. Life is but a moment,--there is an eternal blessedness
+just beyond us,--and for the little time between I will be all I can to
+you, if you will only show me how."
+
+And the Doctor----
+
+No, young man,--the study-door closed just then, and no one heard those
+words from a quaint old Oriental book which told that all the poetry of
+that grand old soul had burst into flower, as the aloe blossoms once
+in a hundred years. The feelings of that great heart might have fallen
+unconsciously into phrases from that one love-poem of the Bible which
+such men as he read so purely and devoutly, and which warm the icy
+clearness of their intellection with the myrrh and spices of ardent
+lands, where earthly and heavenly love meet and blend in one
+indistinguishable horizon-line, like sea and sky.
+
+"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear
+as the sun? My dove, my undefiled, is but one; she is the only one of
+her mother. Thou art all fair, my love! there is no spot in thee!"
+
+The Doctor might have said all this; we will not say he did, nor will
+we say he did not; all we know is, that, when the breakfast-table was
+ready, they came out cheerfully together. Madame de Frontignac stood in
+a fresh white wrapper, with a few buttercups in her hair, waiting for
+the breakfast. She was startled to see the Doctor entering all-radiant,
+leading in Mary by the hand, and looking as if he thought she were some
+dream-miracle which might dissolve under his eyes, unless he kept fast
+hold of her.
+
+The keen eyes shot their arrowy glance, which went at once to the heart
+of the matter. Madame de Frontignac knew they were affianced, and
+regarded Mary with attention.
+
+The calm, sweet, elevated expression of her face struck her; it struck
+her also that _that_ was not the light of any earthly love,--that it had
+no thrill, no blush, no tremor, but only the calmness of a soul that
+knows itself no more; and she sighed involuntarily.
+
+She looked at the Doctor, and seemed to study attentively a face which
+happiness made this morning as genial and attractive as it was generally
+strong and fine.
+
+There was little said at the breakfast-table; and yet the loud singing
+of the birds, the brightness of the sunshine, the life and vigor of all
+things, seemed to make up for the silence of those who were too well
+pleased to speak.
+
+"_Eh bien, ma chère_" said Madame, after breakfast, drawing Mary into
+her little room,-"_c'est donc fini?_"
+
+"Yes," said Mary, cheerfully.
+
+"Thou art content?" said Madame, passing her arm around her. "Well,
+then, I should be. But, Mary, it is like a marriage with the altar, like
+taking the veil, is it not?"
+
+"No," said Mary; "it is not taking the veil; it is beginning a cheerful,
+reasonable life with a kind, noble friend, who will always love me
+truly, and whom I hope to make as happy as he deserves."
+
+"I think well of him, my little cat," said Madame, reflectively; but
+she stopped something she was going to say, and kissed Mary's forehead.
+After a moment's pause, she added, "One must have love or refuge,
+Mary;--this is thy refuge, child; thou wilt have peace in it." She
+sighed again. "_Enfin_," she said, resuming her gay tone, "what shall be
+_la toilette de noces?_ Thou shalt have Virginia's pearls, my fair one,
+and look like a sea-born Venus. _Tiens_, let me try them in thy hair."
+
+And in a few moments she had Mary's long hair down, and was chattering
+like a blackbird, wreathing the pearls in and out, and saying a thousand
+pretty little nothings,--weaving grace and poetry upon the straight
+thread of Puritan life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+BUSTLE IN THE PARISH.
+
+The announcement of the definite engagement of two such bright
+particular stars in the hemisphere of the Doctor's small parish excited
+the interest that such events usually create among the faithful of the
+flock.
+
+There was a general rustle and flutter, as when a covey of wild pigeons
+has been started; and all the little elves who rejoice in the name of
+"says he" and "says I" and "do tell" and "have you heard" were speedily
+flying through the consecrated air of the parish.
+
+The fact was discussed by matrons and maidens, at the spinning-wheel,
+in the green clothes-yard, and at the foamy wash-tub, out of which rose
+weekly a new birth of freshness and beauty. Many a rustic Venus of the
+foam, as she splashed her dimpled elbows in the rainbow-tinted froth,
+talked of what should be done for the forthcoming solemnities, and
+wondered what Mary would have on when she was married, and whether she
+(the Venus) should get an invitation to the wedding, and whether Ethan
+would go,--not, of course, that she cared in the least whether he did or
+not.
+
+Grave, elderly matrons talked about the prosperity of Zion, which
+they imagined intimately connected with the event of their minister's
+marriage; and descending from Zion, speculated on bed-quilts and
+table-cloths, and rummaged their own clean, sweet-smelling stores,
+fragrant with balm and rose-leaves, to lay out a bureau-cover, or a pair
+of sheets, or a dozen napkins for the wedding outfit.
+
+The solemnest of solemn quillings was resolved upon. Miss Prissy
+declared that she fairly couldn't sleep nights with the responsibility
+of the wedding-dresses on her mind, but yet she must give one day to
+getting on that quilt.
+
+The _grand monde_ also was in motion. Mrs. General Wilcox called in her
+own particular carriage, bearing present of a Cashmere shawl for the
+bride, with the General's best compliments,--also an oak-leaf pattern
+for quilting, which had been sent her from England, and which was
+authentically established to be that used on a petticoat belonging to
+the Princess Royal. And Mrs. Major Seaforth came also, bearing a
+scarf of wrought India muslin; and Mrs. Vernon sent a splendid China
+punch-bowl. Indeed, to say the truth, the notables high and mighty of
+Newport, whom the Doctor had so unceremoniously accused of building
+their houses with blood and establishing their city with iniquity,
+considering that nobody seemed to take his words to heart, and that they
+were making money as fast as old Tyre, rather assumed the magnanimous,
+and patted themselves on the shoulder for this opportunity to show the
+Doctor that after all they were good fellows, though they did make money
+at the expense of thirty _per cent_. on human life.
+
+Simeon Brown was the only exception. He stood aloof, grim and sarcastic,
+and informed some good middle-aged ladies who came to see if he would,
+as they phrased it, "esteem it a privilege to add his mite" to the
+Doctor's outfit, that he would give him a likely negro boy, if he wanted
+him, and, if he was too conscientious to keep him, he might sell him at
+a fair profit,--a happy stroke of humor which he was fond of relating
+many years after.
+
+The quilting was in those days considered the most solemn and important
+recognition of a betrothal. And for the benefit of those not to the
+manner born, a little preliminary instruction may be necessary.
+
+The good wives of New England, impressed with that thrifty orthodoxy of
+economy which forbids to waste the merest trifle, had a habit of saving
+every scrap clipped out in the fashioning of household garments, and
+these they cut into fanciful patterns and constructed of them rainbow
+shapes and quaint traceries, the arrangement of which became one
+of their few fine arts. Many a maiden, as she sorted and arranged
+fluttering bits of green, yellow, red, and blue, felt rising in her
+breast a passion for somewhat vague and unknown, which came out at
+length in a new pattern of patchwork. Collections of these tiny
+fragments were always ready to fill an hour when there was nothing else
+to do; and as the maiden chatted with her beau, her busy flying needle
+stitched together those pretty bits, which, little in themselves, were
+destined, by gradual unions and accretions, to bring about at last
+substantial beauty, warmth, and comfort,--emblems thus of that household
+life which is to be brought to stability and beauty by reverent economy
+in husbanding and tact in arranging the little useful and agreeable
+morsels of daily existence.
+
+When a wedding was forthcoming, there was a solemn review of the stores
+of beauty and utility thus provided, and the patchwork-spread best
+worthy of such distinction was chosen for the quilting. Thereto, duly
+summoned, trooped all intimate female friends of the bride, old and
+young; and the quilt being spread on a frame, and wadded with cotton,
+each vied with the others in the delicacy of the quilting she could put
+upon it. For the quilting also was a fine art, and had its delicacies
+and nice points,--which grave elderly matrons discussed with judicious
+care. The quilting generally began at an early hour in the afternoon,
+and ended at dark with a great supper and general jubilee, at which that
+ignorant and incapable sex which could not quilt was allowed to appear
+and put in claims for consideration of another nature. It may, perhaps,
+be surmised that this expected reinforcement was often alluded to by
+the younger maidens, whose wickedly coquettish toilettes exhibited
+suspicious marks of that willingness to get a chance to say "No" which
+has been slanderously attributed to mischievous maidens.
+
+In consideration of the tremendous responsibilities involved in this
+quilting, the reader will not be surprised to learn, that, the evening
+before, Miss Prissy made her appearance at the brown cottage, armed with
+thimble, scissors, and pin-cushion, in order to relieve her mind by a
+little preliminary confabulation.
+
+"You see me, Miss Scudder, run 'most to death," she said; "but I thought
+I would just run up to Miss Major Seaforth's, and see her best bed-room
+quilt, 'cause I wanted to have all the ideas we possibly could, before I
+decided on the pattern. Hers is in shells,--just common shells,--nothing
+to be compared with Miss Wilcox's oak-leaves; and I suppose there isn't
+the least doubt that Miss Wilcox's sister, in London, did get that from
+a lady who had a cousin who was governess in the royal family; and I
+just quilted a little bit to-day on an old piece of silk, and it comes
+out beautiful; and so I thought I would just come and ask you if you did
+not think it was best for us to have the oak-leaves."
+
+"Well, certainly, Miss Prissy, if you think so," said Mrs. Scudder, who
+was as pliant to the opinions of this wise woman of the parish as New
+England matrons generally are to a reigning dress-maker and _factotum_.
+
+Miss Prissy had the happy consciousness, always, that her early advent
+under any roof was considered a matter of especial grace; and therefore
+it was with rather a patronizing tone that she announced that she would
+stay and spend the night with them.
+
+"I knew," she added, "that your spare chamber was full, with that Madame
+de ------, what do you call her?--if I was to die, I could not remember
+the woman's name. Well, I thought I could curl in with you, Mary, 'most
+anywhere."
+
+"That's right, Miss Prissy," said Mary; "you shall be welcome to half my
+bed any time."
+
+"Well, I knew you would say so, Mary; I never saw the thing you
+would not give away one half of, since you was that high," said Miss
+Prissy,--illustrating her words by placing her hand about two feet from
+the floor.
+
+Just at this moment, Madame de Frontignac entered and asked Mary to come
+into her room and give her advice as to a piece of embroidery. When she
+was gone out, Miss Prissy looked after her and sunk her voice once more
+to the confidential whisper which we before described.
+
+"I have heard strange stories about that Frenchwoman," she said; "but as
+she is here with you and Mary, I suppose there cannot be any truth in
+them. Dear me! the world is so censorious about women! But then, you
+know, we don't expect much from French women. I suppose she is a Roman
+Catholic, and worships pictures and stone images; but then, after all,
+she has got an immortal soul, and I can't help hoping Mary's influence
+may be blest to her. They say, when she speaks French, she swears every
+few minutes; and if that is the way she was brought up, may-be she isn't
+accountable. I think we can't be too charitable for people that a'n't
+privileged as we are. Miss Vernon's Polly told me she had seen her sew
+Sundays,--sew Sabbath-day! She came into her room sudden, and she was
+working on her embroidery there; and she never winked nor blushed, nor
+offered to put it away, but sat there just as easy! Polly said she never
+was so beat in all her life; she felt kind o' scared, every time she
+thought of it. But now she has come here, who knows but she may be
+converted?"
+
+"Mary has not said much about her state of mind," said Mrs. Scudder;
+"but something of deep interest has passed between them. Mary is such an
+uncommon child, that I trust everything to her."
+
+We will not dwell further on the particulars of this evening,--nor
+describe how Madame de Frontignac reconnoitred Miss Prissy with keen,
+amused eyes,--nor how Miss Prissy assured Mary, in the confidential
+solitude of her chamber, that her fingers just itched to get hold of
+that trimming on Madame de Frog--something's dress, because she was
+pretty nigh sure she could make some just like it, for she never saw any
+trimming she could not make.
+
+The robin that lived in the apple-tree was fairly outgeneralled the next
+morning; for Miss Prissy was up before him, tripping about the chamber
+on the points of her toes, knocking down all the movable things in the
+room, in her efforts to be still, so as not to wake Mary; and it was not
+until she had finally upset the stand by the bed, with the candlestick,
+snuffers, and Bible on it, that Mary opened her eyes.
+
+"Miss Prissy! dear me! what is it you are doing?"
+
+"Why, I am trying to be still, Mary, so as not to wake you up; and it
+seems to me as if everything was possessed, to tumble down so. But it is
+only half past three,--so you turn over and go to sleep."
+
+"But, Miss Prissy," said Mary, sitting up in bed, "you are all dressed;
+where are you going?"
+
+"Well, to tell the truth, Mary, I am just one of those people that can't
+sleep when they have got responsibility on their minds; and I have been
+lying awake more than an hour here, thinking about that quilt. There is
+a new way of getting it on to the frame that I want to try; 'cause, you
+know, when we quilted Cerinthy Stebbins's, it _would_ trouble us in the
+rolling; and I have got a new way that I want to try, and I mean just to
+get it on to the frame before breakfast. I was in hopes I should get out
+without waking any of you. I am in hopes I shall get by your mother's
+door without waking her,--'cause I know she works hard and needs her
+rest,--but that bed-room door squeaks like a cat, enough to raise the
+dead!
+
+"Mary," she added, with sudden energy, "if I had the least drop of
+oil in a teacup, and a bit of quill, I'd stop that door making such a
+noise." And Miss Prissy's eyes glowed with resolution.
+
+"I don't know where you could find any at this time," said Mary.
+
+"Well, never mind; I'll just go and open the door as slow and careful as
+I can," said Miss Prissy, as she trotted out of the apartment.
+
+The result of her carefulness was very soon announced to Mary by a
+protracted sound resembling the mewing of a hoarse cat, accompanied by
+sundry audible grunts from Miss Prissy, terminating in a grand finale
+of clatter, occasioned by her knocking down all the pieces of the
+quilting-frame that stood in the corner of the room, with a concussion
+that roused everybody in the house.
+
+"What is that?" called out Mrs. Scudder, from her bed-room.
+
+She was answered by two streams of laughter,--one from Mary, sitting up
+in bed, and the other from Miss Prissy, holding her sides, as she sat
+dissolved in merriment on the sanded floor,
+
+[To be continued.]
+
+
+
+
+OLD PAPERS.
+
+  As who, in idly searching o'er
+  Some seldom-entered garret-shed,
+  Might, with strange pity, touch the poor
+  Moth-eaten garments of the dead,--
+
+  Thus (to their wearer once allied)
+  I lift these weeds of buried woe,--
+  These relics of a self that died
+  So sadly and so long ago!
+  'Tis said that seven short years can change,
+  Through nerve and bone, this knitted frame,
+  Cellule by cellule waxing strange,
+  Till not an atom is the same.
+
+  By what more subtile, slow degrees
+  Thus may the mind transmute its all,
+  That calmly it should dwell on these,
+  As on another's fate and fall!
+
+  So far remote from joy or bale,
+  Wherewith each dusky page is rife,
+  I seem to read some piteous tale
+  Of strange romance, but true to life.
+
+  Too daring thoughts! too idle deeds!
+  A soul that questioned, loved, and sinned!
+  And hopes, that stand like last year's weeds,
+  And shudder in the dead March wind!
+
+  Grave of gone dreams!--could such convulse
+  Youth's fevered trance?--The plot grows thick;--
+  Was it this cold and even pulse
+  That thrilled with life so fierce and quick?
+
+  Well, I can smile at all this now,--
+  But cannot smile when I recall
+  The heart of faith, the open brow,
+  The trust that once was all in all;--
+
+  Nor when--Ah, faded, spectral sheet,
+  Wraith of long-perished wrong and time,
+  Forbear! the spirit starts to meet
+  The resurrection of its crime!
+
+  Starts,--from its human world shut out,--
+  As some detected changeling elf,
+  Doomed, with strange agony and doubt,
+  To enter on his former self.
+
+  Ill-omened leaves, still rust apart!
+  No further!--'tis a page turned o'er,
+  And the long dead and coffined heart
+  Throbs into wretched life once more.
+
+
+
+
+RIFLED GUNS.[1]
+
+
+When, nearly fifty years ago, England was taught one of the bloodiest
+lessons her history has to record, before the cotton-bale breastworks
+of New Orleans, a lesson, too, which was only the demonstration of a
+proposition laid down more than a hundred years ago by one of her own
+philosophers,[2] who would have believed that she, aiming to be the
+first military power in the world, would have left the first advantage
+of that lesson to be gained by her rival, France?
+
+When the troops that had defeated Napoleon stopped, baffled, before a
+breast-work defended by raw militiamen; when, finding that the heads of
+their columns melted away like wax in fire as they approached the
+blaze of those hunters' rifles, they finally recoiled, terribly
+defeated,--saved from total destruction, perhaps, only by the fact that
+their enemy had not enough of a military organization to enable them to
+pursue effectively; when, in brief, a battle with men who never before
+had seen a skirmish of regular troops was turned into a slaughter almost
+unparalleled for disproportioned losses in the history of civilized
+warfare, the English loss being about twelve hundred, the American some
+fifteen all told; one would have thought that such a demonstration of
+the power of the rifle would have brought Robins's words to the memory
+of England,--"will perhaps fall but little short of the wonderful
+effects which histories relate to have been formerly produced by the
+first inventors of fire-arms." What more astonishing disparity of
+military power does the history of fire-arms record? twelve hundred to
+fifteen! But this lesson, so terrible and so utterly ignored by English
+pride, was simply that of the value of the rifle intelligently used.
+
+They tell a story which makes a capital foot-note to the history of
+the battle:--that General Jackson, having invited some of the English
+officers to dine with him, had on the table a robin-pie which he
+informed the guests contained twelve robins whose heads had all been
+shot off by one of his marksmen, who, in shooting the twelve, used but
+thirteen balls. The result of the battle must be mainly attributed to
+the deadly marksmanship of the hunters who composed the American forces;
+but the same men armed with muskets would not only not have shown the
+same accuracy in firing, but they would not have felt the moral force
+which a complete reliance on their weapons gave,--a certainty that they
+held the life of any antagonist in their hands, as soon as enough of him
+appeared to "draw a bead on." Put the same men in the open field where a
+charge of bayonets was to be met, and they would doubtless have broken and
+fled without crossing steel. Nor, on the other hand, could any musketry
+have kept the English columns out of the cotton-bale breast-work;--they
+had often in the Peninsula stormed stronger works than that,--without
+faltering for artillery, musketry, or bayonet. But here they were
+literally unable to reach the works; the fatal rifle-bullet drew a line at
+which bravery and cowardice, nonchalant veterans and trembling boys, were
+equalized in the dust.
+
+[Footnote 1: _Instructions to Young Marksmen_ in all that relates to the
+General Construction, Practical Manipulation, etc., etc., as exhibited
+in the Improved American Rifle. By John Ratcliffe Chapman, C. E. New
+York: D. Appleton &. Co. 1848.
+
+_Rifle-Practice_. By Lieut.-Col. John Jacob, C. B., of the Bombay
+Artillery. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1857.
+
+_The Rifle; and how to use it_. Comprising a Description of that
+Admirable Weapon, etc., etc. By Hans Busk, M.A. First Lieut. Victoria
+Rifles. London: J. Routledge & Co. 1858.
+
+_Report of the U. S. Commission on Rifles_. 1856.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Robins {on Projectiles) said in 1748, "Whatever state shall
+thoroughly comprehend the nature and advantages of rifle-pieces, and,
+having facilitated and completed their construction, shall introduce
+into their armies their general use, with a dexterity in the management
+of them, will by this means acquire a superiority which will almost
+equal anything that has been done at any time by the particular
+excellence of any one kind of arms, and will perhaps fall but little
+short of the wonderful effects which histories relate to have been
+formerly produced by the first inventors of fire-arms." Words, we now
+see, how prophetic!]
+
+We remember once to have met an old hunter who was one of the volunteers
+at Hattsburg, (another rifle battle, fought by militiamen mainly,) a man
+who never spoiled his furs by shooting his game in the body, and who
+carried into the battle his hunting-rifle. Being much questioned as to
+his share in the day's deeds, he told us that he, with a body of men,
+all volunteers, and mainly hunters like himself, was stationed at a ford
+on the Saranac, where a British column attempted to cross. Their captain
+ordered no one to fire until the enemy were half-way across; "and then,"
+said he, "none of 'em ever got across, and not many of them that got
+into the water got out again. They found out it wa'n't of any kind of
+use to try to get across there, and after a while they give it up and
+went farther down the river; and by-and-by an officer come and told
+us to go to the other ford, and we went there, and so they didn't get
+across there either." We were desirous of getting the estimate of an
+expert as to the effect of such firing, and asked him directly how many
+men he had killed. "I don't know," said he, modestly; "I rather guess I
+killed one fellow, _certain_; but how many more I can't say. I was going
+down to the river with another volunteer to get some water, and I heerd
+a shot right across the river, and I peeked out of the bushes, and see
+a red-coat sticking his head out of the bushes on the other side, and
+looking down the river, as if he'd been firing at somebody on our side,
+and pretty soon he stuck his head out agin, and took aim at something
+in that way; and I thought, of course, it must be some of our folks. I
+couldn't stand that, so I just drawed up and fired at him. He dropped
+his gun, and pitched head-first into the water. I guess I hit him
+amongst the waistcoat-buttons; but then, you know, if I hadn't shot
+him, he might have killed somebody on our side." We put the question in
+another form, asking how many shots he fired that day. "About sixteen,
+I guess, or maybe twenty." "And how far off were the enemy?" "Well, I
+should think about twenty rod." We suggested that he did not waste many
+of his bullets; to which he replied, that "he didn't often miss a deer
+at that distance."
+
+But these were the exploits of fifty years ago; the weapon, the old
+heavy-metalled, long-barrelled "Kentucky" rifle; and the missile, the
+old round bullet, sent home with a linen patch. It is a form of the
+rifled gun not got up by any board of ordnance or theoretic engineers,
+but which, as is generally the case with excellent tools, was the result
+of the trials and experience of a race of practical men, something which
+had grown up to supply the needs of hunters; and with the improvements
+which greater mechanical perfection in gun-making has effected, it
+stands at this day the king of weapons, unapproached for accuracy by the
+work of any nation beside our own, very little surpassed in its range by
+any of the newly invented modifications of the rifle. The Kentucky[1]
+[Footnote 1: The technical name for the long, heavy, small-calibred
+rifle, in which the thickness of the metal outside the bore is about
+equal to the diameter of the bore.] rifle is to American mechanism what
+the chronometer is to English, a speciality in which rivalry by any
+other nation is at this moment out of the question. An English board of
+ordnance may make a series of experiments, and in a year or two
+contrive an Enfield rifle, which, to men who know of nothing better,
+is wonderful; but here we have the result of experiments of nearly a
+hundred years, by generations whose daily subsistence depended on the
+accuracy and excellence of their rifles, and who all experimented
+on the value of an inch in the length of the barrel, an ounce in its
+weight, or a grain in the weight of the ball. They tried all methods of
+creasing, all variations of the spiral of the groove; every town had
+its gunsmith, who experimented in almost every gun he made, and who was
+generally one of the best shots and hunters in the neighborhood; and
+often the hunter, despairing of getting a gun to suit him in any other
+way, went to work himself, and wrought out a clumsy, but unerring gun,
+in which, perhaps, was the germ of some of the latest improvements in
+scientific gunnery. The different gun-makers had shooting-matches, at
+which the excellence of the work of each was put to the severest tests,
+and by which their reputations were established. The result is a rifle,
+compared with which, as manufactured by a dozen rifle-makers in the
+United States, the Minié, the Enfield, the Lancaster, or even the
+Sharpe's, and more recent breech-loaders, are bungling muskets. The last
+adopted form of missile, the sugar-loaf-shaped, of which the Minie,
+Enfieid, Colonel Jacob's, and all the conical forms are partial
+adaptations, has been, to our personal knowledge, in use among our
+riflemen more than twenty years. In one of our earliest visits to that
+most fascinating of _ateliers_ to most American youth, a gunsmith's
+shop, a collection of "slugs" was shown to us, in which the varieties of
+forms, ovate, conical, elliptical, and all nameless forms in which the
+length is greater than the diameter, had been exhausted in the effort to
+find that shape which would range farthest; and the shape (very nearly)
+which Colonel (late General) Jacob alludes to, writing in 1854, in these
+terms, "This shape, after hundreds of thousands of experiments,
+proves to be quite perfect," had been adopted by this unorganized
+ordnance-board, composed of hundreds of gun-makers, stimulated by the
+most powerful incentives to exertion. The experiments by which they
+arrived at their conclusion not only anticipated by years the trials
+of the European experimenters, but far surpass, in laboriousness and
+nicety, all the experiments of Hythe, Vincennes, and Jacobabad. The
+resulting curve, which the longitudinal section of the perfect "slug"
+shows, is as subtile and incapable of modification, without loss, as
+that of the boomerang; no hair's thickness could be taken away or added
+without injury to its range. Such a weapon and such a missile, in their
+perfection, could never have come into existence except in answer to the
+demand of a nation of hunters to whom a shade of greater accuracy is
+the means of subsistence. No man who is not a first-rate shot can judge
+justly of the value of a rifle; and one of our backwoodsmen would never
+use any rifle but the Kentucky _of American manufacture_, if it were
+given him. An Adirondack hunter would not thank the best English
+rifle-maker for one of his guns any more warmly than a sea-captain in
+want of a chronometer would thank his owners for a Swiss lepine watch.
+
+The gun which we thus eulogize we shall describe, and compare the
+results which its use shows with those shown by the other known
+varieties of rifle, and this without any consideration of the powers of
+American marksmen as compared with European. The world is full of fables
+of shooting-exploits as absurd as those told of Robin Hood. Cooper tells
+of Leatherstocking's driving the nail with unfailing aim at a hundred
+paces,--a degree of skill no man out of romance has ever been _reported_
+to possess amongst riflemen. We have seen the best marksmen the
+continent holds attempt to drive the nail at fifty yards, and take
+fifty balls to drive one nail. A story is current of a French rifleman
+shooting an Arab chief a mile distant, which, if true, was only a chance
+shot; for no human vision will serve the truest rifle ever made and the
+steadiest nerves ever strung to perform such a feat with any certainty.
+Lieutenant Busk informs us that Captain Minié "will undertake to hit a
+man at a distance of 1420 yards three times out of five shots,"--a
+feat Captain Minié or any other man will "undertake" many times before
+accomplishing, for the simple reason, that, supposing the rifle
+_perfect_, at _that_ distance a man is too small a mark to be found in
+the sights of a rifle, except by the aid of the telescope.[1] [Footnote
+1: A man, five feet ten inches high, at 1450 yards, will, in the
+buck-sight of the Minie rifle, at fourteen inches from the eye, appear
+1/53 of an inch in height and 1/185 in breadth of shoulders. If the
+reader will look at these measures on a finely divided scale, he will
+appreciate the absurdity of such a boast. A man at that distance could
+hardly be found in the sights.] We could fill a page with marvellous
+shots _quos nidi et quorum pars_, etc. We have seen a bird no larger
+than a half-grown chicken killed off-hand at eighty rods (nearly
+fourteen hundred feet); have known a deer to be killed at a good half
+mile; have shot off the skull-cap of a duck at thirty rods; at twenty
+rods have shot a loon through the head, putting the ball in at one eye
+and out at the other, without breaking the skin;--but such shooting,
+ordinarily, is a physical impossibility, as any experienced rifleman
+knows. These were chance shots, or so nearly so that they could not be
+repeated in a hundred shots. The impossibility lies in the marksman and
+in human vision.
+
+In comparing the effects of rifles, then, we shall suppose them, as in
+government trials and long-range shooting-matches, to be fired from a
+"dead rest,"--the only way in which the absolute power of a rifle can be
+shown. First, for the gun itself. There are two laws of gunnery which
+must be kept in sight in comparing the results of such trials:--1st,
+that the shape and material of two missiles being the same, the heavier
+will range the farther, because in proportion to its momentum it meets
+less resistance from the atmosphere; 2d, that the less the recoil of the
+gun, the greater will be the initial velocity of the ball, since the
+motion lost in recoil is taken from the velocity of the ball. Of course,
+then, the larger the bore of the rifle, the greater will be its range,
+supposing always the best form of missile and a proportionate weight of
+gun. As the result of these two laws, we see that of two guns throwing
+the same weight and description of missile, the heavier will throw its
+missile the farther; while of two guns of the same weight, that one
+which throws the smaller missile will give it the greater initial
+velocity,--supposing the gun free to recoil, as it must, fired from the
+shoulder. But the smaller ball will yield the sooner to the resistance
+of the atmosphere, owing to its greater proportional surface presented.
+Suppose, then, two balls of different weights to be fired from guns of
+the same weight;--the smaller ball will start with the higher rate of
+speed, but will finally be overtaken and passed by the larger ball; and
+the great problem of rifle-gauge is to ascertain that relation of weight
+of gun to weight of projectile which will give the greatest velocity at
+the longest range at which the object fired at can be seen distinctly
+enough to give a reasonable chance of hitting it. This problem the maker
+of the Kentucky rifle solves, by accepting, as a starting-point, the
+greatest weight of gun which a man may reasonably be expected to
+carry,--say, ten to twelve pounds,--and giving to that weight the
+heaviest ball it will throw, without serious recoil,--for no matter what
+the proportion, there will be _some_ recoil. This proportion of the
+weight of gun to that of projectile, as found by experience, is about
+five hundred to one; so that if a gun weigh ten pounds, the ball should
+weigh about 19/500 of a pound. Of course, none of these gun-makers have
+ever made a mathematical formula expressing this relation; but hundreds
+of thousands of shots have pretty well determined it to be the most
+effective for all hunting needs (and the best hunting-rifles are the
+best for a rifle-corps, acting as sharp-shooters). By putting this
+weight of ball into a conical form of good proportions, the calibre
+of the gun may be made about ninety gauge. which, for a range of four
+hundred yards, cannot be excelled in accuracy with that weight of gun.
+
+But in a rifle the grooving is of the utmost importance; for velocity
+without accuracy is useless. To determine the best kind of groove has
+been, accordingly, the object of the most laborious investigations. The
+ball requires an initial rotary motion sufficient to keep it "spinning"
+up to its required range, and is found to gain in accuracy by increasing
+this rotatory speed; but if the pitch of the grooves be too great,
+the ball will refuse to follow them; but, being driven across them,
+"strips,"--that is, the lead in the grooves is torn off, and the ball
+goes out without rotation. The English gunsmiths have avoided the
+dilemma by giving the requisite pitch and making the grooves very deep,
+and even by having wings cast on the ball to keep it in the grooves,
+expedients which increase the friction in the barrel and the resistance
+of the air enormously.
+
+The American gun-makers have solved the problem by adopting the "gaining
+twist," in which the grooves start from the breech nearly parallel to
+the axis of the barrel, and gradually increase the spiral, until, at the
+muzzle, it has the pitch of one revolution in three to four; _the pitch
+being greater as the bore is less_. This gives, as a result, safety from
+stripping, and a rapid revolution at the exit, with comparatively little
+friction and shallow groove-marks on the ball,--accomplishing what is
+demanded of a rifled barrel, to a degree that no other combination of
+groove and form of missile ever has.
+
+English makers have experimented somewhat on the rifling of barrels, but
+with no results which compare with those shown by the improved Kentucky.
+English hunting-rifles, and _all_ military rifles, are made with
+complete disregard of the law of relation between the weights of ball
+and barrel. The former seems to be determined by dividing the weight of
+ammunition a soldier may carry in his cartridge-box by the number of
+charges he is required to have, and then the gun is made as light as
+will stand the test of firing,--blunders all the way through; for we
+never want a rifle-ball to range much farther than it is possible to hit
+a single man with it; and a missile of the proper shape from a barrel of
+sixty gauge will kill a man at a mile's distance, if it strike a vital
+part. The consequence is, that the rifles are so light in proportion to
+their load that the recoil seriously diminishes the force of the ball,
+and entirely prevents accuracy of aim; and at the same time their
+elastic metal springs so much under the pressure of the gas generated
+by the explosion of the powder that anything like exactitude becomes
+impossible.[1][Footnote 1: Experiments have shown, that, with a barrel
+about the thickness of that of our "regulation rifles," the spring will
+throw a ball nearly two feet from the aim in a range of six hundred
+yards, if the barrel be firmly held in a machine.] This the English
+gunsmiths do not seem to have learned, since their best authorities
+recommend a gun of sixty-four gauge to have a barrel of four pounds
+weight, and that is considered heavy,--while ours, of sixty gauge, would
+weigh at least twice that. To get the best possible shooting, we find
+not only weight of barrel requisite, but a thickness of the metal nearly
+or quite equal to the diameter of the bore.
+
+Mr. Whitworth, of Manchester, revived the old polygonal bore, and, by
+a far more perfect boring of barrel than was ever before attained in
+England, has succeeded in doing some very accurate shooting; but the
+pitch of his grooves requisite to give sufficient rotation to his
+polygonal missile to enable it to rotate to the end of its flight is so
+great, that the friction and recoil are enormous, and the liability
+to burst very great, Mr. Whitworth's missile is a twisted prism,
+corresponding to the bore, of two and a half diameters, with a cone at
+the front of one half the diameter. Such a gun, in a firing-machine,
+with powder enough to overcome all the friction, and heavy enough to
+counteract torsion and springing, would give very great accuracy, if
+perfectly made, or as well made as American rifles generally; but no
+maker in England, not even Mr. Whitworth, has attained _that_ point
+yet; and even so made, they would never be available as service--or
+hunting-guns.
+
+The Lancaster rifle avoids grooves (nominally) altogether, and
+substitutes an elliptical bore, twisted to Mr. Whitworth's pitch (twenty
+inches). General Jacob says, very justly, of this gun: "The mode of
+rifling is the _very worst possible. It is only the two-grooved rifle in
+disguise_. Let the shoulders of the grooves of a two-grooved rifle be
+removed, and you have the Lancaster rifle. But by the removal of
+these shoulders, the friction, if the twist be considerable, becomes
+enormous." To compare this twist with the rifled bore, one has only to
+take a lead tube, made slightly elliptical in its cross-section, and,
+fitting a plug to its ellipse, turn the plug round, and he will see that
+the result is to enlarge the whole bore to the longest diameter of the
+ellipse, which, if it were a gun-barrel, unelastic, would be equivalent
+to bursting it. But this is exactly the action which the ball has on the
+barrel, so that, to use General Jacob's words, "the heat developed by
+the friction must be very great, and the tendency of the gun to burst
+also very great." Lieutenant Busk--who seems, if we may judge from the
+internal evidence of his book, to know little or nothing of good rifles
+or rifle-practice, and to have no greater qualification for writing the
+book than the reading of what has been written on the subject and an
+acquaintance of great extent with gunsmiths--remarks, in reply to the
+veteran of English riflemen: "Having given the matter the very closest
+attention, I am enabled confidently to state that the whole of this
+supposition [quoted above] is founded in error.... So far from the
+friction being enormous, it is less than that generated in any other
+kind of rifle. It is also utterly impossible for the bullet to act
+destructively on the barrel in the way suggested." Such cool assurance,
+in an unsupported contradiction of experience and the dictates of the
+simplest mechanical common-sense, would seem to promise little real
+value in the book, and promises no less than it really has.
+
+The same objection which lies against the Lancaster rifle (?) applies
+to the Whitworth in a less degree. If the reader, having tried the
+lead-pipe experiment above, will next hammer the tube hexagonal and try
+the plug again, he will find the same result; but if he will try it with
+a round bore grooved, and with a plug fitting the grooves, he will see
+that the pressure is against the wall of the groove, and acts at right
+angles to the radius of the bore, having only a tendency to twist the
+barrel in order to straighten the grooves,--a tendency which the barrel
+meets in the direction of its greatest stability. We may see, then,
+that, in theory at least, there is no way of rifling so secure as that
+in which the walls of the grooves are parts of radii of the bore. They
+should be numerous, that the hold of the lands (the projection left
+between the grooves) may divide the friction and resistance as much as
+possible, and so permit the grooves to be as shallow as may be. The
+figure
+
+[Illustration: ]
+
+represents, on one side of the dotted line, three grooves, 1, 1, 1, cut
+in this way, exaggerated to show more clearly their character. In the
+Kentucky rifle this law is followed, except that, for convenience in
+cutting, the grooves are made of the same width at the bottom and top,
+as shown at 2, 2, 2, which is, for grooves of the depth of which they
+are made, practically the same, as the dotted circle will show. Our
+gun-makers use from six to ten grooves.
+
+To sum up our conditions,--the model rifle will conform to the following
+description:--Its weight will be from ten to twelve pounds; the length
+of barrel not less than thirty inches,[1] and of calibre from ninety to
+sixty gauge; six to ten freed grooves, about .005 inch deep, angular at
+bottom and top, with the lands of the same width as the grooves; twist
+increasing from six feet to three feet; barrel, of cast steel,[2] fitted
+to the stock with a patent breech, with back action set lock, and open
+or hunting and globe and peek sights. Mr. Chapman, whose book is the
+most interesting and intelligent, by far, of all hitherto published,
+recommends a straighter stock than those generally used by American
+hunters. Here we differ;--the Swiss stock, crooking, on an average, two
+inches more than ours, is preferable for quick shooting, though in a
+_light_ rifle much crook in the stock will throw the muzzle up by the
+recoil. With such a gun,--the best for hunting that the ingenuity and
+skill of man have ever yet contrived and made,--one may depend on
+his shot, if he have skill, as he cannot on the Minié, Enfield, or
+Lancaster; and whether he be in the field against a foe, or in the
+forest against the deer, he holds the life of man or deer in his power
+at the range of rifle-sighting.
+
+[Footnote 1: There is much difference of opinion amongst gun-makers as
+to the length of barrel most desirable. We believe in a long barrel, for
+the following reasons: 1st, a longer distance between sights is given,
+and the back sight can be put farther from the eye, so that finer
+sighting is possible; 2d, a long barrel is steadier in off-hand
+shooting; 3d, it permits a slower powder to be used, so that the ball
+starts more slowly and yet allows the full strength of the powder to be
+used before it leaves the barrel, getting a high initial velocity with
+little recoil, and without "upsetting" the ball, as we shall explain
+farther on. The experiments of the United States government show that
+the increasing of the length of the barrel from thirty-three to forty
+inches (we speak from memory as to numbers) increased the initial
+velocity fifty feet per second; but this will, in long ranges, be no
+advantage, except with such a shape of missile as will maintain a high
+speed.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Hunters still dispute as to iron or steel; and we have used
+iron barrels made by Amsden, of Saratoga Springs, which for accuracy and
+wear were unexceptionable; though gunsmiths generally take less pains
+with iron than steel barrels. But give us steel.]
+
+Of all the variations of the rifle, for the sake of obtaining force of
+penetration, nothing yet compares with the Accelerating Rifle, invented
+some years since by a New York mechanic. In this the ball was started by
+an ordinary charge, and at a certain distance down the barrel received
+a new charge, by a side chamber, which produced an almost incredible
+effect. An ellipsoidal missile of ninety gauge and several diameters
+long, made of brass, was driven through thirty-six inches of oak and
+twenty-four inches of green spruce timber, or fifty inches of the most
+impenetrable of timbers. The same principle of acceleration has, it is
+said, been most successfully applied in Boston by the use of a hollow
+_tige_ or tube fixed at the bottom of the bore with the inside of which
+the cap-fire communicates,--so that, when the gun is charged, part of
+the powder falls into the _tige_, and the remainder into the barrel
+outside of it. The ball being driven down until it rests on the top of
+the _tige_, receives its first impulse from the small charge contained
+in it,--after which, the fire, flashing back, communicates to the powder
+outside the _tige_, producing an enormous accelerating effect. But it is
+doubtful if the gun can be brought into actual service, from being so
+difficult to clean.
+
+It is questionable if any greater range in rifles will be found
+desirable. With a good Kentucky rifle, we are even now obliged to use
+telescope sights to avail ourselves of its full range and accuracy of
+fire. The accelerating inventions may be made use of in artillery, for
+throwing shells, and for siege trains, but promise nothing for small
+arms.
+
+Then, as the secondary point, comes the form of projectile, that in
+which the greatest weight (and thence momentum) combines with least
+resistance from the atmosphere. In the pursuit of this result every
+experimenter since the fifteenth century has worked. Lautmann, writing
+in 1729, recommends an elliptical missile, hollow behind, from a
+notion that the hollow gathered the explosive force, Robins recommends
+elongated balls; and they were used in many varieties of form. Theory
+would assign, as the shape of highest rapidity, one like that which
+would be made by the revolution of the waterline section of a fast
+ship on its longitudinal axis; and supposing the force _to have been_
+applied, this would doubtless be capable of the greatest speed; but the
+rifle-missile must first be fitted to receive the action of the powder
+in the most effective way. An ellipsoid cone would leave the air behind
+it most smoothly, but it would not receive the pressure of the gas in a
+line with its direction of motion; and so of the hollow butt; the gas,
+acting and reacting in every way perpendicularly to the surface it acts
+on, wastes its force in straining outwardly. The perfectly flat butt
+would take as much forward impetus at the edge of the cone base, where
+the soft lead would yield slightly. And so we find the best form to be
+a base which receives the force of the powder in such a way that the
+resultant of the forces acting on each point in the base would be
+coincident with the axis of the missile. And this, in practice, was the
+shape which the American experiments gave to the butt of the ball, the
+condition in which it left the air being found of minor importance,
+compared with its capacity of receiving the force of the powder. The
+point of the cone was found objectionable in practice, and was gradually
+brought to the curve of the now universally used sugar-loaf missile or
+flat-ended picket shown in fig. 1.
+
+[Illustration: Figure 1]
+
+This picket has but a single point of bearing, and is driven down with
+a greased linen patch, filling up the grooves entirely, and preventing
+"leading" of the barrel, as well as keeping the picket firm in
+the barrel. This is of vital importance; for no breech-loading or
+loose-loading and expanding ball can ever fly so truly as a solid ball
+whose position in the barrel is accurately fixed. A longitudinal missile
+must rotate with its axis coincident with its line of flight as it
+leaves the barrel, or else every rotation will throw the point into
+wider circles, until finally it becomes more eccentric than a round
+ball. It is a mistaken notion that a conical missile is more accurate in
+flight than a round; on the contrary, hunters always prefer the ball for
+_short shots_,--and a "slug," as the longer missile is called by them,
+is well known to err more than a ball, if put down untruly.
+
+[Illustration: Figure 2]
+
+The improved Minié ball (fig. 2) was intended to obviate the danger of
+the missile's turning in flight, by hollowing the butt, and so putting
+the centre of gravity in front of the centre of resistance, so that
+it flies like a heavy-headed arrow, while at the same time the powder
+expands the hollow butt and fills the grooves, securing perfect rotation
+with easy loading. But the hollow in the ball diminishes the gravity and
+momentum; the liability of the lead to expand unequally, and so throw
+the point of the missile out of line, makes a long bearing necessary,
+producing enormous friction. This objection obtains equally with all
+pickets having expanding butts, and is a sufficient reason for their
+inferior accuracy to that of solid pickets fitted to the grooves at the
+muzzle with a patch. General Jacob says,--"I have tried every expedient
+I could think of as a substitute for the greased patch for rifle-balls,
+but had always to return to this"; and every experienced rifleman will
+agree with him. Yet both English and American (governmental) experiments
+ignore the fact, that the expansible bullets increase friction
+enormously; and the Enfield bullet (fig. 3) is as badly contrived as
+possible, being round-pointed, expansible, and with very long bearings,
+without the bands which in the French and American bullets reduce the
+friction somewhat. The Harper's Ferry bullet (fig. 4) is better than
+either the English or the French, and is as good as a loose-loading
+bullet can be.
+
+[Illustration: Figure 3]
+
+[Illustration: Fig 4]
+
+Besides all the objections we have urged against the bullet with long
+bearings, another still remains of a serious nature. No missile that has
+two points of bearing can be used with the gaining twist, as the change
+in the direction of the ridges on the shot formed by the grooves will
+necessarily tend to change the position of the axis of the shot; and
+the gaining twist is the greatest improvement made since grooving was
+successfully applied;--to reject it is to reject something indispensable
+to the _best_ performance of the rifle. The flat-ended picket complies
+with all the requisites laid down; and we will venture to say, that,
+if any government will give it a thorough trial, side by side with any
+loose-loading bullet, it will be found preferable to any other bullet,
+despite the disadvantage of slow loading from using a patch and a
+tight-fitting ball.
+
+To make the statement conclusive, we give the results of the United
+States experiments, and a statement of the European as compared with the
+United States firing, and then the results of Kentucky rifle-firing.
+With the new trial-rifle at Harper's Ferry, (a target 1 X 216 feet being
+put up at two hundred yards,) with the American ball, (fig. 4,) the best
+string of twenty-five shots averaged 3.2 inches vertical deviation, 2.4
+in. horizontal deviation. At five hundred yards, the best string of
+twenty-five shots averaged 10.8 inches vertical deviation, 14 in.
+horizontal deviation. At one thousand yards, 26.4 vertical deviation,
+16.8 horizontal deviation. In another trial with the new musket-rifle,
+the mean deviation at two hundred yards was 4.4 vertical, 3.4
+horizontal.
+
+In a comparison of the power of French, English, and American rifles,
+it was found that at two hundred yards the American gun averaged 4.8
+vertical and 4.5 horizontal deviation. The Enfield rifle gave 7 in.
+vertical, 11.3 horizontal; the French rifle _a tige_, 8 vertical, 7.6
+horizontal. A Swiss rifle, at the same distance, gave 5.3 vertical and
+4.3 horizontal deviation.
+
+At five hundred yards, the following was the result:--
+
+  American gun,       13.  in. vert. dev.   11.5   hor. dev.
+  Enfield,  "         20.4       "          19.2      "
+  Rifle _à tige_,     18.5       "          17.1      "
+
+  At one thousand yards,--
+
+  American gun,    31.5 in. vert. dev.    20.1   hor. dev.
+  Enfield,  "       42        "           52.8      "
+  Rifle_à tige_(874 yds.),47.2 "          37.4      "
+
+The only detailed reports of General Jacob's practice are at one
+thousand yards or over, at which his _shell_ averaged 31.2 in.
+horizontal deviation, 55.2 in. vertical; not far from the range of the
+Enfield. His bullet is fig. 5.
+
+[Illustration: Fig 5.]
+
+But long ranges test less fairly the _accuracy_ of a rifle than short
+ones, because in long flights they are more subject to drift, of the
+wind, etc. We shall compare the government reports of shooting at two
+hundred yards with that of the Kentucky rifle at two hundred and twenty,
+the usual trying distance. At that distance, the American gun gave
+
+                       4.8 in. vert dev. and 4.5 hor. dev.
+  Enfield,             7         "          11.3    "
+  French _à tige_,     8         "           7.6    "
+  Swiss,               5.3       "           4.3    "
+  Kentucky, (according to Mr. Chapman,) 1.06 absolute deviation.
+
+At 500 yards, the comparison stands,--
+
+American, (government,) 13 in. vertical deviation, 11.5 in. horizontal.
+(About 17 in. absolute.)
+
+Kentucky, (550 yards,) 11 in. absolute deviation
+
+We give cuts of two targets, of which we have duplicates in our
+possession, made by rifles manufactured by Morgan James, of Utica, New
+York, that the reader may appreciate the marvellous accuracy of this
+weapon; the first was made by a rifle of 60 gauge, twenty-five shots
+being fired, the average deviation being 1.4 in.; the second by a 90
+gauge, the average being [Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+.8 in.; both at two hundred and twenty yards, and better than Mr.
+Chapman's report. In the northern part of the State of New York, the
+practice at shooting-matches is, at turkeys at one hundred rods, (five
+hundred and fifty yards,) and a good marksman is expected to kill one
+turkey, on an average, in three shots,--and this with a bullet weighing
+from two hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty grains, while the
+army bullet weighs five hundred and fifty-seven. The easily fatal range
+of the bullet of two hundred and forty grains is a thousand yards; and
+farther than that, no bullet can be relied on as against single men.
+
+In breech-loading guns, much must be sacrificed, in point of accuracy,
+to mere facility of loading; and here there seems room for doubt whether
+a breech-loader offers any advantage compensating for its complication
+of mechanism and the danger of its being disabled by accident in hurried
+loading. No breech-loading gun is so trustworthy in its execution as a
+muzzle-loader; for, in spite of all precautions, the bullets will go
+out irregularly. We have cut out too many balls of Sharpe's rifle from
+the target, which had entered sidewise, not to be certain on this point;
+and we know of no other breech-loader so little likely to err in this
+respect, when the ball is crowded down into the grooves, and the powder
+poured on the ball,--as we always use it. The government reports on
+breech-loaders are adverse to their adoption, mainly because they are so
+likely to get out of working order and to get clogged. We have used one
+of Sharpe's two years in hunting, and found it, with a round ball at
+short shots, perfectly reliable; while with the belted picket perhaps
+one shot in five or six would wander. Used with the cartridge, they
+are much less reliable. They may be apt to clog, but we have used one
+through a day's hunting, and found the oil on the slide at night: and we
+are inclined to believe, that, when fitted with gas rings, they will
+not clog, if used with good powder. The Maynard rifle is perfectly
+unexceptionable in this respect, and an excellent gun, in its way. The
+powder does not flash out any more than in a muzzle-loader. Of the other
+kinds of breech-loaders we can say nothing from experience, and should
+scarcely recommend using one for a hunting-gun. One who has used a
+rifle of James, of Lewis (of Troy, New York), Amsden of Saratoga, (and
+doubtless others in the West are equally famous in their sections,) will
+hardly be willing to use the best breech-loader. There is no time saved,
+when the important shot is lost; and the gun that is always true is the
+only one for a rifleman, _if it take twice, the time to load_.
+
+In the rifling of cannon, there seems to be no reason why the same rules
+should not hold good as in small arms. The gaining twist seems more
+important, from the greater tendency of the heavy balls to strip; and
+there being less object in extreme lightness, the gun may be made a
+large-sized Kentucky rifle on wheels; and there is less difficulty in
+loading with the precision that the flat-ended picket requires. In the
+cannon, even more than in the rifle for the line, there is no gain in
+getting facility of loading at the expense of precision. If, by careful
+loading, we hit the given mark twice as often as when we load in haste,
+it is clear how much we gain. The breech-loader seems to be useless as a
+cannon, because that in which it has the advantage, namely, rapidity of
+loading, is useless in a field-piece, where, even now, artillery-men can
+load faster than they can fire safely. Napoleon III. has made his rifled
+cannon to load at the muzzle, and practical artillerists commend
+his decision. The Armstrong gun, of which so much is expected, we
+confidently predict, will prove a failure, when tried in field-practice
+in the hurry of battle, if it is ever so tried. It is a breech-loader of
+the clumsiest kind, taking twice as long to load as a common gun,
+and very complicated. Its wonderful range is owing to its great
+calibre,--sixty-four pounds; but even at that, it furnishes no results
+proportionate to those given by the Napoleon cannon, or by our General
+James's recent gun.
+
+The great anticipations raised by the general introduction of the rifle,
+and its greater range, of such a change in warfare as to make the
+bayonet useless, seem to have met with disappointment in the recent
+wars. No matter how perfect the gun, men, in the heat and excitement of
+battle, will hardly be deliberate in aim, or effective enough in firing
+to stop a charge of determined men; the bayonet, with the most of
+mankind, will always be the queen of weapons in a pitched battle; only
+for skirmishing, for sharp-shooting, and artillery, will the rifle equal
+theoretical expectations. Men, not brought up from boyhood to such
+constant use of the rifle as to make sure aim an act of instinct with
+them, will never repel with certainty a charge of the bayonet by
+rifle-balls. With men whose rifles come to an aim with the instinctive
+accuracy with which a hawk strikes his prey, firing is equivalent to
+hitting, and excitement only makes the aim surer and more prompt; but
+such must have been hunters from youth; and no training of the army can
+give this second nature. American volunteers are the only material,
+outside the little districts of Switzerland and the Tyrol, who can ever
+be trained to this point, because they are the only nation of hunters
+beside the Swiss and Tyrolese. The English game-laws, which prevent the
+common people from using fire-arms _ad libitum_, have done and are doing
+more to injure the efficacy of the individual soldier than all their
+militia-training can ever mend. In the hands of an English peasant,
+"Brown Bess" is as good as a rifle; for he would only throw the ball of
+either at random. Discipline is wonderful and wondrously effective; but,
+in the first place, it won't make a man a ready and accurate shot, in
+time of excitement; and, in the second place, it won't make his bayonet
+a shield for a ball from the rifle of a man who has learned, by the
+practice of years, not to throw away a ball or to fire at random;--it
+couldn't carry the bravest men in Wellington's army over a cotton-bale
+intrenchment, in the face of a double line of Kentucky rifles. It is
+very well to sing,
+
+"Riflemen, riflemen, riflemen, form!"
+
+but where are the riflemen? Can Britannia stamp them out of the dust? or
+has she a store of "dragon's teeth" to sow? God grant she may never have
+to defend those English homes against the guns of Vincennes! but if
+she must, it is on a comparatively undisciplined militia she must
+depend;--and then she may remember, with bitter self-reproach, the
+lesson of New Orleans.
+
+
+
+
+A TRIP TO CUBA.
+
+COMPANY AT THE HOTEL.--SERVANTS.--OUR DRIVE.--DON PEPE.
+
+I do not mean to give portraits of the individuals at our hotel. My
+chance acquaintance with them confers on me no right to appropriate
+their several characteristics for my own convenience and the diversion
+of the public. I will give only such general sketches as one may make of
+a public body at a respectful distance, marking no features that fix or
+offend.
+
+Our company is almost entirely composed of two classes,--invalids and
+men of business, with or without their families. The former are easily
+recognizable by their sad eyes and pallid countenances; even the hectic
+of disease does not deceive you,--it has no affinity to the rose of
+health. There is the cough, too,--the cruel cough that would not be
+left at the North, that breaks out through all the smothering by day,
+and shakes the weak frame with uneasy rocking by night.
+
+The men of business are apt to name their firm, when they introduce
+themselves to you.
+
+"My name is Norval, Sir,--Norval, Grampian, & Company. I suppose you
+know the firm."
+
+We do not, indeed; but we murmur, in return, that we have an uncle or a
+cousin in business, who may, very likely, know it.
+
+"What is your uncle's firm?" will be the next question.
+
+"Philpots Brothers."
+
+"Excellent people,--we have often done business with them. Happy to make
+your acquaintance, Sir."
+
+And so, the first preliminaries being established, and each party
+assured of the other's solvency, we glide easily into a relation of chat
+and kind little mutualities which causes the periods of contact to pass
+smoothly enough.
+
+We found among these some manly, straight-forward fellows, to whom one
+would confide one's fortunes, or even one's widow and orphans, with
+small fear of any flaw In their trustworthiness. Nor was the more
+slippery class, we judged, without its representatives; but of this we
+had only hints, not experience. There were various day-boarders, who
+frequented only our table, and lodged elsewhere. A few of these were
+decorous Spaniards, who did not stare, nor talk, nor gobble their
+meals with unbecoming vivacity of appetite. They were obviously staid
+business-men, differing widely in character from the street Spaniard,
+whom I have already copiously described. Some were Germans, thinned by
+the climate, and sharpened up to the true Yankee point of competition;
+very little smack of Fatherland was left about them,--no song, no
+sentimentality, not much quivering of the heart-strings at remembering
+the old folks at home, whom some of them have not seen in twenty years,
+and never will see again. To be sure, in such a hard life as theirs,
+with no social surroundings, and grim death meeting them at every
+corner, there is nothing for it but to be as hard and tough as one's
+circumstances. But give me rather the German heart in the little old
+German village, with the small earnings and spendings, the narrow sphere
+of life and experience, and the great vintage of geniality which is laid
+up from youth to age, and handed down with the old wine from father to
+son. I don't like your cosmopolitan German any better than I do your
+Englishman done to death with travel. I prize the home-flavor in all the
+races that are capable of home. There are very many Germans scattered
+throughout Cuba, in various departments of business. They are generally
+successful, and make very good Yankees, in the technical acceptation
+of the word. Their original soundness of constitution enables them to
+resist the climate better than Americans, and though they lose flesh
+and color, they rarely give that evidence of a disordered liver which
+foreign residents in tropical countries are so apt to show.
+
+The ladies at the hotel were all our own countrywomen, as we see them at
+home and abroad. I have already spoken of their diligence in sewing, and
+of their enthusiasm in shopping. Their other distinctive features are
+too familiar to us to require illustration. Yet upon one trait I will
+adventure. A group of them sat peaceably together, one day, when a
+file of newspapers arrived, with full details of a horrible Washington
+scandal, and the murder consequent upon it. Now I must say that no swarm
+of bees ever settled upon a bed of roses more eagerly than our fair
+sisters pounced upon the carrion of that foul and dreadful tale. It
+flew from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, as if it had been glad
+tidings of great joy,--and the universal judgment upon it caused our
+heart to shudder with the remembrance, that it had heard some one
+somewhere propose that female offenders should be tried by a jury of
+their own sex.
+
+It was a real comfort, a few days later, to hear this sad subject
+discussed by a circle of intelligent Englishwomen, with good sense and
+good feeling, and with true appreciation of the twofold crime, the
+domestic treason and the public assassination. In passing, I must say of
+this English circle, that it is charming, and that the Britannic Consul
+has the key of it in his pocket. Wherefore, if any of you, my friends,
+would desire to know four of the most charming women in Havana, he is to
+lay hold upon Mr. Consul Crawford, and compel him to be his friend.
+
+Mr. Dana recounts his shopping in Havana, whereof the beginning and
+ending were one dress, white and blue, which he commendably purchased
+for his wife. But does Dana know what he had to be thankful for, in
+getting off with one dress? Tell him, ye patient husbands, whose pockets
+seem to be made like lemons, only to be squeezed! Tell him, ye insatiate
+ones, who have new wants and new ideas every day! Dana's dress was,
+probably, an _holan batista_, which he calls "_Bolan_";--it was, in
+other words, a figured linen cambric. But you have bought those cambrics
+by the piece, and also _piñas_, thin, gossamer fabrics, of all degrees
+of color and beauty, sometimes with _pattern flounces_,--do you hear?
+And you have bought Spanish table-cloths with red or blue edges, with
+bull-fights on them, and balloon-ascensions, and platoons of soldiery in
+review, and with bull-fighting and ballooning napkins to match. And you
+have secured such bales of transparent white muslins, that one would
+think you intended to furnish a whole troupe of ballet-girls with
+saucer petticoats. Catalan lace you have got, to trim curtains, sheets,
+pillow-cases, and kitchen-towels with. And as for your fans, we only
+hope that the stories you tell about them are true, and that Kitty,
+Julia, and Jemima at home are to divide them with you; for we shrewdly
+suspect that you mean, after all, to keep them, and to have a fan for
+every day in the year. Let a man reflect upon all this, added to the
+inevitable three dollars and fifty cents _per diem_, with the frequent
+refreshment of _volantes_ and ices at the Dominica, and then say whether
+it pays to take a partner not of a frugal mind to Havana for the season.
+
+I had intended to give some account of the servants at Mrs. Almy's;
+but my gossip runs to such lengths that I must dismiss them with a few
+words. Ramon, the porter, never leaves the vestibule; he watches there
+all day, takes his meals there, plays cards there in the evening with
+his fellow-servants, and at night spreads his cot there, and lies down
+to sleep. He is white, as are most of the others. If I have occasion to
+go into the kitchen at night, I find a cot there also, with no bed, and
+a twisted sheet upon it, which, I am told, is the chrysalis of the cook.
+Said cook is a free yellow, from Nassau, who has wrought in this
+kitchen for many years past. Heat, hard work, and they say drink, have
+altogether brought him to a bad pass. His legs are frightfully swollen,
+and in a few days he leaves, unable to continue his function. Somebody
+asks after his wife. "She has got a white husband now," he tells us,
+with a dejected air. She might have waited a little,--he is to die soon.
+
+Garcia is the kind waiter with the rather expressive face, who is never
+weary of bringing us the rice and fried plantain, which form, after all,
+the staple of our existence in Cuba. The waiters all do as well as they
+can, considering the length of the table, and the extremely short staple
+of the boarders' patience. As a general rule, they understand good
+English better than bad Spanish; but comparative philology has obviously
+been neglected among them.
+
+Luis is a negro boy of twelve, fearfully black in the face and white
+in the eye; his wool cropped to entire bareness. He is chiefly good at
+dodging your orders,--disappears when anything is asked for, but does
+not return with it.
+
+Rosalia is the chambermaid, of whom I have already spoken, as dexterous
+in sweeping the mosquitos from the nets,--her afternoon service. She
+brings, too, the morning cup of coffee, and always says, "Good morning,
+Sir; you want coffee?"--the only English she can speak. Her voice and
+smile are particularly sweet, her person tall and well-formed, and her
+face comely and modest. She is not altogether black,--about mahogany
+color. I mention her modesty, because, so far as I saw, the good-looking
+ones among the black women have an air of assumption, and almost of
+impudence,--probably the result of flattery.
+
+With all this array of very respectable "help," our hostess avers that
+she has not a single person about her whom she can trust. Hence the
+weary look about her eyes and brow, speaking of a load never laid down.
+She attends to every detail of business herself, and is at work over her
+books long after her boarders have retired to rest.
+
+But the one of all the servants who interests us most is Alexander, Mrs.
+Almy's own slave. He is, like Rosalia, of mahogany color, with a broad
+forehead and intelligent eyes. His proud, impatient nature is little
+suited to his position, and every day brings some new account of his
+petulant outbreaks. To-day he quarrelled with the new cook, and drew a
+knife upon him. Mrs. Almy threatens continually to sell him, and at this
+the hearts of some of us grow very sick,--for she always says that his
+spirit must be broken, that only the severest punishment will break it,
+and that she cannot endure to send him to receive that punishment. What
+that mysterious ordeal may be, we dare not question,--we who cannot help
+him from it; we can only wish that he might draw that knife across his
+own throat before he undergoes it. He is trying to buy his own freedom,
+and has something saved towards it. He looks as if he would do good
+service, with sufficient training. As it is, he probably knows no law,
+save the two conflicting ones, of necessity and his own wild passions.
+One of the sad thoughts we shall carry away from here will be, that
+Alexander is to be sold and his spirit broken. Good Mrs. Almy, do have a
+little patience with him! Enlighten his dark mind; let Christianity be
+taught him, which will show him, even in his slave's estate, that he can
+conquer his fellow-servant better than by drawing a knife upon him. Set
+him free? Ah! that is past praying for; but, as he has the right to buy
+himself, give him every chance of doing so, and we, your petitioners,
+will pray for him, and for you, who need it, with that heavy brow of
+care.
+
+I have called the negroes of Nassau ugly, clumsy, and unserviceable. The
+Cuban negroes make, so far, a very different impression upon me. One
+sees among them considerable beauty of form, and their faces are more
+expressive and better cut than those of the Nassau blacks. The women are
+well-made, and particularly well-poised, standing perfectly straight
+from top to toe, with no hitch or swing in their gait. Beauty of feature
+is not so common among them; still, one meets with it here and there.
+There is a massive sweep in the bust and arms of the women which is very
+striking. Even in their faces, there is a certain weight of feature and
+of darkness, which makes its own impression. The men have less grace
+of movement, though powerful and athletic in their make. Those who are
+employed at hard work, within-doors, wear very little clothing, being
+stripped to the loins. One often has a glimpse of them, in passing the
+open smithies and wheelwrights' shops. The greatest defect among the
+men is the want of calf. The narrow boots of the postilions make this
+particularly discernible. Such a set of spindle-shanks I never saw, not
+even in Trumbull's famous Declaration of Independence, in which we have
+the satisfaction of assuring ourselves that the fathers of our liberty
+had two legs apiece, and crossed them in concert with the utmost
+regularity. One might think, at first, that these narrow boots were as
+uncomfortable to the _calesero_ as the Scottish instrument of torture of
+that name; but his little swagger when he is down, and his freedom in
+kicking when he is up, show that he has ample room in them.
+
+Very jolly groups of Spanish artisans does one see in the open shops at
+noon, gathered around a table. The board is chiefly adorned with earthen
+jars of an ancient pattern filled with oil and wine, platters of bread
+and sausage, and the ever fragrant onion is generally perceptible. The
+personal qualities of these men are quite unknown to us; but they have
+an air of good-fellowship which gives pleasure.
+
+We hired a carriage this afternoon,--we and two others from Boston. We
+had a four-wheeled barouche, with two horses, which costs two dollars an
+hour; whereas a _volante_ can be hired only at eight dollars and a half
+per whole afternoon,--no less time, no less money. As it holds but two,
+or, at the utmost, three, this is paying rather dear for the glory of
+showing one's self on the Paseo. The moment we were in the carriage, our
+coachman nodded to us, and saying, "_A la tropa_," galloped off with us
+in an unknown direction. We soon fell in with a line of other carriages,
+and concluded that there was something to be seen somewhere, and that we
+were going to see it. Nor were we mistaken; for in due time, ascending a
+steep acclivity, we came upon "_la tropa_" and found some ten thousand
+soldiers undergoing review, in their seersucker coats and Panama hats,
+which, being very like the costume of an easy Wall-Street man in August,
+had a very peaceful appearance on so military an occasion. The cavalry
+and infantry had nearly concluded their evolutions when we arrived. The
+troops were spread out on a vast plateau. The view was magnificent.
+The coachman pointed to one immovable figure on horseback, and said,
+"Concha." We found it was indeed the Captain-General; for as the
+different bands passed, they all saluted him, and he returned their
+courtesy. Unluckily, his back was towards us, and so remained until he
+rode off in an opposite direction. He was mounted on a white horse, and
+was dressed like the others. He seemed erect and well-made; but his
+back, after all, was very like any one else's back. _Query_,--Did we
+see Concha, or did we not? When all was over, the coachman carefully
+descended the hill. He had come hither in haste, wishing to witness the
+sport himself; but now he drove slowly, and indulged in every sort of
+roundabout to spin out his time and our money. We met with a friend
+who, on our complaint, expostulated with him, and said,--"Señor, these
+gentlemen say that you drive them very slowly (_muy poco á poco_)." To
+the which he,--"Señor, if gentlemen will hire a carriage by the
+hour, and not by the afternoon, they must expect to get on very
+softly."--_Mem_. A white driver is always addressed as _Señor_, and I
+have occasionally heard such monologues as the following:--"Señor, why
+do you drive me this way? Curse you, Señor! You don't know anything,
+Señor! You are the greatest ass I ever encountered." The coachman takes
+it all coolly enough; the "Señor" spares his dignity, and he keeps his
+feelings to himself.
+
+The writer of this has already spoken of various disappointments, in the
+way of seeing things, incidental to the position of the sex in Cuba.
+She came abroad prepared for microscopic, telescopic, and stereoscopic
+investigation,--but, hedged in on all sides by custom and convenience,
+she often observed only four very bare walls and two or three very
+stupid people. What could she see? Prisons? No. Men, naked and filthy,
+lying about, using very unedifying language, and totally unaccustomed to
+the presence of lady-visitors. She invoked the memory of Mrs. Fry and
+the example of Miss Dix. "Oh, they were saints, you know." "Only because
+they went to prisons, which you won't let me do."--Bull-fight? No. "How
+could you go back to Boston after seeing a bull-fight, eh?" "As if
+married life were anything else, eh?" And so on.--Negro ball? "Not
+exactly the place for a lady." "Miss Bremer went." "Very differently
+behaved woman from you." "Yes, virtue with a nose, impregnable."
+
+But there is something she can go to see,--at least, some one,--the
+angelic man, Don Pepe, the wise, the gentle, the fearless, whom all the
+good praise. Yes, she shall go to see Don Pepe; and one burning Sunday
+noon she makes a pilgrimage through the scorching streets, and comes
+where he may be inquired for, and is shown up a pair of stairs, at the
+head of which stands the angelic man, mild and bland, with great, dark
+eyes, and a gracious countenance. He ushers us into a room furnished
+with nothing but books, and finds two chairs for us and one for himself,
+not without research.
+
+Now I will not pretend to say that Don Pepe occupied himself with me
+after the first kind greeting, nor that, my presence occasioned him
+either pleasure or surprise. My companion was a man after his own heart,
+and, at first sight, the two mounted their humanitarian hobbies, and
+rode them till they were tired. And when this came, I went away and said
+nothing. Yet I knew that I had seen a remarkable man.
+
+Don Pepe de la Luz is a Cuban by birth, and his age may number some
+sixty years. He inherited wealth and its advantages, having received
+somewhere a first-rate education, to which he copiously added in
+subsequent years. He is a Liberal in politics and religion, a man of
+great reason and of great heart. In affairs of state, however, he
+meddles not, but contents himself with making statesmen. Like all wise
+philanthropists, he sees the chief source of good to man in education,
+and devotes his life, and, in a degree, his fortune, to this object. The
+building in which we found him was a large school, or rather college,
+founded by himself, and carried on in a great measure through his
+efforts. This college is upon the same literary footing as the
+University of Havana; and Don Pepe's graduates pass examinations and
+receive diplomas in the last-named institution. He himself rarely leaves
+its walls; and though he has house and wife elsewhere, and the great
+world is everywhere open to him, he leads here a more congenial life of
+ascetic seclusion, study, and simplicity.
+
+  "Oh, noble instinct of good men, to stay and do their duty!
+  This let us celebrate above all daring, wit, and beauty."
+
+Don Pepe has been abroad as much as it profits a man to be,--but has not
+lost his own soul there, as an American is apt to do. He has known the
+best men in Europe and America. The best languages, he possesses them;
+the best books, here they are, piled all about his room. The floor is
+carpeted with them; there are cases all around the walls; and a large
+parallelogramic arrangement in the middle of the room, stuck all
+with books, as a pin-cushion with pins. True, there is not in their
+arrangement that ornateness of order observable in Northern libraries;
+dust even lies and blows about; and though he can find his favorites, we
+should be much puzzled to find any volume where it ought to be. But it
+looks as if the master were happy and undisturbed here, and as if the
+housemaid and her hated broom were as far off as the snow and frost.
+
+In person, Don Pepe is not above the middle height. He is a fairly
+developed man, but looks thin and worn, and his shoulders have the stoop
+of age, which scholars mostly anticipate. His face is much corrugated,
+but it bears the traces of vivacious thought and emotion, not the
+withering print of passion. Of his eyes I have already spoken; they are
+wise, kind, and full of Southern fire.
+
+Don Pepe has had some annoyances from the government,--probably in the
+more sanguine period of his life. The experience of years has taught him
+the secret of living peaceably with all men. He can be great and good
+himself, without perpetually quarrelling with those who can be neither.
+He spoke with warm interest of his scholars. "They have much capacity,"
+he said; "but we want a little more of that _air_ you spoke of just now,
+Doctor." That air was Liberty. Reader, have you ever been in a place
+where her name was contraband? All such places are alike. Here, as in
+Rome, men who have thoughts disguise them; and painful circumlocution
+conveys the meaning of friend to friend. For treachery lies hid, like
+the scorpion, under your pillow, and your most trusted companion will
+betray your head, to save his own. I am told that this sub-treason
+reached, in the days of Lopez, an incredible point. After every secret
+meeting of those affected to the invaders, each conspirator ran to save
+himself by denouncing all others. One Cuban, of large fortune and small
+reputation, being implicated in these matters, brought General Concha
+a list of all his confederates, which Concha burned before his face,
+unread. Piteous, laughable spectacle! Better be monkeys than such men;
+yet such work does Absolutism in government and religion make of the
+noble human creature! God preserve us ever from tyrants, spies, and
+Jesuits!
+
+Don Pepe does not tell us this; but we have much pleasant talk with him
+about books, about great men in Europe, and, lastly, about Prescott,
+whom he knew and honored. We took leave of him with regret. He
+accompanied us to the head of the stairs, and then said, "Ah! my dear
+Madam, my liver will not suffer me to go down." "I am glad it is not
+your heart," I rejoined, and we parted,--to meet again, in my thoughts,
+and perhaps elsewhere, in the dim vista of the future.
+
+
+
+
+BLONDEL.
+
+  At the castle's outer door
+  Stood Blondel, the Troubadour.
+  Up the marble stairs the crowd,
+  Pressing, talked and laughed aloud.
+  Upward with the throng he went;
+  With a heart of discontent,
+  Timed his sullen instrument;
+  Tried to sing of mirth and jest,
+  As the knights around him pressed;
+  But across his heart a pang
+  Struck him wordless ere he sang.
+
+  Then the guests and vassals roared,
+  Sitting round the oaken board,
+  "If thou canst not wake our mirth,
+  Touch some softer rhyme of earth:
+  Sing of knights in ladies' bowers,--
+  Twine a lay of love and flowers."
+
+  "Can I sing of love?" he said,--
+  And a moment bowed his head,
+  Then looked upward, out of space,
+  With a strange light in his face.
+
+  Said Blondel, the Troubadour,
+  "When I hear the battle roar,
+  And the trumpet-tones of war,
+  Can I tinkle my guitar?"
+
+  "But the war is o'er," said all;
+  "Silent now the bugle's call.
+  Love should be the warrior's dream,--
+  Love alone the minstrel's theme.
+  Sing us _Rose-leaves on a stream_."
+
+  Said Blondel, "Not roses now,--
+  Leafless thorns befit the brow.
+  In this crowd my voice is weak,
+  But ye force me now to speak.
+  Know ye not King Richard groans
+  Chained 'neath Austria's dungeon-stones?
+  What care I to sing of aught
+  Save what presses on my thought?
+  Over laughter, song, and shout
+  From these windows swelling out,
+  Over passion's tender words
+  Intonating through the chords,
+
+  "Rings the prisoned monarch's lay,
+  Through and through me, night and day;
+  And the only strain I know
+  Haunts my brain where'er I go,--
+  Trumpet-tones that ring and ring
+  Till I see my Richard king!
+
+  "Gallants, hear my song of love,
+  Deeper tones than courtiers move,--
+  Hear my royal captive's sigh,--
+  England, Home, and Liberty!"
+
+  Then he struck his lute and sang,
+  Till the shields and lances rang:
+  How for Christ and Holy Land
+  Fought the Lion Heart and Hand,--
+  How the craft of Leopold
+  Trapped him in a castle old,--
+  How one balmy morn in May,
+  Singing to beguile the day,
+  In his tower, the minstrel heard
+  Every note and every word,--
+  How he answered back the song,
+  "Let thy hope, my king, be strong!
+  We will bring thee help ere long!"
+
+  Still he sang,--"Who goes with me?
+  Who is it wills King Richard free?
+  He who bravely toils and dares,
+  Pain and danger with me shares,--
+  He whose heart is true and warm,
+  Though the night perplex with storm
+  Forest, plain, and dark morass,
+  Hanging-rock and mountain-pass,
+  And the thunder bursts ablaze,--
+  Is the lover that I praise!"
+
+  As the minstrel left the hall,
+  Silent, sorrowing, sat they all.
+  "Well they knew his banner-sign,
+  The Lion-Heart of Palestine.
+  Like a flame the song had swept
+  O'er them;--then the warriors leapt
+  Up from the feast with one accord,--
+  Pledged around their knightly word,--
+  From the castle-windows rang
+  The last verse the minstrel sang,
+  And from out the castle-door
+  Followed they the Troubadour.
+
+
+
+
+THE WONDERSMITH.
+
+I.
+
+GOLOSH STREET AND ITS PEOPLE.
+
+A small lane, the name of which I have forgotten, or do not choose to
+remember, slants suddenly off from Chatham Street, (before that headlong
+thoroughfare reaches into the Park,) and retreats suddenly down towards
+the East River, as if it were disgusted with the smell of old clothes,
+and had determined to wash itself clean. This excellent intention it
+has, however, evidently contributed towards the making of that imaginary
+pavement mentioned in the old adage; for it is still emphatically a
+dirty street. It has never been able to shake off the Hebraic taint of
+filth which it inherits from the ancestral thoroughfare. It is slushy
+and greasy, as if it were twin brother of the Roman Ghetto.
+
+I like a dirty slum; not because I am naturally unclean,--I have not a
+drop of Neapolitan blood in my veins,--but because I generally find a
+certain sediment of philosophy precipitated in its gutters. A clean
+street is terribly prosaic. There is no food for thought in carefully
+swept pavements, barren kennels, and vulgarly spotless houses. But when
+I go down a street which has been left so long to itself that it has
+acquired a distinct outward character, I find plenty to think about. The
+scraps of sodden letters lying in the ash-barrel have their meaning:
+desperate appeals, perhaps, from Tom, the baker's assistant, to Amelia,
+the daughter of the dry-goods retailer, who is always selling at a
+sacrifice in consequence of the late fire. That may be Tom himself who
+is now passing me in a white apron, and I look up at the windows of
+the house (which does not, however, give any signs of a recent
+conflagration) and almost hope to see Amelia wave a white
+pocket-handkerchief. The bit of orange-peel lying on the sidewalk
+inspires thought. Who will fall over it? who but the industrious mother
+of six children, the eldest of which is only nine months old, all of
+whom are dependent on her exertions for support? I see her slip and
+tumble. I see the pale face convulsed with agony, and the vain struggle
+to get up; the pitying crowd closing her off from all air; the anxious
+young doctor who happened to be passing by; the manipulation of the
+broken limb, the shake of the head, the moan of the victim, the litter
+borne on men's shoulders, the gates of the New York Hospital unclosing,
+the subscription taken up on the spot. There is some food for
+speculation in that three-year-old, tattered child, masked with dirt,
+who is throwing a brick at another three-year-old, tattered child,
+masked with dirt. It is not difficult to perceive that he is destined to
+lurk, as it were, through life. His bad, flat face--or, at least, what
+can be seen of it--does not look as if it were made for the light of
+day. The mire in which he wallows now is but a type of the moral mire in
+which he will wallow hereafter. The feeble little hand lifted at this
+instant to smite his companion, half in earnest, half in jest, will be
+raised against his fellow-beings forevermore.
+
+Golosh Street--as I will call this nameless lane before alluded to--is
+an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seem to have found
+their way thither and made an eccentric mercantile settlement. There
+is a bird-shop at one corner, wainscoted with little cages containing
+linnets, waxwings, canaries, blackbirds, Mino-birds, with a hundred
+other varieties, known only to naturalists. Immediately opposite is an
+establishment where they sell nothing but ornaments made out of the
+tinted leaves of autumn, varnished and gummed into various forms.
+Farther down is a second-hand book-stall, which looks like a sentry-box
+mangled out flat, and which is remarkable for not containing a
+complete set of any work. There is a small chink between two
+ordinary-sized houses, in which a little Frenchman makes and sells
+artificial eyes, specimens of which, ranged on a black velvet cushion,
+stare at you unwinkingly through the window as you pass, until you
+shudder and hurry on, thinking how awful the world would be, if every
+one went about without eyelids. There are junk-shops in Golosh Street
+that seem to have got hold of all the old nails in the Ark and all the
+old brass of Corinth. Madame Filomel, the fortune-teller, lives at No.
+12 Golosh Street, second story front, pull the bell on the left-hand
+side. Next door to Madame is the shop of Herr Hippe, commonly called the
+Wondersmith.
+
+Herr Hippe's shop is the largest in Golosh Street, and to all appearance
+is furnished with the smallest stock. Beyond a few packing-cases, a
+turner's lathe, and a shelf laden with dissected maps of Europe, the
+interior of the shop is entirely unfurnished. The window, which is lofty
+and wide, but much begrimed with dirt, contains the only pleasant object
+in the place. This is a beautiful little miniature theatre,--that is
+to say, the orchestra and stage. It is fitted with charmingly painted
+scenery and all the appliances for scenic changes. There are tiny
+traps, and delicately constructed "lifts," and real footlights fed with
+burning-fluid, and in the orchestra sits a diminutive conductor before
+his desk, surrounded by musical manikins, all provided with the smallest
+of violoncellos, flutes, oboes, drums, and such like. There are
+characters also on the stage. A Templar in a white cloak is dragging a
+fainting female form to the parapet of a ruined bridge, while behind a
+great black rock on the left one can see a man concealed, who, kneeling,
+levels an arquebuse at the knight's heart. But the orchestra is silent;
+the conductor never beats the time, the musicians never play a note. The
+Templar never drags his victim an inch nearer to the bridge, the masked
+avenger takes an eternal aim with his weapon. This repose appears
+unnatural; for so admirably are the figures executed, that they seem
+replete with life. One is almost led to believe, in looking on them,
+that they are resting beneath some spell which hinders their motion. One
+expects every moment to hear the loud explosion of the arquebuse,--to
+see the blue smoke curling, the Templar falling,--to hear the orchestra
+playing the requiem of the guilty.
+
+Few people knew what Herr Hippe's business or trade really was. That he
+worked at something was evident; else why the shop? Some people inclined
+to the belief that he was an inventor, or mechanician. His workshop was
+in the rear of the store, and into that sanctuary no one but himself had
+admission. He arrived in Golosh Street eight or ten years ago, and one
+fine morning, the neighbors, taking down their shutters, observed that
+No. 13 had got a tenant. A tall, thin, sallow-faced man stood on a
+ladder outside the shop-entrance, nailing up a large board, on which
+"Herr Hippe, Wondersmith," was painted in black letters on a yellow
+ground. The little theatre stood in the window, where it stood ever
+after, and Herr Hippe was established.
+
+But what was a Wondersmith? people asked each other. No one could reply.
+Madame Filomel was consulted, but she looked grave, and said that it was
+none of her business. Mr. Pippel, the bird-fancier, who was a German,
+and ought to know best, thought it was the English for some singular
+Teutonic profession; but his replies were so vague, that Golosh Street
+was as unsatisfied as ever. Solon, the little humpback, who kept the
+odd-volume book-stall at the lowest corner, could throw no light upon
+it. And at length people had to come to the conclusion, that Herr Hippe
+was either a coiner or a magician, and opinions were divided.
+
+
+II.
+
+A BOTTLEFUL OF SOULS.
+
+It was a dull December evening. There was little trade doing in Golosh
+Street, and the shutters were up at most of the shops. Hippe's store had
+been closed at least an hour, and the Mino-birds and Bohemian waxwings
+at Mr. Pippel's had their heads tucked under their wings in their first
+sleep.
+
+Herr Hippe sat in his parlor, which was lit by a pleasant wood-fire.
+There were no candles in the room, and the flickering blaze played
+fantastic tricks on the pale gray walls. It seemed the festival of
+shadows. Processions of shapes, obscure and indistinct, passed across
+the leaden-hued panels and vanished in the dusk corners. Every fresh
+blaze flung up by the wayward logs created new images. Now it was a
+funeral throng, with the bowed figures of mourners, the shrouded
+coffin, the plumes that waved like extinguished torches; now a knightly
+cavalcade with flags and lances, and weird horses, that rushed silently
+along until they met the angle of the room, when they pranced through
+the wall and vanished.
+
+On a table close to where Herr Hippe sat was placed a large square
+box of some dark wood, while over it was spread a casing of steel, so
+elaborately wrought in an open arabesque pattern that it seemed like a
+shining blue lace which was lightly stretched over its surface.
+
+Herr Hippe lay luxuriously in his armchair, looking meditatively into
+the fire. He was tall and thin, and his skin was of a dull saffron hue.
+Long, straight hair,--sharply cut, regular features,--a long, thin
+moustache, that curled like a dark asp around his mouth, the expression
+of which was so bitter and cruel that it seemed to distil the venom
+of the ideal serpent,--and a bony, muscular form, were the prominent
+characteristics of the Wondersmith.
+
+The profound silence that reigned in the chamber was broken by a
+peculiar scratching at the panel of the door, like that which at the
+French court was formerly substituted for the ordinary knock, when it
+was necessary to demand admission to the royal apartments. Herr Hippe
+started, raised his head, which vibrated on his long neck like the head
+of a cobra when about to strike, and after a moment's silence uttered a
+strange guttural sound. The door unclosed, and a squat, broad-shouldered
+woman, with large, wild, Oriental eyes, entered softly.
+
+"Ah! Filomel, you are come!" said the Wondersmith, sinking back in his
+chair. "Where are the rest of them?"
+
+"They will be here presently," answered Madame Filomel, seating herself
+in an arm-chair much too narrow for a person of her proportions, and
+over the sides of which she bulged like a pudding.
+
+"Have you brought the souls?" asked the Wondersmith.
+
+"They are here," said the fortune-teller, drawing a large pot-bellied
+black bottle from under her cloak. "Ah! I have had such trouble with
+them!"
+
+"Are they of the right brand,--wild, tearing, dark, devilish fellows? We
+want no essence of milk and honey, you know. None but souls bitter as
+hemlock or scorching as lightning will suit our purpose."
+
+"You will see, you will see, Grand Duke of Egypt! They are ethereal
+demons, every one of them. They are the pick of a thousand births. Do
+you think that I, old midwife that I am, don't know the squall of the
+demon child from that of the angel child, the very moment they are
+delivered? Ask a musician, how he knows, even in the dark, a note struck
+by Thalberg from one struck by Listz!"
+
+"I long to test them," cried the Wondersmith, rubbing his hands
+joyfully. "I long to see how the little devils will behave when I give
+them their shapes. Ah! it will be a proud day for us when we let them
+loose upon the cursed Christian children! Through the length and breadth
+of the land they will go; wherever our wandering people set foot, and
+wherever they are, the children of the Christians shall die. Then we,
+the despised Bohemians, the gypsies, as they call us, will be once more
+lords of the earth, as we were in the days when the accursed things
+called cities did not exist, and men lived in the free woods and
+hunted the game of the forest. Toys indeed! Ay, ay, we will give the
+little dears toys! toys that all day will sleep calmly in their boxes,
+seemingly stiff and wooden and without life,--but at night, when the
+souls enter them, will arise and surround the cots of the sleeping
+children, and pierce their hearts with their keen, envenomed blades!
+Toys indeed! oh, yes! I will sell them toys!"
+
+And the Wondersmith laughed horribly, while the snaky moustache on his
+upper lip writhed as if it had truly a serpent's power and could sting.
+
+"Have you got your first batch, Herr Hippe?" asked Madame Filomel. "Are
+they all ready?"
+
+"Oh, ay! they are ready," answered the Wondersmith with gusto, opening,
+as he spoke, the box covered with the blue steel lace-work; "they are
+here."
+
+The box contained a quantity of exquisitely carved wooden manikins of
+both sexes, painted with great dexterity so as to present a miniature
+resemblance to Nature. They were, in fact, nothing more than admirable
+specimens of those toys which children delight in placing in various
+positions on the table,--in regiments, or sitting at meals, or grouped
+under the stiff green trees which always accompany them in the boxes in
+which they are sold at the toy-shops.
+
+The peculiarity, however, about the manikins of Herr Hippe was not alone
+the artistic truth with which the limbs and the features were gifted;
+but on the countenance of each little puppet the carver's art had
+wrought an expression of wickedness that was appalling. Every tiny face
+had its special stamp of ferocity. The lips were thin and brimful of
+malice; the small black bead-like eyes glittered with the fire of a
+universal hate. There was not one of the manikins, male or female, that
+did not hold in his or her hand some miniature weapon. The little men,
+scowling like demons, clasped in their wooden fingers swords delicate as
+a housewife's needle. The women, whose countenances expressed treachery
+and cruelty, clutched infinitesimal daggers, with which they seemed
+about to take some terrible vengeance.
+
+"Good!" said Madame Filomel, taking one of the manikins out of the box
+and examining it attentively; "you work well, Duke Balthazar! These
+little ones are of the right stamp; they look as if they had mischief in
+them. Ah! here come our brothers."
+
+At this moment the same scratching that preceded the entrance of Madame
+Filomel was heard at the door, and Herr Hippe replied with a hoarse,
+guttural cry. The next moment two men entered. The first was a small man
+with very brilliant eyes. He was wrapt in a long shabby cloak, and wore
+a strange nondescript species of cap on his head, such a cap as one
+sees only in the low billiard-rooms in Paris. His companion was tall,
+long-limbed, and slender; and his dress, although of the ordinary cut,
+either from the disposition of colors, or from the careless, graceful
+attitudes of the wearer, assumed a certain air of picturesqueness. Both
+the men possessed the same marked Oriental type of countenance which
+distinguished the Wondersmith and Madame Filomel. True gypsies they
+seemed, who would not have been out of place telling fortunes, or
+stealing chickens in the green lanes of England, or wandering with their
+wild music and their sleight-of-hand tricks through Bohemian villages.
+
+"Welcome, brothers!" said the Wondersmith; "you are in time. Sister
+Filomel has brought the souls, and we are about to test them. Monsieur
+Kerplonne, take off your cloak. Brother Oaksmith, take a chair. I
+promise you some amusement this evening; so make yourselves comfortable.
+Here is something to aid you."
+
+And while the Frenchman Kerplonne, and his tall companion, Oaksmith,
+were obeying Hippe's invitation, he reached over to a little closet let
+into the wall, and took thence a squat bottle and some glasses, which he
+placed on the table.
+
+"Drink, brothers!" he said; "it is not Christian blood, but good stout
+wine of Oporto. It goes right to the heart, and warms one like the
+sunshine of the South."
+
+"It is good," said Kerplonne, smacking his lips with enthusiasm.
+
+"Why don't you keep brandy? Hang wine!" cried Oaksmith, after having
+swallowed two bumpers in rapid succession.
+
+"Bah! Brandy has been the ruin of our race. It has made us sots and
+thieves. It shall never cross my threshold," cried the Wondersmith, with
+a sombre indignation.
+
+"A little of it is not bad, though, Duke," said the fortune-teller. "It
+consoles us for our misfortunes; it gives us the crowns we once wore; it
+restores to us the power we once wielded; it carries us back, as if by
+magic, to that land of the sun from which fate has driven us; it darkens
+the memory of all the evils that we have for centuries suffered."
+
+"It is a devil; may it be cursed!" cried Herr Hippe, passionately. "It
+is a demon that stole from me my son, the finest youth in all Courland.
+Yes! my son, the son of the Waywode Balthazar, Grand Duke of Lower
+Egypt, died raving in a gutter, with an empty brandy-bottle in his
+hands. Were it not that the plant is a sacred one to our race, I would
+curse the grape and the vine that bore it."
+
+This outburst was delivered with such energy that the three gypsies
+kept silence. Oaksmith helped himself to another glass of Port, and the
+fortune-teller rocked to and fro in her chair, too much overawed by
+the Wondersmith's vehemence of manner to reply. The little Frenchman,
+Kerplonne, took no part in the discussion, but seemed lost in admiration
+of the manikins, which he took from the box in which they lay, handling
+them with the greatest care. After the silence had lasted for about a
+minute, Herr Hippe broke it with the sudden question,--
+
+"How does your eye get on, Kerplonne?"
+
+"Excellently, Duke. It is finished. I have it here." And the little
+Frenchman put his hand into his breeches-pocket and pulled out a large
+artificial human eye. Its great size was the only thing in this eye that
+would lead any one to suspect its artificiality. It was at least twice
+the size of life; but there was a fearful speculative light in its iris,
+which seemed to expand and contract like the eye of a living being, that
+rendered it a horrible staring paradox. It looked like the naked eye of
+the Cyclops, torn from his forehead, and still burning with wrath and
+the desire for vengeance.
+
+The little Frenchman laughed pleasantly as he held the eye in his hand,
+and gazed down on that huge dark pupil, that stared back at him, it
+seemed, with an air of defiance and mistrust.
+
+"It is a devil of an eye," said the little man, wiping the enamelled
+surface with an old silk pocket-handkerchief; "it reads like a demon. My
+niece--the unhappy one--has a wretch of a lover, and I have a long
+time feared that she would run away with him. I could not read her
+correspondence, for she kept her writing-desk closely locked. But I
+asked her yesterday to keep this eye in some very safe place for me. She
+put it, as I knew she would, into her desk, and by its aid I read every
+one of her letters. She was to run away next Monday, the ungrateful! but
+she will find herself disappointed."
+
+And the little man laughed heartily at the success of his stratagem, and
+polished and fondled the great eye until that optic seemed to grow sore
+with rubbing.
+
+"And you have been at work, too, I see, Herr Hippe. Your manikins are
+excellent. But where are the souls?"
+
+"In that bottle," answered the Wondersmith, pointing to the pot-bellied
+black bottle that Madame Filomel had brought with her. "Yes, Monsieur
+Kerplonne," he continued, "my manikins are well made. I invoked the aid
+of Abigor, the demon of soldiery, and he inspired me. The little fellows
+will be famous assassins when they are animated. We will try them
+to-night."
+
+"Good!" cried Kerplonne, rubbing his hands joyously. "It is close upon
+New Year's Day. We will fabricate millions of the little murderers
+by New Year's Eve, and sell them in large quantities; and when the
+households are all asleep, and the Christian children are waiting for
+Santa Claus to come, the small ones will troop from their boxes and the
+Christian children will die. It is famous! Health to Abigor!"
+
+"Let us try them at once," said Oaksmith. "Is your daughter, Zonéla, in
+bed, Herr Hippe? Are we secure from intrusion?"
+
+"No one is stirring about the house," replied the Wondersmith, gloomily.
+
+Filomel leaned over to Oaksmith, and said, in an undertone,--
+
+"Why do you mention his daughter? You know he does not like to have her
+spoken about."
+
+"I will take care that we are not disturbed," said Kerplonne, rising. "I
+will put my eye outside the door, to watch."
+
+He went to the door and placed his great eye upon the floor with tender
+care. As he did so, a dark form, unseen by him or his second vision,
+glided along the passage noiselessly and was lost in the darkness.
+
+"Now for it!'" exclaimed Madame Filomel, taking up her fat black bottle.
+"Herr Hippe, prepare your manikins!"
+
+The Wondersmith took the little dolls out, one by one, and set them upon
+the table. Such an array of villanous countenances was never seen. An
+army of Italian bravos, seen through the wrong end of a telescope, or a
+hand of prisoners at the galleys in Liliput, will give some faint idea
+of the appearance they presented. While Madame Filomel uncorked the
+black bottle, Herr Hippe covered the dolls over with a species of linen
+tent, which he took also from the box. This done, the fortune-teller
+held the mouth of the bottle to the door of the tent, gathering the
+loose cloth closely round the glass neck. Immediately, tiny noises
+were heard inside the tent. Madame Filomel removed the bottle, and the
+Wondersmith lifted the covering in which he had enveloped his little
+people.
+
+A wonderful transformation had taken place. Wooden and inflexible no
+longer, the crowd of manikins were now in full motion. The beadlike eyes
+turned, glittering, on all sides; the thin, wicked lips quivered with
+bad passions; the tiny hands sheathed and unsheathed the little swords
+and daggers. Episodes, common to life, were taking place in every
+direction. Here two martial manikins paid court to a pretty sly-faced
+female, who smiled on each alternately, but gave her hand to be kissed
+to a third manikin, an ugly little scoundrel, who crouched behind her
+back. There a pair of friendly dolls walked arm in arm, apparently on
+the best terms, while, all the time, one was watching his opportunity to
+stab the other in the back.
+
+"I think they'll do," said the Wondersmith, chuckling, as he watched
+these various incidents. "Treacherous, cruel, bloodthirsty. All goes
+marvellously well. But stay! I will put the grand test to them."
+
+So saying, he drew a gold dollar from his pocket, and let it fall on the
+table in the very midst of the throng of manikins. It had hardly touched
+the table, when there was a pause on all sides. Every head was turned
+towards the dollar. Then about twenty of the little creatures rushed
+towards the glittering coin. One, fleeter than the rest, leaped upon it,
+and drew his sword. The entire crowd of little people had now gathered
+round this new centre of attraction. Men and women struggled and shoved
+to get nearer to the piece of gold. Hardly had the first Liliputian
+mounted upon the treasure, when a hundred blades flashed back a defiant
+answer to his, and a dozen men, sword in hand, leaped upon the yellow
+platform and drove him off at the sword's point. Then commenced a
+general battle. The miniature faces were convulsed with rage and
+avarice. Each furious doll tried to plunge dagger or sword into his or
+her neighbor, and the women seemed possessed by a thousand devils.
+
+"They will break themselves into atoms," cried Filomel, as she
+watched with eagerness this savage _mélée_. "You had better gather them
+up, Herr Hippe. I will exhaust my bottle and suck all the souls back
+from them."
+
+"Oh, they are perfect devils! they are magnificent little demons!" cried
+the Frenchman, with enthusiasm. "Hippe, you are a wonderful man. Brother
+Oaksmith, you have no such man as Hippe among your English gypsies."
+
+"Not exactly," answered Oaksmith, rather sullenly, "not exactly. But
+we have men there who can make a twelve-year-old horse look like a
+four-year-old,--and who can take you and Herr Hippe up with one hand,
+and throw you over their shoulders."
+
+"The good God forbid!" said the little Frenchman. "I do not love such
+play. It is incommodious."
+
+While Oaksmith and Kerplonne were talking, the Wondersmith had placed
+the linen tent over the struggling dolls, and Madame Filomel, who had
+been performing some mysterious manipulations with her black bottle, put
+the mouth once more to the door of the tent. In an instant the confused
+murmur within ceased. Madame Filomel corked the bottle quickly. The
+Wondersmith withdrew the tent, and, lo! the furious dolls were once
+more wooden-jointed and inflexible; and the old sinister look was again
+frozen on their faces.
+
+"They must have blood, though," said Herr Hippe, as he gathered them up
+and put them into their box. "Mr. Pippel, the bird-fancier, is asleep. I
+have a key that opens his door. We will let them loose among the birds;
+it will be rare fun."
+
+"Magnificent!" cried Kerplonne. "Let us go on the instant. But first let
+me gather up my eye."
+
+The Frenchman pocketed his eye, after having given it a polish with the
+silk handkerchief; Herr Hippe extinguished the lamp; Oaksmith took a
+last bumper of Port; and the four gypsies departed for Mr. Pippel's,
+carrying the box of manikins with them.
+
+
+
+III.
+
+SOLON.
+
+The shadow that glided along the dark corridor, at the moment that
+Monsieur Kerplonne deposited his sentinel eye outside the door of the
+Wondersmith's apartment, sped swiftly through the passage and ascended
+the stairs to the attic. Here the shadow stopped at the entrance to one
+of the chambers and knocked at the door. There was no reply.
+
+"Zonéla, are you asleep?" said the shadow, softly.
+
+"Oh, Solon, is it you?" replied a sweet low voice from within. "I
+thought it was Herr Hippe. Come in."
+
+The shadow opened the door and entered. There were neither candles nor
+lamp in the room; but through the projecting window, which was open,
+there came the faint gleams of the starlight, by which one could
+distinguish a female figure seated on a low stool in the middle of the
+floor.
+
+"Has he left you without light again, Zonéla?" asked the shadow, closing
+the door of the apartment. "I have brought my little lantern with me,
+though."
+
+"Thank you, Solon," answered she called Zonéla; "you are a good fellow.
+He never gives me any light of an evening, but bids me go to bed. I like
+to sit sometimes and look at the moon and the stars,--the stars more
+than all; for they seem all the time to look right back into my face,
+very sadly, as if they would say, 'We see you, and pity you, and would
+help you, if we could.' But it is so mournful to be always looking at
+such myriads of melancholy eyes! and I long so to read those nice books
+that you lend me, Solon!"
+
+By this time the shadow had lit the lantern and was a shadow no longer.
+A large head, covered with a profusion of long blonde hair, which was
+cut after that fashion known as a _l'enfants d'Edouard;_ a beautiful
+pale face, lit with wide, blue, dreamy eyes; long arms and slender
+hands, attenuated legs, and--an enormous hump;--such was Solon, the
+shadow. As soon as the humpback had lit the lamp, Zonéla arose from
+the low stool on which she had been seated, and took Solon's hand
+affectionately in hers.
+
+Zonéla was surely not of gypsy blood. That rich auburn hair, that looked
+almost black in the lamp-light, that pale, transparent skin, tinged with
+an under-glow of warm rich blood, the hazel eyes, large and soft as
+those of a fawn, were never begotten of a Zingaro. Zonéla was seemingly
+about sixteen; her figure, although somewhat thin and angular, was full
+of the unconscious grace of youth. She was dressed in an old cotton
+print, which had been once of an exceedingly boisterous pattern, but
+was now a mere suggestion of former splendor; while round her head was
+twisted, in fantastic fashion, a silk handkerchief of green ground
+spotted with bright crimson. This strange headdress gave her an elfish
+appearance.
+
+"I have been out all day with the organ, and I am so tired, Solon!--not
+sleepy, but weary, I mean. Poor Furbelow was sleepy, though, and he's
+gone to bed."
+
+"I'm weary, too, Zonéla;--not weary as you are, though, for I sit in my
+little book-stall all day long, and do not drag round an organ and a
+monkey and play old tunes for pennies,--but weary of myself, of life, of
+the load that I carry on my shoulders"; and, as he said this, the poor
+humpback glanced sideways, as if to call attention to his deformed
+person.
+
+"Well, but you ought not to be melancholy amidst your books, Solon.
+Gracious! If I could only sit in the sun and read as you do, how happy
+I should be! But it's very tiresome to trudge round all day with that
+nasty organ, and look up at the houses, and know that you are annoying
+the people inside; and then the boys play such bad tricks on poor
+Furbelow, throwing him hot pennies to pick up, and burning his poor
+little hands; and oh! sometimes, Solon, the men in the street make me
+so afraid,--they speak to me and look at me so oddly!--I'd a great deal
+rather sit in your book-stall and read."
+
+"I have nothing but odd volumes in my stall," answered the humpback.
+"Perhaps that's right, though; for, after all, I'm nothing but an odd
+volume myself."
+
+"Come, don't be melancholy, Solon. Sit down and tell me a story. I'll
+bring Furbelow to listen."
+
+So saying, she went to a dusk corner of the cheerless attic-room, and
+returned with a little Brazilian monkey in her arms,--a poor, mild,
+drowsy thing, that looked as if it had cried itself to sleep. She sat
+down on her little stool, with Furbelow in her lap, and nodded her head
+to Solon, as much as to say, "Go on; we are attentive."
+
+"You want a story, do you?" said the humpback, with a mournful smile.
+"Well, I'll tell you one. Only what will your father say, if he catches
+me here?"
+
+"Herr Hippe is not my father," cried Zonéla, indignantly. "He's a gypsy,
+and I know I'm stolen; and I'd run away from him, if I only knew where
+to run to. If I were his child, do you think that he would treat me
+as he does? make me trudge round the city, all day long, with
+a barrel-organ and a monkey,--though I love poor dear little
+Furbelow,--and keep me up in a garret, and give me ever so little to
+eat? I know I'm not his child, for he hates me."
+
+"Listen to my story, Zonéla, and well talk of that afterwards. Let me
+sit at your feet";--and, having coiled himself up at the little maiden's
+feet, he commenced:--
+
+"There once lived in a great city, just like this city of New York, a
+poor little hunchback. He kept a second-hand book-stall, where he made
+barely enough money to keep body and soul together. He was very sad at
+times, because he knew scarce any one, and those that he did know did
+not love him. He had passed a sickly, secluded youth. The children of
+his neighborhood would not play with him, for he was not made like them;
+and the people in the streets stared at him with pity, or scoffed at
+him when he went by. Ah! Zonéla, how his poor heart was wrung with
+bitterness when he beheld the procession of shapely men and fine women
+that every day passed him by in the thoroughfares of the great city! How
+he repined and cursed his fate as the torrent of fleet-footed firemen
+dashed past him to the toll of the bells, magnificent in their
+overflowing vitality and strength! But there was one consolation left
+him,--one drop of honey in the jar of gall, so sweet that it ameliorated
+all the bitterness of life. God had given him a deformed body, but his
+mind was straight and healthy. So the poor hunchback shut himself into
+the world of books, and was, if not happy, at least contented. He kept
+company with courteous paladins, and romantic heroes, and beautiful
+women; and this society was of such excellent breeding that it never so
+much as once noticed his poor crooked back or his lame walk. The love
+of books grew upon him with his years. He was remarked for his studious
+habits; and when, one day, the obscure people that he called father and
+mother--parents only in name--died, a compassionate book-vendor gave
+him enough stock in trade to set up a little stall of his own. Here, in
+his book-stall, he sat in the sun all day, waiting for the customers
+that seldom came, and reading the fine deeds of the people of the
+ancient time, or the beautiful thoughts of the poets that had warmed
+millions of hearts before that hour, and still glowed for him with
+undiminished fire. One day, when he was reading some book, that, small
+as it was, was big enough to shut the whole world out from him, he heard
+some music in the street. Looking up from his book, he saw a little
+girl, with large eyes, playing an organ, while a monkey begged for alms
+from a crowd of idlers who had nothing in their pockets but their hands.
+The girl was playing, but she was also weeping. The merry notes of the
+polka were ground out to a silent accompaniment of tears. She looked
+very sad, this organ-girl, and her monkey seemed to have caught the
+infection, for his large brown eyes were moist, as if he also wept. The
+poor hunchback was struck with pity, and called the little girl over to
+give her a penny,--not, dear Zonéla, because he wished to bestow alms,
+but because he wanted to speak with her. She came, and they talked
+together. She came the next day,--for it turned out that they were
+neighbors,--and the next, and, in short, every day. They became friends.
+They were both lonely and afflicted, with this difference, that she was
+beautiful, and he--was a hunchback."
+
+"Why, Solon," cried Zonéla, "that's the very way you and I met!"
+
+"It was then," continued Solon, with a faint smile, "that life seemed to
+have its music. A great harmony seemed to the poor cripple to fill the
+world. The carts that took the flour-barrels from the wharves to the
+store-houses seemed to emit joyous melodies from their wheels. The hum
+of the great business-streets sounded like grand symphonies of triumph.
+As one who has been travelling through a barren country without much
+heed feels with singular force the sterility of the lands he has passed
+through when he reaches the fertile plains that lie at the end of his
+journey, so the humpback, after his vision had been freshened with this
+blooming flower, remembered for the first time the misery of the life
+that he had led. But he did not allow himself to dwell upon the past.
+The present was so delightful that it occupied all his thoughts. Zonéla,
+he was in love with the organ-girl."
+
+"Oh, that's so nice!" said Zonéla, innocently,--pinching poor Furbelow,
+as she spoke, in order to dispel a very evident snooze that was creeping
+over him. "It's going to be a love-story."
+
+"Ah! but, Zonéla, he did not know whether she loved him in return. You
+forget that he was deformed."
+
+"But," answered the girl, gravely, "he was good."
+
+A light like the flash of an aurora illuminated Solon's face for an
+instant. He put out his hand suddenly, as if to take Zonéla's and press
+it to his heart; but an unaccountable timidity seemed to arrest the
+impulse, and he only stroked Furbelow's head,--upon which that
+individual opened one large brown eye to the extent of the eighth of an
+inch, and, seeing that it was only Solon, instantly closed it again, and
+resumed his dream of a city where there were no organs and all the
+copper coin of the realm was iced.
+
+"He hoped and feared," continued Solon, in a low, mournful voice; "but
+at times he was very miserable, because he did not think it possible
+that so much happiness was reserved for him as the love of this
+beautiful, innocent girl. At night, when he was in bed, and all the
+world was dreaming, he lay awake looking up at the old books that hung
+against the walls, thinking how he could bring about the charming of her
+heart. One night, when he was thinking of this, with his eyes fixed
+upon the mouldy backs of the odd volumes that lay on their shelves, and
+looked back at him wistfully, as if they would say,--'We also are like
+you, and wait to be completed,'--it seemed as if he heard a rustle of
+leaves. Then, one by one, the books came down from their places to the
+floor, as if shifted by invisible hands, opened their worm-eaten covers,
+and from between the pages of each the hunchback saw issue forth a
+curious throng of little people that danced here and there through the
+apartment. Each one of these little creatures was shaped so as to bear
+resemblance to some one of the letters of the alphabet. One tall,
+long-legged fellow seemed like the letter A; a burly fellow, with a big
+head and a paunch, was the model of B; another leering little chap might
+have passed for a Q; and so on through the whole. These fairies--for
+fairies they were--climbed upon the hunchback's bed, and clustered thick
+as bees upon his pillow. 'Come!' they cried to him, 'we will lead you
+into fairy-land.' So saying, they seized his hand, and he suddenly found
+himself in a beautiful country, where the light did not come from sun
+or moon or stars, but floated round and over and in everything like the
+atmosphere. On all sides he heard mysterious melodies sung by strangely
+musical voices. None of the features of the landscape were definite;
+yet when he looked on the vague harmonies of color that melted one into
+another before his sight, he was filled with a sense of inexplicable
+beauty. On every side of him fluttered radiant bodies which darted to
+and fro through the illumined space. They were not birds, yet they flew
+like birds; and as each one crossed the path of his vision, he felt a
+strange delight flash through his brain, and straightway an interior
+voice seemed to sing beneath the vaulted dome of his temples a verse
+containing some beautiful thought. The little fairies were all this
+time dancing and fluttering around him, perching on his head, on his
+shoulders, or balancing themselves on his finger-tips. 'Where am I?' he
+asked, at last, of his friends, the fairies. 'Ah! Solon,' he heard them
+whisper, in tones that sounded like the distant tinkling of silver
+bells, 'this land is nameless; but those whom we lead hither, who tread
+its soil, and breathe its air, and gaze on its floating sparks of light,
+are poets forevermore!' Having said this, they vanished, and with
+them the beautiful indefinite land, and the flashing lights, and the
+illumined air; and the hunchback found himself again in bed, with the
+moonlight quivering on the floor, and the dusty books on their shelves,
+grim and mouldy as ever."
+
+"You have betrayed yourself. You called yourself Solon," cried Zonéla.
+"Was it a dream?"
+
+"I do not know," answered Solon; "but since that night I have been a
+poet."
+
+"A poet?" screamed the little organ-girl,--"a real poet, who makes
+verses which every one reads and every one talks of?"
+
+"The people call me a poet," answered Solon, with a sad smile. "They do
+not know me by the name of Solon, for I write under an assumed title;
+but they praise me, and repeat my songs. But, Zonéla, I can't sing this
+load off of my back, can I?"
+
+"Oh, bother the hump!" said Zonéla, jumping up suddenly. "You're a poet,
+and that's enough, isn't it? I'm so glad you're a poet, Solon! You must
+repeat all your best things to me, won't you?"
+
+Solon nodded assent.
+
+"You don't ask me," he said, "who was the little girl that the hunchback
+loved."
+
+Zonela's face flushed crimson. She turned suddenly away, and ran into a
+dark corner of the room. In a moment she returned with an old hand-organ
+in her arms.
+
+"Play, Solon, play!" she cried. "I am so glad that I want to dance.
+Furbelow, come and dance in honor of Solon the Poet."
+
+It was her confession. Solon's eyes flamed, as if his brain had suddenly
+ignited. He said nothing; but a triumphant smile broke over his
+countenance. Zonela, the twilight of whose cheeks was still rosy with
+the setting blush, caught the lazy Furbelow by his little paws; Solon
+turned the crank of the organ, which wheezed out as merry a polka as
+its asthma would allow, and the girl and the monkey commenced their
+fantastic dance. They had taken but a few steps when the door suddenly
+opened, and the tall figure of the Wondersmith appeared on the
+threshold. His face was convulsed with rage, and the black snake that
+quivered on his upper lip seemed to rear itself as if about to spring
+upon the hunchback.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE MANIKINS AND THE MINOS.
+
+The four gypsies left Herr Hippe's house cautiously, and directed their
+steps towards Mr. Pippel's bird-shop. Golosh Street was asleep. Nothing
+was stirring in that tenebrous slum, save a dog that savagely gnawed a
+bone which lay on a dust-heap, tantalizing him with the flavor of food
+without its substance. As the gypsies moved stealthily along in the
+darkness, they had a sinister and murderous air that would not have
+failed to attract the attention of the policeman of the quarter, if
+that worthy had not at the moment been comfortably ensconced in the
+neighboring "Rainbow" bar-room, listening to the improvisations of that
+talented vocalist, Mr. Harrison, who was making impromptu verses on
+every possible subject, to the accompaniment of a cithern which was
+played by a sad little Italian in a large cloak, to whom the host of the
+"Rainbow" gave so many toddies and a dollar for his nightly performance.
+
+Mr. Pippel's shop was but a short distance from the Wondersmith's house.
+A few moments, therefore, brought the gypsy party to the door, when, by
+aid of a key which Herr Hippe produced, they silently slipped into the
+entry. Here the Wondersmith took a dark-lantern from under his cloak,
+removed the cap that shrouded the light, and led the way into the shop,
+which was separated from the entry only by a glass door, that yielded,
+like the outer one, to a key which Hippe took from his pocket. The four
+gypsies now entered the shop and closed the door behind them.
+
+It was a little world of birds. On every side, whether in large or small
+cages, one beheld balls of various-colored feathers standing on one leg
+and breathing peacefully. Love-birds, nestling shoulder to shoulder,
+with their heads tucked under their wings and all their feathers puffed
+out, so that they looked like globes of malachite; English bullfinches,
+with ashen-colored backs, in which their black heads were buried, and
+corselets of a rosy down; Java sparrows, fat and sleek and cleanly;
+troupials, so glossy and splendid in plumage that they looked as if they
+were dressed in the celebrated armor of the Black Prince, which was jet,
+richly damascened with gold; a cock of the rock, gleaming, a ball of
+tawny fire, like a setting sun; the Campanero of Brazil, white as snow,
+with his dilatable tolling-tube hanging from his head, placid and
+silent;--these, with a humbler crowd of linnets, canaries, robins,
+mocking-birds, and phoebes, slumbered calmly in their little cages, that
+were hung so thickly on the wall as not to leave an inch of it visible.
+
+"Splendid little morsels, all of them!" exclaimed Monsieur Kerplonne.
+"Ah we are going to have a rare beating!" "So Pippel does not sleep in
+his shop," said the English gypsy, Oaksmith.
+
+"No. The fellow lives somewhere up one of the avenues," answered Madame
+Filomel. "He came, the other evening, to consult me about his fortune. I
+did not tell him," she added, with a laugh, "that he was going to have
+so distinguished a sporting party on his premises."
+
+"Come," said the Wondersmith, producing the box of manikins, "get ready
+with souls, Madame Filomel. I am impatient to see my little men letting
+out lives for the first time."
+
+Just at the moment that the Wondersmith uttered this sentence, the four
+gypsies were startled by a hoarse voice issuing from a corner of the
+room, and propounding in the most guttural tones the intemperate query
+of "What'll you take?" This sottish invitation had scarce been given,
+when a second extremely thick voice replied from an opposite corner,
+in accents so rough that they seemed to issue from a throat torn and
+furrowed by the liquid lava of many bar-rooms, "Brandy and water."
+
+"Hollo! who's here?" muttered Herr Hippe, flashing the light of his
+lantern round the shop.
+
+Oaksmith turned up his coat-cuffs, as if to be ready for a fight; Madame
+Filomel glided, or rather rolled, towards the door; while Kerplonne put
+his hand into his pocket, as if to assure himself that his supernumerary
+optic was all right.
+
+"What'll you take?" croaked the voice in the corner, once more.
+
+"Brandy and water," rapidly replied the second voice in the other
+corner. And then, as if by a concerted movement, a series of bibular
+invitations and acceptances were rolled backwards and forwards with a
+volubility of utterance that threw Patter _versus_ Clatter into the
+shade.
+
+"What the Devil can it be?" muttered the Wondersmith, flashing his
+lantern here and there. "Ah! it is those Minos."
+
+So saying, he stopped under one of the wicker cages that hung high up
+on the wall, and raised the lantern above his head, so as to throw the
+light upon that particular cage. The hospitable individual who had
+been extending all these hoarse invitations to partake of intoxicating
+beverages was an inhabitant of the cage. It was a large Mino-bird, who
+now stood perched on his cross-bar, with his yellowish orange bill
+sloped slightly over his shoulder, and his white eye cocked knowingly
+upon the Wondersmith. The respondent voice in the other corner came
+from another Mino-bird, who sat in the dusk in a similar cage, also
+attentively watching the Wondersmith. These Mino-birds, I may remark, in
+passing, have a singular aptitude for acquiring phrases.
+
+"What'll you take?" repeated the Mino, cocking his other eye upon Herr
+Hippe.
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_ what a bird!" exclaimed the little Frenchman. "He is, in
+truth, polite."
+
+"I don't know what I'll take," said Hippe, as if replying to the
+Mino-bird; "but I know what you'll get, old fellow! Filomel, open the
+cage-doors, and give me the bottle."
+
+Filomel opened, one after another, the doors of the numberless little
+cages, thereby arousing from slumber their feathered occupants, who
+opened their beaks, and stretched their claws, and stared with great
+surprise at the lantern and the midnight visitors.
+
+By this time the Wondersmith had performed the mysterious manipulations
+with the bottle, and the manikins were once more in full motion,
+swarming out of their box, sword and dagger in hand, with their little
+black eyes glittering fiercely, and their white teeth shining. The
+little creatures seemed to scent their prey. The gypsies stood in
+the centre of the shop, watching the proceedings eagerly, while the
+Liliputians made in a body towards the wall and commenced climbing from
+cage to cage. Then was heard a tremendous fluttering of wings, and
+faint, despairing "quirks" echoed on all sides. In almost every cage
+there was a fierce manikin thrusting his sword or dagger vigorously into
+the body of some unhappy bird. It recalled the antique legend of the
+battles of the Pygmies and the Cranes. The poor love-birds lay with
+their emerald feathers dabbled in their hearts' blood, shoulder to
+shoulder in death as in life. Canaries gasped at the bottom of their
+cages, while the water in their little glass fountains ran red. The
+bullfinches wore an unnatural crimson on their breasts. The mocking-bird
+lay on his back, kicking spasmodically, in the last agonies, with a tiny
+sword-thrust cleaving his melodious throat in twain, so that from the
+instrument which used to gush with wondrous music only scarlet drops of
+blood now trickled. The manikins were ruthless. Their faces were ten
+times wickeder than ever, as they roamed from cage to cage, slaughtering
+with a fury that seemed entirely unappeasable. Presently the feathery
+rustlings became fewer and fainter, and the little pipings of despair
+died away; and in every cage lay a poor murdered minstrel, with the song
+that abode within him forever quenched;--in every cage but two, and
+those two were high up on the wall; and in each glared a pair of wild,
+white eyes; and an orange beak, tough as steel, pointed threateningly
+down. With the needles which they grasped as swords all wet and warm
+with blood, and their beadlike eyes flashing in the light of the
+lantern, the Liliputian assassins swarmed up the cages in two separate
+bodies, until they reached the wickets of the habitations in which the
+Minos abode. Mino saw them coming,--had listened attentively to the
+many death-struggles of his comrades, and had, in fact, smelt a rat.
+Accordingly he was ready for the manikins. There he stood at the
+barbican of his castle, with formidable beak couched like a lance. The
+manikins made a gallant charge. "What'll you take?" was rattled out
+by the Mino, in a deep bass, as with one plunge of his sharp bill he
+scattered the ranks of the enemy, and sent three of them flying to the
+floor, where they lay with broken limbs. But the manikins were brave
+automata, and again they closed and charged the gallant Mino. Again the
+wicked white eyes of the bird gleamed, and again the orange bill dealt
+destruction. Everything seemed to be going on swimmingly for Mino, when
+he found himself attacked in the rear by two treacherous manikins, who
+had stolen upon him from behind, through the lattice-work of the cage.
+Quick as lightning the Mino turned to repel this assault, but all too
+late; two slender quivering threads of steel crossed in his poor body,
+and he staggered into a corner of the cage. His white eyes closed, then
+opened; a shiver passed over his body, beginning at his shoulder-tips
+and dying off in the extreme tips of the wings; he gasped as if for air,
+and then, with a convulsive shudder, which ruffled all his feathers,
+croaked out feebly his little speech, "What'll you take?" Instantly
+from the opposite corner came the old response, still feebler than the
+question,--a mere gurgle, as it were, of "Brandy and water." Then all
+was silent. The Mino-birds were dead.
+
+"They spill blood like Christians," said the Wondersmith, gazing fondly
+on the manikins. "They will be famous assassins."
+
+
+
+V.
+
+TIED UP.
+
+Herr Hippe stood in the doorway, scowling. His eyes seemed to scorch the
+poor hunchback, whose form, physically inferior, crouched before that
+baneful, blazing glance, while his head, mentally brave, reared itself,
+as if to redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the
+attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the
+crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonéla, she was
+frozen in the attitude of motion;--a dancing nymph in colored marble;
+agility stunned; elasticity petrified.
+
+Furbelow, astonished at this sudden change, and catching, with all the
+mysterious rapidity of instinct peculiar to the lower animals, at
+the enigmatical character of the situation, turned his pleading,
+melancholy eyes from one to another of the motionless three, as if
+begging that his humble intellect (pardon me, naturalists, for the
+use of this word "intellect" in the matter of a monkey!) should
+be enlightened as speedily as possible. Not receiving the desired
+information, he, after the manner of trained animals, returned to his
+muttons; in other words, he conceived that this unusual entrance, and
+consequent dramatic _tableau_, meant "shop." He therefore dropped
+Zonéla's hand and pattered on his velvety little feet over towards the
+grim figure of the Wondersmith, holding out his poor little paw for
+the customary copper. He had but one idea drilled into him,--soulless
+creature that he was,--and that was, alms, But I have seen creatures
+that professed to have souls, and that would have been indignant, if
+you had denied them immortality, who took to the soliciting of alms as
+naturally as if beggary had been the original sin, and was regularly
+born with them, and never baptized out of them. I will give these
+Bandits of the Order of Charity this credit, however, that they knew
+the best highways and the richest founts of benevolence,--unlike to
+Furbelow, who, unreasoning and undiscriminating, begged from the first
+person that was near. Furbelow, owing to this intellectual inferiority
+to the before-mentioned Alsatians, frequently got more kicks than
+coppers, and the present supplication which he indulged in towards the
+Wondersmith was a terrible confirmation of the rule. The reply to the
+extended pleading paw was what might be called a double-barrelled kick,
+--a kick to be represented by the power of two when the foot touched the
+object, multiplied by four when the entire leg formed an angle of 45°
+with the spinal column. The long, nervous leg of the Wondersmith caught
+the little creature in the centre of the body, doubled up his brown,
+hairy form, till he looked like a fur driving-glove, and sent him
+whizzing across the room into a far corner, where he dropped senseless
+and flaccid.
+
+This vengeance which Herr Hippe executed upon Furbelow seemed to have
+operated as a sort of escape-valve, and he found voice. He hissed out
+the question, "Who are you?" to the hunchback; and in listening to that
+essence of sibillation, it really seemed as if it proceeded from the
+serpent that curled upon his upper lip.
+
+"Who are you? Deformed dog, who are you? What do you here?"
+
+"My name is Solon," answered the fearless head of the hunchback, while
+the frail, cowardly body shivered and trembled inch by inch into a
+corner.
+
+"So you come to visit my daughter in the night-time, when I am away?"
+continued the Wondersmith, with a sneering tone that dropped from his
+snake-wreathed mouth like poison. "You are a brave and gallant lover,
+are you not? Where did you win that Order of the Curse of God that
+decorates your shoulders? The women turn their heads and look after you
+in the street, when you pass, do they not? lost in admiration of that
+symmetrical figure, those graceful limbs, that neck pliant as the stem
+that moors the lotus! Elegant, conquering, Christian cripple, what do
+you here in my daughter's room?"
+
+Can you imagine Jove, limitless in power and wrath, hurling from his
+vast grasp mountain after mountain upon the struggling Enceladus,--and
+picture the Titan sinking, sinking, deeper and deeper into the earth,
+crushed and dying, with nothing visible through the superincumbent
+masses of Pelion and Ossa, but a gigantic head and two flaming eyes,
+that, despite the death which is creeping through each vein, still flash
+back defiance to the divine enemy? Well, Solon and Herr Hippe presented
+such a picture, seen through the wrong end of a telescope,--reduced in
+proportion, but alike in action. Solon's feeble body seemed to sink into
+utter annihilation beneath the horrible taunts that his enemy hurled at
+him, while the large, brave brow and unconquered eyes still sent forth a
+magnetic resistance.
+
+Suddenly the poor hunchback felt his arm grasped. A thrill seemed to run
+through his entire body. A warm atmosphere, invigorating and full of
+delicious odor, surrounded him. It appeared as if invisible bandages
+were twisted all about his limbs, giving him a strange strength. His
+sinking legs straightened. His powerless arms were braced. Astonished,
+he glanced round for an instant, and beheld Zonéla, with a world of love
+burning in her large lambent eyes, wreathing her round white arms about
+his humped shoulders. Then the poet knew the great sustaining power of
+love. Solon reared himself boldly.
+
+"Sneer at my poor form," he cried, in strong vibrating tones, flinging
+out one long arm and one thin finger at the Wondersmith, as if he would
+have impaled him like a beetle. "Humiliate me, if you can. I care not.
+You are a wretch, and I am honest and pure. This girl is not your
+daughter. You are like one of those demons in the fairy tales that held
+beauty and purity locked in infernal spells. I do not fear you, Heir
+Hippe. There are stories abroad about you in the neighborhood, and when
+you pass, people say that they feel evil and blight hovering over their
+thresholds. You persecute this girl. You are her tyrant. You hate her. I
+am a cripple. Providence has cast this lump upon my shoulders. But that
+is nothing. The camel, that is the salvation of the children of the
+desert, has been given his hump in order that he might bear his human
+burden better. This girl, who is homeless as the Arab, is my appointed
+load in life, and, please God, I will carry her on this back, hunched
+though it may be. I have come to see her, because I love her,--because
+she loves me. You have no claim on her; so I will take her from you."
+
+Quick as lightning, the Wondersmith had stridden a few paces, and
+grasped the poor cripple, who was yet quivering with the departing
+thunder of his passion. He seized him in his bony, muscular grasp, as
+he would have seized a puppet, and held him at arm's length gasping
+and powerless; while Zonéla, pale, breathless, entreating, sank
+half-kneeling on the floor.
+
+"Your skeleton will be interesting to science when you are dead, Mr.
+Solon," hissed the Wondersmith. "But before I have the pleasure of
+reducing you to an anatomy, which I will assuredly do, I wish to
+compliment you on your power of penetration, or sources of information;
+for I know not if you have derived your knowledge from your own mental
+research or the efforts of others. You are perfectly correct in your
+statement, that this charming young person, who day after day parades
+the streets with a barrel-organ and a monkey,--the last unhappily
+indisposed at present,--listening to the degrading jokes of ribald boys
+and depraved men,--you are quite correct, Sir, in stating that she is
+not my daughter. On the contrary, she is the daughter of an Hungarian
+nobleman who had the misfortune to incur my displeasure. I had a son,
+crooked spawn of a Christian!--a son, not like you, cankered, gnarled
+stump of life that you are,--but a youth tall and fair and noble in
+aspect, as became a child of one whose lineage makes Pharaoh modern,--a
+youth whose foot in the dance was as swift and beautiful to look at as
+the golden sandals of the sun when he dances upon the sea in summer.
+This youth was virtuous and good; and being of good race, and dwelling
+in a country where his rank, gypsy as he was, was recognized, he mixed
+with the proudest of the land. One day he fell in with this accursed
+Hungarian, a fierce drinker of that Devil's blood called brandy. My
+child until that hour had avoided this bane of our race. Generous wine
+he drank, because the soul of the sun our ancestor palpitated in its
+purple waves. But brandy, which is fallen and accursed wine, as devils
+are fallen and accursed angels, had never crossed his lips, until in an
+evil hour he was seduced by this Christian hog, and from that day forth
+his life was one fiery debauch, which set only in the black waves of
+death. I vowed vengeance on the destroyer of my child, and I kept my
+word. I have destroyed _his_ child,--not compassed her death, but
+blighted her life, steeped her in misery and poverty, and now, thanks to
+the thousand devils, I have discovered a new torture for her heart. She
+thought to solace her life with a love-episode! Sweet little epicure
+that she was! She shall have her little crooked lover, shan't she?
+Oh, yes! She shall have him, cold and stark and livid, with that great,
+black, heavy hunch, which no back, however broad, can bear, Death,
+sitting between his shoulders!"
+
+There was something so awful and demoniac in this entire speech and the
+manner in which it was delivered, that it petrified Zonéla into a mere
+inanimate figure, whose eyes seemed unalterably fixed on the fierce,
+cruel face of the Wondersmith. As for Solon, he was paralyzed in the
+grasp of his foe. He heard, but could not reply. His large eyes, dilated
+with horror to far beyond their ordinary size, expressed unutterable
+agony.
+
+The last sentence had hardly been hissed out by the gypsy when he took
+from his pocket a long, thin coil of whipcord, which he entangled in
+a complicated mesh around the cripple's body. It was not the ordinary
+binding of a prisoner. The slender lash passed and repassed in a
+thousand intricate folds over the powerless limbs of the poor humpback.
+When the operation was completed, he looked as if he had been sewed from
+head to foot in some singularly ingenious species of network.
+
+"Now, my pretty lop-sided little lover," laughed Herr Hippe, flinging
+Solon over his shoulder, as a fisherman might fling a net-full of fish,
+"we will proceed to put you into your little cage until your little
+coffin is quite ready. Meanwhile we will lock up your darling
+beggar-girl to mourn over your untimely end."
+
+So saying, he stepped from the room with his captive, and securely
+locked the door behind him.
+
+When he had disappeared, the frozen Zonéla thawed, and with a shriek of
+anguish flung herself on the inanimate body of Furbelow.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE POISONING OF THE SWORDS.
+
+It was New Year's Eve, and eleven o'clock at night. All over this great
+land, and in every great city in the land, curly heads were lying on
+white pillows, dreaming of the coming of the generous Santa Claus.
+Innumerable stockings hung by countless bedsides. Visions of beautiful
+toys, passing in splendid pageantry through myriads of dimly lit
+dormitories, made millions of little hearts palpitate in sleep. Ah! what
+heavenly toys those were that the children of this soil beheld, that
+mystic night, in their dreams! Painted cars with orchestral wheels,
+making music more delicious than the roll of planets. Agile men of
+cylindrical figure, who sprang unexpectedly out of meek-looking boxes,
+with a supernatural fierceness in their crimson cheeks and fur-whiskers.
+Herds of marvellous sheep, with fleeces as impossible as the one that
+Jason sailed after; animals entirely indifferent to grass and water and
+"rot" and "ticks." Horses spotted with an astounding regularity, and
+furnished with the most ingenious methods of locomotion. Slender
+foreigners, attired in painfully short tunics, whose existence passed in
+continually turning heels over head down a steep flight of steps, at
+the bottom of which they lay in an exhausted condition with dislocated
+limbs, until they were restored to their former elevation, when they
+went at it again as if nothing had happened. Stately swans, that seemed
+to have a touch of the ostrich in them; for they swam continually after
+a piece of iron which was held before them, as if consumed with a
+ferruginous hunger. Whole farm-yards of roosters, whose tails curled the
+wrong way,--a slight defect, that was, however, amply atoned for by the
+size and brilliancy of their scarlet combs, which, it would appear,
+Providence had intended for pen-wipers. Pears, that, when applied to
+youthful lips, gave forth sweet and inspiring sounds. Regiments of
+soldiers, that performed neat, but limited evolutions on cross-jointed
+contractile battle-fields. All these things, idealized, transfigured,
+and illuminated by the powers and atmosphere and colored lamps of
+Dreamland, did the millions of dear sleeping children behold, the night
+of the New Year's Eve of which I speak.
+
+It was on this night, when Time was preparing to shed his skin and come
+out young and golden and glossy as ever,--when, in the vast chambers of
+the universe, silent and infallible preparations were making for the
+wonderful birth of the coming year,--when mystic dews were secreted
+for his baptism, and mystic instruments were tuned in space to welcome
+him,--it was at this holy and solemn hour that the Wondersmith and his
+three gypsy companions sat in close conclave in the little parlor before
+mentioned.
+
+There was a fire roaring in the grate. On a table, nearly in the centre
+of the room, stood a huge decanter of Port wine, that glowed in the
+blaze which lit the chamber like a flask of crimson fire. On every side,
+piled in heaps, inanimate, but scowling with the same old wondrous
+scowl, lay myriads of the manikins, all clutching in their wooden hands
+their tiny weapons. The Wondersmith held in one hand a small silver
+bowl filled with a green, glutinous substance, which he was delicately
+applying, with the aid of a camel's-hair brush, to the tips of tiny
+swords and daggers. A horrible smile wandered over his sallow face,--a
+smile as unwholesome in appearance as the sickly light that plays above
+reeking graveyards.
+
+"Let us drink great draughts, brothers," he cried, leaving off his
+strange anointment for a while, to lift a great glass, filled with
+sparkling liquor, to his lips. "Let us drink to our approaching triumph.
+Let us drink to the great poison, Macousha. Subtle seed of Death,--swift
+hurricane that sweeps away Life,--vast hammer that crushes brain and
+heart and artery with its resistless weight,--I drink to it."
+
+"It is a noble decoction, Duke Balthazar," said the old fortune-teller
+and midwife, Madame Filomel, nodding in her chair as she swallowed her
+wine in great gulps. "Where did you obtain it?"
+
+"It is made," said the Wondersmith, swallowing another great goblet-full
+of wine ere he replied, "in the wild woods of Guiana, in silence and
+in mystery. But one tribe of Indians, the Macoushi Indians, know the
+secret. It is simmered over fires built of strange woods, and the maker
+of it dies in the making. The place, for a mile around the spot where
+it is fabricated, is shunned as accursed. Devils hover over the pot in
+which it stews; and the birds of the air, scenting the smallest breath
+of its vapor from far away, drop to earth with paralyzed wings, cold and
+dead."
+
+"It kills, then, fast?" asked Kerplonne, the artificial eyemaker,--his
+own eyes gleaming, under the influence of the wine, with a sinister
+lustre, as if they had been fresh from the factory, and were yet
+untarnished by use.
+
+"Kills?" echoed the Wondersmith, derisively; "it is swifter than
+thunderbolts, stronger than lightning. But you shall see it proved
+before we let forth our army on the city accursed. You shall see a
+wretch die, as if smitten by a falling fragment of the sun."
+
+"What? Do you mean Solon?" asked Oaksmith and the fortune-teller
+together.
+
+"Ah! you mean the young man who makes the commerce with books?" echoed
+Kerplonne. "It is well. His agonies will instruct us."
+
+"Yes! Solon," answered Hippe, with a savage accent. "I hate him, and he
+shall die this horrid death. Ah! how the little fellows will leap upon
+him, when I bring him in, bound and helpless, and give their beautiful
+wicked souls to them! How they will pierce him in ten thousand spots
+with their poisoned weapons, until his skin turns blue and violet and
+crimson, and his form swells with the venom,--until his hump is lost in
+shapeless flesh! He hears what I say, every word of it. He is in the
+closet next door, and is listening. How comfortable he feels! How
+the sweat of terror rolls on his brow! How he tries to loosen his bonds,
+and curses all earth and heaven when he finds that he cannot! Ho! ho!
+Handsome lover of Zonéla, will she kiss you when you are livid and
+swollen? Brothers, let us drink again,--drink always. Here, Oaksmith,
+take these brushes,--and you, Filomel,--and finish the anointing of
+these swords. This wine is grand. This poison is grand. It is fine to
+have good wine to drink, and good poison to kill with; is it not?" and,
+with flushed face and rolling eyes, the Wondersmith continued to drink
+and use his brush alternately.
+
+The others hastened to follow his example. It was a horrible scene:
+those four wicked faces; those myriads of tiny faces, just as wicked;
+the certain unearthly air that pervaded the apartment; the red,
+unwholesome glare cast by the fire; the wild and reckless way in which
+the weird company drank the red-illumined wine.
+
+The anointing of the swords went on rapidly, and the wine went as
+rapidly down the throats of the four poisoners. Their faces grew more
+and more inflamed each instant; their eyes shone like rolling fireballs;
+their hair was moist and dishevelled. The old fortune-teller rocked to
+and fro in her chair, like those legless plaster figures that sway upon
+convex loaded bottoms. All four began to mutter incoherent sentences,
+and babble unintelligible wickednesses. Still the anointing of the
+swords went on.
+
+"I see the faces of millions of young corpses," babbled Herr Hippe,
+gazing, with swimming eyes, into the silver bowl that contained the
+Macousha poison,--"all young, all Christians,--and the little fellows
+dancing, dancing, and stabbing, stabbing. Filomel, Filomel, I say!"
+
+"Well, Grand Duke," snored the old woman, giving a violent lurch.
+
+"Where's the bottle of souls?"
+
+"In my right-hand pocket, Herr Hippe"; and she felt, so as to assure
+herself that it was there. She half drew out the black bottle,
+before described in this narrative, and let it slide again into her
+pocket,--let it slide again, but it did not completely regain its former
+place. Caught by some accident, it hung half out, swaying over the edge
+of the pocket, as the fat midwife rolled backwards and forwards in her
+drunken efforts at equilibrium.
+
+"All right," said Herr Hippe, "perfectly right! Let's drink."
+
+He reached out his hand for his glass, and, with a dull sigh, dropped on
+the table, in the instantaneous slumber of intoxication. Oaksmith soon
+fell back in his chair, breathing heavily. Kerplonne followed. And the
+heavy, stertorous breathing of Filomel told that she slumbered also; but
+still her chair retained its rocking motion, and still the bottle of
+souls balanced itself on the edge of her pocket.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+LET LOOSE.
+
+Sure enough, Solon heard every word of the fiendish talk of the
+Wondersmith. For how many days he had been shut up, bound in the
+terrible net, in that dark closet, he did not know; but now he felt that
+his last hour was come. His little strength was completely worn out in
+efforts to disentangle himself. Once a day a door opened, and Herr Hippe
+placed a crust of bread and a cup of water within his reach. On this
+meagre fare he had subsisted. It was a hard life; but, bad as it was, it
+was better than the horrible death that menaced him. His brain reeled
+with terror at the prospect of it. Then, where was Zonéla? Why did she
+not come to his rescue? But she was, perhaps, dead. The darkness, too,
+appalled him. A faint light, when the moon was bright, came at night
+through a chink far up in the wall; and the only other hole in the
+chamber was an aperture through which, at some former time, a stove-pipe
+had been passed. Even if he were free, there would have been small hope
+of escape; but, laced as it were in a network of steel, what was to be
+done? He groaned and writhed upon the floor, and tore at the boards with
+his hands, which were free from the wrists down. All else was as solidly
+laced up as an Indian papoose. Nothing but pride kept him from shrieking
+aloud, when, on the night of New Year's Eve, be heard the fiendish Hippe
+recite the programme of his murder.
+
+While he was thus wailing and gnashing his teeth in darkness and
+torture, he heard a faint noise above his head. Then something seemed to
+leap from the ceiling and alight softly on the floor. He shuddered with
+terror. Was it some new torture of the Wondersmith's invention? The next
+moment, he felt some small animal crawling over his body, and a soft,
+silky paw was pushed timidly across his face. His heart leaped with joy.
+
+"It is Furbelow!" he cried. "Zonéla has sent him. He came through the
+stove-pipe hole."
+
+It was Furbelow, indeed, restored to life by Zonéla's care, and who had
+come down a narrow tube, that no human being could have threaded,
+to console the poor captive. The monkey nestled closely into the
+hunchback's bosom, and as he did so, Solon felt something cold and hard
+hanging from his neck. He touched it. It was sharp. By the dim light
+that struggled through the aperture high up in the wall, he discovered
+a knife, suspended by a bit of cord. Ah! how the blood came rushing
+through the veins that crossed over and through his heart, when life and
+liberty came to him in this bit of rusty steel! With his manacled hands
+he loosened the heaven-sent weapon; a few cuts were rapidly made in the
+cunning network of cord that enveloped his limbs, and in a few seconds
+he was free!--cramped and faint with hunger, but free!--free to move,
+to use the limbs that God had given him for his preservation,--free to
+fight,--to die fighting, perhaps,--but still to die free. He ran to the
+door. The bolt was a weak one, for the Wondersmith had calculated more
+surely on his prison of cords than on any jail of stone,--and more; and
+with a few efforts the door opened. He went cautiously out into the
+darkness, with Furbelow perched on his shoulder, pressing his cold
+muzzle against his cheek. He had made but a few steps when a trembling
+hand was put into his, and in another moment Zonéla's palpitating heart
+was pressed against his own. One long kiss, an embrace, a few whispered
+words, and the hunchback and the girl stole softly towards the door of
+the chamber in which the four gypsies slept. All seemed still; nothing
+but the hard breathing of the sleepers, and the monotonous rocking of
+Madame Filomel's chair broke the silence. Solon stooped down and put his
+eye to the keyhole, through which a red bar of light streamed into the
+entry. As he did so, his foot crushed some brittle substance that lay
+just outside the door; at the same moment a howl of agony was heard to
+issue from the room within. Solon started; nor did he know that at that
+instant he had crushed into dust Monsieur Kerplonne's supernumerary eye,
+and the owner, though wrapt in a drunken sleep, felt the pang quiver
+through his brain.
+
+While Solon peeped through the keyhole, all in the room was motionless.
+He had not gazed, however, for many seconds, when the chair of the
+fortune-teller gave a sudden lurch, and the black bottle, already
+hanging half out of her wide pocket, slipped entirely from its
+resting-place, and, falling heavily to the ground, shivered into
+fragments.
+
+Then took place an astonishing spectacle. The myriads of armed dolls,
+that lay in piles about the room, became suddenly imbued with motion.
+They stood up straight, their tiny limbs moved, their black eyes flashed
+with wicked purposes, their thread-like swords gleamed as they waved
+them to and fro. The villanous souls imprisoned in the bottle began
+to work within them. Like the Liliputians, when they found the giant
+Gulliver asleep, they scaled in swarms the burly sides of the four
+sleeping gypsies. At every step they took, they drove their thin swords
+and quivering daggers into the flesh of the drunken authors of their
+being. To stab and kill was their mission, and they stabbed and killed
+with incredible fury. They clustered on the Wondersmith's sallow cheeks
+and sinewy throat, piercing every portion with their diminutive poisoned
+blades. Filomel's fat carcass was alive with them. They blackened the
+spare body of Monsieur Kerplonne. They covered Oaksmith's huge form like
+a cluster of insects.
+
+Overcome completely with the fumes of wine, these tiny wounds did not
+for a few moments awaken the sleeping victims. But the swift and deadly
+poison Macousha, with which the weapons had been so fiendishly anointed,
+began to work. Herr Hippe, stung into sudden life, leaped to his feet,
+with a dwarf army clinging to his clothes and his hands,--always
+stabbing, stabbing, stabbing. For an instant, a look of stupid
+bewilderment clouded his face; then the horrible truth burst upon him.
+He gave a shriek like that which a horse utters when he finds himself
+fettered and surrounded by fire,--a shriek that curdled the air for
+miles and miles.
+
+"Oaksmith! Kerplonne! Filomel! Awake! awake! We are lost! The souls have
+got loose! We are dead! poisoned! Oh, accursed ones! Oh, demons, ye are
+slaying me! Ah! fiends of Hell!"
+
+Aroused by these frightful howls, the three gypsies sprang also to their
+feet, to find themselves stung to death by the manikins. They raved,
+they shrieked, they swore. They staggered round the chamber. Blinded in
+the eyes by the ever-stabbing weapons,--with the poison already burning
+in their veins like red-hot lead,--their forms swelling and discoloring
+visibly every moment,--their howls and attitudes and furious gestures
+made the scene look like a chamber in Hell.
+
+Maddened beyond endurance, the Wondersmith, half-blind and choking with
+the venom that had congested all the blood-vessels of his body, seized
+dozens of the manikins and dashed them into the fire, trampling them
+down with his feet.
+
+"Ye shall die too, if I die," he cried, with a roar like that of a
+tiger. "Ye shall burn, if I burn. I gave ye life,--I give ye death.
+Down!--down!--burn!--flame! Fiends that ye are, to slay us! Help me,
+brothers! Before we die, let us have our revenge!"
+
+On this, the other gypsies, themselves maddened by approaching death,
+began hurling manikins, by handfuls, into the fire. The little
+creatures, being wooden of body, quickly caught the flames, and an awful
+struggle for life took place in miniature in the grate. Some of them
+escaped from between the bars and ran about the room, blazing, writhing
+in agony, and igniting the curtains and other draperies that hung
+around. Others fought and stabbed one another in the very core of the
+fire, like combating salamanders. Meantime, the motions of the gypsies
+grew more languid and slow, and their curses were uttered in choked
+guttural tones. The faces of all four were spotted with red and green
+and violet, like so many egg-plants. Their bodies were swollen to a
+frightful size, and at last they dropped on the floor, like overripe
+fruit shaken from the boughs by the winds of autumn.
+
+The chamber was now a sheet of fire. The flames roared round and round,
+as if seeking for escape, licking every projecting cornice and sill with
+greedy tongues, as the serpent licks his prey before he swallows it. A
+hot, putrid breath came through the keyhole and smote Solon and Zonéla
+like a wind of death. They clasped each other's hands with a moan of
+terror, and fled from the house.
+
+The next morning, when the young Year was just unclosing its eyes, and
+the happy children all over the great city were peeping from their beds
+into the myriads of stockings hanging near by, the blue skies of heaven
+shone through a black network of stone and charred rafters. These were
+all that remained of the habitation of Herr Hippe, the Wondersmith.
+
+
+
+
+ROBA DI ROMA
+
+[Continued.]
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Lent.
+
+The gay confusion of Carnival is over, with its mad tossing of flowers
+and _bonbons_, its showering of _confetti_, its brilliantly draped
+balconies running over with happy faces, its barbaric races, its rows of
+joyous _contadine_, its quaint masquerading, and all the glad folly of
+its Saturnalia. For Saturnalia it is, in most respects just like the
+_festa_ of the Ancient Romans, with its _Saturni septem dies_, its
+uproar of "_Io Saturnalia!_" in the streets, and all its mad frolic. In
+one point it materially differs, however; for on the ancient _festa_ no
+criminal could be punished; but in modern times it is this gay occasion
+that the government selects to execute (_giustiziare_) any poor wretch
+who may have been condemned to death, so as to strike a wholesome terror
+into the crowd. Truly, the ways of the Church are as wonderful as
+they are infallible! But all is over now. The last _moccoletti_ are
+extinguished, that flashed and danced like myriad fire-flies from window
+and balcony and over the heads of the roaring tide of people that ebbed
+and flowed in stormy streams of wild laughter through the streets. The
+Corso has become sober and staid, and taken in its draperies. The fun is
+finished. The masked balls, with their _belle maschere_, are over. The
+theatres are all closed. Lent has come, bringing its season of sadness;
+and the gay world of strangers is flocking down to Naples.
+
+_Eh, Signore! Finito il nostro carnovale. Adesso è il carnovale dei
+preti:_--"Our carnival is over, and that of the priests has come." All
+the _frati_ are going round to every Roman family, high and low, from
+the prince in his palace to the boy in the _caffe_, demanding "_una
+santa elemosina,--un abbondante santa elemosina,--ma abbondante_,"--and
+willingly pocketing any sum, from a half-_baiocco_ upwards. The parish
+priest is now making his visits in every ward of the city, to register
+the names of the Catholics in all the houses, so as to insure a
+confession from each during this season of penance. And woe to any wight
+who fails to do his duty!--he will soon be brought to his marrow-bones.
+His name will be placarded in the church, and he will be punished
+according to circumstances,--perhaps by a mortification to the pocket,
+perhaps by the penance of the convent; and perhaps his fate will be
+worse, if he be obstinate. So nobody is obstinate, and all go to
+confession like good Christians, and confess what they please, for the
+sake of peace, if not of absolution. The Francescani march more solemnly
+up and down the alleys of their cabbage-garden, studiously with books in
+their hands, which they pretend to read; now and then taking out their
+snuff-stained bandanna and measuring it from corner to corner, in search
+of a feasible spot for its appropriate function, and then rolling it
+carefully into a little round ball and returning it to the place whence
+it came. Whatever penance they do is not to Father Tiber or Santo
+Acquedotto, excepting by internal ablutions,--the exterior things of
+this world being ignored. There is no meat-eating now, save on certain
+festivals, when a supply is laid in for the week. But opposites cure
+opposites, (contrary to the homoeopathic rule,) and their _magro_ makes
+them _grasso_. Two days of festival, however, there are in the little
+church of San Patrizio and Isidoro, when the streets are covered with
+sand, and sprigs of box and red and yellow hangings flaunt before the
+portico, and scores of young boy-priests invade their garden, and,
+tucking up their long skirts, run and scream among the cabbages;
+for boydom is an irrepressible thing, even under the extinguisher of a
+priest's black dress.
+
+Daily you will hear the tinkle of a bell and the chant of alto
+child-voices in the street, and, looking out, you will see two little
+boys clad in some refuse of the Church's wardrobe, one of whom carries a
+crucifix or a big black cross, while the other rings a bell and chants
+as he loiters along; now stopping to chaff with other boys of a similar
+age, nay, even at times laying down his cross to dispute or struggle
+with them, and now renewing the appeal of the bell. This is to call
+together the children of the parish to learn their Dottrina or
+Catechism,--from which the Second Commandment is, however, carefully
+expurgated, lest to their feeble minds the difference between bowing
+down to graven images, or likenesses of things in the earth, and what
+they do daily before the images and pictures of the Virgin and Saints
+may not clearly appear. Indeed, let us cheerfully confess, in passing,
+that, by a strange forgetfulness, this same Commandment is not
+reestablished in its place even in the catechism for older persons,--of
+course through inadvertence. However, it is of no consequence, as the
+real number of Ten Commandments is made up by the division of the last
+into two; so that there really are ten. And in a country where so many
+pictures are painted and statues made, perhaps this Second Commandment
+might be open to misconstruction, if not prohibited by the wise and holy
+men of the Church. [A]
+
+[Footnote A: This is a fact,--denied, of course, by some of the Roman
+Catholics, in argument; for what will they not deny? But it is,
+nevertheless, a fact. I have now before me a little Catechism, from
+which the Second Commandment is omitted, and the Tenth divided into two;
+and I have examined others in which the same omission is made. I cannot
+say that all are in the same category; for the Catholic Church is
+everything to everybody; but I can assert it of all I have seen,
+and especially of _La Dottrina Xtiana, compilata per Ordine dell
+Eminentissinto Cardinale_ GONZAGA MEMBRINI, _Vescovo di Ancona, per
+l'Uso delict Citta e Diocesi_, published in 1830, which I mention
+because it is a compilation of authority, made under the superintendence
+of the Cardinal Bishop of Ancona,--and of the _Catechismo per i
+Fanciulll, ad Uso delle Città e Diocesi di Cortona, Chiuso, Pienza,
+Pistoia, Prato e Colle_, published in 1786, under the auspices and with
+the approval of the bishops of all these cities and dioceses.]
+
+Meantime the snow is gradually disappearing from Monte Gennaro and the
+Sabine Mountains. Picnic parties are spreading their tables under the
+Pamfili Doria pines, and drawing St. Peter's from the old wall near
+by the ilex avenue,--or making excursions to Frascati, Tusculum, and
+Albano,--or spending a day in wandering among the ruins of the Etruscan
+city of Veii, lost to the world so long ago that even the site of it was
+unknown to the Caesars,--or strolling by the shore at Ostia, or under
+the magnificent _pineta_ at Castel Fusano, whose lofty trees repeat, as
+in a dream, the sound of the blue Mediterranean that washes the coast at
+half a mile distant. There is no lack of places that Time has shattered
+and strewn with relics, leaving Nature to festoon her ruins and heal her
+wounds with tenderest vines and flowers, where one may spend a charming
+day and dream of the old times.
+
+Spring--_prima vera_, the first true thing, as the Italians call it--has
+come. The nightingales already begin to bubble into song under the
+Ludovisi ilexes and in the Barberini Gardens. Daisies have snowed all
+over the Campagna,--periwinkles star the grass,--crocuses and anemones
+impurple the spaces between the rows of springing grain along the still
+brown slopes. At every turn in the streets baskets-full of _mammole_,
+the sweet-scented Parma violet, are offered you by little girls and
+boys; and at the corner of the Condotti and Corso is a splendid show of
+camelias, set into beds of double violets, and sold for a song. Now and
+then one meets huge baskets filled with these delicious violets, on their
+way to the confectioners and caffes, where they will be made into syrup;
+for the Italians are very fond of this _bibite_, and prize it not only for
+its flavor, but for its medicinal qualities. Violets seem to rain over the
+villas in the spring,--acres are purple with them, and the air all around
+is sweet with their fragrance. Every day, scores of carriages are driving
+about the Borghese grounds, which are open to the public, and hundreds of
+children are running about, plucking flowers and playing on the lovely
+slopes and in the shadows of the noble trees, while their parents stroll
+at a distance and wait for them in the shady avenues. At the Pamfili Doria
+villa the English play their national game of cricket, on the flower-
+enamelled green, which is covered with the most wondrous anemones; and
+there is a _matinée_ of friends who come to chat and look on. This game is
+rather "slow" at Rome, however, and does not rhyme with the Campagna. The
+Italians lift their hands and wonder what there is in it to fascinate the
+English; and the English in turn call them a lazy, stupid set, because
+they do not admire it. But those who have seen _pallone_ will not,
+perhaps, so much wonder at the Italians, nor condemn them for not playing
+their own game, when they remember that the French have turned them out of
+their only amphitheatre adapted for it, and left them only _pazienza_.
+
+If one drives out at any of the gates, he will see that spring is come.
+The hedges are putting forth their leaves, the almond-trees are in full
+blossom, and in the vineyards the _contadini_ are setting cane-poles and
+trimming the vines to run upon them. Here and there, along the slopes,
+the rude old plough of the Georgics, dragged by great gray oxen, turns
+up the rich loam, that "needs only to be tickled to laugh out in flowers
+and grain." In the olive-orchards, the farmers are carefully pruning
+away the decayed branches and loosening the soil about their old roots.
+Here and there, the smoke of distant bonfires, burning heaps of useless
+stubble, shows against the dreamy purple hills like the pillar of cloud
+that led the Israelites. One smells the sharp odor of these fires
+everywhere, and hears them crackle in the fields.
+
+"Atque levem stipulam crepitantibus urere flammis."
+
+On _festa_-days the way-side _osterias (con cucina)_ are crowded by
+parties who come out to sit under the _frascati_ of vines and drink the
+wine grown on the very spot, and regale themselves with a _frittata_
+of eggs and chopped sausages, or a slice of _agnello_, and enjoy the
+delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals
+descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their
+household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin
+liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad
+red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in
+their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of
+scholars from the Propaganda stream along, now and then, two by two,
+their leading-strings swinging behind them, and in their ranks all
+shades of physiognomy, from African and Egyptian to Irish and American.
+Scholars, too, from the English College, and Germans, in red, go by in
+companies. All the schools, too, will be out,--little boys, in black
+hats, following the lead of their priest-master, (for all masters are
+priests,) and orphan girls in white, convoyed by Sisters of Charity, and
+the deaf and dumb with their masters. Scores of _ciocciari_, also, may
+be seen in faded scarlets, with their wardrobes of wretched clothes, and
+sometimes a basket with a baby in it, on their heads. The _contadini_,
+who have been to Rome to be hired for the week to labor on the Campagna,
+come tramping along too, one of them often mounted on a donkey, and
+followed by a group carrying their tools with them; while hundreds of
+the middle classes, husbands and wives with their children, and _paini_
+and _paine_, with all their jewelry on, are out to take their _festa_
+stroll, and to see and be seen.
+
+Once in a while, the sadness of Lent is broken by a Church festival,
+when all the fasters eat prodigiously and make up for their usual Lenten
+fare. One of the principal days is that of the 19th of March, dedicated
+to San Giuseppe, (the most ill-used of all the saints,) when the little
+church in Capo le Case, dedicated to him, is hung with brilliant
+draperies, and the pious flock thither in crowds to say their prayers.
+The great curtain is swaying to and fro constantly as they come and go,
+and a file of beggars is on the steps to relieve you of _baiocchi_.
+Beside them stands a fellow who sells a print of the Angel appearing to
+San Giuseppe in a dream, and warning him against the sin of jealousy.
+Four curious lines beneath the print thus explain it:--
+
+  "Qual sinistro pensier l'alma ti scuote?
+  Se il sen fecondo di Maria tu vedi,
+  Giuseppe, non temer; calmati, e credi
+  Ch' opra è sol di colui che tutto puote."
+
+Whether Joseph is satisfied or not with this explanation, it would be
+difficult to determine from his expression. He looks rather haggard and
+bored than persuaded, and certainly has not that cheerful acquiescence
+of countenance which one is taught to expect.
+
+During all Lent, a sort of bun, called _maritozze_, which is filled with
+the edible kernels of the pine-cone, made light with oil, and thinly
+crusted with sugar, is eaten by the faithful,--and a very good Catholic
+"institution" it is. But in the festival days of San Giuseppe, gayly
+ornamented booths are built at the corner of many of the streets,
+especially near the church in Capo le Case, in the Borgo, and at San
+Eustachio, which are adorned with great green branches as large as young
+trees, and hung with red and gold draperies, where the "_Frittelle di
+San Giuseppe_" are fried in huge caldrons of boiling oil and served out
+to the common people. These _frittelle_, which are a sort of delicate
+doughnut, made of flour mixed sometimes with rice, are eaten by all good
+Catholics, though one need not be a Catholic to find them excellent
+eating. In front of the principal booths are swung "_Sonetti_" in praise
+of the Saint, of the cook, and of the doughnuts,--some of them declaring
+that Mercury has already descended from Olympus at the command of the
+gods to secure a large supply of the _frittelle_, and praying all
+believers to make haste, or there would be no more left. The latter
+alternative seems little probable, when one sees the quantity of
+provision laid in by the vendors. Their prayer, however, is heeded by
+all; and a gay scene enough it is,--especially at night, when the great
+cups filled with lard are lighted, and the shadows dance on the crowd,
+and the light flashes on the tinsel-covered festoons that sway with the
+wind, and illuminates the great booth, while the smoke rises from the
+great caldrons which flank it on either side, and the cooks, all in
+white, ladle out the dripping _frittelle_ into large polished platters,
+and laugh and joke, and laud their work, and shout at the top of their
+lungs, "_Ecco le belle, ma belle frittelle_!" For weeks this frying
+continues in the streets; but after the day of San Giuseppe, not only
+the sacred _frittelle_ are made, but thousands of minute fishes,
+fragments of cauliflower, _broccoli_, cabbage, and _carciofi_ go into
+the hissing oil, and are heaped all "_dorati_" upon the platters and
+vases. For all sorts of fries the Romans are justly celebrated. The
+sweet olive-oil, which takes the place of our butter and lard, makes the
+fry light, delicate, and of a beautiful golden color; and spread upon
+the snowy tables of these booths, their odor is so appetizing and their
+look so inviting, that I have often been tempted to join the crowds who
+fill their plates and often their pocket-handkerchiefs (_con rispetto_)
+with these golden fry, "_fritti dorati_," as they are called, and thus
+do honor to the Saint, and comfort their stomachs with holy food, which
+quells the devil of hunger within.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: This festival of San Giuseppe, which takes place on the
+19th of March, bears a curious resemblance to the _Liberalia_ of the
+ancient Romans, a festival in honor of Bacchus, which was celebrated
+every year on the 17th of March, when priests and priestesses, adorned
+with garlands of ivy, carried through the city wine, honey, cakes, and
+sweetmeats, together with a portable altar, in the middle of
+which was a small fire-pan, (_foculus_,) in which, from time to time,
+sacrifices were burnt. The altar has now become a booth, the _foculus_
+a caldron, the sacrifices are of little fishes as well as of cakes,
+and San Giuseppe has taken the place of Bacchus, Liber Pater; but the
+festivals, despite these differences, have such grotesque points of
+resemblance that the latter looks like the former, just as one's face is
+still one's face, however distortedly reflected in the bowl of a spoon;
+and, perhaps, if one remembers the third day of the Anthesteria, when
+cooked vegetables were offered in honor of Bacchus, by putting it
+together with the Liberalia, we shall easily get the modern _festa_ of
+San Giuseppe.]
+
+But not only at this time and at these booths are good _fritti_ to
+be found. It is a favorite mode of cooking in Rome; and a mixed fry
+(_fritta mista_) of bits of liver, brains, cauliflower, and _carciofi_
+is a staple dish, always ready at every restaurant. At any _osteria con
+cucina_ on the Campagna one is also sure of a good omelet and salad;
+and, sitting under the vines, after a long walk, I have made as savory
+a lunch on these two articles as ever I found in the most glittering
+restaurant in the Palais Royal. If one add the background of exquisite
+mountains, the middle distance of flowery slopes, where herds of
+long-haired goats, sheep, and gray oxen are feeding among the skeletons
+of broken aqueducts, ruined tombs, and shattered mediaeval towers, and
+the foreground made up of picturesque groups of peasants, who lounge
+about the door, and come and go, and men from the Campagna, on
+horseback, with their dark, capacious cloak and long ironed staff, who
+have come from counting their oxen and superintending the farming, and
+_carrettieri_, stopping in their hooded wine-carts or ringing along the
+road,--there is, perhaps, as much to charm the artist as is to be seen
+while sipping beer or _eau gazeuse_ on the hot Parisian _asphalte_,
+where the _grisette_ studiously shows her clean ankles, and the dandy
+struts in his patent-leather boots.
+
+One great _festa_ there is during Lent at the little town of
+Grotta-Ferrata, about fourteen miles from Rome. It takes place on the
+25th of March, and sometimes is very gay and picturesque, and always
+charming to one who has eyes to see and has shed some of his national
+prejudices. By eight o'clock in the morning open carriages begin to
+stream out of the Porta San Giovanni, and in about two hours the old
+castellated monastery may be seen at whose feet the little village of
+Grotta-Ferrata stands. As we advance through noble elms and planetrees,
+crowds of _contadini_ line the way, beggars scream from the banks,
+donkeys bray, _carretti_ rattle along, until at last we arrive at a long
+meadow which seems alive and crumbling with gayly dressed figures that
+are moving to and fro as thick as ants upon an ant-hill. Here are
+gathered peasants from all the country-villages within ten miles, all in
+their festal costumes; along the lane which skirts the meadow and
+leads through the great gate of the old fortress, donkeys are
+crowded together, and keeping up a constant and outrageous concert;
+_saltimbanci_, in harlequin suits, are making faces or haranguing from
+a platform, and inviting everybody into their penny-show. From inside
+their booths is heard the sound of the invariable pipes and drum, and
+from the lifted curtain now and then peers forth a comic face, and then
+disappears with a sudden scream and wild gesticulation. Meantime the
+closely packed crowd moves slowly along in both directions, and on we go
+through the archway into the great court-yard. Here, under the shadow
+of the monastery, booths and benches stand in rows, arrayed with the
+produce of the country-villages,--shoes, rude implements of husbandry,
+the coarse woven fabrics of the _contadini_, hats with cockades and
+rosettes, feather brooms and brushes, and household things, with here
+and there the tawdry pinchbeck ware of a peddler of jewelry, and little
+_quadretti_ of Madonna and saints. Extricating ourselves from the crowd,
+we ascend by a stone stairway to the walk around the parapets of the
+walls, and look down upon the scene. How gay it is! Around the fountain,
+which is spilling in the centre of the court, a constantly varying group
+is gathered, washing, drinking, and filling their flasks and vases.
+Near by, a charlatan, mounted on a table, with a huge canvas behind him
+painted all over with odd cabalistic figures, is screaming, in loud and
+voluble tones, the virtues of his medicines and unguents, and his skill
+in extracting teeth. One need never have a pang in tooth, ear, head, or
+stomach, if one will but trust his wonderful promises. In one little
+bottle he has the famous water which renews youth; in another, the
+lotion which awakens love, or cures jealousy, or changes the fright into
+the beauty. All the while he plays with his tame serpents, and chatters
+as if his tongue went of itself, while the crowd of peasants below gape
+at him, laugh with him, and buy from him. Listen to him, all who have
+ears!
+
+  Udite, udite, O rustici!
+  Attenti, non fiatate!
+  Io già suppongo e immagino
+  Che al par di me sappiate
+  Che io son quel gran medico
+  Dottore Enciclopedico
+  Chiamato Dulcamara,
+  La cui virtu preclara
+  E i portenti infiniti
+  Son noti in tutto il mondo--_e in altri siti_.
+
+  Benefattor degli uomini,
+  Reparator dei mali,
+  In pochi giorni io sgombrerò.
+  Io spazzo gli spedali
+  E la salute a vendere
+  Per tutto il mondo io vo.
+  Compratela, compratela,--
+  Per poco io ve la do.
+
+  È questo l'odontalgico,
+  Mirabile liquore,
+  De' topi e dei cimici
+  Possente distruttore,
+  I cui certificati
+  Autentici, bollati,
+  Toccar, vedere, e leggere,
+  A ciaschedun farò.
+  Per questo mio specifico
+  Simpatico, prolifico,
+  Un uom settuagenario
+  E valetudinario
+  Nonno di dieci bamboli
+  Ancora diventò.
+
+  O voi matrona rigide,
+  Ringiovanir bramate?
+  Le vostre rughe incomode
+  Con esso cancellate.
+  Volete, voi donzelle,
+  Ben liscia aver la pelle?
+  Voi giovani galanti,
+  Per sempre avere amanti,
+  Comprate il mio specifico,--
+  Per poco io ve lo do.
+
+  Ei move i paralitici,
+  Spedisce gli apopletici,
+  Gli asmatici, gli asfitici,
+  Gli isterici, e disbetici;
+  Guarisce timpanitidi
+  E scrofoli e rachitidi;
+  E fino il mal di fegato,
+  Che in moda diventò.
+  Comprate il mio specifico,--
+  Per poco io ve lo do.
+
+And so on and on and on. There is never an end of that voluble gabble.
+Nothing is more amusing than the Italian _ciarlatano_, wherever you meet
+him; but, like many other national characters, he is vanishing, and is
+seen more and more rarely every year. Perhaps he has been promoted to an
+office in the Church or government, and finds more pickings there than
+at the fairs; and if not, perhaps he has sold out his profession and
+good-will to his confessor, who has mounted, by means of it into a
+gilded carriage, and wears silk stockings, whose color, for fear of
+mistake, I will not mention.
+
+But to return to the fair and our station on the parapets at
+Grotta-Ferrata. Opposite us is a penthouse, (where nobody peaks and
+pines,) whose jutting _fraschi_-covered eaves and posts are adorned with
+gay draperies; and under the shadow of this is seated a motley set of
+peasants at their lunch and dinner. Smoking plates come in and out of
+the dark hole of a door that opens into kitchen and cellar, and the
+_camerieri_ cry constantly, "_Vengo subito_" "_Eccomi quà_"--whether
+they come or not. Big-bellied flasks of rich Grotta-Ferrata wine are
+filled and emptied; and bargains are struck for cattle, donkeys, and
+clothes; and healths are pledged and _brindisi_ are given. But there is
+no riot and no quarrelling. If we lift our eyes from this swarm below,
+we see the exquisite Campagna with its silent, purple distances
+stretching off to Rome, and hear the rush of a wild torrent scolding in
+the gorge below among the stones and olives.
+
+But while we are lingering here, a crowd is pushing through into the
+inner court, where mass is going on in the curious old church. One has
+now to elbow his way to enter, and all around the door, even out into
+the middle court, _contadini_ are kneeling. Besides this, the whole
+place reeks intolerably with garlic, which, mixed with whiff of incense
+from the church within and other unmentionable smells, makes such a
+compound that only a brave nose can stand it. But stand it we must, if
+we would see Domenichino's frescoes in the chapel within; and as they
+are among the best products of his cold and clever talent, we gasp and
+push on,--the most resolute alone getting through. Here in this old
+monastery, as the story goes, he sought refuge from the fierce Salvator
+Rosa, by whom his life was threatened, and here he painted his best
+works, shaking in his shoes with fear. When we have examined these
+frescoes, we have done the fair of Grotta-Ferrata; and those of us who
+are wise and have brought with us a well-packed hamper stick in our hat
+one of the red artificial roses which everybody wears, take a charming
+drive to the Villa Conti, Muti, or Falconieri, and there, under the
+ilexes, forget the garlic, finish the day with a picnic, and return to
+Rome when the western sun is painting the Alban Hill.
+
+And here, in passing, one word on the onions and garlic, whose odor
+issues from the mouths of every Italian crowd, like the fumes from
+the maw of Fridolin's dragon. Everybody eats them in Italy; the upper
+classes show them to their dishes to give them a flavor, and the lower
+use them not only as a flavor, but as a food. When only a formal
+introduction of them is made to a dish, I confess that the result is
+far from disagreeable; but that close, intimate, and absorbing relation
+existing between them and the lowest classes is frightful. _Senza
+complimenti_, it is "tolerable and not to be endured." When a poor man
+can procure a raw onion and a hunch of black bread, he does not want a
+dinner; and towards noon many and many a one may be seen sitting like
+a king upon a door-step, or making a statuesque finish to a _palazzo
+portone_, cheerfully munching this spare meal, and taking his siesta
+after it, full-length upon the bare pavement, as calmly as if he were in
+the perfumed chambers of the great,
+
+  "Under the canopies of costly state,
+  And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody."
+
+And, indeed, so he is; for the canopy of the soft blue sky is above him,
+and the plashing fountains lull him to his dreams. Nor is he without
+ancient authority for his devotion to those twin saints, Cipolla and
+Aglio. There is an "odor of sanctity" about them, turn up our noses
+as we may. The Ancient Egyptians offered them as firstfruits upon the
+altars of their gods, and employed them also in the services for the
+dead; and such was their attachment to them, that the followers of Moses
+hankered after them despite the manna, and longed for "the leeks and the
+onions and the garlic which they did eat in Egypt freely." Nay, even the
+fastidious Greeks not only used them as a charm against the Evil Eye,
+but ate them with delight. And in the "Banquet" of Xenophon, Socrates
+specially recommends them. On this occasion, several curious reasons
+for their use are adduced, of which we who despise them should not be
+ignorant. Niceratus says that they relish well with wine, citing Homer
+in confirmation of his opinion; Callias affirms that they inspire
+courage in battle; and Charmidas clenches the matter by declaring that
+they are most useful in "deceiving a jealous wife, who, finding her
+husband return with his breath smelling of onions, would be induced to
+believe he had not saluted any one while from home." Despise them not,
+therefore, O Saxon! for as "their offence is rank," their pedigree is
+long, and they are sacred plants that "smell to heaven." Happily for
+you, if these reasons do not persuade you against your will, there is a
+certain specific against them,--_Eat them yourself_, and you will smell
+them no longer.
+
+The time of the church processions is now coming, and one good specimen
+takes place on the 29th of March, from the Santa Maria in Via, which
+may stand with little variations for all the others. These processions,
+which are given by every church once a year, are in honor of the
+Madonna, or some saint specially reverenced in the particular church.
+They make the circuit of the parish limits, passing through all its
+principal streets, and every window and balcony is decorated with yellow
+and crimson hangings, and with crowds of dark eyes. The front of the
+church, the steps, and the street leading to it, are spread with yellow
+sand, over which are scattered sprigs of box. After the procession
+has been organized in the church, they "come unto the yellow sands,"
+preceded by a band of music, which plays rather jubilant, and what the
+uncopious would call profane music, polkas and marches, and airs
+from the operas. Next follow great lanterns of strung glass drops,
+accompanied by soldiers; then an immense gonfalon representing the
+Virgin at the Cross, which swings backwards and forwards, borne by the
+_confraternità_ of the parish, with blue capes over their white dresses,
+and all holding torches. Then follows a huge wooden cross, garlanded
+with golden ivy-leaves, and also upheld by the _confraternità_, who
+stagger under its weight. Next come two crucifixes, covered, as the body
+of Christ always is during Lent and until Resurrection-Day, with cloth
+of purple, (the color of passion,) and followed by the _frati_ of the
+church in black, carrying candles and dolorously chanting a hymn. Then
+comes the bishop in his mitre, his yellow stole upheld by two principal
+priests, (the curate and subcurate,) and to him his acolytes waft
+incense, as well as to the huge figure of the Madonna which follows.
+This figure is of life-size, carved in wood, surrounded by gilt angels,
+and so heavy that sixteen stout _facchini_, whose shabby trousers show
+under their improvised costume, are required to bear it along. With this
+the procession comes to its climax. Immediately after follow the guards,
+and a great concourse of the populace closes the train.
+
+As Holy Week approaches, pilgrims begin to flock to Rome with their
+oil-cloth capes, their scallop-shell, their long staffs, their rosaries,
+and their dirty hands held out constantly for "_una santa elemosina pel
+povero pellegrino_." Let none of my fair friends imagine that she will
+find a Romeo among them, or she will be most grievously disappointed.
+There is something to touch your pity in their appearance, though not
+the pity akin to love. They are, for the most part, old, shabby, and
+soiled, and inveterate mendicants,--and though, some time or other,
+some one or other may have known one of them for her true-love, "by his
+cockle hat and staff, and his sandal shoon," that time has been long
+forbye, unless they are wondrously disguised. Besides these pilgrims,
+and often in company with them, bands of peasants, with their long
+staffs, may be met on the road, making a pilgrimage to Rome for the Holy
+Week, clad in splendid _ciocciari_ dresses, carrying their clothes on
+their heads, and chanting a psalm as they go. Among these may be found
+many a handsome youth and beautiful maid, whose faces will break into
+the most charming of smiles as you salute them and wish them a happy
+pilgrimage. And of all smiles, none is so sudden, open, and enchanting
+as a Roman girl's; and breaking over their dark, passionate faces, black
+eyes, and level brows, it seems like a burst of sunlight from behind a
+cloud. There must be noble possibilities in any nation which, through
+all its oppression and degradation, has preserved the childlike
+frankness of the Italian smile. Still another indication of the approach
+of Holy Week is the Easter egg, which now makes its appearance, and
+warns us of the solemnities to come. Sometimes it is stained yellow,
+purple, red, green, or striped with various colors; sometimes it is
+crowned with paste-work, representing, in a most primitive way, a
+hen,--her body being the egg, and her pastry-head adorned with a
+disproportionately tall feather. These eggs are exposed for sale at
+the corners of the streets and bought by everybody, and every sort of
+ingenious device is resorted to, to attract customers and render them
+attractive. This custom is probably derived from the East, where the egg
+is the symbol of the primitive state of the world and of the creation
+of things. The new year formerly began at the spring equinox, at about
+Easter; and at that period of the renewal of Nature, a festival was
+celebrated in the new moon of the month Phamenoth, in honor of Osiris,
+when painted and gilded eggs were exchanged as presents, in reference to
+the beginning of all things. The transference of the commencement of the
+year to January deprived the Paschal egg of its significance. Formerly
+in France, and still in Russia as in Italy, it had a religious
+significance, and was never distributed until it had received a solemn
+benediction. On Good Friday, a priest, with his robes and an attendant,
+may be seen going into every door in the street to bless the house, the
+inhabitants, and the eggs. The last, colored and arranged according to
+the taste of the individual, are spread upon a table, which is decorated
+with box, flowers, and whatever ornamental dishes the family possesses.
+The priest is received with bows at the door, and when the benediction
+is over he is rewarded with the gratuity of a _paul_ or a _scudo_,
+according to the piety and purse of the proprietor; while into the
+basket of his attendant is always dropped a _pagnotta_, a couple of
+eggs, a _baiocco_, or some such trifle. [Footnote: Beside the blessing
+of the eggs and house, it is the custom in some parts of Italy, (and I
+have particularly observed it in Siena,) for the priest, at Easter, to
+affix to the door of the chief _palazzi_ and villas a waxen cross, or
+the letter M in wax, so as to guard the house from evil spirits. But
+only the houses of the rich are thus protected; for the priests bestow
+favors only "for a consideration," which the poor cannot so easily
+give.]
+
+It is on this day, too, that the customary Jew is converted, recants,
+and is baptized; and there are not wanting evil tongues which declare
+that there is a wonderful similarity in his physiognomy every year.
+However this may be, there is no doubt that some one is annually dug out
+of the Ghetto, which is the pit of Judaism here in Rome; and if he fall
+back again, after receiving the temporal reward, and without waiting for
+the spiritual, he probably finds it worth his while to do so, in view of
+the zeal of the Church, and in remembrance of the fifteenth verse of the
+twenty-third chapter of Matthew, if he ever reads that portion of the
+Bible. It is in the great basaltic vase in the baptistery of St. John
+Lateran, the same in which Rienzi bathed in 1347, before receiving the
+insignia of knighthood, that the converted Jew, and any other infidel
+who can be brought over, receives his baptism when he is taken into the
+arms of the Church.
+
+It is at this season, too, that the _pizzicarolo_ shops are gayly
+dressed in the manner so graphically described by Hans Andersen in his
+"Improvisatore." No wonder, that, to little Antonio, the interior of
+one of these shops looked like a realization of Paradise; for they are
+really splendid; and when glittering with candles and lamps at night,
+the effect is very striking. Great sides of bacon and lard are ranged
+endwise in regular bars all around the interior, and adorned with
+stripes of various colors, mixed with golden spangles and flashing
+tinsel; while over and under them, in reticulated work, are piled scores
+upon scores of brown cheeses, in the form of pyramids, columns, towers,
+with eggs set into their interstices. From the ceiling, and all around
+the doorway, hang wreaths and necklaces of sausages, or groups of the
+long gourd-like _cacio di cavallo_, twined about with box, or netted
+wire baskets filled with Easter eggs, or great bunches of white candles
+gathered together at the wicks. Seen through these, at the bottom of the
+shop, is a picture of the Madonna, with scores of candles burning about
+it, and gleaming upon the tinsel hangings and spangles with which it
+is decorated. Underneath this, there is often represented an elaborate
+_presepio_,--or, when this is not the case, the animals may be seen
+mounted here and there on the cheeses. Candelabra of eggs, curiously
+bound together, so as to resemble bunches of gigantic white grapes,
+swung from the centre of the ceiling, and cups of colored glass, with a
+taper in them, or red paper lanterns, and _terra-cotta_ lamps, of the
+antique form, show here and there their little flames among the flitches
+of bacon and cheeses; while, in the midst of all this splendor, the
+figure of the _pizzicarolo_ moves to and fro, like a high-priest at a
+ceremony. Nor is this illumination exclusive. The doors, often of the
+full width of the shop, are thrown wide open, and the glory shines upon
+all passers-by. It is the apotheosis of ham and cheese, at which only
+the Hebraic nose, doing violence to its natural curve, turns up in
+scorn; while true Christians crowd around it to wonder and admire, and
+sometimes to venture in upon the almost enchanted ground. May it be long
+before this pleasant custom dies out!
+
+At last comes Holy Week, with its pilgrims that flock from every part
+of the world. Every hotel and furnished apartment is crowded,--every
+carriage is hired at double and treble its ordinary fare,--every door,
+where a Papal ceremony is to take place, is besieged by figures in black
+with black veils. The streets are filled with Germans, English, French,
+Americans, all on the move, coming and going, and anxiously inquiring
+about the _funzioni_, and when they are to take place, and where,--for
+everything is kept in a charming condition of perfect uncertainty, from
+the want of any public newspaper or journal, or other accurate means of
+information. So everybody asks everybody, and everybody tells everybody,
+until nobody knows anything, and everything is guesswork. But,
+nevertheless, despite impatient words, and muttered curses, and all
+kinds of awkward mistakes, the battle goes bravely on. There is terrible
+fighting at the door of the Sistine Chapel, to hear the _Miserere_,
+which is sure to be Baini's when it is said to be Allegri's, as well as
+at the railing of the Chapel, where the washing of the feet takes place,
+and at the supper-table, where twelve country-boors represent the
+Apostolic company, and are waited on by the Pope, in a way that shows
+how great a sham the whole thing is. The air is close to suffocation in
+this last place. Men and women faint and are carried out. Some fall and
+are trodden down. Sometimes, as at the table this year, some unfortunate
+pays for her curiosity with her life. It is "Devil take the
+hindmost!" and if any one is down, he is leaped over by men and women
+indiscriminately, for there is no time to be lost. In the Chapel, when
+once they are in, all want to get out. Shrieks are heard as the jammed
+mass sways backward and forward,--veils and dresses are torn in the
+struggle,--women are praying for help. Meantime the stupid Swiss keep to
+their orders with a literalness which knows no parallel; and all this
+time, the Pope, who has come in by a private door, is handing round beef
+and mustard and bread and potatoes to the gormandizing Apostles, who put
+into their pockets what their stomachs cannot hold, and improve their
+opportunities in every way. At last, those who have been through the
+fight return at nightfall, haggard and ghastly with fear, hunger, and
+fatigue; and, after agreeing that they could never counsel any one to
+such an attempt, set off the next morning to attack again some shut door
+behind which a "function" is to take place.
+
+All this, however, is done by the strangers. The Romans, on these high
+festivals, do not go to Saint Peter's, but perform their religious
+services at their parish churches, calmly and peacefully; for in Saint
+Peter's all is a spectacle. "How shall I, a true son of the Holy
+Church," asks Pasquin, "obtain admittance to her services?" And Marforio
+answers, "Declare you are an Englishman, and swear you are a heretic."
+
+The Piazza is crowded with carriages during all these days, and a
+hackman will look at nothing under a _scudo_ for the smallest distance,
+and, to your remonstrances, he shrugs his shoulders and says, "_Eh,
+signore, bisogna vivere; adesso è la nostra settimana, e poi niente._
+Next week I will take you anywhere for two _pauls_,--now for fifteen."
+Meluccio, (the little old apple,) the aged boy in the Piazza San Pietro,
+whose sole occupation it has been for years to open and shut the doors
+of carriages--and hold out his hand for a _mezzo-baiocco_, is in great
+glee. He runs backwards and forwards all day long,--hails carriages like
+mad,--identifies to the bewildered coachmen their lost fares, whom he
+never fails to remember,--points out to bewildered strangers the coach
+they are hopelessly striving to identify, having entirely forgotten
+coachman and carriage in the struggle they have gone through. He is
+everywhere, screaming, laughing, and helping everybody. It is his high
+festival as well as the Pope's, and grateful strangers drop into his
+hand the frequent _baiocco_ or half-_paul_, and thank God and Meluccio
+as they sink back in their carriages and cry, "_A casa_."
+
+Finally comes Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection; and at twelve
+on the Saturday previous all the bells are rung, and the crucifixes
+uncovered, and the Pope, cardinals, and priests change their
+mourning-vestments for those of rejoicing. Easter has come. You may know
+it by the ringing bells, and the sound of trumpets in the street, and
+the jar of long trains of cannon going down to the Piazza San Pietro, to
+guard the place and join in the dance, in case of a row or rising
+among the populace; for the right arm of the Church is the cannon, and
+Christ's doctrines are always protected by the bayonet, and Peter's
+successor "making broad his phylacteries," and his splendid _cortége_
+"enlarging the borders of their garments" and going up to "the chief
+seats in the synagogues" "in purple and fine linen" to make their "long
+prayers," crave the protection of bristling arms and drawn swords.
+
+By twelve o'clock Mass in Saint Peter's is over, and the Piazza is
+crowded with people to see the Benediction,--and a grand and imposing
+spectacle it is! Out over the great balcony stretches a huge white
+awning, where priests and attendants are collected, and where the Pope
+will soon be seen. Below, the Piazza is alive with moving masses. In the
+centre are drawn up long lines of soldiery, with yellow and red pompons
+and glittering helmets and bayonets. These are surrounded by crowds on
+foot, and at the outer rim are packed carriages filled and overrun with
+people mounted on the seats and boxes. There is a half-hour's waiting
+while we can look about, a steady stream of carriages all the while
+pouring in, and, if one could see it, stretching out a mile behind, and
+adding thousands of impatient spectators to those already there. What a
+sight it is!--above us the great dome of Saint Peter's, and below, the
+grand embracing colonnade, and the vast space, in the centre of which
+rises the solemn obelisk thronged with masses of living beings. Peasants
+from the Campagna and the mountains are moving about everywhere.
+Pilgrims in oil-cloth cape and with iron staff demand charity. On the
+steps are rows of purple, blue, and brown umbrellas; for there the sun
+blazes fiercely. Everywhere cross forth the white hoods of Sisters of
+Charity, collected in groups, and showing, among the party-colored
+dresses, like beds of chrysanthemums in a garden. One side of the
+massive colonnade casts a grateful shadow over the crowd beneath, that
+fill up the intervals of its columns; but elsewhere the sun burns down
+and flashes everywhere. Mounted on the colonnade are masses of people
+leaning over, beside the colossal statues. Through all the heat is heard
+the constant plash of the two superb fountains, that wave to and fro
+their veils of white spray. At last the clock strikes. In the far
+balcony are seen the two great snowy peacock fans, and between them a
+figure clad in white, that rises from a golden chair, and spreads his
+great sleeves like wings as he raises his arms in benediction. That is
+the Pope, Pius the Ninth. All is dead silence, and a musical voice,
+sweet and penetrating, is heard chanting from the balcony;--the people
+bend and kneel; with a cold, gray flash, all the bayonets gleam as the
+soldiers drop to their knees, and rise to salute as the voice dies away,
+and the two white wings are again waved;--then thunder the cannon,--the
+bells dash and peal,--a few white papers, like huge snowflakes, drop
+wavering from the balcony;--these are Indulgences, and there is an eager
+struggle for them below;--then the Pope again rises, again gives his
+benediction, waving to and fro his right hand, three fingers open, and
+making the sign of the cross,--and the peacock fans retire, and he
+between them is borne away,--and Lent is over.
+
+As Lent is ushered in by the dancing lights of the _moccoletti_, so it
+is ushered out by the splendid illumination of Saint Peter's, which is
+one of the grandest spectacles in Rome. The first illumination is by
+means of paper lanterns, distributed everywhere along the architectural
+lines of the church, and from the steps beneath its portico to the cross
+above its dome. These are lighted before sunset, and against the blaze
+of the western light are for some time completely invisible; but as
+twilight thickens, and the shadows deepen, and a gray pearly veil is
+drawn over the sky, the distant basilica begins to glow against it with
+a dull furnace-glow, as of a wondrous coal fanned by a constant wind;
+looking not so much lighted from without as reddening from an interior
+fire. Slowly this splendor grows, until the mighty building at last
+stands outlined against the dying twilight as if etched there with
+a fiery burin. As the sky darkens into intense blue behind it, the
+material part of the basilica seems to vanish, until nothing is left to
+the eye but a wondrous, magical, visionary structure of fire. This is
+the silver illumination; watch it well, for it does not last long. At
+the first hour of night, when the bells sound all over Rome, a sudden
+change takes place. From the lofty cross a burst of flame is seen, and
+instantly a flash of light whirls over the dome and drum, climbs the
+smaller cupolas, descends like a rain of fire down the columns of the
+_facade_, and before the great bell of Saint Peter's has ceased to toll
+twelve peals, the golden illumination has succeeded to the silver. For
+my own part, I prefer the first illumination; it is more delicate, airy,
+and refined, though the second is more brilliant and dazzling. One is
+like the Bride of the Church, the other like the Empress of the World.
+In the second lighting, the Church becomes more material; the flames
+are like jewels, and the dome seems a gigantic triple crown of Saint
+Peter's. One effect, however, is very striking. The outline of fire,
+which before was firm and motionless, now wavers and shakes as if it
+would pass away, as the wind blows the flames back and forth from the
+great cups by which it is lighted. From near and far the world looks
+on,--from the Piazza beneath, where carriages drive to and fro in its
+splendor, and the band plays and the bells toll,--from the windows and
+_loggias_ of the city, wherever a view can be caught of this superb
+spectacle,--and from the Campagna and mountain towns, where, far
+away, alone and towering above everything, the dome is seen to blaze.
+Everywhere are ejaculations of delight, and thousands of groups are
+playing the game of "What is it like?" One says, it is like a hive
+covered by a swarm of burning bees; others, that it is the enchanted
+palace in the gardens of Gul in the depths of the Arabian nights,--like
+a gigantic tiara set with wonderful diamonds, larger than those which
+Sinbad found in the roc's valley,--like the palace of the fairies in the
+dreams of childhood,--like the stately pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan in
+Xanadu, and twenty other whimsical things. At nearly midnight, when
+we go to bed, we take a last look at it. It is a ruin, like the
+Colosseum,--great gaps of darkness are there, with broken rows of
+splendor. The lights are gone on one side the dome,--they straggle
+fitfully here and there down the other and over the _façade_, fading
+even as we look. It is melancholy enough. It is a bankrupt heiress, an
+old and wrinkled beauty, that tells strange tales of its former wealth
+and charms, when the world was at its feet. It is the once mighty
+Catholic Church, crumbling away with the passage of the night,--and when
+morning and light come, it will be no more.
+
+[To be continued.]
+
+
+
+
+LA MALANOTTE.
+
+One morning in Naples, in the spring of ----, I was practising over
+some operas of Rossini with a musical friend. He had known the great
+_maestro_ personally, and his intelligence on musical matters, his
+numberless anecdotes and reminiscences, made him a charming companion;
+he was a living, talking Scudo article, full of artistic _mots_ and
+_ana_. We had just finished looking over the "Tancredi," and, as I sat
+down to rest in an arm-chair near the window, he leaned back in the deep
+window-embrasure, and looked down into the fine old garden below, from
+which arose the delicious odor of orange and young grape blossoms.
+
+"I was in Venice," he said, "when this opera was composed, in 1813. _Mon
+Dieu_! how time flies! Rossini wrote it for one of the loveliest women
+God ever made, Adelaïde Montresor. I knew her very well. She was the
+wife of a French gentleman, a friend of mine, M. Montresor, at one time
+very prosperous in fortune. Adelaide was a Veronese, of good family, and
+had studied music only _en amateur_. Her maiden name was Malanotte. Oh,
+yes, of course, you have heard of her. She was famous, poor child, in
+her day, which was a short one."
+
+The old gentleman sighed, and threw the end of his cigar out of the
+window. I handed him another; for his age and charming conversation
+entitled him to such indulgences. He remained silent a little
+while, puffing away at his cigar until it was well lighted; then he
+continued:--
+
+"I think I'll tell you poor Adelaide's story. She was a delicious young
+creature when Montresor married her,--scarcely more than a child. For
+some years they lived delightfully; they had plenty of money, and were
+very fond of each other. She had two charming little children; one was
+my godson and namesake, Ettore. Montresor, her husband, was surely one
+of the happiest of men.
+
+"They were both musical. Montresor had a clever barytone voice, and
+sang with sufficient grace and memory for an amateur. Adelaide was more
+remarkable than her husband; she had genius more than culture, and sang
+good old music with an unconscious creative grace. At their house we
+used to get up 'Il Matrimonio Segreto,' _scenas_ from 'Don Giovanni,'
+and many other passages from favorite operas; and Adelaide was always
+our admired _prima donna_; for she, as Fétis says of genius, 'invented
+forms, imposed them as types, and obliged us not only to acknowledge,
+but to imitate them.'
+
+"I had to go to Russia in 1805, and leave my home and friends for an
+indefinite period of time. When I bade the Montresors good-bye,
+I wondered what sorrow could touch them, they seemed so shielded by
+prosperity from every accident; but some one has said very justly of
+prosperity, that it is like glass,--it shines brightest just before
+shivering. A year after I left, Montresor, who had foolishly entered
+into some speculations, lost all his fortune. In a fortnight after the
+event, Veronese society was electrified by the public announcement of
+Madame Montresor's first appearance in public as an opera-singer. I
+forget what her opening piece was. She wrote to me about it, telling
+me that her _début_ was successful, but that she felt she needed more
+preparation, and should devote the following year to studies necessary
+to insure success in her profession. Her letters had no murmurs in
+them about the lost fortune, no moans over the sacrifice of her social
+position. She possessed true genius, and felt most happy in the exercise
+of her music, even if it took sorrow, toil, and poverty to develop it.
+Her whole thoughts were on the plan of studies laid down for her. Now
+she could be an artist conscientiously. She had obtained the
+rare advantage of lessons from some famous retired singer at
+Milan,--Marchesi, I think,--and her letters were filled with learned
+and enthusiastic details of her master's method, her manner of study,
+regimen, and exercise,--enough to make ten Catalanis, I saucily wrote
+back to her.
+
+"Once in a while she would send me a notice of her success at some
+concert or minor theatre. At last, in 1813, seven years after her
+girlish _début_ at Verona, she received an engagement at Venice. At
+that time I obtained _congé_ for a few months, and, on my home-journey,
+stopped a few weeks at Venice, to see some relatives living there, and
+my old friends, the Montresors. The seven-years' hard study and public
+life had developed the pretty _petite_ girl-matron into a charming woman
+and fine artist. She was as _naïve_ and frank as in her girlish days,
+though not so playful,--more self-possessed, and completely engrossed
+with her art. Her domestic life was gone; she lived and breathed only in
+the atmosphere of her profession, and happily her husband sympathized
+with her, and generously regarded her triumphs as his own. The first
+morning I saw her, I was struck with her excited air; a deep crimson
+spot was on each cheek, which made her eyes, formerly so soft in their
+expression, painfully sharp in their brilliancy.
+
+"'I sang for Rossini last night,' she said, in a quick tone, after our
+first greeting was over; then continued, with her old, frank _naïveté_,
+'I did not know he was in the theatre. I am so glad! for otherwise I
+might not have done myself justice.'
+
+"'He was pleased, of course,' I replied.
+
+"'Yes; he was here this morning. He is a charming person,--so graceful
+and complaisant! Montresor and I were delighted with him. He is to
+compose an opera for me.'
+
+"Her whole form seemed to dilate with pride. She walked up and down the
+_salon_ with unconscious restlessness while she talked, went to a stand
+of flowers, and, leaning her burning face over the fragrant blossoms,
+drew in sharp, rapid breaths of their odors. She plucked off a white
+tea-rose, and pressed its yellow core against her cheeks, as if she
+fancied the fresh white color of the flower would cool them. Every look,
+every movement, every expression that shot rapidly over her varying
+face, as quickly as the ripples on water under the hot noonday sunlight,
+spoke more plainly than words her intense longing. As I recall my
+beautiful friend, so possessed as I saw her then with this intense
+desire for the fame of a great artist, I think of two lines in a little
+song I have heard you sing--
+
+  "'To let the new life in, we know
+  Desire must ope the portal.'
+
+"And, surely, her earnest spirit was beating with feverish haste on that
+portal of her future for her new life.
+
+"Of course we did not meet so constantly, and therefore not so
+familiarly as formerly. When we did meet, she was as frank and friendly
+as ever; but she was always preoccupied. She was studying daily with the
+great young _maestro_ himself, then just rising to the full zenith of
+his fame, and her whole thoughts were filled with the music of the new
+opera he was writing, which she called glorious.
+
+"'So grand and heroic,' she said, with enthusiasm, one morning, when
+describing it, 'and yet so original and fresh! The melodies are
+graceful, and the accompaniments as sparkling as these diamonds in their
+brilliancy.'
+
+"At _caffès_, where silly young men murder reputations, it was said
+that Rossini was madly in love with the beautiful _prima donna;_ and of
+course he was; for he could not help being in love, in his way, with
+every brilliant woman he met. Numberless stories were told of the
+bewitching tyranny '_La Malanotte_,' as she was called, loved to
+exercise over her distinguished admirer, which were interpreted by the
+uncharitable as the caprice of a mistress in the first flush of her
+loving power. I had to listen in silence to such stories, and feel
+grateful that Montresor did not hear them also.
+
+"'It is one of the penalties one always has to pay for a woman's fame,'
+I said to myself, one day, as I sat sipping my chocolate, while I was
+forced to overhear from a neighboring alcove an insolent young dandy
+tell of various scenes, betraying passionate love on both sides, which
+he had probably manufactured to make himself of consequence. One story
+he told I felt sure was false, and yet I would rather it had been true
+than the others; he declared he had been present at the theatre when it
+had taken place, which had been the morning previous,--the morning after
+the first representation of this famous opera. La Malanotte, he said,
+was dissatisfied with her opening _cavatina_, and at rehearsal had
+presented the _maestro_ with the MS. of that passage torn into fifty
+atoms, declaring in a haughty tone that she would never sing it again.
+This was too unlike Adelaïde to be true; but I tried to swallow my
+vexation in silence, and with difficulty restrained myself from
+insulting the addle-pated young puppy. I had heard her say she did not
+like the passage so well as the rest of the opera, and felt sure
+that the whole story had been founded on this simple expression of
+disapprobation.
+
+"I swallowed my chocolate, put on my hat, and sauntered leisurely along
+to Montresor's apartments. It was late in the afternoon; the servant
+admitted me, saying Madame was alone in the _salon_. The apartments were
+several rooms _en suite;_ the music-room was divided from the _salon_ by
+curtains. I entered the _salon_ unannounced; for the _valet de chambre_
+was an old family-servant, and having known me for so many years
+as _garçon de famille_, he let me proceed through the antechamber
+unaccompanied. The heavy curtains over the music-room were dropped; but
+as I entered, I heard a low murmur of voices coming from it. The thick
+Turkey carpet which lay on the inlaid ivory floor of the _salon_ gave
+back no sound of my footsteps. I did not think of committing any
+indiscretion; I concluded that Adelaïde was busy studying; so I took up
+a book and seated myself comfortably, feeling as well off there as at
+home.
+
+"Presently I heard a brilliant preluding passage on the piano, then
+Adelaïde's glorious voice pronounced that stirring recitative, _'O
+Patria.'_ This was the passage alluded to by the young dandies in
+the _caffè_. I laid down my book, and leaned forward to listen. The
+recitative over, then followed that delicious 'hymn of youth and love,'
+as Scudo calls it, '_Tu che accendi_' followed by the 'Di _tanti
+palpiti_.' Can you imagine the sensations produced by hearing for the
+first time such a passage? If you can, pray do, for I cannot describe
+them;--just fancy that intoxicating '_Ti revedrò_' soaring up, followed
+by the glittering accompaniment,--and to hear it, as I did, just fresh
+from its source, the aroma from this bright-beaded goblet of youth and
+love! Heigho! Adelaïde repeated it again and again, and the _enivrement_
+seemed as great in the music-room as in my brain and heart. Then the low
+talking recommenced, and from some words that reached my ears I began
+to think I might be committing an indiscretion; so I left the room as I
+entered it, unannounced.
+
+"That night I was at the theatre, and witnessed the wild, frantic
+reception of this _cavatina_, and also saw the point Scudo alludes to,
+which Adelaïde made that night for the first time, in the duo between
+Tancredi and Argirio, '_Ah, se de' mali miei_,' in the passage at the
+close of '_Ecco la tromba_,' at the repeat of '_Al campo_.' She looked
+superbly, and, as that part of the duo ended, she advanced a step, drew
+up her fine form to its full height, flashed her sword with a gesture of
+inspiration, and exclaimed, in clear, musical diction, '_Il vivo lampo
+di questa spada_.' The effect was electric. The duet could not proceed
+for the cries and shouts of enthusiasm; the whole theatre rose in one
+mass, and shouted aloud their ecstasy in one voice, as if they had but
+one common ear and heart.
+
+"The instant the cries lessened, Adelaïde gave the sign to Argirio,
+and they took up the duo, '_Splenda terribile_,' before the orchestra,
+equally electrified with the audience, were prepared for it, so that
+Adelaïde's clear ringing '_Mi_' soared out like a mellow violoncello
+note, and she sang the three following measures unaccompanied. The short
+symphony which follows this little bit was not heard for the cries of
+applause, which were silenced only by the grand finale, '_Se il ciel mi
+guida_.'
+
+"_Gran Dio!_ the bare memory of that night is a joy," said my friend,
+walking rapidly up and down the room.
+
+"I had to leave for my Russian home a few days after that, and saw
+Adelaïde only once; it was the morning of my departure. Her _salon_ was
+crowded, and she was leaning on her husband's arm, looking very proud
+and happy. 'Who could have been in that music-room?' I asked myself,
+while I looked at them; then in an instant I felt reproached at my
+suspicions, as the thought flashed across my mind, that it might have
+been her husband. What more likely? I bade her good-bye, and told her,
+laughingly, as she gave me a cordial grasp of her hand, that I hoped to
+renew our friendship in St. Petersburg.
+
+"She never wrote to me after that. Marked differences in pursuits and
+a continued separation will dissolve the outward bonds of the truest
+friendships. Adelaïde's time was now completely occupied; it was one
+round of brilliant success for the poor woman. 'Such triumphs! such
+intoxication!' as Scudo says; but the glory was that of a shooting star.
+In eight short years after that brilliant season at Venice, Adelaïde
+Montresor, better known as 'La Malanotte,' the idol of the European
+musical public, the short-lived infatuation and passion of the
+celebrated Rossini, was a hopeless invalid, and worse, _presque folle_.
+
+"I received the news, strange to say, one evening at the opera in St.
+Petersburg, while I was listening to the music of 'Tancredi.' Two
+gentlemen were talking behind me, and one was telling the other his
+recollection of that brilliant scene I have just recounted. Then
+followed the account of her illness; and I could not restrain myself, as
+I had in the _caffe_ at Venice; for I had known Adelaïde as a girl, and
+loved her as a brother. I presented myself, explaining the cause of my
+interest in their conversation, and found the news was only too
+true. The gentlemen had just come from Southern Europe, and knew the
+Montresors personally. He said that her mind was gone, even more
+hopelessly than her health. She lingered eleven years in this sad state,
+and then, happily for herself, died."
+
+"And Rossini," I asked,--"how did he take her illness?"
+
+"Oh, three years after his Venetian infatuation, he was off here in
+Naples, worshipping the Spanish beauty, a little _passée_ to be sure, of
+La Colbrand. She, however, possessed more lasting attractions than mere
+physical ones. She had amassed a large fortune in a variety of ways.
+Rossini was not over-nice; he wanted money most of all things, and he
+carried off La Colbrand from her _cher ami_, the Neapolitan director of
+San Carlo, and married her. It was a regular elopement, as if of a young
+miss from her papa. Do not look so shocked. Rossini could not help his
+changeability. You women always throw away a real gem, and receive, nine
+times out of ten, a mock one in return. But the fault lies not with us,
+but with you; you almost invariably select the wrong person. Now such
+men as Montresor and I knew how to return a real gem for Adelaïde's
+heart-gift; but such men as Rossini have no real feelings in their
+hearts."
+
+"And you think she loved him?"
+
+"I try to think otherwise, for I cannot bear to remember Adelaïde
+Montresor as an unworthy woman; and when the unwelcome thought will
+thrust itself in, I think of her youth, her beauty, her genius, and
+the sudden blinding effect that rapid prosperity and brilliant success
+produce on an enthusiastic, warm temperament--Good-morning; to-morrow
+let me come again, and we will go over 'Tancredi,' and I will sing with
+you the '_Ah, se de' mali miei_.'"
+
+My friend left me alone. I sat by the window, watching the waving of the
+tasselled branches of the acacia, and the purple fiery vapor that arose
+from the overflowing Vesuvius; and I thought of Adelaïde Malanotte,
+and wondered at the strange, fatal necessity attendant on genius, its
+spiritual labor and pain. Like all things beautiful in Art, made by
+human hands, it must proceed from toil of brain or heart. It takes
+fierce heat to purify the gold, and welding beats are needed to mould
+it into gracious shapes; the sharp chisel must cut into the marble,
+to fashion by keen, driving blows the fair statue; the fine, piercing
+instrument, "the little diamond-pointed ill," it is that traces the
+forms of beauty on the hard onyx. There had been sorrow in the tale of
+my friend, temptation at least, if not sinful yielding, labor and pain,
+which had broken down the fair mind itself,--but it had all created a
+gracious form for the memory to dwell on, an undying association with
+the "Tancredi," as beautiful, instructive, and joy-giving as the "Divino
+Amore" of Raphael, the exquisite onyx heads in the "Cabinet of Gems," or
+that divine prelude the Englishman was at that moment pouring out from
+his piano in a neighboring _palazzo_, in a flood of harmony as golden
+and rich as the wine of Capri, every note of which, we know, had been a
+life-drop wrung from the proud, breaking heart of Chopin, when he sat
+alone, that solemn, stormy midnight, in the old convent-chamber at
+Majorca. But the toil and suffering are forgotten in the enjoyment of
+creation, and genius itself, when going down into the fiery baptism of
+sorrow, or walking over the red-hot ploughshares of temptation, would
+rather take all its suffering and peril than not be itself;--and well it
+may; for it is making, what poor heart-broken Keats sung,
+
+  "A thing of beauty--a joy forever."
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
+
+WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.
+
+Iris, her Book.
+
+  I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,
+  By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee,
+  Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!
+
+  For Iris had no mother to infold her,
+  Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder,
+  Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.
+
+  She had not learned the mystery of awaking
+  Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching,
+  Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.
+
+  Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!
+  Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,
+  Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?
+
+  She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,--
+  Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,
+  And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.
+
+  Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,--
+  Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,
+  Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.
+
+  Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
+  What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
+  Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
+
+  And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,
+  Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,
+  Save me! oh, save me! Shall I die forgiven?
+
+  And then--Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:
+  Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters
+  The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!
+
+  If she had--Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore.
+  Had the world nothing she might live to care for?
+  No second self to say her evening prayer for?
+
+  She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,
+  Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming
+  Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.
+
+  Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.
+  What if a lonely and unsistered creature
+  Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,
+
+  Saying, unsaddened,--This shall soon be faded,
+  And double-hued the shining tresses braided,
+  And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?
+
+  --This her poor book is full of saddest follies
+  Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,
+  With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.
+
+  In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,
+  Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances
+  May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.
+
+  Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,
+  Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,
+  Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.
+
+  Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,
+  Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.
+  No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.
+
+These verses were written in the first leaves of the locked volume. As I
+turned the pages, I hesitated for a moment. Is it quite fair to take
+advantage of a generous, trusting impulse to read the unsunned depths of
+a young girl's nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers
+tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent
+waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might
+strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted _me_ with such
+artless confessions,--self-revelations, which might be whispered by
+trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but
+which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging
+a sacred confidence?
+
+To all this the answer seemed plain enough after a little thought.
+She did not know how fearfully she had disclosed herself; she was too
+profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes
+that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. Having
+nobody to tell her story to,--having, as she said in her verses, no
+musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,--nothing, in short, but
+the language of pen and pencil,--all the veinings of her nature were
+impressed on these pages, as those of a fresh leaf are transferred
+to the blank sheets which inclose it. It was the same thing which I
+remember seeing beautifully shown in a child of some four or five years
+we had one day at our boarding-house. This child was a deaf mute. But
+its soul had the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping
+capacity which through natural organs realizes itself in words. Only
+it had to talk with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid
+alternations of feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted
+over its face, I have never seen in any other human countenance.
+
+I wonder if something of spiritual _transparency_ is not typified in
+the golden-_blonde_ organization. There are a great many little
+creatures,--many small fishes, for instance,--that are literally
+transparent, with the exception of some of the internal organs. The
+heart can be seen beating as if in a case of clouded crystal. The
+central nervous column with its sheath runs as a dark stripe through
+the whole length of the diaphanous muscles of the body. Other little
+creatures are so darkened with pigment that we can see only their
+surface. Conspirators and poisoners are painted with black, beady eyes
+and swarthy hue; Judas, in Leonardo's picture, is the model of them all.
+
+However this may be, I should say there never had been a book like this
+of Iris,--so full of the heart's silent language, so transparent that
+the heart itself could be seen beating through it. I should say there
+never could have been such a book, but for one recollection, which is
+not peculiar to myself, but is shared by a certain number of my former
+townsmen. If you think I overcolor this matter of the young girl's book,
+hear this, which there are others, as I just said, besides myself, will
+tell you is strictly true.
+
+
+
+_The Book of the Three Maiden Sisters_.
+
+In the town called Cantabridge, now a city, water-veined and
+gas-windpiped, in the street running down to the Bridge, beyond which
+dwelt Sally, told of in a book of a friend of mine, was of old a house
+inhabited by three maidens. They left no near kinsfolk, I believe; if
+they did, I have no ill to speak of them; for they lived and died in
+all good report and maidenly credit. The house they lived in was of the
+small, gambrel-roofed cottage pattern, after the shape of Esquires'
+houses, but after the size of the dwellings of handicraftsmen. The lower
+story was fitted up as a shop. Specially was it provided with one of
+those half-doors now so rarely met with, which are to whole doors as
+spencers worn by old folk are to coats. They speak of limited commerce
+united with a social or observing disposition on the part of the
+shopkeeper,--allowing, as they do, talk with passers-by, yet keeping off
+such as have not the excuse of business to cross the threshold. On the
+door-posts, at either side, above the half-door, hung certain perennial
+articles of merchandise, of which my memory still has hanging among its
+faded photographs a kind of netted scarf and some pairs of thick woollen
+stockings. More articles, but not very many, were stored inside; and
+there was one drawer, containing children's books, out of which I once
+was treated to a minute quarto ornamented with handsome cuts. This was
+the only purchase I ever _knew_ to be made at the shop kept by the three
+maiden ladies, though it is probable there were others. So long as I
+remember the shop, the same scarf and, I should say, the same stockings
+hung on the door-posts.--[You think I am exaggerating again, and that
+shopkeepers would not keep the same article exposed for years. Come to
+me, the Professor, and I will take you in five minutes to a shop in this
+city where I will show you an article hanging now in the very place
+where more than _thirty years ago_ I myself inquired the price of it of
+the present head of the establishment.]
+
+The three maidens were of comely presence, and one of them had
+had claims to be considered a Beauty. When I saw them in the old
+meeting-house on Sundays, as they rustled in through the aisles in silks
+and satins, not gay, but more than decent, as I remember them, I thought
+of My Lady Bountiful in the history of "Little King Pippin," and of the
+Madame Blaize of Goldsmith (who, by the way, may have taken the hint of
+it from a pleasant poem, "Monsieur de la Palisse," attributed to De la
+Monnoye, in the collection of French songs before me). There was some
+story of an old romance in which the Beauty had played her part. Perhaps
+they all had had lovers; for, as I said, they were shapely and seemly
+personages, as I remember them; but their lives were out of the flower
+and in the berry at the time of my first recollections.
+
+One after another they all three dropped away, objects of kindly
+attention to the good people round, leaving little or almost nothing,
+and nobody to inherit it. Not absolutely nothing, of course. There must
+have been a few old dresses,--perhaps some bits of furniture, a Bible,
+and the spectacles the good old souls read it through, and little
+keepsakes, such as make us cry to look at, when we find them in old
+drawers;--such relics there must have been. But there was more. There
+was a manuscript of some hundred pages, closely written, in which the
+poor things had chronicled for many years the incidents of their daily
+life. After their death it was passed round somewhat freely, and fell
+into my hands. How I have cried and laughed and colored over it! There
+was nothing in it to be ashamed of, perhaps there was nothing in it to
+laugh at, but such a picture of the mode of being of poor simple good
+old women I do believe was never drawn before. And there were all the
+smallest incidents recorded, such as do really make up humble life, but
+which die out of all mere literary memoirs, as the houses where the
+Egyptians or the Athenians lived crumble and leave only their temples
+standing. I know, for instance, that on a given day of a certain year,
+a kindly woman, herself a poor widow, now, I trust, not without special
+mercies in heaven for her good deeds,--for I read her name on a proper
+tablet in the churchyard a week ago,--sent a fractional pudding from her
+own table to the Maiden Sisters, who, I fear, from the warmth and detail
+of their description, were fasting, or at least on short allowance,
+about that time. I know who sent them the segment of melon, which in her
+riotous fancy one of them compared to those huge barges to which we give
+the ungracious name of mudscows. But why should I illustrate further
+what it seems almost a breach of confidence to speak of? Some kind
+friend, who could challenge a nearer interest than the curious strangers
+into whose hands the book might fall, at last claimed it, and I was glad
+that it should be henceforth sealed to common eyes. I learned from it
+that every good and, alas! every evil act we do may slumber unforgotten
+even in some earthly record. I got a new lesson in that humanity which
+our sharp race finds it so hard to learn. The poor widow, fighting
+hard to feed and clothe and educate her children, had not forgotten the
+poorer ancient maidens. I remembered it the other day, as I stood by her
+place of rest, and I felt sure that it was remembered elsewhere. I know
+there are prettier words than _pudding_, but I can't help it,--the
+pudding went upon the record, I feel sure, with the mite which was cast
+into the treasury by that other poor widow whose deed the world shall
+remember forever, and with the coats and garments which the good women
+cried over, when Tabitha, called by interpretation Dorcas, lay dead in
+the upper chamber, with her charitable needlework strewed around her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+----Such was the Book of the Maiden Sisters. You will believe me more
+readily now when I tell you that I found the soul of Iris in the one
+that lay open before me. Sometimes it was a poem that held it, sometimes
+a drawing,--angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic
+symbol of which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I
+remember, with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as
+naturally as a crack runs through a China bowl. On the next page a dead
+bird,--some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a
+special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice
+in my life I have had a letter sealed,--a round spot where the paper is
+slightly corrugated, and, if there is writing there, the letters are
+somewhat faint and blurred. Most of the pages were surrounded with
+emblematic traceries. It was strange to me at first to see how often she
+introduced those homelier wild-flowers which we call _weeds_,--for it
+seemed there was none of them too humble for her to love, and none too
+little cared for by Nature to be without its beauty for her artist eye
+and pencil. By the side of the garden-flowers,--of Spring's curled
+darlings, the hyacinths, of rosebuds, dear to sketching maidens, of
+flower-de-luces and morning-glories,--nay, oftener than these, and more
+tenderly caressed by the colored brush that rendered them,--were those
+common growths that fling themselves to be crushed under our feet and
+our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this perpetual martyrdom that
+we forget each of them is a ray of the Divine beauty.
+
+Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions,--just as we see
+them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling
+sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields,
+to the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving
+eyes, with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays;
+the tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame, one
+after another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of
+decaying palaces when the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out; the
+red and white clovers; the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,--"the
+white man's foot," as the Indians called it,--the wiry, jointed stems of
+that iron creeping plant which we call "knot-_grass_" and which loves
+its life so dearly that it is next to impossible to murder it with a
+hoe, as it clings to the cracks of the pavement;--all these plants, and
+many more, she wove into her fanciful garlands and borders.--On one of
+the pages were some musical notes. I touched them from curiosity on a
+piano belonging to one of our boarders. Strange! There are passages that
+I have heard before, plaintive, full of some hidden meaning, as if
+they were gasping for words to interpret them. She must have heard the
+strains that have so excited my curiosity, coming from my neighbor's
+chamber. The illuminated border she had traced round the page that held
+these notes took the place of the words they seemed to be aching for.
+Above, a long, monotonous sweep of waves, leaden-hued, anxious and jaded
+and sullen, if you can imagine such an expression in water. On one side
+an Alpine _needle_, as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. On
+the other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in
+the drops had something fearful,--one would say the cliff was
+bleeding;--perhaps she did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and
+a solitary bird of prey, with his wings spread over some unseen
+object.--And on the very next page a procession wound along, after the
+fashion of that on the title-page of Fuller's "Holy War," in which I
+recognized without difficulty every boarder at our table in all the
+glory of the most resplendent caricature,--three only excepted,--the
+Little Gentleman, myself, and one other.
+
+I confess I did expect to see something that would remind me of the
+girl's little deformed neighbor, if not portraits of him.--There is
+a left arm again, though;--no,--that is from the "Fighting
+Gladiator,"--the "_Jeune Héros combatiant_" of the Louvre;--there is the
+broad ring of the shield. From a cast, doubtless. [The separate casts
+of the "Gladiator's" arm look immense; but in its place the limb looks
+light, almost slender,--such is the perfection of that miraculous
+marble. I never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until I
+looked on that statue.]--Here is something very odd, to be sure. An Eden
+of all the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in her
+head when she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them
+all beauty or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bactrian camel lying under
+a palm. A dromedary flashing up the sands,--spray of the dry ocean
+sailed by the "ship of the desert." A herd of buffaloes, uncouth,
+shaggy-maned, heavy in the forehand, light in the hind-quarter. [The
+buffalo is the _lion_ of the ruminants.] And there is a Norman horse,
+with his huge, rough collar, echoing, as it were, the natural form of
+the other beast. And here are twisted serpents; and stately swans, with
+answering curves in their bowed necks, as if they had snake's blood
+under their white feathers; and grave, high-shouldered herons, standing
+on one foot like cripples, and looking at life round them with the cold
+stare of monumental effigies.--A very odd page indeed! Not a creature in
+it without a curve or a twist, and not one of them a mean figure to look
+at. You can make your own comment; I am fanciful, you know. I believe
+she is trying to idealize what we vulgarly call deformity, which she
+strives to look at in the light of one of Nature's eccentric curves,
+belonging to her system of beauty, as the hyperbola and parabola belong
+to the conic sections, though we cannot see them as symmetrical and
+entire figures, like the circle and ellipse. At any rate, I cannot help
+referring this paradise of twisted spines to some idea floating in
+her head connected with her friend whom Nature has warped in the
+moulding.--That is nothing to another transcendental fancy of mine. I
+believe her soul thinks itself in his little crooked body at times,--if
+it does not really get freed or half freed from her own. Did you ever
+see a case of catalepsy? You know what I mean,--transient loss of sense,
+will, and motion; body and limbs taking any position in which they are
+put, as if they belonged to a lay-figure. She had been talking with him
+and listening to him one day when the boarders moved from the table
+nearly all at once. But she sat as before, her cheek resting on her
+hand, her amber eyes wide open and still. I went to her,--she was
+breathing as usual, and her heart was beating naturally enough,--but she
+did not answer. I bent her arm; it was as plastic as softened wax, and
+kept the place I gave it.--This will never do, though,--and I sprinkled
+a few drops of water on her forehead. She started and looked round.--I
+have been in a dream,--she said;--I feel as if all my strength were in
+this arm;--give me your hand!--She took my right hand in her left, which
+looked soft and white enough, but--Good Heaven! I believe she will crack
+my bones! All the nervous power in her body must have flashed through
+those muscles; as when a crazy lady snaps her iron window-bars,--she who
+could hardly glove herself when in her common health. Iris turned pale,
+and the tears came to her eyes;--she saw she had given pain. Then she
+trembled, and might have fallen but for me;--the poor little soul
+had been in one of those trances that belong to the spiritual pathology
+of higher natures, mostly those of women.
+
+To come back to this wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other
+which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the
+left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a single
+bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be
+soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons such
+as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. I am sure she must have
+seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his
+nightmare vision, described by another as "cemeteries of departed
+greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining
+their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and
+mutilated inscriptions." Such a black dungeon faced the page that held
+the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something was
+coiled,--what, and whether meant for dead or alive, my eyes could not
+make out.
+
+I told you the young girl's soul was in this book. As I turned over the
+last leaves I could not help starting. There were all sorts of faces
+among the arabesques which laughed and scowled in the borders that ran
+round the pages. They had mostly the outline of childish or womanly or
+manly beauty, without very distinct individuality. But at last it seemed
+to me that some of them were taking on a look not wholly unfamiliar to
+me; there were features that did not seem new.--Can it be so? Was there
+ever such innocence in a creature so full of life? She tells her heart's
+secrets as a three-years-old child betrays itself without need of being
+questioned! This was no common miss, such as are turned out in scores
+from the young-lady-factories, with parchments warranting them
+accomplished and virtuous,--in case anybody should question the fact. I
+began to understand her;--and what is so charming as to read the secret
+of a real _femme incomprise_?-for such there are, though they are not
+the ones who think themselves uncomprehended women.
+
+Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the
+far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards
+for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A
+moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. I have
+frequently seen children, long exercised by pain and exhaustion, whose
+features had a strange look of advanced age. Too often one meets such in
+our charitable institutions. Their faces are saddened and wrinkled, as
+if their few summers were three-score years and ten.
+
+And so, many youthful poets have written as if their hearts were old
+before their time; their pensive morning twilight has been as cool
+and saddening as that of evening in more common lives. The profound
+melancholy of those lines of Shelley,
+
+  "I could lie down like a tired child
+  And weep away the life of care
+  Which I have borne and yet must bear,"
+
+came from a heart, as he says, "too soon grown old,"--at _twenty-six
+years_, as dull people count time, even when they talk of poets.
+
+I know enough to be prepared for an exceptional nature, only this gift
+of the hand in rendering every thought in form and color, as well as in
+words, gives a richness to this young girl's alphabet of feeling and
+imagery that takes me by surprise. And then besides, and most of all, I
+am puzzled at her sudden and seemingly easy confidence in me. Perhaps I
+owe it to my ------ Well, no matter! How one must love the editor who
+first calls him the _venerable_ So-and-So!
+
+--I locked the book and sighed as I laid it down. The world is always
+ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what
+to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly
+while the world slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts like
+a lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and
+of the whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild
+blood makes it hard to train.
+
+Talent seems, at first, in one sense, higher than genius,--namely, that
+it is more uniformly and absolutely submitted to the will, and therefore
+more distinctly human in its character. Genius, on the other hand, is
+much more like those instincts which govern the admirable movements of
+the lower creatures, and therefore seems to have something of the
+lower or animal character. A goose flies by a chart which the Royal
+Geographical Society could not mend. A poet, like the goose, sails
+without visible landmarks to unexplored regions of truth, which
+philosophy has yet to lay down on its atlas. The philosopher gets his
+track by observation; the poet trusts to his inner sense, and makes the
+straighter and swifter line.
+
+And yet, to look at it in another light, is not even the lowest instinct
+more truly divine than any voluntary human act done by the suggestion
+of reason? What is a bee's architecture but an _un_obstructed divine
+thought?--what is a builder's approximative rule but an obstructed
+thought of the Creator, a mutilated and imperfect copy of some absolute
+rule Divine Wisdom has established, transmitted through a human soul as
+an image through clouded glass?
+
+Talent is a very common family-trait; genius belongs rather to
+individuals;--just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but
+rarely a whole brood of either. Talent is often to be envied, and genius
+very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of
+dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute. It is a perpetual
+insult to mediocrity; its every word is a trespass against somebody's
+vested ideas,--blasphemy against somebody's _O'm_, or intangible private
+truth.
+
+----What is the use of my weighing out antitheses in this way, like a
+rhetorical grocer?--You know twenty men of talent, who are making their
+way in the world; you may, perhaps, know one man of genius, and very
+likely do not want to know any more. For a divine instinct, such as
+drives the goose southward and the poet heavenward, is a hard thing to
+manage, and proves too strong for many whom it possesses. It must have
+been a terrible thing to have a friend like Chatterton or Burns. And
+here is a being who certainly has more than talent, at once poet and
+artist in tendency, if not yet fairly developed,--a woman, too;--and
+genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem,
+as you may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the stock which
+cannot keep pace with its evolution.
+
+I think now you know something of this young person. She wants nothing
+but an atmosphere to expand in. Now and then one meets with a nature
+for which our hard, practical New England life is obviously utterly
+incompetent. It comes up, as a Southern seed, dropped by accident in one
+of our gardens, finds itself trying to grow and blow into flower among
+the homely roots and the hardy shrubs that surround it. There is no
+question that certain persons who are born among us find themselves many
+degrees too far north. Tropical by organization, they cannot fight for
+life with our eastern and northwestern breezes without losing the
+color and fragrance into which their lives would have blossomed in
+the latitude of myrtles and oranges. Strange effects are produced by
+suffering any living thing to be developed under conditions such as
+Nature had not intended for it. A French physiologist confined some
+tadpoles under water in the dark, removed from the natural stimulus of
+light, they did not develop legs and arms at the proper period of their
+growth, and so become frogs; they swelled and spread into gigantic
+tadpoles. I have seen a hundred colossal _human_ tadpoles,--overgrown
+_larvae_ or embryos; nay, I am afraid we Protestants should look on a
+considerable proportion of the Holy Father's one hundred and thirty-nine
+millions as spiritual _larvae_, sculling about in the dark by the aid
+of their caudal extremities, instead of standing on their legs, and
+breathing by gills, instead of taking the free air of heaven into the
+lungs made to receive it. Of course _we_ never try to keep young souls
+in the tadpole state, for fear they should get a pair or two of legs
+by-and-by and jump out of the pool where they have been bred and fed!
+Never! Never. Never?
+
+Now to go back to our plant. You may know, that, for the earlier stages
+of development of almost any vegetable, you only want warmth, air,
+light, and water. But by-and-by, if it is to have special complex
+principles as a part of its organization, they must be supplied by
+the soil;--your pears will crack, if the root of the tree gets no
+iron,--your asparagus-bed wants salt as much as you do. Just at the
+period of adolescence, the mind often suddenly begins to come into
+flower and to set its fruit. Then it is that many young natures, having
+exhausted the spiritual soil round them of all it contains of the
+elements they demand, wither away, undeveloped and uncolored, unless
+they are transplanted.
+
+Pray for these dear young souls! This is the second _natural_
+birth;--for I do not speak of those peculiar religious experiences which
+form the point of transition in many lives between the consciousness of
+a general relation to the Divine nature and a special personal
+relation. The litany should count a prayer for them in the list of its
+supplications; masses should be said for them as for souls in purgatory;
+all good Christians should remember them as they remember those in peril
+through travel or sickness or in warfare.
+
+I would transport this child to Rome at once, if I had my will. She
+should ripen under an Italian sun. She should walk under the frescoed
+vaults of palaces, until her colors deepened to those of Venetian
+beauties, and her forms were perfected into rivalry with the Greek
+marbles, and the east wind was out of her soul. Has she not exhausted
+this lean soil of the elements her growing nature requires?
+
+I do not know. The magnolia grows and comes into full flower on Cape
+Ann, many degrees out of its proper region. I was riding once along that
+delicious road between the hills and the sea, when we passed a thicket
+where there seemed to be a chance for finding it. In five minutes I had
+fallen on the trees in full blossom, and filled my arms with the sweet,
+resplendent flowers. I could not believe I was in our cold, northern
+Essex, which, in the dreary season when I pass its slate-colored,
+unpainted farmhouses, and huge, square, windy, 'squire-built "mansions,"
+looks as brown and unvegetating as an old rug with its patterns all
+trodden out and the colored fringe worn from all its border.
+
+If the magnolia can bloom in northern New England, why should not a poet
+or a painter come to his full growth here just as well? Yes, but if
+the gorgeous tree-flower is rare, and only as if by a freak of Nature
+springs up in a single spot among the beeches and alders, is there not
+as much reason to think the perfumed flower of imaginative genius will
+find it hard to be born and harder to spread its leaves in the clear,
+cold atmosphere of our ultra-temperate zone of humanity?
+
+Take the poet. On the one hand, I believe that a person with the
+poetical faculty finds material everywhere. The grandest objects of
+sense and thought are common to all climates and civilizations. The
+sky, the woods, the waters, the storms, life, death, love, the hope and
+vision of eternity,--these are images that write themselves in poetry in
+every soul which has anything of the divine gift.
+
+On the other hand, there is such a thing as a lean, impoverished life,
+in distinction from a rich and suggestive one. Which our common New
+England life might be considered, I will not decide. But there are some
+things I think the poet missed in our western Eden. I trust it is not
+unpatriotic to mention them in this point of view, as they come before
+us in so many other aspects.
+
+There is no sufficient flavor of humanity in the soil out of which we
+grow. At Cantabridge, near the sea, I have once or twice picked up an
+Indian arrowhead in a fresh furrow. At Canoe Meadow, in the Berkshire
+Mountains, I have found Indian arrowheads. So everywhere Indian
+arrowheads. Whether a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows?
+who cares? There is no history to the red race,--there is hardly
+an individual in it;--a few instincts on legs and holding a
+tomahawk,--there is the Indian of all time. The story of one red ant is
+the story of all red ants. So, the poet, in trying to wing his way
+back through the life that has kindled, flitted, and faded along our
+watercourses and on our southern hillsides for unknown generations,
+finds nothing to breathe; he "meets
+
+  A vast vacuity! all unawares,
+  Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
+  Ten thousand fathom deep."
+
+But think of the Old World,--that part of it which is the seat of
+ancient civilization! The stakes of the Britons' stockades are still
+standing in the bed of the Thames. The ploughman turns up an old Saxon's
+bones, and beneath them is a tessellated pavement of the time of
+the Caesars. In Italy, the works of mediaeval Art seem to be of
+yesterday,--Rome, under her kings, is but an intruding new-comer, as
+we contemplate her in the shadow of the Cyclopean walls of Fiesole or
+Volterra. It makes a man human to live on these old humanized soils.
+He cannot help marching in step with his kind in the rear of such a
+procession. They say a dead man's hand cures swellings, if laid on them.
+There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the Past to take down our
+tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race.
+Rousseau came out of one of his sad self-torturing fits, as he cast his
+eye on the arches of the old Roman aqueduct, the Pont du Gard.
+
+I am far from denying that there is an attraction in a thriving railroad
+village. The new "dépôt," the smartly-painted pine houses, the spacious
+brick hotel, the white meeting-house, and the row of youthful and leggy
+trees before it, _are_ exhilarating. They speak of progress, and the
+time when there shall be a city, with a His Honor the Mayor, in the
+place of their trim but transient architectural growths. Pardon me, if
+I prefer the pyramids. They seem to me crystals formed from a stronger
+solution of humanity than the steeple of the new meeting-house. I may be
+wrong, but the Tiber has a voice for me, as it whispers to the piers of
+the Pons Aelius, even more full of meaning than my well-beloved Charles
+eddying round the piles of West Boston Bridge.
+
+Then, again, we Yankees are a kind of gypsies,--a mechanical and
+migratory race. A poet wants a home. He can dispense with an apple-parer
+and a reaping-machine. I feel this more for others than for myself, for
+the home of my birth and childhood has been as yet exempted from the
+change which has invaded almost everything around it.
+
+----Pardon me a short digression. To what small things our memory and
+our affections attach themselves! I remember, when I was a child, that
+one of the girls planted some Star-of-Bethlehem bulbs in the southwest
+corner of our front-yard. Well, I left the paternal roof and wandered in
+other lands, and learned to think in the words of strange people.
+But after many years, as I looked on the little front-yard again, it
+occurred to me that there used to be some Stars-of-Bethlehem in the
+southwest corner. The grass was tall there, and the blade of the plant
+is very much like grass, only thicker and glossier. Even as Tully
+parted the briers and brambles when he hunted for the sphere-containing
+cylinder that marked the grave of Archimedes, so did I comb the grass
+with my fingers for my monumental memorial-flower. Nature had stored my
+keepsake tenderly in her bosom; the glossy, faintly streaked blades were
+there; they are there still, though they never flower, darkened as they
+are by the shade of the elms and rooted in the matted turf.
+
+Our hearts are held down to our homes by innumerable fibres, trivial
+as that I have just recalled; but Gulliver was fixed to the soil, you
+remember, by pinning his head a hair at a time. Even a stone with a
+white band crossing it, belonging to the pavement of the back-yard,
+insisted on becoming one of the talismans of memory. This
+intussusception of the ideas of inanimate objects, and their faithful
+storing away among the sentiments, are curiously prefigured in the
+material structure of the thinking centre itself. In the very core of
+the brain, in the part where Des Cartes placed the soul, is a small
+mineral deposit, consisting, as I have seen it in the microscope, of
+grape-like masses of crystalline matter.
+
+But the plants that come up every year in the same place, like the
+Stars-of-Bethlehem, of all the lesser objects, give me the liveliest
+home-feeling. Close to our ancient gambrel-roofed house is the dwelling
+of pleasant old Neighbor Walrus. I remember the sweet honeysuckle that I
+saw in flower against the wall of his house a few months ago, as long
+as I remember the sky and stars. That clump of peonies, butting their
+purple heads through the soil every spring in just the same circle, and
+by-and-by unpacking their hard balls of buds in flowers big enough
+to make a double handful of leaves, has come up in just that place,
+Neighbor Walrus tells me, for more years than I have passed on this
+planet. It is a rare privilege in our nomadic state to find the home of
+one's childhood and its immediate neighborhood thus unchanged. Many born
+poets, I am afraid, flower poorly in song, or not at all, because they
+have been too often transplanted.
+
+Then a good many of our race are very hard and unimaginative;--their
+voices have nothing caressing; their movements are as of machinery,
+without elasticity or oil. I wish it were fair to print a letter a young
+girl, about the age of our Iris, wrote a short time since. "I am *** ***
+***," she says, and tells her whole name outright. Ah!--said I, when I
+read that first frank declaration,--you are one of the right sort!--She
+was. A winged creature among close-clipped barn-door fowl. How tired the
+poor girl was of the dull life about her,--the old woman's "skeleton hand"
+at the window opposite, drawing her curtains,--"Ma'am----_shooing_ away
+the hens,"--the vacuous country eyes staring at her as only country eyes
+can stare,--a routine of mechanical duties,--and the soul's half-
+articulated cry for sympathy, without an answer! Yes,--pray for her, and
+for all such! Faith often cures their longings; but it is so hard to give
+a soul to heaven that has not first been trained in the fullest and
+sweetest human affections! Too often they fling their hearts away on
+unworthy objects. Too often they pine in a secret discontent, which
+spreads its leaden cloud over the morning of their youth. The immeasurable
+distance between one of these delicate natures and the average youths
+among whom is like to be her only choice makes one's heart ache. How many
+women are born too finely organized in sense and soul for the highway they
+must walk with feet unshod! Life is adjusted to the wants of the stronger
+sex. There are plenty of torrents to be crossed in its journey; but their
+stepping-stones are measured by the stride of man, and not of woman.
+
+Women are more subject than men to _atrophy of the heart_. So says the
+great medical authority, Laennec. Incurable cases of this kind used
+to find their hospitals in convents. We have the disease in New
+England,--but not the hospitals. I don't like to think of it. I will not
+believe our young Iris is going to die out in this way. Providence will
+find her some great happiness, or affliction, or duty,--and which would
+be best for her, I cannot tell. One thing is sure: the interest she
+takes in her little neighbor is getting to be more engrossing than ever.
+Something is the matter with him, and she knows it, and I think worries
+herself about it. I wonder sometimes how so fragile and distorted a
+frame has kept the fiery spirit that inhabits it so long its tenant. He
+accounts for it in his own way.
+
+The air of the Old World is good for nothing,--he said, one day.--Used
+up, Sir,--breathed over and over again. You must come to this side, Sir,
+for an atmosphere fit to breathe nowadays. Did not old Josselyn say that
+a breath of New England's air is better than a sup of Old England's ale?
+I ought to have died when I was a boy, Sir; but I couldn't die in this
+Boston air,--and I think I shall have to go to New York one of these
+days, when it's time for me to drop this bundle,--or to New Orleans,
+where they have the yellow fever,--or to Philadelphia, where they have
+so many doctors.
+
+This was some time ago; but of late he has seemed, as I have before
+said, to be ailing. An experienced eye, such as I think I may call mine,
+can tell commonly whether a man is going to die, or not, long before he
+or his friends are alarmed about him. I don't like it.
+
+Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her
+family, and that she is afraid she has it. Those who are so endowed
+look upon a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him. According to the
+degree to which it covers him, his death will be near or more remote. It
+is an awful faculty; but science gives one too much like it. Luckily
+for our friends, most of us who have the scientific second-sight school
+ourselves not to betray our knowledge by word or look.
+
+Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me
+that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over
+his countenance. Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid
+she is under in the wrestling-match. You do not care much, perhaps, for
+my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty. I should
+say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and
+certain other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that
+his heart was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to the _right_
+side, as if there were the centre of his uneasiness.
+
+When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those
+sentimental maladies of that organ which figure more largely in romances
+than on the returns which furnish our Bills of Mortality. I mean some
+actual change in the organ itself, which may carry him off by slow and
+painful degrees, or strike him down with one huge pang and only time
+for a single shriek,--as when the shot broke through the brave Captain
+Nolan's breast, at the head of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and with
+a loud cry he dropped dead from his saddle.
+
+I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to
+some who were entitled to be warned. The landlady's face fell when I
+mentioned my fears.
+
+Poor man!--she said.--And will leave the best room empty! Hasn't he got
+any sisters or nieces or anybody to see to his things, if he should be
+took away? Such a sight of cases, full of everything! Never thought
+of his failin' so suddin. A complication of diseases, she expected.
+Liver-complaint one of 'em?
+
+After this first involuntary expression of the too natural selfish
+feelings, (which we must not judge very harshly, unless we happen to
+be poor widows ourselves, with children to keep filled, covered, and
+taught,--rents high,--beef eighteen to twenty cents per pound,)--after
+this first squeak of selfishness, followed by a brief movement of
+curiosity, so invariable in mature females, as to the nature of the
+complaint which threatens the life of a friend or any person who may
+happen to be mentioned as ill,--the worthy soul's better feelings
+struggled up to the surface, and she grieved for the doomed invalid,
+until a tear or two came forth and found their way down a channel worn
+for them since the early days of her widowhood.
+
+Oh, this dreadful, dreadful business of being the prophet of evil! Of
+all the trials which those who take charge of others' health and lives
+have to undergo, this is the most painful. It is all so plain to the
+practised eye!--and there is the poor wife, the doting mother, who has
+never suspected anything, or at least has clung always to the hope which
+you are just going to wrench away from her!--I must tell Iris that I
+think her poor friend is in a precarious state. She seems nearer to him
+than anybody.
+
+I did tell her. Whatever emotion it produced, she kept a still face,
+except, perhaps, a little trembling of the lip.--Could I be certain that
+there was any mortal complaint?--Why, no, I could not be certain; but it
+looked alarming to me.--He shall have some of my life,--she said.
+
+I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, of a kind of magnetic power
+she could give out;--at any rate, I cannot help thinking she _wills_ her
+strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that
+day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may
+have been a whim, very probably.
+
+One day she came suddenly to me, looking deadly pale. Her lips moved,
+as if she were speaking; but I could not hear a word. Her hair looked
+strangely, as if lifting itself, and her eyes were full of wild light.
+She sunk upon a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her
+trances. Something had frozen her blood with fear; I thought, from
+what she said, half audibly, that she believed she had seen a shrouded
+figure.
+
+That night, at about eleven o'clock, I was sent for to see the Little
+Gentleman, who was taken suddenly ill. Bridget, the servant, went before
+me with a light. The doors were both unfastened, and I found myself
+ushered, without hindrance, into the dim light of the mysterious
+apartment I had so longed to enter.
+
+I found these stanzas in the young girl's book, among many others. I
+give them as characterizing the tone of her sadder moments.
+
+
+  UNDER THE VIOLETS.
+
+  Her hands are cold; her face is white;
+  No more her pulses come and go;
+  Her eyes are shut to life and light;--
+  Fold the white vesture, snow on snow.
+  And lay her where the violets blow.
+
+  But not beneath a graven stone,
+  To plead for tears with alien eyes:
+  A slender cross of wood alone
+  Shall say, that here a maiden lies
+  In peace beneath the peaceful skies.
+
+  And gray old trees of hugest limb
+  Shall wheel their circling shadows round
+  To make the scorching sunlight dim
+  That drinks the greenness from the ground,
+  And drop their dead leaves on her mound.
+
+  When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
+  And through their leaves the robins call,
+  And, ripening in the autumn sun,
+  The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
+  Doubt not that she will heed them all.
+
+  For her the morning choir shall sing
+  Its matins from the branches high,
+  And every minstrel-voice of spring,
+  That trills beneath the April sky,
+  Shall greet her with its earliest cry.
+
+  When, turning round their dial-track,
+  Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
+  Her little mourners, clad in black,
+  The crickets, sliding through the grass,
+  Shall pipe for her an evening mass.
+
+  At last the rootlets of the trees
+  Shall find the prison where she lies,
+  And bear the buried dust they seize
+  In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
+  So may the soul that warmed it rise!
+
+  If any, born of kindlier blood,
+  Should ask, What maiden lies below?
+  Say only this: A tender bud,
+  That tried to blossom in the snow,
+  Lies withered where the violets blow.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+_The Collier-folio Shakespeare._ Is it an imposture?
+
+When the Lady Bab of "High Life below Stairs," having laid the
+forgetfulness which causes her tardy appearance at the elegant
+entertainment given in Mr. Lovel's servant's hall to the fascination of
+her favorite author, "Shikspur," is asked, "Who wrote Shikspur?" she
+replies, with that promptness which shows complete mastery of a subject,
+"Ben Jonson." In later days, another lady has, with greater prolixity,
+it is true, but hardly less confidence, and, it must be confessed, equal
+reason, answered to the same query, "Francis Bacon." This question must,
+then, be regarded as still open to discussion; but, assuming, for the
+nonce, that the Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies in a certain folio
+volume published at London in 1623 were written by William Shakespeare,
+gentleman, sometime actor at the Black Friars Theatre and a principal
+proprietor therein, we apply ourselves to the brief examination of
+another, somewhat related to it, and at least as complicated:--the
+question as to the authorship of certain marginal manuscript readings in
+a copy of a later folio edition of the same works,--that published in
+1632,--which readings Mr. Payne Collier discovered and brought before
+the world with all the weight of his reputation and influence in favor
+of their authority and value. We write for those who are somewhat
+interested in this subject, and must assume that our readers are not
+entirely without information upon it; but it is desirable, if not
+necessary, that in the beginning we should call to mind the following
+dates and circumstances.
+
+According to Mr. Collier's account, this folio was bought by him "in the
+spring of 1849," of Mr. Thomas Rodd, an antiquarian bookseller, well
+known in London. For a year and more he hardly looked at it; but his
+attention being directed particularly to it as he was packing it away to
+be taken into the country, he found that "there was hardly a page which
+did not represent, _in a handwriting of the time_, some emendations in
+the pointing or in the text." He then subjected it to "a most careful
+scrutiny," and became convinced of the great value of its manuscript
+readings. He talked about it to his literary friends, and took it to a
+meeting of the Council of the Shakespeare Society, and to two or three
+meetings of the Society of Antiquaries, as we know by the reports of
+those meetings in the London "Times." He wrote letters in the summer
+of 1852 to the London "Athenaeum," setting forth the character of the
+volume, and giving some of its most noteworthy changes of Shakespeare's
+text. He published, at last, in 1853, his volume of "Notes and
+Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays from _Early Manuscript
+Corrections_ in a Copy of the Folio of 1632," etc.; and in 1854,
+he published an edition of Shakespeare, in the text of which these
+manuscript readings were embodied. In 1856, he added to a Shakespearian
+volume a "List of all the Emendations" in his folio, remarking in the
+preface to the book, (p. lxxix.,) that he had "_often gone over_ the
+thousands of marks of all kinds in its [the folio's] margins," and
+that, for the purpose of making the list in question, he had "recently
+_reëxamined every line and letter_ of the folio." He had previously
+printed for private circulation a few fac-simile copies of eighteen
+corrected passages in the folio; and with the volume last mentioned, his
+publications, and, we believe, all others,--of which more anon,--upon
+the subject, ceased. Mr. Collier, it should be borne in mind, has been
+for forty years a professed student of Elizabethan literature, and is a
+man of hitherto unquestioned honor.
+
+But he is now upon trial. Certain officers of the British Museum, among
+them men of high professional reputation and personal standing, men who
+occupy, and who confess that they occupy, "a judicial position" on such
+questions, charge, after careful investigation, that a great fraud has
+been committed in this folio; that its marginal readings, instead of
+being as old as they seem, and as Mr. Collier has asserted them to be,
+are modern fabrications, and that, consequently, Mr. Collier is either
+an impostor or a dupe. The charge is not a new one. The weight that
+it carries, and the impression that it has produced, are owing to the
+position of the men who make it, and the evidence which they have
+published in its support. It was made, however, six years ago,--but
+vaguely. For, although there was on every side a disposition to welcome
+with all heartiness the manuscript readings, the antiquity and value of
+which Mr. Collier had so positively announced, the poetic sense of the
+world recoiled from the mass of them when they appeared; and although a
+few, a very few, of the readings peculiar to this folio were accepted
+by Shakespearian editors and commentators, they were opposed as a whole
+with determination, and in one or two instances with unbecoming heat, by
+Mr. Collier's fellow-laborers. Prominent among these was Mr. Singer, a
+man of moderate capacity and undisciplined powers, but extensive reading
+in early English literature,--known, too, for the bitterness with
+which he habitually wrote. In opposing Mr. Collier's folio, he did not
+hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition.
+But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences
+between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural
+readings of the editors and critics of the last century,--coincidences
+which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of
+the noticeable changes in the folio,--he failed to accomplish his
+conservative purpose at the expense of Mr. Collier's reputation. But
+although this insinuation of the spurious character Of the writing in
+Mr. Collier's folio fell to the ground, such antiquity as would give
+its readings the consequence due to their having been introduced by a
+contemporary of Shakespeare was shown not to pertain to them, in the
+course of two articles which appeared in "Putnam's Magazine" for October
+and November, 1853, and which, it may be as well to say, were from the
+same hand that writes this reference to them. They effected this by
+exhibiting the corrector's ignorance of the meaning of words in common
+use twenty years after Shakespeare's death, and his introduction of
+stage directions which could not have been complied with until half a
+century after that event, and which were at variance with the very text
+itself to which they were applied. That the argument which they embodied
+was conclusive has been admitted by all the English editors and
+commentators, including even Mr. Collier himself. But this conclusion
+only brought down the date of these marginal readings to a period
+somewhat later than the Restoration of the British Monarchy, and it
+did not put in question the good faith either of their author or their
+discoverer.
+
+The attack now made upon them is directed solely against their
+genuineness, and is based altogether upon external, or, we may properly
+say, physical evidence. The accusers are Mr. N.E.S.A. Hamilton, an
+assistant in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, (whose
+chief, Sir Frederick Madden, the Keeper of that Department, is
+understood to support him,) and Mr. Nevil Story Maskelyne, Keeper of
+the Mineraloglcal Department. Of the alphabetical Mr. Hamilton we know
+something. He is one of the ablest palaeographists of his years in
+England, and the possessor of a pair of eyes of such microscopic
+powers that he can decipher manuscript which to ordinary sight seems
+obliterated by time, or even fire: a man of worth, too, as we hear, and
+one who has borne himself in this affair with mingled confidence and
+modesty. He says, that, of the corrections originally made on the
+margins of this folio, the number which have been wholly or partially
+"obliterated.....with a penknife or the employment of chymical agency"
+"are almost as numerous as those suffered to remain"; that, of the
+corrections allowed to stand, many have been "tampered with, touched
+up, or painted over, a modern character being dexterously altered, by
+touches of the pen, into a more antique form"; and that the margins are
+"covered with an infinite number of faint pencil-marks, in obedience to
+which the supposed old corrector has made his emendations"; and that
+these pencilled memorandums "have not even the pretence of antiquity in
+character or spelling, but are written in a bold hand of the present
+century"; and with regard to the incongruities of spelling, he
+especially mentions the instances, "'body,' 'offals,' in pencil,
+'bodie,' 'offals,' in ink."
+
+Mr. Maskelyne, having examined many of the margins of the folio with the
+microscope, confirms entirely the evidence of Mr. Hamilton's eyes. He
+found the pencilled memorandums "plentifully distributed down the
+margins," and "the particles of plumbago in the hollows of the paper" in
+every instance that he has examined. He found, also, that what seems
+to be ink is not ink, but "a paint, removable, with the exception of a
+slight stain, by mere water,"--which "paint, formed perhaps of sepia,"
+would enable an impostor, it need hardly be observed, to simulate ink
+faded by time; and in several cases in which "the ink word, in a quaint,
+antique-looking writing, and the pencil word, in a modern-looking hand,
+occupy the same ground, and are one over the other," the pencil-marks
+being obscured or obliterated, Mr. Maskelyne found, on washing off the
+ink, that at first "the pencil-marks became much plainer than before,
+and even when as much of the ink-stain as possible was removed, the
+pencil still runs through the ink line in unbroken, even continuity."
+These points established, Mr. Maskelyne's conclusion, that in the
+examples which he tested "the pencil underlies the ink, that is to say,
+was antecedent to it in its date," is unavoidable. But does it follow
+upon this conclusion that the manuscript changes in the readings of this
+folio are of spurious and modern date,--made, for instance, within the
+last fifty years, and with the intention of deceiving the world as to
+their age? Perhaps; but, for reasons which we are about to give, we
+venture to think, not certainly.
+
+First, however, as to the very delicate and unpleasant position in which
+Mr. Collier is placed by these discoveries. For, although the age of the
+manuscript readings of his folio must be fixed by that of the pencilled
+memorandums over which they are written, the question as to whether he
+has not been uncandid or unwise enough to suppress an important part
+of the truth in describing that volume is entirely independent of this
+problem in paleography. For these numberless partially erased pencilled
+memorandums, to which Mr. Collier has made no allusion whatever, must
+have been written upon the margins of that folio either before Mr.
+Collier bought it, in the spring of 1849, or since. If before, is it
+possible that he could have subjected it to "a most careful scrutiny" in
+1850, that he could have studied it for three years for the purpose of
+preparing his "Notes and Emendations,"--an octavo volume of five hundred
+pages,--which appeared in 1853, and that after having, for various
+purposes, "often gone over the thousands of marks _of all kinds_" on
+its margins, he could again, after the lapse of three years more, have
+"reëxamined every line and letter" on those margins for the purpose of
+making the list of the readings which he published in 1856, without
+having discovered, in the course of all this close scrutiny, extending
+through so many years, the pencil-marks which at once became visible
+when the volume went to the British Museum? And if these pencil-marks,
+that underlie the simulated ink corrections, were made after the spring
+of 1849----! Here is a dilemma, either horn of which has a very ugly
+look.
+
+But out of this trial we hope, nay, we confidently believe, that Mr.
+Collier will come unscathed. We hope it for the sake of the profession
+of literature,--for the sake of one who has been honorably known among
+men of letters for almost half a century, and who has borne into the
+vale of years a hitherto untarnished name. We believe it, because a
+contrary supposition would be entirely at variance with Mr. Collier's
+conduct about this folio ever since his first announcement of its
+discovery. It is true, that, in the course of the controversy which the
+publication of his "Notes and Emendations" inevitably brought upon him,
+Mr. Collier has not always shown that delicacy and consideration for
+candid opponents which he could have afforded to show, and which would
+have sat so gracefully upon him. It is true, that, in noticing, and,
+in his enthusiastic partiality, much exaggerating, the admissions of a
+volume in which, as he must have seen, he was first defended against Mr.
+Singer's repeated insinuations of forgery, [Footnote: See _Shakespeare's
+Scholar_, p. 71.] and in availing himself again and again of those not
+always discreet admissions, he was uncourteous enough not to mention the
+name even of the work in question, not to say that of its author. It
+is true, that, on the appearance of an edition of Shakespeare's Works
+edited by the author of that volume, he hastened to accuse him publicly
+of misrepresentation, unwarily admitting at the same time that he did so
+upon a mere glance at the book, and before he had even "cut it open,"
+and, in his haste, causing his accusation to recoil upon his own
+head.[1] [Footnote 1: See the London _Athenaeum_, of Nov. 20th, 1858,
+and Jan. 8th, 1859.] It is true, that, when, in his recent edition of
+Shakespeare's Works,[2] [Footnote 2: London, 1858, Vol. II, p. 181.]
+he abandoned one of the readings of his folio, ("she discourses, she
+_craves_," Merry Wives, I. 3,) which the same opponent had been the
+first to show not only untenable, but fatal to the authority and
+antiquity of the readings of that volume, he requited that opponent's
+defence of him by attributing his defeat on this point to an English
+editor, who only quoted the passage in question from "Shakespeare's
+Scholar," and with special mention of its authorship and its
+importance,[3] [Footnote 3: Rimbault's Edition of Overbury's Works,
+London, 1856, p. 50.]
+
+Under the present circumstances, it may be well to let the reader see
+for himself exactly what Mr. Collier's course was in this little affair.
+Dr. Rimbault's note, published in 1856, is as follows:--
+
+(-----"_her wrie little finger bewraies carving_, etc.) The passage in
+the text sufficiently shows that _carving_ was a sign of intelligence
+made with the little finger, as the glass was raised to the mouth. See
+the prefatory letter to Mr. R. G. White's _Shakespeare's Scholar_,
+8vo., New York, 1854, p. xxxiii. Mr. Hunter (_New Illustrations of
+Shakespeare_, i. 215), Mr. Dyce (_A Few Notes on Shakespeare_, 1853, p.
+18), and Mr. Mitford (_Cursory Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher_, etc.,
+1856, p. 40), were unacquainted with this valuable illustration of a
+Shakespearian word given by Overbury."
+
+And yet Mr. Collier, with this note before him, as it will be seen,
+could write as follows:--
+
+"The Rev. Mr. Dyce ('Few Notes,' p. 18) and the Rev. Mr. Hunter ('New
+Illustrations,' i. p. 215) both adduce quotations [as to 'carves'], but
+they have missed the most apposite, _pointed out by Dr. Rimbault_ in his
+edition of Sir Thomas Overbury's Works, 8vo., 1856, p. 50."
+
+The reader cannot estimate more lightly than we do the credit which Mr.
+Collier thought of consequence enough for him to do an unhandsome, not
+to say dishonorable, act to deprive an opponent of it. By referring to
+White's edition of Shakespeare, Vol. II. p. lx., another instance may be
+found of the same discourtesy on the part of Mr. Collier to Chalmers,
+with regard to a matter yet more trifling.] and that he thereby
+subjected himself self to open rebuke in his own country;[4] [Footnote
+4: See Dyce's _Strictures_ etc., 1859, p. 28.] and he found, we suppose,
+his justification for this course in his seniority and his opponent's
+place of nativity. It is true, also, that, in the recently published
+edition of Shakespeare's Works, just alluded to, he has vengefully
+revived, in its worst form, the animosity which disgraced the pages of
+the editors and commentators of the last century, and has attacked the
+most eminent of critical English scholars, the Rev. Alexander Dyce,
+throughout that edition, bitterly and incessantly,[5] [Footnote 5: See
+the edition _passim_.] and also unfairly and upon forced occasion,
+as Mr. Dyce has conclusively shown, in a volume,[6] [Footnote 6:
+_Strictures on Collier's Shakespeare_, London, 1859.] the appearance of
+which from the pen of a man of Mr. Dyce's character and position we yet
+cannot but deplore, great as the provocation was. Mr. Collier has done
+these things, which would not be tolerated among such men of letters in
+America as are also gentlemen; and he has also made statements about his
+folio which have been proved to be so inaccurate that it is clear that
+his memory is not to be trusted on that matter; but, in spite of all
+this, we neither will nor can believe, that, in his testimony as to the
+manner in which he became possessed of this celebrated volume, or in his
+description of its peculiarities, he has, with the intention to deceive,
+either suppressed the true or asserted the false. Since his first
+announcement of the discovery of the manuscript readings in that volume,
+he has had no concealments about it; he has shown it freely to the very
+persons who would be most likely to detect a literary imposition; he has
+told all, and more than all, that he could have been expected to tell
+about it; he has left no stone unturned in his endeavor to trace its
+history; and, after finally putting all of its manuscript readings upon
+record, and confessing frankly that he had been in error with regard
+to some of them, and that there are many of them which are
+"innovations,--changes which had crept in from time to time, [upon
+the stage,] to make sense out of difficult passages, but which do not
+represent the authentic text of Shakespeare," he gives the volume away
+to the Duke of Devonshire, the owner of one of the most celebrated
+dramatic libraries in England, on whose shelves he knew it would be
+almost as subject to close examination as on those of the British
+Museum. This is not the conduct of a literary forger in regard to the
+enduring witness of his forgery; and we may be sure, that, unless
+practice has made him reckless, and he is the very Merdle of Elizabethan
+scholarship, Mr. Collier has been in this matter as loyal as he has
+seemed to be.
+
+But is the charge of forgery made out? It would seem that it is,--that
+the discovery of pencilled memorandums in a modern hand and in modern
+spelling, over which the readings in ink are written in an antique hand
+and antique spelling, leaves no doubt upon the question. Yet, assuming
+all that is charged at the British Museum to be established, we venture
+to withhold our assent from the conclusion of forgery against all the
+readings in question until the evidence in the case has been more
+thoroughly sifted. Our reasons we must state briefly; and they can as
+well be appreciated from a brief as a detailed statement.
+
+And first, as to the "modern-looking hand" of the pencil-marks over
+which the "antique-looking writing" in ink is found. All the writing
+of even the early part of the seventeenth century was not done in the
+quaint, and, to us, strange and elaborate-seeming hand, sometimes called
+old chancery hand, specimens of which may be seen on the fac-simile
+published with Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations." This
+modern-looking hand, in which the pencil-marks appear, we venture to say
+may be that of a writer who lived long before the date (1632) of the
+volume on which his traces have been discovered, In support of this
+supposition, we might produce hundreds of instances within our reach.
+We must confine ourselves to one; and that, though somewhat more modern
+than others that we could produce, shall be from a volume easily
+accessible and well known to all Shakespearian scholars, and which
+naturally came before us in connection with our present subject. In
+Malone's "Inquiry, etc., into the Ireland Shakespeare Forgeries"
+(London: 8vo. 1796) are two fac-similes (Plate III.) of parts of
+letters from Shakespeare's friend, the Earl of Southampton. From the
+superscription to one of them, written in 1621 to the Lord-Keeper
+Williams, and preserved among the Harleian MSS., we give in fac-simile
+the following words:--
+
+[Illustration: script text which reads "the right honorable"]
+
+We select these words only because they happen to contain six of
+the letters most characteristic of the antique chancery hand of the
+seventeenth century,--_t_, _h_, _e_, _r_, _g_, and _b_,--within a space
+suited to the columns for which we write. The words themselves need none
+of ours added to them to set forth their modern look. They might have
+been written yesterday. The further to enforce our point, we add a
+fac-simile of some writing of forty years' later date. It is in a copy
+in our possession of Simon Lennard's translation of Charron "De la
+Sagesse," which (the translation) was not published until 1658. On an
+original fly-leaf, and evidently after the book had been subjected to
+some years' hard usage, an early possessor of the volume has entered his
+week's washing-account, in a hand of which the words following the date
+afford a fair specimen.
+
+[Illustration: script text which is illegible]
+
+Probably not many readers of the "Atlantic" can decipher the whole of
+this, although it is very neat, clear, and elegant. It is "Cloathes: 1.
+shirt"; [Footnote: This memorandum is characteristic. In full it is as
+follows:--
+
+"Sept: the 9th: Cloathes: 1. Shirt: 3: bands: 8 handkecheirfs: 4
+neckcloaths: 7: pa: cuffs: 1. bootes tops: 1 cap: an old towell: a
+Napkin."
+
+The writer was evidently young, poor, and a dandy. His youth is shown
+by his wearing neckcloths, which were a new and youthful fashion at
+the date of this memorandum; his dandyism, by the number of his
+handkerchiefs, (a luxury in those days,) and of his cuffs, which answer
+to our wristbands, and by his lace boot-tops; his poverty, by his
+wearing three bands, four neckcloths, and seven pair of cuffs (probably
+one a day for the week) to one shirt. His having, in respect to the last
+garment, was probably like Poins'] and if the reader [Footnote: "one
+for superfluity and one other for use." The cap was probably that which
+he wore when he laid aside his wig. His hose, of colored silk, probably
+made only "semi-occasional" visits to the laundress.]
+
+will examine the fac-simile in Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations," he
+will find that it is even older in appearance than the marginal readings
+there given. Clearly, then, if the pencil memorandums on the margins of
+the Collier folio had been made by a person who wrote as the Earl of
+Southampton (born in 1573) did in the first quarter of the seventeenth
+century, and the ink readings were made to conform to them by a person
+who wrote as the profaner of Charron's "Wisdome" with his washing-bill
+did in the third quarter of that century, the pencilled guide would
+be "modern-looking," and the reading in ink written over it
+"antique-looking," although the former might have been half a century
+older than the latter. And that both pencil and ink readings are by the
+same hand remains to be proved. The presumption in our own mind is, that
+they are not. The margins of this folio, on the evidence of all who have
+examined it, Mr. Collier included, are full of proofs that there were
+many doubts and conjectures in the mind of its corrector, (shown by
+erasures, reinsertions, and change of manuscript readings,) before the
+work on it was abandoned; and is it not quite probable that some person
+who was or had been connected with the theatre made memoranda of such
+changes in the text as his memory suggested to him, and that these were
+passed upon (it is in evidence that some of them wore rejected) by the
+person who had undertaken to prepare the text for a new edition, or
+the performance of the plays by a new company? That even all the ink
+readings are by the same hand has not yet been established; and that
+the writing in pencil and that in ink are by one person is yet more
+uncertain. It is, in our opinion, more than doubtful. To assume it is to
+beg the question.
+
+Next, as to the suspicious circumstance, that the pencil spelling is in
+some places modern, while that of the ink reading is old; as "body" in
+pencil, and "bodie" in ink. We wonder that such a fact was noticed by
+a man of Mr. Hamilton's knowledge; for it can be easily set aside; or
+rather, it need not be regarded, because there is nothing suspicious
+about it. For the spelling of the seventeenth century, like its syntax
+and its pronunciation, was irregular; and the fatal error of those
+who attempt to imitate it is that they always use double consonants,
+superfluous final e-s, and _ie_ for _y_. And even supposing that these
+pencilled words and the words in ink were written by the same person,
+the fact that the word, when written in pencil, is spelled with a _y_ or
+a single _l_, when written in ink with _ie_ or double _l_, is of not the
+least consequence. This will be made clear to those who do not already
+know it, by the following instances (the like of which might be produced
+by tens of thousands,) from "Euphues his England," ed. 1597, which
+happened to lie on our table when we read Mr. Hamilton's first letter.
+"For that _Honnie_ taken excessiuelie, cloyeth the stomacke though it be
+_Honny_." (Sig. Aa3.) In this instance, "honey," spelled first in the
+old way, as to the last vowel sound, on its repetition, in the same
+sentence, is spelled in what is called the new way; but in the example
+which follows, the word "folly," which appears first as a catchword
+at the bottom of the page in modern spelling, is found in the ancient
+spelling on the turning of the leaf: "Things that are commonlie knowne
+it were foll_y_ foll_ie_ to repeate." (Sig. Aa.) English scholars may
+smile at the citation of passages to establish such a point; but we are
+writing for those who are too wise to read old books, and who have their
+English study done, as the Turk would have had his dancing, by others
+for them. And besides, Mr. Hamilton has shown that even an English
+professor of antiquarian literature can forget the point, or at least
+not see its bearing on the subject in hand.
+
+The modern-looking hand and the modern spelling of the pencilled
+memorandums do not, then, compel the conclusion that there has been
+forgery, even although they underlie the antique-looking hand and the
+old spelling; but let us see if there is not other evidence to be taken
+into consideration. We have before us the privately-printed fac-similes
+of the eighteen passages in Mr. Collier's folio, above referred to.
+Perhaps they may help us to judge if the corrector's work is like that
+of a forger. From the first we take these four lines [_Tempest_, Act I,
+  Sc. 2];--"Lend thy hand
+  And plueke my Magick garment from me: So [Sidenote: _Lay it downe._]
+  Lye there my Art: wipe thou thine eyes, have comfort,
+  The direfull spectacle," etc.
+
+In those lines, the corrector, beside supplying the stage direction _Lay
+it downe_, has added a comma after "hand," substituted a period for the
+colon after "Art," and a capital for a small _w_ in "wipe." Would
+a forger do such minute and needless work as this, and do it so
+carelessly, too, as this one did? for, to make the colon a period, he
+merely strikes his pen lightly through the upper point; and, to make the
+small _w_ a capital, he merely lengthens its lines upward.
+
+In the passage from "The Taming of the Shrew," we see, what Mr. Collier
+himself notices in his "Notes and Emendations," that the prefix to the
+tinker's speeches, which in the folios is invariably _Beg._ [Beggar],
+is changed to _Sly;_ and this is done in every instance. We have not
+counted _Sly's_ speeches; but they are numerous enough to force the
+unanswerable question, With what possible purpose could this task
+have been undertaken by a forger? for the change adds nothing to our
+knowledge of the interlocutors, and produces no variation in the
+reading.
+
+In a passage given from "The Winter's Tale," Act IV. Sc. 3, we find
+these lines:--
+
+  "_Pol._ This is the pettiest Low-borne Lasse, that ever,
+  Ran on the greene-sord: Nothing she do's _or seemes,_"--
+
+where "seems" is changed to "says," by striking out all but the first
+and last letters, and writing _ay_ in the margin. In a passage given
+from "Troilus and Cressida," Act V. Sc. 2, we have this line:--
+
+  "Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloathes,"--
+
+where the _a_ in the last word is struck out. In a speech of the Moor's,
+given from "Othello," Act IV. Sc. 1, we notice this sentence:--
+
+  "It is not words that shakes me thus, (pish)."
+
+where the final _s_ is struck from "shakes." This is strange work for a
+forger of antique readings, a man who is supposed to be detected at his
+work by writing "bodie" in ink, when his pencil memorandum was "body."
+For, in these instances, he has _modernized the text_, and, except in
+the first, that is _all_ that he has done. If he had wished his text to
+look old, he would have left the last _e_ in "seemes," and read "sayes";
+he would not have been at the trouble of striking out the _a_ in
+"painted cloathes;" [Footnote: See As You Like It, in the folio of 1623,
+p. 196, col. 2, "I answer you right painted _cloath_," and Henry VIII.,
+_Idem_, p. 224, col. 2, "They that beare the _Cloath_ of Honour ouer
+her."] and he would have left the _s_ in "shakes," which superfluity is
+one of the most marked and best-known characteristics of English books
+published before the middle of the seventeenth century. Instances of
+this kind, in which a forger would have defeated his own purpose to gain
+nothing, must be countless upon the nine hundred and odd pages of the
+Collier folio, of which the eighteen fac-similes, from which we have
+quoted, do not give us as much as would fill a single page of the
+original.
+
+Again, we find the author of these manuscript readings scrupulously
+leaving a mark of the antiquity of his work, which we must regard as a
+mark of its genuineness. (For a man can blow hot and blow cold, though
+satyrs have not sense enough to see the right and the reason of it.) In
+a passage given from "Timon of Athens," Act IV. Sc. 2, the first line is
+
+  "Who _wou_ld be so mock'd with glory, or to live."
+
+Here, by a misprint both in the first and second folio, there is a
+syllable too much for rhythm; and the corrector properly abbreviates
+"Who would" into one syllable; but he does it, not by striking out all
+of "would" but the _d_, as a forger of modern days inevitably would
+have done: he scrupulously leaves the _l_, which was pronounced in
+Shakespeare's time, and for many years after; though this, we believe,
+was never remarked until the appearance of a work very recently
+published in this country!
+
+To revert to some of the aimless work of this supposed forger. There are
+many passages in the Collier folio, some of a few lines, others of many,
+which are entirely stricken out; and of these there is not one that we
+have noticed which it could possibly have been intended to represent as
+spurious. What was a forger to gain by this? It could but serve to throw
+discredit on his work. And again, in these erased passages, and on
+erasures for new readings, the verbal and literal changes are still
+made, and made, too, in points of not the slightest moment as to the
+text, and which, in fact, produce no change in it, Take this instance,
+in a passage given from "Hamlet," Act V. Sc. 2:--
+
+  "_Hora_. Now cracks a Noble heart:
+  Good night sweet Prience," etc.
+
+Here "sweet Prience" is struck out, and "be blest" substituted in the
+margin; but, previously to this change, the first e had been struck out
+in "Prience,"--a change of no more consequence than if the capital N
+in "Noble" had been changed to a small one. What, too, did the forger
+propose to gain by putting, at great pains to himself, commas, in
+passages like this, from "Timon of Athens," Act IV. Sc. 2:--
+
+  "To have his pompe, and all state comprehends,
+  But onely painted like his varnisht Friends"?
+
+where he inserts a comma after "painted," properly enough, but
+without at all changing the sense of the passage, or facilitating our
+comprehension of it in the slightest degree.
+
+But enough, although we leave much unsaid. For we think that our readers
+can hardly fail to conclude with us, that proof far stronger and more
+complete than the discovery of modern-looking pencil-marks under
+antique-looking words in ink is required to prove Mr. Collier's folio a
+fabrication of the present day. This external physical evidence is, to
+say the least, far from conclusive, even on its own grounds; and the
+internal moral evidence, ever the higher and the weightier in such
+questions, is all against it. The forgery may be proved hereafter; but
+it has not been proved yet. The character of the ink is not clearly
+established in all the readings which have thus far been submitted to
+experiment, as Mr. Maskelyne admits; and that question is still to be
+determined. We await with interest the appearance of a pamphlet upon the
+subject, which is now in preparation at the British Museum. Meantime,
+upon this brief examination of the subject in a light as new to us as
+to our readers, we venture to repeat the opinion which we have before
+expressed, that many, if not all, of the corrections in this folio were
+made in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The dropping of
+superfluous e-s, (as in "sayes,") and a-s, (as in "cloath,") and s-s,
+(as in "shakes,") points to as late a date as that; and the retention
+of the _l_ in the abbreviation of "would" indicates a period before the
+reign of William and Mary. We conjecture, that, possibly, some of the
+readings are spurious, and were added by a person who found the volume
+with many ancient corrections, and seized the opportunity to obtain the
+authority of age and the support of those corrections for others of
+later date. This, however, is but a conjecture, and upon a point of
+little consequence. Indeed, the chief importance of this investigation
+at the British Museum, to all the world but Mr. Collier, is, that,
+whether the pencil-marks, which the corrector chose in some cases to
+follow, in others to disregard, prove to be ancient or modern, the
+corrections are now deprived of all pretence to authority, and thrown
+upon their own merits; which is just the position in which all candid
+people desire to see them.
+
+
+
+
+_The Exploits and Triumphs in Europe of Paul Morphy, the Chess
+Champion_; including an Historical Account of Clubs, Biographical
+Sketches of Famous Players, and Various Information and Anecdote
+relating to the Noble Game of Chess. By Paul Morphy's late Secretary.
+New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 203.
+
+The American Chess Congress, at New York, in October, 1857, by
+the wide-spread interest which it awakened, revealed what was not very
+generally suspected,--that the game of chess is played and studied in
+the New World more generally, and on the present occasion, we may say
+more thoroughly and successfully, than in the Old. This interest in
+chess the subsequent career of Paul Morphy, the prime hero of that grand
+encounter, has greatly widened and deepened; and to all who had the
+chess-fever before his advent, or who have caught it since, this book
+will be welcome. It fulfils all the promises of its title-page, and
+tells the story of Paul Morphy's modestly achieved victories at home and
+abroad with authority and intimate knowledge. Chess-players, and all who
+take even an incidental interest in Mr. Morphy's adventures abroad,
+will be glad to find here a particular account of his engagements with
+Harrwitz, Anderssen, and especially of the match which he did not play
+with Mr. Stanton, and why he did not play it. The whole of the Stanton
+affair is recounted with much minuteness of date and circumstance, and a
+production of all the letters which passed upon the subject; and we must
+say, that upon the facts, (about which there appears to be no room for
+dispute,) aside from any color given to them by the writer's manner of
+stating them, the case has a very bad aspect for the English champion.
+How much better would Mr. Stanton now be standing before his brother
+chess-players, and, so much attention has the affair attracted, before
+the world, had he been fairly beaten, like Professor Anderssen! His
+reputation as a chess-player would have suffered no diminution by such
+a result of an encounter with Mr. Morphy; that would only have shown,
+that, well as Stanton played, Morphy played better,--as to which the
+world is as well satisfied now as then it would have been. And as to
+his reputation as a man,--what need to say a word about it? This
+chess-flurry has been fraught with good lessons by example. The
+frankness, the entire candor, and simple manliness of Professor
+Anderssen, who went from Breslau to Paris for the purpose of meeting
+Mr. Morphy and there contending for the belt of the chess-ring, and who
+played his games as if he and his opponent were two brothers, playing
+for a chance half-hour's amusement, is charming, and has won him regard
+the world over. Such generosity is truly noble, and it appears yet
+nobler by contrast with the endeavors of Harrwitz to worry and tire his
+opponent into defeat, and his final contrivance to avoid a confession
+that he was beaten. Mr. Stanton's conduct is a warning that cannot be
+entirely lost upon men not utterly depraved, who are tempted into
+petty duplicity to serve petty ends; and in the midst of all, how Paul
+Morphy's modesty, dignity of carriage, generosity, and entire honesty of
+purpose shine out and make us proud to call him countryman!
+
+Mr. Morphy, in the speeches which he has been compelled to make
+since his return from Europe, has spoken lightly of chess, as a mere
+amusement. It became him to do so; and yet chess would seem to have its
+value as a discipline upon natures amenable to discipline. We--that is,
+the present writer, not all the contributors to the "Atlantic"--sat by
+the side of Mr. Morphy when he won from Mr. Paulsen the decisive game at
+the Chess Tournament in New York,--that game in which all the others
+of that encounter culminated. The game was evidently approaching its
+termination. Mr. Paulsen, who generally thinks out to its last result
+his every move, deliberated half an hour and moved, and then, with a
+slight flush upon his face, sat quietly awaiting the consequences.
+Morphy, pale, collected, yet with a look of restrained--though entirely
+restrained--nervousness, looked steadily at the board for about one
+minute, after which his hand opened very far back, so that the knuckles
+were much the lowest part of it, poised over a piece for a second or
+two, and then swooped quickly down and moved it somewhat decidedly,
+which is his usual way of moving. He remained looking intently upon
+the board, which Paulsen studied for a few minutes, equally absorbed.
+Looking up at last, the latter quietly said to his opponent,--"I don't
+see how I can prevent the mate." Paul Morphy smiled, waved his hand
+deprecatingly, and the tournament was won. The checkmate was about five
+moves off, if we remember rightly. Restraint of this kind seems to be
+imposed by a thorough study of this noble game, and its moral discipline
+is quite as valuable as the sharpening of the intellectual faculties
+which it accompanies.
+
+But even those who have a sincere admiration of Mr. Morphy, and have a
+sufficient knowledge of chess to appreciate his absolute mastery of the
+game, must be unpleasantly affected by the public and extravagant manner
+in which he has been lionized since his return from Europe. It was well
+that the chess-players of New York should present him with a chessboard
+so splendid that he can never use it; well that the cleverest men in
+Boston should have him to dine with them; but what need of such blatant
+publicity? what justification for such interminable and such miserable
+speeches as were made at him in Gotham? Why did not one compliment in
+each town suffice? and why must he be persecuted with watches and run
+down by crowds? Why, except because some people are allowed to pamper
+their silly vanity by means of other people's silly curiosity? Good
+sense and good taste revolted at these exhibitions; but good sense and
+good taste are undemonstrative, while folly and vulgarity are bold and
+carry the day. In all such matters, we of this country allow ourselves
+to be misrepresented by a comparatively few impudent people, with their
+own ends to serve. This book is somewhat open to like objections. Its
+title is too pretentious; its style is braggart, and tainted with the
+vulgarity of an English flash reporter; and yet this is tempered by a
+certain constraint, as if the writer could not but occasionally think
+how ill such a style was suited to his subject. The portrait
+is wretched, and a certain likeness to Mr. Morphy adds to its
+offensiveness.
+
+
+
+_Summer Pictures_. From Copenhagen to Venice. By HENRY M. FIELD, Author
+of "The Irish Confederates and the Rebellion of 1798." New York:
+Sheldon, Blakeman & Co. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1859.
+
+The unpretending title to this neat volume expresses the modest purpose
+of the writer. Escaping from care and responsibility, he has made
+a rapid tour through parts of Europe, some of which are rarely
+frequented;--from London to Normandy; thence to Paris, Holland, Denmark;
+through the Baltic to Berlin, Dresden, Prague, and Vienna; thence to the
+Adriatic, Venice, Milan, and so round again to Paris.
+
+To see all this with new eyes, and to present the world with a perfectly
+fresh book of "Travels in Europe," requires a rare man and a rare
+audacity; and we congratulate Mr. Field that he has not attempted the
+doubtful task. But, in his rapid run, he has gathered a flower here, a
+specimen there, a bit of history, a sight of a man, a pebble from the
+Baltic, a moss from Venice, a sigh from the heart of Italy, a word of
+hope and happiness from the domestic life of France. He has seen the
+cloud rising in Italy, and ventures to hope, almost against possibility.
+He has seen the firesides and _homes_ of France, and assures us that in
+Paris, too, exist honest and warm and pure hearts, and generous and holy
+souls, and that all France is not a den in which liars and charlatans
+only struggle and tear one another. Mr. Field looks at things with
+somewhat of a professional eye, and draws what encouragement he can for
+the future of the Protestant religion. His facts and speculations will
+thus interest a large and valuable class of readers, while to some few
+of another class a certain suspicion of prosiness will be distasteful.
+The volume is well prepared, and we are sure that the manly, generous
+sentiments of the writer will be welcomed by a large number of personal
+friends, and by a discriminating public.
+
+
+
+_Adam Bede_. By GEORGE ELLIOT, Author of "Scenes of Clerical Life." New
+York: Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 496.
+
+As Nature will have it, Great Unknowns are out of the question in any
+other branch of the world's business than the writing of books. If,
+through sponsorial neglect or cruelty, the name of our butcher or baker
+or candlestick-maker happens to be John, with the further and congenial
+addition of Smith, JOHN SMITH it is on sign-board, pass book, and at the
+top, and sometimes at the bottom, of the monthly bills, in living and
+familiar characters. But in the matter of authorship, the world is yet
+far short of the Scriptural standard; in a variety of instances it has
+found itself unable to know men by their works; and, in deference to
+this short-sightedness of their fellows, merchants and lawyers and
+doctors have their cards, and clergymen, at least once in every
+twelvemonth, make the personal circuit of their congregations, so that
+no sheep shall wander into darkness through ignorance of the shepherd.
+We believe that no pursuit should be marked by greater frankness and
+fairness than the literary. It is a question, at least, of kindness; and
+it is not kind to set good people on an uneasy edge of curiosity; it is
+not kind to bring down upon the care-bowed heads of editors storms of
+communications, couched in terms of angry disputation; it is not kind to
+establish a perennial root of bitterness, to give an unhealthy flavor to
+the literary waters of unborn generations, as "Junius" did, and Scott
+would have done, had he been able.
+
+"Adam Bede" is remarkable, not less for the unaffected Saxon style which
+upholds the graceful fabric of the narrative, and for the naturalness of
+its scenes and characters, so that the reader at once feels happy and
+at home among them, than for the general perception of those universal
+springs of action which control all society, the patient unfolding of
+those traits of humanity with which commonplace writers get out of
+temper and rudely dispense. The place and the people are of the
+simplest, and the language is of the simplest; and what happens from day
+to day, and from year to year, in the period of the action, might happen
+in any little village where the sun shines.
+
+We do not know where to look, in the whole range of contemporary
+fictitious literature, for pictures in which the sober and the brilliant
+tones of Nature blend with more exquisite harmony than in those which
+are set in every chapter of "Adam Bede." Still life--the harvest-field,
+the polished kitchens, the dairies with a concentrated cool smell of all
+that is nourishing and sweet, the green, the porches that have vines
+about them and are pleasant late in the afternoon, and deep woods
+thrilling with birds--all these were never more vividly, and yet
+tenderly depicted. The characters are drawn with a free and impartial
+hand, and one of them is a creation for immortality. Mrs. Poyser is
+a woman with an incorrigible tongue, set firmly in opposition to the
+mandates of a heart the overflows of whose sympathy and love keep the
+circle of her influence in a state of continual irrigation. Her epigrams
+are aromatic, and she is strong in simile, but never ventures beyond her
+own depth into that of her author.
+
+
+
+_The Poetical Works of Edgar A. Poe._ With an Original Memoir. Redfield,
+New York.
+
+This pocket edition of the Poetical Works of Edgar A. Poe is illustrated
+with a very much idealized portrait of the author. The poems are
+introduced by an original memoir, which, without eulogy or anathema,
+gives a clear and succinct account of that singular and wayward genius.
+The copies of verses are many in number, and most of them are chiefly
+remarkable for their art, rather than for their power of awakening
+either pleasing or profound emotion. It is one poem alone which makes an
+edition of these works emphatically called for. That poem, it is nearly
+superfluous to mention, is "The Raven," and truly it is unforgetable.
+In this weird and wonderful creation, art holds equal dominion with
+feeling. The form not only never yields to the sweep of the thought, but
+that thought, touching and fearful as is its tone, is made to turn and
+double fantastically, almost playfully, in many of the lines. The croak
+of the raven is taken up and moulded into rhyme by a nimble, if not a
+mocking spirit; and, fascinating as is the rhythmic movement of the
+verse, it appears like the dancing of the daughter of Herodias. This
+looks incongruous; and so do the words of the fool which Shakspeare has
+intermingled with the agonies and imprecations of Lear. In the tragedy,
+this is held to be a consummate stroke of art, and certainly the reader
+is grateful for the relief. Had Poe a similar design? Closely analyzed,
+this song seems the very ecstasy of fancy; as if the haunting apparition
+inspired the poet more than it appalled the man. We can call to mind no
+one who has ever played with an inexplicable horror more daintily or
+more impressively; and, whether premeditated or spontaneous, it is
+an epitome of the life of the writer, for the marked traits of his
+character are there, and almost the prevailing expression of his . . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It becomes the sad duty of the editors of the "ATLANTIC" to record the
+death of its founder, MR. M.D. PHILLIPS. It indicates no ordinary force
+of character, that a man, dying at the age of forty-six, should have
+worked himself, solely by his own talents and integrity, to the head
+of one of the largest publishing-houses of the country. But it was
+not merely by strength and tenacity of purpose, and by clearness of
+judgment, that Mr. Phillips was distinguished. He had also a generous
+ambition, and aims which transcended the sphere of self and the limits
+of merely commercial success. Showing, as he did, a rare courage (and
+that of the best kind, for it was a courage based upon experience and
+qualified by discretion) in beginning the publication of the "Atlantic"
+during the very storm and stress of the financial revulsion of 1857, it
+was by no means as a mere business speculation that he undertook
+what seemed a doubtful enterprise. His wish and hope were, that the
+"Atlantic" should represent what was best in American thought and
+letters; and while he had no doubt of ultimate pecuniary profit, his
+chief motive was the praiseworthy ambition to associate his name with
+an undertaking which should result in some good to letters and some
+progress in ideas and principles which were dear to him.
+
+We speak of him as we saw him. He would not have wished a garrulous
+eulogy or a cumbrous epitaph. A character whose outline was simple
+and bold, and which was marked by certain leading and high qualities,
+demands few words, if only they be sincere. It is less painful to say
+that good word for the dead, which it is the instinct of human nature to
+offer, when we can say, as of Mr. Phillips, that his mind was strong and
+clear, that it was tenacious of experience, and therefore both rapid and
+safe in decision, that he was courageous and constant, and acted under
+the inspiration of desires and motives which he can carry with him into
+the new sphere to which he has passed.
+
+
+
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.
+
+Memoirs of Vidocq, the Principal Agent of the French Police. Written
+by Himself, and Translated from the Original French expressly for
+this Edition. With Illustrative Engravings from Original Designs by
+Cruikshank. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 580.
+$1.25.
+
+Sketches of Moravian Life and Character; comprising a General View of
+the History, Life, Character, and Religious and Educational Institutions
+of the Unitas Fratrum. By James Henry, Member of the Moravian Historical
+Society, etc. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. 316. $1.25.
+
+American Wit and Humor. Illustrated by J. McLenan. New York. Harper &
+Brothers. 12mo. pp. 206. 50 cts.
+
+Life and Liberty in America; or, A Tour in the United States and
+Canadas, in the Years 1857-8. By Charles Mackay, LL. D., F. R. S. With
+Ten Illustrations. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 412. $1.00.
+
+The Life of Jabez Bunting, D.D. With Notices of Contemporary Persons and
+Events. By his Son, Thomas Percival Bunting. Vol. I. New York. Harper &
+Brothers. 12mo. pp. 389. $1.00.
+
+A First Lesson in Natural History. By Actea. Boston. Little, Brown, &
+Co. 18mo. pp. 82. 63 cts.
+
+Germany. By Madame the Baroness de Staël-Holstein. With Notes and
+Appendices, By O. W. Wight. 2 vols. New York. Derby & Jackson. 12mo. pp.
+408, 437. $2.50.
+
+Knitting-Work; a Web of many Textures, wrought by Ruth Partington (B.P.
+Shillaber). Boston. Brown, Taggard, & Chase. 12mo. pp. 408. $1.25.
+
+The History of Herodotus; a New English Version, with Copious Notes and
+Appendices, etc., etc. By George Rawlinson, M.A., late Fellow and Tutor
+of Exeter College, Oxford. Assisted by Colonel Sir Henry Rawlinson, K.
+C. B., and Sir J. G. Wilkinson, F. R. S. 4 vols. Vol. I. With Maps and
+Illustrations. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 563. $2.50.
+
+History of France; from the Earliest Times to MDCCCXLVIII. By the Rev.
+James White, Author of the "Eighteen Christian Centuries." New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 571. $2.00.
+
+Glossary of Supposed Americanisms. Collected by Alfred L. Elwyn, M. D.
+Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. 121. 75 cts.
+
+A Popular Treatise on Gems in Reference to their Scientific Value; a
+Guide for the Teacher of Natural Sciences, the Lapidary, Jeweller, and
+Amateur, etc., etc. With Elegant Illustrations. By Dr. L. Fleuchtwanger.
+New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 464. $3.00.
+
+A Select Glossary of English Words, used formerly in Senses different
+from their present. By Richard Chenevix French, D.D., Dean of
+Westminster. New York. Blakeman & Mason. 12mo. pp. 218. 75 cts.
+
+Recollections. By Samuel Rogers. Boston. Bartlett & Miles. 16mo. pp.
+253. 75 cts.
+
+Ten Years of Preacher Life: Chapters from an Autobiography. By William
+Henry Milburn. New York. Derby & Jackson. 12mo. pp. 363. $1.00.
+
+Travels in Greece and Russia, with an Excursion to Crete. By Bayard
+Taylor. New York. G. P. Putnam. 12mo. pp. 426. $1.25.
+
+Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter; being Reminiscences of Meshach
+Browning, a Maryland Hunter, roughly written down by Himself. Revised
+and illustrated by E. Stabler. Philadelphia. J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo.
+pp. 400. $1.25.
+
+Paris; or, A Fagot of French Sticks. By Sir Francis Head. New York.
+Michael Doolady. 12mo. pp. 496. $1.00.
+
+Parlor Charades and Proverbs, intended for the Parlor or Saloon, and
+requiring no Expensive Apparatus, or Scenery, or Properties for their
+Performance. By S. Annie Frost. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co.
+12mo. pp. 262. $1.00.
+
+A Life for a Life. By the Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," etc. New
+York. Harper & Brothers. 8vo. 50 cts.
+
+Breakfast, Dinner, and Tea, viewed Classically, Poetically, and
+Practically. Containing Numerous Curious Dishes and Feasts of all Times
+and all Countries, besides Three Hundred Modern Receipts. New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 350. $1.50.
+
+The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish; a Tale. By J. Fenimore Cooper. Illustrated
+from Drawings by F.O.C. Darley. New York. W. A. Townsend & Co. 12mo. pp.
+474. $1.50.
+
+Morphy's Match-Games. Being a Full and Accurate Account of his most
+Astounding Successes abroad, defeating, in almost Every Instance, the
+Chess Celebrities of Europe. Edited, with Copious and Valuable Notes, by
+Charles Henry Stanley. New York. R. M. DeWitt. 18mo. pp. 108. 38 cts.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No.
+24, Oct. 1859, by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. 4, NO. 24 ***
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