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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 119, September, 1867

Author: Various

Release date: August 17, 2010 [eBook #33451]
                Most recently updated: January 6, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 20, NO. 119, SEPTEMBER, 1867 ***




Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections.)







THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._

VOL. XX.--SEPTEMBER, 1867.--NO. CXIX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.




THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.


CHAPTER XXIV.

MUSTERING OF FORCES.

Not long after the tableau performance had made Myrtle Hazard's name
famous in the school and among the friends of the scholars, she received
the very flattering attention of a call from Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24
Carat Place. This was in consequence of a suggestion from Mr. Livingston
Jenkins, a particular friend of the family.

"They've got a demonish splendid school-girl over there," he said to
that lady,--"made the stunningest-looking Pocahontas at the show there
the other day. Demonish plucky-looking filly as ever you saw. Had a row
with another girl,--gave the war-whoop, and went at her with a knife.
Festive,--hey? Say she only meant to scare her,--_looked_ as if she
meant to stick her, anyhow. Splendid style. Why can't you go over to the
shop and make 'em trot her out?"

The lady promised Mr. Livingston Jenkins that she certainly would, just
as soon as she could find a moment's leisure,--which, as she had nothing
in the world to do, was not likely to be very soon. Myrtle in the mean
time was busy with her studies, little dreaming what an extraordinary
honor was awaiting her.

That rare accident in the lives of people who have nothing to do, a
leisure morning, did at last occur. An elegant carriage, with a coachman
in a wonderful cape, seated on a box lofty as a throne, and wearing a
hat-band as brilliant as a coronet, stopped at the portal of Madam
Delacoste's establishment. A card was sent in bearing the open sesame of
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, the great lady of 24 Carat Place. Miss Myrtle
Hazard was summoned as a matter of course, and the fashionable woman and
the young girl sat half an hour together in lively conversation.

Myrtle was fascinated by her visitor, who had that flattering manner
which, to those not experienced in the world's ways, seems to imply
unfathomable depths of disinterested devotion. Then it was so delightful
to look upon a perfectly appointed woman,--one who was as artistically
composed as a poem or an opera,--in whose costume a kind of various
rhythm undulated in one fluent harmony, from the spray that nodded on
her bonnet to the rosette that blossomed on her sandal. As for the lady,
she was captivated with Myrtle. There is nothing that your fashionable
woman, who has ground and polished her own spark of life into as many
and as glittering social facets as it will bear, has a greater passion
for than a large rough diamond, which knows nothing of the sea of light
it imprisons, and which it will be her pride to have cut into a
brilliant under her own eye, and to show the world for its admiration
and her own reflected glory. Mrs. Clymer Ketchum had taken the entire
inventory of Myrtle's natural endowments before the interview was over.
She had no marriageable children, and she was thinking what a killing
bait Myrtle would be at one of her own parties.

She soon got another letter from Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, which
explained the interest he had taken in Madam Delacoste's school,--all
which she knew pretty nearly beforehand, for she had found out a good
part of Myrtle's history in the half-hour they had spent in company.

"I had a particular reason for my inquiries about the school," he wrote.
"There is a young girl there I take an interest in. She is handsome and
interesting, and--though it is a shame to mention such a thing--has
possibilities in the way of fortune not to be undervalued. Why can't you
make her acquaintance and be civil to her? A country girl, but fine old
stock, and will make a figure some time or other, I tell you. Myrtle
Hazard,--that's her name. A mere school-girl. Don't be malicious and
badger me about her, but be polite to her. Some of these country girls
have got 'blue blood' in them, let me tell you, and show it plain
enough."

("In huckleberry season.") said Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, in a
parenthesis,--and went on reading.

"Don't think I'm one of your love-in-a-cottage sort, to have my head
turned by a village beauty. I've got a career before me, Mrs. K., and I
know it. But this is one of my pets, and I want you to keep an eye on
her. Perhaps when she leaves school you wouldn't mind asking her to come
and stay with you a little while. Possibly. I may come and see how she
is getting on if you do,--won't that tempt you, Mrs. C. K.?"

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum wrote back to her relative how she had already made
the young lady's acquaintance.

"Livingston Jenkins (you remember him) picked her out of the whole lot
of girls as the 'prettiest filly in the stable.' That's his horrid way
of talking. But your young milkmaid is really charming, and will come
into form like a Derby three-year-old. There, now, I've caught that
odious creature's horse-talk, myself. You're dead in love with this
girl, Murray, you know you are.

"After all, I don't know but you're right. You would make a good country
lawyer enough, I don't doubt. I used to think you had your ambitions,
but never mind. If you choose to risk yourself on 'possibilities,' it is
not my affair, and she's a beauty,--there's no mistake about that.

"There are some desirable _partis_ at the school with your Dulcinea.
There's Rose Bugbee. That last name is a good one to be married from.
Rose is a nice girl,--there are only two of them. The estate will cut up
like one of the animals it was made out of,--you know,--the
sandwich-quadruped. Then there's Berengaria. Old Topping owns the Planet
Hotel among other things,--so big, they say, there's always a bell
ringing from somebody's room day and night the year round. Only
child--unit and six ciphers--carries diamonds loose in her
pocket--that's the story--good-looking--lively--a little slangy--called
Livingston Jenkins 'Living Jingo' to his face one day. I want you to see
my lot before you do anything serious. You owe something to the family,
Mr. William Murray Bradshaw! But you must, suit yourself, after all: if
you are contented with a humble position in life, it is nobody's
business that I know of. Only I know what life is, Murray B. Getting
married is jumping overboard, any way you look at it, and if you must
save some woman from drowning an old maid, try to find one _with a cork
jacket_, or she'll carry you down with her."

Murray Bradshaw was calculating enough, but he shook his head over this
letter. It was too demonish cold-blooded for him, he said to himself.
(Men cannot pardon women for saying aloud what they do not hesitate to
think in silence themselves.) Never mind,--he must have Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum's house and influence for his own purposes. Myrtle Hazard must
become her guest, and then, if circumstances were favorable, he was
certain of obtaining her aid in his project.

The opportunity to invite Myrtle to the great mansion presented itself
unexpectedly. Early in the spring of 1861 there were some cases of
sickness in Madam Delacoste's establishment, which led to closing the
school for a while. Mrs. Clymer Ketchum took advantage of the dispersion
of the scholars to ask Myrtle to come and spend some weeks with her.
There were reasons why this was more agreeable to the young girl than
returning to Oxbow Village, and she very gladly accepted the invitation.

It was very remarkable that a man living as Master Byles Gridley had
lived for so long a time should all at once display such liberality as
he showed to a young woman who had no claim upon him, except that he had
rescued her from the consequences of her own imprudence and warned her
against impending dangers. Perhaps he cared more for her than if the
obligation had been the other way,--students of human nature say it is
commonly so. At any rate, either he had ampler resources than it was
commonly supposed, or he was imprudently giving way to his generous
impulses, or he thought he was making advances which would in due time
be returned to him. Whatever the reason was, he furnished her with
means, not only for her necessary expenses, but sufficient to afford her
many of the elegances which she would be like to want in the fashionable
society with which she was for a short time to mingle.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was so well pleased with the young lady she was
entertaining, that she thought it worth while to give a party while
Myrtle was staying with her. She had her jealousies and rivalries, as
women of the world will, sometimes, and these may have had their share
in leading her to take the trouble a large party involved. She was tired
of the airs of Mrs. Pinnikle, who was of the great Apex family, and her
terribly accomplished daughter Rhadamantha, and wanted to crush the
young lady, and jaundice her mother, with a girl twice as brilliant and
ten times handsomer. She was very willing, also, to take the nonsense
out of the Capsheaf girls, who thought themselves the most stylish
personages of their city world, and would bite their lips well to see
themselves distanced by a country miss.

In the mean time circumstances were promising to bring into Myrtle's
neighborhood several of her old friends and admirers. Mrs. Clymer
Ketchum had written to Murray Bradshaw that she had asked his pretty
milkmaid to come and stay awhile with her, but he had been away on
business, and only arrived in the city a day or two before the party.
But other young fellows had found out the attractions of the girl who
was "hanging out at the Clymer Ketchum concern," and callers were
plenty, reducing _tête-à-têtes_ in a corresponding ratio. He did get one
opportunity, however, and used it well. They had so many things to talk
about in common, that she could not help finding him good company. She
might well be pleased, for he was an adept in the curious art of being
agreeable, as other people are in chess or billiards, and had made a
special study of her tastes, as a physician studies a patient's
constitution. What he wanted was to get her thoroughly interested in
himself, and to maintain her in a receptive condition until such time as
he should be ready for a final move. Any day might furnish the decisive
motive; in the mean time he wished only to hold her as against all
others.

It was well for her, perhaps, that others had flattered her into a
certain consciousness of her own value. She felt her veins full of the
same rich blood as that which had flushed the cheeks of handsome Judith
in the long summer of her triumph. Whether it was vanity, or pride, or
only the instinctive sense of inherited force and attraction, it was the
best of defences. The golden bracelet on her wrist seemed to have
brought as much protection with it as if it had been a shield over her
heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

But far away in Oxbow Village other events were in preparation. The
"fugitive pieces" of Mr. Gifted Hopkins had now reached a number so
considerable, that, if collected and printed in large type, with plenty
of what the unpleasant printers call "fat,"--meaning thereby blank
spaces,--upon a good, substantial, not to say thick paper, they might
perhaps make a volume which would have substance enough to bear the
title, printed lengthwise along the back, "Hopkins's Poems." Such a
volume that author had in contemplation. It was to be the literary event
of the year 1861.

He could not mature such a project, one which he had been for some time
contemplating, without consulting Mr. Byles Gridley, who, though he had
not unfrequently repressed the young poet's too ardent ambition, had yet
always been kind and helpful.

Mr. Gridley was seated in his large arm-chair, indulging himself in the
perusal of a page or two of his own work before repeatedly referred to.
His eye was glistening, for it had just rested on the following
passage:--

"_There is infinite pathos in unsuccessful authorship. The book that
perishes unread is the deaf mute of literature. The great asylum of
Oblivion is full of such, making inaudible signs to each other in leaky
garrets and unattainable dusty upper shelves._"

He shut the book, for the page grew a little dim as he finished this
elegiac sentence, and sighed to think how much more keenly he felt its
truth than when it was written,--than on that memorable morning when he
saw the advertisement in all the papers, "This day published, 'Thoughts
on the Universe. By Byles Gridley, A. M.'"

At that moment he heard a knock at his door. He closed his eyelids
forcibly for ten seconds, opened them, and said, cheerfully, "Come in!"

Gifted Hopkins entered. He had a collection of manuscripts in his hands
which it seemed to him would fill a vast number of pages. He did not
know that manuscript is to type what fresh dandelions are to the dish of
greens that comes to table, of which last Nurse Byloe, who considered
them very wholesome spring grazing for her patients, used to say that
they "biled down dreadful."

"I have brought the autographs of my poems, Master Gridley, to consult
you about making arrangements for publication. They have been so well
received by the public and the leading critics of this part of the
State, that I think of having them printed in a volume. I am going to
the city for that purpose. My mother has given her consent. I wish to
ask you several business questions. Shall I part with the copyright for
a downright sum of money, which I understand some prefer doing, or
publish on shares, or take a percentage on the sales? These, I believe,
are the different ways taken by authors."

Mr. Gridley was altogether too considerate to reply with the words which
would most naturally have come to his lips. He waited as if he were
gravely pondering the important questions just put to him, all the while
looking at Gifted with a tenderness which no one who had not buried one
of his soul's children could have felt for a young author trying to get
clothing for his new-born intellectual offspring.

"I think," he said presently, "you had better talk with an intelligent
and liberal publisher, and be guided by his advice. I can put you in
correspondence with such a person, and you had better trust him than me
a great deal. Why don't you send your manuscript by mail?"

"_What_, Mr. Gridley? Trust my poems, some of which are unpublished, to
the post-office? No, sir, I could never make up my mind to such a risk.
I mean to go to the city myself, and read them to some of the leading
publishers. I don't want to pledge myself to any one of them. I should
like to set them bidding against each other for the copyright, if I sell
it at all."

Mr. Gridley gazed upon the innocent youth with a sweet wonder in his
eyes that made him look like an angel, a little damaged in the features
by time, but full of celestial feelings.

"It will cost you something to make this trip, Gifted. Have you the
means to pay for your journey and your stay at a city hotel?"

Gifted blushed. "My mother has laid by a small sum for me," he said.
"She knows some of my poems by heart, and she wants to see them all in
print."

Master Gridley closed his eyes very firmly again, as if thinking, and
opened them as soon as the foolish film had left them. He had read many
a page of "Thoughts on the Universe" to his own old mother, long, long
years ago, and she had often listened with tears of modest pride that
Heaven had favored her with a son so full of genius.

"I'll tell you what, Gifted," he said. "I have been thinking for a good
while that I would make a visit to the city, and if you have made up
your mind to try what you can do with the publishers, I will take you
with me as a companion. It will be a saving to you and your good mother,
for I shall bear the expenses of the expedition."

Gifted Hopkins came very near going down on his knees. He was so
overcome with gratitude that it seemed as if his very coat-tails wagged
with his emotion.

"Take it quietly," said Master Gridley. "Don't make a fool of yourself.
Tell your mother to have some clean shirts and things ready for you, and
we will be off day after to-morrow morning."

Gifted hastened to impart the joyful news to his mother, and to break
the fact to Susan Posey that he was about to leave them for a while, and
rush into the deliriums and dangers of the great city.

Susan smiled. Gifted hardly knew whether to be pleased with her
sympathy, or vexed that she did not take his leaving more to heart. The
smile held out bravely for about a quarter of a minute. Then there came
on a little twitching at the corners of the mouth. Then the blue eyes
began to shine with a kind of veiled glimmer. Then the blood came up
into her cheeks with a great rush, as if the heart had sent up a herald
with a red flag from the citadel to know what was going on at the
outworks. The message that went back was of discomfiture and
capitulation. Poor Susan was overcome, and gave herself up to weeping
and sobbing.

The sight was too much for the young poet. In a wild burst of passion he
seized her hand, and pressed it to his lips, exclaiming, "Would that you
could be mine forever!" and Susan forgot all that she ought to have
remembered, and, looking half reproachfully but half tenderly through
her tears, said, in tones of infinite sweetness, "O Gifted!"


CHAPTER XXV

THE POET AND THE PUBLISHER.

It was settled that Master Byles Gridley and Mr. Gifted Hopkins should
leave early in the morning of the day appointed, to take the nearest
train to the city. Mrs. Hopkins labored hard to get them ready, so that
they might make a genteel appearance among the great people whom they
would meet in society. She brushed up Mr. Gridley's best black suit, and
bound the cuffs of his dress-coat, which were getting a little worried.
She held his honest-looking hat to the fire, and smoothed it while it
was warm, until one would have thought it had just been ironed by the
hatter himself. She had his boots and shoes brought into a more
brilliant condition than they had ever known: if Gifted helped, it was
to his credit as much as if he had shown his gratitude by polishing off
a copy of verses in praise of his benefactor.

When she had got Mr. Gridley's encumbrances in readiness for the
journey, she devoted herself to fitting out her son Gifted. First, she
had down from the garret a capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered
with leather, and adorned with brass-headed nails, by the cunning
disposition of which, also, the paternal initials stood out on the
rounded lid, in the most conspicuous manner. It was his father's trunk,
and the first thing that went into it, as the widow lifted the cover,
and the smothering, shut-up smell struck an old chord of associations,
was a single tear-drop. How well she remembered the time when she first
unpacked it for her young husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed
their snowy plaits! O dear, dear!

But women decant their affection, sweet and sound, out of the old
bottles into the new ones,--off from the lees of the past generation,
clear and bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it.
Gifted Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only
the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she
felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and
thought proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention
her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the
mother of Hopkins.

So she took great pains to equip this brilliant but inexperienced young
man with everything he could by any possibility need during his absence.
The great trunk filled itself until it bulged with its contents like a
boa-constrictor who has swallowed his blanket. Best clothes and common
clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, flannels and linens, socks and
collars, with handkerchiefs enough to keep the pickpockets busy for a
week, with a paper of gingerbread and some lozenges for gastralgia, and
"hot drops," and ruled paper to write letters on, and a little Bible,
and a phial with _hiera picra_, and another with paregoric, and another
with "camphire" for sprains and bruises,--Gifted went forth equipped for
every climate from the tropic to the pole, and armed against every
malady from Ague to Zoster. He carried also the paternal watch, a solid
silver bull's-eye, and a large pocket-book, tied round with a long tape,
and, by way of precaution, pinned into his breast-pocket. He talked
about having a pistol, in case he were attacked by any of the ruffians
who are so numerous in the city, but Mr. Gridley told him, No! he would
certainly shoot himself, and he shouldn't think of letting him take a
pistol.

They went forth, Mentor and Telemachus, at the appointed time, to dare
the perils of the railroad and the snares of the city. Mrs. Hopkins was
firm up to near the last moment, when a little quiver in her voice set
her eyes off; and her face broke up all at once, so that she had to hide
it behind her handkerchief. Susan Posey showed the truthfulness of her
character in her words to Gifted at parting. "Farewell," she said, "and
think of me sometimes while absent. My heart is another's, but my
friendship, Gifted--my friendship--"

Both were deeply affected. He took her hand and would have raised it to
his lips; but she did not forget herself, and gently withdrew it,
exclaiming, "O Gifted!" this time with a tone of tender reproach which
made him feel like a profligate. He tore himself away, and when at a
safe distance flung her a kiss, which she rewarded with a tearful smile.

Master Byles Gridley must have had some good dividends from some of his
property of late. There is no other way of accounting for the handsome
style in which he did things on their arrival in the city. He went to a
tailor's and ordered a new suit to be sent home as soon as possible, for
he knew his wardrobe was a little rusty. He looked Gifted over from head
to foot, and suggested such improvements as would recommend him to the
fastidious eyes of the selecter sort of people, and put him in his own
tailor's hands, at the same time saying that all bills were to be sent
to him, B. Gridley, Esq., parlor No. 6, at the Planet House. Thus it
came to pass that in three days from their arrival they were both in an
eminently presentable condition. In the mean time the prudent Mr.
Gridley had been keeping the young man busy, and amusing himself by
showing him such of the sights of the city and its suburbs as he thought
would combine instruction with entertainment.

When they were both properly equipped and ready for the best company,
Mr. Gridley said to the young poet, who had found it very hard to
contain his impatience, that they would now call together on the
publisher to whom he wished to introduce him, and they set out
accordingly.

"My name is Gridley," he said with modest gravity, as he entered the
publisher's private room. "I have a note of introduction here from one
of your authors, as I think he called himself,--a very popular writer
for whom you publish."

The publisher rose and came forward in the most cordial and respectful
manner. "Mr. Gridley?--Professor Byles Gridley,--author of 'Thoughts on
the Universe'?"

The brave-hearted old man colored as if he had been a young girl. His
dead book rose before him like an apparition. He groped in modest
confusion for an answer. "A child I buried long ago, my dear sir," he
said. "Its title-page was its tombstone. I have brought this young
friend with me,--this is Mr. Gifted Hopkins of Oxbow Village,--who
wishes to converse with you about--"

"I have come, sir--" the young poet began, interrupting him.

"Let me look at your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Popkins," said the
publisher, interrupting in his turn.

"Hopkins, if you please, sir," Gifted suggested mildly, proceeding to
extract the manuscript, which had got wedged into his pocket, and seemed
to be holding on with all its might. He was wondering all the time over
the extraordinary clairvoyance of the publisher, who had looked through
so many thick folds, broadcloth, lining, brown paper, and seen his poems
lying hidden in his breast-pocket. The idea that a young person coming
on such an errand should have to explain his intentions would have
seemed very odd to the publisher. He knew the look which belongs to this
class of enthusiasts just as a horse-dealer knows the look of a green
purchaser with the equine fever raging in his veins. If a young author
had come to him with a scrap of manuscript hidden in his boots, like
Major André's papers, the publisher would have taken one glance at him
and said, "Out with it!"

While he was battling for the refractory scroll with his pocket, which
turned half wrong side out, and acted as things always do when people
are nervous and in a hurry, the publisher directed his conversation
again to Master Byles Gridley.

"A remarkable book, that of yours, Mr. Gridley,--would have a great run
if it were well handled. Came out twenty years too soon,--that was the
trouble. One of our leading scholars was speaking of it to me the other
day. 'We must have a new edition,' he said; 'people are just ripe for
that book.' Did you ever think of that? Change the form of it a little,
and give it a new title, and it will be a popular book. Five thousand or
more, very likely."

Mr. Gridley felt as if he had been rapidly struck on the forehead with a
dozen distinct blows from a hammer not quite big enough to stun him. He
sat still without saying a word. He had forgotten for the moment all
about poor Gifted Hopkins, who had got out his manuscript at last, and
was calming the disturbed corners of it. Coming to himself a little, he
took a large and beautiful silk handkerchief, one of his new purchases,
from his pocket, and applied it to his face, for the weather seemed to
have grown very warm all at once. Then he remembered the errand on which
he had come, and thought of this youth, who had got to receive his first
hard lesson in life, and whom he had brought to this kind man that it
should be gently administered.

"You surprise me," he said,--"you surprise me. Dead and buried. Dead and
buried. I had sometimes thought that--at some future period, after I was
gone, it might--but I hardly know what to say about your suggestions.
But here is my young friend, Mr. Hopkins, who would like to talk with
you, and I will leave him in your hands. I am at the Planet House, if
you should care to call upon me. Good morning. Mr. Hopkins will explain
everything to you more at his ease, without me, I am confident."

Master Gridley could not quite make up his mind to stay through the
interview between the young poet and the publisher. The flush of hope
was bright in Gifted's eye and cheek, and the good man knew that young
hearts are apt to be over-sanguine, and that one who enters a
shower-bath often feels very differently from the same person when he
has pulled the string.

"I have brought you my Poems in the original autographs, sir," said Mr.
Gifted Hopkins.

He laid the manuscript on the table, caressing the leaves still with one
hand, as loath to let it go.

"What disposition had you thought of making of them?" the publisher
asked, in a pleasant tone. He was as kind a man as lived, though he
worked the chief engine in a chamber of torture.

"I wish to read you a few specimens of the poems," he said, "with
reference to their proposed publication in a volume."

"By all means," said the kind publisher, who determined to be very
patient with the _protégé_ of the hitherto little-known, but remarkable
writer, Professor Gridley. At the same time he extended his foot in an
accidental sort of way, and pressed it on the right-hand knob of three
which were arranged in a line beneath the table. A little bell in a
distant apartment--the little bell marked C--gave one slight note, loud
enough to start a small boy up, who looked at the clock, and knew that
he was to go and call the publisher in just twenty-five minutes. "A,
five minutes; B, ten minutes; C, twenty-five minutes";--that was the
small boy's working formula. Mr. Hopkins was treated to the full
allowance of time, as being introduced by Professor Gridley.

The young man laid open the manuscript so that the title-page, written
out very handsomely in his own hand, should win the eye of the
publisher.

    BLOSSOMS OF THE SOUL.

    A WREATH OF VERSE; _Original_.

    BY GIFTED HOPKINS.

    "A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown."

    _Gray._

"Shall I read you some of the rhymed pieces first, or some of the
blank-verse poems, sir?" Gifted asked.

"Read what you think is best,--a specimen of your first-class style of
composition."

"I will read you the very last poem I have written," he said, and
began:--


    "THE TRIUMPH OF SONG.

    "I met that gold-haired maiden, all too dear;
    And I to her: Lo! Thou art very fair,
    Fairer than all the ladies in the world
    That fan the sweetened air with scented fans,
    And I am scorchéd with exceeding love,
    Yea, crispéd till my bones are dry as straw.
    Look not away with that high-archéd brow,
    But turn its whiteness that I may behold,
    And lift thy great eyes till they blaze on mine.
    And lay thy finger on thy perfect mouth,
    And let thy lucent ears of carven pearl
    Drink in the murmured music of my soul,
    As the lush grass drinks in the globéd dew;
    For I have many scrolls of sweetest rhyme
    I will unroll and make thee glad to hear.
      "Then she: O shaper of the marvellous phrase
    That openeth woman's heart as doth a key,
    I dare not hear thee--lest the bolt should slide
    That locks another's heart within my own.
    Go, leave me,--and she let her eyelids fall
    And the great tears rolled from her large blue eyes.
      "Then I: If thou not hear me, I shall die,
    Yea, in my desperate mood may lift my hand
    And do myself a hurt no leech can mend;
    For poets ever were of dark resolve,
    And swift stern deed--
                        That maiden heard no more,
    But spake: Alas! my heart is very weak,
    And but for--Stay! And if some dreadful morn,
      After great search and shouting thorough the wold,
    We found thee missing,--strangled,--drowned i' the mere,--
      Then should I go distraught and be clean mad!
    O poet, read! read all thy wondrous scroll!
    Yea, read the verse that maketh glad to hear!
    Then I began and read two sweet, brief hours,
    And she forgot all love save only mine!"

"Is all this from real life?" asked the publisher.

"It--no, sir--not exactly from real life--that is, the leading female
person is not wholly fictitious--and the incident is one which might
have happened. Shall I read you the poems referred to in the one you
have just heard, sir?"

"Allow me, one moment. Two hours' reading, I think, you said. I fear I
shall hardly be able to spare quite time to hear them all. Let me ask
what you intend doing with these productions, Mr----rr--Popkins."

"Hopkins, if you please, sir, not Popkins," said Gifted, plaintively. He
expressed his willingness to dispose of the copyright, to publish on
shares, or perhaps to receive a certain percentage on the profits.

"Suppose we take a glass of wine together, Mr.----Hopkins, before we
talk business," the publisher said, opening a little cupboard and taking
therefrom a decanter and two glasses. He saw the young man was looking
nervous. He waited a few minutes, until the wine had comforted his
epigastrium, and diffused its gentle glow through his unspoiled and
consequently susceptible organization.

"Come with me," he said.

Gifted followed him into a dingy apartment in the attic, where one sat
at a great table heaped and piled with manuscripts. By him was a huge
basket, half full of manuscripts also. As they entered he dropped
another manuscript into the basket and looked up.

"Tell me," said Gifted, "what are these papers, and who is he that looks
upon them and drops them into the basket?"

"These are the manuscript poems that we receive, and the one sitting at
the table is commonly spoken of among us as The Butcher. The poems he
drops into the basket are those rejected as of no account."

"But does he not read the poems before he rejects them?"

"He tastes them. Do you eat a cheese before you buy it?"

"And what becomes of all these that he drops into the basket?"

"If they are not claimed by their author in proper season they go to the
devil."

"What!" said Gifted, with his eyes stretched very round.

"To the paper factory, where they have a horrid machine they call the
devil, that tears everything to bits,--as the critics treat our authors,
sometimes,--_sometimes_, Mr. Hopkins."

Gifted devoted a moment to silent reflection.

After this instructive sight they returned together to the publisher's
private room. The wine had now warmed the youthful poet's præcordia, so
that he began to feel a renewed confidence in his genius and his
fortunes.

"I should like to know what that critic of yours would say to _my_
manuscript," he said boldly.

"You can try it, if you want to," the publisher replied, with an ominous
dryness of manner which the sanguine youth did not perceive, or,
perceiving, did not heed.

"How can we manage to get an impartial judgment?"

"O, I'll arrange that. He always goes to his luncheon about this time.
Raw meat and vitriol punch,--that's what the authors say. Wait till we
hear him go, and then I will lay your manuscript so that he will come to
it among the first after he gets back. You shall see with your own eyes
what treatment it gets. I hope it may please him, but you shall see."

They went back to the publisher's private room and talked awhile.
Then the small boy came up with some vague message about a
gentleman--business--wants to see you, sir, etc, according to the
established programme; all in a vacant, mechanical sort of way, as if he
were a talking-machine just running down.

The publisher told the small boy that he was engaged, and the gentleman
must wait. Very soon they heard The Butcher's heavy footstep as he went
out to get his raw meat and vitriol punch.

"Now, then," said the publisher, and led forth the confiding literary
lamb once more, to enter the fatal door of the critical shambles.

"Hand me your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Hopkins. I will lay it so
that it shall be the third of these that are coming to hand. Our friend
here is a pretty good judge of verse, and knows a merchantable article
about as quick as any man in his line of business. If he forms a
favorable opinion of your poems, we will talk over your propositions."

Gifted was conscious of a very slight tremor as he saw his precious
manuscript deposited on the table under two others, and over a pile of
similar productions. Still he could not help feeling that the critic
would be struck by his title. The quotation from Gray must touch his
feelings. The very first piece in the collection could not fail to
arrest him. He looked a little excited, but he was in good spirits.

"We will be looking about here when our friend comes back," the
publisher said. "He is a very methodical person, and will sit down and
go right to work just as if we were not here. We can watch him, and if
he should express any particular interest in your poems, I will, if you
say so, carry you up to him and reveal the fact that you are the author
of the works that please him."

They waited patiently until The Butcher returned, apparently refreshed
by his ferocious refection, and sat down at his table. He looked
comforted, and not in ill humor. The publisher and the poet talked in
low tones, as if on business of their own, and watched him as he
returned to his labor.

The Butcher took the first manuscript that came to hand, read a stanza
here and there, turned over the leaves, turned back and tried
again,--shook his head--held it for an instant over the basket, as if
doubtful,--and let it softly drop. He took up the second manuscript,
opened it in several places, seemed rather pleased with what he read,
and laid it aside for further examination.

He took up the third. "Blossoms of the Soul," etc. He glared at it in a
dreadfully ogreish way. Both the lookers-on held their breath. Gifted
Hopkins felt as if half a glass more of that warm sherry would not hurt
him. There was a sinking at the pit of his stomach, as if he was in a
swing, as high as he could go, close up to the swallows' nests and
spiders' webs. The Butcher opened the manuscript at random, read ten
seconds, and gave a short, low grunt. He opened again, read ten seconds,
and gave another grunt, this time a little longer and louder. He opened
once more, read five seconds, and, with something that sounded like the
snort of a dangerous animal, cast it impatiently into the basket, and
took up the manuscript that came next in order.

Gifted Hopkins stood as if paralyzed for a moment.

"Safe, perfectly safe," the publisher said to him in a whisper. "I'll
get it for you presently. Come in and take another glass of wine," he
said, leading him back to his own office.

"No, I thank you," he said faintly, "I can bear it. But this is
dreadful, sir. Is this the way that genius is welcomed to the world of
letters?"

The publisher explained to him, in the kindest manner, that there was an
enormous over-production of verse, and that it took a great part of one
man's time simply to overhaul the cart-loads of it that were trying to
get themselves into print with the _imprimatur_ of his famous house.
"You're young, Mr. Hopkins. I advise you not to try to force your
article of poetry on the market. The B----, our friend, there, that is,
knows a thing that will sell as soon as he sees it. You are in
independent circumstances, perhaps? If so, you can print--at your own
expense--whatever you choose. May I take the liberty to ask
your--profession?"

Gifted explained that he was "clerk" in a "store," where they sold dry
goods and West India goods, and goods promiscuous.

"O, well, then," the publisher said, "you will understand me. Do you
know a good article of brown sugar when you see it?"

Gifted Hopkins rather thought he did. He knew at sight whether it was a
fair, salable article or not.

"Just so. Now our friend, there, knows verses that are salable and
unsalable as well as you do brown sugar.--Keep quiet now, and I will go
and get your manuscript for you.----There, Mr. Hopkins, take your
poems,--they will give you a reputation in your village, I don't doubt,
which is pleasant, but it will cost you a good deal of money to print
them in a volume. You are very young: you can afford to wait. Your
genius is not ripe yet, I am confident, Mr. Hopkins. These verses are
very well for a beginning, but a man of promise like you, Mr. Hopkins,
mustn't throw away his chance by premature publication! I should like to
make you a present of a few of the books we publish. By and by, perhaps,
we can work you into our series of poets; but the best pears ripen
slowly, and so with genius.--Where shall I send the volumes?"

Gifted answered, to parlor No. 6, Planet Hotel, where he soon presented
himself to Master Gridley, who could guess pretty well what was coming.
But he let him tell his story.

"Shall I try the other publishers?" said the disconsolate youth.

"I wouldn't, my young friend, I wouldn't. You have seen the best one of
them all. He is right about it, quite right: you are young, and had
better wait. Look here, Gifted, here is something to please you. We are
going to visit the gay world together. See what has been left here this
forenoon."

He showed him two elegant notes of invitation requesting the pleasure of
Professor Byles Gridley's and of Mr. Gifted Hopkins's company on
Thursday evening, as the guests of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat
Place.


CHAPTER XXVI.

MRS. CLYMER KETCHUM'S PARTY.

Myrtle Hazard had flowered out as beyond question the handsomest girl of
the season. There were hints from different quarters that she might
possibly be an heiress. Vague stories were about of some contingency
which might possibly throw a fortune into her lap. The young men about
town talked of her at the clubs in their free-and-easy way, but all
agreed that she was the girl of the new crop,--"best filly this grass,"
as Livingston Jenkins put it. The general understanding seemed to be
that the young lawyer who had followed her to the city was going to
capture her. She seemed to favor him certainly as much as anybody. But
Myrtle saw many young men now, and it was not so easy as it would once
have been to make out who was an especial favorite.

There had been times when Murray Bradshaw would have offered his heart
and hand to Myrtle at once, if he had felt sure that she would accept
him. But he preferred playing the safe game now, and only wanted to feel
sure of her. He had done his best to be agreeable, and could hardly
doubt that he had made an impression. He dressed well when in the
city,--even elegantly,--he had many of the lesser social
accomplishments, was a good dancer, and compared favorably in all such
matters with the more dashing young fellows in society. He was a better
talker than most of them, and he knew more about the girl he was dealing
with than they could know. "You have only got to say the word, Murray,"
Mrs. Clymer Ketchum said to her relative, "and you can have her. But
don't be rash. I believe you can get Berengaria if you try; and there's
something better there than possibilities." Murray Bradshaw laughed, and
told Mrs. Clymer Ketchum not to worry about him; he knew what he was
doing.

It so happened that Myrtle met Master Byles Gridley walking with Mr.
Gifted Hopkins the day before the party. She longed to have a talk with
her old friend, and was glad to have a chance of pleasing her poetical
admirer. She therefore begged her hostess to invite them both to her
party to please her, which she promised to do at once. Thus the two
elegant notes were accounted for.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, though her acquaintances were chiefly in the world
of fortune and of fashion, had yet a certain weakness for what she
called clever people. She therefore always variegated her parties with a
streak of young artists and writers, and a literary lady or two; and, if
she could lay hands on a first-class celebrity, was as happy as an
Amazon who had captured a Centaur.

"There's a demonish clever young fellow by the name of Lindsay," Mr.
Livingston Jenkins said to her a little before the day of the party.
"Better ask him. They say he's the rising talent in his line,
architecture mainly, but has done some remarkable things in the way of
sculpture. There's some story about a bust he made that was quite
wonderful. I'll find his address for you." So Mr. Clement Lindsay got
his invitation, and thus Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's party promised to bring
together a number of persons with whom we are acquainted, and who were
acquainted with each other.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum knew how to give a party. Let her only have _carte
blanche_ for flowers, music, and champagne, she used to tell her lord,
and she would see to the rest,--lighting the rooms, tables, and toilet.
He needn't be afraid; all he had to do was to keep out of the way.

Subdivision of labor is one of the triumphs of modern civilization.
Labor was beautifully subdivided in this lady's household. It was old
Ketchum's business to make money, and he understood it. It was Mrs. K.'s
business to spend money, and she knew how to do it. The rooms blazed
with light like a conflagration; the flowers burned like lamps of
many-colored flame; the music throbbed into the hearts of the
promenaders and tingled through all the muscles of the dancers.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was in her glory. Her _point d'Alençon_ must have
spoiled ever so many French girls' eyes. Her bosom heaved beneath a kind
of breastplate glittering with a heavy dew of diamonds. She glistened
and sparkled with every movement, so that the admirer forgot to question
too closely whether the eyes matched the brilliants, or the cheeks
glowed like the roses. Not far from the great lady stood Myrtle Hazard.
She was dressed as the fashion of the day demanded, but she had added
certain audacious touches of her own, reminiscences of the time when the
dead beauty had flourished, and which first provoked the question and
then the admiration of the young people who had a natural eye for
effect. Over the long white glove on her left arm was clasped a rich
bracelet, of so quaint an antique pattern that nobody had seen anything
like it, and as some one whispered that it was "the last thing out," it
was greatly admired by the fashion-plate multitude, as well as by the
few who had a taste of their own. If the soul of Judith Pride, long
divorced from its once beautifully moulded dust, ever lived in dim
consciousness through any of those who inherited her blood, it was then
and there that she breathed through the lips of Myrtle Hazard. The young
girl almost trembled with the ecstasy of this new mode of being,
soliciting every sense with light, with perfume, with melody,--all that
could make her feel the wonderful complex music of a fresh life when all
its chords first vibrate together in harmony. Miss Rhadamantha Pinnikle,
whose mother was an Apex (of whose race it was said that they always
made an obeisance when the family name was mentioned, and had all their
portraits painted with halos round their heads), found herself
extinguished in this new radiance. Miss Victoria Capsheaf stuck to the
wall as if she had been a fresco on it. The fifty-year-old dynasties
were dismayed and dismounted. Myrtle fossilized them as suddenly as if
she had been a Gorgon, instead of a beauty.

The guests in whom we may have some interest were in the mean time
making ready for the party, which was expected to be a brilliant one;
for 24 Carat Place was well known for the handsome style of its
entertainments.

Clement Lindsay was a little surprised by his invitation. He had,
however, been made a lion of several times of late; and was very willing
to amuse himself once in a while with a peep into the great world. It
was but an empty show to him at best, for his lot was cast, and he
expected to lead a quiet domestic life after his student days were over.

Master Byles Gridley had known what society was in his earlier time, and
understood very well that all a gentleman of his age had to do was to
dress himself in his usual plain way, only taking a little more care in
his arrangements than was needed in the latitude of Oxbow Village. But
Gifted must be looked after, that he should not provoke the unamiable
comments of the city youth by any defect or extravagance of costume. The
young gentleman had bought a light sky-blue neckerchief, and a very
large breastpin containing a gem which he was assured by the vendor was
a genuine stone. He considered that both these would be eminently
effective articles of dress, and Mr. Gridley had some trouble to
convince him that a white tie and plain shirt-buttons would be more
fitted to the occasion.

On the morning of the day of the great party Mr. William Murray Bradshaw
received a brief telegram, which seemed to cause him great emotion, as
he changed color, uttered a forcible exclamation, and began walking up
and down his room in a very nervous kind of way. It was a foreshadowing
of a certain event now pretty sure to happen. Whatever bearing this
telegram may have had upon his plans, he made up his mind that he would
contrive an opportunity somehow that very evening to propose himself as
a suitor to Myrtle Hazard. He could not say that he felt as absolutely
certain of getting the right answer as he had felt at some previous
periods. Myrtle knew her price, he said to himself, a great deal better
than when she was a simple country girl. The flatteries with which she
had been surrounded, and the effect of all the new appliances of beauty,
which had set her off so that she could not help seeing her own
attractions, rendered her harder to please and to satisfy. A little
experience in society teaches a young girl the arts and the phrases
which all the Lotharios have in common. Murray Bradshaw was ready to
land his fish now, but he was not quite sure that she was yet hooked,
and he had a feeling that by this time she knew every fly in his book.
However, as he had made up his mind not to wait another day, he
addressed himself to the trial before him with a determination to
succeed, if any means at his command would insure success. He arrayed
himself with faultless elegance: nothing must be neglected on such an
occasion. He went forth firm and grave as a general going into a battle
where all is to be lost or won. He entered the blazing saloon with the
unfailing smile upon his lips, to which he set them as he set his watch
to a particular hour and minute.

The rooms were pretty well filled when he arrived and made his bow
before the blazing, rustling, glistening, waving, blushing appearance
under which palpitated, with the pleasing excitement of the magic scene
over which its owner presided, the heart of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum. He
turned to Myrtle Hazard, and if he had ever doubted which way his
inclinations led him, he could doubt no longer. How much dress and how
much light can a woman bear? That is the way to measure her beauty. A
plain girl in a simple dress, if she has only a pleasant voice, may seem
almost a beauty in the rosy twilight. The nearer she comes to being
handsome, the more ornament she will bear, and the more she may defy the
sunshine or the chandelier. Murray Bradshaw was fairly dazzled with the
brilliant effect of Myrtle in full dress. He did not know before what
handsome arms she had,--Judith Pride's famous arms, which the
high-colored young men in top-boots used to swear were the handsomest
pair in New England, right over again. He did not know before with what
defiant effect she would light up, standing as she did directly under a
huge lustre, in full flower of flame, like a burning azalea. He was not
a man who intended to let his sentiments carry him away from the serious
interests of his future, yet, as he looked upon Myrtle Hazard, his heart
gave one throb which made him feel in every pulse that this was a woman
who in her own right, simply as a woman, could challenge the homage of
the proudest young man of her time. He hardly knew till this moment how
much of passion mingled with other and calmer motives of admiration. He
could say _I love you_ as truly as such a man could ever speak these
words, meaning that he admired her, that he was attracted to her, that
he should be proud of her as his wife, that he should value himself
always as the proprietor of so rare a person, that no appendage to his
existence would take so high a place in his thoughts. This implied also,
what is of great consequence to a young woman's happiness in the married
state, that she would be treated with uniform politeness, with
satisfactory evidences of affection, and with a degree of confidence
quite equal to what a reasonable woman should expect from a very
superior man, her husband.

If Myrtle could have looked through the window in the breast against
which only authors are privileged to flatten their features, it is for
the reader to judge how far the programme would have satisfied her. Less
than this, a great deal less, does appear to satisfy many young women;
and it may be that the picture just drawn, fairly judged, belongs to a
model lover and husband. Whether it does or not; Myrtle did not see this
picture. There was a beautifully embroidered shirt-bosom in front of
that window through which we have just looked, that intercepted all
sight of what was going on within. She only saw a man, young, handsome,
courtly, with a winning tongue, with an ambitious spirit, whose every
look and tone implied his admiration of herself, and who was associated
with her past life in such a way that they alone appeared like old
friends in the midst of that cold, alien throng. It seemed as if he
could not have chosen a more auspicious hour than this; for she never
looked so captivating, and her presence must inspire his lips with the
eloquence of love. And she--was not this delirious atmosphere of light
and music just the influence to which he would wish to subject her
before trying the last experiment of all which can stir the soul of a
woman? He knew the mechanism of that impressionable state which served
Coleridge so excellently well,--

    "All impulses of soul and sense
    Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
    The music, and the doleful tale,
      The rich and balmy eve,"--

though he hardly expected such startling results as happened in that
case,--which might be taken as an awful warning not to sing moving
ballads to young ladies of susceptible feelings, unless one is prepared
for very serious consequences. Without expecting that Myrtle would rush
into his arms, he did think that she could not help listening to him in
the intervals of the delicious music, in some recess where the roses and
jasmines and heliotropes made the air heavy with sweetness, and the
crimson curtains drooped in heavy folds that half hid their forms from
the curious eyes all round them. Her heart would swell like Genevieve's
as he told her in simple phrase that she was his life, his love, his
all,--for in some two or three words like these he meant to put his
appeal, and not in fine poetical phrases: that would do for Gifted
Hopkins and rhyming tomtits of that feather.

Full of his purpose, involving the plans of his whole life, implying, as
he saw clearly, a brilliant future or a disastrous disappointment, with
a great unexploded mine of consequences under his feet, and the spark
ready to fall into it, he walked about the gilded saloon with a smile
upon his lips so perfectly natural and pleasant, that one would have
said he was as vacant of any aim, except a sort of superficial
good-natured disposition to be amused, as the blankest-eyed simpleton
who had tied himself up in a white cravat and come to bore and be bored.

Yet under this pleasant smile his mind was so busy with its thoughts
that he had forgotten all about the guests from Oxbow Village who, as
Myrtle had told him, were to come this evening. His eye was all at once
caught by a familiar figure, and he recognized Master Byles Gridley,
accompanied by Mr. Gifted Hopkins, at the door of the saloon. He stepped
forward at once to meet and to present them.

Mr. Gridley in evening costume made an eminently dignified and
respectable appearance. There was an unusual look of benignity upon his
firmly moulded features, and an air of ease which rather surprised Mr.
Bradshaw, who did not know all the social experiences which had formed a
part of the old Master's history. The greeting between them was
courteous, but somewhat formal, as Mr. Bradshaw was acting as one of the
masters of ceremony. He nodded to Gifted in an easy way, and led them
both into the immediate Presence.

"This is my friend Professor Gridley, Mrs. Ketchum, whom I have the
honor of introducing to you,--a very distinguished scholar, as I have no
doubt you are well aware. And this is my friend Mr. Gifted Hopkins, a
young poet of distinction, whose fame will reach you by and by, if it
has not come to your ears already."

The two gentlemen went through the usual forms, the poet a little
crushed by the Presence, but doing his best. While the lady was making
polite speeches to them, Myrtle Hazard came forward. She was greatly
delighted to meet her old friend, and even looked upon the young poet
with a degree of pleasure she would hardly have expected to receive from
his company. They both brought with them so many reminiscences of
familiar scenes and events, that it was like going back for the moment
to Oxbow Village. But Myrtle did not belong to herself that evening, and
had no opportunity to enter into conversation just then with either of
them. There was to be dancing by and by, and the younger people were
getting impatient that it should begin. At last the music sounded the
well-known summons, and the floors began to ring to the tread of the
dancers. As usual on such occasions there were a large number of
non-combatants, who stood as spectators around those who were engaged in
the campaign of the evening. Mr. Byles Gridley looked on gravely,
thinking of the minuets and the gavots of his younger days. Mr. Gifted
Hopkins, who had never acquired the desirable accomplishment of dancing,
gazed with dazzled and admiring eyes at the wonderful evolutions of the
graceful performers. The music stirred him a good deal; he had also been
introduced to one or two young persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he
began to feel a kind of excitement, such as was often the prelude of a
lyric burst from his pen. Others might have wealth and beauty, he
thought to himself, but what were these to the gift of genius? In fifty
years the wealth of these people would have passed into other hands. In
fifty years all these beauties would be dead, or wrinkled and
double-wrinkled great-grandmothers. And when they were all gone and
forgotten, the name of Hopkins would be still fresh in the world's
memory. Inspiring thought! A smile of triumph rose to his lips; he felt
that the village boy who could look forward to fame as his inheritance
was richer than all the millionnaires, and that the words he should set
in verse would have a lustre in the world's memory to which the
whiteness of pearls was cloudy, and the sparkle of diamonds dull.

He raised his eyes, which had been cast down in reflection, to look upon
these less favored children of Fortune, to whom she had given nothing
but perishable inheritances. Two or three pairs of eyes, he observed,
were fastened upon him. His mouth perhaps betrayed a little
self-consciousness, but he tried to show his features in an aspect of
dignified self-possession. There seemed to be remarks and questionings
going on, which he supposed to be something like the following:--

Which is it? Which is it?--Why, that one, there,--that young
fellow,--don't you see?--What young fellow are you two looking at? Who
is he? What is he?--Why, that is _Hopkins_, the poet.--Hopkins, the
poet! Let me see him! Let _me_ see him!--Hopkins? What! Gifted Hopkins?
etc., etc.

Gifted Hopkins did not hear these words except in fancy, but he did
unquestionably find a considerable number of eyes concentrated upon him,
which he very naturally interpreted as an evidence that he had already
begun to enjoy a foretaste of the fame of which he should hereafter have
his full allowance. Some seemed to be glancing furtively, some appeared
as if they wished to speak, and all the time the number of those looking
at him seemed to be increasing. A vision came through his fancy of
himself as standing on a platform, and having persons who wished to look
upon him and shake hands with him presented, as he had heard was the way
with great people when going about the country. But this was only a
suggestion, and by no means a serious thought, for that would have
implied infatuation.

Gifted Hopkins was quite right in believing that he attracted many eyes.
At last those of Myrtle Hazard were called to him, and she perceived
that an accident was making him unenviably conspicuous. The bow of his
rather large white neck-tie had slid round and got beneath his left ear.
A not very good-natured or well-bred young fellow had pointed out the
subject of this slight misfortune to one or two others of not much
better taste or breeding, and thus the unusual attention the youthful
poet was receiving explained itself. Myrtle no sooner saw the little
accident of which her rural friend was the victim, than she left her
place in the dance with a simple courage which did her credit. "I want
to speak to you a minute," she said. "Come into this alcove."

And the courageous young lady not only told Gifted what had happened to
him, but found a pin somehow, as women always do on a pinch, and had him
in presentable condition again almost before the bewildered young man
knew what was the matter. On reflection it occurred to him, as it has to
other provincial young persons going to great cities, that he might
perhaps have been hasty in thinking himself an object of general
curiosity as yet. There had hardly been time for his name to have become
very widely known. Still, the feeling had been pleasant for the moment,
and had given him an idea of what the rapture would be, when, wherever
he went, the monster digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the
collective admiring public would be lifted to point him out, and the
whisper would pass from one to another, "That's him! That's Hopkins!"

Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity for carrying out
his intentions, with his pleasant smile covering up all that was
passing in his mind, and Master Byles Gridley, looking equally
unconcerned, had been watching him. The young man's time came at last.
Some were at the supper-table, some were promenading, some were talking,
when he managed to get Myrtle a little apart from the rest, and led her
towards one of the recesses in the apartment, where two chairs were
invitingly placed. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were
sparkling,--the influences to which he had trusted had not been thrown
away upon her. He had no idea of letting his purpose be seen until he
was fully ready. It required all his self-mastery to avoid betraying
himself by look or tone, but he was so natural that Myrtle was thrown
wholly off her guard. He meant to make her pleased with herself to begin
with, and that not by point-blank flattery, of which she had had more
than enough of late, but rather by suggestion and inference, so that she
should find herself feeling happy without knowing how. It would be easy
to glide from that to the impression she had produced upon him, and get
the two feelings more or less mingled in her mind. And so the simple
confession he meant to make would at length evolve itself logically, and
hold by a natural connection to the first agreeable train of thought
which he had called up. Not the way, certainly, that most young men
would arrange their great trial scene; but Murray Bradshaw was a lawyer
in love as much as in business, and considered himself as pleading a
cause before a jury of Myrtle Hazard's conflicting motives. What would
any lawyer do in a jury case, but begin by giving the twelve honest men
and true to understand, in the first place, that their intelligence and
virtue were conceded by all, and that he himself had perfect confidence
in them, and leave them to shape their verdict in accordance with these
propositions and his own side of the case?

Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the pleasing
accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact, that
she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an
admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made
it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it
was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his
plans,--they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from her,
and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could
safely give his confidence.

The dread moment was close at hand. Myrtle was listening with an
instinctive premonition of what was coming,--ten thousand mothers and
grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it
all in preceding generations until time reached backwards to the sturdy
savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the great
primeval grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the
rock, or into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the
coming question announce itself by stirring in the pulses and thrilling
in the nerves of the descendant of all these grandmothers?

She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere blind
elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of
Schehallion. Her lips were parted, and she breathed a little faster than
so healthy a girl ought to breathe in a state of repose. The steady
nerves of William Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors
tingling through them, as he came nearer and nearer the few simple words
with which he was to make Myrtle Hazard the mistress of his destiny. His
tones were becoming lower and more serious; there were slight breaks
once or twice in the conversation; Myrtle had cast down her eyes.

"There is but one word more to add," he murmured softly, as he bent
towards her--

A grave voice interrupted him. "Excuse me, Mr. Bradshaw," said Master
Byles Gridley, "I wish to present a young gentleman to my friend here. I
promised to show him the most charming young person I have the honor to
be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss Hazard, I have the
pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance my distinguished young
friend, Mr. Clement Lindsay."

Once more, for the third time, these two young persons stood face to
face. Myrtle was no longer liable to those nervous seizures which any
sudden impression was liable to produce when she was in her
half-hysteric state of mind and body. She turned to the new-comer, who
found himself unexpectedly submitted to a test which he would never have
risked of his own will. He must go through it, cruel as it was, with the
easy self-command which belongs to a gentleman in the most trying social
exigencies. He addressed her, therefore, in the usual terms of courtesy,
and then turned and greeted Mr. Bradshaw, whom he had never met since
their coming together at Oxbow Village. Myrtle was conscious, the
instant she looked upon Clement Lindsay, of the existence of some
peculiar relation between them; but what, she could not tell. Whatever
it was, it broke the charm that had been weaving between her and Murray
Bradshaw. He was not foolish enough to make a scene. What fault could he
find with Clement Lindsay, who had only done as any gentleman would do
with a lady to whom he had just been introduced,--addressed a few polite
words to her? After saying those words, Clement had turned very
courteously to him, and they had spoken with each other. But Murray
Bradshaw could not help seeing that Myrtle had transferred her
attention, at least for the moment, from him to the new-comer. He folded
his arms and waited,--but he waited in vain. The hidden attraction which
drew Clement to the young girl with whom he had passed into the Valley
of the Shadow of Death overmastered all other feelings, and he gave
himself up to the fascination of her presence.

The inward rage of Murray Bradshaw at being interrupted just at the
moment when he was, as he thought, about to cry checkmate and finish the
first great game he had ever played, may well be imagined. But it could
not be helped. Myrtle had exercised the customary privilege of young
ladies at parties, and had turned from talking with one to talking with
another,--that was all. Fortunately for him the young man who had been
introduced at such a most critical moment was not one from whom he need
apprehend any serious interference. He felt grateful beyond measure to
pretty Susan Posey, who, as he had good reason for believing, retained
her hold upon her early lover, and was looking forward with bashful
interest to the time when she should become Mrs. Lindsay. It was better
to put up quietly with his disappointment; and, if he could get no
favorable opportunity that evening to resume his conversation at the
interesting point where he left it off, he would call the next day and
bring matters to a conclusion.

He called accordingly, the next morning, but was disappointed in not
seeing Myrtle. She had hardly slept that night, and was suffering from a
bad headache, which last reason was her excuse for not seeing company.

He called again, the following day, and learned that Miss Hazard had
just left the city, and gone on a visit to Oxbow Village.




PROPHETIC VOICES ABOUT AMERICA: A MONOGRAPH.


The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus is the greatest event
of all secular history. Besides the potato, the turkey, and maize, which
it introduced at once for the nourishment and comfort of the Old World,
this discovery opened the door to influences infinite in extent and
beneficence. Measure them, describe them, picture them, you cannot.
While this continent was unknown, imagination invested it with
proverbial magnificence. It was the Orient. When afterwards it took its
place in geography, imagination found another field in trying to portray
its future history. If the Golden Age is before, and not behind, as is
now happily the prevailing faith, then indeed must America share at
least, if it does not monopolize, the promised good.

Before the voyage of Columbus in 1492, nothing of America was really
known. A few scraps from antiquity, a few rumors from the ocean, and a
few speculations from science, were all that the inspired navigator
found to guide him. Foremost among all these were the well-known verses
of the Spaniard Seneca, in the chorus of his "Medea," which for
generations had been the finger-point to an undiscovered world.

    "Venient annis sæcula seris
    Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
    Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
    Tethysque novos detegat orbes;
    Nec sit terris ultima Thule."[1]

"In tardy years the epoch will come in which the ocean will unloose the
bonds of nature, and the great earth will stretch out, and the sea will
disclose new worlds; nor will Thule be the most remote on the globe."

Two, if not more, different copies of these verses are extant in the
handwriting of Columbus,--precious autographs; one in the sketch of his
work on the Prophecies, another in a letter addressed to Queen Isabella;
and it would seem as if there was still a third entered among his
observations of lunar eclipses at Hayti and Jamaica. By these verses the
great discoverer sailed. But Humboldt, who has illustrated the
enterprise with all that classical or mediæval literature affords,[2]
does not hesitate to declare his conviction, that the discovery of a new
continent was more completely foreshadowed in the simple geographical
statement of the Greek Strabo, who, after a long life of travel, sat
down in the eighty-fourth year of his age, during the reign of Augustus,
to write the geography of the world, including its cosmography. In this
work, where are gathered the results of ancient study and experience,
the venerable author, after alluding to the possibility of passing
direct from Spain to India, and explaining that the inhabited world is
that which we inhabit and know, thus lifts the curtain: "There may be in
the same temperate zone _two and indeed more inhabited lands_,
especially nearest the parallel of Thinæ or Athens, prolonged into the
Atlantic Ocean."[3] This was the voice of ancient science.

Before the voyage of Columbus, Pulci, the Italian poet, in his _Morgante
Maggiore_, sometimes called the last of the romances and the earliest of
the Italian epics, reveals an undiscovered world beyond the Pillars of
Hercules.

    "Know that this theory is false; _his bark
    The daring mariner shall urge far o'er
    The western wave, a smooth and level plain_,
    Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.
    Man was in ancient days of grosser mould,
    And Hercules might blush to learn how far
    _Beyond the limits he had vainly set
    The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way_.

    "_Men shall descry another hemisphere_,
    Since to one common centre all things tend;
    So earth, by curious mystery divine
    Well balanced, hangs amid the starry spheres.
    _At our Antipodes are cities, states,
    And thronged empires, ne'er divined of yore._
    But see, the sun speeds on his western path
    To glad the nations with expected light."[4]

This translation is by our own eminent historian, Prescott, who first
called attention to this testimony,[5] which is not mentioned even by
Humboldt. Leigh Hunt referred to it at a later day.[6] Pulci was born in
Florence, 1431, and died there, 1487, five years before Columbus sailed,
so that he was not aided by any rumor of the discovery which he so
distinctly predicts.

Passing from the discovery, it may not be uninteresting to collect some
of the prophetic voices about the future of America, the "All-Hail
Hereafter" of our continent. They will have a lesson also. Seeing what
has been already fulfilled, we may better judge what to expect. I shall
set them forth in the order of time, prefacing each prediction with an
account of the author sufficient to explain its origin and character. If
some are already familiar, others are little known. Brought together
into one body, on the principle of our national Union, _E pluribus
unum_, they must give new confidence in the destinies of the Republic.

Of course I shall embrace only what has been said seriously by those
whose words are important; not an oracular response, which may receive a
double interpretation, like the deceptive replies to Croesus and to
Pyrrhus; and not a saying, such as is described by Sir Thomas Browne
when he remarks, in his "Christian Morals," that "many positions seem
quodlibetically constituted, and, like a Delphian blade, will cut both
ways."[7] Men who have lived much and felt strongly see further than
others. Their vision penetrates the future. Second sight is little more
than clearness of sight. Milton tells us,

    "That old experience does attain
    To something like prophetic strain."

Sometimes this strain is attained even in youth.


SIR THOMAS BROWNE.--1682.

Dr. Johnson called attention to a tract of Sir Thomas Browne entitled,
"A Prophecy concerning the Future State of Several Nations," where the
famous author "plainly discovers his expectation to be the same with
that entertained later with more confidence by Dr. Berkeley, _that
America will be the seat of the fifth empire_."[8] The tract is vague,
but prophetic.

Sir Thomas Browne was born 19th October, 1605, and died 19th October,
1682. His tract was published, two years after his death, in a
collection of Miscellanies, edited by Dr. Tenison. As a much-admired
author, some of whose writings belong to our English classics, his
prophetic prolusions are not unworthy of notice. They are founded on
verses entitled "The Prophecy," purporting to have been sent to him by a
friend. Among these are the following:--

    "When New England shall trouble New Spain,
    When Jamaica shall be lady of the isles and the main;
    When Spain shall be in America hid,
    And Mexico shall prove a Madrid;
    _When Africa shall no more sell out their blacks
    To make slaves and drudges to the American tracts_;

       *       *       *       *       *

    _When America shall cease to send out its treasure,
    But employ it at home in American pleasure;
    When the New World shall the Old invade,
    Nor count them their lords but their fellows in trade_;

           *       *       *       *       *

    Then think strange things have come to light,
    Whereof but few have had a foresight."[9]

Some of these words are striking, especially when we consider their
early date. The author of the "Religio Medici" seems in the main to
accept the prophecy. In a commentary on each verse he seeks to explain
it. New England is "that thriving colony which hath so much increased in
his day"; its people are already "industrious," and when they have so
far increased "that the neighboring country will not contain them, they
will range still farther, and be able in time to set forth great
armies, seek for new possessions, or _make considerable and conjoined
migrations_." The verse about Africa will be fulfilled "when African
countries shall no longer make it a common trade to sell away their
people." And this may come to pass "whenever they shall be well
civilized and acquainted with arts and affairs sufficient to employ
people in their countries." It would also come to pass "if they should
be converted to Christianity, but especially into Mahometism; for then
they would never sell those of their religion to be slaves unto
Christians." The verse about America is expounded as follows:--

"That is, when America shall be better civilized, new policied, and
divided between great princes, it may come to pass that they will no
longer suffer their treasure of gold and silver to be sent out to
maintain the luxury of Europe and other ports; but rather employ it to
their own advantages, in great exploits and undertakings, magnificent
structures, wars, or expeditions of their own."[10]

The other verse, on the invasion of the Old World by the New, is thus
explained:--

"That is, when America shall be so well peopled, civilized, and divided
into kingdoms, _they are like to have so little regard of their
originals as to acknowledge no subjection unto them_; they may also have
a distinct commerce themselves, or but independently with those of
Europe, and may hostilely and piratically assault them, even as the
Greek and Roman colonies after a long time dealt with their original
countries."[11]

That these speculations should arrest the attention of Dr. Johnson is
something. They seem to have been in part fulfilled. An editor remarks
that, "To judge from the course of events since Sir Thomas wrote, we may
not unreasonably look forward to their more complete fulfilment."[12]


BISHOP BERKELEY.--1726.

It is pleasant to think that Berkeley, whose beautiful verses predicting
the future of America are so often quoted, was so sweet and charming a
character. Atterbury wrote of him, "So much understanding, knowledge,
innocence, and humility I should have thought confined to angels, had I
never seen this gentleman." Swift said, "He is an absolute philosopher
with regard to money, title, and power." Pope let drop a tribute which
can never die, when he said,

    "To Berkeley every virtue under Heaven."

Such a person was naturally a seer.

He is compendiously called an Irish prelate and philosopher; he was born
in Kilkenny, 1684, and died in Oxford, 1753. He began as a philosopher.
While still young, he wrote his famous treatise on "The Principles of
Human Knowledge," in which he denies the existence of matter, insisting
that it is only an impression produced on the mind by Divine power.
After travel for several years on the Continent, and fellowship with the
witty and learned at home, among whom were Addison, Swift, Pope, Garth,
and Arbuthnot, he conceived the project of educating the aborigines of
America, which was set forth in a tract, published in 1725, entitled,
"Scheme for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity by a College
to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of
Bermuda." Persuaded by his benevolence, the ministers promised twenty
thousand pounds, and there were several private subscriptions to promote
what was called by the king "so pious an undertaking." Berkeley
possessed already a deanery in Ireland, with one thousand pounds a year.
Turning away from this residence, and refusing to be tempted by an
English mitre, offered by the queen, he set sail for Rhode Island,
"which lay nearest Bermuda," where, after a tedious passage of five
months, he arrived, 23d January, 1729. Here he lived on a farm back of
Newport, having been, according to his own report, "at great expense
for land and stock." In familiar letters he has given his impression of
this place, famous since for fashion. "The climate," he says, "is like
that of Italy, and not at all colder in the winter than I have known it
everywhere north of Rome. This island is pleasantly laid out in hills
and vales and rising grounds, hath plenty of excellent springs and fine
rivulets and many delightful landscapes of rocks and promontories and
adjacent lands. The town of Newport contains about six thousand souls,
and is the most thriving, flourishing place in all America for its
bigness. It is very pretty and pleasantly situated. I was never more
agreeably surprised than at the first sight of the town and its
harbor."[13] He seems to have been contented here, and when his
companions went to Boston stayed at home, "preferring," as he wrote,
"quiet and solitude to the noise of a great town, notwithstanding all
the solicitations that have been used to draw us thither."[14]

The money which he had expected, especially from the ministry, failed,
and after waiting in vain expectation two years and a half, he returned
to England, leaving an infant son buried in the yard of Trinity Church,
and bestowing upon Yale College a library of eight hundred and eighty
volumes, as well as his estate in Rhode Island. During his residence at
Newport he had preached every Sunday, and was indefatigable in pastoral
duties, besides meditating, if not composing, "The Minute Philosopher,"
which was published shortly after his return.

He had not been forgotten at home during his absence; and shortly after
his return he became Bishop of Cloyne, in which place he was most
exemplary, devoting himself to his episcopal duties, to the education of
his children, and the pleasures of composition.

It was while occupied with his plan of a college, especially as a
nursery for the Colonial churches, shortly before sailing for America,
that the future seemed to be revealed to him, and he wrote the famous
poem, the only one to be found among his works, entitled, "Verses on the
Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America."[15] The date may be
fixed at 1726. Such a poem was an historic event. I give the first and
last stanzas.

    "The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
      Barren of every glorious theme,
    _In distant lands now waits a better_,
      _Producing subjects worthy fame_.

           *       *       *       *       *

    "_Westward the course of empire takes its way_;
      The first four acts already past,
    A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
      Time's noblest offspring is the last."

It is difficult to exaggerate the value of these verses, which have been
so often quoted as to become one of the commonplaces of literature and
politics. There is nothing from any oracle, there is very little from
any prophecy, which can compare with them. The biographer of Berkeley,
who wrote in the last century, was very cautious, when, after calling
them "a beautiful copy of verses," he says that "another age will,
perhaps, acknowledge the old conjunction of the prophetic character with
that of the poet to have again taken place."[16] The _vates_ of the
Romans was poet and prophet; and such was Berkeley.

The sentiment which prompted the prophetic verses of the good Bishop was
widely diffused; or, perhaps, it was a natural prompting.[17] Of this an
illustration is afforded in the life of Benjamin West. On his visit to
Rome in 1760, the young artist encountered a famous improvvisatore, who,
on learning that he was an American come to study the fine arts in Rome,
at once addressed him with the ardor of inspiration, and to the music of
his guitar. After singing the darkness which for so many ages veiled
America from the eyes of science, and also the fulness of time when the
purposes for which America had been raised from the deep would be
manifest, he hailed the youth before him as an instrument of Heaven to
raise there a taste for those arts which elevate man, and an assurance
of refuge to science and knowledge, when, in the old age of Europe, they
should have forsaken her shores. Then, in the spirit of prophecy, he
sang:--

"_But all things of heavenly origin, like the glorious sun, move
westward_; and truth and art have their periods of shining and of night.
Rejoice then, O venerable Rome, in thy divine destiny; for though
darkness overshadow thy seats, and though thy mitred head must descend
into the dust, _thy spirit immortal and undecayed already spreads
towards a new world_."[18]

John Adams, in his old age; dwelling on the reminiscences of early life,
records that nothing was "more ancient in his memory than the
observation that arts, sciences, and empire had travelled westward, and
in conversation it was always added, since he was a child, that their
next leap would be over the Atlantic into America." With the assistance
of an octogenarian neighbor, he recalled a couplet that had been
repeated with rapture as long as he could remember:--

    "The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends,
    And empire rises where the sun descends."

It was imagined by his neighbor that these lines came from some of our
early pilgrims,--by whom they had been "inscribed, or rather drilled,
into a rock on the shore of Monument Bay in our old Colony of
Plymouth."[19]

Another illustration of this same sentiment will be found in Burnaby's
"Travels through the Middle Settlements of North America, in 1759 and
1760," a work which was first published in 1775. In his reflections at
the close of his book the traveller thus remarks:--

"An idea, strange as it is visionary, has entered into the minds of the
generality of mankind, _that empire is travelling westward: and every
one is looking forward with eager and impatient expectation to that
destined moment when America is to give the law to the rest of the
world_."[20]

The traveller is none the less an authority for the prevalence of this
sentiment because he declares it "illusory and fallacious," and records
his conviction that "America is formed for happiness, but not for
empire." Happy America! What empire can compare with happiness! But, to
make amends for this admission, the jealous traveller, in his edition of
1796, after the adoption of our Constitution, announces that "the
present union of American States will not be permanent, or last for any
considerable length of time," and "that that extensive country must
necessarily be divided into separate states and kingdoms."[21] Thus far
the Union has stood against all shocks, foreign or domestic; and the
prophecy of Berkeley is more than ever in the popular mind.


TURGOT.--1750.

Among the illustrious names of France there are few equal to that of
Turgot. He was a philosopher among ministers, and a minister among
philosophers. Malesherbes said of him, that he had the heart of
L'Hôpital and the head of Bacon. Such a person in public affairs was an
epoch for his country and for the human race. Had his spirit prevailed,
the bloody drama of the French Revolution would not have occurred, or it
would at least have been postponed. I think it could not have occurred.
He was a good man, who sought to carry into government the rules of
goodness. His career from beginning to end was one continuous
beneficence. Such a nature was essentially prophetic, for he discerned
the natural laws by which the future is governed.

He was of an ancient Norman family, whose name suggests the _god Thor_;
he was born at Paris, 1727, and died, 1781. Being a younger son, he was
destined for the Church, and commenced his studies as an ecclesiastic
at the ancient Sorbonne. Before registering an irrevocable vow, he
announced his repugnance to the profession, and turned aside to other
pursuits. Law, literature, science, humanity, government, now engaged
his attention. He associated himself with the writers of the
Encyclopædia, and became one of its contributors. In other writings he
vindicated especially the virtue of toleration. Not merely a theorist,
he soon arrived at the high post of intendant of Limousin, where he
developed a remarkable talent for administration, and a sympathy with
the people. He introduced the potato into that province. But he
continued to employ his pen, especially on questions of political
economy, which he treated as a master. On the accession of Louis XVI. he
was called to the cabinet as Minister of the Marine, and shortly
afterwards he gave up this place to be the head of the finances. Here he
began a system of rigid economy, founded on a curtailment of expenses
and an enlargement of resources. The latter was obtained especially by a
removal of disabilities from trade, whether at home or abroad, and the
substitution of a single tax on land for a complex multiplicity of
taxes. The enemies of progress were too strong at that time, and the
king dismissed the reformer. Good men in France became anxious for the
future; Voltaire, in his distant retreat, gave a shriek of despair, and
addressed to Turgot some remarkable verses entitled _Épître à un Homme_.
Worse still, the good edicts of the minister were rescinded, and society
was put back.

The discarded minister gave himself to science, literature, and
friendship. He welcomed Franklin to France and to immortality in a Latin
verse of marvellous felicity. He was already the companion of the
liberal spirits who were doing so much for knowledge and for reform. By
writing and by conversation he exercised a constant influence. His
"ideas" seem to illumine the time. We may be content to follow him in
saying, "The glory of arms cannot compare with the happiness of living
in peace." He anticipated our definition of a republic, when he said "it
was formed upon the _equality of all the citizens_,"--good words, not
yet practically verified in all our States. Such a government he, living
under a monarchy, bravely pronounced the best of all; but he added that
he "had never known a constitution truly republican." This was in 1778.
With similar plainness he announced that "the destruction of the Ottoman
empire would be a real good for all the nations of Europe," and--he
added still further--for humanity also, because it would involve the
abolition of negro slavery, and because to strip "our oppressors is not
to attack, but to vindicate, the common rights of humanity." With such
thoughts and aspirations, the prophet died.

But I have no purpose of writing a biography, or even a character. All
that I intend is an introduction to Turgot's prophetic words relating to
America. When only twenty-three years of age, while still an
ecclesiastic at the Sorbonne, the future minister delivered a discourse
on the Progress of the Human Mind, in which, after describing the
commercial triumphs of the ancient Phoenicians, covering the coasts of
Greece and Asia with their colonies, he lets drop these remarkable
words:--

"Les colonies sont comme des fruits qui ne tiennent à l'arbre que
jusqu'à leur maturité; devenues suffisantes à elles-mêmes, elles firent
ce que fit depuis Carthage,--_ce que fera un jour l'Amérique_."[22]

"Colonies are like fruits, which hold to the tree only until their
maturity; when sufficient for themselves, they did that which Carthage
afterwards did,--_that which some day America will do_."

On this most suggestive declaration, Dupont de Nemours, the editor of
Turgot's works, published in 1808, remarks in a note as follows:--

"It was in 1750 that M. Turgot, being then only twenty-three years old,
and devoted in a seminary to the study of theology, divined, foresaw the
revolution which has formed the United States,--which has detached them
from the European power apparently the most capable of retaining its
colonies under its domination."

At the time Turgot wrote, Canada was a French possession; but his words
are as applicable to this colony as to the United States. When will this
fruit be ripe?


JOHN ADAMS.--1755, 1776, 1780, 1785, 1787.

Next in time among the prophets was John Adams, who has left on record
at different dates several predictions which show a second-sight of no
common order. Of his life I need say nothing, except that he was born
19th October, 1735, and died 4th July, 1826. I mention the predictions
in the order of their utterance.

1. While teaching a school at Worcester, and when under twenty years of
age, he wrote a letter to one of his youthful companions, _bearing date
12th October, 1755_, which is a marvel of foresight. Fifty-two years
afterwards, when already much of its prophecy had been fulfilled, the
original was returned to its author by the son of his early comrade and
correspondent, Nathan Webb, who was at the time dead. In this letter,
after remarking gravely on the rise and fall of nations, with
illustrations from Carthage and Rome, he proceeds:--

"England began to increase in power and magnificence, and is now the
greatest nation of the globe. Soon after the Reformation, a few people
came over into this New World for conscience' sake. Perhaps this
apparently trivial incident _may transfer the great seat of empire to
America. It looks likely to me_; for if we can remove the turbulent
Gallics, our people, according to the exactest computations, will, in
another century, become more numerous than England itself. Should this
be the case, since we have, I may say, all the naval stores of the
nations in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the mastery of the seas;
and then the united force of all Europe will not be able to subdue us.
The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us.
_Divide et impera._ Keep us in distinct colonies, and then, some great
men in each colony desiring the monarchy of the whole, they will destroy
each others' influence, and keep the country _in equilibrio_."[23]

On this letter his son, John Quincy Adams, remarks:--

"Had the political part of it been written by the minister of state of a
European monarchy, at the close of a long life spent in the government
of nations, it would have been pronounced worthy of the united wisdom of
a Burleigh, a Sully, or an Oxenstiern.... _In one bold outline he has
exhibited by anticipation a long succession of prophetic history, the
fulfilment of which is barely yet in progress, responding exactly
hitherto to his foresight_, but the full accomplishment of which is
reserved for the development of after ages. The extinction of the power
of France in America, the union of the British North American Colonies,
the achievement of their independence, and the establishment of their
ascendency in the community of civilized nations by the means of their
naval power, are all foreshadowed in this letter, with a clearness of
perception and a distinctness of delineation which time has done little
more than to convert into historical fact."[24]

2. The Declaration of Independence bears date 4th July, 1776, for on
that day it was signed; but the vote which determined it was on the 2d
July. _On the 3d July_, John Adams, in a letter to his wife, wrote as
follows:--

"Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in
America, and a greater, perhaps, never was nor will be decided among
men.... I am surprised at the suddenness as well as greatness of this
revolution. Britain has been filled with folly, and America with wisdom.
At least this is my judgment. Time must determine. _It is the will of
Heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever_.... The day is
past. The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in
the history of America. _I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated
by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival._ It ought
to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of
devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and
parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and
illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this
time forward, forevermore. You will think me transported with
enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and
treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support
and defend these States. _Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the ray
of ravishing light and glory; and that posterity will triumph in that
day's transaction_, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God
we shall not."[25]

Here is a comprehensive prophecy, first, that the two countries would be
separated forever; secondly, that the anniversary of Independence would
be celebrated as a great annual festival; and, thirdly, that posterity
would triumph in this transaction, where, through all the gloom, shone
rays of ravishing light and glory; all of which has been fulfilled to
the letter. Recent events give to the Declaration additional importance.
For a long time its great promises that all men are equal, and that
rightful government stands only on the consent of the governed, were
disowned by our country. Now that at last they are beginning to prevail,
there is increased reason to celebrate the day on which the mighty
Declaration was made, and new occasion for triumph in the rays of
ravishing light and glory.

3. Here is another prophetic passage in a letter _dated at Paris, 13th
July, 1780_, and addressed to the Count de Vergennes of France, pleading
the cause of the colonists:--

"The United States of America are a great and powerful people, whatever
European statesmen may think of them. If we take into our estimate the
numbers and the character of her people, the extent, variety, and
fertility of her soil, her commerce, and her skill and materials for
ship-building, and her seamen, excepting France, Spain, England,
Germany, and Russia, there is not a state in Europe so powerful.
Breaking off such a nation as this from the English so suddenly, and
uniting it so closely with France, is one of the most extraordinary
events that ever happened among mankind."[26]

Perhaps this may be considered a statement rather than a prophecy; but
it illustrates the prophetic character of the writer.

4. In an official letter to the President of Congress, _dated at
Amsterdam, 5th September, 1780_, the same writer, while proposing an
American Academy for refining, improving, and ascertaining the English
language, thus predicts the extension of this language:--

"_English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more
generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French
is in the present age._ The reason of this is obvious,--because the
increasing population in America, and their universal connection and
correspondence with all nations, will, aided by the influence of England
in the world, whether great or small, force their language into general
use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be thrown in their way, if
any such there should be."[27]

In another letter of an unofficial character, _dated at Amsterdam, 23d
September, 1780_, he thus repeats his prophecy:--

"You must know _I have undertaken to prophesy that English will be the
most respectable language in the world, and the most universally read
and spoken in the next century, if not before the close of this_.
American population will in the next age produce a greater number of
persons who will speak English than any other language, and these
persons will have more general acquaintance and conversation with all
other nations than any other people."[28]

This prophecy is already accomplished. Of all the European languages,
English is most extensively spoken. Through England and the United
States it has become the language of commerce, which, sooner or later,
must embrace the globe. The German philologist, Grimm, has followed our
American prophet in saying that it "seems chosen, like its people, to
rule in future times in a still greater degree in all the corners of the
earth."[29]

5. There is another prophecy, at once definite and broad, which
proceeded from the same eminent quarter. In a letter _dated London, 17th
October, 1785_, and addressed to John Jay, who was at the time Secretary
for Foreign Affairs under the Confederation, John Adams reveals his
conviction of the importance of France to us, "while England held a
province in America";[30] and then, in another letter, _dated 21st
October, 1785_, reports the saying of people about him, "_that Canada
and Nova Scotia must soon be ours_; there must be war for it; they know
how it will end, but the sooner the better. This done, we shall be
forever at peace; till then, never."[31] These intimations foreshadow
the prophecy which will be found in the Preface to his "Defence of the
American Constitutions," written in London, while he was Minister there,
and _dated at Grosvenor Square, 1st January, 1787_:--

"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example
of governments erected on the simple principles of nature.... Thirteen
governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone,
without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and _which are destined to
spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe_, are a
great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind. The experiment is
made, and has completely succeeded."[32]

Here is foretold nothing less than that our system of government is to
embrace the whole continent of North America.


GALIANI.--1776, 1778.

Among the most brilliant persons in this list is the Abbé Galiani, a
Neapolitan, who was born in 1728, and died at Naples in 1787. Although
Italian by birth, yet by the accident of official residence he became
for a while domesticated in France, wrote the French language, and now
enjoys a French reputation. His writings in French and his letters have
the wit and ease of Voltaire.

Galiani was a genius. Whatever he touched shone at once with his
brightness, in which there was originality as well as knowledge. He was
a finished scholar, and very successful in lapidary verses. Early in
life, while in Italy, he wrote a grave essay on Money, which contrasted
with another of rare humor suggested by the death of the public
executioner. Other essays followed, and then came the favor of that
congenial pontiff, Benedict XIV. In 1760 he found himself at Paris, as
Secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy. Here he mingled with the courtiers
officially, according to the duties of his position, but he fraternized
with the liberal and sometimes audacious spirits who exercised such an
influence over society and literature. He was soon recognized as one of
them, and as inferior to none. His petty stature was forgotten, when he
conversed with inexhaustible faculties of all kinds, so that he seemed
an Encyclopædia, Harlequin, and Machiavelli all in one. The atheists at
the Thursday dinner of D'Holbach were confounded, while he enforced the
existence of God. Into the questions of political economy which occupied
attention at the time he entered with a pen which seemed borrowed from
the French Academy. His _Dialogues sur le Commerce des Blés_ had the
success of a romance; ladies carried this book on corn in their
work-baskets. Returning to Naples, he continued to live in Paris through
his correspondence, especially with Madame d'Epinay, the Baron
d'Holbach, Diderot, and Grimm.[33]

Among his later works, after his return to Naples, was a solid
volume--not to be forgotten in the History of International Law--on the
"Rights of Neutrals," where a difficult subject is treated with such
mastery that, half a century later, D'Hautefeuille, in his elaborate
treatise, copies from it at length. Galiani was the predecessor of this
French writer in the extreme assertion of neutral rights. Other works
were left at his death in manuscript, some grave and some humorous; also
letters without number. The letters he had preserved from Italian
_savans_ filled eight large volumes; those from _savans_, ministers, and
sovereigns abroad filled fourteen. His Parisian correspondence did not
see the light till 1818, although some of the letters may be found in
the contemporary correspondence of Grimm.

In his Parisian letters, which are addressed chiefly to that clever
individuality, Madame d'Epinay, the Neapolitan Abbé shows not only the
brilliancy and nimbleness of his talent, but the universality of his
knowledge and the boldness of his speculations. Here are a few words
from a letter dated at Naples, 12th October, 1776, in which he brings
forward the idea of "races," so important in our day, with an
illustration from Russia:--

"_All depends on races._ The first, the most noble of races, comes
naturally from the North of Asia. The Russians are the nearest to it,
and this is the reason why they have made more progress in fifty years
than can be got out of the Portuguese in five hundred."[34]

Belonging to the Latin race, Galiani was entitled to speak thus freely.

1. In another letter to Madame d'Epinay, _dated at Naples, 18th May,
1776_, he had already foretold the success of our Revolution. Few
prophets have been more explicit than he was in the following passage:--

"Livy said of his age, which so much resembled ours, 'Ad hæc tempora
ventum est quibus, nec vitia nostra, nec remedia pati possumus,'--'We
are in an age where the remedies hurt as much as the vices.' Do you know
the reality? _The epoch has come of the total fall of Europe, and of
transmigration into America._ All here turns into rottenness,--religion,
laws, arts, sciences,--and all hastens to renew itself in America. This
is not a jest; nor is it an idea drawn from the English quarrels; I have
said it, announced it, preached it, for more than twenty years, and I
have constantly seen my prophecies come to pass. _Therefore, do not buy
your house in the Chaussée d'Antin; you must buy it in Philadelphia._ My
trouble is that there are no abbeys in America."[35]

This letter was written some months before the Declaration of
Independence was known in Europe.

2. In another letter, _dated at Naples, 7th February, 1778_, the Abbé
alludes to the "quantities" of English men and women who have come to
Naples "for shelter from the American tempest," and adds, "Meanwhile the
Washingtons and Hancocks will be fatal to them."[36] In still another,
_dated at Naples, 25 July, 1778_, he renews his prophecies in language
still more explicit:--

"You will at this time have decided the greatest revolution of the
globe; namely, _if it is America which is to reign over Europe, or if it
is Europe which is to continue to reign over America_. I will wager in
favor of America, for the reason merely physical, that for five thousand
years genius has turned opposite to the diurnal motion, and travelled
from the East to the West."[37]

Here again is the idea of Berkeley which has been so captivating.


ADAM SMITH.--1776.

In contrast with the witty Italian is the illustrious philosopher and
writer of Scotland, Adam Smith, who was born 5th June, 1723, and died
17th July, 1790. His fame is so commanding that any details of his life
or works would be out of place on this occasion. He was a thinker and an
inventor, through whom mankind was advanced in knowledge.

I say nothing of his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," which constitutes an
important contribution to the science of ethics, but come at once to his
great work of political economy, entitled "Inquiry into the Nature and
Sources of the Wealth of Nations," which first appeared in 1776. Its
publication marks an epoch which is described by Mr. Buckle when he
says: "Adam Smith contributed more, by the publication of this single
work, toward the happiness of man, than has been effected by the united
abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has
preserved an authentic account." The work is full of prophetic
knowledge, and especially with regard to the British colonies. Writing
while the debate with the mother country was still pending, Adam Smith
urged that they should be admitted to Parliamentary representation in
proportion to taxation, so that their representation would enlarge with
their growing resources; and here he predicts nothing less than the
transfer of empire.

"The distance of America from the seat of government, the natives of
that country might flatter themselves, with some appearance of reason
too, would not be of very long continuance. Such has hitherto been the
rapid progress of that country in wealth, population, and improvement,
that, in the course of little more than a century, perhaps, the produce
of America might exceed that of British taxation. _The seat of the
empire would then naturally remove itself to that part of the empire
which contributed most to the general defence and support of the
whole._"[38]

In these tranquil words of assured science this great author carries the
seat of government across the Atlantic.


GOVERNOR POWNALL.--1777, 1780, 1785.

Among the best friends of our country abroad during the trials of the
Revolution was Thomas Pownall, called by one biographer "a learned
antiquary and politician," and by another "an English statesman and
author." Latterly he has so far dropped out of sight, that there are few
who recognize in him either of these characters. He was born, 1722, and
died at Bath, 1805. During this long period he held several offices. As
early as 1745 he became secretary to the Commission for Trade and
Plantations. In 1753 he crossed the ocean. In 1755, as Commissioner for
Massachusetts Bay, he negotiated with New York, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, in union with New England, the confederated expedition
against Crown Point. He was afterwards Governor of Massachusetts Bay,
New Jersey, and South Carolina, successively. Returning to England, he
was, in 1761, Comptroller-General of the army in Germany, with the
military rank of Colonel. He sat in three successive Parliaments until
1780, when he passed into private life. Hildreth gives a glimpse at his
personal character, when, admitting his frank manners and liberal
politics, he describes his "habits as rather freer than suited the New
England standard."[39]

Pownall stands forth conspicuous for his championship of our national
independence, and especially for his foresight with regard to our
national future. In both these respects his writings are unique. Other
Englishmen were in favor of our independence, and saw our future also;
but I doubt if any one can be named who was his equal in strenuous
action, or in minuteness of foresight. While the war was still
proceeding, as early as 1780, he openly announced, not only that
independence was inevitable, but that the new nation, "founded in nature
and built up in truth," would continually expand; that its population
would increase and multiply; that a civilizing activity beyond what
Europe could ever know would animate it; and that its commercial and
naval power would be found in every quarter of the globe. All this he
set forth at length with argument and illustration, and he called his
prophetic words "the _stating of the simple fact_, so little understood
in the Old World." Treated at first as "unintelligible speculation" and
as "unfashionable," the truth he announced was neglected where it was
not rejected, but generally rejected as inadmissible, and the author,
according to his own language, "was called by the wise men of the
British Cabinet _a Wild Man_, unfit to be employed." But these writings
are a better title now than any office. In manner they are diffuse and
pedantic; but they hardly deserve the cold judgment of John Adams, who
in his old age said of them, that "a reader who has patience to search
for good sense in an uncouth and disgusting style will find in those
writings proofs of a thinking mind."[40]

He seems to have written a good deal. But the works which will be
remembered the longest are not even mentioned by several of his
biographers. Rose, in his Biographical Dictionary, records works by him,
entitled Antiquities of Ancient Greece; Roman Antiquities dug up at
Bath; Observations on the Currents of the Ocean; Intellectual Physics;
and also contributions to the _Archæologia_. Gorton in his Biographical
Dictionary adds some other titles to this list. But neither mentions his
works on America. This is another instance where the stone rejected by
the builders becomes the head of the corner.

At an early date Pownall comprehended the position of our country,
geographically. He saw the wonderful means of internal communication
supplied by its inland waters, and also the opportunities of external
commerce supplied by the Atlantic Ocean. On the first he dwells, in a
memorial _drawn-up in 1756_ for the Duke of Cumberland.[41] Nobody in
our own day, after the experience of more than a century, has portrayed
more vividly the two masses of waters,--one composed of the great lakes
and their dependencies, and the other of the Mississippi and its
tributaries. The great lakes are described as "a wilderness of waters
spreading over the country by an infinite number and variety of
branchings, bays, and straits." The Mississippi, with its eastern
branch, called the Ohio, is described as having, "so far as we know, but
two falls,--one at a place called, by the French, St. Antoine, high up
on the west or main branch"; and all its waters "run to the ocean with a
still, easy, and gentle current." The picture is completed by exhibiting
the two masses of water in combination:--

"The waters of each respective mass--not only the lesser streams, but
the main general body of each going through this continent in every
course and direction--have by their approach to each other, by their
communication to every quarter and in every direction, an alliance and
unity, and form one mass, or one whole."[42]

Again, depicting the intercommunication among the several waters of the
continent, and how "the watery element claims and holds dominion over
this extent of land," he insists that all shall see these two mighty
masses in their central throne, declaring that "the great lakes which
lie upon its bosom on one hand, and the great river Mississippi and the
multitude of waters which run into it, form there a communication,--an
alliance or dominion of the watery element, that commands throughout the
whole; that these great lakes appear to be the throne, the centre of a
dominion, whose influence, by an infinite number of rivers, creeks, and
streams, extends itself through all and every part of the continent,
supported by the communication of, and alliance with the waters of the
Mississippi."[43]

If these means of internal commerce were vast, those afforded by the
Atlantic Ocean were not less extensive. The latter were developed in the
volume entitled "The Administration of the Colonies," the fourth edition
of which, published in 1768, is now before me. This was after the
differences between the Colonies and the mother country had begun, but
before the idea of independence had shown itself. Pownall insisted that
the Colonies ought to be considered as parts of the realm, entitled to
representation in Parliament. This was a constitutional unity. But he
portrayed a commercial unity also, which he represented in attractive
forms. The British isles, and the British possessions in the Atlantic
and in America, were, according to him, "one grand marine dominion," and
ought, therefore, by policy, to be united into one empire, with one
centre. On this he dwells at length, and the picture is presented
repeatedly.[44] It was incident to the crisis produced in the world by
the predominance of the commercial spirit which already began to rule
the powers of Europe. It was the duty of England to place herself at the
head of this great movement.

"As the rising of this crisis forms precisely the _object_, on which
government should be employed, so the taking leading measures towards
the forming all those Atlantic and American possessions into one empire,
of which Great Britain should be the commercial and political centre, is
the _precise duty_ of government at this crisis."

This was his desire. But he saw clearly the resources as well as the
rights of the Colonies, and was satisfied that, if power were not
consolidated under the constitutional auspices of England, it would be
transferred to the other side of the Atlantic. Here his words are
prophetic:--

"The whole train of events, the whole course of business, must
perpetually bring forward into practice, and necessarily in the end into
establishment, _either an American or a British union_. There is no
other alternative."

The necessity for union is enforced in a manner which foreshadows our
national Union:--

"The Colonial Legislature does not answer all purposes; is incompetent
and inadequate to many purposes. Something more is necessary,--_either a
common union among themselves_, or a common union of subordination under
the one general legislature of the state."[45]

Then, again, in another place of the same work, after representing the
declarations of power over the Colonies as little better than mockery,
he prophesies again:--

"Such is the actual state of the really existing system of our
dominions, that _neither the power of government over these various
parts can long continue under the present mode of administration_, nor
the great interests of commerce extended throughout the whole long
subsist under the present system of the laws of trade."[46]

Recent events may give present interest to his views, in this same work,
on the nature and necessity of a paper curency, where he follows
Franklin. The principal points of his plan were, that bills of credit,
to a certain amount, should be printed in England for the use of the
Colonies; that a loan-office should be established in each Colony to
issue bills, take securities, and receive the payment; that the bills
should be issued for ten years, bearing interest at five per cent,--one
tenth part of the sum borrowed to be paid annually, with interest; and
that they should be a legal tender.

When the differences had flamed forth in war, then the prophet became
more earnest. His utterances deserve to be rescued from oblivion. He was
open, and almost defiant. As early as _2d December, 1777_, some months
before our treaty with France, he declared, from his place in
Parliament, "that the sovereignty of this country over America is
abolished and gone forever"; "that they are determined at all events to
be independent, _and will be so_"; and "that all the treaty this country
can ever expect with America is federal, and that, probably, only
commercial." In this spirit he said to the House:--

"Until you shall be convinced that you are no longer sovereigns over
America, but that the United States are an independent, sovereign
people,--until you are prepared to treat with them as such,--it is of no
consequence at all what schemes or plans of conciliation this side of
the House or that may adopt."[47]

The position taken in Parliament he maintained by writings, and here he
depicted the great destinies of our country. He began with a work
entitled "A Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe," which was published
early in 1780, and was afterwards, through the influence of John Adams,
while at the Hague, abridged and translated into French. In this
remarkable production independence was the least that he claimed for us.
Thus he foretells our future:--

"North America is become a new primary planet in the system of the
world, which, while it takes its own course, must have effect on the
orbit of every other planet, and shift the common centre of gravity of
the whole system of the European world. North America is _de facto_ an
independent power, which has taken its equal station with other powers,
and must be so _de jure_.... The independence of America is fixed as
fate. She is mistress of her own future, knows that she is so, and will
actuate that power which she feels she hath, so as to establish her own
system _and to change the system of Europe_."[48]

Not only is the new power to take an independent place, but it is "to
change the system of Europe." For all this its people are amply
prepared. "Standing on that high ground of improvement up to which the
most enlightened parts of Europe have advanced, like eaglets, they
commence the first efforts of their pinions from a towering
advantage."[49] Then again, giving expression to this same conviction in
another form, he says:--

"North America has advanced, and is every day advancing, to growth of
state, with a steady and continually accelerating motion, of which there
has never yet been any example in Europe."[50] "It is a vitality, liable
to many disorders, many dangerous diseases; but it is young and strong,
and will struggle, by the vigor of internal healing principles of life,
against those evils, and surmount them. Its strength will grow with its
years."[51]

He then dwells in detail on "the progressive population" here; on our
advantage in being "on the other side of the globe, where there is no
enemy"; on the products of the soil, among which is "bread-corn to a
degree that has wrought it to a staple export for the supply of the Old
World"; on the fisheries, which he calls "mines of more solid riches
than all the silver of Potosi"; on the inventive spirit of the people;
and on their commercial activity. Of such a people it is easy to predict
great things; and our prophet announces,--

1. That the new state will be "an active naval power," exercising a
peculiar influence on commerce, and, through commerce, on the political
system of the Old World,--becoming the arbitress of commerce, and,
perhaps, the mediatrix of peace.[52]

2. That ship-building and the science of navigation have made such
progress in America, that her people will be able to build and navigate
cheaper than any country in Europe, even Holland, with all her
economy.[53]

3. That the peculiar articles to be had from America only, and so much
sought in Europe, must give Americans a preference in those markets.[54]

4. That a people "whose empire stands singly predominant on a great
continent" can hardly "suffer in their borders such a monopoly as the
European Hudson Bay Company"; that it cannot be stopped by Cape Horn or
the Cape of Good Hope; that before long they will be found "trading in
the South Sea and in China"; and that the Dutch "will hear of them in
the Spice Islands."[55]

5. That by constant intercommunion of business and correspondence, and
by increased knowledge with regard to the ocean, "America will seem
every day to approach nearer and nearer to Europe"; that the old alarm
at the sea will subside, and "a thousand attractive motives will become
the irresistible cause of _an almost general emigration to the New
World_"; and that "many of the most useful, enterprising spirits, and
much of the active property, will go there also."[56]

6. That "North America will become a _free port_ to all the nations of
the world indiscriminately, and will expect, insist on, and demand, in
fair reciprocity, a _free market_ in all those nations with whom she
trades"; and that, adhering to this principle, "she must be, in the
course of time, the chief carrier of the commerce of the whole
world."[57]

7. That America must avoid complication with European politics, or "the
entanglement of alliances," having no connections with Europe other than
commercial;[58]--all of which at a later day was put forth by Washington
in his Farewell Address, when he said, "The great rule of conduct for
us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial
relations, to have with them as little political concern as possible."

8. That similar modes of living and thinking, the same manners and same
fashions, the same language and old habits of national love, impressed
on the heart and not yet effaced, _the very indentings of the fracture
where North America is broken off from England, all conspire naturally
to a rejuncture by alliance_.[59]

9. That the sovereigns of Europe, "who have despised the unfashioned,
awkward youth of America," and have neglected to interweave their
interests with the rising States, when they find the system of the new
empire not only obstructing, but superseding, the old system of Europe,
and crossing all their settled maxims, will call upon their ministers
and wise men, "Come, curse me this people, for they are too mighty for
me."[60]

This appeal was followed by two other memorials, "drawn up solely for
the king's use, and designed solely for his eye," _dated at Richmond,
January, 1782_, in which the author most persuasively pleads with the
king to treat with the Colonies on the footing of independence, and
with this view to institute a preliminary negotiation "as with free
states _de facto_ under a truce." On the signature of the treaty of
peace, he wrote a private letter to Franklin, dated at _Richmond, 28th
February, 1783_, in which be testifies again to the magnitude of the
event, as follows:--

"My old Friend,--I write this to congratulate you on the establishment
of your country as a free and sovereign power, taking its equal station
amongst the powers of the world. I congratulate you, in particular, as
chosen by Providence to be a principal instrument in this great
Revolution,--_a Revolution that has stranger marks of Divine
interposition, superseding the ordinary course of human affairs, than
any other event which this world has experienced_."

He closes this letter by saying that he thought of making a tour of
America, adding that, "if there ever was an object worth travelling to
see, and worthy of the contemplation of a philosopher, it is that in
which he may see the beginning of a great empire at its foundation."[61]
He communicated this purpose also to John Adams, who answered him, that
"he would be received respectfully in every part of America,--that he
had always been considered friendly to America,--and that his writings
had been useful to our cause."[62]

Then came another work, first published in 1783, entitled, "A Memorial
addressed to the Sovereigns of America, by Governor Pownall," of which
he gave the mistaken judgment to a private friend, that it was "the best
thing he ever wrote." Here for the first time American citizens are
called "sovereigns." At the beginning he explains and indicates the
simplicity with which he addresses them:--

"Having presumed to address to the Sovereigns of Europe a Memorial ...
permit me now to address this Memorial to you, Sovereigns of America. I
shall not address you with the court titles of Gothic Europe, nor with
those of servile Asia. I will neither address your Sublimity or Majesty,
your Grace or Holiness, your Eminence or High-mightiness, your
Excellence or Honors. What are titles, where things themselves are known
and understood? What title did the Republic of Rome take? The state was
known to be sovereign and the citizens to be free. What could add to
this? Therefore, United States and Citizens of America, I address you as
you are."[63]

Here again are the same constant sympathy with liberty, the same
confidence in our national destinies, and the same aspirations for our
prosperity, mingled with warnings against disturbing influences. He
exhorts that all our foundations should be "laid in nature"; that there
should be "no contention for, nor acquisition of, unequal domination in
men"; and that union should be established on the attractive principle
by which all are drawn to a common centre. He fears difficulty, in
making the line of frontier between us and the British Provinces "a line
of peace," as it ought to be; he is anxious lest something may break out
between us and Spain; and he suggests that possibly, "in the cool hours
of unimpassioned reflection," we may learn the danger of our
"alliances,"--referring plainly to that original alliance with France
which, at a later day, was the occasion of such trouble. Two other
warnings occur. One is against Slavery, which is more noteworthy,
because in an earlier memorial he enumerates among articles of commerce
"African slaves carried by a circuitous, trade in American shipping to
the West India market."[64] The other warning is thus strongly
expressed:--"Every inhabitant of America is, _de facto_ as well as _de
jure_, equal, in his essential, inseparable rights of the individual, to
any other individual, and is, in these rights, independent of any power
that any other can assume over him, over his labor, or his property.
This is principle in act and deed, and not a mere speculative
theorem."[65]

I close this strange and striking testimony, all from one man, with his
farewell words to Franklin. As Pownall heard that the great philosopher
and negotiator was about to embark for the United States, he wrote to
him from Lausanne, _under date of 3d July, 1785_, as follows:--

"Adieu, my dear friend. You are going to a New World, formed to exhibit
a scene which the Old World never yet saw. You leave me here in the Old
World, which, like myself, begins to feel, as Asia hath felt, that it is
wearing out apace. We shall never meet again on this earth; but there is
another world where we shall, and _where we shall be understood_."

Clearly Pownall was not understood in his time; but it is evident that
he understood our country as few Englishmen since have been able to
understand it.


DAVID HARTLEY.--1775, 1785.

Another friend of our country in England was David Hartley. He was
constant and even pertinacious on our side, although less prophetic than
Pownall, with whom he co-operated in purpose and activity. His father
was Hartley the metaphysician, and author of the ingenious theory of
sensation. The son was born 1729, and died at Bath, 1813, During our
revolution he sat in Parliament for Kingston-upon-Hull. He was also the
British plenipotentiary in negotiating the definitive Treaty of Peace
with the United States. He, too, has dropped out of sight. In the
biographical dictionaries he has only a few lines. But he deserves a
considerable place in the history of our independence.

John Adams was often austere, and sometimes cynical in his judgments.
Evidently he did not like Hartley. In one place he speaks of him as
"talkative and disputatious, and not always intelligible";[66] then, as
"a person of consummate vanity";[67] and then, again, when he was
appointed to sign the definitive Treaty, he says, "it would have been
more agreeable to have finished with Mr. Oswald";[68] and, in still
another place, he records, "Mr. Hartley was as copious as usual."[69]
And yet, when writing most elaborately to Count de Vergennes on the
prospects of the negotiation with England, he introduces opinions of
Hartley at length, saying that he was "more for peace than any man in
the kingdom."[70] Such testimony may well outweigh the other
expressions, especially as nothing of the kind appears in the
correspondence of Franklin, with whom Hartley was much more intimate.

The Parliamentary History is a sufficient monument for Hartley. He was a
frequent speaker, and never missed an opportunity of pleading our cause.
Although without the immortal eloquence of Burke, he was always clear
and full. Many of his speeches seem to have been written out by himself.
He was not a tardy convert. He began as "a new member" by supporting an
amendment favorable to the Colonies, 5th December, 1774. In March, 1775,
he brought forward "propositions for conciliation with America," which
he sustained in an elaborate speech, where he avowed that the American
Question had occupied him already for some time:--

"Though I have so lately had the honor of a seat in this House, yet I
have for many years turned my thoughts and attention to matters of
public concern and national policy. This question of America is now of
many years' standing."[71]

In the course of this speech he thus acknowledges the services of New
England at Louisburg:--

"In that war too, sir, they took Louisburg from the French,
single-handed, without any European assistance,--as mettled an
enterprise as any in our history,--an everlasting memorial of the zeal,
courage, and perseverance of the troops of New England. The men
themselves dragged the cannon over a morass which had always been
thought impassable, where neither horses nor oxen could go, and they
carried the shot upon their backs. And what was their reward for this
forward and spirited enterprise,--for the reduction of this American
Dunkirk? Their reward, sir, you know very well; it was given up for a
barrier to the Dutch."[72]

All his various propositions were negatived; but he was not
disheartened. On every occasion he spoke,--now on the budget, then on
the address, and then on specific propositions. At this time he asserted
the power of Parliament over the Colonies, and he proposed on the 2d
November, 1775, that a test of submission by the Colonists should be the
recognition of an act of Parliament, "enacting that all the slaves in
America should have the trial by jury."[73] Shortly afterwards _on the
5th December, 1775_, he brought forward another set of "propositions for
conciliation with America," where, among other things, he embodied the
test on slavery, which he put forward as a compromise; and here his
language belongs, not only to the history of our Revolution, but to the
history of anti-slavery. While declaring that in his opinion Great
Britain was "the aggressor in everything," he sought to bring the two
countries together on a platform of human rights, which he thus
explained:--

"The act to be proposed to America, _as an auspicious beginning to lay
the first stone of universal liberty to mankind_, should be what no
American could hesitate an instant to comply with, namely, that every
slave in North America should be entitled to his trial by jury in all
criminal cases. America cannot refuse to accept and enroll such an act
as this, and thereby to re-establish peace and harmony with the parent
state. _Let us all be re-united in this, as a foundation to extirpate
slavery from the face of the earth. Let those who seek justice and
liberty for themselves give that justice and liberty to their
fellow-creatures._ With respect to putting a final period to slavery in
North America, it should seem best that, when this country had led the
way by the act for jury, each Colony, knowing their own peculiar
circumstances, should undertake the work in the most practicable way,
and that they should endeavor to establish some system by which slavery
should be in a certain term of years abolished. _Let the only contention
henceforward between Great Britain and America be, which shall exceed
the other in zeal for establishing the fundamental rights of liberty for
all mankind._"[74]

The motion was rejected; but among the twenty-three in its favor were
Fox and Burke. During this same month the unwearied defender of our
country came forward again, declaring that he could not be "an adviser
or a well-wisher to any of the vindictive operations against America,
because the cause is unjust; but at the same time he must be equally
earnest to secure British interests from destruction," and he thus
prophesies:--

"The fate of America is cast. You may bruise its heel; but you cannot
crush its head. It will revive again. _The new world is before them.
Liberty is theirs._ They have possession of a free government, their
birthright and inheritance, derived to them from their parent state,
which the hand of violence cannot wrest from them. If you will cast them
off, my last wish is to them, May they go and prosper!"

Again, on the 10th May, 1776, he vindicated anew his original
proposition, and here again he testifies for peace and against slavery.

"For the sake of peace, therefore, I did propose a test of compromise by
an act of acceptance, on the part of the Colonists, of an act of
Parliament which should lay _the foundation for the extirpation of the
horrid custom of slavery in the New World_. My motion was simply an act
of compromise and reconciliation; and, as far as it was a legislative
act, it was still to have been applied in correcting the laws of slavery
in America, which I considered as repugnant to the laws of the realm of
England and to the fundamentals of our constitution. Such a compromise
would at the same time have saved the national honor."[75]

All gratitude to the hero who at this early day vowed himself to the
abolition of slavery. Hartley is among the first of abolitionists, with
hardly a predecessor except Granville Sharp, and in Parliament
absolutely the first. Clarkson was at this time fifteen years old,
Wilberforce sixteen. It was only in 1787 that Clarkson obtained the
prize for the best Latin essay on the question, "Is it right to make men
slaves against their will?" It was not until 1791 that Wilberforce moved
for leave to bring in a bill for the abolition of the slave-trade.
Surely it is a great honor for one man, that he should have come forward
in Parliament as an avowed abolitionist, while he was at the same time a
vindicator of our independence.

Again, on the 15th May, 1777, Hartley pleaded for us, saying:--

"At sea, which has hitherto been our prerogative element, they rise
against us at a stupendous rate; and if we cannot return to our old
mutual hospitalities towards each other, a very few years will show us a
most formidable hostile marine, ready to join hands with any of our
enemies.... I will venture to prophesy that the principles of a federal
alliance are the only terms of peace that ever will and that ever ought
to obtain between the two countries."[76]

On the 15th June, immediately afterwards, the Parliamentary History
reports briefly:--

"Mr. Hartley went upon the cruelties of slavery, and urged the Board of
Trade to take some means of mitigating it. He produced a pair of
handcuffs, which he said was a manufacture they were now going to
establish."[77]

Thus again the abolitionist reappeared in the vindicator of our
independence. On the 22d June, 1779, he brought forward another formal
motion "for reconciliation with America," and, in the course of a
well-considered speech, denounced the ministers for "headstrong and
inflexible obstinacy in prosecuting a cruel and destructive American
war."[78] On the 3d December, 1779, in what is called "a very long
speech," he returned to his theme, inveighing against ministers for "the
favorite, though wild, Quixotic, and impracticable measure of coercing
America."[79] These are only instances.

During this time he had maintained a correspondence with Franklin, which
appears in the "Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution," and all of
which attests his desire for peace. In 1778 he came to Paris on a
confidential errand, especially to confer with Franklin. It was on this
occasion that John Adams met him and judged him severely. In 1783 he was
appointed a commissioner to sign the definitive Treaty of Peace.

These things belong to history. Though perhaps not generally known, they
are accessible. I have presented them partly for their intrinsic value
and their prophetic character, and partly as an introduction to an
unpublished letter from Hartley which I received some time ago from an
English friend who has since been called away from important labors. The
letter concerns _emigration to our country and the payment of the
national debt_.

The following indorsement will explain its character:--

"_Note._ This is a copy of the material portion of a long letter from D.
Hartley, the British Commissioner in Paris, to Lord Sydenham, January,
1785. The original was sold by C. Robinson, of 21 Bond Street, London,
on the 6th April, 1859, at a sale of Hartley's MSS. and papers chiefly
relating to the United States of America. It was Hartley's copy, in his
own hand.

"The lot was No. 82 in the sale catalogue. It was bought by J. R. Smith,
the London bookseller, for £2 6_s._ 0_d._

"I had a copy made before the sale.

     "_Joseph Parkes._

     "London, 18 July, '59."

The letter is as follows:--

     "MY LORD,--In your Lordship's last letter to me, just before
     my leaving Paris, you are pleased to say that any
     information which I might have been able to collect of a
     nature to promote the mutual and reciprocal interests of
     Great Britain and the United States of America would be
     extremely acceptable to his Majesty's government.... Annexed
     to this letter I have the honor of transmitting to your
     Lordship some papers and documents which I have received
     from the American Ministers. One of them (No. 5) is a Map of
     the Continent of North America, in which the land ceded to
     them by the late treaty of peace is divided, by parallels of
     latitude and longitude, into fourteen new States. The whole
     project, in its full extent, would take many years in its
     execution, and therefore it must be far beyond the present
     race of men to say, 'This shall be so.' Nevertheless, _those
     who have the first care of this New World will probably give
     it such directions and inherent influences as may guide and
     control its course and revolutions for ages to come_. But
     these plans, being beyond the reach of man to predestinate,
     are likewise beyond the reach of comment or speculation to
     say what may or may not be possible, or to predict what
     events may hereafter be produced by time, climates, soils,
     adjoining nations, or by the unwieldy magnitude of empire,
     and _the future population of millions superadded to
     millions_. The sources of the Mississippi may be unknown.
     The lines of longitude and latitude may be extended into
     unexplored regions, and the plan of this new creation may be
     sketched out by a presumptuous compass, if all its
     intermediate uses and functions were to be suspended until
     the final and precise accomplishment, without failure or
     deviation, of this unbounded plan. But this is not the case;
     the immediate objects in view are limited and precise; they
     are of prudent thought, and within the scope of human power
     to measure out and to execute. The principle indeed is
     indefinite, and will be left to the test of future ages to
     determine its duration or extent. I take the liberty to
     suggest thus much, lest we should be led away to suppose
     that the councils which have produced these plans have had
     no wiser or more sedate views than merely the amusement of
     drawing meridians of ambition and high thoughts. There
     appear to me to be two solid and rational objects in view:
     the first is, by the sale of lands nearly contiguous to the
     present States (receiving Congress paper in payment
     according to its scale of depreciation) _to extinguish the
     present national debt_, which I understand might be
     discharged for about twelve millions sterling.

     "If your Lordship will cast your eye upon the map to the
     south and east of the Ohio and the Mississippi, you will see
     many millions of acres, which, valued at a single dollar per
     acre, would discharge many millions sterling. The whole
     space within the boundaries lately conceded to the United
     States, together with the unoccupied lands eastward of the
     great rivers, may perhaps contain near half a million of
     square miles (in acres, perhaps three hundred millions, more
     or less). A sixth part of this, the nearest parts being
     likewise the most valuable, would discharge the whole of
     their national debt. It is a new proposition to be offered
     to the numerous common rank of mankind in all the countries
     of the world, to say that there are in America fertile soils
     and temperate climates in which an acre of land may be
     purchased for a trifling consideration, which may be
     possessed in freedom, together with all the natural and
     civil rights of mankind. The Congress have already
     proclaimed this, and that no other qualification or name is
     necessary but to become settlers, without distinction of
     countries or persons. The European peasant, who toils for
     his scanty sustenance in penury, wretchedness, and
     servitude, will eagerly fly to this asylum for free and
     industrious labor. The tide of immigration may set strongly
     outward from Scotland, Ireland, and Canada to this new land
     of promise. A very great proportion of men in all the
     countries of the world are without property, and generally
     are subject to governments of which they have no
     participation, and over whom they have no control. The
     Congress have now opened to all the world a sale of landed
     settlements where the liberty and property of each
     individual is to be consigned to his own custody and
     defence. The first settlers, as the seedlings of a new
     State, will be under a temporary government of their own
     choice, provided it be similar to some one of the present
     American governments. But as soon as their numbers shall
     amount to twenty thousand, their temporary government is to
     cease, and they are to establish a permanent government for
     themselves, and whenever such new State shall have of free
     inhabitants as many as shall be in any one the least
     numerous of the original States. These are such propositions
     of free establishments as have never yet been offered to
     mankind, and cannot fail of producing great effects in the
     future progress of things. The Congress have arranged their
     offers in the most inviting and artful terms, and lest
     individual peasants and laborers should not have the means
     of removing themselves, they throw out inducements to
     moneyed adventurers to purchase and to undertake the
     settlement by commission and agency, without personal
     residence, by stipulating that the lands of proprietors
     being absentees shall not be higher taxed than the lands of
     residents. This will quicken the sale of lands, which is
     their object. For the explanation of these points, I beg
     leave to refer your Lordship to the documents annexed, Nos.
     5 and 6, namely, the Map and Resolutions of Congress, dated
     April, 1784. There is another circumstance would confirm
     that it is the intention of Congress to invite moneyed
     adventurers to make purchases and settlements, which is the
     precise and mathematical mode of dividing and marking out
     for sale the lands in each new proposed State. These new
     States are to be divided by parallel lines running north and
     south, and by other parallels running east and west. They
     are to be divided into hundreds of ten geographical miles
     square, and then again into lots of one square mile. The
     divisions are laid out as regularly as the squares upon a
     chessboard, and all to be formed into a Charter of Compact.

     "They may be purchased by purchasers at any distance, and
     the titles may be verified by registers of such or such
     numbers, north or south, east or west; all this is explained
     by the document annexed, No. 7, viz. _The Ordinance for
     ascertaining the mode of locating and disposing of lands in
     the Western Territory. This is their plan and means for
     paying off their national debt, and they seem very intent
     upon doing it._ I should observe that their debt consists of
     two parts, namely, domestic and foreign. The sale of lands
     is to be appropriated to the former.

     "The domestic debt may perhaps be nine or ten millions, and
     the foreign debt two or three. For payment of the foreign
     debt it is proposed to lay a tax of five per cent upon all
     imports until discharged, which, I am informed, has already
     been agreed to by most of the States, and probably will
     soon be confirmed by the rest. Upon the whole, it appears
     that this plan is as prudently conceived and as judiciously
     arranged, as to the end proposed, as any experienced cabinet
     of European ministers could have devised or planned any
     similar project. The second point which appears to me to be
     deserving of attention, respecting the immense cession of
     territory to the United States at the late peace, is a point
     _which will perhaps in a few years become an unparalleled
     phenomenon in the political world_. As soon as the national
     debt of the United States shall be discharged by the sale of
     one portion of those lands, we shall then see the
     Confederate Republic in a new character, as a proprietor of
     lands, either for sale or to let upon rents, while other
     nations may be struggling under debts too enormous to be
     discharged either by economy or taxation, and while they may
     be laboring to raise ordinary and necessary supplies by
     burdensome impositions upon their own persons and
     properties. _Here will be a nation possessed of a new and
     unheard of financial organ of stupendous magnitude, and in
     process of time of unmeasured value, thrown into their lap
     as a fortuitous superfluity, and almost without being sought
     for._

     "When such an organ of revenue begins to arise into produce
     and exertion, what public uses it may be applicable to, or
     to what abuses and perversions it might be rendered
     subservient, is far beyond the reach of probable discussion
     now. Such discussions would only be visionary speculations.
     However, thus far it is obvious and highly deserving of our
     attention, that it cannot fail becoming to the American
     States a most important instrument of national power, the
     progress and operation of which must hereafter be _a most
     interesting object of attention to the British American
     dominions which are in close vicinity to the territories of
     the United States, and I should hope that these
     considerations would lead us, inasmuch as we value those
     parts of our dominions, to encourage conciliatory and
     amicable correspondence between them and their neighbors_.

     "I have thus, my Lord, endeavored to comply with your
     Lordship's commands to the best of my power, in stating such
     information to his Majesty's government as I have been
     enabled to collect of such nature as may tend to the mutual
     and reciprocal interest of Great Britain and the United
     States of America. I do not recollect at present anything
     further to trouble your Lordship with. If any of the
     foregoing points should require any further elucidation, I
     shall always be ready to obey your Lordship's summons, or to
     give in any other way the best explanations in my power."


COUNT D'ARANDA.--1783.

The Count d'Aranda was one of the first of Spanish statesmen and
diplomatists, and one of the richest subjects of Spain in his day; born
at Saragossa, 1718, and died 1799. He, too, is one of our prophets.
Originally a soldier, he became ambassador, governor of a province, and
prime minister. In the latter post he displayed character as well as
ability, and was the benefactor of his country. He drove the Jesuits
from Spain and dared to oppose the Inquisition. He was a philosopher,
and, like Pope Benedict XIV., corresponded with Voltaire. Such a liberal
spirit was out of place in Spain. Compelled to resign in 1773, he found
a retreat at Paris as ambassador, where he came into communication with
Franklin, Adams, and Jay, and finally signed the Treaty of Paris, by
which Spain acknowledged our independence. Shortly afterwards he
returned to Spain and took the place of Florida Blanca as prime
minister.

Franklin, on meeting him, records, in his letter to the secret committee
of Congress, that he seemed "well disposed to us."[80] Shortly
afterwards he had another interview with him, which he thus chronicles
in his journal:--

"_Saturday, June 29th_ [1782].--We went together to the Spanish
Ambassador's, who received us with great civility and politeness. He
spoke with Mr. Jay on the subject of the treaty they were to make
together.... On our going out, he took pains himself to open the
folding-doors for us, which is a high compliment here, and told us he
would return our visit (_rendre son devoir_), and then fix a day with us
for dining with him."[81]

Adams, in his journal, describes a Sunday dinner at his house, then a
"new building in the finest situation of Paris,"[82] being a part of the
incomparable palace, with its columnar front, which is still admired as
it looks on the Place de la Concorde. Jay also describes a dinner with
the Count, who was "living in great splendor, with an assortment of
wines the finest in Europe," and was "the ablest Spaniard he had ever
known"; showing by his conversation "that his court is in earnest," and
appearing "frank and candid, as well as sagacious."[83] These
hospitalities have a peculiar interest, when it is known, as it now is,
that Count d'Aranda regarded the acknowledgment of our independence with
"grief and dread." But these sentiments were disguised from our
ministers.

After signing the Treaty of Paris, by which Spain acknowledged our
independence, D'Aranda addressed a memoir secretly to King Charles III.,
in which his opinions on this event are set forth. This prophetic
document slumbered for a long time in the confidential archives of the
Spanish crown. Coxe, in his "Memoirs of the House of Bourbon in Spain,"
which are founded on a rare collection of original documents, makes no
allusion to it. The memoir appears for the first time in a volume
published at Paris in 1837, and entitled _Gouvernement de Charles III.,
Roi d'Espagne, ou Instruction réservée à la Funte d'État par ce
Monarque. Publiée par D. André Muriel_. The editor had already
translated into French the Memoirs of Coxe, and was probably led by this
labor to make the supplementary collection. An abstract of the memoir of
D'Aranda appears in one of the historical dissertations of the Mexican
authority, Alaman, who said of it that it has "a just celebrity, because
results have made it pass for a prophecy."[84] I translate it now from
the French of Muriel.

     "_Memoir communicated secretly to the King by his Excellency
     the Count d'Aranda, on the Independence of the English
     Colonies, after having signed the Treaty of Paris of 1783._

     "The independence of the English colonies has been
     acknowledged. This is for me an occasion of grief and dread.
     France has few possessions in America; but she should have
     considered that Spain, her intimate ally, has many, and that
     she is left to-day exposed to terrible shocks. From the
     beginning, France has acted contrary to her true interests
     in encouraging and seconding this independence; I have so
     declared often to the ministers of this nation. What could
     happen better for France than to see the English and the
     colonists destroy each other in a party warfare which could
     only augment her power and favor her interests? The
     antipathy which reigns between France and England blinded
     the French Cabinet; it forgot that its interest consisted in
     remaining a tranquil spectator of this conflict; and, once
     launched in the arena, it dragged us unhappily, and by
     virtue of the family compact, into a war entirely contrary
     to our proper interest.

     "I will not stop here to examine the opinions of some
     statesmen, our own countrymen as well as foreigners, which I
     share, on _the difficulty of preserving our power in
     America. Never have so extensive possessions, placed at a
     great distance from the metropolis, been long preserved_.
     To this cause, applicable to all colonies, must be added
     others peculiar to the Spanish possessions; namely, the
     difficulty of succoring them in case of need; the vexations
     to which the unhappy inhabitants have been exposed from some
     of the governors; the distance of the supreme authority to
     which they must have recourse for the redress of grievances,
     which causes years to pass before justice is done to their
     complaints; the vengeance of the local authorities to which
     they continue exposed while waiting; the difficulty of
     knowing the truth at so great a distance; finally, the means
     which the viceroys and governors, from being Spaniards,
     cannot fail to have for obtaining favorable judgments in
     Spain; all these different circumstances will render the
     inhabitants of America discontented, and make them attempt
     efforts to obtain independence as soon as they shall have a
     propitious occasion.

     "Without entering into any of these considerations, I shall
     confine myself now to that which occupies us from the dread
     of seeing ourselves exposed to dangers from the new power
     which we have just recognized in a country where there is no
     other in condition to arrest its progress. _This Federal
     Republic is born a pygmy_, so to speak. It required the
     support and the forces of two powers as great as Spain and
     France in order to attain independence. _A day will come
     when it will be a giant, even a colossus formidable in these
     countries._ It will then forget the benefits which it has
     received from the two powers, and will dream of nothing but
     to organize itself. _Liberty of conscience, the facility for
     establishing a new population on immense lands, as well as
     the advantages of the new government, will draw thither
     agriculturists and artisans from all the nations; for men
     always run after fortune. And in a few years we shall see
     with true grief the tyrannical existence of this same
     colossus of which I speak._

     "The first movement of this power, when it has arrived at
     its aggrandizement, will be to obtain possession of the
     Floridas, in order to dominate the Gulf of Mexico. After
     having rendered commerce with New Spain difficult for us, it
     will aspire to the conquest of this vast empire, which it
     will not be possible for us to defend against a formidable
     power established on the same continent, and in its
     neighborhood. These fears are well founded, Sire; they will
     be changed into reality in a few years, if, indeed, there
     are not other disorders in our Americas still more fatal.
     This observation is justified by what has happened in all
     ages, and with all nations which have begun to rise. Man is
     the same everywhere; the difference of climate does not
     change the nature of our sentiments; he who finds the
     opportunity of acquiring power and of aggrandizing himself,
     profits by it always. How then can we expect the Americans
     to respect the kingdom of New Spain, when they shall have
     the facility of possessing themselves of this rich and
     beautiful country? A wise policy counsels us to take
     precautions against evils which may happen. This thought has
     occupied my whole mind, since, as Minister Plenipotentiary
     of your Majesty, and conformably to your royal will and
     instructions, I signed the Peace of Paris. I have considered
     this important affair with all the attention of which I am
     capable, and after much reflection drawn from the knowledge,
     military as well as political, which I have been able to
     acquire in my long career, I think that, in order to escape
     the great losses with which we are threatened, there remains
     nothing but the means which I am about to have the honor of
     exhibiting to your Majesty.

     "Your Majesty must relieve yourself of all your possessions
     on the continent of the two Americas, _preserving only the
     islands of Cuba and Porto Rico_ in the northern part, and
     some other convenient one in the southern part, to serve as
     a seaport or trading-place for Spanish commerce.

     "In order to accomplish this great thought in a manner
     becoming to Spain, three infantas must be placed in
     America,--one as king of Mexico, another as king of Peru,
     and the third as king of the Terra Firma. Your Majesty will
     take the title of Emperor."

I have sometimes heard this remarkable memoir called apocryphal, but
without reason, except because its foresight is so remarkable. The
Mexican historian Alaman treats it as genuine, and, after praising it,
informs us that the proposition of Count d'Aranda to the king was not
taken into consideration, which, according to him, was "disastrous to
all, and especially to the people of America, who in this way would have
obtained independence, without struggle or anarchy."[85] Meanwhile all
the American possessions of the Spanish crown, except Cuba and Porto
Rico, have become independent, as predicted, and the new power, known as
the United States, which at that time was a "pygmy," has become a
"colossus."

D'Aranda was not alone in surprise at the course of Spain. The English
traveller Burnaby, in his edition of 1796, mentions this as one of the
reasons for the success of the colonists, and declares that he had not
supposed, originally, "that Spain would join in a plan inevitably
leading by slow and imperceptible steps to the final loss of all her
rich possessions in America."[86] This was not an uncommon idea. One of
John Adams's Dutch correspondents, under date of 14th September, 1780,
writes he has heard it said twenty times, that, "if America becomes
free, it will some day give the law to Europe; it will seize our islands
and our colonies of Guiana; it will seize all the West Indies; it will
swallow Mexico, even Peru, Chili, and Brazil; it will take from us our
freighting commerce; it will pay its benefactors with ingratitude."[87]
Mr. Adams also records in his diary, under date of 14th December, 1779,
on his landing at Ferrol in Spain, that, according to the report of
various persons, "the Spanish nation in general have been of opinion
that the Revolution in America was of bad example to the Spanish
colonies, and dangerous to the interests of Spain, as the United States,
should they become ambitious, and be seized with the spirit of conquest,
might aim at Mexico and Peru."[88] All this is entirely in harmony with
the memoir of the Count d'Aranda.


BURNS.--1788.

From Count d'Aranda to Robert Burns,--from the rich and titled minister,
faring sumptuously in the best house of Paris, to the poor ploughboy
poet, struggling in a cottage,--what a contrast! Of the poet I shall say
nothing, except that he was born 25th January, 1759, and died 21st July,
1796, in the thirty-seventh year of his age.

There is only a slender thread of Burns to be woven into this web, and
yet, coming from him, it must not be neglected. In a letter _dated 8th
November, 1788_, after saying a friendly word for the unfortunate house
of Stuart, he thus prophetically alludes to our independence:--

"I will not, I cannot, enter into the merits of the cause, but I dare
say the American Congress, in 1776, will be allowed to be as able and as
enlightened as the English Convention was in 1688; _and that their
posterity will celebrate the centenary of their deliverance from us, as
duly and sincerely as we do ours from the oppressive measures of the
house of Stuart_."[89]

The year 1788, when these words were written, was a year of
commemoration, being the hundredth from the famous revolution by which
the Stuarts were excluded from the throne of England. The "centenary" of
our independence is not yet completed; but long ago the commemoration
began. On the coming of that hundredth anniversary, the prophecy of
Burns will be more than fulfilled.


FOX.--1794.

In quoting from Charles James Fox, the statesman, minister, and orator,
I need add nothing, except that he was born 24th January, 1749, and died
13th September, 1806, and that he was an early friend of our country.

Many words of his, especially during our Revolution, might be introduced
here; but I content myself with a single passage of a later date, which,
besides its expression of good-will, is a prophecy of our power. It will
be found in a speech on his motion for putting an end to war with France
in the House of Commons, _30th May, 1794_.

"It was impossible to dissemble that we had a serious dispute with
America, and although we might be confident that the wisest and best man
of his age, who presided in the government of that country, would do
everything that became him to avert a war, it was impossible to foresee
the issue. America had no fleet, no army; but in case of war she would
find various means to harass and annoy us. Against her we could not
strike a blow that would not be as severely felt in London as in
America, so identified were the two countries by commercial intercourse.
_To a contest with such an adversary he looked as the greatest possible
misfortune._ If we commenced another crusade against her, we might
destroy her trade, and check the progress of her agriculture, but we
must also equally injure ourselves. Desperate, therefore, indeed, must
be that war in which each wound inflicted on our enemy would at the same
time inflict one upon ourselves. He hoped to God that such an event as a
war with America would not happen."[90]

All good men on both sides of the ocean must join with Fox, who thus
early deprecated a war between the United States and England, and
portrayed the consequences. Time, which has enlarged and multiplied the
relations between the two countries, makes his words more applicable now
than when he first uttered them.


GEORGE CANNING.--1826.

George Canning was a successor of Fox, in the House of Commons, as
statesman, minister, and orator; he was born 11th April, 1770, and died
8th August, 1827, in the beautiful villa of the Duke of Devonshire, at
Chiswick, where Fox had died before. Unlike Fox in sentiment for our
country, he is nevertheless associated with a leading event of our
history, and is the author of prophetic words.

The Monroe Doctrine, as it is now familiarly called, proceeded from
Canning. He was its inventor, promoter, and champion, at least so far as
it bears against European intervention in American affairs. Earnestly
engaged in counteracting the designs of the Holy Alliance for the
restoration of the Spanish colonies to Spain, he sought to enlist the
United States in the same policy, and when Mr. Rush, who was at the time
our Minister at London, replied that any interference with European
politics was contrary to the traditions of our government, he argued
that, however just such a policy might have been formerly, it was no
longer applicable,--that the question was new and complicated,--that it
was "full as much American as European, to say no more,"--that it
concerned the United States under aspects and interests as immediate and
commanding as those of any of the states of Europe,--that "they were the
first power on that continent, and confessedly the leading power"; and
he then asked, "Was it possible that they could see with indifference
their fate decided upon by Europe? Had not a new epoch arrived in the
relative position of the United States toward Europe, which Europe must
acknowledge? _Were the great political and commercial interests_ which
hung upon the destinies of the new continent to be canvassed and
adjusted in this hemisphere, without the co-operation, or even the
knowledge, of the United States?" With mingled ardor and importunity the
British Minister pressed his case. At last, after much discussion in the
Cabinet at Washington, President Monroe, accepting the lead of Mr.
Canning, put forth his famous declaration, where, after referring to the
radical difference between the political systems of Europe and America,
he says, that "we should consider any attempt on their part to extend
their systems to any portion of this hemisphere as _dangerous to our
peace and safety_," and that, where governments have been recognized by
us as independent, "we could not view any interposition for the purpose
of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by
any European power, in any other light than as _a manifestation of an
unfriendly disposition toward the United States_."[91]

The message of President Monroe was received in England with
enthusiastic congratulations. It was upon all tongues; the press was
full of it; the securities of Spanish America rose in the market; the
agents of Spanish America were happy.[92] Brougham exclaimed, in
Parliament, that "no event had ever dispersed greater joy, exultation,
and gratitude over all the freemen of Europe." Mackintosh rejoiced in
the coincidence of England and the United States, "the two great
commonwealths, for so he delighted to call them; and he heartily prayed
that they may be forever united in the cause of justice and
liberty."[93] The Holy Alliance abandoned their purposes on this
continent, and the independence of the Spanish colonies in America was
established. Some time afterwards, on the occasion of assistance to
Portugal, when Mr. Canning felt called to review and vindicate his
foreign policy, he assumed the following lofty strain. This was in the
House of Commons, _12th December, 1826_:--

"It would be disingenuous not to admit that the entry of the French army
into Spain was, in a certain sense, a disparagement,--an affront to our
pride,--a blow to the feelings of England. But I deny that, questionable
or censurable as the act may be, it was one that necessarily called for
our direct and hostile opposition. Was nothing then to be done? If
France occupied Spain, was it necessary, in order to avoid the
consequences of that occupation, that we should blockade Cadiz? No. I
looked another way. I sought materials for compensation in another
hemisphere. Contemplating Spain, such as our ancestors had known her, I
resolved that, if France had Spain, it should not be Spain 'with the
Indies.' _I called the New World into existence to resist the balance of
the Old._"[94]

The republics of Spanish America, thus called into independent
existence, were to redress the balance of the Old World. If they have
not contributed the weight thus vaunted, the growing power of the United
States is ample to compensate any deficiencies on this continent. There
is no balance of power which it cannot redress, if occasion requires.


RICHARD COBDEN.--1849.

Coming to our own day, we meet a familiar name, now consecrated by
death,--Richard Cobden; born 3d June, 1804, and died 2d April, 1865. In
proportion as truth prevails among men, his character will shine with
increasing glory until he is recognized as the first Englishman of his
time. Though thoroughly English, he was not insular, and he served
mankind as well as England.

His masterly faculties and his real goodness made him a prophet always.
He saw the future, and strove to hasten its promises. The elevation and
happiness of the human family were his daily thought. He knew how to
build as well as to destroy. Through him disabilities upon trade and
oppressive taxes were overturned; also a new treaty was negotiated with
France, quickening commerce and intercourse. He was never so truly
eminent as when bringing his practical sense and enlarged experience to
commend the cause of Permanent Peace in the world by the establishment
of a refined system of International Justice, and the disarming of the
nations. To this great consummation all his later labors tended. I have
before me a long letter, dated at _London, 7th November, 1849_, where he
says much on this absorbing question, from which, by an easy transition,
he passes to speak of the proposed annexation of Canada to the United
States. As what he says on the latter topic concerns America, and is a
prophetic voice, I have obtained permission to copy it for this
collection.

"Race, religion, language, traditions, are becoming bonds of union, and
not the parchment title-deeds of sovereigns. These instincts maybe
thwarted for the day, but they are too deeply rooted in nature and in
usefulness not to prevail in the end. I look with less interest to these
struggles of races to live apart for what they want to undo, than for
what they will prevent being done in future. _They will warn rulers that
henceforth the acquisition of fresh territory, by force of arms, will
only bring embarrassments and civil war_, instead of that increased
strength which, in ancient times, when people were passed, like flocks
of sheep, from one king to another, always accompanied the incorporation
of new territorial conquests.

"This is the secret of the admitted doctrine, that we shall have no more
wars of conquest or ambition. In this respect _you_ are differently
situated, having vast tracts of unpeopled territory to tempt that
cupidity which, in respect of landed property, always disposes
individuals and nations, however rich in acres, to desire more. This
brings me to the subject of Canada, to which you refer in your letters.

"I agree with you, that _nature has decided that Canada and the United
States must become one, for all purposes of free intercommunication_.
Whether they also shall be united in the same federal government must
depend upon the two parties to the union. I can assure you that there
will be no repetition of the policy of 1776, on our part, to prevent our
North American colonies from pursuing their interest in their own way.
If the people of Canada are tolerably unanimous in wishing to sever the
very slight thread which now binds them to this country, I see no reason
why, if good faith and ordinary temper be observed, it should not be
done amicably. I think it would be far more likely to be accomplished
peaceably, _if the subject of annexation were left as a distinct
question_. I am quite sure that _we_ should be gainers, to the amount of
about a million sterling annually, if our North American colonists would
set up in life for themselves and maintain their own establishments, and
I see no reason to doubt that they might be also gainers by being thrown
upon their own resources.

"The less your countrymen mingle in the controversy, the better. It will
only be an additional obstacle in the path of those in this country who
see the ultimate necessity of a separation, but who have still some
ignorance and prejudice to contend against, which, if used as political
capital by designing politicians, may complicate seriously a very
difficult piece of statesmanship. It is for you and such as you, who
love peace, to guide your countrymen aright in this matter. You have
made the most noble contributions of any modern writer to the cause of
peace; and as a public man I hope you will exert all your influence to
induce Americans to hold a dignified attitude and observe a 'masterly
inactivity' in the controversy which is rapidly advancing to a solution
between the mother country and her American colonies."

A prudent patriotism among us will appreciate the wisdom of this
counsel, which is more needed now than when it was written. The
controversy which Cobden foresaw "between the mother country and her
American colonies" is yet undetermined. The recent creation of what is
somewhat grandly called "The Dominion of Canada" marks one stage in its
progress.


LUCAS ALAMAN.--1852.

From Canada I pass to Mexico, and close this list with Lucas Alaman, the
Mexican statesman and historian, who has left on record a most pathetic
prophecy with regard to his own country, intensely interesting to us at
this moment.

Little can be gathered here with regard to this remarkable character.
His name does not appear in any biographical or bibliographical
dictionary,--not in the late editions of Michaud or Brunet,--although
his public life and his literary labors might claim for him a place in
biography and bibliography. From the title-page of one of his volumes it
appears that, besides being a member of the Mexican Society of Geography
and Statistics, and also of the Fine Arts, he was a corresponding member
of several foreign societies, among which were the Royal Academy of
History at Madrid, the Royal Institute of Sciences in Bavaria, the
Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and the Massachusetts Historical
Society. It is only in the dearth of authentic information with regard
to him that I mention these circumstances. It does not appear when he
died. The Preface to the last volume of his History is dated 18th
November, 1852; and, as his name is not noticed in Mexican affairs since
then, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he died shortly after this
date, although his death first appears in the Transactions of the
Massachusetts Historical Society for 1861.

Alaman figured in the Mexican Cortes, and also as Minister of Foreign
Affairs, especially under President Bustamente. In the latter capacity
he inspired the respect of foreign diplomatists. One of these, who had
occasion to know him officially, says of him, in answer to my inquiries,
that he "was the greatest statesman which Mexico has produced since her
independence." His portrait, as engraved in one of his volumes,
resembles the late Mr. Clayton of Delaware. He was one of the few
persons in any country who have been able to unite literature with
public life, and obtain honors in each department.

His first work was "Dissertations on the History of the Mexican
Republic," _Disertaciones sobre la Historia de la Republica Megicana_,
in three volumes, published at Mexico, 1844. In these he considers the
original conquest by Cortez; its consequences; the conqueror and his
family; the propagation of the Christian religion in New Spain; the
formation of the city of Mexico; the history of Spain and the house of
Bourbon. All these topics are treated somewhat copiously. Then followed
the "History of Mexico, from the First Movements which prepared its
Independence in 1808, to the present Epoch," (_Historia de Mejico desde
los primeros Movimientos que prepararon á su Independencia en el Año de
1808 hasta la Época presente_,) in five volumes, published at Mexico,
the first bearing date 1849, and the fifth 1852. From the Preface to the
first volume, it appears that the author was born in Guanajuato, and
witnessed there the beginning of the Mexican revolution in 1810, under
Don Miguel Hidalgo, the curate of Dolores; that he was personally
acquainted with the curate and with many of those who had a principal
part in the successes of that time; that he was experienced in public
affairs, as deputy and as member of the cabinet; and that he had known
directly the persons and things of which he wrote. His last volume
embraces the government of Iturbide as Emperor, and also his unfortunate
death, ending with the establishment of the Mexican Federal Republic in
1824. The work is careful and well considered. The eminent diplomatist
already mentioned, who had known the author officially, writes that "no
one was better acquainted with the history and causes of the incessant
revolutions in his unfortunate country, and that his work on this
subject is considered by all respectable men in Mexico a
_chef-d'oevre_ for purity of sentiments and patriotic convictions."

It is on account of the valedictory words of this History that I have
introduced the name of Alaman on this occasion. They are as follows:--

"Mexico will be, without doubt, a land of prosperity from its natural
advantages, _but it will not be so for the races which now inhabit it_.
As it seemed the destiny of the peoples who established themselves
therein at different and remote epochs to perish from the face of it,
leaving hardly a memory of their existence; even as the nation which
built the edifices of Palenque, and those which we admire in the
peninsula of Yucatan, was destroyed without its being known what it was
nor how it disappeared; _even as the Toltecs perished by the hands of
barbarous tribes coming from the North_, no record of them remaining but
the pyramids of Cholulu and Teotihuacan; and, finally, even as the
ancient Mexicans fell beneath the power of the Spaniards, _the country
gaining infinitely by this change of dominion, but its ancient masters
being overthrown_;--so likewise its present inhabitants shall be ruined
and hardly obtain the compassion they have merited, and the Mexican
nation of our days shall have applied to it what a celebrated Latin poet
said of one of the most famous personages of Roman history, STAT MAGNI
NOMINIS UMBRA,[95]--nothing more remains than the shadow of a name
illustrious in another time.

"May the Almighty, in whose hands is the fate of nations, and who by
ways hidden from our sight abases or exalts them, according to the
designs of his providence, be pleased to grant unto ours the protection
by which he has so often deigned to preserve it from the dangers to
which it has been exposed."[96]

Most affecting words of prophecy! Considering the character of the
author as statesman and historian, it could have been only with
inconceivable anguish that he made this terrible record with regard to
the land whose child and servant he was. Born and reared in Mexico,
honored by its important trusts, and writing the history of its
independence, it was his country, having for him all that makes a
country dear; and yet thus calmly he consigns the present people to
oblivion, while another enters into those happy places where nature is
so bountiful. Thus does a Mexican leave the door open to the foreigner.


CONCLUSION.

Such are some of the prophetic voices about America, differing in
character and importance, but all having one augury, and opening one
vista, illimitable in extent and vastness. Farewell to the idea of
Montesquieu, that a republic can exist only in a small territory.

Ancient prophecy foretold another world beyond the ocean, which in the
mind of Christopher Columbus was nothing less than the Orient with its
inexhaustible treasures. Then came the succession of prophets, who
discerned the future of this continent, beginning with that rare genius,
Sir Thomas Browne, who, in the reign of Charles II., while the
settlements were in their infancy, predicted their growth in power and
civilization; and then that rarest character, Bishop Berkeley, who, in
the reign of George I., while the settlements were still feeble and
undeveloped, heralded a Western empire as "Time's noblest offspring."

These voices are general. Others more precise followed. Turgot, the
philosopher and minister, saw in youth, with the vision of genius, that
all colonies must at their maturity drop from the parent stem, like ripe
fruit. John Adams, one of the chiefs of our own history, in a youth
illumined as that of Turgot, saw the predominance of the Colonies in
population and power followed by the transfer of empire to America; then
the glory of Independence and its joyous celebration by grateful
generations; then the triumph of our language; and, finally, the
establishment of our republican institutions over all North America.
Then came the Abbé Galiani, the Neapolitan Frenchman, who, writing from
Naples while our struggle was still undecided, gayly predicts the total
downfall of Europe, the transmigration to America, and the consummation
of the greatest revolution of the globe by establishing the reign of
America over Europe. There is also Adam Smith, the illustrious
philosopher, who quietly carries the seat of government across the
Atlantic. Meanwhile Pownall, once a Colonial Governor and then a member
of Parliament, in successive works of great detail, foreshadows
independence, naval supremacy, commercial prosperity, immigration from
the Old World, and a new national life, destined to supersede the
systems of Europe and arouse the "curses" of royal ministers. Hartley,
also a member of Parliament, and the British negotiator who signed the
definitive treaty of Independence, bravely announces in Parliament that
the New World is before the Colonists, and that liberty is theirs; and
afterwards, as diplomatist, instructs his government that, through the
attraction of our public lands, immigration will be quickened beyond
precedent and the national debt cease to be a burden. D'Aranda, the
Spanish statesman and diplomatist, predicts to his king that the United
States, though born a "pygmy," will soon be a "colossus," under whose
influence Spain will lose all her American possessions except only Cuba
and Porto Rico. Burns, the truthful poet, looks forward a hundred years,
and beholds our people rejoicing in the centenary of their independence.
Fox, the liberal statesman, foresees the increasing might and various
relations of the United States, so that a blow aimed at them must have a
rebound as destructive as itself. Canning, the brilliant orator, in a
much-admired flight of eloquence, discerns the New World, with its
republics just called into being, redressing the balance of the old.
Cobden, whose fame will be second only to that of Adam Smith among all
in this catalogue, calmly predicts the separation of Canada from the
mother country by peaceable means. Alaman, the Mexican statesman and
historian, announces that Mexico, which has already known so many
successive races, will hereafter be ruled by yet another people, who
will take the place of the present possessors; and with these prophetic
words, he draws a pall over his country.

All these various voices, of different times and countries, mingle and
intertwine in representing the great future of our Republic, which from
small beginnings has already become great. It was at first only a grain
of mustard-seed, "which is, indeed, the least of all seeds; but when it
is grown, it is the greatest among herbs and becomes a tree, so that the
birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." Better still,
it was only a little leaven, but it is fast leavening the whole
continent. Nearly all who have prophesied speak of "America" or "North
America," and not of any limited circle, colony, or state. It was so, at
the beginning, with Sir Thomas Browne, and especially with Berkeley.
During our Revolution the Colonies, struggling for independence, were
always described by this continental designation. They were already
"America," or "North America," thus incidentally foreshadowing that
coming time when the whole continent, with all its various States, shall
be a Plural Unit, with one Constitution, one Liberty, and one Destiny.
The theme was also taken up by the poet, and popularized in the often
quoted lines:--

    "No pent-up Utica contracts your powers,
    But the whole boundless continent is yours."[97]

Such grandeur may justly excite anxiety rather than pride, for duties
are in corresponding proportion. There is occasion for humility also, as
the individual considers his own insignificance in the transcendent
mass. The tiny polyp, in its unconscious life, builds the everlasting
coral; each citizen is little more than the industrious insect. The
result is accomplished by continuous and combined exertion. Millions of
citizens, working in obedience to nature, can accomplish anything. Of
course, war is an instrumentality which a true civilization disowns.
Here some of our prophets have erred. Sir Thomas Browne was so much
overshadowed by his own age, that his vision was darkened by "great
armies," and even "hostile and piratical attacks" on Europe. It was
natural that D'Aranda, schooled in worldly affairs, should imagine the
new-born power ready to seize the Spanish possessions. Among our own
countrymen, Jefferson looked to war for the extension of dominion. The
Floridas, he says on one occasion, "are ours on the first moment of war,
and until a war they are of no particular necessity to us."[98] Happily
they were acquired in another way. Then again, while declaring that no
constitution was ever before so calculated as ours for extensive empire
and self-government, and insisting upon Canada as a component part, he
calmly says that "this would be, of course, in the first war."[99]
Afterwards, while confessing a longing for Cuba, "as the most
interesting addition that could ever be made to our system of States,"
he says that "he is sensible this can never be obtained, even with her
own consent, without war."[100] Thus at each stage is the baptism of
blood. In much better mood the good Bishop recognized empire as moving
gently in the pathway of light. All this is much clearer now than when
he prophesied. It is easy to see that empire obtained by force is
unrepublican, and offensive to that first principle of our Union
according to which all just government stands only on the consent of the
governed. Our country needs no such ally as war. Its destiny is mightier
than war. Through peace it will have everything. This is our talisman.
Give us peace, and population will increase beyond all experience;
resources of all kinds will multiply infinitely; arts will embellish the
land with immortal beauty; the name of Republic will be exalted, until
every neighbor, yielding to irresistible attraction, will seek a new
life in becoming a part of the great whole; and the national example
will be more puissant than army or navy for the conquest of the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Seneca, Medea, Act II. v. 371.

[2] Humboldt, _Examen critique de la Géographie_, Tome I. pp. 101, 162.
See also Humboldt, _Kosmos_, Vol. II. pp. 516, 556, 557, 645.

[3] Strabo, Lib. I. p. 65; Lib. II. p. 118.

[4] Pulci, _Morgante Maggiore_, Canto XXV. st. 229, 230.

[5] Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, Vol. II. pp. 117, 118.

[6] Leigh Hunt, Stories from the Italian Poets, p. 171.

[7] Browne, Works, Pickering's edition. Vol. IV. p. 81.

[8] Johnson, Life of Sir Thomas Browne.

[9] Browne, Works, Vol. IV. pp. 232, 233.

[10] Browne, Works, Vol. IV. p. 236.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., p. 231, note.

[13] Berkeley, Works, Vol. I., Life prefixed, p. 53.

[14] Ibid., p. 53.

[15] Berkeley. Works, Vol. II. p. 443.

[16] Ibid., Vol. I., Life prefixed, p. 15.

[17] Grahame, History of the United States, Vol. IV. pp. 136, 448.

[18] Galt, Life of West, Vol. I. pp. 116, 117.

[19] John Adams, Works Vol. IX. pp. 597-599.

[20] Burnaby, Travels, p. 115.

[21] Ibid., Preface, p. 21.

[22] Turgot, _Oeuvres_, Tome II. p. 66. See also Condorcet, _Oeuvres_,
Tome IV., _Vie de Turgot_; Louis Blanc, _Histoire de la Révolution
Française_, Tome I. pp. 527-533.

[23] John Adams, Works, Vol. I. p. 23. See also Vol. IX. pp. 591, 592.

[24] Ibid., Vol. I. pp. 24, 25.

[25] John Adams, Works, Vol. I. pp. 230, 232.

[26] Ibid., Vol. VII. p. 227.

[27] Ibid., p. 250.

[28] John Adams, Works, Vol. IX. p. 510.

[29] Keith Johnston, Physical Atlas p. 114.

[30] John Adams, Works, Vol. VIII. p. 322.

[31] Ibid. p. 33.

[32] John Adams, Works, Vol. IV. p. 293.

[33] _Biographie Universelle_ of Michaud; also of Didot; Louis Blanc,
_Histoire de la Révolution Française_, Tome I. pp. 390, 545-551.

[34] Galiani, Correspondence, Tome II. p. 221. See also Grimm,
Correspondence, Tome IX. p. 282.

[35] Galiani, Tome II. p. 203; Grimm, Tome IX. p. 285.

[36] Galiani, Tome II. p. 275.

[37] Galiani, TOME II. p. 275.

[38] Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book IV. cap. 7, part 3.

[39] Hildreth, History of the United States, Vol. II. p. 476.

[40] John Adams, Works, Vol. X. p. 241.

[41] Pownall, Administration of the Colonies, Appendix, P. 7.

[42] Pownall, Administration of the Colonies, Appendix, p. 6.

[43] Ibid., p. 9.

[44] Pownall, Colonies, pp. 9, 10, 164.

[45] Pownall, Administration of the Colonies, p. 165.

[46] Ibid., p. 164.

[47] Parliamentary History, Vol. XIX. pp. 527, 528. See also p. 1137.

[48] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, pp. 4, 5.

[49] Ibid., p. 43.

[50] Ibid., p. 56.

[51] Ibid., p. 69.

[52] Pownall. Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, pp. 74, 77.

[53] Ibid., p. 82.

[54] Ibid., p. 83.

[55] Ibid., p. 85.

[56] Ibid., p. 87.

[57] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, pp. 80, 97.

[58] Ibid., p. 78.

[59] Ibid., p. 93.

[60] Ibid., p. 91.

[61] Franklin, Works, Vol. IX. p. 491.

[62] John Adams, Works, Vol. VIII. p. 179.

[63] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of America, pp. 5, 6.

[64] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, p. 83.

[65] Pownall, Memorial to the Sovereigns of America, p. 55.

[66] John Adams, Works, Vol. IX. p. 517.

[67] Ibid., Vol. III. p. 137.

[68] Ibid., Vol. VIII. p. 54.

[69] Ibid., Vol. III. p. 363.

[70] Ibid., Vol. VII. p. 226.

[71] Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 553.

[72] Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 556.

[73] Ibid., p. 846.

[74] Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 1050.

[75] Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 1356.

[76] Parliamentary History, Vol. XIX. pp. 259, 260.

[77] Ibid., p. 315.

[78] Ibid., p. 904.

[79] Ibid., p. 1190.

[80] Franklin, Works, Vol. VIII. p. 194.

[81] Franklin, Works, Vol. IX. p. 350.

[82] John Adams, Works, Vol. III. p. 379.

[83] Jay, Life of John Jay, Vol. I. p. 140; Vol. II. p. 101

[84] Alaman, _Disertaciones sobre la Historia de la Republica Megicana_,
Tomo III. pp. 351, 352.

[85] Alaman, _Disertaciones_, Tomo III. p. 333.

[86] Burnaby, Travels in North America, Preface, p. 10.

[87] John Adams, Works, Vol. VII p. 484

[88] John Adams, Works, Vol. III. p. 234.

[89] Currie, Life and Works of Burns, p. 266, Grahame, History of United
States, Vol. IV. p. 462.

[90] Parliamentary History, Vol. XXXI. p. 627.

[91] Annual Message to Congress of 2d December, 1823.

[92] Rush, Memoranda of Residence at London, Vol. II. p. 458: Wheaton,
Elements of International Law, pp. 97-112, Dana's note.

[93] Stapleton, Life of Canning, Vol. II. pp. 46, 47.

[94] Canning, Speeches, Vol. VI. pp. 108, 109.

[95] In the original text of Alaman this is printed in large capitals,
and it is explained in a note as said by Lucan in his Pharsalia, with
regard to Pompey.

[96] Alaman, _Historia_, Tomo V. pp. 954, 955.

[97] By Jonathan M. Sewall, in an epilogue to Addison's tragedy of
"Cato," written in 1778 for the Bow Street Theatre, Portsmouth, N. H.

[98] Jefferson's Works, Vol. V. p. 444.

[99] Jefferson's Works, Vol. V. p. 444.

[100] Ibid., Vol. VII. p. 316. See also pp. 288, 299.




SUNSHINE AND PETRARCH.


Near my summer home there is a little cove or landing by the bay, where
nothing larger than a boat can ever anchor. I sit above it now, upon the
steep bank, knee-deep in buttercups, and amid grass so lush and green
that it seems to ripple and flow instead of waving. Below lies a tiny
beach, strewn with a few bits of driftwood and some purple shells, and
so sheltered by projecting walls that its wavelets plash but lightly. A
little farther out, the sea breaks more roughly over submerged rocks,
and the waves lift themselves, ere breaking, in an indescribable way, as
if each gave a glimpse through a translucent window, beyond which all
ocean's depths might be clearly seen. On the right side of my retreat a
high wall limits the view, while on the left the crumbling parapet of
Fort Greene stands out into the foreground, its grassy scarp so relieved
against the blue water, that each inward-bound schooner seems to sail
into a cave of grass. In the middle distance is a white lighthouse, and
beyond lie the round tower of old Fort Louis and the soft low hills of
Conanicut.

Behind me an oriole chirrups in triumph amid the birch-trees which wave
around the house of the haunted window; before me a kingfisher pauses
and waits, and a darting blackbird shows the scarlet on his wings. From
the mossy and water-worn stones of the fort the bright-eyed rats peep
out, or, emerging, swim along the beach, with a motion made graceful, as
is all motion, by contact with the water. Sloops and schooners
constantly come and go, careening in the wind, and their white sails
taking, if remote enough, a vague blue mantle from the delicate air.
Sailboats glide in the distance,--each a mere white wing of canvas,--or
coming nearer, and glancing suddenly into the cove, are put as suddenly
on the other tack, and almost in an instant seem far away. There is
to-day such a live sparkle on the water, such a luminous freshness on
the grass, that it seems, as is so often the case in early June, as if
all history were a dream, and the whole earth were but the creation of a
summer's day.

If Petrarch still knows and feels the consummate beauty of these earthly
things, it may seem to him some repayment for the sorrows of a lifetime
that one reader, after all this lapse of years, should choose his
sonnets to match this grass, these blossoms, and the soft lapse of these
blue waves. Yet any longer or more continuous poem would be out of place
to-day. I fancy that this narrow cove prescribes the proper limits of a
sonnet; and when I count the lines of ripple within yonder projecting
wall, there proves to be room for just fourteen. Nature meets our whims
with such little fitnesses. The words which build these delicate
structures are as soft and fine and close-textured as the sands upon
this tiny beach, and their monotone, if such it be, is the monotone of
the neighboring ocean. Is it not possible, by bringing such a book into
the open air, to separate it from the grimness of commentators, and
bring it back to life and light and Italy? The beautiful earth is the
same as when this poetry and passion were new; there is the same
sunlight, the same blue water and green grass; yonder pleasure-boat
might bear, for aught we know, the friends and lovers of five centuries
ago; Petrarch and Laura might be there, with Boccaccio and Fiammetta as
comrades, and with Chaucer as their stranger guest. It bears, at any
rate, if I know its voyagers, eyes as lustrous, voices as sweet. With
the world thus young, beauty eternal, fancy free, why should these
delicious Italian pages exist but to be tortured into grammatical
examples? Is there no reward to be imagined for a delightful book that
can match Browning's fantastic burial of a tedious one? When it has
sufficiently basked in sunshine, and been cooled in pure salt air, when
it has bathed in heaped clover, and been scented, page by page, with
melilot, cannot its beauty once more blossom, and its buried loves
revive?

Emboldened by such influences, at least let me translate a sonnet, and
see if anything is left after the sweet Italian syllables are gone.
Before this continent was discovered, before English literature existed,
when Chaucer was a child, these words were written. Yet they are to-day
as fresh and perfect as these laburnum-blossoms that droop above my
head. And as the variable and uncertain air comes freighted with
clover-scent from yonder field, so floats through these long centuries,
a breath of fragrance, the memory of Laura.


SONNET 129.

"_Lieti fiori e felici._"

      O joyous, blossoming, ever-blessed flowers!
    'Mid which my queen her gracious footstep sets;
    O plain, that keep'st her words for amulets
    And hold'st her memory in thy leafy bowers!
      O trees, with earliest green of spring-time hours,
    And spring-time's pale and tender violets!
    O grove so dark, the proud sun only lets
    His blithe rays gild the outskirts of your towers!
      O pleasant country-side! O purest stream,
    That mirrorest her sweet face, her eyes so clear,
    And of their living light can catch the beam!
      I envy you her haunts so close and dear.
    There is no rock so senseless but I deem
    It burns with passion that to mine is near.

Goethe compared translators to carriers, who convey good wine to market,
though it gets unaccountably watered by the way. The more one praises a
poem, the more absurd becomes one's position, perhaps, in trying to
translate it. If it is so perfect,--is the natural inquiry,--why not let
it alone? It is a doubtful blessing to the human race, that the instinct
of translation still prevails, stronger than reason; and after one has
once yielded to it, then each untranslated favorite is like the trees
round a backwoodsman's clearing, each of which stands, a silent
defiance, until he has cut it down. Let us try the axe again. This is to
Laura singing.


SONNET 134.

"_Quando Amor i begli occhi a terra, inclina._"

      When Love doth those sweet eyes to earth incline,
    And weaves those wandering notes into a sigh
    Soft as his touch, and leads a minstrelsy
    Clear-voiced and pure, angelic and divine,
      He makes sweet havoc in this heart of mine,
    And to my thoughts brings transformation high,
    So that I say, "My time has come to die,
    If fate so blest a death for me design."
      But to my soul thus steeped in joy the sound
    Brings such a wish to keep that present heaven,
    It holds my spirit back to earth as well.
      And thus I live; and thus is loosed and wound
    The thread of life which unto me was given
    By this sole Siren who with us doth dwell.

As I look across the bay, there is seen resting over all the hills, and
even upon every distant sail, an enchanted veil of palest blue, that
seems woven out of the very souls of happy days,--a bridal veil, with
which the sunshine weds this soft landscape in summer. Such and so
indescribable is the atmospheric film that hangs over these poems of
Petrarch's; there is a delicate haze about the words, that vanishes when
you touch them, and reappears as you recede. How it clings, for
instance, around this sonnet!


SONNET 191.

"_Aura che quelle chiome._"

      Sweet air, that circlest round those radiant tresses,
    And floatest mingled with them, fold on fold,
    Deliciously, and scatterest that fine gold,
    Then twinest it again, my heart's dear jesses,
      Thou lingerest on those eyes, whose beauty presses
    Stings in my heart that all its life exhaust,
    Till I go wandering round my treasure lost,
    Like some scared creature whom the night distresses.
      I seem to find her now, and now perceive
    How far away she is; now rise, now fall;
    Now what I wish, now what is true, believe.
      O happy air! since joys enrich thee all,
    Rest thee; and thou, O stream too bright to grieve!
    Why can I not float with thee at thy call?

The airiest and most fugitive among Petrarch's love-poems, so far as I
know,--showing least of that desperate earnestness which he has somehow
imparted to almost all,--is this little ode or madrigal. It is
interesting to see, from this, that he could be almost conventional and
courtly in moments when he held Laura farthest aloof; and when it is
compared with the depths of solemn emotion in his later sonnets, it
seems like the soft glistening of young birch-leaves against a
background of pines.


CANZONE XXIII.

"_Nova angeletta sovra l'ale accorta._"

    A new-born angel, with her wings extended,
    Came floating from the skies to this fair shore,
    Where, fate-controlled, I wandered with my sorrows.
    She saw me there, alone and unbefriended.
    She wove a silken net, and threw it o'er
    The turf, whose greenness all the pathway borrows.
    Then was I captured; nor could fears arise,
    Such sweet seduction glimmered from her eyes.

The following, on the other hand, seems to me one of the Shakespearian
sonnets; the successive phrases set sail, one by one, like a yacht
squadron; each spreads its graceful wings and glides away. It is hard to
handle this white canvas without soiling. Macgregor, in the only version
of this sonnet which I have seen, abandons all attempt at rhyme; but to
follow the strict order of the original in this respect is a part of the
pleasant problem which one cannot bear to leave out. And there seems a
kind of deity who presides over this union of languages, and who
sometimes silently lays the words in order, after all one's own poor
attempts have failed.


SONNET 128.

"_O passi sparsi; o pensier vaghi e pronti._"

      O wandering steps! O vague and busy dreams!
    O changeless memory! O fierce desire!
    O passion strong! heart weak with its own fire;
    O eyes of mine! not eyes, but living streams;
      O laurel boughs! whose lovely garland seems
    The sole reward that glory's deeds require;
    O haunted life! delusion sweet and dire,
    That all my days from slothful rest redeems;
      O beauteous face! where Love has treasured well
    His whip and spur, the sluggish heart to move
    At his least will; nor can it find relief.
      O souls of love and passion! if ye dwell
    Yet on this earth, and ye, great Shades of Love!
    Linger, and see my passion and my grief.

Yonder flies a kingfisher, and pauses, fluttering like a butterfly in
the air, then dives toward a fish, and, failing, perches on the
projecting wall. Doves from neighboring dove-cotes alight on the parapet
of the fort, fearless of the quiet cattle who find there a breezy
pasture. These doves, in taking flight, do not rise from the ground at
once, but, edging themselves closer to the brink, with a caution almost
ludicrous in such airy things, trust themselves upon the breeze with a
shy little hop, and at the next moment are securely on the wing.

How the abundant sunlight inundates everything! The great clumps of
grass and clover are imbedded in it to the roots; it flows in among
their stalks, like water; the lilac-bushes bask in it eagerly; the
topmost leaves of the birches are burnished. A vessel sails by with
plash and roar, and all the white spray along her keel is sparkling with
sunlight. Yet there is sorrow in the world, and it reached Petrarch even
before Laura died,--when it reached her. This exquisite sonnet shows
it:--


SONNET 123.

"_I' vidi in terra angelici costumi._"

      I once beheld on earth celestial graces,
    And heavenly beauties scarce to mortals known,
    Whose memory lends nor joy nor grief alone,
    But all things else bewilders and effaces.
      I saw how tears had left their weary traces
    Within those eyes that once like sunbeams shone,
    I heard those lips breathe low and plaintive moan,
    Whose spell might once have taught the hills their places.
      Love, wisdom, courage, tenderness, and truth,
    Made in their mourning strains more high and dear
    Than ever, wove sweet sounds for mortal ear;
      And Heaven seemed listening in such saddest ruth
    The very leaves upon the boughs to soothe,
    Such passionate sweetness filled the atmosphere.

These sonnets are in Petrarch's earlier manner; but the death of Laura
brought a change. Look at yonder schooner coming down the bay, straight
toward us; she is hauled close to the wind, her jib is white in the
sunlight, her larger sails are touched with the same snowy lustre, and
all the swelling canvas is rounded into such lines of beauty as nothing
else in the world--not even the perfect outlines of the human form--can
give. Now she comes up into the wind, and goes about with a strong
flapping of the sails, which smites our ears at a half-mile's distance;
and she then glides off on the other tack, showing us the shadowed side
of her sails, until she reaches the distant zone of haze. So change the
sonnets after Laura's death, growing shadowy as they recede, until the
very last seems to merge itself in the blue distance.


SONNET 251.

"_Gli occhi di ch' io parlai._"

      Those eyes, 'neath which my passionate rapture rose,
    The arms, hands, feet, the beauty that erewhile
    Could my own soul from its own self beguile,
    And in a separate world of dreams enclose,
      The hair's bright tresses, full of golden glows,
    And the soft lightning of the angelic smile
    Which changed this earth to some celestial isle,
    Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows.
      And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn,
    Left dark without the light I loved in vain,
    Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn;
      Dead is the source of all my amorous strain,
    Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn,
    And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain.

"And yet I live!" What immeasurable distances of time and thought are
implied in the self-recovery of those words. Shakespeare might have
taken from them his "Since Cleopatra died,"--the only passage in
literature which has in it the same wide spaces of emotion. There is a
vastness of transition in each, which, if recited by Fanny Kemble, would
take one's breath away.

The next sonnet seems to me the most stately and concentrated of the
whole volume. It is the sublimity of all hopelessness, destined to
deliverance, but unable to foresee it.


SONNET 253.

"_Soleasi nel mio cor._"

      She ruled in beauty o'er this heart of mine,
    A noble lady in a humble home,
    And now her time for heavenly bliss has come,
    'Tis I am mortal proved, and she divine.
      The soul that all its blessings must resign,
    And love whose light no more on earth finds room
    Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom,
    Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine;
      They weep within my heart; and ears are deaf
    Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care,
    And naught remains to me save mournful breath.
      Assuredly but dust and shade we are,
    Assuredly desire is blind and brief,
    Assuredly its hope but ends in death.

In the next he has risen to that dream which is more than earth's
realities.


Sonnet 261

"_Levommi il mio pensiero._"

      Dreams bore my fancy to that region where
    She dwells whom here I seek, but cannot see.
    'Mid those who in the loftiest heaven be
    I looked on her, less haughty and more fair.
      She touched my hand, she said "Within this sphere,
    If hope deceive not, thou shall dwell with me:
    I filled thy life with war's wild agony;
    Mine own day closed ere evening could appear.
      My bliss no human brain can understand;
    I wait for thee alone, and that fair veil
    Of beauty thou dost love shall wear again."
      Why was she silent then, why dropped my hand
    Ere those delicious tones could quite avail
    To bid my mortal soul in heaven remain?

In the next sonnet visions multiply upon visions. Would that one could
transfer into English the delicious way in which the sweet Italian
rhymes recur and surround and seem to embrace each other, and are woven
and unwoven and interwoven, like the heavenly hosts that gathered around
Laura!


SONNET 302.

"_Cli angeli cletti._"

      The holy angels and the spirits blest,
    Celestial bands, upon that day serene
    When first my love went by in heavenly mien,
    Came thronging, wondering at the gracious guest.
      "What light is here, in what new beauty drest?"
    They said among themselves; "for none has seen
    Within this age come wandering such a queen
    From darkened earth into immortal rest."
      And she, contented with her new-found bliss,
    Ranks with the purest in that upper sphere,
    Yet ever and anon looks back on this,
      To watch for me, as if for me she stayed.
    So strive my thoughts, lest that high path I miss.
    I hear her call, and must not be delayed.

These odes and sonnets are all but parts of one vast symphony, leading
us through a passion strengthened by years and only purified by death,
until at last the graceful lay becomes an anthem and a _Nunc dimittis_.
In the closing sonnets he withdraws from the world, and they seem like a
voice from a cloister, growing more and move solemn till the door is
closed. This is one of the very last:--


SONNET 309.

"_Dicemi spesso il mio fidato speglio._"

      Oft by my faithful mirror I am told,
    And by my mind outworn and altered brow,
    My earthly powers impaired and weakened now,--
    "Deceive thyself no more, for thou art old!"
      Who strives with Nature's laws is over-bold,
    And Time to his commandments bids us bow.
    Like fire which waves have quenched, I calmly vow
    In life's long dream no more my sense to fold.
      And while I think, our swift existence flies,
    And none can live again earth's brief career,--
    Then in my deepest heart the voice replies
      Of one who now has left this mortal sphere,
    But walked alone through earthly destinies,
    And of all women is to fame most dear.

How true this was! Who can wonder that women prize beauty, and are
intoxicated by their own fascinations, when these fragile gifts are yet
strong enough to outlast all the memories of statesmanship and war? Next
to the immortality of genius is that which genius may confer upon the
object of its love. Laura, while she lived, was simply one of a hundred
or a thousand beautiful and gracious Italian women; she had her little
loves and aversions, joys and griefs; she cared dutifully for her
household, and embroidered the veil which Petrarch loved; her memory
appeared as fleeting and unsubstantial as that woven tissue. After five
centuries we find that no armor of that iron age was so enduring. The
kings whom she honored, the popes whom she revered, are dust, and their
memory is dust, while literature is still fragrant with her name. An
impression which has endured so long is ineffaceable; it is an earthly
immortality.

"Time is the chariot of all ages to carry men away, and beauty cannot
bribe this charioteer." Thus wrote Petrarch in his Latin essays; but his
love had access to a treasury more potent, and for Laura the chariot
stayed.




CANADIAN WOODS AND WATERS.


The monotony so characteristic generally of the woodlands of Upper
Canada is mitigated, to a great extent, by the pleasant waters with
which many of the tracts of that country are intersected. Away back from
the great lakes, chains of smaller lakes glisten in the bosom of the
immense forest. Rivers take their course from these, narrow at first,
but noisy, rushing along by sparse settlements and lonely Indian camps
to their junction with the big lakes, where mills, and factories, and
ships, and human dross in general, soon pollute with unclean contact
their fair waters. Many of the early settlers of these regions were of a
stamp far different from that of the rough pioneers by whom new
settlements have generally been opened in the United States and their
territories. Here and there throughout Upper Canada there are
communities--some of them progressive, if not actually flourishing,
others yet in a backward state--which were founded by men whose early
lives had been passed amid the highest refinements of Old World
civilization. Among these, retired officers of the army and navy were
very frequently to be met with. They were generally married men, with
incomes wretchedly inadequate to the support of themselves and their
families on the "European plan." Land in Canada was to be acquired in
fee for a mere song, and it was something for the cadet of a landed
family to become the squire of a thousand acres upon some remote
Canadian lake or river, even although six hundred of his acres might be
nothing but cedar swamp. The native British keenness for the pursuit of
wild creatures had much to do with the choice of locality by the
adventurers, who generally set up their log-houses in districts where
game and fish were to be had in abundance. Communication by road, until
within the last twenty years or so, was so imperfect in many of these
tracts, that but little intercourse existed between one settlement and
another. On this account agricultural operations were very limited,
being confined, generally, to the raising of sufficient grain for family
use. In these communities somebody was always found to build a mill; and
as the gentleman settlers themselves were not above doing carpenter and
blacksmith work, no matter how bunglingly, things were made to look
shapely enough in the course of time, and thus were founded villages,
some of which have since expanded into towns of considerable size and
local importance.

Strangely grotesque, with their half-civilization, were these places in
their earlier days. Characters which would not have been out of place at
a _bal masqué_ were frequently to be met with in all of them. Blanket
coats in winter, adorned with beaded epaulets, scarlet woollen stockings
pulled up over the legs to fend off the snow, and Indian moccasons, were
considered quite the proper thing. Once, as I was travelling by sleigh
in a comparatively settled part of the country, a young man, who was
driving rapidly in the opposite direction, pulled up to greet my
companion, with whom he was acquainted. He was coming to the town, from
his residence in the heart of the woods, thirty or forty miles from
where we met him, and certainly I was astonished--being then newly
arrived in the country--at the extreme slenderness of the outfit of one
who was bound to do the "man about town" for a few days, and that in
midwinter too. He was in his shirt-sleeves, having no coat with him
whatever. His black velvet waistcoat, now foxy and threadbare with much
use, might once have been a _chef-d'oevre_ from the hand of some
London tailor whose gossip was of Guardsmen and their measurement. The
rest of his costume consisted of a pair of buckskin breeches fastened at
the knee with pearl buttons, heavy woollen stockings, and pegged
boots,--the latter indebted for their lustre more to the rind of pork
than to the blacking-brush. Singularly incongruous with this get-up was
the kid-gloved hand with which he removed the black pipe from his mouth;
nor was his straw hat exactly the sort of head-dress that one might have
expected to meet with during a Canadian sleigh-ride. But it was only
when he rose to his feet on the little rough sleigh, three feet by two,
on which he had been sitting, that the full splendor of his wardrobe
became revealed to us; for then he threw around his shoulders a
magnificent cloak, made, I think, of some kind of Siberian fur, and
which, folded up, had served him for a cushion on his journey. I
frequently afterwards met this exquisite of the backwoods, wrapped in
that showy mantle, walking in the streets of the little wooden town,
where his appearance, so strange to me, did not seem to excite any
particular comment. In those parts, men would often come into the towns,
in winter, dressed in blanket coats, with the rather inappropriate
accompaniment of white duck trousers and straw hats. Residents did not
appear to see anything eccentric in this; but in the mind of a stranger
a sense of the ludicrous was naturally excited by it.

Contrasts were ever to be observed among the striking features of these
queer settlements. In one very remote township of which I have memories,
there dwelt a family whose eccentricities of costume and manner of life
entitle them to some brief record here. A retired officer of the army,
with a large troop of well-grown sons and daughters, had built himself a
log-house in this dreary wilderness, the roads leading to which were
impassable for four months in the year. The girls of this family were of
a beauty that may truthfully be described as magnificent. No painter
that I know of ever gave to the world a Diana on canvas at all
comparable in beauty of face and form to the eldest of these. The
family, although English, had been brought up, I think, in the Greek
Archipelago, with the language and dialects of which they were
familiar. At home these young wood-nymphs always went barefooted in
summer. Their costume, whether in the woods or when they visited the
more advanced settlements, was of the Oriental style. Ahead of Mrs.
Bloomer, whose note of reform had not yet ruffled the sweeping skirts of
the period, they walked fearlessly abroad in loose trousers, fastened at
the ankle. Close-fitting bodices, with narrow skirts falling a little
below the knee, completed their costume, and the luxuriant masses of
their golden-brown hair fell in natural curls to their shoulders from
beneath their wide-brimmed straw hats. It was strange thus to find a
leaf from "Eothen" amid the black-ash swamps and rickety "corduroy"
causeways of one of the dreariest districts of Canada.

In the social life of these places, where rough hospitality is often
curiously mingled with a strain of former luxury, incidents of a
humorous character will sometimes attract the notice of the visitor. I
remember being told by an acquaintance about a visit once made by him to
the family of an English gentleman, who had settled upon a small
clearing in the depth of the forest. The young men of the family were
engaged in burning brushwood when my informant arrived, and he, anxious
to win their approbation, set to work with a will, and toiled with them
until the distant horn announced that dinner-time had arrived. Ablution
became necessary before the visitor, who by this time was as black as a
charcoal-burner, could venture to greet the ladies of the household, and
pails of water were accordingly furnished hard by the gable end of the
house. There was no towel visible, however, and the visitor, with his
hands and face dripping from recent immersion, was pained to see that
some difficulty had arisen out of his request for one. Then, with sudden
impulse, one of the young men went away, and returned in a minute or two
with a long and richly embroidered scarf, the golden web interwoven with
which, as well as the deep lace border, stamped it as a tissue of price.
Assured by the young men that this brocade was inured to duty as the
regular family towel, the visitor made use of it as such. The texture of
it, as he told me, was not pleasant to the face, and it abraded a good
deal of the skin from his nose. It went the rounds after he had used it,
and the party adjourned to the dinner-table, where some remark was made
as to the non-appearance of the daughter of the house. Presently that
young lady entered, however, and took her place at the dinner-table. She
had evidently bestowed some extra care upon her toilet in honor of the
guest from beyond the "timber limits"; but what chiefly attracted his
notice in her costume was a curious, gold-embroidered scarf, with deep
lace edges, the folds of which, although artfully cast, revealed here
and there the smudges of soiled hands. Indeed, my informant--who was a
little given to exaggeration, perhaps--used to aver that he recognized
upon the mystic garment, just at the point where it was crossed upon the
bosom of the lovely sylvan damsel, a portion of the cuticle of his own
Roman nose.

In another of these settlements,--it was remote, then, though now it has
a great line of railway running through it,--things used to be carried
to an extreme just the opposite of that above noticed. It was a little
English colony, several of the members of which were persons of
tolerably good means, with influential family connections at home.
Engaged, mostly, in agricultural pursuits, they could chop down trees,
and drive oxen, and plough, and mow, as well as any lout in the country
round, and some of them built their own houses and made furniture for
them. They had been swells, though, before they became "hawbucks," and
they brought some of their standard manners and customs with them. It
was considered proper in this community to dine at the fashionable hour
of six, when every person was expected to be precise in the matter of
costume,--the ladies _décolletées_ to the admissible extent, and the
gentlemen in black dress-coats and white "chokers." The necessity of
supporting the position suggested by this attempt at style, though,
induced extravagance. Many of the swells became bankrupt. Their farms
passed into more homespun hands. Their black dress-coats have long since
become rusty and out of the mode, and the mortiferous whiskey of the
country now tantalizes such of them as it has not killed with melancholy
remembrances of the Burgundy that was.

The simple faith and primitive arrangements that existed in some of
these clearings before the advent of the iron horse were peculiarities
that never failed to impress visitors from far-off cities and
settlements of older growth. Bolts and bars were the last things that a
settler would think about, when fitting up his house. A man would leave
his rifle in the canoe, upon the river's bank, for days together,
without the least misgiving as to its being spirited away. Rust would
not touch it, the climate of Western Canada being singularly free from
moisture; and the roving Indians who traversed these woods were
dependent in a great measure upon the white man, and had learned to look
upon his property with respect. Looking over one of my note-books, I
recall the picture of a deserted old shanty that stood in a meadow by
the margin of a bright and swift river. The gentleman who had formerly
occupied this weather-stained hut had built himself a larger and more
ambitious mansion upon the opposite bank of the stream. For some time
after he had moved into this, the interior of the house remained in an
unfinished state, and he had no accommodation for his books. Of these he
had a choice collection, and they were left in their large wooden cases,
for two years or so, on the upper floor of the old shanty, the doors of
which had already parted from their hinges, and the windows yielded to
the autumnal blasts. To this most curious of circulating libraries the
owner accorded free access to the few neighbors who occupied the
clearings around. Many a time I have swung myself up by the crazy ladder
that led to the attic where the books were; and in summer I would often
sit there for hours, reading Cooper's novels, which had then an
attraction enhanced by the circumstances and place. In winter I would
take books away. If it was the season for wild ducks I would have a gun
beside me, to get a shot at them from the attic window as they flew
along the course of the stream. So lonely was the hut, that the mink
would often haunt it in search of such small plunder as attracts his
kind; and once I encountered upon the threshold of it a milk-snake about
five feet long, which disappeared through the chinks of the flooring
before I could administer to it the _coup de grâce_ by which man feels
it to be his stern duty to cut short the serpentine career.

There is a wonderful fascination in these grand old Canadian woods for
sportsmen, whose wildest experiences of their craft, previous to their
essay in it there, had been associated with stalking deer upon Highland
mountains, or shooting grouse upon the moors. The solitude of woods is
of a more impressive character, I think, than that of bare
mountains,--in countries, at least, where one may expect to find traces
of civilized man. From mountain peaks there is a wide range of view, in
which some points of guidance to the traveller are usually visible.
Wandering in the woods is much like groping one's way in the dark; and I
know by experience how easy it is for an explorer not well accustomed to
them to keep moving in circles, until, after hours of what he imagined
to be a straight course, he finds himself back again at some wood-mark
long since passed, instead of the place for which he was bound. There is
something decidedly sensational in this, especially in winter, as
anybody who has ever experienced it will allow. The sounds of the forest
are impressive, too, while its stillness, at times almost absolute, is
painful. In the mystery of its voices lies a good deal of the
fascination of the wood. In the clear, frosty air of winter the cry of
the great black woodpecker rings out like an elfin laugh, as he wings
his curved way through the gray stems in quest of some skeleton tree.
Explosions caused by the frost are heard among the branches of the
trees. They are sometimes as loud as pistol-shots, and--as I can aver
from my own observation--the deer, after they have become accustomed to
them, will not bound away at the crack of a rifle, and the hunter will
often get several shots at one herd, by keeping close in his ambush. But
the slightest sound of a twig beneath his moccason, or the tinkle of the
powder-flask against the muzzle of the rifle as he reloads, will send
the herd crashing and flashing away. In the stillness of a summer
evening there is something very weird in the cry of the loon, or great
Northern diver, as it comes vibrating over the surface of a woodland
lake. Where the woods are very thick and dark and lonely, the hooting of
owls is commonly to be heard in the daytime. Once only--it was in early
summer--I heard the wild turkey-cock utter his vehement call. I made my
way in the direction whence the sound came, until I was stopped by a
river, on the farther side of which I saw a magnificent "gobbler,"
strutting with drooped wings and expanded tail along the strip of
greensward that lay between the water and the woods, while he issued, in
very loud and imperious tones, his orders for the ladies of his seraglio
to attend. This action, in the case of the domestic turkey, is always
provocative of ridicule; but it was absolutely grand and striking as
displayed by the large-feathered free bird, parading to and fro there
upon the river-bank. I watched him for a while, expecting to see the
hen-birds come, but they did not; and so the noble Mormon of the
thickets furled his tail at last, and, tucking up his wings, strode
moodily into the bush, as if to search for the truants.

To hunters who are accustomed to glide through the forest observantly
and with caution, most interesting little scenes of animal life are
sometimes revealed. One day, in the snow-time, as I was roaming the
woods close by a Canadian river, after wild-turkeys, I noticed a flock
of mergansers,--thereabouts usually called saw-billed ducks, or
sheldrakes,--swimming in a small air-hole that had remained open in the
frozen surface of the river. There were four or five ducks, and the pool
might have been about ten feet by six in size. I watched them for some
time, as they kept stemming the current, but without any intention of
wasting ammunition upon them. My attention was attracted elsewhere for a
moment, and I was surprised, on again looking towards them, to see a
splendid red fox sitting at the upper edge of the little pool, where he
could not have been more than a couple of yards from the nearest of the
ducks. Presently he jumped up, and, running to the other end of the
pool, stretched out a paw, as if to seize one of them; but they were too
quick for him, placing themselves well beyond his reach with a few
strokes of their paddles. He was far too cunning to plunge into the
water and risk being carried under the ice by the current; and the ducks
appeared to be quite aware of this, for they did not make any attempt to
rise, nor indeed did they seem to be at all uneasy at the proximity of
their natural enemy. It was exceedingly interesting, not to say amusing,
to watch the many stratagems of the fox to get at them. Sometimes he
would lie down upon the snow and lash about him with his bushy tail,
whimpering in a querulous and imbecile manner at being thus outwitted by
simple water-fowl. Then a new idea would take possession of him, and he
would start up and run round and round the pool at a tremendous pace,
probably to try and get a chance at the ducks by flurrying them; but
they knew too much for Master Reynard, and always edged away from him
just at the right moment. Tired at last of watching these manoeuvres,
I "drew a bead" upon the fox; but my hands were numbed from keeping
still so long, so that, instead of hitting him in a vital spot, as I had
intended, I only broke one of his forelegs, and away he went into the
woods on three paws with amazing speed, while the ducks rose into the
air at the report of the rifle, and flew up the course of the river in
search of lonelier water. I followed the track of the fox for a mile or
more, but had to give up the chase at last. The snow was flecked with
spots of blood where he ran; and although the fox is not usually an
object of sympathy around Canadian borders, yet I regretted much that I
had not missed this one altogether, instead of maiming him, after all
the amusement he had just afforded me by his curious pranks. This little
incident of fox and ducks might offer a good subject for the pencil of
an animal painter, and I hereby present it either to Mr. W. H. Beard or
to Mr. Hays,--whichever of them may first happen to glance over these
pages.

In some of the districts where game is yet plentiful, and where the
maskinonge--prince of the pike tribe--reigns supreme in the woodland
lakes, and the speckled trout haunts the eddies of the clear streams,
men who cannot be called settlers, in the proper sense of the word, are
often to be met with. They have been attracted thither by the free, wild
romance of the forester's life, the Bohemianism of which is a kind by
itself, although based, like other phases of that philosophy, upon
impatience of the formalities by which society is cramped. On one of
these lakes, in a picturesque and not very remote part of Upper Canada,
there was generally a little knot of such men to be found,--men who had
forsworn the gay world, and come from beyond the sea to live among
Indians and make havoc of the wild beasts and birds that still abounded
in the region. Sometimes they would come to the cities, and return for a
brief time to the usages of civilized life. After their arrival, their
affectation was to despise such luxuries as chairs and beds. Of an
evening they spread blankets on the floor, and sat there with their
pipes and "fire-water," like gentle savages as they were. I have met
with several who, for the first few nights, declined to avail themselves
of either house or bed, resorting in preference to some open shed or
garden, where they wrapped themselves in their inevitable blankets, and
slept the sleep of wild men upon the hard ground, with their knives and
rifles at hand, ready to resist any attack that might be made upon them
by hostile tribes during the night. Once in the streets of a city I
remarked a couple of Indian stragglers, such as are common in Canadian
towns. They were dressed in blanket coats, handsomely ornamented, and
bound at the waist with sashes of gay colors, in which long knives and
tobacco-pouches of marten fur were stuck, and they smoked black pipes as
they strolled leisurely along. One of them was a Chippewa of the
half-breed stamp, and rather a good specimen of his caste. His
companion, who wore a Scotch bonnet, was far too light in complexion to
be an Indian, for, though his face was tanned to a healthy brown by
exposure to the weather, his hair, which fell down in long ringlets to
his shoulders, was of a fair, yellowish hue, and I observed, besides,
that he did not turn his toes inward when walking, as Indians invariably
do. On inquiry I found that this romantic young man was an English
baronet of moderate fortune, who had been living among the Indians at
the lake for two or three years. He had been a Guardsman in his time,
and a man about the clubs, and, having drained society to the dregs, had
taken to Canadian woods and waters as a change from the comforts and
inconveniences of too much civilization. Some time afterwards I saw him
again, but in far different guise. He was once more a swell, and was
driving a smart English "trap," with a handsome team, in the streets of
the same town. Not long after this he returned to England, I believe,
and is none the worse, probably, for his adventures by the shores of
the pleasant lake of the woods.

Farther down the St. Lawrence, where Lower Canada stretches away to the
northeast until it reaches melancholy Labrador, lies an immense field of
exploration. More picturesque in its features than the upper or western
province, this offshoot of old France offers peculiar attractions to
persons who would escape, for a while, from the turmoils and cares of
the too-busy world. On the south side of the river, within thirty or
forty miles of the picturesque fortress of Quebec, moose are still
plentiful, and during the winter months their venison is always to be
found in the markets of the old town. The caribou haunts the
wildernesses of timbered mountains that rise away back from the north
shore. Parties of hardy sportsmen set out every winter from Quebec for
the chase of these noble deer. It is only upon snow-shoes, the
_raquettes_ of the French Canadians, that this sport can be pursued; the
snow generally lying to the depth of three or four feet on the level in
the woods. The practice of walking upon these contrivances is general
throughout Lower Canada. On fine afternoons, when the snow is well
packed, hundreds of young men, and not unfrequently young ladies, may be
seen scudding across the country, in every direction, outside the walls
of Quebec. The fences are covered by the snow, so that no obstacles are
offered to pedestrians unless they are bold enough to enter the woods.
Walking upon snow-shoes is a regular part of the training of soldiers in
garrison here and at Montreal. There are snow-shoe clubs, which have
races during the season, sometimes over hurdles three feet high. I have
seen a good performer jump higher than that upon his snow-shoes. This
training enables the sportsman to range the forest with ease, and to
follow the tracks of the moose until he brings it to bay,--for the
animal is heavy, and sinks deep into the snow at every plunge. With the
caribou it is not so easy to come up, the hoofs of that animal being so
arranged as to spread out and offer some resistance to the snow. When
the hunter goes about his work in earnest, the hardship and fatigue
attending this kind of sport are very great. In the little churchyard at
Rivière-du-Loup, one hundred and twenty miles below Quebec, there is a
tombstone to the memory of Captain Turner, an English officer who went
there many years ago to hunt moose. I made inquiries about him from the
people of the village, who told me that his death was caused by
over-fatigue in running down moose, and afterwards conveying the
venison, together with the immense heads and horns, on _trebogans_
through miles of the wild bush. One of two Indians whom he had with him
as guides died from the same cause. Sometimes hunters are seized with
what is called by Canadians the _mal-aux-raquettes_, which is a kind of
cramp caused by the pressure of the snow-shoe thongs near the instep,
not unfrequently obliging the sufferer to set up camp and rest for
several days before resuming his journey.

But summer is, after all, the season in which to enjoy best the wild
scenery and sports of the Lower St. Lawrence. On the north shore,
especially, rivers of wondrous grandeur succeed each other at intervals
all along the rock-bound coast. About one hundred and thirty miles below
Quebec the savage, gloomy Saguenay rolls between its walls of rock into
the St. Lawrence, which here is nearly twenty miles in width. A wild and
beautiful spot is the little bay of Tadousac at the mouth of the
Saguenay, with its curved beach of white sand. When I last visited the
place there was a post of the Hudson's Bay Company there, established
chiefly for the purpose of the salmon fishery. Since that time, however,
all these rivers have been taken under the immediate protection of the
government. Laws have been passed for the protection of the fish, and
they are rigidly enforced, too, under the direction of a Superintendent
of Fisheries. The result of this is, that within a few years the salmon
have gradually returned to many splendid rivers from which they had been
driven. The system of netting has been regulated so as to favor the
fish, although, as I am informed, there is much room for improvement in
this respect yet. It is incumbent upon owners of saw-mills now to
furnish their dams with "passes" of peculiar construction, up which the
fish can travel by a succession of leaps. The Indians are forbidden to
devastate the waters with the destructive _negogue_, or fish-spear; with
which weapon they used to mutilate more fish than they killed. One dark
night, as I lay on the bank of the Escoumain, one of the most beautiful
of these rivers, I was surprised to see a number of lights flashing out
suddenly over the dark pool below the lower fall. A horde of Milicete
Indians had silently paddled their canoes past us under cover of night,
and were now busily engaged in spearing the salmon. It was a curious and
beautiful sight to see these ragged savages, by the light of their
torches, darting their long spears into the water with wonderful
quickness and precision, bringing up every now and then a bright-sided
salmon, and knocking it off the barbs into the canoe. The perfect
wildness and remoteness of the place added much to the impressive
character of the scene. But it was mortifying to think of the wholesale
slaughter that was going on, and of our incapacity to put a stop to it,
for our party consisted of but four, and would have been of no avail
against twenty red savages armed with rifles and spears. It is true that
we had brought with us a letter from the agent of the Hudson's Bay
Company at Tadousac to the net-keeper at the Escoumain, enjoining that
functionary to give us every assistance and information in his power.
One of the instructions contained in that missive ran, as I remember,
"_chasses les sauvages_"; but the chase of twenty armed savages by one
small and smoke-dried old Canadian, like the net-keeper, would have been
a futile, not to say ridiculous, proceeding. And so the Indians had the
pool to themselves on that dark July night, and at gray dawn they
drifted past us down the stream, their canoes loaded with salmon, to
which we had fondly, though delusively, fancied that we had an exclusive
right.

One of the "gamest" and most beautiful fish for which angler ever busked
artificial fly is the sea-trout that comes up with the summer tides into
all these tributaries of the Lower St. Lawrence. Seldom under one pound
in weight, and often weighing as much as four pounds, these fish are so
similar in appearance to the common brook-trout, that many experienced
fishermen declare them to be one and the same species, the slight
difference between the two being accounted for by the influence of the
salt water and the peculiar feeding to be found in it. In color they are
rather more silvery than the brook-trout, but they are marked, like that
fish, with brilliant spots of red and blue along the sides. The best
place to fish for them is where the sea-tide meets the clear, fresh
water of the river, near its mouth. There are times when the salmon
becomes unaccountably reserved, and will not condescend to reply to the
line of invitation wafted to him by the angler across the eddies of the
pool. It is then that the sea-trout is found to be a valuable substitute
for his larger congener of the river, to whom he is only second in
affording excellent sport. In casting for the trout it is advisable to
use but one fly. Once, in the Saguenay, I used a casting-line with three
flies attached to it, as for ordinary trout-fishing. At the first cast
three sea-trout, each apparently over a pound in weight, were upon my
tackle at once, and the consequence was a tangle which resulted in the
loss of my casting-line and flies.

But for the mosquitoes and black-flies, which are very troublesome in
all this region, there can be no pleasanter summer resort for the angler
and the overworked city man. In winter there must be an awful, arctic
dreariness upon the place, and I can hardly imagine any person not a
French Canadian or an Esquimau taking up his abode there. And yet upon
one of the most savage of these rivers--the Mingan, I think--an angler
with whom I am acquainted fell in with a man of ancient Scottish family.
He bore a distinguished name, and had probably once been an ornament to
the social circles in which he moved. When my informant saw him, he had
ceased to be ornamental in any sense of the word, and had long been a
dweller in the wilderness. In appearance he differed but little from the
dirty half-breeds of the coast. Like them, he lived in a wigwam, with a
squaw, and had around him a family of children so numerous and dirty
that they were a wonder to see. He had been there for many years, and
did not seem to think that he should ever go back to England again.
Society had galled him with its harness, and the "raw" was visible yet.
He was in occasional communication with his relatives at home, had a
small, but independent income, and was heir, I think, to a much larger
one. Occasionally he would make his way to the nearest settlement or
Hudson's Bay post, where he sometimes found letters and newspapers
awaiting him; so that, although a little backward as to dates, he had
still some general idea of how matters were going on in the great world.
Strong indeed must be the fascination of the free Indian life, thus to
work its spells upon a man of education and refinement like this
eccentric dweller by the waters of the rugged Mingan.

Among the creatures that visit the Lower St. Lawrence is the white
whale,--_beluga_ of the naturalists. On a fine summer's day, when the
water is blue and calm, these curious rovers of the deep may be seen
basking with their backs just over the surface, looking so like small
icebergs that they convey an agreeable sense of coolness to the
observer. At other times, and especially just about nightfall, they are
very active, tumbling and splashing and spouting in every direction, as
if in play. Often have I been startled by one as it rose, suddenly, and
with a loud snort, close by the little yacht, while we lay at anchor for
the night. I was told here, that the calf, or young, of this whale
utters a kind of bleating cry, and that the mother whales frequently
carry their young ones upon their backs. Some few years ago I had an
opportunity of verifying the truth of these statements by observing the
habits of a white whale and her calf that were exhibited by Mr. Cutter,
of Boston, at Jones's Wood, near New York. The calf used to throw itself
upon the back of its dam, with a peculiar squeal, and remain there till
carried several times round the tank. Brush wears are built by the
inhabitants of these coasts for the capture of this kind of whale, which
is generally called the white porpoise here. These wears are merely
hedges of stiff brushwood, arranged so as to enclose a wedge-like space,
with its wide end open to the river. The whales wander up into them,
when they soon become embarrassed by the obstacles on either side,
losing their reckoning at last, and "coming to grief" by being stranded
upon the beach when the tide ebbs. They are not uncommonly from sixteen
to twenty feet in length, and specimens have occasionally been captured
which had attained the great length of forty feet. One of average size
will yield about a hundred gallons of oil. A soft and excellent leather,
well adapted for shoemakers' and other work, is now manufactured from
their skins, which were first discovered to be available for this
purpose by an enterprising Canadian named Têtu, residing, I think, at
Kamouraska, on the southern bank of the river.

The chase of the _pourcil_--a small species of whale, not often
exceeding five or six feet in length, and of a sooty color--affords good
sport, hereabouts, to those who are skilful and hardy enough to follow
it. In calm, clear weather only the hunter dares to pursue this creature
in his frail canoe, and even then he runs the risk of being caught in
one of the squalls that arise so suddenly on this part of the St.
Lawrence. One hunter sits in the stern of the canoe, and paddles, while
the other, armed with a long duck-gun, loaded with buck-shot, kneels in
the bow. Now and then the _pourcil_ emerges partly from the water, and
the canoe is kept swiftly upon his course until a chance offers for a
shot. Sometimes the creature is killed by the shot, but more frequently
only stunned, so as to enable the hunters to approach near enough to
despatch him with their harpoons.

Seals in great numbers haunt the mouths of the tributaries here,
attracted by the travelling salmon, upon which they commit sad
depredations, often following them even into the fishermen's nets. The
hunting of seals is carried on chiefly in the winter time, when the
great river is partially blocked up with ice. About twenty-five years
ago, at a place called Trois Pistoles, on the south bank, an immense
number of seals made their appearance upon the ice just after it had
become fixed along the shore. Seals are reckoned valuable game in those
parts, and the inhabitants of the parish, armed with clubs, turned out
to chase them, under the direction of six priests. They had killed some
four hundred, when suddenly the ice parted from the shore, and went
drifting down with the tide, priests, _habitans_, seals, and all. Down
they drifted, past dreary shores, the sparse inhabitants of which did
all they could to aid them, but succeeded in taking off only a few in
their canoes. On, on, still they floated, past other parishes, where
people knelt and prayed loudly for them on the shore; then past other
parishes, again, where the canoe-men were more adventurous, and picked
the poor fellows off the ice in detail, until every one of them was
brought safely to land, yet not before they had suffered great hardship
from cold and fright. The old French Canadian from whom I heard this was
one of the hunters on the occasion; and although he expressed exceeding
gratitude to _le bon Dieu_ for the rescue of himself and his companions,
yet he had words of lamentation for the loss of the seals, not one of
which was recovered.

A primitive and interesting race are the French Canadians of these
coasts. Many of their villages, and churches--the latter with very steep
roofs, generally painted red--have a quaint, antiquated air, and some of
the settlements hereabouts are really of very remote date. Wind-bound
for a couple of days at one of the oldest and queerest of these
villages, on a forlorn little bay, not far from the Saguenay, I went
ashore to observe the manners and customs of the place. By the threshold
of every house there lay two or three pair of huge wooden clogs, looking
almost like "dug-out" canoes, and into these the people popped their
feet when the roads were muddy, and their occupations obliged them to go
out of doors. A large wooden crucifix stood by the roadside near the
entrance of the village, with a small space around it enclosed by a
wooden railing. Young girls in wide-brimmed straw hats were kneeling at
the foot of it, and I noticed that they had left their clogs outside the
railing. Presently an old woman came along, and she too deposited her
dug-outs reverently outside the little sanctuary before she entered.
These roadside crosses are to be met with everywhere in the French
Canadian settlements, many of them curiously fitted up as shrines, and
decorated with votive offerings. The valley in which this little village
stood had a pastoral appearance, but the hills to the north of it were
of a wild and dreary character, suggesting endless tracts of wilderness
beyond their dark ridges.

At this place, near the margin of the little bay, there stood a frame
house of better appearance than the ordinary dwellings of the village.
It had a weird and weather-stained look, nevertheless, which was in
keeping with the clump of stunted and sea-blighted pines by which it was
partially sheltered. The garden belonging to it appeared to have been
once well stocked, but it had run much to weeds and tangle now, and the
fence had rotted away in places, and left it open to the road. From this
house there came, as I strolled past, an old man, whose appearance was
at once so singular, and so different from, that of the ordinary
inhabitants of the place, that my curiosity impelled me to stop and
speak to him as he saluted me in passing. He was tall and very thin,
and, though apparently between seventy and eighty years of age, walked
with an erect carriage, leaning but slightly upon the cane he carried.
His face, which was remarkably small, looked like shrivelled parchment,
and his iron-gray hair hung straight down to his shoulders, like that of
an Indian. He was dressed, not in the gray cloth of the country, but in
an old-fashioned suit, which might once have been black, but was now
faded to a dingy greenish hue, and there was about him a decided air of
tarnished gentility very much out of character with the place and its
inhabitants. Speaking excellent English, he invited me to accompany him
to his house; and as dinner was nearly ready when we entered, he pressed
me to remain and partake of it. The table was spread by an old lady
quite as faded and decayed as himself. She was his sister, he told me;
adding that she was very deaf, and so nervous that he hoped I would
excuse her for not joining us at the repast. And so we two sat down
quite companionably together to a dinner consisting of boiled pork and
excellent potatoes and milk, with wild strawberries for a dessert.

The record of this old man's life was a strange one. He was born at
Quebec, of Swiss parents, who took him with them, while he was yet a
child, to Switzerland, in which country and in France he received his
education and passed the earlier years of his life. Returning to Canada
when a grown-up young man, he became a trader among the Indians, and was
for some time in charge of a frontier post hard by where the city of
Detroit now stands. After various ups and downs in life, he joined his
brothers at this old settlement, where they had a mill and a country
store. That was nearly fifty years before, and he had never been out of
the place since. His brothers were all dead, and the sister to whom I
have referred was the only one of the family besides himself now left.
Another sister had died only two months previously, and this accounted
for the bit of black crape twisted round the old gentleman's little
gallipot-shaped glazed hat, which he had lifted so politely when I met
him on the road. One of his brothers was drowned by accident, and
another had committed suicide,--a fact which he communicated to me in a
hollow whisper, as we sat there in the dim old room. Fourteen members of
his family were buried, he told me, under the shade of the pine-trees
near the house. Two more graves must have been added to the row long
since; and that is the end of a family which evidently had once enjoyed
good social position, judging from the cultivated manners and
conversation of the strange old man, who had been fossilizing for nearly
half a century in this remote place.

Among the reminiscences imparted to me by the old man of the bay, I have
note of the following.

While he was at the frontier post near Detroit, engaged in commerce with
the savage tribes and pioneering trappers, there was a gathering of
warriors at the place,--a sort of carnival in celebration of some event
interesting to the red men. One day the Indians got drunker than usual,
and, having exhausted their stock of liquor, a deputation of them
entered the store of the trader, and demanded a fresh supply on credit,
which was refused. Upon this the savages became insolent and abusive,
and the trader's partner, a man of great determination and personal
strength, struck down the leader of them with an axe-handle, just as the
tomahawks began to gleam. The savages were now leaping forward to cut
down the white man, who had intrenched himself among some barrels, when
a fiendish yell rang through the building, seeming to paralyze them like
an electric shock, and a short, thickset Indian, of very dark
complexion, suddenly made his appearance in the midst of them. Raising
his tomahawk aloft, and uttering a few words in his native tongue, the
dark-faced warrior pointed to the door, through which the cowed savages
filed sullenly away and sought their wigwams. This was the renowned
Tecumseh, and such was the influence he exercised over his people, even
when they were maddened by drink.

From the rough and sterile nature of the country through which many of
these north-shore Canadian rivers run, it seems unlikely that their
solitudes will ever be converted into fields for the permanent
civilization that agriculture alone can establish. Lumbering operations
and the fisheries constitute their only inducements for settlers, and
these branches of industry are chiefly carried on by a nomadic
population, nearly as wild in their ways of life as the aborigines of
the region. Sportsmen will be glad to know, however, that of late years
the facilities for reaching these rivers have been much improved.
Steamers now ply regularly upon the St. Lawrence, at least as far down
as the Saguenay. Landing-piers have been built at many points where it
was necessary, not many years ago, for passengers to wade ashore from
their boats; and the roads over the capes and highlands--where any roads
have yet been made--are of a less impracticable and aggravating
character than formerly. The right of leasing the rivers for fly-fishing
is vested in the government, from whose Superintendent of Fisheries at
Quebec all desired information on the subject can be obtained.

It is from Upper Canada that the curious old-time features of the
country are passing rapidly away with the grand old woods. Within the
present century the celebrated Joseph Brant, called Thayendenegea by the
red men, held his half-barbaric court, as Chief of the Six Nations, at
the very spot on the Grand River where the thriving town of Brantford
now stands. Brant had seen European civilization, and was the friend and
companion of English statesmen; and he curiously grafted that
civilization upon the Six Nations' manners and customs when he returned
to his strong-hold on the Grand River. Old men in Upper Canada yet spin
yarns about the entertainments given by this chief at his hospitable
mansion, where the guests were waited on by negro servants dressed in
liveries of green and gold, and a gigantic Indian with a barrel-organ
used to be stationed in the hall, to enhance the pleasures of the
banquet with sweet music. This condition of things can never exist
again, for which people have reason to be thankful, perhaps; but away
into the past with the Indian and his gauds are vanishing the deer, and
the wild-turkeys, and the creatures that men covet for their fur. Many
of the deep, cold brooks, in which the speckled trout used to abound,
are evaporating to mere threads as the country is cleared. Others have
been poisoned by manufactures or choked up with the _débris_ of
saw-mills, to the extinction of the fish; and Upper Canada, on the
whole, offers but a cheerless prospect now to the blighted young man of
leisure who would forswear society and seek to live primitively in
backwoods solitudes on the produce of his rod and gun.




THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY.


    "Come forth!" my cat-bird calls to me,
      "And hear me sing a cavatina,
    That, in this old familiar tree,
      Shall hang a garden of Alcina.

    "These buttercups shall brim with wine
      Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic;
    May not New England be divine?
      My ode to ripening Summer, classic?

    "Or, if to me you will not hark,
      By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing,
    Till all the alder-coverts dark
      Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.

    "Come out beneath the unmastered sky,
      With its emancipating spaces,
    And learn to sing as well as I,
      Unspoiled by meditated graces.

    "What boot your many-volumed gains,
      Those withered leaves forever turning,
    To win, at best, for all your pains,
      A nature mummy-wrapped in learning?

    "The leaves wherein true wisdom lies
      On living trees the sun are drinking,
    Those white clouds drowsing through the skies
      Grew not so beautiful by thinking.

    "Come out! with me the oriole cries,
      Escape the demon that pursues you!
    And, hark, the cuckoo weather wise,
      Still hiding, further onward wooes you."

    "Ah, dear old friend, that, all my days,
      Hast poured from that syringa thicket
    The quaintly discontinuous lays
      To which I hold a season ticket,--

    "A season ticket cheaply bought
      With a dessert of pilfered berries,--
    And who so oft my soul hast caught,
      With morn and evening voluntaries,--

    "Deem me not faithless, if all day
      Among my dusty books I linger,
    Nor am, like thee, June's pipe to play
      With fancy-led, half-conscious finger.

    "A bird is singing in my brain,
      And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies,
    Gay, tragic, rapt,--right heart of Spain
      Fed with the sap of old romances.

    "I ask no ampler skies than those
      His magic music vaults above me,
    No falser friends, no truer foes,--
      And does not Doña Clara love me?

    "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars,
      A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing,
    Then silence deep with breathless stars,
      And overhead a white hand flashing.

    "O, music of all moods and climes,
      Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly,
    Where still between the Christian chimes
      The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!

    "Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale
      To his, my singer of all weathers,
    My Calderon, my nightingale,
      My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.

    "Yes, friend, these singers dead so long,
      And still, perhaps, in purgatory,
    Give its best sweetness to all song,
      To Nature's self her better glory."




HOSPITAL MEMORIES.


II.

In March, the first fresh fragrance of the Southern spring, and the
merry songs of birds in the evergreen-trees, filled the soft air with a
delusive promise that summer was near at hand. But cold, stormy weather
tediously delayed its coming, and resulted calamitously for the soldiers
of the Ninth Army Corps, who came from the bravely borne hardships and
well-earned honors of the siege of Knoxville, as well as for many other
regiments that joined them at Annapolis before starting on the last
campaign of the war. Indeed, throughout the war, it seemed as if the
inception of an expedition was a signal for the elements to lash
themselves into a fury in some remarkable manner. Sleet, snow, and
bitter blasts did their worst for many weeks at this time; and pneumonia
in its most fearful forms, and rheumatism, attacked hundreds in their
unavoidable exposure.

About seventy colored men, many Indians, and scores of others were
brought into the hospital. I think that no one regiment sent more
patients than the First Michigan Sharpshooters, who had come from
Chicago in a violent storm in partially open cars. Their
lieutenant-colonel lay in a critical state for several days with typhoid
pneumonia. The officers and men of the regiment were continually coming
in to inquire for him, and their words of interest and esteem bore
witness to the beauty of a character of which his noble face was alone
sufficient assurance. The disease of which he was apparently dying
needs, perhaps more than any other, the closest watchfulness and good
judgment. The doctors were indefatigable in their consultations. Ice
held constantly in the mouth was the only nourishment he could take.
When medicine had done its utmost, Dr. Vanderkeift sadly said, he feared
that he must die. During five days and nights sleep had not at all
calmed his delirious ravings, and nature seemed exhausted. "But you are
determined that he shall not die," said one of the doctors to the lady
in charge of the ward. "Not if good care can save his life," she
answered. (And here let me record the uniform courtesy and respect with
which suggestions from the ladies were received by the doctors. Their
wishes were always acceded to, if possible, with a gentlemanly deference
which showed they were not considered intrusive.) Life, however, seemed
almost gone, and hope at an end for our patient, when at nightfall a
group of doctors whispered together that there was no use in doing
anything more,--that he could not live till morning. Then, with a
pertinacity which could not yield, the lady in charge requested that a
blister might be applied to the back of his neck. "It will do no harm,
and, if it will be the slightest gratification to you, it shall be put
on; but," added the doctors, "you had better make up your mind to lose
him, for he must die." With what intense satisfaction, at five o'clock
the next morning, was the doctor welcomed in the ward, and told that
four hours of refreshing sleep had followed the application of the
blister! He was surprised even to find the patient alive, and with joy
pronounced him much better. He ordered the strongest beef essence, with
a fresh egg lightly beaten mixed with it, to be given by the teaspoonful
every twenty minutes, alternating it with brandy and water. There was a
wonderful improvement that day, and before his friends arrived on the
next, the sick man was quite out of danger.

One of the most highly prized of all the various gifts which were
offered in grateful remembrance to the ladies in the hospital was a
volume of Autograph Leaves of American Authors from this patient. On the
blank page was written:--

     "---- ---- ----:--I owe you a better memento, but here is
     one that I know your good taste will appreciate.

     "I met you first in my delirium; and knew you only in the
     purest and sweetest character a woman can exhibit,--a true
     and faithful Florence Nightingale, supporting and
     encouraging the weary, bathing the feverish brow of the
     brave soldier dying far from other friends.

     "I never can forget, and I trust you never will, how you
     night and day kept watch over me when wife and father were
     yet far away, when fever and delirium were racking my brain
     and sapping life from my lungs,--how you bore with every
     impatience of mine, or kindly answered every severe word.

     "Please accept this book from

     "Your devoted friend,

     "---- ---- ---- ----."


There was a general commotion and eager haste in the hospital the day
before the Ninth Army Corps left. The convalescents assured the doctors
of their ability to go, but the doctors, differing in opinion, made many
a brave man unhappy. One old soldier, John Paul, chief saddler of the
Third Division of the Corps, insisted stoutly on the necessity of his
joining his command. If the whole success of the undertaking had rested
upon his shoulders, he could not have felt the responsibility more. At
the last moment he was allowed to go.

All were ambitious to share the glory of the coming triumph, little
dreaming of the terrible cost of life and limb with which it was to be
achieved. Of those who went from the hospital, numbers were stricken
down, never to need care again. How sadly the words "Shot through the
head" looked opposite the name of Frank Wagner, in the first lists which
came from the front! He was a spirited boy of seventeen, who by great
care had been raised from a dangerous illness. But almost sadder than
the death-lists were the names of those taken prisoners. We had learned
but too well that it would be death in the end to most; to very few life
worth having.

Back to the hospital, too, came letters, telling of long marches and
hard fighting; and of the amount of sickness which would be kept off,
and pain and misery saved, if there were two or three hundred Miss ----s
down there. The wounded might be counted, the letters said, by tens of
thousands; the Ninth Army Corps had earned imperishable laurels, but
they had lost heavily. The Michigan regiment from which we had had so
many patients suffered severely; of the company of Indians, which
started one hundred and ten in number, only six remained; and the other
companies were hardly more fortunate. Dismay and anguish filled the land
at the tidings of the desolation which was the price of victory.

Early in the spring another exchange of paroled prisoners was made. The
New York came several times, bringing hundreds of starved men. Death had
released many from their sufferings during the winter. The men had had
no meat since New-Year's, and their tortures on Belle Isle and in Libby
Prison had been excruciating. Smallpox had broken out among them. The
dead had lain by the side of the living for days without burial.

Among the prisoners who came were twenty-five little drummer-boys. They
had endured the hardships of exile better than the men, and were in the
best of spirits. A little flaxen-haired boy of about thirteen years of
age, on being asked if he were not rather young to come to the war,
answered, "O no, and there are plenty more just as able as I to come and
help put down this Rebellion." There was a man by the name of Schwarz,
who unfurled the flag of his regiment on landing. He was the
color-bearer of the First Maryland, and had succeeded in concealing the
flag, until now, with proud joy, he held it high once more in free air.
His brother was the first man wounded in the war, at Fort Sumter.

General Neal Dow came at this time, having passed nearly a year in Libby
Prison. He was able to come in and take tea with the ladies on his
arrival, and to start for home the next day. He gave a graphic account
of his prison-life in Virginia. The colored people he had always found
good friends. Being without the news of the day was among the
deprivations of Libby, and the prisoners were indebted to the colored
attendants in the prison for an occasional newspaper. When any great
victory had taken place on the Union side, there was always a stricter
watch kept over our men, lest even this gleam of joy should brighten
their dull life; and particular care was taken constantly to inform them
that great battles had been fought, that the South had gained immense
advantages, and that the North would soon be forced to give up the war.
One morning a colored man came to General Dow and told him that there
was a "mighty big piece of news," but that he was afraid to tell, lest
he should be detected in giving information. But after the General had
promised that he should not be betrayed, "Vicksburg is taken!" resounded
in a loud whisper through the room. It was too good a secret to be kept
in silence, and inspired their hearts with fresh courage to bear their
hard lot.

Major Calhoun came too at this time. He was from Kentucky, a man of
marked character and superior education. He had made an attempt to
escape, and, being caught, was taken back and confined in a cell, in
which he Could neither lie down nor stand up. For six weeks he was kept
there, and then taken out with a brain-fever settled upon him, from
which he had not fully recovered when brought to us. As his pale, thin
face looked forth from the coarse brown blanket in which he was wrapped,
it was as pitiable a sight as can be imagined. It was enough to melt the
stoutest heart to hear him relate his woful experiences, and tell how
many comrades he had left in misery. "Good by, Cap',--we're glad you are
going to God's land; but tell them at home how we fare here, and see if
they can't get us away." These were the parting words from his sorrowful
comrades.

    "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?"

was often the piteous appeal of countenances among the returned
prisoners, betraying a brain disturbed by depressing fancies or
harrowing imaginations. In some cases the malady amounted to insanity,
and then the patients were removed to an asylum. Homesickness was
frequently the cause of the most unmanageable of cases. No medicine was
effectual in giving an appetite or producing sound sleep. All attempts
to cheer or amuse these childish patients were regarded by them as the
evidence of a heartless want of sympathy. "Just think, I have been out
four months, and not had a furlough yet!" said an officer one day at the
conclusion of an hour's effort to divert his mind; and, with violent
sobbings, he buried his face in the pillow. A leave of absence proved
his cure.

There was a Pennsylvania man who had never before he became a soldier
left his native farm,--a vigorous-looking youth, hearty and robust in
stature. At night he would awake from dreams of haying-scenes or
apple-gatherings, shouting out the names of his brothers; and when he
found himself so far away, and in the hospital, he would break into the
most grievous wails and lamentations. This of course disturbed the other
sick men seriously, and night after night the poor nurse strove in vain
to soothe him. In the daytime a quieter kind of crying would satisfy
him. There was nothing but talking about his home that would bring a
gleam of gladness to his disconsolate countenance. Every time that the
lady in charge of the ward left him was the occasion of a trembling lip
and tearful eyes. At last it was proposed to treat him as if he were a
child. "Now you must try and be a good boy, Joseph, and when you wake up
not make such a noise and disturb the men; if you are quiet, you shall
have something nice given you in the morning." This was a good-night
promise. The experiment succeeded; for on our going into the ward in the
morning, he said, "I have been real good, and only woke the men up
once." And then he wondered what he should get. An orange satisfied his
most ardent expectations; and then a promise of something more at noon,
and again at night, if he continued his improved behavior, kept him
happier through the day. This system was followed up for a few days,
when he recovered his spirits, and was able to rejoin his regiment in a
short time.

Where nostalgia was the only complaint, it would yield, but was almost
hopeless if disease had undermined the constitution. There were two boys
about seventeen years old in one ward, both dolefully sad, and pining
continually for home and familiar faces. One was from Tennessee, the
other from Connecticut. They were equally low, being among the worst
cases from prison life. The father of one came to him; the sister whom
the other talked constantly about could not even hear from him, the
Rebels cutting off postal communication. The evening West's father came,
he seemed nearer death than the little Tennesseean, but his father's
presence saved his life; he quickly rallied, the pressure of his
melancholy was removed by hearing a home voice, his appetite returned,
his strength was restored. But the other boy sank lower and lower in
despondency for which there was no remedy; and the last words he spoke
were of his sister,--he would be content to die if he could only see her
once more.

The enlivening music of a fine band was added this spring to the
hospital organization. For an hour every morning and evening its
animating strains stirred the martial spirit in the worn-out and
suffering, and brought cheer and courage to hours of loneliness. The
little "Knapsack," too, was merged into a printed sheet called "The
Crutch," the weekly publication of which furnished an occasion for the
patients to amuse themselves in writing articles in prose or verse.

A complete photographic establishment appeared in one corner of the
hospital grounds at this time, and became the resort of hundreds of
officers and men in their leisure hours of convalescence. The instrument
was used in taking pictures of uncommon cases in surgery, and in
faithfully delineating the spectral features of the returned prisoners.

The month of June found our hospital comparatively deserted: all the men
who were able had left for their regiments, and all but two or three
prisoners had gone to Camp Parole to await exchange, or had been laid
beneath the sods of Maryland. In the wards were to be found patients who
had been there for months, prostrated either by chronic illness or
stubborn wounds,--mere human wrecks, bones and breath alone remaining of
once rugged frames and constitutions.

Gently the balmy summer breezes creep into the tent wards, laden with
the rich fragrance of roses, violets, and jasmine, offering their mute
sympathy to those who shall never more walk forth to behold them growing
in luxuriant beauty. William Miller, a boy of fifteen, is one of these.
He is an orphan, and was the pet of fond grandparents, who consented to
let him join the Union army to escape Rebel conscription. He is a mere
child; his dark, deep, expressive eyes, shaded by long, drooping lashes,
light up with happiness his face of marble paleness, as he receives the
comforts of life and the kindness of friends once more, after long
months of homesickness and starvation. His spirit is buoyant with the
anticipation of seeing his native State of Tennessee entirely rescued
from the destroying hand of treason, and he is proud of having suffered
for the flag of freedom. But at times those bright eyes are clouded; not
that he for one moment regrets his experiences, bitter as they have
been, in contrast with the doting care in which he was reared; yet he
talks a good deal about that little home in the far-off mountains, and
it is easy to discern that the tidings which cannot come from those he
so dearly loves there would bring him great happiness. He is too manly
in his patriotism, however, to give way to these restless longings, and
stifles the secret unquiet of his heart by a bravely forced
cheerfulness. The doctor is sure that he cannot live much longer, and
thinks best that he should be told. It is a painful duty thus to blight
all the hopes which cling to earth.

One day, as he was talking about his grandparents, and how much he
should have to tell them when he got home, he was asked, "But suppose,
Miller, that it was God's will for you not to get well, but to go to a
better world above, how would you feel?" The awful possibility flashed
upon him for the first time, and, bursting into tears, he exclaimed,
"Must I die, and never see grandpapa and grandmamma again?... I can die
for the country, but I do want to see them once more." After a little
while, with a maturity and strength of character far beyond his years,
he sweetly acquiesced in the will of the wise Disposer of our joys and
sorrows, and transferred his thoughts to eternal realities. He was
comforted by the thought that he should meet those he loved in the
heavenly home. "And perhaps they may be there now," he said, "waiting
for me." At another time, on being reminded that his best and most
loving Friend was always near him, he said that he wished that he loved
him better, and knew how to pray to him aright. "Can't you say, God be
merciful to me a sinner?" "O yes, but do you call that praying?" With
his thin, white hands meekly clasped upon his breast, he would lie for
hours repeating with his slowly moving lips this petition. God heard and
answered it A settled peace filled his soul, making those last few days
the beginning of immortal glory to him, as he awaited with triumphant
faith the hour of transition. To the end his patriotism glowed warmly;
he asked, the day before he died, that a little flag which was in the
tent might be put up where he could see it: "I would love to have that
dear flag the last thing that my eyes shall rest upon on earth."
Patiently he suffered until within a few hours of his death, when he
sank into a deep sleep, to awake no more here. As we gazed at his little
form in the coffin, with the flag he died for laid across his snowy
shroud, that impressive, mysterious "Why?" which is so often asked in
life, came to our thoughts. Why should one so pure and innocent be
called to offer his young life in a struggle for which he was in no
manner responsible? Eternity will unfold all the hidden reasons; but
cannot we even now catch a glimpse of them, remembering that no devotion
is too precious a sacrifice for the principles of truth and liberty, and
that the longest life could not be crowned with loftier praise than the
death of a child-patriot? A wreath of white rose-buds was woven for the
funeral of our little loved one; a single pink rose was laid with tears
on the flag-covered coffin by the soldier-nurse who had tenderly cared
for him through his illness.

Impelled by an intense feeling of the importance of a speedy exchange of
the large number of men who had been taken prisoners since the opening
of the spring campaign, two of the ladies in the hospital went to
Washington one day. They were kindly received by President Lincoln, and,
in the few minutes' interview they had with him, the pictures of some of
the released prisoners were shown to him. As he gazed at them, a pitying
sadness crossed his brow. He asked if indeed they could be correct, and
gave a promise that those who were then in the hands of the enemy should
be exchanged as soon as it was in his power to effect it. Could that
time have sooner come, what unutterable tortures would have been saved
to thousands!

Strawberry festivals were given to the men at this time; gingerbread,
and a plentiful supply of fruit, adding a little variety to their
every-day fare. The time afforded for such diversions by a less pressing
amount of care than usual was cut short by the arrival of the steamer
Connecticut, bringing six hundred of those most seriously wounded at the
disastrous attack upon Petersburg on the 18th of June. These men were
landed at midnight; their wounds had been carefully attended to before
their arrival, and were found to be in good order. Yet many were in a
dying state, and it was impossible to do for every man all that we
desired on the morning that followed, and added by its heat to their
weakness, thirst, and discomfort. Hastily the hospital attendants moved
from one helpless sufferer to another, in the thickly crowded tent
wards. One man would shriek, in frenzied agony, for a drink of water;
another would beg to be fanned; while others would ask to be bathed with
ice-water.

Among the newly arrived was General Chamberlain, the present Governor of
Maine. Supposed to have been "mortally wounded," so terribly had a
Minie-rifle-ball shattered his body, he was, after having been borne by
painful and exhausting stages from the extreme front, landed in an
almost dying condition. Leaving Bowdoin College as Colonel of the Maine
Twentieth, he had already distinguished himself by dashing bravery in
many of the great battles of the war. At Petersburg he was raised to the
rank of General by Grant for gallantry in leading a charge,--the only
case of actual promotion on the field during the war. Bravest in battle,
his courage was not less evinced during months of intense and tedious
suffering. Partially restored to health as by a miracle, he resumed his
command five months from the day of his desperate wound. In Grant's last
campaign he opened the attack on the left at Quaker Road and White Oak
Road, for which he received the brevet of Major-General. Although
several times wounded, he valiantly pressed on, fighting through the
campaign, and taking a prominent and important part in the battle of
Five Forks. His command, the First Division of the Fifth Army Corps, was
designated to receive the surrender of the arms and colors of Lee's
army; and the flag that waved that day over a conquered rebellion now
hangs in his peaceful study at Brunswick.

Of those who died on the morning after the arrival of the Connecticut
was a young man belonging to the Rebel army. He had by chance been taken
up among our wounded. He had his little Bible in his pocket, which he
requested should be sent to his mother, with the message that he died
happy, and hoped to meet her in a better world, but that he was a fool
for having joined the army. As it was supposed that he might have some
such regret in his last hours, he was asked if he were sorry that he had
fought against the old flag. "Well, you need not say that," he said,
"but that I was a fool ever to come to this war." With a smile of peace
upon his countenance, he passed away. Several attempts have been made,
in vain, since the close of the war, to find his mother; the Bible, and
a ring taken from his finger, will possibly never reach her now.

Among the wounded were four men who had lost both legs; they were in the
best of spirits, surely thinking to live, and earnestly planning for the
future. Had the heat not been so excessive for the ten days after they
came, they would probably have survived; but, one after another, they
died, suddenly, overcome by fainting weakness. I remember, too, one boy,
only sixteen years old, who had lost his right arm. "You have given a
good deal for the country," was said to him. "Yes, and I would willingly
give my other arm to help put down this Rebellion." Little did he think
that within a few hours his life would be yielded in his country's
cause.

Every day a funeral procession moved forth to the place of burial, the
band playing the "Russian Dirge" or the "Dead March in Saul."

It seemed as if a special inspiration of silent endurance and courageous
patience were given to the men who lingered in the most acute
sufferings. Gangrene spread through the wards, and the remedy was like
the application of fire to open wounds. Three times a day was this agony
endured with a martyr's spirit. One man by the name of Hollenbeck would
sing in joyous tones,--

    "I'm glad I'm in this army,
    I'm glad I'm in this army,
      And I'll battle till the end.

    "He will give me grace to conquer,
    He will give me grace to conquer,
      And keep me to the end."

While consciousness lasted, he firmly retained his self-control; but at
last reason gave way, and the groans and distressing cries which for a
few days preceded his death told over what a depth of agony his soul had
triumphed, before his brain lost its power.

Not alone by the men themselves was this sublime fortitude shown.
Mothers, who came to visit their sons, though crushed with grief at
their hopeless state, would yet calmly and even cheerfully minister to
their comfort.

There was one mother, especially, whom I remember,--a slight, fragile
little woman, dressed in widow's mourning, for her husband had been
killed in the war, and it was her third and last son who was now dying
for the country. Her strength of mind and body was almost superhuman.
She had an angelic expression of countenance, such as comes from
learning the full and perfect love of God in the sharp lessons of
suffering. She was only too thankful at being permitted to spend these
last days and nights by the side of her son,--begging him to put his
trust in the Saviour, and telling of the celestial glory prepared for
him beyond the grave. She could hardly be persuaded to take even a few
hours' sleep; she felt that she could not leave him with the nurse, but
consented, if one of the ladies would stay with him, to take a little
rest. It was my privilege to watch by him through that last night of
restless pain, and then I found that he was in every way worthy of so
noble a mother. He expressed his willingness to die, saying that it had
been his duty to fight, and that now he gloried in dying for the nation.
The tent sides' fluttering in the light breeze from the bay was the only
sound that disturbed the quiet of that starry night, as in the solemn
solitude the departing soul gathered fresh energy as the body grew
weaker and weaker. Chapters of the Bible and Psalms were read over and
over to him; he earnestly listened to each promise and benediction, and
would at the low singing of hymns sleep gently for a few moments at a
time. Early in the morning his mother resumed her place of loving care.
In the afternoon she sent for two of the ladies to come over and sing to
Frank. The chaplain was there, and life was fast ebbing away. After
prayer, the hymn, "My heavenly home is bright and fair," was sung. As
the dying boy thanked the ladies, he said that there was a hymn about
"rest" that he would like to hear once more. "There is rest for the
weary" having been sung, he folded his wasted hands, and said: "This is
the last hymn I shall hear on earth. In a little while I shall know of
that rest." He breathed for a few hours longer, and then his spirit was
among the redeemed, "in the Christian's home in glory." The faithful,
trusting mother only said, in the depth of her affliction, "It is the
Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him best."

Dr. Vanderkeift mingled with the pride of a surgeon the utmost
kindliness toward each patient. He would, on examining a critical case,
immediately after amputation, bend in the most fatherly manner over the
man, and, patting him gently, would say, with his German accent: "Now,
my dear fellow, do please to live. I am doing all I can for you, and
will send you milk from my own Alderney every day."

Flowers were never more appreciated than in the hospital that summer. A
bunch of these bright little treasures would make a man happy for hours,
and would receive the most endearing care to preserve their beauty. On
going in to see a wounded man one day, the attention of one of the
ladies was attracted by a strange-looking object hanging from the tent.
Her curiosity being excited, she inquired, "What have you here, John?"
"Well, miss, it is a long while since I had seen any flowers before
those you brought me in yesterday, and it was so warm that I was afraid
water wouldn't keep them, and I hated to see them wither; so I got Evans
to make me this calico bag and put some earth in it, and I am in hopes
they will grow here by my side, if I keep them moist." Sure enough, when
this admiring florist was able to leave on crutches in a few weeks, he
carried these specimens of Maryland floriculture, all rooted and
growing, to his Western home.

For the sake of convenience, the ladies usually dressed in dark attire;
but when a light muslin appeared in the wards the effect was quite
noticeable. I remember that one day a man asked the lady in charge of
his own ward to get another lady, who was arrayed in pink, to come in
from her ward and see him. "But what do you want with her? Can't I do
everything for you?" "W-e-ll, y-e-s; but then she is dressed up so nice;
if she would only walk through the tent, it would make me feel better."

In July there was threatened an invasion of the city of Annapolis, which
produced much excitement in the hospital. As there were between six and
seven hundred officers there at the time as patients, it was not deemed
unlikely that Harry Gilmore, with his band of raiders, would, after
burning Governor Bradford's house at Baltimore, make a dash in our
direction, if only to terrify and then parole the officers and men. By
degrees the telegraphic wires and railway lines were destroyed nearer
and nearer to us, thus isolating the city, and giving rise to fearful
anticipations. Outside the two entrances to the hospital were dug broad
moats, protected by ramparts of earth and a very ludicrous structure of
barrels; while about a mile off a line of rifle-pits was prepared, with
cannon mounted in hastily made forts behind them. Every steamer,
fishing-boat, or craft capable of carrying persons or property was put
into requisition by the people of Annapolis, and kept constantly ready
to start at the first appearance of the foe, and some of the valuable
possessions of the hospital floated on the bay for a few days. Messages
were left with us for home friends by the men hurrying off to the front,
as we termed the spot of the impending encounter, as if the ladies were
expected to be the sole survivors of the affair. Every man who could
handle a spade or a pickaxe was required at this season of alarm. For
three days and nights the reign of terror lasted, causing an injuriously
nervous inquietude to the helpless and sick. It was useless to try to
allay their apprehensions, for those who smiled at the idea of an attack
were merely regarded as endowed with a Quixotic cheerfulness. When
gunboats arrived to protect the city, a ray of hope dawned; and when the
news reached us that the raiders had retreated across the Potomac, all
felt safe once more. A man by the name of Beck, one of the most valued
of the hospital attendants, was accidentally shot, though not fatally.
He was the sole hero of this brief campaign of fright.

It was not until August that any of our wounded who had been taken
prisoners were exchanged on parole. The New York came about the middle
of the month, bringing six hundred. Many said that their wounds had been
slight, but that amputation had been performed with the assurance from
the Rebels that they would fix them so that they would never fight any
more. I think that these were exceptional victims of cruelty, for the
almost universal testimony of our soldiers was that the surgeons were
their best friends at the South. They would insist upon the necessity of
more food being given to their patients, and remonstrate with the Rebel
authorities,--unfortunately without success.

One of the officers who came at this time was Lieutenant F----,
belonging to a New York regiment. He had lost a limb, and remained a few
weeks in the hospital. The first letter of joyous welcome which he
received from home told him that his family had been wearing mourning
four months for him, and a printed funeral sermon which shortly followed
the letter gave an account of his supposed death at the Battle of the
Wilderness, and contained a eulogy upon his character.

I remember being particularly impressed by a description of hunger in
the hospital at Libby, given by Lieutenant William Foy Smith, who came
at this time. He belonged to the First Massachusetts Cavalry. He was
shot through the lungs, and left for dead on the battle-field. By the
kind care of colored women, who brought him milk, he was
resuscitated--to find himself a prisoner. He said that often at night in
Libby he would amuse himself by calculating how many places there were
in Washington Street, Boston, where edibles were to be had, and he would
fancy the people getting oysters and thousands of good things; and then
he would muse over all the bountiful dinners that he used to have at
home, and reproach himself for not having partaken more heartily,
resolving, if ever he had another opportunity, that his gnawing appetite
should forever do itself justice. Then he would wildly scrape the wall
by which he was lying, and ravenously devour the atoms from it, until at
last he would dream in his sleep of happier days to come. After several
months, Lieutenant Smith was able to rejoin his regiment, whose entrance
into Richmond he thus describes: "I shall never repine again, while I
have health; but who talks of repining after such a march as our last? I
joined the regiment at Manchester, opposite Richmond. How often have I
looked across the river to the field on which we camped, and longed for
liberty! We passed in review through the city the next day. I cannot
describe my sensations as I went by the old prison-house, with a good
horse under me,--one seemed hardly sufficient,--health in my veins, and
freedom,--it was too much. I had to shout. A lank, unshorn Rebel was
looking through the bars where I had so often looked. We had the finest
of music and the gayest of banners, but the people let us have them all
to ourselves. But our glorious reception in Washington repaid us."

It was a great recompense for all his sufferings that this brave, modest
young officer lived to see the day of victorious peace; but within a few
months the wound from which he had partially recovered was the cause of
his death.

Malarial fever was the prevalent disease in the hospital in the early
autumn. Hundreds sank with it, after the hard marches and
counter-marches with Sheridan in the hot Valley of the Shenandoah
through the summer. Stimulating and nourishing diet came too late to
many of these undermined constitutions, and disease worked its deadly
ravages where ball and bayonet had missed their aim. Dr. Hunter, surgeon
of a Pennsylvania regiment, lived but a short time in severe suffering.
A man of strong character, his patriotism had responded when an urgent
call for men had come from the War Department. Having no son to send to
the war, he felt it to be his duty to leave a large practice and enlist
as a private. He was immediately made surgeon of the regiment which he
devotedly served for several months. His death-bed was the scene of the
most serene peace. "Why should I stay longer below? I am only too glad
to depart and be with Christ: it is far better." These and similar words
showed the tone of his mind. His earnest prayers for the nation were his
last rich legacy of dying faith. He cheerfully gave his life as part of
the ransom of liberty and peace.

On one of those autumnal days died, too, Major Butler. Wounded at
Petersburg, one leg had been fractured in seven places, from the thigh
to the ankle. Three months he lingered in distress which can be
imagined, but to which his heroic spirit never gave utterance.

The hospital was brilliantly illuminated when the result of the
Presidential election was made known, in November. Music and shouts of
rejoicing rent the air, and all were filled with exulting confidence
that the beginning of the end had been accomplished by the overwhelming
verdict of the people at home.

The National Thanksgiving was celebrated by a service in the chapel, and
a fine dinner, which one man said he "could not have enjoyed better had
he eaten it at his grandmother's,--only the folks would have been
there."

At last, in December, the earnest entreaties of hearts breaking with
wild anguish and suspense prevailed upon the authorities in Washington
to effect the release of our prisoners. To no one person was this happy
result so much due as to General Mulford, our Commissioner of Exchange.
He was unceasing in his exertions to accomplish this end on almost any
terms, for he knew what tortures our men were enduring, and how rapidly
they were dying. The soldiers looked upon him as their deliverer, and
with good reason. His arduous care and kindly manner deserved their
warmest enthusiasm and gratitude. His personal watchfulness in receiving
the men may be illustrated by a little incident. A man who was feebly
walking fell down quite exhausted, just before reaching the New York; he
lay behind a pile of wood, and could not make himself heard. Just as the
boat was about putting off, General Mulford stepped on shore to look
round and be certain that no one was left. "I should have lain there
till I died had he not in his kindness found me," said the man.

The first exchange was of ten thousand men. Large ocean steamers found
their way up Chesapeake Bay, and our band played "Home again," "Home,
Sweet Home," and other strains of welcome, to their ghastly passengers.
As one man looked up, in landing, to the flag waving in the hospital
grounds, he said earnestly, "We're glad to see you; we know there's grub
enough under you." Such inexpressible relief and joy were never felt by
mortals before. Libby Prison and Belle Isle had startled the ear of
humanity by their records of woe, but the story of Andersonville far
exceeded theirs. The revolting torments inflicted in that place are too
well known to need repetition. Rather let us dwell upon the happiness of
those fortunate enough to escape. The hospital was crowded to its utmost
capacity. Many lived only a few minutes or hours after reaching the
wards; others survived but a day or two, breathing their last in peace
and comfort. An elderly man, quite pulseless when brought in, was
resuscitated with brandy sufficiently to express his gratitude. "God has
been very good in bringing me here," he said, as a beam of joy
irradiated his wan face; "I can die willingly here, and lay my bones
under the old flag, but I didn't want to die down there." And when asked
if he had kept his faith in God while suffering so much at
Andersonville: "O yes! He has been my leader these twenty years, and I
thought He would bring me out all right." His name was John Buttery; he
did not live long enough to hear from his wife and six children, in
Connecticut.

Among the unknown was a boy apparently about seventeen years old, with
clustering curls of auburn hair, and eyes, that once must have been full
of life, now sending forth only a vacant stare. I worked over him,
hoping to get him to utter one word before he died that would give some
hint of his name or home, but in vain.

That month of December, with its cold, leaden sky, and bleak, wintry
winds, will never be forgotten. On going down one dreary morning, in the
obscurity of early dawn, I found that a tent in which five men
dangerously ill had been left the night before was not to be seen; at
first I distrusted my senses,--it was surely the place where the tent
had stood, but the only vestige left was the plank floor. On inquiry, I
found that in the middle of the night the tent had blown over, and men,
furniture, and all had been moved in a furious storm.

Sixty men were buried at one time, and several times over forty were
borne in a long train of ambulances to the cemetery. The martial dirge,
with the sound of its muffled drum, was daily mingled with the groans of
the dying. Many a man who did not shrink from death still desired to
live long enough to hear from his home once more, and died piteously
lamenting his lot. Others, though dying, would cling to the hope of
going home; and when told that the doctor feared they could not live an
hour, and asked if they had any messages to leave, with their last gasp
would say, "O, I shall live! I am going home to see my mother."

In contrast with such cases were others of calm fortitude. These lines
were dictated at midnight by a man who had hoped to live, but whose
strength suddenly failed:--

     "DEAR WIFE:--I am on my death-bed. Get N---- E---- to settle
     our affairs, draw my pay, &c. If our daughter is still
     living, I want her to have a share of three hundred dollars.
     I die under the protecting folds of the starry banner of
     freedom. You must take good care of the little one. Trust in
     God, and meet me in heaven. I bid a last farewell to all my
     friends. I die happy. God bless you.

     "Your husband,

     "H. W. VARNEY."


The friends of many came as soon as they heard of their arrival and
illness, but often failed to recognize them. One woman, on being taken
into the ward where her husband was asleep, persisted in saying that she
had never seen that man before; and on being shown his name and regiment
on the card, she refused to be convinced, feeling sure that there must
be some mistake, till he opened his eyes and greeted her by name.

On the evening of a day on which there had been a new arrival of men, I
was sitting in the comfortably heated tent, while eight happy faces
looked from the warmly blanketed beds. Each man had his own tale of
prison experience to tell. "Not for all the gold that could be heaped
into this tent would I voluntarily spend one more day at Andersonville."
Another said, "We suffered enough in body; but the mental agony, the
mental agony, no one can ever imagine." And so they went on, dwelling at
last upon their anxiety for home friends, wondering if mothers, wives,
and children were yet alive. Then one manly voice told, in earnest
tones, how he could bless the Lord for the perilous trials through which
he had passed; that he had been brought up religiously, but never had
truly loved the Saviour until he became his only refuge. "His love in my
heart is well worth all the discipline I have endured, and I can thank
him for it." These words came from John S. Farnell, a Michigan boy of
eighteen years of age. Since the battle of Gettysburg, seventeen months
before, he had been a prisoner. He enjoyed reading his own little new
Bible, and the meetings for prayer and singing held in his tent. He
seemed to be gaining strength, until an attack of pneumonia occurred,
when the utmost care failed to save his life. He talked peacefully of
dying, in intervals of consciousness, but at last sank into a heavy
stupor. Just as I closed his eyes, and while he ceased to breathe, the
band struck up the strain, "Do they miss me at home?"

It needed a stout heart to turn from the frequent scenes of death, at
that gloomy time, to cheer and amuse the less dangerously ill. The
coming of Christmas was a source of excitement for a few days. Some of
the boys had never heard of Santa Claus and his visits down the chimney
at this merry season; and when his descent through the pipes, and
passage through the stove-doors, and appearance in the tents became
possibilities, there was as much amusement and anticipation among them
as ever gladdened a nursery full of children. On the morning of this
happy festival every man found a sock hanging by his side stuffed with
mittens, scarfs, knives, suspenders, handkerchiefs, and many little
things. Out of the top of each sock peeped a little flag; and as the men
awoke, one by one, and examined the gifts of Santa Claus, shouts of
merriment rang through the wards, and they were satisfied that he was a
friend worth having.

All that was possible under the pressure of the melancholy circumstances
was done to make the day a happy one; but it was not celebrated with the
same rejoicings as the year before, nor was there much time to be spared
from the sick and dying. Steamers were constantly arriving, and filling
up the vacant places with new patients.

On a ragged, soiled piece of paper which a man handed me on landing were
these lines, written at Andersonville by a boy of sixteen who died
there. They are surely worthy of remembrance.

    "Will you leave us here to die?
    When our country called for men,
    We came from forge and store and mill,
    The broken ranks to fill;
    We left our quiet, happy homes,
    And ones we loved so well,
    To vanquish all the Union foes,
    Or fall where others fell.
    Now, in prisons drear we languish,
    And it is our constant cry,
    O ye who yet can save us,
    Will you leave us here to die?

    "The voice of slander tells you
    That our hearts were weak with fear,
    That nearly every one of us
    Was captured in the rear.
    The scars upon our bodies
    From the musket-ball and shell,
    The missing legs and shattered arms
    A truer tale will tell.
    We have tried to do our duty
    In the sight of God on high:
    O ye who yet can save us,
    Will you leave us here to die?

    "There are hearts with hope still beating
    In our pleasant Northern homes,
    Waiting, watching for the footsteps
    That may never, never come.
    In Southern prisons pining,
    Meagre, tattered, pale, and gaunt,
    Growing weaker, weaker daily
    From pinching cold and want.
    Here brothers, sons, and husbands,
    Poor and hopeless, captured lie:
    O ye who yet can save them,
    Will you leave us here to die?

    "From out our prison gate,
    There's a grave-yard close at hand,
    Where lie ten thousand Union men
    Beneath the Georgia sand.
    Scores and scores are laid beside them,
    As day succeeds to day;
    And thus it ever will be
    Till they all shall pass away,
    And the last can say when dying,
    With upturned and glazing eye,
    Both love and faith are dead at home,--
    They have left us here to die!"

A proof of the humanity with which the Rebel prisoners were treated by
our government is found in the fact of their reluctance to be exchanged;
they said that they were very comfortable, and would far rather remain
at the North until the war was over. One general, who was having an
artificial leg made, was forced to return against his will. His
entreaties to be left behind prevailed for a few days; but at last he
was obliged to take passage on the transport for exchange, as one of our
own generals was awaiting his return to come home.

Among the prisoners who came in January was Boston Corbett, of the
Seventeenth New York Cavalry. Every name made public even in remote
connection with the death of our beloved President becomes an object of
interest. The following is a characteristic letter from the brave and
earnest-hearted patriot at whose hand the assassin met his doom:--


     "VIENNA, VA., March 9, 1865.

     "MISS ----:--Many times I have thought I would write to
     acknowledge the kindness shown by you and the other good
     ladies of the hospital to us poor soldiers when we were
     brought from Savannah, Andersonville, and Millen. I remember
     with gratitude the first kind words expressed towards us,
     and how strange and good they sounded after being so long
     deprived of them. Although they might not seem much to the
     giver, yet I believe they will live in the memory of us
     soldier boys long after the war is over. I can never forget
     how much was done for us all on our return from prison to
     hospital; but many thousands lie under the soil of Georgia,
     monuments of the cruelty and wickedness of this
     Rebellion,--the head of all the rebellions of earth for
     blackness and horror. Those only can feel the extent of it
     who have seen their comrades, as I have, lying in the
     broiling sun, without shelter, with swollen feet and parched
     skin, in filth and dirt, suffering as I believe no people
     ever suffered before in the world. But, thank God, these
     things have come, I hope, to an end. May they never exist
     again in the good land! With kind regards to all,

     "Very truly,

     "BOSTON CORBETT."


The ravages of the malignant fever which had broken out in the hospital
were not confined to the patients. Surgeons and chaplain yielded their
lives at its deadly touch. Then, too, was the bond severed which had
harmoniously united a happy sisterhood for many months. Of the six who
went down to the brink of the river of death, five crossed over to the
heavenly shore. She who alone remained gives these simple memories to
the reader.




MINOR ITALIAN TRAVELS.


I.

PISA.

I am afraid that the talk of the modern railway traveller, if he is
honest, must be a great deal of the custodians, the _vetturini_, and the
_facchini_, whose agreeable acquaintance constitutes his chief knowledge
of the population among which he journeys. We do not now-a-days carry
letters recommending us to citizens of the different places. If we did,
consider the calamity we should be to the be-travelled Italian
communities we now bless! No; we buy our through-tickets, and we put up
at the hotels praised in the hand-book, and are very glad of a little
conversation with any native, however adulterated he may be by contact
with the world to which we belong. I do not blush to own that I love the
whole rascal race which ministers to our curiosity and preys upon us,
and I am not ashamed to have spoken so often as I have done in former
sketches of the lowly and rapacious but interesting porters who opened
to me the different gates of that great realm of wonders, Italy. I doubt
if they can be much known to the dwellers in the land, though they are
the intimates of all sojourners and passengers; and if I have any regret
in the matter, it is that I did not more diligently study them when I
could. The opportunity, once lost, seldom recurs; they are all but as
transitory as the Object of Interest itself. I remember that years ago,
when I first visited Cambridge, there was an old man appeared to me in
the character of Genius of the College Grounds, who showed me all the
notable things in our city,--its treasures of art, its monuments,--and
ended by taking me into his wood-house, and sawing me off from a
wind-fallen branch of the Washington Elm a bit of the sacred wood for a
remembrancer. Where now is that old man? He no longer exists for me,
neither he nor his wood-house nor his dwelling-house. Let me look for a
month about the College Grounds, and I shall not see him. But somewhere
in the regions of traveller's faery he still lives, and he appears
instantly to the new-comer; he has an understanding with the dryads who
keep him supplied with boughs from the Washington Elm, and his
wood-house is full of them.

Among memorable cicerones in Italy was one whom we saw at Pisa, where we
stopped on our way from Leghorn after our accident in the Maremma, and
spent an hour in viewing the Quattro Fabbriche. The beautiful old town,
which every one knows from the report of travellers, one finds possessed
of the incommunicable charm which keeps old towns forever novel to the
visitor. Lying on either side of the Arno, it mirrors in the flood
architecture almost as fair and noble as that glassed in the Canalazzo,
and its streets seemed to us as tranquil as the canals of Venice. Those
over which we drove, on the day of our visit, were paved with broad
flag-stones, and gave out scarcely a sound under our wheels. It was
Sunday, and no one was to be seen. Yet the empty and silent city
inspired us with no sense of desolation. The palaces were in perfect
repair; the pavements were clean; behind those windows we felt that
there must be a good deal of easy, comfortable life. It is said that
Pisa is one of the few places in Europe where the sweet, but timid,
spirit of Inexpensiveness--everywhere pursued by Railways--still
lingers, and that you find cheap apartments in those well-preserved old
palaces. No doubt it would be worth more to live in Pisa than it would
cost, for the history of the place would alone be to any reasonable
sojourner a perpetual recompense and a princely income far exceeding his
expenditure. To be sure, the Tower of Famine, with which we chiefly
associate the name of Pisa, has been long razed to the ground, and built
piecemeal into the neighboring palaces; but you may still visit the dead
wall which hides from view the place where it stood, and you may thence
drive on, as we did, to the great Piazza where stands the unrivalledest
group of architecture in the world after that of St. Mark's Place in
Venice. There is the wonderful Leaning Tower, there is the old and
beautiful Duomo, there is the noble Baptistery, there is the lovely
Campo Santo. There, too,--somewhere lurking in portal or behind pillar,
and keeping out an eagle eye for the marvelling stranger,--is the much
experienced cicerone who shows you through the edifices. Yours is the
fourteen-thousandth American family to which he has had the honor of
acting as guide, and he makes you feel an illogical satisfaction in thus
becoming a contribution to statistics.

We entered the Duomo in our new friend's custody, and we saw the things
which it was well to see. There was mass, or some other ceremony,
transacting, but, as usual, it was made as little obtrusive as possible,
and there was not much to weaken the sense of proprietorship with which
travellers view objects of interest. Then we ascended the Leaning Tower,
skilfully preserving its equilibrium, as we went, by an inclination of
our persons in a direction opposed to the tower's inclination, but
perhaps not receiving a full justification of the Campanile's appearance
in pictures till we stood again at its base, and saw its vast bulk and
height as it seemed to sway and threaten in the blue sky above our
heads. There the sensation was too terrible for endurance,--even the
architectural beauty of the tower could not save it from being monstrous
to us,--and we were glad to hurry away from it to the serenity and
solemn loveliness of the Campo Santo.

Here are the frescos painted five hundred years ago to be ruinous and
ready against the time of your arrival in 1864, and you feel that you
are the first to enjoy the joke of the Vergogñosa,--that arch jade who
peers through her fingers at the shameful condition of deboshed Father
Noah, and seems to wink one eye of wicked amusement at you. Turning
afterward to any book written about Italy during the time specified, you
find your impression of exclusive property in the frescos erroneous, and
your Muse naturally despairs where so many muses have labored in vain to
give a just idea of the Campo Santo. Yet it is most worthy celebration.
Those exquisitely arched and traceried colonnades seem to grow like the
slim cypresses out of the sainted earth of Jerusalem; and those old
paintings enforce more effectively than their authors conceived the
lessons of life and death, for they are themselves becoming part of the
triumphant decay they represent. If it was awful once to look upon that
strange scene where the gay lords and ladies of the chase come suddenly
upon three dead men in their coffins, while the devoted hermits enjoy
the peace of a dismal righteousness on a hill in the background, it is
yet more tragic to behold it now, when the dead men are hardly
discernible in their coffins, and the hermits are but the vaguest
shadows of gloomy bliss. Alas! Death mocks even the homage done him by
our poor fears and hopes: with dust he wipes out dust, and with decay he
blots the image of decay.

I assure the reader that I made none of these apt reflections in the
Campo Santo at Pisa, but have written them out this morning, in
Cambridge, because there happens to be an east wind blowing. No one
could have been sad in the company of our cheerful and patient cicerone,
who, although visibly anxious to get his fourteen-thousandth American
family away, still would not go till he had shown us that monument to a
dead enmity which hangs in the Campo Santo. This is the mighty chain
which the Pisans, in their old wars with the Genoese, once stretched
across the mouth of their harbor to prevent the entrance of the hostile
galleys. The Genoese with no great trouble carried the chain away, and
kept it ever afterward till 1860, when Pisa was united to the kingdom of
Italy. Then the trophy was restored to the Pisans, and with public
rejoicings placed in the Campo Santo, an emblem of reconciliation and
perpetual amity between ancient foes.[101] It is not a very good
world,--_e pur si muove_.

The Baptistery stands but a step away from the Campo Santo, and our
guide ushered us into it with the air of one who had till now held in
reserve his great stroke and was ready to deliver it. Yet I think he
waited till we had looked at some comparatively trifling sculptures by
Nicolò da Pisa before he raised his voice and uttered a melodious
species of howl. While we stood in some amazement at this, the conscious
structure of the dome caught the sound, and prolonged it with a variety
and sweetness of which I could not have dreamed. The man poured out in
quick succession his musical wails, and then ceased, and a choir of
heavenly echoes burst forth in response. There was a supernatural beauty
in these harmonies of which I despair of giving any true idea. They were
of such tender and exalted rapture that we might well have thought them
the voices of young-eyed cherubim, singing as they passed through
Paradise over that spot of earth where we stood. They seemed a celestial
compassion that stooped and soothed, and rose again in lofty and solemn
acclaim, leaving us poor and penitent and humbled.

We were long silent, and then broke forth with cries of admiration of
which the marvellous echo at once made eloquence.

"Did you ever," said the cicerone after we had left the building, "hear
such music as that?"

"The papal choir does not equal it," we answered with one voice.

The cicerone was not to be silenced even with such a tribute, and he
went on:--

"Perhaps, as you are Americans, you know Moshu Feelmore, the President?
No? Ah, what a fine man! You saw that he had his heart actually in his
hand! Well, one day he said to me here, when I told him of the
Baptistery echo, 'We have the finest echo in the world in the Hall of
Congress.' I said nothing, but for answer I merely howled a
little,--thus! Moshu Feelmore was convinced. Said he, 'There is no other
echo in the world besides this. You are right.' I am unique," pursued
the cicerone, "for making this echo. But," he added with a sigh, "it has
been my ruin. The English have put me in all the guide-books, and
sometimes I have to howl twenty times a day. When our Victor Emanuel
came here, I showed him the church, the tower, and the Campo Santo. Says
the king, 'Pfui!'"--here the cicerone gave that sweeping, outward motion
with both hands by which Italians dismiss a trifling subject,--"'make me
the echo!' I was forced," concluded the cicerone, with a strong sense of
injury in his tone, "to howl half an hour without ceasing."


II.

COMO.

My visit to Lake Como has become to me a dream of summer,--a vision that
remains faded the whole year round, till the blazing heats of July bring
out the sympathetic tints in which it was vividly painted. Then I behold
myself again in burning Milan, amidst noises and fervors and bustle that
seem intolerable after my first six months in tranquil, cool, mute
Venice. Looking at the great white Cathedral, with its infinite
pinnacles piercing the cloudless blue, and gathering the fierce sun upon
it, I half expect to see the whole mass calcined by the heat, and
crumbling, statue by statue, finial by finial, arch by arch, into a vast
heap of lime on the Piazza, with a few charred English tourists
blackening here and there upon the ruin, and contributing a smell of
burnt leather and Scotch tweed to the horror of the scene. All round
Milan smokes the great Lombard plain, and to the north rises Monte Rosa,
her dark head coifed with tantalizing snows as with a peasant's white
linen kerchief. And I am walking out upon that fuming plain as far as to
the Arco della Pace, on which the bronze horses may melt any minute; or
I am sweltering through the city's noonday streets, in search of Sant'
Ambrogio, or the Cenacolo of Da Vinci, or what know I? Coming back to
our hotel, "Alla Bella Venezia," and greeted on entering by the immense
fresco which covers one whole side of the court, it appeared to my
friend and me no wonder that Garibaldi should look so longingly from the
prow of a gondola toward the airy towers and balloon-like domes that
swim above the unattainable lagoons of Venice, where the Austrian then
lorded it in coolness and quietness, while hot, red-shirted Italy was
shut out upon the dusty plains and stony hills. Our desire for water
became insufferable; we paid our modest bills, and at six o'clock we
took the train for Como, where we arrived about the hour when Don
Abbondio, walking down the lonely path with his book of devotions in his
hand, gave himself to the Devil on meeting the bravos of Don Rodrigo. I
counsel the reader to turn to _I Promessi Sposi_, if he would know how
all the lovely Como country looks at that hour. For me, the ride through
the evening landscape, and the faint sentiment of pensiveness provoked
by the smell of the ripening maize, which exhales the same sweetness on
the way to Como that it does on any Ohio bottom-land, have given me an
appetite, and I am to dine before wooing the descriptive Muse.

After dinner, we find at the door of the hotel an English architect whom
we know, and we take a boat together for a moonlight row upon the lake,
and voyage far up the placid water through air that bathes our heated
senses like dew. How far we have left Milan behind! On the lake lies the
moon, but the hills are held by mysterious shadows, which for the time
are as substantial to us as the hills themselves. Hints of habitation
appear in the twinkling lights along the water's edge, and we suspect an
alabaster lamp in every casement, and in every invisible house a villa
such as Claude Melnotte described to Pauline, and some one mouths that
well-worn fustian. The rags of sentimentality flutter from every crag
and olive-tree and orange-tree in all Italy,--like the wilted paper
collars which vulgar tourists leave by our own mountains and streams, to
commemorate their enjoyment of the landscape.

The town of Como lies, a swarm of lights, behind us; the hills and
shadows gloom around; the lake is a sheet of tremulous silver. There is
no telling how we get back to our hotel, or with what satisfied hearts
we fall asleep in our room there. The steamer starts for the head of the
lake at eight o'clock in the morning, and we go on board at that hour.

There is some pretence of shelter in the awning stretched over the after
part of the boat; but we do not feel the need of it in the fresh morning
air, and we get as near the bow as possible, that we may be the very
first to enjoy the famous beauty of the scenes opening before us. A few
sails dot the water, and everywhere there are small, canopied row-boats,
such as we went pleasuring in last night. We reach a bend in the lake,
and all the roofs and towers of the city of Como pass from view, as if
they had been so much architecture painted on a scene and shifted out of
sight at a theatre. But other roofs and towers constantly succeed them,
not less lovely and picturesque than they, with every curve of the
many-curving lake. We advance over charming expanses of water lying
between lofty hills; and as the lake is narrow, the voyage is like that
of a winding river,--like that of the Ohio, but for the primeval
wildness of the acclivities that guard our Western stream, and the
tawniness of its current. Wherever the hills do not descend sheer into
Como, a pretty town nestles on the brink, or, if not a town, then a
villa, or else a cottage, if there is room for nothing more. Many little
towns climb the heights half-way, and where the hills are green and
cultivated in vines or olives, peasants' houses scale them to the crest.
They grow loftier and loftier as we leave our starting-place farther
behind, and as we draw near Colico they wear light wreaths of cloud and
snow. So cool a breeze has drawn down between them all the way that we
fancy it to have come from them till we stop at Colico, and find that,
but for the efforts of our honest engine, sweating and toiling in the
dark below, we should have had no current of air. A burning calm is in
the atmosphere, and on the broad, flat valley,--out of which a marshy
stream oozes into the lake,--and on the snow-crowned hills upon the
left, and on the dirty village of Colico upon the right, and on the
indolent beggars waiting to welcome us, and sunning their goitres at the
landing.

The name Colico, indeed, might be literally taken in English as
descriptive of the local insalubrity. The place was once large, but it
has fallen away much from sickness, and we found a bill posted in its
public places inviting emigrants to America on the part of a German
steamship company. It was the only advertisement of the kind I ever saw
in Italy, and I judged that the people must be notoriously discontented
there to make it worth the while of a steamship company to tempt from
home any of the home-keeping Italian race. And yet Colico, though
undeniably hot, and openly dirty, and tacitly unhealthy, had merits,
though the dinner we got there was not among its virtues. It had an
accessible country about it; that is, its woods and fields were not
impenetrably walled in from the vagabond foot, and after we had dined we
went and lay down under some greenly waving trees beside a field of
corn, and heard the plumed and panoplied maize talking to itself of its
kindred in America. It always has a welcome for tourists of our nation
wherever it finds us in Italy, and sometimes its sympathy, expressed in
a rustling and clashing of its long green blades, or in its strong,
sweet perfume, has, as already hinted, made me homesick; though I have
been uniformly unaffected by potato-patches and tobacco-fields. If only
the maize could impart to the Italian cooks the beautiful mystery of
roasting-ears! Ah! then indeed it might claim a full and perfect
fraternization from its compatriots abroad.

From where we lay beside the cornfield, we could see, through the
twinkling leaves and the twinkling atmosphere, the great hills across
the lake, taking their afternoon naps, with their clouds drawn like
handkerchiefs over their heads. It was very hot, and the red and purple
ooze of the unwholesome river below "burnt like a witch's oils." It was
indeed but a fevered joy we snatched from nature there; and I am afraid
that we got nothing more comfortable from sentiment, when, rising, we
wandered off through the unguarded fields toward a ruined tower on a
hill. It must have been a relic of feudal times, and perhaps in the cool
season it is haunted by the wicked spirits of such lords as used to rule
in the terror of the people beside peaceful and happy Como. But in
summer no ghost, however sultrily appointed in the other world, could
feel it an object to revisit that ruined tower. A few scrawny
blackberries and other brambles grew out of its fallen stones; harsh,
dust-dry mosses painted its weather-worn walls with their blanched gray
and yellow. From its foot, looking out over the valley, we saw the road
to the Splügen Pass lying white-hot in the valley; and while we looked,
the diligence appeared, and dashed through the dust that rose like a
flame before. After that it was a relief to stroll in dirty by-ways,
past cottages of saffron peasants, and poor stony fields that begrudged
them a scanty vegetation, back to the steamer blistering in the sun.

Now indeed we were glad of the awning, under which a silent crowd of
people with sunburnt faces waited for the departure of the boat. The
breeze rose again as the engine resumed its unappreciated labors, and,
with our head toward Como, we pushed out into the lake. The company on
board was such as might be expected. There was a German
landscape-painter, with three heart's-friends beside him; there were
some German ladies; there were the unfailing Americans and the unfailing
Englishman; there were some French people; there were Italians from the
meridional provinces, dark, thin, and enthusiastic, with fat, silent
wives, and a rhythmical speech; there were Milanese with their families,
out for a holiday,--round-bodied men, with blunt, square features, and
hair and vowels clipped surprisingly short; there was a young girl whose
face was of the exact type affected in rococo sculpture, and at whom one
gazed without being able to decide whether she was a nymph descended
from a villa gate, or a saint come from under a broken arch in a
Renaissance church. At one of the little towns two young Englishmen in
knickerbockers came on board, who were devoured by the eyes of their
fellow-passengers, and between whom and our kindly architect there was
instantly ratified the tacit treaty of non-intercourse which travelling
Englishmen observe.

Nothing further interested us on the way to Como, except the gathering
coolness of the evening air; the shadows creeping higher and higher on
the hills; the songs of the girls winding yellow silk on the reels that
hummed through the open windows of the factories on the shore; and the
appearance of a flag that floated from a shallop before the landing of a
stately villa. The Italians did not know this banner, and the Germans
loudly debated its nationality. The Englishmen grinned, and the
Americans blushed in silence. Of all my memories of that hot day on Lake
Como, this is burnt the deepest; for the flag was that insolent banner
which in 1862 proclaimed us a broken people, and persuaded willing
Europe of our ruin. It has gone down long ago from ship and fort and
regiment, and they who used to flaunt it so gayly in Europe probably
pawned it later in the cheap towns of South France, whither so much
chivalry retired when wealth was to be wrung from slaves no more
forever. Still, I say, it made Como too hot for us that afternoon, and
even breathless Milan was afterwards a pleasant contrast.


III.

TRIESTE.

If you take the midnight steamer at Venice you reach Trieste by six
o'clock in the morning, and the hills rise to meet you as you enter the
broad bay dotted with the sail of fishing-craft. The hills are bald and
bare, and you find, as you draw near, that the city lies at their feet
under a veil of mist, or climbs earlier into view along their sides. The
prospect is singularly devoid of gentle and pleasing features, and
looking at those rugged acclivities, with their aspect of continual
bleakness, you readily believe all the stories you have ever heard of
that fierce wind called the Bora, which sweeps from them through Trieste
at certain seasons. While it blows, ladies walking near the quays are
sometimes caught up and set afloat, involuntary Galateas, in the bay,
and people keep in-doors as much as possible. But the Bora, though so
sudden and so savage, does give warning of its rise, and the peasants
avail themselves of this characteristic. They station a man on one of
the mountain-tops, and when he feels the first breath of the Bora, he
sounds a horn, which is a signal for all within hearing to lay hold of
something that cannot be blown away, and cling to it till the wind
falls. This may happen in three days or in nine, according to the
popular proverbs. "The spectacle of the sea," says Dall' Ongaro, in a
note to one of his ballads, "while the Bora blows, is sublime, and when
it ceases the prospect of the surrounding hills is delightful. The air,
purified by the rapid current, clothes them with a rosy veil, and the
temperature is instantly softened, even in the heart of winter."

The city itself, as you penetrate it, makes good with its stateliness
and picturesqueness your loss through the grimness of its environs. It
is in great part new, very clean, and full of the life and movement of a
prosperous port; but, better than this so far as the mere sight-seer is
concerned, it wins a novel charm from the many public staircases by
which you ascend and descend its hillier quarters, and which are made of
stone, and lightly railed and balustraded with iron.

Something of all this I noticed in my ride from the landing of the
steamer to the house of friends in the suburbs. There I grew better
disposed toward the hills, which, as I strolled over them, I found
dotted with lovely villas, and everywhere traversed by perfectly-kept
carriage-roads, and easy and pleasant foot-paths. It was in the
spring-time, and the peach-trees and almond-trees hung full of blossoms
and bees; the lizards lay in the walks absorbing the vernal sunshine;
the violets and cowslips sweetened all the grassy borders. The scene did
not want a human interest, for the peasant-girls were going to market at
that hour, and I met them everywhere, bearing heavy burdens on their own
heads, or hurrying forward with their wares on the backs of donkeys.
They were as handsome as heart could wish, and they wore that Italian
head-dress which I have never seen anywhere in Italy except at Trieste
and in the Roman and Neapolitan provinces,--a kerchief of dazzling white
linen, laid square upon the crown, and dropping lightly to the
shoulders. Later I saw these comely maidens crouching on the ground in
the market-place, and selling their wares, with much glitter of eyes,
teeth, and ear-rings, and a continual babble of bargaining.

It seemed to me that the average of good looks was greater among the
women of Trieste than among those of Venice, but that the instances of
striking and exquisite beauty were rarer. At Trieste, too, the Italian
type, so pure at Venice, is lost or continually modified by the mixed
character of the population, which perhaps is most noticeable at the
Merchants' Exchange. This is a vast edifice roofed with glass, where are
the offices of the great steam navigation company, the Austrian
Lloyds,--which, far more than the favor of the Imperial government, has
contributed to the prosperity of Trieste,--and where the traffickers of
all races meet daily to gossip over the news and the prices. Here a
Greek or a Dalmat talks with an eager Italian, or a slow, sure
Englishman; here the hated Austrian button-holes the Venetian or the
Magyar; here the Jew meets the Gentile on common ground; here
Christianity encounters the superstitions of the East, and makes a good
thing out of them in cotton or grain. All costumes are seen here, and
all tongues are heard, the native Triestines contributing almost as much
to the variety of the latter as the foreigners. "In regard to language,"
says Cantù, "though the country is peopled by Slavonians, yet the
Italian tongue is spreading into the remotest villages, where a few
years since it was not understood. In the city it is the common and
familiar language; the Slavonians of the North use the German for the
language of ceremony; those of the South, as well as the Israelites, the
Italian; while the Protestants use the German, the Greeks the Hellenic
and Illyric, the employees of the civil courts the Italian or the
German, the schools now German and now Italian, the bar and the pulpit
Italian. Most of the inhabitants, indeed, are bi-lingual, and very many
tri-lingual, without counting French, which is understood and spoken
from infancy. Italian, German, and Greek are written, but the Slavonic
little, this having remained in the condition of a vulgar tongue. But it
would be idle to distinguish the population according to language, for
the son adopts a language different from the father's, and now prefers
one language and now another; the women generally incline to the
Italian; but many of the upper class prefer now German, now French, now
English, as, from one decade to another, affairs, fashions, and fancies
change. This in the salons; in the squares and streets, the Venetian
dialect is heard."

And with the introduction of the Venetian dialect, Venetian discontent
seems also to have crept in, and I once heard a Triestine declaim
against the Imperial government quite in the manner of Venice. It struck
me that this desire for union with Italy, which he declared prevalent in
Trieste, must be of very recent growth, since even so late as 1848
Trieste had refused to join Venice in the expulsion of the Austrians.
Indeed, the Triestines have fought the Venetians from the first; they
stole the Brides of Venice in one of their piratical cruises in the
lagoons; gave aid and comfort to those enemies of Venice, the Visconti,
the Carraras, and the Genoese; revolted from St. Mark whenever subjected
to his banner; and finally, rather than remain under his sway, gave
themselves five centuries ago to Austria.

The objects of interest in Trieste are not many. There are remains of an
attributive temple of Jupiter under the Duomo, and there is near at hand
the museum of classical antiquities founded in honor of Winckelmann,
murdered at Trieste by that ill-advised Pistojese, Ancangeli, who had
seen the medals bestowed on the antiquary by Maria Theresa and believed
him rich. There is also a scientific museum founded by the Archduke
Maximilian, and, above all, there is the beautiful residence of this
unhappy prince,--the Miramare, where the half-crazed Empress of the
Mexicans vainly waits her husband's return from the experiment of
paternal government in the New World. It would be hard to tell how art
has there charmed rock and wave, until the spur of one of those rugged
Triestine hills, jutting into the sea, has been made the seat of ease
and luxury; but the visitor is aware of the magic as soon as he passes
the gate of the palace grounds. These are in great part perpendicular,
and are overclambered with airy stairways climbing to pensile arbors.
Where horizontal, they are diversified with mimic seas for swans to sail
upon, and summer-houses for people to lounge in and look at the swans
from. On the point of land farthest from the acclivity stands the castle
of Miramare, half at sea, and half adrift in the clouds above.

    "And fain it would stoop downward
      To the mirrored wave below;
    And fain it would soar upward
      In the evening's crimson glow."

I remember that a little yacht lay beside the pier at the castle's foot,
and lazily flapped its sail, while the sea beat inward with as languid a
pulse. That was some years ago, before Mexico was dreamed of at
Miramare. Now, perchance, she who is one of the most unhappy among women
looks down distraught from those high windows, and finds in the helpless
sail and impassive wave the images of her baffled hope, and that
immeasurable sea which gives back its mariners neither to love nor to
sorrow. I think, though she be the wife and daughter of royalty, we may
pity this poor Empress at least as much as we pity the Mexicans to whom
her dreams have brought so many woes.

It was the midnight following the visit to Miramare when the fiacre in
which I had quitted my friend's house was drawn up by its greatly
bewildered driver on the quay near the place where the steamer for
Venice should be lying. There was no steamer for Venice to be seen. The
driver swore a little in the polyglot profanities of his native city,
and, descending from his box, went and questioned different
lights--blue lights, yellow lights, green lights--to be seen at
different points. To a light, they were ignorant, though eloquent, and,
to pass the time, we drove up and down the quay, and stopped at the
landings of all the steamers that touch at Trieste. It was a snug fiacre
enough, but I did not care to spend the night in it, and I urged the
driver to further inquiry. A wanderer whom we met declared that it was
not the night for the Venice steamer; another admitted that it might be;
a third conversed with the driver in low tones, and then leaped upon the
box. We drove rapidly away, and before I had, in view of this mysterious
proceeding, composed a fitting paragraph for the _Fatti Diversi_ of the
_Osservatore Triestino_, descriptive of the state in which the Guardie
di Polizia should find me floating in the bay, exanimate and too clearly
the prey of a _triste evvenimento_, the driver pulled up once more, and
now beside a steamer. It was the steamer for Venice, he said, in
precisely the tone which he would have used had he driven me directly to
it without blundering. It was breathing heavily, and was just about to
depart; but even in the hurry of getting on board I could not help
noticing that it seemed to have grown a great deal since I had last
voyaged in it. There was not a soul to be seen except the mute steward
who took my satchel, and, guiding me below into an elegant saloon,
instantly left me alone. Here again the steamer was vastly enlarged.
These were not the narrow quarters of the Venice steamer, nor was this
lamp, shedding a soft light on cushioned seats and panelled doors and
wainscotings, the sort of illumination usual in that humble craft. I
rang the small silver bell on the long table, and the mute steward
appeared.

_Was_ this the steamer for Venice?

_Sicuro!_

All that I could do in comment was to sit down; and in the mean time the
steamer trembled, groaned, choked, cleared its throat, and we were under
way.

"The other passengers have all gone to bed, I suppose," I argued
acutely, seeing none of them. Nevertheless, I thought it odd, and it
seemed a shrewd means of relief to ring the bell, and, pretending
drowsiness, to ask the steward which was my state-room.

He replied, with a curious smile, that I could have any of them. Amazed,
I yet selected a state-room, and while the steward was gone for the
sheets and pillow-cases I occupied my time by opening the doors of all
the other staterooms. They were empty.

"Am I the only passenger?" I asked, when he returned, with some anxiety.

"Precisely," he answered.

I could not proceed and ask if he composed the entire crew: it seemed
too fearfully probable that he did.

I now suspected that I had taken passage with the Olandese Volante, but
there was now nothing in the world for it, except to go to bed, and
there, with the accession of a slight sea-sickness, my views of the
situation underwent a total change. I had gone down into the Maelstrom
with the Ancient Mariner,--I was a Manuscript Found in a Bottle!

Coming to the surface about six o'clock A. M., I found a daylight as
cheerful as need be upon the appointments of the elegant cabin, and upon
the good-natured face of the steward when he brought me the _caffè
_caffè latte_, and the buttered toast for my breakfast. He said,
"_Servitor suo!_" in a loud and comfortable voice, and I perceived the
absurdity of having thought that he was in any way related to the
Nightmare-Death-in-life-that-thicks-man's-blood-with-cold.

"This is not the regular Venice steamer, I suppose," I remarked to the
steward as he laid my breakfast in state upon the long table.

No. Properly, no boat should have left for Venice last night, which was
not one of the times of the tri-weekly departure. This was one of the
steamers of the line between Trieste and Alexandria, and it was going at
present to take on an extraordinary freight at Venice for Egypt. I had
been permitted to come on board because my driver said I had a return
ticket, and would go.

Ascending to the deck, I found nothing whatever mysterious in the
management of the steamer thus pressed for the first time, probably,
into the service of an American citizen. The captain met me with a bow
to the gangway; seamen were coiling wet ropes at different points, as
they always are; the mate was promenading the bridge, and taking the
rainy weather as it came, with his oil-cloth coat and hat on. The wheel
of the steamer was as usual chewing the sea, and finding it unpalatable,
and vainly expectorating.

We were in sight of the breakwater outside Malamocco, and a pilot-boat
was making us from the land. Even at this point the fortifications of
the Austrians began, and they multiplied as we drew near Venice, till we
entered the lagoon, and found it a nest of fortresses, one within
another.

Unhappily, the day being rainy, Venice did not spring resplendent from
the sea, as I had always read she would. She rose slowly and languidly
from the water,--not like a queen, but like the slovenly, heart-broken
old slave she was.


IV.

CANOVA'S BIRTHPLACE.

From Venice to the city of Vicenza by rail it is two hours, and thence
you must take a carriage if you would go to Bassano, which is an opulent
and busy little grain mart of some twelve thousand souls, about thirty
miles north of Venice, at the foot of the Alps. We reached the town at
nine o'clock. It was moonlight; and as we looked out we saw the quaint,
steep streets full of promenaders, and everybody in Bassano seemed to be
making love. Young girls strolled about the picturesque way with their
lovers, and tender couples were cooing at all the doors and windows.
Bassano is the birthplace of the painter Jacopo da Ponte, who was one of
the first Italian painters to treat Scriptural story as accessory to
mere landscape, and who had a peculiar fondness for painting Entrances
into the Ark, because he could indulge without stint the taste for
pairing-off early acquired from observation of the just-mentioned local
customs in his native town. This was the theory offered by one who had
imbibed the spirit of subtile speculation from Ruskin, and I think it
reasonable. At least it does not conflict with the fact that there is at
Bassano a most excellent gallery of paintings entirely devoted to the
works of Jacopo da Ponte and his four sons, who are here to be seen to
better advantage than anywhere else. As few strangers visit Bassano, the
gallery is little frequented. It is in charge of a very strict old man,
who will not allow people to look at the pictures till he has shown them
the adjoining cabinet of geological specimens. It is in vain that you
assure him of your indifference to these scientific _seccature_; he is
deaf, and you are not suffered to escape a single fossil. He asked us a
hundred questions, and understood nothing in reply, insomuch that when
he came to his last inquiry, "Have the Protestants the same God as the
Catholics?" we were rather glad that he should be obliged to settle the
fact for himself.

Underneath the gallery was a school of boys, whom, as we entered, we
heard humming over the bitter honey which childhood is obliged to gather
from the opening flowers of orthography. When we passed out, the master
gave these poor busy bees an atom of holiday, and they all swarmed forth
together to look at the strangers. The teacher was a long, lank man, in
a black threadbare coat, and a skull-cap,--exactly like the schoolmaster
in "The Deserted Village." We made a pretence of asking him our way
somewhere, and went wrong, and came by accident upon a wide, flat space,
bare as a brick-yard, beside which was lettered on a fragment of the old
city wall, "Giuoco di Palla." It was evidently the play-ground of the
whole city, and it gave us a pleasanter idea of life in Bassano than we
had yet conceived, to think of its entire population playing ball there
in the spring afternoons. We respected Bassano as much for this as for
her diligent remembrance of her illustrious dead, of whom she has very
great numbers. It appeared to us that nearly every other house bore a
tablet announcing that "Here was born," or "Here died," some great or
good man of whom no one out of Bassano ever heard. There is enough
celebrity there to supply the world; but as laurel is a thing that grows
anywhere, I covet rather from Bassano the magnificent ivy that covers
the portions of her ancient wall yet standing. The wall, where visible,
is seen to be of a pebbly rough-cast, but it is clothed almost from the
ground in glossy ivy, that glitters upon it like chain-mail upon the
vast shoulders of some giant warrior. The bed of the moat is turned into
a lovely promenade, bordered by quiet villas, with shepherds and
shepherdesses carved in marble on their gates. Where the wall is built
to the verge of the high ground on which the city stands, there is a
swift descent to the wide valley of the Brenta, waving in corn and vines
and tobacco.

It did not take a long time to exhaust the interest of Bassano; but we
were sorry to leave the place, because of the excellence of the inn at
which we tarried. It was called "Il Mondo," and it had everything in it
that heart could wish. Our rooms were miracles of neatness and comfort;
they had the freshness, not the rawness, of recent repair, and they
opened into the dining-hall, where we were served with indescribable
salads and _risotti_. During our sojourn we simply enjoyed the house;
when we were come away we wondered that so much perfection of hotel
could exist in so small a town as Bassano. It is one of the pleasures of
by-way travel in Italy, that you are everywhere introduced in fanciful
character,--that you become fictitious, and play a part as in a novel.
To this inn of "The World" our driver had brought us with a clamor and
rattle proportioned to the fee received from us, and when, in response
to his haughty summons, the _cameriere_, who had been gossiping with the
cook, threw open the kitchen door, and stood out to welcome us in a
broad square of forth-streaming ruddy light, amid the lovely odors of
broiling and roasting, our driver saluted him with, "Receive these
gentle folks, and treat them to your very best. They are worthy of
anything." This at once put us back several centuries, and we never
ceased to be lords and ladies of the period of Don Quixote as long as we
rested in that inn.

It was a bright and breezy Sunday when we left "Il Mondo," and gayly
journeyed toward Treviso, intending to visit Possagno, the birthplace of
Canova, on our way. The road to the latter place passes through a
beautiful country, that gently undulates on either hand, till in the
distance it rises into pleasant hills and green mountain-heights.
Possagno itself lies upon the brink of a declivity, down the side of
which drops terrace after terrace, all planted with vines and figs and
peaches, to a water-course below. The ground on which the village is
built, with its quaint and antiquated stone cottages, slopes gently
northward, and on a little rise upon the left hand of us coming from
Bassano, we saw that stately religious edifice with which Canova has
honored his humble birthplace. It is a copy of the Pantheon, and it
cannot help being beautiful and imposing, but it would be utterly out of
place in any other than an Italian village. Here, however, it consorted
well enough with the lingering qualities of that old pagan civilization
still perceptible in Italy. A sense of that past was so strong with us,
as we ascended the broad stairway leading up the slope from the village
to the level on which the temple stands at the foot of a mountain, that
we might well have fancied we approached an altar devoted to the elder
worship: through the open doorway and between the columns of the portico
we could see the priests moving to and fro, and the voice of their
chanting came out to us like the sound of hymns to some of the deities
long disowned; and I could but recall how Padre L---- had once said to
me in Venice, "Our blessed saints are only the old gods baptized and
christened anew." Within, as without, the temple resembled the Pantheon,
but it had little to show us. The niches designed by Canova for statues
of the saints are empty yet; but there are busts by his own hand of
himself and his brother, the Bishop Canova. Among the people present was
the sculptor's niece, whom our guide pointed out to us, and who was
evidently used to being looked at. She seemed not to dislike it, and
stared back at us amiably enough, being a good-natured, plump, comely,
dark-faced lady of perhaps fifty years.

Possagno is nothing if not Canova, and our guide, a boy, knew all about
him,--how, more especially, he had first manifested his wonderful genius
by modelling a group of sheep out of the dust of the highway, and how an
Inglese, happening along in his carriage, saw the boy's work and gave
him a plateful of gold napoleons. I dare say this is as near the truth
as most facts. And is it not better for the historic Canova to have
begun in this way, than to have poorly picked up the rudiments of his
art in the work-shop of his father, a maker of altar-pieces and the like
for country churches? The Canova family has intermarried with the
Venetian nobility, and probably would not believe those stories of
Canova's beginnings which his townsmen so fondly cherish. I dare say
they would even discredit the butter lion with which the boy-sculptor is
said to have adorned the table of the noble Falier, and first won his
notice.

Besides the temple at Possagno, there is a very pretty gallery
containing casts of all Canova's works. It is an interesting place,
where Psyches and Cupids flutter, where Venuses present themselves in
every variety of attitude, where Sorrows sit upon hard, straight-backed
classic chairs, and mourn in the society of faithful Storks; where the
Bereft of this century surround death-beds in Greek costume appropriate
to the scene; where Muses and Graces sweetly pose themselves and
insipidly smile, and where the Dancers and Passions, though nakeder, are
no wickeder than the Saints and Virtues. In all, there are a hundred and
ninety-five pieces in the gallery, and among the rest the statue named
George Washington which was sent to America in 1820, and afterwards
destroyed by fire in the Capitol of North Carolina, at Raleigh. The
figure is in a sitting posture; naturally, it is in the dress of a Roman
general; and if it does not look much like George Washington, it does
resemble Julius Cæsar.

The custodian of the gallery had been Canova's body-servant, and he
loved to talk of his master. He had so far imbibed the spirit of family
pride that he did not like to allow that Canova had ever been other than
rich and grand, and he begged us not to believe the idle stories of his
first essays in art. He was delighted with our interest in the imperial
Washington, and our pleasure in the whole gallery, which we viewed with
the homage due to the man who had rescued the world from Swaggering in
sculpture. When we were tired, he invited us, with his mistress's
permission, into the house of the Canovas adjoining the gallery; and
there we saw many paintings by the sculptor,--pausing longest in a
lovely little room decorated, after the Pompeian manner, with _scherzi_
in miniature panels representing the jocose classic usualities,--Cupids
escaping from cages, and being sold from them, and playing many pranks
and games with Nymphs and Graces.

Then Canova was done, and Possagno was finished; and we resumed our way
to Treviso.

FOOTNOTES:

[101] I read in Mr. Norton's "Notes of Travel and Study in Italy," that
he saw in the Campo Santo, as long ago as 1856, "the chains that marked
the servitude of Pisa, now restored by Florence," and it is of course
possible that our cicerone may have employed one of these chains for the
different historical purpose I have mentioned. It would be a thousand
pities, I think, if a monument of that sort should be limited to the
commemoration of one fact only.




THE MYSTERY OF NATURE.


    The works of God are fair for naught,
      Unless our eyes, in seeing,
    See hidden in the thing the thought
      That animates its being.

    The outward form is not the whole,
      But every part is moulded
    To image forth an inward soul
      That dimly is unfolded.

    The shadow, pictured in the lake
      By every tree that trembles,
    Is cast for more than just the sake
      Of that which it resembles.

    The dew falls nightly, not alone
      Because the meadows need it,
    But on an errand of its own
      To human souls that heed it.

    The stars are lighted in the skies
      Not merely for their shining,
    But, like the looks of loving eyes,
      Have meanings worth divining.

    The waves that moan along the shore,
      The winds that sigh in blowing,
    Are sent to teach a mystic lore
      Which men are wise in knowing.

    The clouds around the mountain-peak,
      The rivers in their winding,
    Have secrets which, to all who seek,
      Are precious in the finding.

    Thus Nature dwells within our reach,
      But, though we stand so near her,
    We still interpret half her speech
      With ears too dull to hear her.

    Whoever, at the coarsest sound,
      Still listens for the finest,
    Shall hear the noisy world go round
      To music the divinest.

    Whoever yearns to see aright
      Because his heart is tender,
    Shall catch a glimpse of heavenly light
      In every earthly splendor.

    So, since the universe began,
      And till it shall be ended,
    The soul of Nature, soul of Man,
      And soul of God are blended!




A WIFE BY WAGER.


On a sunny afternoon in the middle of August, 1756, a gayly-dressed
young gentleman of evident rank and wealth, apparently about
twenty-three years old, sat in the doorway of the Café de la Régence,
languidly surveying the passers-by, and occasionally vouchsafing a nod
of recognition to some noble cavalier, or graciously waving from his
perfumed handkerchief a sentimental salutation to some lively beauty of
high estate or doubtful fame. So very inert and imperturbable was this
gayly-dressed young gentleman, that it seemed that nothing could disturb
his dainty suavity; but suddenly, and without apparent cause, his eyes
were lighted with a feeble expression of vexation, and, by a petulant
movement, he thrust back his chair as if anxious to avoid observation.

The object that kindled this momentary spark of animation was a tall,
broad-chested man, whose appearance, as he sauntered along the
promenade, casting glances of contempt, which might or might not be
sincerely felt, at the fashionable vanities which surrounded him,
presented a striking contrast to that of the majority of strollers on
that summer afternoon. His dress, though neat, was simple, and almost
sombre, being destitute of any species of decoration. His step was bold
and vigorous, and, in his indifference to the gay panorama which glided
past him, he held his chin so high in the air that the listless young
gentleman hoped he might, in his loftiness, overlook him with the rest.

But possibly the new-comer's unconsciousness may not have been so
absolute as he endeavored to make it appear; or possibly his attention
may have been particularly attracted by the sounds of mirth issuing from
the famous Café. At any rate, as he approached it, he turned his head,
and, gazing a moment at the first-named gentleman, exclaimed, "Ah, my
little Fronsacquin, is it really you?"

The "little Fronsacquin" rose with a vapid smile, from which every trace
of annoyance had vanished. To be associated, even by a title of
questionable compliment, with that social hero, the Due de Fronsac,
whose nimble caperings had been the admiration of Young France for
nearly half a century, was sufficient to banish from his mind any other
thoughts than those of proud complacency and self-content. He welcomed
his interrogator with all the ardor of which he was capable. That is to
say, he lifted his hat with one effort, inclined his body with a second,
and motioned to a vacant chair beside him with a third, after which he
sank back exhausted.

Rallying presently, he said, "You are soon back again, M. de Montalvan."

"Yea, M. de Berniers, our part of the fighting is over for the present."

"Then why not leave off your fighting dress?" said M. de Berniers. "You
look as if you knew nothing of the age we are living in."

"My friend, we live in an age when nobody occupies himself with anything
but the pleasures of life. One of the pleasures of my life is to wear a
soldier's dress; and you very well know the reason why."

"Don't snarl, M. de Montalvan. Yes, I remember the reason now. Never
mind. Some wine; and tell me about the great Duke. Is he really as
gallant in the field as in the boudoir?"

"Hum. The great Duc de Richelieu looked on with remarkable bravery while
we took St. Philippe. Yes, now that the _salons_ refuse him for a hero,
I suppose we must make a place for him in the camp."

"Ah! I have heard why you begrudge the Maréchal his fame. But it matters
very little; even Madame de Pompadour has given him her acclamations at
last."

"She knows when to hide her hatreds and how to cherish them. But that's
a dull subject, M. de Berniers; give me news of home. The Queen?"

"More virtuous than ever."

"And the King?"

"Less."

"Impossible!"

"Quite true."

"Some more wine, then. And the Pompadour?"

"Cold, but still powerful."

"I have heard," said M. de Montalvan, lowering his voice, "strange tales
about the Parliament,--that it holds secret meetings, and that the court
should keep itself prepared for some unexpected action."

"Bah!" said M. de Berniers, with a laugh, or rather a gentle
inarticulate murmur of mockery; "put aside those notions, my dear M. de
Montalvan. There is no power on earth can move the court of France."

"Good! And the theatres?"

"Intolerable. La Clairon has done something in a play by M. de
Voltaire,-a play stolen from a Chinese tragedy, 'The Orphan of Tchao.'
He calls it 'The Orphan of China.' It is dreary stuff. I wonder if our
well-beloved king could not be induced to keep M. de Voltaire's plays in
exile, as well as M. de Voltaire himself."

"Precisely," said M. de Montalvan. "Some more wine."

"And yet," said M. de Berniers, whose usually pale face was flushed by
the repeated draughts of Burgundy with which he had found it necessary
to stimulate himself to the effort of conversation, "and yet Mlle. de
Terville, they say, will hear of nothing but M. de Voltaire. We shall
quarrel finely about that, for one thing,"--and his eyes gleamed with
what would have been amusement if they had been capable of so definite
an expression.

"Mlle. de Terville!" said M. de Montalvan in some surprise, which,
however, the other did not observe; "do you know her?"

"Perfectly."

"Is it possible?"

"All about her."

"Tell me, how does she look?"

"Ah, now you ask too much. I have never seen her."

"But you say--"

"That I know all about her. Yes, I am to wed her in six weeks."

"The Devil and St. Philippe!"

"I don't wonder you are astonished, my dear De Montalvan. It's quite
throwing myself away to marry any woman at my time of life. Think how
many adventures I shall lose. I never intended to be married until I had
risen to something like the glory of Richelieu. Imagine having two
beauties fight a duel for you, for example! Richelieu was only
twenty-two when Mesdames de Nesle and de Polignac fought for his favor.
I am twenty-three, and no woman ever fought for me. At least, not that I
am aware of."

"Courage, De Berniers; if you had lived in Richelieu's day you would
have had forty duels upon your account instead of one."

"Quite likely. The age has degenerated. Some wine, De Montalvan. Yes,
the affair was arranged by our relatives. Contiguous estates; enormous
_dot_. I know very little about it myself, except that I am the victim.
Apropos," added M. de Berniers, as energetically as was consistent with
his sense of what a disciple of Fronsac owed himself, "you are at
leisure. The contract is to be signed early in September. Come to
Brittany, and help me through. They say Brittany is a fine country. I
have never seen it, though I have a chateau there. Will you come?"

De Montalvan looked keenly at his companion, as if endeavoring to detect
some hidden meaning in these last words, drank some more wine, and
remained silent.

"Come, De Montalvan, an answer."

M. de Montalvan scowled, and drank again. He appeared to be considering
in what manner he could most readily make himself offensive to M. de
Berniers. Presently he remarked, in a tone which was intended to be
deeply satirical, but which his frequent imbibitions rendered merely
malicious, "Have you made any wagers of late, my little friend?"

M. de Berniers's countenance fell into the same expression of discontent
as that which it had displayed on his companion's first appearance. He
essayed a frown,--a feat it would have been difficult for him to execute
at any time, but which was now simply impossible. He was not equal even
to a distortion. But he answered spitefully: "To the Devil with you and
your wagers! But I will make it even yet. Perhaps another time you will
not dare to compete so readily."

"Dare, Monsieur!" said De Montalvan, hastily. Then, checking himself, he
added, more composedly: "But why should I quarrel with Fronsacquin? It
is clear he knows nothing. If I must ease my mind by quarrelling, there
are plenty hereabout," and he glared around quite savagely. His eye
lighted upon a _brouette_, one of the small hand-carriages then in
vogue, in which a large and heavily built young man was reclining, while
the owner of the vehicle, a slender lad, toiled with difficulty before
him. "Dare, is it, De Berniers? Do you see that sluggard, wasting this
beautiful day in a lazy _brouette_? Ten louis that I have him out, and
walking, as he ought, in less than five minutes."

"You are mad, M. de Montalvan."

"You decline?"

"No, I accept!" and De Berniers, who was not so tipsy but that he could
plainly see De Montalvan was more so, wore upon his face what by one who
was acquainted with him would have been understood as an air of triumph,
but to a casual observer would convey no direct idea of any kind.

M. de Montalvan rose and advanced, hat in hand. "Pardon me, Monsieur,"
he began, "I have a few observations to address to you. It is a singular
spectacle to behold a man of your health and vigor, and especially of
your size, compelling a poor wretch like this to drag you through the
streets in the midsummer heat."

"It is more singular, Monsieur, that you should venture to address me in
this manner," said the stranger, and he directed his attendant to move
forward.

"No, Monsieur," said De Montalvan, placing himself in the way, "that is
out of the question. I feel it my duty to object to your making use of a
_brouette_ on such a day as this."

"Ah, you object!"

"Most decidedly. In fact I will not allow it."

The stranger sprang with alacrity upon the sidewalk, and, drawing his
sword, advanced upon his persecutor. "We shall see," he said, grimly.

"As you please, Monsieur," said De Montalvan, putting himself on guard.

But, as may be supposed, the soldier's hand was unsteady, and his eye
uncertain. After a few rapid passes, he let fall his right arm, which
had been sharply punctured above the elbow. M. de Berniers absolutely
cackled with delight.

"Now, Monsieur," said the stout stranger, "you will probably suffer me
to traverse the streets in the manner that best suits me."

"Pardon me again," responded De Montalvan; "you have fairly wounded me,
but I am sure you are too gallant a gentleman to deprive a bleeding
adversary of the most convenient means of reaching his home";--with
which he quietly stepped into the _brouette_ and was wheeled away, while
the stranger gazed after him in stupefaction.

De Berniers would have gnashed his teeth, but that he had not yet
recovered from the exertion of his previous cackle. For a week
thenceforth he was the sport of Paris, and, to complete his disgust, the
adventure was circulated by the celebrated _raconteur_, M. de Lugeac, in
the _salons_ of the Dauphine and elsewhere, with embellishments by no
means favorable to his reputation as a _bel esprit_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Raoul de Montalvan was a young gentleman of moderate fortune, who, at
the age of twenty, sold his small estates in Avignon in order to equip a
company and join the Chevalier de Modène in the campaign of 1745, under
the Maréchal Saxe. At Fontenoy he was acknowledged to have distinguished
himself; but his recollections of that battle were embittered by the
fact that the Comte de Lally had robbed him of the honor which he most
coveted,--that of having detected, by a bold reconnoissance, the weak
point in the enemy's front, by piercing which the field was ultimately
won.[102] Nevertheless, he had been praised; and praise, at that period,
was his best reward. With a light heart and high hopes he started for
Paris, in further pursuit of fortune. In company with his patron, M. de
Modène, he presented himself at court. The sentinel on duty curiously
eyed their uniforms, and refused to admit them. The King, fatigued with
war's alarms, and anxious to banish from court all memories of carnage
and confusion, had ordered that no military dresses should appear in his
_salons_. In vain the young soldiers represented that they had parted
with all their possessions to serve their monarch, and that they had
surrendered the last means of otherwise arraying themselves; in vain
they insisted that the noblest decorations in the eyes of his Majesty
should be the dust and blood of the field of Fontenoy. They were
repulsed. De Modène revenged himself by the famous epigram which caused
an order of arrest, and compelled his flight. De Montalvan, taking the
insult more to heart, swore furiously that, excepting as a soldier and
in soldier's dress, he would never enter the French court, and from that
time had steadfastly persisted in the rigorous costume which excited M.
de Berniers's criticism. There were, indeed, some who declared that he
claimed as a virtue of obstinacy that which was only a necessity of
poverty; but for such aspersions he cared little.

As a further mark of his disgust, he quitted France altogether, and, in
his twenty-first year, joined the expedition of the Pretender; but as
his fortunes were not materially improved by this enterprise, he next
year became loyal, and assisted M. de Belle-Isle in the extirpation of
the Austrians from Dauphiny. In 1748 he again followed his old leader,
M. de Saxe, to victory, after which, the war in France having ceased, he
turned his attention to foreign fields of glory and profit. He served
two years in India, with Dupleix, where he found that, although the
glory was free to any man's clutch, the profit was sacred to a few.
After Dupleix's fall, he joined the French troops in America, where,
with his comrades, he assisted in the defeat of Lieutenant-Colonel
Washington in the action which followed the massacre of M. de
Jumonville. Finally, after ten years of military hardship and heroism,
he returned to Paris, bringing with him as the result of his career a
high repute for skill and courage, a well-worn sword, and a dozen deep
scars.

It may be imagined that these ten years had not softened the asperity
with which M. de Montalvan regarded the court and society. His manners
were bizarre, his language was cynical, and his wilful deviations from
the strict etiquette of the day could never have been tolerated
excepting for the brilliant notoriety he had gained as a daring
adventurer. He permitted himself to mingle in fashionable circles, that
he might the better ridicule them, which he did audaciously. The edict
against military dress was no longer in force, so that he was enabled to
hover upon the outskirts of the court without sacrifice of dignity. But
nothing in that effeminate world seemed to satisfy his turbulent
instincts. _Homo erat_,--yet _everything_ human, in that sphere, was
foreign to him. At one of the court balls, however, an incident occurred
which momentarily turned him from the course of his ill-humor.

Mlle. Virginie de Terville, a noble Nantaise, whose life, though not one
of seclusion, had been judiciously kept apart from the corrupting
influences of the capital, was at Paris for the first time, with her
uncle, an ex-officer of the king's household. To the fair neophyte the
scene was one of rare enchantment; and although her keen instincts
enabled her to conform with aptitude to the usages of the lively world
around her, there was a freshness and a _naïveté_ in her manner which
contrasted charmingly with the effete and ceremonious forms of the
experienced. M. de Montalvan met her at a masked ball, and was
captivated with becoming rapidity. Although poor beyond description, his
family was among the best, and he found no difficulty in making M. de
Terville's acquaintance, and in due season that of his niece. For once
he abandoned his acerbity, and returned to the character which had been
natural to him ten years before. None could be more winning than M. de
Montalvan if the impulse prompted him; and his graceful conversation,
overflowing with anecdote and illustration which the homely wits of the
home-keeping youth of Paris could not rival, made a vivid impression
upon Virginie's imagination. They met only twice; for, just as M. de
Montalvan was beginning to take serious thought of where this would lead
him, he received an appointment from M. de Richelieu to the command of a
company in the Minorca expedition, and was obliged to sail for Port
Mahon without even the opportunity of a hasty adieu. Partly by good
luck, partly by hard fighting, and partly owing to the blunders of
Admiral Byng, the island was captured in a few months, and it was not
long after his return from victory--as full of honors and as empty in
purse as ever--that De Montalvan encountered his "little Fronsacquin" on
the threshold of the Café de la Régence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Louis de Berniers was the incarnation of aristocratic _niaiserie_. He
was young, titled, not ill-looking, and had vast wealth at his command.
But for this latter possession he might possibly have distinguished
himself otherwise than by his follies; for he was not without one or two
good qualities,--for example, generosity. But with him generosity took
the form of a reckless prodigality, which caused him to be surrounded by
a swarm of flatterers and parasites, male and female, who so fed and
pampered his raging vanity that he believed himself a Crichton at
eighteen. His ambition soared only to the height of emulating the
boudoir exploits of M. de Richelieu, and he fancied himself a master of
all the social ceremonies of the capital. So far as his languid nature
would allow him, he sought notoriety in every quarter. "No man's pie was
free from his ambitious finger." He had acted with Madame de Pompadour's
company of amateurs at Versailles, and, though surrounded by clever
gentlemen like D'Entragues and De Maillebois, firmly believed himself
the only worthy supporter of Madame d'Etioles. On the strength of his
supposed supremacy, he had from time to time graciously volunteered his
aid to Lekain and Mlle. Clairon in the preparation of their most
difficult _rôles_. He had supplied the poet Beauverset with now and then
a topic, and imagined himself to be the true source whence that
incendiary rhymer drew his choicest inspirations. After the success of
Rousseau's _Devin du Village_, he had driven the composer wild by his
offers to assist him in the purification of his melodies. Nothing in the
way of notoriety was too high or too low for him. He had laid out a plan
for the replanting of the Trianon gardens, and was disgusted because
Richard, the king's gardener, politely declined to adopt it; and he had
been heard to say that in the composition of sauces and _ragoûts_ he
could easily rival his Majesty himself, and would prove his superiority,
but for the fear of losing favor at court.

M. de Berniers and M. de Montalvan had met a short time before the
attack upon Minorca. The gallant soldier was no flatterer, but the
conceited little Parisian amused him sufficiently to occupy a good
share of his leisure. He satirized De Berniers mercilessly from morning
till night, to the latter's great astonishment, he having up to that
time received only adulation and deference from his companions. But the
name of "Fronsacquin," which De Montalvan had jestingly applied, so
gratified his puerile vanity, that for a few days he looked upon the
warlike adventurer almost with affection. Their intimacy had, however,
been broken off a few days before De Montalvan's departure, in
consequence of De Berniers's chagrin at losing a wager he had boastingly
made. He had declared himself capable of securing the attention of any
lady, however distinguished in appearance and however reserved in
manner, that his friends might indicate, at a certain masked ball, and
of bringing her openly to sup with them. De Montalvan defied him, and,
selecting a fresh-faced lad from the opera, trained him to a perfect
illustration of feminine modesty and simplicity, and set De Berniers
upon him. Of course the farce was easily carried through. After the
requisite preliminaries of shy evasion and coy resistance, the supposed
fair one was led triumphantly to the supper-table,--the mask was
removed, the secret exposed, and for ten humiliating days De Berniers
was the laugh of the town.

It may be supposed that his peevishness was not diminished by the loss
of a second public wager; but his opponent had been wounded, and that
afforded him some comfort. Besides, he was still confident of winning
his revenge, so he stifled his angry feelings, and renewed the request
that De Montalvan would accompany him to Nantes. De Montalvan was moody,
and swore he would go and join Montcalm in Canada. But his own
recollection of the charms of Mademoiselle de Terville, added to the
solicitations of De Berniers,--who was all unconscious that they had
ever known one another,--induced him to change his resolution, and he
half graciously consented.

Virginie de Terville, as has been said, was a different being, not only
in the freshness and bloom of her beauty, but also by virtue of her
domestic education, from the artificial goddesses of the Parisian sphere
with whom she had been thrown into temporary contact. But her visit had
not been long enough to reveal to her what lay beneath the glittering
exterior of life at court. Her cautious uncle had cut short their
sojourn at what he deemed a judicious period, and brought his ward back
to the tranquil old chateau near Nantes, not entirely, it must be
admitted, to her satisfaction. The splendors of the capital had just
begun to fascinate her, and, what was more, she had been loath to think
that that last brief interview with the handsome and eccentric captain,
who had seen so much and told what he had seen so well, might never be
repeated. Not that she cared to hear anything beyond his strange tales
of adventure. Indeed no. He had lightly touched upon one or two other
topics, during that same last interview, and she was sorry she had not
checked him. Yet she _did_ wonder what ever had become of him, and
really would have been glad to know the result of his long journey
through the tropical Indian forests with that beautiful Rajah's daughter
of whom he had begun to tell her.

But these ideas did not occur to Virginie until after she had left
Paris. While there, the constant succession of gayeties left no room for
other than merry thoughts. She was a belle of high distinction,--an
heiress, and a lovely one. For a month she was a leader of fashionable
revels, and a very princess of masquerade. If it were known that at a
particular ball she would appear as a heathen goddess, the _salons_ were
thronged with illustrations of mythology. When she wore the quaint dress
of a Brittany peasant, all classes affected a rural simplicity. She had
only to personate Joan of Arc, and a martial spirit fired the assembly;
and when she crowned her triumphs by enacting a dashing young cavalier
of the period, women as well as men yielded their admiration and
contended for her smiles. After so brilliant a career, what could she
care for the applause which her dexterous disguises excited in the
drowsy masquerades of Nantes. It served only to recall to her the
vanished glories of the capital.

M. de Berniers, as chance would have it, was ignorant of the peculiar
sensation which Virginie had created in the _beau monde_. During her
month at Paris he had been hunting upon the estates of a noble friend in
the East of France, and when he returned to his accustomed haunts, some
time after, the fickle heart of society was fixed upon some new object
of adoration, and cherished no recollection of the past. So he arrived
at Terville with little knowledge of his intended _fiancée_, except that
she was young, reputed good-looking, and the possessor of great riches.
Leaving M. de Montalvan at the village inn, he rode over to the chateau
the first morning after their arrival, to present himself in due form.

The fresh country atmosphere and the picturesque surroundings of the
journey had done more to cheer M. de Montalvan's spirits than a college
of physicians could have accomplished. The wound which he had received
in his ridiculous duel was nearly healed, and he seemed more a man of
the world than at any previous period in ten years,--always excepting
the brief term of his acquaintance with Virginie. In spite of his
natural hardihood, he was somewhat uneasy at the thought of again
meeting that young lady, for whom he entertained, to say the least, a
feeling of profound admiration; but curiosity was powerful within him,
and he waited anxiously for the expected summons to the chateau. Any
other sentiment than that of curiosity it would have been absurd for him
to acknowledge. He was poor, and therefore unavailable in a matrimonial
way. He had no domains adjoining the Terville estates, nor indeed
anywhere else. He had nothing but his sword and his renown; and these
would not serve him in such a case. So, if ever the flame of hope had
for a moment lighted his mind, he had summarily extinguished it, and
flung aside, as it were, the tinder-box of every inflammable
recollection.

The day before M. de Berniers's arrival, M. de Terville had been
suddenly called to the South in consequence of the dangerous illness of
a relative. The ceremony of welcome rested therefore with Mlle.
Virginie. That young lady was far better acquainted with the habits and
character of her proposed bridegroom than he imagined. She had heard
much of him in Paris, and, since the project of an alliance had been
submitted, contrived to learn more. Being a girl of spirit and
intelligence, the information which she gained was not agreeable to her.
She regretted not having met M. de Berniers in Paris, and longed for the
opportunity of encountering him at least once or twice under other
circumstances than those which now seemed inevitable. Upon the departure
of her uncle, she set her wit to work; and as of wit she had no lack,
there presently arose from the depths of her consciousness a scheme
which promised to be successful.

"Mariotte," she said, summoning her waiting-maid, "bring me my
cavalier's dress,--wig, buckles, stockings, everything."

"Yes, Ma'm'selle. Would Ma'm'selle wish to put them on?"

"Most certainly."

"But Monsieur de Berniers is expected this morning."

"Precisely."

"And Ma'm'selle will hardly have time--"

"I shall receive him _en cavalier_."

"_Seigneur Dieu du ciel!_" said Mariotte, astounded, "but that is
impossible."

"Be reasonable, Mariotte," said Virginie, "and listen to me. M. de
Berniers proposes to do me the honor of espousing me. I have never seen
M. de Berniers, but I know something of him and I wish to know more. My
uncle earnestly desires this marriage, and it is my duty to oblige him.
But he will not urge it against my inclination. If M. de Berniers, on
arriving here, finds only the delicate and decorous young lady to whom
he offers his hand, he will assume his best manner, conceal his faults,
affect a hundred good qualities, and present nothing but a virtuously
colored portrait of himself, which, I may afterward find out, bears
little resemblance to the actual man. If, on the other hand,--do you
see?"

"Not exactly."

"Mariotte, your stupidity pains me. You know that in my cavalier's dress
nobody can distinguish me from a young gentleman of the court."

"A very young gentleman, Ma'm'selle."

"They are all mature at seventeen, now. At Paris I was taken for a man
of fashion by half the ladies at the court ball, and even found myself
with many a pretty quarrel on my hands. Well, M. de Berniers arrives;
finds not me, but my cousin Charles, do you understand, who remains at
the _château_ to receive him in the temporary absence of M. and Mlle. de
Terville. With one of his own sex he will have no concealments, and we
shall soon know, my good Mariotte, what sort of gentleman we have to
deal with."

"Then you will be--"

"My cousin Charles."

"O, impossible, Ma'm'selle! Think of the Count, your uncle."

"Mariotte, think of me. It is I who am to be married, not the Count, my
uncle. Consider, it is for my happiness."

"One would almost think, Ma'm'selle, that you _wished_ to detect some
excuse for ridding yourself of M. de Berniers."

"Perhaps."

"Ah, ah! then there is a reason."

"Possibly."

"And that reason is--"

"Tall, brave, and handsome. Mariotte, do me justice; do you think it was
for nothing that I used to dress with such double, triple care for the
last few court balls at Paris?"

"Ma'm'selle, say no more; I consent."

"A thousand thanks, Mariotte."

"But it is dreadful to so deceive one's husband before marriage."

"Much better than to deceive him after, Mariotte."

This swept aside all Mariotte's hesitation, and the plot was carried out
accordingly. M. de Berniers was received in due form by the fictitious
cousin Charles, whose disguise a keener observer could not easily have
penetrated. According to her expectation, the conceited Parisian soon
became free and confidential.

"A neat little figure," said De Berniers, patronizingly. "Come to court
a year hence, and I will point you the way to any victory you please."

"Ah, M. de Berniers, it is easy to point the way; but there are few who
can follow it so triumphantly as you. I am not so young but that I have
heard of your conquests."

"True," said De Berniers, affecting indifference; "a few countesses here
and there, and once in a way a duchess or two. But of course Mlle. de
Terville suspects nothing of that sort."

"I suspect she knows it all as well as I."

"Fancy this adventure," began De Berniers, languidly. "Only eight or ten
nights ago--"

"Pardon, Monsieur," interrupted Virginie, who began to think she had
opened a questionable game, "let me order some refreshment."

"No, I breakfasted at the inn. As I was saying, only eight or ten
nights' ago--"

"At least, take some wine," broke in Virginie again; and she rose and
summoned Mariotte, who had been listening, and who entered not without
perturbation.

"Thanks," said De Berniers. "Eight or ten nights ago--"

But the impending peril was averted by Mariotte, who dexterously spilled
a glass of wine over M. de Berniers's wig, causing him to rage after an
impotent fashion, and to drawl an oath.

Virginie was greatly confused at the unexpected and awkward prospect
which this attempt at conversation opened to her; but her thoughts were
presently diverted by the startling intelligence that Raoul de Montalvan
had accompanied her suitor, and was in attendance at the inn. Her first
sensation was one of pleasure,--unaccountable pleasure, she thought; for
why should the mere knowledge that the handsome captain was near her
occasion any particular joy? Ah! she knew; she could now have the end of
that mysterious and interesting story of the Rajah's daughter, with whom
De Montalvan had travelled through the tropical forests.

But her next feeling was one of deep embarrassment. How could she meet
M. de Montalvan in that dress? In the first place, he might have seen
her wear it in Paris, and in that case would at once detect her; perhaps
he would detect her under any circumstances, not being a vain, blind
fool like De Berniers. But, beyond that, she could not bear the idea of
such a masquerade with him. Of course she did not know why, but there
was the fact, fixed and unblinkable.

She was relieved in the way she would least have expected, and by M. de
Berniers himself. That gentleman, who was not fecund in ideas, and who,
even after becoming conscious of the existence of one within him, was
obliged to struggle with more violence than suited his temper in order
to give it birth, had, immediately after mentioning De Montalvan's name,
sunk into a profound revery. He gazed through his eye-glass from head to
foot at Virginie, until she began to fear he had discovered her secret.
At last his brow cleared, and, with a smile of self-congratulation, he
said, "I have it now! I have it now!"

Then he confided, not without a pang of wounded _amour-propre_, the fact
that, in the merry conflicts of wit at the capital, he had
sometimes--not often, like the others--suffered defeat. He related the
anecdote of the masquerade wager which he had lost to De Montalvan, and
exhorted his new friend to assist him in an appropriate revenge.

"You are young," he said; "not too tall; your complexion is as delicate
as need be; you can easily borrow one of your cousin's dresses, and,
without the slightest difficulty, could transform yourself into one of
the most charming young ladies in the world."

"But, Monsieur," hesitated Virginie.

"Say no more," added De Berniers; "I count upon your friendship. Aha! M.
de Montalvan, now we shall see. O, it is easily done, my little friend.
I will ride over for De Montalvan myself. You shall be ready when we
return. Of course I will first see you alone, and give you a few
suggestions. The principal thing, you understand, is to fascinate him to
the last extremity."

Virginie smiled, possibly with an inward conviction that she had already
learned the way to do that.

"By all means fascinate him. Spare no methods. He is a rough soldier,
and will suspect nothing. Make him declare his passion, if you can; and
perhaps we may bring him to the point--who knows? ha! ha!--of offering
marriage."

Virginie fluttered a little at this comprehensive announcement of her
guest's design, but she was amused at the unexpected turn the affair was
taking, and, without much delay, consented to array herself in feminine
apparel.

M. de Berniers returned to the inn, with exultation in his heart. While
riding with De Montalvan to the castle, he said, carelessly, "These
rosy-cheeked peasants are delightful, my friend. Are you on the watch
for adventure?"

"Not especially," said De Montalvan.

"Listen," said De Berniers. "Who knows but that in the country I might
have better fortune than at Paris. Change of scene may bring me change
of luck."

"In what respect?"

"De Montalvan, I have a fancy to renew some of our old wagers. If I fail
here, nobody will know it."

"And if you succeed, you will send an express to Paris to publish the
news."

"I don't say no; but I am willing to undertake to ensnare you as you
deluded me last year at the court ball. And that during our visit here,
or at any rate before we go back to the world."

"As you please," said De Montalvan, indifferently.

"Is it a wager, then?" asked De Berniers, half trembling with
impatience. "Yes.

"For ten louis?"

"Very well."

On arriving at the chateau, M. de Berniers sought his fellow-conspirator
alone, and, finding her duly attired, proceeded to criticise.

"Hum, another patch on the left cheek, I should say. But no matter. Pray
be careful of your voice. Nothing is so difficult to disguise as the
voice. I always detect a man instantly by his voice; though, to be sure,
De Montalvan is not experienced, like me, and there will be up trouble
in deceiving him. Now let me see you walk."

Virginie took a few steps to and fro.

"My dear friend, don't stride like that," said De Berniers; "short
steps, in this manner, if you please";--and he mincingly illustrated, to
Virginie's intense gratification.

"Now, a salutation," he added.

Virginie courtesied.

"Bad, bad," said De Berniers; "it is clear you are not used to this sort
of thing. Try this";--and he executed a profound feminine obeisance.

"That's better," he remarked, approvingly, as she affected to imitate
him; "and now these shoulders. Ah, but these shoulders are very bad. You
should curve them forward, thus,"--with which he seized Virginie's
shoulders, and endeavored to press them into what he conceived to be the
proper position.

"Take your hands away, Monsieur," screamed the young lady, springing
from him with great precipitation.

"Ticklish, I see," he quietly remarked. "And now there is one thing
more. Whatever else you do, speak low, and do not swear. I have known
many a comedy of this sort to be ruined by an inadvertent oath."

"I will try, Monsieur."

Then De Montalvan was brought, and was in proper form presented. At
sight of him, Virginie faintly blushed, which circumstance enchanted De
Berniers. "The rascal does better than I could have expected," he
thought. After a short conversation, he contrived an excuse to leave
them alone together,--his accomplice and his dupe.

"At last, Mademoiselle," said De Montalvan, dismissing the pretence of
reserve which he had maintained during his friend's presence,--"at last
we meet again; but how unexpectedly, and under what strange
circumstances!"

"Indeed, Monsieur, I am hardly less surprised at seeing you again, than
I was at your mysterious disappearance from Paris, some months ago."

"But were you not aware--"

"Of what?"

"That I was ordered to accompany M. de Richelieu to Port Mahon?"

"The orders of M. de Richelieu must be very imperative."

"To a soldier they are, Mademoiselle. But at present I am not a soldier.
The expedition is gloriously ended, and I submit myself to your orders,
and to yours only."

       *       *       *       *       *

During the few days that intervened before M. de Terville's return, De
Berniers labored heart and soul--that is to say, with as much of either
as was in him--to still further entangle his misguided and infatuated
friend. It was clear to him that De Montalvan was hopelessly in love,
and, since he had so well succeeded in the beginning of his enterprise,
he saw no reason why he might not conduct it to a more triumphant
conclusion than he had at first thought possible. He took counsel with
Virginie, and besought the supposed cousin to send a messenger to M. de
Terville, explaining the case, and asking his co-operation. He even
stimulated De Montalvan's passion by privately declaring that the
prospect of marriage was irksome to him, suggesting that he should
transfer his claims, and offering to intercede with Mlle. de Terville's
uncle, if De Montalvan could assure himself of the young lady's favor.

While this bungling disciple of Mephistopheles was digging his own
pitfall, Virginie was in some perplexity. She did not reveal to her
admirer that De Berniers was hoping to entrap him; for that, she said to
herself, there was no immediate necessity; and the days were passing so
agreeably that she shrunk from making any explanation that might disturb
their tranquillity. De Berniers, pursuing his scheme, kept himself
resolutely in retirement. From the treasures of his varied experience,
De Montalvan exhumed volumes of adventurous history for the young girl's
amusement. "The dangers he had passed" endeared him to her, and, though
his apparel was still sombre, there fortunately was no black face to
interfere with the pleasant growth of her regard; for the ladies of
Louis the Fifteenth's time were not generally so indifferent to personal
appearance as the fair Venetian was said to be. And then she had
obtained the sequel of the story of the Rajah's daughter, whom Raoul had
protected in the Indian forests; and it was satisfactory to know that
his guardianship over her, though gallant and chivalrous, had not been
prompted by too ardent an emotion. Her only apprehension was in regard
to what might occur upon her uncle's return. That he would not urge her
to espouse a man whom she thoroughly detested, she very well knew; but
whether he would sanction her betrothal to a poor soldier of fortune,
was a question which she hardly dared to ask herself. Not knowing what
to do, she did nothing, and, with considerable anxiety, waited for
events to work their own solution.

M. de Terville did not appear until the day fixed for the signing of the
contract, when he arrived in great haste, accompanied by a notary, and
expressed his wish that the ceremony should not be delayed, as he was
obliged to return at once, to the South of France. As soon as it was
known that he was within the chateau, De Berniers sought Virginie, and
inquired whether her uncle had received due warning; to which she
answered that he knew all that was necessary. She then prepared to
surrender herself to destiny; for, though a spirited girl, she had not
courage enough even now to take the control of affairs into her own
hands, and could only indulge a vague hope that some beneficent
interposition of fortune might smoothly shape the course of her true
love.

The two young gentlemen joined M. de Terville and the notary in the
library, where the blank contract and writing-materials were
conspicuously displayed. De Berniers wore an air of almost supernatural
intelligence, at which the noble Count marvelled, though he was too
hurried to seek an explanation. On greeting M. de Montalvan, he
expressed regret at not having immediately recognized him. De Berniers,
fully convinced that the Count was in the plot, took this as a piece of
by-play, not, however, thoroughly understanding its purport. De
Montalvan was wretchedly ill at ease, but gathered a little reassurance
from De Berniers's declaration that he would voluntarily renounce his
pretensions, and abdicate in favor of his friend.

"Now, Monsieur, if you please, as follows," said M. de Terville to the
notary--"between Monsieur Louis de Berniers and--"

"Excuse me," interrupted De Berniers, making singular and inexplicable
signs to the Count, "Monsieur Raoul de Montalvan, if you please."

"How, Monsieur," exclaimed the Count, with hauteur.

"But surely you understand," whispered De Berniers, hastily; "of course
you must understand."

"Explain your observation," said the Count, aloud.

"Most extraordinary!" thought De Berniers. "He will spoil everything."
Then again, in an undertone, "You know he is supposed to take my
place."

"Monsieur," said the Count, more stiffly than ever, "I do not understand
this enigma."

"How stupid I am!" said De Berniers suddenly to himself. "To be sure, it
is necessary for him to affect surprise and indignation. The fact is, he
acted it too well; for a moment he almost deceived me." Then turning to
Raoul, he exclaimed: "M. de Montalvan, the Count shall know all. Learn,
M. de Terville, that, finding a total absence of sympathy between myself
and your charming niece, and feeling that I could in no way insure her
happiness, I have determined to ask you to receive, instead of my own,
the addresses of my noble friend, M. Raoul de Montalvan."

"The proposition, Monsieur, is scandalous. I refuse to entertain it. My
niece would never listen to it."

"You are wrong, Monsieur; Mlle. de Terville joins us in this request."

"Impossible. Am I to understand, Monsieur," said the Count, addressing
De Montalvan, "that my niece has indicated a preference for you over
this gentleman?"

"I hardly dare to avow it, Monsieur, but--"

"Enough!" interposed the Count, turning with rage upon De Berniers. "And
as for you, Monsieur, your conduct is nothing better than an insult to
me."

"Saperlotte!" said De Berniers to himself, "but he acts better than
Cousin Charles."

"I will deal with you presently, Monsieur," continued the Count. "M. de
Montalvan, you love my niece?"

"Devotedly," said De Montalvan.

"O, frantically!" cried De Berniers.

The Count cast a withering glance upon the unfortunate plotter. "It is
sufficient," he said; "the contract shall be drawn as you desire, if
only to punish this imbecile. But I have no disposition to control my
niece's wishes. She shall have perfect liberty to sign, or not, as she
chooses."

"That is all we ask," said De Berniers, essaying a comical grimace,
which tempted M. de Terville to order his ejection by the domestics. In
fact, he suddenly did summon a servant, but, after a moment's
reflection, merely directed him to notify Mlle. Virginie that her
attendance was requested.

Three persons awaited her appearance with vivid emotions. Raoul's hope
was higher than his expectation, and, notwithstanding his ten years of
exposure to every kind of mortal peril, he now felt for the first time
the physical panic of fear. M. de Terville was not less curious than
angry; and he was by no means indisposed to see his niece complete De
Berniers's humiliation by accepting the new rival. As for De Berniers
himself, he was revelling in all the ecstasies of satisfied revenge, and
could hardly restrain his exultation long enough to witness the _coup de
grâce_.

Of course, Virginie signed without hesitation. The fate to which she
trusted had been as kind as she could wish. As her pen left the
parchment, a remarkable scene ensued. De Berniers actually laughed
aloud, seized the Count affectionately by the hand, and so far forgot
the laws of decorum as to slap the notary upon the shoulder. He would
next have embraced Virginie with effusion, had not De Montalvan
interposed.

"You shall answer for this, Monsieur," cried M. de Terville, furiously.
"Another such offence, and I will have you expelled by the lackeys."

"My dear Count," said De Berniers, "the comedy is finished, and we can
all drop our _rôles_, except M. de Montalvan, who, I imagine, will
continue to hold his longer than he desires. And now, where is Mlle.
Virginie?"

"Is he mad?" said De Terville.

"Mlle. Virginie is here, at your service," said the lady, coolly.

"That's very well," replied De Berniers, "but I tell you the curtain has
fallen. Poor M. de Montalvan is puzzled enough already. Let us send for
Mlle. Virginie, and show him his error."

"No mere of this senseless jesting," said the Count; "Mlle. Virginie is
here; say what you desire, respectfully, and allow us to wish you good
day and a comfortable journey."

De Berniers's head began to swim. "But this is her cousin, not herself,"
he exclaimed.

"My niece has no cousin," said the Count.

"The fact is," said Virginie, "that my cousin Charles and I are one; and
my reason for the little masquerade was--"

But De Berniers heard no more. He rushed frantically from the library,
straight to the stables, mounted his horse, and galloped wildly away to
the inn, whence he departed for Paris within an hour.

M. de Terville was as much mystified as he was outraged by De Berniers's
behavior; but Virginie, although she at once confided the secret to De
Montalvan, thought it prudent to conceal it for a while from her uncle,
who remained unacquainted with all the details until after the marriage,
which was not long deferred.

It is a lamentable fact, that M. de Berniers never paid this wager. He
even contemplated sending M. de Montalvan, instead of the ten louis, an
invitation to mortal combat; but the friends whom he consulted convinced
him that he had no just cause of complaint against the captain. The only
person by whom he had really been aggrieved was Mlle. de Terville; M. de
Montalvan could not in decency be held responsible for the non-success
of a conspiracy of which he was to have been the victim. So M. de
Berniers had to accept all the ridicule of the position, without the
consolation of directing his vengeance against anybody. He did not pay
the ten louis, but it was never said that M. de Montalvan felt
dissatisfied with the result of his third wager.

FOOTNOTES:

[102] The Lieutenant-General Duc de Richelieu enjoyed the fame and
received the reward of this important discovery, due really to an
unknown adventurer. Even the claim of De Lally was set aside in favor of
the illustrious impostor.




THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.[103]


Mr. Francis Parkman has been fortunate in finding unappropriated,
untried even, a dramatic subject of well-defined and completed
historical interest, for the treatment of which his taste and talents
give him an extraordinary adaptation. He has rightfully asserted his
claims to be regarded as occupying the whole of a field whose scope and
contents he has so ably mastered, and portions of which he has wrought
to such good purpose. He has for many years had in view a series of
historical narratives,--each complete and independent in itself, though
having an organic relation to the others,--which should present the
whole story of early French and English enterprise and rivalry in North
America. Under the title of "Pioneers of France in the New World,"
published two years ago, and noticed at the time in these pages, we had
a volume which initiated the full development of the results of his
labors as far as they dealt with the earliest events and actors
connected with French enterprise on this continent. In his "History of
the Conspiracy of Pontiac," published sixteen years ago, Mr. Parkman had
already given us the last act in a drama of intense interest.

"The Jesuits in North America" is the title of a new volume, and of a
well-rounded and nobly-wrought theme. The English reader had nothing
within his reach before from which he could learn what is offered to him
here. Rich as the subject actually is in documentary and printed
materials of prime authenticity, and in the infinite minuteness of
detail in their contents, these materials were widely scattered and not
readily accessible. Mr. Parkman has either copied or procured the
copying of many thousand pages of manuscripts illustrating his theme. He
has gathered all the pamphlets, volumes, and maps which have any
relation to it. He has put himself in communication with officials,
custodians, and antiquarian students, who could help him in his
researches, and, by visits of exploration and inquiry to the localities
which form the scene of his narratives, he has faithfully met all the
conditions external to his own more special qualifications for the
exacting work which he has undertaken, and, so far, so successfully
accomplished.

We have intimated that Mr. Parkman has special qualifications, taste,
and talents for the line of historical studies to which he has devoted
his life, and in which--in spite of most discouraging and embarrassing
impediments of ill-health and physical suffering in eye and limb, and
the sympathetic demands of the brain for rest and inaction except at
long intervals and for short efforts--he has already done enough to give
him place in our foremost literary ranks. We might emphasize our
assertion of these special aptitudes and talents of his even up to a
point which to those who are not familiar with his pages would seem
enthusiastic or exaggerated. The curiosity, or sympathy, or reference to
his own historical purposes,--call it and regard it which of these
motive influences we will,--which has led Mr. Parkman to seek the
closest contact with many of the Indian tribes in our domains,--to share
their life, to be domiciled in their dirty lodges, to partake of their
unappetizing feasts, to listen to their traditionary and tribal lore,
and to endeavor to put himself into communication with the inner
workings of their thought and being,--has accrued most helpfully to the
benefit of his readers. We feel that he is for us a faithful and
competent interpreter and commentator of Indian life, manners,
superstitions, and fortunes. He has a marvellous skill in observing and
describing the phenomena of nature,--the features and scenes of the
wilderness amid which they roved. Those gentle or strong touches for
shading and blending, for bringing into bold relief, or for suggesting
what is alone for the thought and not for the sight, which the skilful
painter uses in his service, are paralleled by Mr. Parkman in the
felicity of his verbal delineations. We know of no writer whose pages
are so real and vivid in qualities harmonizing with his theme as are
his. The abundant material to which we have referred required just that
elucidation and illustration which he has given to it by familiarity
with the scenes and subjects embraced in it. In some very important
points the author, by his thoroughness, candor, and judicial spirit,
corrects some false impressions generally accepted, and substitutes fact
for the fancies of romance.

_Ad majorem Dei gloriam_,--"For the greater glory of God,"--the noble
motto of the Society of Jesus, had inspiration enough in its sublime
simplicity and fulness of aim to consecrate any great enterprise into
which piety and zeal and self-sacrificing toil could throw themselves,
under whatever limitations of ignorance or superstition. All the
perplexing questions, shifting and deepening from age to age, and
finding more adequate answers as to _what consists with the glory of
God_, may help to train a more intelligent and practical judgment in the
estimate of means and ends. But no comparative allowance of this sort
can reduce the tribute due to devotion and heroism in an untried service
for a holy cause, however bewildered and futile the endeavor. Mr. Lecky
confronts us with the perhaps undeniable, but still unwelcome fact, that
ardor and zeal cool proportionately as intelligent and practical aims
direct the humane or the religious activities of men. Enthusiasm has an
affinity, if not with superstition, yet with exaggerated and
ill-adjusted estimates of the relations between the body and the soul,
the visible and the invisible, the temporal and the eternal.

There can be no reasonable doubt that the missionary Jesuits, whose life
was so sore a martyrdom that they must have found relief even in a cruel
death inflicted by the Indians, did balance their view of what would
consist with the glory of God by some equivalent benefit which they
thought to secure for the barbarians. It has become very desirable, for
various good reasons, to concentrate all the efforts of thorough
research and of discriminating judgment upon the actual condition of the
native tribes on the northern part of this continent when European
enterprise or zeal introduced among them new and potent agencies for
good or ill. Is their decay, their extermination, to be ascribed to the
cupidity and heartlessness of the white man, with his skilled and
calculating arts for overmastering the rude children of nature? Were
they a happy, contented race, supported by the forest and the stream,
and sharing among themselves such relations as served for their uses in
the stead of the more elaborate and artificial institutions of
civilization? Did their compensatory advantages balance to any extent
the rude and stern conditions of their existence? Did the white man try,
even with moderate humanity and sympathy, to lift them to an equality
with himself, and to share peacefully and with mutual benefit their old
domain? Was their destruction a foredoomed conclusion, a calculated
purpose, an acknowledged necessity from the first? or was it slowly and
reluctantly accepted as an inevitable destiny decided by conditions
which overruled and thwarted every scheme and device of philanthropy?
Were the Indians in the way of self-development, working upwards to
intelligent improvement in their means and ways of life? Would they have
retained their heritage here up to this day, had the white man never
come among them? These and many similar questions may be asked, either
by curiosity or in the interest of humanity, or in the service of
ethnologic science. Mr. Parkman contributes more abundant and more
instructive means for discussing and for deciding these questions in the
light of authenticated facts, and of fair deductions from them, than do
all who have preceded him on the subject.

In an Essay, introductory to his present volume, he embodies the results
of many years of study, research, and personal observation concerning
our Northern aborigines,--their tribal, treaty, and confederate
relations, their distribution and numbers, their government, their
family life, their customs, modes of subsistence, and warfare, their
character and traits, their intellectual stage, their superstitions,
their religious notions and observances. It is evident that his task, to
this extent, was made an exacting one, not only by its inherent
difficulties and complications, but by the misleading and guess-work
representations of other writers who have been accepted as authorities.
He makes stupendous reductions from the romance which has invested
Indian character and life. "The noble savage," the ideal of so much
fanciful and morbid sentimentality, becomes in his pages the
representative of quite other qualities than those ascribed to him. In
all that constitutes and ennobles manhood, and in all the conditions
which should elevate the human above the brute creature, the savage and
his lot are wanting.

Mr. Parkman says of the Huron-Iroquois family, that, from average
capacity, superior cranium, and such advancement as is indicated by what
we must call their mode of government, we might look to them, if to any
of the aborigines, for examples of the higher traits popularly ascribed
to Indians. But if we so look, we look in vain. Rather do we find in
them the more repulsive and hideous qualities of the fiercest and the
foulest brutes and reptiles,--a relentless and untamable ferocity and a
homicidal frenzy. From the calm and exhaustive analysis of the
philosophy of his theme, as well as from the tragic story which fills
his thrilling pages, it is evident that Mr. Parkman traces to the nature
and circumstances of the savage himself the prime causes of his
extermination. Independently of the white man's agency,--saving only the
sale of guns by the Dutch traders at Albany to the Iroquois,--the decay
of the Indian tribes is to be ascribed to their own incapacity for
civilization, and to their own homicidal passion. One might as well
expect to neutralize the game flavor in the deer or the sea-fowl, as to
bring an Indian tribe under the conditions of what we call culture and
civilization. Mr. Everett, in his address in commemoration of the
massacre at Bloody Brook, near Deerfield, Massachusetts, vindicated the
general course of the white men towards the aborigines of these regions,
by claiming for it an accordance with the manifest will of Providence
from an economical point of view. The Indian was a wasteful, wretched,
improvident consumer and spoiler of the means of subsistence and
enjoyment for communities of civilized men. So reckless and ruthless was
he, so idle and thriftless, that he required for his precarious and
beastly subsistence a domain which would furnish cities with all their
comforts and luxuries. A thousand white men might subsist in comfort
through the whole year where five Indians could find but enough with
which to gorge themselves for a small part of the year, while for the
rest of it they suffered for lack of food, fire, and shelter.

Undeniable, also, is the fact that, according to the measure of what
represented Christianity to themselves, and the form and degree of
benefit which they personally by experience derived from it, the
earliest European comers labored sincerely, and at cost, to impart the
blessing to the Indians. They made this attempt with equal fidelity
under the inspiration and guidance respectively of the two very
different forms in which Christianity, as a religion, was accepted by
themselves, and divided the range of Christendom. Eliot and the Mayhews
stand, and will ever stand, as exponents of the purest, most patient and
persistent zeal of Protestantism, matched only, but not surpassed, by
the chivalrous devotion, constancy, and martyr-heroism of the subjects
of Mr. Parkman's volume, in all the aims and toils of their
impracticable work. The Protestant offered the Gospel to the Indians
through intellectual teachings; the Romanist tried the experiment
through a symbolism which one might, at first thought, regard as
admirably adapted to the nature and circumstances of the savage. Success
of a certain sort seemed to have secured, in both experiments, the
promise of an ultimate reward for labor.

Happily, too, the Jesuit and the Protestant might alike find comfort in
referring the disastrous overthrow of their hopes, not to the failure of
their work, nor even to the inconstancy of their respective converts,
but to the fortunes of the ferocious warfare by which the native tribes
exterminated each other. Mr. Parkman first, or most lucidly and
emphatically among our historians, and without a particle of special
pleading, but simply by the fidelity of his narrative, makes it appear
that the common impression as to the prime or fatal agency of the white
man in visiting so ruthless a destiny on the Indians is exaggerated, if
not substantially false. The tragic element in his pages, deep and
plaintive as it is, comes in to show how Christian zeal and humane
effort were thwarted by animosities and passions working among the
Indian tribes before the continent was occupied by Europeans.

One of the most suggestive exercises to which the perusal of Mr.
Parkman's book will quicken the minds of many of his readers, and for
the more intelligent pursuit of which his pages will be found to afford
the most helpful material, will be a comparison or contrast, not only of
the genius of the Catholic and the Protestant religions in the work of
missions among barbarians, but of the less spiritual and more homely
qualities of the French and English proclivities, as exhibited in their
respective relations with the savages. The French came more closely and
familiarly into sympathy and intercourse with them. The English never
could fraternize with them. If an Englishman of the lowest grade took a
squaw for his partner, he sank to the level of barbarism himself. It was
quite otherwise with the Frenchman. After the permanent occupation of
Canada was secured, a race of half-breeds constituted, so to speak, a
very respectable, as well as the most efficient, element in its
population. It was enough if the squaw of the Frenchman had been the
subject of Christian baptism. But that ordinance, however effective for
the life to come, did not qualify a native woman for English wedlock.
Sir William Johnson, indeed, made no disguise of his manner of life,
which the complexion of the daughters who sat at his table with his most
honored guests would have rendered rather difficult; but their
mother--or mothers--were not presentable.

A very engaging episode in Mr. Parkman's narrative--we propose it to our
artists as a subject of rare and novel interest, and rich in
capacity--presents us two noble specimens of Christian zeal, in the
persons of a Jesuit and a Protestant missionary in amicable intercourse
with each other. Would that we had a more detailed account of the
interview, and of the conversation which must have given it the highest
charm of courteous sympathy, though with reserve, between two men who
represented the sharpest antagonisms of creed, while a common faith may
have proved an inner attraction for their hearts. The Colony of
Massachusetts had applied to the French at Quebec, in negotiations
looking toward a reciprocity of trade. The Jesuit missionary Druilletes
was sent in that behalf to Boston. His diplomatic character saved him
from the penalty of the halter, which Puritan law had pronounced upon
any one of his profession who should be caught in this jurisdiction. He
arrived in the autumn of 1650, and had a most hospitable and kindly
reception, though he failed in his object. The scene we have proposed to
a painter is that which finds Druilletes a welcome and honored guest in
the humble dwelling of the apostle Eliot, at Roxbury, who invited the
Jesuit to remain through the winter. We are sure they met and communed
as friends,--high-souled, respecting each other, recognizing in each
other aims and purposes, and the experience, alike in success and
failure, of the arduous nature of a work which brought into a true
communion of piety the spirits consecrated by it.

Not quite a score of years--from 1634 to 1650--suffice for the dates of
the chief events in the profoundly interesting and saddening story of
effort and failure which Mr. Parkman rehearses with such masterly
ability. Starting with the renewed occupancy of Quebec in 1634, and the
accession of the Jesuits to the abortive enterprise of the Recollet
Fathers, he traces out for us the history of the Mission to the Hurons,
giving us the characters of all its agents, an account of the
settlements established, and the methods pursued till the work was
frustrated.

It is but a sad and painful story--in some of its incidents harrowing
and revolting--which Mr. Parkman has to tell us. So far as strict
fidelity to his subject would admit, he has had regard to the
sensibilities of his readers, and where he could neither hide nor
soften, he has contented himself with intimating and suggesting what it
would have been simply shocking for him to follow into further details.

With an acute skill in the reading of human nature, and a cosmopolitan
spirit of his own which identifies religious toleration and charity with
common sense, Mr. Parkman, in a few paragraphs crowded with facts and
philosophy, takes us into the inner organization of Jesuitism, indicates
the spring and aliment of its vitality, and explains to us how it
reconciles the abnegation of the will with the concentration of resolve
in obedience. Starting from Quebec as a centre of operation, and the
place where French supplies and Indian traders were brought into contact
in the spring of each year, the Fathers, following the direction of
their Provincial at home, through their Superior resident, Le Jeune,
radiated towards the dismal localities where each looked to live and
die, as the majority of them did. We ought to have their names before
us. The first six of them at Quebec were Le Jeune, Brébeuf, Masse,
Daniel, Davost, and De Nouë. To these were added Buteux, Bressani,
Ragueneau, Chabanel, Garreau, Garnier, Lalemant, Jogues, Chaumonot, and
Vimont. Most of them were very young men, of noble lineage, and with the
finest prospects of worldly success had they sought the prizes of courts
and of civilized life. With few exceptions, they were not robust, but
delicate. Eight of them died under Indian torture. Not one of them
failed in purpose or in courage.

It is not possible for the pen of either Romanist or Protestant to make
a Jesuit a lovely or attractive object to a Protestant. The flaw, if not
the falsehood, in their claim to the loftiest homage, vitiates the
appeal of the disciples of Loyola to the profoundest regard of the human
heart, independently of the antipathies of creed. It is enough to know
that their fellow-Romanists of other orders share to the full the
sentiment of distrust towards them which no pleading in their defence
has weakened in the common Protestant mind. Their devotion, their
heroism, their stern constancy to the recognized principles of their
severe discipline, does not neutralize, even if it qualifies, the
persuasion, which has not lacked evidence to support it, that, in the
service of God, they have been willing to learn art and subtlety from
the Devil. True, we are told that a generous candor will always enable
and dispose us to honor and reverence self-sacrifice with a sincere
purpose, even when folly, instead of necessity, crowns it with
martyrdom. The plausibility of this plea lies in a vague use of the word
_sincere_. The honors of martyrdom are yielded by a fine discrimination,
as graduated by a scale recognizing a varying proportion of truth and
value in the purpose for which the self-sacrifice is made. Every grain
of superstition, duplicity, or recklessness reduces--every element of
loftiness, high-thinking, and wise-purposing exalts--the honors rendered
to a sufferer and a victim. We think that Mr. Parkman has held a fair
balance in those almost alternate sentences in which, with a terse and
comprehensive way of communicating his judgment, he recognizes the
personal devotion, and compassionates the puerility and aimless toil, of
the Jesuit missionaries. They might be pardoned for believing that the
direction which the soul of a dying Indian child would take, either for
heaven or for hell, was decided by their being able to cross a moistened
finger upon its face. But to turn that saving charm into an act of
jugglery, deceiving or falsifying to the parents, was an act which
reduced the performer of it, either in intelligence or honesty, below
the level of the sorcerer.

Mr. Parkman sets up no plea, positive or comparative, in behalf of that
remarkable--we cannot say engaging--class of all-enduring men whose grim
toils and sufferings he so faithfully narrates. Yet we have been
spellbound, and deeply stirred, as we have slowly read and mused over
his pages. So graphic and skilful is his method, so animated is his
style, so vivid and real does he make the scenes, the surroundings, and
the phenomena of his subject, that, while we might dispense wholly with
the exercise of the imagination, we find that it has actually beguiled
us into its most effective exercise by persuading us that we have seen
and shared in many of the personages and incidents of the narrative.

The rules of the Order required of the missionaries something in the
nature of a diary, or journal, which, passing through the hands of the
local Superior, should reach the Provincial at Paris. From these
official papers, entering into the fullest minuteness of detail,
confidential in their contents, and of the utmost trustworthiness, were
composed "The Relations," which, annually made public, were of double
service,--in reporting the hopeful labors of those already in the hard
and dreary field, and in quickening the fervent zeal for new accessions
to it. From these Relations, and from the voluminous and equally rich
private correspondence between the missionaries and their European
friends, Mr. Parkman, contributing what he has learned from other
sources, is able to construct for us a continuous narrative, which
anticipates every question we might ask, and informs us fully on every
point of interest in his theme. He describes to us the Jesuit living on
visions and dreams, reinforcing his spirit by meditations, and keeping
his enthusiasm up to the needed point by assuring himself, on
emergencies, of the direct interposition of the saints in his behalf. He
makes us join the travelling party of the missionary as he avails
himself of an Indian escort to penetrate into the wilderness, sharing
its perils and its annoyances, aggravated always, even when not created,
by the shiftlessness of his companions. We are initiated into all the
methods and appliances of travel, of hunting, of encamping, of
lodge-building, of feasting and starving, on the trail and in the
village. The resources of forest life as presented by Thoreau, who had
houses into which he might bring up at night, the furnishings of a
wardrobe, and the comfort of salt, will be found on comparison to
obtrude many broad contrasts with the realities encountered by the
Jesuits and their entertainers. These all-enduring, patient men, born
amid the luxuries of civilized life, left all behind them when they
embarked in the canoe which was itself, with its contents, to be carried
as a burden over the frequent portages connecting streams or avoiding
cataracts. The first care of the "Black-Robes" was to provide the
vessels and materials for the mass, with paper, pen, and ink. A few
trinkets, and perhaps some implements of the rudest home-use, completed
their outfit. They were disgusted, all but infuriated, by the filth and
vermin, the loathsome familiarities, and the blinding smoke of the
wigwam. Their feelings as civilized men were outraged by the fiendish
barbarities of which they were spectators. Their lives always hung on a
thread, at the mercy of caprice, jealousy, superstition, and hate, which
were always active in savage breasts. Yet they toiled and suffered and
persevered and hoped, as men can do and will do only when they believe
themselves working for heaven,--to obtain heaven for themselves and to
fit others for it.

FOOTNOTES:

[103] The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century. By
FRANCIS PARKMAN. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co.




THE BLUE AND THE GRAY.

     "The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler
     sentiments than are many of their sisters, have shown
     themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory
     of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the
     Confederate and of the National soldiers."--_New York
     Tribune._


    By the flow of the inland river,
      Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
    Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
      Asleep are the ranks of the dead;--
        Under the sod and the dew,
          Waiting the judgment day;--
        Under the one, the Blue;
          Under the other, the Gray.

    These in the robings of glory,
      Those in the gloom of defeat,
    All with the battle-blood gory,
      In the dusk of eternity meet;--
        Under the sod and the dew,
          Waiting the judgment day;--
        Under the laurel, the Blue;
          Under the willow, the Gray.

    From the silence of sorrowful hours
      The desolate mourners go,
    Lovingly laden with flowers
      Alike for the friend and the foe;--
        Under the sod and the dew,
          Waiting the judgment day;--
        Under the roses, the Blue;
          Under the lilies, the Gray.

    So with an equal splendor
      The morning sun-rays fall,
    With a touch, impartially tender,
      On the blossoms blooming for all;
        Under the sod and the dew,
          Waiting the judgment day;--
        Broidered with gold, the Blue;
          Mellowed with gold, the Gray.

    So, when the Summer calleth,
      On forest and field of grain
    With an equal murmur falleth
       The cooling drip of the rain;--
         Under the sod and the dew,
           Waiting the judgment day;--
         Wet with the rain, the Blue;
           Wet with the rain, the Gray.

    Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
      The generous deed was done;
    In the storm of the years that are fading,
      No braver battle was won;--
        Under the sod and the dew,
          Waiting the judgment day;--
        Under the blossoms, the Blue,
          Under the garlands, the Gray.

    No more shall the war-cry sever,
      Or the winding rivers be red;
    They banish our anger forever
      When they laurel the graves of our dead!
        Under the sod and the dew,
          Waiting the judgment day;--
        Love and tears for the Blue.
          Tears and love for the Gray.




FUGITIVES FROM LABOR.


Young America in on the anxious-seat. An imploring cry comes up from the
hearts of thousands, "What shall we do to be saved--from work?"

In the happy days of the Adamses, as Professor Agassiz has taught us to
say, when every vine was a lodging rent-free, and the fig-trees
furnished ready-made clothing, life was a pleasant pastime. But this is
an age of cash or barter. The old common-law maxim concerning pains and
penalties is the rule of modern society: _Qui non habet in crumena, luat
in corpore_,--"He who cannot pay his fare must work his passage." To
evade this law, to shirk the forecastle, and to devise some means of
climbing into the cabin-windows, is the problem that the youth of this
generation are trying to solve.

The United States offer so many _unprospected_ or half-worked placers to
sharp eyes, that we must look for a great deal of vagabondry.
Gold-miners do not settle themselves down to crushing quartz, so long as
there are nuggets to be picked up. Rare chances lie hidden in the
by-paths of this broad country, to tempt men to straggle from the ranks
of the steady workers and turn foragers and _bummers_.

And in this generation money has attained an extraordinary value. Since
Dr. Johnson announced, in his Tour to the Hebrides, that the feudal
system was giving way to wealth, most other social distinctions have
yielded to it,--particularly in America, where there were few barriers
to break down,--and money has become the chief good. Our standard of
position in society is financial worth. Our patents of nobility are
railway bonds, stock certificates, and mortgages. The income-return list
of the United States Internal Revenue Department is the _Libro d'Oro_ of
the American Venice. In this age of scepticism, the excellence of
accumulated capital is the one thing no man doubts; and when I take off
my hat to a rich man, which I always do when I meet him, I feel that I
cannot be mistaken in paying respect to something demonstrable,
tangible, real.

Money furnishes all the blessings of life in this Western
World,--health, beauty, wisdom, virtue, consideration; and some
theologians have held that even the eye of the needle may expand to
admit the camel who has dropped enough of his precious burden upon their
premises.

If wealth cannot always give health, it can help to preserve it; it is
the best of physicians.

There is nothing so becoming as property. "Handsome is who handsome
has," is the accepted modern version of the old saw.

If a rich man does not pass for sensible and good, it is his own fault.
Wisdom can be bought, generally at low prices; and virtue is always
assumed to be an attribute of Fortune except in moral didactic
treatises. A cubic ounce of gold can be beaten to cover fourteen hundred
and sixty-six square feet; and a skilful capitalist can make it hide
quite as large an area of meanness.

What weight an income adds to a man's sayings and doings! Your lucky
broker, who has just turned a corner in stocks with a fortune, thinks
Two Shillings has no right to an opinion when Half a Dollar is in the
room. Although a man with a threadbare coat may say anything now-a-days,
in spite of the Roman satirist, he can get no one to listen to him. Even
genuine wit, like a good picture, shows better in a gilt frame with the
varnish of success upon it.

It is not surprising that young men want money, and much of it, and
quickly.

There is another stumbling-block in the path of steady work. Politically
our progress in democracy is complete; but socially we hang back. The
aristocracies of Europe despised trade; with us trade is an aristocracy
that looks down upon manual labor,--an aristocracy with its gradations
of rank and of titles, from merchant-prince to pedler. All who buy and
sell consider themselves as belonging to the peerage of business. And as
the _petite noblesse_ of France liked to take a better title and gayer
armorials than belonged to them, so our lesser nobility and gentry are
fond of using a brevet business-title considerably above the position
they really fill. They are ashamed of the old English words that have
designated their callings for centuries. We all know that shops and
shopkeepers are not to be found in the United States. Even
thread-and-needle establishments and apple-stands are stores. Within
sight of where I write, a maker of false calves, and other cotton or
sawdust contrivances to supply the padding which careless Nature often
forgets to furnish, calls his workshop a studio. If I were to use the
word "slops" in a "ready-made clothing depot," the Sir Piercie Shafton
who keeps it would summarily expel me for my lack of euphemism. As a
general rule, everybody is above his business, and thinks manual labor
mean, and only fit for emigrants.

It is said that our mechanics are nearly all foreigners, and that an
American apprentice is an extinct species, like the cave bear or the
dodo. Farmers' sons prefer any way of getting their bread to working
with their hands. The pedler's caste ranks higher than the manly
independence of the plough. A country store is an object of ambition,
where the only toil is to deal out a glass of wretched tipple to the
village sots who haunt those castles of indolence to drink, to smoke,
and to twaddle over stale village news. Some young fellows solicit
subscriptions for maps or for great American works, or drum for fruit
nurseries, patent clothes-wringers, or baby-jumpers. Others aspire to
enter the religious mendicant orders of America as paid brethren. They
are too proud to work, but not ashamed to beg. Beg is perhaps a hard
word; but solicitation is begging when the solicitor personally profits
by it.

The sons of trading fathers despise the old tiresome roads to wealth of
their class. Ledgers and law-books are too slow. All are in search of
the short cut to fortune. They believe in the philosopher's stone as
implicitly as the alchemists; they seek for it as earnestly. It is a
jewel that will last forever, but its composition varies with each
generation.

We of the press get scores of letters from young men, who spread out
therein what they imagine to be their qualifications and
accomplishments,--and plenty of them, for self-satisfaction is really
the first law of Nature. Then follow their hopes and wishes and askings
for advice, which, stripped of the flimsy rhetorical wrappers they feel
obliged to use in deference to the old prejudice in favor of steady
industry, come simply to this: "What is the minimum of work on which a
clever creature like myself can live? And what kind of work is the least
irksome and the most respectable?"

My colleague Tarbox, justly celebrated as a local reporter, belongs to
the earnest school, and wishes me to take high ground, and write a
sermon on the holiness and dignity of labor. He is always ready with his
_laborare est orare_, and has by heart a passage from a German
professor, who, writing of the manners of the Romans in an epoch of
their history not unlike this of ours, says: "When a man works merely in
order to attain as quickly as possible to enjoyment, it is a mere
accident that he does not become a criminal."

But I tell Tarbox that these foreigners never understand the working of
our institutions, nor the genius of our people. As to the dignity of
labor, I have written a good deal on that text, particularly just before
elections. The phrase sounds well in leading articles and on the stump,
and may carry some comfort to a hard-working man. But I doubt if he
believes it in his heart. I certainly do not. It is not true. There is
no dignity in labor. Honesty, wisdom, manliness, there may be in labor,
but not dignity. Dignity is in repose; the proverb is as old as Julius
Cæsar. I might perhaps serve out some cut-and-dried bits of morality
that have been prescribed as specifics for such complaints since the
days of the Seven Wise Men. We keep them "set up" and ready for use. The
only fault of these excellent old remedies is, that they never cure
chronic cases of inefficiency, whether it be constitutional or
contracted. They are good for nothing unless as a mild tonic for people
who could do well enough without them. Now the cases we have to deal
with are generally constitutional. When a young man writes to a stranger
to ask upon what career in life he shall enter, he sends a diagnosis of
his character in his letter. You know at once to what subdivision of the
species he belongs. The hunting British squire recognizes only three
orders of animals,--game, vermin, and stock. The human race may be
divided in the same way. Game men take care of themselves; the vermin
make others take care of them; and the stock, useful, harmless, and
insignificant, except as an aggregate, furnish the first class with
tools and the second with victims, and hitherto have done most of the
drudgery of the world. Our correspondents belong to a sluggish but
ambitious variety of the stock, that is seeking for some respectable or
semi-respectable method of avoiding the primeval labor curse. Their own
ingenuity failing them, they apply for the use of ours. The robust men,
who have "the wrestling thews that throw the world," know how to get
what they want, and ask no one to teach them. Indeed, to ask advice at
any time is an indication of weakness. We feel kindly to those who
consult us. It is a compliment that we were chosen, and not another; but
I do not think that we respect them the more for it.

It is evident that the heroic remedies recommended by my colleague are
likely to do harm rather than good to young persons who have outgrown
their moral strength. It would be more humane to prescribe a treatment
which, though it cannot cure, may alleviate their most distressing
symptoms, and enable them to bear the burden of life without too much
suffering. I shall, therefore, exhibit some of the methods by which
young fellows of tolerable education and address may get along without
undue exertion,--_Disce puer fortunam ex me, verumque laborem ex aliis_.
For a youngster of good nerves and hopeful temperament there is nothing
better than speculation,--as gambling without pasteboard and ivory is
called. Up to-day and down to-morrow is as pleasant and exciting to men
of that mould as seesaws and swings to children with strong stomachs.
But let those made of feebler stuff beware. Between the two millstones
of winning and losing they will be ground into despair, or into
shameless roguery. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and
many there be which go in thereat."

There is no simpler way of "achieving honorable maintenance" than to
marry an heiress. But to seek fortune in matrimony is almost like
looking for it in a lottery. By some mysterious law of Providence, rich
people draw the high prizes. Money is apt to fall in love with money.
The female dollar prefers the attentions of her own kind. Cupid, "once a
god," as Tennyson writes, "is now a lawyer's clerk," with sharp eyes
wide open; and suits _in forma pauperis_ are as little likely to succeed
in courts of love as in courts of law.

Politics being a subject everybody understands by instinct, young men
will naturally turn their attention that way. The number of offices with
salaries make this country almost that Frenchman's Utopia imagined by
Madame de Staël, where every adult male was to be a public officer paid
by the state. We have even more than this. When all other hopes break
down, there is the custom-house,--that last infirmary of noble minds who
have failed in every attempt to cure the aches that empty pockets are
heirs to. No doubt the profession of politics is generally remunerative;
but where I live, a foreign order of nature's nobility rules us. We
Saxons have fought our battle of Hastings at the polls, and have lost
it; and no one can hope to hold office here, unless he came over with
Murphy the Conqueror. Even should he combine in his person that
profitable conjunction of knavery, impudence, and laziness which we call
a politician, with the physical requisites described by a philosopher of
the last century,--_Vox stentoria, sempiterna, cum cerebello vacuo_,--it
would profit him nothing.

The poet Gray makes Jemmy Twitcher marry Divinity, after being refused
by Law and Physic. These two smile only upon serious admirers. They who
follow the law--at a distance, as some one remarks, never pick up a
living. And in medicine, unless the indolent practitioner can invent a
pill or a syrup, and can borrow enough to publish lying certificates
from country clergymen, and to hire bill-stickers to dirty the face of
Nature with the names of his specifics and the wonders they work, he
will never earn his daily bread. But Divinity is more easily pleased. It
was usual in the generation now passing away to recommend the Church to
young gentlemen of moderate energy without capital. And indeed the path
seemed easy, and the prospect pleasant.

A year or two in a seminary, a white cravat, a "call" made audible by a
salary, Paley's advice in the matter of sermons,--to make one and to
steal three,--all the young women of the parish sitting at his feet,
working worsted slippers for them, and swinging their intoxicating
little censers of flattery under his nose,--such was the imaginary
programme of his career. Certainly a tolerable existence while it
lasted. But it seldom did last. The "young probationer and candidate for
heaven" married. He selected--destiny always seemed to impel him to
it--a "sweet woman," who overstocked his parsonage, and, like the
magician's apprentice in the ballad, could not rule the young spirits
she had evoked. The salary did not increase with the family, and sweet
women are never good housekeepers. The congregation began to criticise
the old sermons; a jury of stern matrons, who spoke what minds they had,
sat in perpetual session on his doctrines, his wife's dress, and his
children's behavior;--and the end of that man was dreary, if he was only
a drone in the hive of the Lord. In our day The Church is militant, and
needs her ministers in the field. Those who are not able to fight will
be sent to garrison some remote post, where there is no danger and
little pay.

Art offers many more inducements to our young friends. If they have a
knack for sketching and a "feeling for color," as the slang goes, they
need not waste much time in preparatory study. Let them devote
themselves to landscape. It is easy to draw a tree that will not shock
the eye of an ordinary observer. Little outlay is needed to hire a room;
none whatever to call it a studio. This magical word furnishes it at
once, and covers every deficiency in chairs, tables, and carpet. Studio,
Artist,--excellent, well-sounding names! In them is often the secret of
the whole business.

An artist has this advantage over other men,--he may indulge in whatever
amusements his means can afford him, and no one will find fault. Every
class has its own standard of manners and conduct. The measure and rule
for artists have come over the sea, condensed from French _feuilletons_
and _Vies de Bohéme_. They are supposed to belong, by right of
profession, to a reckless, witty, singing, and carousing guild. It is
almost needless to say that the real life of the hard-working men who
have earned fame by the brush is as unlike all this as possible. But
these vague, ultramarine notions of fun and revelry have taken
possession of the American mind, just opening to art, and established
the standard for artists here. It exists in fact only in the
imagination; for, excepting a few ebullitions in the way of hair,
beards, and black sombreros, our artists are as saturnine as the rest of
us, and not as good company around the mahogany as a judicious
combination of clergymen and lawyers. Nevertheless, so powerful is the
conventional, when it has once taken root in the imagination, that some
of our younger artists believe themselves to be wild, rollicking
fellows, who despise the humdrum existence of the rest of us, although
they are sober and economical, pay their bills weekly, and talk their
morning paper like other people. Young correspondents! you will perceive
what a chance is here for you. If a kind public, in its youthful
enthusiasm for art, invests these steady-going citizens with such
delightful romantic qualities, it will of course wink at any
irregularities of conduct on your part, as in strict keeping with the
character.

In addition, you will always find us of the press your trusty friends.
Although behind the scenes myself, the peculiar connection that exists
between items-men and artists is as inexplicable to me as the
partnership of the owl and the prairie-dog in their dwellings on the
plains. Why, when we make every other calling pay roundly for a notice,
we puff the artists gratis in the most conspicuous columns of the paper,
is a puzzle to me. But the fact exists. Hire your studio, nail up your
name on the door, and we will make a pet of you at once, and pat you
encouragingly on the back. You shall have little paragraphs of this
kind: "Salvator Smith is studying atmospheric effects in the Brooklyn
Mountains"; or, "Smith, our own Salvator, is making studies from nature
near Roxbury"; or, "He has a grand classical picture on his easel in
Green Street, representing a celebrated American in the character of the
infant Hercules, strangling the British lion with one hand and the
Gallic cock with the other." Few of our readers may have heard of Smith,
but they read these iterated notices, and soon believe Smith to be
somebody. And he has the sweet sensation of seeing his name in print at
no expense to himself, and the rare luck of fame before it is earned. In
the circle he adorns he will be looked upon as a judge in all matters
æsthetical. It is only necessary to have painted a poor picture in order
to be an authority in architecture, music, poetry, dress, decoration,
furniture, private theatricals, and fancy balls.

At this moment the fashionable world is an oyster, which with his
spatula an artist may open. A picture mania rages. Good works bring
enormous prices, and any discoloration of canvas in a gilt frame finds a
ready purchaser, if signed by a known name. We are a commercial people,
and are satisfied with a first-rate indorsement. The patron of art can
soon educate himself for the position. The pet little phrases--"chalky,"
"sketchy," "tone," "repose," "opaque coloring," and all the rest of the
technical vocabulary--are soon learned; and then if Lorenzo is able and
willing to give ten thousand dollars for a picture, he may hold a court
of artists and be sure of having a number of pleasant fellows about him.
They, too, will be sure of champagne and oysters. All the schools,
however different their theories of art may be, agree, I believe, that
both of these compositions are excellent.

Lastly, I should like to say a few words in favor of my own noble
profession, newspaper editing. Mr. Carlyle may spitefully call it "the
California of the spiritually vagabond," but there is a proud pleasure
in knowing that we gentlemen of the press furnish the great American
people with their ideas and their phrases ready made, just as Brooks
Brothers and Oak Hall provide them with their clothes. All very much
alike, it is true,--"our spring style,"--and often ill-fitting and
graceless; but we seem to fill a national want. Our names may be unknown
outside of our offices, but the great planets are perceptibly influenced
in their courses by little asteroids invisible to the naked eye, and
many a celebrity who appears daily in large type is moved by the strings
we pull, and knows it not. My comrade Tarbox says: "The oracles that
became dumb in the year of our Lord were really a necessity to mankind,
and consequently were made vocal again by the agency of Renaudot, who
invented newspapers. The Delphis and Dodonas of the nineteenth century
are newspaper offices." This may explain why young men in search of a
profitable career write to us instead of applying to rich merchants or
to dashing brokers. How fortunate that those who consult us never see
the shrine or the priests! No gold or silver glitters in the modern
_adytum_, or editor's room, and the tripod from which we distribute our
_afflatus_ to the compositors is a wooden three-legged stool, unpainted
and uncushioned. That great oracle, Tarbox himself, was not long ago a
noble savage who ran wild in the woods near some country college. Caught
and caged in that institution, he devoted three years to pipes, and one
to _belles lettres_, and receiving from a good-natured Faculty some sort
of a degree, probably that of tobacco-laureate, came thence to town;
where, inspired by a salary of ten dollars a week, he enlightens the
public on finance and politics, art and literature, manners and taste,
and writes those brilliant articles the world willingly lets die. When
the California gold mines were first discovered, a clever fellow said
that he knew of no opening for a young man like the Southwest Pass. That
is still true for rough, coarse, self-asserting characters; but for
delicate, refined, stay-at-home natures, who have wishes without wills,
there are many ways of getting their porridge without selling their
birthright of doing as little as possible. If they cannot float
buoyantly on the surface, at least they need not sink far beneath it,
but may enjoy a quiet, water-logged kind of existence, not devoid of
comfort.




REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.


     _May-Day and other Pieces._ By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Boston:
     Ticknor and Fields.

We wonder whether those who take up Mr. Emerson's poem now, amid the
glories of the fading summer, are not giving the poet a fairer audience
than those who hurried to hear his song in the presence of the May he
celebrates. As long as spring was here, he had a rival in every reader;
for then we all felt ourselves finer poets than ever sang of the season,
and did not know that our virtue was but an effect of Spring
herself,--an impression, not an expression of her loveliness, which must
pass with her. Now, when the early autumn is in every sense, and those
days when the year first awoke to consciousness have grown so far away,
we must perceive that no one has yet been allowed to speak so well for
the spring of our New World as this poet. The very irregularity of Mr.
Emerson's poem seems to be part of its verisimilitude, and it appears as
if all the pauses and impulses and mysterious caprices of the
season--which fill the trees with birds before blossoms, and create the
soul of sweetness and beauty in the May-flowers under the dead leaves of
the woodlands, while the meadows are still bare and brown--had so
entered into this song, that it could not emulate the deliberation and
consequence of art. The "May-Day" is to the critical faculty a
succession of odes on Spring, celebrating now one aspect and now
another, and united only by their title; yet since an entire idea of
spring is evolved from them, and they awaken the same emotions that the
youth of the year stirs in us, we must accept the result as something
undeniably great and good. Of course, we can complain of the way in
which it is brought about, just as we can upbraid the New England
climate, though its uncertain and desultory April and May give us at
last the most beautiful June weather in the world.

The poem is not one that invites analysis, though it would be easy
enough to instance striking merits and defects. Mr. Emerson, perhaps,
more than any other modern poet, gives the notion of inspiration; so
that one doubts, in reading him, how much to praise or blame. The most
exquisite effects seem not to have been invited, but to have sought
production from his unconsciousness; graces alike of thought and of
touch seem the unsolicited gifts of the gods. Even the doubtful quality
of occasional lines confirms this impression of unconsciousness. One
cannot believe that the poet would wittingly write,

    "Boils the world in tepid lakes,"

for this statement has, for all that the reader can see to the contrary,
the same value with him as that preceding verse, telling how the waxing
heat

    "Lends the reed and lily length,"

wherein the very spirit of summer seems to sway and droop. Yet it is
probable that no utterance is more considered than this poet's, and that
no one is more immediately responsible than he. We must attribute to the
most subtile and profound consciousness the power that can trace with
such tenderness and beauty the alliance he has shown between earth and
humanity in the exultation of spring, and which can make matter of
intellectual perception the mute sympathies that seemed to perish with
childhood:--

    "The pebble loosened from the frost
    Asks of the urchin to be tost.
    In flint and marble beats a heart,
    The kind Earth takes her children's part,
    The green lane is the school-boy's friend,
    Low leaves his quarrel apprehend,
    The fresh ground loves his top and ball,
    The air ring's jocund to his call,
    The brimming brook invites a leap,
    He dives the hollow, climbs the steep."

Throughout the poem these recognitions of our kindred with external
nature occur, and a voice is given to the blindly rejoicing sense within
us when the poet says,

    "The feet that slid so long on sleet
    Are glad to feel the ground"

and thus celebrates with one potent and satisfying touch the instinctive
rapture of the escape from winter. Indeed, we find our greatest pleasure
in some of these studies of pure feeling, while we are aware of the
value of the didactic passages of the poem, and enjoy perfectly the high
beauty of the pictorial parts of it. We do not know where we should
match that strain beginning,

    "Why chidest thou the tardy spring?"

Or that,

    "Where shall we keep the holiday,
    And duly greet the entering May?"

Or this most delicate and exquisite bit of description, which seems
painted _a tempera_,--in colors mixed with the transparent blood of
snowdrops and Alpine harebells:--

    "See, every patriot oak-leaf throws
    His elfin length upon the snows,
    Not idle, since the leaf all day
    Draws to the spot the solar ray,
    Ere sunset quarrying inches down,
    And half-way to the mosses brown:
    While the grass beneath the rime
    Has hints of the propitious time,
    And upward pries and perforates
    Through the cold slab a hundred gates,
    Till green lances, piercing through,
    Bend happy in the welkin blue."

There is not great range of sentiment in "May-Day," and through all the
incoherence of the poem there is a constant recurrence to the
master-theme. This recurrence has at times something of a perfunctory
air, and the close of the poem does not seal the whole with any strong
impression. There is a rise--or a lapse, as the reader pleases to
think--toward a moral at the close; but the motion is evidently willed
of the poet rather than the subject. It seems to us that, if the work
have any climax, it is in those lines near the end in which the poet
draws his reader nearest his own personality, and of which the
delicately guarded and peculiar pathos scarcely needs comment:--

    "There is no bard in all the choir,
    Not Homer's self, the poet sire,
    Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,
    Or Shakespeare, whom no mind can measure,
    Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,
    Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,
    Scott, the delight of generous boys,
    Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,--
    Not one of all can put in verse,
    Or to this presence could rehearse,
    The sights and voices ravishing
    The boy knew on the hills in spring,
    When pacing through the oaks he heard
    Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,
    The heavy grouse's sudden whir,
    The rattle of the kingfisher;
    Saw bonfires of the harlot flies
    In the lowland, when day dies;
    Or marked, benighted and forlorn,
    The first far signal-fire of morn.
    These syllables that Nature spoke,
    And the thoughts that in him woke,
    Can adequately utter none
    Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.
    And best can teach its Delphian chord
    How Nature to the soul is moored,
    If once again that silent string,
    As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.

        "Not long ago, at eventide,
    It seemed, so listening, at my side
    A window rose, and, to say sooth,
    I looked forth on the fields of youth:
    I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,
    I knew their forms in fancy weeds,
    Long, long concealed by sundering fates,
    Mates of my youth,--yet not my mates,
    Stronger and bolder far than I,
    With grace, with genius, well attired,
    And then as now from far admired,
    Followed with love
    They knew not of,
    With passion cold and shy.
    O joy, for what recoveries rare!
    Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,
    See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,--
    Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!
    Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil
    Of life resurgent from the soil
    Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil."

Among the other poems in this volume, it appears to us that "The Romany
Girl," "Voluntaries," and "The Boston Hymn" are in their widely
different ways the best. The last expresses, with a sublime
colloquiality in which the commonest words of every-day parlance seem
cut anew; and are made to shine with a fresh and novel lustre, the idea
and destiny of America. In "Voluntaries" our former great peril and
delusion--the mortal Union which lived by slavery--is at first the
theme, with the strong pulse of prophecy, however, in the mournful
music. Few motions of rhyme so win and touch as those opening lines,--

    "Low and mournful be the strain,
    Haughty thought be far from me;
    Tones of penitence and pain,
    Moanings of the tropic sea,"--

in which the poet, with a hardly articulate sorrow, regards the past;
and Mr. Emerson's peculiarly exalted and hopeful genius has nowhere
risen in clearer and loftier tones than in those stops which open full
upon us after the pathetic pleasing of his regrets:--

    "In an age of fops and toys,
    Wanting wisdom, void of right,
    Who shall nerve heroic boys
    To hazard all in Freedom's fight,--
    Break sharply off their jolly games,
    Forsake their comrades gay,
    And quit proud homes and youthful dames,
    For famine, toil, and fray?
    Yet on the nimble air benign
    Speed nimbler messages,
    That waft the breath of grace divine
    To hearts in sloth and ease.
    So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
    So near is God to man,
    When Duty whispers low, _Thou must_,
    The youth replies, _I can_.

           *       *       *       *       *

    "Blooms the laurel which belongs
    To the valiant chief who fights;
    I see the wreath, I hear the songs
    Lauding the Eternal Rights,
    Victors over daily wrongs:
    Awful victors, they misguide
    Whom they will destroy,
    And their coming triumph hide
    In our downfall, or our joy:
    They reach no term, they never sleep,
    In equal strength through space abide;
    Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,
    The strong they slay, the swift outstride:
    Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods,
    And rankly on the castled steep,--
    Speak it firmly, these are gods,
    All are ghosts beside."

It is, of course, a somewhat Emersonian Gypsy that speaks in "The Romany
Girl," but still she speaks with the passionate, sudden energy of a
woman, and flashes upon the mind with intense vividness the conception
of a wild nature's gleeful consciousness of freedom, and exultant scorn
of restraint and convention. All sense of sylvan health and beauty is
uttered when this Gypsy says,--

    "The wild air bloweth in our lungs,
    The keen stars twinkle in our eyes,
    The birds gave us our wily tongues,
    The panther in our dances flies."

"Terminus" has a wonderful didactic charm, and must be valued as one of
the noblest introspective poems in the language. The poet touches his
reader by his acceptance of fate and age, and his serene trust of the
future, and yet is not moved by his own pathos.

We do not regard the poem "The Adirondacks" as of great absolute or
relative value. It is one of the prosiest in the book, and for a
professedly out-of-doors poem has too much of the study in it. Let us
confess also that we have not yet found pleasure in "The Elements," and
that we do not expect to live long enough to enjoy some of them.
"Quatrains" have much the same forbidding qualities, and have chiefly
interested us in the comparison they suggest with the translations from
the Persian: it is curious to find cold Concord and warm Ispahan in the
same latitude. Others of the briefer poems have delighted us. "Rubies,"
for instance, is full of exquisite lights and hues, thoughts and
feelings; and "The Test" is from the heart of the severe wisdom without
which art is not. Everywhere the poet's felicity of expression appears;
a fortunate touch transfuses some dark enigma with color; the riddles
are made to shine when most impenetrable; the puzzles are all
constructed of gold and ivory and precious stones.

Mr. Emerson's intellectual characteristics and methods are so known that
it is scarcely necessary to hint that this is not a book for instant
absorption into any reader's mind. It shall happen with many, we fancy,
that they find themselves ready for only two or three things in it, and
that they must come to it in widely varying moods for all it has to
give. No greater wrong could be done to the poet than to go through his
book running, and he would be apt to revenge himself upon the impatient
reader by leaving him all the labor involved in such a course, and no
reward at the end for his pains.

But the case is not a probable one. People either read Mr. Emerson
patiently and earnestly, or they do not read him at all. In this earnest
nation he enjoys a far greater popularity than criticism would have
augured for one so unflattering to the impulses that have heretofore and
elsewhere made readers of poetry; and it is not hard to believe, if we
believe in ourselves for the future, that he is destined to an
ever-growing regard and fame. He makes appeal, however mystically, only
to what is fine and deep and true and noble in men, and no doubt those
who have always loved his poetry have reason to be proud of their
pleasure in it. Let us of the present be wise enough to accept
thankfully what genius gives us in its double character of bard and
prophet, saying, when we enjoy the song, "Ah, this is the poet that now
sings!" and when the meaning is dark, "Now we have the seer again!"


     _An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the
     Christian Church._ By HENRY C. LEA. Philadelphia: J. B.
     Lippincott & Co. 1867.

This exhaustive treatise of Mr. Lea upon ecclesiastical celibacy we take
to possess, like his excellent work upon "Superstition and Force," all
the capital requisites of an historical monograph,--an immense body of
information and of reference on the subject in hand, a sufficiently cool
and dispassionate manner of presenting facts, and a severe adherence to
the central question. The amount of research and indeed of scholarship
involved in the preparation of this volume is such as to command the
warmest recognition. In these days of "picturesque" histories, of hasty
criticism, and of precipitate generalizations, it is very gratifying to
encounter a writer who construes his obligations with such austerity as
Mr. Lea. He is content to marshal his facts and his _data_ into such an
order that under a close inspection no one of them conceals the
half-genuine look of its neighbor. He lets them tell their own story for
good or for evil, and is never guilty, through the wish to be vivid and
effective, of spreading his colors outside of the lines drawn by his
authorities. Within these lines even his tints are sober and discreet,
and careful not to depart too widely from those somewhat neutral hues
which, wherever man's knowledge of the past rests upon accidentally
preserved documents and monuments, must continue to be the colors of
history. Nevertheless, with all the various merits of a well-executed
monograph, Mr. Lea's work has certain of the corresponding defects.
Perhaps, indeed, it were more just to say that these defects correspond
to the limitations of the general reader's knowledge, rather than to any
imperfection in the author's programme. In the course of a special
history executed on such a scale as the present one, and with all its
soberness of style, so little mechanical in spirit, and so free from
chronological dryness, it is almost inevitable that the reader's
impressions should become somewhat overbalanced. He is likely to forget
that he is taking a partial view of a great subject, and that he must
hold his opinions liable to correction when he has surveyed the whole
field. A dishonest writer, we conceive, may readily take advantage of
this perfectly logical error. He has accumulated an immense mass of
material bearing on a particular point, extracted and expressed, by long
labor, from a field in which it has lain interfused with material of a
very different, and even of a directly opposite significance. There are
a hundred literary arts by which a writer may put forward his fractional
gleaning as a representation of the whole. In this matter of
ecclesiastical celibacy, for instance, the result of Mr. Lea's
researches is that practically the thing has never existed in the
Christian Church. That is to say, the regulations enforcing it have at
all times been more violated and eluded than obeyed. With the
Reformation a large section of the Church ceased to admit its
needfulness, and the field of its enforcement was very much curtailed.
But the Catholic Church continued to cling to it as almost the central
principle of its being, and continued likewise to connive at an
inveterate system of escape from its harsh conditions. Mr. Lea's volume
is a long record of reiterated legislation and exhortation against
unchastity, formal and actual, and of a series of equally uninterrupted
disclosures of the futility of such legislation. And, nevertheless,
there is no doubt that, during all the long ages of its history, the
Church was the abode and the refuge of a vast deal of purity and
continence, to say nothing of the various other virtues by which its
members have been distinguished. But the reader sees only the obverse of
the medal: he sees a custom of prodigious bearings, if duly carried out,
honored chiefly in the breach; and he will be very apt to close the book
with an impression that the Church has been through all time a sink of
incurable corruption. It is superfluous to say that this impression will
be quite as erroneous as it would be to assert that, on the other hand,
its practice has kept pace with its high pretensions. Neither view of
the case is just. If there is one thing that strikes us more than
another, in reading Mr. Lea's work, it is that, on the whole, the Church
must have been at any moment a tolerably faithful reflection of the
manners and feelings of the time. Its empire was practicable only by
means of a constant renewal of the exquisite and everlasting compromise
between man's transient interests and his external destiny. Taken as a
whole, it never pretended to ride rough-shod over his natural passions
and instincts. It pretended to convert them to its own service and
aggrandizement. It respected them, it handled them gently. And as these
passions and instincts have never been exclusively evil or exclusively
good, so the Church has never been wholly corrupt or wholly pure. It has
been animated by the average moral enlightenment of the time, and it has
grown with men's moral growth. Reared, as it was, upon the primitive
needs of men's nature, it is difficult to see how the result should have
been different. And if the Catholic Church has lost that firmness of
grasp upon human affection which it once possessed, it is not that
laymen have become more virtuous than priests; it is that they have
become more intelligent. The intellectual growth of the Church has
lagged behind its moral growth. Secular humanity is perfectly willing to
admit that its sacerdotal counterpart observes the Decalogue equally
well with itself; but it contests the right of an institution, of whose
long spiritual efforts this insignificant accomplishment is the only
surviving result, to impose itself further upon men's respect and
obedience. The reader has only to remember, then, that Mr. Lea's volume
is not a history of the Church at large, but only a history of a single
province, and he will find it full of profit and edification.

It is no exaggeration to repeat, as we have said, that the Church never
achieved anything like complete celibacy. A rapid survey of the ground
under Mr. Lea's guidance will confirm and explain this statement. During
the first three centuries there is no evidence that celibacy was deemed
essential to the clerical character, or even that it was thought
especially desirable. It was natural that during the early years of the
Church, and under the stress of persecution, it should not multiply the
restrictions placed upon the freedom of its adherents. Up to the period
of the Council of Nicæa, therefore, the virtues of chastity were
maintained only by isolated groups of ascetics, animated by that spirit
of Puritanism which seems to have existed in every faith in every stage
of its history. When men are looking about them for means to mortify the
flesh and to stifle the heart, a prohibition of marriage is the first
expedient that suggests itself. Until this is done away with, further
severities are impossible. Marriage, however, was not condemned at a
single blow. The first step was to forbid second marriages. A bachelor
in holy orders might marry with impunity; a widower did so at his peril.
Having effected this concession, the ascetic spirit found means to
increase its influence. It received a strong impulse at the close of the
second century, as Mr. Lea affirms, by the rise of the Neoplatonic
philosophy, with all its mystical and stoical tendencies, and by the
introduction into Europe and the rapid spread of the great Manichæan
heresy. In the view of this doctrine, man's body was the work of the
Devil, and condemned as such to ceaseless abuse and mortification by his
soul. Among the ascetic excesses which were the logical consequences of
such a dogma, inveterate chastity was, of course, not the last to be
enjoined. Manichæism was an object of violent detestation to the Church;
but as the latter could not afford to let itself be outdone in austerity
by a vulgar heresy, it began to adopt a similar uncompromising attitude
towards marriage. The Council of Nicæa was held in 325. This body,
however, was chiefly occupied with debates upon Arianism, and is
responsible but for a single enactment bearing on the subject in hand.
The bearing of this enactment is, moreover, indirect, inasmuch as Mr.
Lea conclusively proves that it refers not to lawful wives, (as in later
ages of the Church it became needful to assume that it _did_ refer,) but
to female companions of the unlicensed sort. For more than half a
century after the Nicæan Council, the movement of the celibatarian
spirit is lost sight of in the all-absorbing disputes on the Arian
heresy. A strong reaction, however, is signalized by the issue, under
Pope Damasus, in the year 385, of the first definite command imposing
perpetual celibacy as an absolute rule of discipline on the ministers of
the altar. This was very well as an injunction, but it was nothing
without enforcement. More than half a century again elapsed before the
new discipline was substantially acknowledged. By the mass of the
servants of the Church--among which several names stand apart as those
of its more eminent opponents--it was received with bitter resentment
and incompliance. But it had the popular favor for it on one side, and
on the other the passionate energies of the three great Latin
fathers,--Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome. The people had not yet reached
that state of mind when it clamored imperiously either for priestly
marriage, or, in simple self-defence, for an organized substitute. Mr.
Lea at this point devotes a chapter to the Eastern Church, of which it
is sufficient for us to say, that in this establishment the question of
celibacy was less violently agitated than among its neighbors, and that
a final decision was more speedily reached. Early in the sixth century,
Justinian published an edict which still forms the basis of its
celibatarian discipline. Marriage in orders is forbidden, and men who
have been twice married are inadmissible. Monks are of course bound to
chastity, but the lower grades of the secular clergy are free to marry.

The rise of the monastic orders in the West dates from the close of the
fifth century, when St. Benedict founded in the Latian Apennines the
community which subsequently became famous as the Convent of Monte
Cassino. With this enterprise begins the real growth of the Church,
which, of course, we do not propose to trace. With each succeeding
century its area expanded, its power increased, and its responsibilities
multiplied. It was called to preside at the organization of a new
Europe, to witness and to accelerate the extinction of the Roman Empire
and the foundation of the new nationalities, to save whatever was worth
saving from the wreck of the old society, to stand firm against the
Barbarians, to prosecute constant and wholesale conversions, and to
preserve in the midst of these various cares the integrity of the idea
of sacerdotal chastity. The idea, we say; for we may be sure that the
practice was left to take care of itself. We are told that the Barbarian
invaders were inexpressibly shocked by the licentiousness and immorality
of the Latin civilization; and if this were so, it promised well for a
thorough purgation of the Church in proportion as the new-comers were
admitted into its fold. But as we continue to read, we see that,
although upon society at large their arrival may have produced in
certain directions a healthful and renovating effect, they speedily
became converted to the general tolerance of ecclesiastical laxity.
Italy and France, up to the domination of Charlemagne, were the only
important countries in Europe. The history of France from Clovis to
Charlemagne is a long record of disorder and iniquity, in which, if the
Church plays no worse part than the state, it at least plays no better.
In Italy religion and politics are involved in an inextricable tangle of
convulsions and dissensions. During this time there is no better proof
of the practical neglect into which the canon of celibacy had fallen,
than the continual iteration to which it is subjected by councils and
synods. Gregory the Great, in his conscientious efforts in the seventh
century to enforce sacerdotal chastity at least,--or rather to check the
flagrant violation of it,--in default of celibacy, had to contend, where
France was concerned, with the powerless imbecility of the Merovingian
monarchs.

His successors found more effectual assistance in the first
strong-handed Carlovingians. Pope Zachary, in concert with Carloman, and
St. Boniface, the great apostle of the Saxons, for the first time
attached the penalties of deposition, degradation, and penance to proved
impurity of life. This was the beginning of a series of reforms, of
which Boniface was the leading spirit, and Pepin and Charlemagne the
rigid guardians. But, although sacerdotal marriage became really the
exception rather than the rule, in consequence of these enactments, it
is doubtful whether morality was improved. It was a licentious age, and
the clergy as well as the laity belonged to their age. In the tenth
century clerical marriage began again to prevail, and again the strong
hands of Gregory VII., and of the Popes who reigned under his direction,
were needed to restore some degree of discipline. But vigorous as were
their measures, and persevering their efforts, it was restored chiefly
in name. Gregory's dissensions with the Empire offer Mr. Lea an occasion
to exhibit the condition of morality in the German Church. We are unable
to see that at this moment, as for some time to come, it differed
materially in any of the countries of Europe. In many outlying
provinces--in Wales, in Bohemia, in Sweden--lawful marriage took the
place of simple cohabitation; but in the great central states the vices
of the laity were still those of the clergy. If there was one spot
indeed where these vices were more flourishing than elsewhere, all
through the Middle Ages and into recent times, that spot was the very
head-quarters of sanctity,--Rome itself. But this circumstance admits
doubtless of a sufficiently logical explanation. Rome was the spiritual
head of Christendom, but she was also a great temporal power, and to a
great extent the social metropolis of the world. This character
necessarily involved a vast deal of magnificent corruption.

In the course of the Middle Ages it is apparent that the clergy not only
continued to possess their share of the general unchastity, but to carry
it to excesses by which they alone were distinguished. The amount of
legislation bearing on this subject, recorded by Mr. Lea with immense
patience and care, is such as to defy memory and imagination, and almost
to challenge belief. There can be assuredly no better proof of the very
imperfect observation of the canons than this unceasing repetition of
them. By the time the Middle Ages had passed away, and the masses had
emerged into the comparatively brilliant light of the Renaissance,
sacerdotal unchastity had grown into an enormous evil. The disparity
between the theory of the priestly character and its actual form had
become too flagrant to be endured. Popular protests accordingly became
frequent. The abuse of those intimate relations into which the priest is
brought with the life of families, and that of the confessional more
especially, acquires horrible proportions. And as the question grows
more complex on the side of the people, so it grows more complex with
regard to the general government of the Church. This government had long
since made up its mind, with a firmness destined to be proof against
even the most formidable remonstrance, that, whatever might be the
manners of its servants, they were to remain inviolably single. The mere
ascetic and sentimental reason for celibacy had long been supplanted by
good logical and material reasons. A wife and children were speedily
found to be incompatible with the exclusive service of the Church. To it
alone, if the ambition of its great rulers was to be fulfilled, its
ministers were to be devoted. When, with the development of the feudal
system, the transmission of property and of functions from father to
sons became the groundwork of social order, ecclesiastical benefices
were disposed of in the same way as manors and baronies, to the utter
prejudice of the temporality of the Church. With this tendency the
Church waged a long and violent contest, in which she was finally
victorious. But she purchased her victory only at the price of the most
scandalous concessions; and by the system of immorality reared upon
these concessions she found her hands almost fatally entangled at the
Reformation. Dispensation to unchastity in her ministers had become a
prominent feature among those various indulgences against which the
consciences of the early Reformers rose in wrath. In every country in
Europe the people had grown weary of crying out for the abolition of
these dispensations, and the reintroduction of marriage. In Germany,
accordingly, the marriage of apostate monks and priests was among the
foremost measures of the more ardent Reformers. Luther, whose discretion
was as great as his courage, was content to wait; but he, too, finally
gave in, and united himself with a nun. It is characteristic of the
English people, that the monarchs under whose guidance they embraced the
Reformation should have shown in this particular more than the
hesitation of Luther. Henry VIII. broke short off with Rome, overturned
the monasteries, and filled the land with the beggared servants of the
old ecclesiastical order, but he would not hear of the marriage of the
Reformed clergy. It was certainly not from a general disapproval of the
institution. Under Edward, the old restrictions on this matter were done
away; but under Mary they were of course restored with a high hand. With
Elizabeth they were eventually removed forever; but it is known that the
measure had very little sympathy from the queen, and that her assent was
grudgingly bestowed.

The Council of Trent was expected to do great things toward the
pacification of the Reformers and the healing of the great schism, and
among others to pave the way for the gradual abolition of clerical
celibacy. The measure had the approval of Charles the Fifth, and of
Ferdinand and Maximilian, his successors. The Council of Trent did very
little that was expected of it, however, and least of all did it
accomplish this. It contented itself with a reenactment of certain
obsolete and threadbare canons in favor of chastity, and launched an
anathema against all those who affirmed the validity of such marriages
as had been made or should yet be made by the apostate clergy. This was
the last word of the Catholic Church for some time to come upon this
important subject. Animated with a new vitality by the great Jesuit
reaction, she had no apprehension that her hour had come, and that she
was brought so low as to be compelled to belie the sagacity of her great
founders and lawgivers. For the past three hundred years she has firmly
adhered to the principle of celibacy, and assuredly with incontestable
wisdom. With the universal elevation of the moral tone throughout
Europe, she has been less frequently mortified by having to look with
indulgence upon the licentious manners of her priests.

It seems to us that this rapid survey of the immense subject treated by
Mr. Lea is calculated to confirm rather than to enfeeble an unprejudiced
reader's sense of the marvellous achievements of the Church. The
enumeration, made in the volume before us, of its enactments with regard
to celibacy and chastity, constitutes a chapter in its internal history.
This is, to our perception, the worst that can be said of them and of
the state of things which they reveal. If the Catholic Church is to be
pronounced an institution of the past, a mockery, a delusion, and a
snare, it is not on these grounds alone, or on any exclusive grounds,
but from a broadly comprehensive point of view. Every human institution
has a private history which is very different from its public one. In
some respects the former is the more, in others the less, admirable of
the two. In the present case, the element in the picture which appeals
to our admiration is the heroic patience and perseverance, the
fortitude, the tact, and the courage with which the Church applied
herself to the healing of her internal wounds when they were curable,
and to the enduring of them when they were not, in order that, at any
cost, she might produce upon the world the impression of unity, sanity,
and strength.


     _Ten Months in Brazil; with Incidents of Voyages and
     Travels, Descriptions of Scenery and Character, Notices of
     Commerce and Productions, etc._ By JOHN CODMAN. Boston: Lee
     and Shepard.

The title of this book leaves its reviewer little to say in explanation
of its purposes. It is a lively enough book, and a book well enough
written, with a good deal of dash and piquancy in the style; and yet,
like the blameless dinner to which Doctor Johnson objected that it was
not a dinner to ask a man to, it is not a book to advise one to read. It
does not appear to us, after reading it, that we are wiser concerning
Brazil than before; even the facts in it we greeted, in many cases, with
the warmth due to old statistical acquaintances. The philosophy of the
author seems to be that the Brazilians are a bad set, and that they have
become so mainly by mingling their blood with that of their negroes,--a
race never so useful and happy as when in the discipline of slavery. Mr.
Codman contrasts their hopeless state on the lands of a good-hearted
Scotchman in Brazil, who intends to let them earn their freedom by
working for him, with their condition on the neighboring estate of a
sharp, slave-driving Yankee, who acquiesces unmurmuringly in the
purposes of Providence; "his theory being, that, as labor is their
condition, the greatest amount of work compatible with their health and
fair endurance is to be got from them. With this end in view, there is a
judicious distribution of rewards and punishments." Mr. Codman finds the
charm of novelty in these just and simple ideas, but we think we have in
past years met with the same ingenious reasoning in Southern speeches
and newspapers; and we suspect the system was one commonly adopted in
our slave States, where the occasional omission of punishments was
economically made to represent the judicious distribution of rewards.

In fact, Mr. Codman seems to have travelled and written too late to
benefit his generation. Six or seven happy years ago, an enlightened
public sentiment would have received his views of slavery with acclaim;
but we doubt if they would now sell a copy of his book even in
Charleston.


     _A Story of Doom, and other Poems._ By JEAN INGELOW. Boston:
     Roberts Brothers.

People who remember things written as long ago as five years have a
certain stiffness in their tastes which disqualifies them for the
enjoyment of much contemporaneous achievement; and it is fortunate for
the poets that it is the young who make reputations. Miss Ingelow's
first volume, indeed, had something in it that could please not only the
inexperience of youth, for which nothing like it existed, but even the
knowledge of those arrived at the interrogation-point in life, who felt
that here there was a movement toward originality in much familiar
mannerism and uncertain purpose. If there was not a vast deal for
enjoyment, there was a reason for hope. It was plain that the author's
gift was not a great one, but it was also clear that she had a gift. She
was a little tedious and diffuse; she was often too long in reaching a
point, and sometimes she never reached it at all. But then she wrote
"The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," and the "Songs of Seven,"
and "Divided,"--none of them perfect poems, yet all very good and
fresh,--and showed a true feeling for nature, and some knowledge of
humanity as women see it. In this second volume, however, she abandons
her maturer admirers to their fate, and seeks the favor of the young
ladies and gentlemen who have begun to like verses since Mr. Tennyson's
latest poems were written, and the old balladists and modern poetical
archaists ceased to be read. In fact, it is amazing to see how this
author, who had a talent of her own, has contentedly buried it, and gone
to counterfeiting the talents of others. The "Story of Doom" here given
is an unusually dreary copy of the unrealism of Mr. Tennyson's "Idyls
of the King," and makes the history of Noah more than ever improbable;
while "Laurance," mimicking all the well-known effects and smallest airs
and movements of the laureate's poems of rustic life, is scarcely to be
read without laughter. "Winstanley" presents an incident that, if told
in simple contemporary English, would have made a thrilling ballad; but
what with its quoth-he's, brave skippers, good master mayors, ladies
gay, and red suns, it is factitious, and of the library only,--it came
from Percy's "Reliques" and "The Ancient Mariner," not from the poet's
heart. It seems worthy of the sentimental purpose with which it was
written; but we doubt if any child in the National School in Dorsetshire
learned it by heart as his forefathers did the old ballads.

In pleasant contrast with its affectations is the beautiful little song
entitled "Apprenticed," which the author tells us is in the old English
manner, but which we find full of a young feeling and tenderness
belonging to all time, expressed in diction quite of our own. This, and
that one of the Songs with Preludes entitled "Wedlock," seem to us the
best, if not the only, poems in the book. Miss Ingelow's forte is not in
single lines and detachable passages, and her efforts are apt to be
altogether successful or unsuccessful. In the long rhyme called "Dreams
that came True," there is but one inspired line, and that is merely
descriptive,--

    "In eddying rings the silence seemed to flow"

round him that waked suddenly from an awful dream. There is an
inglorious ease in the sarcasm, but we must express our regret that Miss
Ingelow did not leave this story in the prose which she says first
received it.

We suppose we need scarcely call the reader's attention to the fact that
certain faults of Miss Ingelow's first book are exaggerated in this. The
rush of half-draped figures, and the pushing and crowding of weak and
unruly fancies, are too obviously unpleasant for comment. Perhaps they
are most unpleasant in the Song with a Prelude which opens with the
bewildering statement that

    "Yon mooréd mackerel fleet
      Hangs thick as a swarm of bees,
    Or a clustering village street
      Foundationless built on the seas."


     _Critical and Social Essays._ Reprinted from the New York
     "Nation." New York: Leypoldt and Holt.

These brief papers very fairly represent the quality of the excellent
journal from which they are taken, and treat subjects suggested by
literary events and social characteristics with a bright intelligence
and an artistic feeling only too uncommon in our journalism. All the
essays are good, and several are of quite unique merit. The first in the
volume, entitled "The Glut in the Fiction Market," is full of a
felicitous badinage and an exquisite power of travesty, which we should
not know how to match elsewhere. The author of this admirable paper
wrote also, as we imagine, the essays on "Some of our Social
Philosophers," "Critics and Criticism," and "Voyages and Travels," which
are the best of the humorous articles in the volume. The graver essays
are almost as good in their way as these, and we especially like "Why we
have no Saturday Reviewers," "Popularizing Science," "Something about
Monuments," and "American Ministers abroad." The paper on "The European
and American Order of Thought" considers the subject with an originality
and penetration which we would willingly have had applied in a more
extended study of it.

In fine, we like all these articles from "The Nation," for the reasons
that we like "The Nation" itself, which has been, in a degree singular
among newspapers, conscientious and candid in literary matters; while in
affairs of social and political interest it has shown itself friendly to
everything that could advance civilization, and notably indifferent to
the claims of persons and parties.








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