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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13631 ***
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+VOL. XII.--SEPTEMBER, 1863.--NO. LXXI.
+
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by TICKNOR AND
+FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE PURITAN MINISTER.
+
+
+It is nine o'clock upon a summer Sunday morning, in the year sixteen
+hundred and something. The sun looks down brightly on a little forest
+settlement, around whose expanding fields the great American wilderness
+recedes each day, withdrawing its bears and wolves and Indians into an
+ever remoter distance,--not yet so far but that a stout wooden gate at
+each end of the village street indicates that there is something outside
+which must stay outside, if possible. It would look very busy and
+thriving in this little place, to-day, but for the Sabbath stillness
+which broods over everything with almost an excess of calm. Even the
+smoke ascends more faintly than usual from the chimneys of these
+abundant log-huts and scanty framed houses, and since three o'clock
+yesterday afternoon not a stroke of this world's work has been done.
+Last night a preparatory lecture was held, and now comes the
+consummation of the whole week's life, in the solemn act of worship. In
+which settlement of the Massachusetts Colony is the great observance to
+pass before our eyes? If it be Cambridge village, the warning drum is
+beating its peaceful summons to the congregation. If it be Salem
+village, a bell is sounding its more ecclesiastic peal, and a red flag
+is simultaneously hung forth from the meeting-house, like the
+auction-flag of later periods, but offering in this case goods without
+money and beyond price. But if it be Haverhill village, then Abraham
+Tyler has been blowing his horn assiduously for half an hour, a service
+for which Abraham, each year, receives a half-pound of pork from every
+family in town.
+
+Be it drum, bell, or horn, which gives the summons, we will draw near to
+this important building, the centre of the village, the one public
+edifice,--meeting-house, town-house, school-house, watch-house, all in
+one. So important is it, that no one can legally dwell more than a
+half-mile from it. And yet the people ride to meeting, short though the
+distance be, for at yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from behind her
+husband;--and has it not, moreover, been found needful to impose a fine
+of forty shillings on fast trotting to and fro? All sins are not modern
+ones, young gentlemen.
+
+We approach nearer still, and come among the civic institutions. This is
+the pillory, yonder the stocks, and there is a large wooden cage, a
+terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the meeting-house
+is a high wooden paling, to which the law permits citizens to tie their
+horses, provided it be not done too near the passage-way. For at that
+opening stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of armor which is painted
+black, and cost the town twenty-four shillings by the bill. He bears
+also a heavy matchlock musket; his rest, or iron fork, is stuck in the
+ground, ready to support the weapon; and he is girded with his
+bandoleer, or broad leather belt, which sustains a sword and a dozen tin
+cartridge-boxes.
+
+The meeting-house is the second to which the town has treated itself,
+the first having been "a timber fort, both strong and comely, with flat
+roof and battlements,"--a cannon on top, and the cannonade of the gospel
+down below. But this one cost the town sixty-three pounds, hard-earned
+pounds, and carefully expended. It is built of brick, smeared outside
+with clay, and finished with clay-boards, larger than our clapboards,
+outside of all. It is about twenty-five feet square, with a chimney half
+the width of the building, and projecting four feet above the thatched
+roof. The steeple is in the centre, and the bell-rope, if they have one,
+hangs in the middle of the broad aisle. There are six windows, two on
+each of the two sides, and two more at the end, part being covered with
+oiled paper only, part glazed in numerous small panes. And between the
+windows, on the outside, hang the heads of all the wolves that have been
+killed in the township within the year. But the Quakers think that the
+wolves have cheated the parish and got inside, in sheep's clothing.
+
+The people are assembling. The Governor has passed by, with his four
+vergers bearing halberds before him. The French Popish ambassadors, who
+have just arrived from Canada, are told the customs of the place, and
+left to stay quietly in the Governor's house, with sweetmeats, wines,
+and the liberty of a private walk in the garden. The sexton has just
+called for the minister, as is his duty twice every Sunday, and,
+removing his cocked hat, he walks before his superior officer. The
+minister enters and passes up the aisle, dressed in Geneva cloak, black
+skull-cap, and black gloves open at thumb and finger, for the better
+handling of his manuscript. He looks round upon his congregation, a few
+hundred, recently _seated_ anew for the year, arranged according to rank
+and age. There are the old men in the pews beneath the pulpit. There are
+the young men in the gallery, or near the door, with ruffs, showy belts,
+gold and silver buttons, "points" at the knees, and great boots. There
+are the young women, with "silk or tiffany hoods or scarfs,"
+"embroidered or needle-worked caps," "immoderate great sleeves," "cut
+works,"--a mystery,--"slash apparel,"--another mystery,--"immoderate
+great vayles, long wings," etc.,--mystery on mystery, but all recorded
+in the statutes, which forbid these splendors to persons of mean estate.
+There are the wives of the magistrates in prominent seats, and the
+grammar-school master's wife next them; and in each pew, close to the
+mother's elbow, is the little wooden cage for the youngest child, still
+too young to sit alone. All boys are held too young to sit alone also;
+for, though the emigrants left in Holland the aged deaconess who there
+presided, birch in hand, to control the rising generation in Sunday
+meetings, yet the urchins are now herded on the pulpit- and
+gallery-stairs, with four constables to guard them from the allurements
+of sin. And there sits Sin itself embodied in the shrinking form of some
+humiliated man or woman, placed on a high stool in the principal aisle,
+bearing the name of some dark crime written on paper and pinned to the
+garments, or perhaps a Scarlet Letter on the breast.
+
+Oh, the silence of this place of worship, after the solemn service sets
+in! "People do not sneeze or cough here in public assemblies," says one
+writer, triumphantly, "so much as in England." The warning caution, "Be
+short," which the minister has inscribed above his study-door, claims no
+authority over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing, and no one
+thinks it long; for, indeed, at prayer-meetings four persons will
+sometimes pray an hour each,--one with confession, one with private
+petitions, a third with petitions for church and kingdom, and a fourth
+with thanksgiving,--neither part of the quartette being for an instant
+confused with the other. Then he may preach his hour, and, turning his
+hour-glass, may say,--but that he will not anticipate the levity to be
+born in a later century with Mather Byles,--"Now, my hearers, we will
+take another glass."
+
+In short, this is the pomp and circumstance of glorious preaching. Woe
+to any one who shall disturb its proprieties! It is written in the
+statute, "If any one interrupt or oppose a preacher in season of
+worship, they shall be reproved by the magistrate, and on repetition
+shall pay £5, or stand two hours on a block four feet high, with this
+inscription in capitals, 'A Wanton Gospeller.'" Nor this alone, but the
+law stands by the minister's doctrine even out of the meeting-house. It
+is but a few days since Nathaniel Hadlock was sentenced to be severely
+whipped for declaring that he could receive no profit from Mr. H----'s
+preaching,--since Thomas Maule was mauled to the extent of ten stripes
+for declaring that Mr. H---- preached lies, and that his instruction was
+the doctrine of devils,--since even the wife of Nicholas Phelps was
+sentenced to pay five pounds or be whipped, for asserting that this same
+Mr. H---- sent abroad his wolves and bloodhounds among the sheep and
+lambs. Truly, it is a perilous thing to attend public worship in such
+reverential days. However, it is equally dangerous to stay at home;
+there are tithing-men to look after the absentees, and any one
+unnecessarily absent must pay five shillings. He may be put in the
+stocks or in the wooden cage, if delinquent for a month together.
+
+But we must give our attention to the sermon. It is what the
+congregation will pronounce "a large, nervous, and golden discourse," a
+Scriptural discourse,--like the skeleton of the sea-serpent, all
+backbone and a great deal of that. It may be some very special and
+famous effort. Perhaps Increase Mather is preaching on "The Morning
+Star," or on "Snow," or on "The Voice of God in Stormy Winds"; or it may
+be his sermon entitled "Burnings Bewailed," to improve the lesson of
+some great conflagration, which he attributes partly to Sabbath-breaking
+and partly to the new fashion of monstrous periwigs. Or it may be Cotton
+Mather, his son, rolling forth his resounding discourse during a
+thunder-storm, entitled "Brantologia Sacra,"--consisting of seven
+separate divisions or thunderbolts, and filled with sharp lightning from
+Scripture and the Rabbinical lore, and Cartesian natural philosophy.
+Just as he has proclaimed, "In the thunder there is the voice of the
+glorious God," a messenger comes hastening in, as in the Book of Job, to
+tell him that his own house has just been struck, and though no person
+is hurt, yet the house hath been much torn and filled with the
+lightnings. With what joy and power he instantly wields above his
+audience this providential surplus of excitement, reminding one
+irresistibly of some scientific lecturer who has nearly blown himself up
+by his own experiments, and proceeds beaming with fresh confidence, the
+full power of his compound being incontestably shown. Rising with the
+emergency, he tells them grandly, that, as he once had in his house a
+magnet which the thunder changed instantly from north to south, so it
+were well if the next bolt could change their stubborn souls from Satan
+to God. But afterward he is compelled to own that Satan also is
+sometimes permitted to have a hand in the thunder, which is the reason
+why it breaks oftener on churches than on any other buildings; and again
+he admits, pensively, at last, that churches and ministers' houses have
+undoubtedly the larger share.
+
+The sermon is over. The more demoralized among the little boys, whose
+sleepy eyes have been more than once admonished by the hare's-foot wand
+of the constables,--the sharp paw is used for the boys, the soft fur is
+kept for the smooth foreheads of drowsy maidens,--look up thoroughly
+awakened now. Bright eyes glance from beneath silk or tiffany hoods, for
+a little interlude is coming. Many things may happen in this pause after
+the sermon. Questions may be asked of the elders now, which the elders
+may answer,--if they can. Some lay brother may "exercise" on a text of
+Scripture,--rather severe exercise, it sometimes turns out. Candidates
+for the church may be proposed. A baptism may take place. If it be the
+proper month, the laws against profaning the Sabbath may be read. The
+last town-regulations may be read; or, far more exciting, a new marriage
+may be published. Or a darker scene may follow, and some offending
+magistrate may be required to stand upon a bench, in his worst garments,
+with a foul linen cap drawn close to his eyes, and acknowledge his sins
+before the pious people, who reverenced him so lately.
+
+These things done, a deacon says impressively, "Brethren, now there is
+time for contribution; wherefore, as God hath prospered you, so freely
+offer." Then the people in the galleries come down and march two
+abreast, "up one ile and down the other," passing before the desk, where
+in a long "pue" sit the elders and deacons. One of these holds a
+moneybox, into which the worshippers put their offerings, usually
+varying from one to five shillings, according to their ability and
+good-will. Some give paper pledges instead; and others give other
+valuables, such as "a fair gilt cup, with a cover," for the
+communion-service. Then comes a psalm, read, line after line, by some
+one appointed, out of the "Bay Psalm-Book," and sung by the people.
+These psalms are sung regularly through, four every Sunday, and some ten
+tunes compose the whole vocal range of the congregation. Then come the
+words, "Blessed are they who hear the word of the Lord and keep it," and
+then the benediction.
+
+And then the reverend divine descends from his desk and walks down the
+aisle, bowing gravely right and left to his people, not one of whom
+stirs till the minister has gone out; and then the assembly disperses,
+each to his own home, unless it be some who have come from a distance,
+and stay to eat their cold pork and peas in the meeting-house.
+
+Roll aside the panorama of the three-hours' Sunday service of two
+centuries ago, lest that which was not called wearisome in the passing
+prove wearisome in the delineation now. It needed all this accumulation
+of small details to show how widely the externals of New-England
+church-going have changed since those early days. But what must have
+been the daily life of that Puritan minister for whom this exhausting
+service was but one portion of the task of life! Truly, they were "pious
+and painful preachers" then, as I have read upon a stone in the old
+Watertown graveyard;--"princely preachers" Cotton Mather calls them. He
+relates that Mr. Cotton, in addition to preaching on Sunday and holding
+his ordinary lecture every Thursday, preached thrice a week besides, on
+Wednesday and Thursday early in the morning, and on Saturday afternoon.
+He also held a daily lecture in his house, which was at last abandoned
+as being too much thronged, and frequent occasional days occurred, when
+he would spend six hours "in the word and in prayer." On his voyage to
+this country, he being accompanied by two other ministers, they commonly
+had three sermons a day,--one after every meal. He was "an universal
+scholar and a walking library,"--he studied twelve hours a day, and
+said he liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin before he went
+to sleep.
+
+A fearful rate of labor; a strange, grave, quaint, ascetic, rigorous
+life. It seems a mystery how the Reverend Joshua Moody could have
+survived to write four thousand sermons, but it is no mystery why the
+Reverend John Mitchell was called "a truly aged young man" at
+thirty,--especially when we consider that he was successor at Cambridge
+to "the holy, heavenly, sweet-affecting, and soul-ravishing Mr.
+Shepard," in continuance of whose labors he kept a monthly lecture,
+"wherein he largely handled man's misery by sin and made a most
+entertaining exposition of the Book of Genesis."
+
+For the minister's week-days were more arduous than his Sundays, and to
+have for each parish both pastor and teacher still left a formidable
+duty for each. He must visit families during several afternoons in every
+week, sending previous notice, so that children and domestics might be
+ready for catechizing. He was "much visited for counsel" in his own
+home, and must set apart one day in the week for cases of conscience,
+ranging from the most fine-drawn self-tormentings up to the most
+unnatural secret crimes. He must often go to lectures in neighboring
+towns, a kind of religious dissipation which increased so fast that the
+Legislature at last interfered to restrict it. He must have five or six
+separate seasons for private prayer daily, devoting each day in the week
+to special meditations and intercessions,--as Monday to his family,
+Tuesday to enemies, Wednesday to the churches, Thursday to other
+societies, Friday to persons afflicted, and Saturday to his own soul. He
+must have private fasts, spending whole days locked in his study and
+whole nights prostrate on the floor. Cotton Mather "thought himself
+starved," unless he fasted once a month at farthest, while he often did
+it twice in a week. Then there were public fasts quite frequently,
+"because of sins, blastings, mildews, drought, grasshoppers,
+caterpillars, small pox," "loss of cattle by cold and frowns of
+Providence." Perhaps a mouse and a snake had a battle in the
+neighborhood, and the minister must expound it as "symbolizing the
+conflict betwixt Satan and God's poor people," the latter being the
+mouse triumphant. Then if there were a military expedition, the minister
+might think it needful to accompany it. If there were even a muster, he
+must open and close it with prayer, or, in his absence, the captain must
+officiate instead.
+
+One would naturally add to this record of labors the attendance on
+weddings and funerals. It is strange how few years are required to make
+a usage seem ancestral, or to reunite a traditional broken one. Who now
+remembers that our progenitors for more than a century disused religious
+services on both these solemn occasions? Magistrates alone could perform
+the marriage ceremony; though it was thought to be carrying the monopoly
+quite too far, when Governor Bellingham, in 1641, officiated at his own.
+Prayer was absolutely forbidden at funerals, as was done also by Calvin
+at Geneva, by John Knox in Scotland, by the English Puritans in the
+Westminster Assembly, and by the French Huguenots. The bell might ring,
+the friends might walk, two and two, to the grave; but there must be no
+prayer uttered. The secret was, that the traditions of the English and
+Romish Churches must be avoided at all sacrifices. "Doctor," said King
+James to a Puritan divine, "do you go barefoot because the Papists wear
+shoes and stockings?" Even the origin of the frequent New-England habit
+of eating salt fish on Saturday is supposed to have been the fact that
+Roman Catholics eat it on Friday.
+
+But if there were no prayers said on these occasions, there were
+sermons. Mr. John Calf, of Newbury, described one specimen of funeral
+sermon in immortal verse:--
+
+  "On Sabbath day he went his way,
+      As he was used to do,
+  God's house unto, that they might know
+      What he had for to show;
+
+  God's holy will he must fulfil,
+      For it was his desire
+  For to declare a sermon rare
+      Concerning Madam Fryer."
+
+The practice of wedding discourses was handed down into the last
+century, and sometimes beguiled the persons concerned into rather
+startling levities. For instance, when Parson Smith's daughter Mary was
+to marry young Mr. Cranch,--(what graceful productions of pen and pencil
+have come to this generation from the posterity of that union!)--the
+father permitted the saintly maiden to decide on her own text for the
+sermon, and she meekly selected, "Mary hath chosen the better part,
+which shall not be taken away from her," and the discourse was duly
+pronounced. But when her wild young sister Abby was bent on marrying a
+certain Squire Adams, called John, whom her father disliked and would
+not even invite to dinner, she boldly suggested for _her_ text, "John
+came, neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say he hath a
+devil." But no sermon stands recorded under this prefix, though Abby
+lived to be the wife of one President of the United States and mother of
+another.
+
+The Puritan minister had public duties also upon him. "New England being
+a country," said Cotton Mather, "whose interests are remarkably
+enwrapped in theological circumstances, ministers ought to interest
+themselves in politics." Indeed, for many years they virtually
+controlled the franchise, inasmuch as only male church-members could
+vote or hold office, at least in the Massachusetts Colony. Those
+malecontents who petitioned to enlarge the suffrage were fined and
+imprisoned in 1646, and even in 1664 the only amendment was by
+permitting non-church-members to vote on a formal certificate to their
+orthodoxy from the minister. The government they aimed at was not
+democracy, but theocracy: "God never did ordain democracy as a fit
+government," said Cotton. Accordingly, when Cotton and Ward framed their
+first code, Ward's portion was rejected by the colony as heathen,--that
+is, based on Greek and Roman models, not Mosaic,--and Cotton's was
+afterwards rebuked in England as "fanatical and absurd." But the
+government finally established was an ecclesiastical despotism, tempered
+by theological controversy.
+
+In Connecticut it was first the custom, and then the order, lasting as
+late as 1708, that "the ministers of the gospel should preach a sermon,
+on the day appointed by law for the choice of civil rulers, proper for
+the direction of the town in the work before them." They wrote
+state-papers, went on embassies, and took the lead at town-meetings. At
+the exciting gubernatorial election in 1637, Rev. John Wilson, minister
+of the First Church in Boston, not satisfied with "taking the stump" for
+his candidate, took to a full-grown tree and harangued the people from
+among the boughs. Perhaps the tree may have been the Great Elm which
+still ornaments the Common; but one sees no chips of that other old
+block among its branches now.
+
+One would expect that the effect of this predominant clerical influence
+would have been to make the aim of the Puritan codes lofty, their
+consistency unflinching, their range narrow, and their penalties
+severe,--and it certainly was so. Looking at their educational
+provisions, they seem all noble; looking at their schedule of sins and
+retributions, one wonders how any rational being could endure them for a
+day. Communities, like individuals, furnish virtues piecemeal. Roger
+Williams, with all his wise toleration, bequeathed to Rhode Island no
+such system of schools as his persecutors framed for Massachusetts. But
+the children who were watched and trained thus carefully might be put to
+death, if they "cursed their orderly parents" after the age of
+sixteen;--not that the penalty ever was inflicted, but it was on the
+statute-book. Sabbath-breaking was placed on a level with
+murder,--though Calvin himself allowed the old men to play at bowls and
+the young men to practise military training, after afternoon service,
+at Geneva. Down to 1769 not even a funeral could take place on Sunday in
+Massachusetts, without license from a magistrate. Then the stocks and
+the wooden cage were in frequent use, though "barbarous and cruel"
+punishments were forbidden in 1641. Scolds and railers were set on a
+ducking-stool and dipped over head and ears three times, in running
+water, if possible. Mrs. Oliver, a troublesome theologian, was silenced
+with a cleft stick applied to her tongue. Thomas Scott, in 1649, was
+sentenced for some offence to learn "the chatachise," or be fined ten
+shillings, and, after due consideration, paid the fine. Sometimes
+offenders, with a refinement of cruelty, were obliged to "go and talk to
+the elders." And if any youth made matrimonial overtures to a young
+female without the consent of her parents, or, in their absence, of the
+County Court, he was first fined and then imprisoned. A new etymology
+for the word "courting."
+
+An exhibition of this mingled influence was in the relation of the
+ministers to the Indian wars. Roger Williams, even when banished and
+powerless, could keep the peace with the natives. But when the brave
+Miantonimo was to be dealt with for suspected treason, and the civil
+authorities decided, that, though it was unsafe to set him at liberty,
+they yet had no ground to put him to death, the matter being finally
+referred to five "elders," Uncas was straightway authorized to slay him
+in cold blood. The Pequots were first defeated and then exterminated,
+and their heroic King Philip, a patriot according to his own standard,
+was hunted like a wild beast, his body quartered and set on poles, his
+head exposed as a trophy for twenty years on a gibbet in Plymouth, and
+one of his hands sent to Boston: then the ministers returned thanks, and
+one said that they had _prayed_ the bullet into Philip's heart. Nay, it
+seems that in 1677, on a Sunday in Marblehead, "the women, as they came
+out of the meeting-house, fell upon two Indians, that had been brought
+in as captives, and in a tumultuous way very barbarously murdered them,"
+in revenge for the death of some fishermen: a moral application which
+certainly gives a singular impression of the style of gospel prevailing
+inside the meeting-house that day. But it is good to know, on the other
+side, that, when the Commissioners of the United Colonies had declared
+an Indian war, and the Massachusetts Colony had become afterwards
+convinced that the war was unrighteous, the troops were recalled, though
+already far towards the field, and no pride or policy prevented the
+order from being rescinded.
+
+These were some of the labors of the clergy. But no human being lives
+without relaxation, and they may have had theirs. True, "ministers have
+little to joy in in this world," wrote old Norton; and one would think
+so, to read the dismal diaries, printed or manuscript, of those days. "I
+can compare with any man living for fears," said Hooker. "I have sinned
+myself into darkness," said Bailey. "Many times have I been ready to lay
+down my ministry, thinking God had forsaken me." "I was almost in the
+suburbs of hell all day." Yet who can say that this habit of agonizing
+introspection wholly shut out the trivial enjoyments of daily life? Who
+drank, for instance, that twelve gallons of sack and that six gallons of
+white wine which the General Court thought it convenient that the
+Auditor should send, "as a small testimony of the Court's respect, to
+the reverend assembly of Elders at Cambridge," in 1644? Did the famous
+Cambridge Platform rest, like the earth in the Hebrew cosmology, upon
+the waters,--strong waters? Was it only the Derry Presbyterians who
+would never give up a p'int of doctrine, nor a pint of rum? It is
+startling to remember that in 1685 it was voted, on occasion of a public
+funeral, that "some person be appointed to look after the burning of the
+wine and the heating of the cider," and to hear that on this occasion
+there were thirty-two gallons of wine and still more of cider, with one
+hundred and four pounds of that ensnaring accessory, sugar. Francis
+Higginson, in writing back to the mother country that one sup of New
+England's air was better than a whole draught of Old England's ale, gave
+convincing proof that he had tasted both beverages. But, after all, the
+very relaxations of the Puritan minister were more spiritual than
+spirituous, and to send forth a good Nineteenthly from his own lips was
+more relishing than to have the best Double X go in.
+
+In spite of the dignity of this influential class, they were called only
+Elders for a long time. Titles were carefully adjusted in those days.
+The commonalty bore the appellations of Goodman and Goodwife, and one of
+Roger William's offences was his wishing to limit these terms to those
+who gave some signs of deserving them. The name "Mr." was allowed to
+those who had taken the degree of Master of Arts at College, and also to
+professional men, eminent merchants, military officers, and mates of
+vessels, and their wives and daughters monopolized the epithet "Mrs."
+Mr. Josiah Plastow, when he had stolen four baskets of corn from the
+Indians, was degraded into plain Josiah. "Mr." seems to have meant
+simply "My Sir," and the clergy were often called "Sir" merely, a title
+given also to college graduates, on Commencement programmes, down to the
+time of the Revolution. And so strong was the Puritan dislike to the
+idolatry of saints' names, that the Christian Apostles were sometimes
+designated as Sir Paul, Sir Peter, and Sir James.
+
+In coming to the private affairs of the Puritan divines, it is
+humiliating to find that anxieties about salary are of no modern origin.
+The highest compensation I can find recorded is that of John Higginson
+in 1671, who had £160 voted him "in country produce," which he was glad,
+however, to exchange for £120 in solid cash. Solid cash included
+beaver-skins, black and white wampum, beads, and musket-balls, value one
+farthing. Mr. Woodbridge in Newbury at this same time had £60, and Mr.
+Epes preached in Salem for twenty shillings a Sunday, half in money and
+half in provisions. Holy Mr. Cotton used to say that nothing was cheap
+in New England but milk and ministers. Down to 1700, Increase Mather
+says, most salaries were less than £100, which he thinks "might account
+for the scanty harvests enjoyed by our farmers." He and his son Cotton
+both tell the story of a town where "two very eminent ministers were
+only allowed £30 per annum" and "the God who will not be mocked made
+them lose £300 worth of cattle that year." The latter also complains
+that the people were very willing to consider the ministers the stars,
+rather than the mere lamps, of the churches, provided they, like the
+stars, would shine without earthly contributions.
+
+He also calls the terms of payment, in one of his long words,
+"Synecdotical Pay,"--in allusion to that rhetorical figure by which a
+part is used for the whole. And apparently various causes might produce
+this Synecdoche. For I have seen an anonymous "Plea for Ministers of the
+Gospel," in 1706, which complains that "young ministers have often
+occasion in their preaching to speak things offensive to some of the
+wealthiest people in town, on which occasion they may withhold a
+considerable part of their maintenance." It is a comfort to think how
+entirely this source of discomfort, at least, is now eradicated from the
+path of the clergy; and it is painful to think that there ever was a
+period when wealthy parishioners did not enjoy the delineation of their
+own sins.
+
+However, the ministerial households contrived to subsist, in spite of
+rhetorical tropes and malecontent millionnaires. The Puritan divine
+could commonly afford not only to keep house, but to keep horse
+likewise, and to enjoy the pet professional felicity of printing his own
+sermons. As to the last privilege there could have been no great
+trouble, for booksellers were growing rich in New England as early as
+1677,--not that it is always an inevitable inference that authors
+are,--and Cotton Mather published three hundred and eighty-two
+different works for his own share. Books were abundant enough at that
+day, though somewhat grim and dingy, and two complete Puritan libraries
+are preserved in the rich collection of the American Antiquarian Society
+at Worcester,--without whose treasures, let me add, this modest
+monograph never could have been written. As for the minister's horse,
+the moral sentiment of the community protected him faithfully; for a man
+was fined in Newbury for "killing our elder's mare, and a special good
+beast she was." The minister's house was built by the town; in Salem it
+was "13 feet stud, 23 by 42, four chimnies and no gable-ends,"--so that
+the House with Seven Gables belonged to somebody else;--and the
+Selectmen ordered all men to appear with teams on a certain day and put
+the minister's grounds in order.
+
+Inside the parsonage-house, however, there was sometimes trouble. Rev.
+Ezekiel Rogers wrote in 1657 to his brother in England,--"Much ado I
+have with my own family; hard to get a servant who enjoys catechising or
+family duties. I had a rare blessing of servants in England, and those I
+brought over were a blessing; but the young brood doth much afflict me."
+Probably the minister's wife had the worst of this; but she seems to
+have been generally, like the modern minister's wife, a saint, and could
+bear it. Cotton Mather, indeed, quotes triumphantly the Jewish phrase
+for a model female,--"one who deserved to marry a priest"; and one of
+the most singular passages in the history of the human heart is the old
+gentleman's own narrative, in his manuscript diary, of a passionate
+love-adventure, in his later years, with a fascinating young girl, an
+"ingenious child," as he calls her, whom his parish thought by no means
+a model female, but from whom it took three days of solitary fasting and
+prayer to wean him at last.
+
+He was not the only Puritan minister who bestowed his heart somewhat
+strangely. Rev. John Mitchell, who succeeded the soul-ravishing Shepard
+at Cambridge, as aforesaid, married his predecessor's widow "on the
+general recommendation of her," and the college students were greatly
+delighted, as one might imagine. Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, in 1691,
+wooed the Widow Avery in a written discourse, which I have seen in
+manuscript, arranged under twelve different heads,--one of which treats
+of the prospect of his valuable life being preserved longer by her care.
+She having children of her own, he offers mysteriously to put some of
+his own children "out of the way," if necessary,--a hint which becomes
+formidable when one remembers that he was the author of that once famous
+theological poem, "The Day of Doom," in which he relentingly assigned to
+infants, because they had sinned only in Adam, "the easiest room in
+hell." But he wedded the lady, and they were apparently as happy as if
+he had not been a theologian; and I have seen the quaint little
+heart-shaped locket he gave her, bearing an anchor and a winged heart
+and "Thine forever."
+
+Let us glance now at some of the larger crosses of the Puritan minister.
+First came a "young brood" of heretics to torment him. Gorton's
+followers were exasperating enough; they had to be confined in irons
+separately, one in each town, on pain of death, if they preached their
+doctrines,--and of course they preached them. But their offences and
+penalties were light, compared with those of the Quakers. When the
+Quakers assembled by themselves, their private doors might be broken
+open,--a thing which Lord Chatham said the king of England could not do
+to any one,--they might be arrested without warrant, tried without jury,
+for the first offence be fined, for the second lose one ear, for the
+third lose the other ear, and for the fourth be bored with red-hot iron
+through the tongue,--though this last penalty remained a dead letter.
+They could be stripped to the waist, tied to a cart, and whipped through
+town after town,--three women were whipped through eleven towns, eighty
+miles,--but afterwards the number was limited to three. Their testimony
+was invalid, their families attainted, and those who harbored them were
+fined forty shillings an hour. They might be turned out shelterless
+among wolves and bears and frosts: they could be branded H for Heretic,
+and R for Rogue; they could be sold as slaves; and their graves must not
+be fenced to keep off wild beasts, lest their poor afflicted bodies
+should find rest there.
+
+Yet in this same age female Quakers had gone as missionaries to Malta
+and to Turkey and returned unharmed. No doubt the monks and the Sultan
+must have looked on the plain dress much as some clerical gentlemen have
+since regarded the Bloomer costume,--and the Inquisition imprisoned the
+missionaries, though the Sultan did not. But meanwhile the Quaker women
+in New England might be walking to execution with their male
+companions,--like Mary Dyer in Boston,--under an armed guard of two
+hundred, led on by a minister seventy years old, and the fiercer for
+every year. When they asked Mary Dyer, "Are you not ashamed to walk thus
+hand in hand between two young men?" she answered, "No, this is to me an
+hour of the greatest joy I could enjoy in this world. No tongue could
+utter and no heart understand the sweet influence of the Spirit which
+now I feel." Then they placed her on the scaffold, and covered her face
+with a handkerchief which the Reverend Mr. Wilson lent the hangman; and
+when they heard that she was reprieved, she would not come down, saying
+that she would suffer with her brethren. And suffer death she did, at
+last, and the Reverend Mr. Wilson made a pious ballad on her execution.
+
+It is no wonder, if some persons declare that about this time the wheat
+of Massachusetts began to be generally blasted, and the peas to grow
+wormy. It is no wonder, that, when the witchcraft excitement came on,
+the Quakers called it a retribution for these things. But let us be
+just, even to the unjust. Toleration was a new-born virtue in those
+days, and one which no Puritan ever for a moment recognized as such, or
+asked to have exercised toward himself. In England they did not wish to
+be tolerated for a day as sectaries, they claimed to have authority as
+the one true church. They held with Pym, that "it is the duty of
+legislators to establish the true religion and to punish false,"--a
+doctrine equally fatal, whether applied to enforce the right theology or
+the wrong. They objected to the Church of England, not that it
+persecuted, but that its persecution was wrongly aimed. It is,
+therefore, equally absurd to praise them for a toleration they never
+professed, or to accuse them of any inconsistency when they practised
+intolerance. They have been so loosely praised, that they are as loosely
+blamed. What was great in them was their heroism of soul, not their
+largeness. They sought the American wilderness not to indulge the whims
+of others, but their own. They said to the Quakers, "We seek not your
+death, but your absence." All their persecution, after all, was an
+alternative sentence; all they asked of the Quakers was to keep out of
+their settlements and let them alone. Moreover, their worst penalties
+were borrowed from the English laws, and only four offenders were put to
+death from the beginning;--of course, four too many.
+
+Again, it is to be remembered that the Quaker peculiarities were not
+theological only, but political and social also. Everything that the
+Puritan system of government asserted the Quakers denied; they rendered
+no allegiance, owned no laws, paid no taxes, bore no arms. With the best
+possible intentions, they subverted all established order. Then their
+modes of action were very often intemperate and violent. One can hardly
+approve the condemnation pronounced by Cotton Mather upon a certain
+Rarey among the Friends in those days, who could control a mad bull that
+would rend any other man. But it was oftener the Quakers who needed the
+Rareys. Running naked through the public streets,--coming into meeting
+dressed in sackcloth, with ashes on their heads and nothing on their
+feet,--or sitting there with their hats on, groaning and rocking to and
+fro, in spite of elders, deacons, and tithing-men: these were the
+vagaries of the zealots, though always repudiated by the main body. The
+Puritans found themselves reproached with permitting these things, and
+so took refuge in outrageous persecutions, which doubled them. Indeed,
+the Quakers themselves began to persecute, on no greater provocation, in
+Philadelphia, thirty years afterwards,--playing over again upon George
+Keith and his followers the same deluded policy of fines and
+imprisonment from which they had just escaped;--as minorities have
+persecuted sub-minorities ever since intolerance began.
+
+Indeed, so far as mere language went, the minority always watched the
+majority. Grave divines did not like to be pelted with such epithets as
+these: "Thou fiery fighter and green-headed trumpeter! thou hedgehog and
+grinning dog! thou mole! thou tinker! thou lizard! thou bell of no metal
+but the tone of a kettle! thou wheelbarrow! thou whirlpool! thou
+whirligig! thou firebrand! thou moon-calf! thou ragged tatterdemalion!
+thou gormandizing priest! thou bane of reason and beast of the earth!
+thou best to be spared of all mankind!"--all of which are genuine
+epithets from the Quaker books of that period, and termed by Cotton
+Mather, who collected them, "quills of the porcupine." They surpass even
+Dr. Chauncy's catalogue of the unsavory epithets used by Whitefield and
+Tennent a century later; and it was not likely that they would be
+tolerated by a race whose reverence for men in authority was so
+comprehensive that they actually fined some one for remarking that Major
+Phillips's old mare was as lean as an Indian's dog.
+
+There is a quaint anecdote preserved, showing the continuance of the
+Quaker feud in full vigor as lately as 1705. A youth among the Friends
+wished to espouse a fair Puritan maiden; but the Quakers disapproved his
+marrying out of their society, and the Congregationalists his marrying
+into theirs; so in despair he thus addressed her:--"Ruth, let us break
+from this unreasonable bondage. I will give up my religion, and thou
+shalt give up thine; and we will marry and go into the Church of
+England, and go to the Devil together." And they fulfilled the
+resolution, the Puritan historian says, _so far_ as going into the
+Church, and marrying, and staying there for life. But probably the
+ministers thought it to be another case of synecdoche.
+
+With the same careful discrimination we must try to study the
+astonishing part played by the ministers in the witchcraft delusions. It
+must be remembered that the belief in this visitation was no new or
+peculiar thing in New England. The Church, the Scriptures, the mediæval
+laws, had all made it a capital crime. There had been laws against it in
+England for a hundred years. Bishop Jewel had complained to Queen
+Elizabeth of the alarming increase of witches and sorcerers. Sir Thomas
+Browne had pronounced it flat atheism to doubt them. High legal and
+judicial authorities, as Dalton, Keeble, Sir Matthew Hale, had described
+this crime as definitely and seriously as any other. In Scotland four
+thousand had suffered death for it in ten years; Cologne, Nuremberg,
+Geneva, Paris, were executing hundreds every year; even in 1749 a girl
+was burnt alive in Würtzburg; and is it strange, if, during all that
+wild excitement, Massachusetts put to death twenty? The only wonder is
+in the independence of the Rhode Island people, who declared that "there
+were no witches on the earth, nor devils,--except" (as they profanely
+added) "the New-England ministers, and such as they."
+
+John Higginson sums it up best:--"They proceeded in their integrity with
+a zeal of God against sin, according to their best light and law and
+evidence." "_But there is a question_," he wisely adds, "whether some of
+the laws, customs, and privileges used by judges and juries in England,
+which were followed as patterns here, were not insufficient." Cotton
+Mather also declared that he observed in judges and juries a
+conscientious endeavor to do the thing which was right, and gives a long
+list of the legal authorities whom they consulted; observing, finally,
+that the fact of fifty confessions was, after all, the one irresistible
+vindication of their strong measures.
+
+It must have been so. Common sense and humanity might have refuted every
+other evidence than that of the victims themselves. But what were the
+authorities to do, when, in addition to all legal and Scriptural
+precedents, the prisoners insisted on entering a plea of guilty? When
+Goody E---- testified that she and two others rode from Andover to a
+witch-meeting on a broomstick, and the stick broke and she fell and was
+still lame from it,--when her daughter testified that she rode on the
+same stick, and confirmed all the details of the casualty,--when the
+grand-daughter confirmed them also, and added, that she rode on another
+stick, and they all signed Satan's book together,--when W. B----, aged
+forty, testified that Satan assembled a hundred fine blades near Salem
+Meeting-House, and the trumpet sounded, and bread and wine were carried
+round, and Satan was like a black sheep, and wished them to destroy the
+minister's house, (by thunder probably,) and set up his kingdom, and
+"then all would be well,"--when one woman summoned her three children
+and some neighbors and a sister and a domestic, who all testified that
+she was a witch and so were they all,--what could be done for such
+prisoners by judge or jury, in an age which held witchcraft a certainty?
+It was only the rapid rate of increase which finally stopped the
+convictions.
+
+One thing is certain, that this strange delusion, a semi-comedy to
+us,--though part of the phenomena may find their solution in laws not
+yet unfolded,--was the sternest of tragedies to those who lived in it.
+Conceive, for an instant, of believing in the visible presence and
+labors of the arch-fiend in a peaceful community. Yet from the bottom of
+their souls these strong men held to it, and they waged a hand-to-hand
+fight with Satan all their days. Very inconveniently the opponent
+sometimes dealt his blows, withal. Surely it could not be a pleasant
+thing to a sound divine, just launched upon his seventeen-headed
+discourse, to have a girl with wild eyes and her hair about her ears
+start up and exclaim, "Parson, your text is too long,"--or worse yet,
+"Parson, your sermon is too long,"--or most embarrassing of all,
+"There's a great yellow bird sitting on the parson's hat in the pulpit."
+But these formidable interruptions veritably happened, and received the
+stern discipline in such cases made and provided.
+
+But beside Quakers and witches, the ministers had other female
+tormentors to deal with. There was the perpetual anxiety of the
+unregenerated toilet. "Immodest apparel, laying out of hair, borders,
+naked necks and arms, or, as it were, pinioned with superfluous
+ribbons,"--these were the things which tried men's souls in those days,
+and the statute-books and private journals are full of such plaintive
+inventories of the implements of sin. Things known as "slash apparel"
+seem to have been an infinite source of anxiety; there must be only one
+slash on each sleeve and one in the back. Men also must be prohibited
+from shoulderbands of undue width, double ruffs and cuffs, and
+"immoderate great breeches." Part of the solicitude was for modesty,
+part for gravity, part for economy: none must dress above their
+condition. In 1652, three men and a woman were fined ten shillings each
+and costs for wearing silver-lace, another for broad bone-lace, another
+for tiffany, and another for a silk hood. Alice Flynt was accused of a
+silk hood, but, proving herself worth more than two hundred pounds,
+escaped unpunished. Jonas Fairbanks, about the same time, was charged
+with "great boots," and the evidence went hard against him; but he was
+fortunately acquitted, and the credit of the family saved.
+
+The question of veils seems to have rocked the Massachusetts Colony to
+its foundations, and was fully discussed at Thursday Lecture, March 7th,
+1634. Holy Mr. Cotton was utterly and unalterably opposed to veils,
+regarding them as a token of submission to husbands in an unscriptural
+degree. It is pleasant to think that there could be an unscriptural
+extent of such submission, in those times. But Governor Endicott and
+Rev. Mr. Williams resisted stoutly, quoting Paul, as usual in such
+cases; so Paul, veils, and vanity carried the day. But afterward Mr.
+Cotton came to Salem to preach for Mr. Skelton, and did not miss his
+chance to put in his solemn protest against veils; he said they were a
+custom not to be tolerated; and so the ladies all came to meeting
+without their veils in the afternoon. Probably the most astounding
+visible result from a single sermon within the memory of man.
+
+Beginning with the veils, the eye of authority was next turned on what
+was under them. In 1675 it was decided, that, as the Indians had done
+much harm of late, and the Deity was evidently displeased with
+something, the General Court should publish a list of the evils of the
+time. And among the twelve items of contrition stood this: "Long hair
+like women's hair is worn by some men, either their own or others' hair
+made into periwigs;--and by some women wearing borders of hair, and
+their cutting, curling, and immodest laying out of their hair," (does
+this hint at puff-combs?) "which practice doth increase, especially
+among the younger sort." Not much was effected, however,--"divers of the
+elders' wives," as Winthrop lets out, "being in some measure partners in
+this disorder." The use of wigs also, at first denounced by the clergy,
+was at last countenanced by them: in portraits later than 1700 they
+usually replace the black skull-cap of earlier pictures, and in 1752 the
+tables had so far turned that a church-member in Newbury refused
+communion because "the pastor wears a wigg." Yet Increase Mather thought
+they played no small part in producing the Boston Fire. "Monstrous
+Periwigs, such as some of our church-members indulge in, which make them
+resemble the Locusts that came out of y'e Bottomless Pit. Rev. ix. 7,
+8,--and as an eminent Divine calls them, _Horrid Bushes of Vanity_; such
+strange apparel as is contrary to the light of Nature and to express
+Scripture. 1 Cor. xi. 14, 15. Such pride is enough to provoke the Lord
+to kindle fires in all the towns in the country."
+
+Another vexation was the occasional arrival of false prophets in a
+community where every man was expected to have a current supply of
+religious experiences always ready for circulation. There was a certain
+hypocritical Dick Swayn, for instance, a seafaring man, who gave much
+trouble; and E.F.,--for they mostly appear by initials,--who, coming to
+New Haven one Saturday evening, and being dressed in black, was taken
+for a minister, and asked to preach: he was apparently a little insane,
+and at first talked "demurely," but at last "railed like Rabshakeh,"
+Cotton Mather says. There was also M.J., a Welsh tanner, who finally
+stole his employer's leather breeches and set up for a preacher,--less
+innocently apparelled than George Fox. But the worst of all was one
+bearing the since sainted name of Samuel May. This vessel of wrath
+appeared in 1699, indorsed as a man of a sweet gospel spirit,--though,
+indeed, one of his indorsers had himself been "a scandalous fire-ship
+among the churches." Mather declares that every one went a-Maying after
+this man, whom he maintains to have been a barber previously, and who
+knew no Latin, Greek, Hebrew, nor even English,--for (as he indignantly
+asserts) "there were eighteen horrid false spells, and not one point, in
+one very short note I received from him." This doubtful personage copied
+his sermons from a volume by his namesake, Dr. Samuel Bolton,--"Sam the
+Doctor and Sam the Dunce," Mather calls them. Finally, "this eminent
+worthy stranger," Sam, who was no dunce, after all, quarrelled with his
+parish for their slow payments, and "flew out like a Dragon, spitting
+this among other fire at them:--'I see, no longer pipe, no longer
+dance,'--so that they came to fear he was a cheat, and wish they had
+never seen him." Then "the guilty fellow, having bubbled the silly
+neighbors of an incredible number of pounds, on a sudden was gone," and
+Cotton Mather sent a letter after him, which he declares to have been
+the worst penalty the man suffered.
+
+It is safer to say little of the theological scheme of the Puritan
+ministers, lest the present writer be pronounced a Wanton Gospeller, and
+have no tithingman to take his part. But however it may be with the
+regular standards of theology of that period, every one could find a
+sufficient variety to suit him among its heresies. Eighty-two "pestilent
+heresies" were counted as having already sprung up in 1637; others say
+one hundred and six; others, two hundred and ten. The Puritans kept
+Rhode Island for what housekeepers call an "odd drawer," into which to
+crowd all these eccentricities. It was said, that, if any man happened
+to lose his religious opinion, he might be sure to find it again at some
+village in Rhode Island. Thither went Roger Williams and his Baptists;
+thither went Quakers and Ranters; thither went Ann Hutchinson, that
+extraordinary woman, who divided the whole politics of the country by
+her Antinomian doctrines, denouncing the formalisms around her, and
+converting the strongest men, like Cotton and Vane, to her opinions.
+Thither went also Samuel Gorton, a man of no ordinary power, who
+proclaimed a mystical union with God in love, thought that heaven and
+hell were in the mind alone, but esteemed little the clergy and the
+ordinances. The colony was protected also by the thoughtful and
+chivalrous Vane, who held that water baptism had had its day, and that
+the Jewish Sabbath should give place to the modern Sunday. All these,
+and such as these, were called generally "Seekers" by the Puritans,--who
+claimed for themselves that they had found that which they sought. It is
+the old distinction; but for which is the ship built, to be afloat or to
+be at anchor?
+
+Such were those pious worthies, the men whose names are identified with
+the leadership of the New-England colonies,--Cotton, Hooker, Norton,
+Shepard, the Higginsons, the Mathers. To these might be added many an
+obscurer name, preserved in the quaint epitaphs of the
+"Magnalia":--Blackman, "in spite of his name, a Nazarene whiter than
+snow";--Partridge, "a hunted partridge," yet "both a dove and an
+eagle";--Ezekiel Rogers, "a tree of knowledge, whose apples the very
+children might pluck";--Nathaniel Rogers, "a very lively preacher and a
+very preaching liver, he loved his church as if it had been his family
+and he taught his family as if it had been his church";--Warham, the
+first who preached with notes, and who suffered agonies of doubt
+respecting the Lord's Supper;--Stone, "both a loadstone and a flint
+stone," and who set the self-sacrificing example of preaching only one
+hour.
+
+These men had mingled traits of good and evil, like all mankind,--nobler
+than their descendants in some attributes, less noble in others. The
+most strait-laced Massachusetts Calvinist of these days would have been
+disciplined by them for insufferable laxity, and yet their modern
+successor would count it utter shame, perhaps, to own a slave in his
+family or to drink rum-punch at an ordination,--which Puritan divines
+might do without rebuke. Not one of them has left on record a statement
+so broad and noble as that of Roger Williams:--"To be content with food
+and raiment,--to mind, not our own, but every man the things of
+another,--yea, and to suffer wrong, and to part with what we judge to be
+right, yea, our own lives, and, as poor women martyrs have said, as many
+as there be hairs upon our heads, for the name of God and for the Son of
+God's sake,--this is humanity, this is Christianity; the rest is but
+formality and picture-courteous idolatry, and Jewish and Popish
+blasphemy against the Christian religion." And yet the mind of Roger
+Williams was impulsive, erratic, and unstable, compared with theirs; and
+in what respect has the work they left behind them proved, after the
+testing of two centuries, less solid or durable than his?
+
+These men were stern even to cruelty against all that they held
+evil,--Satan and his supposed emissaries, witches, Quakers, Indians,
+negligent parishioners, disobedient offspring, men with periwigs, and
+women in slash apparel. Yet the tenderest private gentleness often lay
+behind this gloomy rigor of the conscience. Some of them would never
+chastise a son or daughter, in spite of Solomon; others would write in
+Greek characters in their old almanacs quaint little English verses on
+the death of some beloved child. That identical "Priest Wilson" who made
+the ballad at Mary Dyer's execution attended a military muster one day.
+"Sir," said some one, "I'll tell you a great thing: here's a mighty body
+of people, and there's not seven of them all but loves Mr. Wilson."
+"Sir," it was replied, "I'll tell you as good a thing: here's a mighty
+body of people, and there's not one of them all but Mr. Wilson loves
+him." Mr. Cotton was a terror to evil-doers, yet, when a company of men
+came along from a tavern and said, "Let us put a trick upon Old Cotton,"
+and one came and cried in his ear, "Cotton, thou art an old fool,"--"I
+know it, I know it," retorted cheerily the venerable man, and pungently
+added, "The Lord make both me and thee wiser!" Mr. Hooker was once
+reproving a boy in the street, who boldly replied, "I see you are in a
+passion; I will not answer you," and so ran away. It contradicts all
+one's notions of Puritan propriety, and yet it seems that the good man,
+finding afterwards that the boy was not really guilty, sent for him to
+apologize, and owned himself to have been wrong.
+
+What need to speak of the strength and courage, the disinterestedness
+and zeal, with which they bore up the fortunes of the colony on their
+shoulders, and put that iron into the New-England blood which has since
+supplied the tonic for a continent? It was said of Mr. Hooker, that he
+was "a person who, while doing his Master's work, would put a king in
+his pocket"; and it was so with them all: they would pocket anything but
+a bribe to themselves or an insult to God or their profession. They
+flinched from no reproof that was needed: "Sharp rebukes make sound
+Christians" was a proverb among them. They sometimes lost their tempers,
+and sometimes their parishes, but never their independence. I find a
+hundred anecdotes of conscientious cruelty laid up against them, but not
+one of cowardice or of compromise. They may have bored the tongues of
+others with a bar of iron, but they never fettered their own tongues
+with a bar of gold,--as some African tribes think it a saintly thing to
+do, and not African tribes alone.
+
+There was such an absolute righteousness among them, that to this day
+every man of New-England descent lives partly on the fund of virtuous
+habit they accumulated. And, on the other hand, every man of the many
+who still stand ready to indorse everything signed by a D.D.--without
+even adding the commercial E.E., for Errors Excepted--is in part the
+victim of the over-influence they obtained. Yet there was a kind of
+democracy in that vast influence also: the Puritans were far more
+thorough Congregationalists than their successors; they recognized no
+separate clerical class, and the "elder" was only the highest officer of
+his own church. Each religious society could choose and ordain its own
+minister, or dispense with all ordaining services at will, without the
+slightest aid or hindrance from council or consociation. So the stern
+theology of the pulpit only reflected the stern theology of the pews;
+the minister was but the representative man. If the ministers were
+recognized as spiritual guides, it was because they were such to the
+men of their time, whatever they might be to ours. Demonax of old, when
+asked about the priests' money, said, that, if they were really the
+leaders of the people, they could not have too much payment,--or too
+little, if they were not. I believe that on these conditions the Puritan
+ministers well earned their hundred and sixty pounds a year, with a
+discount of forty pounds, if paid in wampum-beads, beaver-skins, and
+musket-balls. What they took in musket-balls they paid back in the
+heavier ammunition of moral truth. Here is a specimen of their
+grape-shot:--"My fathers and brethren," said John Higginson, "this is
+never to be forgotten, that our New England is originally a plantation
+of religion, and not a plantation of trade. Let merchants and such as
+are making cent. per cent. remember this. Let others who have come over
+since at sundry times remember this, that worldly gain was not the end
+and design of the people of New England, but religion. And if any man
+among us make religion as twelve and the world as thirteen, let such a
+man know he hath neither the spirit of a true New-England man, nor yet
+of a sincere Christian."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THOREAU'S FLUTE.
+
+
+  We, sighing, said, "Our Pan is dead;
+    His pipe hands mute beside the river;--
+    Around it wistful sunbeams quiver,
+  But Music's airy voice is fled.
+  Spring mourns as for untimely frost;
+    The bluebird chants a requiem;
+    The willow-blossom waits for him;--
+  The Genius of the wood is lost."
+
+  Then from the flute, untouched by hands,
+    There came a low, harmonious breath:
+    "For such as he there is no death;--
+  His life the eternal life commands;
+  Above man's aims his nature rose:
+    The wisdom of a just content
+    Made one small spot a continent,
+  And tuned to poetry Life's prose.
+
+  "Haunting the hills, the stream, the wild,
+    Swallow and aster, lake and pine,
+    To him grew human or divine,--
+  Fit mates for this large-hearted child.
+  Such homage Nature ne'er forgets,
+    And yearly on the coverlid
+    'Neath which her darling lieth hid
+  Will write his name in violets.
+
+  "To him no vain regrets belong,
+    Whose soul, that finer instrument,
+    Gave to the world no poor lament,
+  But wood-notes ever sweet and strong.
+  O lonely friend! he still will be
+    A potent presence, though unseen,--
+    Steadfast, sagacious, and serene:
+  Seek not for him,--he is with thee."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+MR. MARTIN'S DISAPPOINTMENTS.
+
+
+The circumstances of a first meeting so color long years of
+acquaintanceship, that, should these circumstances be comic in their
+nature, the intercourse which follows partakes much of the grotesque.
+Thus, perhaps, it is, that the misfortunes of Edward Martin, apart from
+the whimsical demeanor of the man himself, provoke in my memory a smile
+rather than a sigh.
+
+Some years ago, journeying on foot through Northern Connecticut, it
+became necessary for me to stop overnight at the quiet inn of Deacon
+S----.
+
+Sharon I had visited, fair as Berkshire, but less an old story; I had
+lingered about the twin lakes of Salisbury; I had carried away many
+sweet memories of Warramaug and its mountain; and I now found myself in
+the neighborhood of Gramley Bridge, eager for fresh water, clean towels,
+and the plenty of a country tea-table,--not averse to strawberry
+short-cake, or the snowy delights of cottage-cheese.
+
+It was rapidly growing dark, when, as I hurried on toward my cheerful
+welcome, a bend in the road brought me in sight of a figure that filled
+me with curiosity and amazement.
+
+  "Was it a man?
+  A devil infernal?
+  An angel supernal?"
+
+Was it were-wolf spectral, or bear aboriginal? It lived and moved, and,
+as I cautiously neared the spot, I seemed to recognize a human being in
+the singular form,--stooping, squatting, and groping before me.
+
+The man, for such it proved, was performing most wondrous gymnastics
+upon the ground,--smelling here, smelling there, too agile to be tipsy,
+too silent to be mad. I had no desire to be alone in a lonely road at
+nightfall with a maniac, and I was not sorry when my nearer approach
+resolved these strange phenomena into a well-dressed pedestrian on
+all-fours in the middle of a dusty highway.
+
+He rose as I approached, and I smiled to see that the spectacles astride
+his handsome nose were minus one lens. He seemed half blind and wholly
+bewildered. I looked at once for the lost glass, and there it lay
+shining at me from the very spot where he had been so industriously
+peering. He laughed grimly as I handed it to him, fitted his treasure
+into its wonted rim, took out his watch, and with a low chuckle said,--
+
+"Twenty-five minutes is a long time to search for a bit of such small
+circumference. Thank you. Do you go to the Deacon's?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So do I."
+
+We walked on together in silence, till we reached our journey's end,--I
+too tired, he too reserved, too preoccupied, or too shy, to speak again;
+but when, at last, we were seated with our cigars on the Deacon's
+door-step, he turned suddenly to me and asked,--
+
+"Are you fond of the country?"
+
+"Why, yes! What else is there?" I answered, laughing.
+
+"Ah, you are an artist!"
+
+"I hope to be one."
+
+"Its a bad business," said he, testily,--"a very bad business. If I were
+you, I would give it up."
+
+"Have you ever tried it?"
+
+"Tried it?" he ejaculated, kicking the gravel-walk,--"yes, and
+everything else, I believe. If I thought it would do you any good, I
+would give you the benefit of my experience; but you'd only laugh, and
+make a good story of it to your wife."
+
+"Alas! I have no such incumbrance."
+
+"The worse for you, if you have genius and the modesty of genius. A true
+artist, who seeks to interpret Nature in its purest and most exquisite
+relations, who penetrates the deepest temples of the woods and the
+silent sanctuaries of the mountains, must be a true, pure, and good man.
+He must be a happy man,--happy in a sweet and natural way. A man whose
+life is passed in a daily delight that gently stirs without feverish
+excitement will be tender and most lovely to women. He _ought_ to
+marry."
+
+"Did you ever write poetry?" I asked.
+
+"I began to compose when I was six years old. I wrote a poem on the sea,
+commencing,--
+
+  'O thou earthly sea,
+  Every person thinks of thee,--
+  The sailor, and the busy bee,
+  And the Chinese drinking tea!'
+
+I thought it very fine. I have written many things since then, and they
+seemed good to me at the time. I would not venture to say how they
+struck others."
+
+He smiled pleasantly.
+
+"Do not be frightened by the shadow of a possible wife from unfolding
+your history," said I. "Chance has thrown us together; befriend me with
+your experience."
+
+"Take warning, then, if need be.
+
+"In college I was thought 'a very able fellow,' one 'who held the pen of
+a ready writer'; and I graduated as vain of my supposed talents as a
+young miss of her first conquest.
+
+"My earliest literary essay was in a new magazine, which, as it was just
+rising into notice, would be, I imagined, greatly assisted by my
+condescension. It was a charity, indeed, to give my support to this
+fledgling, and I sent to it a long article, entitled, 'The Cultivated,
+as Moving and Educational Powers.' My manuscripts were returned, with
+this quiet bit of advice:--'Before "X.Y.Z." institutes any other
+reforms, we would advise him to reperuse his English Grammar.' Far from
+having a salutary effect, this rebuff only rankled in my soul. I
+determined to revenge myself on the paltry malignant who dared to
+despise my efforts. I therefore wrote a slashing criticism for one of
+the evening papers, demolishing (as I thought) the delinquent
+periodical, and denouncing its whole corps of writers as frivolous and
+almost illiterate. My satire was returned, being too personal for
+publication.
+
+"Just at this time I chanced to fall in love with Miss Ellen Wilson, now
+Mrs. Martin. Fancying my passion unrequited, I poured forth my feelings
+in ten melancholy stanzas, beginning,--
+
+  'Oh! what avails it, if the spring be bright?'
+
+These verses were very morbid and dreary, but they were published in the
+'Tri-Weekly Tribune,' and 'Hope revived again.'
+
+"The drama I next deemed worthy of my attention, and wrote a play, the
+plot of which I thought quite new and original. A large fortune is left
+to my hero, who forthwith becomes enamored of a fair damsel; but,
+fearful lest the beloved object should worship his money more than his
+merits, he disguises himself in a wig and blue spectacles, becomes tutor
+to her brother, and wins her affections while playing pedagogue. On her
+acknowledging her attachment, he flings his disguises into the sea, and,
+in the wildness of his joy at being adored for his profundity in Latin,
+Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, German, Mathematics, Natural Science,
+and Civil Engineering, folds his loved one in his arms, and springs into
+the surf, where both are drowned.
+
+"This, you see, was quite new."
+
+"Quite," I replied, laughing.
+
+"I published it at my own expense, and I must say I have yet to receive
+the first remittance for this truly original work.
+
+"During the next season, I met with Hans Andersen's inimitable
+'Märchen,' and, immediately setting myself to work, I wrote 'Uncle Job's
+Legacies,' a series of children's tales, full, as I fondly fancied, of
+poetry, pleasantry, and information. I sent them to 'The Juvenile
+Weekly,' then published in the city. They were accepted with a profusion
+of thanks; and in a few days I called, by request, at the office,
+expecting large compensation for services so eagerly received.
+
+"I went up a dirty staircase, into a mean, slovenly back-office, where a
+small, uncleanly man sat tipped back in his chair, picking his teeth. He
+seemed the personification of _nonchalance_, impudence, and conceit. As
+I entered, he looked up with a lazy insolence, which, had I been a
+woman, would have brought a hot flush of indignation to my face, and, on
+my mentioning my name, he rose and extended a very dirty hand.
+
+"'Glad to see you, Sir,--hope you'll continue your contributions,--Uncle
+Job,--good idea, Sir,--love the little ones? So do we, Sir,--work very
+hard for them,--don't pay at all,--poor business,--pure charity,--that's
+all.'
+
+"'But you don't mean to say,' I exclaimed, 'that your contributors are
+expected to work from charity?'
+
+"'Glad to pay them, if we could, but we can't afford it,--more
+contributions than we can use,--best authors in the country write for
+us,--pure love for the little ones, I assure you.'
+
+"'Will you give me my manuscripts?' I said. 'I do not vouchsafe to
+bestow my time and thoughts for nothing. If you do not pay, I can offer
+them to others who do.'
+
+"'You won't find a child's paper in the United States that pays,' he
+growled. 'We don't care for contributions. Me and my partner writes most
+of the articles ourselves.'
+
+"'Will you give me my manuscripts?' I said again, anxious to put an end
+to the interview, and disgusted with the fellow's falsehood.
+
+"'Hallo! Mortimer, do you know where them are?'
+
+"'Sorry I can't oblige you,' said a fat man, dirtier and greasier than
+the first, emerging from an inner den; 'they're gone to press.'
+
+"'If you tell me any more lies,' cried I, becoming furious, 'I shall
+take measures that you will not at all relish. If you will not _give_ me
+my manuscripts, I shall _take_ them'; and, suiting the action to the
+word, I snatched them from a shelf, where they lay conspicuous, and
+carried them off without further parley.
+
+"This cured me for a while of all literary ambition. But the unquiet
+spirit within me would not rest, and during the following summer I wrote
+a sentimental tale, full of aspirations, large adjectives, and soft
+epithets. It was accepted by a well-known monthly, then supposed to be
+in the height of its prosperity. This was a grain of comfort, and I
+looked forward confidently to a long future of remuneration and renown,
+when a letter of regret arrived from the fair editress, returning my
+story, and explaining, that, being unable to meet her engagements, the
+magazine had been sold to pay her debts.
+
+"This was bad; but my story was my own, and I accordingly despatched it
+to 'The Salmagundian,' a periodical of the highest reputation. There it
+was published, praised, and further contributions requested. Several
+weeks passed away. I indited a poem, entitled, 'Past and Future, or,
+Golden and Leaden Hours.' This also appeared in print, and my thirst for
+fame was beginning to be satisfied, when a polite note reached me from
+'The Salmagundian' office, begging for another tale, and offering to pay
+me in _back numbers of the magazine_. I wrote no more."
+
+"Art beguiled you then, perhaps?"
+
+"Alas, yes, the siren! I had taken lessons from a very clever colorist,
+and was thoroughly imbued with his enthusiasm. 'I, too, am a painter,' I
+took for my motto; and, hiring a small studio in ---- Street, I bought a
+large canvas, on which I sketched out a picture which cost me much
+money, more time, and many anxious thoughts.
+
+"It represented the interior of a church, at the dim end of which a
+marriage was being solemnized. In the foreground, a group of ten people,
+in anomalous costumes, was gathered round a youth supposed to be a
+rejected and despairing lover, who had fallen on the ground in a swoon.
+It was very affecting, I thought.--it would be very effective. Were
+_she_ to see it, she would be stung with remorse,--she would behold the
+probable effects of her present indifference,--she would relent.
+
+"No one knew of my painting. I would keep it a profound secret, till it
+was a complete and glorious success. So I worked on in my quiet studio,
+draping before a cheval-glass for my women, attitudinizing and agonizing
+for my men, until the last touches were on, the varnish dry, and it was
+all ready for the Spring Exhibition. Then came doubts and speculations.
+Would it be accepted? Was it good, after all? Would Ellen like it? How
+would it seem among so many others? Should I take her to look at it?
+Should I tell her it was mine? Who would buy it?
+
+"I had hired my studio under an assumed name, and under an assumed name
+sent my picture to the Academy. Now, when I went to see it, I found it,
+by some strange chance, hung next to a beautiful portrait by Huntington.
+The juxtaposition gave me a new idea. I saw at once what a villanous
+daub mine was, and went away oppressed with shame and a new-found
+modesty. Some time after this I strolled again into the Exhibition, in
+the hope of finding Miss Wilson; as I entered the vestibule, I met her
+coming out.
+
+"'Oh, Mr. Martin!' she exclaimed, 'I am just going away, but I _must_
+turn back, and show you the _funniest_ picture! So theatrical! So
+distorted!'
+
+"'Does it hang next to a lady in a purple shawl, by Huntington?'
+
+"'Yes. Of course I might have known you would appreciate it, you are
+such a good critic of pictures. Isn't it the very worst specimen of art
+you ever saw?'
+
+"Can you imagine my feelings?"
+
+"I think I can."
+
+"This was not all, however. That afternoon I went to my now forsaken
+studio, previous to taking my departure from it forever. I was carefully
+packing my materials, when I heard a knock at the door. I opened it, and
+an elderly, shrewd-looking man walked into the room.
+
+"'Are you T. Markham Worthington?' he asked.
+
+"'I am a friend of his.'
+
+"'Authorized to sell his picture in the Academy, Number ----?'
+
+"'Yes.'
+
+"'How much does he ask for it?'
+
+"'How much are you willing to give?'
+
+"'Not more than twenty-five dollars,'
+
+"'That will do. Where shall it be sent?'
+
+"He paid the money, wrote the address, and, bowing, left the studio.
+Twenty-five dollars just paid for the frame. Who had bought my picture?
+I looked at the card:--
+
+    'PARKER J. SPERRY,
+    '_Yankee Pie Depot_,
+    '126 ---- Street.'"
+
+"Did you ever paint again?"
+
+"Once only. I made a portrait of my sister-in-law, and sent it to her in
+a gorgeous frame. I happened to go into her sitting-room, one morning,
+when she was out, and found my picture hanging with its face to the
+wall. I turned it round. Directly across the mouth was pasted a white
+label, on which I saw neatly printed in India-ink,--'Queen of the
+Deplorables.' I took it home with me, and hung it in my library as a
+lesson to me for all future time.
+
+"So," said Martin, throwing away the of his third cigar, "you have heard
+my experience. May you profit by it! I am now in the pork-packing
+business, and make a handsome income for my wife and two children.
+To-morrow I go to New York, to bring them into these wilds for change of
+air. And now, good night."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+ROBERT AND CLARA SCHUMANN.
+
+FLORESTAN'S STORY.
+
+
+I.
+
+In every person's memory there are niches fixed, and in those niches are
+sacred persons. These are such as never obtruded themselves upon you,
+staining the pane through which their light shone with their own images,
+but who became perfectly transparent to the word they uttered, the song
+they sang, or the work they did. Such a sacred person to me is the
+gifted woman who first interpreted for me Schumann's Albums. Many years
+ago it was, as she told me, that she one day stood unperceived in the
+half-open door of her master, near the lesson-hour, and heard him softly
+rendering a theme which stole far into places of her heart, which had
+been awaiting its spell unconsciously. Presently he felt that there was
+a listener, and, hastily brushing away a tear, he placed the music in a
+far corner of the room, away from his _répertoire_. She confessed, that,
+afterward, when he was not present, she had looked on that which he
+evidently desired to conceal; she saw written, in pencil, upon it,
+"Sternenkranz." Thenceforth shops and catalogues were ransacked, but no
+"Sternenkranz" was found,--the word was evidently her master's own
+fancy; so she summoned all her heroism, one day, when Herr Otto
+complained of her indifference to the pieces he set before her, and
+informed him that she should perish at his feet, unless he would give
+her "Sternenkranz." Of course her guilt was manifest, and Herr Otto, in
+a spasm of anger at "prying women," as he called them, brought out the
+treasure, and with it others of a very rare album of Schumann's, to
+which he had given no names, leaving them to whisper their own names to
+each soul that could receive them: Star-Wreath it might be to one, Bower
+of Lilies to another. It was the same as with that white stone which the
+Seer of Patmos saw,--within it "a name written which no man knoweth,
+saving he that receiveth it."
+
+This piece was to the lady a touch of consecration. Thenceforth she was
+known among us as "the Schumannite woman." I verily believe that to-day,
+next to the divine Clara herself, she is the best interpreter of Robert
+Schumann's works living; and if the love she has obtained for him is not
+as universal, it is just as fervent. Many silent and holy hours have I
+sat communing, through her, with him whom the Germans love to call their
+Tone-Poet; and the music remained to clothe with the full vesture of
+romance the meagre paragraphs of the journals which hinted his love, his
+sorrow, and at length his insanity and death. More, however, I longed to
+know of him,--of the wedlock of these Brownings of music; and more I
+came to know, in the way which, with this preface, I now proceed to
+relate.
+
+A bitter December evening found me tumbling through snow and ice to
+accommodate a certain lyceum in one of our Northwestern cities. Cold
+winds from over the Lakes made me wish that the Modern Athens had kept
+its lecture-system at home; for it has always seemed to me, that,
+wherever this has gone, her eastern storms have gone with it. Such ugly
+thoughts were shamed, however, by the beaming welcome which shone from
+the face of the kindest of landladies, and at length completely thawed
+out of me by the glowing fire to which she introduced me, and which
+animated the coziest of rooms. Why has not some poet celebrated the
+experience of thawing? How deliciously each fibre of the thawee responds
+to the informing ray, evolving its own sweet sensation of release until
+all unite in a soft choral reverie! Carried thus, in a few moments, from
+the Arctic to the Tropic, I thought, as dear Heine says, my "sweet
+nothing-at-all thoughts," until a subtile breath of music won me back to
+life.
+
+Heavens! what is that? A strain, strong and tender, pressed its way into
+the room, soothed my temples, then broke over me in a shower of pearls.
+Confused, I started up; and it was some moments before I understood that
+the music proceeded from the room adjoining mine in the hotel. Not
+altogether unfamiliar was the theme; the priestess of whom I have spoken
+had once brought it from the Holy of Holies, when she was appointed to
+stand; and now, remembering, I broke out with the word, "Florestan!"
+
+As I uttered it, the music ceased with the dreary fall of an octave.
+Whether the musician had heard the exclamation, or whether such a
+terrible termination was in the music, I knew not: the latter was quite
+probable, for, alas! such fearful Icarus-falls are not rare in poor
+Schumann's music. However, I did not consider long, but, rising quickly,
+passed into the hall, and knocked gently at the door of the next room.
+
+"Enter," replied a voice, eagerly, but softly.
+
+Enter I did, and stood before a man of about forty winters. His face was
+so swart that I could see only the German in the blue eye, and at once
+imagined that a stream of Plutonic fire had streamed into his veins from
+some more Oriental race. I stammered out an apology for my intrusion,
+but told him how irresistible were such subtile threads as Schumann's
+"Carnival" had projected through the walls which separated our rooms.
+
+"Florestan," I said, "was too much for me."
+
+Then his eye lighted up as might that of some Arctic voyager, which,
+having for bleak months rested only on the glittering scales of the
+ice-dragon coiled about him, is suddenly filled with the warm spread of
+the Polar Sea. Taking my hand, he said,--
+
+"In me, wanderer that I am,--in me, with the _Heimweh_ in my heart never
+to be stilled but in that home where Schumann has already gone,--you see
+Florestan."
+
+"Louis Boehner!"
+
+Filled with wonder, and scarcely knowing what I did, I took a little
+piece of paper which he unwrapped from many folds and placed in my hand.
+On it these words were written:--
+
+
+     "_Peace and joy attend thee, Louis Boehner! and mayst thou never
+     want for such a friend as thou hast been to_
+
+     ROBERT SCHUMANN."
+
+I could say no word; never have I felt a profounder emotion than when,
+at this moment, I drew so near one whose brow Art had crowned with a
+living halo.
+
+Students of German music and composers will need no word to bring before
+them the fulness of this incident. But to others I may briefly mention
+some facts connected with Schumann's "Carnival, or _Scènes Mignonnes_,
+on Four Notes." Not by any means representing the pure depths of
+Schumann's soul, this strange medley is yet pregnant with historic
+associations. The composer wrote it in his young days, stringing
+twenty-two little pieces on four letters composing the name of Asch, a
+town of Saxony, "whither," according to Sobolewski, "Schumann's thoughts
+frequently strayed, because at that time there was an object there
+interesting to his sensitive soul." In the letters A, S, C, H, it must
+be remembered that the H in German stands for our B natural, and S or
+_es_ for E flat. The Leipsic "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik" was begun and
+for ten years edited by Schumann,--in what spirit we may gather from his
+own words:--"The musical state of Germany, at that time, was not very
+encouraging. On the stage Rossini yet reigned, and on the piano Herz and
+Hünten excluded all others. And yet how few years had passed since
+Beethoven, Weber, and Schubert lived among us! True, Mendelssohn's star
+was ascending, and there were wonderful whispers of a certain Pole,
+Chopin; but it was later that these gained their lasting influence. One
+day the idea took possession of our young and hot heads,--Let us not
+idly look on; take hold, and reform it; take hold, and the Poetry of Art
+shall be again enthroned!" Then gathered together a Protestant-league of
+music, whose Luther and Melancthon in one was Schumann. The Devil at
+which they threw their inkstands and semi-breves was the _Philistines_,
+which is the general term amongst German students, artists, poets, etc.,
+for prosaic, narrow, hard, ungenial, commonplace respectabilities.
+"Young Germany" was making itself felt in all coördinate directions:
+forming new schools of plastic Art in Munich and Dresden,--a sharp and
+spirited Bohemian literature at Frankfort, under the lead of Heine and
+Boerne; and now, music being the last to yield in Germany, because most
+revered, as it is with religion in other countries, a new vitality
+brought together in Kühne's cellar in Leipsic the revolutionists, "who
+talked of Callot, Hoffmann, and Jean Paul, of Beethoven and Franz
+Schubert, and of the three foreign Romanticists beyond the Rhine, the
+friends of the new phenomenon in French poetry, Victor Hugo." This was
+the _Davidsbund_, or League of David (the last of the "Scènes Mignonnes"
+is named "Marche des _Davidsbündler_ contre les Philistines"). An
+agreeable writer in the "Weimarer Somitagsblatt" has given us a fine
+sketch of this company, which we will quote.
+
+"The head of the table was occupied by a lively, flexible man of middle
+age, intellectual in conversation, and overflowing with sharp and witty
+remarks. He was the instructor of more than one of the young musicians
+around him, who all listened to his observations with profound
+attention. He was very fond of monopolizing the conversation and
+suffering himself to be admired. For he called many a young, highly
+promising musician his pupil, and had, besides, the certain
+consciousness of having moulded his daughter Clara, at that time a girl
+of fourteen, into a prodigy, whose first appearance delighted the whole
+world, and whose subsequent artist-activity became the pride of her
+native city, Leipsic. By his side sat a quiet, thoughtful young man of
+twenty-three, with melancholy eyes. But lately a student in Heidelberg,
+he had now devoted himself entirely to music, had removed to Leipsic and
+was now a pupil of the 'old schoolmaster,' as the father of Clara Wieck
+liked to be called. Young Robert Schumann had good reason to be
+melancholy. After long struggles, he had only been able to devote
+himself entirely to music comparatively late in life, and had been
+obliged to pass a part of his precious youth in studies which were as
+uncongenial as possible to his artist-spirit. He had finally decided for
+the career of a _virtuoso_, and was pursuing the study of the piano with
+an almost morbid zeal, when the disabling of one of his fingers, a
+consequence of his over-exertions, obliged him to give up this career
+forever. He did not yet suspect that this accident would prove fortunate
+for him in the end, by directing him to his true vocation, composition.
+Perhaps, too, it was the first germ of love, in the garb of admiration
+for the wondrous talent of Clara, which made young Robert so quiet and
+dreamy. His companions were all the more lively. There sat the eccentric
+Louis Boehner,[A] who long ago had served as the model for E.T.A.
+Hoffmann's fantastic pictures. Here J.P. Lyser, a painter by profession,
+but a poet as well, and a musician besides. Here Carl Bauck, the
+indefatigable, yet unsuccessful composer of songs,--now, in his capacity
+of critic, the paper bugbear of the Dresden artists. He had just
+returned from Italy, and believed himself in possession of the true
+secret of the art of singing, the monopoly of which every singing-master
+is wont to claim for himself. C.F. Becker, too, the eminent organist and
+industrious collector, belonged to this circle, as well as many more
+young and old artists of more or less merit and talent."[B]
+
+[Footnote A: The "Florestan" of the "Scènes Mignonnes"; "Chiara" is
+Clara herself; "Eusebius" was Robert Schumann.]
+
+[Footnote B: See Dwight's _Journal of Music_, Vol. VIII. No. 3.]
+
+Florestan then stood before me; and with him, although invisible, stood
+that sacred circle, which had unconsciously borne within it the germs of
+so many future sorrows and glories.
+
+"With him," said Louis Boehner, "I began life, when we were boys
+together at Heidelberg; with him I stood when the dawn of a better day,
+which since has blessed hill and vale, was glowing for his eye alone;
+this breast held his sorrows and his hopes, when he was struggling to
+reach his Clara; these hands saved him when in his madness he cast
+himself into the Rhine; these eyes dropped their hot tears on his
+eyelids when they were closed in death."
+
+Overcome by his emotion, he sat down and sobbed aloud.
+
+At that moment, hearing my name called loudly in the hall, I went out,
+and was informed that my audience was waiting at the Lyceum, and had
+been waiting nearly fifteen minutes!
+
+
+II.
+
+Next morning, bright and early, I was in the artist-pilgrim's room,
+listening to that which it thrilled him to tell and me to hear. And
+first he told me the story of Schumann's love.
+
+The "old schoolmaster," Wieck, trained his daughter more ambitiously
+than judiciously; and, indeed, none but one of the elect would ever have
+survived the tasks imposed on her childhood. Indeed, she had no
+childhood: at the piano she was kept through all the bright days, roving
+only from scale to scale, when she should have been roving from flower
+to flower. At length her genius asserted itself, and she entered into
+her destiny; thenceforth flowers bloomed for her out of exercise-books,
+and she could touch the notes which were sun-bursts, and those which
+were mosses beneath them. From this training she came before the best
+audience in Germany, and stood a sad-eyed, beautiful child of fourteen
+summers, and by acclamation was crowned the Queen of the Piano. Franz
+Liszt remembered his enthusiasm of that period, and many years afterward
+wrote in his extravagant way,--"When we heard Clara Wieck in Vienna,
+fifteen years ago, she drew her hearers after her into her poetic world,
+to which she floated upward in a magical car drawn by electric sparks
+and lifted by delicately prismatic, but nervously throbbing winglets."
+At her performance of Beethoven's F Minor Sonata, Grillparzer was
+inspired to write the following verses:--
+
+  "A weird magician, weary of the world,
+  In sullen humor locked his charms all up
+  Within a diamond casket, firmly clasped,
+  And threw the key into the sea, and died.
+  The manikins here tried with all their might;
+  In vain! no tool can pick the flinty lock;
+  His magic arts still slumber, like their master.
+  A shepherd's child, along the sea-shore playing,
+  Watches the waves, in hurrying, idle chase.
+  Dreaming and thoughtless, as young maidens are,
+  She dippeth her white fingers in the flood,
+  And grasps, and lifts, and holds it! 'Tis the key.
+  Up springs she, up, her heart still beating higher.
+  The casket glances, as with eyes, before her.
+  The key fits well, up flies the lid. The spirits
+  All mount aloft, then bow themselves submissive
+  To this their gracious, innocent, sweet mistress,
+  Who with white fingers guides them in her play."
+
+The first, perhaps, to recognize the surpassing ability of that child
+was the young editor of the "Zeitschrift." Robert Schumann. On her first
+appearance, he wrote,--"Others make poetry,--she is a poem." And soon
+afterward,--"She early lifted the veil of Isis. The child looks calmly
+up,--the man would, perhaps, be dazzled by the brilliancy."
+
+From this moment there was an elasticity and purpose about the young
+composer, the secret of which no one knew, not even himself. Like one
+caught in the whorls of some happy dream, who will not pause to ask,
+"Whither?" he poured out before this child the half-revealed hopes
+striving within him; an equal spell was woven about her ingenuous and
+earnest heart, and their souls were joined in that purple morning; in
+due time they were to be rather _clenched_, through pain. It was under
+this baptismal touch of Love that Schumann wrote his first
+sonata,--"Florestan and Eusebius." It gained him at once a fame with all
+from whom fame was graceful.
+
+In the light of this period of his life must be interpreted those
+wonderful little "pieces" which mystify whilst they fascinate; without
+it their meaning is as strange as their names. Often did he say,--"I can
+write only where my life is in unison with my works." "Listen now to
+these," said Florestan, as he opened an album and struck the piano;
+"these are the voices of a new life." The "Alternatives," with song, "My
+peace is o'er"; "Evening Thoughts"; "Impromptus," (whose first theme was
+written by Clara): these; seemed like the emotion of some newly winged
+aspirant released from its chrysalis, resting on its first flower. But
+faster than planets through the abysses Love moves on. Florestan ceased,
+and there was a long silence; and then he told the unspeakable portion
+of his story by performing these two: "Sternenkranz," "Warum." Who has
+ever scaled the rapture of the former, or fathomed the pathos of the
+latter? Every summit implies its precipice; and the star-wreath that
+crowned Love was snatched at by the Fate which soon burdened two hearts
+with the terrible questioning, _Wherefore?_
+
+Thus: before these two were fully conscious of the love they bore each
+other, the shrewd eye of old Wieck had caught a glimpse of what was
+coming to pass. He had educated this girl to be an artist to bring _him_
+fame; alas, it must be confessed that he thought also of certain
+prospective thalers. Willing as he was that all Leipsic should admire
+his daughter, he did not like the enthusiasm of the "Zeitschrift." He
+then began to warn Clara against "this Faust in modern garb, who, when
+he had gained one finger, would soon have the whole hand, and finally
+the poor soul into the bargain!" Stupid old schoolmaster, thou shouldst
+have known that it is Mephistopheles, and not Faust, that women hate!
+
+The old man, finding that his warnings were of no avail, forbade all
+acquaintance, forbade Robert's visits to his house. Then, inaugurating
+at once Clara's career as a _virtuoso_, he took her to Vienna.
+
+No wonder, that, when she appeared there, it was to be as the priestess
+of Beethoven. It takes something besides an academy to train artists up
+to Beethoven. Robert was forbidden to write to her; but the
+"Schwärmibriefe of Eusebius to Chiara," utterly unintelligible to the
+general reader of the "Zeitschrift," who, doubtless, fancied that its
+editor had gone mad, were quite clear to a certain little lady in
+Vienna, who consequently pined less than her father had anticipated.
+
+"Amid all our musical soul-feasts," he writes, "there always peeps out
+an angel-face, which more than resembles a certain Clara. Why art thou
+not with us? (_Warum!_) And how thou wilt have thought of us last
+night, from the 'Meeresstille' to the flaming close of the A major
+symphony! I also thought of thee then, Chiara, pure one, bright one,
+whose hands are stretched towards Italy, whither thy longing draws thee,
+but thy dreamy eye still turned to us."
+
+At length a sun-burst. In 1840 appeared the first number of Schumann's
+"Myrthen," whose dedication, _Seiner geliebten Braut_, breaks forth in
+the passionate and beautiful song,--"Thou my soul, O thou my heart!"
+
+But this word _Braut_ means Bride in the German sense of "affianced";
+and although the joy of this relation passed over Schumann like the
+breath of a Tropic, bringing forth, amongst other gorgeous fruits, his
+glorious First Symphony, which some one has well called the Symphony of
+Bliss, yet, ere this bliss was more than an elusive vision, the two
+passed through fierce wildernesses, and drank together of bitter Marahs.
+"But of all this," said Florestan, "you will know, if you have the right
+to know, from these,"--his "Voice from afar," and his "Night-Pieces."
+
+Neither of us dared break the silence claimed by these exquisite pieces
+when they ceased; we shook hands and parted without a word.
+
+
+III.
+
+But another mystery about the loved and lost master, which I longed to
+have revealed, would not let me leave the city. In the afternoon I
+sought Boehner, and asked him to walk with me. As soon as we had alluded
+to the one subject that bound us together, I requested him to tell me,
+what had not yet been given to the world, the details of Schumann's
+insanity and death.
+
+Then, as one who takes up a heavy burden to bear it, he proceeded:--
+
+"The heart of Robert Schumann was a lyre so delicate, and with strings
+so sensitive, that the effect of his pains and his joys, both always in
+extremes, was as if you gave an Æolian harp to be swept now by a cold
+north-wind and now by a hot sirocco. His spirit wore on to the confines
+of his flesh, and was not warmly covered thereby, but only veiled. Under
+his grief he seemed stronger; but when his joy came, when Clara was his
+own, and went through Europe with him, giving expression to the voices
+within, which, to him, had been unutterable,--then we saw that the
+emotions which would have been safe, had they been suffered to well up
+gently from the first, could come forth now only as a fierce and perhaps
+devastating torrent.
+
+"Schumann saddened his intimate friends by times of insanity, five or
+six years before the world at large knew anything of it. At such times
+he imagined himself again cruelly separated from the patient and tender
+being who never left his side; and he would write pieces full of
+distractions, in the midst of each of which, however, some touchingly
+beautiful theme would float up, like a fair island through seething
+seas. Then there were longer intervals, of seven and eight months, in
+which he was perfectly sane; at which times he would write with a
+wearing persistence which none could restrain: he would put our advice
+aside gently, saying,--'A long life is before me; but it must be lived
+in a few years.' And, indeed, the works which have reached farthest into
+hearts that loved him most deeply date from these times. I remember,
+that, when he sat down to compose his last symphony, he said,--'It is
+almost accomplished; but the invisible mansion needs another chamber.'
+
+"Once when I was at Frankfort, Clara Schumann sent me this word:
+'Hasten.' I left all my affairs, and came to watch for many months
+beside this beloved one. It was not a wild delirium which had taken
+possession of him; the only fit of that kind was that in which he tried
+to drown himself in the Rhine,--at the time when the papers got hold of
+the terrible secret. His insanity was manifested in his conviction that
+he was occupied by the souls of Beethoven and Schubert. Much in the
+manner of your American mediums, he would be seized by a controlling
+power,--would snatch a pencil, and dash out upon paper the wildest
+discords. These we would play for him, at his request, from morning till
+night,--during much of which time he would seem to be in a happy trance.
+Of this music no chord or melody was true; they were jangling memories
+of his earlier works.
+
+"One day he called his wife and myself, and took our hands in his
+own:--'Beethoven says that my earthly music is over; it cannot be
+understood here; he writes for angels, and I shall write for them.'
+Then, turning to me, he said,--'Louis, my friend, farewell! This is my
+last prayer for you,'--handing me the paper which I have shown you; 'and
+now leave us, to come again and kiss me when I am cold.'
+
+"Then I left him alone with his Clara.
+
+"A month from that time, Schumann was no more."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out under the glowing sunset, I clasped hands parting with Louis
+Boehner, and said, as my voice would let me.--"Take this paper, and when
+you would have a friend, such as you have been to Robert Schumann, come
+and help me to be that friend."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE FREEDMEN AT PORT ROYAL.
+
+
+Two questions are concerned in the social problem of our time. One is,
+Will the people of African descent work for a living? and the other is,
+Will they fight for their freedom? An affirmative answer to these must
+be put beyond any fair dispute before they will receive permanent
+security in law or opinion. Whatever may be the theses of philosophers
+or the instincts of the justest men, the general sense of mankind is not
+likely to accord the rights of complete citizenship to a race of
+paupers, or to hesitate in imposing compulsory labor on those who have
+not industry sufficient to support themselves. Nor, in the present
+development of human nature, is the conscience of great communities
+likely to be so pervasive and controlling as to restrain them from
+disregarding the rights of those whom it is perfectly safe to injure,
+because they have not the pluck to defend themselves. Sentiment may be
+lavished upon them in poetry and tears, but it will all be wasted. Like
+all unprivileged classes before them, they will have their full
+recognition as citizens and men when they have vindicated their title to
+be an estate of the realm, and not before. Let us, then, take the world
+as we find it, and try this people accordingly. But it is not pertinent
+to any practical inquiry of our time to predict what triumphs in art,
+literature, or government they are to accomplish, or what romance is to
+glow upon their history. No Iliad may be written of them and their woes.
+No Plutarch may gather the lives of their heroes. No Vandyck may delight
+to warm his canvas with their forms. How many or how few astronomers
+like Banneker, chieftains like Toussaint, orators like Douglass they may
+have, it is not worth while to conjecture. It is better to dismiss these
+fanciful discussions. To vindicate their title to a fair chance in the
+world as a free people, it is sufficient, and alone sufficient, that it
+appear to reasonable minds that they are in good and evil very much like
+the rest of mankind, and that they are endowed in about the same degree
+with the conservative and progressive elements of character common to
+ordinary humanity.
+
+It is given to the people of this country and time, could they realise
+it, to make a new chapter of human experience. The past may suggest, but
+it can do little either in directing or deterring. There is nothing in
+the gloomy vaticinations of Tocqueville, wise and benevolent as he is,
+which should be permitted to darken our future. The mediæval antagonisms
+of races, when Christianity threw but a partial light over mankind, and
+before commerce had unfolded the harmony of interests among people of
+diverse origin or condition, determine no laws which will fetter the
+richer and more various development of modern life. Nor do the results
+of emancipation in the West Indies, more or less satisfactory as they
+may be, afford any measure of the progress which opens before our
+enfranchised masses. The insular and contracted life of the colonies,
+cramped also as they were by debt and absenteeism, has no parallel in
+the grand currents of thought and activity ever sweeping through the
+continent on which our problem is to be solved.
+
+In the light of these views, the attempt shall be made to report
+truthfully upon the freedmen at Port Royal. A word, however, as to the
+name. Civilization, in its career, may often be traced in the
+nomenclatures of successive periods. These people were first called
+contrabands at Fortress Monroe; but at Port Royal, where they were next
+introduced to us in any considerable number, they were generally
+referred to as freedmen. These terms are milestones in our progress; and
+they are yet to be lost in the better and more comprehensive designation
+of citizens, or, when discrimination is convenient, citizens of African
+descent.
+
+The enterprise for the protection and development of the freedmen at
+Port Royal has won its way to the regard of mankind. The best minds of
+Europe, as well as the best friends of the United States, like Cairnes
+and Gasparin, have testified much interest in its progress. An English
+periodical of considerable merit noticed at some length "Mr. Pierce's
+Ten Thousand Clients." In Parliament, Earl Russell noted it in its
+incipient stage, as a reason why England should not intervene in
+American affairs. The "Revue des Deux Mondes," in a recent number,
+characterizes the colony as "that small pacific army, far more important
+in the history of civilization than all the military expeditions
+despatched from time to time since the commencement of the civil war."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No little historical interest covers the region to which this account
+belongs. Explorations of the coast now known as that of the Carolinas,
+Georgia, and Florida, involving the rival pretensions of Spain and
+France, were made in the first half of the sixteenth century. They were
+conducted by Ponce de Leon, Vasquez, Verrazani, and Soto, in search of
+the fountain of perpetual youth, or to extend empire by right of
+discovery. But no permanent settlement by way of colony or garrison was
+attempted until 1562.
+
+In that year,--the same in which he drew his sword for his faith, and
+ten years before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in which he fell the
+most illustrious victim,--Admiral Coligny, the great Protestant chief,
+anxious to found beyond the seas a refuge for persecuted Huguenots,
+fitted out the expedition of Jean Ribault, which, after a voyage of over
+three months across the ocean and northward along the coast, cast anchor
+on May 27th in the harbor of Port Royal, and gave it the name which it
+retains to this day. That year was also to be ever memorable for another
+and far different enterprise, which was destined to be written in dark
+and perpetual lines on human history. Then it was that John Hawkins
+sailed for Africa in quest of the first cargo of negroes ever brought to
+the New World. The expedition of Ribault was the first visit of
+Europeans to Port Royal or to any part of South Carolina, and the
+garrison left by him was the first settlement under their auspices ever
+made on this continent north of Mexico. There is not space or need to
+detail here the mutiny and suffering of this military colony, their
+abandonment of the post, the terrible voyage homeward, or the
+perseverance of Coligny in his original purpose. Nor is it within the
+compass of this narrative to recount the fortunes of the second
+garrison, which was founded on the St. John's, the visit of John Hawkins
+in 1565 with timely relief, the return of Ribault from France and his
+sad fate, the ferocity of Melendez against all heretic Frenchmen, and
+the avenging chivalry of Dominic de Gourges. The student is baffled in
+attempts to fix localities for the deeds and explorations of this
+period, even with the help of the several accounts and the drawings of
+Le Moyne; and, besides, these later vicissitudes did not involve any
+permanent occupation as far north as Port Royal, that region having been
+abandoned by the French, and being then visited by the Spanish only for
+trade or adventure.
+
+Some merchants of Barbados, in 1663, sent William Hilton and other
+commissioners to Florida, then including Port Royal, to explore the
+country with reference to an emigration thither. Hilton's Narration,
+published in London the year after, mentions St. Ellens as one of the
+points visited, meaning St. Helena, but probably including the Sea
+Islands under that name. The natives were found to speak many Spanish
+words, and to be familiar enough with the report of guns not to be
+alarmed by it. The commissioners, whose explorations were evidently
+prompted by motives of gain, close a somewhat glowing description of the
+country by saying, "And we could wish that all they that want a happy
+settlement of our English nation were well transported thither."
+
+Hitherto England had borne no part in exploring this region. But,
+relieved of her civil wars by the Restoration, she began to seek
+colonial empire on the southern coast of North America. In 1663, Charles
+II. granted a charter to Clarendon, Monk, Shaftsbury,--each famous in
+the conflicts of those times,--and to their associates, as proprietors
+of Carolina. The genius of John Locke, more fitted for philosophy than
+affairs, devised a constitution for the colony,--an idle work, as it
+proved. In 1670, the first emigrants, under Governor William Sayle,
+arrived at Port Royal, with the purpose to remain there; but, disturbed
+probably with apprehensions of Spanish incursions from Florida, they
+removed to the banks of the Ashley, and, after another change of site,
+founded Charleston.
+
+In 1682, a colony from Scotland under Lord Cardross was founded at Port
+Royal, but was driven away four years later by the Spanish. No permanent
+settlement of the Beaufort district appears to have succeeded until
+1700. This district is divided into four parishes, St. Peter's, St.
+Luke's, St. Helena, and Prince William, being fifty-eight miles long and
+thirty-two broad, and containing 1,224,960 acres. St. Helena parish
+includes the islands of St. Helena, Ladies, Port Royal, Paris, and a few
+smaller islands, which, together with Hilton Head, make the district
+occupied by our forces. The largest and most populous of these islands
+is St. Helena, being fifteen miles long and six or seven broad,
+containing fifty plantations and three thousand negroes, and perhaps
+more since the evacuation of Edisto. Port Royal is two-thirds or
+three-quarters the size of St. Helena, Ladies half as large, and Hilton
+Head one-third as large. Paris, or Parry, has five plantations, and
+Coosaw, Morgan, Cat, Cane, and Barnwell have each one or two. Beaufort
+is the largest town in the district of that name, and the only one at
+Port Royal in our possession. Its population, black and white, in time
+of peace may have been between two and three thousand. The first lots
+were granted in 1717. Its Episcopal church was built in 1720. Its
+library was instituted in 1802, had increased in 1825 to six or eight
+hundred volumes, and when our military occupation began contained about
+thirty-five hundred.
+
+The origin of the name Port Royal, given to a harbor at first and since
+to an island, has already been noted. The name of St. Helena, applied to
+a sound, a parish, and an island, originated probably with the
+Spaniards, and was given by them in tribute to Saint Helena, the mother
+of Constantine the Great, whose day in the calendar is August 18th.
+Broad River is the equivalent of La Grande, which was given by Ribault.
+Hilton Head may have been derived from Captain Hilton, who came from
+Barbados. Coosaw is the name of a tribe of Indians. Beaufort is likely
+to have been so called for Henry, Duke of Beauford, one of the lord
+proprietors, while Carolina was a province of Great Britain.
+
+The Beaufort District is not invested with any considerable
+Revolutionary romance. In 1779, the British forces holding Savannah sent
+two hundred troops with a howitzer and two field-pieces to Beaufort.
+Four companies of militia from Charleston with two field-pieces,
+reinforced by a few volunteers from Beaufort, repulsed and drove them
+off. The British made marauding incursions from Charleston in 1782, and
+are said to have levied a military contribution on St. Helena and Port
+Royal Islands.
+
+There are the remains of Indian mounds and ancient forts on the islands.
+One of these last, it is said, can be traced on Paris Island, and is
+claimed by some antiquaries to be the Charles Fort built by Ribault.
+There are the well-preserved walls of one upon the plantation of John J.
+Smith on Port Royal Island, a few miles south of Beaufort, now called
+Camp Saxton, and recently occupied by Colonel Higginson's regiment. It
+is built of cemented oyster-shells. Common remark refers to it as a
+Spanish fort, but it is likely to be of English construction. The site
+of Charles Fort is claimed for Beaufort, Lemon Island, Paris Island, and
+other points.
+
+The Sea Islands are formed by the intersection of the creeks and arms of
+the sea. They have a uniform level, are without any stones, and present
+a rather monotonous and uninteresting scenery, spite of the raptures of
+French explorers. The creeks run up into the islands at numerous points,
+affording facilities for transportation by flats and boats to the
+buildings which are usually near them. The soil is of a light, sandy
+mould, and yields in the best seasons a very moderate crop, say fifteen
+bushels of corn and one hundred or one hundred and thirty pounds of
+ginned cotton to the acre,--quite different from the plantations in
+Mississippi and Texas, where an acre produces five or six hundred
+pounds. The soil is not rich enough for the cultivated grasses, and one
+finds but little turf. The coarse saline grasses, gathered in stacks,
+furnish the chief material for manure. The long-fibred cotton peculiar
+to the region is the result of the climate, which is affected by the
+action of the salt water upon the atmosphere by means of the creeks
+which permeate the land in all directions. The seed of this cotton,
+planted on the upland, will produce in a few years the cotton of coarser
+texture; and the seed of the latter, planted on the islands, will in a
+like period produce the finer staple. The Treasury Department secured
+eleven hundred thousand pounds from the islands occupied by our forces,
+including Edisto, being the crop, mostly unginned, and gathered in
+storehouses, when our military occupation began.
+
+The characteristic trees are the live-oak, its wood almost as heavy as
+lignum-vitæ, the trunk not high, but sometimes five or six feet in
+diameter, and extending its crooked branches far over the land, with the
+long, pendulous, funereal moss adhering to them,--and the palmetto,
+shooting up its long, spongy stem thirty or forty feet, unrelieved by
+vines or branches, with a disproportionately small cap of leaves at the
+summit, the most ungainly of trees, albeit it gives a name and
+coat-of-arms to the State. Besides these, are the pine, the red and
+white oak, the cedar, the bay, the gum, the maple, and the ash. The soil
+is luxuriant with an undergrowth of impenetrable vines. These
+interlacing the trees, supported also by shrubs, of which the cassena is
+the most distinguished variety, and faced with ditches, make the
+prevailing fences of the plantations. The hedges are adorned in March
+and April with the yellow jessamine, (_jelseminum_,)--the cross-vine
+(_bignonia_,) with its mass of rich red blossoms,--the Cherokee rose,
+(_loevigata_,) spreading out in long waving wreaths of white,--and, two
+months later, the palmetto royal, (_yucca gloriosa_,) which protects the
+fence with its prickly leaves, and delights the eyes with its
+pyramid-like clusters of white flowers. Some of these trees and shrubs
+serve a utilitarian end in art and medicine. The live-oak is famous in
+shipbuilding. The palmetto, or cabbage-palmetto, as it is called,
+resists destruction by worms, and is used for facing wharves. It was
+employed to protect Fort Moultrie in 1776, when bombarded by the British
+fleet; and the cannon-balls were buried in its spongy substance. The
+moss (_tillandsia usneoides_) served to calk the rude vessel of the
+first French colonists, longing for home. It may be used for bedding
+after its life has been killed by boiling water, and for the subsistence
+of cattle when destitute of other food. The cassena is a powerful
+diuretic.
+
+The game and fish, which are both abundant and of desirable kinds, and
+to the pursuit of which the planters were much addicted, are described
+in Eliot's book. Russell's "Diary" may also be consulted in relation to
+fishing for devil and drum.
+
+The best dwellings in Beaufort are capacious, with a piazza on the first
+and second stories, through each of which runs a large hall to admit a
+free circulation of air. Only one, however, appeared to have been built
+under the supervision of a professional architect. Those on the
+plantations, designed for the planters or overseers, were, with a few
+exceptions, of a very mean character, and a thriving mechanic in New
+England would turn his back on them as unfit to live in. Their yards are
+without turf, having as their best feature a neighboring grove of
+orange-trees. One or two dwellings only appear to be ancient. Indeed,
+they are not well enough built to last long. The estates upon Edisto
+Island are of a more patrician character, and are occasionally
+surrounded by spacious flower-gardens and ornamental trees fancifully
+trimmed.
+
+The names of the planters indicated mainly an English origin, although
+some may be traced to Huguenot families who sought a refuge here from
+the religious persecutions of France.
+
+The deserted houses were generally found strewn with religious
+periodicals, mainly Baptist magazines. This characteristic of Southern
+life has been elsewhere observed in the progress of our army.
+Occasionally some book denouncing slavery as criminal and ruinous was
+found among those left behind. One of these was Hewatt's history of
+South Carolina, published in 1779, and reprinted in Carroll's
+collection. Another was Gregoire's vindication of the negro race and
+tribute to its distinguished examples, translated by Warden in 1810.
+These people seem, indeed, to have had light enough to see the infinite
+wrong of the system, and it is difficult to believe them entirely
+sincere in their passionate defence of it. Their very violence, when the
+moral basis of slavery is assailed, seems to be that of a man who
+distrusts the rightfulness of his daily conduct, has resolved to persist
+in it, and therefore hates most of all the prophet who comes to confront
+him for his misdeeds, and, if need be, to publish them to mankind.
+
+Well-authenticated instances of cruelty to slaves were brought to notice
+without being sought for. The whipping-tree is now often pointed out,
+still showing the place where it was worn by the rope which bound the
+sufferer to it. On the plantation where my own quarters were was a woman
+who had been so beaten when approaching the trials of maternity as to
+crush out the life of the unborn child. But this planter had one
+daughter who looked with horror on the scenes of which she was the
+unwilling witness. She declared to her parents and sisters that it was
+hell to live in such a place. She was accustomed to advise the negroes
+how best to avoid being whipped. When the war began, she assured them
+that the story of the masters that the Yankees were going to send them
+to Cuba was all a lie. Surely a kind Providence will care for this noble
+girl! This war will, indeed, emancipate others than blacks from bonds
+which marriage and kindred have involved. But it is unpleasant to dwell
+on these painful scenes of the past, constant and authentic as they are;
+and they hardly concern the practical question which now presses for a
+solution. Nor in referring to them is there any need of injustice or
+exaggeration. Human nature has not the physical endurance or moral
+persistence to keep up a perpetual and universal cruelty; and there are
+fortunate slaves who never received a blow from their masters. Besides,
+there was less labor exacted and less discipline imposed on the loosely
+managed plantations of the Sea Islands than in other districts where
+slave-labor was better and more profitably organized and directed.
+
+The capture of Hilton Head and Bay Point by the navy, November 7th,
+1861, was followed by the immediate military occupation of the Sea
+Islands. In the latter part of December, the Secretary of the Treasury,
+Mr. Chase, whose foresight as a statesman and humane disposition
+naturally turned his thoughts to the subject, deputed a special agent to
+visit this district for the purpose of reporting upon the condition of
+the negroes who had been abandoned by the white population, and of
+suggesting some plan for the organization of their labor and the
+promotion of their general well-being. The agent, leaving New York
+January 13th, 1862, reached that city again on his way to Washington on
+the 13th of February, having in the mean time visited a large number of
+the plantations, and talked familiarly with the negroes in their cabins.
+The results of his observations, in relation to the condition of the
+people, their capacities and wishes, the culture of their crops, and the
+best mode of administration, on the whole favorable, were embodied in a
+report. The plan proposed by him recommended the appointment of
+superintendents to act as guides of the negroes and as local
+magistrates, with an adequate corps of teachers. It was accepted by the
+Secretary with a full indorsement, and its execution intrusted to the
+same agent. The agent presented the subject to several members of
+Congress, with whom he had a personal acquaintance, but, though they
+listened respectfully, they seemed either to dread the magnitude of the
+social question, or to feel that it was not one with which they as
+legislators were called upon immediately to deal. The Secretary himself,
+and Mr. Olmsted, then connected with the Sanitary Commission, alone
+seemed to grasp it, and to see the necessity of immediate action. It is
+doubtful if any member of the Cabinet, except Mr. Chase, took then any
+interest in the enterprise, though it has since been fostered by the
+Secretary of War. At the suggestion of the Secretary, the President
+appointed an interview with the agent. Mr. Lincoln, who was then chafing
+under a prospective bereavement, listened for a few moments, and then
+said, somewhat impatiently, that he did not think he ought to be
+troubled with such details,--that there seemed to be an itching to get
+negroes into our lines; to which the agent replied, that these negroes
+were within them by the invitation of no one, being domiciled there
+before we commenced occupation. The President then wrote and handed to
+the agent the following card:--
+
+"I shall be obliged if the Sec. of the Treasury will in his discretion
+give Mr. Pierce such instructions in regard to Port Royal contrabands as
+may seem judicious.
+
+"A. LINCOLN.
+
+"Feb. 15, 1862."
+
+The President, so history must write it, approached the great question
+slowly and reluctantly; and in February, 1862, he little dreamed of the
+proclamations he was to issue in the September and January following.
+Perhaps that slowness and reluctance were well, for thereby it was given
+to this people to work out their own salvation, rather than to be saved
+by any chief or prophet.
+
+Notwithstanding the plan of superintendents was accepted, there were no
+funds wherewith to pay them. At this stage the "Educational Commission,"
+organized in Boston on the 7th of February, and the "Freedmen's Relief
+Association," organized in New York on the 20th of the same month,
+gallantly volunteered to pay both superintendents and teachers, and did
+so until July 1st, when the Government, having derived a fund from the
+sale of confiscated cotton left in the territory by the Rebels,
+undertook the payment of the superintendents, the two societies,
+together with another organized in Philadelphia on the 3d of March, and
+called the "Port Royal Relief Committee," providing for the support of
+the teachers.
+
+When these voluntary associations sprang into being to save an
+enterprise which otherwise must have failed, no authoritative assurance
+had been given as to the legal condition of the negroes. The Secretary,
+in a letter to the agent, had said, that, after being received into our
+service, they could not, without great injustice, be restored to their
+masters, and should therefore be fitted to become self-supporting
+citizens. The President was reported to have said freely, in private,
+that negroes who were within our lines, and had been employed by the
+Government, should be protected in their freedom. No official assurance
+of this had, however, been given; and its absence disturbed the
+societies in their formation. At one meeting of the Boston society
+action was temporarily arrested by the expression of an opinion by a
+gentleman present, that there was no evidence showing that these people,
+when educated, would not be the victims of some unhappy compromise. A
+public meeting in Providence, for their relief, is said to have broken
+up without action, because of a speech from a furloughed officer of a
+regiment stationed at Port Royal, who considered such a result the
+probable one. But the societies, on reflection, wisely determined to do
+what they could to prepare them to become self-supporting citizens, in
+the belief, that, when they had become such, no Government could ever be
+found base enough to turn its back upon them. These associations, it
+should be stated, have been managed by persons of much consideration in
+their respective communities, of unostentatious philanthropy, but of
+energetic and practical benevolence, hardly one of whom has ever filled
+or been a candidate for a political office.
+
+There was a pleasant interview at this time which may fitly be
+mentioned. The venerable Josiah Quincy, just entered on his ninety-first
+year, hearing of the enterprise, desired to see one who had charge of
+it. I went to his chamber, where he had been confined to his bed for
+many weeks with a fractured limb. He talked like a patriot who read the
+hour and its duty. He felt troubled lest adequate power had not been
+given to protect the enterprise,--said that but for his disability he
+should be glad to write something about it, but that he was living "the
+postscript of his life"; and as we parted, he gave his hearty
+benediction to the work and to myself. Restored in a measure to
+activity, he is still spared to the generation which fondly cherishes
+his old age; and recently, at the organization of the Union Club, he
+read to his fellow-citizens, gathering close about him and hanging on
+his speech, words of counsel and encouragement.
+
+On the morning of the 3d of March, 1862, the first delegation of
+superintendents and teachers, fifty-three in all, of whom twelve were
+women, left the harbor of New York, on board the United States
+steam-transport Atlantic, arriving at Beaufort on the 9th. It was a
+voyage never to be forgotten. The enterprise was new and strange, and it
+was not easy to predict its future. Success or defeat might be in store
+for us; and we could only trust in God that our strength would be equal
+to our responsibilities. As the colonists approached the shores of South
+Carolina, they were addressed by the agent in charge, who told them the
+little he had learned of their duties, enjoined patience and humanity,
+impressed on them the greatness of their work, the results of which were
+to cheer or dishearten good men, to settle, perhaps, one way or the
+other, the social problem of the age,--assuring them that never did a
+vessel bear a colony on a nobler mission, not even the Mayflower, when
+she conveyed the Pilgrims to Plymouth, that it would be a poorly written
+history which should omit their individual names, and that, if faithful
+to their trust, there would come to them the highest of all recognitions
+ever accorded to angels or to men, in this life or the next,--"Inasmuch
+as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."
+
+This first delegation of superintendents and teachers were distributed
+during the first fortnight after their arrival at Beaufort, and at its
+close they had all reached their appointed posts. They took their
+quarters in the deserted houses of the planters. These had all left on
+the arrival of our army, only four white men, citizens of South
+Carolina, remaining, and none of those being slaveholders, except one,
+who had only two or three slaves. Our operations were, therefore, not
+interfered with by landed proprietors who were loyal or pretended to be
+so. The negroes had, in the mean time, been without persons to guide and
+care for them, and had been exposed to the careless and conflicting talk
+of soldiers who chanced to meet them. They were also brought in
+connection with some _employés_ of the Government, engaged in the
+collection of cotton found upon the plantations, none of whom were doing
+anything for their education, and most of whom were in favor of leasing
+the plantations and the negroes upon them as _adscripti gleboe_ looking
+forward to their restoration to their masters at the close of the war.
+They were uncertain as to the intentions of the Yankees, and were
+wondering at the confusion, as they called it. They were beginning to
+plant corn in their patches, but were disinclined to plant cotton,
+regarding it as a badge of servitude. No schools had been opened, except
+one at Beaufort, which had been kept a few weeks by two freedmen, one
+bearing the name of John Milton, under the auspices of the Rev. Dr.
+Peck. This is not the place to detail the obstacles we met with, one
+after another overcome,--the calumnies and even personal violence to
+which we were subjected. These things occurred at an early period of our
+struggle, when the nation was groping its way to light, and are not
+likely to occur again. Let unworthy men sleep in the oblivion they
+deserve, and let others of better natures, who were then blind, but now
+see, not be taunted with their inconsiderate acts. The nickname of
+Gibeonites, applied to the colonists, may, however, be fitly remembered.
+It may now justly claim rank with the honored titles of Puritan and
+Methodist. The higher officers of the army were uniformly respectful and
+disposed to coöperation. One of these may properly be mentioned. Our
+most important operations were in the district under the command of
+Brigadier-General Isaac I. Stevens, an officer whose convictions were
+not supposed to be favorable to the enterprise, and who, during the
+political contest of 1860, had been the chairman of the National
+Breckinridge Committee. But such was his honor as a gentleman, and his
+sense of the duty of subordination to the wishes of the Government,
+that his personal courtesies and official aid were never wanting. He
+received his mortal wound at Chantilly, Virginia, on the first of
+September following, and a braver and abler officer has not fallen in
+the service.
+
+Notwithstanding our work was commenced six weeks too late, and other
+hindrances occurred, detailed in the second report of the agent, some
+eight thousand acres of esculents,--a fair supply of food,--and some
+four thousand five hundred acres of cotton (after a deduction for
+over-estimates) were planted. This was done upon one hundred and
+eighty-nine plantations, on which were nine thousand and fifty people,
+of whom four thousand four hundred and twenty-nine were field-hands,
+made up of men, women, and children, and equivalent, in the usual
+classification and estimate of the productive capacity of laborers, to
+three thousand eight hundred and five and one-half full hands. The
+cotton-crop produced will not exceed sixty-five thousand pounds of
+ginned cotton. Work enough was done to have produced five hundred
+thousand pounds in ordinary times; but the immaturity of the pod,
+resulting from the lateness of the planting, exposed it to the ravages
+of the frost and the worm. Troops being ordered North, after the
+disasters of the Peninsular campaign, Edisto was evacuated in the middle
+of July, and thus one thousand acres of esculents, and nearly seven
+hundred acres of cotton, the cultivation of which had been finished,
+were abandoned. In the autumn, Major-General Mitchell required forty
+tons of corn-fodder and seventy-eight thousand pounds of corn in the
+ear, for army-forage. These are but some of the adverse influences to
+which the agricultural operations were subjected.
+
+It is fitting here that I should bear my testimony to the
+superintendents and teachers commissioned by the associations. There was
+as high a purpose and devotion among them as in any colony that ever
+went forth to bear the evangel of civilization. Among them were some of
+the choicest young men of New England, fresh from Harvard, Yale, and
+Brown, from the divinity-schools of Andover and Cambridge,--men of
+practical talent and experience. There were some of whom the world was
+scarce worthy, and to whom, whether they are among the living or the
+dead, I delight to pay the tribute of my respect and admiration.
+
+Four of the original delegation have died. William S. Clark died at
+Boston, April 25th, 1863, a consumptive when he entered on the work,
+which he was obliged to leave six months before his death. He was a
+faithful and conscientious teacher. Though so many months had passed
+since he left these labors, their fascination was such that he dwelt
+fondly upon them in his last days.
+
+The colony was first broken by the death of Francis E. Barnard, at St.
+Helena Island, October 18th, 1862. He was devoted, enthusiastic,--and
+though not fitted, as it at first appeared, for the practical duties of
+a superintendent, yet even in this respect disappointing me entirely. He
+was an evangelist, also, and he preached with more unction than any
+other the gospel of freedom,--always, however, enforcing the duties of
+industry and self-restraint. He was never sad, but always buoyant and
+trustful. He and a comrade were the first to be separated from the
+company, while at Hilton Head, and before the rest went to
+Beaufort,--being assigned to Edisto, which had been occupied less than a
+month, and was a remote and exposed point; but he went fearlessly and
+without question. The evacuation of Edisto in July, the heat, and the
+labor involved in bringing away and settling his people at the village
+on St. Helena Island, a summer resort of the former residents, where
+were some fifty vacant houses, were too much for him. His excessive
+exertions brought on malarious fever. This produced an unnatural
+excitement, and at mid-day, under a hot sun, he rode about to attend to
+his people. He died,--men, women, and children, for whom he had toiled,
+filling the house with their sobs during his departing hours. His
+funeral was thronged by them, his coffin strewn with flowers which they
+and his comrades had plucked, and then his remains were borne to his
+native town, where burial-rites were again performed in the old church
+of Dorchester. Read his published journal, and find how a noble youth
+can live fourscore years in a little more than one score. One high
+privilege was accorded to him. He lived to hear of the immortal edict of
+the twenty-second of September, by which the freedom of his people was
+to be secured for all time to come.
+
+Samuel D. Phillips was a young man of much religions feeling, though he
+never advertised himself as having it, and a devout communicant of the
+Episcopal Church. He was a gentleman born and bred, inheriting the
+quality as well as adding to it by self-discipline. He had good
+business-capacity, never complained of inconveniences, was humane, yet
+not misled by sentiment, and he gave more of his time, otherwise
+unoccupied, to teaching than almost any other superintendent. I was
+recently asking the most advanced pupils of a school on St. Helena who
+first taught them their letters, and the frequent answer was, "Mr.
+Phillips." He was at home in the autumn for a vacation, was at the
+funeral of Barnard in Dorchester, and though at the time in imperfect
+health, he hastened back to his charge, feeling that the death of
+Barnard, whose district was the same as his own, rendered his immediate
+return necessary to the comfort of his people. He went,--but his health
+never came back to him. His quarters were in the same house where
+Barnard had died, and in a few days, on the 5th of December, he followed
+him. He was tended in his sickness by the negroes, and one day, having
+asked that his pillow might be turned, he uttered the words, "Thank
+God," and died. There was the same grief as at Barnard's death, the same
+funeral-rites at the St. Helena Church, and his remains were borne North
+to bereaved relatives.
+
+Daniel Bowe was an alumnus of Yale College, and a student of the Andover
+Theological Seminary, not yet graduated when he turned from his
+professional studies at the summons of Christian duty. He labored
+faithfully as a superintendent, looking after the physical, moral, and
+educational interests of his people. He had a difficult post, was
+overburdened with labor, and perhaps had not the faculty of taking as
+good care of himself as was even consistent with his duties. He came
+home in the summer, commended the enterprise and his people to the
+citizens and students of Andover, and returned. He afterwards fell ill,
+and, again coming North, died October 30th, a few days after reaching
+New York. The young woman who was betrothed to him, but whom he did not
+live to wed, has since his death sought this field of labor; and on my
+recent visit I found her upon the plantation where he had resided,
+teaching the children whom he had first taught, and whose parents he had
+guided to freedom. Truly, the age of Christian romance has not passed
+away!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the first of July, 1862, the administration of affairs at Port Royal
+having been transferred from the Treasury to the War Department, the
+charge of the freedmen passed into the hands of Brigadier-General Rufus
+Saxton, a native of Massachusetts, who in childhood had breathed the
+free air of the valley of the Connecticut, a man of sincere and humane
+nature; and under his wise and benevolent care they still remain. The
+Sea Islands, and also Fernandina and St. Augustine in Florida, are
+within our lines in the Department of the South, and some sixteen or
+eighteen thousand negroes are supposed to be under his jurisdiction.
+
+The negroes of the Sea Islands, when found by us, had become an abject
+race, more docile and submissive than those of any other locality. The
+native African was of a fierce and mettlesome temper, sullen and
+untamable. The master was obliged to abate something of the usual rigor
+in dealing with the imported slaves. A tax-commissioner, now at Port
+Royal, and formerly a resident of South Carolina, told me that a native
+African belonging to his father, though a faithful man, would
+perpetually insist on doing his work in his own way, and being asked the
+threatening question, "A'n't you going to mind?" would answer, with
+spirit, "No, a'n't gwine to!" and the master desisted! Severe discipline
+drove the natives to the wilderness, or involved a mutilation of person
+which destroyed their value for proprietary purposes. In 1816, eight
+hundred of these refugees were living free in the swamps and everglades
+of Florida. There the ancestors of some of them had lived ever since the
+early part of the eighteenth century, rearing families, carrying on
+farms, and raising cattle. They had two hundred and fifty men fit to
+bear arms, led by chiefs brave and skilful. The story of the Exiles of
+Florida is one of painful interest. The testimony of officers of the
+army who served against them is, that they were more dangerous enemies
+than the Indians, fighting the most skilfully and standing the longest.
+The tax-commissioner before referred to, who was a resident of
+Charleston during the trial and execution of the confederates of Denmark
+Vesey, relates that one of the native Africans, when called to answer to
+the charge against him, haughtily responded,--"_I was a prince in my
+country, and have as much right to be free as you!_" The Carolinians
+were so awe-struck by his defiance that they transported him. Another,
+at the execution, turned indignantly to a comrade about to speak, and
+said, "_Die silent, as I do!_" and the man hushed. The early newspapers
+of Georgia recount the disturbances on the plantations occasioned by
+these native Africans, and even by their children, being not until the
+third generation reduced to obedient slaves.
+
+Nowhere has the deterioration of the negroes from their native manhood
+been carried so far as on these Sea Islands,--a deterioration due to
+their isolation from the excitements of more populous districts, the
+constant surveillance of the overseers, and their intermarriage with
+each other, involving a physical degeneracy with which inexorable Nature
+punishes disobedience to her laws. The population with its natural
+increase was sufficient for the cultivation of the soil under existing
+modes, and therefore no fresh blood was admitted, such as is found
+pouring from the Border States into the sugar and cotton regions of the
+Southwest. This unmanning and depravation of the native character had
+been carried so far, that the special agent, on his first exploration,
+in January, 1862, was obliged to confess the existence of a general
+disinclination to military service on the part of the negroes; though it
+is true that even then instances of courage and adventure appeared,
+which indicated that the more manly feeling was only latent, to be
+developed under the inspiration of events. And so, let us rejoice, it
+has been. You may think yourself wise, as you note the docility of a
+subject race; but in vain will you attempt to study it until the burden
+is lifted. The slave is unknown to all, even to himself, while the
+bondage lasts. Nature is ever a kind mother. She soothes us with her
+deceits, not in surgery alone, when the sufferer, else writhing in pain,
+is transported with the sweet delirium, but she withholds from the
+spirit the sight of her divinity until her opportunity has come. Not
+even Tocqueville or Olmsted, much less the master, can measure the
+capacities and possibilities of the slave, until the slave himself is
+transmuted to a man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My recent visit to Port Royal extended from March 25th to May 10th. It
+was pleasant to meet the first colonists, who still toiled at their
+posts, and specially grateful to receive the welcome of the freedmen,
+and to note the progress they had made. There were interesting scenes to
+fill the days. I saw an aged negro, Cæsar by name, not less than one
+hundred years old, who had left children in Africa, when stolen away.
+The vicissitudes of such a life were striking,--a free savage in the
+wilds of his native land, a prisoner on a slave-ship, then for long
+years a toiling slave, now again a freeman under the benign edict of the
+President,--his life covering an historic century. A faithful and
+industrious negro, Old Simon, as we called him, hearing of my arrival,
+rode over to see me, and brought me a present of two or three quarts of
+pea-nuts and some seventeen eggs. I had an interview with Don Carlos,
+whom I had seen in May, 1862, at Edisto, the faithful attendant upon
+Barnard, and who had been both with him and Phillips during their last
+hours,--now not less than seventy years of age, and early in life a
+slave in the Alston family, where he had known Theodosia Burr, the
+daughter of Aaron Burr, and wife of Governor Alston. He talked
+intelligently upon her personal history and her mysterious fate. He had
+known John Pierpont, when a teacher in the family of Colonel Alston, and
+accompanying the sons on their way North to college after the completion
+of their preparatory studies. Pierpont was a classmate of John C.
+Calhoum at Yale College, and, upon graduating, went South as a private
+tutor.
+
+Aunt Phillis was not likely to be overlooked,--an old woman, with much
+power of expression, living on the plantation where my quarters had
+formerly been. The attack on Charleston was going on, and she said, "If
+you're as long beating Secesh everywhere as you have been in taking the
+town, guess it'll take you some time!" Indeed, the negroes had somewhat
+less confidence in our power than at first, on account of our not having
+followed up the capture of Bay Point and Hilton Head. The same quaint
+old creature, speaking of the disregard of the masters for the feelings
+of the slaves, said, with much emphasis, "They thought God was dead!"
+
+I visited Barnwell Island, the only plantation upon which is that of
+Trescot, formerly Secretary of Legation at London, a visit to whom
+Russell describes in his "Diary." But the mansion is not now as when
+Russell saw it. Its large library is deposited in the Smithsonian
+Institution at Washington. Its spacious rooms in the first and second
+stories, together with the attics, are all filled with the families of
+negro refugees. From this point, looking across the water, we could see
+a cavalry-picket of the Rebels. The superintendent who had charge of the
+plantation, and accompanied me, was Charles Follen, an inherited name,
+linked with the struggles for freedom in both hemispheres.
+
+The negro graveyards occasionally attracted me from the road. They are
+usually in an open field, under a clump of some dozen or twenty trees,
+perhaps live-oaks, and not fenced. There may be fifty or a hundred
+graves, marked only by sticks eighteen inches or two feet high and about
+as large as the wrist. Mr. Olmsted saw some stones in a negro graveyard
+at Savannah, erected by the slaves, and bearing rather illiterate
+inscriptions; but I never succeeded in finding any but wooden memorials,
+not even at Beaufort. Only in one case could I find an inscription, and
+that was in a burial-place on Ladies Island. There was a board at the
+head of the grave, shaped something like an ordinary gravestone, about
+three feet high and six inches wide. The inscription was as follows:--
+
+  OLd Jiw
+  de PArt his
+  Life on the
+  2 of WAY
+  Re st frow
+  LAuer
+
+On the foot-board were these words:--
+
+  We ll
+  d OW N.
+
+The rude artist was Kit, the son of the old man. He can read, and also
+write a little, and, like his deceased father, is a negro preacher. He
+said that he used to carry his father in his arms in his old age,--that
+the old man had no pain, and, as the son expressed it, "sunk in years."
+I inquired of Kit concerning several of the graves; and I found, by his
+intelligent answers, that their tenants were disposed in families and
+were known. These lowly burial-places, for which art has done nothing,
+are not without a fascination, and in some hours of life they take a
+faster hold on the sentiments than more imposing cemeteries, adorned
+with shafts of marble and granite, and rich in illustrious dead.
+
+There were some superstitions among the people, perhaps of African
+origin, which the teachers had detected, such as a belief in hags as
+evil spirits, and in a kind of witchcraft which only certain persons can
+cure. They have a superstition, that, when you take up and remove a
+sleeping child, you must call its spirit, else it will cry, on awaking,
+until you have taken it back to the same place and invoked its spirit.
+They believe that turning an alligator on his back will bring rain; and
+they will not talk about one when in a boat, lest a storm should thereby
+be brought on.
+
+But the features in the present condition of the freedmen bearing
+directly on the solution of the social problem deserve most
+consideration.
+
+And, first, as to _education_. There are more than thirty schools in the
+territory, conducted by as many as forty or forty-five teachers, who are
+commissioned by the three associations in Boston, New York, and
+Philadelphia, and by the American Missionary Association. They have an
+average attendance of two thousand pupils, and are more or less
+frequented by an additional thousand. The ages of the scholars range in
+the main from eight to twelve years. They did not know even their
+letters prior to a year ago last March, except those who were being
+taught in the single school at Beaufort already referred to, which had
+been going on for a few weeks. Very many did not have the opportunity
+for instruction till weeks and even months after. During the spring and
+summer of 1862 there were not more than a dozen schools, and these were
+much interrupted by the heat, and by the necessity of assigning at times
+some of the teachers to act as superintendents. Teachers came for a
+brief time, and upon its expiration, or for other cause, returned home,
+leaving the schools to be broken up. It was not until October or
+November that the educational arrangements were put into much shape; and
+they are still but imperfectly organized. In some localities there is as
+yet no teacher, and this because the associations have not had the funds
+wherewith to provide one.
+
+I visited ten of the schools, and conversed with the teachers of others.
+There were, it may be noted, some mixed bloods in the schools of the
+town of Beaufort,--ten in a school of ninety, thirteen in another of
+sixty-four, and twenty in another of seventy. In the schools on the
+plantations there were never more than half a dozen in one school, in
+some cases but two or three, and in others none.
+
+The advanced classes were reading simple stories and didactic passages
+in the ordinary school-books, as Hillard's Second Primary Reader,
+Willson's Second Reader, and others of similar grade. Those who had
+enjoyed a briefer period of instruction were reading short sentences or
+learning the alphabet. In several of this schools a class was engaged on
+an elementary lesson in arithmetic, geography, or writing. The eagerness
+for knowledge and the facility of acquisition displayed in the beginning
+had not abated.
+
+On the 25th of March I visited a school at the Central Baptist Church on
+St. Helena Island, built in 1855, shaded by lofty live-oak trees, with
+the long, pendulous moss everywhere hanging from their wide-spreading
+branches, and surrounded by the gravestones of the former proprietors,
+which bear the ever-recurring names of Fripp and Chaplin. This school
+was opened in September last, but many of the pupils had received some
+instruction before. One hundred and thirty-one children were present on
+my first visit, and one hundred and forty-five on my second, which was a
+few days later. Like most of the schools on the plantations, it opened
+at noon and closed at three o'clock, leaving the forenoon for the
+children to work in the field or perform other service in which they
+could be useful. One class, of twelve pupils, read page 70th in
+Willson's Reader, on "Going Away." They had not read the passage before,
+and they went through it with little spelling or hesitation. They had
+recited the first thirty pages of Towle's Speller, and the
+multiplication-table as high as fives, and were commencing the sixes. A
+few of the scholars, the youngest, or those who had come latest to the
+school, were learning the alphabet. At the close of the school, they
+recited in concert the Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd," requiring
+prompting at the beginning of some of the verses. They sang with much
+spirit hymns which had been taught them by the teachers, as,--
+
+  "My country, 'tis of thee,
+  Sweet land of liberty";
+
+also,--
+
+  "Sound the loud timbrel";
+
+also, Whittier's new song, written expressly for this school, the
+closing stanzas of which are,--
+
+  "The very oaks are greener clad,
+    The waters brighter smile;
+  Oh, never shone a day so glad
+    On sweet St. Helen's Isle!
+
+  "For none in all the world before
+    Were ever glad as we,--
+  We're free on Carolina's shore,
+    We're all at home and free!"
+
+Never has that pure Muse, which has sung only of truth and right, as the
+highest beauty and noblest art, been consecrated to a better service
+than to write the songs of praise for these little children, chattels no
+longer, whom the Saviour, were he now to walk on earth, would bless as
+his own.
+
+The prevalent song, however, heard in every school, in church, and by
+the way-side, is that of "John Brown," which very much amuses our white
+soldiers, particularly when the singers roll out,--
+
+  "We'll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree!"
+
+The children also sang their own songs, as,--
+
+  "In de morning' when I rise,
+    Tell my Jesus. Huddy oh?[A]
+  In de mornin' when I rise,
+    Tell my Jesus, Huddy oh?
+
+  "I wash my hands in de mornin' glory,
+    Tell my Jesus, Huddy oh?
+  I wash my hands in de mornin' glory,
+    Tell my Jesus, Huddy oh?
+
+  "Pray, Tony, pray, boy, you got de order,
+    Tell my Jesus, Huddy oh?
+  Pray, Tony, pray, boy, you got de order,
+    Tell my Jesus, Huddy oh?
+
+  "Pray, Rosy, pray, gal," etc.
+
+[Footnote A: How d' y' do?]
+
+Also,--
+
+  "I would not let you go, my Lord,
+    I would not let you go,
+  I would not let you go, my Lord,
+    I would not let you go.
+
+  "Dere's room enough, dere's room enough,
+    Dere's room enough in de heab'nly groun',
+  Dere's room enough, dere's room enough,
+      I can't stay behin'.
+
+  "I can't stay behin', my Lord,
+    I can't stay behin',
+  I can't stay behin', my Lord,
+    I can't stay behin'.
+
+  "De angels march all roun' de trone,
+  De angels march all roun' de trone,
+  De angels march all roun' de trone,
+      I can't stay behin'.
+
+  "I can't stay behin', my Lord.
+    I can't stay behin',
+  I can't stay behin', my Lord,
+    I can't stay behin'.
+
+  "Dere's room enough," etc.
+
+Other songs of the negroes are common, as, "The Wrestling Jacob," "Down
+in the lonesome valley," "Roll, Jordan, roll," "Heab'n shall-a be my
+home." Russell's "Diary" gives an account of these songs, as he heard
+them in his evening row over Broad River, on his way to Trescot's
+estate.
+
+One of the teachers of this school is an accomplished woman from
+Philadelphia. Another is from Newport, Rhode Island, where she had
+prepared herself for this work by benevolent labors in teaching poor
+children. The third is a young woman of African descent, of olive
+complexion, finely cultured, and attuned to all beautiful sympathies, of
+gentle address, and, what was specially noticeable, not possessed with
+an overwrought consciousness of her race. She had read the best books,
+and naturally and gracefully enriched her conversation with them. She
+had enjoyed the friendship of Whittier; had been a pupil in the
+Grammar-School of Salem, then in the State Normal School in that city,
+then a teacher in one of the schools for white children, where she had
+received only the kindest treatment both from the pupils and their
+parents,--and let this be spoken to the honor of that ancient town. She
+had refused a residence in Europe, where a better social life and less
+unpleasant discrimination awaited her, for she would not dissever
+herself from the fortunes of her people; and now, not with a superficial
+sentiment, but with a profound purpose, she devotes herself to their
+elevation.
+
+At Coffin Point, on St. Helena Island, I visited a school kept by a
+young woman from the town of Milton, Massachusetts, "the child of
+parents passed into the skies," whose lives have both been written for
+the edification of the Christian world. She teaches two schools, at
+different hours in the afternoon, and with different scholars in each.
+One class had read through Hillard's Second Primary Reader, and were on
+a review, reading Lessons 19, 20, and 21, while I was present. Being
+questioned as to the subjects of the lessons, they answered
+intelligently. They recited the twos of the multiplication-table,
+explained numeral letters and figures on the blackboard, and wrote
+letters and figures on slates. Another teacher in the adjoining
+district, a graduate of Harvard, and the son of a well-known Unitarian
+clergyman of Providence, Rhode Island, has two schools, in one of which
+a class of three pupils was about finishing Ellsworth's First
+Progressive Reader, and another, of seven pupils, had just finished
+Hillard's Second Primary Header. Another teacher, from Cambridge,
+Massachusetts, on the same island, numbers one hundred pupils in his two
+schools. He exercises a class in elocution, requiring the same sentence
+to be repeated with different tones and inflections, and one could not
+but remark the excellent imitations.
+
+In a school at St. Helena village, where were collected the Edisto
+refugees, ninety-two pupils were present as I went in. Two ladies were
+engaged in teaching, assisted by Ned Loyd White, a colored man, who had
+picked up clandestinely a knowledge of reading while still a slave. One
+class of boys and another of girls read in the seventh chapter of St.
+John, having begun this Gospel and gone thus far. They stumbled a little
+on words like "unrighteousness" and "circumcision"; otherwise they got
+along very well. When the Edisto refugees were brought here, in July,
+1862, Ned, who is about forty or forty-five years old, and Uncle Cyrus,
+a man of seventy, who also could read, gathered one hundred and fifty
+children into two schools, and taught them as best they could for five
+months until teachers were provided by the societies. Ned has since
+received a donation from one of the societies, and is now regularly
+employed on a salary. A woman comes to one of the teachers of this
+school for instruction in the evening, after she has put her children to
+bed. She had become interested in learning by hearing her younger sister
+read when she came home from school; and when she asked to be taught,
+she had learned from this sister the alphabet and some words of one
+syllable. Only a small proportion of the adults are, however, learning.
+
+On the 8th of April, I visited a school on Ladies Island, kept in a
+small church on the Eustis estate, and taught by a young woman from
+Kingston, Massachusetts. She had manifested much persistence in going to
+this field, went with the first delegation, and still keeps the school
+which she opened in March, 1862. She taught the pupils their letters.
+Sixty-six were present on the day of my visit. A class of ten pupils
+read the story which commences on page 86th of Hillard's Second Primary
+Reader. One girl, Elsie, a full black, and rather ungainly withal, read
+so rapidly that she had to be checked,--the only case of such fast
+reading that I found. She assisted the teacher by taking the beginners
+to a corner of the room and exercising them upon an alphabet card,
+requiring them to give the names of letters taken out of their regular
+order, and with the letters making words, which they were expected to
+repeat after her. One class recited in Eaton's First Lessons in
+Arithmetic; and two or three scholars with a rod pointed out the states,
+lakes, and large rivers on the map of the United States, and also the
+different continents on the map of the world, as they were called. I saw
+the teacher of this school at her residence, late in the afternoon,
+giving familiar instruction to some ten boys and girls, all but two
+being under twelve years, who read the twenty-first chapter of the Book
+of Revelation, and the story of Lazarus in the eleventh chapter of St.
+John. Elsie was one of these. Seeing me taking notes, she looked archly
+at the teacher, and whispered,--"he's putting me in the book"; and as
+Elsie guessed, so I do. The teacher was instructing her pupils in some
+dates and facts which have had much to do with our history. The
+questions and answers, in which all the pupils joined, were these:--
+
+"Where were slaves first brought to this country?"
+
+"Virginia."
+
+"When?"
+
+"1620."
+
+"Who brought them?"
+
+"Dutchmen."
+
+"Who came the same year to Plymouth, Massachusetts?"
+
+"Pilgrims."
+
+"Did they bring slaves?"
+
+"No."
+
+A teacher in Beaufort put these questions, to which answers were given
+in a loud tone by the whole school:--
+
+"What country do you live in?"
+
+"United States."
+
+"What State?"
+
+"South Carolina."
+
+"What island?"
+
+"Port Royal."
+
+"What town?"
+
+"Beaufort."
+
+"Who is your Governor?"
+
+"General Saxton."
+
+"Who is your President?"
+
+"Abraham Lincoln."
+
+"What has he done for you?"
+
+"He's freed us."
+
+There were four schools in the town of Beaufort, all of which I visited,
+each having an average attendance of from sixty to ninety pupils, and
+each provided with two teachers. In some of them writing was taught. But
+it is unnecessary to describe them, as they were very much like the
+others. There is, besides, at Beaufort an industrial school, which meets
+two afternoons in a week, and is conducted by a lady from New York, with
+some dozen ladies to assist her. There were present, the afternoon I
+visited it, one hundred and thirteen girls from six to twenty years of
+age, all plying the needle, some with pieces of patchwork, and others
+with aprons, pillow-cases, or handkerchiefs.
+
+Though I have never been on the school-committee, I accepted invitations
+to address the schools on these visits, and particularly plied the
+pupils with questions, so as to catch the tone of their minds; and I
+have rarely heard children answer with more readiness and spirit. We had
+a dialogue substantially as follows:--
+
+"Children, what are you going to do when you grow up?"
+
+"Going to work, Sir."
+
+"On what?"
+
+"Cotton and corn, Sir."
+
+"What are you going to do with the corn?"
+
+"Eat it."
+
+"What are you going to do with the cotton?"
+
+"Sell it."
+
+"What are you going to do with the money you get for it?"
+
+One boy answered in advance of the rest,--
+
+"Put it in my pocket, Sir."
+
+"That won't do. What's better than that?"
+
+"Buy clothes, Sir."
+
+"What else will you buy?"
+
+"Shoes, Sir."
+
+"What else are you going to do with your money?"
+
+There was some hesitation at this point. Then the question was put,--
+
+"What are you going to do Sundays?"
+
+"Going to meeting."
+
+"What are you going to do there?"
+
+"Going to sing."
+
+"What else?"
+
+"Hear the parson."
+
+"Who's going to pay him?"
+
+One boy said,--"Government pays him"; but the rest answered,--
+
+"We's pays him."
+
+"Well, when you grow up, you'll probably get married, as other people
+do, and you'll have your little children; now, what will you do with
+them?"
+
+There was a titter at this question; but the general response came,--
+
+"Send 'em to school, Sir."
+
+"Well, who'll pay the teacher?"
+
+"We's pays him."
+
+One who listens to such answers can hardly think that there is any
+natural incapacity in these children to acquire with maturity of years
+the ideas and habits of good citizens.
+
+The children are cheerful, and, in most of the schools, well-behaved,
+except that it is not easy to keep them from whispering and talking.
+They are joyous, and you can see the boys after school playing the
+soldier, with corn-stalks for guns. The memory is very susceptible in
+them,--too much so, perhaps, as it is ahead of the reasoning faculty.
+
+The labor of the season has interrupted attendance on the schools, the
+parents being desirous of having the children aid them in planting and
+cultivating their crops, and it not being thought best to allow the
+teaching to interfere in any way with industrious habits.
+
+A few freedmen, who had picked up an imperfect knowledge of reading,
+have assisted our teachers, though a want of proper training materially
+detracts from their usefulness in this respect. Ned and Uncle Cyrus have
+already been mentioned. The latter, a man of earnest piety, has died
+since my visit. Anthony kept four schools on Hilton Head Island last
+summer and autumn, being paid at first by the superintendents, and
+afterwards by the negroes themselves; but in November he enlisted in the
+negro regiment. Hettie was another of these. She assisted Barnard at
+Edisto last spring, continued to teach after the Edisto people were
+brought to St. Helena village, and one day brought some of her pupils to
+the school at the Baptist Church, saying to the teachers there that she
+could carry them no farther. They could read their letters and words of
+one syllable. Hettie had belonged to a planter on Wadmelaw Island, a
+kind old gentleman, a native of Rhode Island, and about the only citizen
+of Charleston who, when Samuel Hoar went on his mission to South
+Carolina, stood up boldly for his official and personal protection.
+Hettie had been taught to read by his daughter; and let this be
+remembered to the honor of the young woman.
+
+Such are the general features of the schools as they met my eye. The
+most advanced classes, and these are but little ahead of the rest, can
+read simple stories and the plainer passages of Scripture; and they
+could even pursue self-instruction, if the schools were to be suspended.
+The knowledge they have thus gained can never be extirpated. They could
+read with much profit a newspaper specially prepared for them and
+adapted to their condition. They are learning that the world is not
+bounded north by Charleston, south by Savannah, west by Columbia, and
+east by the sea, with dim visions of New York on this planet or some
+other,--about their conception of geography when we found them. They are
+acquiring the knowledge of figures with which to do the business of
+life. They are singing the songs of freemen. Visit their schools;
+remember that a little more than a twelve-month ago they knew not a
+letter, and that for generations it has been a crime to teach their
+race; then contemplate what is now transpiring, and you have a scene
+which prophets and sages would have delighted to witness. It will be
+difficult to find equal progress in an equal period since the morning
+rays of Christian truth first lighted the hill-sides of Judea. I have
+never looked on St. Peter's, or beheld the glories of art which Michel
+Angelo has wrought or traced; but to my mind the spectacle of those poor
+souls struggling in darkness and bewilderment to catch the gleams of the
+upper and better light transcends in moral grandeur anything that has
+ever come from mortal hands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next as to _industry_. The laborers, during their first year under the
+new system, have acquired the idea of ownership, and of the security of
+wages, and have come to see that labor and slavery are not the same
+thing. The notion that they were to raise no more cotton has passed
+away, since work upon it is found to be remunerative, and connected with
+the proprietorship of land. House-servants, who were at first
+particularly set against it, now generally prefer it. The laborers have
+collected the pieces of the gins which they destroyed on the flight of
+their masters, the ginning being obnoxious work, repaired them, and
+ginned the cotton on the promise of wages. Except upon plantations in
+the vicinity of camps, where other labor is more immediately
+remunerative, and an unhealthy excitement prevails, there is a general
+disposition to cultivate it. The culture of the cotton is voluntary, the
+only penalty for not engaging in it being the imposition of a rent for
+the tenement and land adjacent thereto occupied by the negro, not
+exceeding two dollars per month. Both the Government and private
+individuals, who have become owners of one-fourth of the land by the
+recent tax-sales, pay twenty-five cents for a standard day's-work, which
+may, by beginning early, be performed by a healthy and active hand by
+noon; and the same was the case with the tasks under the slave-system on
+very many of the plantations. As I was riding through one of Mr.
+Philbrick's fields one morning, I counted fifty persons at work who
+belonged to one plantation. This gentleman, who went out with the first
+delegation, and at the same time gave largely to the benevolent
+contributions for the enterprise, was the leading purchaser at the
+tax-sales, and combining a fine humanity with honest sagacity and close
+calculation, no man is so well fitted to try the experiment. He bought
+thirteen plantations, and on these has had planted and cultivated eight
+hundred and sixteen acres of cotton where four hundred and ninety-nine
+and one twelve-hundredth acres were cultivated last year,--a larger
+increase, however, than will generally be found in other districts, due
+mainly to prompter payments. The general superintendent of Port Royal
+Wand said to me,--"We have to restrain rather than to encourage the
+negroes to take land for cotton." The general superintendent of Hilton
+Head Island said, that on that island the negroes had, besides adequate
+corn, taken two, three, and in a few cases four acres of cotton to a
+hand, and there was a general disposition to cultivate it, except near
+the camps. A superintendent on St. Helena Island said, that, if he were
+going to carry on any work, he should not want bettor laborers. He had
+charge of the refugees from Edisto, who had been brought to St. Helena
+village, and who had cleared and fenced patches for gardens, felling the
+trees for that purpose.
+
+The laborers do less work, perhaps, than a Yankee would think they might
+do; but they do about as much as he himself would do, after a residence
+of a few years in the same climate, and when he had ceased to work under
+the influence of Northern habits. Northern men have sometimes been
+unjust to the South, when comparing the results of labor in the
+different sections. God never intended that a man should toil under a
+tropical sun with the same energy and constancy as in our bracing
+latitude. There has been less complaint this year than last of "a pain
+in the small of the back," or of "a fever in the head,"--in other words,
+less _shamming_. The work has been greatly deranged by the draft, some
+features of which have not been very skilfully arranged, and by the
+fitfulness with which the laborers have been treated by the military
+authorities. The work both upon the cotton and the corn is done only by
+the women, children, and disabled men. It has been suggested that
+field-work does not become women in the new condition; and so it may
+seem to some persons of just sympathies who have not yet learned that no
+honest work is dishonorable in man or woman. But this matter may be left
+to regulate itself. Field-work, as an occupation, may not be consistent
+with the finest feminine culture or the most complete womanliness; but
+it in no way conflicts with virtue, self-respect, and social
+development. Women work in the field in Switzerland, the freest country
+of Europe; and we may look with pride on the triumphs of this
+generation, when the American negroes become the peers of the Swiss
+peasantry. Better a woman with the hoe than without it, when she is not
+yet fitted for the needle or the book.
+
+The negroes were also showing their capacity to organize labor and apply
+capital to it. Harry, to whom I referred in my second report, as "my
+faithful guide and attendant, who had done for me more service than any
+white man could render," with funds of his own, and some borrowed money,
+bought at the recent tax-sales a small farm of three hundred and
+thirteen acres for three hundred and five dollars. He was to plant
+sixteen and a half acres of cotton, twelve and a half of corn, and one
+and a half of potatoes. I rode through his farm on the 10th of April, my
+last day in the territory, and one-third of his crop was then in.
+Besides some servant's duty to an officer, for which he is well paid, he
+does the work of a full hand on his place. He hires one woman and two
+men, one of the latter being old and only a three-quarters hand. He has
+two daughters, sixteen and seventeen years of age, one of whom is
+likewise only a three-quarters hand. His wife works also, of whom he
+said, "She's the best hand I got"; and if Celia is only as smart with
+her hoe as I know her to be with her tongue, Harry's estimate must be
+right. He has a horse twenty-five years old and blind in both eyes, whom
+he guides with a rope,--carrying on farming, I thought, somewhat under
+difficulties. Harry lives in the house of the former overseer, and
+delights, though not boastingly, in his position as a landed proprietor.
+He has promised to write me, or rather dictate a letter, giving an
+account of the progress of his crop. He has had much charge of
+Government property, and when Captain Hooper, of General Saxton's staff,
+was coming North last autumn, Harry proposed to accompany him; but at
+last, of his own accord, gave up the project, saying, "It'll not do for
+all two to leave together."
+
+Another case of capacity for organization should be noted. The
+Government is building twenty-one houses for the Edisto people, eighteen
+feet by fourteen, with two rooms, each provided with a swinging
+board-window, and the roof projecting a little as a protection from
+rain. The journey-carpenters are seventeen colored men, who have fifty
+cents per day without rations, working ten hours. They are under the
+direction of Frank Barnwell, a freedman, who receives twenty dollars a
+month. Rarely have I talked with a more intelligent contractor. It was
+my great regret that I had not time to visit the village of improved
+houses near the Hilton Head camp, which General Mitchell had
+extemporized, and to which he gave so much of the noble enthusiasm of
+his last days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next as to the _development of manhood_. This has been shown, in the
+first place, in the prevalent disposition to acquire land. It did not
+appear upon our first introduction to these people, and they did not
+seem to understand us when we used to tell them that we wanted them to
+own land. But it is now an active desire. At the recent tax-sales, six
+out of forty-seven plantations sold were bought by them, comprising two
+thousand five hundred and ninety-five acres, sold for twenty-one hundred
+and forty-five dollars. In other cases the negroes had authorized the
+superintendent to bid for them, but the land was reserved by the United
+States. One of the purchases was that made by Harry, noted above. The
+other five were made by the negroes on the plantations combining the
+funds they had saved from the sale of their pigs, chickens, and eggs,
+and from the payments made to them for work,--they then dividing off the
+tract peaceably among themselves. On one of these, where Kit, before
+mentioned, is the leading spirit, there are twenty-three field-hands,
+who are equivalent to eighteen full hands. They have planted and are
+cultivating sixty-three acres of cotton, fifty of corn, six of potatoes,
+with as many more to be planted, four and a half of cow-peas, three of
+pea-nuts, and one and a half of rice. These facts are most significant.
+The instinct for land--to have one spot on earth where a man may stand,
+and whence no human being can of right drive him--is one of the most
+conservative elements of our nature; and a people who have it in any
+fair degree will never be nomads or vagabonds.
+
+This developing manhood is further seen in their growing consciousness
+of rights, and their readiness to defend themselves, even when assailed
+by white men. The former slaves of a planter, now at Beaufort, who was a
+resident of New York when the war broke out, have generally left the
+plantation, suspicious of his presence, saying that they will not be his
+bondmen, and fearing that in some way he may hold them, if they remain
+on it. A remarkable case of the assertion of rights occurred one day
+during my visit. Two white soldiers, with a corporal, went on Sunday to
+Coosaw Island, where one of the soldiers, having a gun, shot a chicken
+belonging to a negro. The negroes rushed out and wrested the gun from
+the corporal, to whom the soldier had handed it, thinking that the
+negroes would not take it from an officer. They then carried it to the
+superintendent, who took it to head-quarters, where an order was given
+for the arrest of the trespasser. Other instances might be added, but
+these are sufficient.
+
+Another evidence of developing manhood appears in their desire for the
+comforts and conveniences of household life. The Philadelphia society,
+for the purpose of maintaining reasonable prices, has a store on St.
+Helena Island, which is under the charge of Friend Hunn, of the good
+fellowship of William Penn. He was once fined in Delaware three thousand
+dollars for harboring and assisting fugitive slaves; but he now harbors
+and assists them at a much cheaper rate. Though belonging to a society
+which is the advocate of peace, his tone is quite as warlike as that of
+the world's people. In this store alone--and there are others on the
+island, carried on by private enterprise--two thousand dollars' worth of
+goods are sold monthly. To be sure, a rather large proportion of these
+consists of molasses and sugar, "sweetening," as the negroes call it,
+being in great demand, and four barrels of molasses having been sold the
+day of my visit. But there is also a great demand for plates, knives,
+forks, tin ware, and better clothing, including even hoop-skirts.
+Negro-cloth, as it is called, osnaburgs, russet-colored shoes,--in
+short, the distinctive apparel formerly dealt out to them, as a uniform
+allowance,--are very generally rejected. But there is no article of
+household-furniture or wearing apparel, used by persons of moderate
+means among us, which they will not purchase, when they are allowed the
+opportunity of labor and earning wages. What a market the South would
+open under the new system! It would set all the mills and workshops
+astir. Four millions of people would become purchasers of all the
+various articles of manufacture and commerce, in place of the few
+coarse, simple necessaries, laid in for them in gross by the planters.
+Here is the solution of the vexed industrial question. The indisposition
+to labor is overcome in a healthy nature by instincts and motives of
+superior force, such as the love of life, the desire to be well clothed
+and fed, the sense of security derived from provision for the future,
+the feeling of self-respect, the love of family and children, and the
+convictions of duty. These all exist in the negro, in a state of greater
+or less development. To give one or two examples. One man brought
+Captain Hooper seventy dollars in silver, to keep for him, which he had
+obtained from selling pigs and chickens,--thus providing for the future.
+Soldiers of Colonel Higginson's regiment, having confidence in the same
+officer, intrusted him, when they were paid off, with seven hundred
+dollars, to be transmitted by him to their wives, and this besides what
+they had sent home in other ways,--showing the family-feeling to be
+active and strong in them. They have also the social and religious
+inspirations to labor. Thus, early in our occupation of Hilton Head,
+they took up, of their own accord, a collection to pay for the candles
+for their evening meetings, feeling that it was not right for the
+Government longer to provide them. The result was a contribution of two
+dollars and forty-eight cents. They had just fled from their masters,
+and had received only a small pittance of wages, and this little sum was
+not unlike the two mites which the widow cast into the treasury. Another
+collection was taken, last June, in the church on St. Helena Island,
+upon the suggestion of the pastor that they should share in the expenses
+of worship. Fifty-two dollars was the result,--not a bad collection for
+some of our Northern churches. I have seen these people where they are
+said to be lowest, and sad indeed are some features of their lot, yet
+with all earnestness and confidence I enter my protest against the
+wicked satire of Carlyle.
+
+Is there not here some solution of the question of prejudice or caste
+which has troubled so many good minds? When these people can no longer
+be used as slaves, men will try to see how they can make the most out of
+them as freemen. Your Irishman, who now works as a day-laborer, honestly
+thinks that he hates the negro; but when the war is over, he will have
+no objection to going South and selling him groceries and
+household-implements at fifty per cent. advance on New-York prices, or
+to hiring him to raise cotton for twenty-five or fifty cents a day. Our
+prejudices, under any reasonable adjustment of the social system,
+readily accommodate themselves to our interests, even without much aid
+from the moral sentiments.
+
+Let those who would study well this social question, or who in public
+trusts are charged with its solution, be most careful here. Every motive
+in the minds of these people, whether of instinct, desire, or duty, must
+be addressed. All the elements of human nature must be appealed to,
+physical, moral, intellectual, social, and religious. Imperfect indeed
+is any system which, like that at New Orleans, offers wages, but does
+not welcome the teacher. It is of little moment whether three dollars or
+thirty per month be paid the laborer, so long as there is no school to
+bind both parent and child to civil society with new hopes and duties.
+
+There are some vices charged upon these people, or a portion of them,
+and truth requires that nothing be withheld. There is said to be a good
+deal of petty pilfering among them, although they are faithful to
+trusts. This is the natural growth of the old system, and is quite
+likely to accompany the transition-state. Besides, the present
+disturbed and unorganized condition of things is not favorable to the
+rigid virtues. But inferences from this must not be pressed too far.
+When I was a private soldier in Virginia, as one of a three-months'
+regiment, we used to bide from each other our little comforts and
+delicacies, even our dishes and clothing, or they were sure to
+disappear. But we should have ridiculed an adventurous thinker upon the
+characteristics of races and classes, who should have leaped therefrom
+to the conclusion that all white men or all soldiers are thieves. And
+what inferences might not one draw, discreditable to all traders and
+manufacturers, from the universal adulteration of articles of food!
+These people, it is said, are disposed to falsehood in order to get
+rations and small benefits,--a natural vice which comes with slavery,
+and too often attends on poverty without slavery. Those of most
+demonstrative piety are rarely better than the rest, not, indeed,
+hypocritical, but satisfying their consciences by self-depreciation and
+indulgence in emotion,--psychological manifestations which one may find
+in more advanced communities. They show no special gratitude to us for
+liberating them from bonds. Nor do they ordinarily display much
+exhilaration over their new condition,--being quite unlike the Italian
+revolutionist who used to put on his toga, walk in the forum, and
+personate Brutus and Cassius. Their appreciation of their better lot is
+chiefly seen in their dread of a return of their masters, in their
+excitement when an attack is feared, in their anxious questionings while
+the assault on Charleston was going on, and in their desire to get their
+friends and relatives away from the Rebels,--an appreciation of freedom,
+if not ostentatious, at least sensible.
+
+But away with such frivolous modes of dealing with the rights of races
+to self-development! Because Englishmen may be classified as hard and
+conceited, Frenchmen as capricious, Austrians as dull, and the people of
+one other nation are sometimes thought to be vainglorious, shall these
+therefore be slaves? And where is that model race which shall sway them
+all? A people may have grave defects, but it may not therefore be
+rightfully disabled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During my recent visit, I had an opportunity, on three different
+occasions, to note carefully Colonel T.W. Higginson's colored regiment,
+known as the First Regiment of South-Carolina Volunteers. Major-General
+Hunter's first regiment was mainly made up of conscripts, drafted May
+12th, 1862, and disbanded August 11th, three months afterwards, there
+being no funds wherewith to pay them, and the discharged men going home
+to find the cotton and corn they had planted overgrown with weeds. On
+the 10th of October, General Saxton, being provided with competent
+authority to raise five thousand colored troops, began to recruit a
+regiment. His authority from the War Department bore date August 25th,
+and the order conferring it states the object to be "to guard the
+plantations, and protect the inhabitants from captivity and murder."
+This was the first clear authority ever given by the Government to raise
+a negro regiment in this war. There were, indeed, some ambiguous words
+in the instructions of Secretary Cameron to General Sherman, when the
+original expedition went to Port Royal, authorizing him to organize the
+negroes into companies and squads for such services as they might be
+fitted for, but this not to mean a general arming for military service.
+Secretary Stanton, though furnishing muskets and red trousers to General
+Hunter's regiment, did not think the authority sufficient to justify the
+payment of the regiment. The first regiment, as raised by General
+Saxton, numbered four hundred and ninety-nine men when Colonel Higginson
+took command of it on the 1st of December; and on the 19th of January,
+1863, it had increased to eight hundred and forty-nine. It has made
+three expeditions to Florida and Georgia,--one before Colonel Higginson
+assumed the command, described in Mrs. Stowe's letter to the women of
+England, and two under Colonel Higginson, one of which was made in
+January up the St. Mary's, and the other in March to Jacksonville, which
+it occupied for a few days until an evacuation was ordered from
+head-quarters. The men are volunteers, having been led to enlist by duty
+to their race, to their kindred still in bonds, and to us, their allies.
+Their drill is good, and their time excellent. They have borne
+themselves well in their expeditions, quite equalling the white
+regiments in skirmishing. In _morale_ they seemed very much like white
+men, and with about the same proportion of good and indifferent
+soldiers. Some I saw of the finest metal, like Robert Sutton, whom
+Higginson describes in his report as "the real conductor of the whole
+expedition at the St. Mary's," and Sergeant Hodges, a master-carpenter,
+capable of directing the labors of numerous journeymen. Another said,
+addressing a meeting at Beaufort, that he had been restless, nights,
+thinking of the war and of his people,--that, when he heard of the
+regiment being formed, he felt that his time to act had come, and that
+it was his duty to enlist,--that he did not fight for his rations and
+pay, but for wife, children, and people.
+
+These men, as already intimated, are very much like other men, easily
+depressed, and as easily reanimated by words of encouragement. Many have
+been reluctant to engage in military service,--their imagination
+investing it with the terrors of instant and certain death. But this
+reluctance has passed away with participation in active service, with
+the adventure and inspiration of a soldier's life, and the latent
+manhood has recovered its rightful sway. Said a superintendent who was
+of the first delegation to Tort Royal in March, 1862,--a truthful man,
+and not given to rose-colored views,--"I did not have faith in arming
+negroes, when I visited the North last autumn, but I have now. They will
+be not mere machines, but real tigers, when aroused; and I should not
+wish to face them." One amusing incident may be mentioned. A man
+deserted from the regiment, was discovered hidden in a chimney in the
+district where he had lived, was taken back to camp, went to Florida in
+Higginson's first expedition, bore his part well in the skirmishes,
+became excited with the service, was made a sergeant, and, receiving a
+furlough on his return, went to the plantation where he had hid, and
+said he would not take five thousand dollars for his place.
+
+But more significant, as showing the success of the experiment, is the
+change of feeling among the white soldiers towards the negro regiment, a
+change due in part to the just policy of General Saxton, in part to the
+President's Proclamation of January 1st, which has done much to clear
+the atmosphere everywhere within the army-lines, but more than all to
+the soldierly conduct of the negroes themselves during their
+expeditions. I had one excellent opportunity to note this change. On the
+6th of April, Colonel Higginson's regiment was assigned to picket-duty
+on Port Royal Island,--the first active duty it had performed on the Sea
+Islands,--and was to relieve the Pennsylvania Fifty-Fifth. When, after a
+march of ten miles, it reached the advanced picket-station, there were
+about two hundred soldiers of the Pennsylvania Fifty-Fifth awaiting
+orders to proceed to Beaufort. I said, in a careless tone, to one of the
+Pennsylvania soldiers, who was looking at Higginson's regiment as it
+stood in line,--
+
+"Isn't this rather new, to be relieved by a negro regiment?"
+
+"All right," said he. "They've as much right to fight for themselves as
+I have to fight for them."
+
+A squad of half a dozen men stood by, making no dissent, and accepting
+him as their spokesman. Moving in another direction, I said to a
+soldier,--
+
+"What do you think of that regiment?"
+
+The answer was,--
+
+"All right. I'd rather they'd shoot the Rebels than have the Rebels
+shoot me"; and none of the by-standers dissented.
+
+As one of the negro companies marched off the field to picket a station
+at the Ferry, they passed within a few feet of some twenty of the
+Pennsylvania soldiers, just formed into line preparatory to marching to
+Beaufort. The countenances of the latter, which I watched, exhibited no
+expression of disgust, dislike, or disapprobation, only of curiosity.
+Other white soldiers gave to the weary negroes the hominy left from the
+morning meal. The Major of the Fifty-Fifth, highest in command of the
+relieved regiment, explained very courteously to Colonel Higginson the
+stations and duties of the pickets, and proffered any further aid
+desired. This was, it is true, an official duty, but there are more ways
+than one in which to perform even an official duty. I rode back to
+Beaufort, part of the way, in company with a captain of the First
+Massachusetts Cavalry, who was the officer of the day. He said "he
+wasn't much of a negro-man, but he had no objection to their doing our
+fighting." He pronounced the word as spelled with two _g_s; but I prefer
+to retain the good English. Colonel Montgomery, who had a partly filled
+regiment, most of whom were conscripts, said that on his return from
+Jacksonville he sent a squad of his men ashore in charge of some
+prisoners he had taken. Some white soldiers seeing them approach from
+the wharf, one said,--
+
+"What are those coming?"
+
+"Negro soldiers," (word pronounced as in the former case,) was the
+answer.
+
+"Damn 'em!" was the ejaculation.
+
+But as they approached nearer, "What have they got with 'em?" was
+inquired.
+
+"Why, some Secesh prisoners."
+
+"Bully for the negroes!" (the same pronunciation as before,) was then
+the response from all.
+
+So quick was the transition, when it was found that the negroes had
+demonstrated their usefulness! It is, perhaps, humiliating to remember
+that such an unreasonable and unpatriotic prejudice has at any time
+existed; but it is never worth while to suppress the truth of history.
+This prejudice has been effectually broken in the Free States; and one
+of the pageants of this epoch was the triumphal march through Boston, on
+the 28th of May, on its way to embark for Port Royal, of the
+Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, the first regiment of
+negro soldiers which the Free States have sent to the war. On the day
+previous, May 27th, a far different scene transpired on the banks of the
+Mississippi. Two black regiments, enlisted some months before in
+Louisiana under the order of Major-General Butler, both with line and
+one with field officers of their own lineage, made charge after charge
+on the batteries of Port Hudson, and were mown down like summer's grass,
+the survivors, many with mutilated limbs, closing up the thinned ranks
+and pressing on again, careless of life, and mindful only of honor and
+duty, with a sublimity of courage unsurpassed in the annals of war, and
+leaving there to all mankind an immortal record for themselves and their
+race.
+
+I cannot here forbear a momentary tribute to Wentworth Higginson.
+Devoting himself heroically to his great work, absorbed in its duties,
+and bearing his oppressive responsibility as the leader of a regiment in
+which to a great extent are now involved the fortunes of a race, he adds
+another honorable name to the true chivalry of our time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Homeward-bound, I stopped for two days at Fortress Monroe, and was again
+among the familiar scenes of my soldier-life. It was there that
+Major-General Butler, first of all the generals in the army of the
+Republic, and anticipating even Republican statesmen, had clearly
+pointed to the cause of the war. At Craney Island I met two accomplished
+women of the Society of Friends, who, on a most cheerless spot, and with
+every inconvenience, were teaching the children of the freedmen. Two
+good men, one at the fort and the other at Norfolk, were distributing
+the laborers on farms in the vicinity, and providing them with
+implements and seeds which the benevolent societies had furnished.
+Visiting Hampton, I recognized, in the shanties built upon the charred
+ruins, the familiar faces of those who, in the early days of the war,
+had been for a brief period under my charge. Their hearty greetings to
+one whom they remembered as the first to point them to freedom and cheer
+them with its prospect could hardly be received without emotion. But
+there is no time to linger over these scenes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such are some of the leading features in the condition of the freedmen,
+particularly at Port Royal. The enterprise for their aid, begun in
+doubt, is no longer a bare hope or possibility. It is a fruition and a
+consummation. The negroes will work for a living. They will fight for
+their freedom. They are adapted to civil society. As a people, they are
+not exempt from the frailties of our common humanity, nor from the vices
+which hereditary bondage always superadds to these. As it is said to
+take three generations to subdue a freeman completely to a slave, so it
+may not be possible in a single generation to restore the pristine
+manhood. One who expects to find in emancipated slaves perfect men and
+women, or to realize in them some fair dream of an ideal race, will meet
+disappointment; but there is nothing in their nature or condition to
+daunt the Christian patriot; rather, there is everything to cheer and
+fortify his faith. They have shown capacity for knowledge, for free
+industry, for subordination to law and discipline, for soldierly
+fortitude, for social and family relations, for religious culture and
+aspirations; and these qualities, when stirred and sustained by the
+incitements and rewards of a just society, and combining with the
+currents of our continental civilization, will, under the guidance of a
+benevolent Providence which forgets neither them nor us, make them a
+constantly progressive race, and secure them ever after from the
+calamity of another enslavement, and ourselves from the worse calamity
+of being again their oppressors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NO AND YES.
+
+
+  I watched her at her spinning;
+  And this was my beginning
+  Of wooing and of winning.
+
+  But when a maid opposes,
+  And throws away your roses,
+  You say the case forecloses.
+
+  Yet sorry wit one uses,
+  Who loves and thinks he loses
+  Because a maid refuses.
+
+  For by her once denying
+  She only means complying
+  Upon a second trying.
+
+  When first I said, in pleading,
+  "Behold, my love lies bleeding!"
+  She heard me half unheeding.
+
+  When afterward I told her,
+  And blamed her growing colder,--
+  She dropped upon my shoulder.
+
+  Had I a doubt? That quelled it:
+  Her very look dispelled it,
+  I caught her hand, and held it.
+
+  Along the lane I led her,
+  And while her cheeks grew redder,
+  I sued outright to wed her.
+
+  Good end from bad beginning!
+  My wooing came to winning,--
+  And still I watch her spinning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE MATHER SAFE.
+
+
+The service I was able to render an official personage connected with
+----College in New England procured me access to the library belonging
+to that institution. In common with many of my fellow-citizens, I had
+previously enjoyed the pleasure of responding to circulars petitioning
+for money to buy books for interment in this choice literary catacomb;
+nay, I was even allowed the satisfaction of an annual stare at them
+through an iron grating, and of reading a placard to the effect that
+nobody was allowed to enter an alcove or take down a volume. As it
+occurred to me that the generous donors could not object to add one more
+to the select half-dozen or so, who, by having the privilege of the
+shelves, could really use the library, I demanded this favor of the
+gentleman who desired to recompense me for what I had done for him. The
+Librarian, who valued books as things capable of being locked up in
+cells like criminals, there to figure numerically to the confusion of
+rival institutions, was manifestly disturbed when I presented my
+credentials. The authority, however, was not to be questioned;--I was to
+be admitted to the library at any hour of the day; and I took care to
+drop a civil expression to imply my estimation of the privilege and my
+purpose of enjoying it.
+
+Wanting the leisure to attempt that ponderous undertaking known as "a
+course of reading," it became my habit to browse about the building upon
+Saturday afternoons, and finally to establish myself, with whatever
+authors I had selected, in a certain retired alcove devoted to the
+metaphysicians. This comfortable nook opens just behind Crawford's bust
+of the late President T----, and is nearly opposite the famous Mather
+Safe. As it is possible that I am addressing some who are not graduates
+of ---- College, nor familiar with its library, it may be well to say a
+word of the history of the spacious and ancient coffer to which
+allusion is made.
+
+The Mather Safe--which, by the way, is not of iron, but of oak heavily
+bound with that metal--is said to have been among the possessions of the
+author of the "Magnalia." Its last private proprietor was a collateral
+descendant of the Mathers, an eccentric character, popularly known as
+Miser Farrel. As Farrel was a bachelor, and had the reputation of being
+enormously rich, the College authorities of his day were accustomed to
+treat him with distinguished consideration, and went so far, I believe,
+as to vote him some minor degree. What effect these academic
+blandishments may have had upon their object cannot at present be
+determined. For when the day came for the long-expected will to be
+opened, it was found that the old gentleman had bequeathed to the
+College only his Mather Safe, with certain papers carefully let into the
+wood-work in one corner of the same,--which papers were not to be
+removed or opened for a hundred years.
+
+It may be conceived that this bulky benefaction was not accepted with
+the best grace, particularly as the testator made no provision for
+considerable expense necessarily incurred in moving and setting it up in
+the library. Yet, not satisfied with this culpable negligence, Mr.
+Farrel had affixed still other conditions to the acceptance of his gift.
+He had caused two massive locks to be put upon the Mather Safe, of which
+he enjoined that the respective keys should be forever held by the
+President and Treasurer of the College, to the end that neither could
+have access to its contents except in the presence of the other.
+Moreover, he required that the Safe should be used only as a receptacle
+for packages which the depositors desired to keep from the world for at
+least fifty years. Of course no right-minded corporation would have
+endured this posthumous fussiness, were it not for the mysterious papers
+left in the Safe,--these being considered instruments whereby immense
+possessions would finally come to the College. But, as their worthy
+friend, however niggardly in other respects, had taken care to save
+nothing in lawyers, there were really no means of disregarding his
+wishes, except by relinquishing all claims under the will. And so, many
+years ago, the Mather Safe came to be opened to the public on the
+conditions already declared. At first, it was matter of surprise that so
+many persons appeared to claim the privilege of Farrel's singular
+legacy. Carefully enveloped packages had been consigned to various
+periods of oblivion by all conditions of men and women. These were
+numbered and registered in a volume kept for the purpose; they were
+severally addressed, perhaps to a specified descendant of some living
+person, perhaps to the future occupant of some professor's chair or
+metropolitan pulpit.
+
+It was near the Mather Safe, as I have already said, that my favorite
+alcove opened. In the short winter afternoon, when the twilight
+thickened without the building, and the type began to blur within, I
+would lay aside my book and muse over wild rumors of secrets borne by
+this messenger between the generations. Journals and letters, it was
+said, were there concealed, which should change the current gossip of
+history, and explode many bubble-reputations that had glittered on the
+world. There were hints of deadly sins, committed by men high in Church
+and State, which their perpetrators lacked the courage to confess before
+their fellows, but which, in the bitterness of remorse, they had
+recorded in the Mather Safe, to blacken their fame to future
+times,--thus taking a ghastly satisfaction from the knowledge that they
+should not always appear as whited sepulchres before men. There was
+vague talk, also, of funds which had been deposited to found some
+professorship in the College, to furnish some instruction which the age
+was not advanced enough to accept. Then, too, there were intimations of
+endowments to establish scholarships for women, who,--so it was
+argued,--after the increasing enlightenment of a few score of years,
+would be admitted to every privilege of culture offered to men. In
+short, there was matter enough to send a curdling tingle through the
+blood, as this tough old ark, buffeting slowly through the years,
+entered its familiar night. If there was deficiency in the testimony
+which consigned any special wonder to its keeping, there was, doubtless,
+sufficient truth in common reports to justify the imagination in
+interpreting misty hieroglyphics of its own device.
+
+During the latter part of a certain August--my family being established
+at the seaside--I determined to devote a long day to the College
+Library. The fact was, that a trifling domestic incident--no other than
+the smoking of a kitchen-chimney--had turned my attention to the
+conditions of atmospheric changes. Certain phenomena I had observed
+seemed inconsistent with the law assumed in popular text-books. Indeed,
+as it appeared to me, modifications of a received theory--which might be
+determined by a diligent comparison of existing authorities--would
+suggest a household economy of great practical importance. Certain
+facts, which must have been noted by all the great voyagers of the
+world, might give me data from which to establish the suspected
+conclusion. I accordingly repaired to the library at a very early hour,
+and labored through the day in collecting and committing to writing what
+had been observed by many eminent navigators upon the point in question.
+Four o'clock in the afternoon found me too tired to apply any process of
+analysis to the observations obtained. I therefore retired to my
+accustomed seat, took down almost the first book which came to hand, and
+resigned myself to the impressions of a favorite author. I had passed
+about an hour in a delicious state of dreamy tranquillity, sometimes
+reading, sometimes pausing to color the faded page with the brilliant
+hues of more modern thought, when my attention was attracted by a
+familiar voice proceeding from the neighborhood of the Mather Safe.
+
+"The President and Treasurer were to have been here at five o'clock."
+
+"I have heard nothing of it," said the Librarian. "I am sure that the
+President is out of town for the day."
+
+"Strange! strange!" exclaimed the Reverend Mr. Clifton, in a very
+excited tone. "I wish to make a deposit of great importance in the
+Mather Safe. I had the assurance that the Safe should be opened at five
+this afternoon. Here, read the solemn promise upon which I have come
+from Foxden!"
+
+The Librarian glanced at an open letter which Clifton held out to him,
+and said, in a quiet manner,--
+
+"The President promises to meet you in the College Library on the
+afternoon of Thursday, the twenty-fourth instant; to-day is Wednesday,
+the twenty-third."
+
+"Is it possible?" muttered the clergyman, with a look of startled
+despair. "Pardon my disturbance. I have been hardly myself for these
+last weeks. Yet I can wait."
+
+I spoke to Mr. Clifton as he was about to leave the library. He blenched
+at hearing my voice, and strove to conceal the package beneath his arm.
+
+"How do my good friends in Foxden?" said I, inviting him into my alcove.
+"Is it true that Dr. Dastick has presented his cabinet of curiosities to
+the town?"
+
+"What are you reading?" said the clergyman, in a tone of curt authority
+very foreign to the mild persuasiveness of his usual professional
+accents.
+
+I exhibited the title of the book: it was the "Meditations of
+Descartes."
+
+"And do you follow those who vainly seek for truth through the inner
+world of man, not conforming themselves to the necessities of the
+outward world and the teachings of Revelation?"
+
+I defended the usefulness of some acquaintance with the original and
+powerful thinker, whose apologies are certainly profuse enough to
+satisfy the most orthodox.
+
+"Yes; I suppose you read Spinoza, Hegel, Fichte, the Atheism of
+D'Holbach, Utilitarianism Systematized by Auguste Comte! Did you ever go
+fishing in a dory when the wind was off shore?"
+
+There was an alarm in the eye and manner of Mr. Clifton, a tremulous
+restlessness in his speech, which warned me to avoid discussion, and
+endeavor to soothe his agitation. It was only to the last interrogatory,
+therefore, that I made some light reply.
+
+"The sea sparkles gayly," pursued the clergyman, in the manner of an
+extemporaneous preacher who strives to catch in a net of decorations
+some illustration which presents itself,--"the boat tosses on from wave
+to wave, for dories will sail before the wind. Soon we are miles from
+shore, and throw the anchor. What auspicious expansion of soul and body!
+How we slide up and down the backs of great billows, and cast our lines
+with ever-varying success! But the night comes, and with it the
+necessity of rowing back against wind and tide. Ah, then how long the
+lonely ocean-leagues! How distant the time when we may hope to stand
+confused and giddy upon solid earth! Some never see the land again, but
+are swept out into the storm and darkness, and are lost,--_lost_!"
+
+"I presume I understand the significance of your similitude," I replied,
+a little annoyed at this inopportune indulgence of the pastoral
+privilege. "You would imply the dangerous tendency of a certain sort of
+philosophical speculation; and so far we doubtless agree. Yet I ought to
+say, that, in cases where personal investigation is possible, I would
+take neither popular clamor nor learned dogmatism as conclusive evidence
+against any writer's honesty and usefulness. With the vulgar, genius has
+always seemed a sort of madness; and should a man rise preeminent above
+the teachers of his generation, his wisdom would appear to them as
+foolishness."
+
+A change came over the face of Clifton as I said these words. It was as
+if a mask had fallen. Perchance he had wished to appear to me in that
+character of instructor which he desired some competent person to assume
+to him. Now, the relaxed muscles and averted eye only asked the sympathy
+of an equal. He spoke with forced, and almost grating, utterance.
+
+"Then you have used experience well enough to know that some minds may
+bear into the world a light, a knowledge too fine for general
+perception, too pure for even exceptional recognition."
+
+"I fully believe it possible," I said. "Yonder old Safe, if rumor says
+true, holds many mystic signals which the past and present could address
+only to the future,--signs meaningless, no doubt, to you or me, but
+which the freemasonry of higher intelligence shall render plain in the
+time hereafter."
+
+"And what if I had come," exclaimed Clifton, eagerly,--"what if I had
+come to add to those deposits which are not for this time, but which may
+be for other times? What blame to me, if I am here to do this? Should we
+common men, who find a life full of active duties presented to our
+acceptance,--should such as we, I say, receive this world as a pageant
+before which we must sit down and evolve a doctrine? The conceit of
+external education is at present too strong to acknowledge a divine
+element radiating from the depths of the soul, and finding in the mind
+only an awkward and imperfect instrument. Any extravagance is now
+tolerated, but an extravagance of spirituality; and we find altogether
+wanting the perception, that, rising from the gross symbols of language,
+can know the subtile and precious emotion which in a more advanced state
+of being those symbols might suggest."
+
+As it was evident that Mr. Clifton was laboring under great nervous
+excitability, I judged it prudent not to question the sequence of what
+he said, or even demand that it be made intelligible by further
+explanation. Indeed, I was sufficiently occupied in striving to identify
+this incomprehensible person with my familiar acquaintance, the pastor
+of the First Church in Foxden. It occurred to me that something had
+once been said of Clifton's connection with that topsy-turvy sodality
+popularly known as "The Transcendentalists." But this was many years
+ago; and the world always supposed that he had outgrown his early
+errors, and found, in the liberal theology of New England, a more
+genuine inspiration. In meeting him in his pastoral relation, I had only
+remarked that he was one of those men who find it very difficult to
+resist the social influences into which they may be thrown. This was
+probably the case even where that influence tended to degrade him from
+the plane he would have occupied, if left to himself. His spiritual life
+seemed to lack that vigor and buoyancy so infinitely important to
+contemplative men. He appeared to be ever yearning for something which
+should add robustness to his convictions. After a pause of some moments,
+Clifton again addressed me.
+
+"Recollections of moments, months of excitement, of intense power, have
+returned! They may not fade again unspoken. You shall know my
+long-cherished secret. Younger in years, you may scarcely advise; but,
+at least, you may give sympathy that shall confirm my decision. I have
+engaged rooms at the neighboring hotel. Come and pass the evening--nay,
+the night--with me; for much must be read and thought and spoken before
+the black veil of personality can be lifted between us."
+
+It has already been observed that my family were at the seaside. This
+circumstance left me sole disposer of my time and localities. How, then,
+resist the inclination to see out the adventure upon which I had
+stumbled? Let me credit myself also with a worthier motive: I saw that
+my companion was in no state to be left to himself,--and, really, there
+was no mutual friend to whom I could consign him. Accordingly I offered
+my arm in a manner to imply acquiescence in his proposal.
+
+We soon reached the hotel, and ascended to a room in the remote corner
+of a spacious wing. Clifton at once turned the key, placed his package
+upon the table, and proceeded to employ a stray bit of carpet in
+stopping a ventilator which communicated with the entry. Having
+satisfied himself that this passage was rendered impervious to sound, he
+drew two chairs up to the table, motioned me into one, and planted
+himself in the other with the air of a man, in popular phrase, about to
+make a night of it.
+
+"Did you ever hear of Herbert Vannelle?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+It can hardly be necessary to say that a substitute is here placed for
+the name really mentioned.
+
+I replied in the negative, and asked where the gentleman lived.
+
+"He lives nowhere on earth; he is dead,--just dead."
+
+"A friend of yours?"
+
+"A master once; now a presence eluding, haunting, torturing. He left me
+this manuscript; it is a 'Philosophy of the Absolute.'" (Here Clifton
+drew from a curiously contrived case of parchment a cluster of pages.)
+"It has now twenty-two hours to appear in the present century. You shall
+devote the night to reading it, and tell me that I have acted well."
+
+A sultry August evening, a smoky boarding-house lamp, much skirmishing
+of mosquitoes, and--a manuscript system of philosophy! The prospect was
+not inviting. The reading of other people's manuscripts is surely the
+crucial test of a devoted benevolence. There are few ways in which I am
+so little ready to oblige my fellow-men. I had, indeed, at times, been
+induced to inspect sundry romances in blotted embryo; but, as yet,
+nobody had called upon me with a system of philosophy. _Printed_
+philosophy is none too easy reading. But to sit there, under the
+guardianship of Clifton, and spell out the dim dogmatism of some
+nebulous fanatic,--of course it was not to be thought of for a moment.
+With a _suave_ periphrasis of speech I questioned the expediency of the
+proposition.
+
+"I shall ring for candles that will burn during the night," said Mr.
+Clifton, heedless of my expostulation. "Also some refreshment. You take
+tea, I suppose? You shall read the first ten pages of Vannelle's
+writing. It is possible you may exercise self-control enough to abandon
+it unfinished. But you will not sleep tonight."
+
+There was a confidence in the minister's tone which gave rather
+unpleasant emphasis to this final prophecy. Still, I believed myself
+capable of the ten pages without establishing a hopelessly wakeful
+condition,--indeed, it was something to be guarantied against the
+opposite infirmity. The tea, accompanied by a few thin shavings of
+toast, presently arrived. The means of procuring light were also
+furnished us. Clifton's hand lay heavily upon the manuscript until the
+attendant had disappeared for the last time, and the door was locked
+behind him. He then opened the papers before me, and signified that the
+time had come. I braced myself as for a serious undertaking.
+
+Thus I accepted the task. How give words to the singular emotions which
+soon possessed me? As if some charm, some spell of magnetism, had been
+given to the paper, my whole consciousness was riveted upon it. I know
+not how to represent this bold, this startling attempt to establish a
+positive basis for metaphysical philosophy, an exact science of all
+things human and divine. Here was a man, perchance of more courage and
+conscience, perchance of more devilish recklessness, than any of his
+contemporaries. But how deal with what came to me from that wondrous
+writing in the ambiguities of common language? All thought--even
+supposing it embodied in a perfect form of speech--is subject to the
+limitations of the recipient mind. My own glimpses of the writer's
+meaning were necessarily most indistinct. I cannot attempt to transfer
+them. I was controlled by a force not my own. The shadow of a mysterious
+power was over me. The mists of sentimental pantheism were left far
+below the clear-cut summits whither the reader was invited to ascend.
+There was an interpretation of Revelation far more removed from the
+apparent letter than that of Swedenborg. Here was reaffirmed (though for
+a widely different purpose) what the Romish Church has ever
+declared,--that the Scriptures, recording spiritual truth, cannot be
+comprehensible to the natural understanding,--that, while the Sacred
+Writings contain a natural letter, it can be translated into spiritual
+verity only by a few exceptional men. If this scheme of philosophy was
+an idealism, it nevertheless manifested itself through the plainest
+realities. The solution of the problem seemed to come not from one
+point, but from all points. Certainly there was a tendency towards the
+supersensible; but this direction was taken through stern grappling with
+the actual. At one time I struggled against the august spirit that was
+borne in upon me; at another, I was utterly subdued by the lofty
+enthusiasm of the writer,--something within me capable of absolute
+cognition seemed responding to his appeals. But the pith and vitality of
+this marvel could be recognized only by long experience. And here the
+student was required to stake his soul upon a perilous cast. For, if not
+pursued and fathomed to full satisfaction, this view of things would be
+disturbing, paralyzing. With any half-acceptance a man might scarcely
+live. It must fashion the mind as an artist fashions the passive metals
+into a musical instrument, and then every event in time might touch it
+to exquisite harmony. But the more ravishing the beauty which seemed
+offered through perfect realization of this knowledge, the more
+blighting would be its effects, if entertained in the spirit of a
+selfish dilettanteism. For in certain passages were breathed faint
+suggestions, that moral codes held sacred by the people could not bind
+the initiated,--nay, that what seemed most evil might be so explained as
+to become wholly legitimate to the elect.
+
+It was far into the night. I had gone over about a third of the
+manuscript. Sharp questions assailed my ears. Was I bound to jeopard
+all the common good of life for the chance of--just failing to know
+existence from a higher plane? Could I ascend so far above the frailties
+of average men as to receive in purity and innocence the license which
+acceptance of this strange scheme would surely give? Dim-sighted as I
+was, it was necessary to rise and dispel this splendid phantasm. I
+shuddered in sudden alarm at the danger which threatened me. By a
+spasmodic movement, in which I failed to recognize any presence of my
+will, the manuscript was closed and handed to Clifton. Welcome existence
+under coarsest and harshest terms, rather than tamper with such fearful
+possibilities!
+
+For hours the minister had gazed into my face, partaking the excitement
+to which he had subjected me. He had lighted and trimmed the candles, as
+was necessary, but had never broken silence. And now there came from him
+the deep sigh of relief from an absorbing interest; he sighed as a
+little child when the fairytale is ended and the tense strain of
+attention may be relaxed.
+
+"What was this man?" I demanded, hurriedly.
+
+"What he was is to be discovered through these writings, if it may be
+found out at all. What he was is not for me nor for you to know. It is
+possible that he may meet with competent judges hereafter, even among
+men. Look at this address."
+
+Clifton handed me a little memorandum relating to the ultimate
+disposition of the manuscript. It was to remain for eighty years in the
+Mather Safe, and was then to be consigned to the occupant of the Chair
+of Moral Philosophy in the College.
+
+"Say rather to the last minority-candidate for the professorship!" I
+exclaimed. "I doubt if the actual winner of that comfortable possession
+will feel disposed to abandon the market-worth of conventional
+acquirements, and set forth as a humble student of unpopular truth."
+
+The minister seemed struck with the suggestion, and made the alteration
+I had indicated.
+
+The darkest hour of the night had come. Every sound of human activity
+had long ago ceased. It was the quiet time when one may most easily
+probe an intense experience. I felt that more was to be
+known,--something which the minister longed to tell,--something to which
+what he had caused me to read was to serve as a prelude. I suspected how
+powerless must have been this sensitive man in the presence of the Idea
+which he had carried. Doubtless, in one of his peculiar tendencies, it
+might prevent all harmonious action,--it might ever goad the intellect,
+and crush the heart. As the confession trembled upon the lips of
+Clifton, I signified my profound sympathy. It is an awful moment, when a
+mature man tries to put off the solitariness of his life.
+
+What was then communicated I can repeat only in the first person. The
+pathetic earnestness of the speaker imprinted on my memory the very
+phrases that he used; there can be few verbal changes as they now flow
+from the pen.
+
+
+II.
+
+NARRATIVE OF THE REVEREND CHARLES CLIFTON.
+
+I am indebted for education to a bachelor uncle, who, after our great
+bereavement, received at his house an infant sister and myself. I was at
+that time about twelve years old. My relative enjoyed a handsome
+annuity, which he spent with the utmost liberality. As I was rather a
+thoughtful, though not very studious boy, it was determined that I
+should go to college. I entered with some difficulty soon after my
+seventeenth birthday,--an age somewhat later than the average at that
+time.
+
+Two years before me in college was the class of 18--. Upon the roll of
+its fifty-two members stood the name of Herbert Vannelle. Rich, an
+orphan, inclined to thought and study beyond the limited academic range
+of those days, endowed with personal fascinations of a very rare and
+peculiar kind,--there seemed only one possible shadow to darken his
+career. In his family there had been said to exist a tendency to
+eccentric independence of action, which vulgarly, perhaps justly, passed
+for insanity. His father, who died soon after Herbert entered college,
+had given much uneasiness to the wealthy and respectable city-circle
+with which he was socially connected. Upon the death of his wife he had
+retired to the Vannelle homestead in the northwestern part of
+Connecticut, and there lived in studious seclusion. There he insisted
+upon bringing up his only son, deprived of such recreations and
+companionships as are suitable to youth. He had, indeed, superintended
+his studies with patience and thoroughness, and had not failed to
+accomplish him in the grace of physical power, at that time little
+recognized as a part of education.
+
+So much was known of Vannelle when he appeared at college among the
+young men of the Junior Class. And little more was known of him when he
+left America on the day his class graduated. His connections with the
+other students had been very slight. He had never cared to acquire that
+fluency in retailing the thoughts of others upon which college-rank
+depends. An access to the library was all that he seemed to value in his
+connection with the institution. And here he busied himself, not with
+the openings to the solid and rational sciences, but with the
+bewildering sophistries of the school-philosophies, and their aimless
+wrangling over verbal conceits.
+
+At that time I happened to be taking a young man's first enchanting
+rounds upon the tread-mill of metaphysics. At the library I often
+encountered Vannelle in search of some volume of which I had just
+possessed myself. This led to an acquaintance. I was soon fascinated by
+a power which streamed from his large, expressive eyes, and persuaded by
+a voice modulated in a pathos and sweetness that I have heard in no
+other person. His influence upon me at this time was not unlike that
+which the mesmerists had just begun to exercise. Yet, while he showed an
+interest in directing my inquiries along the paths to which they
+naturally tended, he never communicated the results of his own studies,
+or offered me the slightest assistance in generalizing my random
+observations. What he thought himself, or by what writers he was
+influenced, it was not easy to fathom. He was deeply acquainted with the
+writings of the New-England Transcendentalists, then at their greatest
+notoriety, yet never for an instant seemed giddy upon the hazy heights
+where those earnest spirits soared.
+
+Vannelle spent two years in Germany, and returned to America about the
+time that my college-course was finished. The little I knew of him
+during his absence was from the scattered notices of
+newspaper-correspondents, who intimated that Herbert possessed the
+privilege of friendly intercourse with men most distinguished for
+knowledge in the Old World. Just before Class-Day, I received a letter
+dated from X----, in Connecticut, inviting me, in terms which seemed
+almost a command, to spend the summer at the Vannelle homestead. Herbert
+had returned, and thus abruptly summoned me. Intending to postpone until
+the autumn the study of a profession, I promised to come to him for a
+few weeks,--a visit which might be extended, were it mutually agreeable.
+
+There was, at that time, a day of weary staging after leaving the cars,
+before arriving in the village of X----; there were also six rough miles
+of carriage-conveyance before the traveller could attain the old house
+by the damp river-marsh whereto I was destined. When I arrived there,
+Vannelle stood at the door to greet me.
+
+"We have six months' concern together," he said, as if delivering
+himself of some studied speech,--"we have six months' concern together;
+then we may stand at the parting of the ways,--we may cleave to one
+another, or separate forever."
+
+A low, dark house. The south-side planted out from the sun by pines and
+cedars. The parlors covered with well-worn Turkey carpets, chafed into
+dusty ridges. The wretched window-glass breaking and distorting the
+pine-trees without. Little oval mirrors distorting the human countenance
+within. In the living-room (so called by those able to live in it)
+loomed a rusty air-tight stove of cathedral proportion,--a ghastly altar
+which the bitterest enemy of the family might feel fully justified in
+protecting. A square, cellarless room, about twenty feet from the house,
+had been the study of the elder Vannelle. Tables covered with a confused
+mass of writing-materials. A jumble of retorts and other chemical
+apparatus about the floor. Cabinets of the ugliest pattern reached to
+the ceiling;--at first I supposed them to be made of painted wood;
+afterwards I discovered they were of iron, and filled with rare books
+and manuscripts.
+
+"My father built this study," said Vannelle, as we passed into it. "He
+wished to get rid of those periodical clearings-up from which there is
+no escape in a New-England household. Mrs. Brett, the wife of our
+farmer, could never resist the feminine itch to put things to rights.
+She was always contriving to arrange papers and books in symmetrical
+piles where nothing could be found. My father could never turn his back
+but she was sure to annihilate important scraps of writing that were
+lying about the floor, and, under pretence of sweeping, invoke a simoom
+of dust that hours were insufficient to allay. But when he built this
+room, and kept the key of it, there was no more trouble."
+
+I shudder as I hurry through these descriptions, for a confession which
+I hardly dare to put into words must accompany them. All these
+surroundings, seen by me for the first time, had a fearful familiarity.
+In some occult state of spiritual existence I seemed to have known them
+all. I have learned that the soul may enter into communion with other
+minds otherwise than through the senses,--nay, more, it may thus take an
+inexplicable cognizance of material things. Of this I have had such
+proof as it would be infatuation to doubt. I was compelled to test this
+startling suspicion for the first time.
+
+"You need not take me up-stairs, Herbert," I said, as we returned to the
+house. "The picture of your father, which hangs in the large chamber
+projecting over the porch, was doubtless a good likeness of the mask he
+wore at city club-houses and family-dinners,--but the man as you knew
+him _here_, how little does it resemble! As for the Chinese cabinet
+which stands between the windows, it has associations, no doubt, but it
+is sadly out of repair. Those pink tiles about the fireplace may be
+interesting to antiquaries; but I rather prefer the blue variety, as
+corresponding to the mental state in which their infinitely pretentious
+subjects and execrable drawing always put me."
+
+The lightness of speech was painfully forced. Vannelle turned to me and
+said, slowly,--
+
+"Have you been here before?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Has any one described to you this house or its contents?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then thought has been conveyed from mind to mind in unconditioned
+purity. It is as I had supposed. We are brothers forever."
+
+The next day, after an early breakfast, Vannelle summoned me to the
+study. I glanced distrustfully at the confusion of the room, which
+seemed in strange contrast with the exquisitely neat and even
+fashionable attire of its proprietor. A smile of proud pity touched the
+lips of Vannelle, as he seemed to divine my thought. Then, as if I had
+read them in letters of light, these words seemed to answer me:--
+
+"Shall we, the stewards and guardians of the highest interests of
+mankind, fret our souls at trifles,--we, who are to be instruments in
+marshalling the race from slavery and folly to wisdom and freedom?
+Behold, in one bound, the hovels and palaces of earth shall be alike,
+and, floating free in spiritual space, we will win such dominion as the
+highest graduates in saintship dimly perceived, but were never able to
+declare!"
+
+These thoughts, energizing the brain of my companion, seemed thrown into
+my consciousness with far more distinctness than if they had been
+uttered. It was with awe that this mystic correspondence between mind
+and mind was made plain to me. One man out of this myriad-bodied
+humanity had sought me out, and in his presence I was never more to be
+alone. The gigantic shadow of self passed from me; I was as clay in the
+potter's hands!
+
+At length Herbert spoke.
+
+"Our work in this world is determined for us; mine is allotted to
+me,--not by my own choice. I return to this house never to leave it till
+I go to join my father, with his great work more nearly completed than
+when it came to my hands. At that table he died, with some glimpses of
+the promised land whither he tended,--where he prayed that I might
+enter."
+
+There escaped from me a feeble remonstrance,--no utterance of the heart,
+but rather a dry rattling of such conventional proprieties as lingered
+in the memory.
+
+"And you intend to leave this wholesome world,--you, whose career might
+be such as few have it in their power to choose? You know, you must
+know, the wonderful gifts which you possess; you cannot alone be
+ignorant of the fascination you might exercise over man and woman."
+
+"I know all these temptations, and others that you cannot surmise,"
+exclaimed Vannelle, "and I will conquer them,--if not through spiritual
+grace, then by some bodily penance of lasting effect. I discern in you
+certain qualities of mind that may serve to regulate the equipoise of
+mine. I have the means to provide for us both during the high
+speculations in which we shall engage. Let us be comrades in this
+undertaking. I seek to bridge the great gulf that separates the natural
+from the spiritual. My father firmly believed in the possibility of
+obtaining an absolute ground for the philosophy which should include all
+things human and divine. He passed onward before the inestimable gift he
+seemed to have won could be set forth in the symbols of the world. To
+see is not difficult, but only to contrive a popular adaptation through
+which others may discern the thought. I seek the means to express the
+truth which he saw, and of which I can catch some glimpses through such
+colored mythologies as represent the higher religions of the world. Man
+has found out the knowledge by which a universe was evoked from chaos:
+shall he not perfect that knowledge in the Law which includes the divine
+element by which the universe is informed? How can we love with our
+whole heart what we do not know with our whole mind? Clifton, I declare
+to you that knowledge of the Law by which the Creator is and acts is
+possible to man!"
+
+I shall seem to you weak and unstable in no common degree to have been
+moved by utterance like this. Remember that I can reproduce only the
+words, not the wild power of that persuasive voice, not the aspiring
+courage that struck me from his eye. Almost against my will there was
+produced in me a plasticity of mind that seemed to demand the impress of
+some foreign mould. The tree of knowledge was set in the midst of the
+garden, and again were audible the seductive serpent-tones: "Your eyes
+shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
+
+I found Vannelle so far my superior in the knowledge of all earthly
+lores, that I at length came to think it possible he might be the
+appointed instrument of communicating the singular intelligence that he
+sought. He proposed to review the different systems built by human
+thought before applying himself to the problem of finding a system of
+philosophy which should include them all. His idea was, that from the
+extreme negation of the so-called transcendental position--when that
+position had been legitimately attained by a thoroughly conscientious
+thinker--some new light must break upon the mind. His was no shrinking
+from the conflict with real things to indulge in vague yearnings after
+the inaccessible, but a definite effort so to place the soul and
+discipline the understanding that wisdom could be realized without
+process or media. Unlike most inquirers of that time, he had no love for
+the abstract and the controversial, but entertained them freely as
+finally discovering some path to the concrete and the unquestioned. He
+declared that only to superficial persons was skepticism the terminus of
+speculative deism. Let me also say this for my friend,--that his
+directing stimulus to action was neither ambition nor curiosity, but
+what, had it been directed to any recognized end, the world would have
+called a religious principle. He was never guilty of the shallow
+wickedness of seeking self-culture as an end; he sought the highest
+self-culture only as a state of more passionate yearning for
+regeneration.
+
+What need to tell how I was fascinated, mesmerized, into a humble
+companionship? how I became inspired with his own mighty belief in the
+feasibility of the object he strove to attain? We read together certain
+manuscripts of the elder Vannelle, in which, wrapt in a gorgeous
+symbolism, seemed dimly to approach a great truth, which, at times,
+could be faintly perceived, but never mastered. There were hints,
+apparently of the deepest significance, which, when the mind endeavored
+to grasp them, vanished like a vision.
+
+Day after day, almost night after night, for five months, I passed with
+Vannelle in the room I have described. And during that vivid period I
+knew an intellectual intoxication which seemed the pure ecstasy of
+spirit wholly delivered from the burden of the flesh. Vannelle talked
+like one inspired upon the higher problems of metaphysical research,
+showing, or appearing to show, in what sense the speculations of the
+philosophers were true, and in what sense absolutely false. We seemed to
+have cut ourselves adrift from the human race, and to look down upon it
+from a position whence its basest moral corruptions and most detestable
+oppressions marked the rhythm in a majestic poem. The infinite vagaries
+of crime, the unspeakable ecstasies of blessedness, were equally
+wholesome as equally full of Law. At times it seemed impossible that any
+words could so mould themselves as to give distinctness to the thought
+which flashed through our minds. At times a representation corresponding
+to what Vannelle so eloquently uttered seemed embodied in every phase of
+opinion man had known. But, alas, there were also periods of doubt and
+despair analogous to those which succeed physical intoxication. The
+grosser systems of antiquity were not only considered, but actually
+personated in our experience. Here it was necessary for us to penetrate
+into some of the darkest recesses of the human soul, and to test how
+nearly allied is that which exalts man to that which degrades him, how
+the noblest virtues plunge headlong into the maddest passions. Yet we
+learned to welcome these convulsions of Chaos and Old Night, as blindly
+bearing us onward towards our destined goal.
+
+--But enough of this. I would only faintly express how terribly real was
+the delusion (the world would so call it, and who am I to gainsay it?)
+which has overhung my earthly life.
+
+Let me tell in briefest words how the spell was broken,--partially
+broken. During those months of passionate exaltation, letters from
+friends once dear to me had been thrown aside half-read, and wholly
+valueless. On the eleventh of November I started,--as a black seal was
+to be broken. My uncle had suddenly died. The last instalment of his
+annuity had been paid, and my little sister, an orphan and penniless,
+was thrown upon me for education and support. Shame to me that I then
+hesitated! Yet it was some hours before I could persuade myself to put
+the letter into Vannelle's hand, and say that I must abandon him
+forever. Let me forget the bitter temptation. Of course my friend begged
+to provide for my sister from his own ample means, and even offered her
+an asylum at his house. I still retained sufficient sanity to perceive
+the wrong of bringing a young child to that dismal place to wither
+removed from all human companionship and sympathy. A spirit not in a
+condition to be sustained and elevated by the society of Herbert would
+be confused, and finally petrified. Had this refined probing and
+questioning deadened all sense of duty? Was this the end of my Absolute
+Philosophy, that the intellect should usurp the place of the conscience
+and the moral law? Shame to me that I could have paused to ask such
+questions! yet any claim but one tittle less urgent I should have
+bantered aside. I seemed to realize the torture described in the dream
+of Dante,--two souls struggling together in one frail body. I had been
+applauding good and condemning evil when it cost me nothing but the
+sentiment; but when the fiery test came, my purpose cracked and
+shrivelled before it. Yes, I conquered; but the scars that purchased the
+victory have ached through my life.
+
+There was but one calling wherein it seemed possible for me to earn my
+bread; for how could I descend to chaffer in the market, to trim and
+huckster through the world,--_I_, who had thought to condition the
+Spirit of the Universe? But there were metaphors faintly shadowing
+divine things, symbols adapted to the limitations of the popular mind,
+and with these I might do an honest work for the souls of men. _Honest?_
+Yes,--unless Augustine was a hypocrite, when he declared that he spoke
+of the Unseen as unity in three persons, less to say something than not
+to remain altogether silent. To a certain order of minds among the
+clergy this is the daily cross,--the necessity of maintaining a fixed
+position, and ever looking down from it to teach, instead of ever
+yearning upward to be taught.
+
+It is enough to say, that, supporting myself and my sister by
+school-teaching, I achieved such courses of reading as are supposed to
+qualify for enrolment among the liberal clergy of New England. Until the
+time when my sister left me by marriage I was settled at N----, on the
+Connecticut. Soon after this event, died old Dr. P---- of Foxden, and I
+received a call to his vacant parish. I knew that the sort of society to
+be found in that place would minister to my most urgent need. I craved
+some intellectual clanship which should never seek to rise to an equal
+spiritual companionship. For there was only one man to whom I might
+speak freely, and from him my path ever diverged. How far apart the
+years had led us! Sometimes there came a whisper that I had been
+snatched from the hand of Satan, killer of souls; sometimes my only
+opportunities of salvation seemed left in that sad, damp homestead. I
+could never return to him; I could never be wholly free from him. Ever
+was I controlled by a shadowy force which reached me from his abundant
+power. No occupation was so absorbing as to protect me from the invading
+presence of Herbert Vannelle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first Sunday of the present month brought the twentieth anniversary
+of the day that I parted from Vannelle. In the morning I had preached a
+written sermon on those solemn words of the Apostle, "Whatsoever is not
+of faith is sin." For the first time I shrank from the consciousness
+that the words uttered were true to me in a very different sense from
+that in which the congregation received them. I found it difficult to
+poise in tremulous balance between Truth and its available
+representation to common men. It is my custom to preach extemporaneously
+in the afternoon. Upon rising, after the introductory services, I could
+perceive that my pulse and breathing were accelerated. A certain
+numbness of the brain seemed pierced with convulsive, fugitive shocks.
+An inexplicable influence, a command for cerebral sympathy, seemed
+beating at my forehead. I turned the sacred pages before me, but could
+find nothing upon which to base my remarks. But to my lips would come
+incessantly a passage from Sir Thomas Browne. At last I gave it voice:--
+
+"There are, as in philosophy, so in divinity, sturdy doubts and
+boisterous objections wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too
+nearly acquainteth us. More of these no man hath known than myself;
+which I confess I conquered, not in martial attitude, but on my knees."
+
+An extraordinary impetus seemed imparted to my mental powers. Men have
+said that I spoke with a fluency and eloquence unknown to them before.
+Indeed, I was conscious of a capacity to receive and convey such
+portions of divine wisdom as corresponded to their needs. To speak in
+figure, my heavenly race was as if the Lord of Evil pursued my soul.
+
+Thoroughly exhausted by the effort, I returned to my study and threw
+myself upon a sofa. More fully than ever before, I entered that state
+where one far distant may make himself perceived and known. The occult
+power of foreknowing events, the delicate perception of forbidden
+things, worked their abnormal invigoration in the brain. I became
+conscious that a carriage miles off was rolling nearer and nearer; I
+knew that it would stop at my door. I waited, waited long into the
+night. One by one went out the scattered village-lights. Another
+consciousness of twenty years seemed compressed into those brilliant,
+bitter hours. My lamp flickered. I rose with effort and supplied oil; it
+would now burn till morning. The carriage came nearer. I knew that
+Vannelle was in it. At last the heavy rumble ceased at the door.
+
+A figure stood before me. The old fascination in the eyes; a soul
+burning with lofty enthusiasm looked through and kindled them. But the
+face,--it was ghastly, livid as the face of a leper: it was
+spectral,--blanched and dried with the white flames of his exalted
+vigils. Ah, black eyes, well may you shine in terrible triumph! The old
+idolatry this man demanded of me would not be repelled. I gazed upon my
+visitor as upon a phantom from another sphere, and knew no reckoning of
+time. His magnetism was upon me; I could only crouch into myself--and
+wait. At length the silence was broken.
+
+"Charles Clifton, teacher of the people, listen that you may be taught!
+For the last time I have come down into your world of passion and sense.
+The impulses with which you vainly strive and wrestle are behind me.
+Alone, alone, I have risen from the abysmal depths of personality. I
+have struggled fiercely. I have also conquered."
+
+The livid face showed no change. It suddenly came to me, that, by some
+voluntary disfigurement of his exquisite beauty of feature, this man had
+cut away the lusts for pleasure, fame, and influence. What woman would
+kiss that ghastly cheek? What sycophant could fawn and smirk in that
+chilly presence? The injunctions concerning the offending eye and hand
+Vannelle had interpreted literally.
+
+"I hold," he continued, "the noble prize of intellectual satisfaction
+seized by effort. Multiply the self-satisfactions of earth by infinity,
+and you may guess a little of the sublime contentment which wraps me
+round! Does the best stage-trick of your liberal clergy help them to
+anything but a plasticity of mind to be moulded into artistic forms of
+skepticism? How can you feel the delight of a definite, positive
+affirmation which accounts for and includes all creeds and lives of men?
+How can you come out from your partial dogmas to enter Truth and find it
+alone dogmatic and compulsive? Clifton, I pity you. I would rescue you
+from this haze of thought and feeling,--I, who have even now discarded
+Intelligence and enthroned Wisdom."
+
+"I hope to be pardoned," I said,--"the current of this life sets so in
+favor of Utility and the Practical; men long to be fed with
+sentiment,--why try to give them ideas?"
+
+"Fulfil, then, forever your little round of decencies and proprieties,"
+exclaimed Vannelle; "I judge you not. Perchance your weakness is the
+pardonable weakness of one who has done his best. You may be guiltless
+in failing to attain the strength, the glory, of a true conviction."
+
+"Is it too late?" I asked, faintly.
+
+"It is the question I must put to you," replied Herbert. "I bring you in
+this manuscript the result of my life,--the result of two lives. Here is
+written, as clearly as can be written in gross symbols of human
+language, that which may suggest the Absolute, the Alpha and Omega, the
+System, not humanly built upon hypothesis, but divinely founded upon
+Law."
+
+I knew that a package had been placed upon the table at my side.
+
+"If you can so far command the fragmentary life you lead as to give this
+manuscript the sober, searching thought which it invites, the truth may
+be brought to you. But if these twenty years have only filled you with
+the pride of inventing arguments and detecting analogies, if they have
+only given you the petty skill of a petty scholar, why then dally on
+with a tinsel variety of superficial attainments, and give others the
+blessed privilege you are not strong enough to accept."
+
+"Take it from me," I said. "It has haunted me too long. What you may
+have found, it is for your honor to promulgate."
+
+"The finding is enough for one life," replied Vannelle. "The spiritual
+manhood is indeed complete, but the shell which enclosed it totters
+towards earth. My responsibility in this matter is at an end: yours will
+now begin."
+
+A tremor ran through my frame as he spoke these words. A mystery rigid
+as Fate seemed to shackle me. Without seeing him go, I knew that
+Vannelle had left the room. Again was I conscious of the carriage-rumble
+growing fainter, fainter, fainter in the distance. A dream of passionate
+excitement, a phantasmagoria of old wishes, old hopes, of the life I
+might have led, flew before me. For a moment the energy of Vannelle
+seemed to have transfused itself through every fibre. An unquenchable
+thirst that I had never summoned struck into my brain. I seized the
+manuscript, and devoured page after page. Then I felt the approaches of
+a supreme despotism that might annihilate all I had been, all I hoped to
+be,--that might compel me to denounce all that I had taught, to hear all
+that was respectable and healthy in the world jeer at me as an impostor,
+an enthusiast, a madman. It was not that I was simply invited to come
+above the ordinary doctrines of the day, and stand supported and
+encouraged by a few advanced minds; but I was called to place myself
+where the most earnest souls--unless a second birth could be granted
+them--would scoff with the ignorance and intolerance of the mass.
+
+At last the gray light of morning shone upon me.
+
+One of my deacons, whistling sturdily, passed along the street. A
+physical emanation from his healthy vitality partially counteracted the
+influence of the night. Gathering up every muscle of my feeble will, I
+closed the manuscript forever. Hereditary imperfections of body and mind
+confine me to a sphere of reputable usefulness. If I have sinned in the
+past, I have also suffered. If, as I sometimes suspect, I have thrust
+from me the grandest opportunity ever offered to man, the loss through
+all eternity will be mine.
+
+In eight days I heard of the death of Herbert Vannelle.
+
+
+III.
+
+As the last words of his strange narration fell from Clifton's lips, he
+bowed his head and was greatly agitated. The vast theologic conception
+over which he had so long brooded, instead of lifting him on high, had
+crushed him to the earth. His moral consciousness had demanded a
+satisfaction which he lacked integrity of purpose to pursue and
+challenge. A fixed conviction of the dreariest pessimism would have been
+better for this man than the lofty uncertainty which had tortured his
+days; for in the belief that one may neither struggle nor aspire there
+is a certain practical drift. But how shall he do any good who bears
+about him a quick conscience, a skeptical understanding, sensitive
+religious affections, and a feeble will? Charles Clifton had neither the
+leisure, nor possibly the application, to follow the creeping advances
+of systematic knowledge. He had listened to a fatal persuasion, and at
+the same time had sought to satisfy contradictory principles of the
+human mind. The kindest thing I could do for him was soon perceived.
+
+"Reverend Sir," I said, "you must permit me to advise you. It is now six
+o'clock. In an hour the early train leaves for Foxden. You must take it
+and return home. Any further vacuum in your daily employment will
+produce a crushing pressure from without that might endanger reason
+itself. I solemnly promise to deposit this manuscript in the Mather
+Safe,--nay, I will not leave town until the President and Treasurer have
+met me this afternoon according to your agreement. I pledge you my honor
+that the parchment shall be consigned to its resting-place with every
+necessary formality."
+
+My companion gazed long upon vacancy before returning any answer. He
+strove to dispel the cloud-pageantry which had sailed above him in
+shapeless beauty. He walked up and down the chamber, paused, threw open
+the window, and looked upon the street below. I felt that every petty
+detail of man's daily craft struck outlines of painful vividness upon
+the morbid sensibility of his condition. Finally he spoke to this
+effect: --
+
+"A grief has been lessened in giving it words. My deepest and most
+solitary moments have been revealed to human sympathy, and the relief is
+great. It may be that I have been created to some wholesome end,--that
+some truth may shine before the world through what seems the failure of
+my life. I will return at once to the sphere of the senses: it is, as
+you say, all that is left me. Let who will inquire into the significance
+and purpose of the Universe; it is for me to work in the bondage of the
+flesh, to be the humble tool of the age in which my lot is cast."
+
+Yet it was not easy to induce the clergyman to commit to my care the
+conclusion of the enterprise which had brought him to town. His peculiar
+nervous temperament foretold a thousand accidents that might befall the
+precious legacy of his friend. It was only by addressing his reason in
+repeated arguments, and by solemnly asseverating my entire fidelity,
+that I induced him to yield.
+
+It was a gracious gift to be once more alone.
+
+I seemed awakened from a dream of pining exultation, of dark foreboding.
+Without acknowledging it to myself, I had been strangely wrought upon by
+what I had read and heard. As Clifton emerged from the magical influence
+of Vannelle, was it not concentrated upon me? The impulse to return to
+the perusal of the manuscript was almost irresistible. Yet it was
+evident, that, failing to receive as my very life what was there
+written, I should become hopelessly entangled in discrepancies and
+contradictions. A glance at the imminent peril sent me shuddering to my
+only safety.
+
+It has been mentioned that I had interested myself in some inquiries
+tending to modify the received understanding of a certain natural law.
+During my morning in the College Library I had collected the records of
+many facts, which, laboriously compared, might confirm the hypothesis I
+had conceived. I now braced myself to the task of tracing an order in
+these random observations. I was soon stimulated by perceiving that my
+statistics seemed to confirm the justice of the reasoning which at
+first roused my suspicion. More and more plainly did man's experience
+respond to the results I had dared to predict. Trivial circumstances,
+noted in remote times and disconnected places, pointed in one direction,
+and there beat the regular pulse of Nature.
+
+It is perhaps a little humiliating to mention, what I afterwards
+discovered, that the doctrine which I endeavored to reach had been
+already conceived and passed upon by a not very eminent scientist in one
+of the Western States. But at that time absorption in the search for
+attainable truth was necessary to my welfare; and, with very brief
+intervals for rest and refreshment, I continued my pursuit until the
+afternoon-hour for visiting the library.
+
+The President and Treasurer entered the building at five o'clock.
+
+For some minutes I had stood before the massive doors of the Mather
+Safe, wondering if any of its mysterious contents could be more singular
+than the consignment about to be made to its keeping.
+
+"Is Mr. Clifton of Foxden in the library?" inquired the President.
+
+"I am here to represent him," I replied. "He made a strange mistake in
+the day of appointment, and was compelled to leave town this morning.
+The package which he wished to deposit in the Mather Safe I hold in my
+hand."
+
+"_Lex Universalis Naturæ_; THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSOLUTE," exclaimed
+the Treasurer, reading the inscription upon the outer parchment. "Poh,
+poh! I thought that sort of philosophy had long ago been handed over to
+the limbo of fallacies."
+
+"By those who have neither feeling nor imagination enough to care for
+anything not transmutable into dollars, perhaps it has," I rejoined,
+somewhat tartly.
+
+"Come, come!" said the President, in his good-natured, rolling tones;
+"since the days of the great Jonathan, our New-England metaphysicians
+have generally been broken-down poets, and should be treated with the
+greatest tenderness. Some flighty minds will prefer dangerous trips to
+dream-land to the rigid demonstrations of figures; but the mass of our
+graduates accept the teaching of their Alma Mater, that only the
+mathematician has the right to investigate, and that of all philosophers
+only natural philosophers are competent instructors."
+
+"Yet, Sir," I said, "you will remember that the time was when your
+natural philosophers were persecuted as wizards by Church and State.
+Even the mathematician is defined by an old lexicographer to be '_Magus
+dæmonum invocator_'; and I cannot forget that all that is of honor and
+respect to-day is but the actual of a once despised ideal."
+
+I really marvelled at my own audacity in presuming to question the words
+of this distinguished and excellent gentleman. Indeed, it was
+particularly surprising, because (if I knew myself) I precisely agreed
+with him. But there is a certain waywardness in my composition, which
+loves to puncture an inflated conventionality, even when I myself am
+most conventional.
+
+In the mean time the Treasurer, taking the President's key with his own,
+had opened the Safe. I looked in and beheld coffers of lead and oak,
+nooks and pigeon-holes covered and sealed with the College seal, little
+cells of glass which appeared to hold documents of the utmost
+importance, and, in short, whatever might best defy the injuries of
+time. The weighty book which registered the contents of the Safe was
+opened before me. I was told to write the number assigned to the
+manuscript, to describe its present condition, and to indicate its
+destination. This I carefully did, and was about to confide my charge to
+its long oblivion.
+
+"Stay!" said the President. "You have forgotten the mottoes! Here is
+only one; and it is our rule that every deposit in the Mather Safe be
+distinguished by three, in as many languages.
+
+  '_Alteri Sæculo_.'
+
+The selection is good, though it has already been adopted by a
+Massachusetts statesman. It is now for you to supply two others."
+
+Singular as it may appear, this sudden call to perform a trifling office
+which I had not anticipated, filled me with a conflict of emotions. In
+choosing another's words, I seemed to indorse or repudiate the strange
+matter with which they were to be associated. I thought of Vannelle's
+wondrous language, of Clifton's exhilaration, and of the vivid buoyancy
+with which my spirit had striven to rise. I even groped for some phrase
+which might hint what delicate aërial impressions had tended to condense
+the soul on the supreme point of spiritual ecstasy. But memory was a
+blank when I demanded words for this seeming-glorious fact in the
+experience of humanity. Success was made impossible by the very
+intensity of the effort to summon an appropriate message to be dropped
+over the abyss of Time. I was confident that there were many apt things
+which might be said, if I could come at them, as it were, sideways. In
+order that I might take them at this advantage, I snatched a letter from
+my pocket, and began to read. My eye was soon caught by the impression
+of a seal that I had once given my wife. It was a good [woman's] motto,
+I jestingly told her; and now it was returned to me at my sorest need.
+Six little words of the good Pascal,--
+
+  "_Le plus sûr est de croire_."
+
+Something compelled me to write them, and a new freedom was with me when
+I had done so.
+
+"Make haste, make haste, for the prayer-bell is ringing!" cried the
+President "See, here is a copy of Plato's 'Phædrus,'--a work which our
+vapory brethren are fond of quoting, generally at second-hand; perhaps
+you may pick out a sentence that will prophesy with sufficient
+ambiguity."
+
+But it was not Plato or his "Phædrus" that then claimed my thoughts.
+There loomed a Rock graven with more august instruction than the sage of
+the Academy was privileged to communicate,--a Rock against which the
+heaving surface of human opinion had chafed and broken in vain. Tossed
+to and fro upon the tide of life, who has not sometimes listened to the
+wrangling voices which shouted, "Mystical Interpretation," "Absolute
+Fiction," "Huge Conglomerate of Myths"? Whose eye has never been caught
+by the sparkling tinsel of modern philosophies, with their Seers,
+Heroes, Missions, Developments, Insights, Principles of Nature,
+Clairvoyance, and Magnetic Currents? Happy those who are able to return
+to that one channel through which magnetic currents have indeed
+descended from an unseen sphere, and touched the noblest hearts! For
+there _is_ a certain mediation between the necessities and aspirations
+of man,--an assured deliverance from the gross and sordid surroundings
+of his earthly life. There came before me one simple period from a
+familiar Book. Most direct and confident is the solemn statement. I
+wrote it as the final motto.
+
+
+     "NOW THE SERPENT WAS MORE SUBTILE THAN ANY BEAST OF THE FIELD WHICH
+     THE LORD GOD HAD MADE."
+
+THE TERTIARY AGE, AND ITS CHARACTERISTIC ANIMALS.
+
+
+In entering upon the Tertiaries, we reach that geological age which,
+next to his own, has the deepest interest for man. The more striking
+scenes of animal life, hitherto confined chiefly to the ocean, are now
+on land; the extensive sheets of fresh water are filled with fishes of a
+comparatively modern character,--with Whitefish, Pickerel, Perch, Eels,
+etc.,--while the larger quadrupeds are introduced upon the continents so
+gradually prepared to receive them. The connection of events throughout
+the Tertiaries, considered as leading up to the coming of man, may be
+traced not only in the physical condition of the earth, and in the
+presence of the large terrestrial Mammalia, but also in the appearance
+of those groups of animals and plants which we naturally associate with
+the domestic and social existence of man. Cattle and Horses are first
+found in the middle Tertiaries; the grains, the Rosaceæ, with their
+variety of fruits, the tropical fruit-trees, Oranges, Bananas, etc., the
+shade- and cluster-trees, so important to the comfort and shelter of
+man, are added to the vegetable world during these epochs. The fossil
+vegetation of the Tertiaries is, indeed, most interesting from this
+point of view, showing the gradual maturing and completion of those
+conditions most intimately associated with human life. The earth had
+already its seasons, its spring and summer, its autumn and winter, its
+seed-time and harvest, though neither sower nor reaper was there; the
+forests then, as now, dropped their thick carpet of leaves upon the
+ground in the autumn, and in many localities they remain where they
+originally fell, with a layer of soil between the successive layers of
+leaves,--a leafy chronology, as it were, by which we read the passage of
+the years which divided these deposits from each other. Where the leaves
+have fallen singly on a clayey soil favorable for receiving such
+impressions, they have daguerreotyped themselves with the most wonderful
+accuracy, and the Oaks, Poplars, Willows, Maples, Walnuts, Gum- and
+Cinnamon-trees, etc., of the Tertiaries are as well known to us as are
+those of our own time.
+
+It was an eventful day, not only for science, but for the world, when a
+Siberian fisherman chanced to observe a singular mound lying near the
+mouth of the River Lena, where it empties into the Arctic Ocean. During
+the warmer summer-weather, he noticed, that, as the snow gradually
+melted, this mound assumed a more distinct and prominent outline, and at
+length, on one side of it, where the heat of the sun was greatest, a
+dark body became exposed, which, when completely uncovered, proved to be
+that of an immense elephant, in so perfect a state of preservation that
+the dogs and wolves were attracted to it as by the smell of fresh meat,
+and came to feed upon it at night. The man knew little of the value of
+his discovery, but the story went abroad, and an Englishman travelling
+in Russia, being curious to verify it, visited the spot, and actually
+found the remains where they had been reported to lie, on the frozen
+shore of the Arctic Sea,--strange burial-place enough for an animal
+never known to exist out of tropical climates. Little beside the
+skeleton was left, though parts of the skin remained covered with hair,
+showing how perfect must have been the condition of the body when first
+exposed. The tusks had been sold by the fisherman; but Mr. Adams
+succeeded in recovering them; and collecting all the bones except those
+of one foot, which had been carried off by the wolves, he had them
+removed to St. Petersburg, where the skeleton now stands in the Imperial
+Museum. The inhabitants of Siberia seem to be familiar with this animal,
+which they designate by the name of _Mammoth_, while naturalists call
+it _Elephas primigenius_. The circumstance that they abound in the
+frozen drift of the great northern plain of Asia, and are occasionally
+exposed in consequence of the wearing of the large rivers traversing
+Siberia, has led to the superstition among the Tongouses, that the
+Mammoths live under ground, and die whenever, on coming to the surface,
+the sunlight falls upon them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Had this been the only creature of the kind found so far from the
+countries to which elephants are now exclusively confined, it might have
+been believed that some strange accident had brought it to the spot
+where it was buried. But it was not long before similar remains were
+found in various parts of Europe,--in Russia, in Germany, in Spain, and
+in Italy. The latter were readily accounted for by the theory that they
+must be the remains of the Carthaginian elephants brought over by the
+armies of Hannibal, while it was suggested that the others might have
+been swept from India by some great flood, and stranded where they were
+found. It was Cuvier, entitled by his intimate acquaintance with the
+anatomy of living animals to an authoritative opinion in such matters,
+who first dared to assert that these remains belonged to no elephant of
+our period. He rested this belief upon structural evidence, and insisted
+that an Indian elephant, brought upon the waves of a flood to Siberia,
+would be an Indian elephant still, while all these remains differed in
+structure from any species existing at present. This statement aroused
+research in every direction, and the number of fossil Mammalia found
+within the next few years, and proved by comparison to be different from
+any living species, soon demonstrated the truth of his conclusion.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Shortly after the discovery of fossil elephants had opened this new path
+of investigation, some curious bones were found by some workmen in the
+quarries of Montmartre, near Paris, and brought to Cuvier for
+examination. Although few in number, and affording but very scanty
+_data_ for such a decision, he at once pronounced them to be the remains
+of some extinct animal preceding the present geological age. Here, then,
+at his very door, as it were, was a settlement of that old creation in
+which he could pursue the inquiry, already become so important in its
+bearings. It was not long before other bones of the same kind were
+found, though nothing as yet approaching an entire skeleton. However,
+with such means as he had, Cuvier began a comparison with all the living
+Mammalia,--with the human skeleton first, with Monkeys, with the larger
+Carnivora and Ruminants, then with all the smaller Mammalia, then with
+the Pachyderms; and here, for the first time, he began to find some
+resemblance. He satisfied himself that the animal must have belonged to
+the family of Pachyderms; and he then proceeded to analyze and compare
+all the living species, till he had collected ample evidence to show
+that the bones in question did not correspond with any species, and
+could not even be referred to any genus, now in existence. At length
+there was discovered at Montmartre an upper jaw of the same
+animal,--next a lower jaw, matching the upper one, and presently a whole
+head with a few backbones was brought to light. These were enough, with
+Cuvier's vast knowledge of animal structure, to give him a key to the
+whole skeleton. At about the same time, in the same locality, were found
+other bones and teeth also, differing from those first discovered, and
+yet equally unlike those of any living animal. The first evidently
+belonged to some stout and heavy animal, the others were more slender
+and of lighter build. From these fragments, ample evidence to him of his
+results, he drew the outlines of two animals: one which he called the
+Palæotherium, (old animal,) a figure of which is given in the above
+wood-cut, and the other Anoplotherium, (animal without fangs). He
+presented these figures with an explanatory memoir at the Academy, and
+announced them as belonging to some creation preceding the present,
+since no such animals had ever existed in our own geological period.
+Such a statement was a revelation to the scientific world: some looked
+upon it with suspicion and distrust; others, who knew more of
+comparative anatomy, hailed it as introducing a new era in science; but
+it was not till complete specimens were actually found of animals
+corresponding perfectly to those figured and described by Cuvier, and
+proving beyond a doubt their actual existence in ancient times, that all
+united in wonder and admiration at the result obtained by him with such
+scanty means.
+
+It would seem that the family of Pachyderms was largely represented
+among the early Mammalia; for, since Cuvier named these species, a
+number of closely allied forms have been found in deposits belonging to
+the same epoch. Of course, the complete specimens are rare; but the
+fragments of such skeletons occur in abundance, showing that these
+old-world Pachyderms, resembling the Tapirs more than any other living
+representatives of the family, were very numerous in the lower
+Tertiaries.
+
+There is, however, one animal now in existence, forming one of those
+singular links before alluded to between the present and the past, of
+which I will say a few words here, though its relation is rather with a
+later group of Tertiary Pachyderms than with those described by Cuvier.
+On the coast of Florida there is an animal of very massive, clumsy
+build, long considered to be a Cetacean, but now recognized, by some
+naturalists at least, as belonging to the order of Pachyderms. In form
+it resembles the Cetaceans, though it has a fan-shaped tail, instead of
+the broad flapper of the Whales. It inhabits fresh waters or shoal
+waters, and is not so exclusively aquatic as the oceanic Cetaceans. Its
+most striking feature is the form of the lower jaw, which is bent
+downward, with the front teeth hanging from it. This animal is called
+the Manatee, or Sea-Cow. There are three species known to
+naturalists,--one in Tampa Bay, one in the Amazon, and one in Africa. In
+the Tertiary deposits of Germany there has been found an animal allied
+in some of its features to those described by Cuvier, but it has the
+crown of its teeth folded like the Tapir, while the lower jaw is turned
+down with a long tusk growing from it. This animal has been called the
+Dinotherium. A part of the head, showing the heavy jaws and the
+formidable tusk, is represented in the subjoined wood-cut.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Its hanging lower jaw, with the protruding tusk, corresponds perfectly
+to the formation of the lower jaw and teeth in the Manatee. Some
+resemblance of the Dinotherium to the Mastodon suggested a comparison
+with that animal as the next step in the investigation, when it was
+found that at the edge of the lower jaw of the latter there was a pit
+with a small projecting tooth, also corresponding exactly in its
+position to the tusk in the Dinotherium. The Elephant was now examined;
+and in him also a rudimentary tooth appeared in the lower jaw, not cut
+through, but placed in the same relation to the jaw and the other teeth
+as that of the Mastodon. It would seem, then, that the Manatee makes one
+in this series of Dinotherium, Mastodon, and Elephant, and represents
+the aquatic Pachyderms, occupying the same relation to the terrestrial
+Pachyderms as the Seals bear to the terrestrial Carnivora, and, like
+them, lowest in structure among their kind.
+
+The announcement of Cuvier's results stimulated research, and from this
+time forward Tertiary Mammalia became the subject of extensive and most
+important investigations among naturalists. The attention of collectors
+once drawn to these remains, they were found in such numbers that the
+wonder was how they had been so long hidden from the observation of men.
+They remind us chiefly of tropical animals; indeed, Tigers, Hyenas,
+Rhinoceroses, Hippopotamuses, Mastodons, and Elephants had their home in
+countries which now belong to the Cold Temperate Zone, showing that the
+climate in these latitudes was much milder then than it is at present.
+Bones of many of these animals were found in caverns in Germany, France,
+Italy, and England. Perhaps the story of Kirkdale Cave, where the first
+important discovery of this kind was made on English soil, may not be so
+well known to American readers as to forbid its repetition here.
+
+It was in the summer of 1821 that some workmen, employed in quarrying
+stone upon the slope of a limestone hill at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, came
+accidentally upon the mouth of a cavern. Overgrown with grass and
+bushes, the mouth of this cave in the hill-side had been effectually
+closed against all intruders, and it was not strange that its existence
+had never been suspected. The hole was small, but large enough to admit
+a man on his hands and knees; and the workmen, creeping in through the
+opening, found that it led into a cavern, broad in some parts, but low
+throughout. There were only a few spots where a man could stand upright;
+but it was quite extensive, with branches opening out from it, some of
+which have not yet been explored. The whole floor was strewn, from one
+end to the other, with hundreds of bones, like a huge dog-kennel. The
+workmen wondered a little at their discovery, but, remembering that
+there had been a murrain among the cattle in this region some years
+before, they came to the conclusion that these must be the bones of
+cattle that had died in great numbers at that time; and, having so
+settled the matter to their own satisfaction, they took little heed to
+the bones, but threw many of them out on the road with the common
+limestone. Fortunately, a gentleman, living in the neighborhood, whose
+attention had been attracted to them, preserved them from destruction;
+and a few months after the discovery of the cave, Dr. Buckland, the
+great English geologist, visited Kirkdale, to examine its strange
+contents, which proved indeed stranger than any one had imagined; for
+many of these remains belonged to animals never before found in England.
+The bones of Hyenas, Tigers, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, and Hippopotamuses
+were mingled with those of Deer, Bears, Wolves, Foxes, and many smaller
+creatures. The bones were gnawed, and many were broken, evidently not by
+natural decay, but seemed to have been snapped violently apart. After
+the most complete investigation of the circumstances, Dr. Buckland
+convinced himself, and proved to the satisfaction of all scientific men,
+that the cave had been a den of Hyenas[A] at a time when they, as well
+as Tigers, Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc., existed in England in as great
+numbers as they now do in the wildest parts of tropical Asia or Africa.
+The narrow entrance to the cave still retained the marks of grease and
+hair, such as one may see on the bars of a cage in a menagerie against
+which the imprisoned animals have been in the habit of rubbing
+themselves constantly, and there were marks of the same kind on the
+floor and walls.
+
+[Footnote A: Among the other facts showing that Kirkdale Cave had been
+the den of these animals, and not tenanted as their home by any of the
+other creatures whose remains occurred there, were the excrements of the
+Hyenas found in considerable quantity by Dr. Buckland, and identified as
+such by the keeper of a menagerie. Any one who may wish to read the
+whole history of Dr. Buckland's investigations of this matter, showing
+the patience and sagacity with which he collected and arranged the
+evidence, will find a full account of Kirkdale Cave and other caverns
+containing fossil bones in his "Reliquiæ Diluvianæ."]
+
+It was evident that the Hyenas were the lords of this ancient cavern,
+and the other animals their unwilling guests; for the remains of the
+latter were those which had been most gnawed, broken, and mangled; and
+the head of an enormous Hyena, with gigantic fangs found complete, bore
+ample evidence to their great size and power. Some of the animals, such
+as the Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc., could not have been brought into
+the cave without being first killed and torn to pieces, for it is not
+large enough to admit them. But their gnawed and broken bones attest,
+nevertheless, that they were devoured like the rest; and probably the
+Hyenas then had the same propensity which characterizes those of our own
+time, to tear in pieces the body of any dead animal, and carry it to
+their den to feed upon it apart.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+While Kirkdale Cave was evidently the haunt of Hyenas chiefly, other
+caverns in Germany and France were tenanted in a similar manner by a
+gigantic species of Bear. Their remains, mingled with those of the
+animals on which they fed, have been found in great numbers in the
+Cavern of Gailenreuth, in Franconia. The subjoined wood-cut shows the
+head of this formidable beast, which must have exceeded in size any Bear
+now living. Indeed, although there were many smaller kinds, and the
+other types of the Animal Kingdom in the Tertiaries seem to approach
+very nearly both in size and general character their modern
+representatives, yet, on the whole, the earlier Mammalia were giants in
+comparison with those now living. The Mastodon and Mammoth, as compared
+with the modern Elephant, the Megatherium, as compared with the Sloths
+of present times, the Hyenas and Bears of the European caverns, and the
+fossil Elk of Ireland, by the side of which even the Moose of our
+Northern woods is belittled, are remarkable instances in proof of this.
+One cannot but be struck with the fact that this first representation of
+Mammalia, the very impersonation of brute force in power, size, and
+ferocity, immediately preceded the introduction of man, with whose
+creation intelligence and moral strength became the dominant influences
+on earth.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Among these huge Tertiary Mammalia, one of those most common on the
+North-American continent seems to have been the Mastodon. The
+magnificent specimens preserved in this country are too well known to
+require description. The remains of the Rhinoceros occur also in the
+recent Tertiary deposits of North America, though as yet no perfect
+skeletons have been found. The Edentata, now confined to South America
+and the western coast of Africa, were also numerous in the Southern
+States during that time; their remains have been found as far north as
+the Salt Lick in Kentucky. But we must not judge of the Tertiary
+Edentata by any now known to us. The Sloths, the Armadillos, the
+Ant-Eaters, the Pangolins, are all animals of rather small size; but
+formerly they were represented by the gigantic Megatherium, the
+Megalonyx, and the Mylodon, some of which were larger than the Elephant,
+and others about the same size of the Rhinoceros or Hippopotamus. The
+subjoined wood-cut represents a Mylodon in the act of lifting himself
+against the trunk of a tree.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+They were clumsy brutes, and though their limbs were evidently built
+with reference to powerful movements, perhaps climbing, or at least
+rising on their hind quarters, the act of climbing with them cannot have
+had anything of the nimbleness or activity generally associated with it.
+On the contrary, they probably were barely able to support their huge
+bodies on their hind limbs, which are exceedingly massive, and on the
+stiff, heavy tail, while they dragged down with their front limbs the
+branches of the trees, and fed upon them at leisure. The Zoölogical
+Museum at Cambridge is indebted to the generosity of Mr. Joshua Bates
+for a very fine set of casts taken from the Megatherium in the British
+Museum. They are now mounted, and may be seen in one of the
+exhibition-rooms of the building. Large Reptiles, but very unlike those
+of the Cretaceous and Jurassic epochs, belonging chiefly to the types of
+Turtles, Crocodiles, Pythons, and Salamanders, existed during the
+Tertiary epochs. The wood-cut below represents a gigantic Salamander of
+the Tertiary deposits. It is a curious fact, illustrative of the
+ignorance of all anatomical science in those days, that, when the
+remains of this reptile (Audrias, as it is now called) were first
+discovered toward the close of the seventeenth century, they were
+described by old Professor Scheuchzer as the bones of an infant
+destroyed by the Deluge, and were actually preserved, not for their
+scientific value, but as precious relics of the Flood, and described in
+a separate pamphlet, entitled, "Homo Diluvii Testis." Among the Tertiary
+Reptiles the Turtles seem to have been a very prominent type, by their
+size as well as by their extensive distribution. Their remains have been
+found both in the far West and in the East. The fossil Turtles of
+Nebraska are well known to American naturalists; but the Oriental one
+exceeds them in size, and is, indeed, the most gigantic representative
+of the order known thus far. A man could stand under the arch of the
+shield of the old Himalayan Turtle preserved in the British Museum.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It would carry me too far, were I to attempt to give anything more than
+the most cursory sketch of the animals of the Tertiary age; and, indeed,
+they are so well known, and have been so fully represented in
+text-books, that I fear some of my readers may think even now that I
+have dwelt too long upon them. Monkeys were unquestionably introduced
+upon earth before the close of the Tertiaries; some bones have been
+found in Southern France, and also on Mount Pentelicus in Greece, in the
+later Tertiary deposits; but these remains have not yet been collected
+in sufficient number to establish much more than the fact of their
+presence in the animal creation at that time. I do not offer any opinion
+respecting the fossil human bones so much discussed recently, because
+the evidence is at present too scanty to admit of any decisive judgment
+concerning them. It becomes, however, daily more probable that facts
+will force us sooner or later to admit that the creation of man lies far
+beyond any period yet assigned to it, and that a succession of human
+races, as of animals, have followed one another upon the earth. It may
+be the inestimable privilege of our young naturalists to solve this
+great problem, but the older men of our generation must be content to
+renounce this hope; we may have some prophetic vision of its fulfilment,
+we may look from afar into the land of promise, but we shall not enter
+in and possess it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The other great types of the Animal Kingdom are very fully represented
+in the Tertiaries, and in their general appearance they approach much
+more closely those of the present creation than of any previous epochs.
+Professor Heer has collected and described the Tertiary Insects in great
+number and variety; and the Butterflies, Bugs, Flies, Grasshoppers,
+Dragon-Flies, Beetles, etc., described in his volumes, would hardly be
+distinguished from our own, except by a practised entomologist. Among
+Crustacea, the Shrimp-like forms of the earlier geological epochs have
+become much less conspicuous, while Crabs and Lobsters are now the
+prominent representatives of the class. Among Mollusks, the Chambered
+Shells, hitherto so numerous, have become, as they now are, very few in
+comparison with the naked Cephalopods. The Nautili, however, resemble
+those now living in the Pacific Ocean; and some fragments of the
+Paper-Nautilus have been found, showing that this delicate shell was
+already in existence. There is one very peculiar type of this class,
+belonging to the Tertiaries, which should not be passed by unnoticed. It
+partakes of the character both of the Cretaceous Belemnites and of the
+living Cuttle-Fish, and is known as the Spirulirostra. Another very
+characteristic group among the Tertiary Shells is that of the
+Nummulites, formerly placed by naturalists in immediate proximity with
+the Ammonites, on account of their internal partitions. This is now
+admitted to have been an error; their position is not yet fully
+determined, but they certainly stand very low in the scale, and have no
+affinity whatever with the Cephalopods. The subjoined wood-cut
+represents one of these Shells, so numerous in the Tertiaries that large
+masses of rock consist of their remains. The Univalve Shells or
+Gasteropods of the Tertiaries embraced all the families now living,
+including land and fresh-water Shells as well as the marine
+representatives of the type. Some of the latter, as, for instance, the
+Cerithium, are accumulated in vast numbers. The limestone quarries out
+of which Paris is chiefly built consist wholly of these Shells. The
+fresh-water basins were filled with Helices, one of which is represented
+in the following wood-cut, with Planorbis, Limnæus and other Shells
+resembling those now so common in all our lakes and rivers, and
+differing from the living ones only by slight specific characters. The
+Bivalves also have the same resemblance to the present ones, including
+fresh-water Mussels as well as the marine Clams and Oysters. Among
+Radiates, the higher Echini (Sea-Urchins) have become numerous, while
+the other Echinoderms of all families abound. Corals include, for the
+first time, the more highly organized Madrepores.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In the Tertiaries we see the dawn of the present condition of things,
+not only in the character of the animals and plants, but in the height
+of the mountains and in the distribution of land and sea.
+
+Let us give a glance at the continents whose growth we have been
+following, and see what these more recent geological epochs have done
+for their completion. In Europe they have filled the basin in Central
+France, and converted all that region into dry land: they have filled
+also the channel between France and Spain; they have united Central
+Russia with the rest of Europe by the completion of Poland, and have
+greatly enlarged Austria and Turkey; they have completed the
+promontories of Italy and Greece, and have converted the inland sea at
+the foot of the Jura into the plain of Switzerland. But this fruitful
+period in the progress of the world, when the character of organic life
+was higher and the physical features of the earth more varied than ever
+before, was not without its storms and convulsions. The Pyrenees, the
+Apennines, the Alps, and with them the whole range of the Caucasus and
+Himalayas, were raised either immediately after the Cretaceous epoch, or
+in the course of the Tertiaries. Indeed, with this most significant
+passage in her history, Europe acquired all her essential characters.
+There remained, it is true, much to be done in what is called by
+geologists "modern times." The work of the artist is not yet finished
+when his statue is blocked out and the grand outline of his conception
+stands complete; and there still remained, after the earth was rescued
+from the water, after her framework of mountains was erected, after her
+soil was clothed with field and forest, processes by which her valleys
+were to be made more fruitful, her gulfs to be filled with the rich
+detritus poured into them by the rivers, her whole surface to be
+rendered more habitable for the higher races who were to possess it.
+
+We left America at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. A glance at the
+geological map will show the reader that during the Permian, Triassic,
+and Jurassic epochs little was added to the United States, though here
+and there deposits belonging to each of them crop out. In the Cretaceous
+epoch, however, large tracts of land were accumulated, chiefly in the
+South and West; and during the Tertiaries the continent was very nearly
+completed, leaving only a narrow gulf running up to the neighborhood of
+St. Louis to be filled by modern detritus, and the peninsula of Florida
+to be built by the industrious Coral-Workers of our own period. The age
+of the Alleghany chain is not yet positively determined, but it was
+probably raised at the close of the Carboniferous epoch. Up to that
+time, only the Laurentian Hills, the northern side of that mountainous
+triangle which now makes the skeleton, as it were, of the United States,
+existed. The upheaval of the Alleghanies added its eastern side, raising
+the central part of the continent so as to form a long slope from the
+base of the Alleghanies to the Pacific Ocean; but it was not until the
+Tertiary Age that the upheaval of the great chain at the West completed
+the triangle, and transformed that wide westerly slope into the
+Mississippi Valley, bounded on one side by the Alleghanies, and on the
+other by the Rocky Mountains.
+
+It is my belief, founded upon the tropical character of the Fauna, that
+a much milder climate then prevailed over the whole northern hemisphere
+than is now known to it. Some naturalists have supposed that the
+presence of the tropical Mammalia in the Northern Temperate Zone might
+be otherwise accounted for,--that they might have been endowed with
+warmer covering, with thicker hair or fur. But I think the simpler and
+more natural reason for their existence throughout the North is to be
+found in the difference of climate; and I am the more inclined to this
+opinion because the Tertiary animals generally, the Fishes, Shells,
+etc., in the same regions, are more closely allied in character to those
+now living in the Tropics than to those of the Temperate Zones. The
+Tertiary age may be called the geological summer; we shall see,
+hereafter, how abruptly it was brought to a close.
+
+One word more as to the relation of the Tertiary Mammalia to the
+creation which preceded them. I can only repeat here the argument used
+before: the huge quadrupeds characteristic of these epochs make their
+appearance suddenly, and the deposits containing them follow as
+immediately upon those of the Cretaceous epoch, in which no trace of
+them occurs, as do those of the Cretaceous upon those of the Jurassic
+epoch. I would remind the reader that in the central basin of France, in
+which Cuvier found his first Palæotherium, and which afterwards proved
+to have been thickly settled by the early Mammalia, the deposits of the
+Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary epochs follow each other in
+immediate, direct, uninterrupted succession; that the same is true of
+other localities, in Germany, in Southern Europe, in England, where the
+most complete collections have been made from all these deposits; and
+there has never been brought to light a single fact leading us to
+suppose that any intermediate forms have ever existed through which more
+recent types have been developed out of older ones. For thirty years
+Geology has been gradually establishing, by evidence the fulness and
+accuracy of which are truly amazing, the regularity in the sequence of
+the geological formations, and distinguishing, with ever-increasing
+precision, the specific differences of the animals and plants contained
+in these accumulations of past ages. These results bear living testimony
+to the wonderful progress of the kindred sciences of Geology and
+Palæontology in the last half-century; and the development-theory has
+but an insecure foundation so long as it attempts to strengthen itself
+by belittling the geological record, the assumed imperfection of which,
+in default of positive facts, has now become the favorite argument of
+its upholders.
+
+THE NEW SANGREAL.
+
+
+  "Show me the Sangreal, Lord! Show me Thy blood!
+  Thy body and Thy blood! Give me the Quest!
+  Lord, I am faint and tired; my soul is sick
+  Of all the falseness, all the little aims,
+  The weary vanities, the gasping joys,
+  The slow procession of this satiate world!
+  Dear Lord, I burn for Thee! Give me Thy Quest!
+  Down through the old reverberating time,
+  I see Thy knights in wonderful array
+  Go out to victory, like the solemn stars
+  Fighting in courses, with their conquering swords,
+  Their sad, fixed lips of purity and strength,
+  Their living glory, their majestic death.
+  Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
+
+  He lay upon a mountain's rocky crest,
+  So high, that all the glittering, misty world,
+  All summer's splendid tempests, lay below,
+  And sudden lightnings quivered at his feet;
+  So still, not any sound of silentness
+  Expressed the silence, nor the pallid sun
+  Burned on his eyelids; all alone and still,
+  Save for the prayer that struggled from his lips,
+  Broken with eager stress. Then he arose.
+  But always, down the hoary mountain-side,
+  Through whispering forests, by soft-rippled streams,
+  In clattering streets, or the great city's roar,
+  Still from his never sated soul went up,
+  "Give me Thy Quest! Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
+
+  Through all the land there poured a trumpet's clang,
+  And when its silvery anger smote the air,
+  Men sprang to arms from every true man's home,
+  And followed to the field. He followed, too,--
+  All the mad blood of manhood in his veins,
+  All the fierce instincts of a warring race
+  Kindled like flame in every tingling limb,
+  And raging in his soul on fire with war.
+  He heard a thousand voices call him on:
+  Lips hot with anguish, shrieking their despair
+  From swamps and forests and the still bayous
+  That hide the wanderer, nor bewray his lair:
+  From fields and marshes where the tropic sun
+  Scorches a million laborers scourged to work;
+  From homes that are not homes; from mother-hearts
+  Torn from the infants lingering at their breasts;
+  From parted lovers, and from shuddering wives;
+  From men grown mad with whips and tyranny;
+  From all a country groaning in its chains.
+  Nor sleep, nor dream beguiled him any more;
+  He leaped to manhood in one torrid hour,
+  And armed, and sped to battle. Now no more
+  He cried or prayed,--"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
+
+  So in the front of deadly strife he stood;
+  The glorious thunder of the roaring guns,
+  The restless hurricane of screaming shells,
+  The quick, sharp singing of the rifle-balls,
+  The sudden clash of sabres, and the beat
+  Of rapid horse-hoofs galloping at charge,
+  Made a great chorus to his valorous soul,
+  The dreadful music of a grappling world,
+  That hurried him to fight. He turned the tide,
+  But fell upon its turning. Over him
+  Fluttered the starry flag, and fluttered on,
+  While he lay helpless on the trampled sward,
+  His hot life running scarlet from its source,
+  And all his soul in sudden quiet spent,
+  As still as on the silent mountain-top;
+  So still that from his quick-remembering heart
+  Burst that old cry,--"Show me the Sangreal, Lord!"
+
+  Then a bright mist descended over him,
+  And in its central glory stood a shape,
+  Wounded, yet smiling. With His bleeding hands
+  Stretched toward that bleeding side, His eyes divine
+  Like a new dawn, thus softly spake the Lord:--
+  "The blood poured out for brothers is my blood;
+  The flesh for brothers broken is my flesh;
+  No more in golden chalices I dwell,
+  No longer in a vision, angel-borne:
+  Here is the Sangreal, here the Holy Quest.
+  Thy prayer is heard, thy soul is satisfied:
+  Come, my belovèd! I am come for thee.
+  As first I broke the bread and poured the wine,
+  So have I broken thee and poured thy life,
+  So do I bless thee and give thanks for thee,
+  So do I bear thee in my wounded hands."
+  Smiling, He stooped, and kissed the tortured brow,
+  And over all its anguish stole a smile;
+  The blood-sealed lips unclosed; the dying breath
+  Sighed, like the rain-sound in a summer wind,
+  Sobbing, but sweet,--"I see the Sangreal, Lord!"
+
+THOMAS DE QUINCEY.
+
+
+In the notice of so memorable a man, even the briefest prelusive
+flourish seems uncalled for; and so indeed it would be, if by such means
+it were meant simply to justify the undertaking. In regard to any of the
+great powers in literature there exists already a prevailing interest,
+which cannot be presumed to slumber for one moment in any thinking
+mind.[A] By way of notification, there is no need of prelude. Yet there
+are occasions, as, for example, the entrances of kings, which absolutely
+demand the inaugural flourish of arms,--which, like the rosy flood of
+dawn, require to be ushered in by a train of twilight glories. And there
+are lives which proceed as by the movements of music,--which, must
+therefore be heralded by overtures: majestic steppings, heard in the
+background, compel us, through mere sympathy with their pomp of
+procession, to sound the note of preparation.
+
+[Footnote A: "_In any thinking mind_." Yet it must be confessed that
+there _does_ exist a woful ignorance or negligence concerning De Quincey
+in quarters from which better things might be expected. Misappreciation
+it cannot be called, where no trouble has been taken to estimate claims
+that needed only to be weighed to be truly valued. Up to this time,
+there has never been published in England a single essay on the life or
+the genius of De Quincey that indicated even a good acquaintance, on the
+part of the writer, with that author's works; and in such a case, of
+course, not much could be looked for in the way of just interpretation.
+Gilfillan did him gross injustice: indeed, from what he condescended to
+say of the man, it would be difficult to conjecture that a greater than
+Gilfillan was there. And, will the reader believe it? in Professor
+Craik's "English Literature"--a work of great excellence--the name of De
+Quincey is not mentioned! "Sam Johnson," says Craik, "was the last king
+that sat upon the throne of English prose literature." Let it be that
+Sam was a proper king; yet it is just as true that De Quincey was
+legitimately his successor. First, in the matter of time: Sam died in
+1784, and De Quincey was born in 1785, just in time to continue the
+regal line. What was it, again, that entitled Johnson to kingly honors?
+Was it learning? De Quincey was as erudite. Was it his style? There is
+no writer in the language who in that matter may look down on De
+Quincey.
+
+If there ever was a writer "damned with faint praise," it was De
+Quincey. Some stupid writer for the London "Athenæum," for instance,
+dared to compliment the poor "opium-chewer" after the following
+style:--"He possessed taste, but _he lacked creative energy_; and his
+subtle and highly refined intellect was ingenious and acute rather than
+powerful." This reminds me of a criticism once passed upon Shakspeare by
+a mere pedagogue, to the effect that the great poet had considerable
+genius, but very little taste!]
+
+Else I should plunge _in medias res_ upon a sketch of De Quincey's life;
+were it not a rudeness amounting to downright profanity to omit the
+important ceremony of prelibation, and that at a banquet to which,
+implicitly, gods are invited. The reader will assuredly unite with me in
+all such courtesies,--
+
+  "Neu desint epulis rosæ";
+
+particularly as the shade we deal with can be evoked only by peculiar
+incantations,--only the heralding of certain precise claims will this
+monarch listen to as the just _inferiæ_, the fitting sacrifice or
+hecatomb of our homage.
+
+The key-note of preparation, the claim which preëminently should be set
+forth in advance, is this: that De Quincey was the prince of
+hierophants, or of pontifical hierarchs, as regards all those profound
+mysteries which from the beginning have swayed the human heart,
+sometimes through the light of angelic smiles lifting it upwards to an
+altitude just beneath the heavens, and sometimes shattering it, with the
+shock of quaking anguish, down to earth. As it was the function of the
+hierophant, in the Grecian mysteries, to show the sacred symbols as
+concrete incarnations of faith, so was it De Quincey's to reveal in open
+light the everlasting symbols, universally intelligible when once
+disclosed, which are folded in the involutions of dreams and of those
+meditations which most resemble dreams; and as to the manner of these
+revelations, no Roman _pontifex maximus_, were it even Cæsar himself,
+could have rivalled their magisterial pomp.
+
+The peculiarities of his life all point in the direction here indicated.
+It was his remarkable experience which furnished him the key to certain
+secret recesses of human nature hitherto sealed up in darkness. Along
+that border-line by which the glimmerings of consciousness are, as by
+the thinnest, yet the most impervious veil, separated from the regions
+of the unexplored and the undefinable, De Quincey walked familiarly and
+with privileged eye and ear. Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically
+inscribed meanings did he--this Champollion, defying all human enigmas,
+this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms
+and yawning abysses of human astronomy--resolve into orderly
+constellations, that, once and for all, through his telescopic
+interpretation and enlargement, were rendered distinct and commensurable
+amongst men. The conditions of his power in this respect are
+psychologically inseparable from the remarkable conditions of his life,
+two of which are especially to be noticed. First, a ruling disposition
+towards meditation, constituting him, in the highest sense of the word,
+a poet. Secondly, the peculiar qualities which this singular mental
+constitution derived from his use of opium,--qualities which, although
+they did not increase, or even give direction to his meditative power,
+at least magnified it, both optically, as to its visual capacity, and
+creatively, as to its constructive faculty. These two conditions, each
+concurrent with the other in its ruling influence, impart to his life a
+degree of psychological interest which belongs to no other on record.
+Nor is this all. The reader knows how often a secondary interest will
+attach to the mightiest of conquerors or to the wisest of sovereigns,
+who is not merely in himself, and through his own deeds, magnificent,
+but whose glory is many times repeated and piled up by numerous
+reverberations of itself from a contemporary race of Titans. Thus,
+doubtless, Charles V., although himself King of Spain, Germany, the
+Netherlands, and a portion of Italy, gloried in the sublime empery of
+the Turkish Solyman, as by some subtile connection of fate sympathetic
+with his own. A secondary interest of this nature belongs to the life of
+De Quincey,--a life which inclosed, as an island, a whole period of
+English literature, one, too, which in activity and originality is
+unsurpassed by any other, including the names of Scott and Dickens, of
+Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Southey, of Moore, Byron, Shelley, and
+Keats. His connection with very many of these was not simply that of
+coëxistence, but also of familiar intercourse.
+
+Between De Quincey's life and his writings it is impossible that there
+should be any distraction of interest, so intimately are the two
+interwoven: in this case more so than in that of any known author.
+Particularly is this true of his more impassioned writings, which are a
+faithful rescript of his all-impassioned life. Hierophant we have called
+him,--the prince of hierophants,--having reference to the matter of his
+revelations; but in his _manner_, in his style of composition, he is
+something more than this: here he stands the _monarch_ amongst
+rhapsodists. In these writings are displayed the main peculiarities of
+his life and genius.
+
+But, besides these, there is a large section of his works, the aim of
+which is purely intellectual, where feeling is not at all involved; and
+surely there is not, in either ancient or modern literature, a section
+which, in the same amount of space, exhibits the same degree of intense
+activity on the part of the analytic understanding, applied to the
+illustration of truth or to the solution of vexed problems. This latter
+class is the more remarkable from its polar antithesis to the former;
+just as, in his life, it is a most remarkable characteristic of the man,
+that, rising above all other men through the rhapsodies of dreams, he
+should yet be able truly to say of himself that he had devoted a greater
+number of hours to intellectual pursuits than any other man whom he had
+seen, heard of, or read of. A wider range is thus exhibited, not of
+thought merely, but also of the possible modes of expressing thought,
+than is elsewhere to be found, even in writers the most skilled in
+rhetorical subtilty. The distance between these two opposites De Quincey
+does not traverse by violent leaps; he does not by some feat of
+legerdemain evanish from the fields of impassioned eloquence, where he
+is an unrivalled master, to appear forthwith in those of intellectual
+gymnastics, where, at least, he is not surpassed. He is familiar with
+every one of the intervening stages between the rhapsody and the
+demonstration,--between the loftiest reach of aspirant passion, from
+which, with reptile instinct, the understanding slinks downwards to the
+earth, and that fierce antagonism of naked thoughts, where the crested
+serpent "mounts and burns." His alchemy is infinite, combining light
+with warmth in all degrees,--in pathos, in humor,[A] in genial
+illumination. Let the reader, if he can, imagine Rousseau to have
+written "Dinner, Real and Reputed," or the paper on "The Essenes," in
+both of which great erudition is necessary, but in which erudition is as
+nothing when compared to the faculty of recombining into novel forms
+what previously had been so grouped as to be misunderstood, or had
+lacked just the one element necessary for introducing order. To have
+written these would have entitled Rousseau to a separate sceptre. Or,
+moving into a realm of art totally distinct from this, suppose him to
+have been the author of "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts":
+that would mount a new plume in Rousseau's hat. But I happen just now to
+be reminded of another little paper, numbering about six pages,
+entitled, "On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth": give him _that_,
+too. Why, the little French king is beginning to assume an imperial
+consequence! We beg the reader's pardon for indulging in comparisons of
+this nature, which are always disagreeable; but we have this excuse,
+that the two writers are often mentioned as on the same level, and with
+no appreciation of that unlimited range of power which belongs to De
+Quincey, but not at all to Rousseau. All but one of the trophies which
+we have hypothetically transferred to the Frenchman adorn a single
+volume out of twenty-two, in the Boston edition. Nor is this one
+imperial column adorned by these alone: there are, besides,--alas for
+Rousseau!--two other _spolia opima_ by which the French master is, in
+his own field, proved not the first, nor even the second,--_proximus,
+sed non secundus_,--so wide is the distance between De Quincey and _any_
+other antagonist. These two are the essays respectively entitled, "Joan
+of Arc," and "The English Mail-Coach."
+
+[Footnote A: Of De Quincey's humor, a friend once remarked to me, that
+it always reminded him of an elephant attempting to dance. Now, without
+any doubt, an elephant could dance after an elephantine fashion; but
+surely you would never catch him going through the movements of a jig or
+a Virginia "breakdown." He never lets you forget that he is an elephant.
+So with De Quincey. Levity is an element farthest removed from _his_
+humor; in fact, whenever he allows himself to indulge in humor at all,
+you may be sure that murder is going on somewhere in the vicinity, a
+tragedy of pretty frequent occurrence in De Quincey's works.
+
+There was sufficient humor in De Quincey to have endowed a dozen
+Aristophaneses. There was something, too, in its order, by which it
+resembled the gigantesque features of the old Greek master. I will
+illustrate my meaning by a single instance from each. In Aristophanes's
+"Clouds," Strepsiades is being initiated into the Socratic
+_Phrontisterium_, and in the course of the ceremony Socrates directs his
+pupil's attention to the moon for certain mysterious purposes. But the
+moon only reminds Strepsy of numerous imperturbable duns that storm
+about his ears with lunar exactness, (literally so, since the Greeks
+paid, or refused to pay, regularly on the last day of the month,)--and
+here it is that the opportunity is offered for a monstrous stroke of
+humor; for, at this crisis, Strepsy is made to exclaim, "Some magic is
+it, O Socrates, about the moon? Well! since you are up to that sort of
+thing, what do you say, now, to a spell by which I could snap the old
+monster out of her course for a generation or so?" Now for the parallel
+case from De Quincey. It is from his paper on "California," a
+politico-economical treatise. The author's object is to illustrate the
+fact that scarcity of gold is not due to its non-existence, but to the
+difficulty of obtaining it. "Emeralds and sapphires," says he, "are
+lying at this moment in a place which I could indicate, and no policeman
+is on duty in the whole neighborhood to hinder me or the reader from
+pocketing as many as we please. We are also at perfect liberty to pocket
+the anchors of Her Majesty's ship the Victoria, (one hundred and twenty
+guns,) and to sell them for old iron. Pocket them by all means, and I
+engage that the magistrate sitting at the Thames police-office will have
+too much respect for your powers to think of detaining you. If he does,
+your course is to pocket the police-office, and all which it inherits.
+The man that pockets an anchor may be a dangerous customer, but not a
+customer to be sneezed at." This strikes us as very similar to
+Strepsiades's bagging the moon.]
+
+It is impossible to be exhaustive upon such a subject as that which I
+have undertaken. I shall select, therefore, two prominent centres, about
+which the thoughts which I wish to present naturally revolve: De
+Quincey's childhood, and his opium-experiences.
+
+Thomas de Quincey--hierophant, rhapsodist, philosopher--was born at
+Greenhay, then a suburb of Manchester, in Lancashire County, England, on
+the 15th of August, 1785. According to his own account, the family of
+the De Quinceys was of Norwegian origin; and after its transfer to
+France, in connection with William the Norman, it received its
+territorial appellation from the village of Quincy, in Normandy. Thence,
+at the time of the Norman Invasion, it was transplanted to England,
+where, as afterwards in Scotland, it rose to the highest position, not
+merely in connection with a lordly title and princely estates, but
+chiefly on account of valuable services rendered to the State, and
+conferring preeminence in baronial privilege and consideration.
+
+So sensitive was De Quincey, even at the early age of fifteen, on the
+point of his descent, lest from his name he might be supposed of French
+extraction, that, even into the ears of George III. (that king having,
+in an accidental interview with him at Frogmore, suggested the
+possibility of his family having come to England at the time of the
+Huguenot exodus from France) he ventured to breathe the most earnest
+protest against any supposition of that nature, and boldly insisted upon
+his purely Norman blood,--blood that in the baronial wars had helped to
+establish the earliest basis of English constitutional liberty, and that
+had flowed from knightly veins in the wars of the Crusades. Robert De
+Quincey came into England with William the Conqueror, uniting with whose
+fortunes, he fared after the Conquest as a feudal baron, founding the
+line of Winchester; and that he was a baron of the first water is
+evident from the statement of Gerard Leigh,--that his armorial device
+was inscribed (and how inscribed, if not memorially and as a mark of
+eminent distinction?) on the stained glass in the old church of St.
+Paul's.
+
+And here it is proper that the reader's attention should be momentarily
+diverted to the American branch of this family, at the head of which
+stands the Hon. Josiah Quincy, (the aristocratic _De_ being omitted,)--a
+branch which fled from England in the early part of the seventeenth
+century, to avoid a strife which had then become too intense and fiery
+to admit of reconciliation, and which, indeed, a few years after their
+withdrawal, culminated in civil war. As illustrating the inevitableness
+of any great moral issue, no matter how vast the distance which at a
+critical moment we may put between it and ourselves,--as indicating how
+surely the Nemesis, seemingly avoided, but really only postponed, will
+continue to track our flying footsteps, even across the barren wastes of
+ocean, that ought, if anything could, to interpose an effectual barrier
+between us and all pursuers, and, having caught up with us in our
+fancied retreat, will precipitate upon our devoted heads its
+accumulated violence,--as demonstrating thus the melancholy persistence
+with which that ugly Sphinx who impersonates Justice in our human
+affairs doggedly insists on having her questions answered, and, coming
+by a circuitous route upon those who by good luck have escaped her
+direct path, through an incarnation of unusual terror compels her dread
+alternative,--it is interesting to note how this same family, separated
+by over seven generations from one political revolution, the momentous
+crisis of which was by them successfully evaded, are now, after an
+interval of unsound and hollow peace, compelled to witness the precise
+reiteration of that storm, in the very land to which they fled for
+refuge,--a reiteration that repeats, only on a different stage, and
+under an aggravation of horror as to minute details, not merely two
+antagonistic races corresponding on either side to those which met in
+battle on Marston Moor, but also interests far outweighing any that
+could possibly attach to a conflict between royalty and democracy.
+
+But the Earls of Winchester, in England, whatever may have been their
+prosperity during the nine or ten generations after the Conquest, came
+suddenly to an abrupt termination, abutting at length on some guilty
+traitor in the line, who, like a special Adam for the family, involved
+in his own ruin that prosperity which would else have continued to his
+successors. The dissevered fragments of the old feudal estate, however,
+remained in possession of separate members of the family, as De Quincey
+tells us, until the generation next preceding his own, when the last
+vestige slipped out of the hands of the one sole squire who, together
+with the name, held also some relic of its ancient belongings. But above
+the diluvial wreck of the Winchester estates there has arisen an estate
+far more royal and magnificent, and beneath a far-reaching bow of
+promise, sealed in magical security against a similar disaster. For just
+here, where every hold is lost upon the original heritage, is the family
+freshly grounded upon a second heritage,--one sublime in its order above
+that of all earthly possessions, one that is forever
+imperishable,--namely, the large domain which the gigantic intellect of
+Thomas De Quincey has absolved from aboriginal darkness and brought
+under distinct illumination for all time to come. These are the vast
+acres over which human pride must henceforth soar,--acres that have
+been, through the mighty realizations of human genius, built out into
+the mysterious ocean-depths of chaotic Nature, and that have in some
+measure bridged over infinite chasms in thought, and by just so far have
+extended the fluctuating boundaries of human empire. And for De Quincey
+himself, in view of that monumental structure which rises above the
+shattered wrecks of his poor, frail body, as above the mummied dust of
+Egyptian kings remain eternally the pyramids which they wrought in their
+lifetime, we find it impossible to cherish a single regret, that,
+possibly, by the treasonable slip of a predecessor, he may have been
+robbed of an earldom,--or even that, during a life which by some years
+overlapped the average allotment to humanity, and through which were
+daily accumulating the most splendid results in the very highest
+departments of philosophy and art, these accumulations nevertheless went
+on without any notable recognition from a court the most liberal in all
+Europe; no badge of outward knighthood coming to him through all these
+years, as formerly to Sir Thomas Browne for his subtile meditations, and
+to Sir William Hamilton for his philosophic speculations. The absence of
+such merely _nominal_ titles excites in us no deep regret; there is in
+them little that is monumental, and the pretty tinsel, with which they
+gild monuments already based on substantial worth, is easily, and
+without a sigh, exchanged for that everlasting sunshine reflected from
+the loving remembrances of human hearts.
+
+But at the same time that we so willingly dispense with these nominal
+conditions in the case of De Quincey,--though, assuredly, there was
+never a man upon earth whom these conditions, considered as aërial
+hieroglyphs of the most regal pomp and magnificence, would more
+consistently fit,--we cannot thus easily set aside those other outward
+conditions of affluence and respectability, which, by their presence or
+absence, so materially shape and mould the life, and particularly in its
+earliest tendencies and impulses,--in that season of immature
+preparation when the channels of habit are in the process of formation,
+and while yet a marvellous uncertainty hangs and broods over the
+beginnings of life, as over the infant rivulet yet dandled and tended by
+its mountain-nurses. For, although there are certain elements which
+rigidly and by a foreseen certainty determine its course, as, for
+instance, an extraordinary vantage-height of source, securing for it the
+force and swiftness of a torrent,--yet how shifting are the
+mountain-winds, chilling into frosty silence or quickening with Favonian
+warmth, and how shifting the flying clouds, which, whether marshalled in
+mimic tournament above it, or in the shock of a real conflict, forever
+sway its tender fountains! Thus, even in inexperienced childhood, do the
+scales of the individual destiny begin, favorably or unfavorably, to
+determine their future preponderations, by reason of influences merely
+material, and before, indeed, any sovereignty save a corporeal one (in
+conjunction with heavenly powers) is at all recognized in life. For, in
+this period, with which above all others we associate influences the
+most divine, "with trailing clouds of glory," those influences which are
+purely material are the most efficiently operative. Against the former,
+adult man, in whom reason is developed, _may_ battle, though ignobly,
+and, for himself, ruinously; and against the latter oftentimes he _must_
+struggle, to escape ignominious shipwreck. But the child, helpless alike
+for both these conflicts, is, through the very ignorance which shields
+him from all conscious guilt, bound over in the most impotent (though,
+because impotent and unconscious, the least humiliating) slavery to
+material circumstance,--a slavery which he cannot escape, and which,
+during the period of its absolutism, absorbs his very blood, bone, and
+nerve. To poverty, which the strong man resists, the child succumbs; on
+the other hand, that affluence of comfort, from which philosophy often
+weans the adult, wraps childhood about with a sheltering care; and
+fortunate indeed it is, if the mastery of Nature over us during our
+first years is thus a gentle dealing with us, fertilizing our powers
+with the rich juices of an earthly prosperity. And in this respect De
+Quincey _was_ eminently fortunate. The powers of heaven and of earth
+and--if we side with Milton and _other_ pagan mythologists in
+attributing the gift of wealth to some Plutonian dynasty--the dark
+powers _under_ the earth seem to have conjointly arrayed themselves in
+his behalf. Whatever storms were in the book of Fate written against his
+name they postponed till a far-off future, in the mean time granting him
+the happiest of all childhoods. Really of gentle blood, and thus gaining
+whatever substantial benefits in constitutional temperament and
+susceptibilities _could_ be thence derived, although lacking, as Pope
+also had lacked, the factitious circumstance and airy heralding of this
+distinction, he was, in addition to this, surrounded by elements of
+aristocratic refinement and luxury, and thus hedged in not merely
+against the assault, in any form, of pinching poverty, (as would be any
+one in tolerably comfortable circumstances,) but even against the most
+trivial hint of possible want,--against all necessity of limitation or
+retrenchment in any normal line of expenditure.
+
+He was the son of a merchant, who, at the early age of thirty-nine,
+died, leaving to his family--a wife and six children--an estate yielding
+annually an income of sixteen hundred pounds. And as at his father's
+death De Quincey was seven years old, we may reasonably infer, that,
+during this previous period, while his father was still living, and
+adding to this fixed a fluctuating income from his yearly gains, (which
+to a wholesale merchant of his standing were considerable,) the
+family-fortunes were even more auspicious, amounting to the yearly
+realization of between two and three thousand pounds, and that at a time
+when Napoleon had not as yet meddled with the financial affairs of
+Europe, nor by his intimidations caused even pounds and shillings to
+shrink into less worth and significance than they formerly had,--in view
+of which fact, if we are to charge Alexander the Great (as in a famous
+anecdote he was charged) with the crime of highway-robbery, as the
+"snapper-up of unconsidered trifles" in the way of crowns and a few
+dozen sceptres, what a heinous charge must be brought against this
+Corsican as universal pickpocket! This pecuniary depreciation De Quincey
+himself realized some years later, when, determining to quit school, he
+thought himself compelled[A] to cut off all communication with his
+guardians, and gave himself up to a Bohemian life among the Welsh
+mountains, wandering from one rustic valley to another with the most
+scanty means of support,--for just then the Allies were in full rig
+against France, and the shrinkage of guineas in our young wanderer's
+pocket became palpably evident in view of the increased price of his
+dinner.
+
+[Footnote A: But afterwards he discovered his mistake, and that it was
+only by the lack on his part of that frankness which the kindness of his
+guardians deserved that he had brought so much misery upon himself in
+after-life. His younger brother, Richard,--the Pink of the
+"Autobiographic Sketches,"--made the same mistake, a mistake which in
+his case was never rectified, but led to a life of perilous wanderings
+and adventures.]
+
+The time _did_ come at length when the full epos of a remarkable
+prosperity was closed up and sealed for De Quincey. But that was in the
+unseen future. To the child it was not permitted to look beyond the hazy
+lines that bounded his oasis of flowers into the fruitless waste abroad.
+Poverty, want, at least so great as to compel the daily exercise of his
+mind for mercenary ends, was stealthily advancing from the rear; but the
+sound of its stern steppings was wholly muffled by intervening years of
+luxurious opulence and ease.
+
+I dwell thus at length upon the aristocratic elegance of De Quincey's
+earliest surroundings, (which, coming at a later period, I should notice
+merely as an accident,) because, although not a _potential_ element,
+capable of producing or of adding one single iota to the essential
+character of genius, it is yet a negative condition--a _sine qua
+non_--to the displays of genius in certain directions and under certain
+aspects. By misfortune it is true that power may be intensified. So may
+it by the baptism of malice. But, given a certain degree of power, there
+still remains a question as to its _kind_. So deep is the sky: but of
+what _hue_, of what aspect? Wine is strong, and so is the crude alcohol
+but what the _mellowness_? And the blood in our veins, it is an infinite
+force: but of what temper? Is it warm, or is it cold? Does it minister
+to Moloch, or to Apollo? Will it shape the Madonna face, or the Medusa?
+Why, the simple fact that the rich blue sky over-arches this earth of
+ours, or that it is warm blood which flows in our veins, is sufficient
+to prove that no malignant Ahriman made the world. Just here the
+question is not, what increment or what momentum genius may receive from
+outward circumstances, but what coloring, what mood. Here it is that a
+Mozart differs from a Mendelssohn. The important difference which
+obtains, in this respect, between great powers in literature, otherwise
+coördinate, will receive illustration from a comparison between De
+Quincey and Byron. For both these writers were capable, in a degree
+rarely equalled in any literature, of reproducing, or rather, we should
+say, of reconstructing, the pomp of Nature and of human life. In this
+general office they stand together: both wear, in our eyes, the regal
+purple; both have caused to rise between earth and heaven miracles of
+grandeur, such as never Cheops wrought through his myriad slaves, or
+Solomon with his fabled ring. But in the final result, as in the whole
+_modus operandi_, of their architecture, they stand apart _toto coelo_.
+Byron builds a structure that repeats certain elements in Nature or
+humanity; but they are those elements only which are allied to gloom,
+for he builds in suspicion and distrust, and upon the basis of a
+cynicism that has been nurtured in his very flesh and blood from birth;
+he erects a Pisa-like tower which overhangs and threatens all human
+hopes and all that is beautiful in human love. Who else, save this
+archangelic intellect, shut out by a mighty shadow of eclipse from the
+bright hopes and warm affections of all sunny hearts, could have
+originated such a Pandemonian monster as the poem on "Darkness"? The
+most striking specimen of Byron's imaginative power, and nearly the most
+striking that has ever been produced, is the apostrophe to the sea, in
+"Childe Harold." But what is it in the sea which affects Lord Byron's
+susceptibilities to grandeur? Its destructiveness alone. And _how_? Is
+it through any high moral purpose or meaning that seems to sway the
+movements of destruction? No; it is only through the gloomy mystery of
+the ruin itself,--ruin revealed upon a scale so vast and under
+conditions of terror the most appalling,--ruin wrought under the
+semblance of an almighty passion for revenge directed against the human
+race. Thus, as an expression of the attitude which the sea maintains
+toward man, we have the following passage of Æschylian grandeur, but
+also of Æschylian gloom:--
+
+                                "Thou dost arise
+  And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
+  For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
+  Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
+  And send'st him, shivering in thy _playful_ spray,
+  And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
+  His petty hope in some near port or bay,
+  And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay!"
+
+Who but this dark spirit, forever wooing the powers of darkness, and of
+darkness the most sullen, praying to Nemesis alone, could, with such
+lamentable lack of faith in the purity and soundness of human
+affections, have given utterance to a sentiment like this:--
+
+  "O love! no habitant of earth thou art,--
+  An _unseen_ seraph we believe in thee"?
+
+or the following:--
+
+  "Who loves, raves,--'tis youth's frenzy," etc.?
+
+and again:--
+
+  "Few--_none_--find what they love or could have loved,
+  Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
+  Necessity of loving having removed
+  Antipathies"?
+
+This, then, is the nearest approach to human love,--the removal of all
+antipathies! But even these
+
+                     "recur erelong,
+  Envenomed with irrevocable wrong:
+  And circumstance--that unspiritual god
+  And miscreator--makes and helps along
+  Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,
+  Whose touch turns hope to dust,--the dust which all have trod."
+
+De Quincey, on the other hand, in whose heart there was laid no such
+hollow basis for infidelity toward the master-passions of humanity,
+repeated the pomps of joy or of sorrow, as evolved out of universal
+human nature, and as, through sunshine and tempest, typified in the
+outside world,--but never for one instant did he seek alliance, on the
+one side, with the shallow enthusiasm of the raving Bacchante, or, on
+the other, with the overshadowing despotism of gloom; nor can there be
+found on a single page of all his writings the slightest hint indicating
+even a latent sympathy with the power which builds only to crush, or
+with the intellect that denies, and that against the dearest objects of
+human faith fulminates its denials and shocking recantations solely for
+the purposes of scorn.
+
+Whence this marked difference? To account for it, we must needs trace
+back to the first haunts of childhood the steps of these two fugitives,
+each of whom has passed thence, the one into a desert _mirage_, teeming
+with processions of the gloomiest falsities in life, and the other--also
+into the desert, but where he is yet refreshed and solaced by an
+unshaken faith in the genial verities of life, though separated from
+them by irrecoverable miles of trackless wastes, and where, however
+apparently abandoned and desolate, he is yet ministered unto by angels,
+and no mimic fantasies are suffered to exercise upon his heart their
+overmastering seductions to
+
+  "Allure, or terrify, or undermine."
+
+Whether the days of childhood be our happiest days, is a question all by
+itself. But there can be no question as to the inevitable certainty with
+which the conditions of childhood, fortunate or unfortunate, determine
+the main temper and disposition of our lives. For it is underneath the
+multitude of fleeting proposals and conscious efforts, born of reason,
+and which, to one looking upon life from any superficial stand-point,
+seem to have all to do with its conduct, that there runs the
+undercurrent of disposition, which is born of Nature, which is cradled
+and nurtured with us in our infancy, which is itself a general choice,
+branching out into our specific choices of certain directions and aims
+among all opposite directions and aims, and which, although we rarely
+recognize its important functions, is in all cases the arbiter of our
+destiny. And in the very word _disposition_ is indicated the finality of
+its arbitraments as contrasted with all _proposition_.
+
+Now, with respect to this disposition: Nature furnishes its basis; but
+it is the external structure of circumstance, built up or building about
+childhood,--to shelter or imprison,--which, more than all else, gives it
+its determinate character; and though this outward structure may in
+after-life be thoroughly obliterated, or replaced by its
+opposite,--porcelain by clay, or clay by porcelain,--yet will the
+tendencies originally developed remain and hold a sway almost
+uninterrupted over life. And, generally, the happy influences that
+preside over the child may be reduced under three heads: first, a genial
+temperament,--one that naturally, and of its own motion, inclines toward
+a centre of peace and rest rather than toward the opposite centre of
+strife; secondly, profound domestic affections; and, thirdly, affluence,
+which, although of all three it is the most negative, the most material
+condition, is yet practically the most important, because of the degree
+in which it is necessary to the full and unlimited prosperity of the
+other two. For how frequent are the cases in which the happiest of
+temperaments are perverted by the necessities of toil, so burdensome to
+tender years, or in which corroding anxieties, weighing upon parents'
+hearts, check the free play of domestic love!--and in all cases where
+such limitations are present, even in the gentlest form, there must be a
+cramping up of the human organization and individuality somewhere; and
+everywhere, and under all circumstances, there must be sensibly felt the
+absence of that leisure which crowns and glorifies the affections of
+home, making them seem the most like summer sunshine, or rather like a
+sunshine which knows no season, which is an eternal presence in the
+soul.
+
+As regards all these three elements, De Quincey's childhood was
+prosperous; afterwards, vicissitudes came,--mighty changes capable of
+affecting all other transmutations, but thoroughly impotent to annul the
+inwrought grace of a pre-established beauty. On the other hand, Byron's
+childhood was, in all these elements, unfortunate. The sting left in his
+mother's heart by the faithless desertion of her husband, after the
+desolation of her fortunes, was forever inflicted upon him, and
+intensified by her fitful temper; and notwithstanding the change in his
+outward prospects which occurred afterwards, he was never able to lift
+himself out of the Trophonian cave into which his infancy had been
+thrust, any more than Vulcan could have cured that crooked gait of his,
+which dated from some vague infantile remembrances of having been
+rudely kicked out of heaven over its brazen battlements, one summer's
+day,--for that it was a summer's day we are certain from a line of
+"Paradise Lost," commemorating the tragic circumstance:--
+
+  "From morn till noon he fell, from noon till dewy eve--
+  _A summer's day_."
+
+And this allusion to Vulcan reminds us that Byron, in addition to all
+his other early mishaps, had also the identical clubfoot of the Lemnian
+god. Among the guardians over Byron's childhood was a demon, that,
+receiving an ample place in his victim's heart, stood demoniacally his
+ground through life, transmuting love to hate, and what might have been
+benefits to fatal snares. Over De Quincey's childhood, on the contrary,
+a strong angel guarded to withstand and thwart all threatened ruin,
+teaching him the gentle whisperings of faith and love in the darkest
+hours of life: an angel that built happy palaces, the beautiful images
+of which, and their echoed festivals, far outlasted the splendor of
+their material substance.
+
+"We,--the children of the house,--" says De Quincey, in his
+"Autobiographic Sketches," "stood, in fact, upon the very happiest tier
+in the social scaffolding for all good influences. The prayer of
+Agur--'Give me neither poverty nor riches'--was realized for us. That
+blessing we had, being neither too high nor too low. High enough we were
+to see models of good manners, of self-respect, and of simple dignity;
+obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amply furnished
+with all the nobler benefits of wealth, with _extra_ means of health, of
+intellectual culture, and of elegant enjoyment, on the other hand we
+knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by the
+consciousness of privations too sordid, nor tempted into restlessness by
+privileges too aspiring, we had no motives for shame, we had none for
+pride. Grateful, also, to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all
+things else, we were trained to a Spartan, simplicity of diet,--that we
+fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than the servants. And if
+(after the manner of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks
+to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation,
+these four I would single out as worthy of special commemoration: that I
+lived in a rural solitude; that this solitude was in England; that my
+infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by
+horrid pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful and
+loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent church."
+
+Let the reader suppose a different case from that here presented. Let
+him suppose, for instance, that De Quincey, now arrived at the age of
+seven, and having now at least one "pugilistic brother" to torment his
+peace, could annul his own infancy, and in its place substitute that of
+one of the factory-boys of Manchester, of the same age, (and many such
+could be found,) among those with whom daily the military
+predispositions of this brother brought him into a disagreeable
+conflict. Instead of the pure air of outside Lancashire, let there be
+substituted the cotton-dust of the Lancashire mills. The contrast, even
+in thought, is painful. It is true that thus the irrepressible fires of
+human genius could not be quenched. Nay, through just these
+instrumentalities, oftentimes, is genius fostered. We need not the
+instance of Romulus and Remus, or of the Persian Cyrus, to prove that
+men have sometimes been nourished by bears or by she-wolves.
+Nevertheless, this is essentially a Roman nurture. The Greeks, on the
+contrary, laid their infant heroes on beds of violets,--if we may
+believe the Pindaric odes,--set over them a divine watch, and fed them
+with angels' food. And this Grecian nurture De Quincey had.
+
+And not the least important element of this nurture is that of perfect
+_leisure_. Through this it is that we pass from the outward to the
+subjective relations of De Quincey's childhood; for only in connection
+with these has the element just introduced any value, since leisure,
+which is the atmosphere, the breathing-place of genius, is also cap and
+bells for the fool. In relation to power, it is, like solitude, the open
+heaven through which the grandeurs of eternity flow into the penetralian
+recesses of the human heart, after that once the faculties of thought,
+or the sensibilities, have been powerfully awakened. Sensibility _had_
+been thus awakened in De Quincey, through grief occasioned by the loss
+of a sister, his favorite and familiar playmate,--a grief so profound,
+that he, somewhere, in speaking of it, anticipates the certainty of its
+presence in the hour of death; and thought, also, had been prematurely
+awakened, both under the influence of this overmastering pathos of
+sorrow, and because of his strong predisposition to meditation. Both the
+pathos and the meditative tendencies were increased by the halcyon peace
+of his childhood. In a memorial of the poet Schiller, he speaks of that
+childhood as the happiest, "of which the happiness has survived and
+expressed itself, not in distinct records, but in deep affection, in
+abiding love, and the hauntings of meditative power." His, at least, was
+the felicity of this echoless peace.
+
+In no memorial is it so absolutely requisite that a marked prominence
+should be given to its first section as in De Quincey's. This is a
+striking peculiarity in his life. If it were not so, I should have
+seriously transgressed in keeping the reader's attention so long upon a
+point which, aside from such peculiarity, would yield no sufficient, at
+least no proportionate value. But, in the treatment of any life, that
+cannot seem disproportionate which enters into it as an element only and
+just in that ratio of prominence with which it enters into the life
+itself, No stream can rise above the level of its source. No life, which
+lacks a prominent interest as to its beginnings, can ever, in its entire
+course, develop any distinguishing features of interest. This is true of
+any life; but it is true of De Quincey's above all others on record,
+that, through all its successive arches, ascending and descending, it
+repeats the original arch of childhood. Repeats,--but with what
+marvellous transformations! For hardly is its earliest section passed,
+when, for all its future course, it is masked by a mighty trouble. No
+longer does it flow along its natural path, and beneath the open sky,
+but, like the sacred Alpheus, runs
+
+  "Through caverns measureless to man,
+  Down to the sunless sea."
+
+Yet, amid the "briny tides" of that sea, amid turmoil and perplexity and
+the saddest of mysteries, it preserves its earliest gentleness, and its
+inward, noiseless peace, till once more it gushes up toward the sweet
+heaven through the Arethusan font of death. Easily, then, is it to be
+seen why De Quincey himself continually reverted, both in his conscious
+reminiscences and through the subconscious relapses of dreams, from a
+life clouded and disguised in its maturer years, to the unmasked purity
+of its earliest heaven. And what from the vast desert, what from the
+fatal wreck of life, was he to look back upon, for even an imaginary
+solace, if not upon the rich argosies that spread their happier sails
+above a calmer sea? We are forcibly reminded of the dream which
+Milton[A] gives to his Christ in the desert, hungry and tired:--
+
+                      "There he slept,
+  And dreamed, as appetite is wont to dream,
+  Of meats and drinks, Nature's refreshment sweet.
+  Him thought he by the brook of Cherith stood,
+  And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
+  Food to Elijah bringing even and morn,
+  Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought:
+  He saw the prophet also, how he fled
+  Into the desert, and how there he slept
+  Under a juniper, then how, awaked,
+  He found his supper on the coals prepared,
+  And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
+  And eat the second time after repose,
+  The strength whereof sufficed him forty days;
+  Sometimes that with Elijah he partook,
+  Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse."
+
+[Footnote A: _Paradise Regained_, Book II.]
+
+If the splendors of divinity could be so disguised by the severe
+necessities of the wilderness and of brutal hunger as to be thus
+solicited and baffled even in dreams,--if, by the lowest of mortal
+appetites, they could be so humiliated and eclipsed as to revel in the
+shadowy visions of merely human plenty,--then by how much more must the
+human heart, eclipsed at noon, revert, under the mask of sorrow and of
+dreams, to the virgin beauties of the dawn! with how much more violent
+revulsion must the weary, foot-sore traveller, lost in a waste of sands,
+be carried back through the gate of ivory or of horn to the dewy,
+flower-strewn fields of some far happier place and time!
+
+The transition from De Quincey's childhood to his opium-experiences is
+as natural, therefore, as from strophe to antistrophe in choral
+antiphonies. Henceforth, as the reader already understands, we are not
+permitted to look upon a simple, undisguised life, unless we draw aside
+a veil as impenetrable as that which covers the face of Isis or the
+poppy-sceptred Demeter. Under this _papaverian_ mask it is likely to be
+best known to the reader; for it is under the title of "Opium-Eater"
+that he is most generally recognized. It was through his
+Opium-Confessions, popular both as to matter and style, that he first
+conciliated and charmed the reading public,--and to such a degree that
+great expectations were awakened as to anything which afterwards he
+might write. This expectation heightens appreciation; and in this case
+it helped many a metaphysical dose down the voracious throat of the
+public, without its being aware of the nauseating potion, or
+experiencing any uncomfortable consequences. The flood of popularity
+produced by the Opium-Confessions among that large intellectual class of
+readers who, notwithstanding their mental capacity, yet insist upon the
+graces of composition and upon a subject of immediate and moving
+interest, was sufficient to float into a popular haven many a ship of
+heavier freightage, which might else have fallen short of port.
+
+The general interest which is manifested in De Quincey _personally_ is
+also very much due to the fact that he was an opium-eater, and an
+opium-eater willing to breathe into the public ear the peculiarities of
+his situation and its hidden mysteries, or "_suspiria de profundis_."
+This interest is partly of that vulgar sort which connects itself with
+all mysterious or abnormal phenomena in Nature or in the human mind,
+with a "What is it?" or a spiritual medium, and which is satisfied with
+a palpable exhibition of the novelty; and partly it is of a
+philosophical order, inquiring into the causes and modes of the abnormal
+development. It is rarely the case that human vision is especially or
+deliberately directed to the sun or the moon, except at the marvellous
+season of eclipse, when interest is awakened by the novelty of the
+appearance among the vulgar, and among philosophers by the unusual
+nature of the phenomenon, demanding explanation. Then it is that the
+people inhabiting this globe are excited by something which calls off
+their attention from terrestrial trifles to that which connects them
+with unknown worlds. If we had been born Hindoos, we should, at such
+times, exhibit our skittish tendencies, "shying" at the sun-eating
+monster with nervous apprehension, and should doubtless do our best,
+through horrid yells and tintinnabulations, towards getting up a
+tremendous counter-irritation upon the earth that should tell mightily
+on the nerves of this umbratilous tiger in the heavens. But since we are
+neither Hindoos nor Egyptians, nor skittish heathen of any sort, we take
+defiant attitudes and look through smoked glasses. At any rate, it is
+only at such times that we pay particular attentions, by way of
+courtesy, to foreign worlds. And of all the creatures of God which come
+within the circle of human knowledge or notice, which is it that may be
+said to enjoy the most continuous round of attentions, and to live in
+excitement the most nearly approaching to perpetual? It is the comet,
+which no sooner gets out of reach of _our_ flying compliments than she
+becomes the pet of Jupiter's magnificent citizens, or calls forth
+deprecating murmurs from our shy sister Venus, and Mercury, our milder
+brother, who, from all such mischiefs, creeps as nearly as possible
+under the paternal wings of the Sun. No one of these erratic visitors
+can remember the time when she was not making a stir somewhere in the
+universe, or when a cloudy night, intercepting her from vision, would
+not have been as surely execrated as are the colds which afflict _prima
+donnas_.
+
+Strikingly similar to our interest in these heavenly bodies is that
+which we manifest in mortal men. Here, too, it is the darkened orb or
+the eccentric comet that bespeaks especial notice. Judged by this
+interest, considered in its vulgar aspects, De Quincey would suffer
+gross injustice. Externally, and at one period of his life, I am certain
+that he had all the requisite qualifications for collecting a mob about
+him, and that, had he appeared in the streets of London after one of his
+long sojourns amongst the mountains, no unearthly wight of whatever
+description, no tattered lunatic or Botany-Bay convict, would have been
+able to vie with him in the picturesque _déshabillé_ of the whole
+"turnout." Picture to yourself the scene. This "king of shreds and
+patches"--for, to the outward sense, he seems that now--has been "at
+large" for days, perhaps for two or three weeks; he has been
+unkennelled, and, among the lawless mountains, has felt no restraint
+upon his own lawlessness, however Cyclopean. Doubtless he has met with
+panthers and wolves, each one of whom will to its dying day retain
+impressive recollections of the wee monster, from which they fled as a
+trifle too uncanny even for them. As to his subsistence during these
+rambles, it would be very difficult to say how he managed that affair,
+at these, or indeed at any other times; and it may be that the prophetic
+limitation of a fast to forty days is now the urgent occasion of his
+return from vagabondism. One thing we may be sure of,--that he has made
+plentiful use of a certain magical drug hid away in his
+waistcoat-pocket. Like Wordsworth's brook, he has been wandering
+purposely and at his own sweet will, or rather where his feet have taken
+him; and he has laid him down to sleep wherever sleep may have chanced
+to find him.
+
+The result we have here, in this uncouth specimen of humanity, in the
+matted hair, the soiled garments, and the straggling gait; and what
+gives the finishing touch to this grotesque picture is his utter
+unconsciousness of the ludicrous features of his situation, as they
+appear to other eyes. Soon, it is true, he will go through an Æson-like
+rejuvenation; for, in a certain cottage, there are hearts that anxiously
+await his return, and hands ready to fulfil their oft-repeated duties in
+the way of refitting him out for another tramp. But, before this
+transformation is effected, let us suppose the case of his being set
+down in the streets of London, somewhere in the vicinity of Cheapside.
+What an eddying of stragglers about this new-found focus of attraction!
+what amazement, and curiosity to find him out, if, indeed, he be
+find-out-able, and not, as the unmistakable papaverian odor suggests,
+some Stygian bird, hailing from the farther side of Lethe. But, Stygian
+or not, neither Hermes nor Pan (nor Panic, his namesake) could muster
+such a rabble at his heels, supposing _him_ to appear on Cheapside!
+
+In his innermost sensibilities he would have shrunk from this vulgar
+notice as from pollution itself. It would be monstrous to conceive of
+him in such situations, except for the purpose of showing that he had
+very much in his outward habit that would readily attract such a notice.
+In the same light we are to regard some illustrations which J. Hill
+Burton has given in "The Book-Hunter" of similar features in his
+character, and which I take the liberty of introducing here; for,
+although they have appeared in "Blackwood," and more lately in a
+book-form, they are still unpublished to many of my readers.
+
+Thus, we have him pictured to us as he appeared at a dinner, "whereto he
+was seduced by the false pretence that he would there meet with one who
+entertained novel and anarchical views regarding the 'Golden Ass' of
+Apuleius. The festivities of the afternoon are far on, when a commotion
+is heard in the hall, as if some dog or other stray animal had forced
+its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival;
+he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. What can it be? A
+street-boy of some sort? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle
+great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to
+the chin, where it meets the fragments of a party-colored belcher
+handkerchief; on his feet are list shoes, covered with snow, for it is a
+stormy winter night; and the trousers,--some one suggests that they are
+inner linen garments blackened with writing-ink, but that Papaverius
+never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them." De Quincey,
+led on by the current of his own thoughts,--though he was always too
+courteous to absorb the entire conversation,--talks on "till it is far
+into the night, and slight hints and suggestions are propagated about
+separation and home-going. The topic starts new ideas on the progress of
+civilization, the effect of habit on men in all ages, and the power of
+the domestic affections. Descending from generals to the specials, he
+could testify to the inconvenience of late hours: for was it not the
+other night, that, coming to what was, or what he believed to be, his
+own door, he knocked and knocked, but the old woman within either
+couldn't or wouldn't hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and, having
+taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme
+unpleasantness of such a couch?"
+
+"Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-stained and foot-sore,
+he glided in on us one night like a shadow, the child by the fire gazing
+on him with round eyes of astonishment, and suggesting that he should
+get a penny and go home,--a proposal which he subjected to some
+philosophical criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How far he
+had wandered since he had last refreshed himself, or even whether he had
+eaten food that day, were matters on which there was no getting
+articulate utterance from him. How that wearied, worn little body was to
+be refreshed was a difficult problem: soft food disagreed with him; the
+hard he could not eat. Suggestions pointed at length to the solution of
+that vegetable unguent to which he had given a sort of lustre, and it
+might be supposed that there were some fifty cases of acute toothache to
+be treated in the house that night. How many drops? Drops! nonsense! If
+the wineglasses of the establishment were not beyond the ordinary normal
+size, there was no risk,--and so the weary is at rest for a time.
+
+"At early morn, a triumphant cry of '_Eureka!_' calls me to his place of
+rest. With his unfailing instinct he has got at the books, and lugged a
+considerable heap of them around him. That one which specially claims
+his attention--my best-bound quarto--is spread upon a piece of
+bedroom-furniture readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him
+pore over it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with only one article of
+attire to separate him from the condition in which Archimedes, according
+to the popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry. He had discovered
+a very remarkable anachronism in the commonly received histories of a
+very important period. As he expounded it, turning up his unearthly face
+from the book with an almost painful expression of grave eagerness, it
+occurred to me that I had seen something like the scene in Dutch
+paintings of the Temptation of St. Anthony."
+
+I cannot refrain from quoting from Mr. Burton one more example,
+illustrative of the fact that De Quincey, in money-matters, considered
+merely the immediate and pressing exigencies of the present. "He arrives
+very late at a friend's door, and on gaining admission,--a process in
+which he often endured impediments,--he represents, with his usual
+silver voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity of his being
+then and there invested with a sum of money in the current coin of the
+realm,--the amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he
+very freely states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or
+fancying he discovers, that his eloquence is likely to prove
+unproductive, he is fortunately reminded, that, should there be any
+difficulty in connection with security for the repayment of the loan, he
+is at that moment in possession of a document which he is prepared to
+deposit with the lender,--a document calculated, he cannot doubt, to
+remove any feeling of anxiety which the moat prudent person could
+experience in the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets, which
+develops miscellaneous and varied, but as yet by no means valuable,
+possessions, he at last comes to the object of his search, a crumpled
+bit of paper, and spread it out,--a fifty-pound bank-note! All sums of
+money were measured by him through the common standard of immediate use;
+and, with more solemn pomp of diction than he applied to the bank-note,
+might he inform you, that, with the gentleman opposite, to whom he had
+hitherto been entirely a stranger, but who happened to be the nearest to
+him at the time when the exigency occurred to him, he had just succeeded
+in negotiating a loan of two-pence."
+
+These pictures, though true to certain phases of De Quincey's outward
+life, are yet far from personally representing him, even to the eye.
+They satisfy curiosity, and that is about all. As to the real character
+of the man, they are negative and unessential; they represent, indeed,
+his utter carelessness as to all that, like dress, may at pleasure be
+put on or off, but "the human child incarnate" is not thus brought
+before us. For, could we but once look upon his face in rest, then
+should we forget these inferior attributes; just as, looking upon the
+Memnonian statues, one forgets the horrid nicknames of "Shandy" and
+"Andy" which they have received from casual travellers, observing merely
+their grotesque features. Features of this latter sort "dislimn" and
+yield, as the writing on palimpsests, to the regal majesty of the divine
+countenance, which none can look upon and smile. Let me paint De
+Quincey's face as at this moment I seem to see it. It is wrinkled as
+with an Homeric antiquity; arid it is, and sallow, as parchment. Through
+a certain Bedouin-like conformation,--which, however, is idealized by
+the lofty, massive forehead, and by the prevailing subtilty of the
+general expression,--it seems fitted to desert solitudes; and in this
+respect it is truly Memnonian. In another respect, also, is it
+Memnonian,--that, whenever should rest upon its features the morning
+sunlight, we should surely await its responsive requiem or its trembling
+_jubilate_. By a sort of instinctive palmistry (applied, not to the
+hands, but to the face) we interpret symbols of ineffable sorrow and of
+ineffable peace. These, too, are Memnonian,--as is also that infinite
+distance which seems to interpose between its subtile meanings and the
+very possibility of interpretation. This air of remoteness, baffling the
+impertinent crowd not less effectually than the dust which has gathered
+for centuries about the heads of Sphinxes, is due partly to the deeply
+sunken eyes beneath the wrinkled, overarching forehead; partly it arises
+from that childlike simplicity and sweetness which lurk in gentle
+undulations of the features,--undulations as of happy wavelets set in
+motion ages since, and that cannot cease forever; but chiefly it is born
+of a dream-like, brooding eternity of speculation, which we can trace
+neither to the eye alone, nor to the mouth, but rather to the effect
+which both together produce in the countenance.
+
+This is the face which for more than half a century opium veiled to
+mortal eyes, and which refuses to reveal itself save through hints the
+most fugitive and impalpable. Here are draperies and involutions of
+mystery from which mere curiosity stands aloof. This is the head which
+we have loved, and which in our eyes wears a triple wreath of glory: the
+laurel for his Apollo-like art, the lotos-leaf for his impassioned
+dreams, and roses for his most gentle and loving nature.
+
+How much of that which glorified De Quincey was due to opium? Very
+little as to quality, but very much as to the degree and the peculiar
+manner in which original qualities and dispositions are developed, for
+here it is that the only field of influence open to abnormal agencies
+lies. Coleridge, as an opium-eater, is the only individual worthy of
+notice in the same connection. Had _he_ also confessed, it is uncertain
+what new revelations might have been made. It is certain that opium
+exercised a very potent effect upon him; for it was generally after his
+dose that his remarkable intellectual displays occurred. These displays
+were mostly confined to his conversations, which were usually
+long-winded metaphysical epics, evolving a continued series of
+abstractions and analyses, and, for their movement, depending upon a
+sort of poetic construction. A pity it is that we must content ourselves
+with empty descriptions of this nature. Here, doubtless, if anywhere,
+opium was an auxiliary to Coleridge. For a laudanum negus, whatever
+there may be about it that is pernicious, will, to a mind that is
+metaphysically predisposed, open up thoroughfares of thought which are
+raised above the level of the gross material, and which lead into the
+region of the shadowy. Show us the man who habitually carries pills of
+_any_ sort in his waistcoat-pocket, be they opium or whatever else, and
+we can assure you that that man is an _aërobat_,--that somehow, in one
+sense or another, he walks in the air above other men's heads. Whatever
+disturbs the healthful isolation of the nervous system is prosperous to
+metaphysics, because it attracts the mental attention to the organism
+through which thought is carried on. Numerous are the instances of men
+who would never have been heard of as thinkers or as reflective poets,
+if they had had sufficient muscular ballast to pull against their
+teeming brains. The consequence of the disproportion has been that the
+superfluous brain has exhaled, as a mere necessity.[A] If Tacitus had
+fared in any sort like his brother,--if there had been anything like an
+equitable division between them of muscle and brain, it is more than
+probable that we should have lost the illustrious historian.
+
+[Footnote A: It has been adduced as an important proof of the soul's
+immortality, that frequently, as physical power declines, the mind
+exhibits unusual activity. But the argument moves in the opposite
+direction. For of what sort is this unusual activity? That which results
+from unbalanced nerves; and the indications are that not only are the
+physical harmonies disturbed, but that the same disturbing cause has
+impaired the delicate adjustments of thought itself. Sometimes there is
+manifested, towards the near approach of death, an almost insane
+brilliancy; as, for instance, in the case of a noted theologian, who
+occupied the last minutes of his ebbing life with a very subtile
+mathematical discourse concerning the exceeding, the excruciating
+smallness of nothing divided into infinitesimal parts. And strange as it
+may seem, I once heard this identical instance cited as a triumphant
+vindication of the most sublime article of either Pagan or Christian
+faith. Nay, from the lips of a theological professor, the fragmentary
+glimmerings of a maniac's mind have been adduced for precisely the same
+purpose.]
+
+Coleridge was indolent from temperament, a disposition which was
+increased by opium. Hence De Quincey was of the opinion that it injured
+Coleridge's poetic faculties; which probably was the case, since in
+genuine poetry the mind is prominently realistic, its motions are all
+outward, and therefore excessive indolence must of necessity be fatal.
+
+De Quincey's physical system, on the contrary, seemed preconformed to
+opium: it demanded it, and would be satisfied with nothing else. No
+temptation so strong _could_ have been presented to Coleridge. De
+Quincey really craved the drug. His stomach was deranged, and was still
+suffering from the sad results of his youthful wanderings in London. It
+seems almost as if fate had compelled the unfortunate course into which
+he finally drifted. The craving first appeared in the shape of a horrid
+gnawing at the stomach; afterwards this indefinite yearning gave place
+to a specific one, which was unmistakable in its demands. Daily, like
+the daughters of the horse-leech, it cried, "Give, give!" Toward the
+last, this craving became, in De Quincey's solemn belief, an animal
+incarnate, and the opium-eater reasoned after the following fashion:--It
+is not I that eat, it is not I that am responsible either for the fact
+of eating or the amount; am I the keeper of this horrid monster's
+conscience? He even carried the conceit so far as to consider a portion
+of each meal as especially devoted to this insane stomachic reveller,
+just as a voracious Greek or Roman would have attributed no small part
+of his outrageous appetite to the gods, as eating by proxy through the
+mouths of mortals. This is almost as bad as the case reported of
+Stonewall Jackson, who, it is said, religiously believed that whatever
+he ate was, by some mysterious physiological economy, conveyed into his
+left leg.
+
+No less was De Quincey _psychologically_ preconformed to opium. The
+prodigious mental activity so early awakened in him counteracted the
+narcotic despotism of the drug, and made it a sort of ally. The reader
+sees from this how much depends upon predispositions as to the effect of
+opium. De Quincey himself says that the man whose daily talk is of oxen
+will pursue his bovine speculations into dreams. Opium originates
+nothing; but, given activity of a certain type and moving in a certain
+direction, and there will be perhaps through opium a multiplication of
+energies and velocities. What was De Quincey _without_ opium? is,
+therefore, the question preliminary to any proper estimate as to what in
+him was due to opium. This question has already been answered in the
+remarks made concerning his childhood. His meditative tendencies were
+especially noticed as most characteristic. There was besides this a
+natural leaning toward the mysterious,--the mysterious, I mean, as
+depending, not upon the terrible or ghostly, or upon anything which
+excites gloom or fear, but upon operations that are simply inscrutable
+as moving in darkness. Take, for example, the idea of a grand
+combination of human energies mustered together in secret, and operating
+through invisible agencies for the downfall of Christianity,--an idea
+which was conveyed to De Quincey in his childhood through the Abbé
+Baruel's book exposing such a general conspiracy was existing throughout
+Europe: this was the sort of mystery which arrested and engrossed his
+thoughts. Similar elements invested all secret societies with an awful
+grandeur in his conception. So, too, the complicated operations of great
+cities such as London, which he call the "Nation of London," where even
+Nature is mimicked, both in her strict regularity of results, and in the
+seeming unconsciousness of all her outward phases, hiding all meaning
+under the enigmas that defy solution. In order to this effect it was
+absolutely necessary that there should be not simply one mystery
+standing alone by itself, and striking in its portentous significance;
+there must have been more than this,--namely, a network of occult
+influences, a vast organization, wheeling in and out upon itself,
+gyrating in mystic cycles and epicycles, repeating over and again its
+dark omens, and displaying its insignia in a never-ending variety of
+shapes. To him intricacy the most perplexing was also the most inviting.
+It was this which lent an overwhelming interest to certain problems of
+history that presented the most labyrinthian mazes to be disinvolved:
+for the demon that was in him sought after hieroglyphics that by all
+others had been pronounced undecipherable; and not unfrequently it was
+to his eye that for the first time there seemed to be an unknown element
+that must be supplied. Such a problem was presented by the religious
+sect among the Hebrews entitled the _Essenes_. Admitting the character
+and functions of this sect to have been those generally ascribed to it
+no special importance. But the idea once having occurred to De Quincey
+that the general assumption was the farthest removed from the
+truth,--than there was an unknown _x_ in the problem, which could be
+satisfied by no such meagre hypothesis,--that, to meet the urgent
+demands of the case, there must be substituted for this Jewish sect an
+organization of no less importance than the Christian Church
+itself,--that this organization, thus suddenly brought to light, was
+one, moreover, that, from the most imperative necessity, veiled itself
+from all eyes, uttering its sublime articles of faith, and even its very
+name, to itself only in secret recesses of silence:--from the moment
+that all this was revealed to De Quincey, there was thenceforth no limit
+to his profound interest. Two separate essays he wrote on this
+subject,[A] of which he seemed never to tire.
+
+[Footnote A: Yet, marvellous as it may seem, he wrote the second without
+being distinctly conscious of having written a previous one. It was no
+uncommon thing for him to forget his own writings. In one case it is
+known that for a long time he persisted in disowning his production. His
+American editor--a fact which is little known--selected, from among the
+mass of periodical writings in the various magazines for which De
+Quincey wrote, those which, having no other clue to guide him than,
+their peculiar style, he judged to have proceeded from De Quincey's pen.
+In one instance,--as to the "Traditions of the Rabbins,"--after
+considerable examination, he still hesitated, and finally wrote to De
+Quincey, to set himself right. The latter disowned the essay: he had
+forgotten it. Mr. F., however, after another examination, concluded,
+that, notwithstanding De Quincey's denial of the fact, he _must_ have
+written it; accordingly, at his own risk, he published it. Afterwards De
+Quincey owned up, and ever after that referred all disputed cases of
+this nature to his Boston publishers.]
+
+"Klosterheim" is from beginning to end only the development, through
+regular stages, of an intricately involved mystery of this subtile
+nature. Oftentimes De Quincey deals with the horrid tragedy of murder;
+but the mere fact of a murder, however shocking, was not sufficient to
+arrest him. With the celebrated Williams murders, on the contrary, he
+was entirely taken up, since these proceeded in accordance with designs
+not traceable to the cursory glance, but which tasked the skill of a
+decipherer to interpret and reduce to harmony. Here were murders that
+revolved musically, that modulated themselves to master-principles, and
+that at every stage of progress sought alliance with the hidden
+mysteries of universal human nature. I know of no writer but De Quincey
+who invests mysteries of this tragic order with their appropriate
+drapery, so that they shall, to our imaginations, unfold the full
+measure of their capacities for striking awe into our hearts.
+
+This sort of mystery is always connected with dreams. They owe their
+very existence to darkness, which withdraws them from the material
+limitations of every-day life; they are shifted to an ideal
+_proscenium_; their _dramatis personæ_, however familiar nominally, and
+however much derived from material suggestions, are yet in all their
+motions obedient to an alien centre as opposite as is possible to the
+ordinary centre about which the mere mechanism of life revolves. We
+should therefore expect beforehand in De Quincey an overruling tendency
+towards this remote architecture of dreams. The careful reader of his
+"Autobiographic Sketches" will remember, that, at the early age of
+seven, and before he knew of even the existence of opium, the least
+material hint which bordered on the shadowy was sufficient to lift him
+up into aërial structures, and to lead his infant footsteps amongst the
+clouds. Such hints, after his little sister's death, were furnished by
+certain expressions of the Litany, by pictures in the stained windows of
+the church, and by the tumult of the organ. Nor were the dreams thus
+introduced mere fantasies, irregular and inconsistent. Throughout, they
+were self-sustained and majestic.
+
+The natural effects of opium were concurrent with preëxisting tendencies
+of De Quincey's mind. If, instead of having his restless intellect, he
+had been indolent,--if, instead of loving the mysterious, because it
+invited a Titanic energy to reduce its anarchy to order, he had loved it
+as simply dark or obscure,--if his natural subtilty of reflection had
+been less, or if he had been endowed with inferior powers in the sublime
+architecture of impassioned expression,--then might he as well have
+smoked a meerschaum, taken snuff or grog or any other stimulant, as to
+have gone out of his way for the more refined pleasures of opium.
+
+The reader will indulge us in a single philosophical distinction, at
+this point, by which we mean to classify the effects of opium under two
+heads: first, the _external_, and, secondly, the _internal_. Properly
+speaking, all the _positive_ effects of opium must be internal; for all
+its movements are inward in their direction, being refluent upon the
+focal centres of life. Thus, one of the most noticeable phenomena
+connected with opium-eating is the burden of life resting back upon the
+heart, which deliberately pulsates the moments of existence, as if the
+most momentous issues depended upon each separate throb. But this very
+reflux of sensibility will produce great effects at the surface, which
+are purely negative. This latter class of effects Homer has indicated
+with considerable accuracy, in the ninth Odyssey, (82-105,) where he
+notices specifically an air of carelessness regarding external
+things,--carelessness as to the mutual interchange of conversation by
+question and answer, and as to the ordinary pursuits of life as
+disturbing an inward peace. The same characteristics are more fully
+developed in Tennyson's "Lotos-Eaters":--
+
+  "Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,
+  Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
+  To each; but whoso did receive of them,
+  And taste, to him the gushing of the wave,
+  Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave
+  On alien shores; and if his fellows spake,
+  His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
+  And deaf-asleep he seemed, yet all awake,
+  And music in his ears his beating heart did make."
+
+By causing the life to flow inward upon a more ideal centre, opium
+deepens the consciousness, and compels it to give testimony to processes
+and connections that in ordinary moments escape unrecorded. It is as if
+new materials were found for a history of the individual
+life,--materials which, like freshly discovered records, sound the
+deepest meanings of the present and measure the abysses of the past.
+Thus it is that the fugitive imagery of sense is interpreted as a scroll
+which hides infinite truths under the most fleeting of symbols,--symbols
+which are not sufficiently enduring to call them words, or even
+syllables of words, since the most trivial hint or whisper of them has
+hardly reached us ere they have perished. Thus it is that even the still
+more intangible record of memory, where are preserved only images and
+echoes of that which undeniably has perished, is revivified and
+enlarged.
+
+There is, then, in the opium-eater a most marked, a polar antithesis
+between his every-day life and the central manifestations of his genius.
+In the latter, there is beautiful order, as in a symphony of
+Beethoven's; but in the former, looked upon from without, all seems
+confusion. There is the same antithesis in every meditative mind; but
+here opium has heightened each part of the contrast. The more we admire
+the _en_centric harmonies of inwrapt power, the more do we find to draw
+forth laughter in the eccentricities of outward habit. The very same
+agencies which undisguised and unveiled the deep, divine heaven, masked
+the earth with desert sands; and De Quincey's outward life was thus
+masked and rendered abnormal, that the blue heaven in which he revelled
+might be infinitely exalted.
+
+Thus is it possible for the seemingly ludicrous to harmonize with
+transcendent sublimity. We smile at De Quincey's giving in "copy" on the
+generous margins of a splendid "Somnium Scipionis"; but the precious
+words, that might perhaps have found some more fit vehicle to the
+composer's eye, could have found no deeper place in our hearts. We look
+at the hatless sleeper among the mountains: his face seems utterly blank
+and meaningless, and to all intents and purposes he seems as good as
+dead; but let us ascend with him in his dreams, and we shall soon forget
+that under God's heavens there exists mortality or the commonplace uses
+of mortality.
+
+As we ascend from grotesque features to such as are more intellectual,
+that peculiarity of his character which most strikes us is his
+inimitable courtesy. Mr. F.,--to whom I am indebted for the most novel
+and interesting portions of this memorial,--from his own personal
+interviews with the man, among many other things, retains this chiefly
+in remembrance,--that De Quincey was the perfectest gentleman he had
+ever seen.
+
+I take the liberty here of particularizing somewhat in regard to one
+visit which this friend of De Quincey's paid him, particularly as it
+introduces us to the man towards the last of his life (1851). Mr. F.,
+curious as it may seem, found but one person in Edinburgh who could
+inform him definitely as to De Quincey's whereabouts. In return to a
+note, giving De Quincey information of his arrival, etc., the latter
+replies in a letter which is very characteristic, and which may well be
+highly prized, so rarely was it that any friend was able to obtain from
+him such a memento. The style, perhaps, is as familiar as it was ever
+his habit to indulge in; and it shows how impossible it was for him,
+even on the most temporary summons, to dispense with his usual
+regularity of expression or with any logical nicety of method. The
+letter runs thus:--
+
+
+     _Thursday evening, August 26, 1851_.
+
+     "My dear Sir,--The acccompanying billet from my daughter, short at
+     any rate under the pressure of instant engagements, has been cut
+     shorter by a sudden and very distressing headache; I, therefore,
+     who (from a peculiar nervousness connected with the act of writing)
+     so rarely attempt to discharge my own debts in the letter-writing
+     department of life, find myself unaccountably, I might say
+     mysteriously, engaged in the knight-errantry of undertaking for
+     other people's. Wretched bankrupt that I am, with an absolute
+     refusal on the part of the Commissioner to grant me a certificate
+     of the lowest class, suddenly, and by a necessity not to be evaded,
+     I am affecting the large bounties of supererogation. I appear to be
+     vaporing in a spirit of vainglory; and yet it is under the mere
+     coercion of '_salva necessitas_' that I am surprised into this
+     unparalleled instance of activity. Do you walk? That is, do you
+     like walking for four hours '_on end_'--(which is our archaic
+     expression for _continuously_)? If I knew _that_, I would arrange
+     accordingly for meeting you. The case as to distance is this. The
+     Dalkeith railway, from the Waverley station, brings you to Esk
+     Bank. That is its nearest approach,--its _perihelion_, in relation
+     to ourselves; and it is precisely two and three-quarters miles
+     distant from _Mavis Bush_,--the name of our cottage. Close to us,
+     and the most noticeable object for guiding your inquiries, is _Mr.
+     Annandale's Paper-Mills_.
+
+     "Now, then, accordingly as you direct my motions, I will--rain
+     being supposed absent--join you at your hotel in Edinburgh any time
+     after 11 A.M. and walk out the whole distance, (seven miles from
+     the Scott monument,) or else I will meet you at Esk Bank; or, if
+     you prefer coming out in a carriage, I will await your coming here
+     in that state of motionless repose which best befits a philosopher.
+     Excuse my levity; and believe that with sincere pleasure we shall
+     receive your obliging visit.
+
+     "Ever your faithful servant,
+
+     "THOMAS DE QUINCEY."
+
+In order to appreciate the physical powers of him who proposed a walk of
+the distance indicated in the letter, we must remember that he was then
+just sixty-six years _plus_ ten days old. He was now living with his
+daughters, in the utmost simplicity. On his arrival, Mr. F. found De
+Quincey awaiting him at the door of his cottage,--a short man, with
+small head, and eyes that were absolutely indescribable as human
+features, with a certain boyish awkwardness of manner, but with the most
+urban-like courtesy and affability. From noon till dark, the time is
+spent in conversation, continued, various, and eloquent. What a presence
+is there in this humble, unpretending cottage! And as the stream of
+Olympian sweetness moves on, now in laughing ripples, and again in a
+solemn majestic flood, what a past do we bring before ourselves! what a
+present! For this is he that talked with Coleridge, that was the friend
+of Wilson,--and--what furnishes a more sublime suggestion--this is he
+that knows by heart the mountain-fells and the mysterious recesses of
+hidden valleys for miles around; and we think, if he could convey us
+from the haunts of this Lasswade of his old age to those which glorified
+the Grasmere of his youth, what new chords he might touch,--of human
+love, for there it was that the sweetness of his wedded life had been
+buried and embalmed in a thousand outward memorials of happy hours long
+gone by,--and of human sadness, for there it was that he had experienced
+the reversal of every outward fortune, and the alienations of
+friendships which he most highly valued. But the remembrances of
+Grasmere and of youth seem now to have been removed as into some other
+life: the man of a past generation walks alone, and amid other scenes.
+And yonder is the study in which he spends hours that are most
+holy,--hours consecrated to what specific employments is known to none,
+since across its threshold no feet save his have passed for years. Now
+and then some grand intellectual effort proceeds forth from its sacred
+precincts; but that only happens when pecuniary necessities compel the
+exertion. How is it that the time not thus occupied is spent?--in what
+remembrances, in what hidden thoughts, what passing dreams?
+
+As it grows dark, De Quincey's guest, having spent most precious moments
+which he feels ought never to cease, signifies the necessity of his
+taking his departure. To take leave of this strange man, however, is not
+so easy a matter as one might rashly suppose. There is a genius of
+procrastination about him. Was he ever known to make his appearance at
+any dinner in season, or indeed at any entertainment? Yes, he did
+_once_, at the recital of a Greek tragedy on the Edinburgh stage; but
+that happened through a trick played on him by an acquaintance, who, to
+secure some remote chance of his seeing the performance, told him that
+the doors opened at half-past six, whereas, in fact, they opened at
+seven. How preposterous, then, to suppose that he would let an
+opportunity pass for procrastinating other people, and putting all
+manner of snares about their feet! It is dangerous with such a man to
+hint of late hours; for just that lateness is to him the very jewel of
+the thing. In mentioning the circumstance, you only suggest to him the
+infinite pleasure connected with the circumstance. Perhaps he will
+deliberately set to work to prove that candle-light is the one
+absolutely indispensable condition to genial intercourse,--which would
+doubtless suggest a great contrast, in that respect, between the ancient
+and modern economy,--and where, then, _is_ there to be an end? All
+attempts to extricate yourself by unravelling the net which is being
+woven about you are hopelessly vain; you cannot keep pace with _him_.
+The thought of delay enchants him, and he dallies with it, as a child
+with a pet delicacy. Thus, he is at the house of a friend; it storms,
+and a reasonable excuse is furnished for his favorite experiment. The
+consequence is, that, once started in this direction, the delay is
+continued for a year. Late hours were particularly potent to "draw out"
+De Quincey; and, understanding this, Professor Wilson used to protract
+his dinners almost into the morning, a tribute which De Quincey
+doubtless appreciated.
+
+So that it is better to be on the sly about saying "Good bye" to this
+host of yours. When, however, it was absolutely necessary to be gone, De
+Quincey forthwith insisted on accompanying his guest. What, then, was to
+be done? Ominously the sky looked down upon them, momently threatening a
+storm. No resource was there but to give the man his way, and accept his
+offer of companionship for a short distance, painfully conscious though
+you are of the fact that every step taken forwards must, during this
+same August night, be retraced by the weary-looking old man at your
+side, who now lacks barely four years of life's average allotment. Thus
+you move on: and the heavens move on their hurricanes by nearer
+approaches, warnings of which propagate themselves all around you in
+every sound of the wind and every rustle of the forest-leaves.
+Meanwhile, there is no rest to the silvery vocal utterances of your
+companion: every object by the way furnishes a ready topic for
+conversation. Just now you are passing an antiquated old mansion, and
+your guide stops to tell you that in this house may have been committed
+most strange and horrible murders, that, in spite of the tempestuous
+mutterings heard on every side, ought now and here to be specially and
+solemnly memorialized by human relation. A woman passes by, a perfect
+stranger, but De Quincey steps entirely out of the road to one side,
+takes off his hat, and in the most reverent attitude awaits her
+passage,--and you, poor astonished mortal that you are, lest you should
+yourself seem scandalously uncourteous, are compelled to do likewise. In
+this incident we see what infinite majesty invested the very semblance
+of humanity in De Quincey's thoughts: and something of the same
+remarkable courtesy was manifested by Rufus Choate, who uniformly
+addressed the lowest of women in the witness-box as if they were every
+one of them worthy of the most queenly consideration.
+
+Onward you proceed,--one,--two,--three miles, and you can endure no
+longer the thought that your friend shall go on farther, increasing thus
+at every step the burden of his journey back. You have, reached the Esk
+bank and the bridge which spans the stream; the storm so long threatened
+begins now to let loose its rage against all unsheltered mortals. Here
+De Quincey consents to bid you good-bye,--to you his last good-bye; and
+as here you leave him, so is he forever enshrined in your thoughts,
+together with the primal mysteries of night and of storm, of human
+tragedies and of the most pathetic human tenderness.
+
+But this paper, already sufficiently prolonged, should draw to a close.
+It is a source of great mortification to me that I cannot find some very
+disagreeable thing to say of De Quincey, merely as a matter of poetic
+justice; for assuredly he was in the habit of saying all the malicious
+things _he_ could about his friends. If there was anything in a man's
+face or shape particularly uncouth, you might trust De Quincey for
+noticing _that_. Even Wordsworth he could not let off without a Parthian
+shot at his awkward legs and round shoulders; Dr. Parr he rated soundly
+on his mean proportions; and one of the most unfortunate things which
+ever happened to the Russian Emperor Alexander was to have been seen in
+London by De Quincey, who, even amid the festivities of national and
+international congratulation on the fall of Napoleon, could not forget
+that this imperial ally was a very commonplace-looking fellow, after
+all. But, in regard to physical superiority, De Quincey lived in a glass
+house too fragile to admit of his throwing many stones at his neighbors.
+The very fact that he valued personal appearance at so low an estimate
+takes away the sting from his remarks on the deformities of other
+people: he could not have meant any detraction, but simply wished to
+present a perfect picture to the eye, preserving the ugly features with
+the faultless, just as we all insist on doing in regard to those we
+love. De Quincey and myself, therefore, are likely to part good friends.
+Surely, if there was anything which vexed the tender heart of this man,
+it was "the little love and the infinite hate" which went to make up the
+sum of life. If morbid in any direction, it was not in that of spite,
+but of love; and as an instance of almost unnatural intensity of
+affection, witness his insane grief over little Kate Wordsworth's
+grave,--a grief which satisfied itself only by reasonless prostrations,
+for whole nights, over the dark mould which covered her from his sight.
+
+It only remains for us to look in upon De Quincey's last hours. We are
+enabled to take almost the position of those who were permitted really
+to watch at his bedside, through a slight unpublished sketch, from the
+hand of his daughter, in a letter to an American friend. I tremble
+almost to use materials that personally are so sacred; but sympathy, and
+the tender interest which is awakened in our hearts by such a life, are
+also sacred, and in privilege stand nearest to grief.
+
+During the few last, days of his life De Quincey wandered much, mixing
+up "real and imaginary, or apparently imaginary things." He complained,
+one night, that his feet were hot and tired. His daughter arranged the
+blankets around them, saying, "Is that better, papa?" when he answered,
+"Yes, my love, I think it is; you know, my dear girl, these are the feet
+that Christ washed."
+
+Everything seemed to connect itself in his mind with little children. He
+aroused one day, and said suddenly,--"You must know, my dear, the
+Edinburgh cabmen are the most brutal set of fellows under the sun. I
+must tell you that I and the little children were all invited to supper
+with Jesus Christ. So, as you see, it was a great honor. I thought I
+must buy new dresses for the little ones; and--would you believe it
+possible?--when I went out with the children, these wretches laughed at
+their new dresses."
+
+"Of my brothers he often spoke, both those that are dead and those that
+are alive, as if they were his own brothers. One night he said, when I
+entered the room,--
+
+"'Is that you, Horace?'
+
+"'No, papa.'
+
+"'Oh, I see! I thought you were Horace; for he was talking to me just
+now, and I suppose has just left the room.'"
+
+Speaking of his father, one day, suddenly and without introduction, he
+exclaimed,--"There is one thing I deeply regret, that I did not know my
+dear father better; for I am sure a better, kinder, or juster man could
+never have existed."
+
+When death seemed approaching, the physician recommended that a telegram
+should be sent to the eldest daughter,[A] who resided in Ireland, but he
+forbade any mention of this fact to the patient. De Quincey seemed to
+have a prophetic feeling that she was on her way to him, saying, "Has M.
+got to that town yet, that we stopped at when we went to Ireland? How
+many hours will it be before she can be here? Let me see,--there are
+eight hours before I can see her, and three added to that!" His daughter
+came sooner than the family expected; but the time tallied very nearly
+with the computation he had made. On the morning his daughter arrived
+occurred the first intimation his family had seen that the hand of death
+was laid upon him. He had passed a quiet, but rather sleepless night,
+appearing "much the same, yet more than ordinarily loving." After
+greeting his child, he said, "And how does mamma's little girl like her
+leaving her?" "Oh, they were very glad for me to come to grandpapa, and
+they sent you this kiss,--which they did of their own accord." He seemed
+much pleased. It was evident that M. presented herself to him as the
+mother of children, the constant theme of his wanderings. Once when his
+daughter quitted the room, he said, "They are all leaving me but my
+_dear_ little children." "I heard him call, one day, distinctly,
+'Florence! Florence! Florence!'--again, 'My dear, dear mother!'--and to
+the last he called us 'my love,' and it sounded like no other sound
+ever uttered. I never heard such pathos as there was in it, and in every
+tone of his voice. It gave me an idea of a love that passeth all
+understanding."
+
+[Footnote A: De Quincey, at his death, had two sons and three daughters.
+The, eldest of the daughters became the wife of Robert Craig of Ireland.
+It was this one, and the youngest, who were present during his last
+hours. The second daughter, Florence, was with her husband (a colonel of
+the British army) in India. The two sons were both absent: one in India,
+a captain in the army; the other, a physician, in Brazil.]
+
+During the next night he was thought dying, "but he lingered on and on
+till half past nine the next morning. He told me something about
+'to-morrow morning,' and something about sunshine; but the thought that
+he was talking about what he would never see drove the exact idea out of
+my head, though I am sure it was morning in another world he was talking
+of."
+
+"There was an extraordinary appearance of youth about him, both for some
+time before and after death. He looked more like a boy of fourteen, and
+very beautiful. We did not like to let in the morning light, and the
+candle was burning at nine o'clock, when the post brought the following
+letter, which my sister and myself glanced over by the candle-light,
+just as we were listening to his decreasing breath. At the moment it did
+not strike me with the astonishment, at such an extraordinary
+coincidence, that when we came to read it afterwards it did.
+
+
+     "'_Brighton, Dec. 7th, 1859_.
+
+     "'My Dear De Quincey,--Before I quit this world, I most ardently
+     desire to see your handwriting. In early life, that is, more than
+     sixty years ago, we were school-fellows together and mutually
+     attached; nay, I remember a boyish paper ("The Observer") in which
+     we were engaged. Yours has been a brilliant literary career, mine
+     far from brilliant, but I hope not unuseful as a theological
+     student. It seems a pity we should not once more recognize one
+     another before quitting the stage. I have often read your works,
+     and never without remembering the promise of your talents at
+     Winkfield. My life has been almost a domestic tragedy. I have four
+     children in lunatic-asylums. Thank God, it is now drawing to a
+     close; but it would cheer the evening of my days to receive a line
+     from you, for I am, with much sincerity,
+
+     "'Your old and attached friend,
+
+     "'E.H.G.'
+
+"I do not remember the name of G., but the name of Edward constantly
+recurred in his wanderings.
+
+"Half an hour after the reading of that letter we heard those last
+pathetic sighs, so terrible from their very softness, and saw the poor,
+worn-out garment laid aside." Just before he died, he looked around the
+room, and said very tenderly to the nurse, the physician, and his
+daughters, who were present, "Thank you,--thank you all!" Sensible thus
+to the very last of kindness, he breathed out his life in simple thanks,
+swayed even in death by the spirit of profound courtesy that had ruled
+his life.
+
+MRS. LEWIS.
+
+A STORY IN THREE PARTS.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+I.
+
+"Here's something Gus Lewis would like to send by you, mother," said my
+hasty boy John, plunging into the room at nine in the evening, and
+stumbling over two trunks, three valises, and bandboxes countless.
+
+The floor was strewn with bundles, and the mantel-piece adorned with
+letters, directed to Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, and New York.
+
+"Oh! ah! yes. Any packages, if not too large," said I, wistfully eying
+the box, (a foot square,) full of fresh maple-sugar, with its card of
+direction to "_Mrs. Lulu L., by the politeness of Mrs. Prince_."
+Boy-like.
+
+"First of all, my John, go you to bed, where Charley has been this
+half-hour, and say good-bye, for we shall be off before you are up."
+
+"See, then, father, if you are!" retorted the wide-awake youth, going
+out of the room in ground and lofty tumbling, and up-stairs in
+somersets.
+
+"I don't see," said I, pettishly, "how I _am_ to get this bundle into my
+trunk, nor where in the world this great box of sugar is to go. See! not
+a direction! but I suppose she is in New York somewhere."
+
+"We shall see her at all events, which is something. I should like to
+know what she is like,--not to look after her boy for two mortal years,"
+said the Dominie.
+
+"I hope not like Gus. He'd make an ugly woman, with his black hair and
+heavy eyebrows, and his big, black eyes always staring. He don't look
+like an American child."
+
+"If we could only say what an American type is. At present, it is a
+little of everything."
+
+"I mean a New-Englander,--an original American."
+
+"Well, he don't.--What do you say to these trunks? Shall we try again to
+compress the gigantic genie into the copper vessel? I thought it was a
+dangerous move, that last one of yours, taking out Tirzah White's
+quilted coat. And what's to be done with these three packages?"
+
+"Well! we can't sit here!" said I, briskly; "half-past nine already, and
+only one trunk packed! Never mind. You can put these three bundles in
+with your clothes."
+
+"Bursting the lock, now."
+
+"How easy 'tis to pack other people's things! But what, then, have you
+in there,--I mean, besides your shirts, etc.?"
+
+"_Imprimis_. Eight volumes of Scott's Commentaries, brought by Deacon
+Boardman. I am to exchange them. They are imperfect. _Item_. A dozen of
+'Sinbad the Sailor,' sent by mistake to the Association, instead of
+Doddridge. These books won't press nor give, more than sound doctrine;
+and I must have room for my gown, without which I am nothing."
+
+The clock struck ten, and we were still struggling with unabated ardor
+to compress Lorana Briggs's shawl, and the flat packages from Burt's,
+into the largest carpet-bag, that there might be room for the seventeen
+letters on top of the minister's luggage, inside the sanctuary of his
+silk gown.
+
+"We can carry a good deal in your coat-pocket, my dear," said I,
+cheerfully; for really we seemed to be coming to daylight, a little.
+
+"Full."
+
+The knocker sounded.
+
+"My galoches at last! Deacon, I can't ask you to come in, we are so
+untidy; but I couldn't pack as I meant to, this afternoon."
+
+How we dreaded his coming in,--half deacon, half shoemaker, and
+two-thirds missionary, with his "Panoplist" sticking out of his
+coat-pocket, and his ears evermore pricked up for the latest news from
+Bombay! and how angry I had been for three weeks because I couldn't get
+those indispensable galoches!
+
+It seemed as if he never would go from the half-open door. He reckoned
+the York folks would stare to see so many patches; he expected ministers
+down to York warn't quite so carfle and troubled about many things, as
+they be to Weston; but he added, with a grim joyfulness,--
+
+"We took up a good collection, though, last Sabbath! eight dollars and
+fifteen cents, clear!"
+
+"Yes, Deacon," responded the minister, with as much heartiness as he
+could muster, between the pushings, puffings, and pressings at the
+carpet-bag; "a cup of cold water shall in no wise lose its reward, we're
+told.--These carpet-bags stretch well!"
+
+"Them poor, dear heathen!" groaned the Deacon.
+
+"Oh, dreadful!" chimed I; "give me that biggest shawl, will you?--no,
+the other,--Ursula Drury's! Shall we ever finish packing?"
+
+"S'pose ye'll see th' A.B.C.F.M.!--Lucina Rand's put in 'the avails of a
+hen,'--and Semela Briggs sold the silver thimble her aunt gin her. 'T
+all helps the good work. I told the Widow Rand she'd ough' to do
+somethin' for the heathen, so she's gone to raisin' mustard. She said
+she hadn't more 'n a grain o' that to spare, she was so poor; but I told
+her 't would be blest, I guessed. Widow Rand's rather worldly-minded,
+I'm afraid."
+
+A minute more and we should have had Hindostan, Harriet Newell, and
+Juggernaut. Happily, somebody came for the Deacon, and we were left to
+our packing again.
+
+
+II.
+
+This was the second week in May, in the year 1830. We were a promising
+country, but had not yet performed. Neither railroads, telegraphs, nor
+cheap postage had been established. Enthusiastic inventors yet sucked
+their fingers in garrets, waiting for the good time coming; and
+philanthropic statesmen aired their vocabularies in vain, in
+Congressional halls, built in defiance of acoustics. Their words rose,
+their fine sentiments curled up and down the pillars of the temple of
+eloquence, and fell flat to the floor. Meanwhile human nature travelled
+by stage-coaches; and postage for over a hundred miles rose to eighteen
+cents. Not a lover's sigh for a cent less; and it took a fortune for
+persons of sensibility to exchange sentiments.
+
+The consequence to country-people of this last-mentioned fact was, that
+everybody who went anywhere took everybody's letters, and, as there were
+no expresses, added, of course, everybody's packages and messages. And
+the consequence of this was, that everybody made everybody's purchases,
+whether gowns, books, bonnets, or what not. It mattered little who did
+errands, so only they were done. Generally, the one store-keeper bought
+our bonnets when he went to Boston for his yearly stock of goods, and
+our one bonnet lasted in those days a year, being retrimmed for winter
+weather. I remember, too, when our one store-keeper, mingling in the
+æsthetic conversation at one of our parties, where Art was on the
+_tapis_, made a comical mistake, but one natural enough, too,--stating
+that he could buy, and had bought, Vandykes for ten dollars. We were not
+thinking of exactly the same kind of Vandyke that he was.
+
+Many a time have I carried in my trunk more letters than the mail-bag
+did to Boston, and conscientiously finished all the parish's business
+before touching my own.
+
+A certain amount of self-complacency and satisfaction is felt, and
+laudably earned, by being intrusted with commissions; and I flatter
+myself few persons ever set off for New York with such an array of them
+as I did on this occasion.
+
+Looking over my list, I must confess to a flush of real enjoyment at
+finding _carte blanche_ for a scarf. "Now, that is something like!" said
+I. "I can see now how pleasantly an artist feels, or would feel, at an
+order for a picture,--'your own subject,--your own terms.' Miss Patty
+Jones knows what is what, and shall be my patroness."
+
+And did I not vindicate triumphantly Miss Patty's confidence? I knew
+better than to buy her a gray and brown thing, merely because she, too,
+was gray and brown. I wreathed her with lilies and hyacinths and French
+green leaves, and she blossomed under it like a rose. If she were not
+the garland, she wore it, and so borrowed bloom and gay freshness. She
+extolled my taste to all Weston.
+
+Then Mrs. Eben Loring had concluded on the whole that I should buy her a
+hat, in Maiden Lane, at the very tip-top milliner's. The thought of my
+return was somewhat embittered by the prospective necessity of carrying
+two very large bandboxes in my lap, in case of rain. Rain might not
+unreasonably be expected in the course of a three days' journey. Think
+of all the bandboxes that in such a case would be put in at the
+coach-window by the driver, to be held in the hapless laps of the nine
+passengers! Almost I was persuaded to leave my own black satin bonnet,
+and perambulate the streets of New York in my travelling-calash, which
+looked exactly like, and was nearly of the size of, a "bellows-top
+shay."
+
+I was thinking of this last sacrifice, when my husband said, in a
+dreamy, bewildered way,--
+
+"Here are five boxes, mother, two bundles, and the rest of these books.
+I give up!"
+
+"Give up? Not I! Now, where a man's energies are exhausted, a woman's
+just begin to show themselves. First and foremost, lock this trunk, and
+let me put the key in my pocket. That's one thing done, and can't be
+undone."
+
+He stepped back from the trunk.
+
+"What's this? all your clothes on the floor!"
+
+"Well, yes, my dear, most of 'em. You see, I couldn't leave Zipporah
+Haven's shawl out, which she sends to her grandmother; and I must put in
+these bundles of the Burts's, and Mary Skinner's box of linen thread. If
+my own things are lost, why, they must be replaced, you know, my dear;
+that is all."
+
+"And we must keep a good lookout, ourselves, that our bandboxes and
+bundles don't fall off behind," replied the Dominie, faintly.
+
+"Yes; and you can put the small trunk under my feet, and the big basket
+under your own, and you will keep an eye on my red shawl,--and pray
+don't lose the umbrella, nor your great-coat, nor your cane. I will, on
+my part, see to these three small bundles, and my parasol. Doubtless we
+shall go on smoothly as need be, only I am afraid you won't be able to
+think up many sermons on the highway. There! I forgot the jar of
+currant-jelly to go to Ruth Hoyt's aunt! However, we must manage
+somehow. You are sure our names are down at the stage-office?"
+
+But, like Charles XII., "after Pultowa's dreadful day," when the
+tale-teller listened for his sympathy,
+
+  "The king had been an hour asleep."
+
+I am ashamed to say that I must have lost myself after that, though I
+thought I was only thinking of the Day of Judgment. But I must have
+dreamed it, or how should I have thought it the last trumpet, when it
+was only the stage-driver's warning knock?
+
+It was delightful to hear the knock, and the simultaneous clang of pots
+and pans which assured us, that, though night had been no night to us,
+the dark morning would usher in our breakfast with coffee by the
+faithful Polly. The driver coming in again before we had finished, we
+seduced him without scruple into taking a cup of boiling comfort, while
+we guiltily collected the waifs and strays of our multifarious luggage.
+Many a time I have waited, myself, in the coach, while similar orgies
+were going on among the unready, so I know just how vexed and impatient
+the passengers were. But what use to go on without the driver? At last
+we squeezed into the full stage.
+
+
+III.
+
+No sooner in than out, however. I was determined not to die before my
+time, as I was sure to do on the back-seat of an overloaded stage, with
+nine passengers, besides numerous, because gratuitously earned,
+children. "For who," as it was sometimes pertinently asked, "would
+charge anything for a poor little innocent child?" The younger, the more
+innocent, of course, and the more numerous.
+
+"If you'll set up here 'long o' me, Miss Prince, there's a plenty o'
+room,--and for you, too, Parson," said the good-natured driver.
+
+Extricating ourselves from the Black Hole, we delightedly clambered to
+the heights above, regardless of risk, and catching at wheel and step
+like Alpine hunters. How comfortable the seat was, with the fresh, early
+morning air blowing freely in our faces! How small the horses looked in
+the dim light of three o'clock! How oddly the wheel-horses looked, all
+backs and no legs!--and how mysteriously many were the reins that were
+tied round and round the iron lantern-rod!
+
+"Just let me put the mail-bag under your feet, Miss Prince. Here we are,
+now, all right, and nothin' to do but go along!"
+
+"Now, then!"
+
+"Come up! come! come!"
+
+But in vain were caresses; in vain were chirrups, duckings, and kisses,
+wafted to the nigh leader. Like the rebellious South of to-day, he had
+taken his attitude, and stood now on four legs, now on two, pawing only
+the dark air, and regardless of the general welfare behind him.
+
+"Now what will you do, driver?" said cowardly I, who, always mortally
+afraid of horse-flesh, felt on this occasion a strange confidence:
+partly in the staid, heavy mass of determination beside me, who looked
+so calm and good-natured; and partly in the queer, elfin look of the
+beast, who seemed so far off as to have no necessary connection with our
+safety or ultimate progress. It seemed quite possible for us to get on
+with the other three pulling, while our demoniacal friend ornamented the
+occasion by plunges, rearings, and kickings.
+
+Still gathering the reins lightly in his large hand, the stable and sure
+intelligence beside me calmly chirruped, and then as calmly switched his
+long whip at the distant rebel brute. How the switching and snapping
+galled his proud neck! How his black back curved, and his small head
+tossed! Still, he would not pull an ounce, but just pawed like a fairy
+horse, or as if he were born to tread on clouds alone, or to herald in
+the morning.
+
+"He'll start by-'m-by,--he's a devil of a spirit in him, when he doos
+start," remarked our Phoebus, composedly, giving, through the darkness,
+the unerring switch every half minute.
+
+What acted on the capricious thing at last,--whether the Inevitability
+behind him, or the folly exhausting itself, nobody knows; but the
+"beautiful disdain" left his black back and tossing mane in a moment,
+and he buckled down to his work with an energy worthy of the cause, and
+with a good-will that was an example to the other three.
+
+"There! you see he can do well enough, 'f he's jest a mind to! nothin'
+wantin' but the will! There's a pair on 'em," said the driver, "but I
+won't never drive 'em together. Staples drove the pair last summer. He
+says they'd run till they dropped down dead. I guess they would. He's a
+putty critter enough, and well made, but dreadful ugly. Now, I like that
+'ere wheeler!"--he pointed his whip towards the horse below my foot.
+"She's kind,--that mare is; and she's fast enough, and handsome. Broad
+back,--short legs,--goes like a duck!"
+
+In such pleasant chat (and why not? for wasn't the driver a cousin of my
+own?--a man of means,--owning his team,--and with more knowledge of his
+district than most members of Congress have? Indeed, I believe he's in
+Congress this minute!) we pulled up hill and tore down dale. Nobody
+knows a hill by experience but New-Hampshire travellers. The Green
+Mountains are full of comparatively gentle slopes, and verdure crowns
+their highest and tallest tops; but the hills of New Hampshire are
+Alpine in their steepness and barrenness, and the roads of old time made
+by the Puritans took the Devil by the horns. There was no circuitous,
+soothing, easy passage. The road ran straight over mountains and pitched
+deep down ravines, the surveyors having evidently kept only in view the
+shortest air-line between places.
+
+Sometimes we chained the wheels, but not often. Oftenest we ran down a
+steep place, and the impetus carried us up the opposite hill. At the
+foot of a long hill, of a two-mile stretch, the driver generally
+stopped, to indicate the propriety of the male passengers, at least,
+ascending the hill on foot. And often the whole stage-load gladly
+availed itself of the permission. It was handy for the owners of
+bandboxes, to pick them up from the rocky road, as they tumbled off now
+and then; and the four beasts, like those in Revelation, said "Amen" to
+the kindly impulse of humanity that lightened their load, and left them
+to scramble comfortably from one side to the other of the still
+ascending path. When they did get to the top of some of those Walpole
+hills, would they could have taken in the living glory and beauty of the
+far-reaching and most magnificent landscape!
+
+
+IV.
+
+We had the mails to change at the post-offices, and a seemingly
+inexhaustible store, intrusted to the care and courtesy of the driver,
+and surrounding him like a rampart,--of newspapers, bundles, cans,
+pillow-cases full of dried apples, and often letters.
+
+At the red house near the mill below Surrey, a sweet-looking girl ran
+out, as we passed, holding her hand forward for a letter, which our
+driver pretended to drop half a dozen times, on purpose to tantalize
+her. It was pretty to see her blushing, sparkling face, as the blood
+danced to her brow with hope, and back with the baffled expectancy to
+her heart.
+
+"Neouw, Sil, be still! give to me, yeouw!"
+
+If it hadn't been Yankee, it was soft and melodious enough for an
+Italian peasant. As picturesque, too, was her short, blue woollen
+petticoat, and white short-gown, that "half hid and half revealed" the
+unconstrained grace of healthy mountain-nature; and more modest the
+happy look with which she received the letter at last, and flew with it
+like a bird back to the red nest.
+
+"A love-letter, I suppose," said I, answering the twinkle of the
+driver's good-natured eye.
+
+"Wal, I expect 's likely. They've been sparking now over a year. And
+it's a pity, too, such a real clever girl as that is! She a'n't so
+dreadful bright, but she's real clever, and ough' to hev a better chance
+'n Jim Ruggles."
+
+"A bad match for her?"
+
+"Wal, Jim's a good feller enough, but he drinks. I don't mean to say
+nothin' agin moderate drinkin'. I drink myself moderately. But Jim's a
+real sponge. He'd drink all day hard and never show it, without it is
+bein' cross, maybe, and paler 'n common. Now I say,--and I a'n't no
+'reformed inebriate,' nor Father Matthew sort,--but I do say, and will
+hold to it, such a man at twenty-one makes a poor beginnin'. If he
+lives, he'll be a poor shote, and no mistake. I'm sorry for the gal."
+
+"Somebody ought to tell her. Why not you?"
+
+"Wal, what's the good on 't? She wouldn't hear a word. When a woman's
+once sot her mind, don't do no good to talk. For that matter, talkin'
+never did do much, I'm thinkin',--exceptin' preachin'. We're bound to
+hear that, Parson," he added, laughing, and with a nod which might seem
+respectful.
+
+In three hours we had driven thirteen miles. Pretty good progress this
+of a warm day, and with a full complement of passengers. We had watched
+the sun rise over Walpole hills, and the specks in the distance where
+the early farmers were ploughing and sowing. The breaking day, the
+bursting spring, and all the outward melodies with which the welcoming
+day rings as we toil on, are so many incentives to appetite, and we are
+all sharp for the ready breakfast, at six o'clock.
+
+Then, as I am talking of the past, and not of the present, there was
+time enough: time enough for the comfortable discussion of breakfast,
+for the changing of raiment among the babies, for chatting in the
+bar-room, for the interchange of news among the men, and even for
+glasses of milk-punch. Tell it not in modern Gath that even the Dominie
+spiced his half-mug of flip with an anecdote, and that every man and
+woman took cider as well as coffee.
+
+How can I describe the events and vicissitudes that befell us during
+this journey of three days and a half to New York? Modern travellers,
+who are, or are not, as it happens, run off the track, smashed up, or
+otherwise suddenly and summarily disposed of, have little notion of our
+successive and amusing accidents, and of how they diversified and
+occupied the mind, so as entirely to preclude the _ennui_ which comes
+from railroad-travelling, with its ninety-nine chances of safety to one
+of accident.
+
+That we were tipped out and over repeatedly,--that one of the leaders
+had fits, (which amiable weakness was understood and allowed for by our
+driver, who was in hopes the critter wouldn't have 'em that day,)--that
+the coach wholly collapsed once, letting all the patient passengers into
+a promiscuous heap of unbroken bones,--this, and such as this, will be
+easily believed by any New-England traveller who remembers thirty years
+back. But how we fell so softly that the brains were never damaged,--why
+falling into ditches at night wasn't an unhealthy process,--and, above
+all, how the driver's stock of leathern straps, strings, and nails
+should always prove exhaustless, and be always so wonderfully adapted to
+every emergency,--that was a wonder, and is a wonder still to me. No
+amount of mechanical skill, though the Yankee has made machines that
+almost think, and altogether do, for him, has superseded or exhausted
+his natural tact, expediency, and invention. With string and nail in his
+pocket, I would defy the horses of Phoebus to get away from a Yankee, or
+his chariot to get out of gear; and if Phaeton had only been a
+Vermonter, the deserts of Ethiopia might to this day have been covered
+with roses instead of sand. Our driver, though he didn't know his own
+powers, knew all about Phoebus, and had read Virgil and Ovid by the
+light of a pine-knot in his father's kitchen. This rude culture is the
+commonest fact among our mountaineers.
+
+We "stopped over" one day in Hartford, to see the deaf-mutes. Their
+bright, concentrated, eager looks haunted me long after. I should like
+to know who would stop anywhere now to see anything! One might as well
+be put into a gun and fired off to New York as go there now by
+steam-cars. Line a gun with red plush, and it is not unlike a "resonant
+steam-eagle." And you would see as much in one as in the other.
+
+But travelling in 1830 enlarged your mind. A journey then was one as
+_was_ a journey. You saw people, you made their acquaintance, you
+entered their hearts and took lodgings,--sometimes for life.
+
+Then the country! You saw that, too,--not the poorest part of it,
+scooting round wherever it is most level, till you pronounce the whole
+way flat, and are glad to shut your eyes and listen to the engine,
+rather than have them ache with seeing everything you would never wish
+to look at!
+
+All these days were full of great, beautiful pictures. From the time we
+leave the Granite State, with it a wild, fierce grandeur, its long,
+dreary reaches of unfertile pastures, and its wealth of stone wall,--so
+abundant that travellers wonder where the stones came from to build it,
+seeing no lack in the road or field,--from the time we enter on trim,
+well-kept Massachusetts, the panorama shifts with ever new interest and
+beauty. We leave the pretentious brick houses, or the glaring white
+ones, which mark the uncultivated taste of the American Switzerland, and
+enter for the first time regions impressed with the necessary element of
+fine landscape, maturity. With and under the old oaks and birches rest
+the sad-colored houses that have held life and experience,--birth,
+death, and old historic adventure.
+
+Looking over the broad meadows that skirt the Connecticut by Hadley and
+Northampton, one seems to see under the distant oaks spectral shapes of
+Indian struggle, or wandering regicides, hiding their noble heads in
+caves, or bursting out like white spirits to lead and avenge. The air is
+peopled with traditions far back from the present, but with which the
+grave, imposing, characteristic landscape seems still to sympathize.
+
+In two days we emerged from the brown chrysalis of a New-Hampshire
+spring into the exultant richness of the winged butterfly,--into white,
+fragrant fields of blossoming fruit, and the odor of tree-lilacs.
+
+In my enchantment at the bounteous panorama that spread out before me in
+ever varying abundance, I forgot to cultivate any interest in my
+fellow-passengers, and, except in listening to some communicative old
+women, might really, as far as society was concerned, as well have been
+travelling in the style of to-day. Beyond the casual acquaintances I
+made when rain compelled me to indoor chat, I saw nobody who interested
+me until we reached Springfield. There, at the top of the first short
+hill outside the town, after looking back on the white houses standing
+in the river-mist like so many ghosts in white muslin, I saw somebody
+whom my prophetic soul announced as a companion, looking wholly unlike a
+ghost, and very unlike a mist. He raised his hand, just as we were about
+passing him, as if signalling an omnibus, and our driver suddenly reined
+in his team.
+
+A full, hearty voice, not a bit nasal, but fresh from the broad chest,
+showed us a traveller by the road-side, waiting to be taken up.
+
+He sprang with two bounds to the top of the coach, and made room for
+himself just above us among the countless boxes.
+
+"Don't let me disturb you, Madam All right. Just room for my bag. Go on,
+driver."
+
+"Fine day," said we.
+
+"A warm morning. I have been walking for the last fifteen miles,--but
+the sun is too hot for me."
+
+He took off his travelling-hat of weather-beaten Panama, and dried his
+broad brow with his handkerchief. Then he looked at us with clear blue
+eyes, and tossed back his curling brown hair. He had a gray
+travelling-dress, such as everybody wears now, but which was then a
+novelty; and something in his curt, clear accents, and his crimson lips,
+and the fresh life in his limbs and action, betrayed that he was not an
+American. So much the better.
+
+
+V.
+
+I said he looked sharply at us two. He seemed to have a habit of
+investigating, at least to a certain extent; and he took us in at once,
+evidently. A country-parson and his wife. If I say his pretty wife, I
+will promise faithfully that it shall be the last time I will refer to
+myself or my prettiness, the whole way, further than may be absolutely
+necessary; and it isn't every woman who will do as much. For with this
+man and his belongings I came to have much to do in the course of the
+next five years. Little thought I, as I heard him chatting soberly with
+my husband, and nodding from time to time gravely at me, as If to take
+me into the conversation,--little thought I of the shadow he would one
+day cast over both of our lives!
+
+He showed us his travelling-apparatus for making a cup of tea in ten
+minutes, toasting bread, and boiling eggs. It was like a doll's
+cooking-stove six inches square, a curious invention, new then, and a
+wonderful convenience.
+
+"With my tea and this," said he, "I can go over the United States. Good
+bread and sweet butter I can always get at your farm-houses, and I often
+walk fifty miles together."
+
+We looked and spoke our New-English astonishment. In our part of the
+world nobody walked anywhere. Everybody, however poor, had a wagon, if
+not a chaise; and he must be miserable indeed who did not own at least
+one horse. Nobody in his sober senses demeaned himself to walking.
+Perhaps it was the climate. Perhaps our fathers instituted the custom,
+to be as unlike the British as possible,--as they did of making their
+houses like lanterns, to show they had no window-tax to pay.
+
+This man's hearty voice and healthy frame, charged, as it seemed, with
+fresh air, jollity, and strength, made us think better of walking. We
+looked at his six feet of height, his broad chest, and his firmly knit
+limbs, and fancied how Antaeus gained supernatural vigor from natural
+contact: he trod the earth with a loving and free step, as a child
+approaches and caresses his mother. So, too, his voice, and the topics
+he chose in talking, gave us the feeling of out-door existence always
+connected with him: of singing-birds, and the breeze of mountain-tops,
+of great walnut- and chesnut-trees, and children gathering nuts beneath;
+never of the solemn hush of pines, or twilight, or anything "sough"-ing
+or whispering: no, all about him sounded like the free, dashing, rushing
+water. So were his bright blue eyes, merry lips, and wind-crimsoned
+cheeks, interpreters of his nature. They linked him firmly to the
+outward. The man's soul was made up of joyfulness, strength, and a sort
+of purposeless activity,--energy for its own sake. While his energies
+harmonized with the right, or were exercised in the pursuit of
+knowledge, one felt that he would have much power for good. But suppose
+his activities to take a wrong direction, all his powers would help him
+to be and enjoy the wrong. In either case, his nature would have the
+same harmonious energy, and the moral part of him would not disturb the
+balance of his character. He had no special liking for evil, I am sure;
+yet, according to all the theories, his intense love of Nature ought to
+have elevated and refined him far more than it had done.
+
+Before we had been an hour together, I had also observed that he was
+good-natured, impulsive, and, in a sort, kindly,--that he loved himself
+and his own enjoyment too well ever knowingly to annoy or distress
+another. There is a little difference between this and kindness. No
+matter how I found him out. He who runs may read, if he looks sharply
+enough; and in travelling, people betray and assert character
+continually. I was also as sure as I was years afterwards, that he would
+walk rough-shod over heart-violets and -daisies, nor once notice them
+bleeding under his heel. It was in the grain of the man's nature. He had
+lived at least thirty-five years, and was too old to be made over into
+anything else by any experience.
+
+His bag was half full of tulip-bulbs which he had bought and begged, he
+said. He had a passion at present for cultivating tulips, and was quite
+sure, that, if he had lived in the seventeenth instead of the nineteenth
+century, he would have ruined himself twenty times over for a favorite
+bulb, even without being a Dutchman.
+
+His dominant idea, to which for the first hour he sacrificed without
+scruple every other, was flowers. I had a mischievous pleasure in
+professing a similar passion, on purpose to confound him with a
+description of a Weston flower-garden. If he talked of jessamine and
+Daphne odora, I talked of phlox and bachelor's-buttons. If he raved of
+azaleas and gladioluses, I told him of our China-asters, sunflowers,
+and hollyhocks.
+
+"Ah, now I see you are laughing at me!" said he, good-humoredly, after I
+had said, that, after all, I could not get up an admiration for
+day-lilies or tulips; "promise me that I may show you my tulips, and I
+will promise you that you shall like botany hereafter."
+
+We agreed at last to bury the hatchet at the foot of a rose-bush, which
+I said I would allow, excused the existence of other flowers. The bulbs
+he gave me on the top of the stage-coach that day made a revolution in
+the taste of Weston; and some climbing plants, from his house
+afterwards, took root in our rude homes, and have displaced the old
+glaring colors with soft beauty and grace. Before I left Weston, which
+happened in time, we had prairie-roses, honeysuckles, and woodbine
+clambering over half the houses in the place, and bouncing-Bets were
+extinguished forever.
+
+I forgot that we had never heard this man's name, though it did not
+matter at all. He was a cultivated gentleman, and we had no occasion for
+introduction. We met freely on that platform, and it was pleasant to us
+to talk on so many subjects outside of personal interest. He had
+travelled, and gave us results, in a sketchy, off-hand way, of much that
+he had observed that was extremely entertaining in foreign manners.
+
+Suddenly his loud, cheery voice rang out,--
+
+"Halloo, old boy, get up here!"
+
+He did get up, a languid, pale man, with sharp features, and a frame so
+attenuated that I involuntarily placed a soft bag for him to lean
+against, and removed a cane and umbrella that seemed likely to hurt his
+bones.
+
+It was about half an hour before I saw that the new man was not at all
+an invalid, but of the natural gaunt frame and pallid complexion of my
+countrymen. My eyes had become so full of the fresh, rosy life of the
+Englishman's face, that the new man's face was bleached and unhealthy to
+me. I happened to glance back from him to the Dominie, and saw, that,
+allowing for green spectacles, they were both of a color. We were so
+arranged on the top of the coach, that with reasonable twisting of necks
+we were able to maintain an animated conversation, and soon found our
+account in the new element.
+
+"Well, Remington!"
+
+"Well, Lewis!"
+
+"Where from now?"
+
+"From Niagara, and home by the White Hills."
+
+"And what of the last, or of both?"
+
+"Miss Rugg has fallen into the one, and Miss Somebody has been to the
+top of the other. Had to be brought down, though. Women shouldn't climb
+mountains."
+
+"There has been some talk of a road, or practicable path at least, to
+the top of Mount Washington."
+
+"Never'll be done. Impossible on the face of the thing."
+
+"Nothing is impossible to Yankees, Remington."
+
+"This is. And now, Lewis, whence come you, and whither go?"
+
+"From Weston, and to New York."
+
+Here was a _denouement!_ We looked at him with new interest, and saw at
+once, such was the force of imagination, the very eyes and eyebrows of
+Gus Lewis. However, it proved afterwards to be only imagination. When we
+told him we came from Weston only two days and a half before, the
+conversation assumed the native style of New England, and for the next
+quarter of an hour we talked of each other and each other's affairs.'
+Mr. Lewis was delighted to see us, had stayed only an hour in Weston,
+and there heard of our trip from Auguste,--profanely called Gus,--took
+the box of maple-sugar in charge at once, laughed at the boy-like
+direction without even a surname, and ended with recommending us to go
+at once to Miss Post's, on Broadway, where himself and his wife were at
+present boarding. All the particulars of life, character, and relative
+interests were discussed between ourselves and Mr. Lewis with the
+relish and zest of compatriots. I had forgotten how close a tie was that
+of Yankee birth, and how like an unknown tongue our talk was to the
+Englishman, till we stopped and turned to him to say something, and
+found him fast asleep. Then I was glad that he hadn't heard my satirical
+description of "donation-parties" at Weston, nor the account I gave of
+our two boys, our salary of five hundred dollars, and the various
+comical shifts we had to make to live comfortably on that sum and
+support aged parents and graceless relations. Little touches told Mr.
+Lewis the whole story. I knew very well that Mr. Remington would be
+entirely abroad about such a social existence as ours in Weston, travel
+he ever so long or widely.
+
+Mr. Lewis had black eyes and hair, and bent like an habitual student. He
+had a scar on his right eyebrow, which he had got by a fall, and by
+which he had saved the life of Mr. Remington, who was a connection of
+his wife's. This he told us, afterwards, and I amused myself with
+drawing parallels between his face and his mind. One side was gentle,
+sweet-humored, sentimental, with a touch of melancholy. The other,
+disfigured with the scar, seemed to have been turned harsh, suspicious,
+proud, reserved, and unrelenting. These were many qualities, all to
+depend on a scar, to be sure; but they generally herd together, and he
+might be one man or another, as life presented its dark or sunny side to
+him. To me, he was very interesting, from the first; and my husband was
+delighted with him. The Dominie starved in Weston for congenial
+intellectual nutriment. Nobody but myself could tell what a drain it was
+on him always to impart, always to simplify, to descend, to walk on the
+ground with wings folded flat to his back, and the angel in him
+habitually kept out of view. The most he could do was to insinuate now
+and then a thought above the farming interest, and in a direction aside
+from Bombay. More than that exposed him to suspicion, and hindered his
+usefulness in Coös County.
+
+Somehow, we got talking of Mr. Remington, which we might well do, seeing
+him there before us, sleeping like a baby.
+
+"That he could always do, like Napoleon," said Mr. Lewis, "and so can
+accomplish much without fatigue."
+
+"Is he married?" said I.
+
+"Yes. His wife is in delicate health."
+
+I was surprised to hear that he was married.
+
+"He hasn't a married look, has he?"
+
+"You are talking about me," said Remington, waking up. "I felt it
+mesmerically. And, to give you a good opportunity, I will walk a mile or
+two. Give me a good character, Lewis. Hold up, driver!"
+
+Springing down, he went on, laughing, before us, now and then calling
+back to ask if we were nearly through?
+
+"He has not the 'subdued domestic smile upon his features mild', that
+marks the man who has a wife at home," said I.
+
+"No. He is a man, however, born under a lucky star, and his cup filled
+with good-fortune to the brim. His self-lordship has been to him no
+heritage of woe, thus far."
+
+"A certain happiness, but necessarily of a poor quality, comes from
+being able to gratify our wishes. If he has no more, it is poor enough."
+
+"Do you mean that pleasure must be an outgrowth of pain to be properly
+appreciated?" said Mr. Lewis.
+
+"Somewhat,--mostly," said the minister; "since the insensibility that
+protects one from pain prevents also delicate picture. I think, indeed,
+a rational being must suffer in order to enjoy, after infancy."
+
+"His eyes don't look as if they had been in training of any sort," said
+I, without knowing what my words implied, till I saw the harsh
+expression on Mr. Lewis's face.'
+
+"I mean that they have a sort of undisciplined expression, as if he had
+never been tamed by suffering or sorrow of any sort," said I.
+
+"That sadness is the true human look," said the minister, "the look that
+redeems us from the mere animal expression of enjoyment. It is the
+stamp God puts on those He loves. He chastens them; after that, they are
+no more servants, but sons of the house."
+
+I saw by Mr. Lewis's eyes that he understood and felt this. Also, that
+from his nature he bought his enjoyments every step of the way of life.
+How differently his cousin laid hold on the cornucopia of enjoyment, and
+covered himself with bountiful beauty, drinking in at every sense
+pleasure! The former, as could be seen too, held his title to happiness
+by the most uncertain tenure; the nervous quiver betraying, and the
+sensitive blood witnessing, how keenly he felt and how dearly he paid
+for every passing pleasure. I remember, as I saw his purple, thrilling
+face, that I hoped his home-life was happy, feeling that to such a man
+it must be everything. Yet I was sure, from what he did not say, with
+eye or lips, that he had not learned religious trust. Still, he did not
+listen to the mere minister, but to the friend; and there sprang up
+between the two the corresponding interest and respect belonging to
+natures kindred in depth and sensibility, though of widely differing
+experience. In after-years, he who had already attained was able
+frequently to hold out a helping hand to his younger brother; but now,
+only a smile and a look told much. This acquaintance of the soul is very
+fascinating. In the two or three steps we take together, with cognizance
+and measure of each other, what a long path opens before us of alternate
+shade and sunshine, and how imagination borders every step of the way
+with richest heart-blossoms! In friendship, all is glowing and
+enriching. As it has not the depth of love, it neither anticipates nor
+requires sacrifice. We do not think of doing or suffering for a friend;
+but the friend ministers to our weakness, and exalts our strength. He
+sympathizes gently with our self-love, he magnifies every excellence. He
+is perpetually charmed, alike with the novelty and the similarity of our
+experience, and unwearied in comparing thoughts and balancing opinions.
+All, and more, that he gives us, he receives; and so an incipient
+friendship is one of the most intoxicating delights of life. What long
+leaps in acquaintance we took during our first hour, and while Mr.
+Remington still walked up-hill before us!
+
+"You will probably have an opportunity to see and judge for yourselves
+of Mr. Remington, as we are together a great deal, and he is a cousin of
+Mrs. Lewis's. This will be better than for me to attempt a description,
+I think, and, on the whole, more satisfactory. He annoys me, and offends
+me frequently; and then I am not just to him, of course. But he is a
+fine fellow, honorable and agreeable; and with a love of natural science
+that leads him, for the time, like a dog. Just now, he is wild with
+floriculture. Last year, it was geology. You will see."
+
+And then, as if he feared to trust himself with his cousin's character,
+or that it was a distasteful subject for some reason, he turned to the
+minister, and began talking about Cherry Mountain and the scenery in
+Coös.
+
+Mr. Remington called out, at the top of the hill,--
+
+"Now it is my turn! Let me ride, and I will give your character!"
+
+"Oh! we don't need it, I assure you," said I; "we understand him
+entirely."
+
+"Not a bit of it!" said he, shaking his brown curls; "I am the
+transparent one."
+
+He stepped up on the wheel-hub to get his bag, and to say he should
+strike off for Middleton on foot. He would see us very soon in New York,
+and claim our promise to visit him.
+
+Being relieved from the fascination of personal beauty and presence,
+with only the impression of character remaining, I was a little ashamed
+to find how much I had liked, without being at all able to esteem him.
+It was with a very different feeling that I looked at Mr. Lewis, whose
+ugly, positively ugly face was being perpetually transfigured with
+emotion and variety. Without grace of feature or figure, he impressed
+one as a living soul; and this inward light gave a translucent beauty
+to the frail, chance-shapen vase, which all Mr. Remington's personal
+advantages of form and color failed to impress us with. Only dark eyes
+of un-sounded depth, and a voice whose rich cadences had an answering
+rhythm in the inward man, showed what his attractions might be, or were,
+to a woman. We became curious to see Mrs. Lewis, of whom we gained no
+idea from his casual references to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LYRICS OF THE STREET.
+
+
+  VI.
+
+  PLAY.
+
+  From yon den of double-dealing,
+      With its Devil's host,
+  Come I, maddened out of healing:
+             All is lost!
+
+  So the false wine cannot blind me,
+      Nor the braggart toast;
+  But I know that Hell doth bind me:
+             All is lost!
+
+  Where the lavish gain attracts us,
+      And the easy cost,
+  While the damning dicer backs us,
+             All is lost!
+
+  Blest the rustic in his furrows,
+      Toil- and sweat-embossed;
+  Blest are honest souls in sorrows.
+             All is lost!
+
+  Wifely love, the closer clinging
+      When men need thee most,
+  Shall I come, dishonor bringing?
+             All is lost!
+
+  Babe in silken cradle lying,
+      To low music tossed,
+  Will they wake thee for my dying?
+             All is lost!
+
+  Yonder where the river grimly
+      Whitens, like a ghost,
+  Must I plunge and perish dimly;
+             All is lost!
+
+INTERESTING MANUSCRIPTS OF EDMUND BURKE.
+
+
+Macaulay opens his most remarkable article on Milton by saying, "The
+dexterous Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a
+saint, till they have awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors
+by exhibiting some relic of him,--a thread of his garment, a lock of his
+hair, or a drop of his blood." If we were in the mood, we might take
+advantage of interesting manuscripts of Edmund Burke, which are now
+before us, to say something of this remarkable character. But we shall
+confine ourselves for the present to a passing glance at the manuscripts
+which have strayed across the Atlantic.[A]
+
+[Footnote A: These manuscripts are now in the possession of the Hon.
+Charles Sumner, who is also the fortunate owner of the _Album Amicorum_
+containing the autograph of John Milton.--ED.]
+
+The authentic manuscripts of Burke have passed through several hands. On
+his death, they were intrusted to the eminent civilian, Dr. French
+Lawrence, of Doctors' Commons, and to Dr. King, afterwards Bishop of
+Rochester. To these two gentlemen we are indebted for the first eight
+volumes of the London octavo edition of Burke's Works. The career of Dr.
+Lawrence was cut short by death in 1809. His associate had the exclusive
+charge of the papers till 1812, when the venerable widow of Burke died
+at Beaconsfield, and by her last will gave to Earl Fitzwilliam, the
+Bishop of Rochester, and the Right Honorable William Elliott the entire
+direction of the printing and publishing of such parts of the works of
+her late husband as were not published before her decease,--bequeathing
+to them all the printed and manuscript papers for this purpose. Eight
+more volumes were published by the Bishop, who died in 1828, a few
+months after the publication of the fifteenth and sixteenth volumes. Mr.
+Elliott had already died in 1818. The papers now came into the sole
+possession of Earl Fitzwilliam, the distinguished nobleman associated
+with the latter portion of Burke's life, from whom they descended to his
+son, the late Earl Fitzwilliam, who, in conjunction with Sir Richard
+Bourke, published, in 1844, the four volumes of correspondence, with a
+few notes of unpublished speeches.
+
+We have personal reason to know that there are yet other unpublished
+manuscripts of Burke in the hands of Lord Fitzwilliam, some of which it
+was our fortune many years ago to inspect. Mr. Macknight, it appears,
+applied to the present Earl for permission to publish some of those
+which are preserved in the archives of Wentworth House, but, "out of
+obedience to the expressed wish of his father, who published all he
+thought necessary, he declined to sanction any further publication of
+these documents."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Macknight's _Life of Burke_, Vol. III. p. 737.]
+
+There are also letters of Burke which from time to time have seen the
+light, as they were communicated by their possessors. Among these none
+equals in interest that addressed to Pitt with regard to his pension,
+which has been printed recently by Lord Stanhope, in his small, but rich
+and rare collection, entitled "Miscellanies." This important letter came
+to light among the papers of Pitt, and has been described by Macaulay as
+"interesting and very characteristic."
+
+The manuscripts now before us are none of these. They have a history of
+their own.
+
+They constitute a thin volume in folio, neatly bound, having a
+book-mark, and arms with the name of _Fillingham_. Here are four
+familiar autograph-letters from Burke to his amanuensis, Swift, all of
+them written from Margate, on the sea-shore, and bearing Burke's frank
+as a member of Parliament. According to habit with us, the frank of a
+member of Congress is written in the right-hand upper corner of the
+superscription, while the old English frank is in the left-hand lower
+corner. But English law, while the privilege of franking existed,
+required also that the name of the place where the letter was pasted,
+and the day on which it was posted, written at length, should appear in
+the superscription. Take, for instance, the following frank of Burke in
+this collection:--
+
+  "Margate July seventeenth, 1791
+  "Mr Swift,
+  "Mr Burke's Chambers
+  "4 Stone Buildings
+  "Lincoln's Inn
+  "London.
+
+  "Edm. Burke."
+
+These letters have been recently published by Mr. Macknight, who says of
+them that "they show how kind and familiar Burke was to the humblest
+dependants with whom he was thrown into any human relationship"; they
+also "show the statesman, when at the height of literary fame, as busy
+and anxious in sending his sheets through the press, and making
+corrections and alterations, as any young author with his first proofs";
+and he adds, "These letters seem to me quite as important, as
+illustrations of Burke's private character, as those which he wrote to
+the Nagles in former years." It seems that the amanuensis to whom they
+were addressed had at his death other similar letters in his possession;
+but his wife, ignorant of their value, deliberately committed them to
+the names, and the four now before us are all that were saved. Mr.
+Macknight adds, in a note,--"These letters I owe to the kindness of John
+Fillingham, Esq., of Hoxton, who allowed me to inspect and copy the
+originals."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Life of Burke_, Vol. III. p. 410.]
+
+Of one of these letters there is an accurate _fac-simile_, which will be
+found in the third volume of Mr. Macknight's elaborate biography of
+Burke.
+
+But the main paper in the collection is none other than the manuscript
+of the "Observations on the Conduct of the Minority," being the
+_identical copy_ from which the surreptitious publication was made which
+disturbed the last hours of Burke. The body of it is in the handwriting
+of the amanuensis to whom the familiar letters were addressed; but it
+shows the revision of Burke, and on several pages most minute and
+elaborate corrections and additions, with changes of sections. Of one of
+these pages there is an accurate _fac-simile_ in the third volume of Mr.
+Macknight, who says that "the manuscript was given by Swift's sister,
+after his death, to the gentleman who kindly permitted him to inspect
+it." [A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Lifo of Burke_, Vol. III. p. 700.]
+
+These manuscripts--both the letters and the Observations--all concern
+the closing period of Burke's life, after the unhappy feud between
+himself and Fox, to which they directly relate. In order to appreciate
+their value, we must glance at the scene by which the memorable
+friendship of these men was closed.
+
+Few political events in English history are read with more interest than
+the separation of Burke and Fox. They had been friends and allies; but
+the French Revolution, which separated so many persons in France,
+reached across the Channel to separate them. They differed so radically
+with regard to this portentous, undeveloped movement, that their
+relations, both political and personal, were rudely severed. Burke, in
+the House of Commons, openly announced this result. He was most
+earnestly inveighing against France, when he said, "It may be indiscreet
+in me at my time of life to provoke enemies, and give occasion to
+friends to desert me." Fox whispered, "There is no loss of friends."
+Burke for a moment paused, and then exclaimed, "Yes, there is a loss of
+friends; I know the price of my conduct. I have done my duty at the
+expense of my friend. Our friendship is at an end." As he finished,
+Burke walked across the floor of the House, and squeezed himself between
+Pitt and Dundas on the Treasury Bench. Fox rose to reply, while tears
+streamed down his face. In the course of his remarks he intimated that
+Burke had heaped upon him the most ignominious terms. Burke at once said
+that he did not recollect having used any; when Fox replied, "My right
+honorable friend does not recollect the epithets. They are out of his
+mind. Then they are completely and forever out of mine. I cannot cherish
+a recollection so painful; and from this moment they are obliterated and
+forgotten."
+
+But the difference was too intense. A few days later it broke forth
+again. "I complain," said Burke, "of being obliged to stand upon my
+defence by the right honorable gentleman, who, when a young man, was
+brought to me and evinced the most promising talents, which I used my
+best endeavors to cultivate; and this man, who has arrived at the
+maturity of being the most brilliant and powerful debater that ever
+existed, has described me as having deserted and abandoned every one of
+my principles!" Fox replied, but alluded to Burke no longer as "friend",
+but as "the right honorable gentleman", and said, in a taunting style,
+that "all he had to do was to repent, and his friends would be ready to
+receive him back and love him as they had previously done". Burke was
+indignant. He said,--"I have gone through my youth without encountering
+any party disgrace, and though in my age I have been so unfortunate as
+to meet it, I do not solicit the right honorable gentleman's friendship,
+nor that of any other man, either on one side of the House or the
+other." [A] This most important and historic friendship was at an end.
+
+[Footnote A:_Parliamentary History_ Vol. XXIX. p. 426.]
+
+The larger part of the Whigs at that time sided with Fox. But Burke
+turned away from Parliament and politicians in one of the most masterly
+productions of his pen, entitled, "An Appeal from the New to the Old
+Whigs." One of the autograph-letters in the collection before us,
+addressed to the amanuensis, Swift, relates to the last corrections of
+this tract, and contains the title, arranged for the printer. It is the
+letter of which a _fac-simile_ is given by Mr. Macknight.
+
+Meanwhile, the difference between the two statesmen became more fixed
+and intense. The Whig Club declared, "that their confidence in Mr. Fox
+was confirmed, strengthened, and increased by the calumnies against
+him." Burke and some forty-five noblemen and gentlemen withdrew from the
+club. It was then that Burke, in justification of himself and his
+friends, took the pen, and drew up what his biographer Prior calls the
+"famous" paper, entitled, "Observations on the Conduct of the Minority,
+particularly in the Last Session of Parliament, addressed to the Duke of
+Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, 1793," which will be found in the third
+volume of Bonn's edition of his Works.
+
+This paper presents, in fifty-four articles, duly numbered, objections
+to the course and policy of Fox. It was, in brief, an arraignment of
+that distinguished gentleman. But it was not intended for publication,
+at least at that time. It was transmitted to the Duke of Portland, with
+a letter, asking that it might not even be read at once, but that the
+Duke would keep it locked in the drawer of his library-table, and when a
+day of compulsory reflection came, then be pleased to turn to it.
+Communicated thus in confidence, it might have remained indefinitely, if
+not always, unknown to the public, locked in the ducal drawer, if the
+amanuensis whom Burke employed in copying it had not betrayed him. This
+was none other than Swift, to whom the familiar letters were addressed.
+Unknown to his employer, he had appropriated to himself a copy in his
+own handwriting, with corrections and additions by Burke, which seems to
+have come between the original rough draught and the final copy
+transmitted to the Duke of Portland. Some time afterwards, while Burke
+was in his last illness, feeble and failing fast, this faithless
+scrivener communicated this copy to an equally faithless publisher, by
+whom it was advertised as "Fifty-Four Articles of Impeachment against
+the Eight Honorable C.J. Fox." When this was seen by Mrs. Burke, she
+felt it her duty to keep all newspapers and letters from her husband,
+that he might know nothing of the treachery, at least until it was
+relieved so far as it could be. Dr. Lawrence and Dr. King, assisted by
+the affidavit of Mr. Rivington, succeeded in obtaining an injunction
+against the publisher on the very day when the tract appeared. But two
+thousand copies had already stolen abroad.
+
+It was not until Mrs. Burke, on opening a letter from Dr. Lawrence to
+her husband, learned that the injunction had been obtained, that, at two
+o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th of February, 1797, she delivered to
+him his newspapers and correspondence for the past week. He was less
+disturbed than had been expected. "This affair does vex me," he said;
+"but I am not in a state of health at present to be deeply vexed at
+anything. Had I intended it for the public, I should have been more
+exact and full. Many temperaments and explanations there would have
+been, if ever I had had a notion that it should meet the public eye." He
+was justly indignant at the knavish publisher, whose conduct surpassed
+that of the Dublin pirates, or Edmund Curll. But he was at a loss to
+know how the publisher obtained a copy. He did not suppose that the Duke
+of Portland had given up his, and he remembered only "the rough and
+incorrect papers" constituting the first draught, which, it seems, Dr.
+Lawrence, about a year before, had paid the false Swift a guinea to
+deliver back. He had forgotten the intermediate copy made by Swift and
+corrected by himself.
+
+This illicit publication, especially under such a title, was calculated
+to attract attention. Its author was dying, so that it seemed to be his
+last words. Pitt read it with delight, and declared it to be a model in
+that style of composition. But his latest biographer says of it, that
+"it may, perhaps, be regretted that Burke ever wrote the 'Observations
+on the Conduct of the Minority.' It is certainly the least pleasing of
+all his compositions."[A] In style, it is direct, terse, and compact,
+beyond any other composition of Burke's. Perhaps, as it was not intended
+for the public, he was less tempted to rhetorical indulgence. But the
+manuscript now before us exhibits the minute care with which it was
+executed. Here also may be traced varieties of expression, constituting
+the different forms which a thought assumed, not unlike the various
+drawings of Raffaelle for the same wonderful picture.
+
+[Footnote A: Macknight, Vol. III. p. 532.]
+
+But we must stop. It is only as a literary curiosity that we are now
+dealing with this relic.
+
+HARVARD'S HEROES.
+
+
+The stranger who enters the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral in London
+cannot fail to notice the superb pulpit which stands at the angle of the
+choir. It is composed of rare and costly marbles and other precious
+stones. But, beautiful and fitting as it is, its greatest value lies in
+the circumstance which placed it there. It is a memorial, the tribute of
+affection. It was erected by his surviving comrades in arms to a noble
+officer of the Indian army. Yet this, from its position a [Greek: ktêma
+es aei], is only one among numberless like monuments which the traveller
+in England meets at every turn. In public squares, in parish churches,
+in stately cathedrals,--wherever the eye of the wayfarer can be
+arrested, whereever the pride of country is most deeply stirred,
+wherever the sentiment of loyalty is consecrated by religion,--the
+Englishman loves to guard from oblivion the names of his honored dead.
+There is in this both a cause and a consequence of that intense local
+pride and affection by which the men of Great Britain are bound to the
+scenes of their early lives.
+
+"It will never do for us to be beaten," said the Duke at Waterloo;
+"think what they will say of us at home!"--and this simple sentence went
+straight to the heart of every man who heard. What they will say at home
+is the prevailing thought in each young soldier's heart as he goes into
+his first fight. And "home" does not mean for him so much broad England
+as it does the little hamlet where he was born, the school where he was
+trained, the county in which his forefathers were honored in times gone
+by. He thinks of his name, henceforward linked with a glorious victory!
+whispered around among the groups who linger in the church-yard after
+the morning service. He trusts, that, if he fall nobly, there will be
+for him the memorial window through whose blazoned panes the sunlight
+will fall softly across the "squire's pew," where as a boy he knelt and
+worshipped, or touch with a crimson and azure gleam the marble effigies
+of his knightly sires recumbent on their tombs. Or he thinks of a place
+among the lettered names high up on the old oaken wall of the
+school-room at Winchester or Harrow or Westminster,--that future boys,
+playing where he played, shall talk of him whom they never knew as "one
+of ours." For he is well aware that he is making fame not for himself
+alone, but to be prized where he himself has been most loved and
+happiest.
+
+We, in this new land of ours, have but a very faint experience of the
+intense working of such influences upon a people in whom the local
+association and sentiment are ingrained. We are but just beginning where
+Englishmen began eight centuries and more ago. Hence our glorifying of
+the past has been a little indiscriminate, and withal has sought to
+commemorate events more than individuals. But the last two years have
+taken us through one of those great periods which, in their concentrated
+energy, compress the work of years into days, and which mark the
+water-sheds of history. The United States of 1865 will be as unlike the
+same land in 1855 as the youth is unlike the child. Life is measured by
+action, not duration. The brilliant epoch of the first Persian invasion
+was more to Greece than its slumbering centuries under Turkish rule, and
+"fifty years of Europe" more "than a cycle of Cathay." We shall look
+back upon a past. We shall have a truly national existence. It will be
+but natural, as it will be most wise, that we take heed of those
+elements which have ever been so potent in strengthening national
+character. One of these has been briefly hinted at above. Yet it may be
+undesirable to perpetuate the memory of events in which the whole
+country cannot participate, which will not for the remainder of this
+century be thought of by one section without shame and confusion of
+face, and which will only tend to keep alive the sad old jealousies and
+hates. We shall be very loath to place our monumental columns upon the
+fields of Antietam and Gettysburg. We should not tolerate them upon the
+slopes of Manassas or the bluffs of Edwards' Ferry. When the war is
+ended, and the best guardian of our internal commerce is the loyalty of
+the returning citizens to their old allegiance, we shall do wisely to
+level the earthworks of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. In the city where
+mob-violence is crushed under the force of armed law, no one cares to
+keep for a day the crumbling walls and the shattered barricade, though
+they may have witnessed heroism as splendid as Arcola or Wagram, for
+they witness also to a wickedness and a terror which all would gladly
+forget. The only memorial that a wise and high-souled nation _can_ erect
+after this war will be the single monument which shall commemorate the
+hour of peace restored.
+
+But while we are debarred from thus recording upon tablets more lasting
+than brass the story of our mournful triumphs over erring brethren, we
+are doubly bound in gratitude to keep green the memory of the men who
+have deserved well of their country in the hour of utmost need. We ought
+to do this also in that temper which shall look most singly to the noble
+end of forming heroic traditions for the youth of our future land. I
+know no place where this can be more fitly carried out than in
+New-England's foremost university. Coeval with the commonwealth itself,
+the starry roll of its heroes links it with all the fortunes of our
+history. Men who sat in the Long Parliament, and who may have seen the
+Battles of Worcester and Dunbar, took their early degrees upon Harvard's
+first Commencement-stage. Her sons fought against King Philip, were
+colonels and captains in the "old French War," went forth in the days of
+Wolfe and Amherst, and exchanged the lexicon for the musket in the eight
+years' struggle which gave to the Thirteen Colonies their independence.
+Alumni still survive who did military duty in the second war with
+England. The men of Harvard were with Taylor at Buena Vista, and helped
+Scott in his victorious march upon the Aztec capital. Of these the only
+record is in the annual necrology and the quaint Latin of the
+"Triennial."
+
+For the young heroes who dropped the oar and took up the sword, who laid
+aside the gown for the sash and shoulder-strap, who, first in the
+bloodless triumphs of the regatta and in "capital training" for the
+great race of life where literary and professional fame are the prizes,
+went forth to venture all for honor and country, the Alma Mater surely
+should have a special commemoration. For her own sake, because of her
+high responsibility in the education of "ingenuous youth," she can do no
+less. I will venture to say that not a Harvard man, among all the loyal
+thousands of her surviving Alumni, but feels his heart beat quicker as
+he reads the story of her children amid their "baptism of fire." There
+is a notable peculiarity about this the most purely New-England of our
+colleges,--the continual recurrence of familiar patronymics. I take up
+the last semi-annual catalogue, and there among the five hundred names I
+can almost make out my own classmates of twenty years ago. Abbots,
+Bigelows, Lawrences, Masons, Russells,--they come with every
+Commencement-season. Some families have had for every generation in a
+hundred and fifty years a representative in her halls. There is a patent
+of nobility in this, such peerage as a republic can rightly confer, the
+coronet which marks the union of birth and worth. We cannot, we, the
+Alumni, suffer these our brothers to sleep unhonored. Those who shall
+come after us, who shall fill our places in dear Old Harvard, shall
+occupy our ancient rooms in Hollis and Massachusetts and Stoughton and
+Holworthy, have a right not only to count the academic wreaths which
+have been won in past days by their namesakes, but also to be taught the
+inspiring lesson of holy love of country, of highest courage and truth
+and soldierly virtue.
+
+And how shall this be done? Let these few remaining lines suggest at
+least one plan. Harvard's chief want is a hall for her Alumni, one
+worthy, in architecture and convenience, of her children's fame, which
+Harvard Hall is not. That long, awkward room, very hot and cramped to
+dine in at midsummer, hotter and more cramped still for the Class-day
+dances, is just fit for one purpose,--the declamation-exercises of the
+Sophomore year. Let us have a hall fit for Commencements, for Alumni and
+Phi-Beta orations, for our annual dinners, worthy of the "Doctor's"
+poems and the "General's" speeches, with a wainscot, not of vulgar
+plaster, but of noble oak, against which Copley's pictures and Story's
+busts may properly be placed.
+
+Then let its windows be filled, as in the glorious halls and chapels of
+England, with memorial glass. Let one of these, if no more, be formed,
+of the costliest and most perfect workmanship our art can compass, to
+the memory of the Heroes of Harvard. It shall be the gift of every class
+which counts among its members one of these. There, amid the gorgeous
+emblazonry, shall be read their names, their academic year, their
+battles.
+
+Or, if this may not be, because our Alma Mater is still too poor or too
+humble to offer to her returning children such banqueting-place,--if
+there is no Wykcham or Waynflete or Wolsey to arch for us the
+high-embowed roof, let us place our memorial in the Library, along its
+shaded alcoves and above its broad portals. There the bright shadows
+shall sleep and pass with the sliding day, where the young scholars
+mused and studied. There the future student, as he walks, shall read as
+noble a lesson as he can glean from any of the groaning shelves and
+dusty tomes. There shall be for Harvard her _Libro d'Oro_ wherein she
+has written the names of her best-beloved.
+
+Some token let us have that they are unforgotten. It was no quarrel of
+vulgar ambition in which they fell. It was the sacred strife for which
+the mother armed them when she sent them forth. For her they fought, for
+culture, generous learning, noble arts, for all that makes a land great
+and glorious, against the barbarism of anarchy and the baseness of a
+system founded upon wrong and oppression. We cannot, indeed, forget them
+while we live to come up to our annual gathering, and see the vacant
+places amid familiar ranks. There will then be question and reply,
+saddening, but proud. "He fell at Port Hudson, cheering on the forlorn
+hope." "He lies beneath the forest-trees of Chancellorsville." "He was
+slain upon the glacis of Fredericksburg." "He died in the foul prisons
+of Richmond." We cannot forget them, and we would fain leave the
+memorial of them to future generations. Their fame belongs to Harvard;
+for what they learned there could not be other than noble, inspiring,
+manly. Let Harvard make the plan, and give the call, and all of us, from
+our distant homes and according to our ability, will offer our gifts
+with gladness. Let the graduates who have leisure and taste and means,
+and who are still dwelling under the pleasant shades of the Cambridge
+elms, come together and take up the matter while love and gratitude and
+pride are fresh.
+
+WHO IS ROEBUCK?
+
+
+An inquiring American mind, seeking the solution of this momentous
+question, would naturally turn to Appleton's "New Cyclopædia," Vol.
+XIV., page 131. The inquiring mind would be enlightened in a somewhat
+bewildering manner by the description there laid down of a little
+animal, some of whose qualities are thus set forth in the first article
+on the page indicated above:--
+
+"ROEBUCK. A small European deer of the genus _Capreolus_.... The skull
+has a very small, shallow suborbital pit, ... tear-bag indistinct, hoofs
+narrow and triangular.... The color in summer is reddish brown, in
+winter olive, with paler shades; inside of the ears fulvous, and a black
+spot at the angles of the mouth.... It is about four feet long.... The
+horns are used for knife-handles.... They congregate in small families,
+but not in herds.... From their strong scent they are easily hunted;
+though they frequently escape by their speed, doublings, springing to
+cover, and other artifices.... The roebucks are represented in North
+America by the Virginia deer."
+
+Inquiring mind, not wishing for researches in the direction of Natural
+History, albeit the subject of parallelisms is a somewhat curious study
+and in special cases infinitely amusing, passes on to the next article
+in the Cyclopædia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is sufficiently obvious that it requires neither fame nor greatness
+to excite public curiosity. A notorious criminal or an unusually
+eccentric lunatic frequently gives rise to a larger share of
+newspaper-comment and general discussion than the wisest and most
+virtuous of mankind. It must be well remembered by those who have read
+Tom Taylor's Life of Haydon that a dwarf was attracting thousands to the
+Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, while the historical painter, stung
+to madness by the neglect of the frivolous crowd, committed the hideous
+and ghastly suicide which threw a tragic darkness over the close of his
+strange and troubled existence. The desperate and dangerous frequently
+succeed in placing themselves on a bad eminence, from which they are
+conspicuous enough; and if to be talked of and pointed at be the sole
+object of their ambition, they can, of course, be congratulated on their
+success. Virtue may sit in humble and obscure usefulness at a thousand
+quiet firesides, while the work of the incendiary may be seen to spread
+widely, and the tumult of his mischief be heard from afar. And so any
+public man or politician, whose taste is so morbidly depraved and whose
+aim in life is so debased as to prefer notoriety to honest, useful
+service, may revel in the questionable enjoyment of being the especial
+theme of public debate and private conversation. Hence it happens that
+so many of our fellow-countrymen are at this moment asking the question
+with which we head these pages,--"Who is Roebuck?"
+
+An unhappy culprit, who combined with an innocent taste for green peas a
+thievish method of acquiring their usual savory accompaniment, is
+reported to have been addressed by an English judge in the following
+felicitous terms:--"Prisoner at the bar, Providence has endowed you with
+health and strength, _instead of which_ you go about the country
+stealing ducks." Providence has endowed John Arthur Roebuck, member of
+the Parliament of Great Britain, with fair talents and some power of
+speech, _instead of which_ (to use the accurate judicial ellipsis) he
+goes about using violent and vulgar words of menace against those who
+have never offended him, and scattering firebrands as if there were no
+gun-powder anywhere to ignite and explode. This would be a mean and
+mischievous occupation for the dullest man; but for one who has proved
+by his very failures that he is not devoid of intellect or energy, it
+is a monstrous perversion of mental gifts, even if they are small.
+
+A portion of the fiery heat of his nature may be traced, perhaps, to the
+fact that he was born at Madras; but as on the mother's side he is
+descended from the poet Tickell, the friend of Addison, it would not be
+altogether unreasonable to have expected in him some few of the
+amenities of the _literæ humaniores_. He soon, however, exchanged the
+torrid scenes of Oriental life for the snows of Canada, where he
+received his education; and when we remember what the bizarre oddities
+of his subsequent career have been, it might be interesting, if we had
+the materials for the purpose, to inquire what that education was. The
+British Provinces, however, were not deemed a sufficiently ample theatre
+of action for the energy of the capacious soul that dwelt in that not
+over-capacious body; and so, at the age of twenty-three, he repaired to
+England and commenced his studies for the profession of the law.
+
+He was called to the bar in 1832. He had, however, by no means paid an
+exclusive attention to the study of the law, or his success in his
+profession might have been greater, and the world might have had a good
+lawyer instead of a bad politician. The period of his Inner-Temple
+student-life was a very stirring time in England. Old principles were
+dying out, and wrestling in death-struggle with newer and wider theories
+of human liberty and human progress. The young East-Indian Canadian
+rushed with natural impetuosity into the arena, and was one of the most
+reckless and noisy debating-club spouters of the day. In speaking of the
+Reform Bill at a meeting at a tavern in London, he said, that, if the
+bill did not pass, he for one should like to "wade the streets of the
+capital knee-deep in blood." It was consoling to reflect, even at the
+time, that the atrocious aspiration was mitigated by the reflection that
+it would not require a deluge of gore to reach the knees of such a
+Zacchæus as Roebuck. "Pretty wicious that for a child of six!" said the
+amiable Mr. Squeers on one occasion; and pretty sanguinary that, say we,
+for a rising little demagogue of thirty.
+
+As England was at that time in a seething ferment of excitement, men who
+were unscrupulous in their language were at a premium in the political
+market, and the respectable constituency of the pleasant watering-place
+of Bath, in Somersetshire, elected the fierce little man as their
+representative in the Imperial Parliament. This was a great start in
+life for the new-fledged barrister, and, had he moderated his
+overweening vanity, and studied wisely, and with some self-abnegation
+and honest adherence to party, he might have risen to some useful
+position, and been saved, at least, from the indignity of fetching and
+carrying for the Emperor of Austria, and from the impertinence of
+intruding himself into the august presence of Mr. Kinglake's amiable and
+virtuous friend, the Emperor of France. The English nation might then
+possibly have pointed to his portrait in their historical gallery as
+that of an efficient public servant who had deserved well of his
+country, and he might have escaped a ludicrous immortality as the Dog
+Tear-'em, in the recent admirable sketch in "Punch."
+
+But, in the words of a political song,--
+
+    "There weren't no such luck
+    For John A. Roebuck,
+  And he thought he would teach the whole nation
+    That the Tories were fools,
+    And the Whigs only tools,
+  But Roebuck was England's salvation."
+
+And he, according to this programme, set himself to reform the
+Constitution and protect the Colonies.
+
+  "Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri,"
+
+he was an eclectic in politics,--acknowledged no leader, had himself no
+followers. A chief without a party, an apostle without disciples, a
+critic without the merest ordinary penetration, a cynic whose bitterness
+was not enlivened by wit or humor, a spouter whose arguments, when he
+had any, were usually furnished from the mint, John Arthur Roebuck was
+for many years that impersonation of terrific honesty, glaring purity,
+and indignant virtue, known in English politics as an INDEPENDENT member
+of Parliament. When party-spirit runs high, and many party-men are
+disposed to be unscrupulous in the measures and artifices by which they
+win or retain place and power, such a position, occupied with judgment
+and fortified by modesty and good sense, is a most powerful and a most
+beneficent one; but it is useless when seized on by one whose obtrusive
+egotism and more than feminine vanity disqualify him for any serious or
+permanent influence on his fellow-men. When a Pocket-Diogenes rolls his
+little tub into the House of Commons, and complains that everybody is
+standing between him and the sun,--why, in an assembly of educated and
+sensible men the sham is soon discovered, the pseudo-cynic seen through,
+and his affected misanthropy deservedly gains for him universal derision
+and scorn. Some years after he entered Parliament, Mr. Disraeli, with
+whom he had many encounters, in which he was invariably worsted, made
+the House roar with laughter by taunting Roebuck with his "Sadler's
+Wells sarcasms and melodramatic malignities," and drew a most amusing
+picture of him as "a solitary sentinel pacing round the deserted citadel
+of his own opinions."
+
+  "He who surpasses or subdues mankind
+  Must look down on the hate of those below";
+
+but as Mr. Roebuck has done neither the one nor the other, his only
+chance of not being utterly forgotten, instead of being feared or hated,
+by his contemporaries, is to continue his work of mischief, and merely
+change the object of his puny attacks as one becomes more prominent than
+another, and as he can manage to maintain his own quasi-importance by
+attaching his name to great questions. He had no special dislike for
+this country; so far from that, he admired and praised us, as by an
+extract from one of his books we will presently prove; but since he has
+become a self-appointed lackey, has donned imperial livery, and as a
+volunteer does the dirty work of despots, he must have lost all sympathy
+with and all regard for an independent, free, and brave people. We hope
+and believe that this country vastly prefers his censure to his praise,
+and, as far as it has leisure at the present crisis for any serious
+consideration of his erratic pranks, would rather have his enmity than
+his friendship. _Non tali auxilio!_
+
+But we must recur to his inconsistent and rather uninteresting career,
+and so satisfy, and perhaps weary, the curiosity of any reader who is
+still disposed to ask the momentous question, "Who is Roebuck?"
+
+In 1835, he was appointed the agent--the _paid_ agent--of the House of
+Assembly of Lower Canada, during the dispute then raging between the
+Executive Government and the House of Assembly. As Englishmen especially
+plume themselves on the fact that the members of their legislative
+bodies are unremunerated, it is somewhat difficult to understand how
+this exception was made in John Arthur's favor. As a precedent it is to
+be hoped that it has not been followed; for it is obvious that such an
+arrangement, however advantageous or pleasant to individual members,
+might throw grave suspicions on the purity of public men, and introduce
+a wholesale venality into public life. If such a system is permitted,
+any foreign monarch or any foreign government may secure the services of
+a British senator as his agent and representative. It is quite appalling
+to think that the chivalrous Earl of Derby or the conscientious Mr.
+Gladstone should be shocked by the offer of a handsome annual salary
+paid quarterly, (not deducting the income-tax,) made by the King of
+Dahomey for an eloquent defence of his humane and enlightened rule, or
+by an equally munificent donative from the famous and merry monarch of
+the Cannibal Islands for the support of himself and his loyal subjects
+in their copious consumption of human flesh. We should be sorry wantonly
+to raise so dreadful a suspicion; but if British M.P.s are permitted,
+according to the Roebuck precedent, to be PAID agents, why has not
+Southern money found its way into senatorial pockets? Greedy Mr. Laird,
+and unscrupulous, money-loving Mr. Lindsay,[A] always resolutely
+grubbing for the main chance, are perhaps sufficiently paid by indirect,
+though heavy gains in shipbuilding. Needy Mr. Roebuck may be salaried by
+the Emperor of Austria, though there is nothing to prove, except his own
+open-mouthed and loud-tongued professions of purity, that he is not
+"_paid_ agent" of the Confederate Government. The indulgence of the evil
+feelings of malice and uncharitableness may, however, sufficiently
+recompense him; and to him, perhaps, his virtue may be its own reward.
+But if paid agencies are not permitted, a very serious suspicion fastens
+on that hard-mouthed, rising lordling, Robert Cecil, son of the Marquis
+of Salisbury, and one of the most active and energetic champions of the
+slave-mongers of the South. The young lord, it is well known, stepped
+down from the lofty pedestal of a bad pedigree to marry the fair, but
+portionless daughter of an English judge; his father is proverbially
+mean and stingy, and the young lord himself proportionately poor; and in
+the intervals of his strenuous advocacy of the claims of the Rebels to
+European recognition he laudably ekes out his very narrow income by
+writing articles for the London newspapers and reviews; and rumor says
+that he communicates gossiping letters, full of piquant and satirical
+sketches of the proceedings of the House of Commons to two or three of
+the provincial papers. He is under these circumstances peculiarly open
+to suspicion. If the proceeding in question is a usual one, why does he
+not openly avow it? If it is unusual or improper, why does he not deny
+the soft impeachment so much credited both in this country and in his
+own? It is really refreshing to contemplate, that Roebuck, after being
+the paid agent of the Canadian House of Assembly, should have become
+such a _purist_ as to drag poor Mr. Isaac Butt before the notice of the
+Commons, and scream for the censure on him on a mere suspicion that he
+had touched the yellow and handsome gold coins of one of the innumerable
+Indian princes and rajahs who come to England with complaints of
+grievances, sometimes real, and sometimes fictitious, against the
+British Government.
+
+[Footnote A: Lindsay's fawning, plastic sycophancy is well known this
+side the water. After shrewdly filling his coffers with profits from
+Northern business-transactions, he now turns about, kicks his old
+friends, who always half suspected his knavish propensities, bows, cap
+in hand, to visionary cotton-bales, and hopes to turn some honest
+pounds, shillings, and pence by advocating the slave-drivers' rebellion.
+A "fool's gudgeon" will surely reward his laborious endeavors for
+Southern gold, that article growing beautifully less every day.]
+
+During the period of the "paid agency" Roebuck was tolerably industrious
+with his pen; but in literature and journalism he proved his utter
+incapacity for joining in any combined action. Such was his dogged
+self-assertion and indomitable egotism that none of the ordinary
+channels would answer his purpose; and so he issued a series of
+political papers, entitled "Pamphlets for the People," to which the
+curious may sometimes refer, but which have now lost all their
+significance and interest. His quarrels with editors and publishers were
+notorious; and an altercation with Mr. Black, the well-known editor of
+the "Morning Chronicle," eventuated in a duel so bloodless as to be
+ridiculous. David's pebble did not reach Goliath, and Goliath was
+equally merciful to David. In these pamphlets he violently assailed the
+whole body of editors, sub-editors, reporters, etc., of most of the
+papers of any note. And the more accustomed he became to the House of
+Commons, the greater liberties did he take with the conventional
+fairness and courtesy of debate. His personality and scurrility were so
+indiscriminating and excessive that he was perhaps at this time the most
+unpopular member of the House.
+
+In 1837 he lost his election for Bath, but was reelected in 1841. In a
+subsequent contest at Bath he was successfully opposed by Lord Ashley,
+the present Earl of Shaftesbury. On this occasion he exhibited even more
+than his usual bad temper and bad taste. He declined to accept Lord
+Ashley's proffered hand; and in the chagrin and vexation occasioned by
+unexpected defeat he uttered a rabid invective against the
+Non-Conformist ministers of the place, to whose influence he rightly
+attributed his rival's success. Lord Ashley was a well-known
+philanthropist, and his consistent support and patronage of many
+religious and charitable societies had naturally given him popularity
+among the Protestant clergy of all denominations,--a popularity
+heightened in the case of the Evangelical and Calvinistic ministers by
+his Lordship's strict Sabbatarianism and his belief in cold dinners on
+Sunday. On the other hand, Mr. Roebuck was openly accused of private
+professions of skepticism in matters of religion; and this report, so
+dangerous to the repute of any public man in England, (where theology
+and politics so frequently cross each other,) considerably damaged his
+chance of success. Lord Ashley, however, was in no way responsible for
+the rumor; and the difference between the conduct of the two during the
+contest was this, that Lord Ashley behaved like a gentleman and Mr.
+Roebuck did not.
+
+During his retirement into private life, after this defeat in 1847, he
+wrote his work entitled "The History of the Whig Ministry of 1830,"--a
+book in the preparation of which he is said to have received
+considerable and valuable assistance from no less a person than Lord
+Brougham. Despite the aid that he received, it is amusing to find in his
+preface a characteristic vaunting of his entire difference with Lord
+Brougham about the character of King William IV. "Lord Brougham," he
+writes, "is accustomed to describe William IV as frank, just, and
+straightforward. We believe him to have been very weak and very false, a
+finished dissembler, and always bitterly hostile to the Whig Ministry
+and their great measure of Reform." This is Roebuck all over. He would
+infinitely rather argue that white was black than quietly coincide in
+any generally received opinion.
+
+While on the subject of his writings, we will mention the book in which
+he vouchsafed to praise those whom he now so elaborately vilifies. In
+1849 he published an octavo volume of two hundred and forty-eight pages
+on "The Colonies of England." Speaking (page 84) of the vast and rapid
+progress made by this country, he says:--
+
+"We are led to inquire by what machinery, by what favoring
+circumstances, such a result has been brought about. The people, be it
+remarked, are the same as ourselves,--the original Thirteen States were
+the work of Englishmen. English heads, English hearts, English hands
+brought those new communities into existence. No longer connected by
+government with us, they nevertheless retained the characteristics of
+the race from which they sprang, and proceeding in the great work to
+which they were destined, they strode across the continent, the fairest
+portion of which they could now call their own. In planting new
+settlements they were aided by our own people,--the very elements _out
+of which we endeavor to frame colonies, and with which we do produce
+sickly, miserable communities that can only be said to exist, and to
+linger on in a sort of half-life_, without the spirit of a young, or the
+amenities and polish of an old community, and, above all, _without any
+spirit of independence_."
+
+Again, speaking of colonization In this country as opposed to Canada and
+other English colonies, he writes (page 88):--"Certain adventurous
+persons, the 'pioneers' of civilization, wishing to make new settlements
+beyond the boundaries of Pennsylvania and Virginia, upon wild lands
+belonging to the United States, made formal application to the
+Government of the United States at Washington, who, being bound to
+afford all possible facility, thereupon take steps to have the land
+surveyed and laid out into counties, townships, parishes. The roads are
+also indicated, and at once the law exists; and security, guarantied by
+the authority of the United States, immediately follows, both for person
+and property; and all the machinery known to the Common Law, and needed
+for the maintenance of this security, and the enforcement of the law's
+decrees, is at once adopted. A municipal authority comes into existence;
+a court-house, a jail, a school-room, arise in the wilderness; and
+although these buildings be humble, and the men who exercise authority
+in them may appear to be in some degree rude, yet is the law there in
+all its useful majesty. To it a reverent obedience is rendered; and the
+plain magistrate, who, in a hunter's frock, may, in the name of the
+United States, pronounce the law's decree, commands an obedience as
+complete and sincere as that which is paid to the Chief-Justice of the
+Supreme Court at Washington, or to the ermined judge who presides in the
+courts of our Lady the Queen in Westminster Hall."
+
+This in 1849; but what a very different tone has he thought fit to adopt
+now! Was any agency then expected which has not been forthcoming? Or,
+having degenerated from being a supporter of liberal opinions in his
+youth to being the fond and fatuous admirer of autocrats in his old age,
+does he think that it is absolutely necessary that the firm friend of
+Austrian despotism should be the malignant assailant of the Government
+and people of the United States? The man is consistent in nothing but
+his spiteful vindictiveness and love of mischief. He is now the general
+object of deserved ridicule and contempt for his flunkyistic attendance
+at the Tuileries. At the time of Louis Napoleon's visit to London,
+Roebuck raved and ranted about his "perjured lips having kissed the
+Queen of England."
+
+He has, on some occasions, put himself prominently forward, and in such
+a way as to make himself an influential member of Parliament. He moved
+the vote of confidence in the Whig Government in 1850, when the great
+debate ensued in which the late Sir Robert Peel made his last speech,
+and they were kept in office by a poetical majority of nine. But the
+speech with which Roebuck introduced the motion was entirely eclipsed by
+the magnificent declamation of Sir Alexander Cockburn, the present
+Lord-Chief-Justice of England. On another great occasion, in January,
+1855, he brought forward in the House of Commons a motion for inquiry
+into the conduct of the Crimean War. Lord Aberdeen's Government was
+defeated by an immense majority, and, of course, resigned. Mr. Roebuck
+was chairman of the Committee of Inquiry; but the cabinet that came in
+discreetly declined to give him any official post in their ranks. They
+knew too well the terrible uncertainty and inconsistency of the man's
+conduct. They could place no reliance either on his temper or his
+discretion. In 1855 he was one of the numerous candidates for the
+chairmanship of the Metropolitan Board of Works, but failed to inspire
+the electors with any confidence in his capacity for the post. In the
+following year he became the chairman of the Administrative Reform
+Association, and although the league had at first been highly
+successful, and aided much in awaking public attention to the
+miscarriages and mismanagement in the Crimea, yet, under this fatal
+presidency, it became speedily and ingloriously defunct. This was his
+last great failure, before abdicating all his early liberal principles.
+He has of late years endeavored to solace himself for the now
+irretrievable blunders of his career by an exaggerated indulgence in his
+idiosyncratic waywardness, paradox, and eccentricity. He is proud of
+being considered the acquaintance of the Emperor of Austria, and rather
+pleased than otherwise at being assailed on this account. He affects the
+society and friendship of conservative members of the House of Commons.
+He has become tolerant of lords. He may be seen sitting next to Lord
+Robert Cecil, indulging in ill-natured jocosities, from which his
+Lordship probably borrows when he indites ill-natured articles for the
+misguided "Saturday Review."[A] He hates the Manchester school of
+politicians, because their liberality and their sympathy with the cause
+of freedom and civilization in this country remind Roebuck of his own
+deflection from the right path.
+
+[Footnote A: This journal is now owned by Mr. Alexander James Beresford
+Beresford-Hope, (we dare not omit any portion of this august name,) who
+has ample means to enlist the talents of reckless, "smart" young men in
+search of employment for any work he may require, no matter how
+unprincipled the job in hand.]
+
+His private undertakings have not been more fortunate than his public
+acts. He was chairman of a bank, which was unsuccessful, to say the
+least of it. He has been connected with other enterprises, which soon
+courted and obtained failure.
+
+What he has recently said and done in reference to this country is too
+fresh in our memories to require that we should recite or recapitulate
+it here. His past career, as we have reviewed it, may account for the
+now intolerable acerbity of temper and the ludicrous vanity which
+disgrace him. Never was a Nemesis more just than that which has for the
+present consigned him to a melancholy obscurity. The political
+extinguisher has certainly dropped upon his head, and this burning and
+shining light has gone out with an unpleasant odor into utter darkness.
+
+In summing up his character, it is evident that excessive vanity is his
+besetting sin. He is not too clever or too honest to act in union with
+other people, but he is too _vain_. He is by no means too good for the
+rest of the world; but he is too conceited and self-opinionated to
+condescend to coöperate with them. As, at some of the minor theatres, a
+single actor may play an army, so, in the House of Commons, Roebuck is a
+host in himself,--is his own party, and leads it. His occasional
+popularity in his own country is due to the fact, that, in his own
+character, he, to a certain extent, represents and crystallizes a few of
+the good and many of the bad qualities of Englishmen. He has their
+courage and audacity, their independence and pride, their generally
+defiant front to the rest of the world; but he is also vain, obstinate,
+bigoted, prejudiced, narrow in his views, and boastful in his language.
+His vulgar swagger, for instance, about the navy sweeping the seas,
+would have been condemned here, if it had been addressed by the most
+violent of demagogues to the most ignorant of Irish mobs.
+
+We have heard him speak in the House of Commons in his palmier days,
+before he was as decrepit in mind as he is in body. He had great
+fluency, some power of invective, and a vast stock of assurance. We
+listened to him upon one occasion, when, without the slightest
+provocation, he used the most undignified personalities to the late Sir
+Robert Peel,--to which Sir Robert, very wisely, never replied.
+
+We cannot say that we feel any profound interest as to his future. He
+has compared himself to a dog,--but, on behalf of that faithful and
+valued companion of man, we protest against the similitude. He has the
+kind of pugnacity which prompts a cur or a puppy to attack a
+Newfoundland or a mastiff. He has not the fidelity and many other good
+qualities of the canine race. At any rate, he has become a mischievous
+dog,--and a dull dog,--and will soon be a "sad dog."
+
+We would venture to suggest, that he should at once be raised to the
+peerage, under the title of Baron Tear-'em. He might then aid the good
+cause of the slave-mongers of the South, and act in unison with that
+just, generous, moral, and virtuous nobleman, the Marquis of
+Clanricarde.
+
+We ought to apologize to our readers for so lengthy an account of so
+undeserving a person,--but, at any rate, they ought by this time to know
+"Who is Roebuck?"
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Six Months in the Federal States_. By EDWARD DICEY. In Two Volumes.
+London and Cambridge: Macmillan & Co.
+
+This is a very _gentlemanly_ book. Whatever excellence of commendation
+belongs to the adjective we have Italicized must be awarded to Mr.
+Dicey. And it is ill-adapted to the manufactures of most British
+tourists who have preceded him. For, to make no mention of the vulgar
+buffooneries of Bunn or Grattan, we hold that neither the exalted and
+irrepressible prosiness of Dr. Charles Mackay, nor the cleverish
+magic-lantern pictures of that good-natured book-maker, Mr. Anthony
+Trollope, would be perfectly fitted with this polite addition. It is no
+mean praise to say that the word _gentlemanly_ naturally applies itself
+to a traveller's work. And it is necessary to allow that the majority of
+Americans who have printed their impressions of a scamper over Europe
+have fallen as hopelessly below it as a few have risen far above it.
+Some word of deeper meaning must characterize the sterling sentences of
+"English Traits"; some epithet of more rare and subtile significance is
+suggested by those exquisitely painted scenes of foreign life with which
+Hawthorne is even now adorning the pages of the "Atlantic." But after
+the manner in which such a well-informed, modest, humane man as we would
+emphatically credit as an American _gentleman_ might speak of six months
+in England, so has Mr. Dicey spoken of his six months in the Federal
+States.
+
+And, at this present time, far better than all curious delineations or
+"stereographic" descriptions are the sober testimonies concerning us
+which Mr. Dicey offers to his countrymen. To such loyal Americans as
+these volumes may reach they will give a heart not to be found in Dr.
+Russell's pictorial neutrality, in the dashing effects of popular Mr.
+Trollope, nor even--making all allowance for the sanative influence of
+counter-irritation--in the weekly malignity of that _ex_-Moral Minstrel
+whom the London "Times" has sent to the aid of our insurgent
+slave-masters. For, instead of gloating over objections and picking out
+what petty enigmas may not be readily soluble, Mr. Dicey has a manly,
+English way of accepting the preponderant evidence concerning the crisis
+he came to study. He seldom gets entangled in trivial events, but knows
+how to use them as illustrations of great events. It is really
+refreshing to meet with a British traveller who is so happily delivered
+from the haunting consciousness of a personal identity. The reader is
+not called upon to bemoan the tribulations of temperance-taverns, the
+hardships of indiscriminate railroad-carriages, nor the rapacity of
+New-York hackmen. There is scarcely an offence against good taste or
+good feeling in Mr. Dicey's volumes; and whatever American homes may
+have been opened to him would doubtless reopen far more readily than to
+most publishing tourists from the mother-land.
+
+Mr. Dicey clearly exhibits the bearing of the Rebellion upon the fate of
+the servile population of the South, and confesses that his deep
+sympathy with the Federal cause came from the conviction that the
+supremacy or overthrow of Slavery was intimately connected with the
+success or failure of Secession. In acknowledging the necessity that was
+upon loyal Americans of defending the fundamental law of their society,
+he is not disposed to adopt the lamentation of some of our foreign
+well-wishers who are troubled by the fear of a military despotism in the
+Free States. He has the sagacity to perceive that the genius and
+development of the graduates of Northern school-houses are totally
+opposed to a military rule. Mr. Dicey cordially recognizes the
+democratic idea which sanctifies our convulsion, and displays a careful
+observation in noting "the self-restraint, the moderation, and the
+patience of the American people in the conduct of the people's war." He
+is not over-disturbed because this same people loved law and order more
+than freedom itself, and with few murmurs committed high principles to
+the championship of whatever petty men happened to represent them.
+Indeed, one of the best sayings he reports is that of an old Polish
+exile, who congratulates himself that there will be no saviours of
+society, no fathers of their country, to be provided for when the war
+is over.
+
+Throughout these two volumes British readers may discern something more
+than the barren facts of our struggle: they may catch glimpses of its
+energy and movement; they may see it as reflected from the most generous
+American minds. For it seems to have been Mr. Dicey's good fortune in
+this country to have gained admission to the society of men and women of
+high intelligence, in whom the religious sentiment was living and
+powerful; and he appears to estimate the full weight of testimony such
+persons offered in sending their loved ones to Virginia to fall beneath
+the rifle of some Southern boor. It is this silent public opinion of the
+North which our foreign critics have generally failed to comprehend.
+They have been so long accustomed to parody the rhetorical elation of
+our third-rate political speakers, and to represent this as a universal
+American characteristic, that they signally failed to estimate the
+genuine emotion with which it is never connected. When the cherished
+barbarism of slaveholders arose and threatened our Western civilization,
+those who most felt and have best wrought for their country were
+cautious in their speech. They knew that the principle underlying the
+struggle must submit itself to the checks and counter-checks of
+constitutional law. While the fire of liberty burned at the heart of
+citizens of abiding loyalty, it seemed best, that, like the Psalmist,
+they should hold their peace even from good words. Many thought it an
+act of necessary self-restraint to dwell only upon the Union as a symbol
+of that universal freedom which they felt the Union must finally
+represent. The dread of overleaping the restraints of law, which,
+perchance, has prolonged the conflict, has been most creditable to the
+genuine democracy we have represented. We are proud to remember many
+intelligent soldiers who used no language of passionate denunciation
+towards the guilty institution which called them to the field, yet who
+knew the end when they gave their lives to a cause utterly antagonistic
+to its despotic claims.
+
+By the representations of Secessionists encountered in the Free States,
+as well as from disloyal newspapers which the "Lincoln despotism" never
+sought to suppress, Mr. Dicey was convinced that the sole purpose of the
+Rebellion was to get possession of the vast regions which lie west of
+the Mississippi, wherein to establish Slave States and Territories. "The
+North," he declares, "is fighting against, the South is fighting for,
+the power of extending slavery across the American continent; and if
+this was all that could be said, it is clear on which side must be the
+sympathies of any one who really and honestly believes that slavery is
+an evil and a sin." But it is not here that Mr. Dicey rests the case of
+the North as appealing to the Christian sentiment of the world. He shows
+that the inexorable logic of facts must work the overthrow of slavery
+where it now exists. The suppression of the slave-trade, the recognition
+of Hayti, abolition in the District of Columbia, and finally the
+Proclamation of January have one tendency and can have but one result.
+We state these views as one more confirmation of the fact, that, whether
+agreeable to us or not, the sympathies of liberal men in Europe are to
+be had on the sole ground that ours is an anti-slavery war.
+
+Mr. Dicey's predilections lead him to make a generous, although
+discriminating, estimate of those men who, in time past, have endeavored
+to serve their country by leaving the level commonplaces of respectable
+citizenship. It is no slight praise to say that his chapter upon the
+New-England Abolitionists is clear and just. Their points of
+disagreement with the Republican party are stated with no common
+accuracy. Careful sentences give the precise position of Garrison and
+his adherents: the intrinsic essence of the movement of these reformers
+is divested of the subordinate and trivial facts so often put forward to
+misrepresent it. Although Mr. Dicey endeavors not to commit himself upon
+the vital differences in the agitation of anti-slavery sentiments by the
+Abolitionists and by the Republican party, it is very evident that he
+inclines to the belief that the former, in their advocacy of disunion,
+acted not from a perverse and fanatical philosophy, but from the logical
+compulsions of a critical understanding, stimulated by an intense
+conviction of the national sin.
+
+We have dwelt thus upon Mr. Dicey's views of the war, and of the great
+moral question with which it is connected, because these portions of his
+volumes are most pertinent to us, as well as creditable to him. His
+sketches of public characters are good common-sense grasps at them,
+which generally get their externals, and occasionally something more.
+The description of the President is forcible, though a little too
+graphic for perfect courtesy. Caleb Cushing impresses the traveller as
+one of the ablest of our public men, and Wendell Phillips as by far the
+most eloquent speaker he ever heard. General Butler, however, is not to
+Mr. Dicey's taste. Indeed, he is hardly behind the "Saturday Review" in
+the terrible epithets he bestows upon the man who he acknowledges "was
+associated with the grandest triumph of the Federal arms, and by some
+means or other preserved New Orleans to the Union with but little cost
+of either men or money." It is rather late to renew discussion about the
+notorious order relating to the women of the subjected city. But Mr.
+Dicey chooses to express his belief in an infamous intention of General
+Butler at the time of its issue,--though he declares that "the strictest
+care was taken lest the order should be abused," and that the "Southern
+ladies [?] were grossly insulting in their behavior to the Union
+soldiers, using _language and gestures_ which, in a city occupied by
+troops of any other nation, would have subjected them, _without orders_,
+to the coarsest retaliation." To which we have only to reply, that
+General Butler may be a villain, but that he is certainly not a fool.
+Nobody doubts that he has military or civil aspirations for the future,
+and, for such ends, if for nothing else, wishes the approbation of his
+loyal countrymen. Now Mr. Dicey testifies to "the almost morbid
+sentiment of Americans in the Free States with regard to women": he
+tells us that "it renders them ridiculously susceptible to female
+influences"; also, that this same "sentiment" among us "protects women
+from the natural consequences of their own misconduct." These
+characteristics of his countrymen are just as familiar to General Butler
+as they are patent to Mr. Dicey; and we hold it to be simply incredible
+that one who is at least a very shrewd politician used language which
+_he intended_ should convey a meaning that must necessarily consign his
+future career to privacy and infamy. It is perhaps not wonderful that
+men who have deluged their country in blood, to propagate a system which
+consigns unborn millions to enforced harlotry, should put an evil
+interpretation upon the indignant stigma applied to _acts_ which, in
+civilized States, come from one class of women, and are designed for one
+purpose. Neither is it very astonishing that such persons as have been
+employed to pump the New-York sewers into the _cloaca maxima_ which sets
+towards us from Printing-House Square should share the sensitive
+chastity of the slave-masters whose work they are put to do. But it is
+passing strange that a gentleman so fair and reasonable as Mr. Dicey,
+one so appreciative of the moral tone which Northern society demands of
+its representatives, should join in an accusation whose absurdity is
+only lost in its infinite offence.
+
+There are small inaccuracies, as well as occasional instances of
+carelessness or repetition, in these volumes, which, had circumstances
+allowed time for revision, might have been avoided. It would require the
+"Pathfinder" himself to discover "Fremont Street" in the city where we
+write; the "Courier" is _not_ "the most largely circulated of any Boston
+paper"; and our Ex-Mayor "Whiteman" requires no fanciful orthography to
+free his name from the obloquy of an over-devotion to the interests of
+colored citizens. These are local illustrations of mistakes which are
+excusable in view of the commendable expedition with which the work was
+issued,--for, in the late crisis of our affairs, an Englishman who had
+any good words to give us fulfilled the proverb by giving twice in
+giving quickly. But, whatever trifling details might be subjected to
+criticism, the total impression of what Mr. Dicey has written bears
+honorable testimony to the accuracy of his observation, as well as to
+his powers of comparison and judgment.
+
+As has been already remarked, we cannot be blind to the fact that our
+only supporters in England are those men who recognize at the heart of
+our contest that genuine principle of Liberty which is not to be limited
+to caste or to race. And it is only by hastening to justify their
+confidence that we can win to our cause the great people they address.
+If we cannot gain the national sympathy of England, we must do without
+the true sympathy of any nation. It was, indeed, remarked by De
+Tocqueville, that, "in the eyes of the English, the cause which is most
+useful to England is always the cause of justice." But the rare insight
+of the philosopher assigns the phenomenon, not to a political
+Machiavelism, but to a "laudable desire to connect the actions of one's
+country with something more stable than interest." The English have a
+peculiar gift of fixing their whole attention upon certain traits or
+single circumstances which they desire to see. We doubt not that a
+portion of their sympathy with the energy and endurance of those in arms
+against their country is estimable according to its light. But as the
+dignity of our mission in this struggle becomes more and more apparent,
+the moral intelligence of England will be forced to unite itself with
+the Government of the United States. Let that day come when it will,
+posterity will remember its obligations to those Englishmen who did so
+much to avert the hideous calamity of a war between the two liberal
+powers of the world. And to us of this present generation it is grateful
+to know that our brave and generous young men have not died wholly
+unrecognized in the land of their ancestors. Mill, Ellison,
+Hughes,--what need to name the rest?--have stood up to report them and
+their cause aright to the unsatisfied: in which roll of the honorable
+and honored we are glad to write the name of Edward Dicey.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Hospital Transports_. A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and
+Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862. Compiled
+and published at the Request of the Sanitary Commission. Boston: Ticknor
+and Fields.
+
+If pure benevolence was ever organized and utilized into beneficence,
+the name of the institution is the Sanitary Commission. It is a standing
+answer to Samson's riddle, "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." Out
+of the very depths of the agony of this cruel and bloody war springs
+this beautiful system, built of the noblest and divinest attributes of
+the human soul. Amidst all the heroism of daring and enduring which this
+war has developed, amidst all the magnanimity of which it has shown the
+race capable, the daring, the endurance, and the greatness of soul which
+have been discovered among the men and women who have given their lives
+to this work shine as brightly as any on the battle-field,--in some
+respects even more brightly. They have not the bray of trumpets nor the
+clash of swords to rouse enthusiasm, nor will the land ever resound with
+their victories. Theirs is the dark and painful side, the menial and
+hidden side, but made light and lovely by the spirit that shines in and
+through it all. Glimpses of this agency are familiar to our people; but
+not till the history of its inception, progress, and results is calmly
+and adequately written out and spread before the public will any idea be
+formed of the magnitude and importance of the work which it has done.
+Nor even then. Never, till every soldier whose last moments it has
+soothed, till every soldier whose flickering life it has gently steadied
+into continuance, whose waning reason it has softly lulled into quiet,
+whose chilled blood it has warmed into healthful play, whose failing
+frame it has nourished into strength, whose fainting heart it has
+comforted with sympathy,--never, until every full soul has poured out
+its story of gratitude and thanksgiving, will the record be complete;
+but long before that time, ever since the moment that its helping hand
+was first held forth, comes the Blessed Voice, "Inasmuch as ye have done
+it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
+
+An institution asking of Government only permission to live and
+opportunity to work, planting itself firmly and squarely on the
+generosity of the people, subsisting solely by their free-will
+offerings, it is a noble monument of the intelligence, the munificence,
+and the efficiency of a free people, and of the alacrity with which it
+responds when the right chord is rightly touched. It is, however, not
+unnatural that doubts should exist as to the success of a plan so
+far-reaching in its aims and hitherto so untried. Stories have been
+circulated of a mercenary disposition of its stores and trickery among
+its officers. Where these stories have found considerable credence, they
+have been tracked to their source and triumphantly refuted; but it would
+indeed be hardly less than miraculous, if an institution ramifying so
+widely, with agents so numerous, and resources so extensive, should have
+no knaves among its servants, and no waste in its circulation. The
+wonder is, that more leakage has not been proved than has ever been
+suspected. All that is necessary to remove floating doubts, to convince
+all heads of the wisdom which projected this Commission, and to warm all
+hearts up to its continued and sufficient support, is a knowledge of
+what it has done, is doing, and purposes to do. This information the
+Commission has, at different times, and by piecemeal, furnished:
+necessarily by piecemeal, since, as this book justly remarks, the
+immense mass of details which a circumstantial account of its operations
+in field and hospital must involve would prove nearly as laborious in
+the reading as in the performance. In this little volume we have,
+photographed, a single phase of its operations. It consists simply of
+extracts from letters and reports. There is no attempt at completeness
+or dramatic arrangement; yet the most elaborate grouping would probably
+fail to present one-half as accurately a picture of the work and its
+ways as these unpretending fragments. It delights us to see the--we can
+hardly say cheerful, as that savors too much of the "self-sacrifice"
+which benevolence sometimes tarnishes by talking about--but, rather, the
+gay, lively, merry manner in which the most balky matters are taken hold
+of. Men and women seem to have gone into the service with good-will and
+hearty love and buoyant spirits. It refreshes and strengthens us like a
+tonic to read of their taking the wounded, festering, filthy, miserable
+men, washing and dressing them, pouring in lemonade and beef-tea, and
+putting them abed and asleep. There is not a word about "devotion" or
+"ministering angels," (we could wish there were not quite so much about
+"ladies,") but honest, refined, energetic, able women, with quick brains
+and quick hands, now bathing a poor crazy head with ice-water, to be
+rewarded with one grateful smile from the parting soul,--now standing in
+the way of a procession of the slightly wounded, to pour a little brandy
+down their throats, or put an orange into their hands, just to keep them
+up till they reach food and rest,--now running up the river in a
+steam-tug, scrambling eggs in a wash-basin over a spirit-lamp as they
+go,--now groping their way, at all hours of the night, through torrents
+of rain, into dreadful places crammed with sick and dying men, "calling
+back to life those in despair from utter exhaustion, or again and again
+catching for mother or wife the last faint whispers of the dying,"--now
+leaving their compliments to serve a disappointed colonel instead of his
+dinner, which they had nipped in the bud by dragging away the stove with
+its four fascinating and not-to-be-withstood pot-holes;--and let the
+sutler's name be wreathed with laurel who not only permitted this, but
+offered his cart and mule to drag the stove to the boat, and would take
+no pay!
+
+The blessings of thousands who were ready to perish, and of tens of
+thousands who love their country and their kind, rest upon those who
+originated, and those who sustain, this noble work. Let the people's
+heart never faint and its hand never weary; but let it, of its
+abundance, give to this Commission full measure, pressed down, shaken
+together, and running over, that, wherever the red trail of war is seen,
+its divine footsteps may follow,--that, wherever the red hand of war is
+lifted to wound, its white hand may be lifted to heal,--that its work
+may never cease until it is assumed by a great Christian Government, or
+until peace once more reigns throughout the land. And even then,
+gratitude for its service, and joy in its glory, shall never die out of
+the hearts of the American people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The History of the Supernatural, in all Ages and Nations, and in all
+Churches, Christian and Pagan, demonstrating a Universal Faith_. By
+WILLIAM HOWITT. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.
+
+There has been a great change of late years in connection with the
+science of Pneumatology and with the manner of treating it. There was a
+revolution of opinion on this subject in the middle of the last century;
+there is a counter-revolution to-day.
+
+The superstitions and credulities of the Middle Ages eventuated, during
+the course of the eighteenth century, in the Encyclopædism of French
+philosophy. The grounds upon which the Church based her doctrine of the
+supernatural were fiercely attacked. The proofs brought forward to prove
+the insufficiency of such grounds were assumed to prove more than lack
+of logic in the Church; they were taken as proofs, that, in the nature
+of things, there is no evidence for the supernatural, in any sense of
+the term; in other words, that there is no knowledge within the reach of
+mortals, except that which relates to the physical,--to this earth, as
+the only phase of existence,--to the vital body, as the all of the human
+being. Emotional and intellectual phenomena were but results of material
+organization, as heat is the result of combustion: they exhibited
+themselves so long as vitality continued; they disappeared when death
+supervened, as the warmth from a fire dies out with the cessation of
+combustion. No hypothetical soul was needed to account for the thousand
+phenomena of thought or of sensation. Pneumatology was no science, but
+the mere fancy of an excited imagination.
+
+Not to the literature and the social life of France alone was this
+materialistic influence confined. The mind of Germany, of England, and,
+more or less, of the rest of Europe, and of America, was pervaded by it.
+The tendency, all over the civilized world, was towards unbelief, not
+merely in miracles, but in all things spiritual. Science, with her
+strict tests and her severe inductions, lent her aid in the same
+direction.
+
+It does not seem to have occurred to the philosophers of the
+Encyclopædian school that a doctrine is not necessarily false because an
+insufficient argument is brought forward to prove it. It does not appear
+to have occurred to skeptical physicists that there may be laws of
+Nature regulating ultramundane phenomena, as fixed, as invariable, as
+those which decide the succession of geological phenomena and the
+products of chemical combinations.
+
+Here is a theory which is worth considering. May it not be that God
+adapts the proofs of that which it is important that man should know to
+the intellectual progress of mankind? Is it certain that the same
+evidence which sufficed for the foundation of religious faith five
+hundred years ago will suffice equally well to-day? Truths are eternal;
+laws of Nature vary not. But of the world's thoughts there is a
+childhood, a youth, a manhood; and there may be various classes of
+arguments suited to various stages of progress.
+
+Again, assuming that the materialist takes a contracted view of the
+economy of human life, ignoring every portion of it except its present
+phase, (that phase being but the preparation for another and a higher,)
+may it not be, that, as the world advances, men may gradually be
+permitted, occasionally and to a limited extent, to become aware of
+influences exerted from a more advanced phase of existence over this?
+May it not be that the links connecting the two phases of existence are
+gradually to become more numerous and apparent?
+
+Such are the general views which William Howitt's work is intended to
+illustrate and enforce. He selects, as a title-page motto, an axiom from
+Butler's "Analogy,"--"There are two courses of Nature: the ordinary and
+the extraordinary." By the supernatural he does not mean phenomena out
+of the course of Nature, but such comparatively rare phenomena as are
+governed by laws with which we are unacquainted, and as are, therefore,
+to us something extraordinary, something to be wondered at,--miracles.
+
+The author travels over a vast extent of ground,--more, we think, than
+can be properly explored in the compass of two duodecimo volumes. All
+ages, all countries, all faiths, furnish their quota towards his
+collection. It is curious, interesting, suggestive, rather than
+conclusive. It exhibits more industry than logic. It consists rather of
+abundant materials for others to use, than of materials worked up by the
+collector. It gives evidence of learning, research, and a comprehensive
+study of the subject. It is a _thesaurus_ of pneumatological knowledge,
+collected with German assiduity. It will set many to thinking, though it
+may convince but few, except of the one truth, that the faith in the
+supernatural has been a universal faith, pervading all nations,
+persisting through all ages.
+
+The number of those who take an interest in the subject treated of in
+Mr. Howitt's book, and who believe that great truths underlie popular
+superstitions, increases day by day; and the work will probably have a
+wide circulation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September,
+1863, No. LXXI., by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13631 ***