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September, 1862, by Various
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Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862
Devoted to Literature and National Policy.
Author: Various
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The death of Henry Thomas Buckle, at this period of his career, is no ordinary calamity to the literary and philosophical world. Others have been cut short in the midst of a great work, but their books being narrative merely, may close at almost any period, and be complete; or others after them may take up the pen and conclude that which was so abruptly terminated. So it was with Macaulay; he was fascinating, and his productions were literally devoured by readers of elevated taste, though they disagreed almost entirely with his conclusions. His volumes were read—as one reads Dickens, or Holmes, or De Quincey—to amuse in leisure hours.
But such are not the motives with which we take up the ponderous tomes of the historian of Civilization in England. He had no heroes to immortalize by extravagant eulogy, no prejudices seeking vent to cover the name of any man with infamy. He knew no William to convert into a demi-god; no Marlborough who was the embodiment of all human vices. His mind, discarding the ordinary prejudices of the historian, took a wider range, and his researches were not into the transactions of a particular monarch or minister, as such, but into the laws of human action, and their results upon the civilization of the race. Hence, while he wrote history, he plunged into all the depths of philosophy; and thus it is, that his work, left unfinished by himself, can never be completed by another. It is a work which will admit no broken link from its commencement to its conclusion.
Mr. Buckle was born in London, in the early part of the year 1824, and was consequently about thirty-eight years of age at the time of his death. His father was a wealthy gentleman of the metropolis, and thoroughly educated, and the historian was an only son. Devoted to literature himself, it is not surprising that the parent spared neither money nor labor to educate his child. He did not, however, follow the usual course; did not hamper the youthful mind by the narrow routine of the English academy, nor did he make him a Master of Arts at Oxford or Cambridge.
His early education was superintended by his father directly, but afterward private teachers were employed. But Mr. Buckle was by nature a close student, and much that he possessed he acquired without a tutor, as his energetic, self-reliant nature rendered him incapable of ever [Pg 254]seeing insurmountable difficulties before him. By this means he became what the students of Oxford rarely are, both learned and liberal. As he mingled freely with the people, during his youth, a democratic sympathy entwined itself with his education, and is manifested in every page of his writings.
Mr. Buckle never married. After he had commenced his great work, he found no time to enjoy society, no hours of leisure and repose. His whole soul was engaged in the accomplishment of one great purpose, and nothing which failed to contribute directly to the object nearest his heart, received a moment's consideration. He collected around him a library of twenty-two thousand volumes, all choice standard works, in Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and English, with all of which languages he was familiar. It was the best private collection of books, said some one, in England. It was from this that the historian drew that inexhaustible array of facts, and procured the countless illustrations, with which the two volumes of his History of Civilization abound.
At what age he first conceived the project of writing his history, is not yet publicly known. He never figured in the literary world previous to the publication of his first volume. He appears to have early grasped at more than a mere temporary fame, and determined to stake all upon a single production. His reading was always systematic, and exceedingly thorough; and as he early became charmed with the apparent harmony of all nature, whether in the physical, intellectual, or moral world, he at once commenced tracing out the laws of the universe, to which, in his mind, all things were subject, with a view of illustrating that beautiful harmony, every where prevailing, every where unbroken. All this influenced every thing, 'and mind and gross matter, each performed their parts, in relative proportions, and according to the immutable laws of progress.'
With a view of discussing his subject thoroughly, and establishing his theory beyond controversy, as he believed, he proposed, before referring to the History of Civilization in England, to discover, so far as possible, all the laws of political and social economy, and establish the relative powers and influence of the moral faculties, the intellect, and external nature, and determine the part each takes in contributing to the progress of the world. To this, the first volume is exclusively devoted; and it is truly astonishing to observe the amount of research displayed. The author is perfectly familiar, not only with a vast array of facts of history, but with the principal discoveries of every branch of science; and as he regards all things as a unit, he sets out by saying that no man is competent to write history who is not familiar with the physical universe. A fascinating writer, with a fair industry, can write narrative, but not history.
This is taking in a wide field; and Mr. Buckle may be regarded as somewhat egotistic and vain; but the fact that he proves himself, in a great degree, the possessor of the knowledge he conceives requisite, rather than asserts it, is a sufficient vindication against all aspersions.
Mr. Buckle regards physical influences as the primary motive power which produces civilization; but these influences are fixed in their nature, and are few in number, and always operate with equal power. The capacity of the intellect is unlimited; it grows and expands, partially impelled by surrounding physical circumstances, and partially by its own second suggestions, growing out of those primary impressions received from nature. The moral influence, the historian asserts, is the weakest of the three, which control the destiny of man. Not an axiom now current, but was known and taught in the days of Plato, of Zoroaster, and of Confucius; yet how wide the gap intervening between the civilization of the different eras! Moral without intellectual culture, is nothing; but with the latter, the former comes as a necessary sequence.
All individual examples are rejected. As all things act in harmony, we can only draw deductions by regarding the[Pg 255] race in the aggregate, and studying its progress through long periods of time. Statistics is the basis of all generalizations, and it is only from a close comparison of these, for ages, that the harmonious movement of all things can be clearly proved.
Mr. Buckle was a fatalist in every sense of the word. Marriages, deaths, births, crime—all are regulated by Law. The moral status of a community is illustrated by the number of depredations committed, and their character. Following the suggestions of M. Quetelot, he brings forward an array of figures to prove that not only, in a large community, is there about the same number of crimes committed each year, but their character is similar, and even the instruments employed in committing them are nearly the same. Of course, outside circumstances modify this slightly—such as financial failures, scarcity of bread, etc., but by a comparison of long periods of time, these influences recur with perfect regularity.
It is not the individual, in any instance, who is the criminal—but society. The murderer and the suicide are not responsible, but are merely public executioners. Through them the depravity of the public finds vent.
Free Will and Predestination—the two dogmas which have, more than any others, agitated the public mind—are discussed at length. Of course he accepts the latter theory, but under a different name. Free Will, he contends, inevitably leads to aristocracy, and Predestination to democracy; and the British and Scottish churches are cited as examples of the effect of the two doctrines on ecclesiastical organizations. The former is an aristocracy, the latter a democracy.
No feature of Mr. Buckle's work is so prominent as its democratic tendencies. The people, and the means by which they can be elevated, were uppermost in his mind, and he disposes of established usages, and aristocratic institutions, in a manner far more American than English. It is this circumstance which has endeared him to the people of this country, and to the liberals of Germany—the work having been translated into German. For the same reason, he was severely criticised in England.
Having devoted the first volume to a discussion of the laws of civilization, it was his intention to publish two additional volumes, illustrating them; taking the three countries in which were found certain prominent characteristics, which he conceived could be fully accounted for by his theories, but by no other, and above all, by none founded upon the doctrine of free will and individual responsibility. These countries were Spain, Scotland, and the United States—nations which grew up under the most diverse physical influences, and which present widely different civilizations.
The volume treating upon Spain and Scotland has been published about a year; and great was the indignation it created in the latter country. In Spain it is probable that the work is unknown; but it was caught up by the Scottish reviewers, who are shocked at any thing outside of regular routine, and whose only employment seems to be to strangle young authors. Blackwood, and the Edinburgh Review, contained article after article against the 'accuser' of Scotland; but the writers, instead of calmly sifting and disproving Mr. Buckle's untenable theories, new into a rage, and only established two things, to the intelligent public—their own malice and ignorance.
Amid all this abuse, our author stood immutable. But once did he ever condescend to notice his maligners, and then only to expose their ignorance, at the same time pledging himself never again to refer to their attacks. A thinking man, he could not but be fully aware that their style, and self-evident malice, could only add to his reputation.
As already remarked, he did not write to immortalize a hero, but to establish an idea; did not labor to please the fancy, but to reach the understanding; hence we read his books, not as we do[Pg 256] the brilliant productions of Macaulay, the smooth narratives of Prescott, or the dramatic pages of Bancroft; but his thoughts are so well connected, and so systematically arranged, that to read a single page, is to insure a close study of the whole volume. We would not study him for his style, for although fair, it is not pleasing; we can not glide over his pages in thoughtless ease; but then, at the close of almost every paragraph, one must pause and think.
Being an original writer, Mr. Buckle naturally fell into numerous errors; but now is not the proper time to refute them. He gives more than due weight to the powers of nature, in the civilization of man; and although he probably intimates the fact, yet he does not add that as the intellect is enlightened, their influences become circumscribed, and must gradually almost entirely disappear. In the primitive state of the race, climate, soil, food, and scenery, are all-powerful; but among an enlightened people, the effects of heat and cold, of barren or exceedingly productive soils, etc., are entirely modified. This omission has given his enemies an excellent opportunity for a display of their refutory powers, of which they have not failed to avail themselves.
The historian is a theorist, yet no controversialist. He states his facts, and draws his conclusions, as if no ideas different from his own had ever been promulgated. He never attempts to show the fallacies of any other author, but readily understands that if he establishes his system of philosophy, all contrary ones must fall. How fortunate it would have been for the human race, if all innovators and reformers had done the same!
That which adds to the regrets occasioned by his loss, which must be entertained by every American, is the circumstance that his forthcoming volume was to be devoted to the social and political condition of the United States, as an example of a country in which existed a general diffusion of knowledge. Knowing, as all his readers do, that his sympathies are democratic, and in favor of the elevation of the masses, we had a right to expect a vindication-the first we ever had—from an English source. At the time of his death he was traveling through Europe and Asia for his health, intending to arrive in this country in autumn, to procure facts as a basis for his third volume, and the last of his introduction.
Although his work is an unfinished one, it will remain a lasting monument to the industry of its author. He has done enough to exhibit the necessity of studying and writing history, henceforth as a science; and of replacing the chaotic fragments of narrative, called history, with which the world abounds, by a systematic statement of facts, and philosophical deductions. Some other author, with sufficient energy and industry, will—not finish the work of Mr. Buckle, but—write another in which the faults of the original will be corrected, and the omissions filled; who will go farther in defining the relative influences of the three powers which control civilization, during the different stages of human progress.
Better than wealth, better than hosts of friends, better than genius, is a mind that finds enjoyment in little things—that sucks honey from the blossom of the weed as well as from the rose—that is not too dainty to enjoy coarse, everyday fare. I am thankful that, though not born under a lucky star, I wasn't born under a melancholy one; that, though there were at my christening no kind fairies to bestow on me all the blessings of life—there was no malignant elf to 'mingle a curse with every blessing.' I'd rather have a few drops of pure sweet than an overflowing cup tinctured with bitterness.
Not that sorrow has never blown her chill breath on my spirit—yet it has never been so iced over that it would not here and there bubble forth with a song of gladness.... There are depths of woe that I have never fathomed, or rather, to which I have never sunken—for there are no line and plummet to sound the dreary depths—yet the waves have overwhelmed me, as every human being, but I soon rose above them.
I have found this true—I know there are some to whom it is not true—that, though sorrows come not to them 'in battalions,' the shadow of the one huge Grief is ever on their path, or on their heart; that at their down-sittings and their up-risings it is with them, even darkening to them the night, and making them almost curse the sunshine; for it is ever between them and it—not a mere shadow, nor yet a substance, but a vacuum of light, casting also a shadow. Neither substance nor shadow, it must be a phantom—it may be of a dead sin—and against such, exorcism avails. I opine this exorcism lies in no cabalistic words, no crossing of the forehead, no holy name, in nothing that one can do unto or for himself, but in entire self-forgetfulness—in doing for, in sympathizing with, others. So shall this Grief step aside from your path, get away from between you and the sunshine, till finally it shall have vanished.
I know—not, however, by experience—that a great sorrow-berg, with base planted in the under-current of a man's being, has been borne at a fearful rate, right up against all his nobly-built hopes and projects, making a complete wreck of them. May God help him then! But must his being ever after be like the lonely Polar Sea on which no bark was ever launched?
But surely we have troubles enough without borrowing from the future or the past, as we constantly do. It is often said, it is a good thing that we can't look into the future. One would think that that mysterious future, on which we are the next moment to enter, in which we are to live our everyday life—one would think it a store-house of evils. Do you expect no good—are there for you no treasures there?
How often life has been likened to a journey, a pilgrimage, with its deserts to cross, its mountains to climb!... The road to—— Lake, distant from my home some eight or ten miles, partly lies through a mountain pass. You drive a few miles—and a beautiful drive it is, with its pines and hemlocks, their dark foliage contrasting with the blue sky—on either hand high mountains; now at your left, then at your right, and again at your left runs now swiftly over stones, now lingering in hollows, making good fishing-places, a creek, that has come many glad miles on its way to the river. But how are you to get over that mountain just before you? Your horse can't draw you up its rocky, perpendicular front! Never mind, drive along—there, the mountain is behind you—the road[Pg 258] has wound around it. Thus it is with many a mountain difficulty in our way, we never have it to climb. There is now and then one, though, that we do have to climb, and we can't be drawn or carried up by a faithful nag, but our weary feet must toil up its steep and rugged side. But many a pilgrim before us has climbed it, and we will not faint on the way. 'What man has done, man may do.' ... Yet, till I have found out to a certainty, I never will be sure that the mountain that seemingly blocks up my way, has not a path winding round it.
Then the past.... Some one says we are happier our whole life for having spent one pleasant day. Keats says: 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.' I believe this: to me the least enjoyment has been like a grain of musk dropped into my being, sending its odor into all my after-life—it may be that centuries hence it will not have lost its fragrance. Who knows?
But sorrows—they should, like bitter medicines, be washed down with sweet; we should get the taste of them out of our mouth as soon as possible.
We are as apt to borrow trouble from the might-have-beens of our past life as from any thing else. We mourn over the chances we've missed—the happiness that eel-like has slipped through our fingers. This is folly; for generally there are so many ifs in the way, that nearly all the might-have-beens turn into couldn't-have-beens. Even if they do not, it is well for us when we don't know them.... The object of our weary search glides past us like Gabriel past Evangeline, so near, did we only know it: happy is it for us if we do not, like her, too late learn it; for
So sad are they, that they would be a suitable refrain to the song of a lost spirit.
Well, I might have been ——, but am ——
Molly O'Molly.
If one wishes to know how barren one's life is of events, the best way is to try to keep a journal. I tried it in my boarding-school days. With a few exceptions, the record of one day's outer life was sufficient for the week; the rest might have been written ditto, ditto. Even then, the events were so trifling that, like entries in a ledger, they might have been classed as sundries. How I tried to get up thoughts and feelings to make out a decent day's chronicle! How I threw in profound remarks on what I had read, sketches of character, caricatures of the teachers, even condescending to give the bill of fare; here, too, there might have been a great many dittos. Had I kept a record of my dream-life, what a variety there would have been! what extravagances, exceeded by nothing out of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. Then, if I could have illuminated each day's page with my own fancy portrait of myself, the Book of Beauty would not have been a circumstance to my journal. Certainly, among these portraits would not have been that plain, snub-nosed daguerreotype, sealed and directed to a dear home friend; but to the dear home friend no picture in the Book of Beauty or my fancy journal would have had such charms; and if the daguerreotype would not have illuminated this journal, it was itself illuminated by the light of a mother's love. Alas! this light never more can rest on and irradiate the plain face of Molly O'Molly.
After all, what a dull, monotonous life ours would be, if within this outer life there were not the inner life, the 'wheel within the wheel,' as in Ezekiel's vision. Though this inner wheel is 'lifted up whithersoever the spirit' wills 'to go,' the outer—unlike that in the vision—is not also lifted up; perhaps hereafter it will be.
The Mohammedans believe that, although unseen by mortals, 'the decreed events of every man's life are impressed in divine characters on his forehead.' If[Pg 259] so, I shouldn't wonder if there was generally a large margin of forehead left, unless there is a great deal of repetition.... The record (not the prophecy) of the inner life, though it is hieroglyphed on the whole face too, is a scant one; not because there is but little to record, but because only results are chronicled. Like the Veni, vidi, vici, of Cæsar. Veni; nothing of the weary march. Vidi; nothing of the doubts, fears, and anxieties. Vici; nothing of the fierce struggle.
One thing is certain; though we can not read the divine imprint on the forehead, we know that either there or on the face, either as prophecy or record, is written, grief. Grief, the burden of the sadly-beautiful song of the poet; yet we find, alas! that grief is grief. And the poet's woe is also the woe of common mortals, though his soul is so strung that every breeze that sweeps over it is changed to melody. The wind that wails, and howls, and shrieks around the corners of streets, among the leafless branches of trees, through desolate houses, is the same wind that sweeps the silken strings of the Æolian harp.
Then there is care, most often traced on the face of woman, the care of responsibility or of work, sometimes of both. A man, however hard he may labor, if he loses a day, does not always find an accumulation of work; but with poor, over-worked woman, it is, work or be overwhelmed with work, as in the punishment of prisoners, it is, pump or drown. I can not understand how women do get along who, with the family of John Rogers' wife, assisted only by the eldest daughter, a girl of thirteen, wash, iron, bake, cook, wash dishes, and sew for the family, coats and pantaloons included, and that too without the help of a machine. Oh! that pile of sewing always cut out, to be leveled stitch by stitch; for, unlike water, it never will find its own level, unless its level be Mont Blanc, for to such a hight it would reach if left to itself. I could grow eloquent on the subject, but forbear.
Croakers to the contrary notwithstanding, there is in the record of our past lives, or in the prophecy of our future, another word than grief or care; it is joy. My friend, could your history be truthfully written, and printed in the old style, are there not many passages that would shine beautifully in golden letters? I say truthfully written; for we are so apt to forget our joys, while we remember our griefs. Perhaps this is because joy and its effects are so evanescent. Leland talks beautifully of 'the perfumed depths of the lotus-word, joyousness;' but in this world we only breathe the perfume. Could we eat the lotus!... The fabled lotus-eater wished never to leave the isle whence he had plucked it. Wrapped in dreamy selfishness, unnerved for the toil of reaching the far-off shore, he grew indifferent to country and friends.... So earth would be to us an enchanted isle. The stern toil by which we are to reach that better land, our home, would become irksome to us. It is well for us that we can only breathe the perfume.
Then, too, the deepest woe we may know—not the highest joy—that is bliss beyond even our capacity of dreaming. Some one, in regard to the ladder Jacob saw in his dream, says: 'But alas! he slept at the foot.' That any ladder should be substantial enough for cumbersome mortality to climb to heaven, was too great an impossibility even for a dream.
But read for yourself the faces that swirl through the streets of a city. Now and then there is one on which the results of all evil passions are traced. Were it not for the brute in it, it might be mistaken for the face of a fiend. Though such are few, too many bear the impress of at least one evil passion. Every passion, unbitted and unbridled, hurries the soul bound to it—as Mazeppa was bound to the wild horse—to certain destruction.... But I—as all things hasten to the end—will mention one word more—the finis of the prophecy—the stamp on the seal of the record—Death.... We will not dwell[Pg 260] on it. Who more than glances at the finis, who studies the plain word stamped on the seal?
I have read of a young Indian girl, disguised as her lover, whom she had assisted to escape from captivity, fleeing from her pursuers, till she reached the brink of a deep ravine; before her is a perpendicular wall of rock; behind, the foe, so near that she can hear the crackling of the dry branches under their tread; yet nearer they come; she almost feels their breath on her cheek; it is useless to turn at bay; there is hardly time to measure with her eye the depth of the ravine, or its width. A step back, another forward, an almost superhuman leap, and she has cleared the awful chasm.... 'Look before you leap,' is one of caution's maxims. We may stand looking till it is too late to leap. There are times when we must put our 'fate to the touch, to win or lose it all;' there are times when doubt, hesitation, caution is certain destruction. You are crossing a frozen pond, firm by the shore, but as you near the centre, the ice beneath your feet begins to crack; hesitate, attempt to retrace your steps, and you are gone. Did you ever cross a rapid stream on an unhewn foot-log? You looked down at the swift current, stopped, turned back, and over you went. You would climb a steep mountain-side. Half-way up, look not from the dizzy hight, but press on, grasping every tough laurel and bare root; but hasten, the laurel may break, and you lose your footing. 'If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all;' but once resolved to climb, leave thy caution at the foot. Before you give battle to the enemy, be cautious, reckon well your chances of winning or losing; above all, be sure of the justice of your cause; but once flung into the fierce fight, then with 'Dieu et mon droit!' for your battle-cry, let not 'discretion' be any 'part of' your 'valor.'
Then your careful, hesitating people are cautious where there is no need of caution, they feel their way on the highways and by-ways of life, as you have seen a person when fording a stream with whose bed he was unacquainted. I'd rather fall down and pick myself up a dozen times a day, than thus grope my way along.
There is Nancy Primrose. I have good reason to remember her. She was, in my childhood, always held up to me as a pattern. She used to come to school with such smooth, clean pantalets, while mine were splashed with mud, drabbled by the wet grass, or all wrinkles from having been rolled up. She would go around a rod to avoid a mud-puddle, or if she availed herself of the board laid down for the benefit of pedestrians, she never, as I was sure to do, stepped on one end, so the other came down with a splash. The starch never was taken out of her sun-bonnet by the rain, for if there was 'a cloud as big as a man's hand,' she took an umbrella. It was well that she never climbed the mountain-side, for she would have surely fallen. It was well that she never crossed a foot-log, unless it was hewn and had a railing, for she would have certainly been ducked. It was well she never went on thin ice, (she didn't venture till the other girls had tried it,) she would have broken through. Her caution, I must say, was of the right kind; it always preceded her undertaking. She had such a 'wholesome fear of consequences,' that she never played truant, as one whom I could mention did. Indeed, antecedents and consequents were always associated in her mind. She never risked any thing for herself or any one else.... Of course, she is still Miss Nancy, (I am 'Aunt Molly' to all my friends' children,) though it is said that she might have been Mrs.——. Mr.——, a widower of some six months' standing, thinking it time to commence his probation—the engagement preparatory to being received into the full matrimonial connection—made some advances toward Miss Nancy, she being the nearest[Pg 261] one verging on 'an uncertain age,' (you know widowers always go the rounds of the old maids.) Though, in a worldly point of view, he was an eligible match, she, from her fixed habits of caution, half-hesitated as to whether it was best to receive his attentions—he got in a hurry (you know widowers are always in a hurry) and married some one else.... I don't think Miss Nancy would venture to love any man before marriage—engagements are as liable to be broken as thin ice, and it isn't best to throw away love. As for her giving it unasked!... How peacefully her life flows along—or rather, it hardly flows at all, about as much as a mill-pond—with such a small bit of heaven and earth reflected in it. Oh! that placidity!—better have some great, heavy, splashing sorrow thrown into it than that ever calm surface.... As for me—it was a good thing that I was a girl—rash, never counting the cost, without caution, it is well that I have to tread the quiet paths of domestic life. Had I been a boy, thrown out into the rough, dangerous world, I'd have rushed over the first precipice, breaking my moral, or physical neck, or both. As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would have been spared many an agony, and—many an exquisite joy.
You may be sure that I have well learned all of caution's maxims; they have, all my life, been dinged into my ears. Now I hate most maxims. Though generally considered epitomes of wisdom, they should, almost all of them, be received with a qualification. What is true in one case is not true in another; what is good for one, is not good for another. You, as far as you are concerned, in exactly the same manner draw two lines, one on a plane, the other on a sphere; one line will be straight, the other curved. So does every truth, even, make a different mark on different minds. This is one reason that I hate most maxims, they never accommodate themselves to circumstances or individuals. The maxim that would make one man a careful economist, would make another a miser. 'One man's meat is another man's poison;' one man's truth is another man's falsehood.
But how many mistaken ideas have been embodied in maxims—fossilized, I may say! It would have been better to let them die the natural death of falsehood, and they might have sprung up in new forms of truth—truth that never dies. What a vitality it has—a vitality that can not be dried out by time, nor crushed out by violence. You know how in old mummy-cases have been found grains of wheat, which, being sown, sprang up, and bore a harvest like that which waved in the breeze on the banks of the Nile. You know how God's truth—all truth is God's truth—was shut up in that old mummy-case, the monastery, and how, when found by one Luther, and sown broadcast, it sprang up, and now there is hardly an island, or a river's bank, on which it has not fallen and does not bear abundant fruit. The 'heel of despotism' could not crush out its life; ages hence it will be said of it: 'It still lives.'
And still lives, yours,
Many reasons have been assigned for the Chivalry's determining to die in that last ditch. One William Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Enobarbus, in Antony and Cleopatra, the best reason we have yet seen. 'Tis thus:
Thus sang Hopeful Tackett, as he sat on his little bench in the little shop of Herr Kordwäner, the village shoemaker. Thus he sang, not artistically, but with much fervor and unction, keeping time with his hammer, as he hammered away at an immense 'stoga.' And as he sang, the prophetic words rose upon the air, and were wafted, together with an odor of new leather and paste-pot, out of the window, and fell upon the ear of a ragged urchin with an armful of hand-bills.
'Would you lose a leg for it, Hope?' he asked, bringing to bear upon Hopeful a pair of crossed eyes, a full complement of white teeth, and a face promiscuously spotted with its kindred dust.
'For the Banger?' replied Hopeful; 'guess I would. Both on 'em—an' a head, too.'
'Well, here's a chance for you.' And he tossed him a hand-bill.
Hopeful laid aside his hammer and his work, and picked up the hand-bill; and while he is reading it, let us briefly describe him. Hopeful is not a beauty, and he knows it; and though some of the rustic wits call him 'Beaut,' he is well aware that they intend it for irony. His countenance runs too much to nose—rude, amorphous nose at that—to be classic, and is withal rugged in general outline and pimply in spots. His hair is decidedly too dingy a red to be called, even by the utmost stretch of courtesy, auburn; dry, coarse, and pertinaciously obstinate in its resistance to the civilizing efforts of comb and brush. But there is a great deal of big bone and muscle in him, and he may yet work out a noble destiny. Let us see.
By the time he had spelled out the hand-bill, and found that Lieutenant —— was in town and wished to enlist recruits for Company ——, —— Regiment, it was nearly sunset; and he took off his apron, washed his hands, looked at himself in the piece of looking-glass that stuck in the window—a defiant look, that said that he was not afraid of all that nose—took his hat down from its peg behind the door, and in spite of the bristling resistance of his hair, crowded it down over his head, and started for his supper. And as he walked he mused aloud, as was his custom, addressing himself in the second person, 'Hopeful, what do you think of it? They want more soldiers, eh? Guess them fights at Donelson and Pittsburg Lannen 'bout used up some o' them ridgiments. By Jing!' (Hopeful had been piously brought up, and his emphatic exclamations took a mild form.) 'Hopeful, 'xpect you'll have to go an' stan' in some poor feller's shoes. 'Twon't do for them there blasted Seceshers to be killin' off our boys, an' no one there to pay 'em back. It's time this here thing was busted! Hopeful, you an't pretty, an' you an't smart; but you used to be a mighty nasty hand with a shot-gun. Guess you'll have to try your hand on old Borey's [Beauregard's] chaps; an' if you ever git a bead on one, he'll enter his land mighty shortly. What do you say to goin'? You wanted to go last year, but mother was sick, an' you couldn't; and now mother's gone to glory, why, show your grit an' go. Think about it, any how.'
And Hopeful did think about it—thought till late at night of the insulted flag, of the fierce fights and glorious victories, of the dead and the dying lying out in the pitiless storm, of the dastardly outrages of rebel fiends—thought of all this, with his great warm heart overflowing with love for the dear[Pg 263] old 'Banger,' and resolved to go. The next morning, he notified his 'boss' of his intention to quit his service for that of Uncle Sam. The old fellow only opened his eyes very wide, grunted, brought out the stocking, (a striped relic of the departed Frau Kordwäner,) and from it counted out and paid Hopeful every cent that was due him. But there was one thing that sat heavily upon Hopeful's mind. He was in a predicament that all of us are liable to fall into—he was in love, and with Christina, Herr Kordwäner's daughter. Christina was a plump maiden, with a round, rosy face, an extensive latitude of shoulders, and a general plentitude and solidity of figure. All these she had; but what had captivated Hopeful's eye was her trim ankle, as it had appeared to him one morning, encased in a warm white yarn stocking of her own knitting. From this small beginning, his great heart had taken in the whole of her, and now he was desperately in love. Two or three times he had essayed to tell her of his proposed departure; but every time that the words were coming to his lips, something rushed up into his throat ahead of them, and he couldn't speak. At last, after walking home from church with her on Sunday evening, he held out his hand and blurted out:
'Well, good-by. We're off to-morrow.'
'Off! Where?'
'I've enlisted.'
Christina didn't faint. She didn't take out her delicate and daintily perfumed mouchoir, to hide the tears that were not there. She looked at him for a moment, while two great real tears rolled down her cheeks, and then—precipitated all her charms right into his arms. Hopeful stood it manfully—rather liked it, in fact. But this is a tableau that we've no right to be looking at; so let us pass by how they parted—with what tears and embraces, and extravagant protestations of undying affection, and wild promises of eternal remembrance; there is no need of telling, for we all know how foolish young people will be under such circumstances. We older heads know all about such little matters, and what they amount to. Oh! yes, certainly we do.
The next morning found Hopeful, with a dozen others, in charge of the lieutenant, and on their way to join the regiment. Hopeful's first experience of camp-life was not a singular one. He, like the rest of us, at first exhibited the most energetic awkwardness in drilling. Like the rest of us, he had occasional attacks of home-sickness; and as he stood at his post on picket in the silent night-watches, while the camps lay quietly sleeping in the moonlight, his thoughts would go back to his far-away home, and the little shop, and the plentiful charms of the fair-haired Christina. So he went on, dreaming sweet dreams of home, but ever active and alert, eager to learn and earnest to do his duty, silencing all selfish suggestions of his heart with the simple logic of a pure patriotism.
'Hopeful,' he would say, 'the Banger's took care o' you all your life, an' now you're here to take care of it. See that you do it the best you know how.'
It would be more thrilling and interesting, and would read better, if we could take our hero to glory amid the roar of cannon and muskets, through a storm of shot and shell, over a serried line of glistening bayonets. But strict truth—a matter of which newspaper correspondents, and sensational writers, generally seem to have a very misty conception—forbids it.
It was only a skirmish—a bush-whacking fight for the possession of a swamp. A few companies were deployed as skirmishers, to drive out the rebels.
'Now, boys,' shouted the captain, 'after'em! Shoot to kill, not to scare 'em!'
'Ping! ping!' rang the rifles.
'Z-z-z-z-vit!' sang the bullets.
On they went, crouching among the bushes, creeping along under the banks of the brook, cautiously peering from behind trees in search of 'butternuts.'
Hopeful was in the advance; his hat[Pg 264] was lost, and his hair more defiantly bristling than ever. Firmly grasping his rifle, he pushed on, carefully watching every tree and bush, A rebel sharp-shooter started to run from one tree to another, when, quick as thought, Hopeful's rifle was at his shoulder, a puff of blue smoke rose from its mouth, and the rebel sprang into the air and fell back—dead. Almost at the same instant, as Hopeful leaned forward to see the effect of his shot, he felt a sudden shock, a sharp, burning pain, grasped at a bush, reeled, and sank to the ground.
'Are you hurt much, Hope?' asked one of his comrades, kneeling beside him and staunching the blood that flowed from his wounded leg.
'Yes, I expect I am; but that red wamus over yonder's redder 'n ever now. That feller won't need a pension.'
They carried him back to the hospital, and the old surgeon looked at the wound, shook his head, and briefly made his prognosis.
'Bone shattered—vessels injured—bad leg—have to come off. Good constitution, though; he'll stand it.'
And he did stand it; always cheerful, never complaining, only, regretting that he must be discharged—that he was no longer able to serve his country.
And now Hopeful is again sitting on his little bench in Mynheer Kordwäner's little shop, pegging away at the coarse boots, singing the same glorious prophecy that we first heard him singing. He has had but two troubles since his return. One is the lingering regret and restlessness that attends a civil life after an experience of the rough, independent life in camp. The other trouble was when he first saw Christina after his return. The loving warmth with which she greeted him pained him; and when the worthy Herr considerately went out of the room, leaving them alone, he relapsed into gloomy silence. At length, speaking rapidly, and with choked utterance, he began:
'Christie, you know I love you now, as I always have, better 'n all the world. But I'm a cripple now—no account to nobody—just a dead weight—an' I don't want you, 'cause o' your promise before I went away, to tie yourself to a load that'll be a drag on you all your life. That contract—ah—promises—an't—is—is hereby repealed! There!' And he leaned his head upon his hands and wept bitter tears, wrung by a great agony from his loving heart.
Christie gently laid her hand upon his shoulder, and spoke, slowly and calmly: 'Hopeful, your soul was not in that leg, was it?'
It would seem as if Hopeful had always thought that such was the case, and was just receiving new light upon the subject, he started up so suddenly.
'By jing! Christie!' And he grasped her hand, and—but that is another of those scenes that don't concern us at all. And Christie has promised next Christmas to take the name, as she already has the heart, of Tackett. Herr Kordwäner, too, has come to the conclusion that he wants a partner, and on the day of the wedding a new sign is to be put up over a new and larger shop, on which 'Co.' will mean Hopeful Tackett. In the mean time, Hopeful hammers away lustily, merrily whistling, and singing the praises of the 'Banger.' Occasionally, when he is resting, he will tenderly embrace his stump of a leg, gently patting and stroking it, and talking to it as to a pet. If a stranger is in the shop, he will hold it out admiringly, and ask:
'Do you know what I call that? I call that 'Hopeful Tackett—his mark.''
And it is a mark—a mark of distinction—a badge of honor, worn by many a brave fellow who has gone forth, borne and upheld by a love for the dear old flag, to fight, to suffer, to die if need be, for it; won in the fierce contest, amid the clashing strokes of the steel and the wild whistling of bullets; won by unflinching nerve and unyielding muscle; worn as a badge of the proudest distinction an American can reach. If these lines come to one of those that have thus fought and suffered—though his scars were received in some unnoticed, unpublished skirmish, though official bulletins[Pg 265] spoke not of him, 'though fame shall never know his story'—let them come as a tribute to him; as a token that he is not forgotten; that those that have been with him through the trials and the triumphs of the field, remember him and the heroic courage that won for him by those honorable scars; and that while life is left to them they will work and fight in the same cause, cheerfully making the same sacrifices, seeking no higher reward than to take him by the hand and call him 'comrade,' and to share with him the proud consciousness of duty done. Shoulder-straps and stars may bring renown; but he is no less a real hero who, with rifle and bayonet, throws himself into the breach, and, uninspired by hope of official notice, battles manfully for the right.
Hopeful Tackett, humble yet illustrious, a hero for all time, we salute you.
It is now I dare not say how many years since the night that chum and I, emerging from No. 24, South College, descended the well-worn staircase, and took our last stroll beneath the heavy shadows that darkly hung from the old elms of our Alma Mater. Commencement, with its dazzling excitement, its galleries of fair faces to smile and approve, its gathered wisdom to listen and adjudge, was no longer the goal of our student-hopes; and the terrible realization that our joyous college-days were over, now pressed hard upon us as we paced slowly along, listening to the low night wind among the summer leaves overhead, or looking up at the darkened windows whence the laugh and song of class-mates had so oft resounded to vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night—and tutors. I thought then, as I have often thought since, that our student-life must be 'the golden prime' compared with which all coming time would be as silver, brass, or iron. Here youth with its keenness of enjoyment and generous heartiness; freedom from care, smooth-browed and mirthful; liberal studies refining and elevating withal; the Numbers, whose ready sympathy had divided sorrow and multiplied joy, were associated as they never could be again; and so I doubt not many a one has felt as he stood at the door of academic life and looked away over its sunny meadows to the dark woodlands and rugged hillsides of world-life. How throbbed in old days the wandering student's heart as on the distant hill-top he turned to take a last look at disappearing Bologna and remembered the fair curtain-lecturing Novella de Andrea[1]—fair prototype of modern Mrs. Caudle; how his spirits rose when, like Lucentio, he came to 'fair Padua, nursery of arts;' or how he mused for the last time wandering beside the turbid Arno, in
'Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,'
we wot not. Little do we know either of the ancient 'larks' of the Sorbonne, of Leyden, Utrecht, and Amsterdam; somewhat less, in spite of gifted imagining, of The Student of Salamanca. But Howitt's Student Life in Germany, setting forth in all its noisy, smoking, beer-drinking conviviality the significance of the Burschenleben,
'I am an unmarried scholar and a free man;'
Bristed's Five Years in an English University, congenial in its setting forth of the Cantab's carnal delights and intellectual jockeyism; The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman, wherein one 'Cuthbert Bede, B.A.' has by 'numerous illustrations' of numerous dissipations, given as good an idea as is desirable of the 'rowing men' in that very antediluvian receptacle of elegant scholarship; are all present evidences of the affectionate interest with which the graduate reverts to his college days. In like manner Student Life in Scotland has engaged the late attention of venerable Blackwood, while the pages of Putnam, in Life in a Canadian College,[2] and Fireside Travels,[3] have given some idea of things nearer home, some little time ago. But while numerous pamphlets and essays have been written on our collegiate systems of education,[Pg 267] the general development and present doings of Young America in the universities remain untouched.
The academic influences exerted over American students are, it must be premised, vastly different from those of the old world. Imprimis, our colleges are just well into being. Reaching back into no dim antiquity, their rise and progress are traceable from their beginnings—beginnings not always the greatest. Thus saith the poet doctor of his Alma Mater:
From small beginnings and short lives our colleges have gathered neither that momentum of years heavy with mighty names and weighty memories, nor of wealth heaping massive piles and drawing within their cloistered walls the learning of successive centuries which carries the European universities crashing down the ages, though often heavy laden with the dead forms of mediæval preciseness. No established church makes with them common cause, no favoring and influential aristocracy gives them the careless security of a complete protection. Their development thus far has been under very different influences. Founded in the wilderness by our English ancestors, they were, at first, it is true, in their course of study and in foolish formula of ceremony an imperfect copy of trans-Atlantic originals. Starting from this point, their course has been shaped according to the peculiar genius of our institutions and people. Republican feeling has dispensed with the monastic dress, the servile demeanor toward superiors, and the ceremonious forms which had lost their significance. The peculiar wants of a new country have required not high scholarship, but more practical learning to meet pressing physical wants. Again, our numerous religious sects requiring each a nursery of its own children, and the great extent of our country, have called, or seemed to call (in spite of continually increasing facility of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general—the increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our regard—and the accompanying fallacy of supposing Latin and Greek heathenish and useless, and we have a summary view of the influences bearing upon our literary institutions. Hence both good and evil have arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth and breadth to any small portion of the national mind. They have conceded to Science the place which her rapid and brilliant progress demanded. On the other hand, however, we see long and well-proven systems of education profaned by the ignorant hands of superficial reformers. We see the colleges themselves dragging on a precarious life, yet less revered than cherished by fostering sects, and more hooted at by the advocates of potato-digging and other practical pursuits, than defended by their legitimate protectors. It is not to be denied that there is a powerful element of Materialism among us, and that too often we neither appreciate nor respect the earnest, abstruse scholar. The progress of humanity must be shouted in popular catch-words from the house-tops, and the noisy herald appropriates the laudation of him who in pain and weariness traced the hidden truth. We hear men of enlarged thought and lofty views derided as old fogies because beyond unassisted appreciation, until we are half-tempted to believe the generation to be multiplied Ephraims[Pg 268] given to their idols, who had best be let alone.
The American student, under these influences, differs somewhat from his European brethren. He is younger by two or three years. Though generally from the better class, he is more, perhaps, identified with the mass of the people, and is more of a politician than a scholar. His remarks upon the Homeric dialects, however laudatory, are most suspiciously vague, and though he escape such slight errors as describing the Gracchi as a barbarous tribe in the north of Italy or the Piræus as a meat-market of Athens, you must beware of his classical allusions. On the other hand he is more moral, a more independent thinker and a freer man than his prototype across the sea. His fault is, as Bristed says, that he is superficial; his virtue, that he is straightforward and earnest in aiming at practical life.
Such may suffice for a few general remarks. But some memories of one of our most important universities will better set forth the habits and customs of the joyous student-life than farther wearisome generality.
The pleasant days are gone that I dreamed away beneath the green arcades of the fair Elm City. But still come the budding spring and the blooming summer to embower those quiet streets and to fill the morning hour with birds' sweet singing. Still comes the gorgeous autumn—the dead summer lain in state—and the cloud-robed winter to round the circling year. Still streams the golden sunlight through the green canopies of tented elms, and still, I ween, do pretty school-girls (feminine of student) loiter away in flirting fascination the holiday afternoons beneath their shade. Still do our memories haunt those old walks we loved so well: the avenue shaded and silent like grove of Academe, fit residence of colloquial man of science or genial metaphysician; the old cemetery with its brown ivy-grown wall, its dark, massive evergreens, and moss-grown stones, that, before years had effaced the inscription, told the mortal story of early settler; elm-arched Temple street, where the midnight moon shone so softly through the dark masses of foliage and slept so sweetly on the sloping green. Still do those old wharves and warehouses—ancient haunts of colonial commerce and scenes of continental struggle—rest there in dusty quiet, hearing but murmurs of the noisy merchant-world without; and the fair bay lies silent among those green hills that slope southward to the Sound. Methinks I hear the ripple of its moonlit waves as in the summer night it upbore our gallant boat and its fair freight; the far-off music stealing o'er the bright waters; the distant rattling of some paid-out cable as a newly arrived bark anchors down the bay; or the lonely baying of a watch-dog at some farm-house on the hight. I see the sail-boats bending under their canvas and dashing the salt spray from their bows as they rush through the smooth water, and the oyster-boats cleaving the clear brine like an arrow, bound for Fair Haven, of many shell-fish; while sturdy sloops and schooners—suggestive of lobsters or pineapples—bow their big heads meekly and sway themselves at rest. I see again those long lines of green-wooded slope, here crowned by a lonely farm-house musing solitary on the hills as it looks off on the blue Sound, there ending abruptly in a weather-worn cliff of splintered trap, or anon bringing down some arable acres to the very beach, where a gray old cottage, kept in countenance by two or three rugged poplars, like the fisher's hut,
'In der blauen Fluth sich beschaut.'
Nor can I soon forget those wild hillsides, so glorious both when the summer floods of foliage came pouring down their sides, and when autumn, favorite child of the year, donned his coat of many colors and came forth to join his brethren. Then, on holiday-afternoon, free from student-care, we climbed the East or West Rock, and looked abroad over the distant city-spires, rock-ribbed[Pg 269] hillside and sail-dotted sea; or threading the devious path to the Judges' Cave, where tradition said that in colonial times the regicides, Goffe and Whalley, lay hidden, read on the lone rock that in the winter wilderness overhung their bleak hiding-place, in an old inscription carved not without pain, in quaint letters of other years, the stern and stirring old watchword:
Or, going further, we climbed Mount Carmel, and looked from its steep cliff down into the solitary rock-strewn valley—
Or went on to the Cheshire hillside, where the Roaring Brook, tumbling down the steep ravine, flashed its clear waters into whitest foam, and veiled the unsightly rocks with its snowy spray; or, perchance, in cumbrous boat, floated upon Lake Saltonstall, hermit of ponds, set like a liquid crystal in the emerald hills—an eyesore to luckless piscatory students, but highly favored of all lovers of ice, whether applied to the bottoms of ringing High Dutchers, or internally in shape of summer refrigerators.
In the midst of these pleasant haunts and this fair city, lies a sloping green of twenty or twenty-five acres, girt and bisected by rows of huge elms, and planted with three churches, whose spires glisten above the tall trees, and with a stuccoed State House, whose peeled columns and crumbling steps are more beautiful in conception than execution. On the upper side, looking down across, stretched out in a long line of eight hundred feet, the buildings of the college stand, in dense shade. Ugly barracks, four stories high, built of red brick, without a line of beautifying architecture, they yet have an ancient air of repose, buried there in the deep shade, that pleases even the fastidious eye. In the rear, an old laboratory, diverted from its original gastronomic purpose of hall, which in our American colleges has dispensed with commons, a cabinet, similarly metamorphosed, and containing some magnificent specimens of the New World's minerals; a gallery of portraits of college, colonial and revolutionary worthies—a collection of rare historical interest; a Gothic pile of library, built of brown sandstone, its slender towers crowned with grinning, uncouth heads, cut in stone, which are pointed out to incipient Freshmen as busts of members of the college faculty; and a castellated Gothic structure of like material, occupied by the two ancient literary fraternities, and notable toward the close of the academic year as the place where isolated Sophomores and Seniors write down the results of two years' study in the Biennial Examination—make up the incongruous whole of the college proper.
Such is the place where, about the middle of September, if you have been sojourning through the very quiet vacation in one of the almost deserted hotels of New-Haven, you will begin to be conscious of an awakening from the six weeks' torpor, (the long vacation of hurried Americans who must study forty weeks of the year.) Along the extended row of brick you will begin to discern aproned 'sweeps' clearing the month and a half's accumulated rubbish from the walks, beating carpets on the grass-plots, re-lining with new fire-brick the sheet-iron cylinder-stoves, more famous for their eminent Professor improver (may his shadow never be less!) than for their heating qualities, or furbishing old furniture purchased at incredibly low prices, of the last class, to make good as new for the Freshmen, periphrastically known as 'the young gentlemen who have lately entered college.' It may be, too, that your practiced eye will detect one of these fearful youths, who, coming from a thousand miles in the interior—from the prairies of the West or the bayous of the South—has arrived before his time, and now, blushing unseen, is reconnoitering the intellectual fortress which he hopes soon to[Pg 270] storm with 'small Latin and less Greek,' or, perchance, remembering with sad face the distance of his old home and the strangeness of the new. A few days more, and hackmen drive down Chapel street hopefully, and return with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of student-humanity within—a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing that his as yet undeveloped character is 'summâ integritate et innocentiâ;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, a hard student in the worse sense, with much of the 'fortiter in re' in his bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical 'suaviter in modo;' a Senior, whose 'otium cum dignitate' at once distinguishes him from the vulgar herd of common mortals. Then succeed hearty greetings of meeting friends, great purchase of text-books, and much changing of rooms; students being migratory by nature, and stimulated thereto by the prospect of choice of better rooms conceded to advanced academical standing. In which state of things the various employés of college, including the trusty colored Aquarius, facetiously denominated Professor Paley, under the excitement of numerous quarters, greatly multiply their efforts.
But the chief interest of the opening year is clustered around the class about to unite its destinies with the college-world. A new century of students—
the rough, energetic Westerner, the refined, lethargic metropolitan, with here and there a missionary's son from the Golden Horn or the isles of the Pacific or even a Chinese, long-queued and meta-physical, are to be divided between the two rival literary Societies.[4] These having during the last term with great excitement elected their officers for the coming 'campaign,' and held numerous 'indignation meetings,' where hostile speeches and inquiries into the numbers to be sent down by the various academies were diligently prosecuted to the great neglect of debates and essays, now join issue with an adroitness on the part of their respective members which gives great promise for political life. Committees at the station-house await the arrival of every train, accost every individual of right age and verdancy; and, having ascertained that he is not a city clerk nor a graduate, relapsed into his ante-academic state, offer their services as amateur porters, guides, or tutors, according to the wants of the individual. Having thus ingratiated themselves, various are the ways of procedure. Should the new-comer prove confiding, perhaps he is told that 'there is one vacancy left in our Society, and if you wish, I will try and get it for you,' which, after a short absence, presumed to be occupied with strenuous effort, the amiable advocate succeeds in doing, to the great gratitude of his Freshman friend. But should he prove less tractable, and wish to hear both sides, then some comrade is perhaps introduced as belonging to the other Society, and is sorely worsted in a discussion of the respective excellencies of the two rival fraternities. Or if he be religious, the same disguised comrade shall visit him on the Sabbath, and with much profanity urge the claims of his supposititious Society. By such, and more honorable means, the destiny of each is soon fixed, and only a few stragglers await undecided the so-called 'Statement of Facts,' when with infinite laughter and great hustling of 'force committees,' they are preädmitted to 'Brewster's Hall' to hear the three appointed orators of each Society laud themselves and deny all virtue to their opponents; which done, in chaotic state of mind they fall an easy prey to the strongest, and with the rest are initiated that very evening with lusty cheers and noisy songs and speeches protracted far into the night.
Nor less notable are the Secret Societies, two or three of which exist in every class, and are handed down yearly to the care of successors. With more quiet, but with busy effort, their mem[Pg 271]bers are carefully chosen and pledged, and with phosphorous, coffins, and dead men's bones, are awfully admitted to the mysteries of Greek initials, private literature, and secret conviviality. Being picked men, and united, they each form an imperium in imperio in the large societies much used by ambitious collegians. Curious as it may seem, too, many of these societies have gained some influence and notoriety beyond college walls. The Psi Upsilon, Alpha Delta Phi, and Delta Kappa Epsilon Societies, are now each ramified through a dozen or more colleges, having annual conventions, attended by numerous delegates from the several chapters, and by graduate members of high standing in every department of letters. Yet they have no deep significance like that of the Burschenschaft.
Close treading on the heels of Society movements, comes the annual foot-ball game between the Freshmen and Sophomores. The former having ad mores majorum given the challenge and received its acceptance, on some sunny autumn afternoon you may see the rival classes of perhaps a hundred men each, drawn up on the Green in battle and motley array, the latter consisting of shirt and pants, unsalable even to the sons of Israel, and huge boots, perhaps stuffed with paper to prevent hapless abrasion of shins. The steps of the State House are crowded with the 'upper classes,' and ladies are numerous in the balconies of the New-Haven Hotel. The umpires come forward, and the ground is cleared of intruders. There is a dead silence as an active Freshman, retiring to gain an impetus, rushes on; a general rush as the ball is warned; then a seizure of the disputed bladder, and futile endeavors to give it another impetus, ending in stout grappling and the endeavor to force it through. Now there is fierce issue; neither party gives an inch. Now there is a side movement and roll of the struggling orb as to relieve the pressure. Now one party gives a little, then closes desperately in again on the encouraged enemy. Now a dozen are down in a heap, and there is momentary cessation, then up and pressing on again. Here a fiery spirit grows pugnacious, but is restrained by his class-mates; there another has his shirt torn off him, and presents the picturesque appearance of an amateur scarecrow. There are, in short, both
'Breaches of peace and pieces of breeches,'
until the stronger party carries the ball over the bounds, or it gets without the crowd unobserved by most, and goes off hurriedly under the direction of some swift-footed player to the same goal. Then mighty is the cheering of the victors, and woe-begone the looks, though defiant the groans of the vanquished. And thus, with much noise and dispute, and great confounding of umpire, they continue for three, four, or five games, or until the evening chapel-bell calls to prayers. In the evening the victors sing pæans of victory by torch-light on the State House steps, and bouquets, supposed to be sent by the fair ones of the balconies, are presented and received with great glorification.
Nor less exciting and interesting in college annals, is the Burial of Euclid. The incipient Sophomores, assisted by the other classes, must perform duly the funeral rites of their friend of Freshman-days, by nocturnal services at the 'Temple.' Wherefore, toward midnight of some dark Wednesday evening in October, you may see masked and fantastically-dressed students by twos and threes stealing through the darkness to the common rendezvous. An Indian chief of gray leggins and grave demeanor goes down arm in arm with the prince of darkness, and a portly squire of the old English school communes sociably with a patriotic continental. Here is a reïnforcement of 'Labs,' (students of chemistry,) noisy with numerous fish-horns; there a detachment of 'Medics,' appropriately armed with thigh-bones, according to their several resources. Then, when gathered within the hall, a crowded mass of ugly masks, shocking bad hats, and antique attire, look down[Pg 272] from the steep slope of seats upon the stage where lies the effigy of Father Euclid, in inflammable state. After a voluntary by the 'Blow Hards,' 'Horne Blenders,' or whatever facetiously denominated band performs the music, there is a mighty singing of some Latin song, written with more reference to the occasion than to correct quantities, of which the following opening stanza may serve as a specimen:
The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs, and music by the band—'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,' and other equally solemn and rare productions. Then are torches lighted, and two by two the long train of torch-bearers defiles through the silent midnight streets to the sound of solemn music, and passing by the dark cemetery of the real dead, bear through 'Tutor's Lane' the coffin of their mathematical ancestor. They climb the hill beyond, and commit him to the flames, invoking Pluto, in Latin prayer, and chanting a final dirge, while the flare of torches, the fearful grotesqueness of each uncouth disguised wight, and the dark background of the encircling forest, make the wild mirth almost solemn.
So ends the fun of the closing year; and with the exception of the various excitements of burlesque debate on Thanksgiving eve, when the smallest Freshman in either Society is elected President pro tempore; of the noctes ambrosianæ of the secret societies; of appointments, prize essays, and the periodical issue of the Yale Literary, now a venerable periodical of twenty years' standing; the severe drill of college study finds little relaxation during the winter months. Three recitations or lectures each day, a review each day of the last lesson, review of and examination on each term's study, with two biennial examinations during the four years' course, require great diligence to excel, and considerable industry to keep above water. But with the returning spring the unused walks again are paced, and the dry keels launched into the vernal waters. Again, in the warm twilight of evening, you hear the laugh and song go up under the wide-spreading elms. Now, too, comes the Exhibition of the Wooden Spoon, where the low-appointment men burlesque the staid performances of college, and present the lowest scholar on the appointment-list with an immense spoon, handsomely carved from rosewood, and engraved with the convivial motto: 'Dum vivimus vivamus.'
Then, too, come those summer days upon the harbor, when the fleet club-boats, and their stalwart crews, like those of Alcinous,
'κοὑροι ἁναρρἱπτειν αλα πηδὡ,'
in their showy uniforms, push out from Ryker's; some bound upward past the oyster-beds of Fair Haven, away up among the salt-marsh meadows, where the Quinnipiac wanders under quaint old bridges among fair, green hills; some for the Light, shooting out into the broad waters of the open bay, their feathered oars flashing in the sunlight; some for Savin's Rock, where among the cool cedars that overshadow the steep rock, they sing uproarious student-songs until the dreamy beauty of ocean, with its laughing sunlight, its white sails, and green, quiet shores, like visible music, shall steal in and fill the soul until the noisy hilarity becomes eloquent silence. And now, as in the twilight-hour they are again afloat, you may hear the song again:
But perhaps the most interesting day of college-life is 'Presentation-Day,' when the Seniors, having passed the various ordeals of viva voce and written examinations, are presented by the senior tutor to the President, as worthy of their degrees. This ceremony is succeeded by a farewell poem and oration by two of the class chosen for the purpose, after which they partake of a collation with the college faculty, and then gather under the elms in front of the colleges. They seat themselves on a ring of benches, inside of which are placed huge tubs of lemonade, (the strongest drink provided for public occasions,) long clay pipes, and great store of mildest Turkey tobacco. Here, led on by an amateur band of fiddlers, flutists, etc., through the long afternoon of 'the leafy month of June,' surrounded by the other classes who crowd about in cordial sympathy, they smoke manfully, harangue enthusiastically, laugh uproariously, and sing lustily, beginning always with the glorious old Burschen song of 'Gaudeamus':
Then as the shadows grow long, perhaps they sing again those stirring words which one returning to the third semi-centennial of his Alma Mater, wrote with all the warmth and power of manly affection:
Then standing in closer circle, they pass around to give, each to each, a farewell grasp of the hand; and amid that extravagant merriment the lips begin to quiver, and eyes grow dim. Then, two by two, preceded by the miscellaneous band, playing 'The Road to Boston,' and headed by a huge base-viol, borne by two stout fellows, and played by a third, they pass through each hall of the long line of buildings, giving farewell cheers, and at the foot of one of the tall towers, each throws his handful of earth on the roots of an ivy, which, clinging about those brown masses of stone, in days to come, he trusts will be typical of their mutual, remembrance as he breathes the silent prayer: 'Lord, keep our memories green!'
So end the college-days of these most uproarious of mirth-makers and hardest of American students; and the hundred whose joys and sorrows have been identified through four happy years, are dispersed over the land. They are partially gathered again at Commencement, but the broken band is never completely united. On the third anniversary of their graduation, the first class-meeting takes place; and the first happy father is presented with a silver cup, suitably inscribed. On the tenth, twentieth, and other decennial years, the gradually diminishing band, in smaller and smaller numbers, meet about the beloved shrine, until only two or three gray-haired men clasp the once stout hand and renew the remembrance of 'the days that are gone.'
[1] 'In the fourteenth century, Novella de Andrea, daughter of the celebrated canonist, frequently occupied her father's chair; and her beauty was so striking, that a curtain was drawn before her in order not to distract the attention of the students.'
[2] Vol. i. p. 392.
[3] Vol. iii. pp. 379 and 473.
[4] The Linonian Society was founded in 1753; The Brothers in Unity, fifteen years later, in 1768.
John Neal was born at the close of the last century, in Portland, Maine, where he now resides; and during sixty years it has not been decided whether he or his twin sister was the elder.
He was born in 1793. When he was four weeks old, he was fatherless. His school education began early, as his mother was a celebrated teacher. From his mother's school he went to the town school, where he once declared in our hearing that he 'got licked, frozen, and stupefied.' That he had a rough time, may be inferred from the fact that his parents were Quakers, and he, notwithstanding his peaceful birthright, fought his way through the school as 'Quaker Neal.' He went barefoot in those days through a great deal of trouble. Somewhere in his early life, he went to a Quaker boarding-school at Windham, where he always averred that they starved him through two winters, till it was a luxury to get a mouthful of brown bread that was not a crumb or fragment that some one had left. At this school the boys learned to sympathize in advance with Oliver Twist—to eat trash, till they would quarrel for a bit of salt fish-skin, and to generalize in their hate of Friends from very narrow data. We have heard Neal speak of the two winters he spent in that school as by far the most miserable six or eight months of his whole life.
Very early, we think at the age of twelve years, he was imprisoned behind a counter, and continued there till he was near twenty; and by the time he was twenty one, he had worked his way to a retail shop of his own in Court street, Boston. We next track him to Baltimore, where, in 1815, if we are not out in our chronology, John Pierpont, John Neal, and Joseph L. Lord were in partnership in a wholesale trade. Neal's somersets in business—from partnership to wholesale jobbing, which he went into on his own hook with a capital of one hundred and fifty dollars, and as he once said, in speaking of this remarkable business operation, 'with about as much credit as a lamp-lighter'—may not be any more interesting to the public than they were to him then; so we shall not be particular about them in this chapter of chronicles.
At Baltimore he was very successful, after he got at it, in making money, but failed after the peace in 1816. This failure made him a lawyer. With his characteristic impetuosity, he renounced and denounced trade, determined to study law, and beat the profession with its own weapons.
This impulse drove him at rather more than railroad speed. He studied as if a demon chased him. By computation of then Justice Story, he accomplished fourteen years' hard work in four. During this time he was reading largely in half-a-dozen languages that he knew nothing of when he began, and maintaining himself by writing, either as editor of The Telegraph, coëditor of The Portico, (for which he wrote near a volume octavo in a year or two,) and also as joint-editor of Paul Allen's Revolution, besides a tremendous avalanche of novels and poetry. We have amused ourself casting up the amount of this four years' labor. It seems entirely too large for the calibre of common belief, and we suppose Neal will hardly believe us, especially if he have grown luxurious and lazy in these latter days. Crowded into these four years, we find: for the Portico and Telegraph, and half-a-dozen other papers, ten volumes; 'Keep Cool,' two volumes; 'Seventy-Six,' two volumes; 'Errata,' two volumes; 'Niagara and Goldau,' two volumes; Index to Niles' Register, three volumes; 'Otho,' one volume; 'Logan,' four volumes; 'Randolph,' two volumes; Buckingham's Galaxy, Miscellanies, and Poetry, two volumes; making the incredible quantity of thirty volumes. He could no more have gone leisurely and[Pg 276] carefully through this amount of work, than a skater could walk a mile a minute on his skates. The marvel is, that he got through it on any terms, not that he won his own disrespect forever. We do not wonder that he manufactured more bayonets than bee-stings for his literary armory, but we wonder that he became a literary champion at all. With all the irons Neal had in the fire, we are not to expect Addisonian paragraphs; and yet he has in his lifetime been mistaken for Washington Irving, as we can show by an extract from an old letter of his, which we will give by and by.
A power that could produce what Neal produced between 1819 and 1823, properly disciplined and economized, might have performed tasks analogous to those of the lightning, since it has been put in harness and employed to carry the mail. When genius has its day of humiliation for the wasted water of life, Neal may put on sackcloth, for he never economized his power; but for the soul's fire quenched in idleness, or smothered in worldliness, certainly for these years, he need wear no weeds.
His novels are always like a rushing torrent, never like a calm stream. They all are dignified with a purpose, with a determination to correct some error, to remedy some abuse, to do good in any number of instances. They are not unlike a field of teasels in blossom—there are the thorny points of this strange plant, and the delicate and exceedingly beautiful blossom beside, resting on the very points of a hundred lances, with their lovely lilac bloom. Those who have lived where teasels grow will understand this illustration. We doubt not it will seem very pointed and proper to Neal. It must be remembered that the teasel is a very useful article in dressing cloth, immense cards of them being set in machinery and made to pass over the cloth and raise and clean the nap. A criticism taking in all the good and bad points of these novels, would be too extensive to pass the door of any review or magazine, unless in an extra. They are full of the faults and virtues of their author's unformed character. Rich as a California mine, we only wish they could be passed through a gold-washer, and the genuine yield be thrown again into our literary currency.
The character of his poems is indicated by their titles, 'Niagara' and 'Goldau,' and by the nom de plume he thought proper to publish them under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's wing and the roar of rushing waters.
We read his 'Otho' years since, when we were younger than now, and our pulse beat stronger; and we read it 'holding our breath to the end'—or this was the exact sensation we felt, as nearly as we can remember, twelve years ago.
The character of Neal's periodical writing was just suited to a working country, that was in too great a hurry to dine decently. People wanted to be arrested. If they could stop, they had brains enough to judge you and your wares; but they needed to be lassoed first, and lashed into quietness afterward, and then they would hear and revere the man who had been 'smart' enough to conquer them. John Neal seemed to be conscious of this without knowing it. A veritable woman in his intuitions, he spoke from them, and the heart of the people responded. The term 'live Yankee' was of his coinage, and it aptly christened himself.
Neal went to Europe in 1823, and remained three years. That an American could manage to maintain himself in England by writing, which Neal did, is a pregnant fact. But his power is better proved than in this way. He left America with a vow of temperance during his travels; he returned with it unbroken. Honor to the strong man![Pg 277] He had traveled through England and France, merely wetting his lips with wine. He wrote volumes for British periodicals, and also his 'Brother Jonathan' in three volumes. After looking over the catalogue of his labors for an hour, we always want to draw a long breath and rest. There is no doubt that since his return from Europe in 1826, he has written and published, in books and newspapers, what would make at least one hundred volumes duodecimo. It would be a hard fate for such an author to be condemned to read his own productions, for he would never get time to read any thing else.
Neal's peculiar style caused many oddities and extravagances to be laid at his door that did not belong there. From this fact of style, people thought he could not disguise himself on paper. This is a mistake, for his papers in Miller's European Magazine were attributed to Washington Irving. We transcribe the paragraph of a letter from Neal, promised above, and which we received years since:
'The papers I wrote for Miller's European Magazine have been generally attributed to no less a person than Washington Irving—a man whom I resemble just about as much in my person as in my writing. He, Addisonian and Goldsmithian to the back-bone, and steeped to the very lips in what is called classical literature, of which I have a horror and a loathing, as the deadest of all dead languages; he, foil of subdued pleasantry, quiet humor, and genial blandness, upon all subjects. I, altogether—but never mind. He is a generous fellow, and led the way to all our triumphs in that 'field of the cloth of gold' which men call the literary'.
Neal went to England a sort of Yankee knight-errant to fight for his country. He had the wisdom to fight with his visor down, and quarter on the enemy. He took heavy tribute from Blackwood and others for his articles vindicating America, which came to be extravagantly quoted and read. His article for Blackwood on the Five Presidents and the Five Candidates, portraying General Jackson to the life as he afterward proved to be, was translated into most of the European languages. I transcribe another paragraph from an old letter. It is too characteristic to remain unread by the public:
'For my paper on the Presidents, Blackwood sent me five guineas, and engaged me as a regular contributor, which I determined to be. But I ventured to write for other journals without consulting him; whereat he grew tetchy and impertinent, and I blew him up sky-high, recalled an article in type for which he had paid me fifteen guineas, (I wish he had kept it,) refunded the money, (I wish I hadn't,) and left him forever. But this I will say: Blackwood behaved handsomely to me from first to last, with one small exception, and showed more courage and good feeling toward 'my beloved country' while I was at the helm of that department, than any and all the editors, publishers, and proprietors in Britain. Give the devil his due, I say!'
This escapade with Blackwood might have been a national loss; but happily, Neal had accomplished his purpose—vindicated his country by telling the truth, and by showing in himself the metal of one of her sons. He had silenced the whole British battery of periodicals who had been abusing America. He had forced literary England to a capitulation, and he could well enough afford to leave his fifteen guineas at Blackwood's, and go to France for recreation, as he did about this time.
In 1826 he returned to America, and applied for admission to the New-York bar. This started a hornet's nest. He had been 'sarving up' too many newspaper and other scribblers, to be left in peace any longer. With an excellent opinion of himself, his contempt was often quite as large, to say the least of it, as his charity; and he had doubtless, at times, in England, ridiculed his countrymen to the full of their deserving; knowing that if he admitted the debtor side honestly, he would be allowed to fix the amount of credit without controversy. His Yankees are alarming specimens, which a growing civilization has so nearly 'used up' that they are now regarded somewhat like fossil remains of some extinct species of animal.[Pg 278]
About the time Neal applied for admission to the New-York bar, a portion of the people of Portland, stimulated by the aggrieved literati above mentioned, determined to elevate themselves into a mob pro tem., and expel him from Portland. In the true spirit of his Quaker ancestry, who, some one has said, always decided they were needed where they were not wanted, Neal determined to stay in Portland, The mobocrats declared that he was sold to the British. Neal retorted, in cool irony, that 'he only wished he had got an offer.' They asserted that he was the mortal enemy of our peculiar institutions, and that therefore he must be placarded and mobbed. Hand-bills were issued, and widely circulated. But they did not effect their object. They only drove this son of the Quakers to swear that he would stay in Portland. And he did stay, and established a literary paper, though he once said to us that 'he would as soon have thought of setting up a Daily Advertiser in the Isle of Shoals three months before.'
His marriage took place about this time, and was, as he used to say, his pledge for good behavior. His wife was one of the loveliest of New-England's daughters, and looked as if she might tame a tiger by the simple magic of her presence. It is several years since we have met Neal, and near a dozen since we saw him in his home. At that time he must have been greatly in fault not to be a proud and happy man. If a calm, restful exterior, and a fresh and youthful beauty, are signs of happiness, then Mrs. Neal was one of the happiest women in the world. The delicate softness, the perfection of youth in her beauty, lives still in our memory. It is one of those real charms that never drop through the mind's meshes.
Judging from Neal's impulsive nature, he was not the last man to do something to be sorry for; but his wife and children looked as if they were never sorry. We remember a little girl of some five or six years; we believe they called her Maggie. Her dimpled cheek, her white round neck and arms, and the perfect symmetry of her form, and the grace of her motions, have haunted us these twelve years. We would not promise to remember her as long or as well if we should see her again in these days. But we made up our mind then, that we would rather be the father of that child than the author of all Neal had written, or might have written, even though he had been a wise and prudent man, and had done his work as well as he doubtless wishes now that he had done it. Neal is only half himself away from his beautiful home. There, he is in place—an eagle in a nest lined with down, soft as eider. There his fine taste is manifest in every thing. If we judge of his taste by his rapidly-written works, we are sure to do him injustice. We find in him a union of the most opposite qualities. We can not say a harmonious union. An inflexible industry is not often united with a bird-like celerity and grace of movement. With Neal, the two first have always been combined—the whole on occasions, which might have been multiplied into unbroken continuity if he had possessed the calm greatness that never hastens and never rests. He did not rest; but through the first half of his life, he surely forgot the Scripture which saith: 'He that believeth shall not make haste.' It has often been asserted, that power which has rest is greater than a turbulent power. We shall not attempt to settle whether Erie or Niagara is greater, but we should certainly choose the Lake for purposes of navigation.
Many men are careless of their character in private, but sufficiently careful in public. The reverse is true of Neal. He has never hesitated to throw his gauntlet in the face of the public as he threw his letters of introduction in the fire when he arrived in Europe. But when he comes into the charmed circle of his home, he is neither reckless nor pugilistic, but a downright gentleman. We don't mean to say that Neal never gets in a passion in private, or that he never needed the wholesome restraint of a strait-waistcoat in the disputes of a[Pg 279] Portland Lyceum or debating-club. We do not give illustrative anecdotes, because a lively imagination can conceive them, and probably has manufactured several that have been afloat; still, we dare guess that the subject has sometimes given facts to base the fictions on.
We speak of the past. A man with a forty-wildcat power imprisoned in him is not very likely to travel on from youth to age, keeping the peace on all occasions. Years bring a calming wisdom. The same man who once swore five consecutive minutes, because he was forbidden by his landlady to swear on penalty of leaving her house, and then made all the inmates vote to refrain from profane language, and rigidly enforced the rule thus democratically established, is now, after a lapse of more than thirty years, (particularly provoking impulse aside,) a careful and dignified gentleman, who might be a Judge, if the public so willed.
That a long line of intellectual and finely developed ancestry gives a man a better patent of nobility than all the kings of all countries could confer, is beginning to be understood and believed among us; though the old battle against titles and privilege, and the hereditary descent of both, for a time blinded Americans to the true philosophy of noble birth.
Neal's ancestors came originally from Scotland, and exemplify the proverb that 'bluid is thicker than water,' in more ways than one. They have a strong feeling of clanship, or, in other words, they are convinced that it is an honor to be a Neal, and many of the last generation have given proof positive that their belief is a fact. The present generation we have little knowledge of, and do not know whether they fulfill the promise of the name.
Neal has done good service to the Democracy of our country in many ways, besides being one of the first and bravest champions of woman's rights. He has labored for our literature with an ability commensurate with his zeal, and he has drawn many an unfledged genius from the nest, encouraged him to try his wings, and magnetized him into self-dependence. A bold heavenward flight has often been the consequence. A prophecy of Neal's that an idea or a man would succeed, has seldom failed of fulfillment. We can not say this of the many aspiring magazines and periodicals that have solicited the charity of his name. We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy, from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a canonical age. According to this mode of generalization, Neal could be convicted of causing the premature death of nine tenths of the defunct periodicals in this country—probably no great sin, if it really lay at his door.
In a brief outline sketch, such as we have chosen to produce, our readers will perceive that only slight justice can be done to a man in the manifold relations to men and things which contribute to form the character.
John Neal's personal appearance is a credit to the country. He is tall, with a broad chest, and a most imposing presence. One of the finest sights we ever saw, was Neal standing with his arms folded before a fine picture. His devotion to physical exercise, and his personal example to his family in the practice of it—training his wife and children to take the sparring-gloves and cross the foils with him in those graceful attitudes which he could perfectly teach, because they were fully developed in himself—all this has inevitably contributed to the health and beauty of his beautiful family.
Few men have had so many right ideas of the art or science of living as John Neal, and fewer still have acted upon them so faithfully. When we last saw him, some ten years since—when he had lived more than half a century—his eye had lost none of its original fire, not a nerve or sinew was unbraced by care, labor, or struggle. He stood before[Pg 280] us, a noble specimen of the strong and stalwart growth of a new and unexhausted land.
Note,—The foregoing must have been written years ago, if one may judge by the color of the paper; and as the writer is now abroad, so as not to be within reach, the manuscript has been put into the hands of a gentleman who has been more or less acquainted with Mr. Neal from his boyhood up, and he has consented to finish the article by bringing down the record to our day, and putting on what he calls a 'snapper.'
Most of what follows, if we do not wholly misunderstand the intimations that accompany the manuscript, is in the very language of Mr. Neal himself word for word; gathered up we care not how, whether from correspondence or conversation, so that there is no breach of manly trust and no indecorum to be charged.
'As to my family,' he writes, in reply to some body's questioning, 'I know not where they originated, nor how. Sometimes I have thought, although I have never said as much before, that we must have come up of ourselves—the spontaneous growth of a rude, rocky soil, swept by the boisterous north-wind, and washed by the heavy surges of some great unvisited sea. Of course, the writer you mention, who says that my ancestors—if I ever had any—'came from Scotland,' must know something that I never heard of, to the best of my recollection and belief. Somewhere in England I have supposed they originated, and probably along the coast of Essex; for there, about Portsmouth and Dover, I have always felt so much at home in the graveyards—among my own household, as it were, the names being so familiar to me, and the grave-stones now to be seen in Portsmouth and Dover, New-Hampshire, where the Neals were first heard of three or four generations ago, being duplicates of some I saw in Portsmouth and Dover, England.
'Others have maintained, with great earnestness and plausibility, as if it were something to brag of, that we have the blood of Oliver Cromwell in us; and one, at least, who has gone a-field into heraldry, and strengthens every position with armorial bearings—which only goes to show the unprofitableness of all such labor, so far as we are concerned—that we are of the 'red O'Neals,' not the learned O'Neals, if there ever were any, but the 'red O'Neals of Ireland,' and that I am, in fact, a lineal descendant of that fine fellow who 'bearded' Queen Elizabeth in her presence-chamber, with his right hand clutching the hilt of his dagger.
'But, for myself, I must acknowledge that if I ever had a great-great-grandfather, I know not where to dig for him—on my father's side, I mean; for on the side of my mother I have lots of grandfathers and great-grandfathers—and furthermore this deponent sayeth not—up to the days of George Fox; enough, I think, to show clearly that the Neals did not originate among the aborigines of the New World, whatever may be supposed to the contrary. And so, in a word, the whole sum and substance of all I know about my progenitors, male and female, is, that they were always a sober-minded, conscientious, hard-working race, with a way and a will of their own, and a habit of seeing for themselves, and judging for themselves, and taking the consequences.
'Nor is it true that I am a 'large' or 'tall' man, though, in some unaccountable way, always passing for a great deal more than I would ever measure or weigh; and my own dear mother having lived and died in the belief that I was good six feet, and well-proportioned, like my father. My inches never exceeded five feet eight-and-a-half, and my weight never varied from one hundred and forty-seven to one hundred and forty-nine pounds, for about five-and-forty years; after which, getting fat and lazy, I have come to weigh from one hundred and sixty-five to one hundred and seventy-five pounds, without being an inch taller, I am quite sure.'
Mr. Neal owns up, it appears, to the following publications, omitted by the writer of the article you mentioned: 'Rachel Dyer,' one volume; 'Authorship,' one volume; 'Brother Jonathan,' three volumes, (English edition;) 'Ruth[Pg 281] Elder,' one volume; 'One Word More;' 'True Womanhood,' one volume; magazine articles, reviews, and stories in most of the British and American monthlies, and in some of the quarterlies, to the amount of twenty volumes, at least, duodecimo. In addition to which, he has been a liberal contributor all his life to some of the ablest newspapers of the age, and either sole or sub-editor, or associate, in perhaps twenty other enterprises, most of which fell through.
He claims, too—being a modest man—and others who know him best acknowledge his claims, we see—that he revolutionized Blackwood and the British periodical press, at a time when they were all against us; that he began the war on titles in this country, that he broke up the lottery system and the militia system, and proposed (through the Westminster Review) the only safe and reasonable plan of emancipation that ever appeared; that with him originated the question of woman's rights; that he introduced gymnasia to our people; and, in short, that he has always been good for something, and always lived to some purpose. 'And furthermore deponent sayeth not.'
When Charles Dickens expressed regret for having written his foolish American Notes, and Martin Chuzzlewit, he 'improved the occasion' to call us a large-hearted and good-natured people, or something to that effect—I have not his peccavi by me, and write from 'a favorable general impression.'
It is not weak vanity which may lead any American to claim that in this compliment lies a great truth. The American is large-hearted and good-natured, and when a few of his comrades join in a good work, he will aid them with a lavish and Jack-tar like generosity. Charity is peculiarly at home in America. A few generations have accumulated, in all the older States, hospitals, schools, and beneficent institutions, practically equal in every respect to those which have been the slow growth of centuries in any European country. The contributions to the war, whether of men or money, have been incredible. And there is no stint and no grumbling. The large heart is as large and generous as ever.
The war has, however, despite all our efforts, become an almost settled institution. This is a pity—we all feel it bitterly, and begin to grow serious. Still there is no flinching. Flinching will not help; we must go on in the good cause, in God's name. 'Shall there not be clouds as well as sunshine?' 'Go in, then'—that is agreed upon. Draft your men, President Lincoln; raise your money, Mr. Chase, we are ready. To the last man and the last dollar we are ready. History shall speak of the American of this day as one who was as willing to spend money for national honor as he was earnest and keen in gathering it up for private emolument. Go ahead!
But let us do every thing advisedly and wisely.
In the first flush of war, it was not necessary to look so closely at the capital. We pulled out our loose change and bank-notes, and scattered them bravely—as we should. Now that more and still more are needed, we should look about to see how to turn every thing to best account. For instance, there is the matter of soldiers. Those who rose in 1861, and went impulsively to battle, acted gloriously—even more noble will it be with every volunteer who now, after hearing of the horrors of[Pg 282] war, still resolutely and bravely shoulders the musket and dares fate. God sends these times to the world and to men as 'jubilees' in which all who have lost an estate, be it of a calling or a social position, may regain it or win a new one.
But still we want to present every inducement. Already the lame and crippled soldiers are beginning to return among us. The poor souls, ragged and sun-burnt, may be seen at every corner. They sit in the parks with unhealed wounds; they hobble along the streets, many of them weary and worn; poor fellows! they are greater, and more to be envied than many a fresh fopling who struts by. And the people feel this. They treat them kindly, and honor them.
But would it not be well if some general action could be adopted on the subject of taking care of all the incurables which this war is so rapidly sending us? If every township in America would hold meetings and provide honorably in some way for the returned crippled soldiers, they would assume no great burden, and would obviate the most serious drawback which the country is beginning to experience as regards obtaining volunteers. It has already been observed by the press, that the scattering of these poor fellows over the country is beginning to have a discouraging effect on those who should enter the army. It is a pity; we would very gladly ignore the fact, and continue to treat the question solely con entusiasmo, and as at first; but what is the use of endeavoring to shirk facts which will only weigh more heavily in the end from being inconsidered now? Let us go to work generously, great-heartedly, and good-naturedly, to render the life of every man who has been crippled for the country as little of a burden as possible.
Dear readers, it will not be sufficient to guarantee to these men a pauper's portion among you. I do not pretend to say what you should give them, or what you should do for them. I only know that there are but two nations on the face of the earth capable of holding town-meetings and acting by spontaneous democracy for themselves. One of these is represented by the Russian serfs, who administer their mir or 'commune' with a certain beaver-like instinct, providing for every man his share of land, his social position, his rights, so far as they are able. The Englishman, or German, or Frenchman, is not capable of this natural town-meeting sort of action. He needs 'laws,' and government, and a lord or a squire in the chair, or a demagogue on the rostrum. The poor serf does it by custom and instinct.
The Bible Communism of the Puritans, and the habit of discussing all manner of secular concerns in meeting, originated this same ability in America. To this, more than to aught else, do we owe the growth of our country. One hundred Americans, transplanted to the wild West and left alone, will, in one week, have a mayor, and 'selectmen,' a town-clerk, and in all probability a preacher and an editor. One hundred Russian serfs will not rise so high as this; but leave them alone in the steppe, and they will organize a mir, elect a starosta, or 'old man,' divide their land very honestly, and take care of the cripples!
Such nations, but more especially the American, can find out for themselves, much better than any living editor can tell them, how to provide liberally for those who fought while they remained at home. The writer may suggest to them the subject—they themselves can best 'bring it out.'
In trials like these it is very essential that our habits of meeting, discussing and practically acting on such measures, should be more developed than ever. We have come to the times which test republican institutions, and to crises when the public meeting—the true corner-stone of all our practical liberties—should be brought most boldly, freely, and earnestly into action. Politics and feuds should vanish from every honorable and noble mind, and all unite in cordial[Pg 283] coöperation for the good work. Friends, there is nothing you can not do, if you would only get together, inspire one another, and do your very best. You could raise an army which would drive these rebel rascals howling into their Dismal Swamps, or into Mexico, in a month, if you would only combine in earnest and do all you can.
Hitherto the man of ease, and the Respectable, disgusted by the politicians, has neglected such meetings, and left them too much to the Blackguard to manage after his own way. But this is a day of politics no longer; at least, those who try to engineer the war with a view to the next election, are in a fair way to be ranked with the enemies of the country, and to earn undying infamy. The only politics which the honest man now recognizes is, the best way to save the country; to raise its armies and fight its battles. It is not McClellan or anti-McClellan, which we should speak of, but anti-Secession. And paramount among the principal means of successfully continuing the war, I place this, of properly caring for the disabled soldier, and of placing before those who have not as yet enlisted, the fact, that come what may, they will be well looked after, for life.
As I said, the common-sense of our minor municipalities will abundantly provide for these poor fellows, if a spirit can be awakened which shall sweep over the country and induce the meetings to be held. In many, something has already been done. But something liberal and large is requisite. Government will undoubtedly do its share; and this, if properly done, will greatly relieve our local commonwealths. Here, indeed, we come to a very serious question, which has been already discussed in these pages—more boldly, as we are told, than our cotemporaries have cared to treat it, and somewhat in advance of others. We refer to our original proposition to liberally divide Southern lands among the army, and convert the retired soldier to a small planter. Such men would very soon contrive to hire the 'contraband,' get him to working, and make something better of him than planterocracy ever did. At least, this is what Northern ship-captains and farmers contrive to do, in their way, with numbers of coal-black negroes, and we have no doubt that the soldier-planter will manage, 'somehow,' to get out a cotton-crop, even with the aid of hired negroes! Here, again, a bounty could be given to the wounded. Observe, we mean a bounty which shall, to as high a degree as is possible or expedient, fully recompense a man for losing a limb. And as we can find in Texas alone, land sufficient to nobly reward a vast proportion of our army, it will be seen that I do not propose any excessive or extravagant reward.
Between our municipalities and our government, much should be done. But will not this prove a two-stool system of relief, between which the disbanded soldier would fall to the ground? Not necessarily. Let our towns and villages do their share, pledging themselves to take good care of the disabled veteran, and to find work for all until Government shall apportion the lands of the conquered among the army.
And let all this be done soon. Let it forthwith form a part of the long cried for 'policy' which is to inspire our people. If this had been a firmly determined thing from the beginning, and if we had dared to go bravely on with it, instead of being terrified at every proposal to act, by the yells and howls of the Northern secessionists, we might have cleared Dixie out as fire clears tow. 'The enemy,' said one who had been among them, 'have the devil in them.' If our men had something solid to look forward to, they too, would have the devil in them, and no mistake. They fight bravely as it is, without much inducement beyond patriotism and a noble cause. But the 'secesh' soldier has more than this—he has the desperation of a traitor in a bad cause, of a fanatic and of a natural savage. It is no slur at the patriotism of our troops to say that they would fight better for[Pg 284] such a splendid inducement as we hold out.
We may as well do all we can for the army—at home and away, here and there, with all our hearts and souls. For it will come to that sooner or later. The army is a terrible power, and its power has been, and is to be, terribly exerted. If we would organize it betimes, prevent it from becoming a social trouble, or rather make of it a great social support and a help instead of a future hindrance and a drag, we must be busy at work providing for it. There it is—destined, perhaps, to rise to a million—the flower, strength, and intellect of America, our productive force, our brain—yes, the great majority of our mills, and looms, and printing-presses, and all that is capital-producing, are there, in those uniforms. There, friends, lie towns and cities, towers and palace-halls, literature and national life—for there are the brains and arms which make these things. Those uniforms are not to be, at least, should not be, forever there. But manage meanly and weakly and stingily now, and you destroy the cities and fair castles, the uniform remains in the myriad ranks, war becomes interminable, the soldier becomes nothing but a soldier—God avert the day!—and you will find yourself some day telling your grand-children—if you have any, for I can inform you that the chances of war diminish many other chances—how 'things might have been, and how finely we might have conquered the enemy and had an undivided country—God bless us!'
Will the WOMEN of America take no active part in this movement?
Many years ago, a German writer—one Kirsten—announced the extraordinary fact, that in the Atlantic States the proportion of women who died unmarried, or of 'old maids,' was larger than in any European country. It is certainly true that, owing to the high standard of expenses adopted by the children of respectable American parents—and what American is not 'respectable'?—we are far less apt to rush into 'imprudent' marriages than is generally supposed. But what proportion of unmarried dames will there be, if drafting continues, and the war becomes a permanent annual subject of draft? The prospect is seriously and simply frightful! The wreck of morality in France caused by Napoleon's wars is notorious, for previous to that time the French peasantry were not so debauched as they subsequently became. But this shocking subject requires no comment.
On with the war! Drive it, push it, send it howling and hissing on like the wild tornado, like the mad levin-brand, right into the foe! Pay the soldier—promise—pledge—do any thing and every thing; but raise an overwhelming force, and end the war.
Up and fight!
It is better to die now than see such disaster as awaits this country if war become a fixed disease.
Bulwer, in narrating the literary career of a young Chinese, states how one of his works was very severely handled by the Celestial critics: one of the gravest of the charges brought against it by these poll-shaved, wooden-shod, little-foot-worshiping, Great-Wall-building mandarins of literature being its extreme originality! They denounced Fihoti as having sinned the unpardonable literary sin of writing a book, a large share of whose ideas was nowhere to be found in the writings of Confucius.
But how strange such a charge would sound in our English ears! With us, if between two authors the most remote resemblance of idea or expression can be detected, straightway some ultraist stickler for originality—some Poe—shrieks out, 'Some body must be a thief!' and forthwith, all along the highways of reviewdom, is sent up the hue and cry: 'Stop thief! stop thief!' For has not the law thundered from Sinai, 'Thou shalt not steal'? True, plagiarism is nowhere distinctly forbidden by Moses; but have not critics judicially pronounced it author-theft? Has not metaphor been sounded through every note of its key-board, to strike out all that is base whereunto to liken it? Have not old Dr. Johnson's seven-footed words—the tramp of whose heavy brogans has echoed down the staircase of years even unto our day—declared plagiarists from the works of buried writers 'jackals, battening on dead men's thoughts'?
And yet, after a vast deal of such like catachresis, the orthodoxy of plagiarism remains still in dispute. What we incorporate among the cardinal articles of literary faith, China abjures as a dangerous heresy. But neither our own nor the Chinese creed consists wholly of tested bullion, but is crude ore, in which the pure gold of truth is mingled with the dross of error. That is a golden tenet of the tea-growers which licenses the borrowing of ideas; that 'of the earth, earthy,' which embargoes every one unborrowed. We build upon a rock when interdicting plagiarism; but on sand when we make that term inclose author-theft and author-borrowing. The making direct and unacknowledged quotations, and palming them off as the quoter's, is a very grave literary offense. But the expression of similar or even identical thoughts in different language, in this age of the world must be tolerated, or else the race of authors soon become as extinct as that of behemoths and ichthyosauri; and, indeed, far from levying any imposts upon author-borrowing, rather ought we to vote bounties and pensions to encourage it.
Originality of thought with men is impossible. There is in existence a certain amount of thought, but it all belongs to God. Lord paramount over the empire of mind as well as matter, he alone is seized, in fee simple right, of the whole domain: provinces of which men hold, as fiefs, by vassal tenure, subject to reversion and enfeoffment to another. Nor can any man absolve himself from his allegiance, and extend absolute sovereignty over broad tracts of idea-territory; for while feudal princes vested in themselves, by conquest merely, the ownership of kingdoms, God became suzerain over the empire of thought by virtue of creation—for creation confers right of property. We do not, then, originate the thoughts we call our own; or else Pantheism tells no lie when it declares that man is God, for the differentia which distinguishes God from man is absolute creative power. And if man be thought-creative, he can as well as God give being unto what was non-existent, and that, too, not mere gross, perishable matter, but immortal soul; for thought is mind, and mind is spirit, soul, undying, immortal. Grant that, and you divide God's empire, and enthrone the creature in equal sovereignty beside his Maker.[Pg 286]
All thought, then, belongs exclusively to God, and is parceled out by him, as he chooses, among his creature feudatories. As the wind, which bloweth where it listeth, and no one knoweth whence it cometh, save that it is sent by God, so is thought, as it blows through our minds. Over birds, flying at liberty through the free air, boys often advance claims of ownership more specific than are easily derived from the general dominion God gave man over the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; yet, 'All those birds are mine!' exclaims a youngster in roundabout, with just as much reason as any man can claim, as exclusively his own, the thoughts which are ever winging their way through the firmament of mind.
But considered apart from the relation we sustain to God, none of us are original with respect to our fellow-men. Few, indeed, are the ideas we derive by direct grant, or through nature, from our liege lord; but far the greater share, by hooks or personal contact, we gather through our fellow-men. Consciously, unconsciously, we all teach—we all learn from, one another. Association does far more toward forming mind than natural endowments. As not alone the soil whence it springs makes the oak, but surrounding elements contribute. Seclude a human mind entirely from hooks and men, and you may have a man with no ideas borrowed from his fellows. Such a one, in Germany, once grew up from childhood to manhood in close imprisonment, and poor Kasper Hauser proved—an idiot. It can hardly be necessary to suggest the well-known fact, that the greatest readers of men and books always possess the greatest minds. Such are, besides, of the greatest service to mankind. For since God has so formed us that we love to give as well as take, a great independent mind, complete in itself and incapable of receiving from others, must always stand somewhat apart from men; and even a great heart, when conjoined—as it seldom is—with a great head, is rarely able to drawbridge over the wide moat which intrenches it in solitary loneliness. Originality ever links with it something of uncongeniality—a feeling somewhat akin to the egotism of that one who, when asked why he talked so much to himself, replied—for two reasons: the one, that he liked to talk to a sensible man; the other, that he liked to hear a sensible man talk. Divorcing itself from fellow-sympathies, it broods over its own perfections, till, like Narcissus, it falls in love with itself. And so, a highly original man can rarely ever be a highly popular man or author. By the very super-abundance of his excellencies, his usefulness is destroyed; just as Tarpeia sank, buried beneath the presents of the Sabine soldiery. A Man once appeared on earth, of perfect originality; and in him, to an unbounded intellect was added boundless moral power. But men received him not. They rejected his teachings; they smote him; they crucified him.
But though the right of eminent domain over ideas does and should inhere in one superior to us, far different is the case with words. These 'incarnations of thought' are of man's device, and therefore his; and style—the peculiar manner in which one uses words to express ideas—is individually personal. Indeed, style has been defined the man himself; a definition, so far as he is recognized only as a revealer of thought, substantially correct. In an idea word-embodied, the embodier, then, possesses with God concurrent ownership. The idea itself may be borrowed, or it may be his so far as discovery gives title; but the words, in their arrangement, are absolutely his. All ideas are like mathematical truths: eternal and unchangeable in their essence, and originate in nature; words like figures, of a fixed value, but of human invention; and sentences are formulæ, embodying oftentimes the same essential truth, but in shapes as various as their paternity. Words, in sentences, should then be inviolate to their author.
Nor is this to value words above ideas—the flesh above the spirit of which it is but the incarnation. It is[Pg 287] not the intrinsic value of each that we here regard, but the value of the ownership one has in each. 'Deacon Giles and I,' said a poor man, 'own more cows than any five other men in the county.' 'How many does Deacon Giles own?' asked a bystander. 'Nineteen.' 'And how many do you?' 'One.' And that one cow, which that poor man owned, was worth more to him than the nineteen which were Deacon Giles's. So, when you have determined whose the style is which enfolds a thought, whose the thought is, is as little worth dispute as, after its wrappage of corn has been shelled off, the cob's ownership is worth a quarrel.
As thoughts bodied in words uttered make up conversation, thought incarnate in words written constitutes literature. The gross sum of thought with which God has seen to dower the human mind, though vast, is finite, and may be exhausted. Indeed, we are told this had been already done so long ago as times whereof Holy Writ takes cognizance. Since that time, then, men have been echoing and reëchoing the same old ideas. And though words, too, are finite, their permutations are infinite. What Himalayan piles of paper, river-coursed by Danubes and Niagaras of ink, hath the 'itch of writing' aggregated! And yet, Ganganelli says that every thing that man has ever written might be contained within six thousand folio volumes, if filled with only original matter. But how books lie heaped on one another, weighing down those under, weighed down by those above them; each crushed and crushing; their thoughts, like bones of skeletons corded in convent vault, mingled in confusion—like those which Hawthorne tells us Miriam saw in the burial-cellar of the Capuchin friars in Rome, where, when a dead brother had lain buried an allotted period, his remains, removed from earth to make room for a successor, were piled with those of others who had died before him.
It is said Aurora once sought and gained from Jove the boon of immortality for one she loved; but forgetting to request also perpetual youth, Tithonus gradually grew old, his thin locks whitened, his wasting frame dwindled to a shadow, and his feeble voice thinned down till it became inaudible. And just so ideas, although immortal, were it not for author-borrowers, through age grown obsolete, might virtually perish. But by and by, just as some precious thought is being lost unto the world, let there come some Medea, by whose potent sorcery that old and withered idea receives new life-blood through its shrunken veins, and it starts to life again with recreated vigor—another Æson, with the bloom of youth upon him. Besides in this way playing the physician to save old ideas from a burial alive, the author-borrower often delivers many a prolific mother-thought of a whole family of children—as a prism from out a parent ray of colorless light brings all the bright colors of the spectrum, which, from red to violet, were all waiting there only for its assistance to leap into existence; or sometimes he plays the parson, wedlocking thoughts from whose union issue new; as from yellow wedded to red springs orange, a new, a secondary life; or enacts, maybe, the brood-hen's substitute. Many a thought is a Leda egg, imprisoning twin life-principles, which,, incubated in the eccaleobion brain of an author-borrower, have blessed the world; but without such a foster-parent, in some neglected nest staled and addled, had never burst the shell.
Author-borrowing should also be encouraged, because it tends to language's perfection, and thus to incrementing the value of the ideas it vehicles; for though a gilding diction and elegant expression may not directly increase a thought's intrinsic worth, yet by bestowing beauty it increases its utility, and so adds relative value—just as a rosewood veneering does to a basswood table. There may be as much raw timber in a slab as in a bunch of shingles, but the latter is worth the most; it will find a purchaser where the former would not. So there may be as much truly valuable thought in a dull[Pg 288] sermon as in a lively lecture; but the lecture will please, and so instruct, where the dull sermon will fall on an inattentive ear. Moreover, author minds are of two classes, the one deep-thinking, the other word-adroit. Providence bestows her favors frugally; and with the power of quarrying out huge lumps of thought, ability to work them over into graceful form is rarely given. This is no new doctrine, but a truth clearly recognized in metaphysics, and evidenced in history. Cromwell was a prodigious thinker; but in language, oh! how deficient. His thoughts, struggling to force themselves out of that sphynx-like jargon which he spake and wrote, appear like the treasures of the shipwrecked Trojans, swimming 'rari in gurgite vasto'—Palmyra columns, reared in the midst of a desert of sentences. And Coleridge—than whom in the mines of mental science few have dug deeper, and though Xerxes-hosts of word-slaves waited on his pen—often wrote apparently mere bagatelle—the most transcendental nonsense. Yet he who takes the pains to husk away his obscurity of style will find solid ears of thought to recompense his labor. Bentham and Kant required interpreters—Dumont and Cousin—to make understood what was well worth understanding. These two kinds of authors—thought-creditors and borrowing expressionists—are as mutually necessary to each other to bring out idea in its most perfect shape, as glass and mercury to mirror objects. Dim, indeed, is the reflection of the glass without its coating of quicksilver; and amalgam, without a plate on which to spread it, can never form a mirror. The metal and the silex are
'Useless each without the other;'
but wed them, and from their union spring life-like images of life.
But it may be objected that in trying to improve a thought we often mar it; just as in transplanting shrubs from the barren soil in which they have become fast rooted, to one more fertile, we destroy them. 'Just as the fabled lamps in the tomb of Terentia burned underground for ages, but when removed into the light of day, went out in darkness.' That this sometimes occurs, we own. Some ideas are as fragile as butterflies, whom to handle is to destroy. But such are exceptions only, and should not preclude attempts at improvement. If a bungler tries and fails, let him be Anathema, Maranathema; but let not his failure deter from trial a genuine artist. Nor is it an ignoble office to be thus shapers only of great thinkers' thoughts—Python interpreters to oracles. Nor is his work of slight account who thus—as sunbeams gift dark thunder-clouds with 'silver lining' and a fringe of purple, as Time with ivy drapes a rugged wall—hangs the beauties of expression round a rude but sterling thought. Nay, oftentimes the shaper's labor is worth more than the thought he shapes. For if the stock out of which the work is wrought be ever more valuable than the workman's skill, then let canvas and paint-pots impeach the fame of Raphael; rough blocks from Paros and Pentelicus, the gold and ivory of the Olympian Jove; tear from the brow of Phidias the laurel wreath with which the world has crowned him. Supply of raw material is little without the ability to use it. Furnish three men with stone and mortar, and while one is building an unsightly heap of clumsy masonry, the architect will rear up a magnificent cathedral—an Angelo, a St. Peter's. And so when ideas, which in their crudeness are often as hard to be digested as unground corn, are run through the mill of another's mind, and appear in a shape suited to satisfy the most dyspeptic stomachs, does not the miller deserve a toll?
Finally, author-borrowing has been hallowed by its practice, in their first essays, by all our greatest writers. Turn to the scroll on which the world has written the names of those it holds as most illustrious. How was it with him whom English readers love to call the 'myriad-minded?' Shakespeare began by altering old plays, and his indebt[Pg 289]edness to history and old legends is by no means slight. How with him who sang 'of man's first disobedience' and exodus from Eden? Even Milton did not, Elijah-like, draw down his fire direct from heaven, but kindled with brands, borrowed from Greek and Hebrew altars, the inspiration which sent up the incense-poetry of a Lost Paradise. And all the while that Maro sang 'Arms and the Man,' a refrain from the harp of Homer was sounding in his ears, unto whose tones so piously he keyed and measured his own notes, that oftentimes we fancy we can hear the strains of 'rocky Scio's blind old bard' mingling in the Mantuan's melody. If thus it has been with those who sit highest and fastest on Parnassus—the crowned kings of mind—how has it been with the mere nobility? What are Scott's poetic romances, but blossomings of engrafted scions on that slender shoot from out the main trunk of English poetry—the old border balladry? Campbell's polished elegance of style, and the 'ivory mechanism of his verse,' was born the natural child of Beattie and Pope. Byron had Gifford in his eye when he wrote 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and Spenser when he penned the 'Pilgrimage.' Pope, despairing of originality, and taking Dryden for his model, sought only to polish and to perfect. Gray borrowed from Spenser, Spenser from Chaucer, Chaucer from Dante, and Dante had ne'er been Dante but for the old Pagan mythology. Sterne and Hunt and Keats were only
And thus it ever is. The inceptions of true genius are always essentially imitations. A great writer does not begin by ransacking for the odd and new. He re-models—betters. Trusting not hypotheses unproven, he demonstrates himself the proposition ere he wagers his faith on the corollary; and it is thus that in time he grows to be a discoverer, an inventor, an originator.
Toward originality all should steer; but can only hope to reach it through imitation. For if originality be the Colchis where the golden fleece of immortality is won, imitation must be the Argo in which we sail thither.
There was a shop occupied by a dealer in paintings, engravings, intaglios, old crockery, and Bric-à-brac-ery generally, down the Via Condotti, and into this shop Mr. William Browne, of St. Louis, one morning found his way. He had been induced to enter by reading in the window, written on a piece of paper,
'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL,'
and as he wisely surmised that the dealer intended to notify the English that he had a painting by Titian for sale, he went in to see it.
Unfortunately for Mr. Browne, familiarly known as Uncle Bill, he had one of those faces that invariably induced Roman tradesmen to resort to the Oriental mode of doing business, namely, charging three hundred per cent profit; and as this dealer having formerly been a courier, commissionaire and pander to English and American travelers, naturally spoke a disgusting jargon of Italianized English, and had what he believed were the most distinguished manners: he charged five hundred per cent.
'I want,' said Uncle Bill to the 'brick-Bat' man, 'to see your Titian.'
'I shall expose 'im to you in one moment, sare; you walk this way. He's var' fine pickshoor, var' fine. You ben long time in Rome, sare?'
No reply from Uncle Bill: his idea was, even a wise man may ask questions, but none but fools answer fools.
Brick-bat man finds that his customer has ascended the human scale one step; he prepares 'to spring dodge' Number two on him.
'Thare, sar, thare is Il Tiziano! I spose you say you see notheeng bote large peas board: zat peas board was one táble for two, tree hundret yars; all zat time ze pickshoor was unbeknounst undair ze táble. Zey torn up ze table, and you see a none-doubted Tiziano. Var' fine pickshoor!'
'Do you know,' asked Uncle Bill, 'if it was in a temperance family all that time?'
'I am not acquent zat word, demprance—wot it means?'
'Sober,' was the answer.
'Yas, zat was in var' sobair fam'ly—in convent of nons.'
'That will account for its being undiscovered so long—all the world knows they are not inquisitive! If it had been in a drinking-house, some body falling under the table would have seen it—wouldn't they?'
Brick-bat reflects, and comes to the conclusion that the 'eldairly cove' is wider-awake than he believed him, at first sight.
'Now I torne zis board you see on ze othaire side, ze Bella Donna of Tiziano. Zere is one in ze Sciarra palace, bote betwane you and I, I don't believe it is gin'wine.'
'I don't know much about paintings,' spoke Uncle Bill, 'but I know I've seen seventy-six of these Belli Donners, and each one was sworn to as the original picture!'
'Var' true, sare, var' true, Tiziano Vermecellio was grate pantaire, man of grate mind, and when he got holt onto fine subjick he work him ovair and ovair feefty, seexty times. Ze chiaro-'scuro is var' fine, and ze depfs of his tone somethings var' deep, vary. Look at ze flaish, sare, you can pinch him, and, sare, you look here, I expose grand secret to you. I take zis pensnife, I scratgis ze pant. Look zare!'
'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I don't see any thing.'
'You don't see anne theengs! Wot you see under ze pant?'
'It looks like dirt.'[Pg 291]
'Cospetto! zat is ze gr-and prep-par-ra-tion zat makes ze flaish of Tiziano more natooral as life. You know grate pantaire, Mistaire Leaf, as lives in ze Ripetta? Zat man has spend half his lifes scratging Tiziano all to peases, for find out 'ow he mak's flaish: now he believes he found out ze way, bote, betwane you and I——' Here the Brick-bat man conveyed, by a shake of his head and a tremolo movement of his left hand, the idea that 'it was all in vain.'
'What do you ask for the picture?' asked Uncle Bill
The head of the Brick-bat man actually disappeared between his shoulders as he shrugged them up, and extended his hands at his sides like the flappers of a turtle. Uncle Bill looked at the man in admiration; he had never seen such a performance before, save by a certain contortionist in a traveling circus, and in his delight he asked the man, when his head appeared, if he wouldn't do that once more, only once more!
In his surprise at being asked to perform the trick, he actually went through it again. For which, Uncle Bill thanked him, kindly, and again asked the price of the Titian.
'I tak' seex t'ousand scudi for him, not one baiocch less.'
'It an't dear,'specially for those who have the money to scatterlophisticate,' replied Uncle Bill cheerfully.
'No, sare, it ees dogs chip, var' chip. I have sevral Englis' want to buy him bad; I shall sell him some days to some bodies. Bote, sare, will you 'ave ze goodniss to write down on peas paper zat word, var' fine word, you use him minit 'go—scatolofistico sometheengs—I wis' to larn ze Englis' better as I spiks him.'
'Certainly; give me a pencil and paper, I'll write it down, and you'll astonish some Englishman with it, I'll bet a hat.'
So it was written down; and if any one ever entered a shop in the Condotti where there was a Titiano for Sal, and was 'astonished' by hearing that word used, they may know whence it came.
Mr. Browne, after carefully examining the usual yellow marble model of the column of Trajan, the alabaster pyramid of Caius Cestius, the verd antique obelisks, the bronze lamps, lizards, marble tazze, and paste-gems of the modern-antique factories, the ever-present Beatrice Cenci on canvas, and the water-color costumes of Italy, made a purchase of a Roman mosaic paper-weight, wherein there was a green parrot with a red tail and blue legs, let in with minute particles of composition resembling stone, and left the Brick-bat man alone with his Titiano for Sal.
Rocjean came into Caper's studio one morning, evidently having something to communicate.
'Are you busy this morning? If not, come along with me; there is something to be seen—something that beats the Mahmoudy Canal of the Past, or the Suez Canal of the Present, for wholesale slaughter; for I do assure you, on the authority of Hassel, that nine hundred and thirty-six million four hundred and sixty-one thousand people died before it was finished!'
'That must be a work worth looking at. Why, the Pyramids must be as anthills to Chimborazo in comparison to it! Nine hundred and odd millions of mortals! Why, that is about the number dying in a generation—and these have passed away while it was being completed? It ought to be a master-piece.'
'Can't we get a glass of wine round here?' asked Rocjean, looking at his watch; 'it is about luncheon-time, and I have a charming little thirst.'
'Oh! yes, there is a wine-shop only three doors from here, pure Roman. Let us go: we can stand out in the street and drink if you are afraid to go in.'
Leaving the studio, they walked a few steps to a house that was literally all front-door; for the entrance was the entire width of the building, and a buffalo-team could have passed in without let. Outside stood a wine-cart, from which they were unloading several small[Pg 292] casks of wine. The driver's seat had a hood over it, protecting him from the sun, as he lazily sleeps there, rumbling over the tufa road, to or from the Campagna, and around the seat were painted in gay colors various patterns of things unknown. In the autumn, vine-branches with pendent, rustling leaves decorate hood and horse, while in spring or summer, a bunch of flowers often ornaments this gay-looking wine-cart.
The interior of the shop was dark, dingy, sombre, and dirty enough to have thrown an old Flemish Interior artist into hysterics of delight. There was an olla podrida browniness about it that would have entranced a native of Seville; and a collection of dirt around, that would have elevated a Chippeway Indian to an ecstasy of delight. The reed-mattings hung against the walls were of a gulden ochre-color, the smoked walls and ceiling the shade of asphaltum and burnt sienna, the unswept stone pavement a warm gray, the old tables and benches very rich in tone and dirt; the back of the shop, even at midday, dark, and the eye caught there glimpses of arches, barrels, earthen jars, tables and benches resting in twilight, and only brought out in relief by the faint light always burning in front of the shrine of the Virgin, that hung on one of the walls.
In a wine-shop this shrine does not seem out of place, it is artistic; but in a lottery-office, open to the light of day, and glaringly common-place, the Virgin hanging there looks much more like the goddess Fortuna than Santa Maria.
But they are inside the wine-shop, and the next instant a black-haired gipsy-looking woman with flashing, black eyes, warming up the sombre color of the shop by the fiery red and golden silk handkerchief which falls from the back of her head, Neapolitan fashion, illuminating that dusky old den like fireworks, asks them what they will order?
'A foglietta of white wine.'
'Sweet or dry?' she asks.
'Dry,' (asciùtto,) said Rocjean.
There it is on the table, in a glass flask, brittle as virtue, light as sin, and fragile as folly. They are called Sixtusses, after that pious old Sixtus V. who hanged a publican and wine-seller sinner in front of his shop for blasphemously expressing his opinion as to the correctness of charging four times as much to put the fluoric-acid government stamp on them as the glass cost. However, taxes must be raised, and the thinner the glass the easier it is broken, so the Papal government compel the wine-sellers to buy these glass bubbles, forbidding the sale of wine out of any thing else save the bottiglie; and as it raises money by touching them up with acid, why, the people have to stand it. These fogliette have round bodies and long, broad necks, on which you notice a white mark made with the before-mentioned chemical preparation; up to this mark the wine should come, but the attendant generally takes thumb-toll, especially in the restaurants where foreigners go, for the Roman citizen is not to be swindled, and will have his rights: the single expression, 'I AM A ROMAN CITIZEN,' will at times save him at least two baiocchi, with which he can buy a cigar. There was a time when these words would have checked the severest decrees of the highest magistrate: now when they fire off 'that gun,' the French soldiers stand at its mouth, laugh, and say; 'Boom! you have no balls for your cartridges!'
The wine finished, our two artists took up their line of march for the object that had outlived so many millions on millions of human beings, and at last reached it, discovering its abode afar off, by the crowd of fair-and unfair, or red-haired Saxons, who were thronging up a staircase of a house near the Ripetta, as if a steamboat were ringing her last bell and the plank were being drawn in.
'And pray, can you tell me, Mister Buller, if it's a positive fact that the man has been so long as they say, at work on the thing?'
'And ah! I haven't the slightest doubt of it, myself. I've been told that he[Pg 293] has worked on it, to be sure, for full thirty years; and I may say I am delighted, that he has it done at last, and that it is to be packed up and sent away to St. Petersburg next week. And how do you like the Hotel Minerva? I think it's not a very dirty inn, but the waiters are very demanding, and the fleas—'
'I beg you won't speak of them, it makes my blood run cold. Have you seen the last copy of Galignani? The Americans, I am glad to see, have had trouble with us, and I hope they will be properly punished. Do you know the Duke of Bigghed is in town?'
'Really! and when did he come—and where is the Duchess? oh!—she's a very amiable lady—but here's the picture!'
Ushered in, or preceded by this rattle-headed talk, Caper and Rocjean stood at last before Ivanhof's celebrated painting—finished at last! Thirty years' work, and the result?
A very unsatisfactory stream of water, a crowd of Orientals, and our Saviour descending a hill.
The general impression left on the mind after seeing it, was like that produced by a wax-work show. Nature was travestied; ease, grace, freedom, were wanting: evidently the thirty years might have been better spent collecting beetles or dried grasses.
Around the walls of the studio hung sketches painted during visits the artist had made to the East. Here were studies of Eastern heads, costumes, trees, soil by river-side, sand in the desert, copied with scrupulous care and precise truth, yet, when they were all together in the great painting, the combined effect was a failure.
The artist, they said, had, during this long period, received an annual pension of so many roubles from the Russian government, and had taken his time about it. At last it was completed; the painting that had outlasted a generation was to be sent to St. Petersburg to hibernate after a lifetime spent in sunny Italy. Well! after all, it was better worth the money paid for it than that paid for nine tenths of those kingly toys in the baby-house Green Chambers of Dresden. Le Roi s'amuse!
And the white-haired Saxons came in shoals to the studio to see the painting with thirty years' labor on it, and accordingly as their oracles had judged it, so did they: for behold! gay colors are tabooed in the mythology of the Pokerites, and are classed with perfumes, dance-music, and jollity, and art earns a precarious livelihood in their land, where all knowledge of it is supposed to be tied up with the enjoyers of primogeniture.
The Apollo, where grand opera, sandwiched with moral ballets, is given for the benefit of foreigners, principally, would be a fine house if you could only see it; but when Caper was in Rome, the oil-lamps, showing you where to sit down, did not reveal its proportions, or the dresses of the box-beauties, to any advantage; and as oil-lamps will smoke, there settled a veil over the theatre towards the second act, that draped Comedy like Tragedy, and then set her to coughing.
During Carnival a melancholy ball or two was given there: a few wild foreigners venturing in masked, believed they had mistaken the house, for although many women were wandering around in domino, they found the Roman young men unmasked, walking about dressed in canes and those dress-coats, familiarly known as tail-coats, which cause a man to look like a swallow with the legs of a crane, and wearing on their impassive faces the appearance of men waiting for an oyster-supper—or an earthquake.
The commissionaire at the hotel always recommends strangers to go to the Apollo: 'I will git you lôge, sare, first tier—more noble, sare.'
The Capranica Theatre is next in size and importance; it is beyond the Pantheon, out of the foreign quarter of Rome, and you will find in it a Roman audience—to a limited extent. Salvini acted there in Othello, and filled the[Pg 294] character admirably; it is needless to say that Iago received even more applause than Othello; Italians know such men profoundly—they are Figaros turned undertakers. Opera was given at the Capranica when the Apollo was closed.
The Valle is a small establishment, where Romans, pure blood, of the middle class, and the nobility who did not hang on to foreigners, were to be found. Giuseppina Gassier, who has since sung in America, was prima-donna there, appearing generally in the Sonnambula.
But the Capranica Theatre was the resort for the Roman minenti, decked in all their bravery. Here came the shoemaker, the tailor, and the small artisan, all with their wives or women, and with them the wealthy peasant who had ten cents to pay for entrance. Here the audience wept and laughed, applauded the actors, and talked to each other from one side of the house to the other. Here the plays represented Roman life in the rough, and were full of words and expressions not down in any dictionary or phrase-book; nor in these local displays were forgotten various Roman peculiarities of accentuation of words, and curious intonations of voice. The Roman people indulge in chest-notes, leaving head-notes to the Neapolitans, who certainly do not possess such smoothness of tongue as would classify them among their brethren in the old proverb: 'When the confusion of tongues happened at the building of the Tower of Babel, if the Italian had been there, Nimrod would have made him a plasterer!'
You will do well, if you want to learn from the stage and audience, the Roman plebs, their customs and language, to attend the Capranica Theatre often; to attend it in 'fatigue-dress,' and in gentle mood, being neither shocked nor astonished if a good-looking Roman youth should call your attention to the fact that there is a beautiful girl in the box to the left hand, and inquire if you know whether she is the daughter of Santi Stefoni, the grocer? And should the man on the other side offer you some pumpkin-seeds to eat, by all means accept a few; you can't tell what they may bring forth, if you will only plant them cheerfully.
Do not think it strange if a doctor on the stage recommends conserve of vipers to a consumptive patient; for these poisonous reptiles are caught in large numbers in the mountains back of Rome, and sold to the city apothecaries, who prepare large quantities of them for their customers.
When you see, perhaps the hero of the play, thrown into a paroxysm of anger and fiery wrath by some untoward event, proceed calmly to cut up two lemons, squeeze into a tumbler their juice, and then drink it down—learn that it is a common Roman remedy for anger.
Or if, when a piece of crockery, or other fragile article, may be broken, you notice one of the actors carefully counting the pieces, do not think it is done in order to reconstruct the article, but to guide him in the purchase of a lottery-ticket.
When you notice that on one of his hands the second finger is twined over the first, of the Rightful-heir in presence of the Wrongful-heir, you may know that the first is guarding himself against the Evil Eye supposed to belong to the second.
And—the list could be extended to an indefinite length—you will learn more, by going to the Capranica.
At the Metastasio Theatre there was a French vaudeville company,
passably good, attended by a French audience, the majority officers and
soldiers. Here were presented such attractive plays as La Femme qui
Mord, or 'The Woman who Bites;' Sullivan, the hero of which gets
bien gris, very gray, that is, blue, that is, very tipsy, and at the
close, astonishes the audience with the moral: To get tight is human!
Dalilah, etc., etc. The French are not very well beloved by the Romans
pure and simple; it is not astonishing, therefore, that their language
should be laughed at.[Pg 295] One morning Rome woke up to find placards all
over the city, headed:
A few days afterward appeared a fearful wood-cut, the head of a jackass, with his tongue hanging down several inches, and under it, these words, in Italian: 'The only tongue yet learnt in less than thirty-six lessons!'
Caper, seated one night in the parquette of the Metastasio, had at his side a French infantry soldier. In conversation he asked him:
'How long have you been in Rome?'
'Three years, Mossu.'
'Wouldn't you like to return to France?'
'Not at all.'
'Why not?'
'Wine is cheap, here, tobacco not dear, the ladies are extremely kind: voila tout!'
'You have all these in France.'
'Oui, Mossu! but when I return there I shall be a farmer again; and it's a frightful fact that you may plow your heart out without turning up but a very small quantity of these articles there!'
French soldiers still protect Rome—and 'these articles there.'
'Can you tell me,' said Uncle Bill Browne to Rocjean, with the air of a man about to ask a hard conundrum, 'why beards, long hair, and art, always go together?'
'Of course, art draws out beards along with talent; paints and bristles must go together; but high-art drives the hair of the head in, and clinches it. Among artists first and last there have been men with giant minds, and they have known it was their duty to show their mental power: the beard is the index.'
'But the beard points downward,' suggested Caper, 'and not upward.'
'That depends——'
'On pomade Hongroise—or beeswax,' interrupted Caper.
'Exactly; but let me answer Uncle Bill. To begin, we may safely assert that an artist's life—here in Rome, for instance—is about as independent a one as society will tolerate; its laws, as to shaving especially, he ignores, and caring very little for the Rules of the Toilette, as duly published by the—bon ton journals, uses his razor for mending lead-pencils, and permits his beard to enjoy long vacation rambles. Again: those who first set the example of long beards, Leonardo da Vinci, for example, who painted his own portrait with a full beard a foot long, were men who moved from principle, and I have the belief that were Leonardo alive to-day, he would say:
"My son, and well-beloved Rocjean, zitto! and let ME talk. Know, then, that I did permit my beard luxuriant length—for a reason. Thou dost not know, but I do, that among the ancient Egyptians they worshiped in their deity the male and female principle combined; so the exponents of this belief, the Egyptian priests, endeavored in their attire to show a mingling of the male and female sex; they wore long garments like women, vergogna! they wore long hair, guai! and they SHAVED THEIR FACES! It pains me to say, that their indecent example is followed even to this day, by the priests of what should be a purer and better religion.
"Silenzio! I have not yet said my say. Among Eastern nations, their proverbs, and what is better, their customs, show a powerful protest against this impure old faith. You have seen the flowing beards of the Mohammedans, especially the Turks, and their short-shaved heads of hair, and you may have heard of their words of wisdom:
"'Long hair, little brain.'
"And that eloquent sentence:
"'Who has no beard has no authority.'
"They have other sayings, which I can not approve of; for instance:[Pg 296]
"'Do not buy a red-haired person, do not sell one, either; if you have any in the house, drive them away.'
"I say I do not approve of this, for the majority of the English have red heads, and people who want to buy my pictures I never would drive out of my house, mai!"
'Come,' said Caper, 'Leonardo no longer speaks when there is a question of buying or selling. Assume the first person.'
'Another excellent reason for artists in Rome to wear beards is, that where their foreign names can not be pronounced, they are often called by the size, color, or shape, of this face-drapery. This is particularly the case in the Café Greco, where the waiters, who have to charge for coffee, etc., when the artist does not happen to have the change about him, are compelled to give him a name on their books, and in more than one instance, I know that they are called from their beards, I have a memorandum of these nicknames: I am called Barbone, or Big-bearded; and you, Caper, are down as Sbarbato Inglese, the Shaved Englishman.'
'Hm!' spoke Caper, 'I an't an Englishman, and I don't shave; my beard has to come yet.'
'What is my name?' asked Uncle Bill.
'Puga Sempre, or He Pays Always. A countryman of mine is called Baffi Rici, or Big Moustache; another one, Barbetta, Little Beard; another, Barbáccia, Shabby Beard; another, Barba Nera, Black Beard; and, of course, there is a Barba Rossa, or Red Beard. Some of the other names are funny enough, and would by no means please their owners. There is Zoppo Francese, the Lame Frenchman; Scapiglione, the Rowdy; Pappagallo, the Parrot; Milordo; Furioso; and one friend of ours is known, whenever he forgets to pay two baiocchi for his coffee, as San Pietro!'
'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I'll tell you why I thought you artists wore long beards: that when you were hard up, and couldn't buy brushes, you might have the material ready to make your own.'
'You're wrong, Uncle,' remarked Caper; 'when we can't buy them, we get trusted for them—that's our way of having a brush with the enemy.'
'That will do, Jim, that will do; say no more. None of the artists' beards here, can compare with one belonging to a buffalo-and-prairie painter who lives out in St. Louis—it is so long he ties the ends together and uses it for a boot-jack. Good-night, boys, good-night!'
Rocjean was finishing his after-dinnerical coffee and cigar, when looking up from Las Novedades, containing the latest news from Madrid, and in which he had just read en Roma es donde hay mas mendigos, Rome, is where most beggars are found; London, where most engineers, lost women, and rat-terriers, abound; Brussels, where women who smoke, are all round—looking up from this interesting reading, he saw opposite him a young man, whose acquaintance he knew at a glance, was worth making. Refinement, common-sense, and energy were to be read plainly in his face. When he left the café, Rocjean asked an artist, with long hair, who was fast smoking himself to the color of the descendants of Ham, if he knew the man?'
'No-o-oo, I believe he's some kind of a calico-painter.'
'What?'
'Oh! a feller that makes designs for a calico-mill.'
Not long afterward Rocjean was introduced to him, and found him, as first impressions taught him he would—a man well worth knowing. Ho was making a holiday-visit to Rome, his settled residence being in Paris, where his occupation was designer of patterns for a large calico-mill in the United States. A New-Yorker by birth, consequently more of a cosmopolitan than the provincial life of our other American cities will tolerate or can create in their children, Charles Gordon was every inch a man,[Pg 297] and a bitter foe to every liar and thief. He was well informed, for he had, as a boy, been solidly instructed; he was polite, refined, for he had been well educated. His life was a story often told: mercantile parent, very wealthy; son sent to college; talent for art, developed at the expense of trigonometry and morning-prayers; mercantile parent fails, and falls from Fifth avenue to Brooklyn, preparatory to embarking for the land of those who have failed and fallen—wherever that is. Son wears long hair, and believes he looks like the painter who was killed by a baker's daughter, writes trashy verses about a man who was wronged, and went off and howled himself to a long repose, sick of this vale of tears, et cetera. Finally, in the midst of his despair, long hair, bad poetry and painting, an enterprising friend, who sees he has an eye for color, its harmonies and contrasts, raises him with a strong hand into the clear atmosphere of exertion for a useful and definite end—makes him a 'calico-painter.'
It was a great scandal for the Bohemians of art to find this calico-painter received every where in refined and intelligent society, while they, with all their airs, long hairs, and shares of impudence, could not enter—they, the creators of Medoras, Magdalens, Our Ladies of Lorette, Brigands' Brides, Madame not In, Captive Knights, Mandoline Players, Grecian Mothers, Love in Repose, Love in Sadness, Moonlight on the Waves, Last Tears, Resignation, Broken Lutes, Dutch Flutes, and other mock-sentimental-titled paintings.
'God save me from being a gazelle!' said the monkey.
'God save us from being utility calico-painters!' cried the high-minded, dirty cavaliers who were not cavaliers, as they once more rolled over in their smoke-house.
'In 1854,' said Gordon, one day, to Rocjean, after their acquaintance had ripened into friendship, 'I was indeed in sad circumstances, and was passing through a phase of life when bad tobacco, acting on an empty stomach, gave me a glimpse of the Land of the Grumblers. One long year, and all that was changed; then I woke up to reality and practical life in a 'Calico-Mill;' then I wrote the lines you have asked me about. Take them for what they are worth.
The Roman season was nearly over: travelers were making preparations to fly out of one gate as the Malaria should enter by the other; for, according to popular report, this fearful disease enters, the last day of April, at midnight, and is in full possession of the city on the first day of May. Rocjean, not having any fears of it, was preparing not only to meet it, but to go out and spend the summer with it; it costs something, however, to keep company with La Malaria, and our artist had but little money: he must sell some paintings. Now it was unfortunate for him that though a good painter, he was a bad salesman; he never kept a list of all the arrivals of his wealthy countrymen or other strangers who bought paintings; he never ran after them, laid them under obligations with drinks, dinners, and drives; for he had neither the inclination nor that capital which is so important for a picture-merchant to possess in order to drive—a heavy trade, and achieve success—such as it is. Rocjean had friends, and warm ones; so that whenever they judged his finances were in an embarrassed state, they voluntarily sent wealthy sensible as well as wealthy insensible patrons of art to his aid, the latter going as Dutch galliots laden with doubloons might go to the relief of a poor, graceful felucca, thrown on her beam-ends by a squall.
One morning there glowed in Rocjean's studio the portly forms of Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Shodd, together with the tall, fragile figure of Miss Tillie Shodd, daughter and heiress apparent and transparent. Rocjean welcomed them as he would have manna in the desert, for he judged by the air and manner of the head of the family, that he was on picture-buying bent. He even gayly smiled when Miss Shodd, pointing out to her father, with her parasol, some beauty in a painting on the easel, run its point along the canvas, causing a green streak from the top of a stone pine to extend from the tree same miles into the distant mountains of the Abruzzi-the paint was not dry!
She made several hysterical shouts of horror after committing this little act, and then seating herself in an arm-chair, proceeded to take a mental inventory of the articles of furniture in the studio.
Mr. Shodd explained to Rocjean that he was a plain man:
This was apparent at sight.
That he was an uneducated man:
This asserted itself to the eyes and ears.
After which self-denial, he commenced 'pumping' the artist on various subjects, assuming an ignorance of things which, to a casual observer, made him appear like a fool; to a thoughtful person, a knave: the whole done in order, perhaps, to learn about some trifle which a plain, straightforward question would have elicited at once. Rocjean saw his man, and led him a fearful gallop in order to thoroughly examine his action and style.
Spite of his commercial life, Mr. Shodd had found time to 'self-educate' himself—he meant self-instruct—and having a retentive memory, and a not always strict regard for truth, was looked up to by the humble-ignorant as a very columbiad in argument, the only fault to be found with which gun was, that when it was drawn from its quiescent state into action, its effective force was comparatively nothing, one half the charge escaping through the large touch-hole of untruth. Discipline was entirely wanting in Mr. Shodd's composition. A man who undertakes to be his own teacher rarely punishes his scholar, rarely checks him with rules and practice, or accustoms him to order and subordination. Mr. Shodd, therefore, was—undisciplined: a raw recruit, not a soldier.
Of course, his conversation was all contradictory. In one breath, on the self-abnegation principle, he would say, 'I don't know any thing about paintings;' in the next breath, his overweening egotism would make him loudly[Pg 299] proclaim: 'There never was but one painter in this world, and his name is Hockskins; he lives in my town, and he knows more than any of your 'old masters'! I ought to know!' Or, 'I am an uneducated man,' meaning uninstructed; immediately following it with the assertion: 'All teachers, scholars, and colleges are useless folly, and all education is worthless, except self-education.'
Unfortunately, self-education is too often only education of self!
After carefully examining all Rocjean's pictures, he settled his attention on a sunset view over the Campagna, leaving Mrs. Shodd to talk with our artist. You have seen—all have seen—more than one Mrs. Shodd; by nature and innate refinement, ladies; (the 'Little Dorrits' Dickens shows to his beloved countrymen, to prove to them that not all nobility is nobly born—a very mild lesson, which they refuse to regard;) Mrs. Shodds who, married to Mr. Shodds, pass a life of silent protest against brutal words and boorish actions. With but few opportunities to add acquirable graces to natural ease and self-possession, there was that in her kindly tone of voice and gentle manner winning the heart of a gentleman to respect her as he would his mother. It was her mission to atone for her husband's sins, and she fulfilled her duty; more could not be asked of her, for his sins were many. The daughter was a copy of the father, in crinoline; taking to affectation—which is vulgarity in its most offensive form—as a duck takes to water. Even her dress was marked, not by that neatness which shows refinement, but by precision, which in dress is vulgar. One glance, and you saw the woman who in another age would have thrown her glove to the tiger for her lover to pick up!
Among Rocjean's paintings was the portrait of a very beautiful woman, made by him years before, when he first became an artist, and long before he had been induced to abandon portrait-painting for landscape. It was never shown to studio-visitors, and was placed with its face against the wall, behind other paintings. In moving one of these to place it in a good light on the easel, it fell with the others to the floor, face uppermost; and while Rocjean, with a painting in his hands, could not stoop at once to replace it, Miss Shodd's sharp eyes discovered the beautiful face, and, her curiosity being excited, nothing would do but it must be placed on the easel. Unwilling to refuse a request from the daughter of a Patron of Art in perspective, Rocjean complied, and, when the portrait was placed, glancing toward Mrs. Shodd, had the satisfaction of reading in her eyes true admiration for the startlingly lovely face looking out so womanly from the canvas.
'Hm!' said Shodd the father, 'quite a fancy head.'
'Oh! it is an exact portrait of Julia Ting; if she had sat for her likeness, it couldn't have been better. I must have the painting, pa, for Julia's sake. I must. It's a naughty word, isn't it, Mr. Rocjean? but it is so expressive!'
'Unfortunately, the portrait is not for sale; I placed it on the easel only in order not to refuse your request.'
Mr. Shodd saw the road open to an argument. He was in ecstasy; a long argument—an argument full of churlish flings and boorish slurs, which he fondly believed passed for polished satire and keen irony. He did not know Rocjean; he never could know a man like him; he never could learn the truth that confidence will overpower strength; only at last, when through his hide and bristles entered the flashing steel, did he, tottering backwards, open his eyes to the fact that he had found his master—that, too, in a poor devil of an artist.
The landscapes were all thrown aside; Shodd must have that portrait. His daughter had set her heart on having it, he said, and could a gentleman refuse a lady any thing?
'It is on this very account I refuse to part with it,' answered Rocjean.
It instantly penetrated Shodd's head that all this refusal was only design on[Pg 300] the part of the artist, to obtain a higher price for the work than he could otherwise hope for; and so, with what he believed was a master-stroke of policy, he at once ceased importuning the artist, and shortly departed from the studio, preceding his wife with his daughter on his arm, leaving the consoler, and by all means his best half, to atone, by a few kind words at parting with the artist, for her husband's sins.
'And there,' thought Rocjean, as the door closed, 'goes 'a patron of art'—and by no means the worst pattern. I hope he will meet with Chapin, and buy an Orphan and an Enterprise statue; once in his house, they will prove to every observant man the owner's taste.'
Mr. Shodd, having a point to gain, went about it with elephantine grace and dexterity. The portrait he had seen at Rocjean's studio he was determined to have. He invited the artist to dine with him—the artist sent his regrets; to accompany him, 'with the ladies,' in his carriage to Tivoli—the artist politely declined the invitation; to a conversazione, the invitation from Mrs. Shodd—a previous engagement prevented the artist's acceptance.
Mr. Shodd changed his tactics. He discovered at his banker's one day a keen, communicative, wiry, shrewd, etc., etc., enterprising, etc., 'made a hundred thousand dollars' sort of a little man, named Briggs, who was traveling in order to travel, and grumble. Mr. Shodd 'came the ignorant game' over this Briggs; pumped him, without obtaining any information, and finally turned the conversation on artists, denouncing the entire body as a set of the keenest swindlers, and citing the instance of one he knew who had a painting which he believed it would be impossible for any man to buy, simply because the artist, knowing that he (Shodd) wished it, would not set a price on it, so as to have a very high one offered (!) Mr. Briggs instantly was deeply interested. Here was a chance for him to display before Shodd of Shoddsville his shrewdness, keenness, and so forth. He volunteered to buy the painting.
In Rome, an artist's studio may be his castle, or it may be an Exchange. To have it the first, you must affix a notice to your studio-door announcing that all entrance of visitors to the studio is forbidden except on, say, 'Monday from twelve A.M. to three P.M. This is the baronial manner. But the artist who is not wealthy or has not made a name, must keep an Exchange, and receive all visitors who choose to come, at almost any hours—model hours excepted. So Briggs, learning from Shodd, by careful cross-questioning, the artist's name, address, and a description of the painting, walked there at once, introduced himself to Rocjean, shook his hand as if it were the handle of a pump upon which he had serious intentions, and then began examining the paintings. He looked at them all, but there was no portrait. He asked Rocjean if he painted portraits; he found out that he did not. Finally, he told the artist that he had heard some one say—he did not remember who—that he had seen a very pretty head in his studio, and asked Rocjean if he would show it to him.
'You have seen Mr. Shodd lately, I should think?' said the artist, looking into the eyes of Mr. Briggs.
A suggestion of a clean brick-bat passed under a sheet of yellow tissue-paper was observable in the hard cheeks of Mr. Briggs, that being the final remnant of all appearance of modesty left in the sharp man, in the shape of a blush.
'Oh! yes; every body knows Shodd—man of great talent—generous,' said Briggs.
'Mr. Shodd may be very well known,' remarked Rocjean measuredly, 'but the portrait he saw is not well known; he and his family are the only ones who have seen it. Perhaps it may save you trouble to know that the portrait I have several times refused to sell him will never be sold while I live. The common opinion that an artist, like a Jew, will sell the old clo' from his back for money, is erroneous.'
Mr. Briggs shortly after this left the studio, slightly at a discount, and as if he had been measured, as he said to[Pg 301] himself; and then and there determined to say nothing to Shodd about his failing in his mission to the savage artist. But Shodd found it all out in the first conversation he made with Briggs; and very bitter were his feelings when he learnt that a poor devil of an artist dared possess any thing he could not buy, and moreover had a quiet moral strength which the vulgar man feared. In his anger, Shodd, with his disregard for truth, commenced a fearful series of attacks against the artist, regaling every one he dared to with the coarsest slanders, in the vilest language, against the painter's character. A very few days sufficed to circulate them, so that they reached Rocjean's ears; a very few minutes passed before the artist presented himself to the eyes of Shodd, and, fortunately finding him alone, told him in four words, 'You are a slanderer;' mentioning to him, beside, that if he ever uttered another slander against his name, he should compel him to give him instantaneous satisfaction, and that, as an American, Shodd knew what that meant.
It is needless to say that a liar and slanderer is a coward; consequently Mr. Shodd, with the consequences before his eyes, never again alluded to Rocjean, and shortly left the city for Naples, to bestow the light of his countenance there in his great character of Art Patron.
'It is a heart-touching face,' said Caper, as one morning, while hauling over his paintings, Rocjean brought the portrait to light which the cunning Shodd had so longed to possess for cupidity's sake.
'I should feel as if I had thrown Psyche to the Gnomes to be torn to pieces, if I had given such a face to Shodd. If I had sold it to him, I should have been degraded; for the women loved by man should be kept sacred in memory. She was a girl I knew in Prague, and, I think, with six or eight exceptions, the loveliest one I ever met. Some night, at sunset, I shall walk over the old bridge, and meet her as we parted; apropos of which meeting, I once wrote some words. Hand me that portfolio, will you? Thank you. Oh! yes; here they are. Now, read them, Caper; out with them!
Mr. Anthony Trollope's work entitled North-America has been republished in this country, and curiosity has at length been satisfied. Great as has been this curiosity among his friends, it can not, however, be said to have been wide-spread, inasmuch as up to the appearance of this book of travels, comparatively few were aware of the presence of Mr. Trollope in this country. When Charles Dickens visited America, our people testified their admiration of his homely genius by going mad, receiving him with frantic acclamations of delight, dining him, and suppering him, and going through the 'pump-handle movement' with him. Mr. Dickens was, in consequence, intensely bored by this attestation of popular idolatry so peculiar to the United States, and looked upon us as officious, absurd, and disgusting. Officious we were, and absurd enough, surely, but far from being disgusting. He ought hardly to beget disgust whose youth and inexperience leads him to extravagance in his kindly demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features to his humorous eye. Two books—American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit—were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon, the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was considered to be synonymous with the name of this novelist. We gave him every chance to see our follies, and we snubbed his cherished and chief object in visiting America, concerning a copyright. There is little wonder, then, that Dickens, an Englishman and a caricaturist, should have painted us in the colors that he did. There is scarcely less wonder that Americans, at that time, all in the white-heat of enthusiasm, should have waxed angry at Dickens' cold return to so much warmth. But, reading these books in the light of 1862, there are few of us who do not smile at the rage of our elders. We see an uproariously funny extravaganza in Martin Chuzzlewit, which we can well afford to laugh at, having grown thicker-skinned, and wonder what there is to be found in the Notes so very abominable to an American. Mr. Dickens was a humorist, not a statesman or philosopher, therefore he wrote of us as a disappointed humorist would have been tempted to write.
It is not likely that Mr. Trollope's advent in this country would have given rise to any remark or excitement, his novels, clever though they be, not having taken hold of the people's heart as did those of Dickens. He came among us quietly; the newspapers gave him no flourish of trumpets; he traveled about unknown; hence it was, that few knew a new book was to be written upon America by one bearing a name not over-popular thirty years ago. Curiosity was confined to the friends and acquaintances of Mr. Trollope, who were naturally not a little anxious that he should conscientiously write such a book as would remove the existing prejudice to the name of Trollope, and render him personally as popular as his novels. For there are, we believe, few intelligent Americans (and Mr. Trollope is good enough to say that we of the North are all intelligent) who are not ready to 'faire l'aimable' to the kindly, genial author of North-America. It is not being rash to state that Mr. Trollope, in his last book, has not disappointed his warmest personal friends in this country, and this is saying much, when it is considered that many of them are radically opposed to him in many of his[Pg 303] opinions, and most of them hold very different views from him in regard to the present war. They are not disappointed, because Mr. Trollope has labored to be impartial in his criticisms. He has, at least, endeavored to lay aside his English prejudices and judge us in a spirit of truth and good-fellowship. Mr. Trollope inaugurated a new era in British book-making upon America, when he wrote: 'If I could in any small degree add to the good feeling which should exist between two nations which ought to love each other so well, and which do hang upon each other so constantly, I should think that I had cause to be proud of my work.' In saying this much, Mr. Trollope has said what others of his ilk—Bulwer, Thackeray, and Dickens—would not have said, and he may well be proud, or, at least, he can afford not to be proud, of a superior honesty and frankness. He has won for himself kind thoughts on this side of the Atlantic, and were Americans convinced that the body English were imbued with the spirit of Mr. Trollope, there would be little left of the resuscitated 'soreness.'
In his introduction, Mr. Trollope frankly acknowledges that 'it is very hard to write about any country a book that does not represent the country described in a more or less ridiculous point of view.' He confesses that he is not a philosophico-political or politico-statistical or a statistico-scientific writer, and hence, 'ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form themselves into sharp paragraphs, which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas, eulogy is commonly dull, and too frequently sounds as though it were false.' We agree with him, that 'there is much difficulty in expressing a verdict which is intended to be favorable, but which, though favorable, shall not be falsely eulogistic, and though true, not offensive.' Mr. Trollope has not been offensive either in his praise or dispraise; and when we look upon him in the light in which he paints himself—that of an English novelist—he has, at least, done his best by us. We could not expect from him such a book as Emerson wrote on English Traits, or such an one as Thomas Buckle would have written had death not staid his great work of Civilization. Nor could we look to him for that which John Stuart Mill—the English De Tocqueville—alone can give. For much that we expected we have received, for that which is wanting we shall now find fault, but good-naturedly, we hope.
Our first ground of complaint against Mr. Trollope's North-America, is its extreme verbosity. Had it been condensed to one half, or at least one third of its present size, the spirit of the book had been less weakened, and the taste of the public better satisfied. The question naturally arises in an inquiring mind, if the author could make so much out of a six months' tour through the Northern States, what would the consequences have been had he remained a year, and visited Dixie's land as well? The conclusions logically arrived at are, to say the least, very unfavorable to weak-eyed persons who are condemned to read the cheap American edition. Life is too short, and books are too numerous, to allow of repetition; and at no time is Mr. Trollope so guilty in this respect as when he dilates upon those worthies, Mason and Slidell, in connection with the Trent affair. It was very natural, especially as England has come off first-best in this matter, that Mr. Trollope should have made a feature of the Trent in reporting the state of the American pulse thereon. One reference to the controversy was desirable, two endurable, but the third return to the charge is likely to meet with impatient exclamations from the reader, who heartily sympathizes with the author when he says: 'And now, I trust, I may finish my book without again naming Messrs. Slidell and Mason.'
It certainly was rash to rave as we did on this subject, but it was quite natural, when our jurists, (even the Hon. Caleb Cushing) who were supposed to know their business, assured us that we[Pg 304] had right on our side. It was extremely ridiculous to put Captain Wilkes upon a pedestal a little lower than Bunker-Hill monument, and present him with a hero's sword for doing what was then considered only his duty. But it must be remembered that at that time the mere performance of duty by a public officer was so extraordinary a phenomenon that loyal people were brought to believe it merited especial recognition. Our Government, and not the people, were to blame. Had the speech of Charles Sumner, delivered on his 'field-day,' been the verdict of the Washington Cabinet previous to the reception of England's expostulations, the position taken by America on this subject would have been highly dignified and honorable. As it is, we stand with feathers ruffled and torn. But if, as we suppose, the Trent imbroglio leads to a purification of maritime law, not only America, but the entire commercial world will be greatly indebted to the super-patriotism of Captain Wilkes.
'The charming women of Boston' are inclined to quarrel with their friend Mr. Trollope, for ridiculing their powers of argumentation apropos to Captain Wilkes, for Mr. Trollope must confess they knew quite as much about what they were talking as the lawyers by whom they were instructed. They have had more than their proper share of revenge, however, meted out for them by the reviewer of the London Critic, who writes as follows:
'Mr. Trollope was in Boston when the first news about the Trent arrived. Of course, every body was full of the subject at once—Mr. Trollope, we presume, not excluded—albeit he is rather sarcastic upon the young ladies who began immediately to chatter about it. 'Wheaton is quite clear about it,' said one young girl to me. It was the first I had heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to knock under.' Yet Mr. Trollope, knowing very little more of Wheaton than he did before, and obviously nothing of the great authorities on maritime law, inflicts upon his readers page after page of argument upon the Trent affair, not half so delightful as the pretty babble of the ball-room belle. With all due respect to Mr. Trollope, and his attractions, we are quite sure that we would much sooner get our international law from the lips of the fair Bostonian than from his.'
After such a champion as this, could the fair Bostonians have the heart to assail Mr. Trollope?
Mr. Trollope treats of our civil war at great length; in fact, the reverberations of himself on this matter are quite as objectionable as those in the Trent affair. But it is his treatment of this subject that must ever be a source of regret to the earnest thinkers who are gradually becoming the masters of our Government's policy, who constitute the bone and muscle of the land, the rank and file of the army, and who are changing the original character of the war into that of a holy crusade. It is to be deplored, because Mr. Trollope's book will no doubt influence English opinion, to a certain extent, and therefore militate against us, and we already know how his mistaken opinions have been seized upon by pro-slavery journals in this country as a bonne bouche which they rarely obtain from so respectable a source; the more palatable to them, coming from that nationality which we have always been taught to believe was more abolition in its creed than William Lloyd Garrison himself, and from whose people we have received most of our lectures on the sin of slavery. It is sad that so fine a nature as that of Mr. Trollope should not feel conscience-stricken in believing that 'to mix up the question of general abolition with this war must be the work of a man too ignorant to understand the real subject of the war, or too false to his country to regard it.' Yet it is strange that these 'too ignorant' or 'too false' men are the very ones that Mr. Trollope holds up to admiration, and declares that any nation might be proud to claim their genius. Longfellow and Lowell, Emerson and Motley, to whom we could add almost all the well-known thinkers of the country, men after his own heart in most things, belong to this 'ignorant' or 'false' sect. Is it their one madness?[Pg 305] That is a strange madness which besets our greatest men and women; a marvelous anomaly surely. Yet there must be something sympathetic in abolitionism to Mr. Trollope, for he prefers Boston, the centre of this ignorance, to all other American cities, and finds his friends for the most part among these false ones, by which we are to conclude that Mr. Trollope is by nature an abolitionist, but that circumstances have been unfavorable to his proper development. And these circumstances we ascribe to a hasty and superficial visit to the British West-India colonies.
It is well known that in his entertaining book on travels in the West-Indies and Spanish Main, Mr. Trollope undertakes to prove that emancipation has both ruined the commercial prosperity of the British islands and degraded the free blacks to a level with the idle brute. Mr. Trollope is still firm in this opinion, notwithstanding the statistics of the Blue Book, which prove that these colonies never were in so flourishing a condition as at present. We, in America, have also had the same fact demonstrated by figures, in that very plainly written book called the Ordeal of Free Labor. Mr. Trollope, no doubt, saw some very lazy negroes, wallowing in dirt, and living only for the day, but later developments have proved that his investigations could have been simply those of a dilettante. It is highly probable that the planters who have been shorn of their riches by the edict of Emancipation, should paint the present condition of the blacks in any thing but rose-colors, and we, of course, believe that Mr. Trollope believes what he has written. He is none the less mistaken, if we are to pin our faith to the Blue Book, which we are told never lies. And yet, believing that emancipation has made a greater brute than ever of the negro, Mr. Trollope rejoices in the course which has been pursued by the home government. If both white man and black man are worse off than they were before, what good could have been derived from the reform, and by what right ought he to rejoice? Mr. Trollope claims to be an anti-slavery man, but we must confess that to our way of arguing, the ground he stands upon in this matter is any thing but terra firma. Mr. Trollope was probably thinking of those dirty West-India negroes when he made the following comments upon a lecture delivered by Wendell Phillips:
'I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty, as a professed philanthropist; and that when the philanthropist's ardor lies negro-ward, it then assumes the deepest die of venom and bloodthirstiness. There are four millions of slaves in the Southern States, none of whom have any capacity for self-maintenance or self-control. Four millions of slaves, with the necessities of children, with the passions of men, and the ignorance of savages! And Mr. Phillips would emancipate these at a blow; would, were it possible for him to do so, set them loose upon the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a hell upon earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled passions and unsatisfied wants of men.'
Mr. Trollope should have thought twice before he wrote thus of the American negro. Were he a competent authority on this subject, his opinion might be worth something; but as he never traveled in the South, and as his knowledge of the negro is limited to a surface acquaintance with the West-Indies, we maintain that Mr. Trollope has not only been unjust, but ungenerous. Four millions of slaves, none of whom have any capacity for self-maintenance or self-control! Whom are we to believe? Mr. Trollope, who has never been on a Southern plantation, or Frederick Law Olmsted? Mr. Pierce, who has been superintendent of the contrabands at Fortress Monroe and at Hilton Head, officers attached to Burnside's Division, and last and best, General David Hunter, an officer of the regular army, who went to South-Carolina with anti-abolition antecedents? All honor to General Hunter, who, unlike many others, has not shut his eyes upon facts, and, like a rational being, has yielded to the logic of events. It is strange that these authorities, all of whom possess the confi[Pg 306]dence of the Government, should disagree with Mr. Trollope. None self-maintaining? Robert Small is a pure negro. Is he not more than self-maintaining? Has he not done more for the Federal Government than any white man of the Gulf States? Tillman is a negro; the best pilots of the South are negroes: are they not self-maintaining? Kansas has welcomed thousands of fugitive slaves to her hospitable doors, not as paupers, but as laborers, who have taken the place of those white men who have gone to fight the battles which they also should be allowed to take part in. The women have been gladly accepted as house-servants. Does not this look like self-maintenance? Would negroes be employed in the army if they were as Mr. Trollope pictures them? He confesses that without these four millions of slaves the South would be a wilderness, therefore they do work as slaves to the music of the slave-drivers' whip. How very odd, that the moment men and women (for Mr. Trollope does acknowledge them to be such) own themselves, and are paid for the sweat of their brow, they should forget the trades by which they have enriched the South, and become incapable of maintaining themselves—they who have maintained three hundred and fifty thousand insolent slave-owners! Given whip-lashes and the incubus of a white family, the slave will work; given freedom and wages, the negro won't work. Was there ever stated a more palpable fallacy? Is it necessary to declare further that the Hilton Head experiment is a success, although the negroes, wanting in slave-drivers and in their musical instruments, began their planting very late in the season? Is it necessary to give Mr. Trollope one of many figures, and prove that in the British West-India colonies free labor has exported two hundred and sixty-five millions pounds of sugar annually, whereas slave labor only exported one hundred and eighty-seven millions three hundred thousand? And this in a climate where, unlike even the Southern States of North-America, there is every inducement to indolence.
Four millions of slaves, none of whom are capable of self-control, who possess the necessities of children, the passions of men, and the ignorance of savages! We really have thought that the many thousands of these four millions who have come under the Federal jurisdiction, exercised considerable self-control, when it is remembered that in some localities they have been left entire masters of themselves, have in other instances labored months for the Government under promise of pay, and have had that pay prove a delusion. Certainly it is fair to judge of a whole by a part. Given a bone, Professor Agassiz can draw the animal of which the bone forms a part. Given many thousands of negroes, we should be able to judge somewhat of four millions. Had Mr. Trollope seen the thousands of octoroons and quadroons enslaved in the South by their own fathers, it would have been more just in him to have attributed a want of self-control to the masters of these four millions. We do not know what Mr. Trollope means by 'the necessities of children. Children need to be sheltered, fed, and clothed, and so do the negroes, but here the resemblance ends; for whereas children can not take care of themselves, the negro can, provided there is any opportunity to work. It is scarcely to be doubted that temporary distress must arise among fugitives in localities where labor is not plenty; but does this establish the black man's incapacity? Revolutions, especially those which are internal, generally bring in their train distress to laborers. Then we are told that the slaves are endowed with the passions of men; and very glad are we to know this, for, as a love of liberty and a willingness to sacrifice all things for freedom, is one of the loftiest passions in men, were he devoid of this passion, we should look with much less confidence to assistance from the negro in this war of freedom versus slavery, than we do at present. In stating that[Pg 307] the slaves are as ignorant as savages, Mr. Trollope pays an exceedingly poor compliment to the Southern whites, as it would naturally be supposed that constant contact with a superior race would have civilized the negro to a certain extent, especially as he is known to be wonderfully imitative. And such is the case; at least the writer of these lines, who has been born and bred in a slave State, thinks so. As a whole, they compare very favorably with the 'poor white trash,' and individually they are vastly superior to this 'trash.' It is true, that they can not read or write, not from want of aptitude or desire, as the teachers among the contrabands write that their desire to read amounts to a passion, in many cases, even among the hoary-headed, but because the teaching of a slave to read or write was, in the good old times before the war, regarded and punished as a criminal offense. What a pity it is that we can not go back to the Union as it was! In this ignorance of the rudiments of learning, the negroes are not unlike a large percentage of the populations of Great Britain and Ireland.
'And Mr. Phillips would let these ignorant savages loose upon the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a hell upon earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled passions and unsatisfied wants of men!' If Mr. Trollope were read in the history of emancipation, he would know that there has not been an instance of 'such a hell upon earth' as he describes. The American negro is a singularly docile, affectionate, and good-natured creature, not at all given to destroying his kind or tearing his master, and the least inclined to do these things at a time when there is no necessity for them. A slave is likely to kill his master to gain his freedom, but he is not fond enough of murder to kill him when no object is to be gained except a halter. The record so far proves that the masters have shot down their slaves rather than have them fall into the hands of the Union troops. Even granting Mr. Trollope's theory of the negro disposition, no edict of emancipation could produce such an effect as he predicts, to the masters, at least. They, in revenge, might shoot down their slaves, but, unfortunately, the victims would be unable to defend themselves, from the fact that all arms are sedulously kept from them. The slaves would run away in greater numbers than they do at present, would give us valuable information of the enemy, and would swell our ranks as soldiers, if permitted, and kill their rebel masters in the legal and honorable way of war. It is likely that Mr. Trollope, holding the black man in so little estimation, would doubt his abilities in this capacity. Fortunately for us, we can quote as evidence in our favor from General Hunter's late letter to Congress, which, for sagacity and elegant sarcasm, is unrivaled among American state papers. General Hunter, after stating that the 'loyal slaves, unlike their fugitive masters, welcome him, aid him, and supply him with food, labor, and information, working with remarkable industry,' concludes by stating that 'the experiment of arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and even marvelous success. They are sober, docile, attentive, and enthusiastic, displaying great natural capacity for acquiring the duties of the soldier. They are eager beyond all things to take the field and be led into action, and it is the unanimous opinion of the officers who have had charge of them, that in the peculiarities of this climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal to the similar regiments so long and successfully used by the British authorities in the West-India Islands. In conclusion, I would say that it is my hope, there appearing no possibility of other reinforcements, owing to the exigencies of the campaign on the peninsula, to have organized by the end of next fall, and to be able to present to the Government, from forty-eight to fifty thousand of these hardy and devoted soldiers.'
Mr. Trollope declares that without the[Pg 308] slaves the South would be a wilderness; he also says that the North is justified in the present war against the South, and although he doubts our ability to attain our ends in this war, he would be very glad if we were victorious. If these are his opinions, and if further, he considers slavery to be the cause of the war, then why in the name of common-sense does he not advocate that which would bring about our lasting success? He expresses his satisfaction at the probability of emancipation in Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia, and yet rather than that abolition should triumph universally, he would have the Gulf States go off by themselves and sink into worse than South-American insignificance, a curse to themselves from the very reason of slavery. This, to our way of thinking, is vastly more cruel to the South than even the 'hell upon earth,' which, supposing it were possible, emancipation would create. A massacre could affect but one generation: such a state of things as Mr. Trollope expects to see would poison numberless generations. The Northern brain is gradually ridding itself of mental fog, begotten by Southern influences, and Mr. Trollope will not live to see the Gulf States sink into a moral Dismal Swamp. The day is not far distant when a God-fearing and justice-loving people will give these States their choice between Emancipation and death in their 'last ditch,' which we suppose to be the Gulf of Mexico. Repulses before Richmond only hasten this end. 'But Congress can not do this,' says Mr. Trollope. Has martial law no virtue? We object to the title, 'An Apology for the War,' which Mr. Trollope has given to one of his chapters; and with the best of motives, he takes great pains to prove to the English public how we of the North could not but fight the South, however losing a game it might be. No true American need beg pardon of Europe for this war, which is the only apology we can make to civilization for slavery. Mr. Trollope states the worn-out cant that the secessionists of the South have been aided and abetted by the fanatical abolitionism of the North. Of course they have: had there been no slavery, there would have been no abolitionists, and therefore no secessionists. Wherever there is a wrong, there are always persons fanatical enough to cry out against that wrong. In time, the few fanatics become the majority, and conquer the wrong, to the infinite disgust of the easy-going present, but to the gratitude of a better future. The Abolitionists gave birth to the Republican party, and of course the triumph of the Republican party was the father to secession; but we see no reason to mourn that it was so; rather do we thank God that the struggle has come in our day. We can not sympathize with Mr. Trollope when he says of the Bell and Everett party: 'Their express theory was this: that the question of slavery should not be touched. Their purpose was to crush agitation, and restore harmony by an impartial balance between the North and South: a fine purpose—the finest of all purposes, had it been practicable.' We suppose by this, that Mr. Trollope wishes such a state of things had been practicable. The impartial balance means the Crittenden Compromise, whose impartiality the North fails to see in any other light than a fond leaning to the South, giving it all territory South of a certain latitude, a latitude that never was intended by the Constitution. It seems to us that there can be no impartial balance between freedom and slavery. Every jury must be partial to the right, or they sin before God.
Mr. Trollope tells us that 'the South is seceding from the North because the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different appetites, different morals, and a different culture. It is well for one man to say that slavery has caused the separation, and for another to say that slavery has not caused it. Each in so saying speaks the truth. Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the great point on which the two have agreed to differ. But slavery has not caused it, seeing that other points of[Pg 309] difference are to be found In every circumstance and feature of the two people. The North and the South must ever be dissimilar. In the North, labor will always be honorable, and because honorable, successful. In the South, labor has ever been servile—at least in some sense—and therefore dishonorable; and because dishonorable, has not, to itself, been successful.' Is not this arguing in a circle? The North is dissimilar to the South. Why? Because labor is honorable in the former, and dishonorable, because of its servility, in the latter. The servility removed, in what are the two dissimilar? One third of the Southern whites are related by marriage to the North; a second third are Northerners, and it is this last third that are most violent in their acts against and hatred of the North. They were born with our instincts and appetites, educated in the same morals, and received the same culture; and these men are no worse than some of their brothers who, though they have not emigrated to the South, have yet fattened upon cotton. The parents of Jefferson Davis belonged to Connecticut; Slidell is a New-Yorker; Benjamin is a Northerner; General Lovell is a disgrace to Massachusetts; so, too, is Albert Pike. It is utter nonsense to say that we are two people. Two interests have been at work—free labor and slave labor; and when the former triumphs, there will be no more straws split about two people, nor will the refrain of agriculture versus manufacture be sung. The South, especially Virginia, has untold wealth to be drained from her great water-power. New-England will not be alone in manufacturing, nor Pennsylvania in mining.
We think that Mr. Trollope fails to appreciate principle when he likens the conflict between the two sections of our country to a quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Jones, in which a mutual friend (England) is, from the very nature of the case, obliged to maintain neutrality, leaving the matter to the tender care of Sir Creswell. There never yet existed a mutual friend who, however little he interfered with a matrimonial difference, did not, in sympathy and moral support, take violent sides with one of the combatants; and Mr. Trollope would be first in taking up the cudgels against private wrong. The North has never wished for physical aid from England; but does Mr. Trollope remember what Mrs. Browning has so nobly and humanely written? 'Non-intervention in the affairs of neighboring States is a high political virtue; but non-intervention does not mean passing by on the other side when your neighbor falls among thieves, or Phariseeism would recover it from Christianity.' England, the greatest of actual nations, had a part to act in our war, and that part a noble one. Not the part of physical intervention for the benefit of Lancashire and of a confederacy founded upon slavery, which both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston inform the world will not take place 'at present.' Not the part of hypercriticism and misconstruction of Northern 'Orders,' and affectionate blindness to Southern atrocities. But such a part as was worthy of the nation, one of whose greatest glories is that it gave birth to a Clarkson, a Sharpe, and a Wilberforce. And England has much to answer for, in that she has been found wanting, not in the cause of the North, but in the cause of humanity. Had she not always told us that we were criminals of the deepest dye not to do what she had done in the West-Indies, had she not always held out to the world the beacon-light of emancipation, there could be little censure cast upon the British ermine; but having laid claim to so white and moral a robe, she subjects herself to the very proper indignation of the anti-slavery party which now governs the North.
Mr. Trollope confesses that British sympathy is with the South, and further writes: 'It seems to me that some of us never tire in abusing the Americans and calling them names, for having allowed themselves to be driven into this civil war. We tell them that they are fools and idiots; we speak of their doings as though there had been some plain[Pg 310] course by which the war might have been avoided; and we throw it in their teeth that they have no capability for war,' etc., etc. Contact with the English abroad sent us home convinced of English animosity, and this was before the Trent affair. A literary woman writes to America: 'There is only one person to whom I can talk freely upon the affairs of your country. Here in England, they say I have lived so long in Italy that I have become an American.' We have had nothing but abuse from the English press always, excepting a few of the liberal journals. Mill and Bright and Cobden alone have been prominent in their expression of good-will to the North. And this is Abolition England! History will record, that at the time when America was convulsed by the inevitable struggle between Freedom and Slavery, England, actuated by selfish motives, withheld that moral support and righteous counsel which would have deprived the South of much aid and comfort, brought the war to a speedier conclusion, gained the grateful confidence of the anti-slavery North, and immeasurably aided the abolition of human slavery.
It may be said that we of the North have no intention of touching the 'institution,' and therefore England can not sympathize with us. Whatever the theory of the administration at Washington may have been, he is insane as well as blind who does not see what is its practical tendency. In the same length of time, this tendency would have been much farther on the road to right had the strong arm of England wielded the moral power which should belong to it. Mr. Trollope says: 'The complaint of Americans is, that they have received no sympathy from England; but it seems to me that a great nation should not require an expression of sympathy during its struggle. Sympathy is for the weak, not for the strong. When I hear two powerful men contending together in argument, I do not sympathize with him who has the best of it; but I watch the precision of his logic, and acknowledge the effects of his rhetoric. There has been a whining weakness in the complaints made by Americans against England, which has done more to lower them, as a people, in my judgment, than any other part of their conduct during the present crisis.' It is true that at the beginning of this war the North did show a whining weakness for English approbation, of which it is sincerely to be hoped we have been thoroughly cured. We paid our mother-land too high a compliment—we gave her credit for virtues which she does not possess—and the disappointment incurred thereby has been bitter in the extreme. We were not aware, however, that a sincere desire for sympathy was an American peculiarity. We have long labored under the delusion that the English, even, were very indignant with Brother Jonathan during the Crimean war, when he failed to furnish the quota of sympathy which our cousins considered was their due, but which we could not give to a debauched 'sick man' whom, for the good of civilization, we wished out of the world as quickly as possible. But England was 'strong;' why should she have desired sympathy? For, according to Mr. Trollope's creed, the weak alone ought to receive sympathy. It seems to be a matter entirely independent of right and wrong with Mr. Trollope. It is sufficient for a man to prove his case to be 'strong,' for Mr. Trollope to side with his opponent. Demonstrate your weakness, whether it be physical, moral, or mental, and Mr. Trollope will fight your battles for you. On this principle—which, we are told, is English—the exiled princes of Italy, especially the Neapolitan-Bourbon, the Pope, Austria, and of course the Southern confederacy, should find their warmest sympathizers among true Britons, and perhaps they do; but Mr. Trollope, in spite of his theory, is not one of them.
The emancipationist should not look to England for aid or comfort, but it will be none the worse for England that she has been false to her traditions. 'I confess,' wrote Mrs. Browning—dead[Pg 311] now a year—'that I dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too large for England, having courage, in the face of his countrymen, to assert of some suggested policy: 'This is good for your trade, this is necessary for your domination; but it will vex a people hard by, it will hurt a people farther off, it will profit nothing to the general humanity; therefore, away with it! it is not for you or for me.'' The justice of the poet yet reigns in heaven only; and dare we dream—we who, sick at heart, are weighed down by the craft and dishonesty of our public men—of the possibility of such a golden age?
On the subject of religion as well, we are much at variance with Mr. Trollope. Of course, it is to be expected that one who says, 'I love the name of State and Church, and believe that much of our English well-being has depended on it; I have made up my mind to think that union good, and am not to be turned away from that conviction;' it is to be expected, we repeat, that such an one should consider religion in the States 'rowdy.' Surely, we will not quarrel with Mr. Trollope for this opinion, however much we may regret it; as we consider it the glory of this country, that while we claim for our moral foundation a fervent belief in God and an abiding faith in the necessity of religion, our government pays no premium to hypocrisy by having fastened to its shirts one creed above all other creeds, made thereby more respectable and more fashionable. 'It is a part of their system,' Mr. Trollope continues, 'that religion shall be perfectly free, and that no man shall be in any way constrained in that matter,' (and he sees nothing to thank God for in this system of ours!) 'consequently, the question of a man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy manner.' That which we have gladly dignified by the name of religious toleration, (not yet half as broad as it should and will be,) Mr. Trollope degrades by the epithet of 'free-and-easy.' This would better apply were ours the toleration of indifference, instead of being a toleration founded upon the unshaken belief that God has endowed every human being with a conscience whose sufficiency unto itself, in matters of religious faith, we have no right to question. And we are convinced that this experiment, with which we started, has been good for our growth of mind and soul, as well as for our growth as a nation. Even Mr. Trollope qualifies our 'rowdyism,' by saying that 'the nation is religious in its tendencies, and prone to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things.'
And now we have done with fault-finding. For all that we hereafter quote from Mr. Trollope's book, we at once express our thanks and sympathy. He is 'strong,' but he is also human, and likes sympathy.
More than true, if such a thing could be, is Mr. Trollope's comments upon American politicians. 'The corruption of the venal politicians of the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men. It behoves the country to look to this. It is time now that she should do so. The people of the nation are educated and clever. The women are bright and beautiful. Her charity is profuse; her philanthropy is eager and true; her national ambition is noble and honest—honest in the cause of civilization. But she has soiled herself with political corruption, and has disgraced the cause of republican government by those whom she has placed in her high places. Let her look to it NOW. She is nobly ambitious of reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called good as well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as beneficent She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and preparing to build impregnable ships of war. But all these will fail to satisfy her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that corruption by which her political democracy has debased itself. A politician should be a man worthy of all honor, in that he loves his country; and not one worthy of contempt, in that he robs his country.' Can we plead other[Pg 312] than guilty, when even now a Senator of the United States stands convicted of a miserable betrayal of his office? Will America heed the voice of Europe, as well as of her best friends at home, before it is too late? Again writes Mr. Trollope: ''It is better to have little governors than great governors,' an American said to me once. 'It is our glory that we know how to live without having great men over us to rule us.' That glory, if ever it were a glory, has come to an end. It seems to me that all these troubles have come upon the States because they have not placed high men in high places.' Is there a thinking American who denies the truth of this? And of our code of honesty—that for which Englishmen are most to be commended—what is truly said of us? 'It is not by foreign voices, by English newspapers, or in French pamphlets, that the corruption of American politicians has been exposed, but by American voices and by the American press. It is to be heard on every side. Ministers of the Cabinet, Senators, Representatives, State Legislatures, officers of the army, officials of the navy, contractors of every grade—all who are presumed to touch, or to have the power of touching, public money, are thus accused.... The leaders of the rebellion are hated in the North. The names of Jefferson Davis, Cobb, Toombs, and Floyd, are mentioned with execration by the very children. This has sprung from a true and noble feeling; from a patriotic love of national greatness, and a hatred of those who, for small party purposes, have been willing to lessen the name of the United States. But, in addition to this, the names of those also should be execrated who have robbed their country when pretending to serve it; who have taken its wages in the days of its great struggle, and at the same time have filched from its coffers; who have undertaken the task of steering the ship through the storm, in order that their hands might be deep in the meal-tub and the bread-basket, and that they might stuff their own sacks with the ship's provisions. These are the men who must be loathed by the nation—whose fate must be held up as a warning to others—before good can come.' How long are the American people to allow this pool of iniquity to stagnate, and sap the vitals of the nation? How long, O Lord! how long?
On the subject of education, Mr. Trollope—though indulging in a little pleasantry on young girls who analyze Milton—does us full justice. 'The one matter in which, as far as my judgment goes, the people of the United States have excelled us Englishmen, so as to justify them in taking to themselves praise which we can not take to ourselves or refuse to them, is the matter of education.... The coachman who drives you, the man who mends your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the girl who stitches your wife's dress—they all carry with them sure signs of education, and show it in every word they utter.' But much as Mr. Trollope admires our system of public schools, he does not see much to extol in the at least Western way of rearing children. 'I must protest that American babies are an unhappy race. They eat and drink just as they please; they are never punished; they are never banished, snubbed, and kept in the background, as children are kept with us; and yet they are wretched and uncomfortable. My heart has bled for them as I have heard them squalling, by the hour together, in agonies of discontent and dyspepsia.' This is the type of child found by Mr. Trollope on Western steamboats; and we agree with him that beef-steaks, with pickles, produce a bad type of child; and it is unnecessary to confess to Mr. Trollope what he already knows, that pertness and irreverence to parents are the great faults of American youth. No doubt the pickles have much to do with this state of things.
While awarding high praise to American women en masse, Mr. Trollope mourns over the condition of the Western women with whom he came in[Pg 313] contact, and we are sorry to think that these specimens form the rule, though of course exceptions are very numerous. 'A Western American man is not a talking man. He will sit for hours over a stove, with his cigar in his mouth and his hat over his eyes, chewing the cud of reflection. A dozen will sit together in the same way, and there shall not be a dozen words spoken between them in an hour. With the women, one's chance of conversation is still worse. 'It seemed as though the cares of this world had been too much for them.... They were generally hard, dry, and melancholy. I am speaking, of course, of aged females, from five-and-twenty, perhaps, to thirty, who had long since given up the amusements and levities of life.' Mr. Trollope's malediction upon the women of New-York whom he met in the street-cars, is well merited, so far as many of them are concerned; but he should bear in mind the fact that these 'many' are foreigners, mostly uneducated natives of the British isles. Inexcusable as is the advantage which such women sometimes take of American gallantry, the spirit of this gallantry is none the less to be commended, and the grateful smile of thanks from American ladies is not so rare as Mr. Trollope imagines. Mr. Trollope wants the gallantry abolished; we hope that rude women may learn a better appreciation of this gallantry by its abolition in flagrant cases only. Had Mr. Trollope once 'learned the ways' of New-York stages, he would not have found them such vile conveyances; but we quite agree with him in advocating the introduction of cabs. In seeing nothing but vulgarity in Fifth Avenue, and a thirst for gold all over New-York City, we think Mr. Trollope has given way to prejudice. There is no city so generous in the spending of money as New-York. Art and literature find their best patrons in this much-abused Gotham; and it will not do for one who lives in a glass house to throw stones, for we are not the only nation of shop-keepers. We do not blame Mr. Trollope, however, for giving his love to Boston, and to the men and women of intellect who have homes in and about Boston.
We are of opinion that Mr. Trollope is too severe upon our hotels; for faulty though they be, they are established upon a vastly superior plan to those of any other country, if we are to believe our own experience and that of the majority of travelers. Mr. Trollope sees no use of a ladies' parlor; but Mr. Trollope would soon see its indispensability were he to travel as an unprotected female of limited means. On the matter of the Post-Office, however, he has both our ears; and much that he says of our government, and the need of a constitutional change in our Constitution, deserves attention—likewise what he says of colonization. We do elevate unworthy persons to the altar of heroism, and are stupid in our blatant eulogies. It is sincerely to be regretted that so honest a writer did not devote two separate chapters to the important subjects of drunkenness and artificial heat, which, had he known us better, he would have known were undermining the American physique. He does treat passingly of our hot-houses, but seems not to have faced the worse evil. Of our literature, and of our absorption of English literature, Mr. Trollope has spoken fully and well; and in his plea for a national copyright, he might have further argued its necessity, from the fact that American publishers will give no encouragement to unknown native writers, however clever, so long as they can steal the brains of Great Britain.
To conclude. We like Mr. Trollope's book, for we believe him when he says: 'I have endeavored to judge without prejudice, and to hear with honest ears, and to see with honest eyes.' We have the firmest faith in Mr. Trollope's honesty. We know he has written nothing that he does not conscientiously believe, and he has given unmistakable evidence of his good-will to this country. We are lost in amazement when he tells us: 'I know I shall never again be at Boston, and that I have said that about the[Pg 314] Americans which would make me unwelcome as a guest if I were there.' Said what? We should be thin-skinned, indeed, did we take umbrage at a book written in the spirit of Mr. Trollope's. On the contrary, the Americans who are interested in it are agreeably disappointed in the verdict which he has given of them; and though they may not accept his political opinions, they are sensible enough to appreciate the right of each man to his honest convictions. Mr. Trollope, though he sees in our future not two, but three, confederacies, predicts a great destiny for the North. We can see but a union of all—a Union cemented by the triumph of freedom in the abolition of that which has been the taint upon the nation. If Mr. Trollope's prophecies are fulfilled, (and God forbid!) it will be because we have allowed the golden hour to escape. Pleased as we are with Mr. Trollope the writer—who has not failed to appreciate the self-sacrifice of Northern patriotism—Mr. Trollope the man has a far greater hold upon our heart; a hold which has been strengthened, rather than weakened, by his book. The friends of Mr. Trollope extend to him their cordial greeting, and Boston in particular will offer a hearty shake of the hand to the writer of North-America, whenever he chooses to take that hand again.
The man who is not convinced, by this time, that the Union has come to 'the bitter need,' must be hard to convince. For more than one year we have put off doing our utmost, and talked incessantly of the 'wants of the enemy.' We have demonstrated a thousand times that they wanted quinine and calomel, beef and brandy, with every other comfort, luxury, and necessary, and have ended by discovering that they have forced every man into their army; that they have, at all events, abundance of corn-meal, raised by the negroes whom Northern Conservatism has dreaded to free; that they are well supplied with arms from Abolition England, and that every day finds them more and more warlike and inured to war.
Time was, we are told, when a bold, 'radical push' would have prevented all this. Time was, when those who urged such vigorous and overwhelming measures—and we were among them—were denounced as insane and traitorous by the Northern Conservative press. Time was, when the Irishman's policy of capturing a horse in a hundred-acre lot, 'by surrounding him,' might have been advantageously exchanged for the more direct course of going at him. Time was, when there were very few troops in Richmond. All this when time—and very precious time—was.
Just now, time is—and very little time to lose, either. The rebels, it seems, can live on corn-meal and whisky as well under tents as they once did in cabins. They are building rams and 'iron-clads,' and very good ones. They have an immense army, and three or four millions of negroes to plant for it and feed it. Hundreds of thousands of acres of good corn-land are waving in the hot breezes of Dixie. These are facts of the strongest kind—so strong that we have actually been compelled to adopt some few of the 'radical and ruinous' measures advocated from the beginning by 'an insane and fanatical band of traitors,' for whose blood the New-York Herald and its weakly ape, the Boston Courier, have not yet ceased to howl or chatter. Negroes, it seems, are, after all, to be employed sometimes, and all the work is not to be put upon soldiers who, as the correspondent of the London Times has truly said, have endured disasters and sufferings caused by unpardonable neglect, such as no Euro[Pg 315]pean troops would have borne without revolt. It is even thought by some hardy and very desperate 'radicals,' that negroes may be armed and made to fight for the Union; in fact, it is quite possible that, should the North succeed in resisting the South a year or two longer, or should we undergo a few more very great disasters, we may go so far as to believe what a great French writer has declared in a work on Military Art, that 'War is war, and he wages it best who injures his enemy most.' We are aware of the horror which this fanatical radical, and, of course, Abolitionist axiom, by a writer of the school of Napoleon, must inspire, and therefore qualify the assertion by the word 'may.' For to believe that the main props of the enemy are to be knocked away from under them, and that we are to fairly fight them in every way, involves a desperate and un-Christian state of mind to which no one should yield, and which would, in fact, be impious, nay, even un-democratic and un-conservative.
It is true that by 'throwing grass' at the enemy, as President Lincoln quaintly terms it, by the anaconda game, and above all, by constantly yelling, 'No nigger!' and 'Down with the Abolitionists!' we have contrived to lose some forty thousand good soldiers' lives by disease; to stand where we were, and to have myriads of men paralyzed and kept back from war just at the instant when their zeal was most needed. We beg our readers to seriously reflect on this last fact. There are numbers of essential and bold steps in this war, and against the enemy, which must, in the ordinary course of events, be taken, as for instance. General Hunter's policy of employing negroes, as General Jackson did. With such a step, honestly considered, no earthly politics whatever has any thing to do. Yet every one of these sheer necessities of war which a Napoleon would have grasped at the first, have been promptly opposed as radical, traitorous, and infernal, by those tories who are only waiting for the South to come in again to rush and lick its hands as of old. Every measure, from the first arming of troops down to the employment of blacks, has been fought by these 'reactionaries' savagely, step by step—we might add, in parenthesis, that it has been amusing to see how they 'ate dirt,' took back their words and praised these very measures, one by one, as soon as they saw them taken up by the Administration. The ecco la fica of Italian history was a small humiliation to that which the 'democratic' press presented when it glorified Lincoln's 'remuneration message,' and gilded the pill by declaring it (Heaven knows how!) a splendid triumph over Abolition—that same remuneration doctrine which, when urged in the New-York Tribune, and in these pages, had been reviled as fearfully 'abolition!'
However, all these conservative attacks in succession on every measure which any one could see would become necessities from a merely military point of view, have had their inevitable result: they have got into the West, and have aided Secession, as in many cases they were intended to do. The plain, blunt man, seeing what must be adopted if the war is to be carried on in earnest, and yet hearing that these inevitable expediencies were all 'abolition,' became confused and disheartened. So that it is as true as Gospel, that in the West, where 'Abolition' has kept one man back from the Union, 'Conservatism' has kept ten. And the proof may be found that while in the West, as in the East, the better educated, more intelligent, and more energetic minds, have at once comprehended the necessities of the war, and dared the whole, 'call it Abolition or not,' the blinder and more illiterate, who were afraid of being 'called' Abolitionists, have kept back, or remained by Secession altogether.
As we write, a striking proof of our news comes before us in a remark in an influential and able Western conservative journal, the Nebraska News, The remark in question is to the effect that the proposition made by us in The Continental Monthly, to partition the con[Pg 316]fiscated real estate of the South among the soldiers of the Federal army is nothing more nor less than 'a bribe for patriotism.' That is the word.
Now, politics apart—abolition or no abolition—we presume there are not ten rational men in the country who believe that the proposition to colonize Texas in particular, with free labor, or to settle free Northern soldiers in the cotton country of the South, is other than judicious and common-sensible. If it will make our soldiers fight any better, it certainly is not very much to be deprecated. To settle disbanded volunteers in the South so as to gradually drive away slave labor by the superior value of free labor on lands confiscated or public, is certainly not a very reprehensible proposition. But it originated, as all the more advanced political proposals of the day do, with men who favor Emancipation, present or prospective, and therefore it must be cried down! The worst possible construction is put upon it. It is 'a bribe for patriotism,' and must not be thought of. 'Better lose the victory,' says Conservatism, 'rather than inspire the zeal of our soldiers by offering any tangible reward!' We beg our thousands of readers in the army to note this. Since we first proposed in these columns to properly reward the army by giving to each man his share of cotton-land, [we did not even go so far as to insist that the land should absolutely be confiscated, knowing well, and declaring, that Texas contains public land enough for this purpose,] the democratic-conservative-pro-slavery press, especially of the West, has attacked the scheme with unwonted vigor. For the West understands the strength latent in this proposal better than the East; it knows what can be done when free Northern vigor goes to planting and town-building; it 'knows how the thing is done;' it 'has been there,' and sees in our 'bribe for patriotism' the most deadly blow ever struck at Southern Aristocracy. Consequently those men who abuse Emancipation in its every form, violently oppose our proposal to give the army such reward as their services merit, and such as their residence in the South renders peculiarly fit. It is 'a bribe;' it is extravagant; it—yes—it is Abolition! The army is respectfully requested not to think of settling in the South, but to hobble back to alms-houses in order that Democracy may carry its elections and settle down in custom-houses and other snug retreats.
And what do the anti-energy, anti-action, anti-contraband-digging, anti-every thing practical and go-ahead in the war gentlemen propose to give the soldier in exchange for his cotton-land? Let the soldier examine coolly, if he can, the next bullet-wound in his leg. He will perceive a puncture which will probably, when traced around the edge and carefully copied, present that circular form generally assigned to a—cipher. This represents, we believe, with tolerable accuracy, what the anti-actionists and reactionists propose to give the soldier as a recompense for that leg. For so truly as we live, so true is it that there is not one anti-Emancipationist in the North who is not opposed to settling the army or any portion of it in the South, simply because to do any thing which may in any way interfere with 'the Institution,' or jar Southern aristocracy, forms no part of their platform!
We believe this to be as plain a fact as was ever yet submitted to living man.
Now, are we to go to work in earnest, to boldly grasp at every means of honorable warfare, as France or England would do in our case, and overwhelm the South, or are we going to let it alone? Are we, for years to come, to slowly fight our way from one small war-expediency to another, as it may please the mongrel puppies of Democracy to gradually get their eyes opened or not? Are we to arm the blacks by and by, or wait till they shall have planted another corn-crop for the enemy? Shall we inspire the soldiers by promising them cotton-lands now, or wait till we get to the street of By and By, which leads to the house of Never? Would we like to have our victory now, or wait till we get it?[Pg 317]
Up and act! We are waiting for grass to grow while the horse is starving! Let the Administration no longer hold back, for lo! the people are ready and willing, and one grasp at a fiercely brave, decided policy would send a roar of approval from ocean to ocean. One tenth part of the wild desire to adopt instant and energetic measures which is now struggling into life among the people, would, if transferred to their leaders, send opposition, North and South, howling to Hades. We find the irrepressible discontent gathering around like a thunder-storm. It reaches us in letters. We know that it is growing tremendously in the army—the discontent which demands a bold policy, active measures, and one great overwhelming blow. Every woman cries for it—it is everywhere! Mr. Lincoln, you have waited for the people, and we tell you that the people are now ready. The three hundred thousand volunteers are coming bravely on; but, we tell you, Draft! That's the thing. The very word has already sent a chill through the South. They have seen what can be done by bold, overwhelming military measures; by driving every man into arms; by being headlong and fearless; and know that it has put them at once on equality with us—they, the half minority! And they know, too, that when WE once begin the 'big game,' all will be up with them. We have more than twice as many men here, and their own blacks are but a broken reed. When we begin to draft, however, war will begin in earnest. They dread that drafting far more than volunteering. They know by experience, what we have not as yet learned, that drafting contains many strange secrets of success. It is a bold conscriptive measure, and indicates serious strength and the consciousness of strength in government. Our government has hitherto lain half-asleep, half-awake, a great, good-natured giant, now and then rolling over and crushing some of the rats running over his bed, and now and then getting very badly bitten. Wake up, Giant Samuel, all in the morning early! The rats are coming down on thee, old friend, not by scores, but by tens of thousands! Jump up, my jolly giant! for verily, things begin to look serious. You must play the Wide-Awake game now; grasp your stick, knock them right and left; call in the celebrated dog Halleck, who can kill his thousand rats an hour, and cry to Sambo to carry out the dead and bury them! It's rats now, friend Samuel, if it ever was!
Can not the North play the entire game, and shake out the bag, as well as the South? They have bundled out every man and dollar, dog, cat, and tenpenny nail into the war, and done it gloriously. They have stopped at nothing, feared nothing, believed in nothing but victory. Now let the North step out! Life and wife, lands and kin, will be of small value if we are to lose this battle and become the citizens of a broken country, going backward instead of forward—a country with a past, but no future. Better draw every man into the army, and leave the women to hoe and reap, ere we come to that. Draft, Abraham Lincoln—draft, in God's name! Let us have one rousing, tremendous pull at victory! Send out such armies as never were seen before. The West has grain enough to feed them, and tide what may betide, you can arm them. Let us try what WE can do when it comes to the last emergency.
When we arise in our full strength, England and France and the South will be as gnats in the flame before us. And there is no time to lose. France is 'tinkering away' at Mexico; foreign cannon are to pass from Mexico into the South; our foe is considering the aggressive policy. Abraham Lincoln, the time has come! Canada is to attack from the North, and France from Mexico. Your three hundred thousand are a trifle; draw out your million; draw the last man who can bear arms—and let it be done quickly! This is your policy. Let the blows rain thick and fast. Hurrah! Uncle Samuel—the rats are running! Strike quick, though—very quick—and you will be saved![Pg 318]
All public exhibitions have their peculiar physiognomies. During the passage of General Jackson through Philadelphia, there was a very strong party opposed to him, which gave a feature to the show differing from others we had witnessed, but which became subdued in a degree by his appearance. A firm and imposing figure on horseback, General Jackson was perfectly at home in the saddle. Dressed in black, with a broad-brimmed white beaver hat, craped in consequence of the recent death of his wife, he bowed with composed ease and a somewhat military grace to the multitude. His tall, thin, bony frame, surmounted by a venerable, weather-beaten, strongly-lined and original countenance, with stiff, upright, gray hair, changed the opinion which some had previously formed. His military services were important, his career undoubtedly patriotic; but he had interfered with many and deep interests. There was much dissentient humming.
The General bowed right and left, lifting his hat often from his head, appearing at the same time dignified and kind. When the cavalcade first marched down Chestnut street, there was no immediate escort, or it did not act efficiently. Rude fellows on horseback, of the roughest description, sat sideling on their torn saddles just before the President, gazing vacantly in his face as they would from the gallery of a theatre, but interrupting the view of his person from other portions of the public.
James Reeside, the celebrated mail-contractor, became very much provoked at one of these fellows. Reeside rode a powerful horse before the President, and with a heavy, long-lashed riding-whip in his hand, attempted to drive the man's broken-down steed out of the way. But the animal was as impervious to feeling as the rider to sense or decency, and Reeside had little influence over a dense crowd, till the escort exercised a proper authority in front. I saw the General smile at Reeside's eagerness to clear the way for him. Of course, this sketch is a glimpse at a certain point where the procession passed me. I viewed it again in Arch street, and noticed the calmness with which the General saluted a crowd of negroes who suddenly gave him a hearty cheer from the wall of a graveyard where they were perched. He had just taken off his hat to some ladies waving handkerchiefs on the opposite side of the street, when he heard the huzza, and replied by a salutation to the unexpected but not despised color.
After the fatigue of the parade, when invited to take some refreshment, Jackson asked for boiled rice and milk at dinner. There was some slight delay to procure them, but he declined any thing else.
I recollect an anecdote of Daniel Webster in relation to General Jackson, which I wish to preserve. On some public occasion, an entertainment was given, under large tents, near Point-no-Point, in Philadelphia county, which the representatives to the Legislature were generally invited to attend. Political antipathies and prejudices were excessive at that day. No moderate person was tolerated, in the slightest degree, by the more violent opponents of the Administration. Mr. Webster was present, and rose to speak. His intelligent and serious air of grave thought was impressively felt. He spoke his objections to a certain policy of the Administration with a gentle firmness. I sat near him. One of his intolerant friends made an inquiry, either at the close of a short dinner-table address, or during his speech, if 'he was not still in the practice of visiting at the White House?' I saw Webster's brow become clouded, as he calmly but slowly explained, 'His position as Senator required him to have occasional intercourse with the President[Pg 319] of the United States, whose views upon some points of national policy differed widely from those he (Webster) was well known to entertain;' when, as if his noble spirit became suddenly aware of the narrow meanness that had induced the question, he raised himself to his full hight, and looking firmly at his audience, with a pause, till he caught the eye of the inquirer, he continued: 'I hope to God, gentlemen, never to live to see the day when a Senator of the United States can not call upon the Chief Magistrate of the nation, on account of any differences in opinion either may possess upon public affairs!' This honorable, patriotic, and liberal expression was most cordially applauded by all parties. Many left that meeting with a sense of relief from the oppression of political intolerance, so nearly allied to the tyranny of religious bigotry.
I had been introduced, and was sitting with a number of gentlemen in a circle round the fire of the President's room, when James Buchanan presented himself for the first time, as a Senator of the United States from his native State. 'I am happy to see you, Mr. Buchanan,' said General Jackson, rising and shaking him heartily by the hand, 'both personally and politically. Sit down, sir.' The conversation was social. Some one brought in a lighted corn-cob pipe, with a long reed-stalk, for the President to smoke. He appeared waiting for it. As he puffed at it, a Western man asked some question about the fire which had been reported at the Hermitage. The answer made was, 'it had not been much injured,' I think, 'but the family had moved temporarily into a log-house,' in which, the General observed, 'he had spent some of the happiest days of his life.' He then, as if excited by old recollections, told us he had an excellent plantation, fine cattle, noble horses, a large still-house, and so on. 'Why, General,' laughed his Western friend, 'I thought I saw your name, the other day, along with those of other prominent men, advocating the cold-water system?' 'I did sign something of the kind,' replied the veteran, very coolly puffing at his pipe, 'but I had a very good distillery, for all that!' Before markets became convenient, almost all large plantations had stills to use up the surplus grains, which could not be sold to a profit near home. Tanneries and blacksmiths' shops were also accompaniments, for essential convenience.
Martin, the President's door-keeper, was very independent, at times, to visitors at the White House, especially if he had been indulging with his friends, as was now and then the case. But he was somewhat privileged, on account of his fidelity and humor. Upon one occasion he gave great offense to some water-drinking Democrats—rather a rare specimen at that day—who complained to the President. He promised to speak to Martin about it. The first opportunity—early, while Martin was cool—the President sent for him in private, and mentioned the objection. 'Och! Jineral, dear!' said Martin, looking him earnestly in the face, 'I'de hev enough to do ef I give ear to all the nonsense people tell me, even about yerself, Jineral! I wonther who folks don't complain about, now-a-days? But if they are friends of yours, Jineral, they maybe hed cause, ef I could only recollict what it was! So we'll jist let it pass by this time, ef you plase, sur!' Martin remained in his station. When the successor of Mr. Van Buren came in, the door-keeper presented himself soon after to the new President, with the civil inquiry: 'I suppose I'll hev to flit, too, with the other Martin?' He was smilingly told to be easy.
I saw General Jackson riding in an open carriage, in earnest conversation with his successor, as I was on the way to the Capitol to witness the inaugural oath. A few days after, I shook hands with him for the last time, as he sat in a railroad-car, about to leave Washington for the West. Crowds of all classes leaped up to offer such salutations, all of whom he received with the same easy, courteous, decided manner he had exhibited on other occasions.[Pg 320]
'The youth of England have been said to take their religion from Milton, and their history from Shakspeare:' and as far as they draw the character of the last royal Plantagenet from the bloody ogre which every grand tragedian has delighted to personate, they set up invention on the pedestal of fact, and prefer slander to truth. Even from the opening soliloquy, Shakspeare traduces, misrepresents, vilifies the man he had interested motives in making infamous; while at the death of Jack Cade, a cutting address is made to the future monarch upon his deformity, just TWO years before his birth! There is no sufficient authority for his having been
A Scotch commission addressed him with praise of the 'princely majesty and royal authority sparkling in his face.' Rev. Dr. Shaw's discourse to the Londoners, dwells upon the Protector's likeness to the noble Duke, his father: his mother was a beauty, his brothers were handsome: a monstrous contrast on Richard's part would have been alluded to by the accurate Philip de Comines: the only remaining print of his person is at least fair: the immensely heavy armor of the times may have bowed his form a little, and no doubt he was pale, and a little higher shouldered on the right than the left side: but, if Anne always loved him, as is now proved, and the princess Elizabeth sought his affection after the Queen's decease, he could not have been the hideous dwarf at which dogs howl. Nay, so far from there being an atom of truth in that famous wooing scene which provokes from Richard the sarcasm:
Richard actually detected her in the disguise of a kitchen-girl, at London, and renewed his early attachment in the court of the Archbishop of York. And while Anne was never in her lifetime charged with insensibility to the death of her relatives, or lack of feeling, she died not from any cruelty of his, but from weakness, and especially from grief over her boy's sudden decease. Richard indeed 'loved her early, loved her late,' and could neither have desired nor designed a calamity which lost him many English hearts. The burial of Henry VI. Richard himself solemnized with great state; a favor that no one of Henry's party was brave and generous enough to return to the last crowned head of the rival house.
Gloucester did not need to urge on the well-deserved doom of Clarence: both Houses of Parliament voted it; King Edward plead for it; the omnipotent relatives of the Queen hastened it with characteristic malice; they may have honestly believed that the peaceful succession of the crown was in peril so long as this plotting traitor lived. No doubt it was.
It is next to certain that Richard did not stab Henry VI., nor the murdered son of Margaret, though he had every provocation in the insults showered upon his father; was devotedly attached to King Edward, and hazarded for him person and life with a constancy then unparalleled and a zeal rewarded by his brother's entire confidence.
Certain names wear a halter in history, and his was one. Richard I. was assassinated in the siege of Chalone Castle; Richard II. was murdered at Pomfret; Richard, Earl of Southampton, was executed for treason; Richard, Duke of York, was beheaded with insult; his son, Richard III., fell by the perfidy of his nobles; Richard, the last[Pg 321] Duke of York, was probably murdered by his uncle, in the Tower.
At the decease of his brother Edward, the Duke of Gloucester was not only the first prince of the blood royal, but was also a consummate statesman, intrepid soldier, generous giver, and prompt executor, naturally compassionate, as is proved by his large pensions to the families of his enemies, to Lady Hastings, Lady Rivers, the Duchess of Buckingham, and the rest; peculiarly devout, too, according to a pattern then getting antiquated, as is shown by his endowing colleges of priests, and bestowing funds for masses in his own behalf and others. Shakspeare never loses an opportunity of painting Gloucester's piety as sheer hypocrisy, but it was not thought so then; for there was a growing Protestant party whom all these Romanist manifestations of the highest nobleman in England greatly offended, not to say alarmed.
Richard's change of virtual into actual sovereignty, in other words, the Lord Protector's usurpation of the crown, was not done by violence: in his first royal procession he was unattended by troops; a fickle, intriguing, ambitious, and warlike nobility approved the change; Buckingham, Catesby, and others, urged it. No doubt he himself saw that the crown was not a fit plaything for a twelve years' old boy, in such a time of frequent treason, ferocious crime, and general recklessness. There is no question but what, as Richard had more head than any man in England, he was best fitted to be at its head.
The great mystery requiring to be explained is, not that 'the Lancastrian partialities of Shakspeare have,' as Walter Scott said, 'turned history upside down,' and since the battle of Bosworth, no party have had any interest in vindicating an utterly ruined cause, but how such troops of nobles revolted against a monarch alike brave and resolute, wise in council and energetic in act, generous to reward, but fearful to punish.
The only solution I am ready to admit is, the imputed assassination of his young nephews; not only an unnatural crime, but sacrilege to that divinity which was believed to hedge a king. The cotemporary ballad of the 'Babes in the Wood,' was circulated by Buckingham to inflame the English heart against one to whom he had thrown down the gauntlet for a deadly wrestle. Except that the youngest babe is a girl, and that the uncle perishes in prison, the tragedy and the ballad wonderfully keep pace together. In one, the prince's youth is put under charge of an uncle 'whom wealth and riches did surround;' in the other, 'the uncle is a man of high estate.' The play soothes the deserted mother with, 'Sister, have comfort;' the ballad with, 'Sweet sister, do not fear.' The drama says that:
And the poem:
But
There is a like agreement in their deaths:
And the ballad:
Finally, the greatest of English tragedies represents Richard's remorse as:
While the most pathetic of English ballads gives it:
As it is probable that this ballad was started on its rounds by Buckingham, the arch-plotter, was eagerly circulated[Pg 322] by the Richmond conspirators, and sung all over the southern part of England as the fatal assault on Richard was about to be made, we shall hardly wonder that, in an age of few books and no journals, the imputed crime hurled a usurper from his throne.
But was he really guilty? Did he deserve to be set up as this scarecrow in English story? The weight of authority says, 'Yes;' facts are coming to light in the indefatigable research now being made in England, which may yet say: 'No.'
The charge was started by the unprincipled Buckingham to excuse his sudden conversion from an accomplice, if Shakspeare is to be credited, to a bloodthirsty foe. It was so little received that, months afterward, the convocation of British clergy addressed King Richard thus, 'Seeing your most noble and blessed disposition in all other things'—so little received that when Richmond actually appeared in the field, there was no popular insurrection in his behalf, only a few nobles joined him with their own forces; and when their treason triumphed, and his rival sat supreme on Richard's throne, the three pretended accomplices in the murder of the princes were so far from punishment that their chief held high office for nearly a score of years, and then perished for assisting at the escape of Lady Suffolk, of the house of York. And when Perkin Warbeck appeared in arms as the murdered Prince Edward, and the strongest possible motive urged Henry VII. to justify his usurpation by producing the bones of the murdered princes, (which two centuries afterward were pretended to be found at the foot of the Tower-stairs,) at least to publish to the world the three murderers' confessions, and demonstrate the absurdity of the popular insurrection, Lord Bacon himself says, that Henry could obtain no proof, though he spared neither money nor effort! We have even the statement of Polydore Virgil, in a history written by express desire of Henry VII., that 'it was generally reported and believed that Edward's sons were still alive, having been conveyed secretly away, and obscurely concealed in some distant region.'
And then the story is laden down with improbabilities. That Brakenbury should have refused this service to so willful a despot, yet not have fled from the penalty of disobedience, and even have received additional royal favors, and finally sacrificed his life, fighting bravely in behalf of the bloodiest villain that ever went unhung, is a large pill for credulity to swallow.
Again, that a mere page should have selected as chief butcher a nobleman high in office, knighted long before this in Scotland, and that this same Sir Edward Tyrrel should have been continued in office around the mother of the murdered princes, and honored year after year with high office by Henry VII., and actually made confidential governor of Guisnes, and royal commissioner for a treaty with France, seems perfectly incredible. All of Shakspeare's representation of this most slandered courtier is, indeed, utterly false; while Bacon's repetition of the principal charges only shows how impossible it is to recover a reputation that has once been lost, and how careless history has been in repeating calumnies that have once found circulation.
Bayley's history of the Tower proves that what has been popularly christened the Bloody Tower could never have been the scene of the supposed murder; that no bones were found under any staircase there; so that this pretended confirmation of the murder in the time of Charles II., on which many writers have relied, vanishes into the stuff which dreams are made of.
And yet by this charge which the antiquarian Stowe declared was 'never proved by any credible witness,' which Grafton, Hall, and Holinshead agreed could never be certainly known; which Bacon declared that King Henry in vain endeavored to substantiate, a brave and politic monarch lost his crown, life, and historic fame! Nay, it is a curious fact[Pg 323] that Richard could not safely contradict the report of the princes' deaths when it broke out with the outbreak of civil war, because it would have been furnishing to the rebellion a justifying cause and a royal head, instead of a milksop whom he despised and felt certain to overthrow.
As it was, Richard left nothing undone to fortify his failing cause; he may be thought even to have overdone. He doubled his spies, enlisted fresh troops, erected fortifications, equipped fleets, twice had Richmond at his fingers' ends, twice saw Providence take his side in the dispersion of Richmond's fleet, the overthrow of Buckingham's force; then was utterly ruined by the general treason of his most trusted nobles and his not unnatural scorn of a pusillanimous rival. In vain did he strive to be just and generous, vigilant and charitable, politic and enterprising. The poor excuse for Buckingham's desertion, the refusal of the grant of Hereford, is refuted by a Harleian MS. recording that royal munificence; yet Buckingham, without any question, wove the net in which this lion fell; he seduced the very officers of the court; he invited Richmond over, assuring him of a popular uprising, which was proved to be a mere mockery by the miserable handful that rallied around him, until Richard fell at Bosworth. And after Buckingham's death, Richmond merely followed his plans, used the tools he had prepared, headed the conspiracy which this unmitigated traitor arranged, and profited more than Richard by his death, because he had not to fear an after-struggle with Buckingham's insatiable ambition, overweening pride, and unsurpassed popular power.
As one becomes familiar with the cotemporary statements, the fall of Richard seems nothing but the treachery which provoked his last outcry on the field of death. Even Catesby probably turned against him; his own Attorney-General invited the invaders into Wales with promise of aid; the Duke of Northumberland, whom Richard had covered over with honor, held his half of the army motionless while his royal benefactor was murdered before his eyes. Stanley was a snake in the grass in the next reign as well as this, and at last expiated his double treason too late upon the scaffold. Yet while the nobles went over to Richmond's side, the common people held back; only three thousand troops, perhaps personal retainers of their lords, united themselves to the two thousand Richmond hired abroad. It was any thing but a popular uprising against the jealous, hateful, bloody humpback of Shakspeare; it excuses the fatal precipitancy with which the King (instead of gathering his troops from the scattered fortifications) not only hurried on the battle, but, when the mine of treason began to explode beneath his feet on Bosworth field, refused to seek safety by flight, but heading a furious charge upon Richmond, threw his life magnificently away.
Even had he been guilty of the great crime which cost him his crown, his fate would have merited many a tear but for the unrivaled genius at defamation with which the master-dramatist did homage to the triumphant house of Lancaster. Lord Orford says, that it is evident the Tudors retained all their Lancastrian prejudices even in the reign of Elizabeth; and that Shakspeare's drama was patronized by her who liked to have her grandsire presented in so favorable a light as the deliverer of his native land from a bloody tyranny.
Even in taking the darkest view of his case, we find that other English sovereigns had sinned the same: Henry I. probably murdered the elder brother whom he robbed; Edward III. deposed his own father; Henry IV. cheated his nephew of the sceptre, and permitted his assassination; Shakspeare's own Elizabeth was not over-sisterly to Mary of Scotland; all around Richard, robbery, treason, violence, lust, murder, were like a swelling sea. Why was he thus singled out for the anathema of four centuries? Why was the naked corpse of one who fell fighting valiantly,[Pg 324] thrown rudely on a horse's back? Why was his stone coffin degraded into a tavern-trough, and his remains tossed out no man knew where? Not merely that the Plantagenets never lifted their heads from the gory dust any more, so that their conquerors wrote the epitaph upon their tombs, and hired the annalists of their fame; but, still more, that the weak and assailed Henry required every excuse for his invasion and usurpation; and that the principal nobility of England wanted a hiding-place for the shame of their violated oaths, their monstrous perfidy, their cowardly abandonment in the hour of peril of one of the bravest leaders, wisest statesmen, and most liberal princes England ever knew.
Whether the negro can or ought to be employed in the Federal army, or in any way, for the purpose of suppressing the present rebellion, is becoming a question of very decided significance. It is a little late in the day, to be sure, since it is probable that the expensive amusement of dirt-and-shovel warfare might, by the aid of the black, have been somewhat shorn of its expense, and our Northern army have counted some thousands of lives more than it now does, had the contraband been freely encouraged to delve for his deliverance. Still, there are signs of sense being slowly manifested by the great conservative mass, and we every day see proof that there are many who, to conquer the enemy, are willing to do a bold or practical thing, even if it does please the Abolitionists. Like the rustic youth who was informed of a sure way to obtain great wealth if he would pay a trifle, they would not mind getting that fortune if it did cost a dollar. It is a pity, of course, saith conservatism, that the South can not be conquered in some potent way which shall at least make it feel a little bad, and at the same time utterly annihilate that rather respectably sized majority of Americans who would gladly see emancipation realized. However, as the potent way is not known, we must do the best we can. In its secret conclaves, respectable conservatism shakes its fine old head, and smoothing down the white cravat inherited from the late great and good Buchanan, admits that the Richmond Whig is almost right, after all—this Federal cause is very much in the nature of a 'servile insurrection' of Northern serfs against gentlemen; 'mais que voulez-vous?—we have got into the wrong boat, and must sink or swim with the maddened Helots! And conservatism sighs for the good old days when they blasphemed Liberty at their little suppers,
'And—blest condition!-felt genteel.'
To be sure, the portraits of Puritan or Huguenot or Revolutionary ancestors frowned on them from the walls—the portraits of men who had risked all things for freedom; ''but this is a different state of things, you know;' we have changed all that—the heart is on the other side of the body now—let us be discreet!'
It is curious, in this connection of employing slaves as workmen or soldiers, with the remembrance of the progressive gentlemen of the olden time who founded this republic, to see what the latter thought in their day of such aid in warfare. And fortunately we have at hand what we want, in a very multum in parvo pamphlet[5] by George H. Moore, Librarian of the New-York Historical Society. From this we learn that while[Pg 325] great opposition to the project prevailed, owing to wrong judgment as to the capacity of the black, the expediency and even necessity of employing him was, during the events of the war, forcibly demonstrated, and that, when he was employed in a military capacity, he proved himself a good soldier.
There were, however, great and good men during the Revolution, who warmly sustained the affirmative. The famous Dr. Hopkins wrote as follows in 1776:
'God is so ordering it in his providence, that it seems absolutely necessary something should speedily be done with respect to the slaves among us, in order to our safety, and to prevent their turning against us in our present struggle, in order to get their liberty. Our oppressors have planned to gain the blacks, and induce them to take up arms against us, by promising them liberty on this condition; and this plan they are prosecuting to the utmost of their power, by which means they have persuaded numbers to join them. And should we attempt to restrain them by force and severity, keeping a strict guard over them, and punishing them severely who shall be detected in attempting to join our opposers, this will only be making bad worse, and serve to render our inconsistence, oppression and cruelty more criminal, perspicuous and shocking, and bring down the righteous vengeance of heaven on our heads. The only way pointed out to prevent this threatening evil, is to set the blacks at liberty ourselves by some public acts and laws, and then give them proper encouragement to labor, or take arms in the defense of the American cause, as they shall choose. This would at once be doing them some degree of justice, and defeating our enemies in the scheme they are prosecuting.'
'These,' says Mr. Moore, 'were the views of a philanthropic divine, who urged them upon the Continental Congress and the owners of slaves throughout the colonies with singular power, showing it to be at once their duty and their interest to adopt the policy of emancipation.' They did not meet with those of the administration of any of the colonies, and were formally disapproved. But while the enlistment of negroes was prohibited, the fact is still notorious, as Bancroft says, that 'the roll of the army at Cambridge had from its first formation borne the names of men of color.' 'Free negroes stood in the ranks by the side of white men. In the beginning of the war, they had entered the provincial army; the first general order which was issued by Ward had required a return, among other things, of the 'complexion' of the soldiers; and black men, like others, were retained in the service after the troops were adopted by the continent.'
It was determined on, at war-councils and in committees of conference, in 1775, that negroes should be rejected from the enlistments; and yet General Washington found, in that same year, that the negroes, if not employed in the American army, would become formidable foes when enlisted by the enemy. We may judge, from a note given by Mr. Moore, that Washington had at least a higher opinion than his confrères of the power of the black. His apprehensions, we are told, were grounded somewhat on the operations of Lord Dunmore, whose proclamation had been issued declaring 'all indented servants, negroes or others, (appertaining to rebels,) free,' and calling on them to join his Majesty's troops. It was the opinion of the commander-in-chief, that if Dunmore was not crushed before spring, he would become the most formidable enemy America had; 'his strength will increase as a snow-ball by rolling, and faster, if some expedient can not be hit upon to convince the slaves and servants of the impotency of his designs.' Consequently, in general orders, December 30th, he says:
'As the General is informed that numbers of free negroes are desirous of enlisting, he gives leave to the recruiting-officers to entertain them, and promises to lay the matter before the Congress, who, he doubts not, will approve of it.'
Washington communicated his action to Congress, adding: 'If this is disapproved of by Congress, I will put a stop to it.'
His letter was referred to a committee of three, (Mr. Wythe, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Wilson,) on the fifteenth of January,[Pg 326] 1776, and upon their report on the following day the Congress determined:
'That the free negroes who have served faithfully in the army at Cambridge may be reënlisted therein, but no others.'
That Washington, at a later period at least, warmly approved of the employment of blacks as soldiers, appears from his remarks to Colonel Laurens, subsequent to his failure to carry out what even as an effort forms one of the most remarkable episodes of the Revolution, full details of which are given in Mr. Moore's pamphlet.
On March 14th, 1779, Alexander Hamilton wrote to John Jay, then President of Congress, warmly commending a plan of Colonel Laurens, the object of which was to raise three or four battalions of negroes in South-Carolina. We regret that our limits render it impossible to give the whole of this remarkable document, which is as applicable to the present day as it was to its own.
'I foresee that this project will have to combat much opposition from prejudice and self-interest. The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability, or pernicious tendency, of a scheme which requires such sacrifices. But it should be considered that if we do not make use of them in this way, the enemy probably will; and that the best way to counteract the temptations they will hold out, will be to offer them ourselves. An essential part of the plan is to give them their freedom with their swords. This will secure their fidelity, animate their courage, and, I believe, will have a good influence upon those who remain, by opening a door to their emancipation.
'This circumstance, I confess, has no small weight in inducing me to wish the success of the project; for the dictates of humanity and true policy equally interest me in favor of this unfortunate class of men.
'While I am on the subject of Southern affairs, you will excuse the liberty I take in saying, that I do not think measures sufficiently vigorous are pursuing for our defense in that quarter. Except the few regular troops of South-Carolina, we seem to be relying wholly on the militia of that and two neighboring States. These will soon grow impatient of service, and leave our affairs in a miserable situation. No considerable force can be uniformly kept up by militia, to say nothing of the many obvious and well-known inconveniences that attend this kind of troops. I would beg leave to suggest, sir, that no time ought to be lost in making a draft of militia to serve a twelve-month, from the States of North and South-Carolina and Virginia. But South-Carolina, being very weak in her population of whites, may be excused from the draft, on condition of furnishing the black battalions. The two others may furnish about three thousand five hundred men, and be exempted, on that account, from sending any succors to this army. The States to the northward of Virginia will be fully able to give competent supplies to the army here; and it will require all the force and exertions of the three States I have mentioned to withstand the storm which has arisen, and is increasing in the South.
'The troops drafted must be thrown into battalions, and officered in the best possible manner. The best supernumerary officers may be made use of as far as they will go. If arms are wanted for their troops, and no better way of supplying them is to be found, we should endeavor to levy a contribution of arms upon the militia at large. Extraordinary exigencies demand extraordinary means. I fear this Southern business will become a very grave one.
'With the truest respect and esteem,
I am, sir, your most obedient servant,
Alexander Hamilton.
'His Excellency, John Jay,
President of Congress,'
The project was warmly approved by Major-General Greene, and Laurens himself, who proposed to lead the blacks, was enthusiastic in his hopes. In a letter written about this time, he says:
'It appears to me that I should be inexcusable in the light of a citizen, if I did not continue my utmost efforts for carrying the plan of the black levies into execution, while there remains the smallest hope of success. The House of Representatives will be convened in a few days. I intend to qualify, and make a final effort. Oh! that I were a Demosthenes! The Athenians never deserved a more bitter exprobation than our countrymen.'
But the Legislature of South-Carolina decided, as might have been expected from the most tory of States in the Rev[Pg 327]olution, as it now is the most traitorous in the Emancipation—for it is by that name that this war will be known in history. It rejected Laurens' proposal—his own words give the best account of the failure:
'I was outvoted, having only reason on my side, and being opposed by a triple-headed monster, that shod the baneful influence of avarice, prejudice, and pusillanimity in all our assemblies. It was some consolation to me, however, to find that philosophy and truth had made some little progress since my last effort, as I obtained twice as many suffrages as before.'
'Washington,' says Mr. Moore, 'comforted Laurens with the confession that he was not at all astonished by the failure of the plan, adding:
''That spirit of freedom, which at the commencement of this contest would have gladly sacrificed every thing to the attainment of its object, has long since subsided, and every selfish passion has taken its place. It is not the public, but private interest, which influences the generality of mankind, nor can the Americans any longer boast an exception. Under these circumstances, it would rather have been surprising if you had succeeded.'
But the real lesson which this rejection of negro aid taught this country was a bitter one. South-Carolina lost twenty-five thousand negroes, and in Georgia between three fourths and seven eighths of the slaves escaped. The British organized them, made great use of them, and they became 'dangerous and well-disciplined bands of marauders.' As the want of recruits in the American army increased, negroes, both bond and free, were finally and gladly taken. In the department under General Washington's command, on August 24th, 1778, there were nearly eight hundred black soldiers. This does not include, however, the black regiment of Rhode Island slaves which had just been organized.
In 1778 General Varnum proposed to Washington that a battalion of negro slaves be raised, to be commanded by Colonel Greene, Lieutenant-Colonel Olney, and Major Ward. Washington approved of the plan, which, however, met with strong opposition from the Rhode Island Assembly. The black regiment was, however, raised, tried, 'and not found wanting.' As Mr. Moore declares:
'In the battle of Rhode-Island, August 29th, 1778, said by Lafayette to have been 'the best fought action of the whole war,' this newly raised black regiment, under Colonel Greene, distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor, repelling three times the fierce assaults of an overwhelming force of Hessian troops. And so they continued to discharge their duty with zeal and fidelity—never losing any of their first laurels so gallantly won. It is not improbable that Colonel John Laurens witnessed and drew some of his inspiration from the scene of their first trial in the field.'
A company of negroes from Connecticut was also raised and commanded by the late General Humphreys, who was attached to the family of Washington. Of this company cotemporary account says that they 'conducted themselves with fidelity and efficiency throughout the war.' So, little by little, the negro came to be an effective aid, after all the formal rejections of his service. In 1780, an act was passed in Maryland to procure one thousand men to serve three years. The property in the State was divided into classes of sixteen thousand pounds, each of which was, within twenty days, to furnish one recruit, who might be either a freeman or a slave. In 1781, the Legislature resolved to raise, immediately, seven hundred and fifty negroes, to be incorporated with the other troops.
In Virginia an act had been passed in 1777, declaring that free negroes, and free negroes only, might be enlisted on the footing with white men. Great numbers of Virginians who wished to escape military service, caused their slaves to enlist, having tendered them to the recruiting-officers as substitutes for free persons, whose lot or duty it was to serve in the army, at the same time representing that these slaves were freemen. 'On the expiration of the term of enlistment, the former owners at[Pg 328]tempted to force them to return to a state of servitude, with equal disregard of the principles of justice and their own solemn promise.'
The iniquity of such proceedings soon raised a storm of indignation, and the result was the passage of an Act of Emancipation, securing freedom to all slaves who had served their term in the war.
Such are the principal facts collected in this remarkable and timely publication. It is needless to say that we commend it to the careful perusal of all who desire conclusive information on a most important subject. It is evident that we are going through nearly the same stages of timidity, ignorance, and blind conservatism which were passed by our forefathers, and shall come, if not too late, upon the same results. It is historically true that Washington apparently had in the beginning these scruples, but was among the first to lay them aside, and that experience taught him and many others the folly of scrupling to employ in regular warfare and in a regular way men who would otherwise aid the enemy. These are undeniable facts, well worth something more than mere reflection, and we accordingly commend the work in which they are set forth, with all our heart, to the reader.
[5] Historical Notes on the Employment of Negroes in the American Army of the Revolution. By George H. Moore. New-York: Charles T. Evans, 532 Broadway. Price, ten cents.
'All of which I saw, and part of which I was.'
The clock of St. Paul's was sounding eight. Buttoning my outside coat closely about me—for it was a cold, stormy night in November—I descended the steps of the Astor House to visit, in the upper part of the city, the blue-eyed young woman who is looking over my shoulder while I write this—it was nearly twenty years ago, reader, but she is young yet!
As I closed the outer door, a small voice at my elbow, in a tone broken by sobs, said:
'Sir—will you—please, sir—will you buy some ballads?'
'Ballads! a little fellow like you selling ballads at this time of night?'
'Yes, sir! I haven't sold only three all day, sir; do, please sir, do buy some!' and as he stood under the one gas-burner which lit the hotel-porch, I saw that his eyes were red with weeping.
'Come inside, my little man; don't stand here in the cold. Who sends you out on such a night as this to sell ballads?'
'Nobody, sir; but mother is sick, and I have to sell 'em! She's had nothing to eat all day, sir. Oh! do buy some—do buy some, sir!'
'I will, my good boy; but tell me, have you no father?'
'No, sir, I never had any—and mother is sick, very sick, sir; and she's nobody to do any thing for her but me—nobody but me, sir!' and he cried as if his very heart would break.
'Don't cry, my little boy, don't cry; I'll buy your ballads—all of them;' and I gave him two half-dollar pieces—all the silver I had.
'I haven't got so many as that, sir; I haven't got only twenty, and they're only a cent a piece, sir;' and with very evident reluctance, he tendered me back the money.
'Oh! never mind, my boy, keep the money and the ballads too.'
'O sir! thank you. Mother will be so glad, so glad, sir!' and he turned to go, but his feelings overpowering him, he hid his little face in the big blanket-shawl which he wore, and sobbed louder and harder than before.
'Where does your mother live, my boy?'[Pg 329]
'Round in Anthony street, sir; some good folks there give her a room, sir.'
'Did you say she was sick?'
'Yes, sir, very sick; the doctor says she can't live only a little while, sir.'
'And what will become of you, when she is dead?'
'I don't know, sir. Mother says God will take care of me, sir.'
'Come, my little fellow, don't cry any more; I'll go with you and see your mother.'
'Oh! thank you, sir; mother will be so glad to have you—so glad to thank you, sir;' and, looking up timidly an my face, he added: 'You'll love mother, sir!'
I took his hand in mine, and we went out into the storm.
He was not more than six years old, and had a bright, intelligent, but pale and peaked face. He wore thin, patched trowsers, a small, ragged cap, and large, tattered boots, and over his shoulders was a worn woolen shawl. I could not see the remainder of his clothing, but I afterward discovered that a man's waistcoat was his only other garment.
As I have said, it was a bleak, stormy night. The rain, which had fallen all the day, froze as it fell, and the sharp, wintry wind swept down Broadway, sending an icy chill to my very bones, and making the little hand I held in mine tremble with cold. We passed several blocks in silence, when the child turned into a side-street.
'My little fellow,' I said, 'this is not Anthony street—that is further on.'
'I know it, sir; but I want to get mother some bread, sir. A good gentleman down here sells to me very cheap, sir.'
We crossed a couple of streets and stopped at a corner-grocery.
'Why, my little 'un,' said the large, red-faced man behind the counter, 'I didn't know what had become of ye! Why haven't ye bin here to-day?'
'I hadn't any money, sir,' replied the little boy.
'An' haven't ye had any bread to-day, sonny?'
'Mother hasn't had any, sir; a little bit was left last night, but she made me eat that, sir.'
'D—n it, an' hasn't she hed any all day! Ye mustn't do that agin, sonny; ye must come whether ye've money or no; times is hard, but, I swear, I kin give ye a loaf any time.'
'I thank you, sir,' I said, advancing from the doorway where I had stood unobserved—'I will pay you;' and taking a roll of bills from my pocket, I gave him one. 'You know what they want—send it to them at once.'
The man stared at me a moment in amazement, then said:
'An' do ye know 'em, sir?'
'No, I'm just going there.'
'Well, do, sir; they're bad off; ye kin do real good there, no mistake.'
'I'll see,' I replied; and taking the bread in one hand and the little boy by the other, I started again for his mother's. I was always a rapid walker, but I had difficulty in keeping up with the little fellow as he trotted along at my side.
We soon stopped at the door of an old, weather-worn building, which I saw by the light of the street-lamp was of dingy brick, three stories high, and hermetically sealed by green board-shutters. It sat but one step above the ground, and a dim light which came through the low basement-windows, showed that even its cellar was occupied. My little guide rang the bell, and in a moment a panel of the door opened, and a shrill voice asked:
'Who's there?'
'It's only me, ma'am; please let me in.'
'What, you, Franky, out so late as this!' exclaimed the woman, undoing the chain which held the door. As she was about closing it she caught sight of me, and eyeing me for a moment, said: 'Walk in, sir.' As I complied with the invitation, she added, pointing to a room opening from the hall: 'Step in there, sir.'
'He's come to see mother, ma'am,' said the little boy.[Pg 330]
'You can't see her, sir, she's sick, and don't see company any more.'
'I would see her for only a moment, madam.'
'But she can't see nobody now, sir.'
'Oh! mother would like to see him very much, ma'am; he's a very good gentleman, ma'am,' said the child, in a pleading, winning tone.
The real object of my visit seemed to break upon the woman, for, making a low courtesy, she said:
'Oh! she will be glad to see you, sir; she's very bad off, very bad indeed;' and she at once led the way to the basement stairway.
The woman was about forty, with a round, full form, a red, bloated face, and eyes which looked as if they had not known a wink of sleep for years. She wore a dirty lace-cap, trimmed with gaudy colors, and a tawdry red and black dress, laid off in large squares like the map of Philadelphia. It was very low in the neck—remarkably so for the season—and disclosed a scorched, florid skin, and a rough, mountainous bosom.
The furnishings of the hall had a shabby-genteel look, till we reached the basement stairs, when every thing became bare, and dark, and dirty. The woman led the way down, and opened the door of a front-room—the only one on the floor, the rest of the space being open, and occupied as a cellar. This room had a forlorn, cheerless appearance. Its front wall was of the naked brick, through which the moisture had crept, dotting it every here and there with large water-stains and blotches of mold. Its other sides were of rough boards, placed upright, and partially covered with a dirty, ragged paper. The floor was of wide, unpainted plank. A huge chimney-stack protruded some three feet into the room, and in it was a hole which admitted the pipe of a rusty air-tight stove that gave out just enough heat to take the chill edge off the damp, heavy atmosphere. This stove, a small stand resting against the wall, a broken-backed chair, and a low, narrow bed covered with a ragged patch-work counterpane, were the only furniture of the apartment. And that room was the home of two human beings.
'How do you feel to-night, Fanny?' asked the woman, as she approached the low bed in the corner. There was a reply, but it was too faint for me to hear.
'Here, mamma,' said the little boy, taking me by the hand and leading me to the bedside, 'here's a good gentleman who's come to see you. He's very good, mamma; he's given me a whole dollar, and got you lots of things at the store; oh! lots of things!' and the little fellow threw his arms around his mother's neck, and kissed her again and again in his joy.
The mother turned her eye upon me—such an eye! It seemed a black flame. And her face—so pale, so wan, so woe-begone, and yet so sweetly, strangely, beautiful—seemed that of some fallen angel, who, after long ages of torment, had been purified, and fitted again for heaven! And it was so. She had suffered all the woe, she had wept for all the sin, and then she stood white and pure before the everlasting gates which were opening to let her in!
She reached me her thin, weak hand, and in a low voice, said: 'I thank you, sir.'
'You are welcome, madam. You are very sick; it hurts you to speak?'
She nodded slightly, but said nothing. I turned to the woman who had admitted me, and in a very low tone said: 'I never saw a person die; is she not dying?'
'No, sir, I guess not. She's seemed so for a good many days.'
'Has she had a physician?'
'Not for nigh a month. A doctor come once or twice, but he said it wan't no use—he couldn't help her.'
'But she should have help at once. Have you any one you can send?'
'Oh! yes; I kin manage that. What doctor will you have?'
I wrote on a piece of paper the name of an acquaintance—a skillful and experienced physician, who lived not far off—and gave it to her.[Pg 331]
'And can't you make her a cup of tea, and a little chicken-broth? She has had nothing all day.'
'Nothing all day! I'm sure I didn't know it! I'm poor, sir—you don't know how poor—but she shan't starve in my house.'
'I suppose she didn't like to speak of it; but get her something as soon as you can.'
'I will, sir; I'll fix her some tea and broth right off.'
'Well, do, as quick as possible. I'll pay you for your trouble.'
'I don't want any pay, sir,' she replied, as she turned and darted from the doorway as nimbly as if she had not been fat and forty.
She soon returned with the tea, and I gave it to the sick girl, a spoonful at a time, she being too weak to sit up. It was the first she had tasted for weeks, and it greatly revived her.
After a time, the doctor came. He felt her pulse, asked, her a few questions in a low voice, and then wrote some simple directions. When he had done that, he turned to me and said: 'Step outside for a moment; I want to speak with you.'
As we passed out, we met the woman going in with the broth.
'Please give it to her at once,' I said.
'Yes, sir, I will; but, gentlemen, don't stand here in the cold. Walk up into the parlor—the front-room.'
We did as she suggested, for the cellar-way had a damp, unhealthy air.
The parlor was furnished in a showy, tawdry style, and a worn, ugly, flame-colored carpet covered its floor. A coal-fire was burning in the grate, and we sat down by it. As we did so, I heard loud voices, mingled with laughter and the clinking of glasses, in the adjoining room. Not appearing to notice the noises, the doctor asked:
'Who is this woman?'
'I don't know; I never saw her before. Is she dying?'
'No, not now. But she can't last long; a week, at the most.'
'She evidently has the consumption. That damp cellar has killed her; she should be got out of it.'
'The cellar hasn't done it; her very vitals are eaten up. She's been beyond cure for six months!'
'Is it possible? And such a woman!'
'Oh! I see such cases every day—women as fine-looking as she is.'
A ring came at the front-door, and in a moment I heard the woman coming up the basement stairs. I had risen when the doctor made the last remark, and was pacing up and down the room, deliberating on what should be done. The parlor-door was ajar, and as the woman admitted the new-comers, I caught a glimpse of them. They were three rough, hard-looking characters; and one, from his unsteady gait, I judged to be intoxicated. She seemed glad to see them, and led them into the room from whence the noises proceeded. In a moment the doctor rose to go, saying: 'I can do nothing more. But what do you intend to do here? I brought you out to ask you.'
'I don't know what can be done. She ought not to be left to die there.'
'She'd prefer dying above-ground, no doubt; and if you relish fleecing, you'll get her an upper room—but she's got to die soon any way, and a day or two, more or less, down there, won't make any difference. Take my advice—don't throw your money away, and don't stay here too late; the house has a very hard name, and some of its rough customers would think nothing of throttling a spruce young fellow like you.'
'I thank you, doctor, but I think I'll run the risk—at least for a while,' and I laughed good-humoredly at the benevolent gentleman's caution.
'Well, if you lose your small change, don't charge it to me.' Saying this, he bade me 'good-night.'
He found the door locked, barred, and secured by the large chain, and he was obliged to summon the woman. When she had let him out, I asked her into the parlor.[Pg 332]
'Who is this sick person?' I inquired.
'I don't know, sir. She never gave me no name but Fanny. I found her and her little boy on the door-step, one night, nigh a month ago. She was crying hard, and seemed very sick, and little Franky was a-trying to comfort her—he's a brave, noble little fellow, sir. She told me she'd been turned out of doors for not paying her rent, and was afeared she'd die in the street, though she didn't seem to care much about that, except for the boy—she took on terrible about him. She didn't know what would become of him. I've to scrape very hard to get along, sir, for times is hard, and my rent is a thousand dollars; but I couldn't see her die there, so I took her in, and put a bed up in the basement, and let her have it. 'Twas all I could do; but, poor thing! she won't want even that long.'
'It was very good of you. How has she obtained food?'
'The little boy sells papers and ballads about the streets. The newsman round the corner trusts him for 'em, and he's managed to make twenty-five cents or more most every day.'
'Can't you give her another room? She should not die where she is.'
'I know she shouldn't, sir, but I hain't got another—all of 'em is taken up; and besides, sir,' and she hesitated a moment, 'the noise up here would disturb her.'
I had not thought of that; and expressing myself gratified with her kindness, I passed down again to the basement. The sick girl smiled as I opened the door, and held out her hand again to me. Taking it in mine, I asked:
'Do you feel better?'
'Much better,' she said, in a voice stronger than before. 'I have not felt so well for a long time. I owe it to you, sir! I am very grateful.'
'Don't speak of it, madam. Won't you have more of the broth?'
'No more, thank you. I won't trouble you any more, sir—I shan't trouble any one long;' and her eyes filled, and her voice quivered; 'but, O sir! my child! my little boy! What will become of him when I'm gone?' and she burst into a hysterical fit of weeping.
'Don't weep so, madam. Calm yourself; such excitement will kill you. God will provide for your child. I will try to help him, madam.'
She looked at me with those deep, intense eyes. A new light seemed to come into them; it overspread her face, and lit up her thin, wan features with a strange glow.
'It must be so,' she said, 'else why were you led here? God must have sent you to me for that!'
'No doubt he did, madam. Let it comfort you to think so.'
'It does, oh! it does. And, O my Father!' and she looked up to Him as she spoke: 'I thank thee! Thy poor, sinful, dying child thanks thee; and, oh! bless him, forever bless him, for it!'
I turned away to hide the emotion I could not repress. A moment after, not seeing the little boy, I asked:
'Where is your son?'
'Here, sir.' And turning down the bed-clothing, she showed him sleeping quietly by her side, all unconscious of the misery and the sin around him, and of the mighty crisis through which his young life was passing.
Saying I would return on the following day, I shortly afterward bade her 'good-night,' and left the house.
It was noon on the following day when I again visited the house in Anthony street. As I opened the door of the sick woman's room, I was startled by her altered appearance. Her eye had a strange, wild light, and her face already wore the pallid hue of death. She was bolstered up in bed, and the little boy was standing by her side, weeping, his arms about her neck. I took her hand in mine, and in a voice which plainly spoke my fears, said:
'You are worse!'
In broken gasps, and in a low, a very[Pg 333] low tone, her lips scarcely moving, she answered:
'No! I am—better—much—better. I knew you—were coming. She told me so.'
'Who told you so?' I asked, very kindly, for I saw that her mind was wandering.
'My mother—she has been with me—all the day—and I have been so—so happy, so—very happy! I am going now—going with her—I've only waited—for you!'
'Say no more now, madam, say no more; you are too weak to talk.'
'But I must talk. I am—dying, and I must tell—you all before—I go!'
'I would gladly hear you, but you have not strength for it now. Let me get something to revive you.'
She nodded assent, and looking at her son, said:
'Take Franky.'
The little boy kissed her, and followed me from the room. When we had reached the upper-landing, I summoned the woman of the house, and said to him:
'Now, Franky, I want you to stay a little while with this good lady; your mother would talk with me.'
'But mother says she's dying, sir,' cried the little fellow, clinging closely to me; 'I don't want her to die, sir. Oh! I want to be with her, sir!'
'You shall be, very soon, my boy; your mother wants you to stay with this lady now.'
He released his hold on my coat, and sobbing violently, went with the red-faced woman. I hurried back from the apothecary's, and seating myself on the one rickety chair by her bedside, gave the sick woman the restorative. She soon revived, and then, in broken sentences, and in a low, weak voice, pausing every now and then to rest or to weep, she told me her story. Weaving into it some details which I gathered from others after her death, I give it to the reader as she outlined it to me.
She was the only daughter of a well-to-do farmer in the town of B——, New-Hampshire. Her mother died when she was a child, and left her to the care of a paternal aunt, who became her father's housekeeper. This aunt, like her father, was of a cold, hard nature, and had no love for children. She was, however, an exemplary, pious woman. She denied herself every luxury, and would sit up late of nights to braid straw and knit socks, that she might send tracts and hymn-books to the poor heathen; but she never gave a word of sympathy, or a look of love to the young being that was growing up by her side. The little girl needed kindness and affection, as much as plants need the sun; but the good aunt had not these to give her. When the child was six years old, she was sent to the district-school. There she met a little boy not quite five years her senior, and they soon became warm friends. He was a brave, manly lad, and she thought no one was ever so good, or so handsome as he. Her young heart found in him what it craved for—some one to lean on and to love, and she loved him with all the strength of her child-nature. He was very kind to her. Though his home was a mile away, he came every morning to take her to school, and in the long summer vacations he almost lived at her father's house. And thus four years flew away—flew as fast as years that are winged with youth and love always fly—and though her father was harsh, and her aunt cold and stern, she did not know a grief, or shed a tear in all that time.
One day, late in summer, toward the close of those four years, John—that was his name—came to her, his face beaming all over with joy, and said:
'O Fanny! I am going—going to Boston. Father [he was a richer man than her father] has got me into a great store there—a great store, and I'm to stay till I'm twenty-one—they won't pay me hardly any thing—only fifty dollars the first year, and twenty-five more every other year—but father says it's a great store, and it'll be the making of me.' And he danced and sung for joy, but she wept in bitter grief.[Pg 334]
Well, five more years rolled away—this time they were not winged as before—and John came home to spend his two weeks of summer vacation. He had come every year, but then he said to her what he had never said before—that which a woman never forgets. He told her that the old Quaker gentleman, the head of the great house he was with, had taken a fancy to him, and was going to send him to Europe, in the place of the junior partner, who was sick, and might never get well. That he should stay away a year, but when he came back, he was sure the old fellow would make him a partner, and then—and he strained her to his heart as he said it—'then I will make you my little wife, Fanny, and take you to Boston, and you shall be a fine lady—as fine a lady as Kate Russell, the old man's daughter.' And again he danced and sung, and again she wept, but this time it was for joy.
He staid away a little more than a year, and when he returned he did not come at once to her, but he wrote that he would very soon. In a few days he sent her a newspaper, in which was a marked notice, which read somewhat as follows:
'The co-partnership heretofore existing under the name and style of Russell, Rollins & Co., has been dissolved by the death of David Gray, Jr.
'The outstanding affairs will be settled, and the business continued, by the surviving partners, who have this day admitted Mr. John Hallet to an interest in their firm.'
The truth had been gradually dawning upon me, yet when she mentioned his name, I sprang involuntarily to my feet, exclaiming:
'John Hallet! and were you betrothed to him?'
The sick woman had paused from exhaustion, but when I said that, she made a feeble effort to raise herself, and said in a stronger voice than before:
'Do you know him—sir?'
'Know him! Yes, madam;' and I paused and spoke in a lower tone, for I saw that my manner was unduly exciting her; 'I know him well.'
I did know him well, and it was on the evening of the day that notice was written, and just one month after David had followed his only son to the grave, that I, a boy of sixteen, with my hat in my hand, entered the inner office of the old counting-room to which I have already introduced the reader. Mr. Russell, a genial, gentle, good old man, was seated at his desk, writing; and Mr. Rollins sat at his, poring over some long accounts.
'Mr. Russell and Mr. Rollins,' I said very respectfully, 'I have come to bid you good-by. I am going to leave you.'
'Thee going to leave!' exclaimed Mr. Russell, laying down his spectacles; 'what does thee mean, Edmund?'
'I mean, I don't want to stay any longer, sir,' I replied, my voice trembling with emotion.
'But you must stay, Edmund,' said Mr. Rollins, in his harsh, imperative way. 'Your uncle indentured you to us till you are twenty-one, and you can't go.'
'I shall go, sir,' I replied, with less respect than he deserved. 'My uncle indentured me to the old firm; I am not bound to stay with the new.'
Mr. Russell looked grieved, but in the same mild tone as before, he said:
'I am sorry, Edmund, very sorry, to hear thee say that. Thee can go if thee likes; but it grieves me to hear thee quibble so. Thee will not prosper, my son, if thee follows this course in life.' And the moisture came into the old man's eyes as he spoke. It filled mine, and rolled in large drops down my cheeks, as I replied:
'Forgive me, sir, for speaking so. I do not want to do wrong, but I can't stay with John Hallet.'
'Why can't thee stay with John?'
'He don't like me, sir. We are not friends.'
'Why are you not friends?'
'Because I know him, sir.'
'What do you know of him?' asked Mr. Rollins, in the same harsh, abrupt[Pg 335] tone. I had never liked Mr. Rollins, and his words just then stung me to the quick, I forgot myself, for I replied:
'I know him to be a lying, deceitful, hypocritical scoundrel, sir.'
Some two years before, Hallet had joined the church in which Mr. Rollins was a deacon, and was universally regarded as a pious, devout young man. The opinion I expressed was, therefore, rank heterodoxy. To my surprise, Mr. Rollins turned to Mr. Russell and said:
'I believe the boy is right, Ephraim; John professes too much to be entirely sincere; I've told you so before.'
'I can't think so, Thomas; but it's too late to alter things now. We shall see. Time will prove him.'
I soon left, but not till they had shaken me warmly by the hand, wished me well, and tendered me their aid whenever I required it. In after-years they kept their word.
Yes, I did know John Hallet. The old gentleman never knew him, but time proved him, and those whom that good old man loved with all the love of his large, noble heart, suffered because he did not know him as I did.
After I had given her some of the cordial, and she had rested awhile, the sick girl resumed her story.
In about a month Hallet came. He pictured to her his new position; the wealth and standing it would give him, and he told her that he was preparing a little home for her, and would soon return and take her with him forever.
[When he said that, he had been for over a year affianced to another—a rich man's only child—a woman older than he, whose shriveled, jaundiced face, weak, scrawny body, and puny, sickly soul, would have been repulsive even to him, had not money been his god.]
The simple, trusting girl believed him. He importuned her—she loved him—and she fell!
About a month afterward, taking up a Boston paper, she read the marriage of Mr. John Hallet, merchant, to Miss ——. 'Some other person has his name,' she thought. 'It can not be he, yet it is strange!' It was strange, but it was true, for there, in another column, she saw that: 'Mr. John Hallet, of the house of Russell, Rollins & Co., and his accomplished lady, were passengers by the steamer Cambria, which sailed from this port yesterday for Liverpool.'
The blow crushed her. But why need I tell of her grief, her agony, her despair? For months she did not leave her room; and when at last she crawled into the open air, the nearest neighbors scarcely recognized her.
It was long, however, before she knew all the wrong that Hallet had done her. Her aunt noticed her altered appearance, and questioned her. She told her all. At first, the cold, hard woman blamed her, and spoke harshly to her; but, though cold and harsh, she had a woman's heart, and she forgave her. She undertook to tell the story to her brother. He had his sister's nature; was a strict, pious, devout man; prayed every morning and evening in his family, and, rain or shine, went every Sunday to hear two dull, cast-iron sermons at the old meeting-house, but he had not her woman's heart. He stormed and raved for a time, and then he cursed his only child, and drove her from his house. The aunt had forty dollars—the proceeds of sock-knitting and straw-braiding not yet invested in hymn-books, and with one sigh for the poor heathen, she gave it to her. With that, and a small satchel of clothes, and with two little hearts beating under her bosom, she went out into the world. Where could she go? She knew not, but she wandered on till she reached the village. The stage was standing before the tavern-door, and the driver was mounting the box to start. She thought for a moment. She could not stay there. It would anger her father, if she did—no one would take her in—and besides, she could not meet, in her misery and her shame, those who had known her since childhood. She spoke to the driver; he dismounted, opened the door, and she took a seat in the coach to go—she did not know whither, she did not care where.[Pg 336]
They rode all night, and in the morning reached Concord. As she stepped from the stage, the red-faced landlord asked her if she was going further. She said, 'I do not know, sir;' but then a thought struck her. It was five months since Hallet had started for Europe, and perhaps he had returned. She would go to him. Though he could not undo the wrong he had done, he still could aid and pity her. She asked the route to Boston, and after a light meal, was on the way thither.
She arrived after dark, and was driven to the Marlboro Hotel—that Eastern Eden for lone women and tobacco-eschewing men—and there she passed the night. Though weak from recent illness, and worn and wearied with the long journey, she could not rest or sleep. The great sorrow that had fallen on her had driven rest from her heart, and quiet sleep from her eye-lids forever. In the morning she inquired the way to Russell, Rollins & Co.'s, and after a long search found the grim, old warehouse. She started to go up the rickety old stairs, but her heart failed her. She turned away and wandered off through the narrow, crooked streets—she did not know for how long. She met the busy crowd hurrying to and fro, but no one noticed or cared for her. She looked at the neat, cheerful homes smiling around her, and she thought how every one had shelter and friends but her. She gazed up at the cold, gray sky, and oh! how she longed that it might fall down and bury her forever. And still she wandered till her limbs grew weary and her heart grew faint. At last she sank down exhausted, and wept—wept as only the lost and the utterly forsaken can weep. Some little boys were playing near, and after a time they left their sports, and came to her. They spoke kindly to her, and it gave her strength. She rose and walked on again. A livery-carriage passed her, and she spoke to the coachman. After a long hour she stood once more before the old warehouse. It was late in the afternoon, and she had eaten nothing all day, and was very faint and tired. As she turned to go up the old stairway, her heart again failed her, but summoning all her strength, she at last entered the old counting-room.
A tall, spare, pleasant-faced man, was standing at the desk, and she asked him if Mr. John Hallet was there.
'No, madam, he's in Europe.'
'When will he come back, sir?'
'Not for a year, madam;' and David raised his glasses and looked at her. He had not done it before.
Her last hope had failed, and with a heavy, crushing pain in her heart, and a dull, dizzy feeling in her head, she turned to go. As she staggered away a hand was gently placed on her arm, and a mild voice said:
'You are ill, madam; sit down.'
She took the proffered seat, and an old gentleman came out of the inner office.
'What! what's this, David?' he asked. 'What ails the young woman?'
(She was then not quite seventeen.)
'She's ill, sir,' said David.
'Only a little tired, sir; I shall be better soon.'
'But thee is ill, my child; thee looks so. Come here, Kate!' and the old gentleman raised his voice as if speaking to some one in the inner room. The sick girl lifted her eyes, and saw a blue-eyed, golden-haired young woman, not so old as she was.
'She seems very sick, father. Please, David, get me some water;' and the young lady undid the poor girl's bonnet, and bathed her temples with the cool, grateful fluid. After a while the old gentleman asked:
'What brought thee here, young woman?'
'I came to see John—Mr. Hallet, I mean, sir.'
'Thee knows John, then?'
'Oh! yes, sir.'
'Where does thee live?'
She was about to say that she had no home, but checking herself, for it would seem strange that a young girl who knew John Hallet, should be homeless, she answered:[Pg 337]
'In New-Hampshire. I live near old Mr. Hallet's, sir. I came to see John because I've known him ever since I was a child.'
She drank of the water, and after a little time rose to go. As she turned toward the door, the thought of going out alone, with her great sorrow, into the wide, desolate world, crossed her mind, the heavy, crushing pain came again into her heart, the dull, dizzy feeling into her head, the room reeled, and she fell to the floor.
It was after dark when she came to herself. She was lying on a bed in a large, splendidly furnished room, and the same old gentleman and the same young woman were with her. Another old gentleman was there, and as she opened her eyes, he said:
'She will be better soon; her nervous system has had a severe shock; the difficulty is there. If you could get her to confide in you, 'twould relieve her; it is hidden grief that kills people. She needs rest, now. Come, my child, take this,' and he held a fluid to her lips. She drank it, and in a few moments sank into a deep slumber.
It was late on the following morning when she awoke, and found the same young woman at her bedside.
'You are better, now, my sister. A few days of quiet rest will make you well,' said the young lady.
The kind, loving words, almost the first she had ever heard from woman, went to her heart, and she wept bitterly as she replied:
'Oh! no, there is no rest, no more rest for me!'
'Why so? What is it that grieves you? Tell me; it will ease your pain to let me share it with you.'
She told her, but she withheld his name. Once it rose to her lips, but she thought how those good people would despise him, how Mr. Russell would cast him off, how his prospects would be blasted, and she kept it back.
'And that is the reason you went to John? You knew what a good, Christian young man he is, and you thought he would aid you?'
'Yes!' said the sick girl.
Thus she punished him for the great wrong he had done her; thus she recompensed him for robbing her of home, of honor, and of peace!
Kate told her father the story, and the good old man gave her a room in one of his tenement houses, and there, a few months later, she gave birth to a little boy and girl. She was very sick, but Kate attended to her wants, procured her a nurse, and a physician, and gave her what she needed more than all else—kindness and sympathy.
Previous to her sickness she had earned a support by her needle, and when she was sufficiently recovered, again had recourse to it. Her earnings were scanty, for she was not yet strong, but they were eked out by an occasional remittance from her aunt, which good lady still adhered to her sock-knitting, straw-braiding habits, but had turned her back resolutely on her benighted brethren and sisters of the Feejee Islands.
Thus nearly a year wore away, when her little girl sickened and died. She felt a mother's pang at first, but she shed no tears, for she knew it was 'well with the child;' that it had gone where it would never know a fate like hers.
The watching with it, added to her other labors, again undermined her health. The remittance from her aunt did not come as usual, and though she paid no rent, she soon found herself unable to earn a support. The Russells had been so good, so kind, had done so much for her, that she could not ask them for more. What, then, should she do? One day, while she was in this strait, Kate called to see her, and casually mentioned that John Hallet had returned. She struggled with her pride for a time, but at last made up her mind to apply to him. She wrote to him; told him of her struggles, of her illness, of her many sufferings, of her little boy—his image, his child[Pg 338]—then playing at her feet, and she besought him by the love he bore her in their childhood, not to let his once affianced wife, and his poor, innocent child STARVE!
Long weeks went by, but no answer came; and again she wrote him.
One day, not long after sending this last letter, as she was crossing the Common to her attic in Charles street, she met him. He was alone, and saw her, but attempted to pass her without recognition. She stood squarely in his way, and told him she would be heard. He admitted having received her letters, but said he could do nothing for her; that the brat was not his; that she must not attempt to fasten on him the fruit of her debaucheries; that no one would believe her if she did; and he added, as he turned away, that he was a married man, and a Christian, and could not be seen talking with a lewd woman like her.
She was stunned. She sank down on one of the benches on the Common, and tried to weep; but the tears would not come. For the first time since he so deeply, basely wronged her, she felt a bitter feeling rising in her heart. She rose, and turned her steps up Beacon Hill toward Mr. Russell's, fully determined to tell Kate all. She was admitted, and shown to Miss Russell's room. She told her that she had met her seducer, and how he had cast her off.
'Who is he?' asked Kate. 'Tell me, and father shall publish him from one end of the universe to the other! He does not deserve to live.'
His name trembled on her tongue. A moment more, and John Hallet would have been a ruined man, branded with a mark that would have followed him through the world. But she paused; the vision of his happy wife, of the innocent child just born to him, rose before her, and the words melted away from her lips unspoken.
Kate spoke kindly and encouragingly to her, but she heeded her not. One only thought had taken possession of her: how could she throw off the mighty load that was pressing on her soul?
After a time, she rose and left the house. As she walked down Beacon street, the sun was just sinking in the West, and its red glow mounted midway up the heavens. As she looked at it, the sky seemed one great molten sea, with its hot, lurid waves surging all around her. She thought it came nearer; that it set on fire the green Common and the great houses, and shot fierce, hot flames through her brain and into her very soul. For a moment, she was paralyzed and sank to the ground; then springing to her feet, she flew to her child. She bounded down the long hill, and up the steep stairways, and burst into the room of the good woman who was tending him, shouting:
'Fire! fire! The world is on fire! Run! run! the world is on fire!'
She caught up her babe and darted away. With him in her arms, she flew down Charles street, across the Common, and through the crowded thoroughfares, till she reached India Wharf, all the while muttering, 'Water, water;' water to quench the fire in her blood, in her brain, in her very soul.
She paused on the pier, and gazed for a moment at the dark, slimy flood; then she plunged down, down, where all is forgetfulness!
She had a dim recollection of a storm at sea; of a vessel thrown violently on its beam-ends; of a great tumult, and of voices louder than she ever heard before—voices that rose above the howling of the tempest and the surging of the great waves—calling out: 'All hands to clear away the foremast!' But she knew nothing certain. All was chaos.
The next thing she remembered was waking one morning in a little room about twelve feet square, with a small grated opening in the door. The sun had just risen, and by its light she saw she was lying on a low, narrow bed, whose clothing was spotlessly white and clean. Her little boy was sleeping by her side. His little cheeks had a[Pg 339] rosier, healthier hue than they ever wore before; and as she turned down the sheet, she saw he had grown wonderfully. She could hardly credit her senses. Could that be her child?
She spoke to him. He opened his eyes and smiled, and put his little mouth up to hers, saying, 'Kiss, mamma, kiss Fanky.' She took him in her arms, and covered him with kisses. Then she rose to dress herself. A strange but neat and tidy gown was on the chair, and she put it on; it fitted exactly. Franky then rolled over to the front of the bed, and putting first one little foot out and then the other, let himself down to the floor. 'Can it be?' she thought, 'can he both walk and talk?' Soon she heard the bolt turning in the door. It opened, and a pleasant, elderly woman, with a large bundle of keys at her girdle, entered the room.
'And how do you do this morning, my daughter?' she asked.
'Very well, ma'am. Where am I, ma'am?'
'You ask where? Then you are well. You haven't been for a long, long time, my child.'
'And where am I, ma'am?'
'Why, you are here—at Bloomingdale.'
'How long have I been here?'
'Let me see; it must be near fifteen months, now.'
'And who brought me?'
'A vessel captain. He said that just as he was hauling out of the dock at Boston, you jumped into the water with your child. One of his men sprang overboard and saved you. The vessel couldn't put back, so he brought you here.'
'Merciful heaven! did I do that?'
'Yes. You must have been sorely troubled, my child. But never mind—it is all over now. But hasn't Franky grown? Isn't he a handsome boy? Come here to grandma, my baby.' And the good woman sat down on a chair, while the little fellow ran to her, put his small arms around her neck, and kissed her over and over again. Children are intuitive judges of character; no really bad man or woman ever had the love of a child.
'Yes, he has grown. You call him Franky, do you?'
'Yes; we didn't know his name. What had you named him?'
'John Hallet.'
As she spoke those words, a sharp pang shot through her heart. It was well that her child had another name!
She was soon sufficiently recovered to leave the asylum. By the kind offices of the matron, she got employment in a cap-factory, and a plain but comfortable boarding-place in the lower part of the city. She worked at the shop, and left Franky during the day with her landlady, a kind-hearted but poor woman. Her earnings were but three dollars a week, and their board was two and a quarter; but on the balance she contrived to furnish herself and her child with clothes. The only luxury she indulged in was an occasional walk, on Sunday to Bloomingdale, to see her good friend the kind-hearted matron.
Thus things went on for two years; and if not happy, she was at least comfortable. Her father never relented; but her aunt wrote her often, and there was comfort in the thought that, at least, one of her early friends had not cast her off. The good lady, too, sent her now and again small remittances, but they came few and far between; for as the pious woman grew older, her heart gradually returned to its first love—the poor heathen.
To Kate Russell Fanny wrote as soon she left the asylum, telling her of all that had happened as far as she knew, and thanking her for all her goodness and kindness to her. She waited some weeks, but no answer came; then she wrote again, but still no answer came, though that time she waited two or three months. Fearing then that something had befallen her, she mustered courage to write Mr. Russell. Still she got no reply, and she reluctantly concluded—though she had not asked them for aid—that they had ceased to feel interested in her.[Pg 340]
'They had not, madam. Kate has often spoken very kindly of you. She wanted to come here to-day, but I did not know this, and I could not bring her here!'
She looked at me with a strange surprise. Her eyes lighted, and her face beamed, as she said: 'And you know her, too!'
'Know her! She is to be my wife very soon.'
She wept as she said: 'And you will tell her how much I love her—how grateful I am to her?'
'I will,' I replied. I did not tell the poor girl, as I might have done, that Hallet had at that time access to Mr. Russell's mails, and that, knowing her hand-writing, he had undoubtedly intercepted her letters.
After a long pause, she resumed her story.
At the end of those two years, a financial panic swept over the country, prostrating the great houses, and sending want and suffering into the attics—not homes, for they have none—of the poor sewing-women. The firm that employed her failed, and Fanny was thrown out of work. She went to her good friend the matron, who interested some 'benevolent' ladies in her behalf, and they procured her shirts to make at twenty-five cents apiece! She could hardly do enough of them to pay her board; but she could do the work at home with Franky, and that was a comfort, for he was growing to be a bright, intelligent, affectionate boy.
About this time, her aunt and the good matron died. She mourned for them sincerely, for they were all the friends she had.
The severe times affected her landlady. Being unable to pay her rent, she was sold out by the sheriff, and Fanny had to seek other lodgings. She then took a little room by herself, and lived alone.
The death of the matron was a great calamity to her, for her 'benevolent' friends soon lost interest in her, and took from her the poor privilege of making shirts at twenty-five cents apiece! When this befell her, she had but four dollars and twenty cents in the world. This she made furnish food to herself and her child for four long weeks, while she vainly sought for work. She offered to do any thing—to sew, scrub, cook, wash—any thing; but no! there was nothing for her—NOTHING! She must drain the cup to the very dregs, that the vengeance of God—and He would not be just if He did not take terrible vengeance for crime like his—might sink John Hallet to the lowest hell!
For four days she had not tasted food. Her child was sick. She had begged a few crumbs for him, but even he had eaten nothing all day. Then the tempter came, and—why need I say it?—she sinned. Turn not away from her, O you, her sister, who have never known a want or felt a woe! Turn not away. It was not for herself; she would have died—gladly have died! It was for her sick, starving child that she did it. Could she, should she have seen him STARVE?
Some months after that, she noticed in the evening paper, among the arrivals at the Astor House, the name of John Hallet. That night she went to him. She was shown to his room, and rapping at the door, was asked to 'walk in.' She stepped inside and stood before him. He sprang from his seat, and told her to leave him. She begged him to hear her—for only one moment to hear her. He stamped on the floor in his rage, and told her again to go! She did not go, for she told him of the pit of infamy into which she had fallen, and she prayed him, as he hoped for heaven, as he loved his own child, to save her! Then, with terrible curses, he opened the door, laid his hands upon her, and—thrust her from the room!
Why should I tell how, step by step, she went down; how want came upon her; how a terrible disease fastened its fangs on her vitals; how Death walked with her up and down Broadway in the gas-light; how, in her very hours of[Pg 341] shame, there came to her visions of the innocent past—thoughts of what she MIGHT HAVE BEEN and of what SHE WAS? The mere recital of such misery harrows the very soul; and, O God! what must be the REALITY!
As she finished the tale which, in broken sentences, with long pauses and many tears, she had given me, I rose from my seat, and pacing the room, while the hot tears ran from my eyes, I said; 'Rest easy, my poor girl! As sure as God lives, you shall be avenged. John Hallet shall feel the misery he has made you feel. I will pull him down—down so low, that the very beggars shall hoot at him in the streets!'
'Oh! no; do not harm him! Leave him to God. He may yet repent!'
The long exertion had exhausted her. The desire to tell me her story had sustained her; but when she had finished, she sank rapidly. I felt of her pulse—it scarcely beat; I passed my hand up her arm—it was icy cold to the elbow! She was indeed dying. Giving her some of the cordial, I called her child.
When I returned, she took each of us by the hand, and said to Franky: 'My child—your mother is going away—from you. Be a good boy—love this gentleman—he will take care of you!' Then to me she said: 'Be kind to him, sir. He is—a good child!'
'Have comfort, madam, he shall be my son. Kate will be a mother to him!'
'Bless you! bless her! A mother's blessing—will be on you both! The blessing of God—will be on you—and if the dead can come back—to comfort those they love—I will come back—and comfort you!'
I do not know—I can not know till the veil which hides her world from ours, is lifted from my eyes, but there have been times—many times—since she said that, when Kate and I have thought she was KEEPING HER WORD!
For a half-hour she lay without speaking, still holding our hands in hers. Then, in a low tone—so low that I had to bend down to hear—she said:
'Oh! is it not beautiful! Don't you hear? And look! oh! look! And my mother, too! Oh! it is too bright for such as I!'
The heavenly gates had opened to her! She had caught a vision of the better land!
In a moment she said:
'Farewell my friend—my child—I will come——' Then a low sound rattled in her throat, and she passed away, just as the last rays of the winter sun streamed through the low window. One of its bright beams rested on her face, and lingered there till we laid her away forever.
And now, as I sit with Kate on this grassy mound, this mild summer afternoon, and write these lines, we talk together of her short, sad life, of her calm, peaceful death, and floating down through the long years, comes to us the blessing of her pure, redeemed spirit, pleasant as the breath of the flowers that are growing on her grave. We look up, and, through our thick falling tears, read again the words which we placed over her in the long ago:
INTRODUCTORY AND EPISODICAL—MEASURING-WORMS, DUSSELDORF PICTURES, AND PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS.
This is going to be an odd jumble.
Without being an odd jumble, it could not possibly reflect American life and manners at the present time with any degree of fidelity; for the foundations of the old in society have been broken up as effectually, within the past two years, as were those of the great deep at the time of Noah's flood, and the disruption has not taken place long enough ago for the new to have assumed any appearance of stability. The old deities of fashion have been swept away in the flood of revolution, and the new which are eventually to take their place have scarcely yet made themselves apparent through the general confusion. The millionaire of two years ago, intent at that time on the means by which the revenues from his brown-stone houses and pet railroad stocks could be spent to the most showy advantage, has become the struggling man of to-day, intent upon keeping up appearances, and happy if diminished and doubtful rents can even be made to meet increasing taxes. The struggling man of that time has meanwhile sprung into fortune and position, through lucky adventures in government transportations or army contracts; and the jewelers of Broadway and Chestnut street are busy resetting the diamonds of decayed families, to sparkle on brows and bosoms that only a little while ago beat with pride at an added weight of California paste or Kentucky rock-crystal. The most showy equipages that have this year been flashing at Newport and Saratoga, were never seen between the bathing-beach and Fort Adams, or between Congress Spring and the Lake, in the old days; and if opera should ever revive, and the rich notes of melody repay the impresario, as they enrapture the audience at the Academy, there will be new faces in the most prominent boxes, almost as outre and unaccustomed in their appearance there as was that of the hard-featured Western President, framed in a shock head and a turn-down collar, meeting the gaze of astonished Murray Hill, when he passed an hour here on his way to the inauguration.
Quite as notable a change has taken place in personal reputation. Many of the men on whom the country depended as most likely to prove able defenders in the day of need, have not only discovered to the world their worthlessness, but filled up the fable of the man who leaned upon a reed, by fatally piercing those whom they had betrayed to their fall. Bubble-characters have burst, and high-sounding phrases have been exploded. Men whose education and antecedents should have made them brave and true, have shown themselves false and cowardly—impotent for good, and active only for evil. Unconsidered nobodies have meanwhile sprung forth from the mass of the people, and equally astonished themselves and others by the power, wisdom and courage they have displayed. In cabinet and camp, in army and navy, in the editorial chair and in the halls of eloquence, the men from whom least was expected have done most, and those upon whom the greatest expectations had been founded have only given another proof of the fallacy of all human calculations. All has been change, all has been transition, in the estimation men have held of themselves, and the light in which they presented themselves to each other.
Opinions of duties and recognitions of necessities have known a change not less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day we know to be truth. What seemed the fixed[Pg 343] and immutable purpose of God only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability. The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the less destructively because we failed to perceive that we were passing through any thing more threatening than a summer shower. While we have stood upon the bank of the swelling river, and pointed to some structure of old rising on the bank, declaring that not a stone could be moved until the very heavens should fall, little by little the foundations have been undermined, and the full crash of its falling has first awoke us from our security. That without which we said that the nation could not live, has fallen and been destroyed; and yet the nation does not die, but gives promise of a better and more enduring life. What we cherished we have lost; what we did not ask or expect has come to us; the effete old is passing away, and out of the ashes of its decay is springing forth the young and vigorous new. Change, transition, every where and in all things: how can society fail to be disrupted, and who can speak, write, or think with the calm decorum of by-gone days?
All this is obtrusively philosophical, of course, and correspondingly out of place. But it may serve as a sort of forlorn hope—mental food for powder—while the narrative reserve is brought forward; and there is a dim impression on the mind of the writer that it may be found to have some connection with that which is necessarily to follow.
So let the odd jumble be prepared, perhaps with ingredients as incongruous as those which at present compose what we used to call the republic, and as unevenly distributed as have been honors and emoluments during a struggle which should have found every man in his place, and every national energy employed to its best purpose.
I was crossing the City Hall Park to dinner at Delmonico's, one afternoon early in July, in company with a friend who had spent some years in Europe, and only recently returned. He may be called Ned Martin, for the purposes of this narration. He had left the country in its days of peace and prosperity, a frank, whole-souled young artist, his blue eyes clear as the day, and his faith in humanity unbounded. He had resided for a long time at Paris, and at other periods been sojourning at Rome, Florence, Vienna, Dusseldorf, and other places where art studies called him or artist company invited him. He had come back to his home and country after the great movements of the war were inaugurated, and when the great change which had been initiated was most obvious to an observing eye. I had heard of his arrival in New York, but failed to meet him, and not long after heard that he had gone down to visit the lines of our army on the Potomac. Then I had heard of his return some weeks after, and eventually I had happened upon him drinking a good-will glass with a party of friends at one of the popular down-town saloons, when stepping in for a post-prandial cigar. The result of that meeting had been a promise that we would dine together one evening, and the after-result was, that we were crossing the Park to keep that promise.
I have said that Ned Martin left this country a frank, blue-eyed, happy-looking young artist, who seemed to be without a care or a suspicion. It had only needed a second glance at his face, on the day when I first met him at the bar of the drinking-saloon, to know that a great change had fallen upon him. He was yet too young for age to have left a single furrow upon his face; not a fleck of silver had yet touched his brown hair, nor had his fine, erect form been bowed by either over-labor or dissipation. Yet he was changed, and the second glance showed that the change was in the eyes. Amid the clear blue there lay a dark, sombre shadow, such as only shows itself in eyes that have been turned[Pg 344] inward. We usually say of the wearer of such eyes, after looking into them a moment, 'That man has studied much;' 'has suffered much;' or, 'he is a spiritualist.' By the latter expression, we mean that he looks more or less beneath the surface of events that meet him in the world—that he is more or less a student of the spiritual in mentality, and of the supernatural in cause and effect. Such eyes do not stare, they merely gaze. When they look at you, they look at something else through you and behind you, of which you may or may not be a part.
Let me say here, (this chapter being professedly episodical,) that the painter who can succeed in transferring to canvas that expression of seeing more than is presented to the physical eye, has achieved a triumph over great difficulties. Frequent visitors to the old Dusseldorf Gallery will remember two instances, perhaps by the same painter, of the eye being thus made to reveal the inner thought and a life beyond that passing at the moment. The first and most notable is in the 'Charles the Second Fleeing from the Battle of Worcester.' The king and two nobles are in the immediate foreground, in flight, while far away the sun is going down in a red glare behind the smoke of battle, the lurid flames of the burning town, and the royal standard just fluttering down from the battlements of a castle lost by the royal arms at the very close of Cromwell's 'crowning mercy.' Through the smoke of the middle distance can be dimly seen dusky forms in flight, or in the last hopeless conflict. Each of the nobles at the side of the fugitive king is heavily armed, with sword in hand, mounted on heavy, galloping horses going at high speed; and each is looking out anxiously, with head turned aside as he flies, for any danger which may menace—not himself, but the sovereign. Charles Stuart, riding between them, is mounted upon a dark, high-stepping, pure-blooded English horse. He wears the peaked hat of the time, and his long hair—that which afterward became so notorious in the masks and orgies of Whitehall, and in the prosecution of his amours in the purlieus of the capital—floats out in wild dishevelment from his shoulders. He is dressed in the dark velvet, short cloak, and broad, pointed collar peculiar to pictures of himself and his unfortunate father; shows no weapon, and is leaning ungracefully forward, as if outstripping the hard-trotting speed of his horse. But the true interest of this figure, and of the whole picture, is concentrated in the eyes. Those sad, dark eyes, steady and immovable in their fixed gaze, reveal whole pages of history and whole years of suffering. The fugitive king is not thinking of his flight, of any dangers that may beset him, of the companions at his side, or even of where he shall lay his periled head in the night that is coming. Those eyes have shut away the physical and the real, and through the mists of the future they are trying to read the great question of fate! Worcester is lost, and with it a kingdom: is he to be henceforth a crownless king and a hunted fugitive, or has the future its compensations? This is what the fixed and glassy eyes are saying to every beholder, and there is not one who does not answer the question with a mental response forced by that mute appeal of suffering thought: 'The king shall have his own again!'
The second picture in the same collection is much smaller, and commands less attention; but it tells another story of the same great struggle between King and Parliament, through the agency of the same feature. A wounded cavalier, accompanied by one of his retainers, also wounded, is being forced along on foot, evidently to imprisonment, by one of Cromwell's Ironsides and a long-faced, high-hatted Puritan cavalry-man, both on horseback, and a third on foot, with musquetoon on shoulder. The cavalier's garments are rent and blood-stained, and there is a bloody handkerchief binding his brow and telling how, when his house was surprised and his dependents slaughtered, he himself fought till he[Pg 345] was struck down, bound and overpowered. He strides sullenly along, looking neither to the right nor the left; and the triumphant captors behind him know nothing of the story that is told in his face. The eyes, fixed and steady in the shadow of the bloody bandage, tell nothing of the pain of his wound or the tension of the cords which are binding his crossed wrists. In their intense depth, which really seems to convey the impression of looking through forty feet of the still but dangerous waters of Lake George and seeing the glimmering of the golden sand beneath, we read of a burned house and an outraged family, and we see a prophecy written there, that if his mounted guards could read, they would set spurs and flee away like the wind—a calm, silent, but irrevocable prophecy: 'I can bear all this, for my time is coming! Not a man of all these will live, not a roof-tree that shelters them but will be in ashes, when I take my revenge!' Not a gazer but knows, through those marvelous eyes alone, that the day is coming that he will have his revenge, and that the subject of pity is the victorious Roundhead instead of the wounded and captive cavalier!
I said, before this long digression broke the slender chain of narration, that some strange, spiritualistic shadow lay in the eyes of Ned Martin; and I could have sworn, without the possibility of an error, that he had become an habitual reader of the inner life, and almost beyond question a communicant with influences which some hold to be impossible and others unlawful.
The long measuring-worms hung pendent from their gossamer threads, as we passed through the Park, as they have done, destroying the foliage, in almost every city of the Northern States. One brushed my face as I passed, and with the stick in my hand I struck the long threads of gossamer and swept several of the worms to the ground. One, a very large and long one, happened to fall on Martin's shoulder, lying across the blue flannel of his coat in the exact position of a shoulder-strap.
'I say, Martin,' I said, 'I have knocked down one of the worms upon you.'
'Have you?' he replied listlessly, 'then be good enough to brush it off, if it does not crawl off itself. I do not like worms.'
'I do not know who does like them,' I said, 'though I suppose, being 'worms of the dust,' we ought to bear affection instead of disgust toward our fellow-reptiles. But, funnily enough,' and I held him still by the shoulder for a moment to contemplate the oddity, 'this measuring-worm, which is a very big one, has fallen on your shoulder, and seems disposed to remain there, in the very position of a shoulder-strap! You must belong to the army!'
It is easy to imagine what would be the quick, convulsive writhing motion with which one would shrink aside and endeavor to get instantaneously away from it, when told that an asp, a centipede or a young rattlesnake was lying on the shoulder, and ready to strike its deadly fangs into the neck. But it is not easy to imagine that even a nervous woman, afraid of a cockroach and habitually screaming at a mouse, would display any extraordinary emotion on being told that a harmless measuring-worm had fallen upon the shoulder of her dress. What was my surprise, then, to see the face of Martin, that had been so impassive the moment before when told that the worm had fallen upon his coat, suddenly assume an expression of the most awful fear and agony, and his whole form writhe with emotion, as he shrunk to one side in the effort to eject the intruder instantaneously!
'Good God! Off with it—quick! Quick, for heaven's sake!' he cried, in a frightened, husky voice that communicated his terror to me, and almost sinking to the ground as he spoke.
Of course I instantly brushed the little reptile away; but it was quite a moment before he assumed an erect[Pg 346] position, and I saw two or three quick shudders pass over his frame, such as I had not seen since, many a long year before, I witnessed the horrible tortures of a strong man stricken with hydrophobia. Then he asked, in a voice low, quavering and broken:
'Is it gone?'
'Certainly it is!' I said. 'Why, Martin, what under heaven can have affected you in this manner? I told you that I had knocked a worm on your coat, and you did not appear to heed it any more than if it had been a speck of dust. It was only when I mentioned the shape it had assumed, that you behaved so unaccountably! What does it mean? Are you afraid of worms, or only of shoulder-straps?' And I laughed at the absurdity of the latter supposition.
'Humph!' said Martin, who seemed to have recovered his equanimity, but not shaken off the impression. 'You laugh. Perhaps you will laugh more when I tell you that it was not the worm, as a worm, of which I was thinking at all, and that my terror—yes, I need not mince words, I was for the moment in abject terror—had to do altogether with the shape that little crawling pest had assumed, and the part of my coat on which he had taken a fancy to lodge himself!'
'No, I should not laugh,' I said; 'but I should ask an explanation of what seems very strange and unaccountable. Shall I lacerate a feeling, or tread upon ground made sacred by a grief, if I do so?'
'Not at all,' was the reply. 'In fact, I feel at this moment very much as the Ancient Mariner may have done the moment before he met the wedding-guest—when, in fact, he had nobody to button-hole, and felt the strong necessity of boring some one!' There was a tone of gayety in this reply, which told me how changeable and mercurial my companion could be; and I read an evident understanding of the character and mission of the noun-substantive 'bore,' which assured me that he was the last person in the world likely to play such a part. 'However,' he concluded, 'wait a bit. When we have concluded the raspberries, and wet our lips with green-seal, I will tell you all that I myself know of a very singular episode in an odd life.'
Half an hour after, the conditions of which he spoke had been accomplished, over the marble at Delmonico's, and he made me the following very singular relation:
'I had returned from a somewhat prolonged stay at Vienna,' he said, 'to Paris, late in 1860. During the fall and winter of that year I spent a good deal of time at the Louvre, making a few studies, and satisfying myself as to some identities that had been called in question during my rambles through the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. I lodged in the little Rue Marie Stuart, not far from the Rue Montorgeuil, and only two or three minutes' walk from the Louvre, having a baker with a pretty wife for my landlord, and a cozy little room in which three persons could sit comfortably, for my domicil. As I did not often have more than two visitors, my room was quite sufficient; and as I spent a large proportion of my evenings at other places than my lodgings, the space was three quarters of the time more than I needed.
'I do not know that I can have any objection to your knowing, before I go any further, that I am and have been for some years a believer in that of which Hamlet speaks when he says: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' You may call me a Spiritualist, if you like, for I have no reverence for or aversion to names. I do not call myself so; I only say that I believe that more things come to us in the way of knowledge, than we read, hear, see, taste, smell, or feel with the natural and physical organs. I know, from the most irrefragable testimony, that there are communications made between one and another, when too far apart to reach each other by any of the recognized modes of intercourse; though how or why they are made I have no[Pg 347] definite knowledge. Electricity—that 'tongs with which God holds the world'—as a strong but odd thinker once said in my presence, may be the medium of communication; but even this must be informed by a living and sentient spirit, or it can convey nothing. People learn what they would not otherwise know, through mediums which they do not recognize and by processes which they can not explain; and to know this is to have left the beaten track of old beliefs, and plunged into a maze of speculation, which probably makes madmen of a hundred while it is making a wise man of one. But I am wandering too far and telling you nothing.
'One of my few intimates in Paris, a young Prussian by the name of Adolph Von Berg, had a habit of visiting mediums, clairvoyants, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, fortune-tellers. Though I had been in company with clairvoyants in many instances, I had never, before my return to Paris in the late summer of 1860, entered any one of those places in which professional fortune-tellers carried on their business. It was early in September, I think, that at the earnest solicitation of Von Berg, who had been reading and smoking with me at my lodgings, I went with him, late in the evening, to a small two-story house in the Rue La Reynie Ogniard, a little street down the Rue Saint Denis toward the quays of the Seine, and running from Saint Denis across to the Rue Saint Martin. The house seemed to me to be one of the oldest in Paris, although built of wood; and the wrinkled and crazy appearance of the front was eminently suggestive of the face of an old woman on which time had long been plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the house, when we entered it by the dingy and narrow hallway, that night, well corresponded with the exterior. A tallow-candle in a tin sconce was burning on the wall, half hiding and half revealing the grime on the plastering, the cobwebs in the corners, and the rickety stairs by which it might be supposed that the occupants ascended to the second story.
'My companion tinkled a small bell that lay upon a little uncovered table in the hall, (the outer door having been entirely unfastened, to all appearance,) and a slattern girl came out from an inner room. On recognizing my companion, who had visited the house before, she led the way without a word to the same room she had herself just quitted. There was nothing remarkable in this. A shabby table, and two or three still more shabby chairs, occupied the room, and a dark wax-taper stood on the table, while at the side opposite the single window a curtain of some dark stuff shut in almost one entire side of the apartment. We took seats on the rickety chairs, and waited in silence, Adolph informing me that the etiquette (strange name for such a place) of the house did not allow of conversation, not with the proprietors, carried on in that apartment sacred to the divine mysteries.
'Perhaps fifteen minutes had elapsed, and I had grown fearfully tired of waiting, when the corner of the curtain was suddenly thrown back, and the figure of a woman stood in the space thus created. Every thing behind her seemed to be in darkness; but some description of bright light, which did not show through the curtain at all, and which seemed almost dazzling enough to be Calcium or Drummond, shed its rays directly upon her side-face, throwing every feature from brow to chin into bold relief, and making every fold of her dark dress visible. But I scarcely saw the dress, the face being so remarkable beyond any thing I had ever witnessed. I had looked to see an old, wrinkled hag—it being the general understanding that all witches and fortune-tellers must be long past the noon of life; but instead, I saw a woman who could not have been over thirty-five or forty, with a figure of regal magnificence, and a face that would have been, but for one circumstance, beautiful beyond description. Apelles never drew and Phidias never chiseled nose or brow[Pg 348] of more classic perfection, and I have never seen the bow of Cupid in the mouth of any woman more ravishingly shown than in that feature of the countenance of the sorceress.
'I said that but for one circumstance, that face would have been beautiful beyond description. And yet no human eye ever looked upon a face more hideously fearful than it was in reality. Even a momentary glance could not be cast upon it without a shudder, and a longer gaze involved a species of horrible fascination which affected one like a nightmare. You do not understand yet what was this remarkable and most hideous feature. I can scarcely find words to describe it to you so that you can catch the full force of the idea—I must try, however. You have often seen Mephistopheles in his flame-colored dress, and caught some kind of impression that the face was of the same hue, though the fact was that it was of the natural color, and only affected by the lurid character of the dress and by the Satanic penciling of the eyebrows! You have? Well, this face was really what that seemed for the moment to be. It was redder than blood-red as fire, and yet so strangely did the flame-color play through it that you knew no paint laid upon the skin could have produced the effect. It almost seemed that the skin and the whole mass of flesh were transparent, and that the red color came from some kind of fire or light within, as the red bottle in a druggist's window might glow when you were standing full in front of it, and the gas was turned on to full height behind. Every feature—brow, nose, lips, chin, even the eyes themselves, and their very pupil seemed to be pervaded and permeated by this lurid flame; and it was impossible for the beholder to avoid asking himself whether there were indeed spirits of flame—salamandrines—who sometimes existed out of their own element and lived and moved as mortals.
'Have I given you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have not conveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself, and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stamped upon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!—I would give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explain whence such things can come, to confound and stupefy all human calculation!'
MORE OF PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLERS—THE VISIONS OF THE WHITE MIST—REBELLION, GRIEF, HOPE, BRAVERY AND DESPAIR
It was after a second bottle of green-seal had flashed out its sparkles into the crystal, that Ned Martin drew a long breath like that drawn by a man discharging a painful and necessary duty, and resumed his story:
'You may some time record this for the benefit of American men and women,' he went on, 'and if you are wise you will deal chiefly in the language to which they are accustomed. I speak the French, of course, nearly as well and as readily as the English; but I think in my native tongue, as most men continue to do, I believe, no matter how many dialects they acquire; and I shall not interlard this little narrative with any French words that can just as well be translated into our vernacular.
'Well, as I was saying, there stood my horribly beautiful fiend, and there I sat spell-bound before her. As for Adolph, though he had told me nothing in advance of the peculiarities of her appearance, he had been fully aware of them, of course, and I had the horrible surprise all to myself. I think the sorceress saw the mingled feeling in my face, and that a smile blended of pride and contempt contorted the proud features and made the ghastly face yet more ghastly for one moment. If so, the expression soon passed away, and she stood, as before, the incarnation of all that was terrible and mysterious. At length, still retaining her place and fixing her eyes upon Von Berg, she spoke, sharply, brusquely, and decidedly:
''You are here again! What do you want?'[Pg 349]
''I wish to introduce my friend, the Baron Charles Denmore, of England,' answered Von Berg, 'who wishes——'
''Nothing!' said the sorceress, the word coming from her lips with an unmistakably hissing sound. He wants nothing, and he is not the Baron Charles Denmore! He comes from far away, across the sea, and he would not have come here to-night but that you insisted upon it! Take him away—go away yourself—and never let me see you again unless you have something to ask or you wish me to do you an injury!'
''But——' began Yon Berg.
''Not another word!' said the sorceress, 'I have said. Go, before you repent having come at all!'
''Madame,' I began to say, awed out of the feeling at least of equality which I should have felt to be proper under such circumstances, and only aware that Adolph, and possibly myself, had incurred the enmity of a being so near to the supernatural as to be at least dangerous—'Madame, I hope that you will not think——'
'But here she cut me short, as she had done Von Berg the instant before.
''Hope nothing, young artist!' she said, her voice perceptibly less harsh and brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hope nothing and ask nothing until you may have occasion; then come to me.'
''And then?'
''Then I will answer every question you may think proper to put to me. Stay! you may have occasion to visit me sooner than you suppose, or I may have occasion to force knowledge upon you that you will not have the boldness to seek. If so, I shall send for you. Now go, both of you!'
'The dark curtain suddenly fell, and the singular vision faded with the reflected light which had filled the room. The moment after, I heard the shuffling feet of the slattern girl coming to show us out of the room, but, singularly enough, as you will think, not out of the house! Without a word we followed her—Adolph, who knew the customs of the place, merely slipping a five-franc piece into her hand, and in a moment more we were out in the street and walking up the Rue Saint Denis. It is not worth while to detail the conversation which followed between us as we passed up to the Rue Marie Stuart, I to my lodgings and Adolph to his own, further on, close to the Rue Vivienne, and not far from the Boulevard Montmartre. Of course I asked him fifty questions, the replies to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. He knew, he said, and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, the singularity of the personal appearance of the sorceress, and her apparent power of divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledge of her origin. He had been introduced at her house several months before, and had asked questions affecting his family in Prussia and the chances of descent of certain property, the replies to which had astounded him. He had heard of her using marvelous and fearful incantations, but had never himself witnessed any thing of them. In two or three instances, before the present, he had taken friends to the house and introduced them under any name which he chose to apply to them for the time, and the sorceress had never before chosen to call him to account for the deception, though, according to the assurances of his friends after leaving the house, she had never failed to arrive at the truth of their nationalities and positions in life. There must have been something in myself or my circumstances, he averred, which had produced so singular an effect upon the witch, (as he evidently believed her to be,) and he had the impression that at no distant day I should again hear from her. That was all, and so we parted, I in any other condition of mind than that promising sleep, and really without closing my eyes, except for a moment or two at a time, during the night which followed. When I did attempt to force myself into slumber, a red spectre stood continually before me, an unearthly light seemed to sear my covered eyeballs, and[Pg 350] I awoke with a start. Days passed before I sufficiently wore away the impression to be comfortable, and at least two or three weeks before my rest became again entirely unbroken.
'You must be partially aware with what anxiety we Americans temporarily sojourning on the other side of the Atlantic, who loved the country we had left behind on this, watched the succession of events which preceded and accompanied the Presidential election of that year. Some suppose that a man loses his love for his native land, or finds it comparatively chilled within his bosom, after long residence abroad. The very opposite is the case, I think! I never knew what the old flag was, until I saw it waving from the top of an American consulate abroad, or floating from the gaff of one of our war-vessels, when I came down the mountains to some port on the Mediterranean. It had been merely red, white and blue bunting, at home, where the symbols of our national greatness were to be seen on every hand: it was the only symbol of our national greatness when we were looking at it from beyond the sea; and the man whose eyes will not fill with tears and whose throat will not choke a little with overpowering feeling, when catching sight of the Stars and Stripes where they only can be seen to remind him of the glory of the country of which he is a part, is unworthy the name of patriot or of man!
'But to return: Where was I? Oh! I was remarking with what interest we on the other side of the water watched the course of affairs at home during that year when the rumble of distant thunder was just heralding the storm. You are well aware that without extensive and long-continued connivance on the part of sympathizers among the leading people of Europe—England and France especially—secession could never have been accomplished so far as it has been; and there never could have been any hope of its eventual success if there had been no hope of one or both these two countries bearing it up on their strong and unscrupulous arms. The leaven of foreign aid to rebellion was working even then, both in London and Paris; and perhaps we had opportunities over the water for a nearer guess at the peril of the nation, than you could have had in the midst of your party political squabbles at home.
'During the months of September and October, when your Wide-Awakes on the one hand, and your conservative Democracy on the other, were parading the streets with banners and music, as they or their predecessors had done in so many previous contests, and believing that nothing worse could be involved than a possible party defeat and some bad feelings, we, who lived where revolutions were common, thought that we discovered the smoldering spark which would be blown to revolution here. The disruption of the Charleston Convention and through it of the Democracy; the bold language and firm resistance of the Republicans; the well-understood energy of the uncompromising Abolitionists, and the less defined but rabid energy of the Southern fire-eaters: all these were known abroad and watched with gathering apprehension. American newspapers, and the extracts made from them by the leading journals of France and Europe, commanded more attention among the Americo-French and English than all other excitements of the time put together.
'Then followed what you all know—the election, with its radical result and the threats which immediately succeeded, that 'Old Abe Lincoln' should never live to be inaugurated! 'He shall not!' cried the South. 'He shall!' replied the North. To us who knew something of the Spanish knife and the Italian stiletto, the probabilities seemed to be that he would never live to reach Washington. Then the mutterings of the thunder grew deeper and deeper, and some disruption seemed inevitable, evident to us far away, while you at home, it seemed, were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, holding[Pg 351] gala-days and enjoying yourselves generally, on the brink of an arousing volcano from which the sulphurous smoke already began to ascend to the heavens! So time passed on; autumn became winter, and December was rolling away.
'I was sitting with half-a-dozen friends in the chess-room at Very's, about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talking over some of the marvelous successes which had been won by Paul Morphy when in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton had placed himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of the New-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his hand on my shoulder.
''Come with me a moment,' he said, 'you are wanted!'
''Where?' I asked, getting up from my seat and following him to the door, before which stood a light coupé, with its red lights flashing, the horse smoking, and the driver in his seat.
''I have been to-night to the Rue la Reynie Ogniard!' he answered.
''And are you going there again?' I asked, my blood chilling a little with an indefinable sensation of terror, but a sense of satisfaction predominating at the opportunity of seeing something more of the mysterious woman.
''I am!' he answered, 'and so are you! She has sent for you! Come!'
'Without another word I stepped into the coupé, and we were rapidly whirled away. I asked Adolph how and why I had been summoned; but he knew nothing more than myself, except that he had visited the sorceress at between nine and ten that evening, that she had only spoken to him for an instant, but ordered him to go at once and find his friend, the American, whom he had falsely introduced some months before as the English baron. He had been irresistibly impressed with the necessity of obedience, though it would break in upon his own arrangements for the later evening, (which included an hour at the Chateau Rouge;) had picked up a coupé, looked in for me at two or three places where he thought me most likely to be at that hour in the evening, and had found me at Very's, as related. What the sorceress could possibly want of me, he had no idea more than myself; but he reminded me that she had hinted at the possible necessity of sending for me at no distant period, and I remembered the fact too well to need the reminder.
'It was nearly midnight when we drove down the Rue St. Denis, turned into La Reynie Ogniard, and drew up at the antiquated door I had once entered nearly three months earlier. We entered as before, rang the bell as before, and were admitted into the inner room by the same slattern girl. I remember at this moment one impression which this person made upon me—that she did not wash so often as four times a year, and that the same old dirt was upon her face that had been crusted there at the time of my previous visit. There seemed no change in the room, except that two tapers, and each larger than the one I had previously seen, were burning upon the table. The curtain was down, as before, and when it suddenly rose, after a few minutes spent in waiting, and the blood-red woman stood in the vacant space, all seemed so exactly as it had done on the previous visit, that it would have been no difficult matter to believe the past three months a mere imagination, and this the same first visit renewed.
'The illusion, such as it was, did not last long, however. The sorceress fixed her eyes full upon me, with the red flame seeming to play through the eyeballs as it had before done through her cheeks, and said, in a voice lower, more sad and broken, than it had been when addressing me on the previous occasion:
''Young American, I have sent for you, and you have done well to come. Do not fear——'
''I do not fear—you, or any one!' I answered, a little piqued that she should have drawn any such impression from my appearance. I may have been uttering a fib of magnificent proportions at the moment, but one has a right to deny[Pg 352] cowardice to the last gasp, whatever else he must admit.
''You do not? It is well, then!' she said in reply, and in the same low, sad voice. 'You will have courage, then, perhaps, to see what I will show you from the land of shadows.'
''Whom does it concern?' I asked. 'Myself, or some other?'
''Yourself, and many others—all the world!' uttered the lips of flame. 'It is of your country that I would show you.'
''My country? God of heaven! What has happened to my country?' broke from my lips almost before I knew what I was uttering. I suppose the words came almost like a groan, for I had been deeply anxious over the state of affairs known to exist at home, and perhaps I can be nearer to a weeping child when I think of any ill to my own beloved land, than I could be for any other evil threatened in the world.
''But a moment more and you shall see!' said the sorceress. Then she added: 'You have a friend here present. Shall he too look on what I have to reveal, or will you behold it alone?'
''Let him see!' I answered. 'My native land may fall into ruin, but she can never be ashamed!'
''So let it be, then!' said the sorceress, solemnly. 'Be silent, look, and learn what is at this moment transpiring in your own land!'
'Beneath that adjuration I was silent, and the same dread stillness fell upon my companion. Suddenly the sorceress, still standing in the same place, waved her right hand in the air, and a strain of low, sad music, such as the harps of angels may be continually making over the descent of lost spirits to the pit of suffering, broke upon my ears. Von Berg too heard it, I know, for I saw him look up in surprise, then apply his fingers to his ears and test whether his sense of hearing had suddenly become defective. Whence that strain of music could have sprung I did not know, nor do I know any better at this moment. I only know that, to my senses and those of my companion, it was definite as if the thunders of the sky had been ringing.
'Then came another change, quite as startling as the music and even more difficult to explain. The room began to fill with a whitish mist, transparent in its obscurity, that wrapped the form of the sybil and finally enveloped her until she appeared to be but a shade. Anon another and larger room seemed to grow in the midst, with columned galleries and a rostrum, and hundreds of forms in wild commotion, moving to and fro, though uttering no sound. At one moment it seemed that I could look through one of the windows of the phantom building, and I saw the branches of a palmetto-tree waving in the winter wind. Then amidst and apparently at the head of all, a white-haired man stood upon the rostrum, and as he turned down a long scroll from which he seemed to be reading to the assemblage, I read the words that appeared on the top of the scroll: 'An ordinance to dissolve the compact heretofore existing between the several States of the Federal Union, under the name of the United States of America.' My breath came thick, my eyes filled with tears of wonder and dismay, and I could see no more.
''Horror!' I cried. 'Roll away the vision, for it is false! It can not be that the man lives who could draw an ordinance to dissolve the Union of the United States of America!'
''It is so! That has this day been done!' spoke the voice of the sorceress from within the cloud of white mist.
''If this is indeed true,' I said, 'show me what is the result, for the heavens must bow if this work of ruin is accomplished!'
''Look again, then!' said the voice. The strain of music, which had partially ceased for a moment, grew louder and sadder again, and I saw the white mist rolling and changing as if a wind were stirring it. Gradually again it assumed shape and form; and in the moonlight, before the Capitol of the nation, its white proportions gleaming in the wintry ray,[Pg 353] the form of Washington stood, the hands clasped, the head bare, and the eyes cast upward in the mute agony of supplication.
''All is not lost!' I shouted more than spoke, 'for the Father of his Country still watches his children, and while he lives in the heavens and prays for the erring and wandering, the nation may yet be reclaimed.'
''It may be so,' said the voice through the mist, 'for look!'
'Again the strain of music sounded, but now louder and clearer and without the tone of hopeless sadness. Again the white mists rolled by in changing forms, and when once more they assumed shape and consistency I saw great masses of men, apparently in the streets of a large city, throwing out the old flag from roof and steeple, lifting it to heaven in attitudes of devotion, and pressing it to their lips with those wild kisses which a mother gives to her darling child when it has been just rescued from a deadly peril.
''The nation lives!' I shouted. 'The old flag is not deserted and the patriotic heart yet beats in American bosoms! Show me yet more, for the next must be triumph!'
''Triumph indeed!' said the voice. 'Behold it and rejoice at it while there is time!' I shuddered at the closing words, but another change in the strain of music roused me. It was not sadness now, nor yet the rising voice of hope, for martial music rung loudly and clearly, and through it I heard the roar of cannon and the cries of combatants in battle. As the vision cleared, I saw the armies of the Union in tight with a host almost as numerous as themselves, but savage, ragged, and tumultuous, and bearing a mongrel flag that I had never seen before—one that seemed robbed from the banner of the nation's glory. For a moment the battle wavered and the forces of the Union seemed driven backward; then they rallied with a shout, and the flag of stars and stripes was rebaptized in glory. They pressed the traitors backward at every turn—they trod rebellion under their heels—they were every where, and every where triumphant.
''Three cheers for the Star-Spangled Banner!' I cried, forgetting place and time in the excitement of the scene. 'Let the world look on and wonder and admire! I knew the land that the Fathers founded and Washington guarded could not die! Three cheers—yes, nine—for the Star-Spangled Banner and the brave old land over which it floats!'
''Pause!' said the voice, coming out once more from the cloud of white mist, and chilling my very marrow with the sad solemnity of its tone. 'Look once again!' I looked, and the mists went rolling by as before, while the music changed to wild discord; and when the sight became clear again I saw the men of the nation struggling over bags of gold and quarreling for a black shadow that flitted about in their midst, while cries of want and wails of despair went up and sickened the heavens! I closed my eyes and tried to close my ears, but I could not shut out the voice of the sorceress, saying once more from her shroud of white mist:
''Look yet again, and for the last time! Behold the worm that gnaws away the bravery of a nation and makes it a prey for the spoiler!' Heart-brokenly sad was the music now, as the vision changed once more, and I saw a great crowd of men, each in the uniform of an officer of the United States army, clustered around one who seemed to be their chief. But while I looked I saw one by one totter and fall, and directly I perceived that the epaulette or shoulder-strap on the shoulder of each was a great hideous yellow worm, that gnawed away the shoulder and palsied the arm and ate into the vitals. Every second, one fell and died, making frantic efforts to tear away the reptile from its grasp, but in vain. Then the white mists rolled away, and I saw the strange woman standing where she had been when the first vision began. She was silent, the music was hushed, Adolph Von Berg had fallen hack asleep in his chair, and drawing[Pg 354] out my watch, I discovered that only ten minutes had elapsed since the sorceress spoke her first word.
''You have seen all—go!' was her first and last interruption to the silence. The instant after, the curtain fell. I kicked Von Berg to awake him, and we left the house. The coupé was waiting in the street and set me down at my lodgings, after which it conveyed my companion to his. Adolph did not seem to have a very clear idea of what had occurred, and my impression is, that he went to sleep the moment the first strain of music commenced.
'As for myself, I am not much clearer than Adolph as to how and why I saw and heard what I know that I did see and hear. I can only say that on that night of the twentieth December, 1860, the same on which, as it afterward appeared, the ordinance of secession was adopted at Charleston, I, in the little old two-story house in the Rue la Reynie Ogniard, witnessed what I have related. What may be the omens, you may judge as well as myself. How much of the sybil's prophecy is already history, you know already. That SHOULDER-STRAPS, which I take to be the desire of military show without courage or patriotism, are destroying the armies of the republic, I am afraid there is no question. Perhaps you can imagine why at the moment of hearing that there was a worm on my shoulder for a shoulder-strap, I for the instant believed that it was one of the hideous yellow monsters that I saw devouring the best officers of the nation, and shrunk and shrieked like a whipped child. Is not that a long story?' Martin concluded, lighting a fresh cigar and throwing himself back from the table.
'Very long, and a little mad; but to me absorbingly interesting,' was my reply, 'And in the hope that it may prove so to others, I shall use it as a strange, rambling introduction to a recital of romantic events which have occurred in and about the great city since the breaking out of the rebellion, having to do with patriotism and cowardice, love, mischief, and secession, and bearing the title thus suggested.'
A part of which stipulation is hereby kept, with the promise of the writer that the remainder shall be faithfully fulfilled in forthcoming numbers.
Pride in the physical grandeur, the magnificent proportions of our country, has for generations been the master passion of Americans. Never has the popular voice or vote refused to sustain a policy which looked to the enlargement of the area or increase of the power of the Republic. To feel that so vast a river as the Mississippi, having such affluents as the Missouri and the Ohio, rolled its course entirely through our territory—that the twenty thousand miles of steamboat navigation on that river and its tributaries were wholly our own, without touching on any side our national boundaries—that the Pacific and the Atlantic, the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, were our natural and conceded frontiers, that their bays and harbors were the refuge of our commerce, and their rising cities our marts and depots—were incense to our vanity and stimulants to our love of country. No true American abroad ever regarded or characterized himself as a New-Yorker, a Virginian, a Louisianian: he dilated in the proud consciousness of his country's transcendent growth and wondrous greatness, and confidently anticipated the day when its flag should float unchallenged from Hudson's Bay to the Isthmus of Darien, if not to Cape Horn.
It was this strong instinct of Nationality which rendered the masses so long tolerant, if not complaisant, toward Slavery and the Slave Power. Merchants and bankers were bound to their footstool by other and ignobler ties; but the yeomanry of the land regarded slavery with a lenient if not absolutely favoring eye, because it existed in fifteen of our States, and was cherished as of vital moment by nearly all of them, so that any popular aversion to it evinced by the North, would tend to weaken the bonds of our Union. It might seem hard to Pomp, or Sambo, or Cuffee, to toil all day in the rice-swamp, the cotton-field, to the music of the driver's lash, with no hope of remuneration or release, nor even of working out thereby a happier destiny for his children; but after all, what was the happiness or misery of three or four millions of stupid, brutish negroes, that it should be allowed to weigh down the greatness and glory of the Model Republic? Must there not always be a foundation to every grand and towering structure? Must not some grovel that others may soar? Is not all drudgery repulsive? Yet must it not be performed? Are not negroes habitually enslaved by each other in Africa? Does not their enslavement here secure an aggregate of labor and production that would else be unattainable? Are we not enabled by it to supply the world with Cotton and Tobacco and ourselves with Rice and Sugar? In short, is not to toil on white men's plantations the negro's true destiny, and Slavery the condition wherein he contributes most sensibly, considerably, surely, to the general sustenance and comfort of mankind? If it is, away with all your rigmarole declarations of 'the inalienable Rights of Man'—the right of every one to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! Let us have a reformed and rationalized political Bible, which shall affirm the equality of all white men—their inalienable right to liberty, etc., etc. Thus will our consistency be maintained, our institutions and usages stand justified, while we still luxuriate on our home-grown sugar and rice, and deluge the civilized world with our cheap cotton and tobacco!—And thus our country—which had claimed a place in the family of nations as the legitimate child and foremost champion of Human Freedom—was fast sinking into the loathsome attitude of foremost champion and most conspicuous exemplar of the vilest and most iniquitous form of Despotism—that which robs the laborer of the[Pg 358] just recompense of his sweat, and dooms him to a life of ignorance, squalor, and despair.
But
For two generations our people have cherished, justified, and pampered slavery, not that they really loved, or conscientiously approved the accursed 'institution,' but because they deemed its tolerance essential to our National Unity; and now we find Slavery desperately intent on and formidably armed for the destruction of that Unity: for two generations we have aided the master to trample on and rob his despised slave; and now we are about to call that slave to defend our National Unity against that master's malignant treason, or submit to see our country shattered and undone.
Who can longer fail to realize that 'there is a God who judgeth in the earth?' or, if the phraseology suit him better, that there is, in the constitution of the universe, provision made for the banishment of every injustice, the redress of every wrong?
'Well,' says a late convert to the fundamental truth, 'we must drive the negro race entirely from our country, or we shall never again have union and lasting peace.'
Ah! friend? it is not the negro per se who distracts and threatens to destroy our country—far from it! Negroes did not wrest Texas from Mexico, nor force her into the Union, nor threaten rebellion because California was admitted as a Free State, nor pass the Nebraska bill, nor stuff the ballot-boxes and burn the habitations of Kansas, nor fire on Fort Sumter, nor do any thing else whereby our country has been convulsed and brought to the brink of ruin. It is not by the negro—it is by injustice to the negro—that our country has been brought to her present deplorable condition. Were Slavery and all its evil brood of wrongs and vices eradicated this day, the Rebellion would die out to-morrow and never have a successor. The centripetal tendency of our country is so intense—the attraction of every part for every other so overwhelming—that Disunion were impossible but for Slavery. What insanity in New-Orleans to seek a divorce from the upper waters of her superb river! What a melancholy future must confront St. Louis, separated by national barriers from Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and all the vast, undeveloped sources of her present as well as prospective commerce and greatness! Ponder the madness of Baltimore, seeking separation from that active and teeming West to which she has laid an iron track over the Alleghanies at so heavy a cost! But for Slavery, the Southron who should gravely propose disunion, would at once be immured in a receptacle for lunatics. He would find no sympathy elsewhere.
But a nobler idea, a truer conception, of National Unity, is rapidly gaining possession of the American mind. It is that dimly foreshadowed by our President when, in his discussions with Senator Douglas, he said: 'I do not think our country can endure half slave and half free. I do not think it will be divided, but I think it will become all one or the other.'
'A union of lakes, a union of lands,' is well; but a true 'union of hearts' must be based on a substantial identity of social habitudes and moral convictions. If Islamism or Mormonism were the accepted religion of the South, and we were expected to bow to and render at least outward deference to it, there would doubtless be thousands of Northern-born men who, for the sake of office, or trade, or in the hope of marrying Southern plantations, would profess the most unbounded faith in the creed of the planters, and would crowd their favorite temples located on our own soil. But this would not be a real bond of union between us, but merely an exhibition of servility and fawning hypocrisy. And so the Northern complaisance toward slavery has in no degree tended to avert the disaster which has over[Pg 359]taken us, but only to breed self-reproach on the one side, and hauteur with ineffable loathing on the other.
Hereafter National Unity is to be no roseate fiction, no gainful pretense, but a living reality. The United States of the future will be no constrained alliance of discordant and mutually repellent commonwealths, but a true exemplification of 'many in one'—many stars blended in one common flag—many States combined in one homogeneous Nation. Our Union will be one of bodies not merely, but of souls. The merchant of Boston or New-York will visit Richmond or Louisville for tobacco, Charleston for rice, Mobile for cotton, New-Orleans for sugar, without being required at every hospitable board, in every friendly circle, to repudiate the fundamental laws of right and wrong as he learned them from his mother's lips, his father's Bible, and pronounce the abject enslavement of a race to the interests and caprices of another essentially just and universally beneficent. That a Northern man visiting the South commercially should suppress his convictions adverse to 'the peculiar institution,' and profess to regard it with approval and satisfaction, was a part of the common law of trade—if one were hostile to Slavery, what right had he to be currying favor with planters and their factors, and seeking gain from the products of slave-labor? So queried 'the South;' and, if any answer were possible, that answer would not be heard. 'Love slavery or quit the South,' was the inexorable rule; and the resulting hypocrisy has wrought deep injury to the Northern character. As manufacturers, as traders, as teachers, as clerks, as political aspirants, most of our active, enterprising, leading classes have been suitors in some form for Southern favor, and the consequence has been a prevalent deference to Southern ideas and a constant sacrifice of moral convictions to hopes of material advantage.
It has pleased God to bring this demoralizing commerce to a sudden and sanguinary close. Henceforth North and South will meet as equals, neither finding or fancying in their intimate relations any reason for imposing a profession of faith on the other. The Southron visiting the North and finding here any law, usage, or institution revolting to his sense of justice, will never dream of offending by frankly avowing and justifying the impression it has made upon him: and so with the Northman visiting the South. It is conscious wrong alone that shrinks from impartial observation and repels unfavorable criticism as hostility. We freely proffer our farms, our factories, our warehouses, common-schools, alms-houses, inns, and whatever else may be deemed peculiar among us, to our visitors' scrutiny and comment: we know they are not perfect, and welcome any hint that may conduce to their improvement. So in the broad, free West. The South alone resents any criticism on her peculiarities, and repels as enmity any attempt to convince her that her forced labor is her vital weakness and her greatest peril.
This is about to pass away. Slavery, having appealed to the sword for justification, is to be condemned at her chosen tribunal and to fall on the weapon she has aimed at the heart of the Republic. A new relation of North to South, based on equality, governed by justice, and conceding the fullest liberty, is to replace fawning servility by manly candor, and to lay the foundations of a sincere, mutual, and lasting esteem. We already know that valor is an American quality; we shall yet realize that Truth is every man's interest, and that whatever repels scrutiny confesses itself unfit to live. The Union of the future, being based on eternal verities, will be cemented by every year's duration, until we shall come in truth to 'know no North, no South, no East, no West,' but one vast and glorious country, wherein sectional jealousies and hatreds shall be unknown, and every one shall rejoice in the consciousness that he is a son and citizen of the first of Republics, the land of Washington and Jefferson, of Adams, Hamilton, and Jay, wherein the inalienable Rights of Man as Man, at first pro[Pg 360]pounded as the logical justification of a struggle for Independence, became in the next century, and through the influence of another great convulsion, the practical basis of the entire political and social fabric—the accepted, axiomatic root of the National life.
'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Everyone lives it—to not many is it known; and seize it where you will, it is interesting.'—Goethe.
'Successful.—Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or intended.'—Webster's Dictionary.
Mr. Burns had finished his breakfast.
A horse and wagon, as was customary at that hour, stood outside the gate. He himself was on the portico where his daughter had followed him to give her father his usual kiss. At that moment Mr. Burns saw some one crossing the street toward his place. As he was anxious not to be detained, he hastened down the walk, so that if he could not escape the stranger, the person might at least understand that he had prior engagements. Besides, Mr. Burns never transacted business at home, and a visitor at so early an hour must have business for an excuse. The new-comer evidently was as anxious to reach the house before Mr. Burns left it, as the latter was to make his escape, for pausing a moment across the way, as if to make certain, the sight of the young lady appeared to reassure him, and he walked over and had laid his hand upon the gate just as Mr. Burns was attempting to pass out.
Standing on opposite sides, each with a hand upon the paling, the two met. It would have made a good picture. Mr. Burns was at this time a little past forty, but his habit of invariable cheerfulness, his energetic manner, and his fine fresh complexion gave him the looks of one between thirty and thirty-five. On the contrary, although Hiram Meeker was scarcely twenty, and had never had a care nor a thought to perplex him, he at the same time possessed a certain experienced look which made you doubtful of his age. If one had said he was twenty, you would assent to the proposition; if pronounced to be thirty, you would consider it near the mark. So, standing as they did, you would perceive no great disparity in their ages.
We are apt to fancy individuals whom we have never seen, but of whom we hear as accomplishing much, older than they really are. In this instance Hiram had pictured a person at least twenty years older than Mr. Burns appeared to be. He was quite sure there could be no mistake in the identity of the man whom he beheld descending the portico. When he saw him at such close quarters he was staggered for a moment, but for a moment only. 'It must be he,' so he said to himself.
Now Hiram had planned his visit with special reference to meeting Mr. Burns in his own house. He had two reasons for this. He knew that there he should find him more at his ease, more off his guard, and in a state of mind better adapted to considering his case socially and in a friendly manner than in the counting-room.
Again: Sarah Burns. He would have an opportunity to renew the acquaintance already begun.
Well, there they stood. Both felt a little chagrined—Mr. Burns that an appointment was threatened to be interrupted, and Hiram that his plan was in danger of being foiled.
This was for an instant only.
Mr. Burns opened the gate passing al[Pg 361]most rapidly through, bowing at the same time to Hiram.
'Do you wish to see me?' he said, as he proceeded to untie the horse and get into the wagon.
'Mr. Joel Burns, I presume?'
'Yes.'
'I did wish to see you, sir, on matters of no consequence to you, but personal to myself. I can call again.'
'I am going down to the paper-mill to be absent for an hour. If you will come to my office in that time, I shall be at liberty.'
Hiram had a faint hope he would be invited to step into the house and wait. Disappointed in this, he replied very modestly: 'Perhaps you will permit me to ride with you—that is, unless some one else is going. I would like much to look about the factories.'
'Certainly. Jump in.' And away they drove to Slab City.
Hiram was careful to make no allusion to the subject of his mission to Burnsville. He remained modestly silent while Mr. Burns occasionally pointed out an important building and explained its use or object. Arriving at the paper-mill, he gave Hiram a brief direction where he might spend his time most agreeably.
'I shall be ready to return in three quarters of an hour,' he said, and disappeared inside.
'I must be careful, and make no mistakes with such a man,' soliloquized Hiram, as he turned to pursue his walk. 'He is quick and rapid—a word and a blow—too rapid to achieve a GREAT success. It takes a man, though, to originate and carry through all this. Every thing flourishes here, that is evident. Joel Burns ought to be a richer man than they say he is. He has sold too freely, and on too easy terms, I dare say. No doubt, come to get into his affairs, there will be ever so much to look after. Too much a man of action. Does not think enough. Just the place for me for two or three years.'
Hiram had no time for special examination, but strolled about from point to point, so as to gain a general impression of what was going on. Five minutes before the time mentioned by Mr. Burns had elapsed, Hiram was at his post waiting for him to come out. This little circumstance did not pass unnoticed. It elicited a single observation, 'You are punctual;' to which Hiram made no reply. The drive back to the village was passed nearly in silence. Mr. Burns's mind was occupied with his affairs, and Hiram thought best not to open his own business till he could have a fair opportunity.
Mr. Burns's place for the transaction of general business was a small one-story brick building, erected expressly for the purpose, and conveniently located. There was no name on the door, but over it a pretty large sign displayed in gilt letters the word 'Office,' simply. Mr. Burns had some time before discovered this establishment to be a necessity, in consequence of the multitude of matters with which he was connected. He was the principal partner in the leading store in the village, where a large trade was carried on. The lumber business was still good. He had always two or three buildings in course of erection. He owned one half the paper-mill. In short, his interests were extensive and various, but all snug and well-regulated, and under his control. For general purposes, he spent a certain time in his office. Beyond that, he could be found at the store, at the mill, in some of the factories, or elsewhere, as the occasion called him.
Driving up to the 'office,' he entered with Hiram, and pointing the latter to a seat, took one himself and waited to hear what our hero had to say.
Hiram opened his case, coming directly to the point. He gave a brief account of his previous education and business experience. At the mention of Benjamin Jessup's name, an ominous 'humph!' escaped Mr. Burns's lips, which Hiram was not slow to notice. He saw it would prove a disadvantage to have come from his establishment. Without attempting immediately to modify the unfavorable impression, he was careful, before he finished, to take pains to do so.[Pg 362]
'I have thus explained to you,' concluded Hiram,'that my object is to gain a full, thorough knowledge of business, with the hope of becoming, in time, a well-informed and, I trust, successful merchant.'
'And for that purpose—'
'For that purpose, I am very desirous to enter your service.'
'Really, I do not think there is a place vacant which would suit you, Mr. Meeker.'
'It is of little consequence whether or not the place would suit me, sir; only let me have the opportunity, and I will endeavor to adapt myself to it.'
'Oh! what I mean is, we have at present no situation fitted for a young man as old and as competent as you appear to be.'
'But if I were willing to undertake it?'
'You see there would be no propriety in placing you in a situation properly filled by a boy, or at least a youth. Still, I will not forget your request; and if occasion should require, you shall have the first hearing.'
'I had hoped,' continued Hiram, no way daunted, 'that possibly you might have been disposed to take me in your private employ.'
'How?'
'You have large, varied, and increasing interests. You must be severely tasked, at least at times, to properly manage all. Could I not serve you as an assistant? You would find me, I think, industrious and persevering. I bring certificates of character from the Rev. Mr. Goddard, our clergyman, and from both the deacons in our church.'
This was said with a naïve earnestness, coupled with a diffidence apparently so genuine, that Mr. Burns could not but be favorably impressed by it. In fact, the idea of a general assistant had never before occurred to him. He reflected a moment, and replied:
'It is true I have much on my hands, but one who has a great deal to do can do a great deal; besides, the duties I undertake it would be impossible to devolve on another.'
'I wish you would give me a trial. The amount of salary would be no object. I want to learn business, and I know I can learn it of you.'
Mr. Burns was not insensible to the compliment. His features relaxed into a smile, but his opinion remained unchanged.
'Well,' said Hiram, in a pathetic tone, 'I hate to go back and meet father. He said he presumed you had forgotten him, though he remembered you when you lived in Sudbury, a young man about my age; and he told me to make an engagement with you, if it were only as errand-boy.'
[O Hiram! how could that glib and ready lie come so aptly to your lips? Your father never said a word to you on the subject. It is doubtful if he knew you were going to Burnsville at all, and he never had seen Mr. Burns in his life. How carefully, Hiram, you calculated before you resolved on this delicate method to secure your object! The risk of the falsity of the whole ever being discovered—that was very remote, and amounted to little. What you were about to say would injure no one—wrong no one. If not true, it might well be true. Oh! but Hiram, do you not see you are permitting an element of falsehood to creep in and leaven your whole nature? You are exhibiting an utter disregard of circumstances in your determination to carry your point. Heretofore you have looked to but one end—self; but you have committed no overt act. Have a care, Hiram Meeker; Satan is gaining on you.]
Mr. Burns had not been favorably impressed, at first sight, with his visitor. Magnetically he was repelled by him. He was too just a man to allow this to influence him, by word or manner. He permitted Hiram to accompany him to the mill and return with him.
During this time, the latter had learned something of his man. He saw quickly enough that he had failed favorably to impress Mr. Burns. Determining not to lose the day, he assumed an entire ingenuousness of character, coupled with[Pg 363] much simplicity and earnestness. He appealed to the certificates of his minister and the deacons, as if these would be sure to settle the question irrespective of Mr. Burns's wants; and at last the lie slipped from his mouth, in appearance as innocently as truth from the lips of an angel.
At the mention of Sudbury and the time when he was a young man, Hiram, who watched narrowly, thought he could perceive a slight quickening in the eye of Mr. Burns—nothing more.
His only reply, however, to the appeal, was to ask:
'How old are you?'
'Nineteen,' said Hiram softly. (He would be twenty the following week, but he did not say so.)
'Only nineteen!' exclaimed Mr. Burns, 'I took you for five-and-twenty.'
'It is very singular,' replied Hiram mournfully; 'I am not aware that persons generally think me older than I am.'
'Oh! I presume not; and now I look closer, I do not think you do appear more than nineteen.'
It was really astonishing how Hiram's countenance had changed. How every trace of keen, shrewd apprehension had vanished, leaving only the appearance of a highly intelligent and interesting, but almost diffident youth!
Mr. Burns sat a moment without speaking. Hiram did not dare utter a word. He knew he was dealing with a man quick in his impressions and rapid to decide. He had done his best, and would not venture farther. Mr. Burns, looking up from a reflective posture, cast his eyes on Hiram. The latter really appeared so amazingly distressed that Mr. Burns's feelings were touched.
'Is your mother living,' he asked.
Hiram was almost on the point of denying the fact, but that would have been too much.
'Oh! yes, sir,' he replied.
Again Mr. Burns was silent. Again Hiram calculated the chances, and would not venture to interrupt him.
This time Mr. Burns's thoughts took another direction. It occurred to him that he had of late overtasked his daughter. 'True, it is a great source of pleasure for us both that she can be of so much assistance to me, but her duties naturally accumulate; she is doing too much. It is not appropriate.'
So thought Mr. Burns while Hiram Meeker sat waiting for a decision.
'It is true,' continued Mr. Burns to himself, 'I think I ought to have a private clerk. The idea occurred even to this youth. I will investigate who and what he is, and will give him a trial if all is right.'
He turned toward Hiram:
'Young man, I am inclined to favor your request. But if I give you employment in my office, your relations with me will necessarily be confidential, and the situation will be one of trust and confidence. I must make careful inquiries.'
'Certainly, sir,' replied Hiram, drawing a long breath, for he saw the victory was gained. 'I will leave these certificates, which may aid you in your inquiries. I was born and brought up in Hampton, and you will have no difficulty in finding persons who know my parents and me. When shall I call again, sir?'
'In a week.'
'Won! won! yes, won!' exclaimed Hiram aloud, when he had walked a sufficient distance from the 'office' to enable him to do so without danger of being overheard. 'A close shave, though! If he had said 'No,' all Hampton would not have moved him. What a splendid place for me! How did I come to be smart enough to suggest such a thing to him? I rather think three years here will make me all right for New-York.'
Hiram walked along to the hotel, and ordered dinner. While it was getting ready, he strolled over the village. He was in hopes to meet, by some accident, Miss Burns.
He was not disappointed. Turning a corner, he came suddenly on Sarah, who had run out for a call on some friend. Hiram fancied he had produced a de[Pg 364]cided impression the evening they met at Mrs. Crofts', and with a slight fluttering at the heart, he was about to stop and extend his hand, when Miss Burns, hardly appearing to recognize him, only bowed slightly and passed on her way.
'You shall pay for this, young lady,' muttered Hiram between his teeth—'you shall pay for this, or my name is not Hiram Meeker! I would come here now for nothing else but to pull her down!' continued Hiram savagely. 'I will let her know whom she has to deal with.'
He walked back to the hotel in a state of great irritation. With the sight of a good dinner, however, this was in a degree dispelled, and before he finished it, his philosophy came to his relief.
'Time—time—it takes time. The fact is, I shall like the girl all the better for her playing off at first. Shan't forget it though—not quite!'
He drove back to Hampton that afternoon. His feelings were placid and complacent as usual. He had asked the Lord in the morning to prosper his journey and to grant him success in gaining his object, and he now returned thanks for this new mark of God's grace and favor.
Mr. Burns did not inquire of the Rev. Mr. Goddard, nor of either of the deacons mentioned by Hiram. He wrote direct to Thaddeus Smith, Senior, whom he knew, and who he thought would be able to give a correct account of Hiram. Informing Mr. Smith that the young man had applied to him for a situation of considerable trust, he asked that gentleman to give his careful opinion about his capacity, integrity, and general character. As there could be but one opinion on the subject in all Hampton, Mr. Smith returned an answer every way favorable. It is true he did not like Hiram himself, but if called on for a reason, he could not have told why. As we have recorded, every one spoke well of him. Every one said how good, and moral, and smart he was, and honest Mr. Smith reported accordingly.
'Well, well,' said Mr. Burns, 'if Smith gives such an account of him while he has been all the time in an opposition store, he must be all right.... Don't quite like his looks, though ... wonder what it is.'
When at the expiration of the week Hiram went to receive an answer from Mr. Burns, he did not attempt to find him at his house. He was careful to call at the office at the hour Mr. Burns was certain to be in.
'I hear a good account of you, Meeker,' said Mr. Burns, 'and in that respect every thing is satisfactory. Had I not given you so much encouragement, I should still hesitate about making a new department. However, we will try it.'
'I am very thankful to you, sir. As I said, I want to learn business and the compensation is no object.'
'But it is an object with me. I can have no one in my service who is not fully paid. Your position should entitle you to a liberal salary. If you can not earn it, you can not fill the place.'
'Then I shall try to earn it, I assure you,' replied Hiram, 'and will leave the matter entirely with you. I have brought you a line from my father,' he continued, and he handed Mr. Burns a letter.
It contained a request, prepared at Hiram's suggestion, that Mr. Burns would admit him in his family. The other ran his eye hastily over it. A slight frown contracted his brow.
'Impossible!' he exclaimed. 'My domestic arrangements will not permit of such a thing. Quite impossible.'
'So I told father, but he said it would do no harm to write. He did not think you would be offended.'
'Offended! certainly not.'
'Perhaps,' continued Hiram, 'you will be kind enough to recommend a good place to me. I should wish to reside in a religious family, where no other boarders are taken.'
The desire was a proper one, but Hiram's tone did not have the ring of the true metal. It grated slightly on Mr. Burns's moral nerves—a little of his[Pg 365] first aversion came back—but he suppressed it, and promised to endeavor to think of a place which should meet Hiram's wishes. It was now Saturday. It was understood Hiram should commence his duties the following Monday. This arranged, he took leave of his employer, and returned home.
That evening Mr. Burns told his daughter he was about to relieve her from the drudgery—daily increasing—of copying letters and taking care of so many papers, by employing a confidential clerk. Sarah at first was grieved; but when her father declared he should talk with her just as ever about every thing he did or proposed to do, and that he thought in the end the new clerk would be a great relief to him, she was content.
'But whom have you got, father,' (she always called him 'father,') 'for so important a situation?'
'His name is Meeker—Hiram Meeker—a young man very highly recommended to me from Hampton.'
'I wonder if it was not he whom I met last Saturday!'
'Possibly; he called on me that day. Do you know him?'
'I presume it is the same person I saw at Mrs. Crofts' some weeks since. Last Saturday a young man met me and almost stopped, as if about to speak. I did not recognize him, although I could not well avoid bowing. Now I feel quite sure it was Mr. Meeker.'
'Very likely.'
'Well, I do hope he will prove faithful and efficient. I recollect every one spoke very highly of him.'
'I dare say.'
Mr. Burns was in a reverie. Certain thoughts were passing through his mind—painful, unhappy thoughts—thoughts which had never before visited him.
'Sarah, how old are you?'
'Why, father, what a question!' She came and sat on his knee and looked fondly into his eyes. 'What can you be thinking of not to remember I am seventeen?'
'Of course I remember it, dear child,' replied Mr. Burns tenderly; 'my mind was wandering, and I spoke without reflection.'
'But you were thinking of me?'
'Perhaps.'
He kissed her, and rose and walked slowly up and down the room. Still he was troubled.
We shall not at present endeavor to penetrate his thoughts; nor is it just now to our purpose to present them to the reader.
Hiram Meeker had been again successful. He had resolved to enter the service of Mr. Burns and he had entered it. He came over Monday morning early, and put up at the hotel. In three or four days he secured just the kind of boarding-place he was in search of. A very respectable widow lady, with two grown-up daughters, after consulting with Mr. Burns, did not object to receive him as a member of her family.
Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife. By the Author of Paul Ferroll. New-York: Carleton, 413 Broadway. Boston: N. Williams & Co.
Those who remember Paul Ferroll, probably recall it as a novel of merit, which excited attention, partly from its peculiarity, and partly from the mystery in which its writer chose to conceal herself—a not unusual course with timid debutantes in literature, who hope either to intriguer the public with their masks, or quietly escape the disgrace of a fiasco should they fail. Mrs. Clive is, however, it would seem, satisfied that the public did not reject her, since she now reäppears to inform us, 'novelly,' why the extremely ill-married Paul made himself the chief of sinners, by committing wife-icide. The work is in fact a very readable novel—much less killing indeed than its title—but still deserving the great run which we are informed it is having, and which, unlike the run of shad, will not we presume—as it is a very summer book—fall off as the season advances.
The Channings. A Domestic Novel of Real Life. By Mrs. Henry Wood. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson. Boston: Crosby and Nichols.
Notwithstanding the praise which has been so lavishly bestowed on this 'tale of domestic life,' the reader will, if any thing more than a mere reader of novels for the very sake of 'story,' probably agree with us, after dragging through to the end, that it would be a blessing if some manner of stop could be put to the manufacture of such books. A really original, earnest novel; vivid in its life-picturing, genial in its characters; the book of a man or woman who has thought something, and actually knows something, is at any time a world's blessing. But what has The Channings of all this in it? Every sentence in it rings like something read of old, all the incidents are of a kind which were worn out years ago—to be sure the third-rate story-reader may lose himself in it—just as we may for a fiftieth time endeavor to trace out the plan of the Hampton Labyrinth, and with about as much real profit or amusement.
It is a melancholy sign of the times to learn that such hackneyed English trash as The Channings has sold well! It has not deserved it. American novels which have appeared nearly cotemporaneously with it, and which have ten times its merit, have not met with the same success, for the simple and sole reason that almost any English circulating library stuff will at any time meet with better patronage than a home work. When our public becomes as much interested in itself as it is in the very common-place life of Cockney clergymen and clerks, we shall perhaps witness a truly generous encouragement of native literature.
The Pearl of Orr's Island. A Story of the Coast of Maine. By Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
In reading this quiet, natural, well-pictured narrative of Northern life, we are tempted to exclaim—fresh from the extraordinary contrast presented by Agnes of Sorrento—O si sic omnes! Why can not Mrs. Stowe always write like this? Why not limit her efforts to subjects which develop her really fine powers—to setting forth the social life of America at the present day, instead of harping away at the seven times worn out and knotted cord of Catholic and Italian romance? The Pearl of Orr's[Pg 367] Island, though not a work which will sweep Uncle Tom-like in tempest fashion over all lands and through all languages, is still a very readable and very refreshing novel—full of reality as we find it among real people, 'inland or on sounding shore,' and by no means deficient in those moral and religious lessons to inculcate which it appears to have been written. Piety is indeed the predominant characteristic of the work—not obtrusive or sectarian, but earnest and actual; so that it will probably be classed, on the whole, as a religious novel, though we can hardly recall a romance in which the pious element interferes so little with the general interest of the plot, or is so little conducive to gloom. The hard, 'Angular Saxon' characteristics of the rural people who constitute the dramatis personæ, their methods of thought and tone of feeling, so singularly different from that of 'the world,' their marked peculiarities, are all set forth with an apparently unconscious ability deserving the highest praise.
The Golden Hour. By Monoure D. Conway, Author of the 'Rejected Stone,' 'Impera Parendo.' Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
The most remarkable work which the war has called out is beyond question the Rejected Stone. Wild, vigorous, earnest, even to suffering, honest as truth itself, quaint, humorous, pathetic, and startlingly eccentric. Those who read it at once decided that a new writer had arisen among us, and one destined to make no mean mark in the destinies of his country. The reader who will refer to our first number will find what we said of it in all sincerity, since the author was then to us unknown. He is—it is almost needless to inform the reader—a thorough-going abolitionist, yet one who, while looking more intently at the welfare of the black than we care to do in the present imbroglio, still appreciates and urges Emancipation, or freeing the black, in its relation to the welfare of the white man. Mr. Conway is not, however, a man who speaks ignorantly on this subject. A Virginian born and bred, brought up in the very heart of the institution, he studied it at home in all its relations, and found out its evils by experience. A thoroughly honest man, too clear-headed and far too intelligent to be rated as a fanatic; too familiar with his subject to be at all disregarded, he claims close attention in many ways, those of wit and eloquence not being by any means the least. In the work before us, he insists that there is a golden hour at hand, a title borrowed from the quaint advertisement, of 'Lost a golden hour set with sixty diamond minutes'—which if not grasped at by the strong, daring hand will see our great national opportunity lost forever. We are not such disbelievers in fate as to imagine that this golden hour ever can be inevitably lost. If the cause of freedom rolls slowly, it is because even in free soil there are too many Conservative pebbles. Still we agree with Conway as to his estimate of the great mass of cowardice, irresolution, and folly which react on our administration. If the word 'Emancipationist,'—meaning thereby one who looks to the welfare of the white man rather than the negro—be substituted for 'Abolitionist' in the following, our more intelligent readers will probably agree with Mr. Conway exactly:
'If this country is to be saved, the Abolitionists are to save it; and though they seem few in numbers, they are not by a thousandth so few as were the Christians when JESUS suffered, or Protestants when Luther spoke. There is need only that we should stand as one man, and unto the end, for an absolutely free Republic, swearing to promote eternal strife until it be attained—until in waters which Agitation, the angel of freedom, has troubled, the diseased nation shall bathe and be made every whit whole.
'The Golden Hour is before us: there is in America enough wisdom and courage to coin it, ere it passes, into national honor and peace, if it is all put forth.
'Up, hearts!'
It is needless to say that we earnestly[Pg 368] commend this book to all who are truly interested in the great questions of the time.
Tragedy of Success. Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
Another of the extraordinary series bearing the motto, 'Aux plus desheritées le plus d'amour'—works as strongly marked by talent as by misapplied taste. The dramatic ability, the deep vein of poetry, the earnest thought, faith, and humanity of these dramas or drama, are beyond question—but very questionable to our mind is the extreme love of over-adorning truth which can induce a writer to represent plantation negroes as speaking elegant language and using lofty, tender, and poetic sentiments on almost all occasions, or at least to a degree which is exceptional and not regular. If we hope that the time may come when all of God's children will be raised to this high standard of thought and culture, so much the more reason is there why they should not now be exaggerated and placed in a false light. Yet, as we have said, the work abounds in noble thoughts and true poetry. It may be read with somewhat more than 'profit,' for it has within it a great and loving heart. True humanity is impressed on every page, and where that exists greatness and beauty are never absent.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. By Victor Hugo. New-York: Dick and Fitzgerald. 1862.
Many years ago—say some thirty-odd—when French literature still walked in the old groves, and the classic form and style of the old revolution still swayed all the minor minds, there sprung up a reäction in the so-called romantic school of which Victor Hugo became the leader. The medieval renaissance, which fifty years before had penetrated Germany and England, and indeed all the North, was late in coming to France, but when it did come it stirred the Latin Quarter and Young France wonderfully. If its results were less remarkable in literature than in any other country, they were at least more admired in their day. Principal among these results was the novel now before us. And this book is really a tolerable imitation of Walter Scott. The feverish spirit of modern France craved, indeed, stronger ingredients than the Wizard of the North was wont to gather, and the Hunchback is accordingly 'sensational.' It has in fact been called extravagant—yes, forced and unnatural. Even ordinary readers were apt to say as much of it. We well remember meeting many years ago in a well-thumbed circulating-library copy of the Hunchback of Notre Dame the following doggerel on the last page:
Yet we counsel all who would be well-informed in literature—as well as the far greater number of those who read only for entertainment, to get this work. It is exciting—full of strange, quaint picturing of the Middle Ages, has vivid characters, and is full of life. Among the series of books with fewer faults, but, alas! with far fewer excellencies, which are daily printed, there is, after all, seldom one so well worth reading as The Hunchback of Notre Dame.[Pg 369]
At last we are wide awake. At last the nation has found out its strength, and determined, despite doughface objections and impediments to every proposal of every kind, to push the war with energy, so that the foe shall be overwhelmed. Six hundred thousand men, as we write, will soon swell the ranks of the Federal army, and if six hundred thousand more are needed they can be had. For the North is arming in real earnest, thank God! and when it rises in all its force, who shall withstand it? It is a thing to remember with pride, that the proclamation calling for the second three hundred thousand by draft, was received with the same joy as though we had heard of a great victory.
Government has not gone to work one day too soon. From a rebellion, the present cause of strife has at length assumed the proportion of equal war. The South has cast its whole population, all its means, all its energy, heart and soul, life and future, on one desperate game; while we with every advantage have let out our strength little by little, so as to hurt the enemy as little as possible. Doughface democracy among us has squalled as if receiving deadly wounds at every proposal to crush or injure the foe. It opposed, heart and soul, the early On to Richmond movement, when the Republicans clamored for an overwhelming army, a grand rally, and a bold push. It rejoiced at heart over Bull Run—for the South was saved for a time. It upheld the wounded snake, 'anaconda' system, it opposed the using of contrabands in any way, it urged, heart and soul, the protection of the property of rebels, it warred on confiscation in any form, it was ready with a negative to every proposition to energetically push the war, and finally its press is now opposing the settling our soldiers on the cotton-lands of the South. Thus far the slow course of this war of ten millions against twenty millions is the history of the action of falsehood and treason benumbing the majority. They have lied against us, and against millions, that the negro was all we cared for, though it was the WHITE MAN, far, far above the black for whom we spoke and cared, or how else could that free labor in which the black is but a small unit have been our principal hope and thought?
But treason at home could not last forever, nor will lies always endure. The people have found out that the foe can not be gently whipped and amiably reinstated in their old place of honor. Moreover we have no time to lose. Another year will find us financially bankrupt, and the enemy in all probability, in that case, free and fairly afloat by foreign aid.
And if the South goes, all may possibly go. In every city exist desperate and unprincipled men—the Fernando Woods of the dangerous classes—who to rule would do all in their power to break our remaining union into hundreds of small independencies. The South would flood us with smuggled European goods—for, be it remembered, this iniquitous device to beat down our manufacture has always been prominent on their programme—our industry would be paralyzed, exchanges ruined, and the Eastern and Middle States become paltry shadows of what they once were.
The people have at last seen this terrible ghost stare them full in the face. They have found out that it is 'rule or ruin' in earnest. No time now to have every decisive and expedient measure yelled down as 'unconstitutional' or undemocratic or unprecedented. No days[Pg 370] these to fight a maddened foe with conservative kid-gloves and frighten the fell tiger back with democratic rose-water. We must do all and every thing, even as the foe have done. We have been generous, we have been merciful—we have protected property, we have returned slaves, we have let our wounded lie in the open air and die rather than offend the fiendish-hearted women of Secessia—and what have we got by it? Lies and lies, again and yet again. For refusing to touch the black, Mr. Lincoln is termed by the Southern press 'a dirty negro-stealer,' and our troops, for not taking the slaves and thereby giving the South all its present crop and for otherwise aiding them, are simply held up as hell-hounds and brigands. Much we have made by forbearance!
The miserable position held by Free State secessionists, Breckinridge Democrats, rose-water conservatives, and other varieties of the great Northern branch of Southern treason, is fully exemplified by the following extract from Breckinridge's special organ, the Louisville Courier, printed while Nashville was still under rebel rule, an article which has been of late more than once closely reëchoed and imitated by the Richmond Whig.
'This,' says the Courier, 'has been called a fratricidal war by some, by others an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery. We respectfully take issue with the authors of both these ideas. We are not the brothers of the Yankees, and the slavery question is merely the pretext, not the cause of the war. The true irrepressible conflict lies fundamentally in the hereditary hostility, the sacred animosity, the eternal antagonism, between the two races engaged.
'The Norman cavalier can not brook the vulgar familiarity of the Saxon Yankee, while the latter is continually devising some plan to bring down his aristocratic neighbor to his own detested level. Thus was the contest waged in the old United States. So long as Dickinson dough-faces were to be bought, and Cochrane cowards to be frightened, so long was the Union tolerable to Southern men; but when, owing to divisions in our ranks, the Yankee hirelings placed one of their own spawn over us, political connection became unendurable, and separation necessary to preserve our self-respect.
'As our Norman friends in England, always a minority, have ruled their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to the present day, so have we, the slave oligarchs, governed the Yankees till within a twelve-month. We framed the Constitution, for seventy years molded the policy of the Government, and placed our own men, or 'Northern men with Southern principles,' in power.'
Cool—and in part true. They did rule us in political vassalage, they did place their own men, or 'Northern men with Southern principles,' in power, and there are scores of such abandoned traitors even now crying out 'pro-slavery' and abusing Emancipation among us, in the hope that if some turn of Fortune's wheel should separate the South, they may again rise to power as its agents and representatives! GOD help them! It is hard to conceive of men sunk so low! Nobody wants them now—but a time may come. They are in New-York—there is a peculiarly contemptible clique of them in Boston, and the Philadelphia Bulletin informs us that there is exactly such another precious party in the city of Brotherly Love, who are 'in a very awkward position just now, inasmuch as there is no market for them. They are in the position of Johnson and Don Juan in the slave-market at Constantinople, and ready to exclaim:
'I wish to G—d that some body would buy us!''
The first draft for the army was a death-blow to the slow-poison democracy, and it has been frightened accordingly. Like a slug on whom salt has just begun to fall, the crawling mass is indeed manifesting symptoms of frightened activity—but it is the activity of death. For the North is awake in real earnest; it is out with banner and bayonet; there is to be no more playing at war or wasting of lives—the foe is to be rooted out—delanda est Dixie. And in the hour of triumph where will the pro-slavery traitors be then? Where? Where they always strive to be—on the winning side. They will 'back water' as they have done on progressive measure which[Pg 371] they once opposed, since the war begun; they will eat their words and fawn and wheedle those in power until the opportunity again occurs for building up on some sham principle a party of rum and faro-banks, low demagogue-ism, ignorance, reaction, and vulgarity. Then from his present toad-like swelling and whispering, we shall hear the full-expanded fiend roar out into a real life. It is the old story of history—the corrupt and venal arraigning itself against truth and terming the latter 'visionary' and 'fanatical.'
Those who visit the sick soldiers and do good in the hospitals occasionally get a gleam of fun among all the sad scenes—for any wag who has been to the wars seldom loses his humor, although he may have lost all else save that and honor. Witness a sketch from life:
C——, good soul, after taking all the little comforts he could afford to give to the wounded soldiers, went into the hospital for the fortieth time the other day, with his mite, consisting of several papers of fine-cut chewing-tobacco, Solace for the wounded, as he called it. He came to one bed, where a poor fellow lay cheerfully humming a tune, and studying out faces on the papered wall.
'Got a fever?' asked C——.
'No,' answered the soldier.
'Got a cold?'
'Yes, cold—lead—like the d——l!'
'Where?'
'Well, to tell you the truth, it's pretty well scattered. First, there's a bullet in my right arm, they han't dug that out yet. Then there's one near my thigh—it's sticking in yet: one in my leg—hit the bone—that fellow hurts! one through my left hand—that fell out. And I tell you what, friend, with all this lead in me, I feel, ginrally speaking, a little heavy all over!'
C—— lightened his woes with a double quantity of Solace.
C—— was a good fellow, and the soldier deserved his 'Solace.' Many of them among us are poor indeed. 'Boys!' exclaimed a wounded volunteer to two comrades, as they paused the other day before a tobacconist's and examined with the eyes of connoisseurs the brier or bruyére-wood pipes in his window, 'Boys! I'd give fifty dollars, if I had it, for four shillins to buy one of them pipes with!'
In a late number of an English magazine, Harriet Martineau gives some account of her conversations, when in America in 1835, with Chief-Justice Marshall and Mr. Madison. These men then represented the old ideas of the Republic and of Virginia as it had been. The following extract fully declares their opinions:
'When I knew Chief-Justice Marshall he was eighty-three—as bright-eyed and warm-hearted as ever, while as dignified a judge as ever filled the highest seat in the highest court of any country. He said he had seen Virginia the leading State for half his life; he had seen her become the second, and sink to be (I think) the fifth.
'Worse than this, there was no arresting her decline if her citizens did not put an end to slavery; and he saw no signs of any intention to do so, east of the mountains, at least. He had seen whole groups of estates, populous in his time, lapse into waste. He had seen agriculture exchanged for human stock-breeding; and he keenly felt the degradation.
'The forest was returning over the fine old estates, and the wild creatures which had not been seen for generations were reäppearing, numbers and wealth were declining, and education and manners were degenerating. It would not have surprised him to be told that on that soil would the main battles be fought when the critical day should come which he foresaw.
'To Mr. Madison despair was not easy. He had a cheerful and sanguine temper, and if there was one thing rather than another which he had learned to consider secure, it was the Constitution which he had so large a share in making. Yet he told me that he was nearly in despair, and that he had been quite so till the Colonization Society arose.
'Rather than admit to himself that the South must be laid waste by a servile war, or the whole country by a civil war, he strove to believe that millions of negroes could be carried to Africa, and so got rid of. I need not speak of the weakness of such a hope. What concerns us now is that he saw and described to me, when I was his guest, the dangers and horrors of the state of society in which he was living.[Pg 372]
'He talked more of slavery than of all other subjects together, returning to it morning, noon, and night. He said that the clergy perverted the Bible because it was altogether against slavery; that the colored population was increasing faster than the white; and that the state of morals was such as barely permitted society to exist.
'Of the issue of the conflict, whenever it should occur, there could, he said, be no doubt. A society burdened with a slave system could make no permanent resistance to an unencumbered enemy; and he was astonished at the fanaticism which blinded some Southern men to so clear a certainty.
'Such was Mr. Madison's opinion in 1855.'
But the trial has come at last, and it is for the country to decide whether the South is to be allowed to secede, or to remain strengthened by their slaves, planting and warring against us until our own resources becoming exhausted, Europe can at an opportune moment intervene. But will that be the end? Will not Russia revenge the Crimea by aiding us—will not Austria be dismembered, France on fire, Southern Europe in arms, and one storm of anarchy sweep over the world? It is all possible, should we persevere in fighting the enemy with one hand and feeding him with the other.
There is such a thing as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown by the subjoined brace of anecdotes:
Dear Sir: I have had, in my time, not a little experience of jailer, warden, and, of late, camp life, and would like to say a word about silly, misplaced sympathy, of which I have witnessed enough in all conscience.
At one time, while officering it in a prison not one thousand miles—as the penny papers say—from the State of New-York, we received into our hands about as degraded a specimen of the genus 'murderer,' as it was ever my lot to see. He had killed a woman in a most cowardly and cruel manner, and was, to my way of thinking, (and I was used to such fellows,) about as brutal-looking a human beast as one need look at. However, we had hardly got him into a cell, before a carriage drove up to the door, and a splendidly-dressed lady, with a basket of oranges and a five-dollar camellia bouquet, asked to see the prisoner.
'Do let me see him!' she cried, 'I read of him in the newspaper, and, guilty as he is, I would fain contribute my mite to soothe him.'
'He is a rough customer, marm,' said my assistant.
'Yes, but you know what the poet says:
"Bring flowers to the captive's lonely cell."
So she went in. She took but small notice of the prisoner, however, arranged her bouquet, left her oranges, and departed. It occurred to me to promptly search the bouquet for a concealed note or file, so I entered the cell as she went out. I found Shocky, as we called him, sucking away at an orange, and staring at the flowers in great amazement. Finally, he spoke.
'Wat in ——'s the use a sendin' them things to a feller fur, unless they give him the rum with 'em?'
'What do you suppose they are meant for?' I replied.
'Why, to make bitters with, in course. An't them come-a-mile flowers?'
The second is something of the same sort. Not long since, a lot of us—I am an H. P., 'high private,' now—were quartered in several wooden tenements, and in the inner room of one lay the corpus of a young Secesh officer, awaiting burial. The news soon spread to a village not far off. Down came tearing a sentimental and not bad-looking specimen of a Virginny dame.
'Let me kiss him for his mother!' she cried, as I interrupted her progress. 'Do let me kiss him for his mother!'
'Kiss whom?'
'The dear little lieutenant, the one who lies dead within. P'int him out to me, sir, if you please. I never saw him, but—oh!'
I led her through a room in which Lieutenant ——, of Philadelphia, lay stretched out on an up-turned trough, fast asleep. Supposing him to be the 'article' sought for, she rushed up, and exclaiming, 'Let me kiss him for his mother,' approached her lips to his forehead. What was her amazement when the 'corpse,' ardently clasping its arms around her, returned the salute vigorously, and exclaimed:
'Never mind the old lady, Miss, go it on[Pg 373] your own account. I haven't the slightest objection!'
Sentiment is a fine thing, Mr. Editor, but it should be handled as one handles the spiked guns which the rebels leave behind, loaded with percussion-caps—very carefully.
Yours amazingly,
Warden.
Readers who are desirous of seeing Ravenshoe fully played out will please glance at the following:
There are those who assert that the doctrine of Compensation is utterly ignored in Ravenshoe. They instance the rewarding Welter, a coarse, brutal scoundrel and sensual beast, with wealth and title, and such honor as the author can confer, as an insult to every rational reader; nor can they think Charles Ravenshoe, or Horton, who endeavored right manfully to support himself, repaid for this exertion, and for bearing up stoutly against his troubles, by being compelled 'to pass a dull, settled, dreaming, melancholy old age' as an invalid.
It may naturally be thought that a residence of years in Australia, the mother of Botany Bay, where not exactly the best of American society could be found, has had its effect in embittering even an Englishman against Americans, and of embroiling him with his own countrymen; therefore the reader must smile at this principle of rewarding vice and punishing virtue; it is what Ravenshoe pretends to be—something novel.
The extreme dissatisfaction of the public with this volume calls imperatively for a satisfactory conclusion to it, consequently a sequel is now presented in what the Australians call the most 'bloody dingo[6] politeful' manner.
A small boy with a dirty face met another small boy similarly caparisoned. Said the first: 'Eech! you don' know how much twicet two is?'
'You are a ——' (we suppress the word he used; suffice it to say, it may be defined, 'a kind of harp much used by the ancients!')—'twicet two is four. Hmm!' replied the second.
The reader may not see it, but the writer does, that this trivial conversation has important bearing on the fate of William Ravenshoe, the wrongful-rightful, rightful-wrongful, etcetera, heir. For further particulars, see the Bohemian Girl, where a babe is changed by a nurse in order that the nurse may have change for it.
When Charles Horton Ravenshoe returned once more to his paternal acres, it will be remembered he settled two thousand pounds a year, rent-charge on Ravenshoe, in favor of William Ravenshoe. Over and above this, Charles enjoyed from this estate and from what Lord Saltire (Satire?) willed him, no less than fourteen thousand pounds; his settlement on William was therefore by no means one half of the income, consequently unfair to the exiled Catholic half-brother.
After the death of Father Mackworth he was followed by a gentleman in crow-colored raiment, named Father Macksham, who accompanied William, the ex-heir, to a small cottage, where the plots inside were much larger than the grass-plots outside, and where Father Macksham hatched the following fruit, which only partially ripened. He determined to overthrow Welter by the means of Adelaide, then overthrow Adelaide by means of Charles Ravenshoe, then overthrow the latter by his illegitimate brother, and finally throw the last over in favor of the Jesuits. He occupied all his spare moments preparing the fireworks.
The reader will remember that Adelaide, wife of Welter, or Lord Ascot, broke her back while attempting to jump a fence, mounted on the back of the Irish mare 'Molly Asthore,' but the reader does not know that Welter was the cause of his wife's fall, and that he actually hired a groom to scare 'Molly Asthore' so that she would take the fence, and also his wife out of this vale of tears. (This sentence I know is not grammatical; who cares?) Welter, when he saw that his wife was not killed, was furious. His large red brutal face turned to purple; he smote his prize-fighting chest with his huge fists, he lowered his eyebrows until he resembled an infuriated hog, and then he retired to his house and[Pg 374] drank a small box of claret—pints—twenty-four to the dozen!
Adelaide, too, was furious, but she sent privately to London for Surgeon Forsups—he came; then in the night season, unbeknown to Welter, an operation was performed, and behold! in the morning light lay Adelaide, tall, straight, commanding, proud—well as ever! in fact, straight as a shingle. Do you think she wanted to choke Welter? I do.
Nature was in one of her gloomiest moods, the clouds were the color of burnt treacle, the sombre rain pelted the dismal streets; mud was everywhere, desolation, misery, wet boots, and ruined hats. In the midst of such a scene, Welter, Lord Ascot, died of apoplexy in the throat, caused by a rope. Who did the deed? Owls on the battlements answer me. Did he do it himself or was it done for him? Shrieking elements respond. Echo answers: Justice!
Ravenshoe bay again. Sunlight on the waters; clear blue sky; all nature smiling serenely; Charles Ravenshoe—I adore the man when I think of him—landing a forty-four-pound salmon; ruddy with health, joyous in countenance; two curly-headed boys screaming for joy; his wife, 'she that was' (Americanism picked up among Yorkshiremen in Australia) Mary Corby, laughing heartily at the tout ensemble. William Ravenshoe affectionately helping Charles with a landing-net to secure the salmon, thus speaks to him:
'Charles, this idea of yours of dividing the 'state evenly between us is noble, but I shall not accept it. I would like a small piece of the tail of this salmon for dinner, though, if it will not rob you.'
'William, halves in every thing between us is my motto; so say no more about it. The delightful news that Father Macksham has at last fallen a victim to his love of gain, while trying to run a cargo of cannons, powder, and Enfield rifles to the confederate States, IN DIRECT OPPOSITION TO HER BLESSED MAJESTY'S COMMANDS, rejoices my heart to that extent that I exclaim, perish all Jesuits! Now that you have turned Protestant, and are thoroughly out of the woods of medieval romance, I may say,
'The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold,'
and quote Tennyson, like poor Cuthbert, all day long. Who is there to hinder?'
'No one,' replied William, with all the warmth of heart of a man who was once a groom and then a bridegroom. 'No one. I saw Adelaide this morning a-carrying flannels and rum to the poor of the parish; how thoroughly she has reformed, I'm sure.'
Reader, let us pause here and dwell on the respective merits of the Bohemian Girl, and Father Rodin in the Mysteries of Paris, compared with the characters described in Ravenshoe. Let us ask if an English novel can be written without allusion to the Derby or Life at Oxford, the accumulation of pounds or the squandering of pounds, rightful heirs or wrongful heirs, false marriages, or the actions of spoiled children generally? An answer is looked for.
'And further this deponent sayeth not.'
The Nashville Union—the new Union newspaper of that city—is emphatically 'an institution,' and a dashing one at that. Its every column is like the charge of a column of infantry into the unhallowed Rebel-ry of Disunion. 'Don't compromise your loyalty with rebels,' says the Union, 'until you are ready to compromise your soul with the devil.'
Some of the humor of this brave pioneer sheet is decidedly piquant. Among its quizzical literary efforts the review of Rev. Dr. McFerrin's Confederate Primer is good enough to form the initial of a series. We make the following extracts:
'Nothing is more worthy of being perpetuated than valuable contributions to literature. The literature of a nation is its crown of glory, whose reflected light shines far down the swift-rolling waves of time and gladdens the eyes of remote generations. This beautiful and—to our notion—finely-expressed sentiment was suggested to our mind in turning over the pages of Rev. Dr. McFerrin's Confederate Primer, which we briefly noticed yesterday. We feel that we then passed too hastily over a work so grand in its conception.... The Primer, after giving the alphabet in due form, offers some little rhymes for youngsters, which are per[Pg 375]fect nosegays of sentiment, of which the following will serve as samples:
N.
At Nashville's fall
We sinned all.
T.
At Number Ten
We sinned again.
F.
Thy purse to mend,
Old Floyd, attend.
L.
Abe Lincoln bold,
Our ports doth hold.
D.
Jeff Davis tells a lie,
And so must you and I.
I.
Isham doth mourn
His case forlorn.
P.
Brave Pillow's flight
Is out of sight.
B.
Buell doth play,
And after slay.
O.
Yon Oak will be the gallows-tree
Of Richmond's fallen majesty.
Governor Ishain Harris 'catches it' in the following extract from the Easy Reading Lessons for Children:
'Once there was a lit-tle boy, on-ly four years old. His name was Dix-ie. His fa-ther's name was I-sham, and his moth-er's name was All-sham. Dix-ie was ver-y smart, He could drink whis-ky, fight chick-ens, play po-ker, and cuss his moth-er. When he was on-ly two years old, he could steal su-gar, hook pre-serves, drown kit-tens, and tell lies like a man. By and by Dix-ie died, and went to the bad place. But the dev-il would not let Dix-ie stay there, for he said: 'When you get big, Dix-ie, you would be head-devil yourself.' All little Reb-els ought to be like Dix-ie, and so they will, if they will stud-y the Con-fed-e-rate Prim-er.'
Very good, too, is the powerful and thrilling sermon on the 'Curse of Cowardice,' delivered by the Rev. Dr. Meroz Armageddon Baldwin, from which we take 'the annexed:'
'Then there is Gideon Pillow, who has undertaken a contract for digging that 'last ditch,' of which you have heard so much. I am afraid that the white 'feathers will fly' whenever that Case is opened, and that Pillow will give us the slip. 'The sword of the Lord' isn't 'the sword of Gideon' Pillow—that's certain—so I shall bolster him up no longer. Gideon is 'a cuss,' and a 'cuss of cowardice.''
We are glad to see that the good cause has so stalwart and keen a defender in Tennessee.
We have our opinion that the following anecdote is true. If not, it is 'well found'—or founded.
Not long since, an eminent 'Conserve' of Boston was arguing with a certain eminent official in Washington, drilling away, of course, on the old pro-slavery, pro-Southern, pro-give-it-up platform.
'But what can you do with the Southerners?' he remarked, for 'the frequenth' time. 'You can't conquer them—you can't reconcile them—you can't bring them back—you can't do any thing with them.'
'But we may annihilate them,' was the crushing reply.
And Conserve took his hat and departed.
It is, when we come to facts, really remarkable that it has not occurred to the world that there can be but one solution to a dispute which has gone so far. There is no stopping this war. Secession is an impossibility. If we willed it, we could not prevent 'an institutional race' from absorbing one which has no accretive principle of growth. It is thought, as we write, that during the week preceding July 4th, seventy thousand of the Secession army perished! They are exhausting, annihilating themselves; and by whom will the vacancy be filled? Not by the children of States which, under the old system, fell behindhand in population. By whom, then? By Northern men and European emigrants, of course.
But European intervention? If Louis Napoleon wants to keep his crown—if England wishes Europe to remain quiet[Pg 376]—if they both dread our good friend Russia, who in event of a war would 'annex,' for aught we can see, all Austria and an illimitable share of the East—if they wish to avoid such an upstirring, riot, and infernal carnival of revolution as the world never saw—they will let us alone.
The London Herald declares that 'America is a nuisance among nations!' When they undertake to meddle with us, they will find us one. We would not leave them a ship on the sea or a seaboard town un-ruined. The whole world would wail one wild ruin, and there should be the smoke as of nations, when despotism should dare to lay its hand on the sacred cause of freedom. For we of the North are living and dying in that cause which never yet went backward, and we shall prevail, though the powers of all Europe and all the powers of darkness should ally against us. Let them come. They do but bring grapes to the wine-press of the Lord; and it will be a bloody vintage which will be pressed forth in that day, as the great cause goes marching on.
Let no one imagine that our military draft has been one whit too great. Our great folly hitherto has been to underrate the power of the enemy. In the South every male who can bear arms is now either bearing them or otherwise directly aiding the rebellion. When the sheriffs of every county in the seceding States made their returns to their Secretary of War, they reported one million four hundred thousand men capable of bearing arms. And they have the arms and will use them. It is 'an united rising of the people,' such as the world has seldom seen.
But then it is all they can do—it is the last card and the last man, and if we make one stupendous effort, we must inevitably crush it. There is no other course—it is drag or be dragged, hammer or anvil now. If we do not beat them thoroughly and completely, they will make us rue the day that ever we were born.
The South is stronger than we thought, and its unity and ferocity add to its strength. It will never be conciliated—it must be crushed. When we have gained the victory, we can be what our foes never were to us—generous and merciful.
A GENTLEMAN of Massachusetts, who has held a position in McClellan's army that gave him an opportunity to know whereof he speaks, states that for weeks, while the army on the Peninsula were in a grain-growing country, surrounded by fields of wheat and oats belonging to well-known rebels, the Commissary Department was not allowed to turn its cattle into a rich pasturage of young grain, from the fear of offending the absent rebel owners, or of using in any way the property of Our Southern Brethren in arms against us. The result was, that the cattle kept with the army for the use of our hard-worked soldiers, were penned up, and half-starved on the forage carried in the regular subsistence trains, and the men got mere skin and bones for beef.
So endeth the month. The rest with the next. But may we, in conclusion, beg sundry kind correspondents to have patience? Time is scant with us, and labor fast and hard. Our editorial friends who have kindly cheered us by applauding 'the outspoken and straightforward young magazine,' will accept our most grateful thanks. It has seldom happened to any journal to be so genially and warmly commended as we have been since our entrance on the stormy field of political discussion.[Pg 377]
[6] The dingo, or native dog of Australia, looks like a cross between the fox or wolf and the shepherd-dog; they generally hunt in packs, and destroy great numbers of sheep. I have never eaten one.
The Continental Monthly has passed its experimental ordeal, and stands firmly established in popular regard. It was started at a period when any new literary enterprise was deemed almost foolhardy, but the publisher believed that the time had arrived for just such a Magazine. Fearlessly advocating the doctrine of ultimate and gradual Emancipation, for the sake of the Union and the White Man, it has found favor in quarters where censure was expected, and patronage where opposition only was looked for. While holding firmly to its own opinions, it has opened its pages to POLITICAL WRITERS of widely different views, and has made a feature of employing the literary labors of the younger race of American writers. How much has been gained by thus giving, practically, the fullest freedom to the expression of opinion, and by the infusion of fresh blood into literature, has been felt from month to month in its constantly increasing circulation.
The most eminent of our Statesmen have furnished The Continental many of its political articles, and the result is, it has not given labored essays fit only for a place in ponderous encyclopedias, but fresh, vigorous, and practical contributions on men and things as they exist.
It will be our effort to go on in the path we have entered, and as a guarantee of the future, we may point to the array of live and brilliant talent which has brought so many encomiums on our Magazine. The able political articles which have given it so much reputation will be continued in each issue, together with the new Novel by Richard B. Kimball, the eminent author of the 'Under-Currents of Wall-Street,' 'St. Leger,' etc., entitled.
An account of the Life and Conduct of Hiram Meeker, one of the leading men in the mercantile community, and 'a bright and shining light' in the Church, recounting what he did, and how he made his money. This work excels the previous brilliant productions of this author. In the present number is also commenced a new Serial by the author of 'Among the Pines,' entitled.
which will depict Southern white society, and be a truthful history of some eminent Northern merchants who are largely in 'the cotton trade and sugar line.'
The Union—The Union of all the States—that indicates our politics. To be content with no ground lower than the highest—that is the standard of our literary character.
We hope all who are friendly to the spread of our political views, and all who are favorable to the diffusion of a live, fresh, and energetic literature, will lend us their aid to increase our circulation. There is not one of our readers who may not influence one or two more, and there is in every town in the loyal States some active person whose time might be justifiably employed in procuring subscribers to our work. To encourage such to act for us we offer the following very liberal
| Two copies for one year, | Five dollars. | |
| Three copies for one year, | Six dollars. | |
| Six copies for one year, | Eleven dollars. | |
| Eleven copies for one year, | Twenty dollars. | |
| Twenty copies for one year, | Thirty-six dollars. | |
| PAID IN ADVANCE | ||
Postage, Thirty-six cents a year, to be paid by the Subscriber.
Three dollars a year, in advance. Postage paid by the Publisher.
CHARLES T. EVANS, 532 Broadway, New-York, General Agent.
Any person sending us Three Dollars, for one year's subscription to "The Continental," commencing with the July number, will receive the Magazine and "Among the Pines," cloth edition; both free of postage.
Near Markets, Schools, Railroads, Churches, and all the blessings of Civilization.
The Illinois Central Railroad Company offer, ON LONG CREDIT, the beautiful and fertile PRAIRIE LANDS lying along the whole line of their Railroad. 700 MILES IN LENGTH, upon the most Favorable Terms for enabling Farmers, Manufacturers, Mechanics and Workingmen to make for themselves and their families a competency, and a HOME they can call THEIR OWN, as will appear from the following statements:
Is about equal in extent to England, with a population of 1,722,666, and a soil capable of supporting 20,000,000. No State in the Valley of the Mississippi offers so great an inducement to the settler as the State of Illinois. There is no part of the world where all the conditions of climate and soil so admirably combine to produce those two great staples, Corn and Wheat.
Nowhere can the Industrious farmer secure such immediate results from his labor as on these deep, rich, loamy soils, cultivated with so much ease. The climate from the extreme southern part of the State to the Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis Railroad, a distance of nearly 200 miles, is well adapted to Winter.
Peaches, Pears, Tomatoes, and every variety of fruit and vegetables is grown in great abundance, from which Chicago and other Northern markets are furnished from four to six weeks earlier than their immediate vicinity. Between the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railway and the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, (a distance of 115 miles on the Branch, and 136 miles on the Main Trunk,) lies the great Corn and Stock raising portion of the State.
of Corn is from 60 to 80 bushels per acre. Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep and Hogs are raised here at a small cost, and yield large profits. It is believed that no section of country presents greater inducements for Dairy Farming than the Prairies of Illinois, a branch of farming to which but little attention has been paid, and which must yield sure profitable results. Between the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, and Chicago and Dunleith, (a distance of 56 miles on the Branch and 147 miles by the Main Trunk,) Timothy Hay, Spring Wheat, Corn, &c., are produced in great abundance.
The Agricultural products of Illinois are greater than those of any other State. The Wheat crop of 1861 was estimated at 35,000,000 bushels, while the Corn crop yields not less than 140,000,000 bushels besides the crop of Oats, Barley, Rye, Buckwheat, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Pumpkins, Squashes, Flax, Hemp, Peas, Clover, Cabbage, Beets, Tobacco, Sorgheim, Grapes, Peaches, Apples, &c., which go to swell the vast aggregate of production in this fertile region. Over Four Million tons of produce were sent out the State of Illinois during the past year.
In Central and Southern Illinois uncommon advantages are presented for the extension of Stock raising. All kinds of Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep, Hogs, &c., of the best breeds, yield handsome profits; large fortunes have already been made, and the field is open for others to enter with the fairest prospects of like results. Dairy Farming also presents its inducements to many.
The experiments in Cotton culture are of very great promise. Commencing in latitude 39 deg. 30 min. (see Mattoon on the Branch, and Assumption on the Main Line), the Company owns thousands of acres well adapted to the perfection of this fibre. A settler having a family of young children, can turn their youthful labor to a most profitable account in the growth and perfection of this plant.
Traverses the whole length of the State, from the banks of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan to the Ohio. As its name imports, the Railroad runs through the centre of the State, and on either side of the road along its whole length lie the lands offered for sale.
There are Ninety-eight Depots on the Company's Railway, giving about one every seven miles. Cities, Towns and Villages are situated at convenient distances throughout the whole route, where every desirable commodity may be found as readily as in the oldest cities of the Union, and where buyers are to be met for all kinds of farm produce.
Mechanics and working-men will find the free school system encouraged by the State, and endowed with a large revenue for the support of the schools. Children can live in sight of the school, the college, the church, and grow up with the prosperity of the leading State in the Great Western Empire.
80 acres at $10 per acre, with interest at 6 per ct. annually on the following terms:
| Cash payment | $48 00 | |
| Payment | in one year | 48 00 |
| " | in two years | 48 00 |
| " | in three years | 48 00 |
| " | in four years | 236 00 |
| " | in five years | 224 00 |
| " | in six years | 212 00 |
40 acres, at $10 00 per acre:
| Cash payment | $24 00 | |
| Payment | in one year | 24 00 |
| " | in two years | 24 00 |
| " | in three years | 24 00 |
| " | in four years | 118 00 |
| " | in five years | 112 00 |
| " | in six years | 106 00 |
Address Land Commissioner, Illinois Central Railroad, Chicago, Ill.[Pg 379]
Number 1025 Cents.
NEW-YORK AND BOSTON:
J. R. GILMORE, 532 BROADWAY, NEW-YORK,
AND 110 TREMONT STREET, BOSTON.
NEW-YORK: HENRY DEXTER AND SINCLAIR TOUSEY.
Philadelphia: T. B. Callender and A. Winch.[Pg 380]
| The Constitution as it Is—The Union as it Was! C. S. Henry, LL.D., | 377 |
| Maccaroni and Canvas. Henry P. Leland, | 383 |
| Sir John Suckling, | 397 |
| London Fogs and London Poor, | 404 |
| A Military Nation. Charles G. Leland, | 413 |
| Tom Winter's Story. Geo. W. Chapman, | 416 |
| The White Hills in October. Miss C. M. Sedgwick, | 423 |
| Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Two, U. S. Johnson, | 442 |
| Flower-Arranging, | 444 |
| Southern Hate of the North. Horace Greeley, | 448 |
| A Merchant's Story. Edmund Kirke, | 451 |
| The Union. Hon. Robert J. Walker, | 457 |
| Our Wounded. C. K. Tuckerman, | 465 |
| A Southern Review. Charles G. Leland, | 466 |
| Was He Successful? Richard B. Kimball, | 470 |
| Literary Notices, | 478 |
| Editor's Table, | 481 |
The Proprietors of The Continental Monthly, warranted by its great success, have resolved to increase its influence and usefulness by the following changes:
The Magazine has become the property of an association of men of character and large means. Devoted to the National Cause, it will ardently and unconditionally support the Union. Its scope will be enlarged by articles relating to our public defenses, Army and Navy, gunboats, railroads, canals, finance, and currency. The cause of gradual emancipation and colonization will be cordially sustained. The literary character of the Magazine will be improved, and nothing which talent, money, and industry combined can achieve, will be omitted.
The political department will be controlled by Hon. Robert J. Walker and Hon. Frederic P. Stanton, of Washington, D.C. Mr. Walker, after serving nine years as Senator, and four years as Secretary of the Treasury, was succeeded in the Senate by Jefferson Davis. Mr. Stanton served ten years in Congress, acting as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and of Naval Affairs. Mr. Walker was succeeded as Governor of Kansas by Mr. Stanton, and both were displaced by Mr. Buchanan, for refusing to force slavery upon that people by fraud and forgery. The literary department of the Magazine will be under the control of Charles Godfrey Leland of Boston, and Edmund Kirke of New-York. Mr. Leland is the present accomplished Editor of the Magazine. Mr. Kirke is one of its constant contributors, but better known as the author of 'Among the Pines' the great picture true to life, of Slavery as it is.
The Continental, while retaining all the old corps of writers, who have given it so wide a circulation, will be reinforced by new contributors, greatly distinguished as statesmen, scholars, and savans.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by James R. Gilmore, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.
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September, 1862, by Various
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