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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77,
+March, 1864, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #19492]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+VOL. XIII.--MARCH, 1864.--NO. LXXVII.
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Minor typos corrected, and footnotes have been
+moved to the end of the text.]
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR
+AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
+District of Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
+
+
+I can see the excitement which this title arouses as it is flashed
+across the sierras, down the valleys, and into the various reading-rooms
+and parlors of the Golden City of the Golden State. As the San Francisco
+"Bulletin" announces some day, that in the "Atlantic Monthly," issued in
+Boston the day before, one of the articles is on "The Queen of
+California," what contest, in every favored circle of the most favored
+of lands, who the Queen may be! Is it the blond maiden who took a string
+of hearts with her in a leash, when she left us one sad morning? is it
+the hardy, brown adventuress, who, in her bark-roofed lodge, serves us
+out our boiled dog daily, as we come home from our water-gullies, and
+sews on for us weekly the few buttons which we still find indispensable
+in that toil? is it some Jessie of the lion-heart, heroine of a hundred
+days or of a thousand? is it that witch with gray eyes, cunningly
+hidden,--were they puzzled last night, or were they all wisdom
+crowded?--as she welcomed me, and as she bade me good-bye? Good Heavens!
+how many Queens of California are regnant this day! and of any one of
+them this article might be written.
+
+No, _Señores!_ No, _Caballeros!_ Throng down to the wharves to see the
+Golden Era or the Cornelius's Coffin, or whatever other mail-steamer may
+bring these words to your longing eyes. Open to the right and left as
+Adams's express-messenger carries the earliest copy of the "Atlantic
+Monthly," sealed with the reddest wax, tied with the reddest tape, from
+the Corner Store direct to him who was once the life and light of the
+Corner Store, who now studies eschscholtzias through a telescope
+thirty-eight miles away on Monte Diablo! Rush upon the newsboy who then
+brings forth the bale of this Journal for the Multitude, to find that
+the Queen of California of whom we write is no modern queen, but that
+she reigned some five hundred and fifty-five years ago. Her precise
+contemporaries were Amadis of Gaul, the Emperor Esplandian, and the
+Sultan Radiaro. And she _flourished_, as the books say, at the time when
+this Sultan made his unsuccessful attack on the city of
+Constantinople,--all of which she saw, part of which she was.
+
+She was not _petite_, nor blond, nor golden-haired. She was large and
+black as the ace of clubs. But the prejudice of color did not then exist
+even among the most brazen-faced or the most copper-headed. For, as you
+shall learn, she was reputed the most beautiful of women; and it was
+she, O Californians, who wedded the gallant prince Talanque,--your
+first-known king. The supporters of the arms of the beautiful shield of
+the State of California should be, on the right, a knight armed
+_cap-à-pie_, and, on the left, an Amazon sable, clothed in skins, as you
+shall now see.
+
+Mr. E. E. Hale, of Boston, sent to the Antiquarian Society last year a
+paper which shows that the name of California was known to literature
+before it was given to our peninsula by Cortés. Cortés discovered the
+peninsula in 1535, and seems to have called it California then. But Mr.
+Hale shows that twenty-five years before that time, in a romance called
+the "Deeds of Esplandian," the name of California was given to an island
+"on the right hand of the Indies." This romance was a sequel, or fifth
+book, to the celebrated romance of "Amadis of Gaul." Such books made the
+principal reading of the young blades of that day who could read at all.
+It seems clear enough, that Cortés and his friends, coming to the point
+farthest to the west then known,--which all of them, from Columbus down,
+supposed to be in the East Indies,--gave to their discovery the name,
+familiar to romantic adventurers, of _California_, to indicate their
+belief that it was on the "right hand of the Indies." Just so Columbus
+called his discoveries "the Indies,"--just so was the name "El Dorado"
+given to regions which it was hoped would prove to be golden. The
+romance had said, that in the whole of the romance-island of California
+there was no metal but gold. Cortés, who did not find a pennyweight of
+dust in the real California, still had no objection to giving so golden
+a name to his discovery.
+
+Mr. Hale, with that brevity which becomes antiquarians, does not go into
+any of the details of the life and adventures of the Queen of California
+as the romance describes them. We propose, in this paper, to supply from
+it this reticency of his essay.
+
+The reader must understand, then, that, in this romance, printed in
+1510, sixty years or less after Constantinople really fell into the
+hands of the Turks, the author describes a pretended assault made upon
+it by the Infidel powers, and the rallying for its rescue of Amadis and
+Perion and Lisuarte, and all the princes of chivalry with whom the novel
+of "Amadis of Gaul" has dealt. They succeed in driving away the Pagans,
+"as you shall hear." In the midst of this great crusade, every word of
+which, of course, is the most fictitious of fiction, appear the episodes
+which describe California and its Queen.
+
+First, of California itself here is the description:--
+
+"Now you are to hear the most extraordinary thing that ever was heard of
+in any chronicles or in the memory of man, by which the city would have
+been lost on the next day, but that where the danger came, there the
+safety came also. Know, then, that, on the right hand of the Indies,
+there is an island called California, very close to the side of the
+Terrestrial Paradise,[1] and it was peopled by black women, without any
+man among them, for they lived in the fashion of Amazons. They were of
+strong and hardy bodies, of ardent courage and great force. Their island
+was the strongest in all the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky
+shores. Their arms were all of gold, and so was the harness of the wild
+beasts which they tamed and rode. For, in the whole island, there was no
+metal but gold. They lived in caves wrought out of the rock with much
+labor. They had many ships with which they sailed out to other countries
+to obtain booty.
+
+"In this island, called California, there were many griffins, on account
+of the great ruggedness of the country, and its infinite host of wild
+beasts, such as never were seen in any other part of the world. And when
+these griffins were yet small, the women went out with traps to take
+them. They covered themselves over with very thick hides, and when they
+had caught the little griffins, they took them to their caves, and
+brought them up there. And being themselves quite a match for the
+griffins, they fed them with the men whom they took prisoners, and with
+the boys to whom they gave birth, and brought them up with such arts
+that they got much good from them, and no harm. Every man who landed on
+the island was immediately devoured by these griffins; and although they
+had had enough, none the less would they seize them and carry them high
+up in the air, in their flight, and when they were tired of carrying
+them, would let them fall anywhere as soon as they died."
+
+These griffins are the Monitors of the story, or, if the reader pleases,
+the Merrimacs. After this description, the author goes on to introduce
+us to our Queen. Observe, O reader, that, although very black, and very
+large, she is very beautiful. Why did not Powers carve his statue of
+California out of the blackest of Egyptian marbles? Try once more, Mr.
+Powers! We have found her now. [Greek: Ehyrhêkamen]!
+
+"Now at the time when those great men of the Pagans sailed with their
+great fleets, as the history has told you, there reigned in this island
+of California a Queen, very large in person, the most beautiful of all
+of them, of blooming years, and in her thoughts desirous of achieving
+great things, strong of limb and of great courage, more than any of
+those who had filled her throne before her. She heard tell that all the
+greater part of the world was moving in this onslaught against the
+Christians. She did not know what Christians were, for she had no
+knowledge of any parts of the world excepting those which were close to
+her. But she desired to see the world and its various people; and
+thinking, that, with the great strength of herself and of her women, she
+should have the greater part of their plunder, either from her rank or
+from her prowess, she began to talk with all of those who were most
+skilled in war, and told them that it would be well, if, sailing in
+their great fleets, they also entered on this expedition, in which all
+these great princes and lords were embarking. She animated and excited
+them, showing them the great profits and honors which they would gain in
+this enterprise,--above all, the great fame which would be theirs in all
+the world; while, if they stayed in their island, doing nothing but what
+their grandmothers did, they were really buried alive,--they were dead
+while they lived, passing their days without fame and without glory, as
+did the very brutes."
+
+Now the people of California were as willing then to embark in distant
+expeditions of honor as they are now. And the first battalion that ever
+sailed from the ports of that country was thus provided:--
+
+"So much did this mighty Queen, Calafia, say to her people, that she not
+only moved them to consent to this enterprise, but they were so eager to
+extend their fame through other lands that they begged her to hasten to
+sea, so that they might earn all these honors, in alliance with such
+great men. The Queen, seeing the readiness of her subjects, without any
+delay gave order that her great fleet should be provided with food, and
+with arms all of gold,--more of everything than was needed. Then she
+commanded that her largest vessel should be prepared with gratings of
+the stoutest timber; and she bade place in it as many as five hundred of
+these griffins, of which I tell you, that, from the time they were born,
+they were trained to feed on men. And she ordered that the beasts on
+which she and her people rode should be embarked, and all the
+best-armed women and those most skilled in war whom she had in her
+island. And then, leaving such force in the island that it should be
+secure, with the others she went to sea. And they made such haste that
+they arrived at the fleets of the Pagans the night after the battle of
+which I have told you; so that they were received with great joy, and
+the fleet was visited at once by many great lords, and they were
+welcomed with great acceptance. She wished to know at once in what
+condition affairs were, asking many questions, which they answered
+fully. Then she said,--
+
+"'You have fought this city with your great forces, and you cannot take
+it; now, if you are willing, I wish to try what my forces are worth
+to-morrow, if you will give orders accordingly.'
+
+"All these great lords said that they would give such commands as she
+should bid them.
+
+"'Then send word to all your other captains that they shall to-morrow on
+no account leave their camps, they nor their people, until I command
+them; and you shall see a combat more remarkable than you have ever seen
+or heard of.'
+
+"Word was sent at once to the great Sultan of Liquia, and the Sultan of
+Halapa, who had command of all the men who were there; and they gave
+these orders to all their people, wondering much what was the thought of
+this Queen."
+
+Up to this moment, it may be remarked, these Monitors, as we have called
+the griffins, had never been fairly tried in any attack on fortified
+towns. The Dupont of the fleet, whatever her name may have been, may
+well have looked with some curiosity on the issue. The experiment was
+not wholly successful, as will be seen.
+
+"When the night had passed and the morning came, the Queen Calafia
+sallied on shore, she and her women, armed with that armor of gold, all
+adorned with the most precious stones,--which are to be found in the
+island of California like stones of the field for their abundance. And
+they mounted on their fierce beasts, caparisoned as I have told you; and
+then she ordered that a door should be opened in the vessel where the
+griffins were. They, when they saw the field, rushed forward with great
+haste, showing great pleasure in flying through the air, and at once
+caught sight of the host of men who were close at hand. As they were
+famished, and knew no fear, each griffin pounced upon his man, seized
+him in his claws, carried him high into the air, and began to devour
+him. They shot many arrows at them, and gave them many great blows with
+lances and with swords. But their feathers were so tight joined and so
+stout, that no one could strike through to their flesh." (This is
+Armstrong _versus_ Monitor.) "For their own party, this was the most
+lovely chase and the most agreeable that they had ever seen till then;
+and as the Turks saw them flying on high with their enemies, they gave
+such loud and clear shouts of joy as pierced the heavens. And it was the
+most sad and bitter thing for those in the city, when the father saw the
+son lifted in the air, and the son his father, and the brother his
+brother; so that they all wept and raved, as was sad indeed to see.
+
+"When the griffins had flown through the air for a while, and had
+dropped their prizes, some on the earth and some on the sea, they
+turned, as at first, and, without any fear, seized up as many more; at
+which their masters had so much the more joy, and the Christians so much
+the more misery. What shall I tell you? The terror was so great among
+them all, that, while some hid themselves away under the vaults of the
+towers for safety, all the others disappeared from the ramparts, so that
+there were none left for the defence. Queen Calafia saw this, and, with
+a loud voice, she bade the two Sultans, who commanded the troops, send
+for the ladders, for the city was taken. At once they all rushed
+forward, placed the ladders, and mounted upon the wall. But the
+griffins, who had already dropped those whom they had seized before, as
+soon as they saw the Turks, having no knowledge of them, seized upon
+them just as they had seized upon the Christians, and, flying through
+the air, carried them up also, when, letting them fall, no one of them
+escaped death. Thus were exchanged the pleasure and the pain. For those
+on the outside now were those who mourned in great sorrow for those who
+were so handled; and those who were within, who, seeing their enemies
+advance on every side, had thought they were beaten, now took great
+comfort. So, at this moment, as those on the ramparts stopped,
+panic-struck, fearing that they should die as their comrades did, the
+Christians leaped forth from the vaults where they were hiding, and
+quickly slew many of the Turks who were gathered on the walls, and
+compelled the rest to leap down, and then sprang back to their
+hiding-places, as they saw the griffins return.
+
+"When Queen Calafia saw this, she was very sad, and she said, 'O ye
+idols in whom I believe and whom I worship, what is this which has
+happened as favorably to my enemies as to my friends? I believed that
+with your aid and with my strong forces and great munition I should be
+able to destroy them. But it has not so proved.' And she gave orders to
+her women that they should mount the ladders and struggle to gain the
+towers and put to the sword all those who took refuge in them to be
+secure from the griffins. They obeyed their Queen's commands, dismounted
+at once, placing before their breasts such breastplates as no weapon
+could pierce, and, as I told you, with the armor all of gold which
+covered their legs and their arms. Quickly they crossed the plain, and
+mounted the ladders lightly, and possessed themselves of the whole
+circuit of the walls, and began to fight fiercely with those who had
+taken refuge in the vaults of the towers. But they defended themselves
+bravely, being indeed in quarters well protected, with but narrow doors.
+And those of the city, who were in the streets below, shot at the women
+with arrows and darts, which pierced them through the sides, so that
+they received many wounds, because their golden armor was so weak."
+(This is Keokuk _versus_ Armstrong.) "And the griffins returned, flying
+above them, and would not leave them.
+
+"When Queen Calafia saw this, she cried to the Sultans, 'Make your
+troops mount, that they may defend mine against these fowls of mine who
+have dared attack them.' At once the Sultans commanded their people to
+ascend the ladders and gain the circle and the towers, in order that by
+night the whole host might join them, and they might gain the city. The
+soldiers rushed from their camps, and mounted on the wall where the
+women were fighting,--but when the griffins saw them, at once they
+seized on them as ravenously as if all that day they had not caught
+anybody. And when the women threatened them with their knives, they were
+only the more enraged, so that, although they took shelter for
+themselves, the griffins dragged them out by main strength, lifted them
+up into the air, and then let them fall,--so that they all died. The
+fear and panic of the Pagans were so great, that, much more quickly than
+they had mounted, did they descend and take refuge in their camp. The
+Queen, seeing this rout without remedy, sent at once to command those
+who held watch and guard on the griffins, that they should recall them
+and shut them up in the vessel. They, then, hearing the Queen's command,
+mounted on top of the mast, and called them with loud voices in their
+language; and they, as if they had been human beings, all obeyed, and
+obediently returned into their cages."
+
+The first day's attack of these flying Monitors on the beleaguered city
+was not, therefore, a distinguished success. The author derives a lesson
+from it, which we do not translate, but recommend to the students of
+present history. It fills a whole chapter, of which the title is,
+"Exhortation addressed by the author to the Christians, setting before
+their eyes the great obedience which these griffins, brute animals,
+rendered to those who had instructed them."
+
+The Sultans may have well doubted whether their new ally was quite what
+she had claimed to be. She felt this herself, and said to them,--
+
+"'Since my coming has caused you so much injury, I wish that it may
+cause you equal pleasure. Command your people that they shall sally out,
+and we will go to the city against those knights who dare to appear
+before us, and we will let them press on the most severe combat that
+they can, and I, with my people, will take the front of the battle.'
+
+"The Sultans gave command at once to all of their soldiers who had
+armor, that they should rush forth immediately, and should join in
+mounting upon the rampart, now that these birds were encaged again. And
+they, with the horsemen, followed close upon Queen Calafia, and
+immediately the army rushed forth and pressed upon the wall; but not so
+prosperously as they had expected, because the people of the town were
+already there in their harness, and as the Pagans mounted upon their
+ladders, the Christians threw them back, whence very many of them were
+killed and wounded. Others pressed forward with their iron picks and
+other tools, and dug fiercely in the circuit of the wall. These were
+very much distressed and put in danger by the oil and other things which
+were thrown upon them, but not so much but that they succeeded in making
+many breaches and openings. But when this came to the ears of the
+Emperor, who always kept command of ten thousand horsemen, he commanded
+all of them to defend these places as well as they could. So that, to
+the grief of the Pagans, the people repaired the breaches with many
+timbers and stones and piles of earth.
+
+"When the Queen saw this repulse, she rushed with her own attendants
+with great speed to the gate Aquileña, which was guarded by Norandel.[2]
+She herself went in advance of the others, wholly covered with one of
+those shields which we have told you they wore, and with her lance held
+strongly in her hand. Norandel, when he saw her coming, went forth to
+meet her, and they met so vehemently that their lances were broken in
+pieces, and yet neither of them fell. Norandel at once put hand upon his
+sword, and the Queen upon her great knife, of which the blade was more
+than a palm broad, and they gave each other great blows. At once they
+all joined in a _mêlée_, one against another, all so confused and with
+such terrible blows that it was a great marvel to see it, and if some of
+the women fell upon the ground, so did some of the cavaliers. And if
+this history does not tell in extent which of them fell, and by what
+blow of each, showing the great force and courage of the combatants, it
+is because their number was so great, and they fell so thick, one upon
+another, that that great master, Helisabat, who saw and described the
+scene, could not determine what in particular passed in these exploits,
+except in a few very rare affairs, like this of the Queen and Norandel,
+who both joined fight as you have heard."
+
+It is to the great master Helisabat that a grateful posterity owes all
+these narratives and the uncounted host of romances which grew from
+them. For, in the first place, he was the skilful leech who cured all
+the wounds of all the parties of distinction who were not intended to
+die; and in the second place, his notes furnish the _mémoires pour
+servir_, of which all the writers say they availed themselves. The
+originals, alas! are lost.
+
+"The tumult was so great, that at once the battle between these two was
+ended, those on each side coming to the aid of their chief. Then, I tell
+you, that the things that this Queen did in arms, like slaying knights,
+or throwing them wounded from their horses, as she pressed audaciously
+forward among her enemies, were such, that it cannot be told nor
+believed that any woman has ever shown such prowess.
+
+"And as she dealt with so many noble knights, and no one of them left
+her without giving her many and heavy blows, yet she received them all
+upon her very strong and hard shield.
+
+"When Talanque and Maneli[3] saw what this woman was doing, and the
+great loss which those of their own party were receiving from her, they
+rushed out upon her, and struck her with such blows as if they
+considered her possessed. And her sister, who was named Liota, who saw
+this, rushed in, like a mad lioness, to her succor, and pressed the
+knights so mortally, that, to the loss of their honor, she drew Calafia
+from their power, and placed her among her own troops again. And at this
+time you would have said that the people of the fleets had the
+advantage, so that, if it had not been for the mercy of God and the
+great force of the Count Frandalo and his companions, the city would
+have been wholly lost. Many fell dead on both sides, but many more of
+the Pagans, because they had the weaker armor.
+
+"Thus," continues the romance, "as you have heard, went on this attack
+and cruel battle till nearly night. At this time there was no one of the
+gates open, excepting that which Norandel guarded. As to the others, the
+knights, having been withdrawn from them, ought, of course, to have
+bolted them; yet it was very different, as I will tell you. For, as the
+two Sultans greatly desired to see these women fight, they had bidden
+their own people not to enter into the lists. But when they saw how the
+day was going, they pressed upon the Christians so fiercely that
+gradually they might all enter into the city, and, as it was, more than
+a hundred men and women did enter. And God, who guided the Emperor,
+having directed him to keep the other gates shut, knowing in what way
+the battle fared, he pressed them so hardly with his knights, that,
+killing some, he drove the others out. Then the Pagans lost many of
+their people, as they slew them from the towers,--more than two hundred
+of the women being slain. And those within also were not without great
+loss, since ten of the _cruzados_ were killed, which gave great grief to
+their companions. These were Ledaderin de Fajarque, Trion and Imosil de
+Borgona, and the two sons of Isanjo. All the people of the city having
+returned, as I tell you, the Pagans also retired to their camps, and the
+Queen Calafia to her fleet, since she had not yet taken quarters on
+shore. And the other people entered into their ships; so that there was
+no more fighting that day."
+
+I have translated this passage at length, because it gives the reader an
+idea of the romantic literature of that day,--literally its only
+literature, excepting books of theology or of devotion. Over acres of
+such reading, served out in large folios,--the yellow-covered novels of
+their time,--did the Pizarros and Balboas and Cortéses and other young
+blades while away the weary hours of their camp-life. Glad enough was
+Cortés out of such a tale to get the noble name of his great discovery.
+
+The romance now proceeds to bring the different princes of chivalry from
+the West, as it has brought Calafia from the East. As soon as Amadis
+arrives at Constantinople, he sends for his son Esplandian, who was
+already in alliance with the Emperor of Greece. The Pagan Sultan of
+Liquia, and the Queen Calafia, hearing of their arrival, send them the
+following challenge:--
+
+"Radiaro, Sultan of Liquia, shield and rampart of the Pagan Law,
+destroyer of Christians, cruel enemy of the enemies of the Gods, and the
+very Mighty Queen Calafia, Lady of the great island of California,
+famous for its great abundance of gold and precious stones: we have to
+announce to you, Amadis of Gaul, King of Great Britain, and you his son,
+Knight of the Great Serpent, that we are come into these parts with the
+intention of destroying this city of Constantinople, on account of the
+injury and loss which the much honored King Amato of Persia, our cousin
+and friend, has received from this bad Emperor, giving him favor and
+aid, because a part of his territory has been taken away from him by
+fraud. And as our desire in this thing is also to gain glory and fame in
+it, so also has fortune treated us favorably in that regard, for we know
+the great news, which has gone through all the world, of your great
+chivalry. We have agreed, therefore, if it is agreeable to you, or if
+your might is sufficient for it, to attempt a battle of our persons
+against yours in presence of this great company of the nations, the
+conquered to submit to the will of the conquerors, or to go to any place
+where they may order. And if you refuse this, we shall be able, with
+much cause, to join all your past glories to our own, counting them as
+being gained by us, whence it will clearly be seen in the future how the
+victory will be on our side."
+
+This challenge was taken to the Christian camp by a black and beautiful
+damsel, richly attired, and was discussed there in council. Amadis put
+an end to the discussion by saying,--
+
+"'My good lords, as the affairs of men, like those of nations, are in
+the hands and will of God, whence no one can escape but as He wills, if
+we should in any way withdraw from this demand, it would give great
+courage to our enemies, and, more than this, great injury to our honor;
+especially so in this country, where we are strangers, and no one has
+seen what our power is, which in our own land is notorious, so that,
+while there we may be esteemed for courage, here we should be judged the
+greatest of cowards. Thus, placing confidence in the mercy of the Lord,
+I determine that the battle shall take place without delay.'
+
+"'If this is your wish,' said King Lisuarte and King Perion, 'so may it
+be, and may God help you with His grace!'
+
+"Then the King Amadis said to the damsel,--
+
+"'Friend, tell your lord and the Queen Calafia that we desire the battle
+with those arms that are most agreeable to them; that the field shall be
+this field, divided in the middle,--I giving my word that for nothing
+which may happen will we be succored by our own. And let them give the
+same order to their own; and if they wish the battle now, now it shall
+be.'
+
+"The damsel departed with this reply, which she repeated to those two
+princes. And the Queen Calafia asked her how the Christians appeared.
+
+"'Very nobly,' replied she, 'for they are all handsome and well armed.
+Yet I tell you, Queen, that, among them, this Knight of the Serpent
+[Esplandian, son of Amadis] is such as neither the past nor the present,
+nor, I believe, any who are to come, have ever seen one so handsome and
+so elegant, nor will see in the days which are to be. O Queen, what
+shall I say to you, but that, if he were of our faith, we might believe
+that our Gods had made him with their own hands, with all their power
+and wisdom, so that he lacks in nothing?'
+
+"The Queen, who heard her, said,--
+
+"'Damsel, my friend, your words are too great.'
+
+"'It is not so,' said she; 'for, excepting the sight of him, there is
+nothing else which can give account of his great excellence.'
+
+"'Then I say to you,' said the Queen, 'that I will not fight with such a
+man until I have first seen and talked with him; and I make this request
+to the Sultan, that he will gratify me in this thing, and arrange that I
+may see him.'
+
+"The Sultan said,--
+
+"'I will do everything, O Queen, agreeably to your wish.'
+
+"'Then,' said the damsel, 'I will go and obtain that which you ask for,
+according to your desire.'
+
+"And turning her horse, she approached the camp again, so that all
+thought that she brought the agreement for the battle. But as she
+approached, she called the Kings to the door of the tent, and said,--
+
+"'King Amadis, the Queen Calafia demands of you that you give order for
+her safe conduct, that she may come to-morrow morning and see your son.'
+
+"Amadis began to laugh, and said to the Kings,--
+
+"'How does this demand seem to you?'
+
+"'I say, let her come,' said King Lisuarte; 'it is a very good thing to
+see the most distinguished woman in the world.'
+
+"'Take this for your reply,' said Amadis to the damsel; 'and say that
+she shall be treated with all truth and honor.'
+
+"The damsel, having received this message, returned with great pleasure
+to the Queen, and told her what it was. The Queen said to the Sultan,--
+
+"'Wait and prosper, then, till I have seen him; and charge your people
+that in the mean time there may be no outbreak.'
+
+"'Of that,' he said, 'you may be secure.'
+
+"At once she returned to her ships; and she spent the whole night
+thinking whether she would go with arms or without them. But at last she
+determined that it would be more dignified to go in the dress of a
+woman. And when the morning came, she rose and directed them to bring
+one of her dresses, all of gold, with many precious stones, and a turban
+wrought with great art. It had a volume of many folds, in the manner of
+a _toca_, and she placed it upon her head as if it had been a hood
+[_capellina_]; it was all of gold, embroidered with stones of great
+value. They brought out an animal which she rode, the strangest that
+ever was seen. It had ears as large as two shields; a broad forehead
+which had but one eye, like a mirror; the openings of its nostrils were
+very large, but its nose was short and blunt. From its mouth turned up
+two tusks, each of them two palms long. Its color was yellow, and it had
+many violet spots upon its skin, like an ounce. It was larger than a
+dromedary, had its feet cleft like those of an ox, and ran as swiftly as
+the wind, and skipped over the rocks as lightly, and held itself erect
+on any part of them, as do the mountain-goats. Its food was dates and
+figs and peas, and nothing else. Its flank and haunches and breast were
+very beautiful. On this animal, of which you have thus heard, mounted
+this beautiful Queen, and there rode behind her two thousand women of
+her train, dressed in the very richest clothes. There brought up the
+rear twenty damsels clothed in uniform, the trains of whose dresses
+extended so far, that, falling from each beast, they dragged four
+fathoms on the ground.
+
+"With this equipment and ornament the Queen proceeded to the Emperor's
+camp, where she saw all the Kings, who had come out upon the plain. They
+had seated themselves on very rich chairs, upon cloth of gold, and they
+themselves were armed, because they had not much confidence in the
+promises of the Pagans. So they sallied out to receive her at the door
+of the tent, where she was dismounted into the arms of Don
+Quadragante;[4] and the two Kings, Lisuarte and Perion, took her by the
+hands, and placed her between them in a chair. When she was seated,
+looking from one side to the other, she saw Esplandian next to King
+Lisuarte, who held him by the hand; and from the superiority of his
+beauty to that of all the others, she knew at once who he was, and said
+to herself, 'Oh, my Gods! what is this? I declare to you, I have never
+seen any one who can be compared to him, nor shall I ever see any one.'
+And he turning his beautiful eyes upon her beautiful face, she perceived
+that the rays which leaped out from his resplendent beauty, entering in
+at her eyes, penetrated to her heart in such a way, that, if she were
+not conquered yet by the great force of arms, or by the great attacks of
+her enemies, she was softened and broken by that sight and by her
+amorous passion, as if she had passed between mallets of iron. And as
+she saw this, she reflected, that, if she stayed longer, the great fame
+which she had acquired as a manly cavalier, by so many dangers and
+labors, would be greatly hazarded. She saw that by any delay she should
+expose herself to the risk of dishonor, by being turned to that native
+softness which women of nature consider to be an ornament; and therefore
+resisting, with great pain, the feelings which she had subjected to her
+will, she rose from her seat and said,--
+
+"'Knight of the Great Serpent, for two excellences which distinguish you
+above all mortals I have made inquiry. The first, that of your great
+beauty, which, if one has not seen, no relation is enough to tell the
+greatness of; the other, the valor and force of your brave heart. The
+one of these I have seen, which is such as I have never seen nor could
+hope to see, though many years of searching should be granted me. The
+other shall be made manifest on the field, against this valiant Radiaro,
+Sultan of Liquia. Mine shall be shown against this mighty king your
+father; and if fortune grant that we come alive from this battle, as we
+hope to come from other battles, then I will talk with you, before I
+return to my home, of some things of my own affairs.'
+
+"Then, turning towards the Kings, she said to them,--
+
+"'Kings, rest in good health. I go hence to that place where you shall
+see me with very different dress from this which I now wear, hoping that
+in that field the King Amadis, who trusts in fickle fortune that he may
+never be conquered by any knight, however valiant, nor by any beast,
+however terrible, may there be conquered by a woman.'
+
+"Then taking the two older Kings by the hand, she permitted them to help
+her mount upon her strange steed."
+
+At this point the novel assumes a tone of high virtue (_virtus_,
+mannishness, prejudice of the more brutal sex) on the subject of woman's
+rights, in especial of woman's right to fight in the field with gold
+armor, lance in rest, and casque closed. We will show the reader, as she
+follows us, how careful she must be, if, in any island of the sea which
+has been slipped by unknown by the last five centuries, she ever happen
+to meet a cavalier of the true school of chivalry.
+
+Esplandian himself would not in any way salute the Queen Calafia, as she
+left him. Nor was this a copperhead prejudice of color; for that
+prejudice was not yet known.
+
+"He made no reply to her, both because he looked at her as something
+strange, however beautiful she appeared to him, and because he saw her
+come thus in arms, so different from the style in which a woman should
+have come. For he considered it as very dishonorable that she should
+attempt anything so different from what the word of God commanded her,
+that the woman should be in subjection to the man, but rather should
+prefer to be the ruler of all men, not by her courtesy, but by force of
+arms, and, above all, because he hated to place himself in relations
+with her, because she was one of the infidels, whom he mortally despised
+and had taken a vow to destroy."
+
+The romance then goes into an account of the preparations for the
+contest on both sides.
+
+After all the preliminaries were arranged, "they separated for a little
+and rode together furiously in full career. The Sultan struck Esplandian
+in the shield with so hard a blow that a part of the lance passed
+through it for as much as an ell, so that all who saw it thought that it
+had passed through the body. But it was not so, but the lance passed
+under the arm next the body, and went out on the other side without
+touching him. But Esplandian, who knew that his much-loved lady was
+looking on, [Leonorina, the daughter of the Emperor of Constantinople,]
+so struck the Sultan's shield, that the iron passed through it and
+struck him on some of the strongest plates of his armor, upon which the
+spear turned. But, with the force of the encounter, it shook him so
+roughly from the saddle that it rolled him upon the ground, and so
+shook the helmet as to tear it off from his head, and thus Esplandian
+passed by him very handsomely, without receiving any stroke himself. The
+Queen rushed upon Amadis, and he upon her, and, before they met, each
+pointed lance at the other, and they received the blows upon their
+shields in such guise, that her spear flew in pieces, while that of
+Amadis slipped off and was thrown on one side. Then they both met,
+shield to shield, with such force that the Queen was thrown upon the
+ground, and the horse of Amadis was so wounded that he fell with his
+head cut in two, and held Amadis with one leg under him. When Esplandian
+saw this, he leaped from his horse and saved him from that peril.
+Meanwhile, the Queen, being put to her defence, put hand to her sword,
+and joined herself to the Sultan, who had raised himself with great
+difficulty, because his fall was very heavy, and stood there with his
+sword and helmet in his hand. They came on to fight very bravely, but
+Esplandian, standing, as I told you, in presence of the Infanta, whom he
+prized so much, gave the Sultan such hard pressure with such heavy
+blows, that, although he was one of the bravest knights of the Pagans,
+and by his own prowess had won many dangerous battles, and was very
+dexterous in that art, yet all this served him for nothing; he could
+neither give nor parry blows, and constantly lost ground. The Queen, who
+had joined fight with Amadis, began giving him many fierce blows, some
+of which he received upon his shield, while he let others be lost; yet
+he would not put his hand upon his sword, but, instead of that, took a
+fragment of the lance which she had driven through his shield, and
+struck her on the top of the helmet with it, so that in a little while
+he had knocked the crest away."
+
+We warned those of our fair readers who may have occasion to defend
+their rights at the point of the lance, that the days of chivalry or the
+cavaliers of chivalry will be very unhandsome in applying to them the
+rules of the tourney. Amadis, it will be observed here, does not
+condescend to use his sword against a woman. And this is not from
+tenderness, but from contempt. For when the Queen saw that he only took
+the broken truncheon of his lance to her, she fairly asked him why.
+
+"'How is this, Amadis?' she said; 'do you consider my force so slight
+that you think to conquer me with sticks?'
+
+"And he said to her,--
+
+"'Queen, I have always been in the habit of serving women and aiding
+them; and as you are a woman, if I should use any weapon against you, I
+should deserve to lose all the honors I have ever gained.'
+
+"'What, then!' said the Queen, 'do you rank me among them? You shall
+see!'
+
+"And taking her sword in both her hands, she struck him with great rage.
+Amadis raised his shield and received the blow upon it, which was so
+brave and strong that the shield was cut in two. Then, seeing her joined
+to him so closely, he passed the stick into his left hand, seized her by
+the rim of her shield, and pulled her so forcibly, that, breaking the
+great thongs by which she held upon it, he took it from her, lifting it
+up in one hand, and forced her to kneel with one knee on the ground; and
+when she lightly sprang up, Amadis threw away his own shield, and,
+seizing the other, took the stick and sprang to her, saying,--
+
+"'Queen, yield yourself my prisoner, now that your Sultan is conquered.'
+
+"She turned her head, and saw that Esplandian had the Sultan already
+surrendered as his prize. But she said, 'Let me try fortune yet one more
+turn'; and then, raising her sword with both her hands, she struck upon
+the crest of his helmet, thinking she could cut it and his head in two.
+But Amadis warded the blow very lightly and turned it off, and struck
+her so heavy a stroke with that fragment of the lance upon the crest of
+her helmet, that he stunned her and made her sword fall from her hands.
+Amadis seized the sword, and, when she was thus disarmed, caught at her
+helmet so strongly that he dragged it from her head, and said,--
+
+"'Now are you my prisoner?'
+
+"'Yes,' replied she; 'for there is nothing left for me to do.'
+
+"At this moment Esplandian came to them with the Sultan, who had
+surrendered himself, and, in sight of all the army, they repaired to the
+royal encampment, where they were received with great pleasure, not only
+on account of the great victory in battle, which, after the great deeds
+in arms which they had wrought before, as this history has shown, they
+did not regard as very remarkable, but because they took this success as
+a good omen for the future. The King Amadis asked the Count Gandalin to
+lead their prisoners to the Infanta Leonorina, in his behalf and that of
+his son Esplandian, and to say to her that he begged her to do honor to
+the Sultan, because he was so great a prince and so strong a knight,
+and, withal, very noble; and to do honor to the Queen, _because she was
+a woman_; and to say that he trusted in God that thus they should send
+to her all those whom they took captive alive in the battles which
+awaited them.
+
+"The Count took them in charge, and, as the city was very near, they
+soon arrived at the palace. Then, coming into the presence of the
+Infanta, he delivered to her the prisoners, and gave the message with
+which he was intrusted. The Infanta replied to him,--
+
+"'Tell King Amadis that I thank him greatly for this present which he
+sends me,--that I am sure that the good fortune and great courage which
+appear in this adventure will appear in those which await us,--and that
+we are very desirous to see him here, that, when we discharge our
+obligation to his son, we may have him as a judge between us.'
+
+"The Count kissed her hand, and returned to the royal camp. Then the
+Infanta sent to the Empress, her mother, for a rich robe and head-dress,
+and, having disarmed the Queen, made her array herself in them; and she
+did the same for the Sultan, having sent for other robes from the
+Emperor, her father, and having dressed their wounds with certain
+preparations made by Master Helisabat. Then the Queen, though of so
+great fortune, was much astonished to see the great beauty of Leonorina,
+and said,--
+
+"'I tell you, Infanta, that in the same measure in which I was
+astonished to see the beauty of your cavalier, Esplandian, am I now
+overwhelmed, beholding yours. If your deeds correspond to your
+appearance, I hold it no dishonor to be your prisoner.'
+
+"'Queen,' said the Infanta, 'I hope the God in whom I trust will so
+direct events that I shall be able to fulfil every obligation which
+conquerors acknowledge toward those who submit to them.'"
+
+With this chivalrous little conversation the Queen of California
+disappears from the romance, and consequently from all written history,
+till the very _dénouement_ of the whole story, where, when the rest is
+"wound up," she is wound up also, to be set a-going again in her own
+land of California. And if the chroniclers of California find no records
+of her in any of the griffin caves of the Black Cañon, it is not our
+fault, but theirs. Or, possibly, did she and her party suffer shipwreck
+on the return passage from Constantinople to the Golden Gate? Their
+probable route must have been through the Ægean, over Lebanon and
+Anti-Lebanon to the Euphrates, ("I will sail a fleet over the Alps,"
+said Cromwell,) down Chesney's route to the Persian Gulf, and so home.
+
+After the Sultan and the Queen are taken prisoners, there are reams of
+terrific fighting, in which King Lisuarte and King Perion and a great
+many other people are killed; but finally the "Pagans" are all routed,
+and the Emperor of Greece retires into a monastery, having united
+Esplandian with his daughter Leonorina, and abdicated the throne in
+their favor. Among the first acts of their new administration is the
+disposal of Calafia.
+
+"As soon as the Queen Calafia saw these nuptials, having no more hope of
+him whom she so much loved, [Esplandian,] for a moment her courage left
+her; and coming before the new Emperor and these great lords, she thus
+spoke to them:--
+
+"'I am a queen of a great kingdom, in which there is the greatest
+abundance of all that is most valued in the world, such as gold and
+precious stones. My lineage is very old,--for it comes from royal blood
+so far back that there is no memory of the beginnings of it,--and my
+honor is as perfect as it was at my birth. My fortune has brought me
+into these countries, whence I hoped to bring away many captives, but
+where I am myself a captive. I do not say of this captivity in which you
+see me, that, after all the great experiences of my life, favorable and
+adverse, I had believed that I was strong enough to parry the thrusts of
+fortune; but I have found that my heart was tried and afflicted in my
+imprisonment, because the great beauty of this new Emperor overwhelmed
+me in the moment that my eyes looked upon him. I trusted in my
+greatness, and that immense wealth which excites and unites so many,
+that, if I would turn to your religion, I might gain him for a husband;
+but when I came into the presence of this lovely Empress, I regarded it
+as certain that they belonged to each other by their equal rank; and
+that argument, which showed the vanity of my thoughts, brought me to the
+determination in which I now stand. And since Eternal Fortune has taken
+the direction of my passion, I, throwing all my own strength into
+oblivion, as the wise do in those affairs which have no remedy, seek, if
+it please you, to take for my husband some other man, who may be the son
+of a king, to be of such power as a good knight ought to have; and I
+will become a Christian. For, as I have seen the ordered order of your
+religion, and the great disorder of all others, I have seen that it is
+clear that the law which you follow must be the truth, while that which
+we follow is lying and falsehood.'
+
+"When the Emperor had heard all this, embracing her with a smile, he
+said, 'Queen Calafia, my good friend, till now you have had from me
+neither word nor argument; for my condition is such that I cannot permit
+my eyes to look, without terrible hatred, upon any but those who are in
+the holy law of truth, nor wish well to such as are out of it. But now
+that the Omnipotent Lord has had such mercy on you as to give you such
+knowledge that you become His servant, you excite in me at once the same
+love as if the King, my father, had begotten us both. And as for this
+you ask, I will give you, by my troth, a knight who is even more
+complete in valor and in lineage than you have demanded.'
+
+"Then, taking by the hand Talanque, his cousin, the son of the King of
+Sobradisa,--very large he was of person, and very handsome withal,--he
+said,--
+
+"'Queen, here you see one of my cousins, son of the King whom you here
+see,--the brother of the King my father,--take him to yourself, that I
+may secure to you the good fortune which you will bring to him.'
+
+"The Queen looked at him, and finding his appearance good, said,--
+
+"'I am content with his presence, and well satisfied with his lineage
+and person, since you assure me of them. Be pleased to summon for me
+Liota, my sister, who is with my fleet in the harbor, that I may send
+orders to her that there shall be no movement among my people.'
+
+"The Emperor sent the Admiral Tartarie for her immediately, and he,
+having found her, brought her with him, and placed her before the
+Emperor. The Queen Calafia told her all her wish, commanding her and
+entreating her to confirm it. Her sister, Liota, kneeling upon the
+ground, kissed her hands, and said that there was no reason why she
+should make any explanation of her will to those who were in her
+service. The Queen raised her and embraced her, with the tears in her
+eyes, and led her by the hand to Talanque, saying,--
+
+"'Thou shalt be my lord, and the lord of my land, which is a very great
+kingdom; and, for thy sake, this island shall change the custom which
+for a very long time it has preserved, so that the natural generations
+of men and women shall succeed henceforth, in place of the order in
+which the men have been separated so long. And if you have here any
+friend whom you greatly love, who is of the same rank with you, let him
+be betrothed to my sister here, and no long time shall pass, before,
+with thy help, she shall be queen of a great land.'
+
+"Talanque greatly loved Maneli the Prudent, both because they were
+brothers by birth and because they held the same faith. He led him
+forth, and said to her,--
+
+"'My Queen, since the Emperor, my lord, loves this knight as much as he
+loves me, and as much as I love thee, take him, and do with him as you
+would do by me.'
+
+"'Then, I ask,' said she, 'that we, accepting your religion, may become
+your wives.'
+
+"Then the Emperor Esplandian and the several Kings, seeing their wishes
+thus confirmed, took the Queen and her sister to the chapel, turned them
+into Christians, and espoused them to those two so famous knights,--and
+thus they converted all who were in the fleet. And immediately they gave
+order, so that Talanque, taking the fleet of Don Galaor, his father, and
+Maneli that of King Cildadan, with all their people, garnished and
+furnished with all things necessary, set sail with their wives,
+plighting their faith to the Emperor, that, if he should need any help
+from them, they would give it as to their own brother.
+
+"What happened to them afterwards, I must be excused from telling; for
+they passed through many very strange achievements of the greatest
+valor, they fought many battles, and gained many kingdoms, of which if
+we should give the story, there would be danger that we should never
+have done."
+
+With this tantalizing statement, California and the Queen of California
+pass from romance and from history. But, some twenty-five years after
+these words were written and published by Garcia Ordoñez de Montalvo,
+Cortés and his braves happened upon the peninsula, which they thought an
+island, which stretches down between the Gulf of California and the sea.
+This romance of Esplandian was the yellow-covered novel of their day;
+Talanque and Maneli were their Aramis and Athos. "Come," said some one,
+"let us name the new island California: perhaps some one will find gold
+here yet, and precious stones." And so, from the romance, the peninsula,
+and the gulf, and afterwards the State, got their name. And they have
+rewarded the romance by giving to it in these later days the fame of
+being godmother of a great republic.
+
+The antiquarians of California have universally, we believe, recognized
+this as the origin of her name, since Mr. Hale called attention to this
+rare romance. As, even now, there are not perhaps half a dozen copies of
+it in America, we have transferred to our pages every word which belongs
+to that primeval history of California and her Queen.
+
+
+
+
+THE BROTHER OF MERCY.
+
+
+    Piero Luca, known of all the town
+    As the gray porter by the Pitti wall
+    Where the noon shadows of the gardens fall,
+    Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down
+    His last sad burden, and beside his mat
+    The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat.
+
+    Unseen, in square and blossoming garden drifted,
+    Soft sunset lights through green Val d'Arno sifted;
+    Unheard, below the living shuttles shifted
+    Backward and forth, and wove, in love or strife,
+    In mirth or pain, the mottled web of life:
+    But when at last came upward from the street
+    Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet,
+    The sick man started, strove to rise in vain,
+    Sinking back heavily with a moan of pain.
+    And the monk said, "'T is but the Brotherhood
+    Of Mercy going on some errand good:
+    Their black masks by the palace-wall I see."--
+    Piero answered faintly, "Woe is me!
+    This day for the first time in forty years
+    In vain the bell hath sounded in my ears,
+    Calling me with my brethren of the mask,
+    Beggar and prince alike, to some new task
+    Of love or pity,--haply from the street
+    To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, with feet
+    Hushed to the quickened ear and feverish brain,
+    To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors,
+    Down the long twilight of the corridors,
+    'Midst tossing arms and faces full of pain.
+    I loved the work: it was its own reward.
+    I never counted on it to offset
+    My sins, which are many, or make less my debt
+    To the free grace and mercy of our Lord;
+    But somehow, father, it has come to be
+    In these long years so much a part of me,
+    I should not know myself, if lacking it,
+    But with the work the worker too would die,
+    And in my place some other self would sit
+    Joyful or sad,--what matters, if not I?
+    And now all's over. Woe is me!"--"My son,"
+    The monk said soothingly, "thy work is done;
+    And no more as a servant, but the guest
+    Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest.
+    No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost
+    Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt sit down
+    Clad in white robes, and wear a golden crown
+    Forever and forever."--Piero tossed
+    On his sick pillow: "Miserable me!
+    I am too poor for such grand company;
+    The crown would be too heavy for this gray
+    Old head; and God forgive me, if I say
+    It would be hard to sit there night and day,
+    Like an image in the Tribune, doing nought
+    With these hard hands, that all my life have wrought,
+    Not for bread only, but for pity's sake.
+    I'm dull at prayers: I could not keep awake,
+    Counting my beads. Mine's but a crazy head,
+    Scarce worth the saving, if all else be dead.
+    And if one goes to heaven without a heart,
+    God knows he leaves behind his better part.
+    I love my fellow-men; the worst I know
+    I would do good to. Will death change me so
+    That I shall sit among the lazy saints,
+    Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints
+    Of souls that suffer? Why, I never yet
+    Left a poor dog in the _strada_ hard beset,
+    Or ass o'erladen! Must I rate man less
+    Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness?
+    Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin!)
+    The world of pain were better, if therein
+    One's heart might still be human, and desires
+    Of natural pity drop upon its fires
+    Some cooling tears."
+                         Thereat the pale monk crossed
+    His brow, and muttering, "Madman! thou art lost!"
+    Took up his pyx and fled; and, left alone,
+    The sick man closed his eyes with a great groan
+    That sank into a prayer, "Thy will be done!"
+
+    Then was he made aware, by soul or ear,
+    Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er him,
+    And of a voice like that of her who bore him,
+    Tender and most compassionate: "Be of cheer!
+    For heaven is love, as God himself is love;
+    Thy work below shall be thy work above."
+    And when he looked, lo! in the stern monk's place
+    He saw the shining of an angel's face!
+
+
+
+
+AMBASSADORS IN BONDS.
+
+
+Mr. Deane walked into church on Easter Sunday, followed by a trophy.
+This trophy had once been a chattel, but was now, as Mr. Deane assured
+him, a man. Scarcely a shade darker than Mr. Deane himself as to
+complexion, in figure quite as prepossessing, in bearing not less erect,
+he passed up the north aisle of St. Peter's to the square pew of the
+most influential of the wardens, who was also the first man of the
+Church Musical Committee.
+
+The old church was beautiful with its floral decorations on this
+festival. The altar shone with sacramental silver, and rare was the
+music that quickened the hearts of the great congregation to harmonious
+tunefulness. The boys in their choral, Miss Ives in her solos, above
+all, the organist, in voluntary, prelude, and accompaniment, how
+glorious! If a soul in the church escaped thankfulness in presence of
+those flowers, in hearing of that music, I know not by what force it
+could have been conducted that bright morning to the feet of Love. It
+was "a day of days."
+
+To the trophy of Deane this scene must have been strangely new. No
+doubt, he had before now sat in a church, a decorated church, a church
+where music had much to do with the service. But never under such
+circumstances had he stood, sat, knelt, taking part in the worship, a
+man among men. Of this Mr. Deane was thinking; and his brain, not very
+imaginative, was taxed to conceive the conception of freedom a man must
+obtain under precisely these circumstances.
+
+But the man in question was thinking thoughts as widely diverse from
+these attributed to him as one could easily imagine. Of himself, and his
+position, scarcely at all. And when he thought, he smiled; but the
+gravity, the abstraction into which he repeatedly lapsed, seemed to say
+for him that freedom was to him more than he knew what to do with. No
+volubility of joy, no laughter, no manifested exultation in deliverance
+from bondage: 't was a rare case; must one believe his eyes?
+
+Probably the constraint of habit was upon the fugitive, the contraband.
+Homesickness in spite of him, it might be. Oh, surely freedom was not
+bare to him as a winter-rifled tree? Not a bud of promise swelling along
+the dreary waste of tortuous branches? Possibly some ties had been
+ruptured in making his escape, which must be knit again before he could
+enter into the joy he had so fairly won. For you and me it would hardly
+be perfect happiness to feast at great men's tables, while the faces we
+love best, the dear, the sacred faces, grow gaunt from starvation.
+
+Mr. Deane took to himself some glory in consequence of his late
+achievements. He was a practical man, and his theories were now being
+put to a test that gave him some proud satisfaction. The attitude he
+assumed not many hours ago in reference to the organist has added to his
+consciousness of weight, and to-day he has taken as little pleasure as
+became him in the choir's performance. Now and then a strain besieged
+him, but none could carry that stout heart, or overthrow that nature,
+the wonder of pachydermata. Generally through the choral service he
+retained his seat; a significant glance now and then, that involved the
+man beside him, was the only evidence he gave that the music much
+impressed him; but this evidence, to one who should understand, was
+all-sufficient.
+
+Meanwhile the object of these glances sat apparently lost in vacuity, or
+patiently waiting the end of the services,--when all at once, during the
+hymn, he sprang to his feet; at the same moment two or three beside him
+felt as if they had experienced an electric shock. What was it? A voice
+joined the soprano singer in one single strain, brief as the best joy,
+but also as decisive. Ninety-nine hundredths of the congregation never
+heard it, and the majority of those that did could hardly have felt
+assured of the hearing; there were, in fact, but three persons among
+them all who were absolutely certain of their ears. One was this
+contraband; another an artist who stood at the foot of one of the
+aisles, leaning against a great stone pillar; the third was, of course,
+Sybella Ives.
+
+She, the soprano, sang from that moment in a seeming rapture. The artist
+listened in a sort of maze,--interpreting aright what he had heard,
+disappointed at its brevity, but waiting on in a kind of wonder through
+canticle, hymn, and gloria, in a deep abasement that had struck the
+singer dumb, could she above there have known what was going on here
+below.
+
+When the singing was over he went away as he had purposed, but it was
+only to the steps of the church. There he sat until he heard a stir
+within announcing that the services were ended, when he walked away. But
+the first person who had heard and understood that voice heard nothing
+after. He was continually waiting for it, but he had no further sign.
+Once his attention was for a moment turned towards the preacher, who was
+dwelling on St. Paul's allusion to himself as an ambassador in bonds; he
+looked at that instant towards Mr. Deane, who, it happened, was at the
+same moment gazing uneasily at him. After that his eyes did not wander
+any more, and from his impassive face it was impossible to discover what
+his thoughts might be.
+
+To go back now a day or two.
+
+
+II.
+
+A pleasant sound of young voices, that became subdued as the children
+passed from street to church-yard, rose from the shadowy elm-walk and
+floated up through the branches towards the window of the organist, who
+seemed to have been waiting some such summons, for she now threw aside
+the manuscript music she had been studying, arrayed herself in her
+shawl, threw a scarf around her head, and looked at the clock. Straight
+she gazed at it, a moment full, before she seemed instructed in the fact
+represented on the dial-plate, thinking still, most likely, of the score
+she had been revising. Some thought at least as profound, as
+unfathomable, and as immeasurable as was thereon represented, possessed
+her, as she now, with a glance around the room, retired from it.
+
+With herself in the apartment it was another sort of place from what it
+looked when she had left it.
+
+There were three pictures on the wall,--three, and no more. One was a
+copy of the lovely portraiture of Milton's musical inspired youth; the
+wonderful eyes, the "breezy hair," the impassioned purity of the
+countenance, looked down on the place where the musician might be found
+three-fourths of her waking hours, at her piano. In other parts of the
+room, opposite each other, were pictures of the Virgin ever-blessed!
+conquering, crowned.
+
+In the first she stood with foot upon the Serpent, that lay coiled on
+the apex of the globe. She had crushed the Destroyer; the world was free
+of its monster. Beneath her shone the crescent moon, whose horns were
+sharp as swords. Rays of blessing, streaming from her hands, revealed
+the Mother of grace and of all benefaction.
+
+Opposite, her apotheosis. A chariot of clouds was bearing her to her
+throne in heaven; the loving head was shining with a light that paled
+the stars above her; far down were the crags of earth, the fearful
+precipices that lead the weary and adventurous toiler to at last but
+narrow prospects. Far away now the conquered Devil, and the conquered
+world,--the foot was withdrawn from destructions,--the writhing of the
+Enemy was felt now no more.
+
+The organist had bought these pictures for her wall when she had paid
+her first month's board in this her present abiding-place.
+
+Towards the centre of the room stood her piano, an instrument of finest
+tone, whose incasing you would not be likely to admire or observe.
+
+White matting covered the floor. Heaps of music were upon the table and
+the piano. There were few books to indicate the taste or studies of the
+owner beside these sheets and volumes of music, and they were
+everywhere. All that ever was written for organ or piano seemed to have
+found its way in at the door of that chamber.
+
+On a pedestal in the window stood an orange-tree, whose blossoms filled
+the room with their bright, soft sweetness; a Parian vase held a bouquet
+of flowers, gathered, none could question whether for the woman whose
+room they decorated.
+
+One window of this room looked out on a busy street, another into the
+church-yard, a third upon the sea: not so remote the sea but one could
+hear the breaking of its waves, and watch its changing glory.
+
+Thus she had for "influences" the loneliness of the grave,--for the
+church-yard was filled with monuments of a past generation,--the
+solitude of the ocean, and the busy street. Was she so involved in
+duties, or in cares, as to be unmindful of all these diverse tongues
+that told their various story in that lofty and lonely apartment of the
+old stone house?
+
+Into the church, equally old and gray, covered with ivy, shadowed even
+to the roof by the vast branching and venerable trees, she now
+went,--and was not too early. The boys were growing restless, though it
+needed but the sound of her coming to reduce them all to silence: when
+they saw her enter the church-door, they all went down quietly to their
+places, opened their books, and no one could mistake their aspect for
+constraint. Here was the bright, beautiful, enthusiasm and blissful
+confidence of youth.
+
+A few words, and all were in working order. The organist touched the
+keys. Then a solemn softness, beautiful to see, overspread the young
+faces. It had never been otherwise since she began to teach them. If she
+controlled, it was not by exhibition of authority.
+
+"Begin."
+
+At that word, with one consent, the voices struck the first notes of the
+carol,--
+
+    "Let the merry church-bells ring,
+      Hence with tears and sighing;
+    Frost and cold have fled from spring,
+      Life hath conquered dying;
+    Flowers are smiling, fields are gay,
+      Sunny is the weather;
+    With our rising Lord to-day
+      All things rise together."
+
+From strain to strain they bore it along till the old church was glad.
+How must the birds in the nests of the great elm-branches have rejoiced!
+And the ivy-vines, did they not cling more closely to the gray stone
+walls, as if they, too, had something at stake in the music? for they
+were the children of the church who sang those strains. Among the
+wonder-working little company within there was no loitering, no
+laughing, no twitching of coat-sleeves on the sly, no malicious
+interruptions: all were alert, earnest, conscientious. They sang with a
+zeal that brought smiles to the face of the organist.
+
+Two or three songs, carols, anthems, and the lesson was over. Now for
+the reward. It came promptly, and was worth more than the gifts of
+others.
+
+"You have all done excellently well. I knew you would. If I had found
+myself mistaken, it would have been a great disappointment. 'T is a
+great thing to be able to sing such verses as if you were eye-witnesses
+of what you repeat. That is precisely what you do. Now you may go. Go
+quietly."
+
+She looked at them all as she spoke; it was a broad, comprehensive
+glance, but they all felt individualized by it. Then they came, the six
+lads, with their bright, handsome faces, pride of a mother's heart every
+one, and took her hand, and carried away, each one, her kiss upon his
+forehead. Not one of them but had been blest beyond expression in the
+few half-hours they had been gathered under the instruction of the
+organist. So they went off, carrying her precious praise with them.
+
+They had scarcely gone, and the organist was yet searching for a sheet
+of music, when a step was in the aisle, noiseless, rapid, and a young
+girl came into the singers' seat.
+
+"Am I too early?" she asked,--for her welcome was not immediate, and her
+courtesy was not just now of the quality that overlooked a seeming lack
+of it in others. Miss Ives was slightly out of tune.
+
+"Not at all," was the answer. Still it was spoken in a very preoccupied
+way that might have been provoking,--that would depend on the mood of
+the person addressed; and that mood, as we know, was not sun-clear or
+marble-smooth. The organist had now found the music she was looking for,
+and proceeded to play it from the first page to the last, without
+vouchsafing an instant's recognition of the singer's presence.
+
+When she had finished, she sat a moment silent; then she turned straight
+toward Miss Ives, and smiled, and it was a smile that could atone for
+any amount of seeming incivility.
+
+But not even David, by mere sweep of harp-string, soothed
+self-beleaguered Saul.
+
+Teacher and pupil did not seem to understand each other as it was best
+such women should. For, let the swaying, surging hosts throughout the
+valley deliver themselves as they can from the confusion of tongues, the
+wanderers among the mountains _ought_ to understand the signals _they_
+see flaring from crag and gorge and pinnacle.
+
+Too many shadowy folds were in the mystery that hung about each of these
+women to satisfy the other: reticence too cold, independence too
+extreme, self-possession too entire. Why was neither summoned, in a
+frank, impulsive way, to take up the burden of the other? Was nothing
+ever to penetrate the seven-walled solitude in which the organist chose
+to intrench herself? Was nobody ever to bid roses bloom on the colorless
+face of the singer, and bring smiles, the veritable smiles of youth, and
+of happiness, into those large, steady, joyless eyes?
+
+But now, while the organist played, and Sybella sat down, supposing she
+was not wanted yet, she found herself not withdrawn into the
+indifference she supposed. Presently far more was given than she either
+looked for or desired.
+
+The music that was being played was indeed wonderful. This was not for
+the delight of children: no happy sprite with dancing feet could
+maintain this measure. It was music for the most advanced, enlightened
+intelligence,--for the soul that music had quickened to far depths,--for
+the heart that had suffered, triumphed, and gained the kingdom of
+calm,--for a wisdom riper even than Sybella's.
+
+An audience of a hundred souls would infallibly have gabbled their way
+through the silence that would _naturally_ gather round those tones. Put
+Sybella in the midst of such an audience, and you would understand her
+better than I hope now to make her understood; for the torture of the
+moment would have been of the quality that has demonstration.
+
+As it was, she now sat silently, as silently as the organist sat in her
+place; but when all was over, she turned to look at the magician.
+Sybella had passed through fearful agitation in the beginning and
+throughout the greater part of the performance, but now she quietly
+said,--
+
+"That is the one sole composition of its author."
+
+"Why do you say so?" asked the organist, whom people in general called
+Miss Edgar.
+
+"Because, of course, everything is in it,--I mean the best of everything
+that could be in one soul. If the composer wrote more, it was
+fragmentary and repetitious. If you played it, Miss Edgar, to put me in
+a better voice for singing than I had when I came in, I think you have
+succeeded. I can almost imagine how Jenny Lind felt, when her voice came
+back to her."
+
+"We shall soon see that. I don't know that the music has ever been
+played on an organ before. But you see it is a rare production,--little
+known,--a book of the Law not read out of the sacred place. Let us try
+that prayer again. You will sing it differently to-day,--I see it in
+your face."
+
+_"Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us!"_
+
+Something _had_ happened to the voice that sang. Never had the organist
+heard such tones from it before; there was volume, depth, purity, such
+as had been unheard by those who thought they knew the quality and
+compass of Sybella's voice.
+
+The organist could not forbear turning and looking at her as she sang.
+Great, evidently, was her emotion. This nature that had been in bonds
+manifestly had eschewed the bondage. Was the organist glad thereat?
+Whose praise would be on everybody's lips on Sunday, if Sybella sang
+like this? Are women and men generally pleased to hear the praises of a
+rival? You have had full hearing, generous, more than patient; do you
+feel a thrill of the old rapture, a kindling of the old enthusiasm, when
+you hear the praises of the young new-comer, who has reached you with a
+stride, and will pass you at a bound? Since this may be in human nature,
+say "Yes" to the catechist. For the organist returned to her duties with
+a brightened face, she touched the keys with new power. Then, again,--
+
+_"Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father!"_
+
+Had this girl the vision--"Not far from any one of us"?
+
+"I thought so," said the organist. "You come forth at last. This is what
+I expected, when I overheard you instructing the children in the
+Sunday-school. Now all that is justified, but you have been a long while
+about it,--or I have. It seems the right chord wasn't struck. I made
+these adaptations on purpose for the voice I expected of you."
+
+"Is not the arrangement a new one, Mrs. Edgar?" asked a voice from one
+of the aisles. "It is perfect."
+
+"It is a new adaptation, Mr. Muir, and I think Miss Ives will hardly
+improve on her first rendering. It is getting late also. It is time to
+look at the hymn."
+
+Mr. Muir, who was the rector of the church, now passed along the aisle
+until he was beyond the voices of the ladies in the choir, and then he
+stood, during the rehearsal of the Easter hymn,--
+
+    "Christ the Lord is risen to-day."
+
+One repetition of these verses, and the rehearsal was at an end. Never
+was such before in that place. Never before in reality had organist of
+St. Peter's attempted so much. When the choir came together for an
+hour's practice, this would be understood. Miss Ives already understood
+it.
+
+"Now indulge _me_," she said, "if I have been so fortunate as to
+satisfy--satisfy you."
+
+In consequence of this request the organist kept her place till night
+had actually descended. Out of all oratorios, and from many an opera,
+she brought the immortal graces, and all conceivable renderings of
+passions, fears, and aspirations of men. At last, and as it seemed quite
+suddenly, she broke off, closed the organ-doors and locked them, then
+rose from her place.
+
+A dark figure at the same moment passed up the aisle from the church to
+the vestry-room in the rear, and organist and singer left the church.
+
+
+III.
+
+"I believe," said Sybella, as they went, venturing now, while aglow with
+the music, on what heretofore had been forbidden ground to her,--"I
+believe, if you would sing, I should be struck dumb, just as now, when
+you play, I feel as if I could do anything in song. Why do you never
+show me how a thing should be done by singing it? I've had teachers with
+voices hoarse as crows', who did it; and I profited, for I understood
+better what they meant. It seems to me to be the natural impulse, and I
+don't know how you control it; for of course you do control it."
+
+That was a venture, felt in all its venturesomeness, answered not with
+encouragement.
+
+"It is all nonsense," said Miss Edgar.
+
+"I expected you to say so; but 't is a scant covering for the truth. For
+_have_ I never heard you sing? When I was a little girl, my brothers and
+I were sent to some springs in the mountains. While we were there, one
+day a party of people came on horseback. They were very gay, and one of
+them sang. It has come back to me so often, that day! So still, bright,
+and cool! Did you ever hear singing in the Highland solitudes? When I
+sing my best, I always seem to hear that voice again. Do you think I
+never shall?"
+
+"Do _you_ think it possible that such an effect as you describe should
+be repeated? Evidently the outcome of some high-wrought, rapt state of
+your own, rather than the result of any singer's skill. It may happen
+you will never hear a voice like that again. But you may make far better
+melody yourself. If you like my organ-music, don't ask me for better. A
+little instrumental performance is all I have to give."
+
+"But," said Sybella, holding to the point with a persistence that showed
+she would not be lightly baffled, "her face haunted me, too. And I have
+seen it since then,--engraved, I am sure. Sometimes, when I look at you
+suddenly, I seem to take hold upon my childhood again."
+
+They had passed from the yard, and walked, neither of them knew exactly
+whither; but now said the organist abruptly,--
+
+"Why have you never shown me where you live?"
+
+A light that had warmth in it flashed over the pale face of Sybella.
+
+"I will show you now," she said.
+
+And so they walked on together, with a distinct aim,--Sybella the guide.
+She seemed tranquilly happy at this moment, and fain would she lay her
+heart in the hand of the organist; for a great trust had composed the
+heart that long since withdrew its riches from the world, and hid them
+for the coming of one who should take usury. How long he was in coming!
+how strangely long! rare worldliness! almost it seemed that now she
+would wait no longer, for the gold must be given away.
+
+"Why do you sing, Sybella?" asked Miss Edgar, as they went.
+
+"Why did I stop singing?" asked the young lady in turn; this stiff, shy,
+proud creature, what flame might one soon see flaring out of those blue
+eyes!
+
+"I knew there had been a break,--that there must have been."
+
+"For two years I did nothing but wait in silence."
+
+"What,--for the voice to come back? overwork? paying a penalty?"
+
+"No,--not the penalty of overwork, at least. I lost everything in a
+moment. That was penalty, perhaps, for having risked everything. I have
+only recently been getting back a little: no, getting _back_
+nothing,--but some new life, out of a new world, I think. A different
+world from what I ever thought to inhabit. New to me as the earth was to
+Noah after the Flood. He couldn't turn a spade but he laid open graves,
+nor pull a flower but it broke his heart. I should never have been in
+the church-choir but for you. Of that I am satisfied. When you came and
+asked me, you saw, perhaps, that I was excited more than so slight a
+matter warranted. It was, indeed, a simple enough request. Not
+surprising that you should discover, one way or another, I could sing.
+And there was need enough of a singer with such an organist. But you
+never could guess what I went through after I had promised, till the
+Sunday came. You remember how astonished you were when I came into the
+choir. I was afraid you were going to excuse me from my part. But you at
+least understood something of it; you did not even ask if I were not
+ill. It seems a long time since then."
+
+A little to the organist's surprise, it was into a broad and handsome
+street that Sybella now led the way, and before the door of a very
+handsome house she stopped.
+
+"Will you not come in and discover where I live, and how? It will be too
+late in a moment for you to go back alone. I shall find somebody to
+attend you."
+
+"In the ten months I have played the organ of St. Peter's Church I have
+not entered another person's dwelling than my own. I set aside a purpose
+that must still be rigidly held, for you. Possibly you may incur some
+danger in receiving me."
+
+"Come in," said Sybella; and she led the way into the house. For one
+instant she had looked her surprise at Miss Edgar's last words, but not
+for half an instant did she look the hesitation such words might have
+occasioned.
+
+The house into which they passed did not, in truth, look like one to
+suffer in. Walls lined with pictures, ceilings hung with costly
+chandeliers, floors covered with softest, finest carpets of most
+brilliant patterns, this seemed like a place for enjoyment, designed by
+happy hearts. It was: all this wealth, and elaboration of its
+evidences,--this covering of what might have looked like display by the
+careful veil of taste. But the house was the home of orphaned
+children,--of this girl, and three brothers, who were united in their
+love for Sybella, but on few other points. And curious was the
+revelation their love had. For they were worldly men, absorbed in
+various ways by the world, and Sybella lived alone here, as she said,
+though the house was the home of all; for one was now abroad, and one
+was in the army, and one was--who knew where?
+
+In the drawing-room it was about the piano that the evidences of real
+life and actual enjoyment were gathered. Flowers filled a dozen vases
+grouped on tables, ornamenting brackets, flower-stands, and pedestals of
+various kinds. The grand piano seemed the base of a glowing and fragrant
+pyramid; and there, it was easy to see, musical studies by day and by
+night went on.
+
+Straight toward the piano both ladies went.
+
+"Now, for once," said the organist.
+
+Sybella stood a moment doubting, then she turned to a book-rack and
+began to look over some loose sheets of music. Presently desisting, she
+came back. One steady purpose had been in her mind all the while. She
+now sat down and produced from the piano what the organist had
+astonished her by executing in the church. But it seemed a variation.
+
+The work of a moment? an effort of memory? a wonderful recall of what
+she had just now heard? The organist did not imagine such a thing. There
+was, there could be, only one solution to anything so mysterious. She
+came nearer to Sybella; invisible arms of succor seemed flung about the
+girl, who played as she had never played before,--as weeping mortals
+smile, when they are safe in heaven.
+
+When she had finished, many minutes passed before either spoke a word.
+At last Sybella said,--
+
+"He told me there was no written copy of this thing he could secure for
+me, but that I must have it; so he wrote it from memory, and I
+elaborated the idea I had from his description, making some mistakes, I
+find. I am speaking," she added, with a resolution so determined that it
+had almost the sound of defiance,--"I am speaking of Adam von Gelhorn."
+
+"When was this?"
+
+"In our last days."
+
+"He is dead, then?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Three years."
+
+Whether the organist remained here after this, or if other words were
+added to these by the hostess or the guest, there is no report. But I
+can imagine that in such an hour, even between these two, little could
+be said. Yesterday I saw on a monument a little bird perched, quite
+content, and still, so far as song went, as the dead beneath him and
+around me. He was throbbing from far flight; silence and rest were all
+he could now endure. But by-and-by he shook his wings and was off again,
+and nobody that saw him could tell where in the sea of air the voyager
+found his last island of refreshment.
+
+
+IV.
+
+On Miss Edgar's return to her room, as she opened the door, a flood of
+fragrance rolled upon her. She put up her hand in hasty gesture, as if
+to rebuke or resist it, while a shade of displeasure crossed her face.
+On the piano lay a bouquet of flowers, richest in hue and fragrance that
+garden or hot-house knows. All the season's splendor seemed concentrated
+within those narrow bounds.
+
+The gas was already burning from a single jet, which she approached
+without observing the unusual fact, for the organist was accustomed in
+this room herself to control light and darkness.
+
+One glance only was needed to convince her through what avenue this
+flowery gift had come.
+
+Such gifts were offerings of more than common significance. Their
+renewal at this day seemed to disturb the organist as she turned the
+bouquet slowly in her hand and perceived how the old arrangement had
+been adhered to, from passion-flower to camellia, whitest white lily,
+and most delicate of roses; moss and vine-tendril, jessamine,
+heliotrope, violet, ivy: it was a work of Art consummating that of
+Nature, and complete.
+
+With the bouquet in her hand, she went and sat down at the window. It
+was easy to see, by the changes of countenance, that she was fast
+assuming the reins of a resolution. Would the door of the organist of
+St. Peter's never open but to guests ethereal as these? The question was
+somehow asked, and she could not choose but hear it.
+
+If he who sent the gift had pondered it, no less did she. And for
+result, at an early hour the next morning, the lady who had lived her
+life in sovereign independence and an almost absolute solitude, week
+after week these many months here in H----, was on her way to the studio
+of Adam von Gelhorn.
+
+As to the lady, what image has the reader conjured up to fancy? Any
+vision? She was the shadow of a woman. Rachel, in her last days, not
+_more_ ethereal. Two pale-faced, blue-eyed women could not be more
+dissimilar than the organist and her soprano. For the organist plainly
+was herself, with merely an abatement, that might have risen from
+anxiety, work, or study; whatever her disturbance, she made no
+exhibition of it; it was always a tranquil face, and no storms or wrecks
+were discoverable in those deep blue eyes. What those few faint lines on
+her countenance might mean she does not choose you shall interpret;
+therefore attempt it not. But when you look at Sybella, it is sorrow you
+see; and she says as plainly as if you heard her voice,--
+
+"I have come to the great state where I expect nothing and am content."
+
+Yet _content_! _Is_ it content you read in her face, in her smile? Is it
+satisfaction that can gaze out thus upon the world?
+
+It is sorrow rather,--and sorrow, with a questioning thereat, that seems
+prophetic of an answer that shall yet overthrow all the grim deductions,
+and restore the early imaginings, pure hopes, desires, and loving aims.
+
+You will choose to gaze rather after this shadowy vision of the fair,
+golden hair that lies tranquilly on the high and beautiful forehead; the
+face, pale as pallor itself, which seems to have no color, except in
+eyes and lips: the eyes so large and blue; the lips with their story of
+firm courage and true genius, so grand in calm. A figure, however, not
+likely to attract the many, but whom it held for once it held forever.
+
+So the organist came to the room of Adam von Gelhorn.
+
+She knew his working hours and habits, it seemed; at least, she did not
+fail to find him, and at work.
+
+As she stepped forward into the apartment, before whose door she had
+paused a moment, no trace of embarrassment or of irresolution was to be
+seen in face, eye, or movement.
+
+But the artist, who arose from his work, _was_ taken by surprise.
+
+The armor of the world did not suffice to protect him at this moment. He
+was at the mercy of the woman who was here.
+
+"Mrs. Edgar!"
+
+"Adam."
+
+"Here!"
+
+"To thank you for the flowers, and to warn you that setting them in
+deserts is neither safe nor providential."
+
+And now her eyes ran round the room,--a flash in which was sheathed a
+smile of satisfaction and of friendly pride. She had come here full of
+reproaches, but surely there was some enchantment against her.
+
+"You will order a picture, perhaps?" said the artist, restored to at
+least an appearance of ease.
+
+But his eyes did not follow hers. They stopped with her: with some
+misgiving, some doubt, some perplexity, for he knew not perfectly the
+ground on which he stood.
+
+"You have been twice to see me, and both times have missed me," she
+said. "I was sorry for that. I did not know until then that you were
+living here."
+
+"But what does it mean, that nobody in H---- has heard the voice yet? It
+has distracted me to think, perhaps, some harm has come to it."
+
+"Let that fear rest. The voice has had its day. I left it behind me at
+Havre. Any repetition of what we used to imagine were triumphs in the
+wonderful Düsseldorf days would now seem absurd, to the painter of these
+pictures, as to me."
+
+"They were triumphs! Besides, have you forgotten? Was it not in New
+York, in '58, that you imported the voice from Havre, left behind by
+mistake? What more could be asked than to inspire a town with
+enthusiasm, so that the dullest should feel the contagion? They were
+triumphs such as women have seldom achieved. If _you_ disdain them,
+recollect that human nature is still the same, and all that I have done
+is under the inspiration of a voice that broke on me in Düsseldorf, and
+opened heaven. And people find some pleasure in my pictures."
+
+"Well may they! You, also. You have kept that power separate from
+sinners, unless I mistake. If it be my music, or the face yonder, that
+has helped you, or something else, unconfessed, perhaps unknown, you
+can, I perceive, at least love Art worthily, and be constant. As for St.
+Peter's, and myself, I find the fine organ there quite enough, with the
+boys to train and Miss Sybella Ives to instruct. It isn't much I can do
+for her, though; she is already a great and wonderful artist."
+
+"Is it possible you think so!"
+
+Was it really wonder at the judgment she heard in that exclamation? The
+voice sounded void of all except wonder,--yet wonder, perhaps, least of
+all was paramount in the pavilion of his secret thoughts.
+
+"Decidedly. But I only engaged there as organist. I find sufficient
+pleasure instructing the young lady, without feeling ambitious to appear
+there as her rival."
+
+"But you know she is not a professional singer": these words escaped the
+artist in spite of him. "She is an heiress of one of the wealthiest old
+families of this old town."
+
+"Nevertheless, she is growing so rarely in these days I would not for
+the world check that growth, as I see I might. Besides, I am selfish;
+it's best for _me_ to keep to my engagement, and not volunteer
+anything."
+
+"And so we who have memories must rest content with them. I am glad you
+tell me, if it must be so. I have not haunted you, and I feel as if I
+almost deserved your thanks on that account. I've haunted the church,
+though, but"----
+
+"Well."
+
+"Miss Ives sings better than she did,--too well for such a girl in such
+a place."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, as I said before, neither Art nor fortune justifies her, and
+what she gets will spoil her."
+
+He ended in confusion; some thought unexpressed overthrew him just here,
+and he could not instantly gather himself up again.
+
+"Do not fear," was the calm answer. "She is sacredly safe from that,--as
+safe as I am. For so young a person, she is rich in safeguards, though
+she seems to be alone; and she is brave enough to use them. If you come
+to the church to-morrow, you will be converted from the error of some of
+your worst thoughts."
+
+"I told you in secret once, Heaven knows under what insane infatuation,
+what I could tell you now with husband or child for audience,--there is,
+there has ever been, but one voice for me."
+
+For answer the organist lifted the lid of the artist's piano, touched a
+few notes, and sang.
+
+Was that the voice that once brought out the applause of the people,
+rushing and roaring like the waves of the sea?
+
+The same, etherealized, strengthened,--meeting the desire of the trained
+and cultured man, as once it had the impassioned aspiration of youth.
+
+He stood there, as of old, completely subject to her will; and of old
+she had worked for good, as one of God's accredited angels. Every evil
+passion in those days had stood rebuked before the charmed circle of her
+influences: a voice to long for as the hart longs for the water-brooks;
+a spirit to trust for work, or for love, or for truth,--"truest truth,"
+and stanchest loyalty, as one might trust those who are delivered
+forever from the power of temptation.
+
+When she had ended the song, she had indeed ended. Not one note more.
+Closing the piano, she walked about the room, looking at his pictures
+one after another, pausing long before some, but the silence in which
+she made the circuit was unbroken.
+
+At last she came to the last-painted picture, where a soldier lay dying,
+with glory on his face, victory in his eyes. Beside this she remained.
+
+"There's many a realization of that dream," she said.
+
+The words seemed to sting the artist as though she had said instead,
+"Here's one who is in no danger of realizing it."
+
+"I thought," said he, "I might one day prove for myself the emotions
+attributed to that soldier."
+
+She hesitated before answering. A vision rose before her,--a vision of
+fields covered with the slain, unburied dead. Here the paths of honor
+were cut short by the grave. She looked at Adam von Gelhorn. Here was no
+warrior except for courage, no knight but for chivalry. Yet how proudly
+his eyes met hers! What was this glance that seemed suddenly to fall
+upon her from some unbroken, awful height? It was a great thing to say,
+with the knowledge that came with that glance,--
+
+"Do you no longer think so? Patriotism has its tests. This war will be
+long enough to sift enthusiasms."
+
+Humbly he answered,--
+
+"I wait my time."
+
+Then, urged on by two motives, distinct, yet confluent, and so
+all-powerful,--
+
+"Strange army, Adam, if all the soldiers waited for it."
+
+He answered her as mildly as before, but with quite as deep assurance,--
+
+"Not a man of them but has heard his name called. The time of a man is
+his own. The trumpet sounds, and though he were dead, yet shall he
+live."
+
+"And do you wait that sound? Then verily you may remain here safely, and
+paint fine pictures of wounded men on awful battle-fields."
+
+The artist looked at the woman. Did she speak to test his patience, or
+his courage, or his loyalty? Gravely he answered, true to himself,
+though baffled in his endeavor to read what she chose to conceal,--
+
+"Once I took everything you said as if you were inspired, for I believed
+you were. For years I have been accustomed to think of your approval,
+and wait for it, and long for it; for I always knew you would finally
+stand here in the midst of my work as the one thing that should prove to
+me it was good. If you could only know what sort of value I have set on
+the praise of critics while waiting for yours, you would deem me
+ungrateful. But I knew you would come. You are here, then,--and I
+perceive, though you do not say so, that I have not wasted time; often,
+while I was painting that hero yonder, I said to myself, 'Better die
+than hold on to life or self a moment after the voice calls!' Julia, it
+has called!"
+
+This was spoken quietly enough, but with the deep feeling that seeks
+neither outlet nor consolation in sound. Having spoken, he went up to
+his easel, cut away the canvas with long, even knife-strokes, set aside
+the frame. He was ready. And now he waited further orders,--looking at
+the woman who had accomplished so much.
+
+She did not, by gesture or word, interrupt him; but when he stood
+absolutely motionless and silent, as if more were to be said, and by
+her, she evidently faltered.
+
+"Give me the canvas," she said.
+
+"Your trophy."
+
+He gave it her with a smile.
+
+"No; but if a trophy, worth more than could be told.
+There's nobler work for you to do than painting pictures.
+Atonement,--reconciliation,--sacrifice."
+
+"Where? when? how?"
+
+He put these questions with a distinctness that required answer.
+
+"Your heart will tell you."
+
+He _had_ his answer.
+
+"And the portrait yonder, that will tell you. It is not hers, you will
+say. But it is not mine, nor a vision, except as you have glorified her.
+In spite of yourself, you are true. And in spite of herself, Sybella
+believes in you."
+
+"Such a collection of incoherent fragments from the lips of an artist
+accustomed to treat of unities,--it is incomprehensible."
+
+So the painter began; but he ended,--
+
+"When I come back from battle, I will think of what you say. I do
+believe in my own integrity as firmly as I trust my loyalty."
+
+There was a rare gentleness in the man's voice that seemed to say that
+mists were rising to envelop the summits of the mountains, and he looked
+forth, not to the bald heights, but along the purple heather-reaches,
+where any human feet might walk, finding pleasant paths, fair flowers,
+cool shades, and blessed reflections of heaven.
+
+
+V.
+
+The rector of St. Peter's sat in the vestry-room, which he used for his
+study, when there came an interruption to the even tenor of his orthodox
+thinking.
+
+Whoever sought him did so with a determination that carried the various
+doors between him and the study, and at last came the knock, of which he
+sat in momentary dread. It expressed the outsider so imperatively, that
+the minister at once laid aside his pen, and opened the door. And, alas!
+it was Saturday, P. M.,--Easter at hand!
+
+He should have been glad, of course, of the cordial hand-grasp with
+which his stanch supporter, Gerald Deane, saluted him; but he had been
+interrupted in necessary work, and his face betrayed him. It told
+unqualified surprise, that, at such an hour, he had the honor of a visit
+from the warden.
+
+The warden, however, was absorbed in his own business to an extent that
+prevented him from seeing what the minister's mood might be. He began to
+speak the moment he had thrown himself into the arm-chair opposite Mr.
+Muir.
+
+"Do you know," said he, "what sort of person we've got here in our
+organist?"
+
+Indignant was the speaker's voice, and indignant were his eyes; he spoke
+quick, breathed hard, showed all the signs of violent emotion.
+
+The minister's bland face had a puzzled expression, as he answered,--
+
+"A first-rate musician, Deane,--and a lady. That's about the extent of
+my information."
+
+"A Rebel! and the wife of a Rebel!" was Deane's wrathful answer.
+
+Hitherto, what had he not said or done in the way of supporting the
+organist?
+
+"A Rebel?" exclaimed the minister, thrown suddenly off his guard.
+
+He might have heard calumny uttered against one under his tender care by
+the way that single word burst from him.
+
+"The wife of a Rebel general, and a spy!"
+
+Deane's voice made one think of the Inquisition, and of inevitable
+forfeitures, unfailing executions of unrelenting judgments.
+
+"For a spy, she makes poor use of her advantages," said the minister.
+"She's never anywhere, that I can learn, except in the church and her
+own room."
+
+"I dare say anybody will believe that whom she chooses to _have_ believe
+it. How do you or I know what she is? or where? or what she does? We're
+not the kind of men for her to take into confidence. She is evidently
+shrewd enough to see that it wouldn't be safe to tamper with _us_! But
+we must get rid of her, or we shall have the organ demolished and the
+church about our ears. Let the mob once suspect that we employ a spy
+here to do our music for us, and see what our chance would be! There's
+no use asking for proof. There's a young man in my storehouse, a
+contraband, who recognized her somewhere in the street this morning, and
+_he_ says she is the wife of the Rebel General Edgar; and if it's true,
+and there's no question about that, _I_ say she ought to be arrested."
+
+"Pooh! pooh!"--the minister was thrown off his guard, and failed to
+estimate aright the kind of patriotism he bluffed off with so little
+ceremony;--"the negro"----
+
+"Negro! face as white as mine, Sir! Well, yes, negro, I suppose,--slave,
+any way,--do you want him summoned in here? Do you want to see him? He
+gives his testimony intelligently enough. Or shall we send for Mrs.
+Edgar? For it's high time _she_ were thrown on her own resources,
+instead of being maintained at our expense for the benefit of the
+enemy."
+
+Precisely as he finished speaking sounded a peal from the great organ,
+and Mr. Deane just half understood the look on the minister's face as he
+turned from him to listen.
+
+A better understanding would have kept him silent longer; but, unable to
+control himself, he said,--
+
+"We're buying that at too high a price. Better go back to drunken
+Mallard,--a great sight better. McClellan would tell us so; so would
+Jeff Davis."
+
+"What can be done?" asked the minister.
+
+Never had that good man looked and felt so helpless as at this moment.
+His words, and still more his look, vexed and surprised the ever-ready
+Deane.
+
+"Exactly what would be done, if the woman played fifty times worse, and
+looked like a beggar. A medium performer with an ugly visage would not
+find us stumbling against duty. No respect should be shown to persons,
+when such a charge is brought up. The facts must be tested, and Miss
+Edgar--What's the reason she never owned she was a Mrs.?"
+
+"Why, Deane, did you ever hear me address her or speak of her in any
+other way? I knew she was a married woman."
+
+"Did you know she had a husband living, too?"
+
+"No."
+
+Mr. Muir spoke as if it were beneath him to suppose that use was to be
+made, to the damage of the woman, of such acknowledgment.
+
+"It don't look well that people in general are ignorant of the fact. I
+tell you it's suspicious. It strikes me I never heard _anybody_ call
+her anything but Miss Edgar. Excuse me; of course you knew better."
+
+"Yes, and some beside myself. She told me she was a married woman. But
+really, Deane, we couldn't expect, especially of a woman who has been
+living for months, as it seems to me, in absolute retirement, that she
+should go about making explanations in regard to her private affairs. I
+have inferred, I confess, that she had in some unfortunate manner
+terminated her union with her husband; and I have always hoped that her
+coming here might prove a providential, happy thing,--that somehow she
+might find her way out of trouble, and resume, what has evidently been
+broken off, a peaceful and happy life. She is familiar with happiness."
+
+"Well, Sir!" Deane exploded on the preacher's mildness, of which he had
+grown in the last few seconds terribly impatient, "I don't know how far
+Christian charity may go,--a great way farther, it seems, than it need
+to, if it will submit to the impertinence of a traitor's coming among us
+and accepting our support, at the same time that she takes advantage of
+her sex and position to betray us. For _that_ business stands just where
+it did before. There isn't the slightest doubt that she will find
+abettors enough who are as false and daring and impudent as herself.
+Whether we shall suffer them is a question, it seems. Excuse my plain
+speaking, but I am surprised all round."
+
+"No more than I am, Mr. Deane. It is, as you say, our duty immediately
+to examine into this business; but we cannot, look at it as you will, we
+cannot do so with too much caution. It is a disagreeable errand for a
+man to undertake. Let us at least defer judgment for the present. I will
+speak to Mrs. Edgar about it myself, and communicate the result
+immediately to you. Do you prefer to remain here till I return?"
+
+He arose as he spoke, but Deane rose also. It had at last penetrated the
+brain of this most shrewd, but also very dull man, that the business
+might be conducted with courtesy, and that a little skill might manage
+it as effectually as a good deal of courage.
+
+"No, no," he said; "he could trust the business to the minister. Liked
+to do so, of course. If there was any shame or remorse in the woman, Mr.
+Muir was the proper person to deal with it."
+
+And so Deane retired.
+
+But when he was gone, the minister stood listening to his departing
+steps as long as they could be heard; then he sat down in his
+study-chair, and seemed in no haste to go about the business with which
+he stood commissioned.
+
+Still the organ-music wandered through the church. Prayer of Moses,
+Miserere, De Profundis, the Voice of One crying in the Wilderness, a
+Song in the Night, the darkness of desolation rifted only by the cry for
+deliverance, tragic human experience, exhausted human hope, and dying
+faith,--he seemed to interpret the sounds as they swept from the
+organ-loft and wandered darkly down the nave among the great stone
+pillars, till they stood, a dismal congregation, at the low door of the
+vestry-room, pleading with him for her who sent them thither, and
+astounding him by the hot calumniation that preceded them.
+
+At last, for he was a man to _do_ his duty, in spite of whatsoever
+shrinking,--and if this accusation were true, it would be indeed hard to
+forgive, impossible to overlook the offence,--the minister walked out
+from the vestry into the church.
+
+The organist must have heard him coming, for she broke off suddenly, and
+dismissed the boy who worked the bellows, at the same moment herself
+rising to depart.
+
+Just then the minister ascended the steps that led into the choir.
+
+She had no purpose to remain a moment, and merely paused for civil
+speech, choosing, however, that he should see she was detained.
+
+He did not accept the signs, and, with his usual grave deference to the
+will of others in things trivial, allow her to pass. He said,
+instead,--
+
+"Mrs. Edgar, I wish you might give me a moment, though I do not see how
+what I have undertaken can be said in that length of time. I choose that
+you should hear from one who wishes you nothing but good the strange
+story that troubles me."
+
+"I remain, Mr. Muir," was the answer; and she sat down.
+
+The subject was too disagreeable for him to dally with it. If the charge
+were a true one, no consideration was due; if untrue, the sooner that
+was made apparent, the better.
+
+"It is said that the organist of St. Peter's is not as loyal a citizen
+of the United States as might be hoped by those who admire and trust her
+most; and not only so, but that she is the wife of a Rebel leader, and
+in communication with Rebels. It sounds harsh, but I speak as a friend.
+I do not credit these things; but they're said, and I repeat them to
+relieve others of what they might deem a duty."
+
+Swiftly on his words came her answer.
+
+"You have not believed it, Sir?"
+
+Looking at her, it was the easiest thing for the minister to feel and
+say,--and, oh, how he wished for Deane!--
+
+"Not one word of it, Madam."
+
+"That is sufficient,--sufficient, at least, for me. But do they, does
+any one, desire that I should take the oath of fealty to the
+Constitution and to the Government? I am ready to do either, or both. I
+hardly reverence the Constitution more than I do the man who is at the
+head of our affairs. To me he is the hero of this age."
+
+The minister smiled,--a cordial smile, right trustful, cordial, glad.
+
+"It may be well," said he. "These are strange days to live in, and we
+all abhor suspicion of our loyalty. Besides, it may be necessary; for
+suspicion of this character is an ungovernable passion now. For myself,
+I should never have asked these questions; but it is merely right that
+you should know the whole truth. A person who reports of himself that he
+has escaped from Charleston avers that he has recognized in the organist
+of St. Peter's the wife of General Edgar. I don't know the man's name.
+But his statement has reached me directly. I give you information I
+might have withheld, because I perfectly trust both the citizen and the
+lady who has rendered us such noble service here."
+
+"And such trust, I may say, is my right. I shall not forfeit it," said
+the organist, rising. "I am ready, at any time, to take the oath, and to
+bear my own responsibilities, Mr. Muir. I have neither fellowship nor
+communication with Rebels, and I deem it a strange insult to be called a
+spy. 'T is a great pity one should stay here to vex himself with puerile
+gossip."
+
+She pointed to the stained windows emblazoned with sacred symbols,
+glorious now with sunlight, bowed, and was gone.
+
+
+VI.
+
+There came, on Easter night, to the door of the organist's apartment,
+the "contraband" who at present was sojourning under the protection of
+Mr. Gerald Deane.
+
+The hour was not early. Evening service was over, and Julius had waited
+a reasonable length of time, that his errand might be delivered when she
+should be at leisure. He might safely have gone at once; for guests
+never came at night, and rarely by day,--the organist's wish being
+perfectly understood among the very few with whom she came in contact,
+and she being consequently "let alone" with what some might have deemed
+"a vengeance." But it satisfied her, and no other dealing would.
+
+Either this man--Julius Hopkins was his name--had not so recently come
+to H---- as to be a stranger in any quarter of the town, or he had made
+use of his time here; for he seemed familiar with the streets and alleys
+as an old resident.
+
+To find the organist was not difficult, when one had come within sight
+of the lofty spire of the church, for it was under its shadow she
+lived; but if he had been accustomed to carry messages to her door for
+years, he could not now have presented himself with fuller confidence as
+to what he should find.
+
+When Mrs. Edgar opened the door, not a word was needed, as if these were
+strangers who stood face to face. In her countenance, indeed, was
+emotion,--unmeasured surprise; in her manner, momentary indecision. But
+the surprise passed into a lofty kindliness of manner, and the
+indecision gave place to the most entire freedom from embarrassment. She
+cut short the words he began to speak with an authoritative, though most
+quiet,--
+
+"Julius, come in."
+
+It was not as one addresses the servant of a friend, but spoken with an
+authority which the man instantly acknowledged by obedience. He came
+into the room, closed the door, and waited till she should speak. She
+asked,--
+
+"Why are you here?"
+
+He answered as if unaware that any great change had taken place in their
+relations.
+
+"My master sent me. At last I have found my mistress. It took me a great
+while."
+
+"Is your master still in arms?"
+
+The man bowed.
+
+"Against the Government?"
+
+"_He_ says, _for_ the Government."
+
+"Of Rebels?"
+
+He bowed again.
+
+"Then, there is no answer,--can be none. Did he not foresee it?"
+
+The slave did not answer. What words that he came commissioned to speak
+could respond to the anguish her voice betrayed? She spoke again; she
+had recovered from the surprise of her distress, and, looking now at
+Julius, said,--
+
+"You are excused from replying; but--you do not, in any event, propose
+to return home?"
+
+"Yes, Madam, yes,--immediately, immediately."
+
+It was the first time he had discovered this purpose, and he did so with
+a vehemence expressive of desire to vindicate himself where he should be
+understood. She answered slowly, but she did not seem amazed, as Deane
+would infallibly have been, as you and I had been,--such doubting
+worshippers, after all, of the great heroic.
+
+"Do you not hear, Julius, everywhere, that you are a freeman? Is it
+possible no one has told you so? Do you not know it for yourself? It is
+likely."
+
+"It don't signify. I tended him through one course,--he got a bad cut,
+Master did,--and I'll take care of him again. I a'n't through till he
+is."
+
+"Is he well?"
+
+"Thanks to me, and the Lord, he _is_ well of the wound again, and gone
+to work."
+
+At the pause that now ensued, as if he had only been waiting for this,
+the slave approached nearer to his mistress; but he did not lift his
+eyes,--he desired but to serve. She was so proud, he thought,--always
+was; if he could only get _himself_ out of the way, and let this ugly,
+cruel business right itself without a witness! Master knew how to plead
+better than any one could for him. He produced a tiny case of
+chamois-leather.
+
+"Master sent you this," he said; and it seemed as if he would have given
+it into her very hands; but they were folded; so he laid it on the edge
+of the piano, and stepped back a pace. He knew there was no need for him
+to explain.
+
+Well she understood. Her husband had done his utmost to secure a
+reconciliation. Love had its rights, its sacrifices; with these she had
+to do, and not with his official conduct and public acts.
+
+She knew well what that trifle of a chamois case contained. It was the
+miniature of their child, the little one of earth no more, but
+heaven-born: the winged child, with the flame above its head,--symbols
+with which, of old, they loved to represent Genius. This miniature was
+set in diamonds; it was the mother's gift to the father of the child:
+this woman's gift to the man whom loyal men to-day call traitor, rebel,
+alien, enemy.
+
+And thus he appealed to her. Oh, tender was the voice! This love that
+called had in its utterances proof that it held by its immortality. The
+love that pleaded with her appealed to recollections the most sacred,
+the most dear, the perpetual,--knowing what was in her heart, knowing
+how _it_ would respond.
+
+But there, where Julius left the miniature, it lay; a letter beside it
+now, and a purse of gold,--pure gold,--not a Confederate note among it.
+
+Poor Julia Edgar! she need not open the case that shone with such starry
+splendor. Never could be hidden from her eyes the face of the child. How
+should she not see again, in all its beauty, the garden where her
+darling had played, little hands filled full of blooms, little face
+whose smiling was as that of angels, butterflies sporting around her as
+the wonderful one of old flitted about St. Rose,--alas! with as sure a
+prophecy as that black and golden one? How clearly she saw again,
+through heavy clouds of tears that never broke, the garden's glory, all
+its peace, its happiness, its pride, and love!
+
+No argument, no word, could have pleaded for the father of the child
+like this. But it was love pleading against love,--Earth's beseeching
+and need, against Heaven's warning and sufficience.
+
+At last she spoke again.
+
+"What is your reward, Julius, for all this danger you've incurred for
+him, and for me?"
+
+"He said it should be my liberty."
+
+How he spoke those words! LIBERTY! it was the golden dream of
+the man's life, yet he named it with a self-control that commanded her
+admiration and reverence.
+
+"I give it to you at this moment, here!" she said.
+
+For an instant the slave seemed to hesitate; but the hesitation was of
+utterance merely, not of will.
+
+"My errand isn't half done, Madam. I never broke my word yet. I'll go
+back."
+
+"Tell him, then, that I gave you your freedom, and you would not accept
+it. And--_go_ back! 't is a noble resolve, worthy of you. Take the
+purse. I do not need it. Say that I have no need of it. And you will,
+perhaps."
+
+No other message for him? Not one word from herself to him! For she knew
+where safety lay.
+
+The slave looked at her, helpless, hopeless, with indecision. The woman
+was incomprehensible. He had set out on his errand, had persevered
+through difficulties, and had withstood temptations too many to be
+written here, with not a doubt as to the success that would attend him.
+He remembered the wife of General Edgar in her home; to that home of
+happy love and noble hospitality, and of all social dignities, he had no
+doubt he should restore her. But now, humbled by defeat, he said,--
+
+"I've looked a great while for you, Madam. I would never 'a' give up,
+though, if I'd gone to Maine or Labrador, and round by the Rocky
+Mountains, hunting for you. I heard you singing in the church this
+morning, and I knew your voice. Though it didn't sound natural
+right,--but I knew it was nobody else's voice,--as if the North mostly
+hadn't agreed with it. And I heard it yesterday somewhere,--that's what
+'sured me. I was going along the street, when I heard it; but it was not
+this house you were in."
+
+"And it was you, then, Julius, who betrayed me to the person who
+supposes himself to be your protector,--and this because you thought
+surely I must be glad to return, when I had lost my friends here through
+ill report! Is that the way your war is carried on?"
+
+"My war, Madam?"
+
+But Julius did not look at his mistress; he looked away, and shrugged
+his shoulders. The device of which he was convicted had seemed to him so
+good, so sure, nevertheless had failed.
+
+She had scarcely finished speaking, when a note was brought to the door.
+It was from Adam von Gelhorn.
+
+     "I am making my preparations to go at nine to-morrow," said the
+     note. "Will you come to the church before? I would like to
+     remember having seen you there last, at the organ. There's a
+     bit of news just reached me, said to be a secret. General
+     Edgar's command aims at preventing the junction of our forces
+     before Y----. He is strong enough, numerically, to overthrow
+     either division in separate conflict, and this is his
+     Napoleonic strategy. But he will be outwitted. There's no doubt
+     of it. Do not despair of our cause, whatever you hear during
+     the coming fortnight. I shall report myself immediately to
+     McClellan, and he may make a drummer-boy of me, if he will.
+     Henceforth I am at his service till the war ends.
+
+    "VON G----."
+
+Thrice she read this note; when her eyes lifted at last, Julius was
+still standing where she had left him. She started, seeing him, as if
+his presence there at the moment took a new significance; her heart
+fainted within her.
+
+Had _he_ heard this secret of which Von Gelhorn spoke? It was her
+husband's _life_ that was in jeopardy!
+
+"When are you going, Julius?" she asked.
+
+"To-morrow. Oh, Madam, give me some word for him!"
+
+Red horror of death, how it rises before her sight! She shuddered,
+cowered, sank before the blackness of darkness that followed fast on
+that terrific spectacle of carnage, before which a whirlwind seemed to
+have planted her. She heard the cries and yells, the groans and curses
+of bleeding, dying men; saw banners in the dust, horsemen and horses
+crushed under the great guns, mortality in fragments, heaps upon heaps
+of ruin on the field Aceldama.
+
+Where was he? Who would search among the slain for him? Who from among
+the dying would rescue him? Who will stanch his bleeding wounds? Who
+will moisten his parched lips? Whose voice sound in the ears that have
+heard the roar of guns amid the crash of battle? What hand shall bathe
+and fan that brow? What eyes shall watch till those eyelids unlock, and
+catch the whisper of those lips? Nay, who will save his life from the
+needless sacrifice? tell him that his plans are known, warn him back,
+warn _him_ of spies and of treachery? Has Julius betrayed him?
+
+She looked at the slave. But before she looked, her heart reproached her
+for having doubted him.
+
+"You will need this gold," she said. "Take it. Restore the miniature to
+your master. And go,--go at once. If success be in store for _him_, I
+share not the shame of it. If defeat, adversity, sickness,--your master
+knows his wife fears but one thing, has fled but from one thing. Her
+heart is with him, but she abhors the cause to which he has given
+himself. She will not share his crime."
+
+Difficult as these words were to speak, she spoke them without
+faltering, and they admitted no discussion.
+
+The slave lingered yet longer, but there was no more that she would say.
+Assured at last of that, he said,--
+
+"I obey you," and was gone.
+
+He was gone,--gone! and she had betrayed nothing,--had given no
+warning,--had uttered not a word by which the life that was of all lives
+most precious to her might have been saved!
+
+
+VII.
+
+By eight o'clock next morning Mrs. Edgar was in the church. Von Gelhorn
+preceded her by five minutes; he was walking up the aisle when she
+entered, impatient for her appearing, eager to be gone,--wondering,
+boy-like, that she came not.
+
+He has performed a prodigious amount of labor since they last met. His
+pictures were all removed to the Odeon, he said. His studio, haunt of
+dreams, beloved of fame so long, stripped and barren, looked like any
+other four-walled room,--and he, a freeman, stood equipped for service.
+
+Yes, an hour would see him speeding to the capital. In less time than it
+had taken him to perfect his arrangements he should be at the
+head-quarters of the commander-in-chief,--to be made a drummer-boy of,
+as he said before, or serve wherever there should be room for him.
+
+He stood there so bright, so ready, eager, daring, was capable of so
+much! What had _she_ done to usurp the functions of conscience, and
+assume the voice of duty? She had done what she could not revoke, and
+yet could not contemplate without a sort of terror,--as if to atone, to
+make amends for disloyalty, which, coming even as from herself, a crime
+in which she had chief concernment, was not to be atoned for by
+repentance merely, nor by any sacrifices less than the costliest. She
+had sought her husband's peer,--deemed that she had found
+him,--therefore would despatch him to the battle-field, by valor to meet
+the valiant. But now the light by which she had hurried forward to that
+deed was gone, and she stood as a prophetess may, who, deserted of the
+divinity, doubts the testimony of her hour of exaltation.
+
+While they talked,--both apparently standing at an elevation of serene
+courage above the level of even warring men and heroic women, but one
+causing such misgiving in her heart as to fix her in that mood, and
+forbid an extrication,--Fate led a lady down the street, who, passing by
+the church and seeing the door ajar, went in. She should find in the
+choir some written music, used in yesterday's services, which she had
+forgotten to bring away. Out of the pure, bright sunshine she stepped
+into the dark, cold shadows, and had come to the choir before she heard
+the voices speaking there. Shrined saints that hold your throne-like
+niches in the old stone walls! gilded cherubim that hover round the
+organ's burnished pipes! what sight do you look down upon? She walked up
+quietly,--it was her way, a noiseless, gliding way,--there stood the
+organist and Adam von Gelhorn! As if hell had made a revelation, she
+stood looking at those two. And both saw her, and neither of the three
+uttered one word, or essayed a motion, till she, quietly, it seemed,
+though it was with utmost violence, turned to go again.
+
+Then--soft the voice sounded, but to her who spoke there was thunder in
+it--the organist called after her, "Sybella!"
+
+She, however, did not turn to answer, neither did she falter in going.
+Departure was the one thing of which she was capable,--and what could
+have hindered her going? What checks Vesuvius, when the flood says, "Lo,
+I come!"? Or shall the little bird that perches and sings on a post in
+the Dismal Swamp prevent the message that sweeps along the wire for a
+thousand miles?
+
+Von Gelhorn, disturbed by her coming and departure, in that so slight
+vibration of air caused by her advance and her retreat, swayed as a reed
+in the wind, stood for a moment seeking equipoise. Vain endeavor!
+
+Not with inquiry, neither for direction, his eyes fell on Julia Edgar.
+
+"Go," she said.
+
+She said it aloud; no utterance could have been more distinct. He strode
+after Sybella.
+
+She heard him come, but did not pause, or turn, or falter. He came
+faster, gained upon, and overtook her. It was just there by the
+church-door. And then he spoke. But not like a warrior. It was a hoarse
+whisper she heard, and her name in it. At _that_ call she turned. When
+she saw his face, she stood.
+
+Why avert her face, indeed, or why go on?
+
+"I am going away,--in search of death, perhaps. I don't know. But to
+battle. Will you not come back and listen one moment?"
+
+She stood as if she could stand. Why did he plead but for one moment?
+Battle! before that word she laid down her weapons. Under that glare of
+awful fire the walls of ice melted, as never iceberg under tropic sun.
+
+Battle! One out of the world who had been so long out of _her_ world!
+Out of her world? So is beauty dead and past all resurrection of a
+surety, when the dismal winds of March howl over land and sea!
+
+"Yesterday," he said, "I came to church. Not to hear you, but I heard
+you. You conquered me. I was giving a word for you to your friend and
+mine, when God led you in here. Do not try to thwart Him. We have tried
+it long enough. If you should go into my studio,--no, there's no such
+place now, but if you went into the Odeon, you would see some faces
+there that would tell you who has haunted my dreams and my heart these
+years. Forgive me now that I'm going away. Let me hear you speak the
+very word, Sybella."
+
+How long must sinner call on God before he sees the smile of Love making
+bright the heavens, glad the earth, possible all holiness, probable all
+blessing? For He has built no walls, fastened no bars and bolts, blasted
+no present, cursed no future. If Love be large, rich, free, strong
+enough, it brings itself with one swift bound into the Heavenly Kingdom
+where the Powers of Darkness have almost prevailed.
+
+When Mrs. Edgar saw these two coming up the aisle together, she
+understood, and, turning full towards them, sang a song such as was
+never heard before within those old gray walls.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Mr. Muir was but a man. Powerful indeed in his way, but it was behind
+his pulpit-desk, with a sermon in his hands, his congregation before
+him,--or in carrying out any charitable project, or in managing the
+business specially devolving on him. He was nobody when he emerged from
+his own distinct path,--at least, such was his opinion; and being so, he
+would not be likely to attempt the enforcement of another view of his
+power on other men. He was afraid of himself now,--afraid that his own
+preferences had made him obtuse where loyalty would have given him a
+clearer vision.
+
+Pity him, therefore, when Mr. Deane learned that the son of bondage in
+whose deliverance he took such proud delight, as surely became a good
+man who greatly valued freedom, aye, valued it as the pearl beyond all
+price,--when he learned that the slave had been seen going to the
+organist's room, and returning from it, and had not since been seen in
+H----.
+
+Mr. Muir reflected on these tidings with perplexity, constrained, in
+spite of him, to believe that the slave had actually come on a secret
+errand, which he had fulfilled, and that not without enlightenment he
+had returned to his master.
+
+The indignation a man feels, a man of the Deane order especially, when
+he finds that he has been imposed upon, though the deception has been in
+this instance of his own furtherance and establishment,--this kind and
+degree of indignation brought Mr. Deane like a firebrand into the next
+vestry-meeting. An end must be made of this matter at once. It was no
+longer a question whether anything had best be done. Something _must_ be
+done; the public demanded, and he, as a good citizen, demanded, that the
+church should free herself of suspicion.
+
+Mr. Muir felt, from the moment his eyes fell on Deane, that _he_ played
+a losing game. Vain to help a woman who had fallen under that man's
+suspicion, useless to defend her! What should he do, then? Let her go?
+let her fall? Allow that she was a spy? Permit her disgrace, dismissal,
+arrest possibly? When War takes hold of women, the touch is not tender.
+Mr. Muir, it was obvious, was not a man of war. And he had to
+acknowledge to the Musical Committee, that, as to the result of his
+conversation with Mrs. Edgar, he had learned merely what was sufficient,
+indeed, to satisfy _him_ of her loyalty, and that she would scorn to do
+a spy's work; but he had no proof to offer that might satisfy minds less
+"prejudiced" in her favor.
+
+It was impossible not to perceive the dissatisfaction with which this
+testimony was received.
+
+The Committee, however favorably disposed toward the organist, had their
+own suspicions to quiet, and a growing rumor among the people to quell.
+Positive proof must be adduced that the organist was not the wife of a
+Rebel general, or she must be removed from her place.
+
+At a time when riot was rife, and street-tumult so common that the
+citizens, loyal or disloyal, had no real security, it was venturesome,
+dangerous, foolhardy, to allow a suspicion to fix, even by implication,
+on the church. If the organist, already sufficiently noted and popular
+in the town to attract within the church-walls scores of people who came
+merely for the music,--if she were suspected of collision with Southern
+traitors, she must pay the price. It was the proper tax on loyalty. The
+church must be free of blame.
+
+So Mr. Muir, a second time on such business, went to Mrs. Edgar.
+
+Various intimations as to what brave men might do in precisely his
+situation distracted him as he went. The fascinations of her power were
+strongly upon him. If he was a hero, here, surely, was a heroine. And in
+distress! Had Christian chivalry no demand to make, no claim on him?
+
+All the way, as he went, he was counting the cost of his opposition to
+the vestry's will. If he only stood alone! If neither wife nor child had
+rights to be considered in advance of other mortals, and which, for the
+necessities of others, must surely not be waived! If Nature had not
+planted in him prudence, if he had only not that vexatious habit of
+surveying duties in their wholeness, and balancing consequences, he
+might, at the moment, enter into Don Quixote's joy. But,--and here he
+was at the head of the flight of stairs that led to her chamber, face to
+face with her.
+
+Advance now, Christian minister! He comes slowly, weighed down by his
+burden of consequences, and, as at one glance, the organist perceives
+the "situation." He has come with her dismissal from the church. She
+sees it in the dejected face, the troubled eyes, the weariness with
+which he throws himself into the nearest chair. The duty he has in hand
+he feels in all its irksomeness, and makes no concealment
+thereof,--indeed, some display perhaps.
+
+From a little desultory talk about church-music, through which words ran
+at random, Mrs. Edgar broke at last, somewhat impatiently.
+
+"What is it, Mr. Muir? Must your organist take the oath?"
+
+The question caught him by surprise; it was uppermost in his thoughts,
+this hateful theme; but then how should she know it? He lost the
+self-possession he had been trying to maintain, the dignity of his
+judicial character broke down completely; he was now merely a
+kind-hearted man, a husband and father it is true, but for the moment
+those domestic ties were not like a fetter on him.
+
+"I require no such evidence of your loyalty, Mrs. Edgar," he said,--"no
+evidence whatever."
+
+"But--does not the church?"
+
+This question was asked with a little faltering, asked for his sake; for
+evidently some knowledge he had, and had to communicate, that
+embarrassed him almost to the making of speech impossible.
+
+"The church! No,--it is too late for that!"
+
+And now he had thrown down the hateful truth. There it lay at the feet
+of the woman who at this moment assumed to the preacher's imagination a
+more than saint's virtue, a more than angel's beauty.
+
+"What then?" she said. "What next, Mr. Muir? Do they want my
+resignation?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mr. Muir said this with a humbled, deprecating gesture of the hand. At
+the same time bowed his head.
+
+"I commission you to carry it," she said.
+
+"I will not," he answered, almost ferociously.
+
+"Mr. Muir!"
+
+"I consider it an outrage."
+
+"No,--a misunderstanding."
+
+That mild magnanimity of speech completed the overthrow of his
+prudence.
+
+"A misunderstanding, then, that shall be rectified to your honor," he
+exclaimed, "in the very place where it has gained ground to your
+dishonor. If you resign, Mrs. Edgar, it must be to come at once to my
+house as a guest. If the people are infatuated, the minister need not be
+of necessity. My wife will welcome you there; if the law of the gospel
+cannot protect you from suspicion, it can at least from harm."
+
+So all in a moment the man got the better of Mr. Muir. What a
+deliverance was there! This was the man who had preached and prayed for
+the Government till more than once he had been invited to march out with
+the soldiers as their chaplain to battle, opening his doors to one whom
+the loyal church rejected,--opening them merely because she was a woman
+on whom suspicion he believed to be unjust had fallen.
+
+Her face lighted, her eyes flashed, she smiled. These were precious
+words to hear from any good man's lips. They broke on the air like balm
+on a wound.
+
+"Not for all the world would I allow it," she answered. "This is no time
+to complicate affairs. I thank you, and I confess you have surprised me.
+I did not expect this even of you. It is needless for me to say that I
+feel this disgrace as you would feel it; but I understand the position
+of the church, and cannot complain. If I were guilty, this treatment
+would be only too lenient. And it is almost guilt to have incurred
+suspicion."
+
+"I will never be the bearer of your resignation, then,--never, Mrs.
+Edgar! I wash my hands of this business!"
+
+She smiled again. The man in his wrath seemed to have seized on a
+child's weapon. He interpreted her smile, and said,--
+
+"My position will be well understood, if another is the bearer. And I
+wish it to be. I wish men to know that I have no hand in this business.
+The church is a persecutor. I, her son, am ashamed of her."
+
+"It has given me my opportunity to make a defence. And I can make none,
+Mr. Muir. My great mistake was in remaining here. Ruin, however, is not
+so rare a thing in these days that I should be surprised by it, even if
+it overtake me."
+
+"Ruin! Aye. What curses thicken for their heads who have brought this
+upon us! Unborn millions will repeat them, and God Almighty sanction and
+enforce them."
+
+Mr. Muir paused. What arrested him? Merely the countenance of the woman
+before him. If all those curses had gathered into legions of devils,
+crowding, swarming, furious, armed with lash and brand, about the form
+of one who represented love, joy, beauty, all preciousness to her, the
+terror and the anguish looking from her face could not have been
+intensified. But she said no word.
+
+How should she speak?
+
+As if in spite of him, and of all he had been wont to hold most sacred
+and potential, in spite of church and congregation, Constitution and
+country, the minister had spoken simply for humanity under oppression;
+had he not earned her confidence? Did he not deserve to know at least
+what real ground there was for the suspicions roused against her?
+
+Nay, nay! When did ever Love seek deliverance at the cost of the
+beloved? What woman ever betrayed to secret friend the sin of him she
+loves? Let all creation read the patent facts, behind them still remains
+the inviolate, sacred _arcanum_, and before it stands sentinel Silence,
+and around it are walls of fire.
+
+Not from this woman's lips should mortal ever learn she was a Rebel's
+wife!
+
+For Mr. Muir, in his present mood, it was only torture to prolong this
+interview. He felt himself unfit for counsel or argument,--unfit even
+for confidence, had it been vouchsafed. But he held, with a tenacity
+that could not but have its influence on his future acts and life, to
+the purpose that had broken from him so suddenly, and not less to his
+own surprise than to the organist's. From this day she was at liberty to
+seek protection under his roof from threatened mobs and hot-headed
+church-wardens. Mr. Deane was one man, he himself was another; and if a
+day was ever coming to the world when Christian magnanimity must rise in
+its majesty and its strength, that day had surely dawned; if the
+Christian ministry was ever to know a period when the greatness of its
+prerogatives was to be made manifest, that period had certainly begun.
+
+
+IX.
+
+From this interview Mrs. Edgar went to make her preparations for the
+flitting she had already determined upon. She resolved to lose no time,
+and consoled Mr. Muir by making known her resolution, and seeking his
+assistance, when he was in a condition adapted to the bestowal.
+
+But scarcely were her rooms bared, her trunks packed, and the day and
+mode of her departure determined upon, when an order came to H---- from
+a high official source, so authoritative as to allow no hesitation or
+demur.
+
+"Arrest the organist of St. Peter's Church, Mrs. Julia Edgar."
+
+And, behold, she was a prisoner in the house where she had lodged!
+
+Opposition was out of the question, protest hardly thought of. One
+glance was broad enough to cover this business from end to end, and of
+resistance there was no demonstration. Her work now was to restore the
+room, denuded and desolate, to its late aspect of refinement and cheer.
+
+Well, but is it the same thing to urge others on to sacrifice, and
+yourself to bring an offering? to gird another for warfare, and yourself
+endure hardness? to incite another to active service, and yourself serve
+by passive obedience? to place a sword in the right hand of the valiant,
+and bare your heart to the smiting of a sword in the same cause of
+glory?
+
+To have urged out of beautiful and studious retirement the painter of
+precious pictures, that he may lift the soldier's burden and gird
+himself for fasting through long, toilsome marches over mountains,
+through wilderness, swamp, and desert, and for encountering Death at
+every pass in one of his manifold disguises,--that he may lie on a field
+of blood, perchance, at last, the fragment of himself, for what? that he
+may say, finally, if speech be left him, he has fought under the flag,
+that at Memphis its buried glory may have resurrection, that at Sumter
+it may float again from the battlements, that at Richmond it may be
+unfurled above Rebellion's grave,--is it the same thing to have
+accomplished this by way of atonement, and in your own body to atone, by
+your humiliation, by suspicion endured? She deemed it a small thing that
+she was called to suffer,--that, when honor was won, she must bear
+disgrace instead. What, indeed, was a year's or a lifetime's
+imprisonment, looked on in the light of privation or sacrifice? Yet _so_
+to atone, since thus it was written, for the sin of one who was in arms
+against the nation's government! Oh, if anywhere, of any loyal citizen,
+it might be looked upon, accepted, _as_ atonement!
+
+In one thing she was happy, and of right. Music never failed her. Art
+keeps her great rewards for such as serve her for her sacred self.
+Therefore let her arise day after day to the same prospect of sky, and
+sea, and busy street, and silent, shadowy church-yard. I bless the birds
+that built their nests in the elm and willow branches for her sake. The
+little creatures flitting here and there, in all their home-ways and
+domestic management, were dear as their song to her.
+
+But in this life, though there might be growth, it was the growth that
+comes through pain endured with patience, through self-control
+maintained in the suspense and the anguish of death.
+
+For what, then, did she long in his behalf whose fate was shrouded in
+thick darkness from her? For victory? or for defeat? A prison?
+mutilation? disablement? burial on the battle-field? or a disgraceful
+safety? Constantly this question urged itself upon her, and the heroic
+love, that in its great disclosures could not fail, shrank shuddering
+back in silence.
+
+Thanks to God, she need not choose. The Omniscient is alone the
+Almighty!
+
+
+X.
+
+Three months after this order of arrest came another of release,--as
+brief and as peremptory.
+
+Deane's patriotism, that really had endangered the church with a mob and
+the organ with demolishment, was the cause of the first despatch.
+Colonel Von Gelhorn, who had routed General Edgar and driven him and his
+forces at the point of the bayonet from an "impregnable position," was
+in the secret of the second.
+
+Close following this order of release, so closely that one must believe
+he but waited for it before he again presented himself to his mistress,
+came Julius, the bearer of a message in whose persuasive power he
+himself had little hope. Defeated, wounded, dying, her husband called
+this second time to her.
+
+The slave, this day a freeman by all writs and rights, ascended again to
+her apartment when the order of release had been received.
+
+Surprise awaited him. Alas, what it says for us! our heroes, who have
+surely the right of unlimited expectations, are as likely to be
+surprised by heroic demonstrations as the dullest soul that never strove
+for aught except its paltry starving self. But the hero surprised is not
+surprised into uncomprehending wonder, but rather into smiles, or tears,
+or heartrending, out of which comes thankfulness.
+
+Yet a bitter word escaped him; he could deem even Liberty guilty of an
+injustice, when she was involved in the judgment that awaits the guilty.
+As if never before under the government of God it was known that the
+overthrow of evil involved sorrow, aye, and temporal ruin, aye, and
+sometimes death, to God's very angels! But to that word she answered,--
+
+"Hush! I have been among friends,--even though some believed I was their
+enemy in disguise. I have nothing to complain of. Duties must be done.
+But, Julius, you have come to tell me of your master. Tell me, then."
+
+"Such news, Madam, as you will not like to hear, though I have travelled
+with it night and day. Colonel Von Gelhorn sent me. He said I would be
+in time. I didn't wait to hear him say that twice."
+
+"_He_ sent you? Where, then, is my husband?"
+
+"He is a prisoner, Madam."
+
+"A prisoner! Whose?"
+
+"Colonel Von Gelhorn's."
+
+Was it satisfaction that filled the silence following this question?
+
+"But safe? but well, Julius?"
+
+"No, Madam, not safe nor well."
+
+"Wounded? Julius, speak! Why must I ask these dreadful questions? Tell
+what you came to tell."
+
+"He is wounded, Madam. He has never been taken away from the church
+where I carried him first after he fell. He had three horses shot under
+him. Oh, Madam, if it hadn't been for him, his whole army would have
+been lost! He wants you now."
+
+"Let us go, then. Guide me. The shortest way. You're a free man, Julius.
+Act like one, freely. Wounded,--Von Gelhorn's prisoner. Then at last
+he's mine again!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hers again! In the church she found him. In her arms he died.
+
+And he said,--nor let us think it was with coward weakness blenching
+before the presence of Death, shaming the day he died by a late
+repentance,--
+
+"I have been deceived. But I deceived others. Who will forgive that? It
+is so hard for me to forgive! You have fought your fight like a hero,
+loyal to the core, but I"----
+
+Nevertheless, her kiss was on his dying lips. _She_ forgave him. Must
+he, then, go out from her presence into everlasting darkness?
+
+
+
+
+WET-WEATHER WORK.
+
+BY A FARMER.
+
+
+V.
+
+It is a pelting November rain. No leaves are left upon the branches but
+a few yellow flutterers on the tips of the willows and poplars, and the
+bleached company that will be clinging to the beeches and the white oaks
+for a month to come. All others are whipped away by the night-winds into
+the angles of old walls, or are packed under low-limbed shrubberies,
+there to swelter and keep warm the rootlets of the newly planted
+weigelias and spruces, until the snows and February suns and April mists
+and May heats shall have transmuted them into fat and unctuous mould. A
+close, pelting, unceasing rain, trying all the leaks of the mossy roof,
+testing all the newly laid drains, pressing the fountain at my door to
+an exuberant gush,--a rain that makes outside work an impossibility; and
+as I sit turning over the leaves of an old book of engravings, wondering
+what drift my rainy-day's task shall take, I come upon a pleasant view
+of Dovedale in Derbyshire, a little exaggerated, perhaps, in the
+luxuriance of its trees and the depth of its shadows, but recalling
+vividly the cloudy April morning on which, fifteen years agone, I left
+the inn of the "Green Man and Black Head," in the pretty town of
+Ashbourne, and strolled away by the same road on which Mr. Charles
+Cotton opens his discourse of fishing with Master "Viator," and plunged
+down the steep valley-side near to Thorpe, and wandered for three miles
+and more, under towering crags, and on soft, spongy bits of meadow,
+beside the blithe river where Walton had cast, in other days, a gray
+palmer-fly, past the hospitable hall of the worshipful Mr. Cotton, and
+the wreck of the old fishing-house, over whose lintel was graven in the
+stone the interlaced initials of "Piscator, Junior," and his great
+master of the rod. As the rain began to patter on the sedges and the
+pools, I climbed out of the valley, on the northward or Derbyshire side,
+and striding away through the heather, which belongs to the rolling
+heights of this region, I presently found myself upon the great London
+and Manchester highway. A broad and stately thoroughfare it had been in
+the old days of coaching, but now a close, fine turf invested it all,
+save one narrow strip of Macadam in the middle. The mile-stones, which
+had been showy, painted affairs of iron, were now deeply bitten and
+blotched with rust. Two of them I had passed, without sight of house, or
+of other traveller, save one belated drover, who was hurrying to the
+fair at Ashbourne; as I neared the third, a great hulk of building
+appeared upon my left, with a crowd of aspiring chimneys, from which
+only one timid little pennant of smoke coiled into the harsh sky.
+
+The gray, inhospitable-looking pile proved to be one of the old
+coach-inns, which, with its score of vacant chambers and huge
+stable-court, was left stranded upon the deserted highway of travel. It
+stood a little space back from the road, so that a coach and four, or,
+indeed, a half-dozen together, might have come up to the door-way in
+dashing style. But it must have been many years since such a demand had
+been made upon the resources of bustling landlord and of attendant
+grooms and waiters. The doors were tightly closed; even the sign-board
+creaked uneasily in the wind, and a rampant growth of ivy that clambered
+over the porch so covered it with leaves and berries that I could not at
+all make out its burden. I gave a sharp ring to the bell, and heard the
+echo repeated from the deserted stable-court; there was the yelp of a
+hound somewhere within, and presently a slatternly-dressed woman
+received me, and, conducting me down a bare hall, showed me into a great
+dingy parlor, where a murky fire was struggling in the grate. A score of
+roistering travellers might have made the stately parlor gay; and I dare
+say they did, in years gone; but now I had only for company their heavy
+old arm-chairs, a few prints of "fast coaches" upon the wall, and a
+superannuated greyhound, who seemed to scent the little meal I had
+ordered, and presently stalked in and laid his thin nose, with an
+appealing look, in my hands. His days of coursing--if he ever had
+them--were fairly over; and I took a charitable pride in bestowing upon
+him certain tough morsels of the rump-steak, garnished with
+horse-radish, with which I was favored for dinner.
+
+I had intended to push on to Buxton the same afternoon; but the
+deliberate sprinkling of the morning by two o'clock had quickened into a
+swift, pelting rain, the very counterpart of that which is beating on my
+windows to-day. There was nothing to be done but to make my home of the
+old coach-inn for the night; and for my amusement--besides the
+slumberous hound, who, after dinner, had taken up position upon the
+faded rug lying before the grate--there was a "Bell's Messenger" of the
+month past, and, as good luck would have it, a much-bethumbed copy of a
+work on horticulture and kindred subjects, first printed somewhere about
+the beginning of the eighteenth century, and entitled "The Clergyman's
+Recreation, showing the Pleasure and Profit of the Art of Gardening," by
+the Reverend John Laurence.
+
+It was a queer book to be found in this pretentious old coach-inn, with
+its silken bell-pulls and stately parlors; and I thought how the
+roisterers who came thundering over the road years ago, and chucked the
+bar-maids under the chin, must have turned up their noses, after their
+pint of crusted Port, at the "Clergyman's Recreation." Yet, for all
+that, the book had a rare interest for me, detailing, as it did, the
+methods of fruit-culture in England a hundred and forty years ago, and
+showing with nice particularity how the espaliers could be best trained,
+and how a strong infusion of walnut-leaf tea will destroy all noxious
+worms.
+
+And now, when, upon this other wet day, and in the quietude of my own
+library, I come to measure the claims of this ancient horticulturist to
+consideration, I find that he was the author of some six or seven
+distinct works on kindred subjects, showing good knowledge of the best
+current practice; and although he incurred the sneers of Mr. Tull, who
+hoped "he preached better than he ploughed," there is abundant evidence
+that his books were held in esteem.
+
+Contemporary with the Rev. Mr. Laurence were London and Wise, the famous
+horticulturists of Brompton, (whose nursery, says Evelyn, "was the
+greatest work of the kind ever seen or heard of, either in books or
+travels,") also Switzer, a pupil of the latter, and Professor Richard
+Bradley.
+
+Mr. London was the director of the royal gardens under William and Mary,
+and at one time had in his charge some three or four hundred of the most
+considerable landed estates in England. He was in the habit of riding
+some fifty miles a day to confer with his subordinate gardeners, and at
+least two or three times in a season traversed the whole length and
+breadth of England,--and this at a period, it must be remembered, when
+travelling was no holiday-affair, as is evident from the mishaps which
+befell those well-known contemporaneous travellers of Fielding, Joseph
+Andrews and Parson Adams. Traces of the work of Mr. London are to be
+seen even now in the older parts of the grounds of Blenheim and of
+Castle Howard in Yorkshire.
+
+Stephen Switzer was an accomplished gardener, well known by a great many
+horticultural and agricultural works, which in his day were "on sale at
+his seed-shop in Westminster Hall." Chiefest among these was the
+"Ichnographia Rustica," which gave general directions for the
+management of country-estates, while it indulged in some prefatory
+magniloquence upon the dignity and antiquity of the art of gardening. It
+is the first of all arts, he claims; for "tho' Chirurgery may plead
+high, inasmuch as in the second chapter of Genesis that _operation_ is
+recorded of taking the rib from Adam, wherewith woman was made, yet the
+very current of the Scriptures determines in favor of Gardening." It
+surprises us to find that so radical an investigator should entertain
+the belief, as he clearly did, that certain plants were produced without
+seed by the vegetative power of the sun acting upon the earth. He is
+particularly severe upon those Scotch gardeners, "Northern lads," who,
+with "a little learning and a great deal of impudence, know, or pretend
+to know, more in one twelvemonth than a laborious, honest South-country
+man does in seven years."
+
+His agricultural observations are of no special value, nor do they
+indicate any advance from the practice of Worlidge. He deprecates paring
+and burning as exhaustive of the vegetable juices, advises winter
+fallowing and marling, and affirms that "there is no superficies of
+earth, how poor soever it may be, but has in its own bowels something or
+other for its own improvement."
+
+In gardening, he expresses great contempt for the clipped trees and
+other excesses of the Dutch school, yet advises the construction of
+terraces, lays out his ponds by geometric formulæ, and is so far devoted
+to out-of-door sculpture as to urge the establishment of a royal
+institution for the instruction of ingenious young men, who, on being
+taken into the service of noblemen and gentlemen, would straightway
+people their grounds with statues. And this notwithstanding Addison had
+published his famous papers on the "Pleasures of the Imagination" three
+years before.[5]
+
+Richard Bradley was the Dr. Lardner of his day,--a man of general
+scientific acquirement, an indefatigable worker, venturing hazardous
+predictions, writing some fifteen or twenty volumes upon subjects
+connected with agriculture, foisting himself into the chair of Botany at
+Cambridge by noisy reclamation, selling his name to the booksellers for
+attachment to other men's wares,[6] and, finally, only escaping the
+indignity of a removal from his professor's chair by sudden death, in
+1732. Yet this gentleman's botanical dictionary ("Historia Plantarum,"
+etc.) was quoted respectfully by Linnæus, and his account of British
+cattle, their races, proper treatment, etc., was, by all odds, the best
+which had appeared up to his time. The same gentleman, in his "New
+Improvements of Planting and Gardening," lays great stress upon a novel
+"invention for the more speedy designing of garden-plats," which is
+nothing more than an adaptation of the principle of the kaleidoscope.
+The latter book is the sole representative of this author's voluminous
+agricultural works in the Astor collection; and, strange to say, there
+are only two in the library of the British Museum.
+
+I take, on this dreary November day, (with my Catawbas blighted,) a
+rather ill-natured pleasure in reading how the Duke of Rutland, in the
+beginning of the last century, was compelled to "keep up fires from
+Lady-day to Michaelmas behind his sloped walls," in order to insure the
+ripening of his grapes; yet winter grapes he had, and it was a great
+boast in that time. The quiet country squires--such as Sir Roger de
+Coverley--had to content themselves with those old-fashioned fruits
+which would struggle successfully with out-of-door fogs. Fielding tells
+us that the garden of Mr. Wilson, where Parson Adams and the divine
+Fanny were guests, showed nothing more rare than an alley bordered with
+filbert-bushes.[7]
+
+In London and its neighborhood the gourmands fared better. Cucumbers,
+which in Charles's time never came in till the close of May, were ready
+in the shops of Westminster (in the time of George I.) in early March.
+Melons were on sale, for those who could pay roundly, at the end of
+April; and the season of cauliflowers, which used to be limited to a
+single month, now reached over a term of six months.
+
+Mr. Pope, writing to Dr. Swift, somewhere about 1730, says,--"I have
+more fruit-trees and kitchen-garden than you have any thought of; nay, I
+have good melons and pine-apples of my own growth." Nor was this a small
+boast; for Lady Wortley Montague, describing her entertainment at the
+table of the Elector of Hanover, in 1716, speaks of "pines" as a fruit
+she had never seen before.
+
+Ornamental gardening, too, was now changing its complexion. Dutch
+William was dead and buried. Addison had written in praise of the
+natural disposition of the gardens of Fontainebleau, and, at his place
+near Rugby, was carrying out, so far as a citizen might, the suggestions
+of those papers to which I have already alluded. Milton was in better
+odor than he had been, and people had begun to realize that an
+arch-Puritan might have exquisite taste. Possibly, too, cultivated
+landholders had seen that charming garden-picture where the luxurious
+Tasso makes the pretty sorceress Armida spread her nets.
+
+Pope affected a respect for the views of Addison; but his Twickenham
+garden was a very stiff affair. Bridgman was the first practical
+landscape-gardener who ventured to ignore old rules; and he was followed
+closely by William Kent, a broken-down and unsuccessful
+landscape-painter, who came into such vogue as a man of taste, that he
+was employed to fashion the furniture of scores of country-villas; and
+Walpole[8] tells us that he was even beset by certain fine ladies to
+design Birthday gowns for them:--"The one he dressed in a petticoat
+decorated with columns of the five orders; the other, like a bronze, in
+a copper-colored satin, with ornaments of gold."
+
+Clermont, the charming home of the exiled Orléans family, shows vestiges
+of the taste of Kent, who always accredited very much of his love for
+the picturesque to the reading of Spenser. It is not often that the poet
+of the "Faerie Queene" is mentioned as an educator.
+
+And now let us leave gardens for a while, to discuss Mr. Jethro Tull,
+the great English cultivator of the early half of the eighteenth
+century. I suspect that most of the gentry of his time, and cultivated
+people, ignored Mr. Tull, he was so rash and so headstrong and so noisy.
+It is certain, too, that the educated farmers, or, more strictly, the
+writing farmers, opened battle upon him, and used all their art to ward
+off his radical tilts upon their old methods of culture. And he fought
+back bravely; I really do not think that an editor of a partisan paper
+to-day could improve upon him,--in vigor, in personality, or in
+coarseness.
+
+Unfortunately, the biographers and encyclopædists who followed upon his
+period have treated his name with a neglect that leaves but scanty
+gleanings for his personal history. His father owned landed property in
+Oxfordshire, and Jethro was a University-man; he studied for the law,
+(which will account for his address in a wordy quarrel,) made the tour
+of Europe, returned to Oxfordshire, married, took the paternal
+homestead, and proceeded to carry out the new notions which he had
+gained in his Southern travels. Ill health drove him to France a second
+time, from which he returned once more, to occupy the famous "Prosperous
+Farm" in Berkshire; and here he opened his batteries afresh upon the
+existing methods of farming. The gist of his proposed reform is
+expressed in the title of his book, "The Horse-hoeing Husbandry." He
+believed in the thorough tillage, at frequent intervals, of all
+field-crops, from wheat to turnips. To make this feasible, drilling was,
+of course, essential; and to make it economical, horse labor was
+requisite: the drill and the horse-hoe were only subsidiary to the main
+end of THOROUGH TILLAGE.
+
+Sir Hugh Platt, as we have seen, had before suggested dibbling, and
+Worlidge had contrived a drill; but Tull gave force and point and
+practical efficacy to their suggestions. He gives no credit, indeed, to
+these old gentlemen; and it is quite possible that his theory may have
+been worked out from his own observations. He certainly gives a clear
+account of the growth of his belief, and sustains it by a great many
+droll notions about the physiology of plants, which would hardly be
+admissible in the botanies of to-day.
+
+Shall I give a sample?
+
+"Leaves," he says, "are the parts, or bowels of a plant, which perform
+the same office to sap as the lungs of an animal do to blood; that is,
+they purify or cleanse it of the recrements, or fuliginous steams,
+received in the circulation, being the unfit parts of the food, and
+perhaps some decayed particles which fly off the vessels through which
+blood and sap do pass respectively."
+
+It does not appear that the success of Tull upon "Prosperous Farm" was
+such as to give a large warrant for its name. His enemies, indeed,
+alleged that he came near to sinking two estates on his system; this,
+however, he stoutly denies, and says, "I propose no more than to keep
+out of debt, and leave my estate behind me better than I found it. Yet,
+owned it must be, that, had I, when I first began to make trials, known
+as much of the system as I do now, the practice of it would have been
+more profitable to me." Farmers in other parts of England, with lands
+better adapted to the new husbandry, certainly availed themselves of it,
+very much to their advantage. Tull, like a great many earnest reformers,
+was almost always in difficulty with those immediately dependent on him;
+over and over he insists upon the "inconveniency and slavery attending
+the exorbitant power of husbandry servants and laborers over their
+masters." He quarrels with their wages, and with the short period of
+their labor. Pray, what would Mr. Tull have thought, if he had dealt
+with the Drogheda gentlemen in black satin waistcoats, who are to be
+conciliated by the farmers of to-day?
+
+I think I can fancy such an encounter for the querulous old reformer.
+"Mike! blast you, you booby, you've broken my drill!" And Mike, (putting
+his thumb deliberately in the armlet of his waistcoat,) "Meester Tull,
+it's not the loikes o' me'll be leestening to insoolting worrds. I'll
+take me money, if ye plase." And with what a fury "Meester" Tull would
+have slashed away, after this, at "Equivocus," and all his
+newspaper-antagonists!
+
+I wish I could believe that Tull always told the exact truth; but he
+gives some accounts of the perfection to which he had brought his drill
+to which I can lend only a most meagre trust; and it is unquestionable
+that his theory so fevered his brain at last as to make him utterly
+contemptuous of all old-fashioned methods of procedure. In this respect
+he was not alone among reformers. He stoutly affirmed that tillage would
+supply the lack of manure, and his neighbors currently reported that he
+was in the habit of dumping his manure carts in the river. This charge
+Mr. Tull firmly denied, and I dare say justly. But I can readily believe
+that the rumors were current; country-neighborhoods offer good
+starting-points for such lively scandal. The writer of this paper has
+heard, on the best possible authority, that he is in the habit of
+planting shrubs with their roots in the air.
+
+In his loose, disputative way, and to magnify the importance of his own
+special doctrine, Tull affirms that the ancients, and Virgil
+particularly, urged tillage for the simple purpose of destroying
+weeds.[9] In this it seems to me that he does great injustice to our old
+friend Maro. Will the reader excuse a moment's dalliance with the
+Georgics again?
+
+    "Multum adeo, rastris glebas qui frangit _inertes_,
+    Vimineasque trahit crates, juvat arva;...
+    Et qui proscisso quæ suscitat æquore terga
+    Rursus in obliquum verso perrumpit aratro,
+    Exercetque frequens tellurem, atque imperat arvis."
+
+That "_imperat_" looks like something more than weed-killing; it looks
+like subjugation; it looks like pulverization at the hands of an
+imperious master.
+
+But behind all of Tull's exaggerated pretension, and unaffected by the
+noisy exacerbation of his speech, there lay a sterling good sense, and a
+clear comprehension of the existing shortcomings in agriculture, which
+gave to his teachings prodigious force, and an influence measured only
+by half a century of years. There were few, indeed, who adopted
+literally and fully his plans, or who had the hardihood to acknowledge
+the irate Jethro as a teacher; yet his hints and his example gave a
+stimulus to root-culture, and an attention to the benefits arising from
+thorough and repeated tillage, that added vastly to the annual harvests
+of England. Bating the exaggerations I have alluded to, his views are
+still reckoned sound; and though a hoed crop of wheat is somewhat
+exceptional, the drill is now almost universal in the best cultivated
+districts; and a large share of the forage-crops owe their extraordinary
+burden to horse-hoeing husbandry.
+
+Even the exaggerated claims of Tull have had their advocates in these
+last days; and the energetic farmer of Lois-Weedon, in Northamptonshire,
+is reported to be growing heavy crops of wheat for a succession of
+years, without any supply of outside fertilizers, and relying wholly
+upon repeated and perfect pulverization of the soil.[10] And Mr. Way,
+the distinguished chemist of the Royal Society, in a paper on "The Power
+of Soils to absorb Manure,"[11] propounds the question as follows:--"Is
+it likely, on theoretical considerations, that the air and the soil
+together can by any means be made to yield, without the application of
+manure, and year after year continuously, a crop of wheat of from thirty
+to thirty-five bushels per acre?" And his reply is this:--"I confess I
+do not see why they should not do so." A practical farmer, however, (who
+spends only his wet days in-doors,) would be very apt to suggest here,
+that the validity of this _dictum_ must depend very much on the original
+constituents of the soil.
+
+Under the lee of the Coombe Hills, on the extreme southern edge of
+Berkshire, and not far removed from the great highway leading from Bath
+to London, lies the farmery where this restless, petulant, suffering,
+earnest, clear-sighted Tull put down the burden of life, a hundred and
+twenty years ago. The house is unfortunately largely modernized, but
+many of the out-buildings remain unchanged; and not a man thereabout, or
+in any other quarter, could tell me where the former occupant, who
+fought so bravely his fierce battle of the drill, lies buried.
+
+About the middle of the last century, there lived in the south of
+Leicestershire, in the parish of Church-Langton, an eccentric and
+benevolent clergyman by the name of William Hanbury, who conceived the
+idea of establishing a great charity which was to be supported by a vast
+plantation of trees. To this end, he imported a great variety of seeds
+and plants from the Continent and America, established a nursery of
+fifty acres in extent, and published "An Essay on Planting, and a Scheme
+to make it Conducive to the Glory of God and the Advantage of Society."
+
+But the Reverend Hanbury was beset by aggressive and cold-hearted
+neighbors, among them two strange old "gentlewomen," Mistress Pickering
+and Mistress Byrd, who malevolently ordered their cattle to be turned
+loose into his first plantation of twenty thousand young and thrifty
+trees. And not content with this, they served twenty-seven different
+copies of writs upon him in one day, for trespass. Of all this he gives
+detailed account in his curious history of the "Charitable Foundations
+at Church-Langton." He tells us that the "venomous rage" of these old
+ladies (who died shortly after, worth a million of dollars) did not even
+spare his dogs; but that his pet spaniel and greyhound were cruelly
+killed by a table-fork thrust into their entrails. Nay, their
+game-keeper even buried two dogs alive, which belonged to his neighbor,
+Mr. Wade, a substantial grazier. His story of it is very Defoe-like and
+pitiful:--"I myself heard them," he says, "_ten days_ after they had
+been buried, and, seeing some people at a distance, inquired what dogs
+they were. '_They are some dogs that are lost, Sir_,' said they; '_they
+have been lost some time_.' I concluded only some poachers had been
+there early in the morning, and by a precipitate flight had left their
+dogs behind them. In short, the howling and barking of these dogs was
+heard for near three weeks, when it ceased. Mr. Wade's dogs were
+missing, but he could not suspect those dogs to be his; and the noise
+ceasing, the thoughts, wonder, and talking about them soon also ceased.
+Some time after, a person, being amongst the bushes where the howling
+was heard, discovered some disturbed earth, and the print of men's heels
+ramming it down again very close, and, seeing Mr. Wade's servant, told
+him he thought something had been buried there. '_Then_,' said the man,
+'_it is our dogs, and they have been buried alive. I will go and fetch a
+spade, and will find them, if I dig all Caudle over_.' He soon brought a
+spade, and, upon removing the top earth, came to the blackthorns, and
+then to the dogs, the biggest of which had eat the loins, and greatest
+share of the hind parts, of the little one."
+
+The strange ladies who were guilty of this slaughter of innocents showed
+"a dying blaze of goodness" by bequeathing twelve thousand pounds to
+charitable societies; and "thus ended," says Hanbury, "these two poor,
+unhappy, uncharitable, charitable old gentlewomen."
+
+The good old man describes the beauty of plants and trees with the same
+delightful particularity which he spent on his neighbors and the buried
+dogs.
+
+I cannot anywhere learn whether or not the charity-plantation of
+Church-Langton is still thriving.
+
+About this very time, Lancelot Brown, who was for a long period the
+kitchen-gardener at Stowe, came into sudden notoriety by his disposition
+of the waters in Blenheim Park, where, in the short period of one week,
+he created perhaps the finest artificial lake in the world. Its
+indentations of shore, its bordering declivities of wood, and the
+graceful swells of land dipping to its margin, remain now in very nearly
+the same condition in which Brown left them more than a hundred years
+ago. All over England the new man was sent for; all over England he
+rooted out the mossy avenues, and the sharp rectangularities, and laid
+down his flowing lines of walks, and of trees. He (wisely) never
+contracted to execute his own designs, and--from lack of facility,
+perhaps--he always employed assistants to draw his plans. But the quick
+eye which at first sight recognized the "capabilities" of a place, and
+which leaped to the recognition of its matured graces, was all his own.
+He was accused of sameness; but the man who at one time held a thousand
+lovely landscapes unfolding in his thought could hardly give a series of
+contrasts without startling affectations.
+
+I mention the name of Lancelot Brown, however, not to discuss his
+merits, but as the principal and largest illustrator of that taste in
+landscape-gardening which just now grew up in England, out of a new
+reading of Milton, out of the admirable essays of Addison, out of the
+hints of Pope, out of the designs of Kent, and which was stimulated by
+Gilpin, by Horace Walpole, and, still more, by the delightful little
+landscapes of Gainsborough.
+
+Enough will be found of Mr. Brown, and of his style, in the professional
+treatises, upon whose province I do not now infringe. I choose rather,
+for the entertainment of my readers, if they will kindly find it, to
+speak of that sad, exceptional man, William Shenstone, who, by the
+beauties which he made to appear on his paternal farm of Leasowes,
+fairly rivalled the best of the landscape-gardeners,--and who, by the
+graces and the tenderness which he lavished on his verse, made no mean
+rank for himself at a time when people were reading the "Elegy" of Gray,
+the Homer of Pope, and the "Cato" of Addison.
+
+I think there can hardly be any doubt, however, that poor Shenstone was
+a wretched farmer; yet the Leasowes was a capital grazing farm, when he
+took it in charge, within fair marketable distance of both Worcester and
+Birmingham. I suspect that he never put his fine hands to the
+plough-tail; and his plaintive elegy, that dates from an April day of
+1743, tells, I am sure, only the unmitigated truth:--
+
+    "Again the laboring hind inverts the soil;
+       Again the merchant ploughs the tumid wave;
+    Another spring renews the soldier's toil,
+       _And finds me vacant in the rural cave_."
+
+Shenstone, like many another of the lesser poets, was unfortunate in
+having Dr. Johnson for his biographer. It is hard to conceive of a man
+who would show less of tenderness for an elaborate parterre of flowers,
+or for a poet who affectedly parted his gray locks on one side of his
+head, wore a crimson waistcoat, and warbled in anapæstics about kids and
+shepherds' crooks. Only fancy the great, snuffy, wheezing Doctor, with
+his hair-powder whitening half his shoulders, led up before some
+charming little extravaganza of Boucher, wherein all the nymphs are
+simpering marchionesses, with rosettes on their high-heeled slippers
+that out-color the sky! With what a "Faugh!" the great gerund-grinder
+would thump his cane upon the floor, and go lumbering away! And
+Shenstone, or rather his memory, caught the besom of just such a sneer.
+
+But other critics were more kindly and appreciative; among them, Dodsley
+the bookselling author, who wrote "The Economy of Human Life," (the
+"Proverbial Philosophy" of its day,) and Whately, who gave to the public
+the most elegant and tasteful discussion of artificial scenery that was
+perhaps ever written.
+
+Shenstone studied, as much as so indolent a man ever could, at Pembroke
+College, Oxford. His parents died when he was young, leaving to him a
+very considerable estate, which fortunately some relative administered
+for him, until, owing to this supervisor's death, it lapsed into the
+poet's improvident hands. Even then a sensible tenant of his own name,
+and a distant relative, managed very snugly the farm of Leasowes; but
+when Shenstone came to live with him, neither house nor grounds were
+large enough for the joint occupancy of the poet, who was trailing his
+walks through the middle of the mowing, and of the tenant, who had his
+beeves to fatten and his rental to pay.
+
+So Shenstone became a farmer on his own account; and, according to all
+reports, a very sorry account he made of it. The good soul had none of
+Mr. Tull's petulance and audacity with his servants; if the ploughman
+broke his gear, I suspect the kind ballad-master allowed him a holiday
+for the mending. The herdsman stared in astonishment to find the
+"beasts" ordered away from their accustomed grazing-fields. A new
+thicket had been planted, which must not be disturbed; the orchard was
+uprooted to give place to some parterre; a fine bit of meadow was flowed
+with a miniature lake; hedges were shorn away without mercy; arbors,
+grottos, rustic seats, Arcadian temples, sprang up in all outlying
+nooks; so that the annual product of the land came presently to be
+limited, almost entirely, to the beauty of its disposition.
+
+I think that the poet, unlike most, was never very thoroughly satisfied
+with his poems, and that, therefore, the vanity possessed him to vest
+the sense of beauty which he felt tingling in his blood in something
+more palpable than language. Hence came the charming walks and woods and
+waters of Leasowes. With this ambition holding him and mastering him,
+what mattered a mouldy grain-crop, or a debt? If he had only an ardent
+admirer of his walks, his wilderness, his grottos,--this was his
+customer. He longed for such, in troops,--as a poet longs for readers,
+and as a farmer longs for sun and rain.
+
+And he had them. I fancy there was hardly a cultivated person in
+England, but, before the death of Shenstone, had heard of the rare
+beauty of his home of Leasowes. Lord Lyttleton, who lived near by, at
+the elegant seat of Hagley, brought over his guests to see what miracles
+the hare-brained, sensitive poet had wrought upon his farm. And I can
+fancy the proud, shy creature watching from his lattice the company of
+distinguished guests,--maddened, if they look at his alcove from the
+wrong direction,--wondering if that shout that comes booming to his
+sensitive ear means admiration, or only an unappreciative
+surprise,--dwelling on the memory of the visit, as a poet dwells on the
+first public mention of his poem. In his "Egotisms," (well named,) he
+writes,--"Why repine? I have seen mansions on the verge of Wales that
+convert my farm-house into a Hampton Court, and where they speak of a
+glazed window as a great piece of magnificence. All things figure by
+comparison."
+
+And this reflection, with its flavor of philosophy, was, I dare say, a
+sweet morsel to him. He saw very little of the world in his later years,
+save that part of it which at odd intervals found its way to the
+delights of Leasowes; indeed, he was not of a temper to meet the world
+upon fair terms. "The generality of mankind," he cynically says, "are
+seldom in good humor but whilst they are imposing upon you in some shape
+or other."[12]
+
+Our farmer of Leasowes published a pastoral that was no way equal to the
+pastoral he wrote with trees, walks, and water upon his land; yet there
+are few cultivated readers who have not some day met with it, and been
+beguiled by its mellifluous seesaw. How its jingling resonance comes
+back to me to-day from the "Reader" book of the High School!
+
+    "I have found out a gift for my fair;
+      I have found where the wood-pigeons breed:
+    But let me that plunder forbear;
+      She will say 'twas a barbarous deed.
+    For he ne'er could be true, she averred,
+      Who could rob a poor bird of its young:
+    And I loved her the more, when I heard
+      Such tenderness fall from her tongue."
+
+And what a killing look over at the girl in the corner, in check
+gingham, with blue bows in her hair, as I read (always on the old
+school-benches),--
+
+    "I have heard her with sweetness unfold
+      How that pity was due to--a dove:
+    That it ever attended the bold;
+      And she called it _the sister of love_.
+    But her words such a pleasure convey,
+      So much I her accents adore,
+    Let her speak, and whatever she say,
+      Methinks I should love her the more."
+
+There is a rhythmic prettiness in this; but it is the prettiness of a
+lover in his teens, and not the kind we look for from a man who stood
+five feet eleven in his stockings, and wore his own gray hair. Strangely
+enough, Shenstone had the _physique_ of a ploughman or a prize-fighter,
+and with it the fine, sensitive brain of a woman; a Greek in his
+refinements, and a Greek in indolence. I hope he gets on better in the
+other world than he ever did in this.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE RELATION OF ART TO NATURE.
+
+IN TWO PARTS.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+The repulsive ugliness of the early Christian paintings was not the
+consequence of any break in the tradition. There was no reason why the
+graceful drawing of the human figure should not have been transmitted,
+as well as the technical procedures and the pigments. Nor was effort
+wanting: these pictures were often very elaborate and splendid in
+execution. But it is clear that grace and resemblance to anything
+existing, so far from being aimed at, were intentionally avoided. Even
+as late as the thirteenth century we find figures with blue legs and red
+bodies,--the horses in a procession blue, red, and yellow. Any whim of
+association, or fanciful color-pattern, was preferred to beauty or
+correctness. Likeness to actual things seemed to be regarded, indeed, as
+an unavoidable evil, to be restricted as far as possible. The problem
+was, to show God's omnipresence in the world, especially His appearance
+on the earth as man, and His abiding presence in holy men and women as
+an inspiration obliterating their humanity. But so long as the divine
+and the human are looked upon as essentially opposed, their union can be
+by miracle only, and the first thought must be to keep prominent this
+miraculousness, and guard against confusion of this angelic existence
+with every-day reality. The result is this realm of ghosts, at home
+neither in heaven nor on earth, neither presuming to be spirit nor
+condescending to be body, but hovering intermediate. But the more
+strongly the antithesis is felt, the nearer the thought to end this
+remaining tenderness for the gross and unspiritual,--to drop this
+ballast of earth, and rise into the region of heavenly realities. Upon a
+window of Canterbury Cathedral, beneath a representation of the miracle
+of Cana, is the legend,--_"Lympha dat historiam, vinum notat
+allegoriam."_ But if the earthly is there only for the sake of this
+heavenly transmutation,--if the miracle, and the miracle alone, shows
+God's purpose accomplished,--then all things must be miraculous, for all
+else may be safely ignored. Henceforth, nothing is of itself profane,
+for the profane is only that wherein the higher and truer sense has not
+yet been recognized. What is demanded is not an exceptional
+transmutation, but a translation,--that all Nature should be interpreted
+of the spirit.
+
+The result is, on the one hand, a greater license in dealing with actual
+forms, since Art sees all things on one level of dignity,--respects one
+no more than another, but only its own purpose,--is careless of material
+qualities, and of moral qualities, too, as far as they are bound to
+particular shapes. Why dwell tediously upon one particle, when the value
+of it consists not in its particularity, but in its harmony with the
+rest of the universe? Giotto seems to make short work with the human
+form divine by wrapping all his figures from head to foot in flowing
+draperies. But these figures have more humanity in them, stand closer to
+us, because the meaning is no longer petrified in the shape, but speaks
+to us freely and directly, in a look, a gesture, a sweep of the garment.
+The Greek said,--"With these superhuman lineaments you are to conceive
+the presence of Jove; these are the appropriate forms of the immortals."
+Giotto said,--"See what divine meanings in every-day faces and actions;
+with these eyes you are to look upon the people in the street." The one
+is a remote and incredible perfection,--the other, the intimate reality
+of the actual and present. It is, in truth, therefore, a closer approach
+to Nature than was before possible. The artist no longer shuns full
+actuality for his conception, for he fears no confusion with the actual.
+For instance, from the earliest times the celestial nature of angels had
+been naïvely intimated by appending wings to them. There was no attempt
+to carry out the suggestion, or to show the mechanical possibility of
+it, for that would be only to make winged men. The painters of the
+sixteenth century, on the other hand, from a nervous dread lest wings
+should prove insufficient, establish a sure basis of clouds for their
+angels, with more and more emphasis of buoyancy and extent, until at
+last, no longer trusting their own statement, they settle the question
+by showing them from below, already risen, and so choke off the doubt
+whether they can rise. But Orcagna's angels float without assistance or
+effort, by their own inherent lightness, as naturally as we walk. They
+are not out of their element, but bring their element with them. These
+are not men caught up into the skies, and do not need to be sustained
+there. The world they inhabit is not earth in heaven, but heaven on
+earth,--the earth seen in accordance with the purpose of its existence.
+
+Giotto's fellow-citizens were struck with the new interest which the
+language of attitude and gesture and all the familiar details of life
+acquired in his representation of them. Looking around them, they saw
+what they had been taught to see, and concluded it was only an
+unexampled closeness of copying. No doubt Giotto thought so, too,--but
+had that been all, we should not have heard of it. It is this new
+interest that has to be accounted for. The charm did not lie in the
+fact, nor in the reproduction of it in the picture, but in a sudden
+sense of its value as expression, resting on a still obscurer feeling
+that herein lay its whole value,--that the actual _is_ not what it
+seems, still less a pure delusion, but that it is pure _seeming_, so
+that its phenomenal character is no reproach, but the bond that connects
+it with reality. Just because it is only "the outward show," and does
+not pretend to be anything more, what it shows is not "the things that
+only seem," but the things that are. The attractiveness of beauty is due
+to the sense of higher affinities in the object; it is finality felt,
+but not comprehended, so that the form shines with the splendor of a
+purpose that belongs not to it, but to the whole whereof it is a part.
+Aristotle makes wonder the forerunner of science. So our admiration of
+beauty is a tribute paid in advance to the fresh insight it promises.
+Whether it be called miracle or inspiration, the artist must see his
+theme as something excellent and singular. This is perhaps that
+"strangeness" which Lord Bacon requires in all "excellent beauty," the
+new significance coming direct, and not through reflection, and
+therefore ineffable and incomparable. That Giotto and his successors
+went on for two hundred years painting saints and miracles was not
+because the Church so ordained, nor from any extraordinary devoutness of
+the artists, but because they still needed an outward assurance that
+what they did was not the petty triviality it seemed. There must always
+remain the sense of an ulterior, undeveloped meaning; when that is laid
+bare, Art has become superfluous, and makes haste to withdraw into
+obscure regions. For it is only as language that the picture or the
+statue avails anything, and this circumstantiality of expression is
+tolerable only so long as it is the only expression. Beauty is an honor
+to matter; but spirit, the source of beauty, is impatient of such
+measure of it as Art can give. As, in the legend, Eurydice, the dawn,
+sinks back into night at the look of the arisen sun, so this lovely
+flush of the dawning intelligence wanes before the eye of the intellect.
+The picture is a help so long as it transcends previous conception; but
+when the mind comes up with these sallies, and the picture is compared
+with the idea, it sinks back into a thing. Thenceforth it takes rank
+with Nature, and falls victim to the natural laws. It is only an aspect
+and an instant,--not eternal, but a petty persistence,--not God, but an
+idol,--not the saint, but his flesh and integuments.
+
+Shall we say, then, that beauty is an illusion? Certainly it is no
+falsity; we may call it provisional truth,--truth at a certain stage, as
+appearance, not yet as idea. It is _appearance_ seen as final, as the
+highest the mind has reached. Hence its miraculousness. It is in advance
+of consciousness; we cannot account for it any more than the savage
+could account for his fetich,--why this bunch of rags and feathers
+should be more venerable to him than other rags and feathers. But to
+deny that the impressiveness it adds to matter comes from a deeper sense
+of the truth would be as unwise as for him to deny his fetich. The
+fetich is false, not as compared with other rags and feathers, but as
+compared with a higher conception of God. The falsity is not that he
+sees God in this rubbish, but that he does not see Him elsewhere.
+Coleridge said that a picture is something between a thought and a
+thing. It must keep the mean; either extreme is fatal. Plato makes Eros
+intermediate between wisdom and ignorance, born of unequal parentage,
+neither mortal nor immortal, forever needy, forever seeking the Psyche
+whom he can never meet face to face.
+
+The history of Art has a certain analogy to the growth of the corals.
+Like them, it seeks the light which it cannot endure. A certain depth
+beneath the surface is most favorable to it,--a dim, midway region of
+twilight and calm, remote alike from the stagnant obscurity of mere
+sensation and from the agitated surface of day, the dry light of the
+intellect. When it is laid bare, it dies,--its substance, indeed,
+enduring as the basis of new continents, but the life gone, and only the
+traces of its action left in the stony relics of the past. Greek Art
+perished when its secret was translated into clearer language by Plato
+and Aristotle; and Duccio and Cimabue and Giotto must go the same way as
+soon as St. Francis of Assisi or Luther or Calvin puts into words what
+they meant. It is its own success that is fatal to Art; for just in
+proportion as the expressiveness it insists upon is shown to be
+pervading, universal, and not the property of this or that shape, the
+particular manifestation is degraded. Color and form are due to partial
+opacity; the light must penetrate to a certain depth, but not
+throughout.
+
+The name of Giotto has come to stand for Devotional Art, for an
+earnestness that subordinates all display to the sacredness of the
+theme. But his fellow-citizens knew him for a man of quick worldly wit,
+who despised asceticism, and was ready with the most audacious jokes,
+even at sacred things. Ghiberti and Cennini do not praise him for piety,
+but for having "brought Art back to Nature" and "translated it from
+Greek into Latin,"--that is, from the language of clerks into the
+vernacular. It is not anything special in the intention that gives
+Giotto his fame, but the freedom, directness, and variety of the
+language with which it is expressed. The effort to escape from
+traditional formulas and conventional shapes often makes itself felt at
+the expense even of beauty. Instead of the statuesque forms of the
+earlier time, it is the dramatic interest that is now prominent,--the
+composition, the convergent action of numerous figures, separately,
+perhaps, insignificant, but pervaded by a common emotion that
+subordinates all distinctions and leaves itself alone visible. Even in
+the traditional groups, as, for instance, the Holy Families, etc., the
+aim is more complete realization, in draperies, gestures, postures,
+rather than beauty of form. We miss in Giotto much that had been
+attained before him. What Madonna of his can rank with Giovanni
+Pisano's? The Northern cathedral-sculptures, even some of the Byzantine
+carvings, have a dignity that is at least uncommon in his pictures.
+Especially the faces are generally wooden,--destitute alike of
+individuality and of the loveliness of Duccio's and even of some of
+Cimabue's. On the other hand, in the picture wherein the school
+attained, perhaps, its highest success as to beauty of the faces,
+Orcagna's "Paradise" at Santa Maria Novella, the blessed are ranged in
+row above row, with mostly no relation to each other but juxtaposition.
+We see here two directions,--one in continuation of the antique, seeking
+beauty as the property of certain privileged forms, the other as the
+hidden possibility that pervades all things. One or the other must abate
+something: either the image must become less sacred, or the meaning
+narrower; for the language of painting is not figurative, like the
+language of poetry, but figure, and unless the form bear on its face
+that it is not all that is meant, its inherent limitations are
+transferred to the thought itself. When Dante tells us that Brunetto
+Latini and his companions looked at him,--
+
+    "Come vecchio sartor fa nella cruna,"
+
+it is the intensity of the gaze that is present with us, not the old
+tailor and his needle. But in Painting the image is usurping and
+exclusive.
+
+Of these divergent tendencies it is easy to see which must conquer. The
+gifts of the spirit are more truly honored as the birthright of humanity
+than as the property of this or that saint. The worship of the Madonna
+is better than the worship of Athene just so far as the homage is paid
+to a sentiment and not to a person. Now the Madonna, too, must come down
+from her throne. The painters grew tired of painting saints and angels.
+Giotto already had diverged from the traditional heads and draperies,
+and begun to put his figures into the Florentine dress. Masaccio and
+Filippino Lippi brought their fellow-citizens into their pictures. Soon
+the Holy Family is only a Florentine matron with her baby. The sacred
+histories are no longer the end, but only the excuse; everything else is
+insisted on rather than the pretended theme. The second Nicene Council
+had declared that "the designing of the holy images was not to be left
+to the invention of artists, but to the approved legislation and
+tradition of the Catholic Church." But now the Church had to take a
+great deal that it had not bargained for. Perspective, chiaroscuro,
+picturesque contrast and variety, and all that belongs to the show of
+things, without regard to what they are,--this is now the religion of
+Art.
+
+These things may seem to us rather superficial, and Art to have declined
+from its ancient dignity. But see how they took hold of men, and what
+men they took hold of. In the midst of that bloody and shameless
+fifteenth century, when only force seems sacred, men hunted these
+shadows as if they were wealth and power. Paolo Uccello could not be got
+away from his drawing to his meals or his rest, and only replied to his
+wife's remonstrances, "Ah, this perspective is so delightful!" With what
+ardor Mantegna and Luca Signorelli seized upon a new trait or action!
+Leonardo da Vinci, "the first name of the fifteenth century," a man to
+whom any career was open, and who seemed almost equally fit for any,
+never walked the streets without a sketch-book in his hand, and was all
+his life long immersed in the study of Appearance, with a persistent
+scrutiny that is revealed by his endless caricatures and studies, but
+perhaps by nothing more clearly than by his incidental discovery of the
+principle of the stereoscope, which he describes in his treatise on
+Painting. This was no learned curiosity, nor the whim of seeing the
+universe under drill, but only a clearer instinct of what the purpose of
+Art is, namely, to see the reality of the actual world in and as the
+appearance, instead of groping for some ulterior reality hidden behind
+it. Leonardo has been called the precursor of Bacon. Certainly the
+conviction that underlies this passion for the outside of things is the
+same in both,--the firm belief that the truth is not to be sought in
+some remote seventh heaven, but in a truer view of the universe about
+us.
+
+Donatello told Paolo Uccello that he was leaving the substance for the
+show. But the painter doubtless felt that the show was more real than
+any such "substance." For it is the finite taken as what it truly is,
+nothing in itself, but only the show of the infinite. If it seem shadowy
+and abstract, it is to be considered with what it is compared. What an
+abstraction is depends on what is taken away and what left behind. For
+instance, the Slavery question in our politics is sometimes termed an
+abstraction. Yes, surely, if the dollar _is_ almighty, is the final
+reality,--if peace and comfort are alone worth living for,--then the
+Slavery question and several other things are abstractions. So in the
+world of matter, if the chemical results are the reality of it, the
+appearance may well be considered as an abstraction. But this is not the
+view of Art; Art has never magnified the materiality of the finite; on
+the contrary, its history is only the record of successive attempts to
+dispose of matter, the failure always lying in the hasty effort to
+abolish it altogether in favor of an immaterial principle outside of it,
+something behind the phenomena, like Kant's _noumenon_,--too fine to
+exist, yet unable to dispense with existence, and so, after all, not
+spirit, but only a superfine kind of matter; or as in a picture in the
+Campo Santo at Pisa, where the world is figured as a series of
+concentric circles, held up like a shield by God standing behind it.
+
+It may be asked, Was not the appearance, and this alone, from all time,
+the object of Art? But so long as the figment of a separate reality of
+the finite is kept up, an antagonism subsists between this and truth,
+and the appearance cannot be frankly made the end, but has only an
+indirect, derivative value. In the classic it was the human form in
+superhuman perfection; in the early Christian Art, God condescending to
+inhabit human shape; in each case, what is given is felt to be negative
+to the reality,--a fiction, not the truth.
+
+But now the antagonism falls away, and the truth of Art is felt to be a
+higher power of the truth of Nature. Perspective puts the mind in the
+place of gravitation as the centre, thus naïvely declaring mind and not
+matter to be the substance of the universe. It will see only this,
+feeling well that there is no other reality. It may be said that
+Perspective is as much an outward material fact as any other. So it is,
+as soon as the point of sight is fixed. The mind alters nothing, but
+gives to the objects that coherency that makes them into a world. The
+universe has no existence for the idiot, not because it is not _there_,
+but because he makes no image of it, or, as we say, does not _mind_ it.
+The point of sight is the mark of a foregone action of the mind; what is
+embraced in it is seen together, because it belongs to one conception.
+The effect can be simulated to a certain extent by mechanical
+contrivance; but before the rules of perspective were systematized, the
+perspective of a picture betrays its history, tells how much of it was
+seen together, and what was added. Even late in the fifteenth century
+pictures are still more or less mosaics,--their piecemeal origin
+confessed by slight indications in the midst even of very advanced
+technical skill. Thus, in Antonio Pollaiuolo's "Three Archangels," in
+the Florence Academy,--three admirably drawn figures, abreast, and about
+equally distant from the frame, the line of the right wing touches the
+head at the same point in each, with no allowance for their different
+relations to the centre of the picture.
+
+But there is a deeper kind of perspective, not so easily manufactured,
+though the manufacture of this, too, is often attempted, namely,
+Composition. The true ground of perspective in a picture is not a
+mechanical arrangement of lines, but a definite vision,--an affection of
+the painter by the subject, the net result of it in his mind,
+instantaneous and complete. It is a mistake to suppose that Composition
+is anything arbitrary,--that in the landscape out-of-doors we see the
+world as God made it, but in the picture as the painter makes it.
+Composition is nothing but the logic of vision; an uncomposed view is
+no more possible than an unlogical sentence. The eyes convey in each
+case what the mind is able to grasp,--no less, no more. As to any
+particular work, it is always a question of fact what it amounts to; the
+composition may be shallow, it may be bad,--the work of the
+understanding, not of the imagination,--put together, instead of seen
+together. But a picture _without_ composition would be the mathematical
+point. Mr. Ruskin thinks any sensible person would exchange his
+pictures, however good, for windows through which he could see the
+scenes themselves. This does not quite meet the point, for it may be
+only a preference of quantity to quality. The window gives an infinitude
+of pictures; the painter, whatever his merit, but one. A fair comparison
+would be to place by the side of the Turner drawing a photograph of the
+scene, which we will suppose taken at the most favorable moment, and
+complete in color as well as light and shade. Whoever should then prefer
+the photograph must be either more of a naturalist than an artist, or
+else a better artist than Turner. The photograph, supposing it to be
+perfect in its way, gives what is seen at a first glance, only with the
+optical part of the process expanded over the whole field, instead of
+being confined to one point, as the eye is. The picture in it is the
+first glance of the operator, as he selected it; whatever delicacy of
+detail told in the impression on his mind tells in the impression on the
+plate; whatever is more than that does not go to increase the richness
+of the result, _as picture_, but belongs to another sphere. The
+landscape-photographs that we have lately had in such admirable
+perfection, however they may overpower our judgment at first sight,
+will, I believe, be found not to _wear_ well; they have really less in
+them than even second-rate drawings, and therefore are sooner exhausted.
+The most satisfactory results of the photograph are where the subject is
+professedly a fragment, as in near foliage, tree-trunks, stone-texture;
+or where the mind's work is already done, and needs only to be
+reflected, as in buildings, sculpture, and, to a certain extent,
+portrait,--as far as the character has wrought itself into the clothes,
+habitual attitude, etc. Is not the popularity of the small full-length
+portrait-photographs owing to the predominance they give to this passive
+imprint of the mind's past action upon externals over its momentary and
+elusive presence? It is to the fillip received from the startling
+likeness of trivial details, exciting us to supply what is deficient in
+more important points, that is to be ascribed the leniency to the
+photograph on the part of near relatives and friends, who are usually
+hard to please with a painted likeness.
+
+But all comparisons between the photograph and the hand-drawn picture
+are apt to be vitiated by the confusion of various extraneous interests
+with a purely artistic satisfaction resting in the thing itself. It is
+the old fallacy, involved in all the comparisons of Art with Nature. Of
+course, at bottom the interest is always that of the indwelling idea.
+But the question is, whether we stop at the outside, the material
+texture, or pass at once to the other extreme, the thought conveyed, or
+whether the two sides remain undistinguished. In the latter case only is
+our enjoyment strictly æsthetic, that is, attached to the bare
+perception of this particular thing; in the others, it is not this thing
+that prevails, but the physical or moral qualities, the class to which
+it belongs. It is true all these qualities play in and influence or even
+constitute the impression that particular works of Art make upon us. One
+man admires a picture for its _handling_, its surface, the way in which
+the paint is laid on; another, for its illustration of the laws of
+physiognomy; another, because it reminds him of the spring he spent in
+Rome, the pleasant people he met there, etc. We do not always care to
+distinguish the sources of the pleasure we feel; but for any _criticism_
+we must quit these accidents and personalities, and attend solely to
+that in the work which is unique, peculiar to it, that in which it
+suggests nothing, and associates itself with nothing, but refuses to be
+classed or distributed. This may not be the most important aspect of the
+thing represented, nor the deepest interest that a picture can have; but
+here, strictly speaking, lies all the _beauty_ of it. The photograph has
+or may have a certain value of this kind, but a little time is needful
+before we discriminate what is general and what is special. Its
+extraneous interest, as specimen, as _instance_ only, tends at once to
+abate from the first view, as the mind classifies and disposes of it.
+What remains, not thus to be disposed of, is its value as picture. Under
+this test, the photograph, compared with works of Art of a high order,
+will prove wanting in substance, thin and spotty, faulty in both ways,
+too full and too empty. For the result in each case must be
+proportionate to the impression that it echoes; but this, in the work of
+the artist, is reinforced by all his previous study and experience, as
+well as by the force and delicacy which his perception has over that of
+other men. It is thus really more concrete, has more in it, than the
+actual scene.
+
+But when Composition is decried as _artificial_, what is meant is that
+it is _artifice_. It must be artificial, in the sense that all is there
+for the sake of the picture. But it is not to be the _contrivance_ of
+the painter; the purpose must be in the work, not in his head. Diotima,
+in Plato's "Banquet," tells Socrates that Eros desires not the
+beautiful, but to bring forth in the beautiful; the creative impulse
+itself must be the motive, not anything ulterior. We require of the
+artist that he shall build better than he knows,--that his work shall
+not be the statement of his opinions, however correct or respectable,
+but an infinity, inexhaustible like Nature. He is to paint, as Turner
+said, only his impressions, and this precisely because they are not
+_his_, but stand outside of his will. To further this, to get the direct
+action of the artist's instinct, clear of the meddling and patching of
+forethought and afterthought, is no doubt the aim of the seemingly
+careless, formless handling now in vogue,--the dash which Harding says
+makes all the difference between what is good and what is intolerable in
+water-colors,--and the palette-knife-and-finger procedure of the French
+painters.
+
+The sin of premeditated composition is that it is premeditated; the why
+and wherefore is of less consequence. If the motive be extraneous to the
+work, a theory, not an instinct, it does not matter much how _high_ it
+is. It is fatal to beauty to see in the thing only its uses,--in the
+tree only the planks, in Niagara only the water-power; but a reverence
+for the facts themselves, or even for the moral meaning of them, so far
+as it is consciously present in the artist's mind, is just so far from
+the true intent of Art. This is the bane of the modern German school,
+both in landscape and history. They are laborious, learned, accurate,
+elevated in sentiment; Kaulbach's pictures, for instance, are complete
+treatises upon the theme, both as to the conception and the drawing,
+grouping, etc.; but it is mostly as treatises that they have interest.
+So the allegories in Albert Dürer's "Melancholia" are obstructive to it
+as a work of Art, and just in proportion to their value as thoughts.
+
+The moral meaning in a picture, and its fidelity to fact, may each serve
+as measure of its merit _after it is done_. They must each be there, for
+its aim is to express after its own fashion the reality that lurks in
+every particle of matter. But it is for the spectator to see them, not
+the artist, and it is talking at cross-purposes to make either the
+motive,--to preach morality to Art, or to require from the artist an
+inventory of the landscape. That five or ten million pines grow in a
+Swiss valley is no reason why every one of them should be drawn. No
+doubt every one of them has its reason for being there, and it is
+conceivable that an exhaustive final statement might require them all
+to be shown. But there are no final statements in this world, least of
+all in Art. There are many things besides pines in the valley, and more
+important, and they can be drawn meanwhile. Besides, if all the pines,
+why not every pebble and blade of grass?
+
+The earnestness that attracts us in mediæval Art, the devout fervor of
+the earlier time and the veracity of the later, the deference of the
+painter to his theme, is profoundly interesting as _history_, but it was
+conditioned also by the limitations of that age. The mediæval mind was
+oppressed by a sense of the foreignness and profaneness of Nature. The
+world is God's work, and ruled by Him; but it is not His dwelling-place,
+but only His foot-stool. The Divine spirit penetrates into the world of
+matter at certain points and to a certain depth, does not possess and
+inhabit it now and here, but only elsewhere and at a future time, in
+heaven, and at the final Judgment; and meantime the Church and the State
+are to maintain His jurisdiction over this outlying province as well as
+they can. The actual presence of God in the world would seem to drag Him
+down into questionable limitations, not to be assumed without express
+warrant, as exception, miracle, and in things consecrated and set apart.
+Hence the patchwork composition of the early painters; we see in it an
+extreme diversity of value ascribed to the things about them. It is a
+world partly divine and partly rubbish; not a universe, but a collection
+of fragments from various worlds. The figures in their landscapes do not
+tread the earth as if they belonged there, but like actors upon a stage,
+tricked up for the occasion. The earth is a desert upon which stones
+have been laid and herbs stuck into the crevices. The trees are put
+together out of separate leaves and twigs, and the rocks and mountains
+inserted like posts. In the earliest specimens the figures themselves
+have the same piecemeal look: their members are not born together, but
+put together. We see just how far the soul extends into them,--sometimes
+only to the eyes, then to the rest of the features, afterwards to the
+limbs and extremities. Evidently the artist's conception left much
+outside of it, to be added by way of label or explanation. In the trees,
+the care is to give the well-known fruit, the acorn or the apple, not
+the character of the tree; for what is wanted is only an indication what
+tree is meant. The only tie between man and the material world is the
+_use_ he makes of it, elaborating and turning it into something it was
+not. Hence the trim _orderliness_ of the mediæval landscape. Dante shows
+no love of the woods or the mountains, but only dread and dislike, and
+draws his tropes from engineering, from shipyards, moats, embankments.
+
+The mediæval conception is higher than the antique; it recognizes a
+reality beyond the immediate, but not yet that it is the reality of the
+immediate and present also. But Art must dislodge this phantom of a
+lower, profane reality, and accept its own visions as authentic and
+sufficient. The modern mind is in this sense less religious than the
+mediæval, that the antithesis of phenomenal and real is less present to
+it. But the pungency of this antithesis comes from an imperfect
+realization of its meaning. Just so far as the subjection of the finite
+remains no longer a postulate or an aspiration, but is carried into
+effect,--its finiteness no longer resisted or deplored, but
+accepted,--just so far it ceases to be opaque and inert. The present
+seems trivial and squalid, because it is clutched and held fast,--the
+fugitive image petrified into an idol or a clod. But taken as it is, it
+becomes transparent, and reveals the fair lines of the ideal.
+
+The complaints of want of earnestness, devoutness, in modern Art, are as
+short-sighted as Schiller's lament over the prosaic present, as a world
+bereft of the gods. It is a loss to which we can well resign ourselves,
+that we no longer see God throned on Olympus, or anywhere else outside
+of the world. It is no misfortune that the mind has recognized under
+these alien forms a spirit akin to itself, and therefore no longer
+gives bribes to Fate by setting up images to it. The deity it worships
+is thenceforth no longer powerless to exist, nor is there any existence
+out of him; it needs not, then, to provide a limbo for him in some
+sphere of abstraction. What has fled is not the divinity, but its false
+isolation, its delegation to a corner of the universe. Instead of the
+god with his whims, we have law universal, the rule of mind, to which
+matter is not hostile, but allied and affirmative. That the sun is no
+longer the chariot of Helios, but a gravitating fireball, is only the
+other side of the perception that it is mind embodied, not some
+unrelated entity for which a charioteer must be deputed.
+
+We no longer worship groves and fountains, nor Madonnas and saints, and
+our Art accordingly can no longer have the fervency, since its objects
+have not the concreteness, that belonged to former times. But it is to
+be noticed that Art can be devout only in proportion as Religion is
+artistic,--that is, as matter, and not spirit, is the immediate object
+of worship. Art and Religion spring from the same root, but coincide
+only at the outset, as in fetichism, the worship of the Black Stone of
+the Caaba, or the wonder-working Madonnas of Italy. The fetich is at
+once image and god; the interest in the appearance is not distinct from
+the interest in the meaning. It needs neither to be beautiful nor to be
+understood. But as the sense springs up of a related _mind_ in the idol,
+the two sides are separated. It is no longer _this thing_ merely, but,
+on the one hand, spirit, above and beyond matter, and, on the other, the
+appearance, equally self-sufficing and supreme among earthly things,
+just because its reality is not here, but elsewhere,--appearance,
+therefore, as transcendent, or Beauty.
+
+To every age the religion of the foregoing seems artificial, incumbered
+with forms, and its Art superstitious, over-scrupulous, biased by
+considerations that have nothing to do with Art. Hence religious
+reformers are mystics, enthusiasts: this is the look of Luther, even of
+the hard-headed Calvin, as seen from the Roman-Catholic side. Hence,
+also, every epoch of revolution in Art seems to the preceding like an
+irruption of frivolity and profanity. Christian Art would have seemed so
+to the ancients; the Realism of the fourteenth century must have seemed
+so to the Giotteschi and the Renaissance, to both. The term
+Pre-Raphaelitism, though it seems an odd collocation to bring together
+such men as Frà Angelico, Filippo Lippi, and Luca Signorelli, has so far
+an intelligible basis, that all this period, from Giotto to Raphael,
+amidst all diversities, is characterized throughout by a deference of
+Art to something extraneous. It is not beauty that Frà Angelico looks
+for, but holiness, or beauty as expressing this; it is not beauty that
+draws Filippo Lippi, but homely actuality. It is from this point of view
+that the Renaissance has been attacked as wanting in faith, earnestness,
+humility. The Renaissance had swallowed all formulas. Nothing was in
+itself sacred, but all other considerations were sacrificed to the
+appeal to the eye. But this, so far from proving any "faithlessness,"
+shows, on the contrary, an entire faith in their Art, that it was able
+to accomplish what was required of it, and needed not to be bolstered up
+by anything external. Mr. Ruskin wants language to express his contempt
+for Claude, because, in a picture entitled "Moses at the Burning Bush,"
+he paints only a graceful landscape, in which the Bush is rather
+inconspicuous. But Claude might well reply, that what he intended was
+not a history, nor a homily, but a picture; that the name was added for
+convenience' sake, as he might name his son, John, without meaning any
+comparisons with the Evangelist. It is no defect, but a merit, that it
+requires nothing else than itself to explain it.
+
+Claude depicts "an unutilized earth," whence all traces of care, labor,
+sorrow, rapine, and want,--all that can suggest the perils and trials of
+life,--is removed. The buildings are palaces or picturesque ruins; the
+personages promenade at leisure, or only pretend to be doing something.
+All action and story, all individuality of persons, objects, and events,
+is merged in a pervading atmosphere of tranquil, sunny repose,--as of a
+holiday-afternoon. It may seem to us an idle lubberland, a paradise of
+do-nothings;--Mr. Ruskin sees in it only a "dim, stupid, serene,
+leguminous enjoyment." But whoever knows Rome will at least recognize in
+Claude's pictures some reflex of that enchantment that still hangs over
+the wondrous city, and draws to it generation after generation of
+pilgrims. In what does the mysterious charm consist? Is it not that the
+place seems set apart from the working-day world of selfish and warring
+interests? that here all manner of men, for once, lay aside their sordid
+occupations and their vulgar standards, to come together on the ground
+of a common humanity? It is easy to sneer at the Renaissance, but to
+understand it we must take it in its connection. The matters that
+interested that age seem now superfluous, the recreations of a holiday
+rather than the business of life. But coming from the dust and din of
+the fifteenth century, it looks differently. It was, in whatever dim or
+fantastic shape, a recognition of universal brotherhood,--of a common
+ground whereon all mankind could meet in peace and even sympathy, were
+it only for a picnic. In this _villeggiatura_ of the human race the
+immediate aim is no very lofty one,--not truth, not duty, but to please
+or be pleased. But who is it that is to be pleased? Not the great of the
+earth, not the consecrated of the Church, not the men merely of this
+guild or this nation, but Man. It is the festival of the new saint,
+Humanus,--a joyful announcement that the ancient antagonism is not
+fundamental, but destined to be overcome.
+
+This dreamy, half-sad, but friendly and soothing influence, that
+breathes from Claude's landscapes, is not the highest that Nature can
+inspire, but it is far better than to see in the earth only food,
+lodging, and a place to fight in, or even mere background and
+filling-in.
+
+The builders of the Rhine-castles looked down the reaches of the river
+only to spy out their prey or their enemy; the monks in their quiet
+valleys looked out for their trout-stream and kitchen-garden, but any
+interest beyond that would have been heathenish and dangerous. Whilst to
+the ancients the earth had value only as enjoyable, inhabitable, the
+earlier Christian ages valued it only as uninhabitable, as a wilderness
+repelling society. In the earliest mediæval landscapes, the effort to
+represent a wilderness that is there only for the sake of the hermits
+leads to the curious contradiction of a populous hermitage, every part
+of it occupied by figures resolutely bent on being alone, and sedulously
+ignoring the others. Humboldt quotes from the early Fathers some glowing
+descriptions of natural scenery, but they turn always upon the seclusion
+from mankind, and upon the contrast between the grandeur of God's works
+and the littleness of ours. But in Claude we have the hint, however
+crude, of a relation as unsordid as this, but positive and direct,--the
+soul of the landscape speaking at once to the soul of man,--showing
+itself cognate, already friendly, and needing only to throw off the husk
+of opposition. The defect is not that he defers too much to the purely
+pictorial, that he postpones the facts or the story to beauty, but that
+he does not defer enough, that he does not sufficiently trust his own
+eyes, but by way of further assurance drags in architecture, ships,
+mythological or Scripture stories, not caring for them himself, but
+supposing the spectator cares, so that they remain unassimilated, a scum
+floating on the surface and obscuring the work. Here is the "want of
+faith" with which, if any, he is justly chargeable,--that beauty is not
+enough for him, but he must make it pleasing. Pleasingness implies a
+languid acceptance, in which the mind is spared the shock of fresh
+suggestion or incitement. We call the Venus de' Medici, for instance, a
+pleasing statue, but the Venus of Milo beautiful; because in the one we
+find in fuller measure only what was already accepted and agreeable,
+whilst in the other we feel the presence of an unexplored and formidable
+personality, provoking the endeavor to follow it out and guess at its
+range and extent.
+
+This deference to the spectator marks the decline of Art from the
+supremacy of its position as the interpreter of religion to mankind. The
+work is no longer a revelation devoutly received by the artist and
+piously transmitted to a believing world; but he is a cultivated man,
+who gives what is agreeable to a cultivated society, where the Bible is
+treated with decorum, but all enthusiasm is reserved for Plato and
+Cicero. The earlier and greater men brought much of what they were from
+the fifteenth century, but even Raphael is too academic. It is not a
+Chinese deference to tradition, nor conformity to a fixed national
+taste, such as ruled Greek Art as by an organic necessity. One knows not
+whether to wonder most at the fancied need to attach to the work the
+stamp of classic authority, or at the levity with which the venerable
+forms of antiquity are treated. Nothing can be more superficial than
+this varnish of classicality. The names of Cicero, Brutus, Augustus were
+in all mouths; but the real character of these men, or of any others, or
+of the times they lived in, was very slightly realized. The classic
+architecture, with its cogent adaptation and sequence of parts, is cut
+up into theatre-scenery: its "members" are members no longer, but scraps
+to be stuck about at will. The gods and heroes of the ancient world have
+become the pageant of a holiday; even the sacred legends of the Church
+receive only an outward respect, and at last not even that. Claude wants
+a foreground-figure and puts in Æneas, Diana, or Moses, he cares little
+which, and he would hear, unmoved, Mr. Ruskin's eloquent denunciation of
+their utter unfitness for the assumed character, and the absurdity of
+the whole action of the piece.
+
+But the Renaissance had its religion, too,--namely, Culture. The one
+"virtue," acknowledged on all hands, alike by busy merchants, soldiers,
+despots, women, the acquaintance with Greek and Roman literature and
+art, was not quite the idle dilettanteism it seems. Lorenzo de' Medici
+said, that, without the knowledge of the Platonic philosophy, it was
+hard to be a good citizen and Christian. Leo X. thought, "Nothing more
+excellent or more useful has been given by the Creator to mankind, if we
+except only the knowledge and true worship of Himself, than these
+studies, which not only lead to the ornament and guidance of human life,
+but are applicable and useful to every particular situation." That this
+culture was superficial, that it regarded only show and outside, is no
+reproach, but means only that it was not a mere galvanizing of dead
+bones, that a new spirit was masquerading in these garments. Had it been
+in earnest in its revival of the past, it would have been insignificant;
+its disregard of the substance, and care for the form alone, showed that
+the form was used only as a protest against the old forms. A provincial
+narrowness, even a slight air of vulgarity, was felt to attach to the
+teachings of the Church. Gentility had come to imply not only
+heathendom, ("_gentilis est qui in Christum non credit_,") but liberal
+breeding. The attraction of the classic culture, "the humanities," as it
+was well called, was just this cosmopolitan largeness, that it had no
+prejudices and prescribed no test, but was open to all kinds of merit
+and every manner of man. Goethe, who belongs in good part to the
+Renaissance, frequently exemplifies this feeling, perhaps nowhere more
+strikingly than in the account of his pilgrimage to the temple of
+Minerva at Assisi, which he lovingly describes, remarking, at the same
+time, that he passed with only aversion the Church of St. Francis, with
+its frescos by Cimabue, Giotto, and their followers, which no traveller
+of our day willingly misses or soon forgets, though the temple may
+probably occupy but a small space in his memory. "I made no doubt,"
+says Goethe, "that all the heads there bore the same stamp as my
+Captain's,"--an Italian officer, more orthodox than enlightened, with
+whom he had been travelling.
+
+In truth, however diverse in its first appearance, the Italian
+Renaissance was the counterpart of the German Reformation, and, like
+that, a declaration that God is not shut up in a corner of the universe,
+nor His revelation restricted in regard of time, place, or persons. The
+day was long past when the Church was synonymous with civilization. The
+Church-ideal of holiness had long since been laid aside; a new world had
+grown up, in which other aims and another spirit prevailed. Macchiavelli
+thought the Church had nothing to do with worldly affairs, could do
+nothing for the State or for freedom. And the Church thought so, too. If
+it was left out of the new order of things, it was because it had left
+itself out. "The world" was godless, _pompa Diaboli_; devotion to God
+implied devotion (of the world) to the Devil. But the world, thus cut
+adrift, found itself yet alive and vigorous, and began thenceforth to
+live its own life, leaving the "other world" to take care of itself.
+Salvation, whether for the State or the individual, it was felt must
+come from individual effort, and not be conferred as a stamp or _visa_
+from the Pope and the College of Cardinals. It was not Religion that was
+dead, but only the Church. The Church being petrified into a negation,
+Culture, the religion of the world, was necessarily negative to that,
+and for a time absorbed in the mere getting rid of obstructions.
+Sainthood had never been proposed even as an ideal for all mankind, but
+only as _fuga sæculi_, the avoidance of all connection with human
+affairs. Logically, it must lead to the completest isolation, and find
+its best exponent in Simeon Stylites. The new ideal of Culture must
+involve first of all the getting rid of isolation, natural and
+artificial. Its representatives are such men as Leonardo da Vinci and
+Leon-Battista Alberti, masters of all arts and sciences, travelled,
+well-bred, at home in the universe,--thoroughly accomplished men of the
+world, with senses and faculties in complete harmonious development. It
+is an age full of splendid figures; whatever growth there was in any
+country came now to its flowering-time.
+
+The drawback is want of purpose. This splendor looks only to show; there
+is no universal aim, no motive except whim,--the whims of men of talent,
+or the whim of the crowd. For the approbation of the Church is
+substituted the applause of cultivated society, a wider convention, but
+conventional still. This is the frivolous side of the Renaissance, not
+its holding light the old traditions, but that for the traditions it
+rejected it had nothing but tradition to substitute. But if this
+declaration of independence was at first only a claim for license, not
+for liberty, this is only what was natural, and may be said of
+Protestantism as well. Protestantism, too, had its orthodoxy, and has
+not even yet quite realized that the _private judgment_ whose rights it
+vindicated does not mean personal whim, and therefore is not fortified
+by the assent of any man or body of men, nor weakened by their dissent,
+but belongs alone to thought, which is necessarily individual, and at
+the same time of universal validity; whereas, personality is partial,
+belongs to the crowd, and to that part of the man which confounds him
+with the crowd. Were the private judgment indeed private, it would have
+no rights. Of what consequence the private judgments of a tribe of apes,
+or of Bushmen? This reference to the bystanders means only an appeal
+from the Church; it is at bottom a declaration that the truth is not a
+miraculous exception, a falsehood which for this particular occasion is
+called truth, but the substance of the universe, apparent everywhere,
+and to all that seek it. The perception must be its own evidence, it
+must be true for us, now and here. We have no right to blame the
+Renaissance painters for their love of show, for Art exists for show,
+and the due fulfilment of its purpose, bringing to the surface what was
+dimly indicated, must engage it the more thoroughly in the superficial
+aspect, and make all reference to a hidden ulterior meaning more and
+more a mere pretence. What was once Thought has now become form, color,
+surface; to make a mystery of it would be thoughtlessness or hypocrisy.
+
+The shortcoming is not in the artists, but in Art. Painting shares the
+same fate as Sculpture: not only is the soul not a thing, it is not
+wholly an appearance, but combines with its appearing a constant protest
+against the finality of it. Not only is the body an inadequate
+manifestation, but what it manifests is itself progressive, and any
+conception of it restrictive and partial. Henceforth any representation
+of the human form must either pretend a mystery that is not felt, or, if
+inspired by a genuine interest, it must be of a lower kind, and must
+avoid of set purpose any undue exaltation of one part over another, as
+of the face over the limbs, and dwell rather upon harmony of lines and
+colors, wherein nothing shall be prominent at the expense of the rest,
+seeking to make up what is wanting in intensity, in inward meaning, by
+allusion, by an interest reflected from without, instead of the
+immediate and intuitive. We often feel, even in Raphael's pictures, that
+the aim is lower than, for instance, Frà Angelico's. But it is at least
+genuine, and what that saves us from we may see in some of Perugino's
+and Pinturicchio's altar-pieces, where spirituality means kicking heels,
+hollow cheeks, and a deadly-sweet smile. That Raphael, among all his
+Holy Families, painted only one Madonna di San Sisto, and that hastily,
+on trifling occasion, shows that it was a chance-hit rather than the
+normal fruit of his genius. The beauty that shines like celestial flame
+from the face of the divine child, and the transfigured humanity of the
+mother, are no denizens of earth, but fugitive radiances that tinge it
+for a moment and are gone. For once, the impossible is achieved; the
+figures hover, dreamlike, disconnected from all around, as if the canvas
+opened and showed, not what is upon it, but beyond it. But it is a
+casual success, not to be sought or expected. A wise instinct made the
+painter in general shun such direct, explicit statement, and rather
+treat the subject somewhat cavalierly than allow it to confront and
+confound him. The greater he is, and the more complete his development,
+the more he must dread whatever makes his Art secondary or superfluous.
+Whatever force we give to the reproach of want of elevation, etc., the
+only impossible theme is the unartistic.
+
+But before we give heed to any such reproach we must beware of
+confounding the personality of the artist or the fashion of the time
+with the moving spirit in both. He works always--as Michel Angelo
+complained that he was painting the ceiling of the Sistine--over his own
+head, and blinded by his own paint. The _purpose_ that we speak of is
+not his petty doings and intentions, but what he unintentionally
+accomplishes. It is the spiritual alone that interests; and if later Art
+seem, by comparison, wanting in spirituality, this is partly the effect
+of its juster appreciation, that rendered direct expression hopeless,
+but at the same time superfluous, by discovering the same import more
+accessible elsewhere, as the higher indirect meaning of all material
+things. Critics tell us that the charm of landscape is incomplete
+without the presence of man,--that there must always be some hint, at
+least, of human habitation or influence. Certainly it is always a human
+interest, it is not the timber and the water, that moves us, but the
+echo of a kindred mind. But in the "landscape and figures" it is hardly
+a human interest that we take in the figures. The "dull victims of pipe
+and mug" serve our turn perhaps better than the noblest mountaineers. It
+is not to them that we look for the spirit of the landscape,--rather
+anywhere else. It is the security of the perception that allows it to
+dispense with pointed demonstration, and to delight rather in obscurer
+intimations of its meaning.
+
+The modern ideal is the Picturesque,--a beauty not detachable, belonging
+to the picture, to the composition, not to the component parts. It has
+no favorites; it is violated alike by the systematic glorification and
+the systematic depreciation of particular forms. The Apollo Belvedere
+would make as poor a figure in the foreground of a modern landscape as a
+fisherman in jack-boots and red nightcap on a pedestal in the Vatican.
+Claude's or Turner's figures may be absurd, when taken by themselves;
+but the absurdity consists in taking them by themselves. Turner, it is
+said, could draw figures well; Claude probably could not; (he is more
+likely to have tried;) but each must have felt that anything that should
+call attention to the figures would be worse than any bad drawing.
+Nicolas Poussin was well called "the learned"; for it is his learning,
+his study of the antique, of Raphael, of drapery and anatomy, that most
+appears in his landscapes and gives his figures their plastic emphasis.
+But this is no praise for a painter.
+
+Of course the boundary-lines cannot be very exactly drawn; the genius of
+a Delaroche or a Millais will give interest to a figure-piece at
+whatever epoch. But such pictures as Etty's, or Page's Venus, where the
+beauty of the human body is the point of attraction, are flat
+anachronisms, and for this reason, not from any prudishness of the
+public, can never excite a hearty enthusiasm. From the sixteenth century
+downwards all pictures become more and more _tableaux de genre_,--the
+piece is not described by the nominal subject, but only the class to
+which it belongs, leaving its special character wholly undetermined. And
+in proportion as the action and the detail are dwelt upon, the more
+evident is it that the theme is only a pretence. Martyrdoms, when there
+was any fervency of faith in the martyrs, were very abstract. A hint of
+sword or wheel sufficed. The saints and the angels, as long as men
+believed in them, carried their witness in their faces, with only some
+conventional indication of their history. As soon as direct
+representation is aimed at and the event portrayed as an historical
+fact, it is proof enough that all direct interest is gone and nothing
+left but the technical problem. The martyrdoms are vulgar
+execution-scenes,--the angels, men sprawling upon clouds. Michel Angelo
+was a noble, devout man, but it is clear that the God he prayed to was
+not the God he painted.
+
+This essential disparity between idea and representation is the weak
+side of Art, plastic and pictorial; but because it is essential it is
+not felt by the artist as defect. His genius urges him to all advance
+that is possible within the limits of his Art, but not to transcend it.
+It will be in vain to exhort him to unite the ancient piety to the
+modern knowledge. If he listen to the exhortation, he may be a good
+critic, but he is no painter. He must be absorbed in what he sees to the
+exclusion of everything else; impartiality is a virtue to all the world
+except him. There will always be a onesidedness; either the conception
+or the embodying of it halts, is only partially realized; some
+incompleteness, some mystery, some apparent want of coincidence between
+form and meaning is a necessity to the artist, and if he does not find
+it, he will invent it. Hence the embarrassment of some of the English
+Pre-Raphaelitists, particularly in dealing with the human form. They
+have no hesitation in pursuing into still further minuteness the literal
+delineation of inanimate objects, draperies, etc.; but they shrink from
+giving full life to their figures, not from a slavish adherence to their
+exemplars, but from a dread lest it should seem that what is shown is
+all that is meant. The early painters were thus _naïve_ and distinct
+because of their limitations; they knew very well what they meant,--as,
+that the event took place out-of-doors, with the sun shining, the grass
+under-foot, an oak-tree here, a strawberry-vine there,--mere adjunct and
+by-play, not to be questioned as to the import of the piece: _that_ the
+Church took care of. But who can say what a modern landscape means? The
+significance that in the older picture was as it were outside of it,
+presupposed, assured elsewhere, has now to be incorporated, verily
+present in every atom of soil and film of vapor. The realism of the
+modern picture must be infinitely more extended, for the meaning of it
+is that _nothing_ is superfluous or insignificant. But with the reality
+that it lends to every particle of matter, it must introduce, at the
+same time, the protest that spirit makes against matter,--most distinct,
+indeed, in the human form and countenance, but nowhere absent. In its
+utmost explication there must be felt that there is yet more behind; its
+utmost distinctness must be everywhere indefinable, evanescent,--must
+proclaim that this parade of surface-appearance is not there for its own
+sake. This is what Mr. Ruskin calls "the pathetic fallacy": but there is
+nothing fallacious in it; it is solid truth, only under the guise of
+mystery. Turner said that Mr. Ruskin had put all sorts of meanings into
+his pictures that he knew nothing about. Of course, else they would
+never have got into the pictures. But this does not affect their
+validity, but means only that it is the imagination, not the intellect,
+that must apprehend them.
+
+It is not an outward, arbitrary incompleteness that is demanded, but a
+visible dependence of each part, by its partiality declaring the
+completeness of the whole. It is often said that the picture must "leave
+room for the imagination." Yes, and for nothing else; but this does not
+imply that it should be unfinished, but that, when the painter has set
+down what the imagination grasped in one view, he shall stop, no matter
+where, and not attempt to eke out the deficiency by formula or by knack
+of fingers. Wherever the inspiration leaves him, there is an end of the
+picture. Beyond that we get only his personalities; no skill, no
+earnestness of intention, etc., can avail him; he is only mystifying
+himself or us. At these points we sooner or later come up with him, are
+as good as he, and the work forthwith begins to tire. What is tiresome
+is to have thrust upon us the dead surface of matter: this is the prose
+of the world, which we come to Art to escape. It is prosaic, because it
+is seen as the understanding sees it, as an aggregate only, apart from
+its vital connection; it matters little whose the understanding is. The
+artist must be alive only to the totality of the impression, blind and
+deaf to all outside of that. He must believe that the idyl he sees in
+the landscape is there because he sees it, and will appear in the
+picture without the help of demonstration. The danger is, that from
+weakness of faith he will fancy or pretend that he sees something else,
+which may be there, but formed no part of the impression. It is simply a
+question of natural attraction, magnetism, how much he can take up and
+carry; all beyond that is hindrance, and any conscious endeavor of his
+cannot help, but can only thwart.
+
+The picturesque has its root in the mind's craving for totality. It is
+Nature seen as a whole; all the characteristics and prerequisites of it
+come back to this,--such as roughness, wildness, ruin, obscurity, the
+gloom of night or of storm; whatever the outward discrepancy, wherever
+the effect is produced, it is because in some way there is a gain in
+completeness. On this condition everything is welcome,--without it,
+nothing. Thus, a broken, weedy bank is more picturesque than the velvet
+slope,--the decayed oak than the symmetry of the sapling,--the squalid
+shanty by the railroad, with its base of dirt, its windows stuffed with
+old hats, and the red shirts dependent from its eaves, than the neatest
+brick cottage. They strike a richer accord, while the others drone on a
+single note. Moonlight is always picturesque, because it substitutes
+mass and breadth for the obtrusiveness of petty particulars. It is not
+the pettiness, but the particularity, that makes them unpicturesque. No
+impressiveness in the object can atone for exclusiveness. Niagara cannot
+be painted, not because it is too difficult, but because it is no
+landscape, but like a vast illuminated capital letter filling the whole
+page, or the sublime monotony of the mosque-inscriptions, declaring in
+thousandfold repetition that God is great. The soaring sublimity of the
+Moslem monotheism comes partly from its narrowness and abstractness. Is
+it because we are a little hard of hearing that it takes such
+reiteration to move us?
+
+The wholeness which the imagination demands is not quantitative, but
+qualitative; it has nothing to do with size or with number, except so
+far as, by confusing the sense, they obscurely intimate infinity, with
+which all quantities are incommensurable. Mr. Ruskin's encyclopedic
+anatomizing of the landscape, to the end of showing the closeness of
+Turner's perception, has great interest, but not the interest merely of
+a longer list, for it is to be remembered that the longest list would be
+no nearer to an exhaustive analysis than the shortest. It is not a
+specious completeness, but a sense of infinity that can never be
+completed,--greater intensity, not greater extension,--that
+distinguishes modern landscape-art. Hence there is no incongruity in the
+seeming license that it takes with the firm order of Nature. It is in no
+spirit of levity or profanity that the substantial distinctions of
+things are thus disregarded,--that all absolute rank is denied, and the
+value of each made contingent and floating. It is only that the mind is
+somewhat nearer apprehending the sense, and dwells less on the
+characters.
+
+If Art suffers in its relative rank among human interests by this
+democratic levelling, it is to the gain of what Art intends. It is true,
+no picture can henceforth move us as men were once moved by pictures. No
+Borgo Allegro will ever turn out again in triumph for a Madonna of
+Cimabue or of any one else; whatever feeling Turner or another may
+excite comes far short of that. But the splendor that clothed the poor,
+pale, formal image belonged very little to it, but expressed rather the
+previous need of utterance, and could reach that pitch only when the age
+had not yet learned to think and to write, but must put up with these
+hieroglyphics. Art has no more grown un-religious than Religion has, but
+only less idolatrous. As fast as religion passes into life,--as the
+spiritual nature of man begins to be recognized as the ground of
+legislation and society, and not merely in the miracle of
+sainthood,--the apparatus and imagery of the Church, its dogmas and
+ceremonies, grow superfluous, as what they stand for is itself present.
+It is the dawn that makes these stars grow pale. So in Art, as fast as
+the dream of the imagination becomes the common sense of mankind, and
+only so fast, the awe that surrounded the earlier glimpses is lost. Its
+influence is not lessened, but diffused and domesticated as Culture.
+
+Art is the truly popular philosophy. Our picture-gazing and view-hunting
+only express the feeling that our science is too abstract, that it does
+not attach us, but isolates us in the universe. What we are thus
+inwardly drawn to explore is not the chaff and _exuviæ_ of things, not
+their differences only, but their central connection, in spite of
+apparent diversity. This, stated, is the Ideal, the abrupt contradiction
+of the actual, and the creation of a world extraordinary, in which all
+defect is removed. But the defect cannot be cured by correction, for
+that admits its right to exist; it is not by exclusion that limitation
+is overcome,--this is only to establish a new limitation,--but by
+inclusion, by reaching the point where the superficial antagonism
+vanishes. Then the ideal is seen no longer in opposition, but everywhere
+and alone existent. As this point is approached, the impulse to
+reconstruct the actual--as if the triumph of truth were staked on that
+venture--dies out. The elaborate contradiction loses interest, earliest
+where it is most elaborate and circumstantial, and latest where the
+image has least materiality and fixity, where it is only a reminder of
+what the actual is securely felt to be, in spite of its stubborn
+exterior.
+
+The modern mind is therefore less demonstrative; our civilization seeks
+less to declare and typify itself outwardly in works of Art, manners,
+dress, etc. Hence it is, perhaps, that the beauty of the race has not
+kept pace with its culture. It is less beautiful, because it cares less
+for beauty, since this is no longer the only reconcilement of the actual
+with the inward demands. The vice of the imagination is its inevitable
+exaggeration. It is our own weakness and dulness that we try to hide
+from ourselves by this partiality. Therefore it was said that the images
+were the Bible of the laity. Bishop Durandus already in the thirteenth
+century declared that it is only where the truth is not yet revealed
+that this "Judaizing" is permissible.
+
+The highest of all arts is the art of life. In this the superficial
+antagonisms of use and beauty, of fact and reality, disappear. A little
+gain here, or the hint of it, richly repays all the lost magnificence.
+We need not concern ourselves lest these latter ages should be left
+bankrupt of the sense of beauty, for that is but a phase of a force that
+is never absent; nothing can supersede it but itself in a higher power.
+What we lament as decay only shows its demands fulfilled, and the arts
+it has left behind are but the landmarks of its accomplished purpose.
+
+
+
+
+OUR CLASSMATE.
+
+F. W. C.
+
+
+    Fast as the rolling seasons bring
+      The hour of fate to those we love,
+    Each pearl that leaves the broken string
+      Is set in Friendship's crown above.
+    As narrower grows the earthly chain,
+      The circle widens in the sky;
+    These are our treasures that remain,
+      But those are stars that beam on high.
+
+    We miss--oh, how we miss!--_his_ face,--
+      With trembling accents speak his name.
+    Earth cannot fill his shadowed place
+      From all her rolls of pride and fame.
+    Our song has lost the silvery thread
+      That carolled through his jocund lips;
+    Our laugh is mute, our smile is fled,
+      And all our sunshine in eclipse.
+
+    And what and whence the wondrous charm
+      That kept his manhood boy-like still,--
+    That life's hard censors could disarm
+      And lead them captive at his will?
+    His heart was shaped of rosier clay,--
+      His veins were filled with ruddier fire,--
+    Time could not chill him, fortune sway,
+      Nor toil with all its burdens tire.
+
+    His speech burst throbbing from its fount
+      And set our colder thoughts aglow,
+    As the hot leaping geysers mount
+      And falling melt the Iceland snow.
+    Some word, perchance, we counted rash,--
+      Some phrase our calmness might disclaim;
+    Yet 't was the sunset lightning's flash,
+      No angry bolt, but harmless flame.
+
+    Man judges all, God knoweth each;
+      We read the rule, He sees the law;
+    How oft His laughing children teach
+      The truths His prophets never saw!
+    O friend, whose wisdom flowered in mirth!
+      Our hearts are sad, our eyes are dim;
+    He gave thy smiles to brighten earth,--
+      We trust thy joyous soul to Him!
+
+    Alas!--our weakness Heaven forgive!
+      We murmur, even while we trust,
+    "How long earth's breathing burdens live,
+      Whose hearts, before they die, are dust!"
+    But thou!--through grief's untimely tears
+      We ask with half-reproachful sigh,
+    "Couldst thou not watch a few brief years
+      Till Friendship faltered, 'Thou mayst die'?"
+
+    Who loved our boyish years so well?
+      Who knew so well their pleasant tales,
+    And all those livelier freaks could tell
+      Whose oft-told story never fails?
+    In vain we turn our aching eyes,--
+      In vain we stretch our eager hands,--
+    Cold in his wintry shroud he lies
+      Beneath the dreary drifting sands!
+
+    Ah, speak not thus! _He_ lies not there!
+      We see him, hear him as of old!
+    He comes! he claims his wonted chair;
+      His beaming face we still behold!
+    His voice rings clear in all our songs,
+      And loud his mirthful accents rise;
+    To us our brother's life belongs,--
+      Dear boys, a classmate never dies!
+
+
+
+
+WHITTIER.
+
+
+It was some ten years ago that we first met John Greenleaf Whittier, the
+poet of the moral sentiment and of the heart and faith of the people of
+America. It chanced that we had then been making notes, with much
+interest, upon the genius of the Semitic nations. That peculiar
+simplicity, centrality, and intensity which caused them to originate
+Monotheism from two independent centres, the only systems of pure
+Monotheism which have had power in history,--while the same
+characteristics made their poetry always lyrical, never epic or
+dramatic, and their most vigorous thought a perpetual sacrifice on the
+altars of the will,--this had strongly impressed us; and we seemed to
+find in it a striking contrast to the characteristic genius of the Aryan
+or Indo-Germanic nations, with their imaginative interpretations of the
+religious sentiment, with their epic and dramatic expansions, and their
+taste for breadth and variety. Somewhat warm with these notions, we came
+to a meeting with our poet, and the first thought, on seeing him, was,
+"The head of a Hebrew prophet!" It is not Hebrew,--Saracen rather; the
+Jewish type is heavier, more material; but it corresponded strikingly to
+the conceptions we had formed of the Southern Semitic crania, and the
+whole make of the man was of the same character. The high cranium, so
+lofty especially in the dome,--the slight and symmetrical backward slope
+of the _whole_ head,--the powerful level brows, and beneath these the
+dark, deep eyes, so full of shadowed fire,--the Arabian complexion,--the
+sharp-cut, intense lines of the face,--the light, tall, erect
+stature,--the quick axial poise of the movement,--all these answered
+with singular accuracy to the picture of those preacher-races which had
+been shaping itself in our imagination. Indeed, the impression was so
+strong as to induce some little feeling of embarrassment. It seemed
+slightly awkward and insipid to be meeting a prophet here in a parlor
+and in a spruce masquerade of modern costume, shaking hands, and saying,
+"Happy to meet you," after the fashion of our feeble civilities.
+
+All this came vividly to remembrance, on taking up, the other day,
+Whittier's last book of poems, "In War-Time,"--a volume that has been
+welcomed all over the land with enthusiastic delight. Had it been no
+more, however, than a mere private reminiscence, it should, at present,
+have remained private. But have we not here a key to Whittier's genius?
+Is not this Semitic centrality and simplicity, this prophetic depth,
+reality, and vigor, without great lateral and intellectual range, its
+especial characteristic? He has not the liberated, light-winged Greek
+imagination,--imagination not involved and included in the religious
+sentiment, but playing in epic freedom and with various interpretation
+between religion and intellect; he has not the flowing, Protean,
+imaginative sympathy, the power of instant self-identification with all
+forms of character and life, which culminated in Shakspeare; but that
+imaginative vitality which lurks in faith and conscience, producing what
+we may call _ideal force of heart_, this he has eminently; and it is
+this central, invisible, Semitic heat which makes him a poet.
+
+Imagination exists in him, not as a separable faculty, but as a pure
+vital suffusion. Hence he is an _inevitable_ poet. There is no drop of
+his blood, there is no fibre of his brain, which does not crave poetic
+expression. Mr. Carlyle desires to postpone poetry; but as Providence
+did not postpone Whittier, his wishes can hardly be gratified. Ours is,
+indeed, one of the plainest of poets. He is intelligible and acceptable
+to those who have little either of poetic culture or of fancy and
+imagination. Whoever has common sense and a sound heart has the powers
+by which he may be appreciated. And yet he is not only a real poet, but
+he is _all_ poet. The Muses have not merely sprinkled his brow; he was
+baptized by immersion. His notes are not many; but in them Nature
+herself sings. He is a sparrow that half sings, half chirps, on a bush,
+not a lark that floods with orient hilarity the skies of morning; but
+the bush burns, like that which Moses saw, and the sparrow herself is
+part of the divine flame.
+
+This, then, is the general statement about Whittier. His genius is
+Hebrew, Biblical,--more so than that of any other poet now using the
+English language. In other words, he is organically a poem of the Will.
+He is a flower of the moral sentiment,--and of the moral sentiment, not
+in its flexible, feminine, vine-like dependence and play, but in its
+masculine rigor, climbing in direct, vertical affirmation, like a
+forest-pine. In this respect he affiliates with Wordsworth, and, going
+farther back, with Milton, whose tap-root was Hebrew, though in the vast
+epic flowering of his genius he passed beyond the imaginative range of
+Semitic mind.
+
+In thus identifying our bard, spiritually, with a broad form of the
+genius of mankind, we already say with emphasis that his is indeed a
+Life. Yes, once more, a real Life. He is a nature. He was _born_, not
+manufactured. Here, once again, the old, mysterious, miraculous
+processes of spiritual assimilation. Here, a genuine root-clutch upon
+the elements of man's experience, and an inevitable, indomitable
+working-up of them into human shape. To look at him without discerning
+this vital depth and reality were as good as no looking at all.
+
+Moreover, the man and the poet are one and the same. His verse is no
+literary Beau-Brummelism, but a _re_-presentation of that which is
+presented in his consciousness. First, there is inward vital conversion
+of the elements of his experience, then verse, or version,--first the
+soul, then the body. His voice, as such, has little range, nor is it any
+marvel of organic perfection; on the contrary, there is many a voice
+with nothing at all in it which far surpasses his in mere vocal
+excellence; only in this you can hear the deep refrain of Nature, and of
+Nature chanting her moral ideal.
+
+We shall consider Whittier's poetry in this light,--as a vital
+effluence, as a product of his being; and citations will be made, not by
+way of culling "beauties,"--a mode of criticism to which there are grave
+objections,--but of illustrating total growth, quality, and power. Our
+endeavor will be to get at, so far as possible, the processes of vital
+action, of spiritual assimilation, which go on in the poet, and then to
+trace these in his poetry.
+
+God gave Whittier a deep, hot, simple, strenuous, and yet ripe and
+spherical, nature, whose twin necessities were, first, that it _must_
+lay an intense grasp upon the elements of its experience, and, secondly,
+that it _must_ work these up into some form of melodious completeness.
+History and the world gave him Quakerism, America, and Rural Solitude;
+and through this solitude went winding the sweet, old Merrimac stream,
+the river that we would not wish to forget, even by the waters of the
+river of life! And it is into these elements that his genius, with its
+peculiar vital simplicity and intensity, strikes root. Historic reality,
+the great _facts_ of his time, are the soil in which he grows, as they
+are with all natures of depth and energy. "We did not wish," said
+Goethe, "to learn, but to live."
+
+Quakerism and America--America ideally true to herself--quickly became,
+in his mind, one and the same. Quakerism means _divine democracy_.
+George Fox was the first forerunner, the John Baptist, of the new
+time,--leather-aproned in the British wilderness. Seeing the whole world
+dissolving into individualism, he did not try to tie it together, after
+the fashion of great old Hooker, with new cords of ecclesiasticism; but
+he did this,--he affirmed a Mount Sinai in the heart of the individual,
+and gave to the word _person_ an INFINITE depth. To sound that
+word thus was his function in history. No wonder that England trembled
+with terror, and then blazed with rage. No wonder that many an ardent
+James Naylor was crazed with the new wine.
+
+Puritanism meant the same thing at bottom; but, accepting the more legal
+and learned interpretations of Calvin, it was, to a great degree,
+involved in the past, and also turned its eye more to political
+mechanisms. For this very reason it kept up more of fellowship with the
+broad world, and had the benefit of this in a larger measure of social
+fructification. Whatever is separated dies. Quakerism uttered a word so
+profound that the utterance made it insular; and, left to itself, it
+began to be lost in itself. Nevertheless, Quakerism and Puritanism are
+the two richest historic soils of modern time.
+
+Our young poet got at the heart of the matter. He learned to utter the
+word _Man_ so believingly that it sounded down into depths of the divine
+and infinite. He learned to say, with Novalis, "He touches heaven who
+touches a human body." And when he uttered this word, "Man," in full,
+_social_ breadth, lo! it changed, and became AMERICA.
+
+There begins the genesis of the conscious poet. All the depths of his
+heart rang with the resonance of these imaginations,--Man, America;
+meaning divine depth of manhood, divine spontaneity and rectitude of
+social relationship.
+
+But what! what is this? Just as he would raise his voice to chant the
+new destinies of man, a harsh, heartless, human bark, and therewith a
+low, despairing stifle of sobbing, came to his ear! It is the bark of
+the auctioneer, "Going! going!"--it is the sobbing of the slave on the
+auction-block! And _this_, too, O Poet, this, too, is America! So you
+are not secure of your grand believing imaginations yet, but must fight
+for them. The faith of your heart would perish, if it did not put on
+armor.
+
+Whittier's poetic life has three principal epochs. The first opens and
+closes with the "Voices of Freedom." We may use Darwin's phrase, and
+call it the period of Struggle for Life. His ideal itself is endangered;
+the atmosphere he would inhale is filled with poison; a desolating moral
+prosaicism springs up to justify a great social ugliness, and spreads in
+the air where his young hopes would try their wings; and in the
+imperfect strength of youth he has so much of dependence upon actual
+surroundings, that he must either war with their evil or succumb to it.
+Of surrender his daring and unselfish soul never for a moment thought.
+Never did a trained falcon stoop upon her quarry with more fearlessness,
+or a spirit of less question, than that which bore our young hero to the
+moral fray; yet the choice was such as we have indicated.
+
+The faith for which he fought is uttered with spirit in a stanza from
+"The Branded Hand."
+
+    "In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below,
+    Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know:
+    God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angels only can,
+    That the one, sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man."
+
+Our poet, too, conversing with God's stars and silence, has come to an
+understanding with himself, and made up his mind. That Man's being has
+an ideal or infinite value, and that all consecrated institutions are
+shams, and their formal consecration a blasphemous mockery, save as they
+look to that fact,--this in his Merrimac solitudes has come forth
+clearly to his soul, and, like old Hebrew David, he has said, "My heart
+is fixed." Make other selections who will, he has concluded to face life
+and death on this basis.
+
+Did he not choose as a poet MUST? Between a low moral
+prosaicism and a generous moral ideal was it possible for him to
+hesitate? Are there those whose real thought is, that man, beyond his
+estimation as an animal, represents only a civil value,--that he is but
+the tailor's "dummy" and clothes-horse of institutions? Do they tell our
+poet that his notion of man as a divine revelation, as a pure spiritual
+or absolute value, is a mere dream, discountenanced by the truth of the
+universe? He might answer, "Let the universe look to it, then! In that
+case, I stand upon my dream as the only worthy reality." What were a
+mere pot-and-pudding universe to him? Does Mr. Holyoke complain that
+these hot idealisms make the culinary kettles of the world boil over?
+Kitchen-prudences are good for kitchens; but the sun kindles his great
+heart without special regard to them.
+
+These "Voices of Freedom" are no bad reading at the present day. They
+are of that strenuous quality, that the light of battle brings to view a
+finer print, which lay unseen between the lines. They are themselves
+battles, and stir the blood like the blast of a trumpet. What a beat in
+them of fiery pulses! What a heat, as of molten metal, or coal-mines
+burning underground! What anger! What desire! And yet we have in vain
+searched these poems to find one trace of base wrath, or of any
+degenerate and selfish passion. He is angry, and sins not. The sun goes
+down and again rises upon his wrath; and neither sets nor rises upon
+aught freer from meanness and egoism. All the fires of his heart burn
+for justice and mercy, for God and humanity; and they who are most
+scathed by them _owe_ him no hatred in return, whether they _pay_ him
+any or not.
+
+Not a few of these verses seem written for the present day. Take the
+following from the poem entitled, "Texas"; they might be deemed a call
+for volunteers.
+
+    "Up the hill-side, down the glen,
+    Rouse the sleeping citizen,
+    Summon forth the might of men!
+
+     *   *   *   *   *
+
+    "Oh! for God and duty stand,
+    Heart to heart and hand to hand,
+    Round the old graves of the land.
+
+    "Whoso shrinks or falters now,
+    Whoso to the yoke would bow,--
+    Brand the craven on his brow!
+
+    "Perish party, perish clan!
+    Strike together, while ye can,
+    Like the arm of one strong man."
+
+The Administration might have gone to these poems for a policy: he had
+fought the battle before them.
+
+    "Have they wronged us? Let us, then,
+      Render back nor threats nor prayers;
+    Have they chained our freeborn men?
+      LET US UNCHAIN THEIRS!"
+
+Or look at these concluding stanzas of "The Crisis," which is the last
+of the "Voices." Has not our prophet written them for this very day?
+
+    "The crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands,
+    With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands!
+    This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin;
+    This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin;
+    Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown,
+    We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down.
+
+    "By all for which the Martyrs bore their agony and shame,
+    By all the warning words of truth with which the Prophets came,
+    By the Future which awaits us, by all the hopes which cast
+    Their faint and trembling beams across the darkness of the Past,
+    And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died,
+    O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.
+
+    "So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way,
+    To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's bay,
+    To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain,
+    And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train;
+    The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea,
+    And mountain unto mountain call, 'PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE!'"
+
+These are less to be named poems than pieces of rhythmic
+oratory,--oratory crystallized into poetic form, and carrying that
+deeper significance and force which from all vitalized form are
+inseparable. A poem, every work of Art, must rest in itself; oratory is
+a means toward a specific effect. The man who writes poems may have aims
+which underlie and suffuse his work; but they must not be partial, they
+must be coextensive with the whole spirit of man, and must enter his
+work as the air enters his nostrils. The moment a definite, partial
+effect is sought, the attitude of poetry begins to be lost. These
+battle-pieces are therefore a warfare for the possession of the poet's
+ideal, not the joyous life-breath of that ideal already victorious in
+him. And the other poems of this first great epoch in his poetical life,
+though always powerful, often beautiful, yet never, we think, show a
+_perfect_ resting upon his own poetic heart.
+
+In the year 1850 appeared the "Songs of Labor, and other Poems"; and in
+these we reach the transition to his second epoch. Here he has already
+recognized the pure ground of the poem,--
+
+    "Art's perfect forms no moral need,
+      And beauty is its own excuse,"--
+
+but his modesty declines attempting that perfection, and assigns him a
+lower place. He must still seek definite uses, though this use be to
+lend imagination or poetic depth to daily labor:--
+
+      "But for the dull and flowerless weed
+       Some healing virtue still must plead,
+    And the rough ore must find its honors in its use.
+
+      "So haply these my simple lays
+         Of homely toil may serve to show
+       The orchard-bloom and tasselled maize
+       That skirt and gladden duty's ways,
+    The unsung beauty hid life's common things below."
+
+Not pure gold as yet, but genuine silver. The aim at a definite use is
+still apparent, as he himself perceives; but there is nevertheless a
+constant native play into them of ideal feeling. It is no longer a
+struggle for room to draw poetic breath in, but only the absence of a
+perfectly free and unconscious poetic respiration. Yet they are sterling
+poems, with the stamp of the mint upon them. And some of the strains are
+such as no living man but Whittier has proven his power to produce.
+"Ichabod," for example, is the purest and profoundest _moral_ lament, to
+the best of our knowledge, in modern literature, whether American or
+European. It is the grief of angels in arms over a traitor brother slain
+on the battle-fields of heaven.
+
+Two years later comes the "Chapel of the Hermits," and with it the
+second epoch in Whittier's poetic career. The epoch of Culture we name
+it. The poet has now passed the period of outward warfare. All the
+arrows in the quiver of his noble wrath are spent. Now on the wrong and
+shame of the land he looks down with deep, calm, superior eyes,
+sorrowful, indeed, and reproving, but no longer perturbed. His hot,
+eloquent, prophetic spirit now breathes freely, lurk in the winds of the
+moment what poison may; for he has attained to those finer airs of
+eternity which hide ever, like the luminiferous ether, in this
+atmosphere of time; so that, like the scholar-hero of Schiller, he is
+indeed "in the time, but not of it." Still his chant of high
+encouragement shall fly forth on wings of music to foster the nobilities
+of the land; still over the graves of the faithful dead he shall murmur
+a requiem, whose chastened depth and truth relate it to other and better
+worlds than this; still his lips utter brave rebuke, but it is a rebuke
+that falls, like the song of an unseen bird, out of the sky, so purely
+moral, so remote from earthly and egoistic passion, so sure and
+reposeful, that verse is its natural embodiment. The home-elements of
+his intellectual and moral life he has fairly assimilated; and his verse
+in its mellowness and rhythmical excellence reflects this achievement of
+his spirit.
+
+But now, after the warfare, begins questioning. For modern culture has
+come to him, as it comes to all, with its criticism, its science, its
+wide conversation through books, its intellectual unrest; it has
+looked him in the eye, and said, "_Are you sure?_ The dear old
+traditions,--they are indeed _traditions_. The sweet customs which have
+housed our spiritual and social life,--these are _customs_. Of what are
+you SURE?" Matthew Arnold has recently said well (we cannot
+quote the words) that the opening of the modern epoch consists in the
+discovery that institutions and habitudes of the earlier centuries, in
+which we have grown, are not absolute, and do not adjust themselves
+perfectly to our mental wants. Thus are we thrown back upon our own
+souls. We have to ask the first questions, and get such answer as we
+may. The meaning of the modern world is this,--an epoch which, in the
+midst of established institutions, of old consecrated habitudes of
+thought and feeling, of populous nations which cannot cast loose from
+ancient anchorage without peril of horrible wreck and disaster, has got
+to take up man's life again from the beginning. Of modern life this is
+the immediate key.
+
+Our poet's is one of those deep and clinging natures which hold hard by
+the heart of bygone times; but also he is of a nature so deep and
+sensitive that the spiritual endeavor of the period must needs utter
+itself in him. "ART THOU SURE?"--the voice went sounding
+keenly, terribly, through the profound of his soul. And to this his
+spirit, not without struggle and agony, but at length clearly, made
+the faithful Hebrew response, "I TRUST." Bravely said, O
+deep-hearted poet! Rest there! Rest there and thus on your own believing
+filial heart, and on the Eternal, who in it accomplishes the miracle of
+that confiding!
+
+Not eminently endowed with discursive intellect,--not gifted with that
+power, Homeric in kind and more than Homeric in degree, which might meet
+the old mythic imaginations on, or rather above, their own level, and
+out of them, together with the material which modern time supplies,
+build in the skies new architectures, wherein not only the feeling, but
+the _imagination_ also, of future ages might house,--our poet comes with
+Semitic directness to the heart of the matter: he takes the divine
+_Yea_, though it be but a simple _Yea_, and no syllable more, in his own
+soul, and holds childlike by that. And he who has asked the questions of
+the time and reached this conclusion,--he who has stood alone with his
+unclothed soul, and out of that nakedness before the Eternities said,
+"_I trust_,"--he is victorious; he has entered the modern epoch, and has
+not lost the spiritual crown from his brows.
+
+The central poem of this epoch is "Questions of Life."
+
+    "I am: how little more I know!
+    Whence came I? Whither do I go?
+    A centred self, which feels and is;
+    _A cry between the silences;_
+    A shadow-birth of clouds at strife
+    With sunshine on the hills of life;
+    A shaft from Nature's quiver cast
+    Into the Future from the Past;
+    Between the cradle and the shroud
+    A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud."
+
+Then to outward Nature, to mythic tradition, to the thought, faith,
+sanctity of old time he goes in quest of certitude, but returns to God
+in the heart, and to the simple heroic act by which he that believes
+BELIEVES.
+
+    "To Him, from wanderings long and wild,
+    I come, an over-wearied child,
+    In cool and shade His peace to find,
+    Like dew-fall settling on the mind.
+    Assured that all I know is best,
+    And humbly trusting for the rest,
+    I turn....
+    From Nature and her mockery, Art,
+    And book and speech of men apart,
+    To the still witness in my heart;
+    With reverence waiting to behold
+    His Avatar of love unfold,
+    The Eternal Beauty new and old!"
+
+"The Panorama and other Poems," together with "Later Poems,"[13] having
+the dates of 1856 and 1857, constitute the transition to his third and
+consummate epoch. Much in them deserves notice, but we must hasten. And
+yet, instead of hastening, we will pause, and take this opportunity to
+pick a small critical quarrel with Mr. Whittier. We charge him, in the
+first place, with sundry felonious assaults upon the good letter _r_. In
+the "Panorama," for example, we find _law_ rhyming with _for_! You, Mr.
+Poet, you, who indulge fastidious objections to the whipping of women,
+to outrage that innocent preposition thus! And to select the word _law_
+itself, with which to force it into this lawless connection! Secondly,
+_romance_ and _allies_ are constantly written by him with the accent on
+the first syllable. These be heinous offences! A poet, of all men,
+should cherish the liquid consonants, and should resist the tendency of
+the populace to make trochees of all dissyllables. In a graver tone we
+might complain that he sometimes--rarely--writes, not by vocation of the
+ancient Muses, who were daughters of Memory and immortal Zeus, but of
+those Muses in drab and scoop-bonnets who are daughters of Memory and
+George Fox. Some lines of the "Brown of Ossawatomie" we are thinking of
+now. We can regard them only as a reminiscence of his special Quaker
+culture.
+
+With the "Home Ballads," published in 1863, dawns fully his final
+period,--long may it last! This is the epoch of Poetic Realism. Not that
+he abandons or falls away from his moral ideal. The fact is quite
+contrary. He has so entirely established himself in that ideal that he
+no longer needs strivingly to assert it,--any more than Nature needs to
+pin upon oak-trees an affirmation that the idea of an oak dwells in her
+formative thought. Nature affirms the oak-idea by oaks; the consummate
+poet exhibits the same realism. He embodies. He lends a soul to forms.
+The real and ideal in Art are indeed often opposed to each other as
+contraries, but it is a false opposition. Let the artist represent
+reality, and all that is in him, though it were the faith of seraphs,
+will go into the representation. The sole condition is that he shall
+_select his subject from native, spontaneous choice_,--that is, leave
+his genius to make its own elections. Let one, whose genius so invites
+him, paint but a thistle, and paint it as faithfully as Nature grows it;
+yet, if the Ten Commandments are meantime uttering themselves in his
+thought, he will make the thistle-top a Sinai.
+
+It is this poetic realism that Whittier has now, in a high
+degree, attained. Calm and sure, lofty in humility, strong in
+childlikeness,--renewing the play-instinct of the true poet in his
+heart,--younger now than when he sat on his mother's knee,--chastened,
+not darkened, by trial, and toil, and time,--illumined, poet-like, even
+by sorrow,--he lives and loves, and chants the deep, homely beauty of
+his lays. He is as genuine, as wholesome and real as sweet-flag and
+clover. Even when he utters pure sentiment, as in that perfect lyric,
+"My Psalm," or in the intrepid, exquisite humility--healthful and sound
+as the odor of new-mown hay or balsam-firs--of "Andrew Rykman's Prayer,"
+he maintains the same attitude of realism. He states God and inward
+experience as he would state sunshine and the growth of grass. This,
+with the devout depth of his nature, makes the rare beauty of his hymns
+and poems of piety and trust. He does not try to _make_ the facts by
+stating them; he does not try to embellish them; he only seeks to utter,
+to state them; and even in his most perfect verse they are not half so
+melodious as they were in his soul.
+
+All perfect poetry is simple statement of facts,--facts of history or of
+imagination. Whoever thinks to create poetry by words, and inclose in
+the verse a beauty which did not exist in his consciousness, has got
+hopelessly astray.
+
+This attitude of simple divine abiding in the present is beautifully
+expressed in the opening stanzas of "My Psalm."
+
+    "I mourn no more my vanished years:
+       Beneath a tender rain,
+    An April rain of smiles and tears,
+       My heart is young again.
+
+    "The west winds blow, and, singing low,
+       I hear the glad streams run;
+    The windows of my soul I throw
+       Wide open to the sun.
+
+    "No longer forward nor behind
+       I look in hope and fear;
+    But, grateful, take the good I find,
+       The best of now and here.
+
+    "I plough no more a desert land,
+       To harvest weed and tare;
+    The manna dropping from God's hand
+       Rebukes my painful care.
+
+    "I break my pilgrim-staff, I lay
+      Aside the toiling oar;
+    The angel sought so far away
+      I welcome at the door."
+
+It is, however, in his ballads that Whittier exhibits, not, perhaps, a
+higher, yet a rarer, power than elsewhere,--a power, in truth, which is
+very rare indeed. Already in the "Panorama" volume he had brought forth
+three of these,--all good, and the tender pathos of that fine ballad of
+sentiment, "Maud Muller," went to the heart of the nation. In how many
+an imagination does the innocent maiden, with her delicate brown ankles,
+
+    "Rake the meadow sweet with hay,"
+
+and
+
+    "The judge ride slowly down the lane"!
+
+But though sentiment so simple and unconscious is rare, our poet has yet
+better in store for us. He has developed of late years the precious
+power of creating _homely beauty_,[14]--one of the rarest powers shown
+in modern literature. Homely life-scenes, homely old sanctities and
+heroisms, he takes up, delineates them with intrepid fidelity to their
+homeliness, and, lo! there they are, beautiful as Indian corn, or as
+ploughed land under an October sun! He has thus opened an inexhaustible
+mine right here under our New-England feet. What will come of it no one
+knows.
+
+These poems of his are natural growths; they have their own circulation
+of vital juices, their own peculiar properties; they smack of the soil,
+are racy and strong and aromatic, like ground-juniper, sweet-fern, and
+the _arbor vitæ_. Set them out in the earth, and would they not sprout
+and grow?--nor would need vine-shields to shelter them from the weather!
+They are living and local, and lean toward the west from the pressure of
+east winds that blow on our coast. "Skipper Ireson's Ride,"--can any one
+tell what makes that poetry? This uncertainty is the highest praise.
+This power of telling a plain matter in a plain way, and leaving it
+there a symbol and harmony forever,--it is the power of Nature herself.
+And again we repeat, that almost anything may be found in literature
+more frequently than this pure creative simplicity. As a special
+instance of it, take three lines which occur in an exquisite picture of
+natural scenery,--and which we quote the more readily as it affords
+opportunity for saying that Whittier's landscape-pictures alone make his
+books worthy of study,--not so much those which he sets himself
+deliberately to draw as those that are incidental to some other purpose
+or effect.
+
+    "I see far southward, this quiet day,
+    The hills of Newbury rolling away,
+    With the many tints of the season gay,
+    Dreamily blending in autumn mist
+    Crimson and gold and amethyst.
+    Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,
+    Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,
+    A stone's toss over the narrow sound.
+    Inland, as far as the eye can go,
+    The hills curve round, like a bended bow;
+    A silver arrow from out them sprung,
+    I see the shine of the Quasycung;
+    _And, round and round, over valley and hill,
+    Old roads winding, as old roads will,
+    Here to a ferry, and there to a mill._"
+
+Can any one tell what magic it is that is in these concluding lines, so
+that they even eclipse the rhetorical brilliancy of those immediately
+preceding?
+
+Our deep-hearted poet has fairly arrived at his poetic youth. Never was
+he so strong, so ruddy and rich as to-day. Time has treated him as,
+according to Swedenborg, she does the angels,--chastened indeed, but
+vivified. Let him hold steadily to his true vocation as a poet, and
+never fear to be thought idle, or untrue to his land. To give
+imaginative and ideal depth to the life of the people,--what truer
+service than that? And as for war-time,--does he know that "Barbara
+Frietche" is the true sequel to the Battle of Gettysburg, is that other
+victory which the nation _asked_ of Meade the soldier and obtained from
+Whittier the poet?
+
+
+
+
+THE CONVULSIONISTS OF ST. MÉDARD.
+
+SECOND PAPER.
+
+
+Having, in a previous number, furnished a brief sketch of the phenomena,
+purely physical, which characterized the epidemic of St. Médard, it
+remains to notice those of a mental and psychological character.
+
+One of the most common incidents connected with the convulsions of that
+period was the appearance of a mental condition, called, in the language
+of the day, a state of _ecstasy_, bearing unmistakable analogy to the
+artificial somnambulism produced by magnetic influence, and to the
+_trance_ of modern spiritualism.
+
+During this condition, there was a sudden exaltation of the mental
+faculties, often a wonderful command of language, sometimes the power of
+thought-reading, at other times, as was alleged, the gift of prophecy.
+While it lasted, the insensibility of the patients was occasionally so
+complete, that, as Montgéron says, "they have been pierced in an inhuman
+manner, without evincing the slightest sensation";[15] and when it
+passed off, they frequently did not recollect anything they had said or
+done during its continuance.
+
+At times, like somnambulism, it seemed to assume something of a
+cataleptic character, though I cannot find any record of that most
+characteristic symptom of catalepsy, the rigid persistence of a limb in
+any position in which it may be placed. What was called the "state of
+death," is thus described by Montgéron:--
+
+"The state of death is a species of ecstasy, in which the convulsionist,
+whose soul seems entirely absorbed by some vision, loses the use of his
+senses, wholly or in part. Some convulsionists have remained in this
+state two or even three days at a time, the eyes open, without any
+movement, the face very pale, the whole body insensible, immovable, and
+stiff as a corpse. During all this time, they give little sign of life,
+other than a feeble, scarcely perceptible respiration. Most of the
+convulsionists, however, have not these ecstasies so strongly marked.
+Some, though remaining immovable an entire day or longer, do not
+continue during all that time deprived of sight and hearing, nor are
+they totally devoid of sensibility; though their members, at certain
+intervals, become so stiff that they lose almost entirely the use of
+them."[16]
+
+The "state of death," however, was much more rare than other forms of
+this abnormal condition. The Abbé d'Asfeld, in his work against the
+convulsionists, alluding to the state of ecstasy, defines it as a state
+"in which the soul, carried away by a superior force, and, as it were,
+out of itself, becomes unconscious of surrounding objects, and occupies
+itself with those which imagination presents"; and he adds,--"It is
+marked by alienation of the senses, proceeding, however, from some cause
+other than sleep. This alienation of the senses is sometimes complete,
+sometimes incomplete."[17]
+
+Montgéron, commenting on the above, says,--"This last phase, during
+which the alienation of the senses is imperfect, is precisely the
+condition of most of the convulsionists, when in the state of ecstasy.
+They usually see the persons present; they speak to them; sometimes they
+hear what is said to them; but as to the rest, their souls seem absorbed
+in the contemplation of objects which a superior power discloses to
+their vision."[18]
+
+And a little farther on he adds,--"In these ecstasies the convulsionists
+are struck all of a sudden with the unexpected aspect of some object,
+the sight of which enchants them with joy. Their eyes beam; their heads
+are raised toward heaven; they appear as if they would fly thither. To
+see them afterwards absorbed in profound contemplation, with an air of
+inexpressible satisfaction, one would say that they are admiring the
+divine beauty. Their countenances are animated with a lively and
+brilliant fire; and their eyes, which cannot be made to close during the
+entire duration of the ecstasy, remain completely motionless, open, and
+fixed, as on the object which seems to interest them. They are in some
+sort transfigured; they appear quite changed. Even those who, out of
+this state, have in their physiognomy something mean or repulsive, alter
+so that they can scarcely be recognized.... It is during these ecstasies
+that many of the convulsionists deliver their finest discourses and
+their chief predictions,--that they speak in unknown tongues,--that they
+read the secret thoughts of others,--and even sometimes that they give
+their representations."[19]
+
+A provincial ecclesiastic, quoted by Montgéron, and who, it should be
+remarked, found fault with many of the doings of the convulsionists,
+admits the exalted character of these declamations. He says,--"Their
+discourses on religion are spirited, touching, profound,--delivered with
+an eloquence and a dignity which our greatest masters cannot approach,
+and with a grace and appropriateness of gesture rivalling that of our
+best actors.... One of the girls who pronounced such discourses was but
+thirteen years and a half old; and most of them were utterly
+incompetent, in their natural state, thus to treat subjects far beyond
+their capacity."[20]
+
+Colbert, already quoted, bears testimony to the same effect. Writing to
+Madame de Coetquen, he says,--"I have read extracts from these
+discourses, and have been greatly struck with them. The expressions are
+noble, the views grand, the theology exact. It is impossible that the
+imagination, and especially the imagination of a child, should originate
+such beautiful things. Sublimity full of eloquence reigns throughout
+these productions."[21]
+
+To judge fairly of this phenomenon, we must consider the previous
+condition and acquirements of those who pronounced such discourses.
+Montgéron, while declaring that among the convulsionists there were
+occasionally to be found persons of respectable standing, adds,--"But it
+must be confessed that in general God has chosen the convulsionists
+among the common people; that they were chiefly young children,
+especially girls; that almost all of them had lived till then in
+ignorance and obscurity; that several of them were deformed, and some,
+in their natural state, even exhibited imbecility. Of such, for the most
+part, it was that God made choice, to show forth to us His power."[22]
+
+The staple of these discourses--wild and fantastic enough--may be
+gathered from the following:--
+
+"The Almighty thus raised up all of a sudden a number of persons, the
+greater part without any instruction; He opened the mouths of a number
+of young girls, some of whom could not read; and He caused them to
+announce, in terms the most magnificent, that the times had now
+arrived,--that in a few years the Prophet Elias would appear,--that he
+would be despised and treated with outrage by the Catholics,--that he
+would even be put to death, together with several of those who had
+expected his coming and had become his disciples and followers,--that
+God would employ this Prophet to convert all the Jews,--that they, when
+thus converted, would immediately carry the light unto all
+nations,--that they would reëstablish Christianity throughout the
+world,--and that they would preach the morality of the gospel in all its
+purity, and cause it to spread over the whole earth."[23]
+
+Montgéron, commenting (as he expresses it) upon "the manner in which the
+convulsionists are supernaturally enlightened, and in which they deliver
+their discourses and their predictions," says,--
+
+"Ordinarily, the words are not dictated to them; it is only the ideas
+that are presented to their minds by a supernatural instinct, and they
+are left to express these thoughts in terms of their own selection.
+Hence it happens that occasionally their most beautiful discourses are
+marred by ill-chosen and incorrect expressions, and by phrases obscure
+and badly turned; so that the beauty of some of these consists rather in
+the depth of thought, the grandeur of the subjects treated, and the
+magnificence of the images presented, than in the language in which the
+whole is rendered.
+
+"It is evident, that, when they are thus left to clothe in their own
+language the ideas given them, they are also at liberty to add to them,
+if they will. And, in fact, most of them declare that they perceive
+within themselves the power to mix in their own ideas with those
+supernaturally communicated, which suddenly seize their minds; and they
+are obliged to be extremely careful not to confound their own thoughts
+with those which they receive from a superior intelligence. This is
+sometimes the more difficult, inasmuch as the ideas thus coming to them
+do not always come with equal clearness.
+
+"Sometimes, however, the terms are dictated to them internally, but
+without their being forced to pronounce them, nor hindered from adding
+to them, if they choose to do so.
+
+"Finally, in regard to certain subjects,--for example, the lights which
+illumine their minds, and oblige them to announce the second coming of
+the Prophet Elias, and all that has reference to that great
+event,--their lips pronounce a succession of words wholly independently
+of their will; so that they themselves listen like the auditors, having
+no knowledge of what they say, except only as, word for word, it is
+pronounced."[24]
+
+Montgéron appears, however, to admit that the exaltation of intelligence
+which is apparent during the state of ecstasy may, to some extent, be
+accounted for on natural principles. Starting from the fact, that,
+during the convulsions, external objects produce much less effect upon
+the senses than in the natural state, he argues that "the more the soul
+is disembarrassed of external impressions, the greater is its activity,
+the greater its power to frame thoughts, and the greater its
+lucidity."[25] He admits, further,--"Although most of the convulsionists
+have, when in convulsion, much more intelligence than in their ordinary
+state, that intelligence is not always supernatural, but may be the mere
+effect of the mental activity which results when soul is disengaged from
+sense. Nay, there are examples of convulsionists availing themselves of
+the superior intelligence which they have in convulsion to make out
+dissertations on mere temporal affairs. This intelligence, also, may at
+times fail to subjugate their passions; and I am convinced that they may
+occasionally make a bad use of it."[26]
+
+In another place, Montgéron says plainly, that "persons accustomed to
+receive revelations, but not raised to the state of the Prophets, may
+readily imagine things to be revealed to them which are but the
+promptings of their own minds,"[27]--and that this has happened, not
+only to the convulsionists, but (by the confession of many of the
+ancient fathers[28]) also to the greatest saints. But he protests
+against the conclusion, as illogical, that the convulsionists never
+speak by the spirit of God, because they do not always do so.
+
+He admits, however,[29] that it is extremely difficult to distinguish
+between what ought to be received as divinely revealed and what ought to
+be rejected as originating in the convulsionist's own mind; nor does he
+give any rule by which this may be done. The knowledge necessary to the
+"discerning of spirits" he thinks can be obtained only by humble
+prayer.[30]
+
+The power of prophecy is one of the gifts claimed by Montgéron as having
+been bestowed on various convulsionists during their ecstatic state. Yet
+he gives no detailed proofs of prophecies touching temporal matters
+having been literally fulfilled, unless it be prophecies by
+convulsionist-patients in regard to the future crises of their diseases.
+And he admits that false predictions were not infrequent, and that false
+interpretations of visions touching the future were of common
+occurrence. He says,--
+
+"It is sometimes revealed to a convulsionist, for example, that there is
+to happen to some person not named a certain accident, every detail of
+which is minutely given; and the convulsionist is ordered to declare
+what has been communicated to him, that the hand of God may be
+recognized in its fulfilment.... But, at the same time, the
+convulsionist receiving this vision believes it to apply to a certain
+person, whom he designates by name. The prediction, however, is not
+verified in the case of the person named, so that those who heard it
+delivered conclude that it is false; but it _is_ verified in the case of
+another person, to whom the accident happens, attended by all the
+minutely detailed particulars."[31]
+
+If this be correctly given, it is what animal magnetizers would call a
+case of imperfect lucidity.
+
+The case as to the gift of tongues is still less satisfactorily made
+out. A few, Montgéron says, translate, after the ecstasy, what they have
+declaimed, during its continuance, in an unknown tongue; but for this,
+of course, we have their word only. The greater part know nothing of
+what they have said, when the ecstasy has passed. As to these, he
+admits,--
+
+"The only proof we have that they understand the words at the time they
+pronounce them is that they often express, in the most lively manner,
+the various sentiments contained in their discourse, not only by their
+gestures, but also by the attitudes the body assumes, and by the
+expression of the countenance, on which the different sentiments are
+painted, by turns, in a manner the most expressive, so that one is able,
+up to a certain point, to detect the feelings by which they are moved;
+and it has been easy for the attentive observer to perceive that most of
+these discourses were detailed predictions as to the coming of the
+Prophet Elias," etc.[32]
+
+If it be presumptuous, considering the marvels which modern observations
+disclose, to pronounce that the alleged unknown languages were unmeaning
+sounds only, it is evident, at least, that the above is inconclusive as
+to their true character.
+
+Much more trustworthy appears to be the evidence touching the phenomenon
+of thought-reading.
+
+The fact that many of the convulsionists were able "to discover the
+secrets of the heart" is admitted by their principal opponents. The Abbé
+d'Asfeld himself adduces examples of it.[33] M. Poncet admits its
+reality.[34] The provincial ecclesiastic whom I have already quoted says
+that he "found examples without number of convulsionists who discovered
+the secrets of the heart in the most minute detail: for example, to
+disclose to a person that at such a period of his life he did such or
+such a thing; to another, that he had done so and so before coming
+hither," etc.[35] The author of the "Recherche de la Vérité," a pamphlet
+on the phenomena of the convulsions, which seems very candidly written,
+acknowledges as one of these "the manifestation of the thoughts and the
+discovery of secret things."[36]
+
+Montgéron testifies to the fact, from repeated personal observation,
+that they revealed to him things known to himself alone; and after
+adducing the admissions above alluded to, and some others, he
+adds,--"But it would be superfluous further to multiply testimony in
+proof of a fact admitted by all the world, even by the avowed
+adversaries of the convulsions, who have found no other method of
+explaining it than by doing Satan the honor to proclaim him the author
+of these revelations."[37]
+
+Besides these gifts, real or alleged, there was occasionally observed,
+during ecstasy, an extraordinary development of the musical faculty.
+Montgéron tells us,--"Mademoiselle Dancogné, who, as was well known, had
+no voice whatever in her natural state, sings in the most perfect manner
+canticles in an unknown tongue, and that to the admiration of all those
+who hear her."[38]
+
+As to the general character of these psychological phenomena, the
+theologians of that day were, with few exceptions, agreed that they were
+of a supernatural character,--the usual question mooted between them
+being, whether they were due to a Divine or to a Satanic influence. The
+medical opponents of the movement sometimes took the ground that the
+state of ecstasy was allied to delirium or insanity,--and that it was a
+degraded condition, inasmuch as the patient abandoned the exercise of
+his free will: an argument similar to that which has been made in our
+day against somewhat analogous phenomena, by a Bostonian.[39]
+
+In concluding a sketch, in which, though it be necessarily a brief one,
+I have taken pains to set forth with strict accuracy all the essential
+features which mark the character of this extraordinary epidemic, it is
+proper I should state that the opponents of Jansenism concur in bringing
+against the convulsionists the charge that many of them were not only
+ignorant and illiterate girls, but persons of bad character,
+occasionally of notoriously immoral habits; nay, that some of them
+justified the vicious courses in which they indulged by declaring these
+to be a representation of a religious tendency, emblematic of that
+degradation through which the Church must pass, before, recalled by the
+voice of Elias, it regained its pristine purity.
+
+Montgéron, while admitting that such charges may justly be brought
+against some of the convulsionists, denies the general truth of the
+allegation, yet after such a fashion that one sees plainly he considers
+it necessary, in establishing the character and divine source of the
+discourses and predictions delivered in the state of ecstasy, to do so
+without reference to the moral standing of the ecstatics. When one of
+his opponents (the physician who addressed to him the satirical letter
+already referred to) ascribes to him the position, that one must decide
+the divine or diabolical state of a person alleged to be inspired by
+reference to that person's morals and conduct, he replies,--"God forbid
+that I should advance so false a proposition!" And he proceeds to argue
+that the Deity often avails Himself, as a medium for expressing His
+will, of unworthy subjects. He says,--
+
+"Who does not know that the Holy Spirit, whose divine rays are never
+stained, let them shine where they will, 'bloweth where it listeth,' and
+distributes its gifts to whom best it seems, without always causing
+these to be accompanied by internal virtues? Does not Scripture inform
+us that God caused miracles to be wrought and great prophecies to be
+delivered by very vicious persons, as Judas, Caiaphas, Balaam, and
+others? Jesus Christ himself teaches us that there will be workers of
+iniquity among the number of those who prophesy and of those who will
+work miracles in his name, declaring that on the Day of Judgment many
+will say unto him, 'Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy
+name done many wonderful works?' and that he will reply to them, 'Depart
+from me, ye that work iniquity.'"
+
+And he proceeds thus:--"If, therefore, all that our enemies allege
+against the character of the convulsionists were true, it does not
+follow that God would not employ such persons as the ministers of His
+miracles and His prophecies, provided, always, that these miracles and
+these prophecies have a worthy object, and tend to a knowledge of the
+truth, to the spread of charity, and to the reformation of the morals of
+mankind."[40]
+
+These accusations of immorality are, probably, greatly exaggerated by
+the enemies of the Jansenists; yet one may gather, even from the tenor
+of Montgéron's defence, that there was more or less truth in the charges
+brought against the conduct of some of the convulsionists, and that the
+state of ecstasy, whatever its true nature, was by no means confined to
+persons of good moral character.
+
+Such are the alleged facts, physical and mental, connected with this
+extraordinary episode in the history of mental epidemics.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the perusal of such a narrative as the above, the questions which
+naturally suggest themselves are,--To what extent can we rationally
+attach credit to it? And, if true, what is the explanation of phenomena
+apparently so incredible?
+
+As to the first, the admission of a distinguished contemporary
+historian, noted for his skeptical tendencies, in regard to the evidence
+for these alleged miracles, is noteworthy. It is in these words:--"Many
+of them were immediately proved on the spot before judges of
+unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction,
+in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the
+world; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the
+civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those opinions in whose
+favor the miracles were supposed to have been wrought, ever able
+distinctly to refute or detect them."[41]
+
+Similar is the admission of another celebrated author, at least as
+skeptical as Hume, and writing at the very time, and on the very spot
+where these marvellous events were occurring. Diderot, speaking of the
+St.-Médard manifestations, says,--"We have of these pretended miracles a
+vast collection, which may brave the most determined incredulity. Its
+author, Carré de Montgéron, is a magistrate, a man of gravity, who up to
+that time had been a professed materialist,--on insufficient grounds,
+it is true, but yet a man who certainly had no expectation of making his
+fortune by becoming a Jansenist. An eye-witness of the facts he relates,
+and of which he had an opportunity of judging dispassionately and
+disinterestedly, his testimony is indorsed by that of a thousand others.
+All relate what they have seen; and their depositions have every
+possible mark of authenticity; the originals being recorded and
+preserved in the public archives."[42]
+
+Even in the very denunciations of opponents we find corroboratory
+evidence of the main facts in question. Witness the terms in which the
+Bishop of Bethléem declaims against the scenes of St. Médard:--"What! we
+find ecclesiastics, priests, in the midst of numerous assemblies
+composed of persons of every rank and of both sexes, doffing their
+cassocks, habiting themselves in shirt and trousers, the better to be
+able to act the part of executioners, casting on the ground young girls,
+dragging them face-downward along the earth, and then discharging on
+their bodies innumerable blows, till they themselves, the dealers of
+these blows, are reduced to such a state of exhaustion that they are
+obliged to have water poured on their heads! What! we find men
+pretending to sentiments of religion and humanity dealing, with the full
+swing of their arms, thirty or forty thousand blows with heavy clubs on
+the arms, on the legs, on the heads of young girls, and making other
+desperate efforts capable of crushing the skulls of the sufferers! What!
+we find cultivated ladies, pious and of high rank, doctors of law, civil
+and canonical, laymen of character, even curates, daily witnessing this
+spectacle of fanaticism and horror in silence, instead of opposing it
+with all their force; nay, they applaud it by their presence, even by
+their countenance and their conversation! Was ever, throughout all
+history, such another example of excesses thus scandalous, thus
+multiplied?"[43]
+
+De Lan, another opponent, thus sketches the same scenes:--"Young girls,
+bareheaded, dashed their heads against a wall or against a marble slab;
+they caused their limbs to be drawn by strong men, even to the extent of
+dislocation;[44] they caused blows to be given them that would kill the
+most robust, and in such numbers that one is terrified. I know one
+person who counted four thousand at a single sitting; they were given
+sometimes with the palm of the hand, sometimes with the fist; sometimes
+on the back, sometimes on the stomach. Occasionally, heavy cudgels or
+clubs were employed instead[45].... Some convulsionists ran pins into
+their heads, without suffering any pain; others would have thrown
+themselves from the windows, had they not been prevented. Others, again,
+carried their zeal so far as to cause themselves to be hanged up by a
+hook," etc.[46]
+
+Modern medical writers of reputation usually admit the main facts, and
+seek a natural explanation of them. In the article, "Convulsions," in
+the great "Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales," (published in 1812-22,)
+which article is from the pen of an able physiologist, Dr. Montègre, we
+find the following, in regard to the St.-Médard phenomena:--"Carré de
+Montgéron surrounded these prodigies with depositions so numerous and so
+authentic, that, after having examined them, no doubt can remain....
+However great my reluctance to admit such facts, it is impossible for me
+to refuse to receive them." As to the _succors_, so-called, he frankly
+confesses that they seem to him as fully proved as the rest. He
+says,--"There are the same witnesses, and the incidents themselves are
+still more clear and precise. It is not so much of cures that there is
+question in this case, as of apparent and external facts, in regard to
+which there can be no misconception."
+
+Dr. Calmeil, in his well-known work on Insanity, while regarding this
+epidemic as one of the most striking examples of religious mania,
+accepts the relation of Montgéron as in the main true. "From various
+motives," says he, "these theomaniacs sought out the most frightful
+bodily tortures. Would it be credible, if it were not that the entire
+population of Paris concurred in testifying to the fact, that more than
+five hundred women pushed the rage of fanaticism or the perversion of
+sensibility to such a point, that they exposed themselves to burning
+fires, that they had their heads compressed between boards, that they
+caused to be administered on the abdomen, on the breast, on the stomach,
+on every part of the body, blows of clubs, stampings of the feet, blows
+with weapons of stone, with bars of iron? Yet the theomaniacs of St.
+Médard braved all these tests, sometimes as proofs that God had rendered
+them invulnerable, sometimes to demonstrate that God could cure them by
+means calculated to kill them, had they not been the objects of His
+special protection, sometimes to show that blows usually painful only
+caused to them pleasant relief. The picture of the punishments to which
+the convulsionists submitted, as if by inspiration, so that no one might
+doubt, as Montgéron has it, that it was easy for the Almighty to render
+invulnerable and insensible bodies the most frail and delicate, would
+induce us to believe, if the contrary were not so conclusively
+established, that a rage for homicide and suicide had taken possession
+of the greater part of the sect of the Appellants."[47]
+
+Though I am acquainted with no class of phenomena occurring elsewhere
+that will match the "Great Succors" of St. Médard, yet we find
+occasional glimpses of instincts somewhat analogous to those claimed for
+the convulsionists, in other examples.
+
+In Hecker's "Epidemics of the Middle Ages" there is a chapter devoted to
+what he calls the "Dancing Mania," the account of which he thus
+introduces:--"So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women
+were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had come out of Germany, and who,
+united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public, both in the
+streets and in the churches, the following strange spectacle. They
+formed circles hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost all control
+over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for
+hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the
+ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme
+oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were
+swathed in cloths bound tightly round their waists; upon which they
+recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This
+practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany[48] which
+followed these spasmodic ravings; but the bystanders frequently relieved
+patients in a less artificial manner, _by thumping and trampling upon
+the parts affected_. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being
+insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted
+by visions." And again,--"In Liege, Utrecht, Tongres, and many other
+towns of Belgium, the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and
+their waists girt with cloths, that they might, as soon as the paroxysm
+was over, receive immediate relief from the attack of tympany. This
+bandage, by the insertion of a stick, was easily twisted tight; _many,
+however, obtained more relief from kicks and blows_, which they found
+numbers of persons ready to administer."[49]
+
+Physicians of our own day, while magnetizing, have occasionally
+encountered not dissimilar phenomena. Dr. Bertrand tells us that the
+first patient he ever magnetized, being attacked by a disease of an
+hysterical character, became subject to convulsions of so long duration
+and so violent in character, that he had never, in all his practice,
+seen the like; and that she suffered horribly. He adds,--"Here is what
+happened during her first convulsion-fits. This unhappy girl, whose
+instinct was perverted by intensity of pain, earnestly entreated the
+persons present to press upon her with such force as at any other time
+would have produced the most serious injury. I had the greatest
+difficulty to prevent those around her from acceding to her urgent
+requests that they would kneel upon her with all their weight, that they
+would exert with their hands the utmost pressure on the pit of her
+stomach, even on her throat, with the view of driving off the imaginary
+hysterical _ball_ of which she complained. Though at any other time such
+treatment would have produced severe pain, she declared that it relieved
+her; and when the fit passed off, she did not seem to suffer the least
+inconvenience from it."[50]
+
+The above, connecting as it does the phenomena exhibited during the
+St.-Médard epidemic with those observed by animal magnetizers, brings us
+to the second query, namely, as to the cause of these phenomena.
+
+And here we find physicians, not mesmerists, comparing these phenomena,
+and others of the same class, with the effects observed by animal
+magnetizers. Dr. Montègre, already quoted, says,--"The phenomena of
+magnetism, and those presented by cases of possession and of
+fascination, connect themselves with those observed among the
+convulsionists, not only by the most complete resemblance, but also by
+the cause which determines them. There is not a single phenomenon
+observed in the one case that has not its counterpart in the
+others."[51]
+
+Calmeil, while admitting that the "nervous effects produced by animal
+magnetizers bear a close resemblance to those which have been observed
+at Loudun, at Louviers, and during other convulsive epidemics," offers
+the following, in explanation of the physical phenomena connected with
+the "Great Succors":--
+
+"The energetic resistance, which, in the case of the convulsionists, the
+skin, the cellular tissue, and the surface of the body and limbs offered
+to the shock of blows, is certainly calculated to excite surprise. But
+many of these fanatics greatly deceived themselves, when they imagined
+that they were invulnerable; for it has been repeatedly proved that
+several of them, as a consequent of the cruel trials they solicited,
+suffered from large ecchymoses on the integuments, and numerous
+contusions on those portions of the surface which were exposed to the
+rudest attacks. For the rest, the blows were never administered except
+during the torments of convulsion; and at that time the tympany
+(_météorisme_) of the abdomen, the state of spasm of the uterus in women
+and of the alimentary canal in both sexes, the state of contraction, of
+orgasm, of turgescence in the fleshy envelopes, in the muscular layers
+which protect and inclose the abdomen, the thorax, the principal
+vascular trunks, and the bony surfaces, must essentially contribute to
+weaken, to deaden, to nullify, the effect of the blows. Is it not by
+means of an analogous state of orgasm, which an over-excited will
+produces, that boxers and athletes find themselves in a condition to
+brave, to a certain point, the dangers of their profession? In fine, it
+is to be remarked, that, when dealing blows on the bodies of the
+convulsionists, the assistants employed weapons of considerable volume,
+having flat or rounded surfaces, cylindrical or blunted. But the action
+of such physical agents is not to be compared, as regards its danger,
+with that of thongs, switches, or other supple and flexible instruments
+with distinct edges. Finally, the contact and the repeated impression of
+the blows produced on the convulsionists the effect of a sort of
+salutary pounding, and rendered less poignant and less sensible the
+tortures of hysteria. It would have been preferable, doubtless, to make
+use of less murderous succors; the rage for distinction as the possessor
+of a miraculous gift, even more perhaps than the instinctive need of
+immediate relief, prompting these convulsionary theomaniacs to make
+choice of means calculated to act on the imagination of a populace,
+whose interest could be kept awake only by a constant repetition of
+wonders."[52]
+
+Calmeil, of all the medical authors I have consulted, appears to have
+the most closely studied the various phases of the St.-Médard
+epidemic.[53] Yet the explanations above given seem to me quite
+incommensurate with the phenomena admitted.
+
+Some of the patients, he says, suffered from ecchymosis and contusions.
+In plain, unprofessional language, they were beaten black and blue. That
+is such a result as usually follows a few blows from a boxer's fist or
+from an ordinary walking-stick. But when the weapon employed is a rough
+iron bar weighing upwards of twenty-nine pounds, when the number of
+blows dealt in succession on the pit of the stomach of a young girl
+exceeds a hundred and fifty, and when these are delivered with the
+utmost force of an athletic man, is it bruises and contusions we look
+for as the only consequence? Or does it explain the immunity with which
+this frightful infliction was received, to call it a salutary pounding?
+The argument drawn from the turgescence of the viscera and other organs,
+from the spasmodic contraction of the muscles and the general state of
+orgasm of the system, has doubtless great weight; but does it reach far
+enough to explain to us the fact, (if it be a fact, and as such Calmeil
+accepts it,) that a girl, bent back so that her head and feet touched
+the floor, the centre of the vertebral column being supported on a
+sharp-pointed stake, received, day after day, with impunity, directly on
+her stomach and bowels, one hundred times in succession, a flint stone
+weighing fifty pounds, dropped suddenly from a height of twelve or
+fifteen feet? Boxers, it is true, in the excited state in which they
+enter the ring, receive, unmoved, from their opponents blows which would
+prostrate a man not prepared, by hard training, for the trial. But even
+such blows, in the end, sometimes prove mortal; and what should we say
+of substituting for the human fist a sharp-pointed rapier, and expecting
+that the tension of the nervous system would render impenetrable the
+skin of the combatant? Finally, it is to be admitted, that flexible
+weapons, especially if loaded, as the cat-o'-nine-tails, still used in
+some countries as an instrument of military punishment, occasionally is,
+with hard, angular substances, are among the most severe that can be
+employed to inflict punishment or destroy life. But what would even the
+poor condemned soldier, shrinking from that terrible instrument of
+torture which modern civilization has not yet been shamed into
+discarding, think of the proposal to substitute for it the andiron with
+which Montgéron, at the twenty-fifth blow, broke an opening through a
+stone wall,--the executioner-drummer being commanded to deal, with his
+utmost strength, one hundred and sixty blows in succession, with that
+ponderous bar, (a bar with rough edges, no cylindrical rod,) not on the
+back of the culprit, but on his unprotected breast?
+
+No wonder that De Gasparin, with all his aversion for the supernatural,
+and all his disinclination to admit anything which he cannot explain,
+after quoting from Calmeil the above explanation, feels its
+insufficiency, and seeks another. These are his words:--
+
+"How does it happen, that, after being struck with the justice of these
+observations, one still retains a sort of intellectual uneasiness, a
+certain suspicion of the disproportion between the explanation and the
+phenomena it seeks to explain? How does it happen, that, under the
+influence of such an impression, many suffer themselves to be seduced
+into an admission of diabolical or miraculous agency? It happens,
+because Dr. Calmeil, faithful to the countersign of all learned bodies
+in England and France, refuses to admit fluidic action, or to make a
+single step in advance of the ordinary theory of nervous excitement. Now
+it is in vain to talk of contractions, of spasms, of turgescence; all
+this evidently fails to reach the case of the St.-Médard _succors_. To
+reach it we need the intervention of a peculiar force,--of a fluid which
+is disengaged, sometimes by the effect of certain crises, sometimes by
+the power of magnetism itself. Those who systematically keep up this
+hiatus in the study of human physiology are the best allies of the
+superstitions they profess to combat.... Suppose that study seriously
+undertaken, with what precision should we resolve the problem of which
+now we can but indicate the solution! Habituated to the wonders of the
+nervous fluid, knowing that it can raise, at a distance, inert objects,
+that it can biologize, that it can communicate suppleness or rigidity,
+the highest development of the senses or absolute insensibility, we
+should not be greatly surprised to discover that it communicates also,
+in certain cases, elasticity and that degree of impenetrability which
+characterizes gum-elastic."[54]
+
+De Gasparin further explains his theory in the following passage:--"The
+great difficulty is not to explain the perversion of sensibility
+exhibited by the convulsionists. Aside from that question, does it not
+remain incomprehensible that feeble women should have received, without
+being a hundred times crushed to pieces, the frightful blows of which we
+have spoken? How can we explain such a power of resistance? A very small
+change, operated by the nervous fluid, would suffice to render the
+matter very simple. Let us suppose the skin and fibres of the
+convulsionists to acquire, in virtue of their peculiar state of
+excitement, a consistency analogous to that of gum-elastic; then all the
+facts that astonish us would become as natural as possible. With
+convulsionists of gum-elastic,[55] or, rather, whose bony framework was
+covered with muscles and tissues of gum-elastic, what would happen?"
+
+He then proceeds to admit that "a vigorous thrust with a rapier, or
+stroke with a sabre, as such thrusts and strokes are usually dealt,
+would doubtless penetrate such an envelope"; but, he alleges, the
+St.-Médard convulsionists never, in a single instance, permitted such
+thrusts or strokes, with rapier or sabre, to be given; prudently
+restricting themselves to pressure only, exerted after the sword-point
+had been placed against the body. He reminds us, further, that neither
+razors nor pistol-balls, both of which would penetrate gum-elastic, were
+ever tried on the convulsionists; and he adds,--"Neither flint stones
+nor andirons nor clubs nor swords and spits, pressed against it, would
+have broken the surface of the gum-elastic envelope. They would have
+produced no visible injury. At the most, they might have caused a
+certain degree of internal friction, more or less serious, according to
+the thickness of the gum-elastic cuirass which covered the bones and the
+various organs."[56]
+
+I am fain to confess, that this imagining of men and women of
+gum-elastic, all but the skeleton, does not seem to me so simple a
+matter as it appears to have been regarded by M. de Gasparin. Let us
+take it for granted that his theory of a nervous fluid, which is the
+agent in table-moving,[57] is the true one. How is the mere disengaging
+of such a fluid to work a sudden transmutation of muscular and tendinous
+fibre and cellular tissue into a substance possessing the essential
+properties of a vegetable gum? And what becomes of the skin, ordinarily
+so delicate, so easily abraded or pierced, so readily injured? Is that
+transmuted also? Let us concede it. But the concession does not suffice.
+There remain the bones and cartilages, naturally so brittle, so liable
+to fracture. Let us even suppose the breast and stomach of a
+convulsionist protected by an artificial coating of actual gum-elastic,
+would it be a safe experiment to drop upon it, from a height of twelve
+feet, a flint stone weighing fifty pounds? We are expressly told that
+the ribs bent under the terrible shock, and sank, flattened, even to the
+backbone. Is it not certain, that human ribs and cartilages, in their
+normal state, would have snapped off, in spite of the interposed
+protection? Must we not, then, imagine osseous and cartilaginous fibre,
+too, transmuted? Indeed, while we are about it, I do not see why we
+should stop short of the skeleton. Since we understand nothing of the
+manner of transmutation, it is as easy to imagine bone turned to
+gum-elastic, as skin and muscle and tendon.
+
+In truth, if we look at it narrowly, this theory of De Gasparin is
+little more than a virtual admission, that, during convulsion, by some
+sudden change, the bodies of the patients did, as they themselves
+declared, become, to a marvellous extent, invulnerable,--with the
+suggestion added, that the nervous fluid may, after some unexplained
+fashion, have been the agent of that change.
+
+For the rest, though the alleged analogy between the properties of
+gum-elastic and those which, in this abnormal state, the human body
+seems to acquire, is, to a certain extent, sustained by many of the
+observations above recorded,--for example, when a sharp-pointed rapier,
+violently pushed against Gabrielle Moler's throat, sank to the depth of
+four finger-breadths, and, when drawn back, seeming to attach itself to
+the skin, drew it back also, causing a trifling injury,--yet others seem
+to prove that there is little strictness in that analogy. The King's
+Chaplain and the Advocate of Parliament, whose testimony I have cited,
+both certify that the flesh occasionally reacted under the sword,
+swelling up, so as to thrust back the weapons, and even push back the
+assistants. There is no corresponding property in gum-elastic. And
+Montgéron expressly tells us, that, at the close of a terrible succor
+called for by Gabrielle Moler, when she caused four sharpened shovels,
+placed, one above, one below, and one on each side, of one of her
+breasts, to be pushed by the main force of four assistants, a committee
+of ladies present "had the curiosity to examine her breast immediately
+after this operation, and unanimously certified that they found it as
+hard as a stone."[58] If this observation can be depended on, the
+gum-elastic theory, even as an analogically approximating explanation of
+this entire class of phenomena, is untenable.
+
+It is further to be remarked, that one of the positions assumed by M. de
+Gasparin, as the basis of his hypothesis, does not tally with some of
+the facts detailed by Montgéron. It was _pushes_ with swords, the former
+alleges, never _thrusts_, to which the convulsionists were exposed. I
+have already stated that this was _usually_ the fact; but there seem to
+have been striking exceptions. On the authority of a priest and of an
+officer of the royal household, Montgéron gives us the details of a
+symbolical combat of the most desperate character, with rapiers, between
+Sisters Madeleine and Félicité, occurring in May, 1744, in the presence
+of thirty persons. One of the witnesses says,--"I know not if I ever saw
+enemies attack each other with more fury or less circumspection. They
+fell upon one another without the slightest precaution, thrusting
+against each other with the points of their rapiers at hap-hazard,
+wherever the thrust happened to take effect. And this they did again and
+again, and with all the force of which, in convulsion, they were
+capable,--which, as all the world knows, is a force far greater than the
+same persons possess in their ordinary state."
+
+And the officer thus further certifies:--"After the combat, Madeleine
+took two short swords, resembling daggers, and, holding one in each
+hand, dealt seven or eight blows, pushed home with all her strength, on
+the breast of Félicité, raising her hands and then stabbing with the
+utmost eagerness, just as an assassin who wished to murder some one
+would plunge two daggers repeatedly into his breast. Félicité received
+the strokes with perfect tranquillity, and without evincing the
+slightest emotion. Then, taking two similar daggers, she did the very
+same to Madeleine, who, with her arms crossed, received the thrusts as
+tranquilly as the other had done. Immediately afterwards, these two
+convulsionists attacked one another with daggers, as with the fury of
+two maniacs, who, having resolved on mutual destruction, were solely
+bent each on poniarding the other."[59]
+
+It is added, that "neither the one nor the other received the least
+appearance of a wound, nor did either seem at all fatigued by so long
+and furious an exercise."
+
+It is not stated, in this particular instance, as it is in others, that
+these girls were examined by a committee of their sex, before or after
+the combat, to ascertain that they had under their dresses no concealed
+means of protection; so that the possibility of trickery must be
+admitted. If, as the officer who certifies appears convinced, all was
+fair, then M. de Gasparin's admission that a vigorous sword-thrust would
+penetrate the gum-elastic envelope is fatal to the theory he propounds.
+
+Yet, withal, we may reasonably assent to the probability that M. de
+Gasparin, in seeking an explanation of these marvellous phenomena, may
+have proceeded in the right direction. Modern physicians admit, that, at
+times, during somnambulism, complete insensibility, resembling hysteric
+coma, prevails.[60] But if, as is commonly believed, this insensibility
+is caused by some modification or abnormal condition of the nervous
+fluid, then to some other modification or changed condition of the same
+fluid comparative invulnerability may be due. For there is connection,
+to a certain extent, between insensibility and invulnerability. A
+patient rendered unconscious of pain, by chloroform or otherwise,
+throughout the duration of a severe and prolonged surgical operation,
+escapes a perilous shock to the nervous system, and may survive an
+ordeal which, if he had felt the agony usually induced, would have
+proved fatal. Pain is not only a warning monitor, it becomes also,
+sometimes, the agent of punishment, if the warning be disregarded.
+
+But, on the other hand, we must not forget that insensibility and
+invulnerability, though to a certain extent allied, are two distinct
+things. Injury the most serious may occur without the premonitory
+warning, even without immediate subsequent suffering. A person in a
+perfect state of insensibility might doubtless receive, without
+experiencing any pain whatever, a blow that would shatter the bones of a
+limb, and render it powerless for life. Indeed, there is on record a
+well-attested case of a poor pedestrian, who, having laid himself down
+on the platform of a lime-kiln, and dropping asleep, and the fire having
+increased and burnt off one foot to the ankle, rose in the morning to
+depart, and knew nothing of his misfortune, until, putting his burnt
+limb to the ground, to support his body in rising, the extremity of his
+leg-bone, calcined into lime, crumbled to fragments beneath him.[61]
+
+Contemporary medical authorities, even when they have the rare courage
+to deny to the convulsions either a divine or a diabolical character,
+furnish no explanation of them more satisfactory than the citing of
+similar cases, more or less strongly attested, in the past.[62] This may
+confirm our faith in the reality of the phenomena, but does not resolve
+our difficulties as to the causes of them.
+
+It does not fall within my purpose to hazard any opinion as to these
+causes, nor, if it did, am I prepared to offer any. Some considerations
+might be adduced, calculated to lessen our wonder as to an occasional
+phenomenon on this marvellous record. Physiologists, for example, are
+agreed that the common opinion as to the sensibility of the interior of
+the eye is an incorrect one;[63] and that consideration might be put
+forth, when we read that Sisters Madeleine and Félicité suffered with
+impunity swords to be pressed against that delicate organ, until the
+point sank an inch beneath its surface. But all such isolated
+considerations are partial, inconclusive, and, as regards any general
+satisfactory explanation, far short of the requirements of the case.
+
+More weight may justly be given to another consideration: to the
+exaggerations inseparable from enthusiasm, and the inaccuracies into
+which inexperienced observers must ever fall. As to the necessity of
+making large allowance for these, I entirely agree with Calmeil and De
+Gasparin. But let the allowance made for such errors be more or less, it
+cannot extend to an absolute denial of the chief phenomena, unless we
+are prepared to follow Hume in his assertion that what is contrary to
+our experience can be proved by no evidence of testimony whatever,--and
+that, though we have here nothing, save the marvellous character of the
+events, to oppose to the cloud of witnesses who attest them, that alone,
+in the eyes of reasonable people, should be regarded as a sufficient
+refutation.[64]
+
+The mental and psychological phenomena, only less marvellous than the
+physical because we have seen more of their like, will, on that account,
+be more readily received.
+
+
+
+
+HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
+
+BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.
+
+
+III.
+
+It is among the sibylline secrets which lie mysteriously between you and
+me, O reader, that these papers, besides their public aspect, have a
+private one proper to the bosom of mine own particular family.
+
+They are not merely an _ex post facto_ protest in regard to that carpet
+and parlor of celebrated memory, but they are forth-looking towards
+other homes that may yet arise near us.
+
+For, among my other confidences, you may recollect I stated to you that
+our Marianne was busy in those interesting cares and details which
+relate to the preparing and ordering of another dwelling.
+
+Now, when any such matter is going on in a family, I have observed that
+every feminine instinct is in a state of fluttering vitality,--every
+woman, old or young, is alive with womanliness to the tips of her
+fingers; and it becomes us of the other sex, however consciously
+respected, to walk softly, and put forth our sentiments discreetly and
+with due reverence for the mysterious powers that reign in the feminine
+breast.
+
+I had been too well advised to offer one word of direct counsel on a
+subject where there were such charming voices, so able to convict me of
+absurdity at every turn. I had merely so arranged my affairs as to put
+into the hands of my bankers, subject to my wife's order, the very
+modest marriage-portion which I could place at my girl's disposal; and
+Marianne and Jennie, unused to the handling of money, were incessant in
+their discussions with ever-patient mamma as to what was to be done with
+it. I say Marianne and Jennie, for, though the case undoubtedly is
+Marianne's, yet, like everything else in our domestic proceedings, it
+seems to fall, somehow or other, into Jennie's hands, through the
+intensity and liveliness of her domesticity of nature. Little Jennie is
+so bright and wide-awake, and with so many active plans and fancies
+touching anything in the housekeeping world, that, though the youngest
+sister, and second party in this affair, a stranger, hearkening to the
+daily discussions, might listen a half-hour at a time without finding
+out that it was not Jennie's future establishment that was in question.
+Marianne is a soft, thoughtful, quiet girl, not given to many words; and
+though, when you come fairly at it, you will find, that, like most quiet
+girls, she has a will five times as inflexible as one who talks more,
+yet, in all family-counsels, it is Jennie and mamma that do the
+discussion, and her own little well-considered "Yes," or "No," that
+finally settles each case.
+
+I must add to this family-_tableau_ the portrait of the excellent Bob
+Stephens, who figured as future proprietor and householder in these
+consultations. So far as the question of financial possibilities is
+concerned, it is important to remark that Bob belongs to the class of
+young Edmunds celebrated by the poet:--
+
+    "Wisdom and worth were all he had."
+
+He is, in fact, an excellent-hearted and clever fellow, with a world of
+agreeable talents, a good tenor in a parlor-duet, a good actor at a
+charade, a lively, off-hand conversationist, well up in all the current
+literature of the day, and what is more, in my eyes, a well-read lawyer,
+just admitted to the bar, and with as fair business-prospects as usually
+fall to the lot of young aspirants in that profession.
+
+Of course, he and my girl are duly and truly in love, in all the proper
+moods and tenses; but as to this work they have in hand of being
+householders, managing fuel, rent, provision, taxes, gas- and
+water-rates, they seem to my older eyes about as sagacious as a pair of
+this year's robins. Nevertheless, as the robins of each year do somehow
+learn to build nests as well as their ancestors, there is reason to hope
+as much for each new pair of human creatures. But it is one of the
+fatalities of our ill-jointed life that houses are usually furnished for
+future homes by young people in just this state of blissful ignorance of
+what they are really wanted for, or what is likely to be done with the
+things in them.
+
+Now, to people of large incomes, with ready wealth for the rectification
+of mistakes, it doesn't much matter how the _menage_ is arranged at
+first; they will, if they have good sense, soon rid themselves of the
+little infelicities and absurdities of their first arrangements, and
+bring their establishment to meet their more instructed tastes.
+
+But to that greater class who have only a modest investment for this
+first start in domestic life mistakes are far more serious. I have known
+people go on for years groaning under the weight of domestic possessions
+they did not want, and pining in vain for others which they did, simply
+from the fact that all their first purchases were made in this time of
+blissful ignorance.
+
+I had been a quiet auditor to many animated discussions among the young
+people as to what they wanted, and were to get, in which the subject of
+prudence and economy was discussed, with quotations of advice thereon
+given in serious good-faith by various friends and relations who lived
+easily on incomes four or five times larger than our own. Who can show
+the ways of elegant economy more perfectly than people thus at ease in
+their possessions? From what serene heights do they instruct the
+inexperienced beginners! Ten thousand a year gives one leisure for
+reflection, and elegant leisure enables one to view household economies
+dispassionately; hence the unction with which these gifted daughters of
+upper-air delight to exhort young neophytes.
+
+"Depend upon it, my dear," Aunt Sophia Easygo had said, "it's always the
+best economy to get the best things. They cost more in the beginning,
+but see how they last! These velvet carpets on my floor have been in
+constant wear for ten years, and look how they wear! I never have an
+ingrain carpet in my house,--not even on the chambers. Velvet and
+Brussels cost more to begin with, but then they last. Then I cannot
+recommend the fashion that is creeping in, of having plate instead of
+solid silver. Plate wears off, and has to be renewed, which comes to
+about the same thing in the end as if you bought all solid at first. If
+I were beginning as Marianne is, I should just set aside a thousand
+dollars for my silver, and be content with a few plain articles. She
+should buy all her furniture at Messrs. David and Saul's. People call
+them dear, but their work will prove cheapest in the end, and there is
+an air and style about their things that can be told anywhere. Of
+course, you won't go to any extravagant lengths,--simplicity is a grace
+of itself."
+
+The waters of the family-council were troubled, when Jennie, flaming
+with enthusiasm, brought home the report of this conversation. When my
+wife proceeded, with her well-trained business-knowledge, to compare the
+prices of the simplest elegancies recommended by Aunt Easygo with the
+sum-total to be drawn on, faces lengthened perceptibly.
+
+"How _are_ people to go to housekeeping," said Jennie, "if everything
+costs so much?"
+
+My wife quietly remarked, that we had had great comfort in our own
+home,--had entertained unnumbered friends, and had only ingrain carpets
+on our chambers and a three-ply on our parlor, and she doubted if any
+guest had ever thought of it,--if the rooms had been a shade less
+pleasant; and as to durability, Aunt Easygo had renewed her carpets
+oftener than we. Such as ours were, they had worn longer than hers.
+
+"But, mamma, you know everything has gone on since your day. Everybody
+must at least approach a certain style nowadays. One can't furnish so
+far behind other people."
+
+My wife answered in her quiet way, setting forth her doctrine of a plain
+average to go through the whole establishment, placing parlors,
+chambers, kitchen, pantries, and the unseen depths of linen-closets in
+harmonious relations of just proportion, and showed by calm estimates
+how far the sum given could go towards this result. _There_ the limits
+were inexorable. There is nothing so damping to the ardor of youthful
+economies as the hard, positive logic of figures. It is so delightful to
+think in some airy way that the things we _like_ best are the cheapest,
+and that a sort of rigorous duty compels us to get them at any
+sacrifice. There is no remedy for this illusion but to show by the
+multiplication and addition tables what things are and are not possible.
+My wife's figures met Aunt Easygo's assertions, and there was a lull
+among the high contracting parties for a season; nevertheless, I could
+see Jennie was secretly uneasy. I began to hear of journeys made to far
+places, here and there, where expensive articles of luxury were selling
+at reduced prices. Now a gilded mirror was discussed, and now a velvet
+carpet which chance had brought down temptingly near the sphere of
+financial possibility. I thought of our parlor, and prayed the good
+fairies to avert the advent of ill-assorted articles.
+
+"Pray keep common sense uppermost in the girls' heads, if you can," said
+I to Mrs. Crowfield, "and don't let the poor little puss spend her money
+for what she won't care a button about by-and-by."
+
+"I shall try," she said; "but you know Marianne is inexperienced, and
+Jennie is so ardent and active, and so confident, too. Then they both, I
+think, have the impression that we are a little behind the age. To say
+the truth, my dear, I think your papers afford a good opportunity of
+dropping a thought now and then in their minds. Jennie was asking last
+night when you were going to write your next paper. The girl has a
+bright, active mind, and thinks of what she hears."
+
+So flattered, by the best of flatterers, I sat down to write on my
+theme; and that evening, at fire-light time, I read to my little senate
+as follows:--
+
+
+WHAT IS A HOME, AND HOW TO KEEP IT.
+
+I have shown that a dwelling, rented or owned by a man, in which his own
+wife keeps house, is not always, or of course, a home. What is it, then,
+that makes a home? All men and women have the indefinite knowledge of
+what they want and long for when that word is spoken. "Home!" sighs the
+disconsolate bachelor, tired of boarding-house fare and buttonless
+shirts. "Home!" says the wanderer in foreign lands, and thinks of
+mother's love, of wife and sister and child. Nay, the word has in it a
+higher meaning, hallowed by religion; and when the Christian would
+express the highest of his hopes for a better life, he speaks of his
+_home_ beyond the grave. The word home has in it the elements of love,
+rest, permanency, and liberty; but besides these it has in it the idea
+of an education by which all that is purest within us is developed into
+nobler forms, fit for a higher life. The little child by the
+home-fireside was taken on the Master's knee when he would explain to
+his disciples the mysteries of the kingdom.
+
+Of so great dignity and worth is this holy and sacred thing, that the
+power to create a HOME ought to be ranked above all creative
+faculties. The sculptor who brings out the breathing statue from cold
+marble, the painter who warms the canvas into a deathless glow of
+beauty, the architect who built cathedrals and hung the world-like dome
+of St. Peter's in mid-air, is not to be compared, in sanctity and
+worthiness, to the humblest artist, who, out of the poor materials
+afforded by this shifting, changing, selfish world, creates the secure
+Eden of a _home_.
+
+A true home should be called the noblest work of art possible to human
+creatures, inasmuch as it is the very image chosen to represent the last
+and highest rest of the soul, the consummation of man's blessedness.
+
+Not without reason does the oldest Christian church require of those
+entering on marriage the most solemn review of all the past life, the
+confession and repentance of every sin of thought, word, and deed, and
+the reception of the holy sacrament; for thus the man and woman who
+approach the august duty of creating a home are reminded of the sanctity
+and beauty of what they undertake.
+
+In this art of home-making I have set down in my mind certain first
+principles, like the axioms of Euclid, and the first is,--
+
+_No home is possible without love._
+
+All business-marriages and marriages of convenience, all mere culinary
+marriages and marriages of mere animal passion, make the creation of a
+true home impossible in the outset. Love is the jewelled foundation of
+this New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven, and takes as many
+bright forms as the amethyst, topaz, and sapphire of that mysterious
+vision. In this range of creative art all things are possible to him
+that loveth, but without love nothing is possible.
+
+We hear of most convenient marriages in foreign lands, which may better
+be described as commercial partnerships. The money on each side is
+counted; there is enough between the parties to carry on the firm, each
+having the appropriate sum allotted to each. No love is pretended, but
+there is great politeness. All is so legally and thoroughly arranged,
+that there seems to be nothing left for future quarrels to fasten on.
+Monsieur and Madame have each their apartments, their carriages, their
+servants, their income, their friends, their pursuits,--understand the
+solemn vows of marriage to mean simply that they are to treat each other
+with urbanity in those few situations where the path of life must
+necessarily bring them together.
+
+We are sorry that such an idea of marriage should be gaining foothold in
+America. It has its root in an ignoble view of life,--an utter and pagan
+darkness as to all that man and woman are called to do in that highest
+relation where they act as one. It is a mean and low contrivance on both
+sides, by which all the grand work of home-building, all the noble pains
+and heroic toils of home-education,--that education where the parents
+learn more than they teach,--shall be (let us use the expressive Yankee
+idiom) _shirked_.
+
+It is a curious fact that in those countries where this system of
+marriages is the general rule there is no word corresponding to our
+English word _home_. In many polite languages of Europe it would be
+impossible neatly to translate the sentiment with which we began this
+essay, that a man's _house_ is not always his _home_.
+
+Let any one try to render the song, "Sweet Home," into French, and one
+finds how Anglo-Saxon is the very genius of the word. The structure of
+life, in all its relations, in countries where marriages are matter of
+arrangement, and not of love, excludes the idea of home.
+
+How does life run in such countries? The girl is recalled from her
+convent or boarding-school, and told that her father has found a husband
+for her. No objection on her part is contemplated or provided for; none
+generally occurs, for the child is only too happy to obtain the fine
+clothes and the liberty which she has been taught come only with
+marriage. Be the man handsome or homely, interesting or stupid, still he
+brings these.
+
+How intolerable such a marriage! we say, with the close intimacies of
+Anglo-Saxon life in our minds. They are not intolerable, because they
+are provided for by arrangements which make it possible for each to go
+his or her several way, seeing very little of the other. The son or
+daughter, which in due time makes its appearance in this _menage_, is
+sent out to nurse in infancy, sent to boarding-school in youth, and in
+maturity portioned and married, to repeat the same process for another
+generation. Meanwhile, father and mother keep a quiet establishment, and
+pursue their several pleasures. Such is the system.
+
+Houses built for this kind of life become mere sets of reception-rooms,
+such as are the greater proportion of apartments to let in Paris, where
+a hearty English or American family, with their children about them,
+could scarcely find room to establish themselves. Individual character,
+it is true, does something to modify this programme. There are charming
+homes in France and Italy, where warm and noble natures, thrown
+together, perhaps, by accident, or mated by wise paternal choice, infuse
+warmth into the coldness of the system under which they live. There are
+in all states of society some of such domesticity of nature that they
+will create a home around themselves under any circumstances, however
+barren. Besides, so kindly is human nature, that Love, uninvited before
+marriage, often becomes a guest after, and with Love always comes a
+home.
+
+My next axiom is,--
+
+_There can be no true home without liberty._
+
+The very idea of home is of a retreat where we shall be free to act out
+personal and individual tastes and peculiarities, as we cannot do before
+the wide world. We are to have our meals at what hour we will, served in
+what style suits us. Our hours of going and coming are to be as we
+please. Our favorite haunts are to be here or there, our pictures and
+books so disposed as seems to us good, and our whole arrangements the
+expression, so far as our means can compass it, of our own personal
+ideas of what is pleasant and desirable in life. This element of
+liberty, if we think of it, is the chief charm of home. "Here I can do
+as I please," is the thought with which the tempest-tossed earth-pilgrim
+blesses himself or herself, turning inward from the crowded ways of the
+world. This thought blesses the man of business, as he turns from his
+day's care, and crosses the sacred threshold. It is as restful to him as
+the slippers and gown and easy-chair by the fireside. Everybody
+understands him here. Everybody is well content that he should take his
+ease in his own way. Such is the case in the _ideal_ home. That such is
+not always the case in the real home comes often from the mistakes in
+the house-furnishing. Much house-furnishing is _too fine_ for liberty.
+
+In America there is no such thing as rank and station which impose a
+sort of prescriptive style on people of certain income. The consequence
+is that all sorts of furniture and belongings, which in the Old World
+have a recognized relation to certain possibilities of income, and which
+require certain other accessories to make them in good keeping, are
+thrown in the way of all sorts of people.
+
+Young people who cannot expect by any reasonable possibility to keep
+more than two or three servants, if they happen to have the means in the
+outset, furnish a house with just such articles as in England would suit
+an establishment of sixteen. We have seen houses in England having two
+or three housemaids, and tables served by a butler and two waiters,
+where the furniture, carpets, china, crystal, and silver were in one and
+the same style with some establishments in America where the family was
+hard pressed to keep three Irish servants.
+
+This want of servants is the one thing that must modify everything in
+American life; it is, and will long continue to be, a leading feature in
+the life of a country so rich in openings for man and woman that
+domestic service can be only the stepping-stone to something higher.
+Nevertheless, we Americans are great travellers; we are sensitive,
+appreciative, fond of novelty, apt to receive and incorporate into our
+own life what seems fair and graceful in that of other people. Our
+women's wardrobes are made elaborate with the thousand elegancies of
+French toilet,--our houses filled with a thousand knick-knacks of which
+our plain ancestors never dreamed. Cleopatra did not set sail on the
+Nile in more state and beauty than that in which our young American
+bride is often ushered into her new home. Her wardrobe all gossamer lace
+and quaint frill and crimp and embroidery, her house a museum of elegant
+and costly gewgaws; and amid the whole collection of elegancies and
+fragilities, she, perhaps, the frailest.
+
+Then comes the tug of war. The young wife becomes a mother, and while
+she is retired to her chamber, blundering Biddy rusts the elegant
+knives, or takes off the ivory handles by soaking in hot water,--the
+silver is washed in greasy soap-suds, and refreshed now and then with a
+thump, which cocks the nose of the teapot awry, or makes the handle
+assume an air of drunken defiance. The fragile China is chipped here and
+there around its edges with those minute gaps so vexatious to a woman's
+soul; the handles fly hither and thither in the wild confusion of
+Biddy's washing-day hurry, when cook wants her to help hang out the
+clothes. Meanwhile, Bridget sweeps the parlor with a hard broom, and
+shakes out showers of ashes from the grate, forgetting to cover the
+damask lounges, and they directly look as rusty and time-worn as if they
+had come from an auction-store; and all together unite in making such
+havoc of the delicate ruffles and laces of the bridal outfit and
+baby-_layette_, that, when the poor young wife comes out of her chamber
+after her nurse has left her, and, weakened and embarrassed with the
+demands of the new-comer, begins to look once more into the affairs of
+her little world, she is ready to sink with vexation and discouragement.
+Poor little princess! Her clothes are made as princesses wear them, her
+baby's clothes like a young duke's, her house furnished like a lord's,
+and only Bridget and Biddy and Polly to do the work of cook,
+scullery-maid, butler, footman, laundress, nursery-maid, house-maid, and
+lady's maid. Such is the array that in the Old Country would be deemed
+necessary to take care of an establishment got up like hers. Everything
+in it is _too fine_,--not too fine to be pretty, not in bad taste in
+itself, but too fine for the situation, too fine for comfort or liberty.
+
+What ensues in a house so furnished? Too often, ceaseless fretting of
+the nerves, in the wife's despairing, conscientious efforts to keep
+things as they should be. There is no freedom in a house where things
+are too expensive and choice to be freely handled and easily replaced.
+Life becomes a series of petty embarrassments and restrictions,
+something is always going wrong, and the man finds his fireside
+oppressive,--the various articles of his parlor and table seem like so
+many temper-traps and spring-guns, menacing explosion and disaster.
+
+There may be, indeed, the most perfect home-feeling, the utmost coziness
+and restfulness, in apartments crusted with gilding, carpeted with
+velvet, and upholstered with satin. I have seen such, where the
+home-like look and air of free use was as genuine as in a Western
+log-cabin; but this was in a range of princely income that made all
+these things as easy to be obtained or replaced as the most ordinary of
+our domestic furniture. But so long as articles must be shrouded from
+use, or used with fear and trembling, because their cost is above the
+general level of our means, we had better be without them, even though
+the most lucky of accidents may put their possession in our power.
+
+But it is not merely by the effort to maintain too much elegance that
+the sense of home-liberty is banished from a house. It is sometimes
+expelled in another way, with all painstaking and conscientious
+strictness, by the worthiest and best of human beings, the blessed
+followers of Saint Martha. Have we not known them, the dear, worthy
+creatures, up before daylight, causing most scrupulous lustrations of
+every pane of glass and inch of paint in our parlors, in consequence
+whereof every shutter and blind must be kept closed for days to come,
+lest the flies should speck the freshly washed windows and wainscoting?
+Dear shade of Aunt Mehitabel, forgive our boldness! Have we not been
+driven for days, in our youth, to read our newspaper in the front
+veranda, in the kitchen, out in the barn,--anywhere, in fact, where
+sunshine could be found, because there was not a room in the house that
+was not cleaned, shut up, and darkened? Have we not shivered with cold,
+all the glowering, gloomy month of May, because, the august front-parlor
+having undergone the spring cleaning, the andirons were snugly tied up
+in tissue-paper, and an elegant frill of the same material was trembling
+before the mouth of the once glowing fireplace? Even so, dear soul, full
+of loving-kindness and hospitality as thou wast, yet ever making our
+house seem like a tomb! And with what patience wouldst thou sit sewing
+by a crack in the shutters, an inch wide, rejoicing in thy immaculate
+paint and clear glass! But was there ever a thing of thy spotless and
+unsullied belongings which a boy might use? How I trembled to touch thy
+scoured tins, that hung in appalling brightness! with what awe I asked
+for a basket to pick strawberries! and where in the house could I find a
+place to eat a piece of gingerbread? How like a ruffian, a Tartar, a
+pirate, I always felt, when I entered thy domains! and how, from day to
+day, I wondered at the immeasurable depths of depravity which were
+always leading me to upset something, or break or tear or derange
+something, in thy exquisitely kept premises! Somehow, the impression was
+burned with overpowering force into my mind, that houses and furniture,
+scrubbed floors, white curtains, bright tins and brasses were the great,
+awful, permanent facts of existence,--and that men and women, and
+particularly children, were the meddlesome intruders upon this divine
+order, every trace of whose intermeddling must be scrubbed out and
+obliterated in the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to me that
+houses would be far more perfect, if nobody lived in them at all; but
+that, as men had really and absurdly taken to living in them, they must
+live as little as possible. My only idea of a house was a place full of
+traps and pitfalls for boys, a deadly temptation to sins which beset one
+every moment; and when I read about a sailor's free life on the ocean, I
+felt an untold longing to go forth and be free in like manner.
+
+But a truce to these fancies, and back again to our essay.
+
+If liberty in a house is a comfort to a husband, it is a necessity to
+children. When we say liberty, we do not mean license. We do not mean
+that Master Johnny be allowed to handle elegant volumes with
+bread-and-butter fingers, or that little Miss be suffered to drum on the
+piano, or practise line-drawing with a pin on varnished furniture. Still
+it is essential that the family-parlors be not too fine for the family
+to sit in,--too fine for the ordinary accidents, haps and mishaps, of
+reasonably well-trained children. The elegance of the parlor where papa
+and mamma sit and receive their friends should wear an inviting, not a
+hostile and bristling, aspect to little people. Its beauty and its order
+gradually form in the little mind a love of beauty and order, and the
+insensible carefulness of regard.
+
+Nothing is worse for a child than to shut him up in a room which he
+understands is his, _because_ he is disorderly,--where he is expected,
+of course, to maintain and keep disorder. We have sometimes pitied the
+poor little victims who show their faces longingly at the doors of
+elegant parlors, and are forthwith collared by the domestic police and
+consigned to some attic-apartment, called a play-room, where chaos
+continually reigns. It is a mistake to suppose, because children derange
+a well-furnished apartment, that they like confusion. Order and beauty
+are always pleasant to them as to grown people, and disorder and
+defacement are painful; but they know neither how to create the one nor
+to prevent the other,--their little lives are a series of experiments,
+often making disorder by aiming at some new form of order. Yet, for all
+this, I am not one of those who feel that in a family everything should
+bend to the sway of these little people. They are the worst of tyrants
+in such houses,--still, where children are, though the fact must not
+appear to them, _nothing must be done without a wise thought of them_.
+
+Here, as in all high art, the old motto is in force, "_Ars est celare
+artem_." Children who are taught too plainly by every anxious look and
+word of their parents, by every family-arrangement, by the impressment
+of every chance guest into the service, that their parents consider
+their education as the one important matter in creation, are apt to grow
+up fantastical, artificial, and hopelessly self-conscious. The stars
+cannot stop in their courses, even for our personal improvement, and the
+sooner children learn this, the better. The great art is to organize a
+home which shall move on with a strong, wide, generous movement, where
+the little people shall act themselves out as freely and impulsively as
+can consist with the comfort of the whole, and where the anxious
+watching and planning for them shall be kept as secret from them as
+possible.
+
+It is well that one of the sunniest and airiest rooms in the house be
+the children's nursery. It is good philosophy, too, to furnish it
+attractively, even if the sum expended lower the standard of
+parlor-luxuries. It is well that the children's chamber, which is to act
+constantly on their impressible natures for years, should command a
+better prospect, a sunnier aspect, than one which serves for a day's
+occupancy of the transient guest. It is well that journeys should be
+made or put off in view of the interests of the children,--that guests
+should be invited with a view to their improvement,--that some
+intimacies should be chosen and some rejected on their account. But it
+is _not_ well that all this should, from infancy, be daily talked out
+before the child, and he grow up in egotism from moving in a sphere
+where everything from first to last is calculated and arranged with
+reference to himself. A little appearance of wholesome neglect combined
+with real care and never-ceasing watchfulness has often seemed to do
+wonders in this work of setting human beings on their own feet for the
+life-journey.
+
+Education is the highest object of home, but education in the widest
+sense,--education of the parents no less than of the children. In a true
+home the man and the woman receive, through their cares, their
+watchings, their hospitality, their charity, the last and highest finish
+that earth can put upon them. From that they must pass upward, for earth
+can teach them no more.
+
+The home-education is incomplete, unless it include the idea of
+hospitality and charity. Hospitality is a biblical and apostolic virtue,
+and not so often recommended in Holy Writ without reason. Hospitality is
+much neglected in America for the very reasons touched upon above. We
+have received our ideas of propriety and elegance of living from old
+countries, where labor is cheap, where domestic service is a
+well-understood, permanent occupation, adopted cheerfully for life, and
+where of course there is such a subdivision of labor as insures great
+thoroughness in all its branches. We are ashamed or afraid to conform
+honestly and hardily to a state of things purely American. We have not
+yet accomplished what our friend the Doctor calls "our weaning," and
+learned that dinners with circuitous courses and divers other
+Continental and English refinements, well enough in their way, cannot be
+accomplished in families with two or three untrained servants, without
+an expense of care and anxiety which makes them heart-withering to the
+delicate wife, and too severe a trial to occur often. America is the
+land of subdivided fortunes, of a general average of wealth and comfort,
+and there ought to be, therefore, an understanding in the social basis
+far more simple than in the Old World.
+
+Many families of small fortunes know this,--they are quietly living
+so,--but they have not the steadiness to share their daily average
+living with a friend, a traveller, or guest, just as the Arab shares his
+tent and the Indian his bowl of succotash. They cannot have company,
+they say. Why? Because it is such a fuss to get out the best things, and
+then to put them back again. But why get out the best things? Why not
+give your friend, what he would like a thousand times better, a bit of
+your average home-life, a seat at any time at your board, a seat at your
+fire? If he sees that there is a handle off your tea-cup, and that there
+is a crack across one of your plates, he only thinks, with a sigh of
+relief, "Well, mine a'n't the only things that meet with accidents," and
+he feels nearer to you ever after; he will let you come to his table and
+see the cracks in his tea-cups, and you will condole with each other on
+the transient nature of earthly possessions. If it become apparent in
+these entirely undressed rehearsals that your children are sometimes
+disorderly, and that your cook sometimes overdoes the meat, and that
+your second girl sometimes is awkward in waiting, or has forgotten a
+table-propriety, your friend only feels, "Ah, well, other people have
+trials as well as I," and he thinks, if you come to see him, he shall
+feel easy with you.
+
+"_Having company_" is an expense that may always be felt; but easy daily
+hospitality, the plate always on your table for a friend, is an expense
+that appears on no account-book, and a pleasure that is daily and
+constant.
+
+Under this head of hospitality, let us suppose a case. A traveller comes
+from England; he comes in good faith and good feeling to see how
+Americans live. He merely wants to penetrate into the interior of
+domestic life, to see what there is genuinely and peculiarly American
+about it. Now here is Smilax, who is living, in a small, neat way, on
+his salary from the daily press. He remembers hospitalities received
+from our traveller in England, and wants to return them. He remembers,
+too, with dismay, a well-kept establishment, the well-served table, the
+punctilious, orderly servants. Smilax keeps two, a cook and chambermaid,
+who divide the functions of his establishment between them. What shall
+he do? Let him say, in a fair, manly way, "My dear fellow, I'm delighted
+to see you. I live in a small way, but I'll do my best for you, and Mrs.
+Smilax will be delighted. Come and dine with us, so and so, and we'll
+bring in one or two friends." So the man comes, and Mrs. Smilax serves
+up such a dinner as lies within the limits of her knowledge and the
+capacities of her servants. All plain, good of its kind, unpretending,
+without an attempt to do anything English or French,--to do anything
+more than if she were furnishing a gala-dinner for her father or
+returned brother. Show him your house freely, just as it is, talk to him
+freely of it, just as he in England showed you his finer things. If the
+man is a true man, he will thank you for such unpretending, sincere
+welcome; if he is a man of straw, then he is not worth wasting Mrs.
+Smilax's health and spirits for, in unavailing efforts to get up a
+foreign dinner-party.
+
+A man who has any heart in him values a genuine little bit of home more
+than anything else you can give him. He can get French cooking at a
+restaurant; he can buy expensive wines at first-class hotels, if he
+wants them; but the traveller, though ever so rich and ever so
+well-served at home, is, after all, nothing but a man as you are, and he
+is craving something that doesn't seem like a hotel,--some bit of real,
+genuine heart-life. Perhaps he would like better than anything to show
+you the last photograph of his wife, or to read to you the great,
+round-hand letter of his ten-year-old which he has got to-day. He is
+ready to cry when he thinks of it. In this mood he goes to see you,
+hoping for something like home, and you first receive him in a parlor
+opened only on state occasions, and that has been circumstantially and
+exactly furnished, as the upholsterer assures you, as every other parlor
+of the kind in the city is furnished. You treat him to a dinner got up
+for the occasion, with hired waiters,--a dinner which it has taken Mrs.
+Smilax a week to prepare for, and will take her a week to recover
+from,--for which the baby has been snubbed and turned off, to his loud
+indignation, and your young four-year-old sent to his aunts. Your
+traveller eats your dinner, and finds it inferior, as a work of art, to
+other dinners,--a poor imitation. He goes away and criticizes; you hear
+of it, and resolve never to invite a foreigner again. But if you had
+given him a little of your heart, a little home-warmth and feeling,--if
+you had shown him your baby, and let him romp with your four-year-old,
+and eat a genuine dinner with you,--would he have been false to that?
+Not so likely. He wanted something real and human,--you gave him a bad
+dress-rehearsal, and dress-rehearsals always provoke criticism.
+
+Besides hospitality, there is, in a true home, a mission of charity. It
+is a just law which regulates the possession of great or beautiful works
+of art in the Old World, that they shall in some sense be considered the
+property of all who can appreciate. Fine grounds have hours when the
+public may be admitted,--pictures and statues may be shown to visitors;
+and this is a noble charity. In the same manner the fortunate
+individuals who have achieved the greatest of all human works of art
+should employ it as a sacred charity. How many, morally wearied,
+wandering, disabled, are healed and comforted by the warmth of a true
+home! When a mother has sent her son to the temptations of a distant
+city, what news is so glad to her heart as that he has found some quiet
+family where he visits often and is made to feel AT HOME? How
+many young men have good women saved from temptation and shipwreck by
+drawing them often to the sheltered corner by the fireside! The poor
+artist,--the wandering genius who has lost his way in this world, and
+stumbles like a child among hard realities,--the many men and women who,
+while they have houses, have no homes,--see from afar, in their distant,
+bleak life-journey, the light of a true home-fire, and, if made welcome
+there, warm their stiffened limbs, and go forth stronger to their
+pilgrimage. Let those who have accomplished this beautiful and perfect
+work of divine art be liberal of its influence. Let them not seek to
+bolt the doors and draw the curtains; for they know not, and will never
+know till the future life, of the good they may do by the ministration
+of this great charity of home.
+
+We have heard much lately of the restricted sphere of woman. We have
+been told how many spirits among women are of a wider, stronger, more
+heroic mould than befits the mere routine of housekeeping. It may be
+true that there are many women far too great, too wise, too high, for
+mere housekeeping. But where is the woman in any way too great, or too
+high, or too wise, to spend herself in creating a home? What can any
+woman make diviner, higher, better? From such homes go forth all
+heroisms, all inspirations, all great deeds. Such mothers and such homes
+have made the heroes and martyrs, faithful unto death, who have given
+their precious lives to us during these three years of our agony!
+
+Homes are the work of art peculiar to the genius of woman. Man _helps_
+in this work, but woman leads; the hive is always in confusion without
+the _queen_-bee. But what a woman must she be who does this work
+perfectly! She comprehends all, she balances and arranges all; all
+different tastes and temperaments find in her their rest, and she can
+unite at one hearthstone the most discordant elements. In her is order,
+yet an order ever veiled and concealed by indulgence. None are checked,
+reproved, abridged of privileges by her love of system; for she knows
+that order was made for the family, and not the family for order.
+Quietly she takes on herself what all others refuse or overlook. What
+the unwary disarrange she silently rectifies. Everybody in her sphere
+breathes easy, feels free; and the driest twig begins in her sunshine to
+put out buds and blossoms. So quiet are her operations and movements,
+that none sees that it is she who holds all things in harmony; only,
+alas, when she is gone, how many things suddenly appear disordered,
+inharmonious, neglected! All these threads have been smilingly held in
+her weak hand. Alas, if that is no longer there!
+
+Can any woman be such a housekeeper without inspiration? No. In the
+words of the old church-service, "Her soul must ever have affiance in
+God." The New Jerusalem of a perfect home cometh down from God out of
+heaven. But to make such a home is ambition high and worthy enough for
+_any_ woman, be she what she may.
+
+One thing more. Right on the threshold of all perfection lies _the
+cross_ to be taken up. No one can go over or around that cross in
+science or in art. Without labor and self-denial neither Raphael nor
+Michel Angelo nor Newton was made perfect. Nor can man or woman create a
+true home who is not willing in the outset to embrace life heroically,
+to encounter labor and sacrifice. Only to such shall this divinest power
+be given to create on earth that which is the nearest image of heaven.
+
+
+
+
+SONG.
+
+
+    We have been lovers now, my dear,
+      It matters nothing to say how long,
+    But still at the coming round o' th' year
+      I make for my pleasure a little song;
+    And thus of my love I sing, my dear,--
+    So much the more by a year, by a year.
+
+    And still as I see the day depart,
+      And hear the bat at my window flit,
+    I sing the little song to my heart,
+      With just a change at the close of it;
+    And thus of my love I sing alway,--
+    So much the more by a day, by a day.
+
+    When in the morning I see the skies
+      Breaking into a gracious glow,
+    I say you are not my sweetheart's eyes,
+      Your brightness cannot mislead me so;
+    And I sing of my love in the rising light,--
+    So much the more by a night, by a night.
+
+    Both at the year's sweet dawn and close,
+      When the moon is filling, or fading away,
+    Every day, as it comes and goes,
+      And every hour of every day,
+    My little song I repeat and repeat,--
+    So much the more by an hour, my sweet!
+
+
+
+
+OUR SOLDIERS.
+
+
+We entered gayly on our great contest. At the first sound from Sumter,
+enthusiasm blazed high and bright. Bells rang out, flags waved, the
+people rose as one man to cheer on our troops, and the practical
+American nation, surveying itself with astonishment, pronounced
+itself--finger on pulse--enthusiastic; and though, in the light of the
+present steadily burning determination, it has been the fashion gently
+to smile at that quick upspringing blaze, and at the times when it was
+gravely noted how the privates of our army took daily baths and wore
+Colt's revolvers, and pet regiments succumbed under showers of
+Havelocks, in contrast with the grim official reports of to-day, I
+cannot but think that enthusiasm healthful, and in itself a lesson, if
+only that it proves beyond question that our patriotism was not simply a
+dweller on the American tongue, but a thing of the American heart, so
+vitalizing us, so woven every day into the most minute ramifications of
+our living, so inner and recognized a part of our thinking, that there
+have been found some to doubt its existence, just as we half forget the
+gracious air, because no labored gasps, in place of our sure and even
+breathing, ever by any chance announce to us that somewhere there have
+been error and confusion in its vast workings.
+
+Bitterer texts were ready all too soon. When we heard how one had
+fallen, bayoneted at the guns, and another was struck, charging on the
+foe, and a third had died after long lingering in hospital,--when we saw
+our brave boys, whom we had sent out with huzzas, coming back to us with
+the blood and grime of battle upon them, maimed, ghastly, dying,
+dead,--we knew that we, whom God had hitherto so blessed that we were
+compelled to look into the annals of other nations for misery and
+strife, had now commenced a record of our own. Henceforth there was for
+us a new literature, new grooves of thought, new interests. By all the
+love of father, brother, husband, and children, we must learn more of
+this tragic and tender lore; and our soldiers have been a thought not
+far from the heart and lips of any one of us, and what is done, or
+doing, or possible for them, held worthiest of our thought and time.
+
+Respecting these, we have had all to learn. True, with us, satisfaction
+has at all times followed close upon the announcement of a need; but
+wisdom in planning and administering is not a marketable commodity, and
+so we are educating ourselves up to the emergency,--the whole mighty
+nation at school, and learning, we are bound to say, with Yankee
+quickness. Love has been for us, also, a marvellous brain-prompter. Some
+of our grandest charities--I mean charities in the broadest and sweetest
+sense, for it is we who owe, not our soldiers--have been the inspiration
+of a moment's need,--thoughts of the people, who, in crises and at
+instance of the heart, think well and swiftly. Take this one example.
+
+When New England's sons seized their arms, the first to answer the
+trumpet-call that rang out over the land, and went in the spirit of
+their fathers to the battle,--when these men passed through
+Philadelphia, hungry and weary, the great heart of the city went out to
+meet them. Citizens brought them into their houses, the neighboring
+shops gave gladly what they could, women came running with food snatched
+from their own tables, and even little squalid children toddled out of
+by-lanes and alleys with loaves and half-loaves, all that they had to
+give, so did the whole people yearn over their defenders; and then it
+was seen how other regiments would come to them, ready for the fray, but
+dusty and way-worn, and how the ambulances would bring them back parched
+and fainting, and--it was hardly known how, only that, as in the old
+times, "the people were of one mind and one accord," and brought of such
+things as they had; but on that sad, yet proud day, that brought back to
+them those who fell in Baltimore on the memorable nineteenth of
+April,--the heroes in whom all claim a share, and the right to say, not
+only Massachusetts's dead and wounded, but ours--there was ready for
+them a shelter in the unpretending building famous since as the Cooper
+Shop. There the people crowded about them, weeping, blessing, consoling;
+and from that day there has no regiment from New England, New York, or
+any other State, been suffered to pass through Philadelphia unrefreshed.
+Water was supplied them, and tables ready spread, by the Volunteer Corps
+always in attendance, within five minutes after the firing of the gun
+that announced their arrival. There was shortly added, also, a volunteer
+hospital for the more dangerously wounded when first brought from the
+battle-field, and of it is told a story that Americans will like to
+hear.
+
+It is of a Wisconsin soldier, who, taken prisoner, effected his escape
+from Richmond. Hiding by day, he forced his way at night through morass
+and forest, snatched such sleep as he dared on the damp and sodden
+earth, went without food whole days, reached our lines bruised, torn,
+shivering, starving, and his wounds, which had never been properly cared
+for, opened afresh. Let him tell the rest, straight from his heart.
+
+"When I had my rubber blanket to wrap about me, I was comfortable, and,
+snug and warm in the cars, I thought myself happy; and when I heard them
+talk of the 'Cooper Shop,' I said to myself, 'A cooper's shop! that will
+be the very place of all the earth, for there I shall have a roof over
+me, and the shavings will be so warm and dry to lie upon!' but when they
+carried me in, and I opened my eyes and saw what was the Cooper Shop,
+and the long tables all loaded for the poor soldiers, and when they took
+me to the hospital up-stairs, and placed me in a bed, and real ladies
+and gentlemen, with tears in their eyes, came and waited on me, my
+manliness left me."
+
+A want of manliness, O honest heart, for which there need be no shame!
+Precious tribute to our country's great love for her sons! For this is
+no sectional charity, only one example culled from thousands; for the
+land must, of a necessity, be overshadowed by the tree that has a root
+under almost every Northern hearth-stone; and then see how we are all
+bound together by the heart-strings!
+
+Forty thousand men-at-arms are looking gravely at the height towering
+above the valley in which they stand. "Impregnable" military science
+pronounced it; but the men scaling it know nothing of this word
+"impregnable." They have heard nothing of an order for retreat,--they
+are filled with a divine wrath of battle, and each man is as mad as his
+neighbor, and the officers are powerless to hold them back, and catch
+the infection and are swept on with them, and climbing, jumping,
+slipping, toiling on hands and knees, swinging from tree and bush, any
+way, any how, but always onward, never backward, they surge up over the
+mountain-top, deadly volleys crashing right in among them, and set on
+the Rebels with a wild hurrah! and the hearts below beat faster, and
+rough lips curse the blinding smoke and fog that veil all the crest, and
+on a sudden a shout,--such a one as the children of Israel gave, when
+the high-piled walls of water bent and swayed and came waving and
+thundering down on Pharaoh's hopeless hosts,--for there, high up in
+heaven, streaming out through parting smoke, is the flag, torn,
+blood-stained, ball-riddled, but the dear old red, white, and blue,
+waving over the enemy's works; and then the telegraph flashed out the
+brave news over the exulting country, and the press took up the story,
+and women said, with kindling faces, "My son, or my brother, or my
+husband may be dead, but, oh, our boys have done glorious things at
+Lookout Mountain!"--and History will tell how a grander charge was never
+made, and calmly note the loss in dead and wounded,--so many
+thousands,--and pass on.
+
+But we are not History, and our dead,--well, we will give them graves
+that shall be ever green with laurels, and their swords shall be our
+most precious legacy to our children, and their memories shall be a part
+of our household; but our wounded, for whom there is yet hope, who may
+yet live,--the cry goes up from Wisconsin, and Maine, and Iowa, and New
+York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Where are they, and how cared
+for? We are all, as I said, bound by the heartstrings in a common
+interest. The Boston woman with her boy in the Army of the Cumberland,
+and the Maine mother with one in New Orleans or Texas, and the Kansas
+father with a son in the Army of the Potomac, all clamor, "Is mine among
+the wounded, and do care and science for him all that care and science
+should?"
+
+The Field Relief Corps of the Sanitary Commission are prompt on the
+battle-field, reaching the groaning sufferers even before their own
+surgeons. Said one man, lying there badly wounded,--
+
+"And what do they pay yez for this? What do you get?"
+
+"Pay! We ask nothing, only the soldier's 'God bless you.'"
+
+"And is that all? Then sure here's plenty of the coin, fresh minted! God
+bless you! God bless you! and the good Lord be good to you, and remember
+yez as you have remembered us, and love yez and your children after you;
+and sure, if that is all, it's plenty of that sort of pay the poor
+soldier has for you!"
+
+God bless such men! we echo; but after that, what then? Our beloved are
+taken to the hospitals, and we know, in a general way, that hospitals
+are buildings containing long rows of beds, and that science is doing
+its utmost in their behalf; but when our friends write us from across
+seas, they tell us, not only how they are, but where,--jotting down
+little pen-and-ink pictures to show us how stands the writing-table, and
+how hangs the picture, and where is the _fauteuil_, that we may see them
+as they are daily; so we crave something more, we feel shut out, we want
+to get at their daily living, to know something of hospital-life.
+
+Hospitals have sprung up as if sown broadcast, and these, too, of no
+mean order. True, in our first haste and inexperience, viciously planned
+hospitals were erected; but these and the Crimean blunders have served
+us as beacons, and the anxious care of the Government has been untiring,
+the outlay of money and things more precious unbounded; and those who
+have had this weighty matter in charge have no reason to fear an account
+of their stewardship. The Boston Free Hospital in excellence of plan and
+beauty of design can be excelled by none. Philadelphia boasts the two
+largest military hospitals in the world. Of the twenty-three in and
+about Washington many are worthy of all praise. The general hospital at
+Fort Schuyler is admirable in plan and _locale_, and this latter
+condition is found to be of vast importance. A Rebel battery, with an
+incurable habit of using the hospital as a target, would scarcely be so
+dangerous as a low, water-sogged, clayey soil, with its inevitable
+results of fever, rheumatism, and bowel-complaints.
+
+Spotless cleanliness is another indispensable characteristic,--not only
+urged, but enforced; for there is no such notable housewife as the
+Government. The vast "Mower" Hospital at Chestnut Hill, the largest in
+the world, is as well kept as a lady's boudoir should be. It is built
+around a square of seven acres, in which stand the surgeon's
+lecture-room, the chapel, the platform for the band, etc. A long
+corridor goes about this square, rounded at the corners, and lighted on
+one side by numerous large windows, which, if removed in summer, must
+leave it almost wholly open. From the opposite side radiate the
+sick-wards, fifty in number, one story in height, one hundred and
+seventy-five feet in length, and twenty feet farther apart at the
+extremity than at the corridor, thus completely isolating them from each
+other. A railway runs the length of the corridor, on which small cars
+convey meals to the mess-rooms attached to each of the wards for those
+who are unable to leave them, stores, and even the sick themselves; and
+the corridor, closed in winter and warmed by stoves, forms a huge and
+airy exercise-hall for the convalescent patients. As for the
+cooking-facilities, they are something prodigious, at least in the sight
+of ordinary kitchens, leaving nothing to be desired, unless it were that
+discriminating kettle of the Erse king, that could cook for any given
+number of men and apportion the share of each to his rank and needs.
+Such a kettle might make the "extra-diet" kitchen unnecessary;
+otherwise, I can hardly tell where improvement would be possible.
+
+But though, with the exception of the West Philadelphia, none can
+compare in hugeness with this Skrymir of hospitals, the
+hospital-buildings, as a rule, have everywhere a strong family-likeness.
+The pavilion-system, which isolates each of the sick-wards, allowing it
+free circulation of air about three of its sides, is conceded to be the
+only one worthy of attention, and is introduced in all such buildings of
+modern date. Ridge-ventilation, obtained by means of openings on either
+side of the ridge, is also very generally used, and advocated even in
+permanent hospitals of stone and brick. Science and Common Sense at last
+have fraternized, and work together hand in hand. The good old-fashioned
+plan of slowly stewing the patient to death, or at least to a fever, in
+confined air and stale odors, equal parts, is almost abandoned; and to
+speak after the manner of Charles Reade, "Nature gets now a pat on the
+back, instead of a kick under the bed." Proper ventilation begins, ends,
+and forms the gist of almost every chapter in our hospital-manuals; and
+I think they should be excellent summer-reading, for a pleasant breeze
+seems to rustle every page, so earnestly is, first, pure air, second,
+pure air, and third, pure air, impressed upon the student, "line upon
+line and precept upon precept."
+
+The Mower Hospital, which employs ten hundred and fifty gas-burners,
+uses daily one hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water, and can
+receive between five and six thousand patients, is free even from a
+suspicion of the "hospital-smell." The Campbell and Harewood, at
+Washington, are models in this respect, and can rank with many a
+handsome drawing-room. The last-named institution is also delightfully
+situated on grounds once belonging to the Rebel Corcoran, comprising
+some two hundred acres, laid out with shaded walks, and adorned with
+rustic bridges and summer-houses,--a fashion of deriving aid and comfort
+from the enemy which doesn't come under the head of treason.
+
+On hygienic grounds, all possible traps are set to catch sunbeams. One
+hospital has a theatre in the mess-room, of which the scenery is painted
+by a convalescent, and the stage, foot-lights, etc., are the work of the
+soldiers. The performers are amateurs, taken from among the patients;
+and the poor fellows who can be moved, but are unable to walk, are
+carried down in the dumb-waiter to share in the entertainment. Another
+has a library, reading-room, and a printing-press, which strikes off a
+weekly newspaper, in which are a serial story, poetry, and many profound
+and moral reflections. The men play cards and backgammon, read, write,
+smoke, and tell marvellous stories, commencing, "It wasn't fairly day,
+and we were hardly wide enough awake to tell a tree-stump from a gray
+coat,"--or, "When we saw them coming, we first formed in square, corner
+towards them you know, and waited till they were close on us, and then,
+Sir, we opened and gave them our cannon, grape-shot, right slap into
+them,"--or good-humoredly rally each other, as in the case of that
+unlucky regiment perfectly cut up in its first battle, and known as
+"six-weeks' soldiers and six-months' hospital-men."
+
+But these are mere surface-facts. Hospital-life is woven in a different
+pattern from our own, the shades deeper, the gold brighter, and we find
+in it very much of heroism in plain colors, and self-sacrifice of rough
+texture.
+
+One poor fellow, yet dim-eyed and faint from long battling for his
+ebbing life, will motion away the offered delicacy, pointing to some
+other bed:--"Give it to him; he needs it more than I"; or sometimes, if
+money is offered, "I have just been paid off; let that man have it; he
+has nothing." Then some of the convalescents furnish our best and
+tenderest nurses. A soldier was brought from Richmond badly wounded in
+the leg. While in the prison his wounds had received no attention, and
+he was in such enfeebled condition, that, when amputation became
+inevitable, it was feared he would die of the operation. Hardly
+breathing, made over apparently unto death, one of these soldier-nurses
+took him in charge, for five days and nights kept close by his bed,
+scarcely leaving him an instant, watching his faltering, flickering
+breath, as his mother might have done, wresting him by force of
+vigilance and tenderest care from the very clutch of the Destroyer,
+rejoicing over his recovery as for that of a dear and only brother.
+Another, likewise brought from Richmond, won the pity of a lady, a
+chance visitor. She came to him every day, a distance of five miles,
+washed his wounds, dressed them, nursed him back into the confines of
+life, obtained for him a furlough, took him to her own house to complete
+the cure, and sent him back to his regiment--well.
+
+Over a third, a ruddy-faced New-England boy hardly yet into manhood,
+hung the shadow of death, and quivering lips and swimming eyes--for they
+come, there, to love our poor boys most tenderly--had spoken his
+death-warrant. He was silent a moment. Even a brave soul stops and
+catches breath, at the unexpected nearness of the Great Revelation; then
+he asked to be baptized,--"because his mother was a Christian, and he
+had promised her, if he died, and not on battle-field, to have this rite
+performed, that she might know that he shared this Holy Faith with her,
+and was not forgetful of her wishes"; and so he was baptized, and died.
+
+There are cheerier phases. Side by side lay a New-Yorker, a
+Pennsylvanian, and a Scotch boy, all terribly wounded. By the by, it is
+a curious fact that there are few sabre-wounds, and almost literally
+none from the bayonet; the work of destruction being, in almost all
+cases, that of the rending Minié ball. The fathers of the New-Yorker and
+Pennsylvanian had just visited them, and they were chatting cheerily of
+their homes. The Scotch boy, who had lost a leg, looked up, brightly
+smiling also.
+
+"My mother will be here on Wednesday, from Scotland. When she knew that
+I had enlisted, she sent me word that I had done well to take up arms
+for a country that had been so good to me; and when she heard that I was
+wounded, she wrote that she should take the next steamer for the United
+States."
+
+And, as might have been expected from such a woman, on Wednesday she
+_was_ by his bedside, redeeming her word to the very day.
+
+Sometimes the men grumble a little. One poor fellow, with a bullet
+through his lungs, took high and strong ground against the meat:--"Oh!
+God love ye! how could a body eat it, swimming in fat? but the eggs,
+they was beautiful; and the toast is good; ye'll send me some of that
+for me supper?" But as a rule they are cheery and contented, grow
+strongly attached to their nurses and the visitors, and, when back in
+camp, write letters of fond remembrance to their hospital-homes.
+
+No one has ever suspected ledgers of a latent angelic principle,--and
+yet, if unpaid benevolence, consolation poured on wounded hearts, hope
+given to despair, and help to poverty and misery, have in them anything
+heavenly, then have our soldiers a guardian angel in the Hospital
+Directory. There has been a battle, and three or four days of maddening
+suspense, and then the cold, hopeless newspaper-list; and your son,
+mother, who played about your knee only a little time ago, and went out
+in his youthful pride to battle, is there, wounded,--or your lover,
+girl, who has taught you the deeper meaning of a woman's life,--or your
+husband, sad woman, whose children stand at your knee scared by your
+tears.
+
+"The regiment stood like a rock against the enemy's furious onset, and
+its blood-stained colors are forever glorious"; but it went out nine
+hundred strong, and it comes back with two hundred, and what do you care
+now for laurel-wreaths? He is not with them. There are railroads,--you
+can near the battle-field, but you cannot reach it; you can inquire, but
+the officers must care for the living,--"let the dead bury their dead";
+and while you are frantically asking and searching, he is dying,
+suffering, calling for you; and then you find that the Hospital
+Directory has trace of him, and the kindly, patient members of the
+Sanitary Commission are ready with time, and money, if needed, to put
+you on it; and if ever you have had that horror of uncertainty strong
+upon you, you will not think that I have strained the language, when I
+call this most pitiful and Christian charity a guardian angel. Hear the
+inquiries:--"By the love you bear your own mother, tell me where my boy
+is! only give me some tidings!" "I pray you, tell me of these two
+nephews for whom I am seeking: I have had fourteen nephews in the
+service, and these two are the only ones left." Words like these put
+soul and meaning into the following statistics, given by Mr. Brown,
+Superintendent of the Hospital Directory at Washington.
+
+"The Washington Bureau of the Hospital Directory of the United States
+Sanitary Commission was opened to the public on the twenty-seventh of
+November, 1862. In the month of December following I was ordered to
+Louisville, Ky., to organize a Directory Bureau for the Western
+Department of the Sanitary Commission, and in January ended my labor in
+that department. Returning to Washington, and thence proceeding to
+Philadelphia and New York upon the same duty performed at the West, I
+completed the entire organization of the four bureaus by the fifth of
+March, 1863. Since the first of June, at these several bureaus, the
+returns from every United States General Hospital of the army, 233 in
+number, have been regularly received.
+
+"The total number of names on record is 513,437. The total number of
+inquiries for information has been 12,884, and the number of successful
+answers rendered 9,203, being seventy-two per cent. on the number
+received. The remaining twenty-eight per cent., of whom no information
+could be obtained, are of those who perished in the Peninsula campaign,
+before Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, etc."
+
+In the Sanitary Commission, mentioned here, our soldiers have yet
+another friend, for whom even our copious Anglo-Saxon can find no word
+of description at once strong, wise, tender, and far-reaching; but
+perhaps a simple story, taken from the Sanitary Commission Bulletin,
+will speak more clearly, and better to the heart, than pages of dry
+records.
+
+"Away up in the fourth story of Hospital No. 3, and in a far corner of
+the ward, was seen, one day, an old lady sitting by the side of a mere
+lad, who was reduced to the verge of death by chronic diarrhoea. She
+was a plain, honest-hearted farmer's wife, her face all aglow with
+motherly love, and who, to judge from appearances, had likely never
+before travelled beyond the limits of her neighborhood, but now had come
+many a long mile to do what might be done for her boy. In the course of
+a conversation she informed her questioner, that, 'if she could only get
+something that tasted like home,--some good tea, for instance, which she
+could make herself, and which would be better than that of the
+hospital,--she thought it might save her son's life.' Of course it was
+sent to her, and on a subsequent visit she expressed her thanks in a
+simple, hearty way, quite in keeping with her appearance. Still she
+seemed sad; something was on her mind that evidently troubled her, and,
+like Banquo's ghost, 'would not down.' At length it came out in a
+confiding, innocent way,--more, evidently, because it was uppermost in
+her thoughts than for the purpose of receiving sympathy,--that her
+means were about exhausted. 'I didn't think that it would take so much
+money; it is so much farther away from home than I had thought, and
+board here is so very high, that I have hardly enough left to take me
+back; and by another week I will have to leave him. I have been around
+to the stores to buy some little things that he would eat,--for he can't
+eat this strong food,--but the prices are so high that I can't buy them,
+and I am afraid, that, if I go away, and if he doesn't get something
+different to eat, that maybe,' and the tears trickled down her cheeks,
+'he won't--be so well.'
+
+"Her listener thought that difficulty might be overcome, and, if she
+would put on her bonnet, they would go to a store where articles were
+cheap. Accordingly they arrived in front of the large three-story
+building which Government has assigned to the Commission, and the old
+lady was soon running her eyes over the long rows of boxes, bales, and
+barrels that stretched for a hundred feet down the room, but was most
+fascinated by the bottles and cans on the shelves. He ordered a supply
+of sugar, tea, soft crackers, and canned fruit, then chicken and
+oysters, then jelly and wine, brandy, milk, and under-clothing, till the
+basket was full. As the earlier articles nestled under its lids, her
+face was glowing with satisfaction; but as the later lots arrived, she
+would draw him aside to whisper that 'it was too much,'--'really she
+hadn't enough money'; and when the more expensive items came from the
+shelves, the shadow of earnestness which gloomed her countenance grew
+into one of perplexity, her soul vibrating between motherly yearning for
+the lad on his bed and the scant purse in her pocket, till, slowly, and
+with great reluctance, she began to return the costliest.
+
+"'Hadn't you better ask the price?' said her guide.
+
+"'How much is it?'
+
+"'Nothing,' replied the store-keeper.
+
+"'Sir!' queried she, in the utmost amazement, '_nothing_ for all this?'
+
+"'My good woman,' asked the guide, 'have you a Soldiers' Aid Society in
+your neighborhood?'
+
+"Yes, they had; she belonged to it herself.
+
+"'Well, what do you suppose becomes of the garments you make, and the
+fruit have you put up?'
+
+"She hadn't thought,--she supposed they went to the army,--but was
+evidently bothered to know what connection there could be between their
+Aid Society and that basket.
+
+"'These garments that you see came from your society, or other societies
+just like yours; so did these boxes and barrels; that milk came from New
+York; those fruits from Boston; that wine was likely purchased with gold
+from California; and it is all for sick soldiers, your son as much as
+for any one else. This is the United States Sanitary Commission
+storehouse; you must come here whenever you wish, and call for
+everything you want; and you must stay with your son until he is able to
+go home: never mind the money's giving out; you shall have more, which,
+when you get back, you can refund for the use of other mothers and sons;
+when you are ready to go, I will put him in a berth where he can lie
+down, and you shall save his life yet.'
+
+"She did,--God bless her innocent, motherly heart!--when nothing but
+motherly care could have achieved it; and when last seen, on a dismal,
+drizzly morning, was, with her face beaming out the radiance of hope,
+making a cup of tea on the stove of a caboose-car for the convalescent,
+who was snugly tucked away in the caboose-berth, waiting the final
+whistle of the locomotive that would speed them both homeward."
+
+But for many of our soldiers there is yet another phase in store,--that
+sad time when the clangor and fierce joy and wild, exulting hurrah of
+the battle are over forever; and so, too, is over tender
+hospital-nursing, and they are sent out by hundreds, cured of their
+wounds, but maimed, the sources of life half drained, vigor gone, hope
+all spent, to limp through the blind alleys and by-ways of life,
+dropped out of the remembrance of a country that has used and forgotten
+them. They have given for her, not life, but all that makes life
+pleasant, hopeful, or even possible. It seems to me, that, in common
+decency, if she has no laurels to spare, she should at least give them
+in return--a daily dinner. Already, however, has the idea been set
+forth, after a better fashion than I can hope to do,--in wood and stone,
+and by the aid of a charter.
+
+In Philadelphia stands the first chartered "Home" for disabled soldiers,
+a cheery old house, dating back to the occupation of the city by the
+British army in 1777-8, founded and supported by private citizens, open
+to all, of whatever State, and fully looking its title, a "Home"; and as
+the want is more widely felt, and presses closer upon us, I cannot but
+think that everywhere we shall find such "Homes," and as we grow graver,
+sadder, and wiser, under the hard teaching of our war, and more awake to
+the thought that we have done with our splendid unclouded youth, and
+must now take upon us the sterner responsibilities of our manhood, that
+a new spirit will spring up among us,--the spirit of that woman who,
+with a bedridden mother, an ailing sister, and a shop to tend, as their
+only means of support, yet finds time to visit our sick soldiers, and
+carry to them the little that she can spare, and that which she has
+begged of her wealthier neighbors,--the spirit of that poor seamstress
+who snatches an hour daily from her exhausting toil to sew for the
+soldiers,--the spirit of that mechanic, who, having nothing to give,
+makes boxes in his evening leisure, and sells them for the
+soldiers,--the spirit of the brooks, that never hesitate between up-hill
+and down, because "all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is never
+full,"--the spirit of all who do with love and zeal whatever their hands
+find to do, and sigh, not because it is so little, but because it is not
+better.
+
+God grant that this spirit may obtain among us,--that our soldiers, and
+their helpless families, may be to us a national trust, for which we are
+bound individually, even the very humblest and meanest of us, to care.
+The field is vast, and white for the harvest. Now, for the love of
+Christ, in the name of honor, for very shame's sake, where we counted
+our laborers by tens, let us number them by fifties,--where there were
+hundreds, let there be thousands.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
+
+BY ONE WHO KNEW HIM.
+
+
+The great master of English prose has left us suddenly, but to himself
+not unexpectedly. In the maturity of his powers, with his enduring
+position in literature fairly won and recognized, with the provision
+which spurred him to constant work secured to those he loved, his death
+saddens us rather through the sense of our own loss than from the tragic
+regret which is associated with an unaccomplished destiny. More
+fortunate than Fielding, he was allowed to take the measure of his
+permanent fame. The niche wherein he shall henceforth stand was
+chiselled while he lived. One by one the doubters confessed their
+reluctant faith, unfriendly critics dropped their blunted steel, and no
+man dared to deny him the place which was his, and his only, by right of
+genius.
+
+In one sense, however, he was misunderstood by the world, and he has
+died before that profounder recognition which he craved had time to
+mature. All the breadth and certainty of his fame failed to compensate
+him for the lack of this: the man's heart coveted that justice which was
+accorded only to the author's brain. Other pens may sum up the literary
+record he has left behind: I claim the right of a friend who knew and
+loved him to speak of him as a man. The testimony, which, while living,
+he was too proud to have desired, may now be laid reverently upon his
+grave.
+
+There is a delicacy to be observed in describing one's intercourse with
+a departed great man, since death does not wholly remove that privacy
+which it is our duty to respect in life. Yet the veil which we
+charitably drop upon weakness or dishonor may surely be lifted to
+disclose the opposite qualities. I shall repeat no word of Thackeray's
+which he would have wished unsaid or suppressed: I shall say no more
+than he would himself have said of a contemporary to whom the world had
+not done full justice. During a friendship of nearly seven years, he
+permitted me to see that one true side of an author's nature which is
+never so far revealed to the public that the malignant may avail
+themselves of his candor to assail or the fools to annoy him. He is now
+beyond the reach of malice, obtrusive sentiment, or vain curiosity; and
+the "late remorse of love," which a better knowledge of the man may here
+and there provoke, can atone for past wrong only by that considerate,
+tender judgment of the living of which he was an example.
+
+I made Thackeray's acquaintance in New York towards the close of the
+year 1855. With the first grasp of his broad hand, and the first look of
+his large, serious gray eyes, I received an impression of the essential
+manliness of his nature,--of his honesty, his proud, almost defiant
+candor, his ever-present, yet shrinking tenderness, and that sadness of
+the moral sentiment which the world persisted in regarding as cynicism.
+This impression deepened with my further acquaintance, and was never
+modified. Although he belonged to the sensitive, irritable genus, his
+only manifestations of impatience which I remember were when that which
+he had written with a sigh was interpreted as a sneer. When so
+misunderstood, he scorned to set himself right. "I have no brain above
+the eyes," he was accustomed to say; "I describe what I see." He was
+quick and unerring in detecting the weaknesses of his friends, and spoke
+of them with a tone of disappointment sometimes bordering on
+exasperation; but he was equally severe upon his own shortcomings. He
+allowed no friend to think him better than his own deliberate estimate
+made him. I have never known a man whose nature was so immovably based
+on truth.
+
+In a conversation upon the United States, shortly after we first met, he
+said,--
+
+"There is one thing in this country which astonishes me. You have a
+capacity for culture which contradicts all my experience. There are
+----" (mentioning two or three names well known in New York) "who I know
+have arisen from nothing, yet they are fit for any society in the world.
+They would be just as self-possessed and entertaining in the presence of
+stars and garters as they are here to-night. Now, in England, a man who
+has made his way up, as they have, doesn't seem able to feel his social
+dignity. A little bit of the flunky sticks in him somewhere. I am,
+perhaps, as independent in this respect as any one I know, yet I'm not
+entirely sure of myself."
+
+"Do you remember," I asked him, "what Goethe says of the boys in Venice?
+He explains their cleverness, grace, and self-possession as children by
+the possibility of any one of them becoming Doge."
+
+"That may be the secret, after all," said Thackeray. "There is no
+country like yours for a young man who is obliged to work for his own
+place and fortune. If I had sons, I should send them here."
+
+Afterwards, in London, I visited with him the studio of Baron
+Marochetti, the sculptor, who was then his next-door neighbor in Onslow
+Square, Brompton. The Baron, it appeared, had promised him an original
+wood-cut of Albert Dürer's, for whom Thackeray had a special admiration.
+Soon after our entrance, the sculptor took down a small engraving from
+the wall, saying,--
+
+"Now you have it, at last."
+
+The subject was St. George and the Dragon.
+
+Thackeray inspected it with great delight for a few minutes: then,
+suddenly becoming grave, he turned to me and said,--
+
+"I shall hang it near the head of my bed, where I can see it every
+morning. We all have our dragons to fight. Do you know yours? I know
+mine: I have not one, but two."
+
+"What are they?" I asked.
+
+"Indolence and Luxury!"
+
+I could not help smiling, as I thought of the prodigious amount of
+literary labor he had performed, and at the same time remembered the
+simple comfort of his dwelling, next door.
+
+"I am serious," he continued; "I never take up the pen without an
+effort; I work only from necessity. I never walk out without seeing some
+pretty, useless thing which I want to buy. Sometimes I pass the same
+shop-window every day for months, and resist the temptation, and think
+I'm safe; then comes the day of weakness, and I yield. My physician
+tells me I must live very simply, and not dine out so much; but I cannot
+break off the agreeable habit. I shall look at this picture and think of
+my dragons, though I don't expect ever to overcome them."
+
+After his four lectures on the Georges had been delivered in New York, a
+storm of angry abuse was let loose upon him in Canada and the other
+British Provinces. The British-Americans, snubbed both by Government and
+society when they go to England, repay the slight, like true Christians,
+by a rampant loyalty unknown in the mother-country. Many of their
+newspapers accused Thackeray of pandering to the prejudices of the
+American public, affirming that he would not dare to repeat the same
+lectures in England, after his return. Of course, the papers containing
+the articles, duly marked to attract attention, were sent to him. He
+merely remarked, as he threw them contemptuously aside,--"These fellows
+will see that I shall not only repeat the lectures at home, but I shall
+make them more severe, just because the auditors will be Englishmen." He
+was true to his promise. The lecture on George IV. excited, not, indeed,
+the same amount of newspaper-abuse as he had received from Canada, but a
+very angry feeling in the English aristocracy, some members of which
+attempted to punish him by a social ostracism. When I visited him in
+London, in July, 1856, he related this to me, with great good-humor.
+"There, for instance," said he, "is Lord ----" (a prominent English
+statesman) "who has dropped me from his dinner-parties for three months
+past. Well, he will find that I can do without his society better than
+he can do without mine." A few days afterwards Lord ---- resumed his
+invitations.
+
+About the same time I witnessed an amusing interview, which explained to
+me the great personal respect in which Thackeray was held by the
+aristocratic class. He never hesitated to mention and comment upon the
+censure aimed against him in the presence of him who had uttered it. His
+fearless frankness must have seemed phenomenal. In the present instance,
+Lord ----, who had dabbled in literature, and held a position at Court,
+had expressed himself (I forget whether orally or in print) very
+energetically against Thackeray's picture of George IV. We had occasion
+to enter the shop of a fashionable tailor, and there found Lord ----.
+Thackeray immediately stepped up to him, bent his strong frame over the
+disconcerted champion of the Royal George, and said, in his full, clear,
+mellow voice,--"I know what you have said. Of course, you are quite
+right, and I am wrong. I only regret that I did not think of consulting
+you before my lecture was written." The person addressed evidently did
+not know whether to take this for irony or truth: he stammered out an
+incoherent reply, and seemed greatly relieved when the giant turned to
+leave the shop.
+
+At other times, however, he was kind and considerate. Reaching London
+one day in June, 1857, I found him at home, grave and sad, having that
+moment returned from the funeral of Douglas Jerrold. He spoke of the
+periodical attacks by which his own life was threatened, and repeated
+what he had often said to me before,--"I shall go some day,--perhaps in
+a year or two. I am an old man already." He proposed visiting a lady
+whom we both knew, but whom he had not seen for some time. The lady
+reminded him of this fact, and expressed her dissatisfaction at some
+length. He heard her in silence, and then, taking hold of the crape on
+his left arm, said, in a grave, quiet voice,--"I must remove this,--I
+have just come from poor Jerrold's grave."
+
+Although, from his experience of life, he was completely
+_désillusionné_, the well of natural tenderness was never dried in his
+heart. He rejoiced, with a fresh, boyish delight, in every evidence of
+an unspoiled nature in others,--in every utterance which denoted what
+may have seemed to him over-faith in the good. The more he was saddened
+by his knowledge of human weakness and folly, the more gratefully he
+welcomed strength, virtue, sincerity. His eyes never unlearned the habit
+of that quick moisture which honors the true word and the noble deed.
+
+His mind was always occupied with some scheme of quiet benevolence. Both
+in America and in England, I have known him to plan ways by which he
+could give pecuniary assistance to some needy acquaintance or countryman
+without wounding his sensitive pride. He made many attempts to procure a
+good situation in New York for a well-known English author, who was at
+that time in straitened circumstances. The latter, probably, never knew
+of this effort to help him. In November, 1857, when the financial crisis
+in America was at its height, I happened to say to him, playfully, that
+I hoped my remittances would not be stopped. He instantly picked up a
+note-book, ran over the leaves, and said to me, "I find I have three
+hundred pounds at my banker's. Take the money now, if you are in want of
+it; or shall I keep it for you, in case you may need it?" Fortunately, I
+had no occasion to avail myself of his generous offer; but I shall never
+forget the impulsive, open-hearted kindness with which it was made.
+
+I have had personal experience of Thackeray's sense of justice, as well
+as his generosity. And here let me say that he was that rarest of men, a
+cosmopolitan Englishman,--loving his own land with a sturdy, enduring
+love, yet blind neither to its faults nor to the virtues of other lands.
+In fact, for the very reason that he was unsparing in dealing with his
+countrymen, he considered himself justified in freely criticizing other
+nations. Yet he never joined in the popular depreciation of everything
+American: his principal reason for not writing a book, as every other
+English author does who visits us, was that it would be superficial, and
+might be unjust. I have seen him, in America, indignantly resent an
+ill-natured sneer at "John Bull,"--and, on the other hand, I have known
+him to take _our_ part, at home. Shortly after Emerson's "English
+Traits" appeared, I was one of a dinner-party at his house, and the book
+was the principal topic of conversation. A member of Parliament took the
+opportunity of expressing his views to the only American present.
+
+"What does Emerson know of England?" he asked. "He spends a few weeks
+here, and thinks he understands us. His work is false and prejudiced and
+shallow."
+
+Thackeray happening to pass at the moment, the member arrested him
+with--
+
+"What do _you_ think of the book, Mr. Thackeray?"
+
+"I don't agree with Emerson."
+
+"I was sure you would not!" the member triumphantly exclaimed; "I was
+sure you would think as I do."
+
+"I think," said Thackeray, quietly, "that he is altogether too
+laudatory. He admires our best qualities so greatly that he does not
+scourge us for our faults as we deserve."
+
+Towards the end of May, 1861, I saw Thackeray again in London. During
+our first interview, we talked of little but the war, which had then but
+just begun. His chief feeling on the subject was a profound regret, not
+only for the nation itself, whose fate seemed thus to be placed in
+jeopardy, but also, he said, because he had many dear friends, both
+North and South, who must now fight as enemies. I soon found that his
+ideas concerning the cause of the war were as incorrect as were those of
+most Englishmen at that time. He understood neither the real nature nor
+the extent of the conspiracy, supposing that Free Trade was the chief
+object of the South, and that the right of Secession was tacitly
+admitted by the Constitution. I thereupon endeavored to place
+the facts of the case before him in their true light, saying, in
+conclusion,--"Even if you should not believe this statement, you must
+admit, that, if _we_ believe it, we are justified in suppressing the
+Rebellion by force."
+
+He said,--"Come, all this is exceedingly interesting. It is quite new to
+me, and I am sure it will be new to most of us. Take your pen and make
+an article out of what you have told me, and I will put it into the next
+number of the 'Cornhill Magazine.' It is just what we want."
+
+I had made preparations to leave London for the Continent on the
+following day, but he was so urgent that I should stay two days longer
+and write the article that I finally consented to do so. I was the more
+desirous of complying, since Mr. Clay's ill-advised letter to the London
+"Times" had recently been published, and was accepted by Englishmen as
+the substance of all that could be said on the side of the Union.
+Thackeray appeared sincerely gratified by my compliance with his wishes,
+and immediately sent for a cab, saying,--"Now we will go down to the
+publishers, and have the matter settled at once. I am bound to consult
+them, but I am sure they will see the advantage of such an article."
+
+We found the managing publisher in his office. He looked upon the
+matter, however, in a very different light. He admitted the interest
+which a statement of the character, growth, and extent of the Southern
+Conspiracy would possess for the readers of the "Cornhill," but objected
+to its publication, on the ground that it would call forth a
+counter-statement, which he could not justly exclude, and thus introduce
+a political controversy into the magazine. I insisted that my object was
+not to take notice of any statements published in England up to that
+time, but to represent the crisis as it was understood in the Loyal
+States and by the National Government; that I should do this simply to
+explain and justify the action of the latter; and that, having once
+placed the loyal view of the subject fairly before the English people, I
+should decline any controversy. The events of the war, I added, would
+soon draw the public attention away from its origin, and the "Cornhill,"
+before the close of the struggle, would probably be obliged to admit
+articles of a more strongly partisan character than that which I
+proposed to write. The publisher, nevertheless, was firm in his refusal,
+not less to Thackeray's disappointment than my own. He decided upon what
+then seemed to him to be good business-reasons; and the same
+consideration, doubtless, has since led him to accept statements
+favorable to the side of the Rebellion.
+
+As we were walking away, Thackeray said to me,--
+
+"I am anxious that these things should be made public: suppose you write
+a brief article, and send it to the 'Times'?"
+
+"I would do so," I answered, "if there were any probability that it
+would be published."
+
+"I will try to arrange that," said he. "I know Mr. ----," (one of the
+editors,) "and will call upon him at once. I will ask for the
+publication of your letter as a personal favor to myself."
+
+We parted at the door of a club-house, to meet again the same afternoon,
+when Thackeray hoped to have the matter settled as he desired. He did
+not, however, succeed in finding Mr. ----, but sent him a letter. I
+thereupon went to work the next day, and prepared a careful, cold,
+dispassionate statement, so condensed that it would have made less than
+half a column of the "Times." I sent it to the editor, referring him to
+Mr. Thackeray's letter in my behalf, and that is the last I ever heard
+of it.
+
+All of Thackeray's American friends will remember the feelings of pain
+and regret with which they read his "Roundabout Paper" in the "Cornhill
+Magazine," in (February, I think) 1862,--wherein he reproaches our
+entire people as being willing to confiscate the stocks and other
+property owned in this country by Englishmen, out of spite for their
+disappointment in relation to the Trent affair, and directs his New-York
+bankers to sell out all his investments, and remit the proceeds to
+London, without delay. It was not his fierce denunciation of such
+national dishonesty that we deprecated, but his apparent belief in its
+possibility. We felt that he, of all Englishmen, should have understood
+us better. We regretted, for Thackeray's own sake, that he had permitted
+himself, in some spleenful moment, to commit an injustice, which would
+sooner or later be apparent to his own mind.
+
+Three months afterwards, (in May, 1862,) I was again in London. I had
+not heard from Thackeray since the publication of the "Roundabout"
+letter to his bankers, and was uncertain how far his evident ill-temper
+on that occasion had subsided; but I owed him too much kindness, I
+honored him too profoundly, not to pardon him, unasked, my share of the
+offence. I found him installed in the new house he had built in Palace
+Gardens, Kensington. He received me with the frank welcome of old, and
+when we were alone, in the privacy of his library, made an opportunity
+(intentionally, I am sure) of approaching the subject, which, he knew, I
+could not have forgotten. I asked him why he wrote the article.
+
+"I was unwell," he answered,--"you know what the moral effects of my
+attacks are,--and I was indignant that such a shameful proposition
+should be made in your American newspapers, and not a single voice be
+raised to rebuke it."
+
+"But you certainly knew," said I, "that the ---- ---- does not represent
+American opinion. I assure you, that no honest, respectable man in the
+United States ever entertained the idea of cheating an English
+stockholder."
+
+"I should hope so, too," he answered; "but when I saw the same thing in
+the ---- ----, which, you will admit, is a paper of character and
+influence, I lost all confidence. I know how impulsive and excitable
+your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be
+madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a
+blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was getting eight per cent.
+from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is
+lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate
+than four per cent."
+
+I said to him, playfully, that he must not expect me, as an American, to
+feel much sympathy with this loss: I, in common with his other friends
+beyond the Atlantic, expected from him a juster recognition of the
+national character.
+
+"Well," said he, "let us say no more about it. I admit that I have made
+a mistake."
+
+Those who knew the physical torments to which Thackeray was periodically
+subject--spasms which not only racked his strong frame, but temporarily
+darkened his views of men and things--must wonder, that, with the
+obligation to write permanently hanging over him, he was not more
+frequently betrayed into impatient or petulant expressions. In his clear
+brain, he judged himself no less severely, and watched his own nature no
+less warily, than he regarded other men. His strong sense of justice was
+always alert and active. He sometimes tore away the protecting drapery
+from the world's pet heroes and heroines, but, on the other hand, he
+desired no one to set him beside them. He never betrayed the least
+sensitiveness in regard to his place in literature. The comparisons
+which critics sometimes instituted between himself and other prominent
+authors simply amused him. In 1856, he told me that he had written a
+play which the managers had ignominiously rejected. "I thought I could
+write for the stage," said he; "but it seems I can't. I have a mind to
+have the piece privately performed, here at home. I'll take the big
+footman's part." This plan, however, was given up, and the material of
+the play was afterwards used, I believe, in "Lovel, the Widower."
+
+I have just read a notice of Thackeray, which asserts, as an evidence of
+his weakness in certain respects, that he imagined himself to be an
+artist, and persisted in supplying bad illustrations to his own works.
+This statement does injustice to his self-knowledge. He delighted in the
+use of the pencil, and often spoke to me of his illustrations being a
+pleasant relief to hand and brain, after the fatigue of writing. He had
+a very imperfect sense of color, and confessed that his forte lay in
+caricature. Some of his sketches were charmingly drawn upon the block,
+but he was often unfortunate in his engraver. The original MS. of "The
+Rose and the Ring," with the illustrations, is admirable. He was fond of
+making groups of costumes and figures of the last century, and I have
+heard English artists speak of his talent in this _genre_: but he never
+professed to be more than an amateur, or to exercise the art for any
+other reason than the pleasure it gave him.
+
+He enjoyed the popularity of his lectures, because they were out of his
+natural line of work. Although he made several very clever after-dinner
+speeches, he always assured me that it was accidental,--that he had no
+talent whatever for thinking on his feet.
+
+"Even when I am reading my lectures," he said, "I often think to myself,
+'What a humbug you are, and I wonder the people don't find it out!'"
+
+When in New-York, he confessed to me that he should like immensely to
+find some town where the people imagined that all Englishmen transposed
+their _h_s, and give one of his lectures in that style. He was very fond
+of relating an incident which occurred during his visit to St. Louis. He
+was dining one day in the hotel, when he overheard one Irish waiter say
+to another,--
+
+"Do you know who that is?"
+
+"No," was the answer.
+
+"That," said the first, "is the celebrated Thacker!"
+
+"What's _he_ done?"
+
+"D----d if I know!"
+
+Of Thackeray's private relations I would speak with a cautious
+reverence. An author's heart is a sanctuary into which, except so far as
+he voluntarily reveals it, the public has no right to enter. The shadow
+of a domestic affliction which darkened all his life seemed only to have
+increased his paternal care and tenderness. To his fond solicitude for
+his daughters we owe a part of the writings wherewith he has enriched
+our literature. While in America, he often said to me that his chief
+desire was to secure a certain sum for them, and I shall never forget
+the joyous satisfaction with which he afterwards informed me, in London,
+that the work was done. "Now," he said, "the dear girls are provided
+for. The great anxiety is taken from my life, and I can breathe freely
+for the little time that is left me to be with them." I knew that he had
+denied himself many "luxuries" (as he called them) to accomplish this
+object. For six years after he had redeemed the losses of a reckless
+youthful expenditure, he was allowed to live and to employ an income,
+princely for an author, in the gratification of tastes which had been so
+long repressed.
+
+He thereupon commenced building a new house, after his own designs. It
+was of red brick, in the style of Queen Anne's time, but the internal
+arrangement was rather American than English. It was so much admired,
+that, although the cost much exceeded his estimate, he could have sold
+it for an advance of a thousand pounds. To me the most interesting
+feature was the library, which occupied the northern end of the first
+floor, with a triple window opening toward the street, and another upon
+a warm little garden-plot shut in by high walls.
+
+"Here," he said to me, when I saw him for the last time, "here I am
+going to write my greatest work,--a History of the Reign of Queen Anne.
+There are my materials,"--pointing to a collection of volumes in various
+bindings which occupied a separate place on the shelves.
+
+"When shall you begin it?" I asked.
+
+"Probably as soon as I am done with 'Philip,'" was his answer; "but I am
+not sure. I may have to write another novel first. But the History will
+mature all the better for the delay. I want to _absorb_ the authorities
+gradually, so that, when I come to write, I shall be filled with the
+subject, and can sit down to a continuous narrative, without jumping up
+every moment to consult somebody. The History has been a pet idea of
+mine for years past. I am slowly working up to the level of it, and know
+that when I once begin I shall do it well."
+
+It is not likely that any part of this history was ever written. What it
+might have been we can only regretfully conjecture: it has perished with
+the uncompleted novel, and all the other dreams of that principle of the
+creative intellect which the world calls Ambition, but which the artist
+recognizes as Conscience.
+
+That hour of the sunny May-day returns to memory as I write. The quiet
+of the library, a little withdrawn from the ceaseless roar of London;
+the soft grass of the bit of garden, moist from a recent shower, seen
+through the open window; the smoke-strained sunshine, stealing gently
+along the wall; and before me the square, massive head, the prematurely
+gray hair, the large, clear, sad eyes, the frank, winning mouth, with
+its smile of boyish sweetness, of the man whom I honored as a master,
+while he gave me the right to love him as a friend. I was to leave the
+next day for a temporary home on the Continent, and he was planning how
+he could visit me, with his daughters. The proper season, the time, and
+the expense were carefully calculated: he described the visit in
+advance, with a gay, excursive fancy; and his last words, as he gave me
+the warm, strong hand I was never again to press, were, "_Auf
+wiedersehen_!"
+
+What little I have ventured to relate gives but a fragmentary image of
+the man whom I knew. I cannot describe him as the faithful son, the
+tender father, the true friend, the man of large humanity and lofty
+honesty he really was, without stepping too far within the sacred circle
+of his domestic life. To me, there was no inconsistency in his nature.
+Where the careless reader may see only the cynic and the relentless
+satirist, I recognize his unquenchable scorn of human meanness and
+duplicity,--the impatient wrath of a soul too frequently disappointed in
+its search for good. I have heard him lash the faults of others with an
+indignant sorrow which brought the tears to his eyes. For this reason he
+could not bear that ignorant homage should be given to men really
+unworthy of it. He said to me, once, speaking of a critic who blamed the
+scarcity of noble and lovable character in his novels,--"Other men can
+do that. I know what I can do best; and if I do good, it must be in my
+own way."
+
+The fate which took him from us was one which he had anticipated. He
+often said that his time was short, that he could not certainly reckon
+on many more years of life, and that his end would probably be sudden.
+He once spoke of Irving's death as fortunate in its character. The
+subject was evidently familiar to his thoughts, and his voice had
+always a tone of solemn resignation which told that he had conquered its
+bitterness. He was ready at any moment to answer the call; and when, at
+last, it was given and answered,--when the dawn of the first Christmas
+holiday lighted his pale, moveless features, and the large heart
+throbbed no more forever in its grand scorn and still grander
+tenderness,--his released spirit could have chosen no fitter words of
+farewell than the gentle benediction his own lips have breathed:--
+
+      "I lay the weary pen aside,
+    And wish you health and love and mirth,
+      As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.
+    As fits the holy Christmas birth,
+      Be this, good friends, our carol still,--
+    Be peace on earth, be peace on earth,
+      To men of gentle will!"
+
+
+
+
+THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.
+
+
+It has been said that "the history of war is a magnificent lie," and
+from what we know in our times, particularly of the history of the
+Mexican War and of the present Rebellion, if the despatches from the
+battle-fields are to be received as history, we are inclined to believe
+the saying is true; and it is natural that it should be so. A general
+writes his despatches under the highest mental excitement. His troops
+have won a great victory, or sustained a crushing defeat; in either
+event, his mind is riveted to the transactions that have led to the
+result; in the one case, his ambition will prompt him to aspire to a
+name in history; in the other, he will try to save himself from
+disgrace. He describes his battles; he gives an account of his marches
+and counter-marches, of the hardships he has endured, the
+disappointments he has experienced, and the difficulties he has had to
+overcome. The principal events may be truthfully narrated; but his hopes
+of rising a hero from the field of victory, or of appearing a martyr
+from one of defeat, will mould his narrative to his wishes.
+
+If it be frequently the misfortune of our generals, in writing their
+reports, not to content themselves with the materials at hand, but to
+draw on their imaginations, not for gross falsehoods, but for that
+coloring which, diffused through their despatches, makes the narrative
+affecting, while it leaves us in doubt where to draw the line between
+fiction and fact, it is not always so, particularly when their
+despatches are not written amidst the excitement of the battle-field,
+but are deferred until the events which they describe have passed into
+history.
+
+Such, we may suppose, to be the case in respect to the Reports of
+Brigadier-Generals Barnard and Barry on the Engineer and Artillery
+Operations of the Army of the Potomac. Written, as these Reports were,
+after the organization of that army had been completed and the
+Peninsular campaign had terminated, by men who, though playing an
+important part in its organization and throughout this its first
+campaign, yet never aspired to be its heroes, we may reasonably hope,
+that, if they have not told the "whole truth," they have told us
+"nothing but the truth."
+
+The points of particular interest in these Reports, so far as relates to
+organization, are the inauguration of a great system of
+field-fortifications for the defence of the national capital, and the
+preparation of engineer-equipments, particularly bridge-equipage for
+crossing rivers. These are only sketched, but the outline is drawn by an
+artist who is master of the subject. The professional engineer, when he
+examines the immense fortifications of Washington and sees their
+skilful construction, can appreciate the labor and thought which must
+have been bestowed on them. He alone could complete the picture. To
+appreciate these works, they must be seen. No field-works on so
+extensive a scale have been undertaken in modern times. The nearest
+approach to them were the lines of Torres Vedras, in Portugal,
+constructed by the British army in 1809-10; but the works constructed by
+General Barnard for the defence of Washington are larger, more numerous,
+more carefully built, and much more heavily armed than were those justly
+celebrated lines of Wellington.
+
+And it should not be forgotten, that, after the Battle of Bull Run, we
+were thrown on the defensive, and the fortifications of our capital were
+called for in a hurry. There were no models, in this country, from which
+to copy,--and few, if any, in Europe. Luckily, however, the art of
+fortification is not imitative; it is based on scientific principles;
+and we found in General Barnard and his assistants the science to
+comprehend the problem before them, and the experience and skill to
+grasp its solution.
+
+Only the citizens of Washington and those who happened to be there after
+the two disastrous defeats at Bull Run can appreciate the value of these
+fortifications. They have twice saved the capital,--perhaps the nation;
+yet forts are passive,--they never speak, unless assailed. But let
+Washington be attacked by a powerful army and successfully defended, and
+they would proclaim General Barnard one of the heroes of the war.
+
+As has already been said, the engineer-equipage is only sketched; but
+enough is said to show its value. Speaking of the bridges, General
+Barnard says,--"They were used by the Quartermaster's department in
+discharging transports, were precisely what was needed for the
+disembarkation of General Franklin's division, constituted a portion of
+the numerous bridges that were built over Wormley Creek during the siege
+of Yorktown, and were of the highest use in the Chickahominy; while over
+the Lower Chickahominy, some seventy-five thousand men, some three
+hundred pieces of artillery, and the enormous baggage-trains of the
+army, passed over a bridge of the extraordinary length of nearly six
+hundred and fifty yards,--a feat scarcely surpassed in military
+history." Pontoons, like forts, cannot talk; but every soldier of the
+Army of the Potomac knows that these same bridges, which were prepared
+when that army was first organized, have since carried it in safety four
+times over the Rappahannock, twice at the Battle of Fredericksburg and
+twice again at the Battle of Chancellorsville, and three times over the
+Upper Potomac, once after the Battle of Antietam, and again both before
+and after the Battle of Gettysburg.
+
+Of the Peninsular campaign General Barnard does not profess to give a
+history. He mentions only the operations which came under his
+supervision as the Chief Engineer of the Army of the Potomac. The siege
+of Yorktown was a matter of engineering skill. General Barnard gives us
+his report to General Totten, the Chief Engineer of the Army, on the
+engineering operations of the siege,--also his journal, showing the
+progress of the siege from day to day. These, with the maps, convey a
+very clear idea of the place to be taken, and the way it was to have
+been reduced, had the enemy continued his defence until our batteries
+were opened; but they do not convey to the mind of any except the
+professional engineer the magnitude of the works which were constructed.
+General Barnard says that fifteen batteries and four redoubts were built
+during the siege, and he gives the armament of each battery. On
+comparing this armament with that used in other sieges, we find the
+amount of metal ready to be hurled on Yorktown when the enemy evacuated
+that place second only to that of the Allies at Sebastopol, the greatest
+siege of modern times.
+
+But these batteries, with a single exception, never spoke. Like their
+predecessors around Washington, they conquered by their mere presence.
+After all the skill and labor that had been bestowed on their
+construction, the enemy evacuated Yorktown just as our batteries were
+about to open. He was at our mercy. General Barnard says that "the
+enemy's position had become untenable,--that he could not have endured
+our fire for six hours." We can readily understand how mortifying it
+must have been to the Commanding General, and particularly to the
+officers of engineers and artillery who had planned, built, and armed
+these siege-works, to hear that the enemy had evacuated his
+fortifications just at the moment when we were prepared to drive him
+from them by force; and we can appreciate the regrets of General
+Barnard, when he says, in reviewing the campaign, and pointing out the
+mistakes that had been committed, that "we should have opened our
+batteries on the place as fast as they were completed. The effect on the
+troops would have been inspiring. It would have lightened the siege and
+shortened our labors; and, besides, we would have had the credit of
+driving the enemy from Yorktown by force of arms; whereas, as it was, we
+only induced him to evacuate for prudential considerations." And General
+Barry says, in his report of the artillery operations at the siege,--"It
+will always be a source of great professional disappointment to me, that
+the enemy, by his premature and hasty abandonment of his defensive line,
+deprived the artillery of the Army of the Potomac of the opportunity of
+exhibiting the superior power and efficiency of the unusually heavy
+metal used in this siege, and of reaping the honor and just reward of
+their unceasing labors, day and night, for nearly one month."
+
+The next serious obstacle to be overcome, after the siege of Yorktown,
+was the passage of the Chickahominy. Here, says General Barnard, "if
+possible, the responsibility and labor of the engineer officers were
+increased." The difficulties of that river, considered as a military
+obstacle, are given in a few touches; but in the sketch of the opposing
+heights, and of the intermediate valley, filled up with the stream, the
+heavily timbered swamp, and the overflowed bottom-lands, we have the
+Chickahominy brought before us so vividly that we can almost _feel_ the
+difficulty of crossing it. Well may General Barnard say that "it was one
+of the most formidable obstacles that could be opposed to the advance of
+an army,--an obstacle to which an ordinary _river_, though it be of
+considerable magnitude, is comparatively slight."
+
+The labors of the engineers in bridging this formidable swamp are
+detailed with considerable minuteness. Ten bridges, of different
+characters, were constructed, though some of them were never used,
+because the enemy held the approaches on his side of the river.
+
+We are glad that General Barnard has elaborated this part of his Report.
+There is a melancholy interest attaching to the Chickahominy. To it, and
+to the events connected with it, history will refer the defeat of
+General McClellan's magnificent army, and the failure of the Peninsular
+campaign. And what a lesson is here to be learned! The fate of the
+contending armies was suspended in a balance. The hour when a particular
+bridge was to be completed, or rendered impassable by the rising floods,
+was to turn the scales!
+
+That mistakes were committed on the Chickahominy the country is prepared
+to believe. Our army was placed astride of that stream, and in this
+situation we fought two battles, each time with only a part of our
+force; thus violating, not only the maxims of war, but the plainest
+principles of common sense.
+
+The Battle of Fair Oaks began on the thirty-first of May. At that time
+our army was divided by the Chickahominy. Of the five corps constituting
+the Army of the Potomac, two were on its right bank, or on the side
+nearest to Richmond, while the other three were on the left bank. There
+had been heavy rains, the river was rising, and the swamps and
+bottom-lands were fast becoming impassable. None of the upper bridges
+had yet been built. We had then only Bottom's Bridge, the
+railroad-bridge, and the two bridges built by General Sumner some miles
+higher up the river. Bottom's Bridge and the railroad-bridge were too
+distant to be of any service in an emergency such as a battle demands.
+At the time of the enemy's attack, which was sudden and unexpected,
+completely overwhelming General Casey's division, our sole reliance to
+reinforce the left wing was by Sumner's corps, and over his two bridges.
+It happened to be the fortune of the writer to see "Sumner's upper
+bridge,"--the only one then passable,--at the moment the head of General
+Sumner's column reached it. The possibility of crossing was doubted by
+all present, including General Sumner himself.
+
+The bridge was of rough logs, and mostly afloat, held together and kept
+from drifting off by the stumps of trees to which it was fastened; the
+portion over the thread of the stream being suspended from the trunks of
+large trees, which had been felled across it, by ropes which a single
+blow with a hatchet would have severed. On this bridge and on these
+ropes hung the fate of the day at Fair Oaks, and, probably, the fate of
+the Army of the Potomac too; for, if Sumner had not crossed in time to
+check the movement of the enemy down the river, the corps of Heintzelman
+and Keyes would have been taken in flank, and it is fair to suppose that
+they must have been driven into an impassable river, or captured.
+
+But Sumner crossed, and saved the day. Forever honored be his name!
+
+As the solid column of infantry entered upon the bridge, it swayed to
+and fro to the angry flood below or the living freight above, settling
+down and grasping the solid stumps, by which it was made secure as the
+line advanced. Once filled with men, it was safe until the corps had
+crossed. It then soon became impassable, and the "railroad-bridge," says
+General Barnard, "for several days was the only communication between
+the two wings of the army." Never was an army in a more precarious
+situation. Fortunately, however, whatever mistakes we made in allowing
+ourselves to be attacked when the two wings of the army were almost
+separated, the enemy also committed serious blunders, both as to the
+point of his attack and the time when his blow was delivered. His true
+point of attack was on the right flank of our left wing. Had the attack
+which Sumner met and repulsed been made simultaneously with the assault
+in front, a single battalion, nay, even a single company, could have
+seized and destroyed "Sumner's upper bridge," the only one, as before
+remarked, then passable, Sumner would consequently have been unable to
+take part in the battle, and our left wing would have been taken in
+flank, and, in all probability, defeated; or, had the attack been
+deferred until the next day, or even for several days, as the bridges
+became impassable during the night of the thirty-first, it would
+probably have been successful.
+
+It is easy to make such criticisms after the events have happened; their
+mere statement will carry conviction to the minds of all who were in a
+position, during these memorable days, to know the facts that decided
+the movements; and it is right that they should be made, for it is only
+by pointing out the causes of success or failure in military affairs,
+as, indeed, in every human undertaking, that we can hope to be
+successful. But, in doing so, we need not confine ourselves to one side
+of the question; we may look at our enemies as well as at ourselves. Nor
+need they be made in a spirit of censoriousness; for the importance of
+individuals, in speaking of such great events, may safely be overlooked
+without affecting the lesson we would learn. Neither should it be
+forgotten that the general who has always fought his battles at the
+right time, in the right place, with the proper arms, and pursued his
+victories to their utmost attainable results, has yet to appear. He
+would, indeed, be an intellectual prodigy.
+
+Such we may suppose to be the reflections of General Barnard, when he
+points out the mistakes which were made in the Army of the Potomac while
+on the Chickahominy. He does not, indeed, bring to our view the mistakes
+of the enemy. That would have been travelling outside of the record in
+the report of the operations falling under his supervision, and such
+criticism is wisely left for some of the enemy's engineers, or for a
+more general history. In speaking of the difficulties of crossing the
+Chickahominy immediately after the battle of the thirty-first of May,
+General Barnard says,--"There was one way, however, to unite the army on
+the other side; it was to take advantage of a victory at Fair Oaks, to
+sweep at once the enemy from his position opposite New Bridge, and,
+simultaneously, to bring over by the New Bridge our troops of the right
+wing, which would then have met with little or no resistance"; and
+again, in a more general criticism of the campaign, he says,--"The
+repulse of the Rebels at Fair Oaks should have been taken advantage of.
+It was one of those 'occasions' which, if not seized, do not repeat
+themselves. We now _know_ the state of disorganization and dismay in
+which the Rebel army retreated. We now _know_ that it could have been
+followed into Richmond. Had it been so, there would have been no
+resistance to overcome to bring over our right wing."
+
+But the "occasion" which the morning of the first of June presented of
+uniting the two wings of the army, and thus achieving a great victory,
+was not seized, because, as General Barnard says, "we did not then know
+all that we now do." At the moment when the New Bridge became passable,
+8.15, A. M., it is not probable the Commanding General knew it.
+Nor did he know, that, at this very moment, the enemy was retreating to
+Richmond in a "state of disorganization and dismay." Besides, the troops
+of the left wing had fought a hard battle the preceding afternoon, and
+they had been up all night, throwing up works of defence, and making
+dispositions to resist another assault by the enemy. They were not in a
+condition to assume the offensive against an enemy who was supposed to
+be in force and in position, himself preparing to resume the attack of
+the previous day, however competent they may have been to pursue a
+demoralized foe flying from the field. The propitious moment was lost,
+not to return,--for, during the day, the rising flood rendered all the
+bridges, except the railroad-bridge, impassable.
+
+The necessity for more substantial bridges to connect the two wings of
+the army had now been made manifest, and two fine structures, available
+for all arms, were completed by the nineteenth. At the same time two
+foot-bridges were made, the other bridges repaired, and their approaches
+made secure, though the enemy still held the approaches of the three
+upper bridges on the right bank.
+
+While these bridges were being made, mostly by the right wing of the
+army, the left wing was engaged in constructing a strong line of
+defence, stretching from the White-Oak Swamp to the Chickahominy,
+consisting of six redoubts connected by rifle-pits or barricades.
+General Barnard says,--"The object of these lines (over three miles
+long) was to hold our position of the left wing against the concentrated
+force of the enemy, until communications across the Chickahominy could
+be established; or, if necessary, to maintain our position on this side,
+while the bulk of the army was thrown upon the other, should occasion
+require it; or, finally, to hold one part of our line and communication
+by a small force, while our principal offensive effort was made upon
+another." At the same time, several batteries were constructed on the
+left bank of the river in the neighborhood of the upper bridges, either
+to operate on the enemy's positions in their front, or to defend these
+bridges.
+
+All these preparations were made with the understood purpose of driving
+the enemy from his positions in front of New Bridge; and they appear to
+have been about completed, for on the night of the twenty-sixth "an
+epaulement for putting our guns in position" to effect this object was
+thrown up. But it was too late. Lee's guns had been heard in the
+afternoon, in the neighborhood of Mechanicsville, attacking the advance
+of our right wing, and Jackson was within supporting distance. The
+battle of the twenty-seventh of June, on which "hinged the fate of the
+campaign," was to be fought to-morrow. This battle, or rather the policy
+of fighting it, or suffering it to be fought, has been more criticized
+than any other battle of the campaign. We fought a battle which was
+decisive against us with less than one-third of our force.
+
+General Barnard is severe in his criticisms. In his "retrospect,
+pointing out the mistakes that were made," he says,--
+
+"At last a moment came when action was imperative. The enemy assumed the
+initiative, and we had warning of when and where he was to strike. Had
+Porter been withdrawn the night of the twenty-sixth, our army would have
+been _concentrated_ on the right bank, while two corps at least of the
+enemy's force were on the _left_ bank. Whatever course we then took,
+whether to strike at Richmond and the portion of the enemy on the right
+bank, or move at once for the James, we would have had a concentrated
+army, and a fair chance of a brilliant result, in the first place; and
+in the second, if we accomplished nothing, we would have been in the
+same case on the morning of the twenty-seventh as we were on that of the
+twenty-eighth,--_minus_ a lost battle and a compulsory retreat; or, had
+the fortified lines (thrown up _expressly_ for the object) been held by
+twenty thousand men, (as they could have been,) we could have fought on
+the other side with eighty thousand men instead of twenty-seven
+thousand; or, finally, had the lines been abandoned, with our hold on
+the right bank of the Chickahominy, we might have fought and crushed the
+enemy on the left bank, reopened our communications, and then returned
+and taken Richmond.
+
+"As it was, the enemy fought with his _whole force_, (except enough left
+before our lines to keep up an appearance,) and we fought with
+twenty-seven thousand men, losing the battle and nine thousand men.
+
+"By this defeat we were driven from our position, our advance of
+conquest turned into a retreat for safety, by a force probably not
+greatly superior to our own."
+
+It is to be hoped that the forthcoming report of General McClellan will
+give us the reasons which induced him to risk such a battle with such a
+force, and modify, to some extent at least, the justice of such
+outspoken censure.
+
+The services of the engineers in passing the army over White-Oak Swamp,
+in reconnoitring the line of retreat to James River, in posting troops,
+and in defending the final position of the army at Harrison's Landing,
+are detailed with great clearness. Of his officers the General speaks in
+the highest terms. It appears, that, with a single exception, they were
+all _lieutenants_, whereas "in a European service the chief engineer
+serving with an army-corps would be a field-officer, generally a
+colonel." In this want of rank in the corps of engineers the General
+says there is a twofold evil.
+
+"_First_, the great hardships and injustice to the officers themselves:
+for they have, almost without exception, refused or _been_ refused high
+positions in the volunteer service, (to which they have seen their
+contemporaries of the other branches elevated,) on the ground that their
+services as _engineers_ were absolutely necessary. _Second_, it is an
+evil to the service: since an adequate rank is almost as necessary to an
+officer for the efficient discharge of his duties as professional
+knowledge. The engineer's duty is a responsible one. He is called upon
+to decide important questions,--to fix the position of defensive works,
+(and thereby of the _troops_ who occupy them,)--to indicate the manner
+and points of attack of fortified positions. To give him the proper
+weight with those with whom he is associated, he should have, as _they_
+have, adequate rank.
+
+"The campaign on the Peninsula called for great labor on the part of the
+engineers. The country, notwithstanding its early settlement, was a
+_terra incognita_. We knew the York River and the James River, and we
+had heard of the Chickahominy; and this was about the extent of our
+knowledge. Our maps were so incorrect that they were found to be
+worthless before we reached Yorktown. New ones had to be prepared, based
+on reconnoissances made by officers of engineers.
+
+"The siege of Yorktown involved great responsibility, besides exposure
+and toil. The movements of the whole army were determined by the
+engineers. The Chickahominy again arrested us, where, if possible, the
+responsibility and labor of the engineer officers were increased. In
+fact, everywhere, and on every occasion, even to our last position at
+Harrison's Landing, this responsibility and labor on the part of the
+engineers was incessant.
+
+"I have stated above in what manner the officers of engineers performed
+their duties. Yet thus far their services are ignored and unrecognized,
+while distinctions have been bestowed upon those who have had the good
+fortune to command troops. Under such circumstances it can hardly be
+expected that the few engineer officers yet remaining will willingly
+continue their services in this unrequited branch of the military
+profession. We have no sufficient officers of engineers at this time
+with any of our armies to commence another siege, nor can they be
+obtained. In another war, if their services are thus neglected in this,
+we shall have none."
+
+It is to be hoped that the General's appeal for additional rank to the
+officers of engineers will not be overlooked. The officers of this corps
+have demonstrated not only their skill as engineers, but also their
+ability to command troops and even armies. On the side of our country's
+cause we have McClellan, Halleck, Rosecrans, Meade, Gillmore, and
+Barnard, besides a score of others, all generals; and in the ranks of
+the Rebels we find Lee, Joe Johnston, Beauregard, Gilmer, and Smith, all
+generals, too, and all formerly officers of engineers. Nobly have they
+all vindicated the scale of proficiency which placed them among the
+distinguished of their respective classes at their common Alma Mater.
+
+Whatever may have been the services of other men during our present
+struggle for nationality, and whatever may be their services in the
+future, to General Barry, the Chief of Artillery of the Army of the
+Potomac, from the organization of that army to the close of the
+Peninsular campaign, more than to any other person, belongs the credit
+of organizing our admirable system of field-artillery.
+
+We have two reports from General Barry: one, on "The Organization of the
+Artillery of the Army of the Potomac"; the other, a "Report of the
+Operations of the Artillery at the Siege of Yorktown." Of the services
+of the artillery during the remainder of the campaign we have no record
+from its chief; but they were conspicuous on every battle-field, and
+will not be forgotten until Malvern Hill shall have passed into
+oblivion.
+
+After the first Battle of Bull Run, the efforts of the nation were
+directed to organizing an army for the defence of the national capital.
+Of men and money we had plenty; but men and money, however necessary
+they may be, do not make an army. Cannon, muskets, rifles, pistols,
+sabres, horses, mules, wagons, harness, bridges, tools, food, clothing,
+and numberless other things, are required; but men and money, with all
+this added _matériel_ of war, still will not make an _efficient_ army.
+Organization, discipline, and instruction are necessary to accomplish
+this. At the time of which we speak the people of this country did not
+comprehend what an army consisted of, or, if they did, they comprehended
+it as children,--by its trappings, its men and horses, its drums and
+fifes, its "pomp and circumstance."
+
+Few even of our best officers who had honestly studied their profession
+had ever seen an army, or fully realized the amount of labor that was
+necessary, even with our unbounded resources, to organize an efficient
+army ready for the field. Happily for our country, there were some who
+in garrison had learned the science and theory of war, and in Mexico, or
+in expeditions against our Western Indians, had acquired some knowledge
+of its practice. Of these General McClellan was selected to be the
+chief. He had seen armies in Europe, and it was believed that he could
+bring to his aid more of the right kind of experience for organization
+than any other man. If there is any one thing more than another for
+which General McClellan is distinguished, it is his ability to _make an
+army_. Men may have their opinions as to his genius or his courage, his
+politics or his generalship; they may think he is too slow or too
+cautious, or they may say he is not equal to great emergencies; but of
+his ability to organize an army there is a concurrent opinion in his
+favor.
+
+By himself, however, he would have been helpless. He required
+assistance. He was obliged to have chiefs of the several arms about
+him,--a chief of engineers, of artillery, of cavalry, and chiefs of the
+several divisions of infantry.
+
+General Barry was his chief of artillery. To him was assigned the duty
+of organizing this arm of the service. We learn from his Report, that,
+"when Major-General McClellan was appointed to the command of the
+'Division of the Potomac,' July 25th, 1861, a few days after the first
+Battle of Bull Run, the whole field-artillery of his command consisted
+of no more than parts of nine batteries, or thirty pieces of various,
+and, in some instances, unusual and unserviceable calibres. Most of
+these batteries were also of mixed calibres. My calculations were based
+upon the expected immediate expansion of the 'Division of the Potomac'
+into the 'Army of the Potomac,' to consist of at least one hundred
+thousand infantry. Considerations involving the peculiar character and
+extent of the force to be employed, the probable field and character of
+operations, the utmost efficiency of the arm, and the limits imposed by
+the as yet undeveloped resources of the nation, led to the following
+general propositions, offered by me to Major-General McClellan, and
+which received his full approval."
+
+These propositions in brief were,--
+
+1st. "That the proportion of artillery should be in the ratio of at
+least two and a half pieces to one thousand men."
+
+2d. "That the proportion of rifled guns should be one-third, and of
+smooth bores two-thirds."
+
+3d. "That each field-battery should, if practicable, be composed of six
+guns."
+
+4th. "That the field-batteries were to be assigned to 'divisions,' and
+not to brigades."
+
+5th. "That the artillery reserve of the whole army should consist of one
+hundred guns."
+
+6th. "That the amount of ammunition to accompany the field-batteries was
+not to be less than four hundred rounds per gun."
+
+7th. That there should be "a siege-train of fifty pieces."
+
+8th. "That instruction in the theory and practice of gunnery, as well as
+in the tactics of the arm, was to be given to the officers and
+non-commissioned officers of the volunteer batteries, by the study of
+suitable text-books, and by actual recitations in each division, under
+the direction of the regular officer commanding the divisional
+artillery."
+
+9th. That inspections should be made.
+
+Such, with trifling modifications, were the propositions upon which the
+artillery of the Army of the Potomac was organized; and this
+organization finds its highest recommendation in the fact that it
+remains unchanged, (except very immaterially,) and has been adopted by
+all other armies in the field. The sudden and extensive expansion of the
+artillery of the Army of the Potomac, that occurred from July 25, 1861,
+to March, 1862, is unparalleled in the history of war. Tabulated, it
+stands thus:--
+
+                              Batteries,   Guns      Men    Horses
+                              parts of
+
+July 25, 1861                   9            30       650       400
+  imperfectly equipped.
+
+March, 1862                    92           520    12,500    11,000
+  fully equipped and in readiness for actual field-service.
+
+
+Well may General Barry and the officers of the Ordnance Department, who
+had, as it were, to create the means of meeting the heavy requisitions
+upon them, be proud of such a record. It is one of the most striking
+exponents of the resources of the nation which the war has produced.
+
+Of this force thirty batteries were _regulars_ and sixty-two
+_volunteers_. The latter had to be instructed not only in the duties of
+a soldier, but in the theory and practice of their special arm.
+Defective guns and _matériel_ furnished by the States had to be
+withdrawn, and replaced by the more serviceable ordnance with which the
+regular batteries were being armed. Boards of examination were
+organized, and the officers thoroughly examined. Incompetency was set
+aside, zeal and efficiency rewarded by promotion.
+
+"Although," says General Barry, "there was much to be improved," yet
+"many of the volunteer batteries evinced such zeal and intelligence, and
+availed themselves so industriously of the instructions of the regular
+officers, their commanders, and of the example of the regular battery,
+their associate, that they made rapid progress, and finally attained a
+degree of proficiency highly creditable."
+
+At the siege of Yorktown, as has already been stated, only one of the
+fifteen batteries was permitted to open fire on the enemy's works. This
+was armed with one hundred- and two hundred-pounder rifled guns, and it
+is remarkable that this is the first time the practicability of placing,
+handling, and serving these guns in siege-operations, and their value at
+the long range of two and a half to three miles, were fully
+demonstrated. These guns, as also the thirteen-inch sea-coast mortars,
+which were placed in position ready for use, were giants when compared
+with the French and English pigmies which were used at Sebastopol.
+
+General Barry, as well as General Barnard, complains of the want of rank
+of his officers. With the immense artillery force that accompanied the
+Army of the Potomac to the Peninsula, consisting of sixty batteries of
+three hundred and forty-three guns, he had only ten field-officers, "a
+number obviously insufficient, and which impaired to a great degree the
+efficiency of the arm, in consequence of the want of rank and official
+influence of the commanders of corps and divisional artillery. As this
+faulty organization can only be suitably corrected by legislative
+action, it is earnestly hoped that the attention of the proper
+authorities may be at an early day invited to it."
+
+When the report of General McClellan is published, the services of the
+artillery of the Army of the Potomac will doubtless fill a conspicuous
+place. These services were rendered to the commanders of divisions and
+corps, giving them an historic name, and in their reports we may expect
+the artillery to be honorably mentioned. General Barry says, in
+conclusion,--"Special detailed reports have been made and transmitted by
+me of the general artillery operations at the siege of Yorktown,--and by
+their immediate commanders, of the services of the field-batteries at
+the Battles of Williamsburg, Hanover Court-House, and those severely
+contested ones comprised in the operations before Richmond. To those
+several reports I respectfully refer the Commanding General for details
+of services as creditable to the artillery of the United States as they
+are honorable to the gallant officers and brave and patient enlisted
+men, who, (with but few exceptions,) struggling through difficulties,
+overcoming obstacles, and bearing themselves nobly on the field of
+battle, stood faithfully to their guns, performing their various duties
+with a steadiness, a devotion, and a gallantry worthy the highest
+commendation."
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Mental Hygiene_. By I. RAY, M. D. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
+
+Dr. Ray, as many of our readers may know, is a physician eminent in the
+speciality of mental disorders. He is at present the head of the Butler
+Hospital for the Insane in Providence, Rhode Island. The four first
+chapters of his book, chiefly relating to matters which may be observed
+outside of a hospital, come under our notice. The fifth and last
+division, addressed to the limited number of persons who are conscious
+of tendencies to insanity, has no place in an unprofessional review.
+
+This little treatise upon "Mental Hygiene" carries its own evidence as
+the work of a disciplined mind, content to labor patiently among the
+materials of exact knowledge, and gradually to approximate laws in the
+spirit of scientific investigation. Mental phenomena are analyzed by Dr.
+Ray as material substances are analyzed by the chemist,--though, from
+the nature of the case, with far less certainty in results. Yet there is
+scarcely anything of practical moment in the book which may not be found
+in the popular writings of other prominent men,--such, for example, as
+Brodie, Holland, Moore, Marcel, and Herbert Spencer. We say this in no
+disparagement; there is no second-hand flavor about these cautious
+sentences. Dr. Ray has investigated for himself, and his conclusions are
+all the more valuable from coinciding with those of other accurate
+observers. It is agreeable to chronicle a contrast to that flux of
+quasi-medical literature put forth by men who have no title (save,
+perhaps, a legal one) to affix the M. D. so pertinaciously displayed.
+For there has lately been no lack of books of quotations, clumsily put
+together and without inverted commas, designed to puff some patent
+panacea, the exclusive property of the compiler, or of volumes whose
+claim to originality lay in the bold attempt to work off a life-stock of
+irrelevant anecdotes, the miscellaneous accumulations of a
+country-practitioner. Such authors--by courtesy so called--are possibly
+well-meaning amateurs, but can never be mistaken for scientists. We
+thank Dr. Ray for a book which, as a popular medical treatise, is really
+creditable to our literature.
+
+Yet, mixed with much admirable counsel hereafter to be noticed, there
+are impressions given in this volume to which we cannot assent. And our
+chief objection might be translated into vulgar, but expressive
+parlance, by saying, that, in generalizing about society, the writer
+does not always seem able to sink the influences of the shop. We have
+been faintly reminded of the professional bias of Mr. Bob Sawyer, when
+he persuaded himself that the company in general would be better for a
+blood-letting. We respectfully submit that we are not quite so mad
+as--for the interests of science, no doubt--Dr. Ray would have us. The
+doctrine, that, do what he will, the spiritual welfare of man is in
+fearful jeopardy, is held by many religionists: we are loath to believe
+that his mental soundness is in no less peril. Yet a susceptible person
+will find it hard to put aside this book without an uncomfortable
+consciousness, that, if not already beside himself, the chances of his
+becoming so are desperately against him. For what practicable escape is
+offered from this impending doom? Shall we leave off work and devote
+ourselves to health? Idleness is a potent cause of derangement. Shall we
+engage in the hard and monotonous duties of an active calling? Paralysis
+and other organic lesions use up professional brains with a frequency
+which is positively startling. Shall we cultivate our imagination and
+make statues or verses? The frenzy of artists and poets is proverbial.
+At least, then, we may give our life-effort to some grand principle
+which shall redeem society from its misery and sin? Quite impossible!
+The contemplation of one idea, however noble, is sure to produce a
+morbid condition of the mind and distort its healthy proportions. Still
+there is a last refuge. By fresh air and vigorous exercise a man may
+surely keep his wits. We will labor steadily upon the soil, and never
+raise our thoughts from the clod we are turning! Even here the Doctor is
+too quick for us, and cries, "Checkmate!" with the fact that the Hodges
+of England and the agriculturists of Berkshire have a great and special
+gift at lunacy.
+
+Of course, the preceding paragraph is very loosely written. We
+cheerfully admit that it might be impossible to quote from the book any
+single proposition to which, taken in a certain sense, a reasonable man
+would object. Nevertheless, there is a total impression derived from it
+which we cannot feel to be true. There is no sufficient allowance for
+the fact that what is most spirited and beautiful and worthy in modern
+society comes from that diversity of human pursuits which necessitates
+the concentration of individual energy into narrow channels. Neither to
+balance his mind in perfect equilibrium, nor to keep his body in highest
+condition, is the first duty of man upon earth. The Christian
+requirement of self-sacrifice often commands him to risk both in service
+to his neighbor. Besides, as we shall presently show, men of equal
+capacity in other branches of human inquiry do not agree with what seems
+to be Dr. Ray's estimate of the highest sanity. When we are warned to
+avoid "men of striking mental peculiarities," (our author advancing the
+proposition that such association is not entirely harmless to the most
+hardy intellect,)--when we are called upon to ostracize those who think
+that their short lives on earth can be most useful to others by
+exclusive devotion to some great principle or regenerating idea,--the
+thoughtful reader will question the instruction. The adjectives
+"extreme" and "fanatical" have, during the last twenty years, been
+applied to most valuable men of various parties and beliefs; they have
+been so applied by masses of conventionally respectable and not
+insincere citizens. But that the persons thus stigmatized have, on the
+whole, advanced the interests of civilization, freedom, and morality, we
+fervently believe.
+
+It is in a very different direction that keenest observers have seen the
+real peril of modern society. De Tocqueville has solemnly warned our
+Democracy of that over-faith in public opinion which tends to become a
+species of religion of which the Majority is the prophet. John Stuart
+Mill has emphasized his conviction that the boldest individuality is of
+the utmost importance to social well-being, and has urged its direct
+encouragement as peculiarly the duty of the present time. Herbert
+Spencer has written most eloquent warnings on the danger of perverting
+certain generalizations upon society into a law for the private citizen.
+He has declared that the wise man will regard the truth that is in him
+not as adventitious, not as something that may be made subordinate to
+the calculations of policy, but as the supreme authority to which all
+his actions should bend. He has shown us that the most useful citizens
+play their appointed part in the world by endeavoring to get embodied in
+fact their present idealisms: knowing that if they can get done the
+things aimed at, well; if not, well also, though not so well. Now our
+complaint is, that Dr. Ray generalizes upon the limited class of facts
+which has come under his professional observation. There may be a feeble
+folk who have gone mad over Mr. Phillips's speeches or Mrs. Dall's
+lectures. This is not the place to discuss the methods or ends of either
+of these conspicuous persons. But shall we make nothing of the possible
+numbers of young men, plunging headlong at the prizes of society after
+the manner which Dr. Ray so intelligently deprecates, who have waked to
+a new standard of success by seeing one with talents which could gain
+their coveted distinctions passing them by to pursue, in uncompromising
+honesty of conviction, his solitary way? Shall we not consider the
+city-bred girls, confined in circles where the vulgar glitter of wealth
+was mitigated only by the feeblest dilettanteism,--spirited young women,
+falling into a morbid condition, whose pitiableness Dr. Ray has well
+illustrated,--who have yet been strengthened to possess their souls in
+health and steadiness by a voice without pleading in their behalf the
+right to choose their own work and command their own lives? When we are
+warned against those who come to regard it "as a sacred duty to
+vindicate the claims of abstract benevolence at all hazards, even though
+it lead through seas of blood and fire," our adviser is either basing
+his counsel upon the very flattest truism, or else intends to indorse a
+popular cry against men who claim to have founded their convictions on
+investigation the most thorough and conscientious. Take the vote of the
+wealth and education of Europe to-day, and Abraham Lincoln will be
+pronounced a fanatic vindicating the claims of abstract benevolence
+"through seas of blood and fire." Go back into the past, and consult one
+Festus, a highly respectable Roman governor, and we shall learn that
+Paul was beside himself, nay, positively mad, with his much learning. We
+repeat that it is for the infinite advantage of society that exceptional
+men are impelled to precipitate their power into very narrow channels.
+The most eminent helpers of civilization have been penetrated by their
+single mission,--they have known that in concentration and courage lay
+their highest usefulness. Let us not judge men who are other than these.
+We will not question the importance of a Goethe, with his scientific
+amusements, stage-plays, ducal companionships, and art of taking good
+care of himself; but we cannot deny at least an equal sanity to the
+"fanatic" Milton, who deemed it disgraceful to pursue his own
+gratification while his countrymen were contending against oppression,
+who was content to sacrifice sight in Liberty's defence, and to live an
+"extreme" protester against the profligacies of power and place.
+
+But we linger too long from the solid instruction of this book. Dr. Ray
+considers the existence of insanity or remarkable eccentricity in a
+previous generation a prolific source of mental unsoundness. He
+addresses words of most solemn warning to those who have not yet formed
+the most important connection in life. A brain free from all congenital
+tendencies to disease results from a rigid compliance with the laws of
+parentage. The intermarriage of those related by blood is no uncommon
+cause of mental deterioration. Dr. Ray thinks that the facts collected
+in France and America upon this point are much more conclusive than a
+recent Westminster reviewer will allow. We are told that in this country
+the mingling of common blood in marriage is more frequent than is
+generally supposed, and that, of all agencies which have to do with the
+prevalence of insanity and idiocy, this is probably the most potent. A
+vigorous body is of course an important condition to high mental health,
+and what is said upon this head is tersely written and very sensible. We
+are told that "those much-enduring men and women who encountered the
+privations of the colonial times have been succeeded by a race incapable
+of toil and exposure, whom the winds of heaven cannot visit too roughly
+without leaving behind the seeds of dissolution." Here and elsewhere Dr.
+Ray cites the passion for light and emotional literature as a proof of
+our degeneracy. We have certainly nothing to say in behalf of that
+quality of modern character produced by the indolent reading of
+sensational writing. Still it may be questioned whether the enormous
+supply of bad books has not increased the demand for good ones,--just as
+quacks make practice for physicians. The readers of the Ledger stories
+have learned to demand a weekly instalment of the good sense and
+sobriety of Mr. Everett. And we are disposed to accept the view of a
+late American publisher, who declared that as a business-transaction he
+could not do better than subscribe to the diffusion of spasmodic
+literature, since it directly promoted the sale of the best authors in
+whose works he dealt. The craving for an intense and exciting literature
+Dr. Ray attributes to "feverish pulse, disturbed digestion, and
+irritable nerves." No doubt he is right,--within limits. But may not a
+_healthy_ laborer find in the startling effects of the younger Cobb
+refreshment as precisely adapted to idealize his life, and divert his
+thoughts from a hard day's work, as that for which the college-professor
+seeks a tragedy of Sophocles or a romance of Hawthorne?
+
+The chapter treating of "Mental Hygiene as affected by Physical
+Influences" begins with such warnings against vitiated air as all
+intelligent people read and believe,--yet not so vitally as to compel
+corporations to reform their halls and conveyances. The remarks upon
+diet have a very practical tendency. Dr. Ray, while declining to commit
+himself to any theory, is very emphatic in his leanings towards what is
+called vegetarianism. He questions the popular impression that
+hard-working men require much larger quantities of animal food than
+those whose employments are of a sedentary character. Although
+confessing that we lack statistics from which to establish the relative
+working-powers of animal and vegetable substances, Dr. Ray declares that
+the few observations which have met his notice are in favor of a diet
+chiefly vegetable. The late Henry Colman was satisfied that no men did
+more work or showed better health than the Scotch farm-laborers, whose
+diet was almost entirely oatmeal. In the California mines no class of
+persons better endure hardships or accomplish greater results than the
+Chinese, who live principally on vegetable food. It is also noticed, as
+pertinent to the point, that the standard of health is probably much
+higher among the people just named than among our New-England laborers.
+Dr. Ray sums up by saying that "there is no necessity for believing that
+the supply required by the waste of material which physical exercise
+produces cannot be as effectually furnished by vegetable as by animal
+substances." This is strong testimony from a physician of standing and
+authority. Not otherwise have asserted various reform-doctors who are
+not supposed to move in the first medical circles. The value of any
+approximate decision of the vegetarian question can hardly be
+overestimated. There are thousands of families of very moderate means
+who strain every nerve to feed their children upon beef and mutton,--and
+this with the tacit approval, or by the positive advice, of physicians
+in good repute. Can our children be brought up equally well upon
+potatoes and hasty-pudding? May the two or three hundred dollars thus
+annually saved be better spent in a trip to the country or a visit to
+the sea-side? He would be a benefactor to his countrymen who could
+affirmatively answer these questions from observations, statistics, and
+arguments which commanded the assent of all intelligent men.
+
+Dr. Ray forcibly exhibits the radical faults of our common systems of
+education. He exposes the vulgar fallacy, that the growth and discipline
+of the mind are tested by the amount of task-work it can be made to
+accomplish. The efficiency of a given course of training is indicated by
+the power and endurance which it imparts,--not by such pyrotechny as may
+be let off before an examining committee. The amount of labor in the
+shape of school-exercises habitually imposed on the young strains the
+mind far beyond the highest degree of healthy endurance. This is shown
+by illustrations which our limits compel us to omit: they are worthy to
+be pondered by every conscientious parent and teacher in the land. Our
+national neglect of a right home-education brings Dr. Ray to a train of
+remarks which sustains what we were led to say in noticing Jean Paul's
+"Levana" a few months ago. "How many of this generation," writes our
+author, "complete their childhood, scarcely feeling the dominion of any
+will but their own, and obeying no higher law than the caprice of the
+moment! Instead of the firm, but gentle sway that quietly represses or
+moderates every outbreak of temper, that checks the impatience of
+desire, that requires and encourages self-denial, and turns the
+performance of duty into pleasure,--they experience only the feeble and
+fitful rule that yields to the slightest opposition, and rather
+stimulates than represses the selfish manifestations of our nature." The
+criticism is just. It is to parents, rather than to children, that our
+educational energies should now address themselves. For what
+school-polish can imitate the lustre of a youth home-reared under the
+authority of a wise and commanding love? But our adult-instruction must
+go deeper than a recommendation of the best scheme of household
+discipline the wit of man can devise. Be the government as rigid as it
+may, the children will imitate the worst portions of the characters
+disclosed in the family. The selfish and worldly at heart will find it
+wellnigh impossible to endow their children with high motives of action.
+
+We cordially indorse what is said of those harpy-defilers of knowledge
+known as juvenile books. A limited use of the works of Abbott,
+Edgeworth, Sedgwick, and a very few others may certainly be permitted.
+But the common practice of removing every occasion for effort from the
+path of the young--of boning and spicing the mental aliment of our
+fathers for the palates of our sons--would be a ridiculous folly, if it
+were not a grievous one. Suitable reading for an average boy of ten
+years may be found in the best authors. For it is well observed by Dr.
+Ray, that, if the lad does not perceive the full significance of
+Shakspeare's thoughts or the deepest harmony of Spenser's verse, if he
+does not wholly appreciate the keen sagacity of Gibbon or the quiet
+charm of Prescott, he will, nevertheless, catch glimpses of the higher
+upper sphere in which a poet moves, and fix in his mind lasting images
+of purity and loveliness, or he will learn on good authority the facts
+of history, and feel somewhat of its grandeur and dignity. To the sort
+of reading which naturally succeeds the Peter-Parley dilutions of
+wisdom we can only allude to thank Dr. Ray for speaking so clearly and
+to the point.
+
+But it becomes necessary to pass over many pages which we had marked for
+approving comment. In conclusion it may be said that this treatise on
+Mental Hygiene is full of wholesome rebukes and valuable suggestions.
+Yet the impression of New-England, or even of American life, which a
+stranger might receive from it, would be lamentably false. In a special
+department, Dr. Ray is an able scientist. To a wide-embracing philosophy
+he does not always show claims. There has been heart-sickening
+corruption in all prosperous societies,--especially in such as have been
+debauched by complicity with Slavery. It is the duty of some men of
+science and benevolence to be ever probing among the defilements of our
+fallen nature, to breathe the tainted air of the lazar-house, to consort
+with madness and crime. Few men deserve our respect and gratitude like
+these. But let them be cheered by remembering that in the great world
+outside the hospital there are still elements of worthiness and
+nobility. Wealth was never more wisely liberal, talents were never held
+to stricter accountability, genius has never been more united with pure
+and high aims, than in the Loyal States to-day. The descendants of
+"those much-enduring men and women of colonial times" have not shown
+themselves altogether "incapable of toil and exposure." From offices and
+counting-rooms, from libraries and laboratories, our young men have gone
+forth to service as arduous as that which tried their fore-fathers. How
+many of them have borne every hardship and privation of war, every
+cruelty of filthy prisons and carrion-food, yet have breasted the
+slave-masters' treason till its bullet struck the pulse of life! Let us
+remember that the most divergent tendencies of character, even such as
+we cannot associate with an ideal poise of mind, may work to worthiest
+ends in this ill-balanced world of humanity. The saying of Novalis, that
+health is interesting only in a scientific point of view, disease being
+necessary to individualization, shows one side of the shield of which
+Dr. Ray presents the other.
+
+
+
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS
+
+RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+
+The Life of Philidor, Musician and Chess-Player. By George Allen, Greek
+Professor in the University of Pennsylvania. With a Supplementary Essay
+on Philidor as Chess-Author and Chess-Player, by Tassilo von Heydebrand
+und der Lasa, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the
+King of Prussia at the Court of Saxe-Weimar. Philadelphia. E. H. Butler
+& Co. 12mo. pp. xii., 156. $1.50.
+
+Spots on the Sun; or, The Plumb-Line Papers. Being a Series of Essays,
+or Critical Examinations of Difficult Passages of Scripture; together
+with a Careful Inquiry into Certain Dogmas of the Church. By Rev. T. M.
+Hopkins, A. M., Geneva, N. Y. Auburn. William J. Moses. 16mo. pp. 367.
+$1.00.
+
+Frank Warrington. By the Author of "Rutledge." New York. G. W. Carleton.
+12mo. pp. 478. $1.50.
+
+Husband and Wife; or, The Science of Human Development through Inherited
+Tendencies. By the Author of "The Parent's Guide," etc. New York. G. W.
+Carleton. 12mo. pp. 259. $1.25.
+
+Sermons preached before His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, during
+his Tour in the East, in the Spring of 1862, with Notices of some of the
+Localities visited. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Regius Professor
+of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, Honorary Chaplain
+in Ordinary to the Queen, etc., etc. New York. C. Scribner. 12mo. pp.
+272. $1.50.
+
+Palmoni; or, The Numerals of Scripture a Proof of Inspiration. A Free
+Inquiry. By M. Mahan, D. D., St. Marks-in-the-Bowery Professor of
+Ecclesiastical History in the General Theological Seminary. New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 176. 75 cts.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] When Columbus sailed on his fourth voyage, in which he hoped to pass
+through what we now know as the Isthmus of Panama, and sail
+northwestward, he wrote to his king and queen that thus he should come
+as near as men could come to "the Terrestrial Paradise."
+
+[2] Norandel was the half-brother of Amadis, both of them being sons of
+Lisuarte, King of England.
+
+[3] Maneli was son of Cildadan, King of Ireland.
+
+[4] Quadragante was a distinguished giant, who had been conquered by
+Amadis, and was now his sure friend.
+
+[5] The "Spectators" 414 and 477, which urge particularly a better taste
+in gardening, are dated 1712; and the first volume of the "Ichnographia"
+(under a different name, indeed) appeared in 1715.
+
+[6] This is averred of the translation of the "Oeconomics" of Xenophon,
+before cited in these papers, and published under Professor Bradley's
+name.
+
+[7] _Joseph Andrews_, Bk. III. Ch. 4, where Fielding, thief that he was,
+appropriates the story that Xenophon tells of Cyrus.
+
+[8] _Works of Earl of Orford_, Vol. III. p. 490.
+
+[9] Chap. IX. p. 136, Cobbett's edition.
+
+[10] It is to be remarked, however, that the Rev. Mr. Smith, (farmer of
+Lois-Weedon,) by the distribution of his crop, avails himself virtually
+of a clean fallow, every alternate year.
+
+[11] _Transactions_, Vol. XXX p. 140.
+
+[12] _Detached Thoughts on Men and Manners:_ Wm. Shenstone.
+
+[13] Completing the two volumes of collected poems.
+
+[14] A taste for this had been early indicated, especially in the essays
+on Bunyan and Robert Dinsmore, in "Old Portraits and Modern Sketches,"
+and in passages of "Literary Recreations." Whittier's prose, by the way,
+is all worth reading.
+
+[15] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État des Convulsionnaires_, p. 104.
+
+[16] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., p. 104.
+
+[17] _Vains Efforts des Discernans_, p. 36.
+
+[18] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., p. 66.
+
+[19] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., p. 67. The latter part
+of the quotation alludes to crucifixion and other symbolical
+representations, to which the convulsionists were much given.
+
+This state of ecstasy is one which has existed, probably, in occasional
+instances, through all past time, especially among religious
+enthusiasts. The writings of the ancient fathers contain constant
+allusions to it. St. Augustine, for example, speaks of it as a
+phenomenon which he has personally witnessed. Referring to persons thus
+impressed, he says,--"I have seen some who addressed their discourse
+sometimes to the persons around them, sometimes to other beings, as if
+they were actually present; and when they came to themselves, some could
+report what they had seen, others preserved no recollection of it
+whatever."--_De Gen. ad Litter._ Lib. XII. c. 13.
+
+[20] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., p. 77.
+
+[21] _Lettre de M. Colbert_, du 8 Février, 1733, à Madame de Coetquen.
+
+[22] Montgéron, Tom. II.
+
+[23] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'Oeuvre_, etc., p. 123.
+
+[24] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc. p. 82.
+
+[25] _Ibid._ p. 17.
+
+[26] _Ibid._ p. 19.
+
+[27] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., p. 77.
+
+[28] In proof of this opinion, Montgéron gives numerous quotations from
+St. Augustine, St. Thomas, St. Gregory, and various theologians and
+ecclesiastics of high reputation, to the effect that "it often happens
+that errors and defects are mixed in with holy and divine revelations,
+(of saints and others, in ecstasy,) either by some vice of nature, or by
+the deception of the Devil, in the same way that our minds often draw
+false conclusions from true premises."--_Ibid._ pp. 88-96.
+
+[29] _Ibid._ p. 94.
+
+[30] _Ibid._ p. 95.
+
+[31] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., pp. 102, 103.
+
+[32] _Ibid._ p. 73.
+
+[33] _Vains Efforts des Discernans_, pp. 39, 40.
+
+[34] _Lettres de M. Poncet_, Let. VII. p. 129.
+
+[35] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., p. 76.
+
+[36] _Recherche de la Vérité_, p. 25.
+
+[37] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., p. 76.
+
+[38] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., p. 73.
+
+[39] _Philosophy of Mysterious Agents, Human and Mundane_, by E. C.
+Rogers, Boston, 1853, p. 321, and elsewhere. He argues, "that, in as far
+as persons become 'mediums,' they are mere automatons," surrendering all
+mental control, and resigning their manhood.
+
+[40] Montgéron, Tom. II. _Idée de l'État_, etc., pp. 34, 35.
+
+[41] Hume's _Essays_, Vol. II. sect. 10.
+
+[42] Diderot's _Pensées Philosophiques_. The original edition appeared
+in 1746, published in Paris.
+
+[43] Dom La Taste's _Lettres Théologiques_, Tom. II. p. 878.
+
+[44] Montgéron expressly tells us, that, in the case of Marguerite
+Catherine Turpin, her limbs were drawn, by means of strong bands, "with
+such, extreme violence that the bones of her knees and thighs cracked
+with a loud noise."--Tom. III. p. 553.
+
+[45] Montgéron supplies evidence that the expression _clubs_, here used,
+is not misapplied. He furnishes quotations from a petition addressed to
+the Parliament of Paris by the mother of the girl Turpin, praying for a
+legal investigation of her daughter's case by the attorney-general, and
+offering to furnish him with the names, station in life, and addresses
+of the witnesses to the wonderful cure, in this case, of a monstrous
+deformity that was almost congenital; in which petition it is
+stated,--"Little by little the force with which she was struck was
+augmented, and at last the blows were given with billets of oak-wood,
+one end of which was reduced in diameter so as to form a handle, while
+the other end, with which the strokes were dealt, was from seven to
+eight inches in circumference, so that these billets were in fact small
+clubs." (Montgéron, Tom. III. p. 552.) This would give from eight to
+nine inches, English measure, or nearly three inches in diameter, and of
+_oak_!
+
+[46] _Dissertation Théologique sur les Convulsions_, pp. 70, 71.
+
+[47] _De la Folie_, Tom. II. p. 373.
+
+[48] Tympany is defined by Johnson, "A kind of obstructed flatulence
+that swells the body like a drum."
+
+[49] _The Epidemics of the Middle Ages_, pp. 89-91. The same work
+supplies other points of analogy between this epidemic and that of St.
+Médard; for example: "Where the disease was completely developed, the
+attack commenced with epileptic convulsions."--p. 88.
+
+[50] _Traité du Somnambulisme_, pp. 384, 385.
+
+[51] _Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales_, Art. _Convulsions_.
+
+[52] _De la Folie, considérée, sous la Point de Vue Pathologique,
+Philosophique, Historique, et Judiciaire_, par le Dr. Calmeil, Paris,
+1845, Tom. II. pp. 386, 387.
+
+[53] See, in Calmeil's work cited above, the Chapter entitled _Théomanie
+Extato-Convulsive parmi les Jansenistes_, Tom. II. pp. 313-400.
+
+[54] _Du Surnaturel en Général_, Tom. II. pp. 94, 95.
+
+[55] I translate literally the words of the original: "_avec des
+convulsionnaires en gomme élastique_," p. 90.
+
+[56] _Du Surnaturel en Général_, Tom. II. pp. 90, 91.
+
+[57] See note in De Gasparin's "Experiments in Table-Moving."
+
+[58] Montgéron, Tom. III. p. 703.
+
+[59] Montgéron, Tom. III. pp. 712, 713.
+
+[60] Carpenter's _Principles of Human Physiology_, p. 647.
+
+[61] Carpenter's _Principles of Human Physiology_, p. 561. The story,
+incredible if it appear, is indorsed by Carpenter as vouched for by Mr.
+Richard Smith, late Senior Surgeon of the Bristol Infirmary, under whose
+care the sufferer had been. The case resulted, after a fortnight, in
+death.
+
+[62] Such will be found throughout Hecquet's "Le Naturalisme des
+Convulsions dans les Maladies," Paris, 1733. Dr. Philippe Hecquet, born
+in 1661, acquired great reputation in Paris as a physician, being
+elected in 1712 President of the Faculty of Medicine in that city. He is
+the author of numerous works on medical subjects. In his "Naturalisme
+des Convulsions," published at the very time when the St.-Médard
+excitement was at the highest, he admits the main facts, but denies
+their miraculous character.
+
+[63] "The eye, contrary to the usual notions, is a very insensible part
+of the body, unless affected with inflammation; for, though the mucous
+membrane which covers its surface, and which is prolonged from the skin,
+is acutely sensible to tactile impressions, the interior is by no means
+so, as is well known to those who have operated much on this
+organ."--Carpenter's _Principles of Human Physiology_, p. 682.
+
+[64] Hume's _Essays_, Vol. II. p. 133.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No.
+77, March, 1864, by Various
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77,
+March, 1864, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #19492]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>THE</h1>
+
+<h1>ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</h1>
+
+<h3>A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.</h3>
+
+<h2>VOL. XIII.&mdash;MARCH, 1864.&mdash;NO. LXXVII.</h2>
+
+<p>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by <span class="smcap">Ticknor
+and Fields</span>, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
+District of Massachusetts.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: Minor typos corrected, and footnotes have been
+moved to the end of the text. Table of Contents created for the HTML version.]</p>
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+<p>
+<a href="#THE_QUEEN_OF_CALIFORNIA"><b>THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_BROTHER_OF_MERCY"><b>THE BROTHER OF MERCY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#AMBASSADORS_IN_BONDS"><b>AMBASSADORS IN BONDS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#WET-WEATHER_WORK"><b>WET-WEATHER WORK.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#ON_THE_RELATION_OF_ART_TO_NATURE"><b>ON THE RELATION OF ART TO NATURE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#OUR_CLASSMATE"><b>OUR CLASSMATE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#WHITTIER"><b>WHITTIER.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_CONVULSIONISTS_OF_ST_MEDARD"><b>THE CONVULSIONISTS OF ST. M&Eacute;DARD.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#HOUSE_AND_HOME_PAPERS"><b>HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#SONG"><b>SONG.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#OUR_SOLDIERS"><b>OUR SOLDIERS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#WILLIAM_MAKEPEACE_THACKERAY"><b>WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_PENINSULAR_CAMPAIGN"><b>THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES"><b>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#RECENT_AMERICAN_PUBLICATIONS"><b>RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS</b></a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_QUEEN_OF_CALIFORNIA" id="THE_QUEEN_OF_CALIFORNIA"></a>THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I can see the excitement which this title arouses as it is flashed
+across the sierras, down the valleys, and into the various reading-rooms
+and parlors of the Golden City of the Golden State. As the San Francisco
+"Bulletin" announces some day, that in the "Atlantic Monthly," issued in
+Boston the day before, one of the articles is on "The Queen of
+California," what contest, in every favored circle of the most favored
+of lands, who the Queen may be! Is it the blond maiden who took a string
+of hearts with her in a leash, when she left us one sad morning? is it
+the hardy, brown adventuress, who, in her bark-roofed lodge, serves us
+out our boiled dog daily, as we come home from our water-gullies, and
+sews on for us weekly the few buttons which we still find indispensable
+in that toil? is it some Jessie of the lion-heart, heroine of a hundred
+days or of a thousand? is it that witch with gray eyes, cunningly
+hidden,&mdash;were they puzzled last night, or were they all wisdom
+crowded?&mdash;as she welcomed me, and as she bade me good-bye? Good Heavens!
+how many Queens of California are regnant this day! and of any one of
+them this article might be written.</p>
+
+<p>No, <i>Se&ntilde;ores!</i> No, <i>Caballeros!</i> Throng down to the wharves to see the
+Golden Era or the Cornelius's Coffin, or whatever other mail-steamer may
+bring these words to your longing eyes. Open to the right and left as
+Adams's express-messenger carries the earliest copy of the "Atlantic
+Monthly," sealed with the reddest wax, tied with the reddest tape, from
+the Corner Store direct to him who was once the life and light of the
+Corner Store, who now studies eschscholtzias through a telescope
+thirty-eight miles away on Monte Diablo! Rush upon the newsboy who then
+brings forth the bale of this Journal for the Multitude, to find that
+the Queen of California of whom we write is no modern queen, but that
+she reigned some five hundred and fifty-five years ago. Her precise
+contemporaries were Amadis of Gaul, the Emperor Esplandian, and the
+Sultan Radiaro. And she <i>flourished</i>, as the books say, at the time when
+this Sultan made his unsuccessful attack on the city of
+Constantinople,&mdash;all of which she saw, part of which she was.</p>
+
+<p>She was not <i>petite</i>, nor blond, nor golden-haired. She was large and
+black as the ace of clubs. But the prejudice of color did not then exist
+even among the most brazen-faced or the most copper-headed. For, as you
+shall learn, she was reputed the most beautiful of women; and it was
+she, O Californians, who wedded the gallant prince Talanque,&mdash;your
+first-known king. The supporters of the arms of the beautiful shield of
+the State of California should be, on the right, a knight armed
+<i>cap-&agrave;-pie</i>, and, on the left, an Amazon sable, clothed in skins, as you
+shall now see.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. E. E. Hale, of Boston, sent to the Antiquarian Society last year a
+paper which shows that the name of California was known to literature
+before it was given to our peninsula by Cort&eacute;s. Cort&eacute;s discovered the
+peninsula in 1535, and seems to have called it California then. But Mr.
+Hale shows that twenty-five years before that time, in a romance called
+the "Deeds of Esplandian," the name of California was given to an island
+"on the right hand of the Indies." This romance was a sequel, or fifth
+book, to the celebrated romance of "Amadis of Gaul." Such books made the
+principal reading of the young blades of that day who could read at all.
+It seems clear enough, that Cort&eacute;s and his friends, coming to the point
+farthest to the west then known,&mdash;which all of them, from Columbus down,
+supposed to be in the East Indies,&mdash;gave to their discovery the name,
+familiar to romantic adventurers, of <i>California</i>, to indicate their
+belief that it was on the "right hand of the Indies." Just so Columbus
+called his discoveries "the Indies,"&mdash;just so was the name "El Dorado"
+given to regions which it was hoped would prove to be golden. The
+romance had said, that in the whole of the romance-island of California
+there was no metal but gold. Cort&eacute;s, who did not find a pennyweight of
+dust in the real California, still had no objection to giving so golden
+a name to his discovery.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hale, with that brevity which becomes antiquarians, does not go into
+any of the details of the life and adventures of the Queen of California
+as the romance describes them. We propose, in this paper, to supply from
+it this reticency of his essay.</p>
+
+<p>The reader must understand, then, that, in this romance, printed in
+1510, sixty years or less after Constantinople really fell into the
+hands of the Turks, the author describes a pretended assault made upon
+it by the Infidel powers, and the rallying for its rescue of Amadis and
+Perion and Lisuarte, and all the princes of chivalry with whom the novel
+of "Amadis of Gaul" has dealt. They succeed in driving away the Pagans,
+"as you shall hear." In the midst of this great crusade, every word of
+which, of course, is the most fictitious of fiction, appear the episodes
+which describe California and its Queen.</p>
+
+<p>First, of California itself here is the description:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now you are to hear the most extraordinary thing that ever was heard of
+in any chronicles or in the memory of man, by which the city would have
+been lost on the next day, but that where the danger came, there the
+safety came also. Know, then, that, on the right hand of the Indies,
+there is an island called California, very close to the side of the
+Terrestrial Paradise,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and it was peopled by black women, without any
+man among them, for they lived in the fashion of Amazons. They were of
+strong and hardy bodies, of ardent courage and great force. Their island
+was the strongest in all the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky
+shores. Their arms were all of gold, and so was the harness of the wild
+beasts which they tamed and rode. For, in the whole island, there was no
+metal but gold. They lived in caves wrought out of the rock with much
+labor. They had many ships with which they sailed out to other countries
+to obtain booty.</p>
+
+<p>"In this island, called California, there were many griffins, on account
+of the great ruggedness of the country, and its infinite host of wild
+beasts, such as never were seen in any other part of the world. And when
+these griffins were yet small, the women went out with traps to take
+them. They covered themselves over with very thick hides, and when they
+had caught the little griffins, they took them to their caves, and
+brought them up there. And being themselves quite a match for the
+griffins, they fed them with the men whom they took prisoners, and with
+the boys to whom they gave birth, and brought them up with such arts
+that they got much good from them, and no harm. Every man who landed on
+the island was immediately devoured by these griffins; and although they
+had had enough, none the less would they seize them and carry them high
+up in the air, in their flight, and when they were tired of carrying
+them, would let them fall anywhere as soon as they died."</p>
+
+<p>These griffins are the Monitors of the story, or, if the reader pleases,
+the Merrimacs. After this description, the author goes on to introduce
+us to our Queen. Observe, O reader, that, although very black, and very
+large, she is very beautiful. Why did not Powers carve his statue of
+California out of the blackest of Egyptian marbles? Try once more, Mr.
+Powers! We have found her now. &#917;&#965;&#961;&#951;&#954;&#945;&#956;&#949;&#957;!</p>
+
+<p>"Now at the time when those great men of the Pagans sailed with their
+great fleets, as the history has told you, there reigned in this island
+of California a Queen, very large in person, the most beautiful of all
+of them, of blooming years, and in her thoughts desirous of achieving
+great things, strong of limb and of great courage, more than any of
+those who had filled her throne before her. She heard tell that all the
+greater part of the world was moving in this onslaught against the
+Christians. She did not know what Christians were, for she had no
+knowledge of any parts of the world excepting those which were close to
+her. But she desired to see the world and its various people; and
+thinking, that, with the great strength of herself and of her women, she
+should have the greater part of their plunder, either from her rank or
+from her prowess, she began to talk with all of those who were most
+skilled in war, and told them that it would be well, if, sailing in
+their great fleets, they also entered on this expedition, in which all
+these great princes and lords were embarking. She animated and excited
+them, showing them the great profits and honors which they would gain in
+this enterprise,&mdash;above all, the great fame which would be theirs in all
+the world; while, if they stayed in their island, doing nothing but what
+their grandmothers did, they were really buried alive,&mdash;they were dead
+while they lived, passing their days without fame and without glory, as
+did the very brutes."</p>
+
+<p>Now the people of California were as willing then to embark in distant
+expeditions of honor as they are now. And the first battalion that ever
+sailed from the ports of that country was thus provided:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"So much did this mighty Queen, Calafia, say to her people, that she not
+only moved them to consent to this enterprise, but they were so eager to
+extend their fame through other lands that they begged her to hasten to
+sea, so that they might earn all these honors, in alliance with such
+great men. The Queen, seeing the readiness of her subjects, without any
+delay gave order that her great fleet should be provided with food, and
+with arms all of gold,&mdash;more of everything than was needed. Then she
+commanded that her largest vessel should be prepared with gratings of
+the stoutest timber; and she bade place in it as many as five hundred of
+these griffins, of which I tell you, that, from the time they were born,
+they were trained to feed on men. And she ordered that the beasts on
+which she and her people rode should be embarked, and all the
+best-armed women and those most skilled in war whom she had in her
+island. And then, leaving such force in the island that it should be
+secure, with the others she went to sea. And they made such haste that
+they arrived at the fleets of the Pagans the night after the battle of
+which I have told you; so that they were received with great joy, and
+the fleet was visited at once by many great lords, and they were
+welcomed with great acceptance. She wished to know at once in what
+condition affairs were, asking many questions, which they answered
+fully. Then she said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'You have fought this city with your great forces, and you cannot take
+it; now, if you are willing, I wish to try what my forces are worth
+to-morrow, if you will give orders accordingly.'</p>
+
+<p>"All these great lords said that they would give such commands as she
+should bid them.</p>
+
+<p>"'Then send word to all your other captains that they shall to-morrow on
+no account leave their camps, they nor their people, until I command
+them; and you shall see a combat more remarkable than you have ever seen
+or heard of.'</p>
+
+<p>"Word was sent at once to the great Sultan of Liquia, and the Sultan of
+Halapa, who had command of all the men who were there; and they gave
+these orders to all their people, wondering much what was the thought of
+this Queen."</p>
+
+<p>Up to this moment, it may be remarked, these Monitors, as we have called
+the griffins, had never been fairly tried in any attack on fortified
+towns. The Dupont of the fleet, whatever her name may have been, may
+well have looked with some curiosity on the issue. The experiment was
+not wholly successful, as will be seen.</p>
+
+<p>"When the night had passed and the morning came, the Queen Calafia
+sallied on shore, she and her women, armed with that armor of gold, all
+adorned with the most precious stones,&mdash;which are to be found in the
+island of California like stones of the field for their abundance. And
+they mounted on their fierce beasts, caparisoned as I have told you; and
+then she ordered that a door should be opened in the vessel where the
+griffins were. They, when they saw the field, rushed forward with great
+haste, showing great pleasure in flying through the air, and at once
+caught sight of the host of men who were close at hand. As they were
+famished, and knew no fear, each griffin pounced upon his man, seized
+him in his claws, carried him high into the air, and began to devour
+him. They shot many arrows at them, and gave them many great blows with
+lances and with swords. But their feathers were so tight joined and so
+stout, that no one could strike through to their flesh." (This is
+Armstrong <i>versus</i> Monitor.) "For their own party, this was the most
+lovely chase and the most agreeable that they had ever seen till then;
+and as the Turks saw them flying on high with their enemies, they gave
+such loud and clear shouts of joy as pierced the heavens. And it was the
+most sad and bitter thing for those in the city, when the father saw the
+son lifted in the air, and the son his father, and the brother his
+brother; so that they all wept and raved, as was sad indeed to see.</p>
+
+<p>"When the griffins had flown through the air for a while, and had
+dropped their prizes, some on the earth and some on the sea, they
+turned, as at first, and, without any fear, seized up as many more; at
+which their masters had so much the more joy, and the Christians so much
+the more misery. What shall I tell you? The terror was so great among
+them all, that, while some hid themselves away under the vaults of the
+towers for safety, all the others disappeared from the ramparts, so that
+there were none left for the defence. Queen Calafia saw this, and, with
+a loud voice, she bade the two Sultans, who commanded the troops, send
+for the ladders, for the city was taken. At once they all rushed
+forward, placed the ladders, and mounted upon the wall. But the
+griffins, who had already dropped those whom they had seized before, as
+soon as they saw the Turks, having no knowledge of them, seized upon
+them just as they had seized upon the Christians, and, flying through
+the air, carried them up also, when, letting them fall, no one of them
+escaped death. Thus were exchanged the pleasure and the pain. For those
+on the outside now were those who mourned in great sorrow for those who
+were so handled; and those who were within, who, seeing their enemies
+advance on every side, had thought they were beaten, now took great
+comfort. So, at this moment, as those on the ramparts stopped,
+panic-struck, fearing that they should die as their comrades did, the
+Christians leaped forth from the vaults where they were hiding, and
+quickly slew many of the Turks who were gathered on the walls, and
+compelled the rest to leap down, and then sprang back to their
+hiding-places, as they saw the griffins return.</p>
+
+<p>"When Queen Calafia saw this, she was very sad, and she said, 'O ye
+idols in whom I believe and whom I worship, what is this which has
+happened as favorably to my enemies as to my friends? I believed that
+with your aid and with my strong forces and great munition I should be
+able to destroy them. But it has not so proved.' And she gave orders to
+her women that they should mount the ladders and struggle to gain the
+towers and put to the sword all those who took refuge in them to be
+secure from the griffins. They obeyed their Queen's commands, dismounted
+at once, placing before their breasts such breastplates as no weapon
+could pierce, and, as I told you, with the armor all of gold which
+covered their legs and their arms. Quickly they crossed the plain, and
+mounted the ladders lightly, and possessed themselves of the whole
+circuit of the walls, and began to fight fiercely with those who had
+taken refuge in the vaults of the towers. But they defended themselves
+bravely, being indeed in quarters well protected, with but narrow doors.
+And those of the city, who were in the streets below, shot at the women
+with arrows and darts, which pierced them through the sides, so that
+they received many wounds, because their golden armor was so weak."
+(This is Keokuk <i>versus</i> Armstrong.) "And the griffins returned, flying
+above them, and would not leave them.</p>
+
+<p>"When Queen Calafia saw this, she cried to the Sultans, 'Make your
+troops mount, that they may defend mine against these fowls of mine who
+have dared attack them.' At once the Sultans commanded their people to
+ascend the ladders and gain the circle and the towers, in order that by
+night the whole host might join them, and they might gain the city. The
+soldiers rushed from their camps, and mounted on the wall where the
+women were fighting,&mdash;but when the griffins saw them, at once they
+seized on them as ravenously as if all that day they had not caught
+anybody. And when the women threatened them with their knives, they were
+only the more enraged, so that, although they took shelter for
+themselves, the griffins dragged them out by main strength, lifted them
+up into the air, and then let them fall,&mdash;so that they all died. The
+fear and panic of the Pagans were so great, that, much more quickly than
+they had mounted, did they descend and take refuge in their camp. The
+Queen, seeing this rout without remedy, sent at once to command those
+who held watch and guard on the griffins, that they should recall them
+and shut them up in the vessel. They, then, hearing the Queen's command,
+mounted on top of the mast, and called them with loud voices in their
+language; and they, as if they had been human beings, all obeyed, and
+obediently returned into their cages."</p>
+
+<p>The first day's attack of these flying Monitors on the beleaguered city
+was not, therefore, a distinguished success. The author derives a lesson
+from it, which we do not translate, but recommend to the students of
+present history. It fills a whole chapter, of which the title is,
+"Exhortation addressed by the author to the Christians, setting before
+their eyes the great obedience which these griffins, brute animals,
+rendered to those who had instructed them."</p>
+
+<p>The Sultans may have well doubted whether their new ally was quite what
+she had claimed to be. She felt this herself, and said to them,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Since my coming has caused you so much injury, I wish that it may
+cause you equal pleasure. Command your people that they shall sally out,
+and we will go to the city against those knights who dare to appear
+before us, and we will let them press on the most severe combat that
+they can, and I, with my people, will take the front of the battle.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Sultans gave command at once to all of their soldiers who had
+armor, that they should rush forth immediately, and should join in
+mounting upon the rampart, now that these birds were encaged again. And
+they, with the horsemen, followed close upon Queen Calafia, and
+immediately the army rushed forth and pressed upon the wall; but not so
+prosperously as they had expected, because the people of the town were
+already there in their harness, and as the Pagans mounted upon their
+ladders, the Christians threw them back, whence very many of them were
+killed and wounded. Others pressed forward with their iron picks and
+other tools, and dug fiercely in the circuit of the wall. These were
+very much distressed and put in danger by the oil and other things which
+were thrown upon them, but not so much but that they succeeded in making
+many breaches and openings. But when this came to the ears of the
+Emperor, who always kept command of ten thousand horsemen, he commanded
+all of them to defend these places as well as they could. So that, to
+the grief of the Pagans, the people repaired the breaches with many
+timbers and stones and piles of earth.</p>
+
+<p>"When the Queen saw this repulse, she rushed with her own attendants
+with great speed to the gate Aquile&ntilde;a, which was guarded by Norandel.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+She herself went in advance of the others, wholly covered with one of
+those shields which we have told you they wore, and with her lance held
+strongly in her hand. Norandel, when he saw her coming, went forth to
+meet her, and they met so vehemently that their lances were broken in
+pieces, and yet neither of them fell. Norandel at once put hand upon his
+sword, and the Queen upon her great knife, of which the blade was more
+than a palm broad, and they gave each other great blows. At once they
+all joined in a <i>m&ecirc;l&eacute;e</i>, one against another, all so confused and with
+such terrible blows that it was a great marvel to see it, and if some of
+the women fell upon the ground, so did some of the cavaliers. And if
+this history does not tell in extent which of them fell, and by what
+blow of each, showing the great force and courage of the combatants, it
+is because their number was so great, and they fell so thick, one upon
+another, that that great master, Helisabat, who saw and described the
+scene, could not determine what in particular passed in these exploits,
+except in a few very rare affairs, like this of the Queen and Norandel,
+who both joined fight as you have heard."</p>
+
+<p>It is to the great master Helisabat that a grateful posterity owes all
+these narratives and the uncounted host of romances which grew from
+them. For, in the first place, he was the skilful leech who cured all
+the wounds of all the parties of distinction who were not intended to
+die; and in the second place, his notes furnish the <i>m&eacute;moires pour
+servir</i>, of which all the writers say they availed themselves. The
+originals, alas! are lost.</p>
+
+<p>"The tumult was so great, that at once the battle between these two was
+ended, those on each side coming to the aid of their chief. Then, I tell
+you, that the things that this Queen did in arms, like slaying knights,
+or throwing them wounded from their horses, as she pressed audaciously
+forward among her enemies, were such, that it cannot be told nor
+believed that any woman has ever shown such prowess.</p>
+
+<p>"And as she dealt with so many noble knights, and no one of them left
+her without giving her many and heavy blows, yet she received them all
+upon her very strong and hard shield.</p>
+
+<p>"When Talanque and Maneli<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> saw what this woman was doing, and the
+great loss which those of their own party were receiving from her, they
+rushed out upon her, and struck her with such blows as if they
+considered her possessed. And her sister, who was named Liota, who saw
+this, rushed in, like a mad lioness, to her succor, and pressed the
+knights so mortally, that, to the loss of their honor, she drew Calafia
+from their power, and placed her among her own troops again. And at this
+time you would have said that the people of the fleets had the
+advantage, so that, if it had not been for the mercy of God and the
+great force of the Count Frandalo and his companions, the city would
+have been wholly lost. Many fell dead on both sides, but many more of
+the Pagans, because they had the weaker armor.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus," continues the romance, "as you have heard, went on this attack
+and cruel battle till nearly night. At this time there was no one of the
+gates open, excepting that which Norandel guarded. As to the others, the
+knights, having been withdrawn from them, ought, of course, to have
+bolted them; yet it was very different, as I will tell you. For, as the
+two Sultans greatly desired to see these women fight, they had bidden
+their own people not to enter into the lists. But when they saw how the
+day was going, they pressed upon the Christians so fiercely that
+gradually they might all enter into the city, and, as it was, more than
+a hundred men and women did enter. And God, who guided the Emperor,
+having directed him to keep the other gates shut, knowing in what way
+the battle fared, he pressed them so hardly with his knights, that,
+killing some, he drove the others out. Then the Pagans lost many of
+their people, as they slew them from the towers,&mdash;more than two hundred
+of the women being slain. And those within also were not without great
+loss, since ten of the <i>cruzados</i> were killed, which gave great grief to
+their companions. These were Ledaderin de Fajarque, Trion and Imosil de
+Borgona, and the two sons of Isanjo. All the people of the city having
+returned, as I tell you, the Pagans also retired to their camps, and the
+Queen Calafia to her fleet, since she had not yet taken quarters on
+shore. And the other people entered into their ships; so that there was
+no more fighting that day."</p>
+
+<p>I have translated this passage at length, because it gives the reader an
+idea of the romantic literature of that day,&mdash;literally its only
+literature, excepting books of theology or of devotion. Over acres of
+such reading, served out in large folios,&mdash;the yellow-covered novels of
+their time,&mdash;did the Pizarros and Balboas and Cort&eacute;ses and other young
+blades while away the weary hours of their camp-life. Glad enough was
+Cort&eacute;s out of such a tale to get the noble name of his great discovery.</p>
+
+<p>The romance now proceeds to bring the different princes of chivalry from
+the West, as it has brought Calafia from the East. As soon as Amadis
+arrives at Constantinople, he sends for his son Esplandian, who was
+already in alliance with the Emperor of Greece. The Pagan Sultan of
+Liquia, and the Queen Calafia, hearing of their arrival, send them the
+following challenge:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Radiaro, Sultan of Liquia, shield and rampart of the Pagan Law,
+destroyer of Christians, cruel enemy of the enemies of the Gods, and the
+very Mighty Queen Calafia, Lady of the great island of California,
+famous for its great abundance of gold and precious stones: we have to
+announce to you, Amadis of Gaul, King of Great Britain, and you his son,
+Knight of the Great Serpent, that we are come into these parts with the
+intention of destroying this city of Constantinople, on account of the
+injury and loss which the much honored King Amato of Persia, our cousin
+and friend, has received from this bad Emperor, giving him favor and
+aid, because a part of his territory has been taken away from him by
+fraud. And as our desire in this thing is also to gain glory and fame in
+it, so also has fortune treated us favorably in that regard, for we know
+the great news, which has gone through all the world, of your great
+chivalry. We have agreed, therefore, if it is agreeable to you, or if
+your might is sufficient for it, to attempt a battle of our persons
+against yours in presence of this great company of the nations, the
+conquered to submit to the will of the conquerors, or to go to any place
+where they may order. And if you refuse this, we shall be able, with
+much cause, to join all your past glories to our own, counting them as
+being gained by us, whence it will clearly be seen in the future how the
+victory will be on our side."</p>
+
+<p>This challenge was taken to the Christian camp by a black and beautiful
+damsel, richly attired, and was discussed there in council. Amadis put
+an end to the discussion by saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'My good lords, as the affairs of men, like those of nations, are in
+the hands and will of God, whence no one can escape but as He wills, if
+we should in any way withdraw from this demand, it would give great
+courage to our enemies, and, more than this, great injury to our honor;
+especially so in this country, where we are strangers, and no one has
+seen what our power is, which in our own land is notorious, so that,
+while there we may be esteemed for courage, here we should be judged the
+greatest of cowards. Thus, placing confidence in the mercy of the Lord,
+I determine that the battle shall take place without delay.'</p>
+
+<p>"'If this is your wish,' said King Lisuarte and King Perion, 'so may it
+be, and may God help you with His grace!'</p>
+
+<p>"Then the King Amadis said to the damsel,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Friend, tell your lord and the Queen Calafia that we desire the battle
+with those arms that are most agreeable to them; that the field shall be
+this field, divided in the middle,&mdash;I giving my word that for nothing
+which may happen will we be succored by our own. And let them give the
+same order to their own; and if they wish the battle now, now it shall
+be.'</p>
+
+<p>"The damsel departed with this reply, which she repeated to those two
+princes. And the Queen Calafia asked her how the Christians appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"'Very nobly,' replied she, 'for they are all handsome and well armed.
+Yet I tell you, Queen, that, among them, this Knight of the Serpent
+[Esplandian, son of Amadis] is such as neither the past nor the present,
+nor, I believe, any who are to come, have ever seen one so handsome and
+so elegant, nor will see in the days which are to be. O Queen, what
+shall I say to you, but that, if he were of our faith, we might believe
+that our Gods had made him with their own hands, with all their power
+and wisdom, so that he lacks in nothing?'</p>
+
+<p>"The Queen, who heard her, said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Damsel, my friend, your words are too great.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It is not so,' said she; 'for, excepting the sight of him, there is
+nothing else which can give account of his great excellence.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then I say to you,' said the Queen, 'that I will not fight with such a
+man until I have first seen and talked with him; and I make this request
+to the Sultan, that he will gratify me in this thing, and arrange that I
+may see him.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Sultan said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I will do everything, O Queen, agreeably to your wish.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then,' said the damsel, 'I will go and obtain that which you ask for,
+according to your desire.'</p>
+
+<p>"And turning her horse, she approached the camp again, so that all
+thought that she brought the agreement for the battle. But as she
+approached, she called the Kings to the door of the tent, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'King Amadis, the Queen Calafia demands of you that you give order for
+her safe conduct, that she may come to-morrow morning and see your son.'</p>
+
+<p>"Amadis began to laugh, and said to the Kings,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'How does this demand seem to you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I say, let her come,' said King Lisuarte; 'it is a very good thing to
+see the most distinguished woman in the world.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Take this for your reply,' said Amadis to the damsel; 'and say that
+she shall be treated with all truth and honor.'</p>
+
+<p>"The damsel, having received this message, returned with great pleasure
+to the Queen, and told her what it was. The Queen said to the Sultan,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Wait and prosper, then, till I have seen him; and charge your people
+that in the mean time there may be no outbreak.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Of that,' he said, 'you may be secure.'</p>
+
+<p>"At once she returned to her ships; and she spent the whole night
+thinking whether she would go with arms or without them. But at last she
+determined that it would be more dignified to go in the dress of a
+woman. And when the morning came, she rose and directed them to bring
+one of her dresses, all of gold, with many precious stones, and a turban
+wrought with great art. It had a volume of many folds, in the manner of
+a <i>toca</i>, and she placed it upon her head as if it had been a hood
+[<i>capellina</i>]; it was all of gold, embroidered with stones of great
+value. They brought out an animal which she rode, the strangest that
+ever was seen. It had ears as large as two shields; a broad forehead
+which had but one eye, like a mirror; the openings of its nostrils were
+very large, but its nose was short and blunt. From its mouth turned up
+two tusks, each of them two palms long. Its color was yellow, and it had
+many violet spots upon its skin, like an ounce. It was larger than a
+dromedary, had its feet cleft like those of an ox, and ran as swiftly as
+the wind, and skipped over the rocks as lightly, and held itself erect
+on any part of them, as do the mountain-goats. Its food was dates and
+figs and peas, and nothing else. Its flank and haunches and breast were
+very beautiful. On this animal, of which you have thus heard, mounted
+this beautiful Queen, and there rode behind her two thousand women of
+her train, dressed in the very richest clothes. There brought up the
+rear twenty damsels clothed in uniform, the trains of whose dresses
+extended so far, that, falling from each beast, they dragged four
+fathoms on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"With this equipment and ornament the Queen proceeded to the Emperor's
+camp, where she saw all the Kings, who had come out upon the plain. They
+had seated themselves on very rich chairs, upon cloth of gold, and they
+themselves were armed, because they had not much confidence in the
+promises of the Pagans. So they sallied out to receive her at the door
+of the tent, where she was dismounted into the arms of Don
+Quadragante;<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> and the two Kings, Lisuarte and Perion, took her by the
+hands, and placed her between them in a chair. When she was seated,
+looking from one side to the other, she saw Esplandian next to King
+Lisuarte, who held him by the hand; and from the superiority of his
+beauty to that of all the others, she knew at once who he was, and said
+to herself, 'Oh, my Gods! what is this? I declare to you, I have never
+seen any one who can be compared to him, nor shall I ever see any one.'
+And he turning his beautiful eyes upon her beautiful face, she perceived
+that the rays which leaped out from his resplendent beauty, entering in
+at her eyes, penetrated to her heart in such a way, that, if she were
+not conquered yet by the great force of arms, or by the great attacks of
+her enemies, she was softened and broken by that sight and by her
+amorous passion, as if she had passed between mallets of iron. And as
+she saw this, she reflected, that, if she stayed longer, the great fame
+which she had acquired as a manly cavalier, by so many dangers and
+labors, would be greatly hazarded. She saw that by any delay she should
+expose herself to the risk of dishonor, by being turned to that native
+softness which women of nature consider to be an ornament; and therefore
+resisting, with great pain, the feelings which she had subjected to her
+will, she rose from her seat and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Knight of the Great Serpent, for two excellences which distinguish you
+above all mortals I have made inquiry. The first, that of your great
+beauty, which, if one has not seen, no relation is enough to tell the
+greatness of; the other, the valor and force of your brave heart. The
+one of these I have seen, which is such as I have never seen nor could
+hope to see, though many years of searching should be granted me. The
+other shall be made manifest on the field, against this valiant Radiaro,
+Sultan of Liquia. Mine shall be shown against this mighty king your
+father; and if fortune grant that we come alive from this battle, as we
+hope to come from other battles, then I will talk with you, before I
+return to my home, of some things of my own affairs.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then, turning towards the Kings, she said to them,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Kings, rest in good health. I go hence to that place where you shall
+see me with very different dress from this which I now wear, hoping that
+in that field the King Amadis, who trusts in fickle fortune that he may
+never be conquered by any knight, however valiant, nor by any beast,
+however terrible, may there be conquered by a woman.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then taking the two older Kings by the hand, she permitted them to help
+her mount upon her strange steed."</p>
+
+<p>At this point the novel assumes a tone of high virtue (<i>virtus</i>,
+mannishness, prejudice of the more brutal sex) on the subject of woman's
+rights, in especial of woman's right to fight in the field with gold
+armor, lance in rest, and casque closed. We will show the reader, as she
+follows us, how careful she must be, if, in any island of the sea which
+has been slipped by unknown by the last five centuries, she ever happen
+to meet a cavalier of the true school of chivalry.</p>
+
+<p>Esplandian himself would not in any way salute the Queen Calafia, as she
+left him. Nor was this a copperhead prejudice of color; for that
+prejudice was not yet known.</p>
+
+<p>"He made no reply to her, both because he looked at her as something
+strange, however beautiful she appeared to him, and because he saw her
+come thus in arms, so different from the style in which a woman should
+have come. For he considered it as very dishonorable that she should
+attempt anything so different from what the word of God commanded her,
+that the woman should be in subjection to the man, but rather should
+prefer to be the ruler of all men, not by her courtesy, but by force of
+arms, and, above all, because he hated to place himself in relations
+with her, because she was one of the infidels, whom he mortally despised
+and had taken a vow to destroy."</p>
+
+<p>The romance then goes into an account of the preparations for the
+contest on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>After all the preliminaries were arranged, "they separated for a little
+and rode together furiously in full career. The Sultan struck Esplandian
+in the shield with so hard a blow that a part of the lance passed
+through it for as much as an ell, so that all who saw it thought that it
+had passed through the body. But it was not so, but the lance passed
+under the arm next the body, and went out on the other side without
+touching him. But Esplandian, who knew that his much-loved lady was
+looking on, [Leonorina, the daughter of the Emperor of Constantinople,]
+so struck the Sultan's shield, that the iron passed through it and
+struck him on some of the strongest plates of his armor, upon which the
+spear turned. But, with the force of the encounter, it shook him so
+roughly from the saddle that it rolled him upon the ground, and so
+shook the helmet as to tear it off from his head, and thus Esplandian
+passed by him very handsomely, without receiving any stroke himself. The
+Queen rushed upon Amadis, and he upon her, and, before they met, each
+pointed lance at the other, and they received the blows upon their
+shields in such guise, that her spear flew in pieces, while that of
+Amadis slipped off and was thrown on one side. Then they both met,
+shield to shield, with such force that the Queen was thrown upon the
+ground, and the horse of Amadis was so wounded that he fell with his
+head cut in two, and held Amadis with one leg under him. When Esplandian
+saw this, he leaped from his horse and saved him from that peril.
+Meanwhile, the Queen, being put to her defence, put hand to her sword,
+and joined herself to the Sultan, who had raised himself with great
+difficulty, because his fall was very heavy, and stood there with his
+sword and helmet in his hand. They came on to fight very bravely, but
+Esplandian, standing, as I told you, in presence of the Infanta, whom he
+prized so much, gave the Sultan such hard pressure with such heavy
+blows, that, although he was one of the bravest knights of the Pagans,
+and by his own prowess had won many dangerous battles, and was very
+dexterous in that art, yet all this served him for nothing; he could
+neither give nor parry blows, and constantly lost ground. The Queen, who
+had joined fight with Amadis, began giving him many fierce blows, some
+of which he received upon his shield, while he let others be lost; yet
+he would not put his hand upon his sword, but, instead of that, took a
+fragment of the lance which she had driven through his shield, and
+struck her on the top of the helmet with it, so that in a little while
+he had knocked the crest away."</p>
+
+<p>We warned those of our fair readers who may have occasion to defend
+their rights at the point of the lance, that the days of chivalry or the
+cavaliers of chivalry will be very unhandsome in applying to them the
+rules of the tourney. Amadis, it will be observed here, does not
+condescend to use his sword against a woman. And this is not from
+tenderness, but from contempt. For when the Queen saw that he only took
+the broken truncheon of his lance to her, she fairly asked him why.</p>
+
+<p>"'How is this, Amadis?' she said; 'do you consider my force so slight
+that you think to conquer me with sticks?'</p>
+
+<p>"And he said to her,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Queen, I have always been in the habit of serving women and aiding
+them; and as you are a woman, if I should use any weapon against you, I
+should deserve to lose all the honors I have ever gained.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What, then!' said the Queen, 'do you rank me among them? You shall
+see!'</p>
+
+<p>"And taking her sword in both her hands, she struck him with great rage.
+Amadis raised his shield and received the blow upon it, which was so
+brave and strong that the shield was cut in two. Then, seeing her joined
+to him so closely, he passed the stick into his left hand, seized her by
+the rim of her shield, and pulled her so forcibly, that, breaking the
+great thongs by which she held upon it, he took it from her, lifting it
+up in one hand, and forced her to kneel with one knee on the ground; and
+when she lightly sprang up, Amadis threw away his own shield, and,
+seizing the other, took the stick and sprang to her, saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Queen, yield yourself my prisoner, now that your Sultan is conquered.'</p>
+
+<p>"She turned her head, and saw that Esplandian had the Sultan already
+surrendered as his prize. But she said, 'Let me try fortune yet one more
+turn'; and then, raising her sword with both her hands, she struck upon
+the crest of his helmet, thinking she could cut it and his head in two.
+But Amadis warded the blow very lightly and turned it off, and struck
+her so heavy a stroke with that fragment of the lance upon the crest of
+her helmet, that he stunned her and made her sword fall from her hands.
+Amadis seized the sword, and, when she was thus disarmed, caught at her
+helmet so strongly that he dragged it from her head, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Now are you my prisoner?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' replied she; 'for there is nothing left for me to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"At this moment Esplandian came to them with the Sultan, who had
+surrendered himself, and, in sight of all the army, they repaired to the
+royal encampment, where they were received with great pleasure, not only
+on account of the great victory in battle, which, after the great deeds
+in arms which they had wrought before, as this history has shown, they
+did not regard as very remarkable, but because they took this success as
+a good omen for the future. The King Amadis asked the Count Gandalin to
+lead their prisoners to the Infanta Leonorina, in his behalf and that of
+his son Esplandian, and to say to her that he begged her to do honor to
+the Sultan, because he was so great a prince and so strong a knight,
+and, withal, very noble; and to do honor to the Queen, <i>because she was
+a woman</i>; and to say that he trusted in God that thus they should send
+to her all those whom they took captive alive in the battles which
+awaited them.</p>
+
+<p>"The Count took them in charge, and, as the city was very near, they
+soon arrived at the palace. Then, coming into the presence of the
+Infanta, he delivered to her the prisoners, and gave the message with
+which he was intrusted. The Infanta replied to him,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell King Amadis that I thank him greatly for this present which he
+sends me,&mdash;that I am sure that the good fortune and great courage which
+appear in this adventure will appear in those which await us,&mdash;and that
+we are very desirous to see him here, that, when we discharge our
+obligation to his son, we may have him as a judge between us.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Count kissed her hand, and returned to the royal camp. Then the
+Infanta sent to the Empress, her mother, for a rich robe and head-dress,
+and, having disarmed the Queen, made her array herself in them; and she
+did the same for the Sultan, having sent for other robes from the
+Emperor, her father, and having dressed their wounds with certain
+preparations made by Master Helisabat. Then the Queen, though of so
+great fortune, was much astonished to see the great beauty of Leonorina,
+and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I tell you, Infanta, that in the same measure in which I was
+astonished to see the beauty of your cavalier, Esplandian, am I now
+overwhelmed, beholding yours. If your deeds correspond to your
+appearance, I hold it no dishonor to be your prisoner.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Queen,' said the Infanta, 'I hope the God in whom I trust will so
+direct events that I shall be able to fulfil every obligation which
+conquerors acknowledge toward those who submit to them.'"</p>
+
+<p>With this chivalrous little conversation the Queen of California
+disappears from the romance, and consequently from all written history,
+till the very <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> of the whole story, where, when the rest is
+"wound up," she is wound up also, to be set a-going again in her own
+land of California. And if the chroniclers of California find no records
+of her in any of the griffin caves of the Black Ca&ntilde;on, it is not our
+fault, but theirs. Or, possibly, did she and her party suffer shipwreck
+on the return passage from Constantinople to the Golden Gate? Their
+probable route must have been through the &AElig;gean, over Lebanon and
+Anti-Lebanon to the Euphrates, ("I will sail a fleet over the Alps,"
+said Cromwell,) down Chesney's route to the Persian Gulf, and so home.</p>
+
+<p>After the Sultan and the Queen are taken prisoners, there are reams of
+terrific fighting, in which King Lisuarte and King Perion and a great
+many other people are killed; but finally the "Pagans" are all routed,
+and the Emperor of Greece retires into a monastery, having united
+Esplandian with his daughter Leonorina, and abdicated the throne in
+their favor. Among the first acts of their new administration is the
+disposal of Calafia.</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as the Queen Calafia saw these nuptials, having no more hope of
+him whom she so much loved, [Esplandian,] for a moment her courage left
+her; and coming before the new Emperor and these great lords, she thus
+spoke to them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I am a queen of a great kingdom, in which there is the greatest
+abundance of all that is most valued in the world, such as gold and
+precious stones. My lineage is very old,&mdash;for it comes from royal blood
+so far back that there is no memory of the beginnings of it,&mdash;and my
+honor is as perfect as it was at my birth. My fortune has brought me
+into these countries, whence I hoped to bring away many captives, but
+where I am myself a captive. I do not say of this captivity in which you
+see me, that, after all the great experiences of my life, favorable and
+adverse, I had believed that I was strong enough to parry the thrusts of
+fortune; but I have found that my heart was tried and afflicted in my
+imprisonment, because the great beauty of this new Emperor overwhelmed
+me in the moment that my eyes looked upon him. I trusted in my
+greatness, and that immense wealth which excites and unites so many,
+that, if I would turn to your religion, I might gain him for a husband;
+but when I came into the presence of this lovely Empress, I regarded it
+as certain that they belonged to each other by their equal rank; and
+that argument, which showed the vanity of my thoughts, brought me to the
+determination in which I now stand. And since Eternal Fortune has taken
+the direction of my passion, I, throwing all my own strength into
+oblivion, as the wise do in those affairs which have no remedy, seek, if
+it please you, to take for my husband some other man, who may be the son
+of a king, to be of such power as a good knight ought to have; and I
+will become a Christian. For, as I have seen the ordered order of your
+religion, and the great disorder of all others, I have seen that it is
+clear that the law which you follow must be the truth, while that which
+we follow is lying and falsehood.'</p>
+
+<p>"When the Emperor had heard all this, embracing her with a smile, he
+said, 'Queen Calafia, my good friend, till now you have had from me
+neither word nor argument; for my condition is such that I cannot permit
+my eyes to look, without terrible hatred, upon any but those who are in
+the holy law of truth, nor wish well to such as are out of it. But now
+that the Omnipotent Lord has had such mercy on you as to give you such
+knowledge that you become His servant, you excite in me at once the same
+love as if the King, my father, had begotten us both. And as for this
+you ask, I will give you, by my troth, a knight who is even more
+complete in valor and in lineage than you have demanded.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then, taking by the hand Talanque, his cousin, the son of the King of
+Sobradisa,&mdash;very large he was of person, and very handsome withal,&mdash;he
+said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Queen, here you see one of my cousins, son of the King whom you here
+see,&mdash;the brother of the King my father,&mdash;take him to yourself, that I
+may secure to you the good fortune which you will bring to him.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Queen looked at him, and finding his appearance good, said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I am content with his presence, and well satisfied with his lineage
+and person, since you assure me of them. Be pleased to summon for me
+Liota, my sister, who is with my fleet in the harbor, that I may send
+orders to her that there shall be no movement among my people.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Emperor sent the Admiral Tartarie for her immediately, and he,
+having found her, brought her with him, and placed her before the
+Emperor. The Queen Calafia told her all her wish, commanding her and
+entreating her to confirm it. Her sister, Liota, kneeling upon the
+ground, kissed her hands, and said that there was no reason why she
+should make any explanation of her will to those who were in her
+service. The Queen raised her and embraced her, with the tears in her
+eyes, and led her by the hand to Talanque, saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Thou shalt be my lord, and the lord of my land, which is a very great
+kingdom; and, for thy sake, this island shall change the custom which
+for a very long time it has preserved, so that the natural generations
+of men and women shall succeed henceforth, in place of the order in
+which the men have been separated so long. And if you have here any
+friend whom you greatly love, who is of the same rank with you, let him
+be betrothed to my sister here, and no long time shall pass, before,
+with thy help, she shall be queen of a great land.'</p>
+
+<p>"Talanque greatly loved Maneli the Prudent, both because they were
+brothers by birth and because they held the same faith. He led him
+forth, and said to her,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'My Queen, since the Emperor, my lord, loves this knight as much as he
+loves me, and as much as I love thee, take him, and do with him as you
+would do by me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then, I ask,' said she, 'that we, accepting your religion, may become
+your wives.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then the Emperor Esplandian and the several Kings, seeing their wishes
+thus confirmed, took the Queen and her sister to the chapel, turned them
+into Christians, and espoused them to those two so famous knights,&mdash;and
+thus they converted all who were in the fleet. And immediately they gave
+order, so that Talanque, taking the fleet of Don Galaor, his father, and
+Maneli that of King Cildadan, with all their people, garnished and
+furnished with all things necessary, set sail with their wives,
+plighting their faith to the Emperor, that, if he should need any help
+from them, they would give it as to their own brother.</p>
+
+<p>"What happened to them afterwards, I must be excused from telling; for
+they passed through many very strange achievements of the greatest
+valor, they fought many battles, and gained many kingdoms, of which if
+we should give the story, there would be danger that we should never
+have done."</p>
+
+<p>With this tantalizing statement, California and the Queen of California
+pass from romance and from history. But, some twenty-five years after
+these words were written and published by Garcia Ordo&ntilde;ez de Montalvo,
+Cort&eacute;s and his braves happened upon the peninsula, which they thought an
+island, which stretches down between the Gulf of California and the sea.
+This romance of Esplandian was the yellow-covered novel of their day;
+Talanque and Maneli were their Aramis and Athos. "Come," said some one,
+"let us name the new island California: perhaps some one will find gold
+here yet, and precious stones." And so, from the romance, the peninsula,
+and the gulf, and afterwards the State, got their name. And they have
+rewarded the romance by giving to it in these later days the fame of
+being godmother of a great republic.</p>
+
+<p>The antiquarians of California have universally, we believe, recognized
+this as the origin of her name, since Mr. Hale called attention to this
+rare romance. As, even now, there are not perhaps half a dozen copies of
+it in America, we have transferred to our pages every word which belongs
+to that primeval history of California and her Queen.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_BROTHER_OF_MERCY" id="THE_BROTHER_OF_MERCY"></a>THE BROTHER OF MERCY.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Piero Luca, known of all the town<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the gray porter by the Pitti wall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the noon shadows of the gardens fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His last sad burden, and beside his mat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Unseen, in square and blossoming garden drifted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft sunset lights through green Val d'Arno sifted;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unheard, below the living shuttles shifted<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Backward and forth, and wove, in love or strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In mirth or pain, the mottled web of life:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when at last came upward from the street<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sick man started, strove to rise in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sinking back heavily with a moan of pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the monk said, "'T is but the Brotherhood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Mercy going on some errand good:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their black masks by the palace-wall I see."&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Piero answered faintly, "Woe is me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This day for the first time in forty years<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain the bell hath sounded in my ears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Calling me with my brethren of the mask,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beggar and prince alike, to some new task<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of love or pity,&mdash;haply from the street<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, with feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hushed to the quickened ear and feverish brain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down the long twilight of the corridors,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Midst tossing arms and faces full of pain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I loved the work: it was its own reward.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I never counted on it to offset<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My sins, which are many, or make less my debt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the free grace and mercy of our Lord;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But somehow, father, it has come to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In these long years so much a part of me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I should not know myself, if lacking it,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with the work the worker too would die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my place some other self would sit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Joyful or sad,&mdash;what matters, if not I?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now all's over. Woe is me!"&mdash;"My son,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The monk said soothingly, "thy work is done;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no more as a servant, but the guest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt sit down<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clad in white robes, and wear a golden crown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forever and forever."&mdash;Piero tossed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On his sick pillow: "Miserable me!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am too poor for such grand company;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The crown would be too heavy for this gray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Old head; and God forgive me, if I say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It would be hard to sit there night and day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like an image in the Tribune, doing nought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With these hard hands, that all my life have wrought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not for bread only, but for pity's sake.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'm dull at prayers: I could not keep awake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Counting my beads. Mine's but a crazy head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Scarce worth the saving, if all else be dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And if one goes to heaven without a heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God knows he leaves behind his better part.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I love my fellow-men; the worst I know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would do good to. Will death change me so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I shall sit among the lazy saints,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of souls that suffer? Why, I never yet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Left a poor dog in the <i>strada</i> hard beset,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or ass o'erladen! Must I rate man less<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The world of pain were better, if therein<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One's heart might still be human, and desires<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of natural pity drop upon its fires<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some cooling tears."<br /></span>
+<span class="i21">Thereat the pale monk crossed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His brow, and muttering, "Madman! thou art lost!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Took up his pyx and fled; and, left alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sick man closed his eyes with a great groan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sank into a prayer, "Thy will be done!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then was he made aware, by soul or ear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And of a voice like that of her who bore him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tender and most compassionate: "Be of cheer!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For heaven is love, as God himself is love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy work below shall be thy work above."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when he looked, lo! in the stern monk's place<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He saw the shining of an angel's face!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AMBASSADORS_IN_BONDS" id="AMBASSADORS_IN_BONDS"></a>AMBASSADORS IN BONDS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Deane walked into church on Easter Sunday, followed by a trophy.
+This trophy had once been a chattel, but was now, as Mr. Deane assured
+him, a man. Scarcely a shade darker than Mr. Deane himself as to
+complexion, in figure quite as prepossessing, in bearing not less erect,
+he passed up the north aisle of St. Peter's to the square pew of the
+most influential of the wardens, who was also the first man of the
+Church Musical Committee.</p>
+
+<p>The old church was beautiful with its floral decorations on this
+festival. The altar shone with sacramental silver, and rare was the
+music that quickened the hearts of the great congregation to harmonious
+tunefulness. The boys in their choral, Miss Ives in her solos, above
+all, the organist, in voluntary, prelude, and accompaniment, how
+glorious! If a soul in the church escaped thankfulness in presence of
+those flowers, in hearing of that music, I know not by what force it
+could have been conducted that bright morning to the feet of Love. It
+was "a day of days."</p>
+
+<p>To the trophy of Deane this scene must have been strangely new. No
+doubt, he had before now sat in a church, a decorated church, a church
+where music had much to do with the service. But never under such
+circumstances had he stood, sat, knelt, taking part in the worship, a
+man among men. Of this Mr. Deane was thinking; and his brain, not very
+imaginative, was taxed to conceive the conception of freedom a man must
+obtain under precisely these circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>But the man in question was thinking thoughts as widely diverse from
+these attributed to him as one could easily imagine. Of himself, and his
+position, scarcely at all. And when he thought, he smiled; but the
+gravity, the abstraction into which he repeatedly lapsed, seemed to say
+for him that freedom was to him more than he knew what to do with. No
+volubility of joy, no laughter, no manifested exultation in deliverance
+from bondage: 't was a rare case; must one believe his eyes?</p>
+
+<p>Probably the constraint of habit was upon the fugitive, the contraband.
+Homesickness in spite of him, it might be. Oh, surely freedom was not
+bare to him as a winter-rifled tree? Not a bud of promise swelling along
+the dreary waste of tortuous branches? Possibly some ties had been
+ruptured in making his escape, which must be knit again before he could
+enter into the joy he had so fairly won. For you and me it would hardly
+be perfect happiness to feast at great men's tables, while the faces we
+love best, the dear, the sacred faces, grow gaunt from starvation.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Deane took to himself some glory in consequence of his late
+achievements. He was a practical man, and his theories were now being
+put to a test that gave him some proud satisfaction. The attitude he
+assumed not many hours ago in reference to the organist has added to his
+consciousness of weight, and to-day he has taken as little pleasure as
+became him in the choir's performance. Now and then a strain besieged
+him, but none could carry that stout heart, or overthrow that nature,
+the wonder of pachydermata. Generally through the choral service he
+retained his seat; a significant glance now and then, that involved the
+man beside him, was the only evidence he gave that the music much
+impressed him; but this evidence, to one who should understand, was
+all-sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the object of these glances sat apparently lost in vacuity, or
+patiently waiting the end of the services,&mdash;when all at once, during the
+hymn, he sprang to his feet; at the same moment two or three beside him
+felt as if they had experienced an electric shock. What was it? A voice
+joined the soprano singer in one single strain, brief as the best joy,
+but also as decisive. Ninety-nine hundredths of the congregation never
+heard it, and the majority of those that did could hardly have felt
+assured of the hearing; there were, in fact, but three persons among
+them all who were absolutely certain of their ears. One was this
+contraband; another an artist who stood at the foot of one of the
+aisles, leaning against a great stone pillar; the third was, of course,
+Sybella Ives.</p>
+
+<p>She, the soprano, sang from that moment in a seeming rapture. The artist
+listened in a sort of maze,&mdash;interpreting aright what he had heard,
+disappointed at its brevity, but waiting on in a kind of wonder through
+canticle, hymn, and gloria, in a deep abasement that had struck the
+singer dumb, could she above there have known what was going on here
+below.</p>
+
+<p>When the singing was over he went away as he had purposed, but it was
+only to the steps of the church. There he sat until he heard a stir
+within announcing that the services were ended, when he walked away. But
+the first person who had heard and understood that voice heard nothing
+after. He was continually waiting for it, but he had no further sign.
+Once his attention was for a moment turned towards the preacher, who was
+dwelling on St. Paul's allusion to himself as an ambassador in bonds; he
+looked at that instant towards Mr. Deane, who, it happened, was at the
+same moment gazing uneasily at him. After that his eyes did not wander
+any more, and from his impassive face it was impossible to discover what
+his thoughts might be.</p>
+
+<p>To go back now a day or two.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>A pleasant sound of young voices, that became subdued as the children
+passed from street to church-yard, rose from the shadowy elm-walk and
+floated up through the branches towards the window of the organist, who
+seemed to have been waiting some such summons, for she now threw aside
+the manuscript music she had been studying, arrayed herself in her
+shawl, threw a scarf around her head, and looked at the clock. Straight
+she gazed at it, a moment full, before she seemed instructed in the fact
+represented on the dial-plate, thinking still, most likely, of the score
+she had been revising. Some thought at least as profound, as
+unfathomable, and as immeasurable as was thereon represented, possessed
+her, as she now, with a glance around the room, retired from it.</p>
+
+<p>With herself in the apartment it was another sort of place from what it
+looked when she had left it.</p>
+
+<p>There were three pictures on the wall,&mdash;three, and no more. One was a
+copy of the lovely portraiture of Milton's musical inspired youth; the
+wonderful eyes, the "breezy hair," the impassioned purity of the
+countenance, looked down on the place where the musician might be found
+three-fourths of her waking hours, at her piano. In other parts of the
+room, opposite each other, were pictures of the Virgin ever-blessed!
+conquering, crowned.</p>
+
+<p>In the first she stood with foot upon the Serpent, that lay coiled on
+the apex of the globe. She had crushed the Destroyer; the world was free
+of its monster. Beneath her shone the crescent moon, whose horns were
+sharp as swords. Rays of blessing, streaming from her hands, revealed
+the Mother of grace and of all benefaction.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite, her apotheosis. A chariot of clouds was bearing her to her
+throne in heaven; the loving head was shining with a light that paled
+the stars above her; far down were the crags of earth, the fearful
+precipices that lead the weary and adventurous toiler to at last but
+narrow prospects. Far away now the conquered Devil, and the conquered
+world,&mdash;the foot was withdrawn from destructions,&mdash;the writhing of the
+Enemy was felt now no more.</p>
+
+<p>The organist had bought these pictures for her wall when she had paid
+her first month's board in this her present abiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the centre of the room stood her piano, an instrument of finest
+tone, whose incasing you would not be likely to admire or observe.</p>
+
+<p>White matting covered the floor. Heaps of music were upon the table and
+the piano. There were few books to indicate the taste or studies of the
+owner beside these sheets and volumes of music, and they were
+everywhere. All that ever was written for organ or piano seemed to have
+found its way in at the door of that chamber.</p>
+
+<p>On a pedestal in the window stood an orange-tree, whose blossoms filled
+the room with their bright, soft sweetness; a Parian vase held a bouquet
+of flowers, gathered, none could question whether for the woman whose
+room they decorated.</p>
+
+<p>One window of this room looked out on a busy street, another into the
+church-yard, a third upon the sea: not so remote the sea but one could
+hear the breaking of its waves, and watch its changing glory.</p>
+
+<p>Thus she had for "influences" the loneliness of the grave,&mdash;for the
+church-yard was filled with monuments of a past generation,&mdash;the
+solitude of the ocean, and the busy street. Was she so involved in
+duties, or in cares, as to be unmindful of all these diverse tongues
+that told their various story in that lofty and lonely apartment of the
+old stone house?</p>
+
+<p>Into the church, equally old and gray, covered with ivy, shadowed even
+to the roof by the vast branching and venerable trees, she now
+went,&mdash;and was not too early. The boys were growing restless, though it
+needed but the sound of her coming to reduce them all to silence: when
+they saw her enter the church-door, they all went down quietly to their
+places, opened their books, and no one could mistake their aspect for
+constraint. Here was the bright, beautiful, enthusiasm and blissful
+confidence of youth.</p>
+
+<p>A few words, and all were in working order. The organist touched the
+keys. Then a solemn softness, beautiful to see, overspread the young
+faces. It had never been otherwise since she began to teach them. If she
+controlled, it was not by exhibition of authority.</p>
+
+<p>"Begin."</p>
+
+<p>At that word, with one consent, the voices struck the first notes of the
+carol,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Let the merry church-bells ring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hence with tears and sighing;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Frost and cold have fled from spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Life hath conquered dying;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flowers are smiling, fields are gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sunny is the weather;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With our rising Lord to-day<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All things rise together."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From strain to strain they bore it along till the old church was glad.
+How must the birds in the nests of the great elm-branches have rejoiced!
+And the ivy-vines, did they not cling more closely to the gray stone
+walls, as if they, too, had something at stake in the music? for they
+were the children of the church who sang those strains. Among the
+wonder-working little company within there was no loitering, no
+laughing, no twitching of coat-sleeves on the sly, no malicious
+interruptions: all were alert, earnest, conscientious. They sang with a
+zeal that brought smiles to the face of the organist.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three songs, carols, anthems, and the lesson was over. Now for
+the reward. It came promptly, and was worth more than the gifts of
+others.</p>
+
+<p>"You have all done excellently well. I knew you would. If I had found
+myself mistaken, it would have been a great disappointment. 'T is a
+great thing to be able to sing such verses as if you were eye-witnesses
+of what you repeat. That is precisely what you do. Now you may go. Go
+quietly."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at them all as she spoke; it was a broad, comprehensive
+glance, but they all felt individualized by it. Then they came, the six
+lads, with their bright, handsome faces, pride of a mother's heart every
+one, and took her hand, and carried away, each one, her kiss upon his
+forehead. Not one of them but had been blest beyond expression in the
+few half-hours they had been gathered under the instruction of the
+organist. So they went off, carrying her precious praise with them.</p>
+
+<p>They had scarcely gone, and the organist was yet searching for a sheet
+of music, when a step was in the aisle, noiseless, rapid, and a young
+girl came into the singers' seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I too early?" she asked,&mdash;for her welcome was not immediate, and her
+courtesy was not just now of the quality that overlooked a seeming lack
+of it in others. Miss Ives was slightly out of tune.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," was the answer. Still it was spoken in a very preoccupied
+way that might have been provoking,&mdash;that would depend on the mood of
+the person addressed; and that mood, as we know, was not sun-clear or
+marble-smooth. The organist had now found the music she was looking for,
+and proceeded to play it from the first page to the last, without
+vouchsafing an instant's recognition of the singer's presence.</p>
+
+<p>When she had finished, she sat a moment silent; then she turned straight
+toward Miss Ives, and smiled, and it was a smile that could atone for
+any amount of seeming incivility.</p>
+
+<p>But not even David, by mere sweep of harp-string, soothed
+self-beleaguered Saul.</p>
+
+<p>Teacher and pupil did not seem to understand each other as it was best
+such women should. For, let the swaying, surging hosts throughout the
+valley deliver themselves as they can from the confusion of tongues, the
+wanderers among the mountains <i>ought</i> to understand the signals <i>they</i>
+see flaring from crag and gorge and pinnacle.</p>
+
+<p>Too many shadowy folds were in the mystery that hung about each of these
+women to satisfy the other: reticence too cold, independence too
+extreme, self-possession too entire. Why was neither summoned, in a
+frank, impulsive way, to take up the burden of the other? Was nothing
+ever to penetrate the seven-walled solitude in which the organist chose
+to intrench herself? Was nobody ever to bid roses bloom on the colorless
+face of the singer, and bring smiles, the veritable smiles of youth, and
+of happiness, into those large, steady, joyless eyes?</p>
+
+<p>But now, while the organist played, and Sybella sat down, supposing she
+was not wanted yet, she found herself not withdrawn into the
+indifference she supposed. Presently far more was given than she either
+looked for or desired.</p>
+
+<p>The music that was being played was indeed wonderful. This was not for
+the delight of children: no happy sprite with dancing feet could
+maintain this measure. It was music for the most advanced, enlightened
+intelligence,&mdash;for the soul that music had quickened to far depths,&mdash;for
+the heart that had suffered, triumphed, and gained the kingdom of
+calm,&mdash;for a wisdom riper even than Sybella's.</p>
+
+<p>An audience of a hundred souls would infallibly have gabbled their way
+through the silence that would <i>naturally</i> gather round those tones. Put
+Sybella in the midst of such an audience, and you would understand her
+better than I hope now to make her understood; for the torture of the
+moment would have been of the quality that has demonstration.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, she now sat silently, as silently as the organist sat in her
+place; but when all was over, she turned to look at the magician.
+Sybella had passed through fearful agitation in the beginning and
+throughout the greater part of the performance, but now she quietly
+said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That is the one sole composition of its author."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say so?" asked the organist, whom people in general called
+Miss Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>"Because, of course, everything is in it,&mdash;I mean the best of everything
+that could be in one soul. If the composer wrote more, it was
+fragmentary and repetitious. If you played it, Miss Edgar, to put me in
+a better voice for singing than I had when I came in, I think you have
+succeeded. I can almost imagine how Jenny Lind felt, when her voice came
+back to her."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall soon see that. I don't know that the music has ever been
+played on an organ before. But you see it is a rare production,&mdash;little
+known,&mdash;a book of the Law not read out of the sacred place. Let us try
+that prayer again. You will sing it differently to-day,&mdash;I see it in
+your face."</p>
+
+<p><i>"Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us!"</i></p>
+
+<p>Something <i>had</i> happened to the voice that sang. Never had the organist
+heard such tones from it before; there was volume, depth, purity, such
+as had been unheard by those who thought they knew the quality and
+compass of Sybella's voice.</p>
+
+<p>The organist could not forbear turning and looking at her as she sang.
+Great, evidently, was her emotion. This nature that had been in bonds
+manifestly had eschewed the bondage. Was the organist glad thereat?
+Whose praise would be on everybody's lips on Sunday, if Sybella sang
+like this? Are women and men generally pleased to hear the praises of a
+rival? You have had full hearing, generous, more than patient; do you
+feel a thrill of the old rapture, a kindling of the old enthusiasm, when
+you hear the praises of the young new-comer, who has reached you with a
+stride, and will pass you at a bound? Since this may be in human nature,
+say "Yes" to the catechist. For the organist returned to her duties with
+a brightened face, she touched the keys with new power. Then, again,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>"Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father!"</i></p>
+
+<p>Had this girl the vision&mdash;"Not far from any one of us"?</p>
+
+<p>"I thought so," said the organist. "You come forth at last. This is what
+I expected, when I overheard you instructing the children in the
+Sunday-school. Now all that is justified, but you have been a long while
+about it,&mdash;or I have. It seems the right chord wasn't struck. I made
+these adaptations on purpose for the voice I expected of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Is not the arrangement a new one, Mrs. Edgar?" asked a voice from one
+of the aisles. "It is perfect."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a new adaptation, Mr. Muir, and I think Miss Ives will hardly
+improve on her first rendering. It is getting late also. It is time to
+look at the hymn."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Muir, who was the rector of the church, now passed along the aisle
+until he was beyond the voices of the ladies in the choir, and then he
+stood, during the rehearsal of the Easter hymn,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Christ the Lord is risen to-day."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>One repetition of these verses, and the rehearsal was at an end. Never
+was such before in that place. Never before in reality had organist of
+St. Peter's attempted so much. When the choir came together for an
+hour's practice, this would be understood. Miss Ives already understood
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now indulge <i>me</i>," she said, "if I have been so fortunate as to
+satisfy&mdash;satisfy you."</p>
+
+<p>In consequence of this request the organist kept her place till night
+had actually descended. Out of all oratorios, and from many an opera,
+she brought the immortal graces, and all conceivable renderings of
+passions, fears, and aspirations of men. At last, and as it seemed quite
+suddenly, she broke off, closed the organ-doors and locked them, then
+rose from her place.</p>
+
+<p>A dark figure at the same moment passed up the aisle from the church to
+the vestry-room in the rear, and organist and singer left the church.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>"I believe," said Sybella, as they went, venturing now, while aglow with
+the music, on what heretofore had been forbidden ground to her,&mdash;"I
+believe, if you would sing, I should be struck dumb, just as now, when
+you play, I feel as if I could do anything in song. Why do you never
+show me how a thing should be done by singing it? I've had teachers with
+voices hoarse as crows', who did it; and I profited, for I understood
+better what they meant. It seems to me to be the natural impulse, and I
+don't know how you control it; for of course you do control it."</p>
+
+<p>That was a venture, felt in all its venturesomeness, answered not with
+encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>"It is all nonsense," said Miss Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>"I expected you to say so; but 't is a scant covering for the truth. For
+<i>have</i> I never heard you sing? When I was a little girl, my brothers and
+I were sent to some springs in the mountains. While we were there, one
+day a party of people came on horseback. They were very gay, and one of
+them sang. It has come back to me so often, that day! So still, bright,
+and cool! Did you ever hear singing in the Highland solitudes? When I
+sing my best, I always seem to hear that voice again. Do you think I
+never shall?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do <i>you</i> think it possible that such an effect as you describe should
+be repeated? Evidently the outcome of some high-wrought, rapt state of
+your own, rather than the result of any singer's skill. It may happen
+you will never hear a voice like that again. But you may make far better
+melody yourself. If you like my organ-music, don't ask me for better. A
+little instrumental performance is all I have to give."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Sybella, holding to the point with a persistence that showed
+she would not be lightly baffled, "her face haunted me, too. And I have
+seen it since then,&mdash;engraved, I am sure. Sometimes, when I look at you
+suddenly, I seem to take hold upon my childhood again."</p>
+
+<p>They had passed from the yard, and walked, neither of them knew exactly
+whither; but now said the organist abruptly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why have you never shown me where you live?"</p>
+
+<p>A light that had warmth in it flashed over the pale face of Sybella.</p>
+
+<p>"I will show you now," she said.</p>
+
+<p>And so they walked on together, with a distinct aim,&mdash;Sybella the guide.
+She seemed tranquilly happy at this moment, and fain would she lay her
+heart in the hand of the organist; for a great trust had composed the
+heart that long since withdrew its riches from the world, and hid them
+for the coming of one who should take usury. How long he was in coming!
+how strangely long! rare worldliness! almost it seemed that now she
+would wait no longer, for the gold must be given away.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you sing, Sybella?" asked Miss Edgar, as they went.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did I stop singing?" asked the young lady in turn; this stiff, shy,
+proud creature, what flame might one soon see flaring out of those blue
+eyes!</p>
+
+<p>"I knew there had been a break,&mdash;that there must have been."</p>
+
+<p>"For two years I did nothing but wait in silence."</p>
+
+<p>"What,&mdash;for the voice to come back? overwork? paying a penalty?"</p>
+
+<p>"No,&mdash;not the penalty of overwork, at least. I lost everything in a
+moment. That was penalty, perhaps, for having risked everything. I have
+only recently been getting back a little: no, getting <i>back</i>
+nothing,&mdash;but some new life, out of a new world, I think. A different
+world from what I ever thought to inhabit. New to me as the earth was to
+Noah after the Flood. He couldn't turn a spade but he laid open graves,
+nor pull a flower but it broke his heart. I should never have been in
+the church-choir but for you. Of that I am satisfied. When you came and
+asked me, you saw, perhaps, that I was excited more than so slight a
+matter warranted. It was, indeed, a simple enough request. Not
+surprising that you should discover, one way or another, I could sing.
+And there was need enough of a singer with such an organist. But you
+never could guess what I went through after I had promised, till the
+Sunday came. You remember how astonished you were when I came into the
+choir. I was afraid you were going to excuse me from my part. But you at
+least understood something of it; you did not even ask if I were not
+ill. It seems a long time since then."</p>
+
+<p>A little to the organist's surprise, it was into a broad and handsome
+street that Sybella now led the way, and before the door of a very
+handsome house she stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you not come in and discover where I live, and how? It will be too
+late in a moment for you to go back alone. I shall find somebody to
+attend you."</p>
+
+<p>"In the ten months I have played the organ of St. Peter's Church I have
+not entered another person's dwelling than my own. I set aside a purpose
+that must still be rigidly held, for you. Possibly you may incur some
+danger in receiving me."</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," said Sybella; and she led the way into the house. For one
+instant she had looked her surprise at Miss Edgar's last words, but not
+for half an instant did she look the hesitation such words might have
+occasioned.</p>
+
+<p>The house into which they passed did not, in truth, look like one to
+suffer in. Walls lined with pictures, ceilings hung with costly
+chandeliers, floors covered with softest, finest carpets of most
+brilliant patterns, this seemed like a place for enjoyment, designed by
+happy hearts. It was: all this wealth, and elaboration of its
+evidences,&mdash;this covering of what might have looked like display by the
+careful veil of taste. But the house was the home of orphaned
+children,&mdash;of this girl, and three brothers, who were united in their
+love for Sybella, but on few other points. And curious was the
+revelation their love had. For they were worldly men, absorbed in
+various ways by the world, and Sybella lived alone here, as she said,
+though the house was the home of all; for one was now abroad, and one
+was in the army, and one was&mdash;who knew where?</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-room it was about the piano that the evidences of real
+life and actual enjoyment were gathered. Flowers filled a dozen vases
+grouped on tables, ornamenting brackets, flower-stands, and pedestals of
+various kinds. The grand piano seemed the base of a glowing and fragrant
+pyramid; and there, it was easy to see, musical studies by day and by
+night went on.</p>
+
+<p>Straight toward the piano both ladies went.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, for once," said the organist.</p>
+
+<p>Sybella stood a moment doubting, then she turned to a book-rack and
+began to look over some loose sheets of music. Presently desisting, she
+came back. One steady purpose had been in her mind all the while. She
+now sat down and produced from the piano what the organist had
+astonished her by executing in the church. But it seemed a variation.</p>
+
+<p>The work of a moment? an effort of memory? a wonderful recall of what
+she had just now heard? The organist did not imagine such a thing. There
+was, there could be, only one solution to anything so mysterious. She
+came nearer to Sybella; invisible arms of succor seemed flung about the
+girl, who played as she had never played before,&mdash;as weeping mortals
+smile, when they are safe in heaven.</p>
+
+<p>When she had finished, many minutes passed before either spoke a word.
+At last Sybella said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He told me there was no written copy of this thing he could secure for
+me, but that I must have it; so he wrote it from memory, and I
+elaborated the idea I had from his description, making some mistakes, I
+find. I am speaking," she added, with a resolution so determined that it
+had almost the sound of defiance,&mdash;"I am speaking of Adam von Gelhorn."</p>
+
+<p>"When was this?"</p>
+
+<p>"In our last days."</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"How long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three years."</p>
+
+<p>Whether the organist remained here after this, or if other words were
+added to these by the hostess or the guest, there is no report. But I
+can imagine that in such an hour, even between these two, little could
+be said. Yesterday I saw on a monument a little bird perched, quite
+content, and still, so far as song went, as the dead beneath him and
+around me. He was throbbing from far flight; silence and rest were all
+he could now endure. But by-and-by he shook his wings and was off again,
+and nobody that saw him could tell where in the sea of air the voyager
+found his last island of refreshment.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<p>On Miss Edgar's return to her room, as she opened the door, a flood of
+fragrance rolled upon her. She put up her hand in hasty gesture, as if
+to rebuke or resist it, while a shade of displeasure crossed her face.
+On the piano lay a bouquet of flowers, richest in hue and fragrance that
+garden or hot-house knows. All the season's splendor seemed concentrated
+within those narrow bounds.</p>
+
+<p>The gas was already burning from a single jet, which she approached
+without observing the unusual fact, for the organist was accustomed in
+this room herself to control light and darkness.</p>
+
+<p>One glance only was needed to convince her through what avenue this
+flowery gift had come.</p>
+
+<p>Such gifts were offerings of more than common significance. Their
+renewal at this day seemed to disturb the organist as she turned the
+bouquet slowly in her hand and perceived how the old arrangement had
+been adhered to, from passion-flower to camellia, whitest white lily,
+and most delicate of roses; moss and vine-tendril, jessamine,
+heliotrope, violet, ivy: it was a work of Art consummating that of
+Nature, and complete.</p>
+
+<p>With the bouquet in her hand, she went and sat down at the window. It
+was easy to see, by the changes of countenance, that she was fast
+assuming the reins of a resolution. Would the door of the organist of
+St. Peter's never open but to guests ethereal as these? The question was
+somehow asked, and she could not choose but hear it.</p>
+
+<p>If he who sent the gift had pondered it, no less did she. And for
+result, at an early hour the next morning, the lady who had lived her
+life in sovereign independence and an almost absolute solitude, week
+after week these many months here in H&mdash;&mdash;, was on her way to the studio
+of Adam von Gelhorn.</p>
+
+<p>As to the lady, what image has the reader conjured up to fancy? Any
+vision? She was the shadow of a woman. Rachel, in her last days, not
+<i>more</i> ethereal. Two pale-faced, blue-eyed women could not be more
+dissimilar than the organist and her soprano. For the organist plainly
+was herself, with merely an abatement, that might have risen from
+anxiety, work, or study; whatever her disturbance, she made no
+exhibition of it; it was always a tranquil face, and no storms or wrecks
+were discoverable in those deep blue eyes. What those few faint lines on
+her countenance might mean she does not choose you shall interpret;
+therefore attempt it not. But when you look at Sybella, it is sorrow you
+see; and she says as plainly as if you heard her voice,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to the great state where I expect nothing and am content."</p>
+
+<p>Yet <i>content</i>! <i>Is</i> it content you read in her face, in her smile? Is it
+satisfaction that can gaze out thus upon the world?</p>
+
+<p>It is sorrow rather,&mdash;and sorrow, with a questioning thereat, that seems
+prophetic of an answer that shall yet overthrow all the grim deductions,
+and restore the early imaginings, pure hopes, desires, and loving aims.</p>
+
+<p>You will choose to gaze rather after this shadowy vision of the fair,
+golden hair that lies tranquilly on the high and beautiful forehead; the
+face, pale as pallor itself, which seems to have no color, except in
+eyes and lips: the eyes so large and blue; the lips with their story of
+firm courage and true genius, so grand in calm. A figure, however, not
+likely to attract the many, but whom it held for once it held forever.</p>
+
+<p>So the organist came to the room of Adam von Gelhorn.</p>
+
+<p>She knew his working hours and habits, it seemed; at least, she did not
+fail to find him, and at work.</p>
+
+<p>As she stepped forward into the apartment, before whose door she had
+paused a moment, no trace of embarrassment or of irresolution was to be
+seen in face, eye, or movement.</p>
+
+<p>But the artist, who arose from his work, <i>was</i> taken by surprise.</p>
+
+<p>The armor of the world did not suffice to protect him at this moment. He
+was at the mercy of the woman who was here.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Edgar!"</p>
+
+<p>"Adam."</p>
+
+<p>"Here!"</p>
+
+<p>"To thank you for the flowers, and to warn you that setting them in
+deserts is neither safe nor providential."</p>
+
+<p>And now her eyes ran round the room,&mdash;a flash in which was sheathed a
+smile of satisfaction and of friendly pride. She had come here full of
+reproaches, but surely there was some enchantment against her.</p>
+
+<p>"You will order a picture, perhaps?" said the artist, restored to at
+least an appearance of ease.</p>
+
+<p>But his eyes did not follow hers. They stopped with her: with some
+misgiving, some doubt, some perplexity, for he knew not perfectly the
+ground on which he stood.</p>
+
+<p>"You have been twice to see me, and both times have missed me," she
+said. "I was sorry for that. I did not know until then that you were
+living here."</p>
+
+<p>"But what does it mean, that nobody in H&mdash;&mdash; has heard the voice yet? It
+has distracted me to think, perhaps, some harm has come to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Let that fear rest. The voice has had its day. I left it behind me at
+Havre. Any repetition of what we used to imagine were triumphs in the
+wonderful D&uuml;sseldorf days would now seem absurd, to the painter of these
+pictures, as to me."</p>
+
+<p>"They were triumphs! Besides, have you forgotten? Was it not in New
+York, in '58, that you imported the voice from Havre, left behind by
+mistake? What more could be asked than to inspire a town with
+enthusiasm, so that the dullest should feel the contagion? They were
+triumphs such as women have seldom achieved. If <i>you</i> disdain them,
+recollect that human nature is still the same, and all that I have done
+is under the inspiration of a voice that broke on me in D&uuml;sseldorf, and
+opened heaven. And people find some pleasure in my pictures."</p>
+
+<p>"Well may they! You, also. You have kept that power separate from
+sinners, unless I mistake. If it be my music, or the face yonder, that
+has helped you, or something else, unconfessed, perhaps unknown, you
+can, I perceive, at least love Art worthily, and be constant. As for St.
+Peter's, and myself, I find the fine organ there quite enough, with the
+boys to train and Miss Sybella Ives to instruct. It isn't much I can do
+for her, though; she is already a great and wonderful artist."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible you think so!"</p>
+
+<p>Was it really wonder at the judgment she heard in that exclamation? The
+voice sounded void of all except wonder,&mdash;yet wonder, perhaps, least of
+all was paramount in the pavilion of his secret thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Decidedly. But I only engaged there as organist. I find sufficient
+pleasure instructing the young lady, without feeling ambitious to appear
+there as her rival."</p>
+
+<p>"But you know she is not a professional singer": these words escaped the
+artist in spite of him. "She is an heiress of one of the wealthiest old
+families of this old town."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, she is growing so rarely in these days I would not for
+the world check that growth, as I see I might. Besides, I am selfish;
+it's best for <i>me</i> to keep to my engagement, and not volunteer
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>"And so we who have memories must rest content with them. I am glad you
+tell me, if it must be so. I have not haunted you, and I feel as if I
+almost deserved your thanks on that account. I've haunted the church,
+though, but"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Ives sings better than she did,&mdash;too well for such a girl in such
+a place."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because, as I said before, neither Art nor fortune justifies her, and
+what she gets will spoil her."</p>
+
+<p>He ended in confusion; some thought unexpressed overthrew him just here,
+and he could not instantly gather himself up again.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not fear," was the calm answer. "She is sacredly safe from that,&mdash;as
+safe as I am. For so young a person, she is rich in safeguards, though
+she seems to be alone; and she is brave enough to use them. If you come
+to the church to-morrow, you will be converted from the error of some of
+your worst thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you in secret once, Heaven knows under what insane infatuation,
+what I could tell you now with husband or child for audience,&mdash;there is,
+there has ever been, but one voice for me."</p>
+
+<p>For answer the organist lifted the lid of the artist's piano, touched a
+few notes, and sang.</p>
+
+<p>Was that the voice that once brought out the applause of the people,
+rushing and roaring like the waves of the sea?</p>
+
+<p>The same, etherealized, strengthened,&mdash;meeting the desire of the trained
+and cultured man, as once it had the impassioned aspiration of youth.</p>
+
+<p>He stood there, as of old, completely subject to her will; and of old
+she had worked for good, as one of God's accredited angels. Every evil
+passion in those days had stood rebuked before the charmed circle of her
+influences: a voice to long for as the hart longs for the water-brooks;
+a spirit to trust for work, or for love, or for truth,&mdash;"truest truth,"
+and stanchest loyalty, as one might trust those who are delivered
+forever from the power of temptation.</p>
+
+<p>When she had ended the song, she had indeed ended. Not one note more.
+Closing the piano, she walked about the room, looking at his pictures
+one after another, pausing long before some, but the silence in which
+she made the circuit was unbroken.</p>
+
+<p>At last she came to the last-painted picture, where a soldier lay dying,
+with glory on his face, victory in his eyes. Beside this she remained.</p>
+
+<p>"There's many a realization of that dream," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The words seemed to sting the artist as though she had said instead,
+"Here's one who is in no danger of realizing it."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," said he, "I might one day prove for myself the emotions
+attributed to that soldier."</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated before answering. A vision rose before her,&mdash;a vision of
+fields covered with the slain, unburied dead. Here the paths of honor
+were cut short by the grave. She looked at Adam von Gelhorn. Here was no
+warrior except for courage, no knight but for chivalry. Yet how proudly
+his eyes met hers! What was this glance that seemed suddenly to fall
+upon her from some unbroken, awful height? It was a great thing to say,
+with the knowledge that came with that glance,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do you no longer think so? Patriotism has its tests. This war will be
+long enough to sift enthusiasms."</p>
+
+<p>Humbly he answered,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I wait my time."</p>
+
+<p>Then, urged on by two motives, distinct, yet confluent, and so
+all-powerful,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Strange army, Adam, if all the soldiers waited for it."</p>
+
+<p>He answered her as mildly as before, but with quite as deep assurance,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Not a man of them but has heard his name called. The time of a man is
+his own. The trumpet sounds, and though he were dead, yet shall he
+live."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you wait that sound? Then verily you may remain here safely, and
+paint fine pictures of wounded men on awful battle-fields."</p>
+
+<p>The artist looked at the woman. Did she speak to test his patience, or
+his courage, or his loyalty? Gravely he answered, true to himself,
+though baffled in his endeavor to read what she chose to conceal,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Once I took everything you said as if you were inspired, for I believed
+you were. For years I have been accustomed to think of your approval,
+and wait for it, and long for it; for I always knew you would finally
+stand here in the midst of my work as the one thing that should prove to
+me it was good. If you could only know what sort of value I have set on
+the praise of critics while waiting for yours, you would deem me
+ungrateful. But I knew you would come. You are here, then,&mdash;and I
+perceive, though you do not say so, that I have not wasted time; often,
+while I was painting that hero yonder, I said to myself, 'Better die
+than hold on to life or self a moment after the voice calls!' Julia, it
+has called!"</p>
+
+<p>This was spoken quietly enough, but with the deep feeling that seeks
+neither outlet nor consolation in sound. Having spoken, he went up to
+his easel, cut away the canvas with long, even knife-strokes, set aside
+the frame. He was ready. And now he waited further orders,&mdash;looking at
+the woman who had accomplished so much.</p>
+
+<p>She did not, by gesture or word, interrupt him; but when he stood
+absolutely motionless and silent, as if more were to be said, and by
+her, she evidently faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the canvas," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Your trophy."</p>
+
+<p>He gave it her with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but if a trophy, worth more than could be told.
+There's nobler work for you to do than painting pictures.
+Atonement,&mdash;reconciliation,&mdash;sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>"Where? when? how?"</p>
+
+<p>He put these questions with a distinctness that required answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Your heart will tell you."</p>
+
+<p>He <i>had</i> his answer.</p>
+
+<p>"And the portrait yonder, that will tell you. It is not hers, you will
+say. But it is not mine, nor a vision, except as you have glorified her.
+In spite of yourself, you are true. And in spite of herself, Sybella
+believes in you."</p>
+
+<p>"Such a collection of incoherent fragments from the lips of an artist
+accustomed to treat of unities,&mdash;it is incomprehensible."</p>
+
+<p>So the painter began; but he ended,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"When I come back from battle, I will think of what you say. I do
+believe in my own integrity as firmly as I trust my loyalty."</p>
+
+<p>There was a rare gentleness in the man's voice that seemed to say that
+mists were rising to envelop the summits of the mountains, and he looked
+forth, not to the bald heights, but along the purple heather-reaches,
+where any human feet might walk, finding pleasant paths, fair flowers,
+cool shades, and blessed reflections of heaven.</p>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<p>The rector of St. Peter's sat in the vestry-room, which he used for his
+study, when there came an interruption to the even tenor of his orthodox
+thinking.</p>
+
+<p>Whoever sought him did so with a determination that carried the various
+doors between him and the study, and at last came the knock, of which he
+sat in momentary dread. It expressed the outsider so imperatively, that
+the minister at once laid aside his pen, and opened the door. And, alas!
+it was Saturday, <span class="smcap">p. m.</span>,&mdash;Easter at hand!</p>
+
+<p>He should have been glad, of course, of the cordial hand-grasp with
+which his stanch supporter, Gerald Deane, saluted him; but he had been
+interrupted in necessary work, and his face betrayed him. It told
+unqualified surprise, that, at such an hour, he had the honor of a visit
+from the warden.</p>
+
+<p>The warden, however, was absorbed in his own business to an extent that
+prevented him from seeing what the minister's mood might be. He began to
+speak the moment he had thrown himself into the arm-chair opposite Mr.
+Muir.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," said he, "what sort of person we've got here in our
+organist?"</p>
+
+<p>Indignant was the speaker's voice, and indignant were his eyes; he spoke
+quick, breathed hard, showed all the signs of violent emotion.</p>
+
+<p>The minister's bland face had a puzzled expression, as he answered,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"A first-rate musician, Deane,&mdash;and a lady. That's about the extent of
+my information."</p>
+
+<p>"A Rebel! and the wife of a Rebel!" was Deane's wrathful answer.</p>
+
+<p>Hitherto, what had he not said or done in the way of supporting the
+organist?</p>
+
+<p>"A Rebel?" exclaimed the minister, thrown suddenly off his guard.</p>
+
+<p>He might have heard calumny uttered against one under his tender care by
+the way that single word burst from him.</p>
+
+<p>"The wife of a Rebel general, and a spy!"</p>
+
+<p>Deane's voice made one think of the Inquisition, and of inevitable
+forfeitures, unfailing executions of unrelenting judgments.</p>
+
+<p>"For a spy, she makes poor use of her advantages," said the minister.
+"She's never anywhere, that I can learn, except in the church and her
+own room."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say anybody will believe that whom she chooses to <i>have</i> believe
+it. How do you or I know what she is? or where? or what she does? We're
+not the kind of men for her to take into confidence. She is evidently
+shrewd enough to see that it wouldn't be safe to tamper with <i>us</i>! But
+we must get rid of her, or we shall have the organ demolished and the
+church about our ears. Let the mob once suspect that we employ a spy
+here to do our music for us, and see what our chance would be! There's
+no use asking for proof. There's a young man in my storehouse, a
+contraband, who recognized her somewhere in the street this morning, and
+<i>he</i> says she is the wife of the Rebel General Edgar; and if it's true,
+and there's no question about that, <i>I</i> say she ought to be arrested."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! pooh!"&mdash;the minister was thrown off his guard, and failed to
+estimate aright the kind of patriotism he bluffed off with so little
+ceremony;&mdash;"the negro"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Negro! face as white as mine, Sir! Well, yes, negro, I suppose,&mdash;slave,
+any way,&mdash;do you want him summoned in here? Do you want to see him? He
+gives his testimony intelligently enough. Or shall we send for Mrs.
+Edgar? For it's high time <i>she</i> were thrown on her own resources,
+instead of being maintained at our expense for the benefit of the
+enemy."</p>
+
+<p>Precisely as he finished speaking sounded a peal from the great organ,
+and Mr. Deane just half understood the look on the minister's face as he
+turned from him to listen.</p>
+
+<p>A better understanding would have kept him silent longer; but, unable to
+control himself, he said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We're buying that at too high a price. Better go back to drunken
+Mallard,&mdash;a great sight better. McClellan would tell us so; so would
+Jeff Davis."</p>
+
+<p>"What can be done?" asked the minister.</p>
+
+<p>Never had that good man looked and felt so helpless as at this moment.
+His words, and still more his look, vexed and surprised the ever-ready
+Deane.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly what would be done, if the woman played fifty times worse, and
+looked like a beggar. A medium performer with an ugly visage would not
+find us stumbling against duty. No respect should be shown to persons,
+when such a charge is brought up. The facts must be tested, and Miss
+Edgar&mdash;What's the reason she never owned she was a Mrs.?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Deane, did you ever hear me address her or speak of her in any
+other way? I knew she was a married woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know she had a husband living, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Muir spoke as if it were beneath him to suppose that use was to be
+made, to the damage of the woman, of such acknowledgment.</p>
+
+<p>"It don't look well that people in general are ignorant of the fact. I
+tell you it's suspicious. It strikes me I never heard <i>anybody</i> call
+her anything but Miss Edgar. Excuse me; of course you knew better."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and some beside myself. She told me she was a married woman. But
+really, Deane, we couldn't expect, especially of a woman who has been
+living for months, as it seems to me, in absolute retirement, that she
+should go about making explanations in regard to her private affairs. I
+have inferred, I confess, that she had in some unfortunate manner
+terminated her union with her husband; and I have always hoped that her
+coming here might prove a providential, happy thing,&mdash;that somehow she
+might find her way out of trouble, and resume, what has evidently been
+broken off, a peaceful and happy life. She is familiar with happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Sir!" Deane exploded on the preacher's mildness, of which he had
+grown in the last few seconds terribly impatient, "I don't know how far
+Christian charity may go,&mdash;a great way farther, it seems, than it need
+to, if it will submit to the impertinence of a traitor's coming among us
+and accepting our support, at the same time that she takes advantage of
+her sex and position to betray us. For <i>that</i> business stands just where
+it did before. There isn't the slightest doubt that she will find
+abettors enough who are as false and daring and impudent as herself.
+Whether we shall suffer them is a question, it seems. Excuse my plain
+speaking, but I am surprised all round."</p>
+
+<p>"No more than I am, Mr. Deane. It is, as you say, our duty immediately
+to examine into this business; but we cannot, look at it as you will, we
+cannot do so with too much caution. It is a disagreeable errand for a
+man to undertake. Let us at least defer judgment for the present. I will
+speak to Mrs. Edgar about it myself, and communicate the result
+immediately to you. Do you prefer to remain here till I return?"</p>
+
+<p>He arose as he spoke, but Deane rose also. It had at last penetrated the
+brain of this most shrewd, but also very dull man, that the business
+might be conducted with courtesy, and that a little skill might manage
+it as effectually as a good deal of courage.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," he said; "he could trust the business to the minister. Liked
+to do so, of course. If there was any shame or remorse in the woman, Mr.
+Muir was the proper person to deal with it."</p>
+
+<p>And so Deane retired.</p>
+
+<p>But when he was gone, the minister stood listening to his departing
+steps as long as they could be heard; then he sat down in his
+study-chair, and seemed in no haste to go about the business with which
+he stood commissioned.</p>
+
+<p>Still the organ-music wandered through the church. Prayer of Moses,
+Miserere, De Profundis, the Voice of One crying in the Wilderness, a
+Song in the Night, the darkness of desolation rifted only by the cry for
+deliverance, tragic human experience, exhausted human hope, and dying
+faith,&mdash;he seemed to interpret the sounds as they swept from the
+organ-loft and wandered darkly down the nave among the great stone
+pillars, till they stood, a dismal congregation, at the low door of the
+vestry-room, pleading with him for her who sent them thither, and
+astounding him by the hot calumniation that preceded them.</p>
+
+<p>At last, for he was a man to <i>do</i> his duty, in spite of whatsoever
+shrinking,&mdash;and if this accusation were true, it would be indeed hard to
+forgive, impossible to overlook the offence,&mdash;the minister walked out
+from the vestry into the church.</p>
+
+<p>The organist must have heard him coming, for she broke off suddenly, and
+dismissed the boy who worked the bellows, at the same moment herself
+rising to depart.</p>
+
+<p>Just then the minister ascended the steps that led into the choir.</p>
+
+<p>She had no purpose to remain a moment, and merely paused for civil
+speech, choosing, however, that he should see she was detained.</p>
+
+<p>He did not accept the signs, and, with his usual grave deference to the
+will of others in things trivial, allow her to pass. He said,
+instead,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Edgar, I wish you might give me a moment, though I do not see how
+what I have undertaken can be said in that length of time. I choose that
+you should hear from one who wishes you nothing but good the strange
+story that troubles me."</p>
+
+<p>"I remain, Mr. Muir," was the answer; and she sat down.</p>
+
+<p>The subject was too disagreeable for him to dally with it. If the charge
+were a true one, no consideration was due; if untrue, the sooner that
+was made apparent, the better.</p>
+
+<p>"It is said that the organist of St. Peter's is not as loyal a citizen
+of the United States as might be hoped by those who admire and trust her
+most; and not only so, but that she is the wife of a Rebel leader, and
+in communication with Rebels. It sounds harsh, but I speak as a friend.
+I do not credit these things; but they're said, and I repeat them to
+relieve others of what they might deem a duty."</p>
+
+<p>Swiftly on his words came her answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not believed it, Sir?"</p>
+
+<p>Looking at her, it was the easiest thing for the minister to feel and
+say,&mdash;and, oh, how he wished for Deane!&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Not one word of it, Madam."</p>
+
+<p>"That is sufficient,&mdash;sufficient, at least, for me. But do they, does
+any one, desire that I should take the oath of fealty to the
+Constitution and to the Government? I am ready to do either, or both. I
+hardly reverence the Constitution more than I do the man who is at the
+head of our affairs. To me he is the hero of this age."</p>
+
+<p>The minister smiled,&mdash;a cordial smile, right trustful, cordial, glad.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be well," said he. "These are strange days to live in, and we
+all abhor suspicion of our loyalty. Besides, it may be necessary; for
+suspicion of this character is an ungovernable passion now. For myself,
+I should never have asked these questions; but it is merely right that
+you should know the whole truth. A person who reports of himself that he
+has escaped from Charleston avers that he has recognized in the organist
+of St. Peter's the wife of General Edgar. I don't know the man's name.
+But his statement has reached me directly. I give you information I
+might have withheld, because I perfectly trust both the citizen and the
+lady who has rendered us such noble service here."</p>
+
+<p>"And such trust, I may say, is my right. I shall not forfeit it," said
+the organist, rising. "I am ready, at any time, to take the oath, and to
+bear my own responsibilities, Mr. Muir. I have neither fellowship nor
+communication with Rebels, and I deem it a strange insult to be called a
+spy. 'T is a great pity one should stay here to vex himself with puerile
+gossip."</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to the stained windows emblazoned with sacred symbols,
+glorious now with sunlight, bowed, and was gone.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<p>There came, on Easter night, to the door of the organist's apartment,
+the "contraband" who at present was sojourning under the protection of
+Mr. Gerald Deane.</p>
+
+<p>The hour was not early. Evening service was over, and Julius had waited
+a reasonable length of time, that his errand might be delivered when she
+should be at leisure. He might safely have gone at once; for guests
+never came at night, and rarely by day,&mdash;the organist's wish being
+perfectly understood among the very few with whom she came in contact,
+and she being consequently "let alone" with what some might have deemed
+"a vengeance." But it satisfied her, and no other dealing would.</p>
+
+<p>Either this man&mdash;Julius Hopkins was his name&mdash;had not so recently come
+to H&mdash;&mdash; as to be a stranger in any quarter of the town, or he had made
+use of his time here; for he seemed familiar with the streets and alleys
+as an old resident.</p>
+
+<p>To find the organist was not difficult, when one had come within sight
+of the lofty spire of the church, for it was under its shadow she
+lived; but if he had been accustomed to carry messages to her door for
+years, he could not now have presented himself with fuller confidence as
+to what he should find.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Edgar opened the door, not a word was needed, as if these were
+strangers who stood face to face. In her countenance, indeed, was
+emotion,&mdash;unmeasured surprise; in her manner, momentary indecision. But
+the surprise passed into a lofty kindliness of manner, and the
+indecision gave place to the most entire freedom from embarrassment. She
+cut short the words he began to speak with an authoritative, though most
+quiet,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Julius, come in."</p>
+
+<p>It was not as one addresses the servant of a friend, but spoken with an
+authority which the man instantly acknowledged by obedience. He came
+into the room, closed the door, and waited till she should speak. She
+asked,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you here?"</p>
+
+<p>He answered as if unaware that any great change had taken place in their
+relations.</p>
+
+<p>"My master sent me. At last I have found my mistress. It took me a great
+while."</p>
+
+<p>"Is your master still in arms?"</p>
+
+<p>The man bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"Against the Government?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He</i> says, <i>for</i> the Government."</p>
+
+<p>"Of Rebels?"</p>
+
+<p>He bowed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, there is no answer,&mdash;can be none. Did he not foresee it?"</p>
+
+<p>The slave did not answer. What words that he came commissioned to speak
+could respond to the anguish her voice betrayed? She spoke again; she
+had recovered from the surprise of her distress, and, looking now at
+Julius, said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You are excused from replying; but&mdash;you do not, in any event, propose
+to return home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Madam, yes,&mdash;immediately, immediately."</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time he had discovered this purpose, and he did so with
+a vehemence expressive of desire to vindicate himself where he should be
+understood. She answered slowly, but she did not seem amazed, as Deane
+would infallibly have been, as you and I had been,&mdash;such doubting
+worshippers, after all, of the great heroic.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not hear, Julius, everywhere, that you are a freeman? Is it
+possible no one has told you so? Do you not know it for yourself? It is
+likely."</p>
+
+<p>"It don't signify. I tended him through one course,&mdash;he got a bad cut,
+Master did,&mdash;and I'll take care of him again. I a'n't through till he
+is."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks to me, and the Lord, he <i>is</i> well of the wound again, and gone
+to work."</p>
+
+<p>At the pause that now ensued, as if he had only been waiting for this,
+the slave approached nearer to his mistress; but he did not lift his
+eyes,&mdash;he desired but to serve. She was so proud, he thought,&mdash;always
+was; if he could only get <i>himself</i> out of the way, and let this ugly,
+cruel business right itself without a witness! Master knew how to plead
+better than any one could for him. He produced a tiny case of
+chamois-leather.</p>
+
+<p>"Master sent you this," he said; and it seemed as if he would have given
+it into her very hands; but they were folded; so he laid it on the edge
+of the piano, and stepped back a pace. He knew there was no need for him
+to explain.</p>
+
+<p>Well she understood. Her husband had done his utmost to secure a
+reconciliation. Love had its rights, its sacrifices; with these she had
+to do, and not with his official conduct and public acts.</p>
+
+<p>She knew well what that trifle of a chamois case contained. It was the
+miniature of their child, the little one of earth no more, but
+heaven-born: the winged child, with the flame above its head,&mdash;symbols
+with which, of old, they loved to represent Genius. This miniature was
+set in diamonds; it was the mother's gift to the father of the child:
+this woman's gift to the man whom loyal men to-day call traitor, rebel,
+alien, enemy.</p>
+
+<p>And thus he appealed to her. Oh, tender was the voice! This love that
+called had in its utterances proof that it held by its immortality. The
+love that pleaded with her appealed to recollections the most sacred,
+the most dear, the perpetual,&mdash;knowing what was in her heart, knowing
+how <i>it</i> would respond.</p>
+
+<p>But there, where Julius left the miniature, it lay; a letter beside it
+now, and a purse of gold,&mdash;pure gold,&mdash;not a Confederate note among it.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Julia Edgar! she need not open the case that shone with such starry
+splendor. Never could be hidden from her eyes the face of the child. How
+should she not see again, in all its beauty, the garden where her
+darling had played, little hands filled full of blooms, little face
+whose smiling was as that of angels, butterflies sporting around her as
+the wonderful one of old flitted about St. Rose,&mdash;alas! with as sure a
+prophecy as that black and golden one? How clearly she saw again,
+through heavy clouds of tears that never broke, the garden's glory, all
+its peace, its happiness, its pride, and love!</p>
+
+<p>No argument, no word, could have pleaded for the father of the child
+like this. But it was love pleading against love,&mdash;Earth's beseeching
+and need, against Heaven's warning and sufficience.</p>
+
+<p>At last she spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your reward, Julius, for all this danger you've incurred for
+him, and for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said it should be my liberty."</p>
+
+<p>How he spoke those words! <span class="smcap">Liberty!</span> it was the golden dream of
+the man's life, yet he named it with a self-control that commanded her
+admiration and reverence.</p>
+
+<p>"I give it to you at this moment, here!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant the slave seemed to hesitate; but the hesitation was of
+utterance merely, not of will.</p>
+
+<p>"My errand isn't half done, Madam. I never broke my word yet. I'll go
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him, then, that I gave you your freedom, and you would not accept
+it. And&mdash;<i>go</i> back! 't is a noble resolve, worthy of you. Take the
+purse. I do not need it. Say that I have no need of it. And you will,
+perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>No other message for him? Not one word from herself to him! For she knew
+where safety lay.</p>
+
+<p>The slave looked at her, helpless, hopeless, with indecision. The woman
+was incomprehensible. He had set out on his errand, had persevered
+through difficulties, and had withstood temptations too many to be
+written here, with not a doubt as to the success that would attend him.
+He remembered the wife of General Edgar in her home; to that home of
+happy love and noble hospitality, and of all social dignities, he had no
+doubt he should restore her. But now, humbled by defeat, he said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I've looked a great while for you, Madam. I would never 'a' give up,
+though, if I'd gone to Maine or Labrador, and round by the Rocky
+Mountains, hunting for you. I heard you singing in the church this
+morning, and I knew your voice. Though it didn't sound natural
+right,&mdash;but I knew it was nobody else's voice,&mdash;as if the North mostly
+hadn't agreed with it. And I heard it yesterday somewhere,&mdash;that's what
+'sured me. I was going along the street, when I heard it; but it was not
+this house you were in."</p>
+
+<p>"And it was you, then, Julius, who betrayed me to the person who
+supposes himself to be your protector,&mdash;and this because you thought
+surely I must be glad to return, when I had lost my friends here through
+ill report! Is that the way your war is carried on?"</p>
+
+<p>"My war, Madam?"</p>
+
+<p>But Julius did not look at his mistress; he looked away, and shrugged
+his shoulders. The device of which he was convicted had seemed to him so
+good, so sure, nevertheless had failed.</p>
+
+<p>She had scarcely finished speaking, when a note was brought to the door.
+It was from Adam von Gelhorn.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I am making my preparations to go at nine to-morrow," said the
+note. "Will you come to the church before? I would like to
+remember having seen you there last, at the organ. There's a
+bit of news just reached me, said to be a secret. General
+Edgar's command aims at preventing the junction of our forces
+before Y&mdash;&mdash;. He is strong enough, numerically, to overthrow
+either division in separate conflict, and this is his
+Napoleonic strategy. But he will be outwitted. There's no doubt
+of it. Do not despair of our cause, whatever you hear during
+the coming fortnight. I shall report myself immediately to
+McClellan, and he may make a drummer-boy of me, if he will.
+Henceforth I am at his service till the war ends.</p></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<span class="smcap">Von</span> G&mdash;&mdash;."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thrice she read this note; when her eyes lifted at last, Julius was
+still standing where she had left him. She started, seeing him, as if
+his presence there at the moment took a new significance; her heart
+fainted within her.</p>
+
+<p>Had <i>he</i> heard this secret of which Von Gelhorn spoke? It was her
+husband's <i>life</i> that was in jeopardy!</p>
+
+<p>"When are you going, Julius?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow. Oh, Madam, give me some word for him!"</p>
+
+<p>Red horror of death, how it rises before her sight! She shuddered,
+cowered, sank before the blackness of darkness that followed fast on
+that terrific spectacle of carnage, before which a whirlwind seemed to
+have planted her. She heard the cries and yells, the groans and curses
+of bleeding, dying men; saw banners in the dust, horsemen and horses
+crushed under the great guns, mortality in fragments, heaps upon heaps
+of ruin on the field Aceldama.</p>
+
+<p>Where was he? Who would search among the slain for him? Who from among
+the dying would rescue him? Who will stanch his bleeding wounds? Who
+will moisten his parched lips? Whose voice sound in the ears that have
+heard the roar of guns amid the crash of battle? What hand shall bathe
+and fan that brow? What eyes shall watch till those eyelids unlock, and
+catch the whisper of those lips? Nay, who will save his life from the
+needless sacrifice? tell him that his plans are known, warn him back,
+warn <i>him</i> of spies and of treachery? Has Julius betrayed him?</p>
+
+<p>She looked at the slave. But before she looked, her heart reproached her
+for having doubted him.</p>
+
+<p>"You will need this gold," she said. "Take it. Restore the miniature to
+your master. And go,&mdash;go at once. If success be in store for <i>him</i>, I
+share not the shame of it. If defeat, adversity, sickness,&mdash;your master
+knows his wife fears but one thing, has fled but from one thing. Her
+heart is with him, but she abhors the cause to which he has given
+himself. She will not share his crime."</p>
+
+<p>Difficult as these words were to speak, she spoke them without
+faltering, and they admitted no discussion.</p>
+
+<p>The slave lingered yet longer, but there was no more that she would say.
+Assured at last of that, he said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I obey you," and was gone.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone,&mdash;gone! and she had betrayed nothing,&mdash;had given no
+warning,&mdash;had uttered not a word by which the life that was of all lives
+most precious to her might have been saved!</p>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<p>By eight o'clock next morning Mrs. Edgar was in the church. Von Gelhorn
+preceded her by five minutes; he was walking up the aisle when she
+entered, impatient for her appearing, eager to be gone,&mdash;wondering,
+boy-like, that she came not.</p>
+
+<p>He has performed a prodigious amount of labor since they last met. His
+pictures were all removed to the Odeon, he said. His studio, haunt of
+dreams, beloved of fame so long, stripped and barren, looked like any
+other four-walled room,&mdash;and he, a freeman, stood equipped for service.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, an hour would see him speeding to the capital. In less time than it
+had taken him to perfect his arrangements he should be at the
+head-quarters of the commander-in-chief,&mdash;to be made a drummer-boy of,
+as he said before, or serve wherever there should be room for him.</p>
+
+<p>He stood there so bright, so ready, eager, daring, was capable of so
+much! What had <i>she</i> done to usurp the functions of conscience, and
+assume the voice of duty? She had done what she could not revoke, and
+yet could not contemplate without a sort of terror,&mdash;as if to atone, to
+make amends for disloyalty, which, coming even as from herself, a crime
+in which she had chief concernment, was not to be atoned for by
+repentance merely, nor by any sacrifices less than the costliest. She
+had sought her husband's peer,&mdash;deemed that she had found
+him,&mdash;therefore would despatch him to the battle-field, by valor to meet
+the valiant. But now the light by which she had hurried forward to that
+deed was gone, and she stood as a prophetess may, who, deserted of the
+divinity, doubts the testimony of her hour of exaltation.</p>
+
+<p>While they talked,&mdash;both apparently standing at an elevation of serene
+courage above the level of even warring men and heroic women, but one
+causing such misgiving in her heart as to fix her in that mood, and
+forbid an extrication,&mdash;Fate led a lady down the street, who, passing by
+the church and seeing the door ajar, went in. She should find in the
+choir some written music, used in yesterday's services, which she had
+forgotten to bring away. Out of the pure, bright sunshine she stepped
+into the dark, cold shadows, and had come to the choir before she heard
+the voices speaking there. Shrined saints that hold your throne-like
+niches in the old stone walls! gilded cherubim that hover round the
+organ's burnished pipes! what sight do you look down upon? She walked up
+quietly,&mdash;it was her way, a noiseless, gliding way,&mdash;there stood the
+organist and Adam von Gelhorn! As if hell had made a revelation, she
+stood looking at those two. And both saw her, and neither of the three
+uttered one word, or essayed a motion, till she, quietly, it seemed,
+though it was with utmost violence, turned to go again.</p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;soft the voice sounded, but to her who spoke there was thunder in
+it&mdash;the organist called after her, "Sybella!"</p>
+
+<p>She, however, did not turn to answer, neither did she falter in going.
+Departure was the one thing of which she was capable,&mdash;and what could
+have hindered her going? What checks Vesuvius, when the flood says, "Lo,
+I come!"? Or shall the little bird that perches and sings on a post in
+the Dismal Swamp prevent the message that sweeps along the wire for a
+thousand miles?</p>
+
+<p>Von Gelhorn, disturbed by her coming and departure, in that so slight
+vibration of air caused by her advance and her retreat, swayed as a reed
+in the wind, stood for a moment seeking equipoise. Vain endeavor!</p>
+
+<p>Not with inquiry, neither for direction, his eyes fell on Julia Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>"Go," she said.</p>
+
+<p>She said it aloud; no utterance could have been more distinct. He strode
+after Sybella.</p>
+
+<p>She heard him come, but did not pause, or turn, or falter. He came
+faster, gained upon, and overtook her. It was just there by the
+church-door. And then he spoke. But not like a warrior. It was a hoarse
+whisper she heard, and her name in it. At <i>that</i> call she turned. When
+she saw his face, she stood.</p>
+
+<p>Why avert her face, indeed, or why go on?</p>
+
+<p>"I am going away,&mdash;in search of death, perhaps. I don't know. But to
+battle. Will you not come back and listen one moment?"</p>
+
+<p>She stood as if she could stand. Why did he plead but for one moment?
+Battle! before that word she laid down her weapons. Under that glare of
+awful fire the walls of ice melted, as never iceberg under tropic sun.</p>
+
+<p>Battle! One out of the world who had been so long out of <i>her</i> world!
+Out of her world? So is beauty dead and past all resurrection of a
+surety, when the dismal winds of March howl over land and sea!</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday," he said, "I came to church. Not to hear you, but I heard
+you. You conquered me. I was giving a word for you to your friend and
+mine, when God led you in here. Do not try to thwart Him. We have tried
+it long enough. If you should go into my studio,&mdash;no, there's no such
+place now, but if you went into the Odeon, you would see some faces
+there that would tell you who has haunted my dreams and my heart these
+years. Forgive me now that I'm going away. Let me hear you speak the
+very word, Sybella."</p>
+
+<p>How long must sinner call on God before he sees the smile of Love making
+bright the heavens, glad the earth, possible all holiness, probable all
+blessing? For He has built no walls, fastened no bars and bolts, blasted
+no present, cursed no future. If Love be large, rich, free, strong
+enough, it brings itself with one swift bound into the Heavenly Kingdom
+where the Powers of Darkness have almost prevailed.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Edgar saw these two coming up the aisle together, she
+understood, and, turning full towards them, sang a song such as was
+never heard before within those old gray walls.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>Mr. Muir was but a man. Powerful indeed in his way, but it was behind
+his pulpit-desk, with a sermon in his hands, his congregation before
+him,&mdash;or in carrying out any charitable project, or in managing the
+business specially devolving on him. He was nobody when he emerged from
+his own distinct path,&mdash;at least, such was his opinion; and being so, he
+would not be likely to attempt the enforcement of another view of his
+power on other men. He was afraid of himself now,&mdash;afraid that his own
+preferences had made him obtuse where loyalty would have given him a
+clearer vision.</p>
+
+<p>Pity him, therefore, when Mr. Deane learned that the son of bondage in
+whose deliverance he took such proud delight, as surely became a good
+man who greatly valued freedom, aye, valued it as the pearl beyond all
+price,&mdash;when he learned that the slave had been seen going to the
+organist's room, and returning from it, and had not since been seen in
+H&mdash;&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Muir reflected on these tidings with perplexity, constrained, in
+spite of him, to believe that the slave had actually come on a secret
+errand, which he had fulfilled, and that not without enlightenment he
+had returned to his master.</p>
+
+<p>The indignation a man feels, a man of the Deane order especially, when
+he finds that he has been imposed upon, though the deception has been in
+this instance of his own furtherance and establishment,&mdash;this kind and
+degree of indignation brought Mr. Deane like a firebrand into the next
+vestry-meeting. An end must be made of this matter at once. It was no
+longer a question whether anything had best be done. Something <i>must</i> be
+done; the public demanded, and he, as a good citizen, demanded, that the
+church should free herself of suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Muir felt, from the moment his eyes fell on Deane, that <i>he</i> played
+a losing game. Vain to help a woman who had fallen under that man's
+suspicion, useless to defend her! What should he do, then? Let her go?
+let her fall? Allow that she was a spy? Permit her disgrace, dismissal,
+arrest possibly? When War takes hold of women, the touch is not tender.
+Mr. Muir, it was obvious, was not a man of war. And he had to
+acknowledge to the Musical Committee, that, as to the result of his
+conversation with Mrs. Edgar, he had learned merely what was sufficient,
+indeed, to satisfy <i>him</i> of her loyalty, and that she would scorn to do
+a spy's work; but he had no proof to offer that might satisfy minds less
+"prejudiced" in her favor.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible not to perceive the dissatisfaction with which this
+testimony was received.</p>
+
+<p>The Committee, however favorably disposed toward the organist, had their
+own suspicions to quiet, and a growing rumor among the people to quell.
+Positive proof must be adduced that the organist was not the wife of a
+Rebel general, or she must be removed from her place.</p>
+
+<p>At a time when riot was rife, and street-tumult so common that the
+citizens, loyal or disloyal, had no real security, it was venturesome,
+dangerous, foolhardy, to allow a suspicion to fix, even by implication,
+on the church. If the organist, already sufficiently noted and popular
+in the town to attract within the church-walls scores of people who came
+merely for the music,&mdash;if she were suspected of collision with Southern
+traitors, she must pay the price. It was the proper tax on loyalty. The
+church must be free of blame.</p>
+
+<p>So Mr. Muir, a second time on such business, went to Mrs. Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>Various intimations as to what brave men might do in precisely his
+situation distracted him as he went. The fascinations of her power were
+strongly upon him. If he was a hero, here, surely, was a heroine. And in
+distress! Had Christian chivalry no demand to make, no claim on him?</p>
+
+<p>All the way, as he went, he was counting the cost of his opposition to
+the vestry's will. If he only stood alone! If neither wife nor child had
+rights to be considered in advance of other mortals, and which, for the
+necessities of others, must surely not be waived! If Nature had not
+planted in him prudence, if he had only not that vexatious habit of
+surveying duties in their wholeness, and balancing consequences, he
+might, at the moment, enter into Don Quixote's joy. But,&mdash;and here he
+was at the head of the flight of stairs that led to her chamber, face to
+face with her.</p>
+
+<p>Advance now, Christian minister! He comes slowly, weighed down by his
+burden of consequences, and, as at one glance, the organist perceives
+the "situation." He has come with her dismissal from the church. She
+sees it in the dejected face, the troubled eyes, the weariness with
+which he throws himself into the nearest chair. The duty he has in hand
+he feels in all its irksomeness, and makes no concealment
+thereof,&mdash;indeed, some display perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>From a little desultory talk about church-music, through which words ran
+at random, Mrs. Edgar broke at last, somewhat impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Mr. Muir? Must your organist take the oath?"</p>
+
+<p>The question caught him by surprise; it was uppermost in his thoughts,
+this hateful theme; but then how should she know it? He lost the
+self-possession he had been trying to maintain, the dignity of his
+judicial character broke down completely; he was now merely a
+kind-hearted man, a husband and father it is true, but for the moment
+those domestic ties were not like a fetter on him.</p>
+
+<p>"I require no such evidence of your loyalty, Mrs. Edgar," he said,&mdash;"no
+evidence whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;does not the church?"</p>
+
+<p>This question was asked with a little faltering, asked for his sake; for
+evidently some knowledge he had, and had to communicate, that
+embarrassed him almost to the making of speech impossible.</p>
+
+<p>"The church! No,&mdash;it is too late for that!"</p>
+
+<p>And now he had thrown down the hateful truth. There it lay at the feet
+of the woman who at this moment assumed to the preacher's imagination a
+more than saint's virtue, a more than angel's beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"What then?" she said. "What next, Mr. Muir? Do they want my
+resignation?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Muir said this with a humbled, deprecating gesture of the hand. At
+the same time bowed his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I commission you to carry it," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not," he answered, almost ferociously.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Muir!"</p>
+
+<p>"I consider it an outrage."</p>
+
+<p>"No,&mdash;a misunderstanding."</p>
+
+<p>That mild magnanimity of speech completed the overthrow of his
+prudence.</p>
+
+<p>"A misunderstanding, then, that shall be rectified to your honor," he
+exclaimed, "in the very place where it has gained ground to your
+dishonor. If you resign, Mrs. Edgar, it must be to come at once to my
+house as a guest. If the people are infatuated, the minister need not be
+of necessity. My wife will welcome you there; if the law of the gospel
+cannot protect you from suspicion, it can at least from harm."</p>
+
+<p>So all in a moment the man got the better of Mr. Muir. What a
+deliverance was there! This was the man who had preached and prayed for
+the Government till more than once he had been invited to march out with
+the soldiers as their chaplain to battle, opening his doors to one whom
+the loyal church rejected,&mdash;opening them merely because she was a woman
+on whom suspicion he believed to be unjust had fallen.</p>
+
+<p>Her face lighted, her eyes flashed, she smiled. These were precious
+words to hear from any good man's lips. They broke on the air like balm
+on a wound.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for all the world would I allow it," she answered. "This is no time
+to complicate affairs. I thank you, and I confess you have surprised me.
+I did not expect this even of you. It is needless for me to say that I
+feel this disgrace as you would feel it; but I understand the position
+of the church, and cannot complain. If I were guilty, this treatment
+would be only too lenient. And it is almost guilt to have incurred
+suspicion."</p>
+
+<p>"I will never be the bearer of your resignation, then,&mdash;never, Mrs.
+Edgar! I wash my hands of this business!"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled again. The man in his wrath seemed to have seized on a
+child's weapon. He interpreted her smile, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"My position will be well understood, if another is the bearer. And I
+wish it to be. I wish men to know that I have no hand in this business.
+The church is a persecutor. I, her son, am ashamed of her."</p>
+
+<p>"It has given me my opportunity to make a defence. And I can make none,
+Mr. Muir. My great mistake was in remaining here. Ruin, however, is not
+so rare a thing in these days that I should be surprised by it, even if
+it overtake me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ruin! Aye. What curses thicken for their heads who have brought this
+upon us! Unborn millions will repeat them, and God Almighty sanction and
+enforce them."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Muir paused. What arrested him? Merely the countenance of the woman
+before him. If all those curses had gathered into legions of devils,
+crowding, swarming, furious, armed with lash and brand, about the form
+of one who represented love, joy, beauty, all preciousness to her, the
+terror and the anguish looking from her face could not have been
+intensified. But she said no word.</p>
+
+<p>How should she speak?</p>
+
+<p>As if in spite of him, and of all he had been wont to hold most sacred
+and potential, in spite of church and congregation, Constitution and
+country, the minister had spoken simply for humanity under oppression;
+had he not earned her confidence? Did he not deserve to know at least
+what real ground there was for the suspicions roused against her?</p>
+
+<p>Nay, nay! When did ever Love seek deliverance at the cost of the
+beloved? What woman ever betrayed to secret friend the sin of him she
+loves? Let all creation read the patent facts, behind them still remains
+the inviolate, sacred <i>arcanum</i>, and before it stands sentinel Silence,
+and around it are walls of fire.</p>
+
+<p>Not from this woman's lips should mortal ever learn she was a Rebel's
+wife!</p>
+
+<p>For Mr. Muir, in his present mood, it was only torture to prolong this
+interview. He felt himself unfit for counsel or argument,&mdash;unfit even
+for confidence, had it been vouchsafed. But he held, with a tenacity
+that could not but have its influence on his future acts and life, to
+the purpose that had broken from him so suddenly, and not less to his
+own surprise than to the organist's. From this day she was at liberty to
+seek protection under his roof from threatened mobs and hot-headed
+church-wardens. Mr. Deane was one man, he himself was another; and if a
+day was ever coming to the world when Christian magnanimity must rise in
+its majesty and its strength, that day had surely dawned; if the
+Christian ministry was ever to know a period when the greatness of its
+prerogatives was to be made manifest, that period had certainly begun.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IX.</h3>
+
+<p>From this interview Mrs. Edgar went to make her preparations for the
+flitting she had already determined upon. She resolved to lose no time,
+and consoled Mr. Muir by making known her resolution, and seeking his
+assistance, when he was in a condition adapted to the bestowal.</p>
+
+<p>But scarcely were her rooms bared, her trunks packed, and the day and
+mode of her departure determined upon, when an order came to H&mdash;&mdash; from
+a high official source, so authoritative as to allow no hesitation or
+demur.</p>
+
+<p>"Arrest the organist of St. Peter's Church, Mrs. Julia Edgar."</p>
+
+<p>And, behold, she was a prisoner in the house where she had lodged!</p>
+
+<p>Opposition was out of the question, protest hardly thought of. One
+glance was broad enough to cover this business from end to end, and of
+resistance there was no demonstration. Her work now was to restore the
+room, denuded and desolate, to its late aspect of refinement and cheer.</p>
+
+<p>Well, but is it the same thing to urge others on to sacrifice, and
+yourself to bring an offering? to gird another for warfare, and yourself
+endure hardness? to incite another to active service, and yourself serve
+by passive obedience? to place a sword in the right hand of the valiant,
+and bare your heart to the smiting of a sword in the same cause of
+glory?</p>
+
+<p>To have urged out of beautiful and studious retirement the painter of
+precious pictures, that he may lift the soldier's burden and gird
+himself for fasting through long, toilsome marches over mountains,
+through wilderness, swamp, and desert, and for encountering Death at
+every pass in one of his manifold disguises,&mdash;that he may lie on a field
+of blood, perchance, at last, the fragment of himself, for what? that he
+may say, finally, if speech be left him, he has fought under the flag,
+that at Memphis its buried glory may have resurrection, that at Sumter
+it may float again from the battlements, that at Richmond it may be
+unfurled above Rebellion's grave,&mdash;is it the same thing to have
+accomplished this by way of atonement, and in your own body to atone, by
+your humiliation, by suspicion endured? She deemed it a small thing that
+she was called to suffer,&mdash;that, when honor was won, she must bear
+disgrace instead. What, indeed, was a year's or a lifetime's
+imprisonment, looked on in the light of privation or sacrifice? Yet <i>so</i>
+to atone, since thus it was written, for the sin of one who was in arms
+against the nation's government! Oh, if anywhere, of any loyal citizen,
+it might be looked upon, accepted, <i>as</i> atonement!</p>
+
+<p>In one thing she was happy, and of right. Music never failed her. Art
+keeps her great rewards for such as serve her for her sacred self.
+Therefore let her arise day after day to the same prospect of sky, and
+sea, and busy street, and silent, shadowy church-yard. I bless the birds
+that built their nests in the elm and willow branches for her sake. The
+little creatures flitting here and there, in all their home-ways and
+domestic management, were dear as their song to her.</p>
+
+<p>But in this life, though there might be growth, it was the growth that
+comes through pain endured with patience, through self-control
+maintained in the suspense and the anguish of death.</p>
+
+<p>For what, then, did she long in his behalf whose fate was shrouded in
+thick darkness from her? For victory? or for defeat? A prison?
+mutilation? disablement? burial on the battle-field? or a disgraceful
+safety? Constantly this question urged itself upon her, and the heroic
+love, that in its great disclosures could not fail, shrank shuddering
+back in silence.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to God, she need not choose. The Omniscient is alone the
+Almighty!</p>
+
+
+<h3>X.</h3>
+
+<p>Three months after this order of arrest came another of release,&mdash;as
+brief and as peremptory.</p>
+
+<p>Deane's patriotism, that really had endangered the church with a mob and
+the organ with demolishment, was the cause of the first despatch.
+Colonel Von Gelhorn, who had routed General Edgar and driven him and his
+forces at the point of the bayonet from an "impregnable position," was
+in the secret of the second.</p>
+
+<p>Close following this order of release, so closely that one must believe
+he but waited for it before he again presented himself to his mistress,
+came Julius, the bearer of a message in whose persuasive power he
+himself had little hope. Defeated, wounded, dying, her husband called
+this second time to her.</p>
+
+<p>The slave, this day a freeman by all writs and rights, ascended again to
+her apartment when the order of release had been received.</p>
+
+<p>Surprise awaited him. Alas, what it says for us! our heroes, who have
+surely the right of unlimited expectations, are as likely to be
+surprised by heroic demonstrations as the dullest soul that never strove
+for aught except its paltry starving self. But the hero surprised is not
+surprised into uncomprehending wonder, but rather into smiles, or tears,
+or heartrending, out of which comes thankfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Yet a bitter word escaped him; he could deem even Liberty guilty of an
+injustice, when she was involved in the judgment that awaits the guilty.
+As if never before under the government of God it was known that the
+overthrow of evil involved sorrow, aye, and temporal ruin, aye, and
+sometimes death, to God's very angels! But to that word she answered,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! I have been among friends,&mdash;even though some believed I was their
+enemy in disguise. I have nothing to complain of. Duties must be done.
+But, Julius, you have come to tell me of your master. Tell me, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Such news, Madam, as you will not like to hear, though I have travelled
+with it night and day. Colonel Von Gelhorn sent me. He said I would be
+in time. I didn't wait to hear him say that twice."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He</i> sent you? Where, then, is my husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is a prisoner, Madam."</p>
+
+<p>"A prisoner! Whose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel Von Gelhorn's."</p>
+
+<p>Was it satisfaction that filled the silence following this question?</p>
+
+<p>"But safe? but well, Julius?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Madam, not safe nor well."</p>
+
+<p>"Wounded? Julius, speak! Why must I ask these dreadful questions? Tell
+what you came to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"He is wounded, Madam. He has never been taken away from the church
+where I carried him first after he fell. He had three horses shot under
+him. Oh, Madam, if it hadn't been for him, his whole army would have
+been lost! He wants you now."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go, then. Guide me. The shortest way. You're a free man, Julius.
+Act like one, freely. Wounded,&mdash;Von Gelhorn's prisoner. Then at last
+he's mine again!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Hers again! In the church she found him. In her arms he died.</p>
+
+<p>And he said,&mdash;nor let us think it was with coward weakness blenching
+before the presence of Death, shaming the day he died by a late
+repentance,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have been deceived. But I deceived others. Who will forgive that? It
+is so hard for me to forgive! You have fought your fight like a hero,
+loyal to the core, but I"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, her kiss was on his dying lips. <i>She</i> forgave him. Must
+he, then, go out from her presence into everlasting darkness?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="WET-WEATHER_WORK" id="WET-WEATHER_WORK"></a>WET-WEATHER WORK.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY A FARMER.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<p>It is a pelting November rain. No leaves are left upon the branches but
+a few yellow flutterers on the tips of the willows and poplars, and the
+bleached company that will be clinging to the beeches and the white oaks
+for a month to come. All others are whipped away by the night-winds into
+the angles of old walls, or are packed under low-limbed shrubberies,
+there to swelter and keep warm the rootlets of the newly planted
+weigelias and spruces, until the snows and February suns and April mists
+and May heats shall have transmuted them into fat and unctuous mould. A
+close, pelting, unceasing rain, trying all the leaks of the mossy roof,
+testing all the newly laid drains, pressing the fountain at my door to
+an exuberant gush,&mdash;a rain that makes outside work an impossibility; and
+as I sit turning over the leaves of an old book of engravings, wondering
+what drift my rainy-day's task shall take, I come upon a pleasant view
+of Dovedale in Derbyshire, a little exaggerated, perhaps, in the
+luxuriance of its trees and the depth of its shadows, but recalling
+vividly the cloudy April morning on which, fifteen years agone, I left
+the inn of the "Green Man and Black Head," in the pretty town of
+Ashbourne, and strolled away by the same road on which Mr. Charles
+Cotton opens his discourse of fishing with Master "Viator," and plunged
+down the steep valley-side near to Thorpe, and wandered for three miles
+and more, under towering crags, and on soft, spongy bits of meadow,
+beside the blithe river where Walton had cast, in other days, a gray
+palmer-fly, past the hospitable hall of the worshipful Mr. Cotton, and
+the wreck of the old fishing-house, over whose lintel was graven in the
+stone the interlaced initials of "Piscator, Junior," and his great
+master of the rod. As the rain began to patter on the sedges and the
+pools, I climbed out of the valley, on the northward or Derbyshire side,
+and striding away through the heather, which belongs to the rolling
+heights of this region, I presently found myself upon the great London
+and Manchester highway. A broad and stately thoroughfare it had been in
+the old days of coaching, but now a close, fine turf invested it all,
+save one narrow strip of Macadam in the middle. The mile-stones, which
+had been showy, painted affairs of iron, were now deeply bitten and
+blotched with rust. Two of them I had passed, without sight of house, or
+of other traveller, save one belated drover, who was hurrying to the
+fair at Ashbourne; as I neared the third, a great hulk of building
+appeared upon my left, with a crowd of aspiring chimneys, from which
+only one timid little pennant of smoke coiled into the harsh sky.</p>
+
+<p>The gray, inhospitable-looking pile proved to be one of the old
+coach-inns, which, with its score of vacant chambers and huge
+stable-court, was left stranded upon the deserted highway of travel. It
+stood a little space back from the road, so that a coach and four, or,
+indeed, a half-dozen together, might have come up to the door-way in
+dashing style. But it must have been many years since such a demand had
+been made upon the resources of bustling landlord and of attendant
+grooms and waiters. The doors were tightly closed; even the sign-board
+creaked uneasily in the wind, and a rampant growth of ivy that clambered
+over the porch so covered it with leaves and berries that I could not at
+all make out its burden. I gave a sharp ring to the bell, and heard the
+echo repeated from the deserted stable-court; there was the yelp of a
+hound somewhere within, and presently a slatternly-dressed woman
+received me, and, conducting me down a bare hall, showed me into a great
+dingy parlor, where a murky fire was struggling in the grate. A score of
+roistering travellers might have made the stately parlor gay; and I dare
+say they did, in years gone; but now I had only for company their heavy
+old arm-chairs, a few prints of "fast coaches" upon the wall, and a
+superannuated greyhound, who seemed to scent the little meal I had
+ordered, and presently stalked in and laid his thin nose, with an
+appealing look, in my hands. His days of coursing&mdash;if he ever had
+them&mdash;were fairly over; and I took a charitable pride in bestowing upon
+him certain tough morsels of the rump-steak, garnished with
+horse-radish, with which I was favored for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>I had intended to push on to Buxton the same afternoon; but the
+deliberate sprinkling of the morning by two o'clock had quickened into a
+swift, pelting rain, the very counterpart of that which is beating on my
+windows to-day. There was nothing to be done but to make my home of the
+old coach-inn for the night; and for my amusement&mdash;besides the
+slumberous hound, who, after dinner, had taken up position upon the
+faded rug lying before the grate&mdash;there was a "Bell's Messenger" of the
+month past, and, as good luck would have it, a much-bethumbed copy of a
+work on horticulture and kindred subjects, first printed somewhere about
+the beginning of the eighteenth century, and entitled "The Clergyman's
+Recreation, showing the Pleasure and Profit of the Art of Gardening," by
+the Reverend John Laurence.</p>
+
+<p>It was a queer book to be found in this pretentious old coach-inn, with
+its silken bell-pulls and stately parlors; and I thought how the
+roisterers who came thundering over the road years ago, and chucked the
+bar-maids under the chin, must have turned up their noses, after their
+pint of crusted Port, at the "Clergyman's Recreation." Yet, for all
+that, the book had a rare interest for me, detailing, as it did, the
+methods of fruit-culture in England a hundred and forty years ago, and
+showing with nice particularity how the espaliers could be best trained,
+and how a strong infusion of walnut-leaf tea will destroy all noxious
+worms.</p>
+
+<p>And now, when, upon this other wet day, and in the quietude of my own
+library, I come to measure the claims of this ancient horticulturist to
+consideration, I find that he was the author of some six or seven
+distinct works on kindred subjects, showing good knowledge of the best
+current practice; and although he incurred the sneers of Mr. Tull, who
+hoped "he preached better than he ploughed," there is abundant evidence
+that his books were held in esteem.</p>
+
+<p>Contemporary with the Rev. Mr. Laurence were London and Wise, the famous
+horticulturists of Brompton, (whose nursery, says Evelyn, "was the
+greatest work of the kind ever seen or heard of, either in books or
+travels,") also Switzer, a pupil of the latter, and Professor Richard
+Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. London was the director of the royal gardens under William and Mary,
+and at one time had in his charge some three or four hundred of the most
+considerable landed estates in England. He was in the habit of riding
+some fifty miles a day to confer with his subordinate gardeners, and at
+least two or three times in a season traversed the whole length and
+breadth of England,&mdash;and this at a period, it must be remembered, when
+travelling was no holiday-affair, as is evident from the mishaps which
+befell those well-known contemporaneous travellers of Fielding, Joseph
+Andrews and Parson Adams. Traces of the work of Mr. London are to be
+seen even now in the older parts of the grounds of Blenheim and of
+Castle Howard in Yorkshire.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Switzer was an accomplished gardener, well known by a great many
+horticultural and agricultural works, which in his day were "on sale at
+his seed-shop in Westminster Hall." Chiefest among these was the
+"Ichnographia Rustica," which gave general directions for the
+management of country-estates, while it indulged in some prefatory
+magniloquence upon the dignity and antiquity of the art of gardening. It
+is the first of all arts, he claims; for "tho' Chirurgery may plead
+high, inasmuch as in the second chapter of Genesis that <i>operation</i> is
+recorded of taking the rib from Adam, wherewith woman was made, yet the
+very current of the Scriptures determines in favor of Gardening." It
+surprises us to find that so radical an investigator should entertain
+the belief, as he clearly did, that certain plants were produced without
+seed by the vegetative power of the sun acting upon the earth. He is
+particularly severe upon those Scotch gardeners, "Northern lads," who,
+with "a little learning and a great deal of impudence, know, or pretend
+to know, more in one twelvemonth than a laborious, honest South-country
+man does in seven years."</p>
+
+<p>His agricultural observations are of no special value, nor do they
+indicate any advance from the practice of Worlidge. He deprecates paring
+and burning as exhaustive of the vegetable juices, advises winter
+fallowing and marling, and affirms that "there is no superficies of
+earth, how poor soever it may be, but has in its own bowels something or
+other for its own improvement."</p>
+
+<p>In gardening, he expresses great contempt for the clipped trees and
+other excesses of the Dutch school, yet advises the construction of
+terraces, lays out his ponds by geometric formul&aelig;, and is so far devoted
+to out-of-door sculpture as to urge the establishment of a royal
+institution for the instruction of ingenious young men, who, on being
+taken into the service of noblemen and gentlemen, would straightway
+people their grounds with statues. And this notwithstanding Addison had
+published his famous papers on the "Pleasures of the Imagination" three
+years before.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>Richard Bradley was the Dr. Lardner of his day,&mdash;a man of general
+scientific acquirement, an indefatigable worker, venturing hazardous
+predictions, writing some fifteen or twenty volumes upon subjects
+connected with agriculture, foisting himself into the chair of Botany at
+Cambridge by noisy reclamation, selling his name to the booksellers for
+attachment to other men's wares,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> and, finally, only escaping the
+indignity of a removal from his professor's chair by sudden death, in
+1732. Yet this gentleman's botanical dictionary ("Historia Plantarum,"
+etc.) was quoted respectfully by Linn&aelig;us, and his account of British
+cattle, their races, proper treatment, etc., was, by all odds, the best
+which had appeared up to his time. The same gentleman, in his "New
+Improvements of Planting and Gardening," lays great stress upon a novel
+"invention for the more speedy designing of garden-plats," which is
+nothing more than an adaptation of the principle of the kaleidoscope.
+The latter book is the sole representative of this author's voluminous
+agricultural works in the Astor collection; and, strange to say, there
+are only two in the library of the British Museum.</p>
+
+<p>I take, on this dreary November day, (with my Catawbas blighted,) a
+rather ill-natured pleasure in reading how the Duke of Rutland, in the
+beginning of the last century, was compelled to "keep up fires from
+Lady-day to Michaelmas behind his sloped walls," in order to insure the
+ripening of his grapes; yet winter grapes he had, and it was a great
+boast in that time. The quiet country squires&mdash;such as Sir Roger de
+Coverley&mdash;had to content themselves with those old-fashioned fruits
+which would struggle successfully with out-of-door fogs. Fielding tells
+us that the garden of Mr. Wilson, where Parson Adams and the divine
+Fanny were guests, showed nothing more rare than an alley bordered with
+filbert-bushes.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>In London and its neighborhood the gourmands fared better. Cucumbers,
+which in Charles's time never came in till the close of May, were ready
+in the shops of Westminster (in the time of George I.) in early March.
+Melons were on sale, for those who could pay roundly, at the end of
+April; and the season of cauliflowers, which used to be limited to a
+single month, now reached over a term of six months.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope, writing to Dr. Swift, somewhere about 1730, says,&mdash;"I have
+more fruit-trees and kitchen-garden than you have any thought of; nay, I
+have good melons and pine-apples of my own growth." Nor was this a small
+boast; for Lady Wortley Montague, describing her entertainment at the
+table of the Elector of Hanover, in 1716, speaks of "pines" as a fruit
+she had never seen before.</p>
+
+<p>Ornamental gardening, too, was now changing its complexion. Dutch
+William was dead and buried. Addison had written in praise of the
+natural disposition of the gardens of Fontainebleau, and, at his place
+near Rugby, was carrying out, so far as a citizen might, the suggestions
+of those papers to which I have already alluded. Milton was in better
+odor than he had been, and people had begun to realize that an
+arch-Puritan might have exquisite taste. Possibly, too, cultivated
+landholders had seen that charming garden-picture where the luxurious
+Tasso makes the pretty sorceress Armida spread her nets.</p>
+
+<p>Pope affected a respect for the views of Addison; but his Twickenham
+garden was a very stiff affair. Bridgman was the first practical
+landscape-gardener who ventured to ignore old rules; and he was followed
+closely by William Kent, a broken-down and unsuccessful
+landscape-painter, who came into such vogue as a man of taste, that he
+was employed to fashion the furniture of scores of country-villas; and
+Walpole<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> tells us that he was even beset by certain fine ladies to
+design Birthday gowns for them:&mdash;"The one he dressed in a petticoat
+decorated with columns of the five orders; the other, like a bronze, in
+a copper-colored satin, with ornaments of gold."</p>
+
+<p>Clermont, the charming home of the exiled Orl&eacute;ans family, shows vestiges
+of the taste of Kent, who always accredited very much of his love for
+the picturesque to the reading of Spenser. It is not often that the poet
+of the "Faerie Queene" is mentioned as an educator.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us leave gardens for a while, to discuss Mr. Jethro Tull,
+the great English cultivator of the early half of the eighteenth
+century. I suspect that most of the gentry of his time, and cultivated
+people, ignored Mr. Tull, he was so rash and so headstrong and so noisy.
+It is certain, too, that the educated farmers, or, more strictly, the
+writing farmers, opened battle upon him, and used all their art to ward
+off his radical tilts upon their old methods of culture. And he fought
+back bravely; I really do not think that an editor of a partisan paper
+to-day could improve upon him,&mdash;in vigor, in personality, or in
+coarseness.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, the biographers and encyclop&aelig;dists who followed upon his
+period have treated his name with a neglect that leaves but scanty
+gleanings for his personal history. His father owned landed property in
+Oxfordshire, and Jethro was a University-man; he studied for the law,
+(which will account for his address in a wordy quarrel,) made the tour
+of Europe, returned to Oxfordshire, married, took the paternal
+homestead, and proceeded to carry out the new notions which he had
+gained in his Southern travels. Ill health drove him to France a second
+time, from which he returned once more, to occupy the famous "Prosperous
+Farm" in Berkshire; and here he opened his batteries afresh upon the
+existing methods of farming. The gist of his proposed reform is
+expressed in the title of his book, "The Horse-hoeing Husbandry." He
+believed in the thorough tillage, at frequent intervals, of all
+field-crops, from wheat to turnips. To make this feasible, drilling was,
+of course, essential; and to make it economical, horse labor was
+requisite: the drill and the horse-hoe were only subsidiary to the main
+end of <span class="smcap">thorough tillage</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh Platt, as we have seen, had before suggested dibbling, and
+Worlidge had contrived a drill; but Tull gave force and point and
+practical efficacy to their suggestions. He gives no credit, indeed, to
+these old gentlemen; and it is quite possible that his theory may have
+been worked out from his own observations. He certainly gives a clear
+account of the growth of his belief, and sustains it by a great many
+droll notions about the physiology of plants, which would hardly be
+admissible in the botanies of to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Shall I give a sample?</p>
+
+<p>"Leaves," he says, "are the parts, or bowels of a plant, which perform
+the same office to sap as the lungs of an animal do to blood; that is,
+they purify or cleanse it of the recrements, or fuliginous steams,
+received in the circulation, being the unfit parts of the food, and
+perhaps some decayed particles which fly off the vessels through which
+blood and sap do pass respectively."</p>
+
+<p>It does not appear that the success of Tull upon "Prosperous Farm" was
+such as to give a large warrant for its name. His enemies, indeed,
+alleged that he came near to sinking two estates on his system; this,
+however, he stoutly denies, and says, "I propose no more than to keep
+out of debt, and leave my estate behind me better than I found it. Yet,
+owned it must be, that, had I, when I first began to make trials, known
+as much of the system as I do now, the practice of it would have been
+more profitable to me." Farmers in other parts of England, with lands
+better adapted to the new husbandry, certainly availed themselves of it,
+very much to their advantage. Tull, like a great many earnest reformers,
+was almost always in difficulty with those immediately dependent on him;
+over and over he insists upon the "inconveniency and slavery attending
+the exorbitant power of husbandry servants and laborers over their
+masters." He quarrels with their wages, and with the short period of
+their labor. Pray, what would Mr. Tull have thought, if he had dealt
+with the Drogheda gentlemen in black satin waistcoats, who are to be
+conciliated by the farmers of to-day?</p>
+
+<p>I think I can fancy such an encounter for the querulous old reformer.
+"Mike! blast you, you booby, you've broken my drill!" And Mike, (putting
+his thumb deliberately in the armlet of his waistcoat,) "Meester Tull,
+it's not the loikes o' me'll be leestening to insoolting worrds. I'll
+take me money, if ye plase." And with what a fury "Meester" Tull would
+have slashed away, after this, at "Equivocus," and all his
+newspaper-antagonists!</p>
+
+<p>I wish I could believe that Tull always told the exact truth; but he
+gives some accounts of the perfection to which he had brought his drill
+to which I can lend only a most meagre trust; and it is unquestionable
+that his theory so fevered his brain at last as to make him utterly
+contemptuous of all old-fashioned methods of procedure. In this respect
+he was not alone among reformers. He stoutly affirmed that tillage would
+supply the lack of manure, and his neighbors currently reported that he
+was in the habit of dumping his manure carts in the river. This charge
+Mr. Tull firmly denied, and I dare say justly. But I can readily believe
+that the rumors were current; country-neighborhoods offer good
+starting-points for such lively scandal. The writer of this paper has
+heard, on the best possible authority, that he is in the habit of
+planting shrubs with their roots in the air.</p>
+
+<p>In his loose, disputative way, and to magnify the importance of his own
+special doctrine, Tull affirms that the ancients, and Virgil
+particularly, urged tillage for the simple purpose of destroying
+weeds.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> In this it seems to me that he does great injustice to our old
+friend Maro. Will the reader excuse a moment's dalliance with the
+Georgics again?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Multum adeo, rastris glebas qui frangit <i>inertes</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vimineasque trahit crates, juvat arva;...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et qui proscisso qu&aelig; suscitat &aelig;quore terga<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rursus in obliquum verso perrumpit aratro,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exercetque frequens tellurem, atque imperat arvis."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That "<i>imperat</i>" looks like something more than weed-killing; it looks
+like subjugation; it looks like pulverization at the hands of an
+imperious master.</p>
+
+<p>But behind all of Tull's exaggerated pretension, and unaffected by the
+noisy exacerbation of his speech, there lay a sterling good sense, and a
+clear comprehension of the existing shortcomings in agriculture, which
+gave to his teachings prodigious force, and an influence measured only
+by half a century of years. There were few, indeed, who adopted
+literally and fully his plans, or who had the hardihood to acknowledge
+the irate Jethro as a teacher; yet his hints and his example gave a
+stimulus to root-culture, and an attention to the benefits arising from
+thorough and repeated tillage, that added vastly to the annual harvests
+of England. Bating the exaggerations I have alluded to, his views are
+still reckoned sound; and though a hoed crop of wheat is somewhat
+exceptional, the drill is now almost universal in the best cultivated
+districts; and a large share of the forage-crops owe their extraordinary
+burden to horse-hoeing husbandry.</p>
+
+<p>Even the exaggerated claims of Tull have had their advocates in these
+last days; and the energetic farmer of Lois-Weedon, in Northamptonshire,
+is reported to be growing heavy crops of wheat for a succession of
+years, without any supply of outside fertilizers, and relying wholly
+upon repeated and perfect pulverization of the soil.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> And Mr. Way,
+the distinguished chemist of the Royal Society, in a paper on "The Power
+of Soils to absorb Manure,"<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> propounds the question as follows:&mdash;"Is
+it likely, on theoretical considerations, that the air and the soil
+together can by any means be made to yield, without the application of
+manure, and year after year continuously, a crop of wheat of from thirty
+to thirty-five bushels per acre?" And his reply is this:&mdash;"I confess I
+do not see why they should not do so." A practical farmer, however, (who
+spends only his wet days in-doors,) would be very apt to suggest here,
+that the validity of this <i>dictum</i> must depend very much on the original
+constituents of the soil.</p>
+
+<p>Under the lee of the Coombe Hills, on the extreme southern edge of
+Berkshire, and not far removed from the great highway leading from Bath
+to London, lies the farmery where this restless, petulant, suffering,
+earnest, clear-sighted Tull put down the burden of life, a hundred and
+twenty years ago. The house is unfortunately largely modernized, but
+many of the out-buildings remain unchanged; and not a man thereabout, or
+in any other quarter, could tell me where the former occupant, who
+fought so bravely his fierce battle of the drill, lies buried.</p>
+
+<p>About the middle of the last century, there lived in the south of
+Leicestershire, in the parish of Church-Langton, an eccentric and
+benevolent clergyman by the name of William Hanbury, who conceived the
+idea of establishing a great charity which was to be supported by a vast
+plantation of trees. To this end, he imported a great variety of seeds
+and plants from the Continent and America, established a nursery of
+fifty acres in extent, and published "An Essay on Planting, and a Scheme
+to make it Conducive to the Glory of God and the Advantage of Society."</p>
+
+<p>But the Reverend Hanbury was beset by aggressive and cold-hearted
+neighbors, among them two strange old "gentlewomen," Mistress Pickering
+and Mistress Byrd, who malevolently ordered their cattle to be turned
+loose into his first plantation of twenty thousand young and thrifty
+trees. And not content with this, they served twenty-seven different
+copies of writs upon him in one day, for trespass. Of all this he gives
+detailed account in his curious history of the "Charitable Foundations
+at Church-Langton." He tells us that the "venomous rage" of these old
+ladies (who died shortly after, worth a million of dollars) did not even
+spare his dogs; but that his pet spaniel and greyhound were cruelly
+killed by a table-fork thrust into their entrails. Nay, their
+game-keeper even buried two dogs alive, which belonged to his neighbor,
+Mr. Wade, a substantial grazier. His story of it is very Defoe-like and
+pitiful:&mdash;"I myself heard them," he says, "<i>ten days</i> after they had
+been buried, and, seeing some people at a distance, inquired what dogs
+they were. '<i>They are some dogs that are lost, Sir</i>,' said they; '<i>they
+have been lost some time</i>.' I concluded only some poachers had been
+there early in the morning, and by a precipitate flight had left their
+dogs behind them. In short, the howling and barking of these dogs was
+heard for near three weeks, when it ceased. Mr. Wade's dogs were
+missing, but he could not suspect those dogs to be his; and the noise
+ceasing, the thoughts, wonder, and talking about them soon also ceased.
+Some time after, a person, being amongst the bushes where the howling
+was heard, discovered some disturbed earth, and the print of men's heels
+ramming it down again very close, and, seeing Mr. Wade's servant, told
+him he thought something had been buried there. '<i>Then</i>,' said the man,
+'<i>it is our dogs, and they have been buried alive. I will go and fetch a
+spade, and will find them, if I dig all Caudle over</i>.' He soon brought a
+spade, and, upon removing the top earth, came to the blackthorns, and
+then to the dogs, the biggest of which had eat the loins, and greatest
+share of the hind parts, of the little one."</p>
+
+<p>The strange ladies who were guilty of this slaughter of innocents showed
+"a dying blaze of goodness" by bequeathing twelve thousand pounds to
+charitable societies; and "thus ended," says Hanbury, "these two poor,
+unhappy, uncharitable, charitable old gentlewomen."</p>
+
+<p>The good old man describes the beauty of plants and trees with the same
+delightful particularity which he spent on his neighbors and the buried
+dogs.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot anywhere learn whether or not the charity-plantation of
+Church-Langton is still thriving.</p>
+
+<p>About this very time, Lancelot Brown, who was for a long period the
+kitchen-gardener at Stowe, came into sudden notoriety by his disposition
+of the waters in Blenheim Park, where, in the short period of one week,
+he created perhaps the finest artificial lake in the world. Its
+indentations of shore, its bordering declivities of wood, and the
+graceful swells of land dipping to its margin, remain now in very nearly
+the same condition in which Brown left them more than a hundred years
+ago. All over England the new man was sent for; all over England he
+rooted out the mossy avenues, and the sharp rectangularities, and laid
+down his flowing lines of walks, and of trees. He (wisely) never
+contracted to execute his own designs, and&mdash;from lack of facility,
+perhaps&mdash;he always employed assistants to draw his plans. But the quick
+eye which at first sight recognized the "capabilities" of a place, and
+which leaped to the recognition of its matured graces, was all his own.
+He was accused of sameness; but the man who at one time held a thousand
+lovely landscapes unfolding in his thought could hardly give a series of
+contrasts without startling affectations.</p>
+
+<p>I mention the name of Lancelot Brown, however, not to discuss his
+merits, but as the principal and largest illustrator of that taste in
+landscape-gardening which just now grew up in England, out of a new
+reading of Milton, out of the admirable essays of Addison, out of the
+hints of Pope, out of the designs of Kent, and which was stimulated by
+Gilpin, by Horace Walpole, and, still more, by the delightful little
+landscapes of Gainsborough.</p>
+
+<p>Enough will be found of Mr. Brown, and of his style, in the professional
+treatises, upon whose province I do not now infringe. I choose rather,
+for the entertainment of my readers, if they will kindly find it, to
+speak of that sad, exceptional man, William Shenstone, who, by the
+beauties which he made to appear on his paternal farm of Leasowes,
+fairly rivalled the best of the landscape-gardeners,&mdash;and who, by the
+graces and the tenderness which he lavished on his verse, made no mean
+rank for himself at a time when people were reading the "Elegy" of Gray,
+the Homer of Pope, and the "Cato" of Addison.</p>
+
+<p>I think there can hardly be any doubt, however, that poor Shenstone was
+a wretched farmer; yet the Leasowes was a capital grazing farm, when he
+took it in charge, within fair marketable distance of both Worcester and
+Birmingham. I suspect that he never put his fine hands to the
+plough-tail; and his plaintive elegy, that dates from an April day of
+1743, tells, I am sure, only the unmitigated truth:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Again the laboring hind inverts the soil;<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Again the merchant ploughs the tumid wave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another spring renews the soldier's toil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3"><i>And finds me vacant in the rural cave</i>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Shenstone, like many another of the lesser poets, was unfortunate in
+having Dr. Johnson for his biographer. It is hard to conceive of a man
+who would show less of tenderness for an elaborate parterre of flowers,
+or for a poet who affectedly parted his gray locks on one side of his
+head, wore a crimson waistcoat, and warbled in anap&aelig;stics about kids and
+shepherds' crooks. Only fancy the great, snuffy, wheezing Doctor, with
+his hair-powder whitening half his shoulders, led up before some
+charming little extravaganza of Boucher, wherein all the nymphs are
+simpering marchionesses, with rosettes on their high-heeled slippers
+that out-color the sky! With what a "Faugh!" the great gerund-grinder
+would thump his cane upon the floor, and go lumbering away! And
+Shenstone, or rather his memory, caught the besom of just such a sneer.</p>
+
+<p>But other critics were more kindly and appreciative; among them, Dodsley
+the bookselling author, who wrote "The Economy of Human Life," (the
+"Proverbial Philosophy" of its day,) and Whately, who gave to the public
+the most elegant and tasteful discussion of artificial scenery that was
+perhaps ever written.</p>
+
+<p>Shenstone studied, as much as so indolent a man ever could, at Pembroke
+College, Oxford. His parents died when he was young, leaving to him a
+very considerable estate, which fortunately some relative administered
+for him, until, owing to this supervisor's death, it lapsed into the
+poet's improvident hands. Even then a sensible tenant of his own name,
+and a distant relative, managed very snugly the farm of Leasowes; but
+when Shenstone came to live with him, neither house nor grounds were
+large enough for the joint occupancy of the poet, who was trailing his
+walks through the middle of the mowing, and of the tenant, who had his
+beeves to fatten and his rental to pay.</p>
+
+<p>So Shenstone became a farmer on his own account; and, according to all
+reports, a very sorry account he made of it. The good soul had none of
+Mr. Tull's petulance and audacity with his servants; if the ploughman
+broke his gear, I suspect the kind ballad-master allowed him a holiday
+for the mending. The herdsman stared in astonishment to find the
+"beasts" ordered away from their accustomed grazing-fields. A new
+thicket had been planted, which must not be disturbed; the orchard was
+uprooted to give place to some parterre; a fine bit of meadow was flowed
+with a miniature lake; hedges were shorn away without mercy; arbors,
+grottos, rustic seats, Arcadian temples, sprang up in all outlying
+nooks; so that the annual product of the land came presently to be
+limited, almost entirely, to the beauty of its disposition.</p>
+
+<p>I think that the poet, unlike most, was never very thoroughly satisfied
+with his poems, and that, therefore, the vanity possessed him to vest
+the sense of beauty which he felt tingling in his blood in something
+more palpable than language. Hence came the charming walks and woods and
+waters of Leasowes. With this ambition holding him and mastering him,
+what mattered a mouldy grain-crop, or a debt? If he had only an ardent
+admirer of his walks, his wilderness, his grottos,&mdash;this was his
+customer. He longed for such, in troops,&mdash;as a poet longs for readers,
+and as a farmer longs for sun and rain.</p>
+
+<p>And he had them. I fancy there was hardly a cultivated person in
+England, but, before the death of Shenstone, had heard of the rare
+beauty of his home of Leasowes. Lord Lyttleton, who lived near by, at
+the elegant seat of Hagley, brought over his guests to see what miracles
+the hare-brained, sensitive poet had wrought upon his farm. And I can
+fancy the proud, shy creature watching from his lattice the company of
+distinguished guests,&mdash;maddened, if they look at his alcove from the
+wrong direction,&mdash;wondering if that shout that comes booming to his
+sensitive ear means admiration, or only an unappreciative
+surprise,&mdash;dwelling on the memory of the visit, as a poet dwells on the
+first public mention of his poem. In his "Egotisms," (well named,) he
+writes,&mdash;"Why repine? I have seen mansions on the verge of Wales that
+convert my farm-house into a Hampton Court, and where they speak of a
+glazed window as a great piece of magnificence. All things figure by
+comparison."</p>
+
+<p>And this reflection, with its flavor of philosophy, was, I dare say, a
+sweet morsel to him. He saw very little of the world in his later years,
+save that part of it which at odd intervals found its way to the
+delights of Leasowes; indeed, he was not of a temper to meet the world
+upon fair terms. "The generality of mankind," he cynically says, "are
+seldom in good humor but whilst they are imposing upon you in some shape
+or other."<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>Our farmer of Leasowes published a pastoral that was no way equal to the
+pastoral he wrote with trees, walks, and water upon his land; yet there
+are few cultivated readers who have not some day met with it, and been
+beguiled by its mellifluous seesaw. How its jingling resonance comes
+back to me to-day from the "Reader" book of the High School!</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I have found out a gift for my fair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I have found where the wood-pigeons breed:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But let me that plunder forbear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She will say 'twas a barbarous deed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For he ne'er could be true, she averred,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who could rob a poor bird of its young:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I loved her the more, when I heard<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Such tenderness fall from her tongue."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And what a killing look over at the girl in the corner, in check
+gingham, with blue bows in her hair, as I read (always on the old
+school-benches),&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I have heard her with sweetness unfold<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How that pity was due to&mdash;a dove:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That it ever attended the bold;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And she called it <i>the sister of love</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But her words such a pleasure convey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So much I her accents adore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let her speak, and whatever she say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Methinks I should love her the more."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is a rhythmic prettiness in this; but it is the prettiness of a
+lover in his teens, and not the kind we look for from a man who stood
+five feet eleven in his stockings, and wore his own gray hair. Strangely
+enough, Shenstone had the <i>physique</i> of a ploughman or a prize-fighter,
+and with it the fine, sensitive brain of a woman; a Greek in his
+refinements, and a Greek in indolence. I hope he gets on better in the
+other world than he ever did in this.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ON_THE_RELATION_OF_ART_TO_NATURE" id="ON_THE_RELATION_OF_ART_TO_NATURE"></a>ON THE RELATION OF ART TO NATURE.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN TWO PARTS.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>PART II.</h3>
+
+<p>The repulsive ugliness of the early Christian paintings was not the
+consequence of any break in the tradition. There was no reason why the
+graceful drawing of the human figure should not have been transmitted,
+as well as the technical procedures and the pigments. Nor was effort
+wanting: these pictures were often very elaborate and splendid in
+execution. But it is clear that grace and resemblance to anything
+existing, so far from being aimed at, were intentionally avoided. Even
+as late as the thirteenth century we find figures with blue legs and red
+bodies,&mdash;the horses in a procession blue, red, and yellow. Any whim of
+association, or fanciful color-pattern, was preferred to beauty or
+correctness. Likeness to actual things seemed to be regarded, indeed, as
+an unavoidable evil, to be restricted as far as possible. The problem
+was, to show God's omnipresence in the world, especially His appearance
+on the earth as man, and His abiding presence in holy men and women as
+an inspiration obliterating their humanity. But so long as the divine
+and the human are looked upon as essentially opposed, their union can be
+by miracle only, and the first thought must be to keep prominent this
+miraculousness, and guard against confusion of this angelic existence
+with every-day reality. The result is this realm of ghosts, at home
+neither in heaven nor on earth, neither presuming to be spirit nor
+condescending to be body, but hovering intermediate. But the more
+strongly the antithesis is felt, the nearer the thought to end this
+remaining tenderness for the gross and unspiritual,&mdash;to drop this
+ballast of earth, and rise into the region of heavenly realities. Upon a
+window of Canterbury Cathedral, beneath a representation of the miracle
+of Cana, is the legend,&mdash;<i>"Lympha dat historiam, vinum notat
+allegoriam."</i> But if the earthly is there only for the sake of this
+heavenly transmutation,&mdash;if the miracle, and the miracle alone, shows
+God's purpose accomplished,&mdash;then all things must be miraculous, for all
+else may be safely ignored. Henceforth, nothing is of itself profane,
+for the profane is only that wherein the higher and truer sense has not
+yet been recognized. What is demanded is not an exceptional
+transmutation, but a translation,&mdash;that all Nature should be interpreted
+of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The result is, on the one hand, a greater license in dealing with actual
+forms, since Art sees all things on one level of dignity,&mdash;respects one
+no more than another, but only its own purpose,&mdash;is careless of material
+qualities, and of moral qualities, too, as far as they are bound to
+particular shapes. Why dwell tediously upon one particle, when the value
+of it consists not in its particularity, but in its harmony with the
+rest of the universe? Giotto seems to make short work with the human
+form divine by wrapping all his figures from head to foot in flowing
+draperies. But these figures have more humanity in them, stand closer to
+us, because the meaning is no longer petrified in the shape, but speaks
+to us freely and directly, in a look, a gesture, a sweep of the garment.
+The Greek said,&mdash;"With these superhuman lineaments you are to conceive
+the presence of Jove; these are the appropriate forms of the immortals."
+Giotto said,&mdash;"See what divine meanings in every-day faces and actions;
+with these eyes you are to look upon the people in the street." The one
+is a remote and incredible perfection,&mdash;the other, the intimate reality
+of the actual and present. It is, in truth, therefore, a closer approach
+to Nature than was before possible. The artist no longer shuns full
+actuality for his conception, for he fears no confusion with the actual.
+For instance, from the earliest times the celestial nature of angels had
+been na&iuml;vely intimated by appending wings to them. There was no attempt
+to carry out the suggestion, or to show the mechanical possibility of
+it, for that would be only to make winged men. The painters of the
+sixteenth century, on the other hand, from a nervous dread lest wings
+should prove insufficient, establish a sure basis of clouds for their
+angels, with more and more emphasis of buoyancy and extent, until at
+last, no longer trusting their own statement, they settle the question
+by showing them from below, already risen, and so choke off the doubt
+whether they can rise. But Orcagna's angels float without assistance or
+effort, by their own inherent lightness, as naturally as we walk. They
+are not out of their element, but bring their element with them. These
+are not men caught up into the skies, and do not need to be sustained
+there. The world they inhabit is not earth in heaven, but heaven on
+earth,&mdash;the earth seen in accordance with the purpose of its existence.</p>
+
+<p>Giotto's fellow-citizens were struck with the new interest which the
+language of attitude and gesture and all the familiar details of life
+acquired in his representation of them. Looking around them, they saw
+what they had been taught to see, and concluded it was only an
+unexampled closeness of copying. No doubt Giotto thought so, too,&mdash;but
+had that been all, we should not have heard of it. It is this new
+interest that has to be accounted for. The charm did not lie in the
+fact, nor in the reproduction of it in the picture, but in a sudden
+sense of its value as expression, resting on a still obscurer feeling
+that herein lay its whole value,&mdash;that the actual <i>is</i> not what it
+seems, still less a pure delusion, but that it is pure <i>seeming</i>, so
+that its phenomenal character is no reproach, but the bond that connects
+it with reality. Just because it is only "the outward show," and does
+not pretend to be anything more, what it shows is not "the things that
+only seem," but the things that are. The attractiveness of beauty is due
+to the sense of higher affinities in the object; it is finality felt,
+but not comprehended, so that the form shines with the splendor of a
+purpose that belongs not to it, but to the whole whereof it is a part.
+Aristotle makes wonder the forerunner of science. So our admiration of
+beauty is a tribute paid in advance to the fresh insight it promises.
+Whether it be called miracle or inspiration, the artist must see his
+theme as something excellent and singular. This is perhaps that
+"strangeness" which Lord Bacon requires in all "excellent beauty," the
+new significance coming direct, and not through reflection, and
+therefore ineffable and incomparable. That Giotto and his successors
+went on for two hundred years painting saints and miracles was not
+because the Church so ordained, nor from any extraordinary devoutness of
+the artists, but because they still needed an outward assurance that
+what they did was not the petty triviality it seemed. There must always
+remain the sense of an ulterior, undeveloped meaning; when that is laid
+bare, Art has become superfluous, and makes haste to withdraw into
+obscure regions. For it is only as language that the picture or the
+statue avails anything, and this circumstantiality of expression is
+tolerable only so long as it is the only expression. Beauty is an honor
+to matter; but spirit, the source of beauty, is impatient of such
+measure of it as Art can give. As, in the legend, Eurydice, the dawn,
+sinks back into night at the look of the arisen sun, so this lovely
+flush of the dawning intelligence wanes before the eye of the intellect.
+The picture is a help so long as it transcends previous conception; but
+when the mind comes up with these sallies, and the picture is compared
+with the idea, it sinks back into a thing. Thenceforth it takes rank
+with Nature, and falls victim to the natural laws. It is only an aspect
+and an instant,&mdash;not eternal, but a petty persistence,&mdash;not God, but an
+idol,&mdash;not the saint, but his flesh and integuments.</p>
+
+<p>Shall we say, then, that beauty is an illusion? Certainly it is no
+falsity; we may call it provisional truth,&mdash;truth at a certain stage, as
+appearance, not yet as idea. It is <i>appearance</i> seen as final, as the
+highest the mind has reached. Hence its miraculousness. It is in advance
+of consciousness; we cannot account for it any more than the savage
+could account for his fetich,&mdash;why this bunch of rags and feathers
+should be more venerable to him than other rags and feathers. But to
+deny that the impressiveness it adds to matter comes from a deeper sense
+of the truth would be as unwise as for him to deny his fetich. The
+fetich is false, not as compared with other rags and feathers, but as
+compared with a higher conception of God. The falsity is not that he
+sees God in this rubbish, but that he does not see Him elsewhere.
+Coleridge said that a picture is something between a thought and a
+thing. It must keep the mean; either extreme is fatal. Plato makes Eros
+intermediate between wisdom and ignorance, born of unequal parentage,
+neither mortal nor immortal, forever needy, forever seeking the Psyche
+whom he can never meet face to face.</p>
+
+<p>The history of Art has a certain analogy to the growth of the corals.
+Like them, it seeks the light which it cannot endure. A certain depth
+beneath the surface is most favorable to it,&mdash;a dim, midway region of
+twilight and calm, remote alike from the stagnant obscurity of mere
+sensation and from the agitated surface of day, the dry light of the
+intellect. When it is laid bare, it dies,&mdash;its substance, indeed,
+enduring as the basis of new continents, but the life gone, and only the
+traces of its action left in the stony relics of the past. Greek Art
+perished when its secret was translated into clearer language by Plato
+and Aristotle; and Duccio and Cimabue and Giotto must go the same way as
+soon as St. Francis of Assisi or Luther or Calvin puts into words what
+they meant. It is its own success that is fatal to Art; for just in
+proportion as the expressiveness it insists upon is shown to be
+pervading, universal, and not the property of this or that shape, the
+particular manifestation is degraded. Color and form are due to partial
+opacity; the light must penetrate to a certain depth, but not
+throughout.</p>
+
+<p>The name of Giotto has come to stand for Devotional Art, for an
+earnestness that subordinates all display to the sacredness of the
+theme. But his fellow-citizens knew him for a man of quick worldly wit,
+who despised asceticism, and was ready with the most audacious jokes,
+even at sacred things. Ghiberti and Cennini do not praise him for piety,
+but for having "brought Art back to Nature" and "translated it from
+Greek into Latin,"&mdash;that is, from the language of clerks into the
+vernacular. It is not anything special in the intention that gives
+Giotto his fame, but the freedom, directness, and variety of the
+language with which it is expressed. The effort to escape from
+traditional formulas and conventional shapes often makes itself felt at
+the expense even of beauty. Instead of the statuesque forms of the
+earlier time, it is the dramatic interest that is now prominent,&mdash;the
+composition, the convergent action of numerous figures, separately,
+perhaps, insignificant, but pervaded by a common emotion that
+subordinates all distinctions and leaves itself alone visible. Even in
+the traditional groups, as, for instance, the Holy Families, etc., the
+aim is more complete realization, in draperies, gestures, postures,
+rather than beauty of form. We miss in Giotto much that had been
+attained before him. What Madonna of his can rank with Giovanni
+Pisano's? The Northern cathedral-sculptures, even some of the Byzantine
+carvings, have a dignity that is at least uncommon in his pictures.
+Especially the faces are generally wooden,&mdash;destitute alike of
+individuality and of the loveliness of Duccio's and even of some of
+Cimabue's. On the other hand, in the picture wherein the school
+attained, perhaps, its highest success as to beauty of the faces,
+Orcagna's "Paradise" at Santa Maria Novella, the blessed are ranged in
+row above row, with mostly no relation to each other but juxtaposition.
+We see here two directions,&mdash;one in continuation of the antique, seeking
+beauty as the property of certain privileged forms, the other as the
+hidden possibility that pervades all things. One or the other must abate
+something: either the image must become less sacred, or the meaning
+narrower; for the language of painting is not figurative, like the
+language of poetry, but figure, and unless the form bear on its face
+that it is not all that is meant, its inherent limitations are
+transferred to the thought itself. When Dante tells us that Brunetto
+Latini and his companions looked at him,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Come vecchio sartor fa nella cruna,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>it is the intensity of the gaze that is present with us, not the old
+tailor and his needle. But in Painting the image is usurping and
+exclusive.</p>
+
+<p>Of these divergent tendencies it is easy to see which must conquer. The
+gifts of the spirit are more truly honored as the birthright of humanity
+than as the property of this or that saint. The worship of the Madonna
+is better than the worship of Athene just so far as the homage is paid
+to a sentiment and not to a person. Now the Madonna, too, must come down
+from her throne. The painters grew tired of painting saints and angels.
+Giotto already had diverged from the traditional heads and draperies,
+and begun to put his figures into the Florentine dress. Masaccio and
+Filippino Lippi brought their fellow-citizens into their pictures. Soon
+the Holy Family is only a Florentine matron with her baby. The sacred
+histories are no longer the end, but only the excuse; everything else is
+insisted on rather than the pretended theme. The second Nicene Council
+had declared that "the designing of the holy images was not to be left
+to the invention of artists, but to the approved legislation and
+tradition of the Catholic Church." But now the Church had to take a
+great deal that it had not bargained for. Perspective, chiaroscuro,
+picturesque contrast and variety, and all that belongs to the show of
+things, without regard to what they are,&mdash;this is now the religion of
+Art.</p>
+
+<p>These things may seem to us rather superficial, and Art to have declined
+from its ancient dignity. But see how they took hold of men, and what
+men they took hold of. In the midst of that bloody and shameless
+fifteenth century, when only force seems sacred, men hunted these
+shadows as if they were wealth and power. Paolo Uccello could not be got
+away from his drawing to his meals or his rest, and only replied to his
+wife's remonstrances, "Ah, this perspective is so delightful!" With what
+ardor Mantegna and Luca Signorelli seized upon a new trait or action!
+Leonardo da Vinci, "the first name of the fifteenth century," a man to
+whom any career was open, and who seemed almost equally fit for any,
+never walked the streets without a sketch-book in his hand, and was all
+his life long immersed in the study of Appearance, with a persistent
+scrutiny that is revealed by his endless caricatures and studies, but
+perhaps by nothing more clearly than by his incidental discovery of the
+principle of the stereoscope, which he describes in his treatise on
+Painting. This was no learned curiosity, nor the whim of seeing the
+universe under drill, but only a clearer instinct of what the purpose of
+Art is, namely, to see the reality of the actual world in and as the
+appearance, instead of groping for some ulterior reality hidden behind
+it. Leonardo has been called the precursor of Bacon. Certainly the
+conviction that underlies this passion for the outside of things is the
+same in both,&mdash;the firm belief that the truth is not to be sought in
+some remote seventh heaven, but in a truer view of the universe about
+us.</p>
+
+<p>Donatello told Paolo Uccello that he was leaving the substance for the
+show. But the painter doubtless felt that the show was more real than
+any such "substance." For it is the finite taken as what it truly is,
+nothing in itself, but only the show of the infinite. If it seem shadowy
+and abstract, it is to be considered with what it is compared. What an
+abstraction is depends on what is taken away and what left behind. For
+instance, the Slavery question in our politics is sometimes termed an
+abstraction. Yes, surely, if the dollar <i>is</i> almighty, is the final
+reality,&mdash;if peace and comfort are alone worth living for,&mdash;then the
+Slavery question and several other things are abstractions. So in the
+world of matter, if the chemical results are the reality of it, the
+appearance may well be considered as an abstraction. But this is not the
+view of Art; Art has never magnified the materiality of the finite; on
+the contrary, its history is only the record of successive attempts to
+dispose of matter, the failure always lying in the hasty effort to
+abolish it altogether in favor of an immaterial principle outside of it,
+something behind the phenomena, like Kant's <i>noumenon</i>,&mdash;too fine to
+exist, yet unable to dispense with existence, and so, after all, not
+spirit, but only a superfine kind of matter; or as in a picture in the
+Campo Santo at Pisa, where the world is figured as a series of
+concentric circles, held up like a shield by God standing behind it.</p>
+
+<p>It may be asked, Was not the appearance, and this alone, from all time,
+the object of Art? But so long as the figment of a separate reality of
+the finite is kept up, an antagonism subsists between this and truth,
+and the appearance cannot be frankly made the end, but has only an
+indirect, derivative value. In the classic it was the human form in
+superhuman perfection; in the early Christian Art, God condescending to
+inhabit human shape; in each case, what is given is felt to be negative
+to the reality,&mdash;a fiction, not the truth.</p>
+
+<p>But now the antagonism falls away, and the truth of Art is felt to be a
+higher power of the truth of Nature. Perspective puts the mind in the
+place of gravitation as the centre, thus na&iuml;vely declaring mind and not
+matter to be the substance of the universe. It will see only this,
+feeling well that there is no other reality. It may be said that
+Perspective is as much an outward material fact as any other. So it is,
+as soon as the point of sight is fixed. The mind alters nothing, but
+gives to the objects that coherency that makes them into a world. The
+universe has no existence for the idiot, not because it is not <i>there</i>,
+but because he makes no image of it, or, as we say, does not <i>mind</i> it.
+The point of sight is the mark of a foregone action of the mind; what is
+embraced in it is seen together, because it belongs to one conception.
+The effect can be simulated to a certain extent by mechanical
+contrivance; but before the rules of perspective were systematized, the
+perspective of a picture betrays its history, tells how much of it was
+seen together, and what was added. Even late in the fifteenth century
+pictures are still more or less mosaics,&mdash;their piecemeal origin
+confessed by slight indications in the midst even of very advanced
+technical skill. Thus, in Antonio Pollaiuolo's "Three Archangels," in
+the Florence Academy,&mdash;three admirably drawn figures, abreast, and about
+equally distant from the frame, the line of the right wing touches the
+head at the same point in each, with no allowance for their different
+relations to the centre of the picture.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a deeper kind of perspective, not so easily manufactured,
+though the manufacture of this, too, is often attempted, namely,
+Composition. The true ground of perspective in a picture is not a
+mechanical arrangement of lines, but a definite vision,&mdash;an affection of
+the painter by the subject, the net result of it in his mind,
+instantaneous and complete. It is a mistake to suppose that Composition
+is anything arbitrary,&mdash;that in the landscape out-of-doors we see the
+world as God made it, but in the picture as the painter makes it.
+Composition is nothing but the logic of vision; an uncomposed view is
+no more possible than an unlogical sentence. The eyes convey in each
+case what the mind is able to grasp,&mdash;no less, no more. As to any
+particular work, it is always a question of fact what it amounts to; the
+composition may be shallow, it may be bad,&mdash;the work of the
+understanding, not of the imagination,&mdash;put together, instead of seen
+together. But a picture <i>without</i> composition would be the mathematical
+point. Mr. Ruskin thinks any sensible person would exchange his
+pictures, however good, for windows through which he could see the
+scenes themselves. This does not quite meet the point, for it may be
+only a preference of quantity to quality. The window gives an infinitude
+of pictures; the painter, whatever his merit, but one. A fair comparison
+would be to place by the side of the Turner drawing a photograph of the
+scene, which we will suppose taken at the most favorable moment, and
+complete in color as well as light and shade. Whoever should then prefer
+the photograph must be either more of a naturalist than an artist, or
+else a better artist than Turner. The photograph, supposing it to be
+perfect in its way, gives what is seen at a first glance, only with the
+optical part of the process expanded over the whole field, instead of
+being confined to one point, as the eye is. The picture in it is the
+first glance of the operator, as he selected it; whatever delicacy of
+detail told in the impression on his mind tells in the impression on the
+plate; whatever is more than that does not go to increase the richness
+of the result, <i>as picture</i>, but belongs to another sphere. The
+landscape-photographs that we have lately had in such admirable
+perfection, however they may overpower our judgment at first sight,
+will, I believe, be found not to <i>wear</i> well; they have really less in
+them than even second-rate drawings, and therefore are sooner exhausted.
+The most satisfactory results of the photograph are where the subject is
+professedly a fragment, as in near foliage, tree-trunks, stone-texture;
+or where the mind's work is already done, and needs only to be
+reflected, as in buildings, sculpture, and, to a certain extent,
+portrait,&mdash;as far as the character has wrought itself into the clothes,
+habitual attitude, etc. Is not the popularity of the small full-length
+portrait-photographs owing to the predominance they give to this passive
+imprint of the mind's past action upon externals over its momentary and
+elusive presence? It is to the fillip received from the startling
+likeness of trivial details, exciting us to supply what is deficient in
+more important points, that is to be ascribed the leniency to the
+photograph on the part of near relatives and friends, who are usually
+hard to please with a painted likeness.</p>
+
+<p>But all comparisons between the photograph and the hand-drawn picture
+are apt to be vitiated by the confusion of various extraneous interests
+with a purely artistic satisfaction resting in the thing itself. It is
+the old fallacy, involved in all the comparisons of Art with Nature. Of
+course, at bottom the interest is always that of the indwelling idea.
+But the question is, whether we stop at the outside, the material
+texture, or pass at once to the other extreme, the thought conveyed, or
+whether the two sides remain undistinguished. In the latter case only is
+our enjoyment strictly &aelig;sthetic, that is, attached to the bare
+perception of this particular thing; in the others, it is not this thing
+that prevails, but the physical or moral qualities, the class to which
+it belongs. It is true all these qualities play in and influence or even
+constitute the impression that particular works of Art make upon us. One
+man admires a picture for its <i>handling</i>, its surface, the way in which
+the paint is laid on; another, for its illustration of the laws of
+physiognomy; another, because it reminds him of the spring he spent in
+Rome, the pleasant people he met there, etc. We do not always care to
+distinguish the sources of the pleasure we feel; but for any <i>criticism</i>
+we must quit these accidents and personalities, and attend solely to
+that in the work which is unique, peculiar to it, that in which it
+suggests nothing, and associates itself with nothing, but refuses to be
+classed or distributed. This may not be the most important aspect of the
+thing represented, nor the deepest interest that a picture can have; but
+here, strictly speaking, lies all the <i>beauty</i> of it. The photograph has
+or may have a certain value of this kind, but a little time is needful
+before we discriminate what is general and what is special. Its
+extraneous interest, as specimen, as <i>instance</i> only, tends at once to
+abate from the first view, as the mind classifies and disposes of it.
+What remains, not thus to be disposed of, is its value as picture. Under
+this test, the photograph, compared with works of Art of a high order,
+will prove wanting in substance, thin and spotty, faulty in both ways,
+too full and too empty. For the result in each case must be
+proportionate to the impression that it echoes; but this, in the work of
+the artist, is reinforced by all his previous study and experience, as
+well as by the force and delicacy which his perception has over that of
+other men. It is thus really more concrete, has more in it, than the
+actual scene.</p>
+
+<p>But when Composition is decried as <i>artificial</i>, what is meant is that
+it is <i>artifice</i>. It must be artificial, in the sense that all is there
+for the sake of the picture. But it is not to be the <i>contrivance</i> of
+the painter; the purpose must be in the work, not in his head. Diotima,
+in Plato's "Banquet," tells Socrates that Eros desires not the
+beautiful, but to bring forth in the beautiful; the creative impulse
+itself must be the motive, not anything ulterior. We require of the
+artist that he shall build better than he knows,&mdash;that his work shall
+not be the statement of his opinions, however correct or respectable,
+but an infinity, inexhaustible like Nature. He is to paint, as Turner
+said, only his impressions, and this precisely because they are not
+<i>his</i>, but stand outside of his will. To further this, to get the direct
+action of the artist's instinct, clear of the meddling and patching of
+forethought and afterthought, is no doubt the aim of the seemingly
+careless, formless handling now in vogue,&mdash;the dash which Harding says
+makes all the difference between what is good and what is intolerable in
+water-colors,&mdash;and the palette-knife-and-finger procedure of the French
+painters.</p>
+
+<p>The sin of premeditated composition is that it is premeditated; the why
+and wherefore is of less consequence. If the motive be extraneous to the
+work, a theory, not an instinct, it does not matter much how <i>high</i> it
+is. It is fatal to beauty to see in the thing only its uses,&mdash;in the
+tree only the planks, in Niagara only the water-power; but a reverence
+for the facts themselves, or even for the moral meaning of them, so far
+as it is consciously present in the artist's mind, is just so far from
+the true intent of Art. This is the bane of the modern German school,
+both in landscape and history. They are laborious, learned, accurate,
+elevated in sentiment; Kaulbach's pictures, for instance, are complete
+treatises upon the theme, both as to the conception and the drawing,
+grouping, etc.; but it is mostly as treatises that they have interest.
+So the allegories in Albert D&uuml;rer's "Melancholia" are obstructive to it
+as a work of Art, and just in proportion to their value as thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The moral meaning in a picture, and its fidelity to fact, may each serve
+as measure of its merit <i>after it is done</i>. They must each be there, for
+its aim is to express after its own fashion the reality that lurks in
+every particle of matter. But it is for the spectator to see them, not
+the artist, and it is talking at cross-purposes to make either the
+motive,&mdash;to preach morality to Art, or to require from the artist an
+inventory of the landscape. That five or ten million pines grow in a
+Swiss valley is no reason why every one of them should be drawn. No
+doubt every one of them has its reason for being there, and it is
+conceivable that an exhaustive final statement might require them all
+to be shown. But there are no final statements in this world, least of
+all in Art. There are many things besides pines in the valley, and more
+important, and they can be drawn meanwhile. Besides, if all the pines,
+why not every pebble and blade of grass?</p>
+
+<p>The earnestness that attracts us in medi&aelig;val Art, the devout fervor of
+the earlier time and the veracity of the later, the deference of the
+painter to his theme, is profoundly interesting as <i>history</i>, but it was
+conditioned also by the limitations of that age. The medi&aelig;val mind was
+oppressed by a sense of the foreignness and profaneness of Nature. The
+world is God's work, and ruled by Him; but it is not His dwelling-place,
+but only His foot-stool. The Divine spirit penetrates into the world of
+matter at certain points and to a certain depth, does not possess and
+inhabit it now and here, but only elsewhere and at a future time, in
+heaven, and at the final Judgment; and meantime the Church and the State
+are to maintain His jurisdiction over this outlying province as well as
+they can. The actual presence of God in the world would seem to drag Him
+down into questionable limitations, not to be assumed without express
+warrant, as exception, miracle, and in things consecrated and set apart.
+Hence the patchwork composition of the early painters; we see in it an
+extreme diversity of value ascribed to the things about them. It is a
+world partly divine and partly rubbish; not a universe, but a collection
+of fragments from various worlds. The figures in their landscapes do not
+tread the earth as if they belonged there, but like actors upon a stage,
+tricked up for the occasion. The earth is a desert upon which stones
+have been laid and herbs stuck into the crevices. The trees are put
+together out of separate leaves and twigs, and the rocks and mountains
+inserted like posts. In the earliest specimens the figures themselves
+have the same piecemeal look: their members are not born together, but
+put together. We see just how far the soul extends into them,&mdash;sometimes
+only to the eyes, then to the rest of the features, afterwards to the
+limbs and extremities. Evidently the artist's conception left much
+outside of it, to be added by way of label or explanation. In the trees,
+the care is to give the well-known fruit, the acorn or the apple, not
+the character of the tree; for what is wanted is only an indication what
+tree is meant. The only tie between man and the material world is the
+<i>use</i> he makes of it, elaborating and turning it into something it was
+not. Hence the trim <i>orderliness</i> of the medi&aelig;val landscape. Dante shows
+no love of the woods or the mountains, but only dread and dislike, and
+draws his tropes from engineering, from shipyards, moats, embankments.</p>
+
+<p>The medi&aelig;val conception is higher than the antique; it recognizes a
+reality beyond the immediate, but not yet that it is the reality of the
+immediate and present also. But Art must dislodge this phantom of a
+lower, profane reality, and accept its own visions as authentic and
+sufficient. The modern mind is in this sense less religious than the
+medi&aelig;val, that the antithesis of phenomenal and real is less present to
+it. But the pungency of this antithesis comes from an imperfect
+realization of its meaning. Just so far as the subjection of the finite
+remains no longer a postulate or an aspiration, but is carried into
+effect,&mdash;its finiteness no longer resisted or deplored, but
+accepted,&mdash;just so far it ceases to be opaque and inert. The present
+seems trivial and squalid, because it is clutched and held fast,&mdash;the
+fugitive image petrified into an idol or a clod. But taken as it is, it
+becomes transparent, and reveals the fair lines of the ideal.</p>
+
+<p>The complaints of want of earnestness, devoutness, in modern Art, are as
+short-sighted as Schiller's lament over the prosaic present, as a world
+bereft of the gods. It is a loss to which we can well resign ourselves,
+that we no longer see God throned on Olympus, or anywhere else outside
+of the world. It is no misfortune that the mind has recognized under
+these alien forms a spirit akin to itself, and therefore no longer
+gives bribes to Fate by setting up images to it. The deity it worships
+is thenceforth no longer powerless to exist, nor is there any existence
+out of him; it needs not, then, to provide a limbo for him in some
+sphere of abstraction. What has fled is not the divinity, but its false
+isolation, its delegation to a corner of the universe. Instead of the
+god with his whims, we have law universal, the rule of mind, to which
+matter is not hostile, but allied and affirmative. That the sun is no
+longer the chariot of Helios, but a gravitating fireball, is only the
+other side of the perception that it is mind embodied, not some
+unrelated entity for which a charioteer must be deputed.</p>
+
+<p>We no longer worship groves and fountains, nor Madonnas and saints, and
+our Art accordingly can no longer have the fervency, since its objects
+have not the concreteness, that belonged to former times. But it is to
+be noticed that Art can be devout only in proportion as Religion is
+artistic,&mdash;that is, as matter, and not spirit, is the immediate object
+of worship. Art and Religion spring from the same root, but coincide
+only at the outset, as in fetichism, the worship of the Black Stone of
+the Caaba, or the wonder-working Madonnas of Italy. The fetich is at
+once image and god; the interest in the appearance is not distinct from
+the interest in the meaning. It needs neither to be beautiful nor to be
+understood. But as the sense springs up of a related <i>mind</i> in the idol,
+the two sides are separated. It is no longer <i>this thing</i> merely, but,
+on the one hand, spirit, above and beyond matter, and, on the other, the
+appearance, equally self-sufficing and supreme among earthly things,
+just because its reality is not here, but elsewhere,&mdash;appearance,
+therefore, as transcendent, or Beauty.</p>
+
+<p>To every age the religion of the foregoing seems artificial, incumbered
+with forms, and its Art superstitious, over-scrupulous, biased by
+considerations that have nothing to do with Art. Hence religious
+reformers are mystics, enthusiasts: this is the look of Luther, even of
+the hard-headed Calvin, as seen from the Roman-Catholic side. Hence,
+also, every epoch of revolution in Art seems to the preceding like an
+irruption of frivolity and profanity. Christian Art would have seemed so
+to the ancients; the Realism of the fourteenth century must have seemed
+so to the Giotteschi and the Renaissance, to both. The term
+Pre-Raphaelitism, though it seems an odd collocation to bring together
+such men as Fr&agrave; Angelico, Filippo Lippi, and Luca Signorelli, has so far
+an intelligible basis, that all this period, from Giotto to Raphael,
+amidst all diversities, is characterized throughout by a deference of
+Art to something extraneous. It is not beauty that Fr&agrave; Angelico looks
+for, but holiness, or beauty as expressing this; it is not beauty that
+draws Filippo Lippi, but homely actuality. It is from this point of view
+that the Renaissance has been attacked as wanting in faith, earnestness,
+humility. The Renaissance had swallowed all formulas. Nothing was in
+itself sacred, but all other considerations were sacrificed to the
+appeal to the eye. But this, so far from proving any "faithlessness,"
+shows, on the contrary, an entire faith in their Art, that it was able
+to accomplish what was required of it, and needed not to be bolstered up
+by anything external. Mr. Ruskin wants language to express his contempt
+for Claude, because, in a picture entitled "Moses at the Burning Bush,"
+he paints only a graceful landscape, in which the Bush is rather
+inconspicuous. But Claude might well reply, that what he intended was
+not a history, nor a homily, but a picture; that the name was added for
+convenience' sake, as he might name his son, John, without meaning any
+comparisons with the Evangelist. It is no defect, but a merit, that it
+requires nothing else than itself to explain it.</p>
+
+<p>Claude depicts "an unutilized earth," whence all traces of care, labor,
+sorrow, rapine, and want,&mdash;all that can suggest the perils and trials of
+life,&mdash;is removed. The buildings are palaces or picturesque ruins; the
+personages promenade at leisure, or only pretend to be doing something.
+All action and story, all individuality of persons, objects, and events,
+is merged in a pervading atmosphere of tranquil, sunny repose,&mdash;as of a
+holiday-afternoon. It may seem to us an idle lubberland, a paradise of
+do-nothings;&mdash;Mr. Ruskin sees in it only a "dim, stupid, serene,
+leguminous enjoyment." But whoever knows Rome will at least recognize in
+Claude's pictures some reflex of that enchantment that still hangs over
+the wondrous city, and draws to it generation after generation of
+pilgrims. In what does the mysterious charm consist? Is it not that the
+place seems set apart from the working-day world of selfish and warring
+interests? that here all manner of men, for once, lay aside their sordid
+occupations and their vulgar standards, to come together on the ground
+of a common humanity? It is easy to sneer at the Renaissance, but to
+understand it we must take it in its connection. The matters that
+interested that age seem now superfluous, the recreations of a holiday
+rather than the business of life. But coming from the dust and din of
+the fifteenth century, it looks differently. It was, in whatever dim or
+fantastic shape, a recognition of universal brotherhood,&mdash;of a common
+ground whereon all mankind could meet in peace and even sympathy, were
+it only for a picnic. In this <i>villeggiatura</i> of the human race the
+immediate aim is no very lofty one,&mdash;not truth, not duty, but to please
+or be pleased. But who is it that is to be pleased? Not the great of the
+earth, not the consecrated of the Church, not the men merely of this
+guild or this nation, but Man. It is the festival of the new saint,
+Humanus,&mdash;a joyful announcement that the ancient antagonism is not
+fundamental, but destined to be overcome.</p>
+
+<p>This dreamy, half-sad, but friendly and soothing influence, that
+breathes from Claude's landscapes, is not the highest that Nature can
+inspire, but it is far better than to see in the earth only food,
+lodging, and a place to fight in, or even mere background and
+filling-in.</p>
+
+<p>The builders of the Rhine-castles looked down the reaches of the river
+only to spy out their prey or their enemy; the monks in their quiet
+valleys looked out for their trout-stream and kitchen-garden, but any
+interest beyond that would have been heathenish and dangerous. Whilst to
+the ancients the earth had value only as enjoyable, inhabitable, the
+earlier Christian ages valued it only as uninhabitable, as a wilderness
+repelling society. In the earliest medi&aelig;val landscapes, the effort to
+represent a wilderness that is there only for the sake of the hermits
+leads to the curious contradiction of a populous hermitage, every part
+of it occupied by figures resolutely bent on being alone, and sedulously
+ignoring the others. Humboldt quotes from the early Fathers some glowing
+descriptions of natural scenery, but they turn always upon the seclusion
+from mankind, and upon the contrast between the grandeur of God's works
+and the littleness of ours. But in Claude we have the hint, however
+crude, of a relation as unsordid as this, but positive and direct,&mdash;the
+soul of the landscape speaking at once to the soul of man,&mdash;showing
+itself cognate, already friendly, and needing only to throw off the husk
+of opposition. The defect is not that he defers too much to the purely
+pictorial, that he postpones the facts or the story to beauty, but that
+he does not defer enough, that he does not sufficiently trust his own
+eyes, but by way of further assurance drags in architecture, ships,
+mythological or Scripture stories, not caring for them himself, but
+supposing the spectator cares, so that they remain unassimilated, a scum
+floating on the surface and obscuring the work. Here is the "want of
+faith" with which, if any, he is justly chargeable,&mdash;that beauty is not
+enough for him, but he must make it pleasing. Pleasingness implies a
+languid acceptance, in which the mind is spared the shock of fresh
+suggestion or incitement. We call the Venus de' Medici, for instance, a
+pleasing statue, but the Venus of Milo beautiful; because in the one we
+find in fuller measure only what was already accepted and agreeable,
+whilst in the other we feel the presence of an unexplored and formidable
+personality, provoking the endeavor to follow it out and guess at its
+range and extent.</p>
+
+<p>This deference to the spectator marks the decline of Art from the
+supremacy of its position as the interpreter of religion to mankind. The
+work is no longer a revelation devoutly received by the artist and
+piously transmitted to a believing world; but he is a cultivated man,
+who gives what is agreeable to a cultivated society, where the Bible is
+treated with decorum, but all enthusiasm is reserved for Plato and
+Cicero. The earlier and greater men brought much of what they were from
+the fifteenth century, but even Raphael is too academic. It is not a
+Chinese deference to tradition, nor conformity to a fixed national
+taste, such as ruled Greek Art as by an organic necessity. One knows not
+whether to wonder most at the fancied need to attach to the work the
+stamp of classic authority, or at the levity with which the venerable
+forms of antiquity are treated. Nothing can be more superficial than
+this varnish of classicality. The names of Cicero, Brutus, Augustus were
+in all mouths; but the real character of these men, or of any others, or
+of the times they lived in, was very slightly realized. The classic
+architecture, with its cogent adaptation and sequence of parts, is cut
+up into theatre-scenery: its "members" are members no longer, but scraps
+to be stuck about at will. The gods and heroes of the ancient world have
+become the pageant of a holiday; even the sacred legends of the Church
+receive only an outward respect, and at last not even that. Claude wants
+a foreground-figure and puts in &AElig;neas, Diana, or Moses, he cares little
+which, and he would hear, unmoved, Mr. Ruskin's eloquent denunciation of
+their utter unfitness for the assumed character, and the absurdity of
+the whole action of the piece.</p>
+
+<p>But the Renaissance had its religion, too,&mdash;namely, Culture. The one
+"virtue," acknowledged on all hands, alike by busy merchants, soldiers,
+despots, women, the acquaintance with Greek and Roman literature and
+art, was not quite the idle dilettanteism it seems. Lorenzo de' Medici
+said, that, without the knowledge of the Platonic philosophy, it was
+hard to be a good citizen and Christian. Leo X. thought, "Nothing more
+excellent or more useful has been given by the Creator to mankind, if we
+except only the knowledge and true worship of Himself, than these
+studies, which not only lead to the ornament and guidance of human life,
+but are applicable and useful to every particular situation." That this
+culture was superficial, that it regarded only show and outside, is no
+reproach, but means only that it was not a mere galvanizing of dead
+bones, that a new spirit was masquerading in these garments. Had it been
+in earnest in its revival of the past, it would have been insignificant;
+its disregard of the substance, and care for the form alone, showed that
+the form was used only as a protest against the old forms. A provincial
+narrowness, even a slight air of vulgarity, was felt to attach to the
+teachings of the Church. Gentility had come to imply not only
+heathendom, ("<i>gentilis est qui in Christum non credit</i>,") but liberal
+breeding. The attraction of the classic culture, "the humanities," as it
+was well called, was just this cosmopolitan largeness, that it had no
+prejudices and prescribed no test, but was open to all kinds of merit
+and every manner of man. Goethe, who belongs in good part to the
+Renaissance, frequently exemplifies this feeling, perhaps nowhere more
+strikingly than in the account of his pilgrimage to the temple of
+Minerva at Assisi, which he lovingly describes, remarking, at the same
+time, that he passed with only aversion the Church of St. Francis, with
+its frescos by Cimabue, Giotto, and their followers, which no traveller
+of our day willingly misses or soon forgets, though the temple may
+probably occupy but a small space in his memory. "I made no doubt,"
+says Goethe, "that all the heads there bore the same stamp as my
+Captain's,"&mdash;an Italian officer, more orthodox than enlightened, with
+whom he had been travelling.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, however diverse in its first appearance, the Italian
+Renaissance was the counterpart of the German Reformation, and, like
+that, a declaration that God is not shut up in a corner of the universe,
+nor His revelation restricted in regard of time, place, or persons. The
+day was long past when the Church was synonymous with civilization. The
+Church-ideal of holiness had long since been laid aside; a new world had
+grown up, in which other aims and another spirit prevailed. Macchiavelli
+thought the Church had nothing to do with worldly affairs, could do
+nothing for the State or for freedom. And the Church thought so, too. If
+it was left out of the new order of things, it was because it had left
+itself out. "The world" was godless, <i>pompa Diaboli</i>; devotion to God
+implied devotion (of the world) to the Devil. But the world, thus cut
+adrift, found itself yet alive and vigorous, and began thenceforth to
+live its own life, leaving the "other world" to take care of itself.
+Salvation, whether for the State or the individual, it was felt must
+come from individual effort, and not be conferred as a stamp or <i>visa</i>
+from the Pope and the College of Cardinals. It was not Religion that was
+dead, but only the Church. The Church being petrified into a negation,
+Culture, the religion of the world, was necessarily negative to that,
+and for a time absorbed in the mere getting rid of obstructions.
+Sainthood had never been proposed even as an ideal for all mankind, but
+only as <i>fuga s&aelig;culi</i>, the avoidance of all connection with human
+affairs. Logically, it must lead to the completest isolation, and find
+its best exponent in Simeon Stylites. The new ideal of Culture must
+involve first of all the getting rid of isolation, natural and
+artificial. Its representatives are such men as Leonardo da Vinci and
+Leon-Battista Alberti, masters of all arts and sciences, travelled,
+well-bred, at home in the universe,&mdash;thoroughly accomplished men of the
+world, with senses and faculties in complete harmonious development. It
+is an age full of splendid figures; whatever growth there was in any
+country came now to its flowering-time.</p>
+
+<p>The drawback is want of purpose. This splendor looks only to show; there
+is no universal aim, no motive except whim,&mdash;the whims of men of talent,
+or the whim of the crowd. For the approbation of the Church is
+substituted the applause of cultivated society, a wider convention, but
+conventional still. This is the frivolous side of the Renaissance, not
+its holding light the old traditions, but that for the traditions it
+rejected it had nothing but tradition to substitute. But if this
+declaration of independence was at first only a claim for license, not
+for liberty, this is only what was natural, and may be said of
+Protestantism as well. Protestantism, too, had its orthodoxy, and has
+not even yet quite realized that the <i>private judgment</i> whose rights it
+vindicated does not mean personal whim, and therefore is not fortified
+by the assent of any man or body of men, nor weakened by their dissent,
+but belongs alone to thought, which is necessarily individual, and at
+the same time of universal validity; whereas, personality is partial,
+belongs to the crowd, and to that part of the man which confounds him
+with the crowd. Were the private judgment indeed private, it would have
+no rights. Of what consequence the private judgments of a tribe of apes,
+or of Bushmen? This reference to the bystanders means only an appeal
+from the Church; it is at bottom a declaration that the truth is not a
+miraculous exception, a falsehood which for this particular occasion is
+called truth, but the substance of the universe, apparent everywhere,
+and to all that seek it. The perception must be its own evidence, it
+must be true for us, now and here. We have no right to blame the
+Renaissance painters for their love of show, for Art exists for show,
+and the due fulfilment of its purpose, bringing to the surface what was
+dimly indicated, must engage it the more thoroughly in the superficial
+aspect, and make all reference to a hidden ulterior meaning more and
+more a mere pretence. What was once Thought has now become form, color,
+surface; to make a mystery of it would be thoughtlessness or hypocrisy.</p>
+
+<p>The shortcoming is not in the artists, but in Art. Painting shares the
+same fate as Sculpture: not only is the soul not a thing, it is not
+wholly an appearance, but combines with its appearing a constant protest
+against the finality of it. Not only is the body an inadequate
+manifestation, but what it manifests is itself progressive, and any
+conception of it restrictive and partial. Henceforth any representation
+of the human form must either pretend a mystery that is not felt, or, if
+inspired by a genuine interest, it must be of a lower kind, and must
+avoid of set purpose any undue exaltation of one part over another, as
+of the face over the limbs, and dwell rather upon harmony of lines and
+colors, wherein nothing shall be prominent at the expense of the rest,
+seeking to make up what is wanting in intensity, in inward meaning, by
+allusion, by an interest reflected from without, instead of the
+immediate and intuitive. We often feel, even in Raphael's pictures, that
+the aim is lower than, for instance, Fr&agrave; Angelico's. But it is at least
+genuine, and what that saves us from we may see in some of Perugino's
+and Pinturicchio's altar-pieces, where spirituality means kicking heels,
+hollow cheeks, and a deadly-sweet smile. That Raphael, among all his
+Holy Families, painted only one Madonna di San Sisto, and that hastily,
+on trifling occasion, shows that it was a chance-hit rather than the
+normal fruit of his genius. The beauty that shines like celestial flame
+from the face of the divine child, and the transfigured humanity of the
+mother, are no denizens of earth, but fugitive radiances that tinge it
+for a moment and are gone. For once, the impossible is achieved; the
+figures hover, dreamlike, disconnected from all around, as if the canvas
+opened and showed, not what is upon it, but beyond it. But it is a
+casual success, not to be sought or expected. A wise instinct made the
+painter in general shun such direct, explicit statement, and rather
+treat the subject somewhat cavalierly than allow it to confront and
+confound him. The greater he is, and the more complete his development,
+the more he must dread whatever makes his Art secondary or superfluous.
+Whatever force we give to the reproach of want of elevation, etc., the
+only impossible theme is the unartistic.</p>
+
+<p>But before we give heed to any such reproach we must beware of
+confounding the personality of the artist or the fashion of the time
+with the moving spirit in both. He works always&mdash;as Michel Angelo
+complained that he was painting the ceiling of the Sistine&mdash;over his own
+head, and blinded by his own paint. The <i>purpose</i> that we speak of is
+not his petty doings and intentions, but what he unintentionally
+accomplishes. It is the spiritual alone that interests; and if later Art
+seem, by comparison, wanting in spirituality, this is partly the effect
+of its juster appreciation, that rendered direct expression hopeless,
+but at the same time superfluous, by discovering the same import more
+accessible elsewhere, as the higher indirect meaning of all material
+things. Critics tell us that the charm of landscape is incomplete
+without the presence of man,&mdash;that there must always be some hint, at
+least, of human habitation or influence. Certainly it is always a human
+interest, it is not the timber and the water, that moves us, but the
+echo of a kindred mind. But in the "landscape and figures" it is hardly
+a human interest that we take in the figures. The "dull victims of pipe
+and mug" serve our turn perhaps better than the noblest mountaineers. It
+is not to them that we look for the spirit of the landscape,&mdash;rather
+anywhere else. It is the security of the perception that allows it to
+dispense with pointed demonstration, and to delight rather in obscurer
+intimations of its meaning.</p>
+
+<p>The modern ideal is the Picturesque,&mdash;a beauty not detachable, belonging
+to the picture, to the composition, not to the component parts. It has
+no favorites; it is violated alike by the systematic glorification and
+the systematic depreciation of particular forms. The Apollo Belvedere
+would make as poor a figure in the foreground of a modern landscape as a
+fisherman in jack-boots and red nightcap on a pedestal in the Vatican.
+Claude's or Turner's figures may be absurd, when taken by themselves;
+but the absurdity consists in taking them by themselves. Turner, it is
+said, could draw figures well; Claude probably could not; (he is more
+likely to have tried;) but each must have felt that anything that should
+call attention to the figures would be worse than any bad drawing.
+Nicolas Poussin was well called "the learned"; for it is his learning,
+his study of the antique, of Raphael, of drapery and anatomy, that most
+appears in his landscapes and gives his figures their plastic emphasis.
+But this is no praise for a painter.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the boundary-lines cannot be very exactly drawn; the genius of
+a Delaroche or a Millais will give interest to a figure-piece at
+whatever epoch. But such pictures as Etty's, or Page's Venus, where the
+beauty of the human body is the point of attraction, are flat
+anachronisms, and for this reason, not from any prudishness of the
+public, can never excite a hearty enthusiasm. From the sixteenth century
+downwards all pictures become more and more <i>tableaux de genre</i>,&mdash;the
+piece is not described by the nominal subject, but only the class to
+which it belongs, leaving its special character wholly undetermined. And
+in proportion as the action and the detail are dwelt upon, the more
+evident is it that the theme is only a pretence. Martyrdoms, when there
+was any fervency of faith in the martyrs, were very abstract. A hint of
+sword or wheel sufficed. The saints and the angels, as long as men
+believed in them, carried their witness in their faces, with only some
+conventional indication of their history. As soon as direct
+representation is aimed at and the event portrayed as an historical
+fact, it is proof enough that all direct interest is gone and nothing
+left but the technical problem. The martyrdoms are vulgar
+execution-scenes,&mdash;the angels, men sprawling upon clouds. Michel Angelo
+was a noble, devout man, but it is clear that the God he prayed to was
+not the God he painted.</p>
+
+<p>This essential disparity between idea and representation is the weak
+side of Art, plastic and pictorial; but because it is essential it is
+not felt by the artist as defect. His genius urges him to all advance
+that is possible within the limits of his Art, but not to transcend it.
+It will be in vain to exhort him to unite the ancient piety to the
+modern knowledge. If he listen to the exhortation, he may be a good
+critic, but he is no painter. He must be absorbed in what he sees to the
+exclusion of everything else; impartiality is a virtue to all the world
+except him. There will always be a onesidedness; either the conception
+or the embodying of it halts, is only partially realized; some
+incompleteness, some mystery, some apparent want of coincidence between
+form and meaning is a necessity to the artist, and if he does not find
+it, he will invent it. Hence the embarrassment of some of the English
+Pre-Raphaelitists, particularly in dealing with the human form. They
+have no hesitation in pursuing into still further minuteness the literal
+delineation of inanimate objects, draperies, etc.; but they shrink from
+giving full life to their figures, not from a slavish adherence to their
+exemplars, but from a dread lest it should seem that what is shown is
+all that is meant. The early painters were thus <i>na&iuml;ve</i> and distinct
+because of their limitations; they knew very well what they meant,&mdash;as,
+that the event took place out-of-doors, with the sun shining, the grass
+under-foot, an oak-tree here, a strawberry-vine there,&mdash;mere adjunct and
+by-play, not to be questioned as to the import of the piece: <i>that</i> the
+Church took care of. But who can say what a modern landscape means? The
+significance that in the older picture was as it were outside of it,
+presupposed, assured elsewhere, has now to be incorporated, verily
+present in every atom of soil and film of vapor. The realism of the
+modern picture must be infinitely more extended, for the meaning of it
+is that <i>nothing</i> is superfluous or insignificant. But with the reality
+that it lends to every particle of matter, it must introduce, at the
+same time, the protest that spirit makes against matter,&mdash;most distinct,
+indeed, in the human form and countenance, but nowhere absent. In its
+utmost explication there must be felt that there is yet more behind; its
+utmost distinctness must be everywhere indefinable, evanescent,&mdash;must
+proclaim that this parade of surface-appearance is not there for its own
+sake. This is what Mr. Ruskin calls "the pathetic fallacy": but there is
+nothing fallacious in it; it is solid truth, only under the guise of
+mystery. Turner said that Mr. Ruskin had put all sorts of meanings into
+his pictures that he knew nothing about. Of course, else they would
+never have got into the pictures. But this does not affect their
+validity, but means only that it is the imagination, not the intellect,
+that must apprehend them.</p>
+
+<p>It is not an outward, arbitrary incompleteness that is demanded, but a
+visible dependence of each part, by its partiality declaring the
+completeness of the whole. It is often said that the picture must "leave
+room for the imagination." Yes, and for nothing else; but this does not
+imply that it should be unfinished, but that, when the painter has set
+down what the imagination grasped in one view, he shall stop, no matter
+where, and not attempt to eke out the deficiency by formula or by knack
+of fingers. Wherever the inspiration leaves him, there is an end of the
+picture. Beyond that we get only his personalities; no skill, no
+earnestness of intention, etc., can avail him; he is only mystifying
+himself or us. At these points we sooner or later come up with him, are
+as good as he, and the work forthwith begins to tire. What is tiresome
+is to have thrust upon us the dead surface of matter: this is the prose
+of the world, which we come to Art to escape. It is prosaic, because it
+is seen as the understanding sees it, as an aggregate only, apart from
+its vital connection; it matters little whose the understanding is. The
+artist must be alive only to the totality of the impression, blind and
+deaf to all outside of that. He must believe that the idyl he sees in
+the landscape is there because he sees it, and will appear in the
+picture without the help of demonstration. The danger is, that from
+weakness of faith he will fancy or pretend that he sees something else,
+which may be there, but formed no part of the impression. It is simply a
+question of natural attraction, magnetism, how much he can take up and
+carry; all beyond that is hindrance, and any conscious endeavor of his
+cannot help, but can only thwart.</p>
+
+<p>The picturesque has its root in the mind's craving for totality. It is
+Nature seen as a whole; all the characteristics and prerequisites of it
+come back to this,&mdash;such as roughness, wildness, ruin, obscurity, the
+gloom of night or of storm; whatever the outward discrepancy, wherever
+the effect is produced, it is because in some way there is a gain in
+completeness. On this condition everything is welcome,&mdash;without it,
+nothing. Thus, a broken, weedy bank is more picturesque than the velvet
+slope,&mdash;the decayed oak than the symmetry of the sapling,&mdash;the squalid
+shanty by the railroad, with its base of dirt, its windows stuffed with
+old hats, and the red shirts dependent from its eaves, than the neatest
+brick cottage. They strike a richer accord, while the others drone on a
+single note. Moonlight is always picturesque, because it substitutes
+mass and breadth for the obtrusiveness of petty particulars. It is not
+the pettiness, but the particularity, that makes them unpicturesque. No
+impressiveness in the object can atone for exclusiveness. Niagara cannot
+be painted, not because it is too difficult, but because it is no
+landscape, but like a vast illuminated capital letter filling the whole
+page, or the sublime monotony of the mosque-inscriptions, declaring in
+thousandfold repetition that God is great. The soaring sublimity of the
+Moslem monotheism comes partly from its narrowness and abstractness. Is
+it because we are a little hard of hearing that it takes such
+reiteration to move us?</p>
+
+<p>The wholeness which the imagination demands is not quantitative, but
+qualitative; it has nothing to do with size or with number, except so
+far as, by confusing the sense, they obscurely intimate infinity, with
+which all quantities are incommensurable. Mr. Ruskin's encyclopedic
+anatomizing of the landscape, to the end of showing the closeness of
+Turner's perception, has great interest, but not the interest merely of
+a longer list, for it is to be remembered that the longest list would be
+no nearer to an exhaustive analysis than the shortest. It is not a
+specious completeness, but a sense of infinity that can never be
+completed,&mdash;greater intensity, not greater extension,&mdash;that
+distinguishes modern landscape-art. Hence there is no incongruity in the
+seeming license that it takes with the firm order of Nature. It is in no
+spirit of levity or profanity that the substantial distinctions of
+things are thus disregarded,&mdash;that all absolute rank is denied, and the
+value of each made contingent and floating. It is only that the mind is
+somewhat nearer apprehending the sense, and dwells less on the
+characters.</p>
+
+<p>If Art suffers in its relative rank among human interests by this
+democratic levelling, it is to the gain of what Art intends. It is true,
+no picture can henceforth move us as men were once moved by pictures. No
+Borgo Allegro will ever turn out again in triumph for a Madonna of
+Cimabue or of any one else; whatever feeling Turner or another may
+excite comes far short of that. But the splendor that clothed the poor,
+pale, formal image belonged very little to it, but expressed rather the
+previous need of utterance, and could reach that pitch only when the age
+had not yet learned to think and to write, but must put up with these
+hieroglyphics. Art has no more grown un-religious than Religion has, but
+only less idolatrous. As fast as religion passes into life,&mdash;as the
+spiritual nature of man begins to be recognized as the ground of
+legislation and society, and not merely in the miracle of
+sainthood,&mdash;the apparatus and imagery of the Church, its dogmas and
+ceremonies, grow superfluous, as what they stand for is itself present.
+It is the dawn that makes these stars grow pale. So in Art, as fast as
+the dream of the imagination becomes the common sense of mankind, and
+only so fast, the awe that surrounded the earlier glimpses is lost. Its
+influence is not lessened, but diffused and domesticated as Culture.</p>
+
+<p>Art is the truly popular philosophy. Our picture-gazing and view-hunting
+only express the feeling that our science is too abstract, that it does
+not attach us, but isolates us in the universe. What we are thus
+inwardly drawn to explore is not the chaff and <i>exuvi&aelig;</i> of things, not
+their differences only, but their central connection, in spite of
+apparent diversity. This, stated, is the Ideal, the abrupt contradiction
+of the actual, and the creation of a world extraordinary, in which all
+defect is removed. But the defect cannot be cured by correction, for
+that admits its right to exist; it is not by exclusion that limitation
+is overcome,&mdash;this is only to establish a new limitation,&mdash;but by
+inclusion, by reaching the point where the superficial antagonism
+vanishes. Then the ideal is seen no longer in opposition, but everywhere
+and alone existent. As this point is approached, the impulse to
+reconstruct the actual&mdash;as if the triumph of truth were staked on that
+venture&mdash;dies out. The elaborate contradiction loses interest, earliest
+where it is most elaborate and circumstantial, and latest where the
+image has least materiality and fixity, where it is only a reminder of
+what the actual is securely felt to be, in spite of its stubborn
+exterior.</p>
+
+<p>The modern mind is therefore less demonstrative; our civilization seeks
+less to declare and typify itself outwardly in works of Art, manners,
+dress, etc. Hence it is, perhaps, that the beauty of the race has not
+kept pace with its culture. It is less beautiful, because it cares less
+for beauty, since this is no longer the only reconcilement of the actual
+with the inward demands. The vice of the imagination is its inevitable
+exaggeration. It is our own weakness and dulness that we try to hide
+from ourselves by this partiality. Therefore it was said that the images
+were the Bible of the laity. Bishop Durandus already in the thirteenth
+century declared that it is only where the truth is not yet revealed
+that this "Judaizing" is permissible.</p>
+
+<p>The highest of all arts is the art of life. In this the superficial
+antagonisms of use and beauty, of fact and reality, disappear. A little
+gain here, or the hint of it, richly repays all the lost magnificence.
+We need not concern ourselves lest these latter ages should be left
+bankrupt of the sense of beauty, for that is but a phase of a force that
+is never absent; nothing can supersede it but itself in a higher power.
+What we lament as decay only shows its demands fulfilled, and the arts
+it has left behind are but the landmarks of its accomplished purpose.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="OUR_CLASSMATE" id="OUR_CLASSMATE"></a>OUR CLASSMATE.</h2>
+
+<h3>F. W. C.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fast as the rolling seasons bring<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hour of fate to those we love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each pearl that leaves the broken string<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is set in Friendship's crown above.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As narrower grows the earthly chain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The circle widens in the sky;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These are our treasures that remain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But those are stars that beam on high.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We miss&mdash;oh, how we miss!&mdash;<i>his</i> face,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With trembling accents speak his name.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth cannot fill his shadowed place<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From all her rolls of pride and fame.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our song has lost the silvery thread<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That carolled through his jocund lips;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our laugh is mute, our smile is fled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And all our sunshine in eclipse.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And what and whence the wondrous charm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That kept his manhood boy-like still,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That life's hard censors could disarm<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And lead them captive at his will?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His heart was shaped of rosier clay,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His veins were filled with ruddier fire,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Time could not chill him, fortune sway,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor toil with all its burdens tire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">His speech burst throbbing from its fount<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And set our colder thoughts aglow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the hot leaping geysers mount<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And falling melt the Iceland snow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some word, perchance, we counted rash,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Some phrase our calmness might disclaim;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet 't was the sunset lightning's flash,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No angry bolt, but harmless flame.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Man judges all, God knoweth each;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We read the rule, He sees the law;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How oft His laughing children teach<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The truths His prophets never saw!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O friend, whose wisdom flowered in mirth!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our hearts are sad, our eyes are dim;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gave thy smiles to brighten earth,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We trust thy joyous soul to Him!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas!&mdash;our weakness Heaven forgive!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We murmur, even while we trust,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"How long earth's breathing burdens live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose hearts, before they die, are dust!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thou!&mdash;through grief's untimely tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We ask with half-reproachful sigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Couldst thou not watch a few brief years<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till Friendship faltered, 'Thou mayst die'?"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who loved our boyish years so well?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who knew so well their pleasant tales,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all those livelier freaks could tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose oft-told story never fails?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain we turn our aching eyes,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In vain we stretch our eager hands,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cold in his wintry shroud he lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beneath the dreary drifting sands!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, speak not thus! <i>He</i> lies not there!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We see him, hear him as of old!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He comes! he claims his wonted chair;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His beaming face we still behold!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His voice rings clear in all our songs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And loud his mirthful accents rise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To us our brother's life belongs,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dear boys, a classmate never dies!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="WHITTIER" id="WHITTIER"></a>WHITTIER.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was some ten years ago that we first met John Greenleaf Whittier, the
+poet of the moral sentiment and of the heart and faith of the people of
+America. It chanced that we had then been making notes, with much
+interest, upon the genius of the Semitic nations. That peculiar
+simplicity, centrality, and intensity which caused them to originate
+Monotheism from two independent centres, the only systems of pure
+Monotheism which have had power in history,&mdash;while the same
+characteristics made their poetry always lyrical, never epic or
+dramatic, and their most vigorous thought a perpetual sacrifice on the
+altars of the will,&mdash;this had strongly impressed us; and we seemed to
+find in it a striking contrast to the characteristic genius of the Aryan
+or Indo-Germanic nations, with their imaginative interpretations of the
+religious sentiment, with their epic and dramatic expansions, and their
+taste for breadth and variety. Somewhat warm with these notions, we came
+to a meeting with our poet, and the first thought, on seeing him, was,
+"The head of a Hebrew prophet!" It is not Hebrew,&mdash;Saracen rather; the
+Jewish type is heavier, more material; but it corresponded strikingly to
+the conceptions we had formed of the Southern Semitic crania, and the
+whole make of the man was of the same character. The high cranium, so
+lofty especially in the dome,&mdash;the slight and symmetrical backward slope
+of the <i>whole</i> head,&mdash;the powerful level brows, and beneath these the
+dark, deep eyes, so full of shadowed fire,&mdash;the Arabian complexion,&mdash;the
+sharp-cut, intense lines of the face,&mdash;the light, tall, erect
+stature,&mdash;the quick axial poise of the movement,&mdash;all these answered
+with singular accuracy to the picture of those preacher-races which had
+been shaping itself in our imagination. Indeed, the impression was so
+strong as to induce some little feeling of embarrassment. It seemed
+slightly awkward and insipid to be meeting a prophet here in a parlor
+and in a spruce masquerade of modern costume, shaking hands, and saying,
+"Happy to meet you," after the fashion of our feeble civilities.</p>
+
+<p>All this came vividly to remembrance, on taking up, the other day,
+Whittier's last book of poems, "In War-Time,"&mdash;a volume that has been
+welcomed all over the land with enthusiastic delight. Had it been no
+more, however, than a mere private reminiscence, it should, at present,
+have remained private. But have we not here a key to Whittier's genius?
+Is not this Semitic centrality and simplicity, this prophetic depth,
+reality, and vigor, without great lateral and intellectual range, its
+especial characteristic? He has not the liberated, light-winged Greek
+imagination,&mdash;imagination not involved and included in the religious
+sentiment, but playing in epic freedom and with various interpretation
+between religion and intellect; he has not the flowing, Protean,
+imaginative sympathy, the power of instant self-identification with all
+forms of character and life, which culminated in Shakspeare; but that
+imaginative vitality which lurks in faith and conscience, producing what
+we may call <i>ideal force of heart</i>, this he has eminently; and it is
+this central, invisible, Semitic heat which makes him a poet.</p>
+
+<p>Imagination exists in him, not as a separable faculty, but as a pure
+vital suffusion. Hence he is an <i>inevitable</i> poet. There is no drop of
+his blood, there is no fibre of his brain, which does not crave poetic
+expression. Mr. Carlyle desires to postpone poetry; but as Providence
+did not postpone Whittier, his wishes can hardly be gratified. Ours is,
+indeed, one of the plainest of poets. He is intelligible and acceptable
+to those who have little either of poetic culture or of fancy and
+imagination. Whoever has common sense and a sound heart has the powers
+by which he may be appreciated. And yet he is not only a real poet, but
+he is <i>all</i> poet. The Muses have not merely sprinkled his brow; he was
+baptized by immersion. His notes are not many; but in them Nature
+herself sings. He is a sparrow that half sings, half chirps, on a bush,
+not a lark that floods with orient hilarity the skies of morning; but
+the bush burns, like that which Moses saw, and the sparrow herself is
+part of the divine flame.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, is the general statement about Whittier. His genius is
+Hebrew, Biblical,&mdash;more so than that of any other poet now using the
+English language. In other words, he is organically a poem of the Will.
+He is a flower of the moral sentiment,&mdash;and of the moral sentiment, not
+in its flexible, feminine, vine-like dependence and play, but in its
+masculine rigor, climbing in direct, vertical affirmation, like a
+forest-pine. In this respect he affiliates with Wordsworth, and, going
+farther back, with Milton, whose tap-root was Hebrew, though in the vast
+epic flowering of his genius he passed beyond the imaginative range of
+Semitic mind.</p>
+
+<p>In thus identifying our bard, spiritually, with a broad form of the
+genius of mankind, we already say with emphasis that his is indeed a
+Life. Yes, once more, a real Life. He is a nature. He was <i>born</i>, not
+manufactured. Here, once again, the old, mysterious, miraculous
+processes of spiritual assimilation. Here, a genuine root-clutch upon
+the elements of man's experience, and an inevitable, indomitable
+working-up of them into human shape. To look at him without discerning
+this vital depth and reality were as good as no looking at all.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the man and the poet are one and the same. His verse is no
+literary Beau-Brummelism, but a <i>re</i>-presentation of that which is
+presented in his consciousness. First, there is inward vital conversion
+of the elements of his experience, then verse, or version,&mdash;first the
+soul, then the body. His voice, as such, has little range, nor is it any
+marvel of organic perfection; on the contrary, there is many a voice
+with nothing at all in it which far surpasses his in mere vocal
+excellence; only in this you can hear the deep refrain of Nature, and of
+Nature chanting her moral ideal.</p>
+
+<p>We shall consider Whittier's poetry in this light,&mdash;as a vital
+effluence, as a product of his being; and citations will be made, not by
+way of culling "beauties,"&mdash;a mode of criticism to which there are grave
+objections,&mdash;but of illustrating total growth, quality, and power. Our
+endeavor will be to get at, so far as possible, the processes of vital
+action, of spiritual assimilation, which go on in the poet, and then to
+trace these in his poetry.</p>
+
+<p>God gave Whittier a deep, hot, simple, strenuous, and yet ripe and
+spherical, nature, whose twin necessities were, first, that it <i>must</i>
+lay an intense grasp upon the elements of its experience, and, secondly,
+that it <i>must</i> work these up into some form of melodious completeness.
+History and the world gave him Quakerism, America, and Rural Solitude;
+and through this solitude went winding the sweet, old Merrimac stream,
+the river that we would not wish to forget, even by the waters of the
+river of life! And it is into these elements that his genius, with its
+peculiar vital simplicity and intensity, strikes root. Historic reality,
+the great <i>facts</i> of his time, are the soil in which he grows, as they
+are with all natures of depth and energy. "We did not wish," said
+Goethe, "to learn, but to live."</p>
+
+<p>Quakerism and America&mdash;America ideally true to herself&mdash;quickly became,
+in his mind, one and the same. Quakerism means <i>divine democracy</i>.
+George Fox was the first forerunner, the John Baptist, of the new
+time,&mdash;leather-aproned in the British wilderness. Seeing the whole world
+dissolving into individualism, he did not try to tie it together, after
+the fashion of great old Hooker, with new cords of ecclesiasticism; but
+he did this,&mdash;he affirmed a Mount Sinai in the heart of the individual,
+and gave to the word <i>person</i> an <span class="smcap">infinite</span> depth. To sound that
+word thus was his function in history. No wonder that England trembled
+with terror, and then blazed with rage. No wonder that many an ardent
+James Naylor was crazed with the new wine.</p>
+
+<p>Puritanism meant the same thing at bottom; but, accepting the more legal
+and learned interpretations of Calvin, it was, to a great degree,
+involved in the past, and also turned its eye more to political
+mechanisms. For this very reason it kept up more of fellowship with the
+broad world, and had the benefit of this in a larger measure of social
+fructification. Whatever is separated dies. Quakerism uttered a word so
+profound that the utterance made it insular; and, left to itself, it
+began to be lost in itself. Nevertheless, Quakerism and Puritanism are
+the two richest historic soils of modern time.</p>
+
+<p>Our young poet got at the heart of the matter. He learned to utter the
+word <i>Man</i> so believingly that it sounded down into depths of the divine
+and infinite. He learned to say, with Novalis, "He touches heaven who
+touches a human body." And when he uttered this word, "Man," in full,
+<i>social</i> breadth, lo! it changed, and became <span class="smcap">America</span>.</p>
+
+<p>There begins the genesis of the conscious poet. All the depths of his
+heart rang with the resonance of these imaginations,&mdash;Man, America;
+meaning divine depth of manhood, divine spontaneity and rectitude of
+social relationship.</p>
+
+<p>But what! what is this? Just as he would raise his voice to chant the
+new destinies of man, a harsh, heartless, human bark, and therewith a
+low, despairing stifle of sobbing, came to his ear! It is the bark of
+the auctioneer, "Going! going!"&mdash;it is the sobbing of the slave on the
+auction-block! And <i>this</i>, too, O Poet, this, too, is America! So you
+are not secure of your grand believing imaginations yet, but must fight
+for them. The faith of your heart would perish, if it did not put on
+armor.</p>
+
+<p>Whittier's poetic life has three principal epochs. The first opens and
+closes with the "Voices of Freedom." We may use Darwin's phrase, and
+call it the period of Struggle for Life. His ideal itself is endangered;
+the atmosphere he would inhale is filled with poison; a desolating moral
+prosaicism springs up to justify a great social ugliness, and spreads in
+the air where his young hopes would try their wings; and in the
+imperfect strength of youth he has so much of dependence upon actual
+surroundings, that he must either war with their evil or succumb to it.
+Of surrender his daring and unselfish soul never for a moment thought.
+Never did a trained falcon stoop upon her quarry with more fearlessness,
+or a spirit of less question, than that which bore our young hero to the
+moral fray; yet the choice was such as we have indicated.</p>
+
+<p>The faith for which he fought is uttered with spirit in a stanza from
+"The Branded Hand."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angels only can,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That the one, sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Our poet, too, conversing with God's stars and silence, has come to an
+understanding with himself, and made up his mind. That Man's being has
+an ideal or infinite value, and that all consecrated institutions are
+shams, and their formal consecration a blasphemous mockery, save as they
+look to that fact,&mdash;this in his Merrimac solitudes has come forth
+clearly to his soul, and, like old Hebrew David, he has said, "My heart
+is fixed." Make other selections who will, he has concluded to face life
+and death on this basis.</p>
+
+<p>Did he not choose as a poet <span class="smcap">must</span>? Between a low moral
+prosaicism and a generous moral ideal was it possible for him to
+hesitate? Are there those whose real thought is, that man, beyond his
+estimation as an animal, represents only a civil value,&mdash;that he is but
+the tailor's "dummy" and clothes-horse of institutions? Do they tell our
+poet that his notion of man as a divine revelation, as a pure spiritual
+or absolute value, is a mere dream, discountenanced by the truth of the
+universe? He might answer, "Let the universe look to it, then! In that
+case, I stand upon my dream as the only worthy reality." What were a
+mere pot-and-pudding universe to him? Does Mr. Holyoke complain that
+these hot idealisms make the culinary kettles of the world boil over?
+Kitchen-prudences are good for kitchens; but the sun kindles his great
+heart without special regard to them.</p>
+
+<p>These "Voices of Freedom" are no bad reading at the present day. They
+are of that strenuous quality, that the light of battle brings to view a
+finer print, which lay unseen between the lines. They are themselves
+battles, and stir the blood like the blast of a trumpet. What a beat in
+them of fiery pulses! What a heat, as of molten metal, or coal-mines
+burning underground! What anger! What desire! And yet we have in vain
+searched these poems to find one trace of base wrath, or of any
+degenerate and selfish passion. He is angry, and sins not. The sun goes
+down and again rises upon his wrath; and neither sets nor rises upon
+aught freer from meanness and egoism. All the fires of his heart burn
+for justice and mercy, for God and humanity; and they who are most
+scathed by them <i>owe</i> him no hatred in return, whether they <i>pay</i> him
+any or not.</p>
+
+<p>Not a few of these verses seem written for the present day. Take the
+following from the poem entitled, "Texas"; they might be deemed a call
+for volunteers.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Up the hill-side, down the glen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rouse the sleeping citizen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Summon forth the might of men!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">*   *   *   *   *<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh! for God and duty stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heart to heart and hand to hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Round the old graves of the land.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Whoso shrinks or falters now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whoso to the yoke would bow,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brand the craven on his brow!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Perish party, perish clan!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike together, while ye can,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like the arm of one strong man."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Administration might have gone to these poems for a policy: he had
+fought the battle before them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Have they wronged us? Let us, then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Render back nor threats nor prayers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have they chained our freeborn men?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><span class="smcap">Let us unchain theirs</span>!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Or look at these concluding stanzas of "The Crisis," which is the last
+of the "Voices." Has not our prophet written them for this very day?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"By all for which the Martyrs bore their agony and shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By all the warning words of truth with which the Prophets came,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the Future which awaits us, by all the hopes which cast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their faint and trembling beams across the darkness of the Past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's bay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mountain unto mountain call, '<span class="smcap">Praise God, for we are free</span>!'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These are less to be named poems than pieces of rhythmic
+oratory,&mdash;oratory crystallized into poetic form, and carrying that
+deeper significance and force which from all vitalized form are
+inseparable. A poem, every work of Art, must rest in itself; oratory is
+a means toward a specific effect. The man who writes poems may have aims
+which underlie and suffuse his work; but they must not be partial, they
+must be coextensive with the whole spirit of man, and must enter his
+work as the air enters his nostrils. The moment a definite, partial
+effect is sought, the attitude of poetry begins to be lost. These
+battle-pieces are therefore a warfare for the possession of the poet's
+ideal, not the joyous life-breath of that ideal already victorious in
+him. And the other poems of this first great epoch in his poetical life,
+though always powerful, often beautiful, yet never, we think, show a
+<i>perfect</i> resting upon his own poetic heart.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1850 appeared the "Songs of Labor, and other Poems"; and in
+these we reach the transition to his second epoch. Here he has already
+recognized the pure ground of the poem,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Art's perfect forms no moral need,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And beauty is its own excuse,"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but his modesty declines attempting that perfection, and assigns him a
+lower place. He must still seek definite uses, though this use be to
+lend imagination or poetic depth to daily labor:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"But for the dull and flowerless weed<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Some healing virtue still must plead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the rough ore must find its honors in its use.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"So haply these my simple lays<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">Of homely toil may serve to show<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The orchard-bloom and tasselled maize<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">That skirt and gladden duty's ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The unsung beauty hid life's common things below."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Not pure gold as yet, but genuine silver. The aim at a definite use is
+still apparent, as he himself perceives; but there is nevertheless a
+constant native play into them of ideal feeling. It is no longer a
+struggle for room to draw poetic breath in, but only the absence of a
+perfectly free and unconscious poetic respiration. Yet they are sterling
+poems, with the stamp of the mint upon them. And some of the strains are
+such as no living man but Whittier has proven his power to produce.
+"Ichabod," for example, is the purest and profoundest <i>moral</i> lament, to
+the best of our knowledge, in modern literature, whether American or
+European. It is the grief of angels in arms over a traitor brother slain
+on the battle-fields of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Two years later comes the "Chapel of the Hermits," and with it the
+second epoch in Whittier's poetic career. The epoch of Culture we name
+it. The poet has now passed the period of outward warfare. All the
+arrows in the quiver of his noble wrath are spent. Now on the wrong and
+shame of the land he looks down with deep, calm, superior eyes,
+sorrowful, indeed, and reproving, but no longer perturbed. His hot,
+eloquent, prophetic spirit now breathes freely, lurk in the winds of the
+moment what poison may; for he has attained to those finer airs of
+eternity which hide ever, like the luminiferous ether, in this
+atmosphere of time; so that, like the scholar-hero of Schiller, he is
+indeed "in the time, but not of it." Still his chant of high
+encouragement shall fly forth on wings of music to foster the nobilities
+of the land; still over the graves of the faithful dead he shall murmur
+a requiem, whose chastened depth and truth relate it to other and better
+worlds than this; still his lips utter brave rebuke, but it is a rebuke
+that falls, like the song of an unseen bird, out of the sky, so purely
+moral, so remote from earthly and egoistic passion, so sure and
+reposeful, that verse is its natural embodiment. The home-elements of
+his intellectual and moral life he has fairly assimilated; and his verse
+in its mellowness and rhythmical excellence reflects this achievement of
+his spirit.</p>
+
+<p>But now, after the warfare, begins questioning. For modern culture has
+come to him, as it comes to all, with its criticism, its science, its
+wide conversation through books, its intellectual unrest; it has
+looked him in the eye, and said, "<i>Are you sure?</i> The dear old
+traditions,&mdash;they are indeed <i>traditions</i>. The sweet customs which have
+housed our spiritual and social life,&mdash;these are <i>customs</i>. Of what are
+you <span class="smcap">sure</span>?" Matthew Arnold has recently said well (we cannot
+quote the words) that the opening of the modern epoch consists in the
+discovery that institutions and habitudes of the earlier centuries, in
+which we have grown, are not absolute, and do not adjust themselves
+perfectly to our mental wants. Thus are we thrown back upon our own
+souls. We have to ask the first questions, and get such answer as we
+may. The meaning of the modern world is this,&mdash;an epoch which, in the
+midst of established institutions, of old consecrated habitudes of
+thought and feeling, of populous nations which cannot cast loose from
+ancient anchorage without peril of horrible wreck and disaster, has got
+to take up man's life again from the beginning. Of modern life this is
+the immediate key.</p>
+
+<p>Our poet's is one of those deep and clinging natures which hold hard by
+the heart of bygone times; but also he is of a nature so deep and
+sensitive that the spiritual endeavor of the period must needs utter
+itself in him. "<span class="smcap">Art thou sure?</span>"&mdash;the voice went sounding
+keenly, terribly, through the profound of his soul. And to this his
+spirit, not without struggle and agony, but at length clearly, made
+the faithful Hebrew response, "<span class="smcap">I trust.</span>" Bravely said, O
+deep-hearted poet! Rest there! Rest there and thus on your own believing
+filial heart, and on the Eternal, who in it accomplishes the miracle of
+that confiding!</p>
+
+<p>Not eminently endowed with discursive intellect,&mdash;not gifted with that
+power, Homeric in kind and more than Homeric in degree, which might meet
+the old mythic imaginations on, or rather above, their own level, and
+out of them, together with the material which modern time supplies,
+build in the skies new architectures, wherein not only the feeling, but
+the <i>imagination</i> also, of future ages might house,&mdash;our poet comes with
+Semitic directness to the heart of the matter: he takes the divine
+<i>Yea</i>, though it be but a simple <i>Yea</i>, and no syllable more, in his own
+soul, and holds childlike by that. And he who has asked the questions of
+the time and reached this conclusion,&mdash;he who has stood alone with his
+unclothed soul, and out of that nakedness before the Eternities said,
+"<i>I trust</i>,"&mdash;he is victorious; he has entered the modern epoch, and has
+not lost the spiritual crown from his brows.</p>
+
+<p>The central poem of this epoch is "Questions of Life."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I am: how little more I know!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence came I? Whither do I go?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A centred self, which feels and is;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>A cry between the silences;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shadow-birth of clouds at strife<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With sunshine on the hills of life;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A shaft from Nature's quiver cast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the Future from the Past;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the cradle and the shroud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then to outward Nature, to mythic tradition, to the thought, faith,
+sanctity of old time he goes in quest of certitude, but returns to God
+in the heart, and to the simple heroic act by which he that believes
+<span class="smcap">believes</span>.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To Him, from wanderings long and wild,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I come, an over-wearied child,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In cool and shade His peace to find,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like dew-fall settling on the mind.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Assured that all I know is best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And humbly trusting for the rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I turn....<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From Nature and her mockery, Art,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And book and speech of men apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the still witness in my heart;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With reverence waiting to behold<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His Avatar of love unfold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Eternal Beauty new and old!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The Panorama and other Poems," together with "Later Poems,"<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> having
+the dates of 1856 and 1857, constitute the transition to his third and
+consummate epoch. Much in them deserves notice, but we must hasten. And
+yet, instead of hastening, we will pause, and take this opportunity to
+pick a small critical quarrel with Mr. Whittier. We charge him, in the
+first place, with sundry felonious assaults upon the good letter <i>r</i>. In
+the "Panorama," for example, we find <i>law</i> rhyming with <i>for</i>! You, Mr.
+Poet, you, who indulge fastidious objections to the whipping of women,
+to outrage that innocent preposition thus! And to select the word <i>law</i>
+itself, with which to force it into this lawless connection! Secondly,
+<i>romance</i> and <i>allies</i> are constantly written by him with the accent on
+the first syllable. These be heinous offences! A poet, of all men,
+should cherish the liquid consonants, and should resist the tendency of
+the populace to make trochees of all dissyllables. In a graver tone we
+might complain that he sometimes&mdash;rarely&mdash;writes, not by vocation of the
+ancient Muses, who were daughters of Memory and immortal Zeus, but of
+those Muses in drab and scoop-bonnets who are daughters of Memory and
+George Fox. Some lines of the "Brown of Ossawatomie" we are thinking of
+now. We can regard them only as a reminiscence of his special Quaker
+culture.</p>
+
+<p>With the "Home Ballads," published in 1863, dawns fully his final
+period,&mdash;long may it last! This is the epoch of Poetic Realism. Not that
+he abandons or falls away from his moral ideal. The fact is quite
+contrary. He has so entirely established himself in that ideal that he
+no longer needs strivingly to assert it,&mdash;any more than Nature needs to
+pin upon oak-trees an affirmation that the idea of an oak dwells in her
+formative thought. Nature affirms the oak-idea by oaks; the consummate
+poet exhibits the same realism. He embodies. He lends a soul to forms.
+The real and ideal in Art are indeed often opposed to each other as
+contraries, but it is a false opposition. Let the artist represent
+reality, and all that is in him, though it were the faith of seraphs,
+will go into the representation. The sole condition is that he shall
+<i>select his subject from native, spontaneous choice</i>,&mdash;that is, leave
+his genius to make its own elections. Let one, whose genius so invites
+him, paint but a thistle, and paint it as faithfully as Nature grows it;
+yet, if the Ten Commandments are meantime uttering themselves in his
+thought, he will make the thistle-top a Sinai.</p>
+
+<p>It is this poetic realism that Whittier has now, in a high
+degree, attained. Calm and sure, lofty in humility, strong in
+childlikeness,&mdash;renewing the play-instinct of the true poet in his
+heart,&mdash;younger now than when he sat on his mother's knee,&mdash;chastened,
+not darkened, by trial, and toil, and time,&mdash;illumined, poet-like, even
+by sorrow,&mdash;he lives and loves, and chants the deep, homely beauty of
+his lays. He is as genuine, as wholesome and real as sweet-flag and
+clover. Even when he utters pure sentiment, as in that perfect lyric,
+"My Psalm," or in the intrepid, exquisite humility&mdash;healthful and sound
+as the odor of new-mown hay or balsam-firs&mdash;of "Andrew Rykman's Prayer,"
+he maintains the same attitude of realism. He states God and inward
+experience as he would state sunshine and the growth of grass. This,
+with the devout depth of his nature, makes the rare beauty of his hymns
+and poems of piety and trust. He does not try to <i>make</i> the facts by
+stating them; he does not try to embellish them; he only seeks to utter,
+to state them; and even in his most perfect verse they are not half so
+melodious as they were in his soul.</p>
+
+<p>All perfect poetry is simple statement of facts,&mdash;facts of history or of
+imagination. Whoever thinks to create poetry by words, and inclose in
+the verse a beauty which did not exist in his consciousness, has got
+hopelessly astray.</p>
+
+<p>This attitude of simple divine abiding in the present is beautifully
+expressed in the opening stanzas of "My Psalm."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I mourn no more my vanished years:<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Beneath a tender rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An April rain of smiles and tears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">My heart is young again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The west winds blow, and, singing low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">I hear the glad streams run;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The windows of my soul I throw<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Wide open to the sun.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"No longer forward nor behind<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">I look in hope and fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, grateful, take the good I find,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">The best of now and here.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I plough no more a desert land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">To harvest weed and tare;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The manna dropping from God's hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i3">Rebukes my painful care.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I break my pilgrim-staff, I lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Aside the toiling oar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The angel sought so far away<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I welcome at the door."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is, however, in his ballads that Whittier exhibits, not, perhaps, a
+higher, yet a rarer, power than elsewhere,&mdash;a power, in truth, which is
+very rare indeed. Already in the "Panorama" volume he had brought forth
+three of these,&mdash;all good, and the tender pathos of that fine ballad of
+sentiment, "Maud Muller," went to the heart of the nation. In how many
+an imagination does the innocent maiden, with her delicate brown ankles,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Rake the meadow sweet with hay,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The judge ride slowly down the lane"!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But though sentiment so simple and unconscious is rare, our poet has yet
+better in store for us. He has developed of late years the precious
+power of creating <i>homely beauty</i>,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>&mdash;one of the rarest powers shown
+in modern literature. Homely life-scenes, homely old sanctities and
+heroisms, he takes up, delineates them with intrepid fidelity to their
+homeliness, and, lo! there they are, beautiful as Indian corn, or as
+ploughed land under an October sun! He has thus opened an inexhaustible
+mine right here under our New-England feet. What will come of it no one
+knows.</p>
+
+<p>These poems of his are natural growths; they have their own circulation
+of vital juices, their own peculiar properties; they smack of the soil,
+are racy and strong and aromatic, like ground-juniper, sweet-fern, and
+the <i>arbor vit&aelig;</i>. Set them out in the earth, and would they not sprout
+and grow?&mdash;nor would need vine-shields to shelter them from the weather!
+They are living and local, and lean toward the west from the pressure of
+east winds that blow on our coast. "Skipper Ireson's Ride,"&mdash;can any one
+tell what makes that poetry? This uncertainty is the highest praise.
+This power of telling a plain matter in a plain way, and leaving it
+there a symbol and harmony forever,&mdash;it is the power of Nature herself.
+And again we repeat, that almost anything may be found in literature
+more frequently than this pure creative simplicity. As a special
+instance of it, take three lines which occur in an exquisite picture of
+natural scenery,&mdash;and which we quote the more readily as it affords
+opportunity for saying that Whittier's landscape-pictures alone make his
+books worthy of study,&mdash;not so much those which he sets himself
+deliberately to draw as those that are incidental to some other purpose
+or effect.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I see far southward, this quiet day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hills of Newbury rolling away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the many tints of the season gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dreamily blending in autumn mist<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crimson and gold and amethyst.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A stone's toss over the narrow sound.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inland, as far as the eye can go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hills curve round, like a bended bow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A silver arrow from out them sprung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see the shine of the Quasycung;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And, round and round, over valley and hill,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Old roads winding, as old roads will,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Here to a ferry, and there to a mill.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Can any one tell what magic it is that is in these concluding lines, so
+that they even eclipse the rhetorical brilliancy of those immediately
+preceding?</p>
+
+<p>Our deep-hearted poet has fairly arrived at his poetic youth. Never was
+he so strong, so ruddy and rich as to-day. Time has treated him as,
+according to Swedenborg, she does the angels,&mdash;chastened indeed, but
+vivified. Let him hold steadily to his true vocation as a poet, and
+never fear to be thought idle, or untrue to his land. To give
+imaginative and ideal depth to the life of the people,&mdash;what truer
+service than that? And as for war-time,&mdash;does he know that "Barbara
+Frietche" is the true sequel to the Battle of Gettysburg, is that other
+victory which the nation <i>asked</i> of Meade the soldier and obtained from
+Whittier the poet?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_CONVULSIONISTS_OF_ST_MEDARD" id="THE_CONVULSIONISTS_OF_ST_MEDARD"></a>THE CONVULSIONISTS OF ST. M&Eacute;DARD.</h2>
+
+<h3>SECOND PAPER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Having, in a previous number, furnished a brief sketch of the phenomena,
+purely physical, which characterized the epidemic of St. M&eacute;dard, it
+remains to notice those of a mental and psychological character.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most common incidents connected with the convulsions of that
+period was the appearance of a mental condition, called, in the language
+of the day, a state of <i>ecstasy</i>, bearing unmistakable analogy to the
+artificial somnambulism produced by magnetic influence, and to the
+<i>trance</i> of modern spiritualism.</p>
+
+<p>During this condition, there was a sudden exaltation of the mental
+faculties, often a wonderful command of language, sometimes the power of
+thought-reading, at other times, as was alleged, the gift of prophecy.
+While it lasted, the insensibility of the patients was occasionally so
+complete, that, as Montg&eacute;ron says, "they have been pierced in an inhuman
+manner, without evincing the slightest sensation";<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> and when it
+passed off, they frequently did not recollect anything they had said or
+done during its continuance.</p>
+
+<p>At times, like somnambulism, it seemed to assume something of a
+cataleptic character, though I cannot find any record of that most
+characteristic symptom of catalepsy, the rigid persistence of a limb in
+any position in which it may be placed. What was called the "state of
+death," is thus described by Montg&eacute;ron:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The state of death is a species of ecstasy, in which the convulsionist,
+whose soul seems entirely absorbed by some vision, loses the use of his
+senses, wholly or in part. Some convulsionists have remained in this
+state two or even three days at a time, the eyes open, without any
+movement, the face very pale, the whole body insensible, immovable, and
+stiff as a corpse. During all this time, they give little sign of life,
+other than a feeble, scarcely perceptible respiration. Most of the
+convulsionists, however, have not these ecstasies so strongly marked.
+Some, though remaining immovable an entire day or longer, do not
+continue during all that time deprived of sight and hearing, nor are
+they totally devoid of sensibility; though their members, at certain
+intervals, become so stiff that they lose almost entirely the use of
+them."<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>The "state of death," however, was much more rare than other forms of
+this abnormal condition. The Abb&eacute; d'Asfeld, in his work against the
+convulsionists, alluding to the state of ecstasy, defines it as a state
+"in which the soul, carried away by a superior force, and, as it were,
+out of itself, becomes unconscious of surrounding objects, and occupies
+itself with those which imagination presents"; and he adds,&mdash;"It is
+marked by alienation of the senses, proceeding, however, from some cause
+other than sleep. This alienation of the senses is sometimes complete,
+sometimes incomplete."<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>Montg&eacute;ron, commenting on the above, says,&mdash;"This last phase, during
+which the alienation of the senses is imperfect, is precisely the
+condition of most of the convulsionists, when in the state of ecstasy.
+They usually see the persons present; they speak to them; sometimes they
+hear what is said to them; but as to the rest, their souls seem absorbed
+in the contemplation of objects which a superior power discloses to
+their vision."<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>And a little farther on he adds,&mdash;"In these ecstasies the convulsionists
+are struck all of a sudden with the unexpected aspect of some object,
+the sight of which enchants them with joy. Their eyes beam; their heads
+are raised toward heaven; they appear as if they would fly thither. To
+see them afterwards absorbed in profound contemplation, with an air of
+inexpressible satisfaction, one would say that they are admiring the
+divine beauty. Their countenances are animated with a lively and
+brilliant fire; and their eyes, which cannot be made to close during the
+entire duration of the ecstasy, remain completely motionless, open, and
+fixed, as on the object which seems to interest them. They are in some
+sort transfigured; they appear quite changed. Even those who, out of
+this state, have in their physiognomy something mean or repulsive, alter
+so that they can scarcely be recognized.... It is during these ecstasies
+that many of the convulsionists deliver their finest discourses and
+their chief predictions,&mdash;that they speak in unknown tongues,&mdash;that they
+read the secret thoughts of others,&mdash;and even sometimes that they give
+their representations."<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>A provincial ecclesiastic, quoted by Montg&eacute;ron, and who, it should be
+remarked, found fault with many of the doings of the convulsionists,
+admits the exalted character of these declamations. He says,&mdash;"Their
+discourses on religion are spirited, touching, profound,&mdash;delivered with
+an eloquence and a dignity which our greatest masters cannot approach,
+and with a grace and appropriateness of gesture rivalling that of our
+best actors.... One of the girls who pronounced such discourses was but
+thirteen years and a half old; and most of them were utterly
+incompetent, in their natural state, thus to treat subjects far beyond
+their capacity."<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p>Colbert, already quoted, bears testimony to the same effect. Writing to
+Madame de Coetquen, he says,&mdash;"I have read extracts from these
+discourses, and have been greatly struck with them. The expressions are
+noble, the views grand, the theology exact. It is impossible that the
+imagination, and especially the imagination of a child, should originate
+such beautiful things. Sublimity full of eloquence reigns throughout
+these productions."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<p>To judge fairly of this phenomenon, we must consider the previous
+condition and acquirements of those who pronounced such discourses.
+Montg&eacute;ron, while declaring that among the convulsionists there were
+occasionally to be found persons of respectable standing, adds,&mdash;"But it
+must be confessed that in general God has chosen the convulsionists
+among the common people; that they were chiefly young children,
+especially girls; that almost all of them had lived till then in
+ignorance and obscurity; that several of them were deformed, and some,
+in their natural state, even exhibited imbecility. Of such, for the most
+part, it was that God made choice, to show forth to us His power."<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>The staple of these discourses&mdash;wild and fantastic enough&mdash;may be
+gathered from the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The Almighty thus raised up all of a sudden a number of persons, the
+greater part without any instruction; He opened the mouths of a number
+of young girls, some of whom could not read; and He caused them to
+announce, in terms the most magnificent, that the times had now
+arrived,&mdash;that in a few years the Prophet Elias would appear,&mdash;that he
+would be despised and treated with outrage by the Catholics,&mdash;that he
+would even be put to death, together with several of those who had
+expected his coming and had become his disciples and followers,&mdash;that
+God would employ this Prophet to convert all the Jews,&mdash;that they, when
+thus converted, would immediately carry the light unto all
+nations,&mdash;that they would re&euml;stablish Christianity throughout the
+world,&mdash;and that they would preach the morality of the gospel in all its
+purity, and cause it to spread over the whole earth."<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>Montg&eacute;ron, commenting (as he expresses it) upon "the manner in which the
+convulsionists are supernaturally enlightened, and in which they deliver
+their discourses and their predictions," says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ordinarily, the words are not dictated to them; it is only the ideas
+that are presented to their minds by a supernatural instinct, and they
+are left to express these thoughts in terms of their own selection.
+Hence it happens that occasionally their most beautiful discourses are
+marred by ill-chosen and incorrect expressions, and by phrases obscure
+and badly turned; so that the beauty of some of these consists rather in
+the depth of thought, the grandeur of the subjects treated, and the
+magnificence of the images presented, than in the language in which the
+whole is rendered.</p>
+
+<p>"It is evident, that, when they are thus left to clothe in their own
+language the ideas given them, they are also at liberty to add to them,
+if they will. And, in fact, most of them declare that they perceive
+within themselves the power to mix in their own ideas with those
+supernaturally communicated, which suddenly seize their minds; and they
+are obliged to be extremely careful not to confound their own thoughts
+with those which they receive from a superior intelligence. This is
+sometimes the more difficult, inasmuch as the ideas thus coming to them
+do not always come with equal clearness.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes, however, the terms are dictated to them internally, but
+without their being forced to pronounce them, nor hindered from adding
+to them, if they choose to do so.</p>
+
+<p>"Finally, in regard to certain subjects,&mdash;for example, the lights which
+illumine their minds, and oblige them to announce the second coming of
+the Prophet Elias, and all that has reference to that great
+event,&mdash;their lips pronounce a succession of words wholly independently
+of their will; so that they themselves listen like the auditors, having
+no knowledge of what they say, except only as, word for word, it is
+pronounced."<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>Montg&eacute;ron appears, however, to admit that the exaltation of intelligence
+which is apparent during the state of ecstasy may, to some extent, be
+accounted for on natural principles. Starting from the fact, that,
+during the convulsions, external objects produce much less effect upon
+the senses than in the natural state, he argues that "the more the soul
+is disembarrassed of external impressions, the greater is its activity,
+the greater its power to frame thoughts, and the greater its
+lucidity."<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> He admits, further,&mdash;"Although most of the convulsionists
+have, when in convulsion, much more intelligence than in their ordinary
+state, that intelligence is not always supernatural, but may be the mere
+effect of the mental activity which results when soul is disengaged from
+sense. Nay, there are examples of convulsionists availing themselves of
+the superior intelligence which they have in convulsion to make out
+dissertations on mere temporal affairs. This intelligence, also, may at
+times fail to subjugate their passions; and I am convinced that they may
+occasionally make a bad use of it."<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>In another place, Montg&eacute;ron says plainly, that "persons accustomed to
+receive revelations, but not raised to the state of the Prophets, may
+readily imagine things to be revealed to them which are but the
+promptings of their own minds,"<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>&mdash;and that this has happened, not
+only to the convulsionists, but (by the confession of many of the
+ancient fathers<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a>) also to the greatest saints. But he protests
+against the conclusion, as illogical, that the convulsionists never
+speak by the spirit of God, because they do not always do so.</p>
+
+<p>He admits, however,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> that it is extremely difficult to distinguish
+between what ought to be received as divinely revealed and what ought to
+be rejected as originating in the convulsionist's own mind; nor does he
+give any rule by which this may be done. The knowledge necessary to the
+"discerning of spirits" he thinks can be obtained only by humble
+prayer.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>The power of prophecy is one of the gifts claimed by Montg&eacute;ron as having
+been bestowed on various convulsionists during their ecstatic state. Yet
+he gives no detailed proofs of prophecies touching temporal matters
+having been literally fulfilled, unless it be prophecies by
+convulsionist-patients in regard to the future crises of their diseases.
+And he admits that false predictions were not infrequent, and that false
+interpretations of visions touching the future were of common
+occurrence. He says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is sometimes revealed to a convulsionist, for example, that there is
+to happen to some person not named a certain accident, every detail of
+which is minutely given; and the convulsionist is ordered to declare
+what has been communicated to him, that the hand of God may be
+recognized in its fulfilment.... But, at the same time, the
+convulsionist receiving this vision believes it to apply to a certain
+person, whom he designates by name. The prediction, however, is not
+verified in the case of the person named, so that those who heard it
+delivered conclude that it is false; but it <i>is</i> verified in the case of
+another person, to whom the accident happens, attended by all the
+minutely detailed particulars."<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+<p>If this be correctly given, it is what animal magnetizers would call a
+case of imperfect lucidity.</p>
+
+<p>The case as to the gift of tongues is still less satisfactorily made
+out. A few, Montg&eacute;ron says, translate, after the ecstasy, what they have
+declaimed, during its continuance, in an unknown tongue; but for this,
+of course, we have their word only. The greater part know nothing of
+what they have said, when the ecstasy has passed. As to these, he
+admits,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The only proof we have that they understand the words at the time they
+pronounce them is that they often express, in the most lively manner,
+the various sentiments contained in their discourse, not only by their
+gestures, but also by the attitudes the body assumes, and by the
+expression of the countenance, on which the different sentiments are
+painted, by turns, in a manner the most expressive, so that one is able,
+up to a certain point, to detect the feelings by which they are moved;
+and it has been easy for the attentive observer to perceive that most of
+these discourses were detailed predictions as to the coming of the
+Prophet Elias," etc.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p>If it be presumptuous, considering the marvels which modern observations
+disclose, to pronounce that the alleged unknown languages were unmeaning
+sounds only, it is evident, at least, that the above is inconclusive as
+to their true character.</p>
+
+<p>Much more trustworthy appears to be the evidence touching the phenomenon
+of thought-reading.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that many of the convulsionists were able "to discover the
+secrets of the heart" is admitted by their principal opponents. The Abb&eacute;
+d'Asfeld himself adduces examples of it.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> M. Poncet admits its
+reality.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> The provincial ecclesiastic whom I have already quoted says
+that he "found examples without number of convulsionists who discovered
+the secrets of the heart in the most minute detail: for example, to
+disclose to a person that at such a period of his life he did such or
+such a thing; to another, that he had done so and so before coming
+hither," etc.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> The author of the "Recherche de la V&eacute;rit&eacute;," a pamphlet
+on the phenomena of the convulsions, which seems very candidly written,
+acknowledges as one of these "the manifestation of the thoughts and the
+discovery of secret things."<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p>Montg&eacute;ron testifies to the fact, from repeated personal observation,
+that they revealed to him things known to himself alone; and after
+adducing the admissions above alluded to, and some others, he
+adds,&mdash;"But it would be superfluous further to multiply testimony in
+proof of a fact admitted by all the world, even by the avowed
+adversaries of the convulsions, who have found no other method of
+explaining it than by doing Satan the honor to proclaim him the author
+of these revelations."<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>Besides these gifts, real or alleged, there was occasionally observed,
+during ecstasy, an extraordinary development of the musical faculty.
+Montg&eacute;ron tells us,&mdash;"Mademoiselle Dancogn&eacute;, who, as was well known, had
+no voice whatever in her natural state, sings in the most perfect manner
+canticles in an unknown tongue, and that to the admiration of all those
+who hear her."<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+<p>As to the general character of these psychological phenomena, the
+theologians of that day were, with few exceptions, agreed that they were
+of a supernatural character,&mdash;the usual question mooted between them
+being, whether they were due to a Divine or to a Satanic influence. The
+medical opponents of the movement sometimes took the ground that the
+state of ecstasy was allied to delirium or insanity,&mdash;and that it was a
+degraded condition, inasmuch as the patient abandoned the exercise of
+his free will: an argument similar to that which has been made in our
+day against somewhat analogous phenomena, by a Bostonian.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>In concluding a sketch, in which, though it be necessarily a brief one,
+I have taken pains to set forth with strict accuracy all the essential
+features which mark the character of this extraordinary epidemic, it is
+proper I should state that the opponents of Jansenism concur in bringing
+against the convulsionists the charge that many of them were not only
+ignorant and illiterate girls, but persons of bad character,
+occasionally of notoriously immoral habits; nay, that some of them
+justified the vicious courses in which they indulged by declaring these
+to be a representation of a religious tendency, emblematic of that
+degradation through which the Church must pass, before, recalled by the
+voice of Elias, it regained its pristine purity.</p>
+
+<p>Montg&eacute;ron, while admitting that such charges may justly be brought
+against some of the convulsionists, denies the general truth of the
+allegation, yet after such a fashion that one sees plainly he considers
+it necessary, in establishing the character and divine source of the
+discourses and predictions delivered in the state of ecstasy, to do so
+without reference to the moral standing of the ecstatics. When one of
+his opponents (the physician who addressed to him the satirical letter
+already referred to) ascribes to him the position, that one must decide
+the divine or diabolical state of a person alleged to be inspired by
+reference to that person's morals and conduct, he replies,&mdash;"God forbid
+that I should advance so false a proposition!" And he proceeds to argue
+that the Deity often avails Himself, as a medium for expressing His
+will, of unworthy subjects. He says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Who does not know that the Holy Spirit, whose divine rays are never
+stained, let them shine where they will, 'bloweth where it listeth,' and
+distributes its gifts to whom best it seems, without always causing
+these to be accompanied by internal virtues? Does not Scripture inform
+us that God caused miracles to be wrought and great prophecies to be
+delivered by very vicious persons, as Judas, Caiaphas, Balaam, and
+others? Jesus Christ himself teaches us that there will be workers of
+iniquity among the number of those who prophesy and of those who will
+work miracles in his name, declaring that on the Day of Judgment many
+will say unto him, 'Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy
+name done many wonderful works?' and that he will reply to them, 'Depart
+from me, ye that work iniquity.'"</p>
+
+<p>And he proceeds thus:&mdash;"If, therefore, all that our enemies allege
+against the character of the convulsionists were true, it does not
+follow that God would not employ such persons as the ministers of His
+miracles and His prophecies, provided, always, that these miracles and
+these prophecies have a worthy object, and tend to a knowledge of the
+truth, to the spread of charity, and to the reformation of the morals of
+mankind."<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p>These accusations of immorality are, probably, greatly exaggerated by
+the enemies of the Jansenists; yet one may gather, even from the tenor
+of Montg&eacute;ron's defence, that there was more or less truth in the charges
+brought against the conduct of some of the convulsionists, and that the
+state of ecstasy, whatever its true nature, was by no means confined to
+persons of good moral character.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the alleged facts, physical and mental, connected with this
+extraordinary episode in the history of mental epidemics.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On the perusal of such a narrative as the above, the questions which
+naturally suggest themselves are,&mdash;To what extent can we rationally
+attach credit to it? And, if true, what is the explanation of phenomena
+apparently so incredible?</p>
+
+<p>As to the first, the admission of a distinguished contemporary
+historian, noted for his skeptical tendencies, in regard to the evidence
+for these alleged miracles, is noteworthy. It is in these words:&mdash;"Many
+of them were immediately proved on the spot before judges of
+unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction,
+in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the
+world; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the
+civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those opinions in whose
+favor the miracles were supposed to have been wrought, ever able
+distinctly to refute or detect them."<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>Similar is the admission of another celebrated author, at least as
+skeptical as Hume, and writing at the very time, and on the very spot
+where these marvellous events were occurring. Diderot, speaking of the
+St.-M&eacute;dard manifestations, says,&mdash;"We have of these pretended miracles a
+vast collection, which may brave the most determined incredulity. Its
+author, Carr&eacute; de Montg&eacute;ron, is a magistrate, a man of gravity, who up to
+that time had been a professed materialist,&mdash;on insufficient grounds,
+it is true, but yet a man who certainly had no expectation of making his
+fortune by becoming a Jansenist. An eye-witness of the facts he relates,
+and of which he had an opportunity of judging dispassionately and
+disinterestedly, his testimony is indorsed by that of a thousand others.
+All relate what they have seen; and their depositions have every
+possible mark of authenticity; the originals being recorded and
+preserved in the public archives."<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>Even in the very denunciations of opponents we find corroboratory
+evidence of the main facts in question. Witness the terms in which the
+Bishop of Bethl&eacute;em declaims against the scenes of St. M&eacute;dard:&mdash;"What! we
+find ecclesiastics, priests, in the midst of numerous assemblies
+composed of persons of every rank and of both sexes, doffing their
+cassocks, habiting themselves in shirt and trousers, the better to be
+able to act the part of executioners, casting on the ground young girls,
+dragging them face-downward along the earth, and then discharging on
+their bodies innumerable blows, till they themselves, the dealers of
+these blows, are reduced to such a state of exhaustion that they are
+obliged to have water poured on their heads! What! we find men
+pretending to sentiments of religion and humanity dealing, with the full
+swing of their arms, thirty or forty thousand blows with heavy clubs on
+the arms, on the legs, on the heads of young girls, and making other
+desperate efforts capable of crushing the skulls of the sufferers! What!
+we find cultivated ladies, pious and of high rank, doctors of law, civil
+and canonical, laymen of character, even curates, daily witnessing this
+spectacle of fanaticism and horror in silence, instead of opposing it
+with all their force; nay, they applaud it by their presence, even by
+their countenance and their conversation! Was ever, throughout all
+history, such another example of excesses thus scandalous, thus
+multiplied?"<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p>
+
+<p>De Lan, another opponent, thus sketches the same scenes:&mdash;"Young girls,
+bareheaded, dashed their heads against a wall or against a marble slab;
+they caused their limbs to be drawn by strong men, even to the extent of
+dislocation;<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> they caused blows to be given them that would kill the
+most robust, and in such numbers that one is terrified. I know one
+person who counted four thousand at a single sitting; they were given
+sometimes with the palm of the hand, sometimes with the fist; sometimes
+on the back, sometimes on the stomach. Occasionally, heavy cudgels or
+clubs were employed instead<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a>.... Some convulsionists ran pins into
+their heads, without suffering any pain; others would have thrown
+themselves from the windows, had they not been prevented. Others, again,
+carried their zeal so far as to cause themselves to be hanged up by a
+hook," etc.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>Modern medical writers of reputation usually admit the main facts, and
+seek a natural explanation of them. In the article, "Convulsions," in
+the great "Dictionnaire des Sciences M&eacute;dicales," (published in 1812-22,)
+which article is from the pen of an able physiologist, Dr. Mont&egrave;gre, we
+find the following, in regard to the St.-M&eacute;dard phenomena:&mdash;"Carr&eacute; de
+Montg&eacute;ron surrounded these prodigies with depositions so numerous and so
+authentic, that, after having examined them, no doubt can remain....
+However great my reluctance to admit such facts, it is impossible for me
+to refuse to receive them." As to the <i>succors</i>, so-called, he frankly
+confesses that they seem to him as fully proved as the rest. He
+says,&mdash;"There are the same witnesses, and the incidents themselves are
+still more clear and precise. It is not so much of cures that there is
+question in this case, as of apparent and external facts, in regard to
+which there can be no misconception."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Calmeil, in his well-known work on Insanity, while regarding this
+epidemic as one of the most striking examples of religious mania,
+accepts the relation of Montg&eacute;ron as in the main true. "From various
+motives," says he, "these theomaniacs sought out the most frightful
+bodily tortures. Would it be credible, if it were not that the entire
+population of Paris concurred in testifying to the fact, that more than
+five hundred women pushed the rage of fanaticism or the perversion of
+sensibility to such a point, that they exposed themselves to burning
+fires, that they had their heads compressed between boards, that they
+caused to be administered on the abdomen, on the breast, on the stomach,
+on every part of the body, blows of clubs, stampings of the feet, blows
+with weapons of stone, with bars of iron? Yet the theomaniacs of St.
+M&eacute;dard braved all these tests, sometimes as proofs that God had rendered
+them invulnerable, sometimes to demonstrate that God could cure them by
+means calculated to kill them, had they not been the objects of His
+special protection, sometimes to show that blows usually painful only
+caused to them pleasant relief. The picture of the punishments to which
+the convulsionists submitted, as if by inspiration, so that no one might
+doubt, as Montg&eacute;ron has it, that it was easy for the Almighty to render
+invulnerable and insensible bodies the most frail and delicate, would
+induce us to believe, if the contrary were not so conclusively
+established, that a rage for homicide and suicide had taken possession
+of the greater part of the sect of the Appellants."<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p>Though I am acquainted with no class of phenomena occurring elsewhere
+that will match the "Great Succors" of St. M&eacute;dard, yet we find
+occasional glimpses of instincts somewhat analogous to those claimed for
+the convulsionists, in other examples.</p>
+
+<p>In Hecker's "Epidemics of the Middle Ages" there is a chapter devoted to
+what he calls the "Dancing Mania," the account of which he thus
+introduces:&mdash;"So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women
+were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had come out of Germany, and who,
+united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public, both in the
+streets and in the churches, the following strange spectacle. They
+formed circles hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost all control
+over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for
+hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the
+ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme
+oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were
+swathed in cloths bound tightly round their waists; upon which they
+recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This
+practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> which
+followed these spasmodic ravings; but the bystanders frequently relieved
+patients in a less artificial manner, <i>by thumping and trampling upon
+the parts affected</i>. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being
+insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted
+by visions." And again,&mdash;"In Liege, Utrecht, Tongres, and many other
+towns of Belgium, the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and
+their waists girt with cloths, that they might, as soon as the paroxysm
+was over, receive immediate relief from the attack of tympany. This
+bandage, by the insertion of a stick, was easily twisted tight; <i>many,
+however, obtained more relief from kicks and blows</i>, which they found
+numbers of persons ready to administer."<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+<p>Physicians of our own day, while magnetizing, have occasionally
+encountered not dissimilar phenomena. Dr. Bertrand tells us that the
+first patient he ever magnetized, being attacked by a disease of an
+hysterical character, became subject to convulsions of so long duration
+and so violent in character, that he had never, in all his practice,
+seen the like; and that she suffered horribly. He adds,&mdash;"Here is what
+happened during her first convulsion-fits. This unhappy girl, whose
+instinct was perverted by intensity of pain, earnestly entreated the
+persons present to press upon her with such force as at any other time
+would have produced the most serious injury. I had the greatest
+difficulty to prevent those around her from acceding to her urgent
+requests that they would kneel upon her with all their weight, that they
+would exert with their hands the utmost pressure on the pit of her
+stomach, even on her throat, with the view of driving off the imaginary
+hysterical <i>ball</i> of which she complained. Though at any other time such
+treatment would have produced severe pain, she declared that it relieved
+her; and when the fit passed off, she did not seem to suffer the least
+inconvenience from it."<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>The above, connecting as it does the phenomena exhibited during the
+St.-M&eacute;dard epidemic with those observed by animal magnetizers, brings us
+to the second query, namely, as to the cause of these phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>And here we find physicians, not mesmerists, comparing these phenomena,
+and others of the same class, with the effects observed by animal
+magnetizers. Dr. Mont&egrave;gre, already quoted, says,&mdash;"The phenomena of
+magnetism, and those presented by cases of possession and of
+fascination, connect themselves with those observed among the
+convulsionists, not only by the most complete resemblance, but also by
+the cause which determines them. There is not a single phenomenon
+observed in the one case that has not its counterpart in the
+others."<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>Calmeil, while admitting that the "nervous effects produced by animal
+magnetizers bear a close resemblance to those which have been observed
+at Loudun, at Louviers, and during other convulsive epidemics," offers
+the following, in explanation of the physical phenomena connected with
+the "Great Succors":&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The energetic resistance, which, in the case of the convulsionists, the
+skin, the cellular tissue, and the surface of the body and limbs offered
+to the shock of blows, is certainly calculated to excite surprise. But
+many of these fanatics greatly deceived themselves, when they imagined
+that they were invulnerable; for it has been repeatedly proved that
+several of them, as a consequent of the cruel trials they solicited,
+suffered from large ecchymoses on the integuments, and numerous
+contusions on those portions of the surface which were exposed to the
+rudest attacks. For the rest, the blows were never administered except
+during the torments of convulsion; and at that time the tympany
+(<i>m&eacute;t&eacute;orisme</i>) of the abdomen, the state of spasm of the uterus in women
+and of the alimentary canal in both sexes, the state of contraction, of
+orgasm, of turgescence in the fleshy envelopes, in the muscular layers
+which protect and inclose the abdomen, the thorax, the principal
+vascular trunks, and the bony surfaces, must essentially contribute to
+weaken, to deaden, to nullify, the effect of the blows. Is it not by
+means of an analogous state of orgasm, which an over-excited will
+produces, that boxers and athletes find themselves in a condition to
+brave, to a certain point, the dangers of their profession? In fine, it
+is to be remarked, that, when dealing blows on the bodies of the
+convulsionists, the assistants employed weapons of considerable volume,
+having flat or rounded surfaces, cylindrical or blunted. But the action
+of such physical agents is not to be compared, as regards its danger,
+with that of thongs, switches, or other supple and flexible instruments
+with distinct edges. Finally, the contact and the repeated impression of
+the blows produced on the convulsionists the effect of a sort of
+salutary pounding, and rendered less poignant and less sensible the
+tortures of hysteria. It would have been preferable, doubtless, to make
+use of less murderous succors; the rage for distinction as the possessor
+of a miraculous gift, even more perhaps than the instinctive need of
+immediate relief, prompting these convulsionary theomaniacs to make
+choice of means calculated to act on the imagination of a populace,
+whose interest could be kept awake only by a constant repetition of
+wonders."<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+<p>Calmeil, of all the medical authors I have consulted, appears to have
+the most closely studied the various phases of the St.-M&eacute;dard
+epidemic.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> Yet the explanations above given seem to me quite
+incommensurate with the phenomena admitted.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the patients, he says, suffered from ecchymosis and contusions.
+In plain, unprofessional language, they were beaten black and blue. That
+is such a result as usually follows a few blows from a boxer's fist or
+from an ordinary walking-stick. But when the weapon employed is a rough
+iron bar weighing upwards of twenty-nine pounds, when the number of
+blows dealt in succession on the pit of the stomach of a young girl
+exceeds a hundred and fifty, and when these are delivered with the
+utmost force of an athletic man, is it bruises and contusions we look
+for as the only consequence? Or does it explain the immunity with which
+this frightful infliction was received, to call it a salutary pounding?
+The argument drawn from the turgescence of the viscera and other organs,
+from the spasmodic contraction of the muscles and the general state of
+orgasm of the system, has doubtless great weight; but does it reach far
+enough to explain to us the fact, (if it be a fact, and as such Calmeil
+accepts it,) that a girl, bent back so that her head and feet touched
+the floor, the centre of the vertebral column being supported on a
+sharp-pointed stake, received, day after day, with impunity, directly on
+her stomach and bowels, one hundred times in succession, a flint stone
+weighing fifty pounds, dropped suddenly from a height of twelve or
+fifteen feet? Boxers, it is true, in the excited state in which they
+enter the ring, receive, unmoved, from their opponents blows which would
+prostrate a man not prepared, by hard training, for the trial. But even
+such blows, in the end, sometimes prove mortal; and what should we say
+of substituting for the human fist a sharp-pointed rapier, and expecting
+that the tension of the nervous system would render impenetrable the
+skin of the combatant? Finally, it is to be admitted, that flexible
+weapons, especially if loaded, as the cat-o'-nine-tails, still used in
+some countries as an instrument of military punishment, occasionally is,
+with hard, angular substances, are among the most severe that can be
+employed to inflict punishment or destroy life. But what would even the
+poor condemned soldier, shrinking from that terrible instrument of
+torture which modern civilization has not yet been shamed into
+discarding, think of the proposal to substitute for it the andiron with
+which Montg&eacute;ron, at the twenty-fifth blow, broke an opening through a
+stone wall,&mdash;the executioner-drummer being commanded to deal, with his
+utmost strength, one hundred and sixty blows in succession, with that
+ponderous bar, (a bar with rough edges, no cylindrical rod,) not on the
+back of the culprit, but on his unprotected breast?</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that De Gasparin, with all his aversion for the supernatural,
+and all his disinclination to admit anything which he cannot explain,
+after quoting from Calmeil the above explanation, feels its
+insufficiency, and seeks another. These are his words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"How does it happen, that, after being struck with the justice of these
+observations, one still retains a sort of intellectual uneasiness, a
+certain suspicion of the disproportion between the explanation and the
+phenomena it seeks to explain? How does it happen, that, under the
+influence of such an impression, many suffer themselves to be seduced
+into an admission of diabolical or miraculous agency? It happens,
+because Dr. Calmeil, faithful to the countersign of all learned bodies
+in England and France, refuses to admit fluidic action, or to make a
+single step in advance of the ordinary theory of nervous excitement. Now
+it is in vain to talk of contractions, of spasms, of turgescence; all
+this evidently fails to reach the case of the St.-M&eacute;dard <i>succors</i>. To
+reach it we need the intervention of a peculiar force,&mdash;of a fluid which
+is disengaged, sometimes by the effect of certain crises, sometimes by
+the power of magnetism itself. Those who systematically keep up this
+hiatus in the study of human physiology are the best allies of the
+superstitions they profess to combat.... Suppose that study seriously
+undertaken, with what precision should we resolve the problem of which
+now we can but indicate the solution! Habituated to the wonders of the
+nervous fluid, knowing that it can raise, at a distance, inert objects,
+that it can biologize, that it can communicate suppleness or rigidity,
+the highest development of the senses or absolute insensibility, we
+should not be greatly surprised to discover that it communicates also,
+in certain cases, elasticity and that degree of impenetrability which
+characterizes gum-elastic."<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p>De Gasparin further explains his theory in the following passage:&mdash;"The
+great difficulty is not to explain the perversion of sensibility
+exhibited by the convulsionists. Aside from that question, does it not
+remain incomprehensible that feeble women should have received, without
+being a hundred times crushed to pieces, the frightful blows of which we
+have spoken? How can we explain such a power of resistance? A very small
+change, operated by the nervous fluid, would suffice to render the
+matter very simple. Let us suppose the skin and fibres of the
+convulsionists to acquire, in virtue of their peculiar state of
+excitement, a consistency analogous to that of gum-elastic; then all the
+facts that astonish us would become as natural as possible. With
+convulsionists of gum-elastic,<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> or, rather, whose bony framework was
+covered with muscles and tissues of gum-elastic, what would happen?"</p>
+
+<p>He then proceeds to admit that "a vigorous thrust with a rapier, or
+stroke with a sabre, as such thrusts and strokes are usually dealt,
+would doubtless penetrate such an envelope"; but, he alleges, the
+St.-M&eacute;dard convulsionists never, in a single instance, permitted such
+thrusts or strokes, with rapier or sabre, to be given; prudently
+restricting themselves to pressure only, exerted after the sword-point
+had been placed against the body. He reminds us, further, that neither
+razors nor pistol-balls, both of which would penetrate gum-elastic, were
+ever tried on the convulsionists; and he adds,&mdash;"Neither flint stones
+nor andirons nor clubs nor swords and spits, pressed against it, would
+have broken the surface of the gum-elastic envelope. They would have
+produced no visible injury. At the most, they might have caused a
+certain degree of internal friction, more or less serious, according to
+the thickness of the gum-elastic cuirass which covered the bones and the
+various organs."<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>I am fain to confess, that this imagining of men and women of
+gum-elastic, all but the skeleton, does not seem to me so simple a
+matter as it appears to have been regarded by M. de Gasparin. Let us
+take it for granted that his theory of a nervous fluid, which is the
+agent in table-moving,<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> is the true one. How is the mere disengaging
+of such a fluid to work a sudden transmutation of muscular and tendinous
+fibre and cellular tissue into a substance possessing the essential
+properties of a vegetable gum? And what becomes of the skin, ordinarily
+so delicate, so easily abraded or pierced, so readily injured? Is that
+transmuted also? Let us concede it. But the concession does not suffice.
+There remain the bones and cartilages, naturally so brittle, so liable
+to fracture. Let us even suppose the breast and stomach of a
+convulsionist protected by an artificial coating of actual gum-elastic,
+would it be a safe experiment to drop upon it, from a height of twelve
+feet, a flint stone weighing fifty pounds? We are expressly told that
+the ribs bent under the terrible shock, and sank, flattened, even to the
+backbone. Is it not certain, that human ribs and cartilages, in their
+normal state, would have snapped off, in spite of the interposed
+protection? Must we not, then, imagine osseous and cartilaginous fibre,
+too, transmuted? Indeed, while we are about it, I do not see why we
+should stop short of the skeleton. Since we understand nothing of the
+manner of transmutation, it is as easy to imagine bone turned to
+gum-elastic, as skin and muscle and tendon.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, if we look at it narrowly, this theory of De Gasparin is
+little more than a virtual admission, that, during convulsion, by some
+sudden change, the bodies of the patients did, as they themselves
+declared, become, to a marvellous extent, invulnerable,&mdash;with the
+suggestion added, that the nervous fluid may, after some unexplained
+fashion, have been the agent of that change.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest, though the alleged analogy between the properties of
+gum-elastic and those which, in this abnormal state, the human body
+seems to acquire, is, to a certain extent, sustained by many of the
+observations above recorded,&mdash;for example, when a sharp-pointed rapier,
+violently pushed against Gabrielle Moler's throat, sank to the depth of
+four finger-breadths, and, when drawn back, seeming to attach itself to
+the skin, drew it back also, causing a trifling injury,&mdash;yet others seem
+to prove that there is little strictness in that analogy. The King's
+Chaplain and the Advocate of Parliament, whose testimony I have cited,
+both certify that the flesh occasionally reacted under the sword,
+swelling up, so as to thrust back the weapons, and even push back the
+assistants. There is no corresponding property in gum-elastic. And
+Montg&eacute;ron expressly tells us, that, at the close of a terrible succor
+called for by Gabrielle Moler, when she caused four sharpened shovels,
+placed, one above, one below, and one on each side, of one of her
+breasts, to be pushed by the main force of four assistants, a committee
+of ladies present "had the curiosity to examine her breast immediately
+after this operation, and unanimously certified that they found it as
+hard as a stone."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> If this observation can be depended on, the
+gum-elastic theory, even as an analogically approximating explanation of
+this entire class of phenomena, is untenable.</p>
+
+<p>It is further to be remarked, that one of the positions assumed by M. de
+Gasparin, as the basis of his hypothesis, does not tally with some of
+the facts detailed by Montg&eacute;ron. It was <i>pushes</i> with swords, the former
+alleges, never <i>thrusts</i>, to which the convulsionists were exposed. I
+have already stated that this was <i>usually</i> the fact; but there seem to
+have been striking exceptions. On the authority of a priest and of an
+officer of the royal household, Montg&eacute;ron gives us the details of a
+symbolical combat of the most desperate character, with rapiers, between
+Sisters Madeleine and F&eacute;licit&eacute;, occurring in May, 1744, in the presence
+of thirty persons. One of the witnesses says,&mdash;"I know not if I ever saw
+enemies attack each other with more fury or less circumspection. They
+fell upon one another without the slightest precaution, thrusting
+against each other with the points of their rapiers at hap-hazard,
+wherever the thrust happened to take effect. And this they did again and
+again, and with all the force of which, in convulsion, they were
+capable,&mdash;which, as all the world knows, is a force far greater than the
+same persons possess in their ordinary state."</p>
+
+<p>And the officer thus further certifies:&mdash;"After the combat, Madeleine
+took two short swords, resembling daggers, and, holding one in each
+hand, dealt seven or eight blows, pushed home with all her strength, on
+the breast of F&eacute;licit&eacute;, raising her hands and then stabbing with the
+utmost eagerness, just as an assassin who wished to murder some one
+would plunge two daggers repeatedly into his breast. F&eacute;licit&eacute; received
+the strokes with perfect tranquillity, and without evincing the
+slightest emotion. Then, taking two similar daggers, she did the very
+same to Madeleine, who, with her arms crossed, received the thrusts as
+tranquilly as the other had done. Immediately afterwards, these two
+convulsionists attacked one another with daggers, as with the fury of
+two maniacs, who, having resolved on mutual destruction, were solely
+bent each on poniarding the other."<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is added, that "neither the one nor the other received the least
+appearance of a wound, nor did either seem at all fatigued by so long
+and furious an exercise."</p>
+
+<p>It is not stated, in this particular instance, as it is in others, that
+these girls were examined by a committee of their sex, before or after
+the combat, to ascertain that they had under their dresses no concealed
+means of protection; so that the possibility of trickery must be
+admitted. If, as the officer who certifies appears convinced, all was
+fair, then M. de Gasparin's admission that a vigorous sword-thrust would
+penetrate the gum-elastic envelope is fatal to the theory he propounds.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, withal, we may reasonably assent to the probability that M. de
+Gasparin, in seeking an explanation of these marvellous phenomena, may
+have proceeded in the right direction. Modern physicians admit, that, at
+times, during somnambulism, complete insensibility, resembling hysteric
+coma, prevails.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> But if, as is commonly believed, this insensibility
+is caused by some modification or abnormal condition of the nervous
+fluid, then to some other modification or changed condition of the same
+fluid comparative invulnerability may be due. For there is connection,
+to a certain extent, between insensibility and invulnerability. A
+patient rendered unconscious of pain, by chloroform or otherwise,
+throughout the duration of a severe and prolonged surgical operation,
+escapes a perilous shock to the nervous system, and may survive an
+ordeal which, if he had felt the agony usually induced, would have
+proved fatal. Pain is not only a warning monitor, it becomes also,
+sometimes, the agent of punishment, if the warning be disregarded.</p>
+
+<p>But, on the other hand, we must not forget that insensibility and
+invulnerability, though to a certain extent allied, are two distinct
+things. Injury the most serious may occur without the premonitory
+warning, even without immediate subsequent suffering. A person in a
+perfect state of insensibility might doubtless receive, without
+experiencing any pain whatever, a blow that would shatter the bones of a
+limb, and render it powerless for life. Indeed, there is on record a
+well-attested case of a poor pedestrian, who, having laid himself down
+on the platform of a lime-kiln, and dropping asleep, and the fire having
+increased and burnt off one foot to the ankle, rose in the morning to
+depart, and knew nothing of his misfortune, until, putting his burnt
+limb to the ground, to support his body in rising, the extremity of his
+leg-bone, calcined into lime, crumbled to fragments beneath him.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
+
+<p>Contemporary medical authorities, even when they have the rare courage
+to deny to the convulsions either a divine or a diabolical character,
+furnish no explanation of them more satisfactory than the citing of
+similar cases, more or less strongly attested, in the past.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> This may
+confirm our faith in the reality of the phenomena, but does not resolve
+our difficulties as to the causes of them.</p>
+
+<p>It does not fall within my purpose to hazard any opinion as to these
+causes, nor, if it did, am I prepared to offer any. Some considerations
+might be adduced, calculated to lessen our wonder as to an occasional
+phenomenon on this marvellous record. Physiologists, for example, are
+agreed that the common opinion as to the sensibility of the interior of
+the eye is an incorrect one;<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> and that consideration might be put
+forth, when we read that Sisters Madeleine and F&eacute;licit&eacute; suffered with
+impunity swords to be pressed against that delicate organ, until the
+point sank an inch beneath its surface. But all such isolated
+considerations are partial, inconclusive, and, as regards any general
+satisfactory explanation, far short of the requirements of the case.</p>
+
+<p>More weight may justly be given to another consideration: to the
+exaggerations inseparable from enthusiasm, and the inaccuracies into
+which inexperienced observers must ever fall. As to the necessity of
+making large allowance for these, I entirely agree with Calmeil and De
+Gasparin. But let the allowance made for such errors be more or less, it
+cannot extend to an absolute denial of the chief phenomena, unless we
+are prepared to follow Hume in his assertion that what is contrary to
+our experience can be proved by no evidence of testimony whatever,&mdash;and
+that, though we have here nothing, save the marvellous character of the
+events, to oppose to the cloud of witnesses who attest them, that alone,
+in the eyes of reasonable people, should be regarded as a sufficient
+refutation.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
+
+<p>The mental and psychological phenomena, only less marvellous than the
+physical because we have seen more of their like, will, on that account,
+be more readily received.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="HOUSE_AND_HOME_PAPERS" id="HOUSE_AND_HOME_PAPERS"></a>HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>It is among the sibylline secrets which lie mysteriously between you and
+me, O reader, that these papers, besides their public aspect, have a
+private one proper to the bosom of mine own particular family.</p>
+
+<p>They are not merely an <i>ex post facto</i> protest in regard to that carpet
+and parlor of celebrated memory, but they are forth-looking towards
+other homes that may yet arise near us.</p>
+
+<p>For, among my other confidences, you may recollect I stated to you that
+our Marianne was busy in those interesting cares and details which
+relate to the preparing and ordering of another dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when any such matter is going on in a family, I have observed that
+every feminine instinct is in a state of fluttering vitality,&mdash;every
+woman, old or young, is alive with womanliness to the tips of her
+fingers; and it becomes us of the other sex, however consciously
+respected, to walk softly, and put forth our sentiments discreetly and
+with due reverence for the mysterious powers that reign in the feminine
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>I had been too well advised to offer one word of direct counsel on a
+subject where there were such charming voices, so able to convict me of
+absurdity at every turn. I had merely so arranged my affairs as to put
+into the hands of my bankers, subject to my wife's order, the very
+modest marriage-portion which I could place at my girl's disposal; and
+Marianne and Jennie, unused to the handling of money, were incessant in
+their discussions with ever-patient mamma as to what was to be done with
+it. I say Marianne and Jennie, for, though the case undoubtedly is
+Marianne's, yet, like everything else in our domestic proceedings, it
+seems to fall, somehow or other, into Jennie's hands, through the
+intensity and liveliness of her domesticity of nature. Little Jennie is
+so bright and wide-awake, and with so many active plans and fancies
+touching anything in the housekeeping world, that, though the youngest
+sister, and second party in this affair, a stranger, hearkening to the
+daily discussions, might listen a half-hour at a time without finding
+out that it was not Jennie's future establishment that was in question.
+Marianne is a soft, thoughtful, quiet girl, not given to many words; and
+though, when you come fairly at it, you will find, that, like most quiet
+girls, she has a will five times as inflexible as one who talks more,
+yet, in all family-counsels, it is Jennie and mamma that do the
+discussion, and her own little well-considered "Yes," or "No," that
+finally settles each case.</p>
+
+<p>I must add to this family-<i>tableau</i> the portrait of the excellent Bob
+Stephens, who figured as future proprietor and householder in these
+consultations. So far as the question of financial possibilities is
+concerned, it is important to remark that Bob belongs to the class of
+young Edmunds celebrated by the poet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Wisdom and worth were all he had."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He is, in fact, an excellent-hearted and clever fellow, with a world of
+agreeable talents, a good tenor in a parlor-duet, a good actor at a
+charade, a lively, off-hand conversationist, well up in all the current
+literature of the day, and what is more, in my eyes, a well-read lawyer,
+just admitted to the bar, and with as fair business-prospects as usually
+fall to the lot of young aspirants in that profession.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, he and my girl are duly and truly in love, in all the proper
+moods and tenses; but as to this work they have in hand of being
+householders, managing fuel, rent, provision, taxes, gas- and
+water-rates, they seem to my older eyes about as sagacious as a pair of
+this year's robins. Nevertheless, as the robins of each year do somehow
+learn to build nests as well as their ancestors, there is reason to hope
+as much for each new pair of human creatures. But it is one of the
+fatalities of our ill-jointed life that houses are usually furnished for
+future homes by young people in just this state of blissful ignorance of
+what they are really wanted for, or what is likely to be done with the
+things in them.</p>
+
+<p>Now, to people of large incomes, with ready wealth for the rectification
+of mistakes, it doesn't much matter how the <i>menage</i> is arranged at
+first; they will, if they have good sense, soon rid themselves of the
+little infelicities and absurdities of their first arrangements, and
+bring their establishment to meet their more instructed tastes.</p>
+
+<p>But to that greater class who have only a modest investment for this
+first start in domestic life mistakes are far more serious. I have known
+people go on for years groaning under the weight of domestic possessions
+they did not want, and pining in vain for others which they did, simply
+from the fact that all their first purchases were made in this time of
+blissful ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>I had been a quiet auditor to many animated discussions among the young
+people as to what they wanted, and were to get, in which the subject of
+prudence and economy was discussed, with quotations of advice thereon
+given in serious good-faith by various friends and relations who lived
+easily on incomes four or five times larger than our own. Who can show
+the ways of elegant economy more perfectly than people thus at ease in
+their possessions? From what serene heights do they instruct the
+inexperienced beginners! Ten thousand a year gives one leisure for
+reflection, and elegant leisure enables one to view household economies
+dispassionately; hence the unction with which these gifted daughters of
+upper-air delight to exhort young neophytes.</p>
+
+<p>"Depend upon it, my dear," Aunt Sophia Easygo had said, "it's always the
+best economy to get the best things. They cost more in the beginning,
+but see how they last! These velvet carpets on my floor have been in
+constant wear for ten years, and look how they wear! I never have an
+ingrain carpet in my house,&mdash;not even on the chambers. Velvet and
+Brussels cost more to begin with, but then they last. Then I cannot
+recommend the fashion that is creeping in, of having plate instead of
+solid silver. Plate wears off, and has to be renewed, which comes to
+about the same thing in the end as if you bought all solid at first. If
+I were beginning as Marianne is, I should just set aside a thousand
+dollars for my silver, and be content with a few plain articles. She
+should buy all her furniture at Messrs. David and Saul's. People call
+them dear, but their work will prove cheapest in the end, and there is
+an air and style about their things that can be told anywhere. Of
+course, you won't go to any extravagant lengths,&mdash;simplicity is a grace
+of itself."</p>
+
+<p>The waters of the family-council were troubled, when Jennie, flaming
+with enthusiasm, brought home the report of this conversation. When my
+wife proceeded, with her well-trained business-knowledge, to compare the
+prices of the simplest elegancies recommended by Aunt Easygo with the
+sum-total to be drawn on, faces lengthened perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>"How <i>are</i> people to go to housekeeping," said Jennie, "if everything
+costs so much?"</p>
+
+<p>My wife quietly remarked, that we had had great comfort in our own
+home,&mdash;had entertained unnumbered friends, and had only ingrain carpets
+on our chambers and a three-ply on our parlor, and she doubted if any
+guest had ever thought of it,&mdash;if the rooms had been a shade less
+pleasant; and as to durability, Aunt Easygo had renewed her carpets
+oftener than we. Such as ours were, they had worn longer than hers.</p>
+
+<p>"But, mamma, you know everything has gone on since your day. Everybody
+must at least approach a certain style nowadays. One can't furnish so
+far behind other people."</p>
+
+<p>My wife answered in her quiet way, setting forth her doctrine of a plain
+average to go through the whole establishment, placing parlors,
+chambers, kitchen, pantries, and the unseen depths of linen-closets in
+harmonious relations of just proportion, and showed by calm estimates
+how far the sum given could go towards this result. <i>There</i> the limits
+were inexorable. There is nothing so damping to the ardor of youthful
+economies as the hard, positive logic of figures. It is so delightful to
+think in some airy way that the things we <i>like</i> best are the cheapest,
+and that a sort of rigorous duty compels us to get them at any
+sacrifice. There is no remedy for this illusion but to show by the
+multiplication and addition tables what things are and are not possible.
+My wife's figures met Aunt Easygo's assertions, and there was a lull
+among the high contracting parties for a season; nevertheless, I could
+see Jennie was secretly uneasy. I began to hear of journeys made to far
+places, here and there, where expensive articles of luxury were selling
+at reduced prices. Now a gilded mirror was discussed, and now a velvet
+carpet which chance had brought down temptingly near the sphere of
+financial possibility. I thought of our parlor, and prayed the good
+fairies to avert the advent of ill-assorted articles.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray keep common sense uppermost in the girls' heads, if you can," said
+I to Mrs. Crowfield, "and don't let the poor little puss spend her money
+for what she won't care a button about by-and-by."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall try," she said; "but you know Marianne is inexperienced, and
+Jennie is so ardent and active, and so confident, too. Then they both, I
+think, have the impression that we are a little behind the age. To say
+the truth, my dear, I think your papers afford a good opportunity of
+dropping a thought now and then in their minds. Jennie was asking last
+night when you were going to write your next paper. The girl has a
+bright, active mind, and thinks of what she hears."</p>
+
+<p>So flattered, by the best of flatterers, I sat down to write on my
+theme; and that evening, at fire-light time, I read to my little senate
+as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<h3>WHAT IS A HOME, AND HOW TO KEEP IT.</h3>
+
+<p>I have shown that a dwelling, rented or owned by a man, in which his own
+wife keeps house, is not always, or of course, a home. What is it, then,
+that makes a home? All men and women have the indefinite knowledge of
+what they want and long for when that word is spoken. "Home!" sighs the
+disconsolate bachelor, tired of boarding-house fare and buttonless
+shirts. "Home!" says the wanderer in foreign lands, and thinks of
+mother's love, of wife and sister and child. Nay, the word has in it a
+higher meaning, hallowed by religion; and when the Christian would
+express the highest of his hopes for a better life, he speaks of his
+<i>home</i> beyond the grave. The word home has in it the elements of love,
+rest, permanency, and liberty; but besides these it has in it the idea
+of an education by which all that is purest within us is developed into
+nobler forms, fit for a higher life. The little child by the
+home-fireside was taken on the Master's knee when he would explain to
+his disciples the mysteries of the kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Of so great dignity and worth is this holy and sacred thing, that the
+power to create a <span class="smcap">home</span> ought to be ranked above all creative
+faculties. The sculptor who brings out the breathing statue from cold
+marble, the painter who warms the canvas into a deathless glow of
+beauty, the architect who built cathedrals and hung the world-like dome
+of St. Peter's in mid-air, is not to be compared, in sanctity and
+worthiness, to the humblest artist, who, out of the poor materials
+afforded by this shifting, changing, selfish world, creates the secure
+Eden of a <i>home</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A true home should be called the noblest work of art possible to human
+creatures, inasmuch as it is the very image chosen to represent the last
+and highest rest of the soul, the consummation of man's blessedness.</p>
+
+<p>Not without reason does the oldest Christian church require of those
+entering on marriage the most solemn review of all the past life, the
+confession and repentance of every sin of thought, word, and deed, and
+the reception of the holy sacrament; for thus the man and woman who
+approach the august duty of creating a home are reminded of the sanctity
+and beauty of what they undertake.</p>
+
+<p>In this art of home-making I have set down in my mind certain first
+principles, like the axioms of Euclid, and the first is,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>No home is possible without love.</i></p>
+
+<p>All business-marriages and marriages of convenience, all mere culinary
+marriages and marriages of mere animal passion, make the creation of a
+true home impossible in the outset. Love is the jewelled foundation of
+this New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven, and takes as many
+bright forms as the amethyst, topaz, and sapphire of that mysterious
+vision. In this range of creative art all things are possible to him
+that loveth, but without love nothing is possible.</p>
+
+<p>We hear of most convenient marriages in foreign lands, which may better
+be described as commercial partnerships. The money on each side is
+counted; there is enough between the parties to carry on the firm, each
+having the appropriate sum allotted to each. No love is pretended, but
+there is great politeness. All is so legally and thoroughly arranged,
+that there seems to be nothing left for future quarrels to fasten on.
+Monsieur and Madame have each their apartments, their carriages, their
+servants, their income, their friends, their pursuits,&mdash;understand the
+solemn vows of marriage to mean simply that they are to treat each other
+with urbanity in those few situations where the path of life must
+necessarily bring them together.</p>
+
+<p>We are sorry that such an idea of marriage should be gaining foothold in
+America. It has its root in an ignoble view of life,&mdash;an utter and pagan
+darkness as to all that man and woman are called to do in that highest
+relation where they act as one. It is a mean and low contrivance on both
+sides, by which all the grand work of home-building, all the noble pains
+and heroic toils of home-education,&mdash;that education where the parents
+learn more than they teach,&mdash;shall be (let us use the expressive Yankee
+idiom) <i>shirked</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious fact that in those countries where this system of
+marriages is the general rule there is no word corresponding to our
+English word <i>home</i>. In many polite languages of Europe it would be
+impossible neatly to translate the sentiment with which we began this
+essay, that a man's <i>house</i> is not always his <i>home</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Let any one try to render the song, "Sweet Home," into French, and one
+finds how Anglo-Saxon is the very genius of the word. The structure of
+life, in all its relations, in countries where marriages are matter of
+arrangement, and not of love, excludes the idea of home.</p>
+
+<p>How does life run in such countries? The girl is recalled from her
+convent or boarding-school, and told that her father has found a husband
+for her. No objection on her part is contemplated or provided for; none
+generally occurs, for the child is only too happy to obtain the fine
+clothes and the liberty which she has been taught come only with
+marriage. Be the man handsome or homely, interesting or stupid, still he
+brings these.</p>
+
+<p>How intolerable such a marriage! we say, with the close intimacies of
+Anglo-Saxon life in our minds. They are not intolerable, because they
+are provided for by arrangements which make it possible for each to go
+his or her several way, seeing very little of the other. The son or
+daughter, which in due time makes its appearance in this <i>menage</i>, is
+sent out to nurse in infancy, sent to boarding-school in youth, and in
+maturity portioned and married, to repeat the same process for another
+generation. Meanwhile, father and mother keep a quiet establishment, and
+pursue their several pleasures. Such is the system.</p>
+
+<p>Houses built for this kind of life become mere sets of reception-rooms,
+such as are the greater proportion of apartments to let in Paris, where
+a hearty English or American family, with their children about them,
+could scarcely find room to establish themselves. Individual character,
+it is true, does something to modify this programme. There are charming
+homes in France and Italy, where warm and noble natures, thrown
+together, perhaps, by accident, or mated by wise paternal choice, infuse
+warmth into the coldness of the system under which they live. There are
+in all states of society some of such domesticity of nature that they
+will create a home around themselves under any circumstances, however
+barren. Besides, so kindly is human nature, that Love, uninvited before
+marriage, often becomes a guest after, and with Love always comes a
+home.</p>
+
+<p>My next axiom is,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>There can be no true home without liberty.</i></p>
+
+<p>The very idea of home is of a retreat where we shall be free to act out
+personal and individual tastes and peculiarities, as we cannot do before
+the wide world. We are to have our meals at what hour we will, served in
+what style suits us. Our hours of going and coming are to be as we
+please. Our favorite haunts are to be here or there, our pictures and
+books so disposed as seems to us good, and our whole arrangements the
+expression, so far as our means can compass it, of our own personal
+ideas of what is pleasant and desirable in life. This element of
+liberty, if we think of it, is the chief charm of home. "Here I can do
+as I please," is the thought with which the tempest-tossed earth-pilgrim
+blesses himself or herself, turning inward from the crowded ways of the
+world. This thought blesses the man of business, as he turns from his
+day's care, and crosses the sacred threshold. It is as restful to him as
+the slippers and gown and easy-chair by the fireside. Everybody
+understands him here. Everybody is well content that he should take his
+ease in his own way. Such is the case in the <i>ideal</i> home. That such is
+not always the case in the real home comes often from the mistakes in
+the house-furnishing. Much house-furnishing is <i>too fine</i> for liberty.</p>
+
+<p>In America there is no such thing as rank and station which impose a
+sort of prescriptive style on people of certain income. The consequence
+is that all sorts of furniture and belongings, which in the Old World
+have a recognized relation to certain possibilities of income, and which
+require certain other accessories to make them in good keeping, are
+thrown in the way of all sorts of people.</p>
+
+<p>Young people who cannot expect by any reasonable possibility to keep
+more than two or three servants, if they happen to have the means in the
+outset, furnish a house with just such articles as in England would suit
+an establishment of sixteen. We have seen houses in England having two
+or three housemaids, and tables served by a butler and two waiters,
+where the furniture, carpets, china, crystal, and silver were in one and
+the same style with some establishments in America where the family was
+hard pressed to keep three Irish servants.</p>
+
+<p>This want of servants is the one thing that must modify everything in
+American life; it is, and will long continue to be, a leading feature in
+the life of a country so rich in openings for man and woman that
+domestic service can be only the stepping-stone to something higher.
+Nevertheless, we Americans are great travellers; we are sensitive,
+appreciative, fond of novelty, apt to receive and incorporate into our
+own life what seems fair and graceful in that of other people. Our
+women's wardrobes are made elaborate with the thousand elegancies of
+French toilet,&mdash;our houses filled with a thousand knick-knacks of which
+our plain ancestors never dreamed. Cleopatra did not set sail on the
+Nile in more state and beauty than that in which our young American
+bride is often ushered into her new home. Her wardrobe all gossamer lace
+and quaint frill and crimp and embroidery, her house a museum of elegant
+and costly gewgaws; and amid the whole collection of elegancies and
+fragilities, she, perhaps, the frailest.</p>
+
+<p>Then comes the tug of war. The young wife becomes a mother, and while
+she is retired to her chamber, blundering Biddy rusts the elegant
+knives, or takes off the ivory handles by soaking in hot water,&mdash;the
+silver is washed in greasy soap-suds, and refreshed now and then with a
+thump, which cocks the nose of the teapot awry, or makes the handle
+assume an air of drunken defiance. The fragile China is chipped here and
+there around its edges with those minute gaps so vexatious to a woman's
+soul; the handles fly hither and thither in the wild confusion of
+Biddy's washing-day hurry, when cook wants her to help hang out the
+clothes. Meanwhile, Bridget sweeps the parlor with a hard broom, and
+shakes out showers of ashes from the grate, forgetting to cover the
+damask lounges, and they directly look as rusty and time-worn as if they
+had come from an auction-store; and all together unite in making such
+havoc of the delicate ruffles and laces of the bridal outfit and
+baby-<i>layette</i>, that, when the poor young wife comes out of her chamber
+after her nurse has left her, and, weakened and embarrassed with the
+demands of the new-comer, begins to look once more into the affairs of
+her little world, she is ready to sink with vexation and discouragement.
+Poor little princess! Her clothes are made as princesses wear them, her
+baby's clothes like a young duke's, her house furnished like a lord's,
+and only Bridget and Biddy and Polly to do the work of cook,
+scullery-maid, butler, footman, laundress, nursery-maid, house-maid, and
+lady's maid. Such is the array that in the Old Country would be deemed
+necessary to take care of an establishment got up like hers. Everything
+in it is <i>too fine</i>,&mdash;not too fine to be pretty, not in bad taste in
+itself, but too fine for the situation, too fine for comfort or liberty.</p>
+
+<p>What ensues in a house so furnished? Too often, ceaseless fretting of
+the nerves, in the wife's despairing, conscientious efforts to keep
+things as they should be. There is no freedom in a house where things
+are too expensive and choice to be freely handled and easily replaced.
+Life becomes a series of petty embarrassments and restrictions,
+something is always going wrong, and the man finds his fireside
+oppressive,&mdash;the various articles of his parlor and table seem like so
+many temper-traps and spring-guns, menacing explosion and disaster.</p>
+
+<p>There may be, indeed, the most perfect home-feeling, the utmost coziness
+and restfulness, in apartments crusted with gilding, carpeted with
+velvet, and upholstered with satin. I have seen such, where the
+home-like look and air of free use was as genuine as in a Western
+log-cabin; but this was in a range of princely income that made all
+these things as easy to be obtained or replaced as the most ordinary of
+our domestic furniture. But so long as articles must be shrouded from
+use, or used with fear and trembling, because their cost is above the
+general level of our means, we had better be without them, even though
+the most lucky of accidents may put their possession in our power.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not merely by the effort to maintain too much elegance that
+the sense of home-liberty is banished from a house. It is sometimes
+expelled in another way, with all painstaking and conscientious
+strictness, by the worthiest and best of human beings, the blessed
+followers of Saint Martha. Have we not known them, the dear, worthy
+creatures, up before daylight, causing most scrupulous lustrations of
+every pane of glass and inch of paint in our parlors, in consequence
+whereof every shutter and blind must be kept closed for days to come,
+lest the flies should speck the freshly washed windows and wainscoting?
+Dear shade of Aunt Mehitabel, forgive our boldness! Have we not been
+driven for days, in our youth, to read our newspaper in the front
+veranda, in the kitchen, out in the barn,&mdash;anywhere, in fact, where
+sunshine could be found, because there was not a room in the house that
+was not cleaned, shut up, and darkened? Have we not shivered with cold,
+all the glowering, gloomy month of May, because, the august front-parlor
+having undergone the spring cleaning, the andirons were snugly tied up
+in tissue-paper, and an elegant frill of the same material was trembling
+before the mouth of the once glowing fireplace? Even so, dear soul, full
+of loving-kindness and hospitality as thou wast, yet ever making our
+house seem like a tomb! And with what patience wouldst thou sit sewing
+by a crack in the shutters, an inch wide, rejoicing in thy immaculate
+paint and clear glass! But was there ever a thing of thy spotless and
+unsullied belongings which a boy might use? How I trembled to touch thy
+scoured tins, that hung in appalling brightness! with what awe I asked
+for a basket to pick strawberries! and where in the house could I find a
+place to eat a piece of gingerbread? How like a ruffian, a Tartar, a
+pirate, I always felt, when I entered thy domains! and how, from day to
+day, I wondered at the immeasurable depths of depravity which were
+always leading me to upset something, or break or tear or derange
+something, in thy exquisitely kept premises! Somehow, the impression was
+burned with overpowering force into my mind, that houses and furniture,
+scrubbed floors, white curtains, bright tins and brasses were the great,
+awful, permanent facts of existence,&mdash;and that men and women, and
+particularly children, were the meddlesome intruders upon this divine
+order, every trace of whose intermeddling must be scrubbed out and
+obliterated in the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to me that
+houses would be far more perfect, if nobody lived in them at all; but
+that, as men had really and absurdly taken to living in them, they must
+live as little as possible. My only idea of a house was a place full of
+traps and pitfalls for boys, a deadly temptation to sins which beset one
+every moment; and when I read about a sailor's free life on the ocean, I
+felt an untold longing to go forth and be free in like manner.</p>
+
+<p>But a truce to these fancies, and back again to our essay.</p>
+
+<p>If liberty in a house is a comfort to a husband, it is a necessity to
+children. When we say liberty, we do not mean license. We do not mean
+that Master Johnny be allowed to handle elegant volumes with
+bread-and-butter fingers, or that little Miss be suffered to drum on the
+piano, or practise line-drawing with a pin on varnished furniture. Still
+it is essential that the family-parlors be not too fine for the family
+to sit in,&mdash;too fine for the ordinary accidents, haps and mishaps, of
+reasonably well-trained children. The elegance of the parlor where papa
+and mamma sit and receive their friends should wear an inviting, not a
+hostile and bristling, aspect to little people. Its beauty and its order
+gradually form in the little mind a love of beauty and order, and the
+insensible carefulness of regard.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is worse for a child than to shut him up in a room which he
+understands is his, <i>because</i> he is disorderly,&mdash;where he is expected,
+of course, to maintain and keep disorder. We have sometimes pitied the
+poor little victims who show their faces longingly at the doors of
+elegant parlors, and are forthwith collared by the domestic police and
+consigned to some attic-apartment, called a play-room, where chaos
+continually reigns. It is a mistake to suppose, because children derange
+a well-furnished apartment, that they like confusion. Order and beauty
+are always pleasant to them as to grown people, and disorder and
+defacement are painful; but they know neither how to create the one nor
+to prevent the other,&mdash;their little lives are a series of experiments,
+often making disorder by aiming at some new form of order. Yet, for all
+this, I am not one of those who feel that in a family everything should
+bend to the sway of these little people. They are the worst of tyrants
+in such houses,&mdash;still, where children are, though the fact must not
+appear to them, <i>nothing must be done without a wise thought of them</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Here, as in all high art, the old motto is in force, "<i>Ars est celare
+artem</i>." Children who are taught too plainly by every anxious look and
+word of their parents, by every family-arrangement, by the impressment
+of every chance guest into the service, that their parents consider
+their education as the one important matter in creation, are apt to grow
+up fantastical, artificial, and hopelessly self-conscious. The stars
+cannot stop in their courses, even for our personal improvement, and the
+sooner children learn this, the better. The great art is to organize a
+home which shall move on with a strong, wide, generous movement, where
+the little people shall act themselves out as freely and impulsively as
+can consist with the comfort of the whole, and where the anxious
+watching and planning for them shall be kept as secret from them as
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>It is well that one of the sunniest and airiest rooms in the house be
+the children's nursery. It is good philosophy, too, to furnish it
+attractively, even if the sum expended lower the standard of
+parlor-luxuries. It is well that the children's chamber, which is to act
+constantly on their impressible natures for years, should command a
+better prospect, a sunnier aspect, than one which serves for a day's
+occupancy of the transient guest. It is well that journeys should be
+made or put off in view of the interests of the children,&mdash;that guests
+should be invited with a view to their improvement,&mdash;that some
+intimacies should be chosen and some rejected on their account. But it
+is <i>not</i> well that all this should, from infancy, be daily talked out
+before the child, and he grow up in egotism from moving in a sphere
+where everything from first to last is calculated and arranged with
+reference to himself. A little appearance of wholesome neglect combined
+with real care and never-ceasing watchfulness has often seemed to do
+wonders in this work of setting human beings on their own feet for the
+life-journey.</p>
+
+<p>Education is the highest object of home, but education in the widest
+sense,&mdash;education of the parents no less than of the children. In a true
+home the man and the woman receive, through their cares, their
+watchings, their hospitality, their charity, the last and highest finish
+that earth can put upon them. From that they must pass upward, for earth
+can teach them no more.</p>
+
+<p>The home-education is incomplete, unless it include the idea of
+hospitality and charity. Hospitality is a biblical and apostolic virtue,
+and not so often recommended in Holy Writ without reason. Hospitality is
+much neglected in America for the very reasons touched upon above. We
+have received our ideas of propriety and elegance of living from old
+countries, where labor is cheap, where domestic service is a
+well-understood, permanent occupation, adopted cheerfully for life, and
+where of course there is such a subdivision of labor as insures great
+thoroughness in all its branches. We are ashamed or afraid to conform
+honestly and hardily to a state of things purely American. We have not
+yet accomplished what our friend the Doctor calls "our weaning," and
+learned that dinners with circuitous courses and divers other
+Continental and English refinements, well enough in their way, cannot be
+accomplished in families with two or three untrained servants, without
+an expense of care and anxiety which makes them heart-withering to the
+delicate wife, and too severe a trial to occur often. America is the
+land of subdivided fortunes, of a general average of wealth and comfort,
+and there ought to be, therefore, an understanding in the social basis
+far more simple than in the Old World.</p>
+
+<p>Many families of small fortunes know this,&mdash;they are quietly living
+so,&mdash;but they have not the steadiness to share their daily average
+living with a friend, a traveller, or guest, just as the Arab shares his
+tent and the Indian his bowl of succotash. They cannot have company,
+they say. Why? Because it is such a fuss to get out the best things, and
+then to put them back again. But why get out the best things? Why not
+give your friend, what he would like a thousand times better, a bit of
+your average home-life, a seat at any time at your board, a seat at your
+fire? If he sees that there is a handle off your tea-cup, and that there
+is a crack across one of your plates, he only thinks, with a sigh of
+relief, "Well, mine a'n't the only things that meet with accidents," and
+he feels nearer to you ever after; he will let you come to his table and
+see the cracks in his tea-cups, and you will condole with each other on
+the transient nature of earthly possessions. If it become apparent in
+these entirely undressed rehearsals that your children are sometimes
+disorderly, and that your cook sometimes overdoes the meat, and that
+your second girl sometimes is awkward in waiting, or has forgotten a
+table-propriety, your friend only feels, "Ah, well, other people have
+trials as well as I," and he thinks, if you come to see him, he shall
+feel easy with you.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Having company</i>" is an expense that may always be felt; but easy daily
+hospitality, the plate always on your table for a friend, is an expense
+that appears on no account-book, and a pleasure that is daily and
+constant.</p>
+
+<p>Under this head of hospitality, let us suppose a case. A traveller comes
+from England; he comes in good faith and good feeling to see how
+Americans live. He merely wants to penetrate into the interior of
+domestic life, to see what there is genuinely and peculiarly American
+about it. Now here is Smilax, who is living, in a small, neat way, on
+his salary from the daily press. He remembers hospitalities received
+from our traveller in England, and wants to return them. He remembers,
+too, with dismay, a well-kept establishment, the well-served table, the
+punctilious, orderly servants. Smilax keeps two, a cook and chambermaid,
+who divide the functions of his establishment between them. What shall
+he do? Let him say, in a fair, manly way, "My dear fellow, I'm delighted
+to see you. I live in a small way, but I'll do my best for you, and Mrs.
+Smilax will be delighted. Come and dine with us, so and so, and we'll
+bring in one or two friends." So the man comes, and Mrs. Smilax serves
+up such a dinner as lies within the limits of her knowledge and the
+capacities of her servants. All plain, good of its kind, unpretending,
+without an attempt to do anything English or French,&mdash;to do anything
+more than if she were furnishing a gala-dinner for her father or
+returned brother. Show him your house freely, just as it is, talk to him
+freely of it, just as he in England showed you his finer things. If the
+man is a true man, he will thank you for such unpretending, sincere
+welcome; if he is a man of straw, then he is not worth wasting Mrs.
+Smilax's health and spirits for, in unavailing efforts to get up a
+foreign dinner-party.</p>
+
+<p>A man who has any heart in him values a genuine little bit of home more
+than anything else you can give him. He can get French cooking at a
+restaurant; he can buy expensive wines at first-class hotels, if he
+wants them; but the traveller, though ever so rich and ever so
+well-served at home, is, after all, nothing but a man as you are, and he
+is craving something that doesn't seem like a hotel,&mdash;some bit of real,
+genuine heart-life. Perhaps he would like better than anything to show
+you the last photograph of his wife, or to read to you the great,
+round-hand letter of his ten-year-old which he has got to-day. He is
+ready to cry when he thinks of it. In this mood he goes to see you,
+hoping for something like home, and you first receive him in a parlor
+opened only on state occasions, and that has been circumstantially and
+exactly furnished, as the upholsterer assures you, as every other parlor
+of the kind in the city is furnished. You treat him to a dinner got up
+for the occasion, with hired waiters,&mdash;a dinner which it has taken Mrs.
+Smilax a week to prepare for, and will take her a week to recover
+from,&mdash;for which the baby has been snubbed and turned off, to his loud
+indignation, and your young four-year-old sent to his aunts. Your
+traveller eats your dinner, and finds it inferior, as a work of art, to
+other dinners,&mdash;a poor imitation. He goes away and criticizes; you hear
+of it, and resolve never to invite a foreigner again. But if you had
+given him a little of your heart, a little home-warmth and feeling,&mdash;if
+you had shown him your baby, and let him romp with your four-year-old,
+and eat a genuine dinner with you,&mdash;would he have been false to that?
+Not so likely. He wanted something real and human,&mdash;you gave him a bad
+dress-rehearsal, and dress-rehearsals always provoke criticism.</p>
+
+<p>Besides hospitality, there is, in a true home, a mission of charity. It
+is a just law which regulates the possession of great or beautiful works
+of art in the Old World, that they shall in some sense be considered the
+property of all who can appreciate. Fine grounds have hours when the
+public may be admitted,&mdash;pictures and statues may be shown to visitors;
+and this is a noble charity. In the same manner the fortunate
+individuals who have achieved the greatest of all human works of art
+should employ it as a sacred charity. How many, morally wearied,
+wandering, disabled, are healed and comforted by the warmth of a true
+home! When a mother has sent her son to the temptations of a distant
+city, what news is so glad to her heart as that he has found some quiet
+family where he visits often and is made to feel <span class="smcap">at home</span>? How
+many young men have good women saved from temptation and shipwreck by
+drawing them often to the sheltered corner by the fireside! The poor
+artist,&mdash;the wandering genius who has lost his way in this world, and
+stumbles like a child among hard realities,&mdash;the many men and women who,
+while they have houses, have no homes,&mdash;see from afar, in their distant,
+bleak life-journey, the light of a true home-fire, and, if made welcome
+there, warm their stiffened limbs, and go forth stronger to their
+pilgrimage. Let those who have accomplished this beautiful and perfect
+work of divine art be liberal of its influence. Let them not seek to
+bolt the doors and draw the curtains; for they know not, and will never
+know till the future life, of the good they may do by the ministration
+of this great charity of home.</p>
+
+<p>We have heard much lately of the restricted sphere of woman. We have
+been told how many spirits among women are of a wider, stronger, more
+heroic mould than befits the mere routine of housekeeping. It may be
+true that there are many women far too great, too wise, too high, for
+mere housekeeping. But where is the woman in any way too great, or too
+high, or too wise, to spend herself in creating a home? What can any
+woman make diviner, higher, better? From such homes go forth all
+heroisms, all inspirations, all great deeds. Such mothers and such homes
+have made the heroes and martyrs, faithful unto death, who have given
+their precious lives to us during these three years of our agony!</p>
+
+<p>Homes are the work of art peculiar to the genius of woman. Man <i>helps</i>
+in this work, but woman leads; the hive is always in confusion without
+the <i>queen</i>-bee. But what a woman must she be who does this work
+perfectly! She comprehends all, she balances and arranges all; all
+different tastes and temperaments find in her their rest, and she can
+unite at one hearthstone the most discordant elements. In her is order,
+yet an order ever veiled and concealed by indulgence. None are checked,
+reproved, abridged of privileges by her love of system; for she knows
+that order was made for the family, and not the family for order.
+Quietly she takes on herself what all others refuse or overlook. What
+the unwary disarrange she silently rectifies. Everybody in her sphere
+breathes easy, feels free; and the driest twig begins in her sunshine to
+put out buds and blossoms. So quiet are her operations and movements,
+that none sees that it is she who holds all things in harmony; only,
+alas, when she is gone, how many things suddenly appear disordered,
+inharmonious, neglected! All these threads have been smilingly held in
+her weak hand. Alas, if that is no longer there!</p>
+
+<p>Can any woman be such a housekeeper without inspiration? No. In the
+words of the old church-service, "Her soul must ever have affiance in
+God." The New Jerusalem of a perfect home cometh down from God out of
+heaven. But to make such a home is ambition high and worthy enough for
+<i>any</i> woman, be she what she may.</p>
+
+<p>One thing more. Right on the threshold of all perfection lies <i>the
+cross</i> to be taken up. No one can go over or around that cross in
+science or in art. Without labor and self-denial neither Raphael nor
+Michel Angelo nor Newton was made perfect. Nor can man or woman create a
+true home who is not willing in the outset to embrace life heroically,
+to encounter labor and sacrifice. Only to such shall this divinest power
+be given to create on earth that which is the nearest image of heaven.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SONG" id="SONG"></a>SONG.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We have been lovers now, my dear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It matters nothing to say how long,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But still at the coming round o' th' year<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I make for my pleasure a little song;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus of my love I sing, my dear,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much the more by a year, by a year.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And still as I see the day depart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And hear the bat at my window flit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sing the little song to my heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With just a change at the close of it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thus of my love I sing alway,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much the more by a day, by a day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When in the morning I see the skies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Breaking into a gracious glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I say you are not my sweetheart's eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your brightness cannot mislead me so;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I sing of my love in the rising light,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much the more by a night, by a night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Both at the year's sweet dawn and close,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the moon is filling, or fading away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every day, as it comes and goes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And every hour of every day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My little song I repeat and repeat,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So much the more by an hour, my sweet!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="OUR_SOLDIERS" id="OUR_SOLDIERS"></a>OUR SOLDIERS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>We entered gayly on our great contest. At the first sound from Sumter,
+enthusiasm blazed high and bright. Bells rang out, flags waved, the
+people rose as one man to cheer on our troops, and the practical
+American nation, surveying itself with astonishment, pronounced
+itself&mdash;finger on pulse&mdash;enthusiastic; and though, in the light of the
+present steadily burning determination, it has been the fashion gently
+to smile at that quick upspringing blaze, and at the times when it was
+gravely noted how the privates of our army took daily baths and wore
+Colt's revolvers, and pet regiments succumbed under showers of
+Havelocks, in contrast with the grim official reports of to-day, I
+cannot but think that enthusiasm healthful, and in itself a lesson, if
+only that it proves beyond question that our patriotism was not simply a
+dweller on the American tongue, but a thing of the American heart, so
+vitalizing us, so woven every day into the most minute ramifications of
+our living, so inner and recognized a part of our thinking, that there
+have been found some to doubt its existence, just as we half forget the
+gracious air, because no labored gasps, in place of our sure and even
+breathing, ever by any chance announce to us that somewhere there have
+been error and confusion in its vast workings.</p>
+
+<p>Bitterer texts were ready all too soon. When we heard how one had
+fallen, bayoneted at the guns, and another was struck, charging on the
+foe, and a third had died after long lingering in hospital,&mdash;when we saw
+our brave boys, whom we had sent out with huzzas, coming back to us with
+the blood and grime of battle upon them, maimed, ghastly, dying,
+dead,&mdash;we knew that we, whom God had hitherto so blessed that we were
+compelled to look into the annals of other nations for misery and
+strife, had now commenced a record of our own. Henceforth there was for
+us a new literature, new grooves of thought, new interests. By all the
+love of father, brother, husband, and children, we must learn more of
+this tragic and tender lore; and our soldiers have been a thought not
+far from the heart and lips of any one of us, and what is done, or
+doing, or possible for them, held worthiest of our thought and time.</p>
+
+<p>Respecting these, we have had all to learn. True, with us, satisfaction
+has at all times followed close upon the announcement of a need; but
+wisdom in planning and administering is not a marketable commodity, and
+so we are educating ourselves up to the emergency,&mdash;the whole mighty
+nation at school, and learning, we are bound to say, with Yankee
+quickness. Love has been for us, also, a marvellous brain-prompter. Some
+of our grandest charities&mdash;I mean charities in the broadest and sweetest
+sense, for it is we who owe, not our soldiers&mdash;have been the inspiration
+of a moment's need,&mdash;thoughts of the people, who, in crises and at
+instance of the heart, think well and swiftly. Take this one example.</p>
+
+<p>When New England's sons seized their arms, the first to answer the
+trumpet-call that rang out over the land, and went in the spirit of
+their fathers to the battle,&mdash;when these men passed through
+Philadelphia, hungry and weary, the great heart of the city went out to
+meet them. Citizens brought them into their houses, the neighboring
+shops gave gladly what they could, women came running with food snatched
+from their own tables, and even little squalid children toddled out of
+by-lanes and alleys with loaves and half-loaves, all that they had to
+give, so did the whole people yearn over their defenders; and then it
+was seen how other regiments would come to them, ready for the fray, but
+dusty and way-worn, and how the ambulances would bring them back parched
+and fainting, and&mdash;it was hardly known how, only that, as in the old
+times, "the people were of one mind and one accord," and brought of such
+things as they had; but on that sad, yet proud day, that brought back to
+them those who fell in Baltimore on the memorable nineteenth of
+April,&mdash;the heroes in whom all claim a share, and the right to say, not
+only Massachusetts's dead and wounded, but ours&mdash;there was ready for
+them a shelter in the unpretending building famous since as the Cooper
+Shop. There the people crowded about them, weeping, blessing, consoling;
+and from that day there has no regiment from New England, New York, or
+any other State, been suffered to pass through Philadelphia unrefreshed.
+Water was supplied them, and tables ready spread, by the Volunteer Corps
+always in attendance, within five minutes after the firing of the gun
+that announced their arrival. There was shortly added, also, a volunteer
+hospital for the more dangerously wounded when first brought from the
+battle-field, and of it is told a story that Americans will like to
+hear.</p>
+
+<p>It is of a Wisconsin soldier, who, taken prisoner, effected his escape
+from Richmond. Hiding by day, he forced his way at night through morass
+and forest, snatched such sleep as he dared on the damp and sodden
+earth, went without food whole days, reached our lines bruised, torn,
+shivering, starving, and his wounds, which had never been properly cared
+for, opened afresh. Let him tell the rest, straight from his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"When I had my rubber blanket to wrap about me, I was comfortable, and,
+snug and warm in the cars, I thought myself happy; and when I heard them
+talk of the 'Cooper Shop,' I said to myself, 'A cooper's shop! that will
+be the very place of all the earth, for there I shall have a roof over
+me, and the shavings will be so warm and dry to lie upon!' but when they
+carried me in, and I opened my eyes and saw what was the Cooper Shop,
+and the long tables all loaded for the poor soldiers, and when they took
+me to the hospital up-stairs, and placed me in a bed, and real ladies
+and gentlemen, with tears in their eyes, came and waited on me, my
+manliness left me."</p>
+
+<p>A want of manliness, O honest heart, for which there need be no shame!
+Precious tribute to our country's great love for her sons! For this is
+no sectional charity, only one example culled from thousands; for the
+land must, of a necessity, be overshadowed by the tree that has a root
+under almost every Northern hearth-stone; and then see how we are all
+bound together by the heart-strings!</p>
+
+<p>Forty thousand men-at-arms are looking gravely at the height towering
+above the valley in which they stand. "Impregnable" military science
+pronounced it; but the men scaling it know nothing of this word
+"impregnable." They have heard nothing of an order for retreat,&mdash;they
+are filled with a divine wrath of battle, and each man is as mad as his
+neighbor, and the officers are powerless to hold them back, and catch
+the infection and are swept on with them, and climbing, jumping,
+slipping, toiling on hands and knees, swinging from tree and bush, any
+way, any how, but always onward, never backward, they surge up over the
+mountain-top, deadly volleys crashing right in among them, and set on
+the Rebels with a wild hurrah! and the hearts below beat faster, and
+rough lips curse the blinding smoke and fog that veil all the crest, and
+on a sudden a shout,&mdash;such a one as the children of Israel gave, when
+the high-piled walls of water bent and swayed and came waving and
+thundering down on Pharaoh's hopeless hosts,&mdash;for there, high up in
+heaven, streaming out through parting smoke, is the flag, torn,
+blood-stained, ball-riddled, but the dear old red, white, and blue,
+waving over the enemy's works; and then the telegraph flashed out the
+brave news over the exulting country, and the press took up the story,
+and women said, with kindling faces, "My son, or my brother, or my
+husband may be dead, but, oh, our boys have done glorious things at
+Lookout Mountain!"&mdash;and History will tell how a grander charge was never
+made, and calmly note the loss in dead and wounded,&mdash;so many
+thousands,&mdash;and pass on.</p>
+
+<p>But we are not History, and our dead,&mdash;well, we will give them graves
+that shall be ever green with laurels, and their swords shall be our
+most precious legacy to our children, and their memories shall be a part
+of our household; but our wounded, for whom there is yet hope, who may
+yet live,&mdash;the cry goes up from Wisconsin, and Maine, and Iowa, and New
+York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Where are they, and how cared
+for? We are all, as I said, bound by the heartstrings in a common
+interest. The Boston woman with her boy in the Army of the Cumberland,
+and the Maine mother with one in New Orleans or Texas, and the Kansas
+father with a son in the Army of the Potomac, all clamor, "Is mine among
+the wounded, and do care and science for him all that care and science
+should?"</p>
+
+<p>The Field Relief Corps of the Sanitary Commission are prompt on the
+battle-field, reaching the groaning sufferers even before their own
+surgeons. Said one man, lying there badly wounded,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And what do they pay yez for this? What do you get?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pay! We ask nothing, only the soldier's 'God bless you.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And is that all? Then sure here's plenty of the coin, fresh minted! God
+bless you! God bless you! and the good Lord be good to you, and remember
+yez as you have remembered us, and love yez and your children after you;
+and sure, if that is all, it's plenty of that sort of pay the poor
+soldier has for you!"</p>
+
+<p>God bless such men! we echo; but after that, what then? Our beloved are
+taken to the hospitals, and we know, in a general way, that hospitals
+are buildings containing long rows of beds, and that science is doing
+its utmost in their behalf; but when our friends write us from across
+seas, they tell us, not only how they are, but where,&mdash;jotting down
+little pen-and-ink pictures to show us how stands the writing-table, and
+how hangs the picture, and where is the <i>fauteuil</i>, that we may see them
+as they are daily; so we crave something more, we feel shut out, we want
+to get at their daily living, to know something of hospital-life.</p>
+
+<p>Hospitals have sprung up as if sown broadcast, and these, too, of no
+mean order. True, in our first haste and inexperience, viciously planned
+hospitals were erected; but these and the Crimean blunders have served
+us as beacons, and the anxious care of the Government has been untiring,
+the outlay of money and things more precious unbounded; and those who
+have had this weighty matter in charge have no reason to fear an account
+of their stewardship. The Boston Free Hospital in excellence of plan and
+beauty of design can be excelled by none. Philadelphia boasts the two
+largest military hospitals in the world. Of the twenty-three in and
+about Washington many are worthy of all praise. The general hospital at
+Fort Schuyler is admirable in plan and <i>locale</i>, and this latter
+condition is found to be of vast importance. A Rebel battery, with an
+incurable habit of using the hospital as a target, would scarcely be so
+dangerous as a low, water-sogged, clayey soil, with its inevitable
+results of fever, rheumatism, and bowel-complaints.</p>
+
+<p>Spotless cleanliness is another indispensable characteristic,&mdash;not only
+urged, but enforced; for there is no such notable housewife as the
+Government. The vast "Mower" Hospital at Chestnut Hill, the largest in
+the world, is as well kept as a lady's boudoir should be. It is built
+around a square of seven acres, in which stand the surgeon's
+lecture-room, the chapel, the platform for the band, etc. A long
+corridor goes about this square, rounded at the corners, and lighted on
+one side by numerous large windows, which, if removed in summer, must
+leave it almost wholly open. From the opposite side radiate the
+sick-wards, fifty in number, one story in height, one hundred and
+seventy-five feet in length, and twenty feet farther apart at the
+extremity than at the corridor, thus completely isolating them from each
+other. A railway runs the length of the corridor, on which small cars
+convey meals to the mess-rooms attached to each of the wards for those
+who are unable to leave them, stores, and even the sick themselves; and
+the corridor, closed in winter and warmed by stoves, forms a huge and
+airy exercise-hall for the convalescent patients. As for the
+cooking-facilities, they are something prodigious, at least in the sight
+of ordinary kitchens, leaving nothing to be desired, unless it were that
+discriminating kettle of the Erse king, that could cook for any given
+number of men and apportion the share of each to his rank and needs.
+Such a kettle might make the "extra-diet" kitchen unnecessary;
+otherwise, I can hardly tell where improvement would be possible.</p>
+
+<p>But though, with the exception of the West Philadelphia, none can
+compare in hugeness with this Skrymir of hospitals, the
+hospital-buildings, as a rule, have everywhere a strong family-likeness.
+The pavilion-system, which isolates each of the sick-wards, allowing it
+free circulation of air about three of its sides, is conceded to be the
+only one worthy of attention, and is introduced in all such buildings of
+modern date. Ridge-ventilation, obtained by means of openings on either
+side of the ridge, is also very generally used, and advocated even in
+permanent hospitals of stone and brick. Science and Common Sense at last
+have fraternized, and work together hand in hand. The good old-fashioned
+plan of slowly stewing the patient to death, or at least to a fever, in
+confined air and stale odors, equal parts, is almost abandoned; and to
+speak after the manner of Charles Reade, "Nature gets now a pat on the
+back, instead of a kick under the bed." Proper ventilation begins, ends,
+and forms the gist of almost every chapter in our hospital-manuals; and
+I think they should be excellent summer-reading, for a pleasant breeze
+seems to rustle every page, so earnestly is, first, pure air, second,
+pure air, and third, pure air, impressed upon the student, "line upon
+line and precept upon precept."</p>
+
+<p>The Mower Hospital, which employs ten hundred and fifty gas-burners,
+uses daily one hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water, and can
+receive between five and six thousand patients, is free even from a
+suspicion of the "hospital-smell." The Campbell and Harewood, at
+Washington, are models in this respect, and can rank with many a
+handsome drawing-room. The last-named institution is also delightfully
+situated on grounds once belonging to the Rebel Corcoran, comprising
+some two hundred acres, laid out with shaded walks, and adorned with
+rustic bridges and summer-houses,&mdash;a fashion of deriving aid and comfort
+from the enemy which doesn't come under the head of treason.</p>
+
+<p>On hygienic grounds, all possible traps are set to catch sunbeams. One
+hospital has a theatre in the mess-room, of which the scenery is painted
+by a convalescent, and the stage, foot-lights, etc., are the work of the
+soldiers. The performers are amateurs, taken from among the patients;
+and the poor fellows who can be moved, but are unable to walk, are
+carried down in the dumb-waiter to share in the entertainment. Another
+has a library, reading-room, and a printing-press, which strikes off a
+weekly newspaper, in which are a serial story, poetry, and many profound
+and moral reflections. The men play cards and backgammon, read, write,
+smoke, and tell marvellous stories, commencing, "It wasn't fairly day,
+and we were hardly wide enough awake to tell a tree-stump from a gray
+coat,"&mdash;or, "When we saw them coming, we first formed in square, corner
+towards them you know, and waited till they were close on us, and then,
+Sir, we opened and gave them our cannon, grape-shot, right slap into
+them,"&mdash;or good-humoredly rally each other, as in the case of that
+unlucky regiment perfectly cut up in its first battle, and known as
+"six-weeks' soldiers and six-months' hospital-men."</p>
+
+<p>But these are mere surface-facts. Hospital-life is woven in a different
+pattern from our own, the shades deeper, the gold brighter, and we find
+in it very much of heroism in plain colors, and self-sacrifice of rough
+texture.</p>
+
+<p>One poor fellow, yet dim-eyed and faint from long battling for his
+ebbing life, will motion away the offered delicacy, pointing to some
+other bed:&mdash;"Give it to him; he needs it more than I"; or sometimes, if
+money is offered, "I have just been paid off; let that man have it; he
+has nothing." Then some of the convalescents furnish our best and
+tenderest nurses. A soldier was brought from Richmond badly wounded in
+the leg. While in the prison his wounds had received no attention, and
+he was in such enfeebled condition, that, when amputation became
+inevitable, it was feared he would die of the operation. Hardly
+breathing, made over apparently unto death, one of these soldier-nurses
+took him in charge, for five days and nights kept close by his bed,
+scarcely leaving him an instant, watching his faltering, flickering
+breath, as his mother might have done, wresting him by force of
+vigilance and tenderest care from the very clutch of the Destroyer,
+rejoicing over his recovery as for that of a dear and only brother.
+Another, likewise brought from Richmond, won the pity of a lady, a
+chance visitor. She came to him every day, a distance of five miles,
+washed his wounds, dressed them, nursed him back into the confines of
+life, obtained for him a furlough, took him to her own house to complete
+the cure, and sent him back to his regiment&mdash;well.</p>
+
+<p>Over a third, a ruddy-faced New-England boy hardly yet into manhood,
+hung the shadow of death, and quivering lips and swimming eyes&mdash;for they
+come, there, to love our poor boys most tenderly&mdash;had spoken his
+death-warrant. He was silent a moment. Even a brave soul stops and
+catches breath, at the unexpected nearness of the Great Revelation; then
+he asked to be baptized,&mdash;"because his mother was a Christian, and he
+had promised her, if he died, and not on battle-field, to have this rite
+performed, that she might know that he shared this Holy Faith with her,
+and was not forgetful of her wishes"; and so he was baptized, and died.</p>
+
+<p>There are cheerier phases. Side by side lay a New-Yorker, a
+Pennsylvanian, and a Scotch boy, all terribly wounded. By the by, it is
+a curious fact that there are few sabre-wounds, and almost literally
+none from the bayonet; the work of destruction being, in almost all
+cases, that of the rending Mini&eacute; ball. The fathers of the New-Yorker and
+Pennsylvanian had just visited them, and they were chatting cheerily of
+their homes. The Scotch boy, who had lost a leg, looked up, brightly
+smiling also.</p>
+
+<p>"My mother will be here on Wednesday, from Scotland. When she knew that
+I had enlisted, she sent me word that I had done well to take up arms
+for a country that had been so good to me; and when she heard that I was
+wounded, she wrote that she should take the next steamer for the United
+States."</p>
+
+<p>And, as might have been expected from such a woman, on Wednesday she
+<i>was</i> by his bedside, redeeming her word to the very day.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the men grumble a little. One poor fellow, with a bullet
+through his lungs, took high and strong ground against the meat:&mdash;"Oh!
+God love ye! how could a body eat it, swimming in fat? but the eggs,
+they was beautiful; and the toast is good; ye'll send me some of that
+for me supper?" But as a rule they are cheery and contented, grow
+strongly attached to their nurses and the visitors, and, when back in
+camp, write letters of fond remembrance to their hospital-homes.</p>
+
+<p>No one has ever suspected ledgers of a latent angelic principle,&mdash;and
+yet, if unpaid benevolence, consolation poured on wounded hearts, hope
+given to despair, and help to poverty and misery, have in them anything
+heavenly, then have our soldiers a guardian angel in the Hospital
+Directory. There has been a battle, and three or four days of maddening
+suspense, and then the cold, hopeless newspaper-list; and your son,
+mother, who played about your knee only a little time ago, and went out
+in his youthful pride to battle, is there, wounded,&mdash;or your lover,
+girl, who has taught you the deeper meaning of a woman's life,&mdash;or your
+husband, sad woman, whose children stand at your knee scared by your
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"The regiment stood like a rock against the enemy's furious onset, and
+its blood-stained colors are forever glorious"; but it went out nine
+hundred strong, and it comes back with two hundred, and what do you care
+now for laurel-wreaths? He is not with them. There are railroads,&mdash;you
+can near the battle-field, but you cannot reach it; you can inquire, but
+the officers must care for the living,&mdash;"let the dead bury their dead";
+and while you are frantically asking and searching, he is dying,
+suffering, calling for you; and then you find that the Hospital
+Directory has trace of him, and the kindly, patient members of the
+Sanitary Commission are ready with time, and money, if needed, to put
+you on it; and if ever you have had that horror of uncertainty strong
+upon you, you will not think that I have strained the language, when I
+call this most pitiful and Christian charity a guardian angel. Hear the
+inquiries:&mdash;"By the love you bear your own mother, tell me where my boy
+is! only give me some tidings!" "I pray you, tell me of these two
+nephews for whom I am seeking: I have had fourteen nephews in the
+service, and these two are the only ones left." Words like these put
+soul and meaning into the following statistics, given by Mr. Brown,
+Superintendent of the Hospital Directory at Washington.</p>
+
+<p>"The Washington Bureau of the Hospital Directory of the United States
+Sanitary Commission was opened to the public on the twenty-seventh of
+November, 1862. In the month of December following I was ordered to
+Louisville, Ky., to organize a Directory Bureau for the Western
+Department of the Sanitary Commission, and in January ended my labor in
+that department. Returning to Washington, and thence proceeding to
+Philadelphia and New York upon the same duty performed at the West, I
+completed the entire organization of the four bureaus by the fifth of
+March, 1863. Since the first of June, at these several bureaus, the
+returns from every United States General Hospital of the army, 233 in
+number, have been regularly received.</p>
+
+<p>"The total number of names on record is 513,437. The total number of
+inquiries for information has been 12,884, and the number of successful
+answers rendered 9,203, being seventy-two per cent. on the number
+received. The remaining twenty-eight per cent., of whom no information
+could be obtained, are of those who perished in the Peninsula campaign,
+before Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, etc."</p>
+
+<p>In the Sanitary Commission, mentioned here, our soldiers have yet
+another friend, for whom even our copious Anglo-Saxon can find no word
+of description at once strong, wise, tender, and far-reaching; but
+perhaps a simple story, taken from the Sanitary Commission Bulletin,
+will speak more clearly, and better to the heart, than pages of dry
+records.</p>
+
+<p>"Away up in the fourth story of Hospital No. 3, and in a far corner of
+the ward, was seen, one day, an old lady sitting by the side of a mere
+lad, who was reduced to the verge of death by chronic diarrh&#339;a. She
+was a plain, honest-hearted farmer's wife, her face all aglow with
+motherly love, and who, to judge from appearances, had likely never
+before travelled beyond the limits of her neighborhood, but now had come
+many a long mile to do what might be done for her boy. In the course of
+a conversation she informed her questioner, that, 'if she could only get
+something that tasted like home,&mdash;some good tea, for instance, which she
+could make herself, and which would be better than that of the
+hospital,&mdash;she thought it might save her son's life.' Of course it was
+sent to her, and on a subsequent visit she expressed her thanks in a
+simple, hearty way, quite in keeping with her appearance. Still she
+seemed sad; something was on her mind that evidently troubled her, and,
+like Banquo's ghost, 'would not down.' At length it came out in a
+confiding, innocent way,&mdash;more, evidently, because it was uppermost in
+her thoughts than for the purpose of receiving sympathy,&mdash;that her
+means were about exhausted. 'I didn't think that it would take so much
+money; it is so much farther away from home than I had thought, and
+board here is so very high, that I have hardly enough left to take me
+back; and by another week I will have to leave him. I have been around
+to the stores to buy some little things that he would eat,&mdash;for he can't
+eat this strong food,&mdash;but the prices are so high that I can't buy them,
+and I am afraid, that, if I go away, and if he doesn't get something
+different to eat, that maybe,' and the tears trickled down her cheeks,
+'he won't&mdash;be so well.'</p>
+
+<p>"Her listener thought that difficulty might be overcome, and, if she
+would put on her bonnet, they would go to a store where articles were
+cheap. Accordingly they arrived in front of the large three-story
+building which Government has assigned to the Commission, and the old
+lady was soon running her eyes over the long rows of boxes, bales, and
+barrels that stretched for a hundred feet down the room, but was most
+fascinated by the bottles and cans on the shelves. He ordered a supply
+of sugar, tea, soft crackers, and canned fruit, then chicken and
+oysters, then jelly and wine, brandy, milk, and under-clothing, till the
+basket was full. As the earlier articles nestled under its lids, her
+face was glowing with satisfaction; but as the later lots arrived, she
+would draw him aside to whisper that 'it was too much,'&mdash;'really she
+hadn't enough money'; and when the more expensive items came from the
+shelves, the shadow of earnestness which gloomed her countenance grew
+into one of perplexity, her soul vibrating between motherly yearning for
+the lad on his bed and the scant purse in her pocket, till, slowly, and
+with great reluctance, she began to return the costliest.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hadn't you better ask the price?' said her guide.</p>
+
+<p>"'How much is it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Nothing,' replied the store-keeper.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sir!' queried she, in the utmost amazement, '<i>nothing</i> for all this?'</p>
+
+<p>"'My good woman,' asked the guide, 'have you a Soldiers' Aid Society in
+your neighborhood?'</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they had; she belonged to it herself.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, what do you suppose becomes of the garments you make, and the
+fruit have you put up?'</p>
+
+<p>"She hadn't thought,&mdash;she supposed they went to the army,&mdash;but was
+evidently bothered to know what connection there could be between their
+Aid Society and that basket.</p>
+
+<p>"'These garments that you see came from your society, or other societies
+just like yours; so did these boxes and barrels; that milk came from New
+York; those fruits from Boston; that wine was likely purchased with gold
+from California; and it is all for sick soldiers, your son as much as
+for any one else. This is the United States Sanitary Commission
+storehouse; you must come here whenever you wish, and call for
+everything you want; and you must stay with your son until he is able to
+go home: never mind the money's giving out; you shall have more, which,
+when you get back, you can refund for the use of other mothers and sons;
+when you are ready to go, I will put him in a berth where he can lie
+down, and you shall save his life yet.'</p>
+
+<p>"She did,&mdash;God bless her innocent, motherly heart!&mdash;when nothing but
+motherly care could have achieved it; and when last seen, on a dismal,
+drizzly morning, was, with her face beaming out the radiance of hope,
+making a cup of tea on the stove of a caboose-car for the convalescent,
+who was snugly tucked away in the caboose-berth, waiting the final
+whistle of the locomotive that would speed them both homeward."</p>
+
+<p>But for many of our soldiers there is yet another phase in store,&mdash;that
+sad time when the clangor and fierce joy and wild, exulting hurrah of
+the battle are over forever; and so, too, is over tender
+hospital-nursing, and they are sent out by hundreds, cured of their
+wounds, but maimed, the sources of life half drained, vigor gone, hope
+all spent, to limp through the blind alleys and by-ways of life,
+dropped out of the remembrance of a country that has used and forgotten
+them. They have given for her, not life, but all that makes life
+pleasant, hopeful, or even possible. It seems to me, that, in common
+decency, if she has no laurels to spare, she should at least give them
+in return&mdash;a daily dinner. Already, however, has the idea been set
+forth, after a better fashion than I can hope to do,&mdash;in wood and stone,
+and by the aid of a charter.</p>
+
+<p>In Philadelphia stands the first chartered "Home" for disabled soldiers,
+a cheery old house, dating back to the occupation of the city by the
+British army in 1777-8, founded and supported by private citizens, open
+to all, of whatever State, and fully looking its title, a "Home"; and as
+the want is more widely felt, and presses closer upon us, I cannot but
+think that everywhere we shall find such "Homes," and as we grow graver,
+sadder, and wiser, under the hard teaching of our war, and more awake to
+the thought that we have done with our splendid unclouded youth, and
+must now take upon us the sterner responsibilities of our manhood, that
+a new spirit will spring up among us,&mdash;the spirit of that woman who,
+with a bedridden mother, an ailing sister, and a shop to tend, as their
+only means of support, yet finds time to visit our sick soldiers, and
+carry to them the little that she can spare, and that which she has
+begged of her wealthier neighbors,&mdash;the spirit of that poor seamstress
+who snatches an hour daily from her exhausting toil to sew for the
+soldiers,&mdash;the spirit of that mechanic, who, having nothing to give,
+makes boxes in his evening leisure, and sells them for the
+soldiers,&mdash;the spirit of the brooks, that never hesitate between up-hill
+and down, because "all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is never
+full,"&mdash;the spirit of all who do with love and zeal whatever their hands
+find to do, and sigh, not because it is so little, but because it is not
+better.</p>
+
+<p>God grant that this spirit may obtain among us,&mdash;that our soldiers, and
+their helpless families, may be to us a national trust, for which we are
+bound individually, even the very humblest and meanest of us, to care.
+The field is vast, and white for the harvest. Now, for the love of
+Christ, in the name of honor, for very shame's sake, where we counted
+our laborers by tens, let us number them by fifties,&mdash;where there were
+hundreds, let there be thousands.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="WILLIAM_MAKEPEACE_THACKERAY" id="WILLIAM_MAKEPEACE_THACKERAY"></a>WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY ONE WHO KNEW HIM.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The great master of English prose has left us suddenly, but to himself
+not unexpectedly. In the maturity of his powers, with his enduring
+position in literature fairly won and recognized, with the provision
+which spurred him to constant work secured to those he loved, his death
+saddens us rather through the sense of our own loss than from the tragic
+regret which is associated with an unaccomplished destiny. More
+fortunate than Fielding, he was allowed to take the measure of his
+permanent fame. The niche wherein he shall henceforth stand was
+chiselled while he lived. One by one the doubters confessed their
+reluctant faith, unfriendly critics dropped their blunted steel, and no
+man dared to deny him the place which was his, and his only, by right of
+genius.</p>
+
+<p>In one sense, however, he was misunderstood by the world, and he has
+died before that profounder recognition which he craved had time to
+mature. All the breadth and certainty of his fame failed to compensate
+him for the lack of this: the man's heart coveted that justice which was
+accorded only to the author's brain. Other pens may sum up the literary
+record he has left behind: I claim the right of a friend who knew and
+loved him to speak of him as a man. The testimony, which, while living,
+he was too proud to have desired, may now be laid reverently upon his
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>There is a delicacy to be observed in describing one's intercourse with
+a departed great man, since death does not wholly remove that privacy
+which it is our duty to respect in life. Yet the veil which we
+charitably drop upon weakness or dishonor may surely be lifted to
+disclose the opposite qualities. I shall repeat no word of Thackeray's
+which he would have wished unsaid or suppressed: I shall say no more
+than he would himself have said of a contemporary to whom the world had
+not done full justice. During a friendship of nearly seven years, he
+permitted me to see that one true side of an author's nature which is
+never so far revealed to the public that the malignant may avail
+themselves of his candor to assail or the fools to annoy him. He is now
+beyond the reach of malice, obtrusive sentiment, or vain curiosity; and
+the "late remorse of love," which a better knowledge of the man may here
+and there provoke, can atone for past wrong only by that considerate,
+tender judgment of the living of which he was an example.</p>
+
+<p>I made Thackeray's acquaintance in New York towards the close of the
+year 1855. With the first grasp of his broad hand, and the first look of
+his large, serious gray eyes, I received an impression of the essential
+manliness of his nature,&mdash;of his honesty, his proud, almost defiant
+candor, his ever-present, yet shrinking tenderness, and that sadness of
+the moral sentiment which the world persisted in regarding as cynicism.
+This impression deepened with my further acquaintance, and was never
+modified. Although he belonged to the sensitive, irritable genus, his
+only manifestations of impatience which I remember were when that which
+he had written with a sigh was interpreted as a sneer. When so
+misunderstood, he scorned to set himself right. "I have no brain above
+the eyes," he was accustomed to say; "I describe what I see." He was
+quick and unerring in detecting the weaknesses of his friends, and spoke
+of them with a tone of disappointment sometimes bordering on
+exasperation; but he was equally severe upon his own shortcomings. He
+allowed no friend to think him better than his own deliberate estimate
+made him. I have never known a man whose nature was so immovably based
+on truth.</p>
+
+<p>In a conversation upon the United States, shortly after we first met, he
+said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There is one thing in this country which astonishes me. You have a
+capacity for culture which contradicts all my experience. There are
+----" (mentioning two or three names well known in New York) "who I know
+have arisen from nothing, yet they are fit for any society in the world.
+They would be just as self-possessed and entertaining in the presence of
+stars and garters as they are here to-night. Now, in England, a man who
+has made his way up, as they have, doesn't seem able to feel his social
+dignity. A little bit of the flunky sticks in him somewhere. I am,
+perhaps, as independent in this respect as any one I know, yet I'm not
+entirely sure of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember," I asked him, "what Goethe says of the boys in Venice?
+He explains their cleverness, grace, and self-possession as children by
+the possibility of any one of them becoming Doge."</p>
+
+<p>"That may be the secret, after all," said Thackeray. "There is no
+country like yours for a young man who is obliged to work for his own
+place and fortune. If I had sons, I should send them here."</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, in London, I visited with him the studio of Baron
+Marochetti, the sculptor, who was then his next-door neighbor in Onslow
+Square, Brompton. The Baron, it appeared, had promised him an original
+wood-cut of Albert D&uuml;rer's, for whom Thackeray had a special admiration.
+Soon after our entrance, the sculptor took down a small engraving from
+the wall, saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now you have it, at last."</p>
+
+<p>The subject was St. George and the Dragon.</p>
+
+<p>Thackeray inspected it with great delight for a few minutes: then,
+suddenly becoming grave, he turned to me and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I shall hang it near the head of my bed, where I can see it every
+morning. We all have our dragons to fight. Do you know yours? I know
+mine: I have not one, but two."</p>
+
+<p>"What are they?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Indolence and Luxury!"</p>
+
+<p>I could not help smiling, as I thought of the prodigious amount of
+literary labor he had performed, and at the same time remembered the
+simple comfort of his dwelling, next door.</p>
+
+<p>"I am serious," he continued; "I never take up the pen without an
+effort; I work only from necessity. I never walk out without seeing some
+pretty, useless thing which I want to buy. Sometimes I pass the same
+shop-window every day for months, and resist the temptation, and think
+I'm safe; then comes the day of weakness, and I yield. My physician
+tells me I must live very simply, and not dine out so much; but I cannot
+break off the agreeable habit. I shall look at this picture and think of
+my dragons, though I don't expect ever to overcome them."</p>
+
+<p>After his four lectures on the Georges had been delivered in New York, a
+storm of angry abuse was let loose upon him in Canada and the other
+British Provinces. The British-Americans, snubbed both by Government and
+society when they go to England, repay the slight, like true Christians,
+by a rampant loyalty unknown in the mother-country. Many of their
+newspapers accused Thackeray of pandering to the prejudices of the
+American public, affirming that he would not dare to repeat the same
+lectures in England, after his return. Of course, the papers containing
+the articles, duly marked to attract attention, were sent to him. He
+merely remarked, as he threw them contemptuously aside,&mdash;"These fellows
+will see that I shall not only repeat the lectures at home, but I shall
+make them more severe, just because the auditors will be Englishmen." He
+was true to his promise. The lecture on George IV. excited, not, indeed,
+the same amount of newspaper-abuse as he had received from Canada, but a
+very angry feeling in the English aristocracy, some members of which
+attempted to punish him by a social ostracism. When I visited him in
+London, in July, 1856, he related this to me, with great good-humor.
+"There, for instance," said he, "is Lord &mdash;&mdash;" (a prominent English
+statesman) "who has dropped me from his dinner-parties for three months
+past. Well, he will find that I can do without his society better than
+he can do without mine." A few days afterwards Lord &mdash;&mdash; resumed his
+invitations.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time I witnessed an amusing interview, which explained to
+me the great personal respect in which Thackeray was held by the
+aristocratic class. He never hesitated to mention and comment upon the
+censure aimed against him in the presence of him who had uttered it. His
+fearless frankness must have seemed phenomenal. In the present instance,
+Lord &mdash;&mdash;, who had dabbled in literature, and held a position at Court,
+had expressed himself (I forget whether orally or in print) very
+energetically against Thackeray's picture of George IV. We had occasion
+to enter the shop of a fashionable tailor, and there found Lord &mdash;&mdash;.
+Thackeray immediately stepped up to him, bent his strong frame over the
+disconcerted champion of the Royal George, and said, in his full, clear,
+mellow voice,&mdash;"I know what you have said. Of course, you are quite
+right, and I am wrong. I only regret that I did not think of consulting
+you before my lecture was written." The person addressed evidently did
+not know whether to take this for irony or truth: he stammered out an
+incoherent reply, and seemed greatly relieved when the giant turned to
+leave the shop.</p>
+
+<p>At other times, however, he was kind and considerate. Reaching London
+one day in June, 1857, I found him at home, grave and sad, having that
+moment returned from the funeral of Douglas Jerrold. He spoke of the
+periodical attacks by which his own life was threatened, and repeated
+what he had often said to me before,&mdash;"I shall go some day,&mdash;perhaps in
+a year or two. I am an old man already." He proposed visiting a lady
+whom we both knew, but whom he had not seen for some time. The lady
+reminded him of this fact, and expressed her dissatisfaction at some
+length. He heard her in silence, and then, taking hold of the crape on
+his left arm, said, in a grave, quiet voice,&mdash;"I must remove this,&mdash;I
+have just come from poor Jerrold's grave."</p>
+
+<p>Although, from his experience of life, he was completely
+<i>d&eacute;sillusionn&eacute;</i>, the well of natural tenderness was never dried in his
+heart. He rejoiced, with a fresh, boyish delight, in every evidence of
+an unspoiled nature in others,&mdash;in every utterance which denoted what
+may have seemed to him over-faith in the good. The more he was saddened
+by his knowledge of human weakness and folly, the more gratefully he
+welcomed strength, virtue, sincerity. His eyes never unlearned the habit
+of that quick moisture which honors the true word and the noble deed.</p>
+
+<p>His mind was always occupied with some scheme of quiet benevolence. Both
+in America and in England, I have known him to plan ways by which he
+could give pecuniary assistance to some needy acquaintance or countryman
+without wounding his sensitive pride. He made many attempts to procure a
+good situation in New York for a well-known English author, who was at
+that time in straitened circumstances. The latter, probably, never knew
+of this effort to help him. In November, 1857, when the financial crisis
+in America was at its height, I happened to say to him, playfully, that
+I hoped my remittances would not be stopped. He instantly picked up a
+note-book, ran over the leaves, and said to me, "I find I have three
+hundred pounds at my banker's. Take the money now, if you are in want of
+it; or shall I keep it for you, in case you may need it?" Fortunately, I
+had no occasion to avail myself of his generous offer; but I shall never
+forget the impulsive, open-hearted kindness with which it was made.</p>
+
+<p>I have had personal experience of Thackeray's sense of justice, as well
+as his generosity. And here let me say that he was that rarest of men, a
+cosmopolitan Englishman,&mdash;loving his own land with a sturdy, enduring
+love, yet blind neither to its faults nor to the virtues of other lands.
+In fact, for the very reason that he was unsparing in dealing with his
+countrymen, he considered himself justified in freely criticizing other
+nations. Yet he never joined in the popular depreciation of everything
+American: his principal reason for not writing a book, as every other
+English author does who visits us, was that it would be superficial, and
+might be unjust. I have seen him, in America, indignantly resent an
+ill-natured sneer at "John Bull,"&mdash;and, on the other hand, I have known
+him to take <i>our</i> part, at home. Shortly after Emerson's "English
+Traits" appeared, I was one of a dinner-party at his house, and the book
+was the principal topic of conversation. A member of Parliament took the
+opportunity of expressing his views to the only American present.</p>
+
+<p>"What does Emerson know of England?" he asked. "He spends a few weeks
+here, and thinks he understands us. His work is false and prejudiced and
+shallow."</p>
+
+<p>Thackeray happening to pass at the moment, the member arrested him
+with&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What do <i>you</i> think of the book, Mr. Thackeray?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't agree with Emerson."</p>
+
+<p>"I was sure you would not!" the member triumphantly exclaimed; "I was
+sure you would think as I do."</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Thackeray, quietly, "that he is altogether too
+laudatory. He admires our best qualities so greatly that he does not
+scourge us for our faults as we deserve."</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of May, 1861, I saw Thackeray again in London. During
+our first interview, we talked of little but the war, which had then but
+just begun. His chief feeling on the subject was a profound regret, not
+only for the nation itself, whose fate seemed thus to be placed in
+jeopardy, but also, he said, because he had many dear friends, both
+North and South, who must now fight as enemies. I soon found that his
+ideas concerning the cause of the war were as incorrect as were those of
+most Englishmen at that time. He understood neither the real nature nor
+the extent of the conspiracy, supposing that Free Trade was the chief
+object of the South, and that the right of Secession was tacitly
+admitted by the Constitution. I thereupon endeavored to place
+the facts of the case before him in their true light, saying, in
+conclusion,&mdash;"Even if you should not believe this statement, you must
+admit, that, if <i>we</i> believe it, we are justified in suppressing the
+Rebellion by force."</p>
+
+<p>He said,&mdash;"Come, all this is exceedingly interesting. It is quite new to
+me, and I am sure it will be new to most of us. Take your pen and make
+an article out of what you have told me, and I will put it into the next
+number of the 'Cornhill Magazine.' It is just what we want."</p>
+
+<p>I had made preparations to leave London for the Continent on the
+following day, but he was so urgent that I should stay two days longer
+and write the article that I finally consented to do so. I was the more
+desirous of complying, since Mr. Clay's ill-advised letter to the London
+"Times" had recently been published, and was accepted by Englishmen as
+the substance of all that could be said on the side of the Union.
+Thackeray appeared sincerely gratified by my compliance with his wishes,
+and immediately sent for a cab, saying,&mdash;"Now we will go down to the
+publishers, and have the matter settled at once. I am bound to consult
+them, but I am sure they will see the advantage of such an article."</p>
+
+<p>We found the managing publisher in his office. He looked upon the
+matter, however, in a very different light. He admitted the interest
+which a statement of the character, growth, and extent of the Southern
+Conspiracy would possess for the readers of the "Cornhill," but objected
+to its publication, on the ground that it would call forth a
+counter-statement, which he could not justly exclude, and thus introduce
+a political controversy into the magazine. I insisted that my object was
+not to take notice of any statements published in England up to that
+time, but to represent the crisis as it was understood in the Loyal
+States and by the National Government; that I should do this simply to
+explain and justify the action of the latter; and that, having once
+placed the loyal view of the subject fairly before the English people, I
+should decline any controversy. The events of the war, I added, would
+soon draw the public attention away from its origin, and the "Cornhill,"
+before the close of the struggle, would probably be obliged to admit
+articles of a more strongly partisan character than that which I
+proposed to write. The publisher, nevertheless, was firm in his refusal,
+not less to Thackeray's disappointment than my own. He decided upon what
+then seemed to him to be good business-reasons; and the same
+consideration, doubtless, has since led him to accept statements
+favorable to the side of the Rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>As we were walking away, Thackeray said to me,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am anxious that these things should be made public: suppose you write
+a brief article, and send it to the 'Times'?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would do so," I answered, "if there were any probability that it
+would be published."</p>
+
+<p>"I will try to arrange that," said he. "I know Mr. &mdash;&mdash;," (one of the
+editors,) "and will call upon him at once. I will ask for the
+publication of your letter as a personal favor to myself."</p>
+
+<p>We parted at the door of a club-house, to meet again the same afternoon,
+when Thackeray hoped to have the matter settled as he desired. He did
+not, however, succeed in finding Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, but sent him a letter. I
+thereupon went to work the next day, and prepared a careful, cold,
+dispassionate statement, so condensed that it would have made less than
+half a column of the "Times." I sent it to the editor, referring him to
+Mr. Thackeray's letter in my behalf, and that is the last I ever heard
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>All of Thackeray's American friends will remember the feelings of pain
+and regret with which they read his "Roundabout Paper" in the "Cornhill
+Magazine," in (February, I think) 1862,&mdash;wherein he reproaches our
+entire people as being willing to confiscate the stocks and other
+property owned in this country by Englishmen, out of spite for their
+disappointment in relation to the Trent affair, and directs his New-York
+bankers to sell out all his investments, and remit the proceeds to
+London, without delay. It was not his fierce denunciation of such
+national dishonesty that we deprecated, but his apparent belief in its
+possibility. We felt that he, of all Englishmen, should have understood
+us better. We regretted, for Thackeray's own sake, that he had permitted
+himself, in some spleenful moment, to commit an injustice, which would
+sooner or later be apparent to his own mind.</p>
+
+<p>Three months afterwards, (in May, 1862,) I was again in London. I had
+not heard from Thackeray since the publication of the "Roundabout"
+letter to his bankers, and was uncertain how far his evident ill-temper
+on that occasion had subsided; but I owed him too much kindness, I
+honored him too profoundly, not to pardon him, unasked, my share of the
+offence. I found him installed in the new house he had built in Palace
+Gardens, Kensington. He received me with the frank welcome of old, and
+when we were alone, in the privacy of his library, made an opportunity
+(intentionally, I am sure) of approaching the subject, which, he knew, I
+could not have forgotten. I asked him why he wrote the article.</p>
+
+<p>"I was unwell," he answered,&mdash;"you know what the moral effects of my
+attacks are,&mdash;and I was indignant that such a shameful proposition
+should be made in your American newspapers, and not a single voice be
+raised to rebuke it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you certainly knew," said I, "that the &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; does not represent
+American opinion. I assure you, that no honest, respectable man in the
+United States ever entertained the idea of cheating an English
+stockholder."</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope so, too," he answered; "but when I saw the same thing in
+the &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;, which, you will admit, is a paper of character and
+influence, I lost all confidence. I know how impulsive and excitable
+your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be
+madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a
+blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was getting eight per cent.
+from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is
+lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate
+than four per cent."</p>
+
+<p>I said to him, playfully, that he must not expect me, as an American, to
+feel much sympathy with this loss: I, in common with his other friends
+beyond the Atlantic, expected from him a juster recognition of the
+national character.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, "let us say no more about it. I admit that I have made
+a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>Those who knew the physical torments to which Thackeray was periodically
+subject&mdash;spasms which not only racked his strong frame, but temporarily
+darkened his views of men and things&mdash;must wonder, that, with the
+obligation to write permanently hanging over him, he was not more
+frequently betrayed into impatient or petulant expressions. In his clear
+brain, he judged himself no less severely, and watched his own nature no
+less warily, than he regarded other men. His strong sense of justice was
+always alert and active. He sometimes tore away the protecting drapery
+from the world's pet heroes and heroines, but, on the other hand, he
+desired no one to set him beside them. He never betrayed the least
+sensitiveness in regard to his place in literature. The comparisons
+which critics sometimes instituted between himself and other prominent
+authors simply amused him. In 1856, he told me that he had written a
+play which the managers had ignominiously rejected. "I thought I could
+write for the stage," said he; "but it seems I can't. I have a mind to
+have the piece privately performed, here at home. I'll take the big
+footman's part." This plan, however, was given up, and the material of
+the play was afterwards used, I believe, in "Lovel, the Widower."</p>
+
+<p>I have just read a notice of Thackeray, which asserts, as an evidence of
+his weakness in certain respects, that he imagined himself to be an
+artist, and persisted in supplying bad illustrations to his own works.
+This statement does injustice to his self-knowledge. He delighted in the
+use of the pencil, and often spoke to me of his illustrations being a
+pleasant relief to hand and brain, after the fatigue of writing. He had
+a very imperfect sense of color, and confessed that his forte lay in
+caricature. Some of his sketches were charmingly drawn upon the block,
+but he was often unfortunate in his engraver. The original MS. of "The
+Rose and the Ring," with the illustrations, is admirable. He was fond of
+making groups of costumes and figures of the last century, and I have
+heard English artists speak of his talent in this <i>genre</i>: but he never
+professed to be more than an amateur, or to exercise the art for any
+other reason than the pleasure it gave him.</p>
+
+<p>He enjoyed the popularity of his lectures, because they were out of his
+natural line of work. Although he made several very clever after-dinner
+speeches, he always assured me that it was accidental,&mdash;that he had no
+talent whatever for thinking on his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Even when I am reading my lectures," he said, "I often think to myself,
+'What a humbug you are, and I wonder the people don't find it out!'"</p>
+
+<p>When in New-York, he confessed to me that he should like immensely to
+find some town where the people imagined that all Englishmen transposed
+their <i>h</i>s, and give one of his lectures in that style. He was very fond
+of relating an incident which occurred during his visit to St. Louis. He
+was dining one day in the hotel, when he overheard one Irish waiter say
+to another,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know who that is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"That," said the first, "is the celebrated Thacker!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's <i>he</i> done?"</p>
+
+<p>"D&mdash;&mdash;d if I know!"</p>
+
+<p>Of Thackeray's private relations I would speak with a cautious
+reverence. An author's heart is a sanctuary into which, except so far as
+he voluntarily reveals it, the public has no right to enter. The shadow
+of a domestic affliction which darkened all his life seemed only to have
+increased his paternal care and tenderness. To his fond solicitude for
+his daughters we owe a part of the writings wherewith he has enriched
+our literature. While in America, he often said to me that his chief
+desire was to secure a certain sum for them, and I shall never forget
+the joyous satisfaction with which he afterwards informed me, in London,
+that the work was done. "Now," he said, "the dear girls are provided
+for. The great anxiety is taken from my life, and I can breathe freely
+for the little time that is left me to be with them." I knew that he had
+denied himself many "luxuries" (as he called them) to accomplish this
+object. For six years after he had redeemed the losses of a reckless
+youthful expenditure, he was allowed to live and to employ an income,
+princely for an author, in the gratification of tastes which had been so
+long repressed.</p>
+
+<p>He thereupon commenced building a new house, after his own designs. It
+was of red brick, in the style of Queen Anne's time, but the internal
+arrangement was rather American than English. It was so much admired,
+that, although the cost much exceeded his estimate, he could have sold
+it for an advance of a thousand pounds. To me the most interesting
+feature was the library, which occupied the northern end of the first
+floor, with a triple window opening toward the street, and another upon
+a warm little garden-plot shut in by high walls.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," he said to me, when I saw him for the last time, "here I am
+going to write my greatest work,&mdash;a History of the Reign of Queen Anne.
+There are my materials,"&mdash;pointing to a collection of volumes in various
+bindings which occupied a separate place on the shelves.</p>
+
+<p>"When shall you begin it?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably as soon as I am done with 'Philip,'" was his answer; "but I am
+not sure. I may have to write another novel first. But the History will
+mature all the better for the delay. I want to <i>absorb</i> the authorities
+gradually, so that, when I come to write, I shall be filled with the
+subject, and can sit down to a continuous narrative, without jumping up
+every moment to consult somebody. The History has been a pet idea of
+mine for years past. I am slowly working up to the level of it, and know
+that when I once begin I shall do it well."</p>
+
+<p>It is not likely that any part of this history was ever written. What it
+might have been we can only regretfully conjecture: it has perished with
+the uncompleted novel, and all the other dreams of that principle of the
+creative intellect which the world calls Ambition, but which the artist
+recognizes as Conscience.</p>
+
+<p>That hour of the sunny May-day returns to memory as I write. The quiet
+of the library, a little withdrawn from the ceaseless roar of London;
+the soft grass of the bit of garden, moist from a recent shower, seen
+through the open window; the smoke-strained sunshine, stealing gently
+along the wall; and before me the square, massive head, the prematurely
+gray hair, the large, clear, sad eyes, the frank, winning mouth, with
+its smile of boyish sweetness, of the man whom I honored as a master,
+while he gave me the right to love him as a friend. I was to leave the
+next day for a temporary home on the Continent, and he was planning how
+he could visit me, with his daughters. The proper season, the time, and
+the expense were carefully calculated: he described the visit in
+advance, with a gay, excursive fancy; and his last words, as he gave me
+the warm, strong hand I was never again to press, were, "<i>Auf
+wiedersehen</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>What little I have ventured to relate gives but a fragmentary image of
+the man whom I knew. I cannot describe him as the faithful son, the
+tender father, the true friend, the man of large humanity and lofty
+honesty he really was, without stepping too far within the sacred circle
+of his domestic life. To me, there was no inconsistency in his nature.
+Where the careless reader may see only the cynic and the relentless
+satirist, I recognize his unquenchable scorn of human meanness and
+duplicity,&mdash;the impatient wrath of a soul too frequently disappointed in
+its search for good. I have heard him lash the faults of others with an
+indignant sorrow which brought the tears to his eyes. For this reason he
+could not bear that ignorant homage should be given to men really
+unworthy of it. He said to me, once, speaking of a critic who blamed the
+scarcity of noble and lovable character in his novels,&mdash;"Other men can
+do that. I know what I can do best; and if I do good, it must be in my
+own way."</p>
+
+<p>The fate which took him from us was one which he had anticipated. He
+often said that his time was short, that he could not certainly reckon
+on many more years of life, and that his end would probably be sudden.
+He once spoke of Irving's death as fortunate in its character. The
+subject was evidently familiar to his thoughts, and his voice had
+always a tone of solemn resignation which told that he had conquered its
+bitterness. He was ready at any moment to answer the call; and when, at
+last, it was given and answered,&mdash;when the dawn of the first Christmas
+holiday lighted his pale, moveless features, and the large heart
+throbbed no more forever in its grand scorn and still grander
+tenderness,&mdash;his released spirit could have chosen no fitter words of
+farewell than the gentle benediction his own lips have breathed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"I lay the weary pen aside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wish you health and love and mirth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As fits the holy Christmas birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Be this, good friends, our carol still,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be peace on earth, be peace on earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To men of gentle will!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_PENINSULAR_CAMPAIGN" id="THE_PENINSULAR_CAMPAIGN"></a>THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It has been said that "the history of war is a magnificent lie," and
+from what we know in our times, particularly of the history of the
+Mexican War and of the present Rebellion, if the despatches from the
+battle-fields are to be received as history, we are inclined to believe
+the saying is true; and it is natural that it should be so. A general
+writes his despatches under the highest mental excitement. His troops
+have won a great victory, or sustained a crushing defeat; in either
+event, his mind is riveted to the transactions that have led to the
+result; in the one case, his ambition will prompt him to aspire to a
+name in history; in the other, he will try to save himself from
+disgrace. He describes his battles; he gives an account of his marches
+and counter-marches, of the hardships he has endured, the
+disappointments he has experienced, and the difficulties he has had to
+overcome. The principal events may be truthfully narrated; but his hopes
+of rising a hero from the field of victory, or of appearing a martyr
+from one of defeat, will mould his narrative to his wishes.</p>
+
+<p>If it be frequently the misfortune of our generals, in writing their
+reports, not to content themselves with the materials at hand, but to
+draw on their imaginations, not for gross falsehoods, but for that
+coloring which, diffused through their despatches, makes the narrative
+affecting, while it leaves us in doubt where to draw the line between
+fiction and fact, it is not always so, particularly when their
+despatches are not written amidst the excitement of the battle-field,
+but are deferred until the events which they describe have passed into
+history.</p>
+
+<p>Such, we may suppose, to be the case in respect to the Reports of
+Brigadier-Generals Barnard and Barry on the Engineer and Artillery
+Operations of the Army of the Potomac. Written, as these Reports were,
+after the organization of that army had been completed and the
+Peninsular campaign had terminated, by men who, though playing an
+important part in its organization and throughout this its first
+campaign, yet never aspired to be its heroes, we may reasonably hope,
+that, if they have not told the "whole truth," they have told us
+"nothing but the truth."</p>
+
+<p>The points of particular interest in these Reports, so far as relates to
+organization, are the inauguration of a great system of
+field-fortifications for the defence of the national capital, and the
+preparation of engineer-equipments, particularly bridge-equipage for
+crossing rivers. These are only sketched, but the outline is drawn by an
+artist who is master of the subject. The professional engineer, when he
+examines the immense fortifications of Washington and sees their
+skilful construction, can appreciate the labor and thought which must
+have been bestowed on them. He alone could complete the picture. To
+appreciate these works, they must be seen. No field-works on so
+extensive a scale have been undertaken in modern times. The nearest
+approach to them were the lines of Torres Vedras, in Portugal,
+constructed by the British army in 1809-10; but the works constructed by
+General Barnard for the defence of Washington are larger, more numerous,
+more carefully built, and much more heavily armed than were those justly
+celebrated lines of Wellington.</p>
+
+<p>And it should not be forgotten, that, after the Battle of Bull Run, we
+were thrown on the defensive, and the fortifications of our capital were
+called for in a hurry. There were no models, in this country, from which
+to copy,&mdash;and few, if any, in Europe. Luckily, however, the art of
+fortification is not imitative; it is based on scientific principles;
+and we found in General Barnard and his assistants the science to
+comprehend the problem before them, and the experience and skill to
+grasp its solution.</p>
+
+<p>Only the citizens of Washington and those who happened to be there after
+the two disastrous defeats at Bull Run can appreciate the value of these
+fortifications. They have twice saved the capital,&mdash;perhaps the nation;
+yet forts are passive,&mdash;they never speak, unless assailed. But let
+Washington be attacked by a powerful army and successfully defended, and
+they would proclaim General Barnard one of the heroes of the war.</p>
+
+<p>As has already been said, the engineer-equipage is only sketched; but
+enough is said to show its value. Speaking of the bridges, General
+Barnard says,&mdash;"They were used by the Quartermaster's department in
+discharging transports, were precisely what was needed for the
+disembarkation of General Franklin's division, constituted a portion of
+the numerous bridges that were built over Wormley Creek during the siege
+of Yorktown, and were of the highest use in the Chickahominy; while over
+the Lower Chickahominy, some seventy-five thousand men, some three
+hundred pieces of artillery, and the enormous baggage-trains of the
+army, passed over a bridge of the extraordinary length of nearly six
+hundred and fifty yards,&mdash;a feat scarcely surpassed in military
+history." Pontoons, like forts, cannot talk; but every soldier of the
+Army of the Potomac knows that these same bridges, which were prepared
+when that army was first organized, have since carried it in safety four
+times over the Rappahannock, twice at the Battle of Fredericksburg and
+twice again at the Battle of Chancellorsville, and three times over the
+Upper Potomac, once after the Battle of Antietam, and again both before
+and after the Battle of Gettysburg.</p>
+
+<p>Of the Peninsular campaign General Barnard does not profess to give a
+history. He mentions only the operations which came under his
+supervision as the Chief Engineer of the Army of the Potomac. The siege
+of Yorktown was a matter of engineering skill. General Barnard gives us
+his report to General Totten, the Chief Engineer of the Army, on the
+engineering operations of the siege,&mdash;also his journal, showing the
+progress of the siege from day to day. These, with the maps, convey a
+very clear idea of the place to be taken, and the way it was to have
+been reduced, had the enemy continued his defence until our batteries
+were opened; but they do not convey to the mind of any except the
+professional engineer the magnitude of the works which were constructed.
+General Barnard says that fifteen batteries and four redoubts were built
+during the siege, and he gives the armament of each battery. On
+comparing this armament with that used in other sieges, we find the
+amount of metal ready to be hurled on Yorktown when the enemy evacuated
+that place second only to that of the Allies at Sebastopol, the greatest
+siege of modern times.</p>
+
+<p>But these batteries, with a single exception, never spoke. Like their
+predecessors around Washington, they conquered by their mere presence.
+After all the skill and labor that had been bestowed on their
+construction, the enemy evacuated Yorktown just as our batteries were
+about to open. He was at our mercy. General Barnard says that "the
+enemy's position had become untenable,&mdash;that he could not have endured
+our fire for six hours." We can readily understand how mortifying it
+must have been to the Commanding General, and particularly to the
+officers of engineers and artillery who had planned, built, and armed
+these siege-works, to hear that the enemy had evacuated his
+fortifications just at the moment when we were prepared to drive him
+from them by force; and we can appreciate the regrets of General
+Barnard, when he says, in reviewing the campaign, and pointing out the
+mistakes that had been committed, that "we should have opened our
+batteries on the place as fast as they were completed. The effect on the
+troops would have been inspiring. It would have lightened the siege and
+shortened our labors; and, besides, we would have had the credit of
+driving the enemy from Yorktown by force of arms; whereas, as it was, we
+only induced him to evacuate for prudential considerations." And General
+Barry says, in his report of the artillery operations at the siege,&mdash;"It
+will always be a source of great professional disappointment to me, that
+the enemy, by his premature and hasty abandonment of his defensive line,
+deprived the artillery of the Army of the Potomac of the opportunity of
+exhibiting the superior power and efficiency of the unusually heavy
+metal used in this siege, and of reaping the honor and just reward of
+their unceasing labors, day and night, for nearly one month."</p>
+
+<p>The next serious obstacle to be overcome, after the siege of Yorktown,
+was the passage of the Chickahominy. Here, says General Barnard, "if
+possible, the responsibility and labor of the engineer officers were
+increased." The difficulties of that river, considered as a military
+obstacle, are given in a few touches; but in the sketch of the opposing
+heights, and of the intermediate valley, filled up with the stream, the
+heavily timbered swamp, and the overflowed bottom-lands, we have the
+Chickahominy brought before us so vividly that we can almost <i>feel</i> the
+difficulty of crossing it. Well may General Barnard say that "it was one
+of the most formidable obstacles that could be opposed to the advance of
+an army,&mdash;an obstacle to which an ordinary <i>river</i>, though it be of
+considerable magnitude, is comparatively slight."</p>
+
+<p>The labors of the engineers in bridging this formidable swamp are
+detailed with considerable minuteness. Ten bridges, of different
+characters, were constructed, though some of them were never used,
+because the enemy held the approaches on his side of the river.</p>
+
+<p>We are glad that General Barnard has elaborated this part of his Report.
+There is a melancholy interest attaching to the Chickahominy. To it, and
+to the events connected with it, history will refer the defeat of
+General McClellan's magnificent army, and the failure of the Peninsular
+campaign. And what a lesson is here to be learned! The fate of the
+contending armies was suspended in a balance. The hour when a particular
+bridge was to be completed, or rendered impassable by the rising floods,
+was to turn the scales!</p>
+
+<p>That mistakes were committed on the Chickahominy the country is prepared
+to believe. Our army was placed astride of that stream, and in this
+situation we fought two battles, each time with only a part of our
+force; thus violating, not only the maxims of war, but the plainest
+principles of common sense.</p>
+
+<p>The Battle of Fair Oaks began on the thirty-first of May. At that time
+our army was divided by the Chickahominy. Of the five corps constituting
+the Army of the Potomac, two were on its right bank, or on the side
+nearest to Richmond, while the other three were on the left bank. There
+had been heavy rains, the river was rising, and the swamps and
+bottom-lands were fast becoming impassable. None of the upper bridges
+had yet been built. We had then only Bottom's Bridge, the
+railroad-bridge, and the two bridges built by General Sumner some miles
+higher up the river. Bottom's Bridge and the railroad-bridge were too
+distant to be of any service in an emergency such as a battle demands.
+At the time of the enemy's attack, which was sudden and unexpected,
+completely overwhelming General Casey's division, our sole reliance to
+reinforce the left wing was by Sumner's corps, and over his two bridges.
+It happened to be the fortune of the writer to see "Sumner's upper
+bridge,"&mdash;the only one then passable,&mdash;at the moment the head of General
+Sumner's column reached it. The possibility of crossing was doubted by
+all present, including General Sumner himself.</p>
+
+<p>The bridge was of rough logs, and mostly afloat, held together and kept
+from drifting off by the stumps of trees to which it was fastened; the
+portion over the thread of the stream being suspended from the trunks of
+large trees, which had been felled across it, by ropes which a single
+blow with a hatchet would have severed. On this bridge and on these
+ropes hung the fate of the day at Fair Oaks, and, probably, the fate of
+the Army of the Potomac too; for, if Sumner had not crossed in time to
+check the movement of the enemy down the river, the corps of Heintzelman
+and Keyes would have been taken in flank, and it is fair to suppose that
+they must have been driven into an impassable river, or captured.</p>
+
+<p>But Sumner crossed, and saved the day. Forever honored be his name!</p>
+
+<p>As the solid column of infantry entered upon the bridge, it swayed to
+and fro to the angry flood below or the living freight above, settling
+down and grasping the solid stumps, by which it was made secure as the
+line advanced. Once filled with men, it was safe until the corps had
+crossed. It then soon became impassable, and the "railroad-bridge," says
+General Barnard, "for several days was the only communication between
+the two wings of the army." Never was an army in a more precarious
+situation. Fortunately, however, whatever mistakes we made in allowing
+ourselves to be attacked when the two wings of the army were almost
+separated, the enemy also committed serious blunders, both as to the
+point of his attack and the time when his blow was delivered. His true
+point of attack was on the right flank of our left wing. Had the attack
+which Sumner met and repulsed been made simultaneously with the assault
+in front, a single battalion, nay, even a single company, could have
+seized and destroyed "Sumner's upper bridge," the only one, as before
+remarked, then passable, Sumner would consequently have been unable to
+take part in the battle, and our left wing would have been taken in
+flank, and, in all probability, defeated; or, had the attack been
+deferred until the next day, or even for several days, as the bridges
+became impassable during the night of the thirty-first, it would
+probably have been successful.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to make such criticisms after the events have happened; their
+mere statement will carry conviction to the minds of all who were in a
+position, during these memorable days, to know the facts that decided
+the movements; and it is right that they should be made, for it is only
+by pointing out the causes of success or failure in military affairs,
+as, indeed, in every human undertaking, that we can hope to be
+successful. But, in doing so, we need not confine ourselves to one side
+of the question; we may look at our enemies as well as at ourselves. Nor
+need they be made in a spirit of censoriousness; for the importance of
+individuals, in speaking of such great events, may safely be overlooked
+without affecting the lesson we would learn. Neither should it be
+forgotten that the general who has always fought his battles at the
+right time, in the right place, with the proper arms, and pursued his
+victories to their utmost attainable results, has yet to appear. He
+would, indeed, be an intellectual prodigy.</p>
+
+<p>Such we may suppose to be the reflections of General Barnard, when he
+points out the mistakes which were made in the Army of the Potomac while
+on the Chickahominy. He does not, indeed, bring to our view the mistakes
+of the enemy. That would have been travelling outside of the record in
+the report of the operations falling under his supervision, and such
+criticism is wisely left for some of the enemy's engineers, or for a
+more general history. In speaking of the difficulties of crossing the
+Chickahominy immediately after the battle of the thirty-first of May,
+General Barnard says,&mdash;"There was one way, however, to unite the army on
+the other side; it was to take advantage of a victory at Fair Oaks, to
+sweep at once the enemy from his position opposite New Bridge, and,
+simultaneously, to bring over by the New Bridge our troops of the right
+wing, which would then have met with little or no resistance"; and
+again, in a more general criticism of the campaign, he says,&mdash;"The
+repulse of the Rebels at Fair Oaks should have been taken advantage of.
+It was one of those 'occasions' which, if not seized, do not repeat
+themselves. We now <i>know</i> the state of disorganization and dismay in
+which the Rebel army retreated. We now <i>know</i> that it could have been
+followed into Richmond. Had it been so, there would have been no
+resistance to overcome to bring over our right wing."</p>
+
+<p>But the "occasion" which the morning of the first of June presented of
+uniting the two wings of the army, and thus achieving a great victory,
+was not seized, because, as General Barnard says, "we did not then know
+all that we now do." At the moment when the New Bridge became passable,
+8.15, <span class="smcap">a. m.</span>, it is not probable the Commanding General knew it.
+Nor did he know, that, at this very moment, the enemy was retreating to
+Richmond in a "state of disorganization and dismay." Besides, the troops
+of the left wing had fought a hard battle the preceding afternoon, and
+they had been up all night, throwing up works of defence, and making
+dispositions to resist another assault by the enemy. They were not in a
+condition to assume the offensive against an enemy who was supposed to
+be in force and in position, himself preparing to resume the attack of
+the previous day, however competent they may have been to pursue a
+demoralized foe flying from the field. The propitious moment was lost,
+not to return,&mdash;for, during the day, the rising flood rendered all the
+bridges, except the railroad-bridge, impassable.</p>
+
+<p>The necessity for more substantial bridges to connect the two wings of
+the army had now been made manifest, and two fine structures, available
+for all arms, were completed by the nineteenth. At the same time two
+foot-bridges were made, the other bridges repaired, and their approaches
+made secure, though the enemy still held the approaches of the three
+upper bridges on the right bank.</p>
+
+<p>While these bridges were being made, mostly by the right wing of the
+army, the left wing was engaged in constructing a strong line of
+defence, stretching from the White-Oak Swamp to the Chickahominy,
+consisting of six redoubts connected by rifle-pits or barricades.
+General Barnard says,&mdash;"The object of these lines (over three miles
+long) was to hold our position of the left wing against the concentrated
+force of the enemy, until communications across the Chickahominy could
+be established; or, if necessary, to maintain our position on this side,
+while the bulk of the army was thrown upon the other, should occasion
+require it; or, finally, to hold one part of our line and communication
+by a small force, while our principal offensive effort was made upon
+another." At the same time, several batteries were constructed on the
+left bank of the river in the neighborhood of the upper bridges, either
+to operate on the enemy's positions in their front, or to defend these
+bridges.</p>
+
+<p>All these preparations were made with the understood purpose of driving
+the enemy from his positions in front of New Bridge; and they appear to
+have been about completed, for on the night of the twenty-sixth "an
+epaulement for putting our guns in position" to effect this object was
+thrown up. But it was too late. Lee's guns had been heard in the
+afternoon, in the neighborhood of Mechanicsville, attacking the advance
+of our right wing, and Jackson was within supporting distance. The
+battle of the twenty-seventh of June, on which "hinged the fate of the
+campaign," was to be fought to-morrow. This battle, or rather the policy
+of fighting it, or suffering it to be fought, has been more criticized
+than any other battle of the campaign. We fought a battle which was
+decisive against us with less than one-third of our force.</p>
+
+<p>General Barnard is severe in his criticisms. In his "retrospect,
+pointing out the mistakes that were made," he says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"At last a moment came when action was imperative. The enemy assumed the
+initiative, and we had warning of when and where he was to strike. Had
+Porter been withdrawn the night of the twenty-sixth, our army would have
+been <i>concentrated</i> on the right bank, while two corps at least of the
+enemy's force were on the <i>left</i> bank. Whatever course we then took,
+whether to strike at Richmond and the portion of the enemy on the right
+bank, or move at once for the James, we would have had a concentrated
+army, and a fair chance of a brilliant result, in the first place; and
+in the second, if we accomplished nothing, we would have been in the
+same case on the morning of the twenty-seventh as we were on that of the
+twenty-eighth,&mdash;<i>minus</i> a lost battle and a compulsory retreat; or, had
+the fortified lines (thrown up <i>expressly</i> for the object) been held by
+twenty thousand men, (as they could have been,) we could have fought on
+the other side with eighty thousand men instead of twenty-seven
+thousand; or, finally, had the lines been abandoned, with our hold on
+the right bank of the Chickahominy, we might have fought and crushed the
+enemy on the left bank, reopened our communications, and then returned
+and taken Richmond.</p>
+
+<p>"As it was, the enemy fought with his <i>whole force</i>, (except enough left
+before our lines to keep up an appearance,) and we fought with
+twenty-seven thousand men, losing the battle and nine thousand men.</p>
+
+<p>"By this defeat we were driven from our position, our advance of
+conquest turned into a retreat for safety, by a force probably not
+greatly superior to our own."</p>
+
+<p>It is to be hoped that the forthcoming report of General McClellan will
+give us the reasons which induced him to risk such a battle with such a
+force, and modify, to some extent at least, the justice of such
+outspoken censure.</p>
+
+<p>The services of the engineers in passing the army over White-Oak Swamp,
+in reconnoitring the line of retreat to James River, in posting troops,
+and in defending the final position of the army at Harrison's Landing,
+are detailed with great clearness. Of his officers the General speaks in
+the highest terms. It appears, that, with a single exception, they were
+all <i>lieutenants</i>, whereas "in a European service the chief engineer
+serving with an army-corps would be a field-officer, generally a
+colonel." In this want of rank in the corps of engineers the General
+says there is a twofold evil.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>First</i>, the great hardships and injustice to the officers themselves:
+for they have, almost without exception, refused or <i>been</i> refused high
+positions in the volunteer service, (to which they have seen their
+contemporaries of the other branches elevated,) on the ground that their
+services as <i>engineers</i> were absolutely necessary. <i>Second</i>, it is an
+evil to the service: since an adequate rank is almost as necessary to an
+officer for the efficient discharge of his duties as professional
+knowledge. The engineer's duty is a responsible one. He is called upon
+to decide important questions,&mdash;to fix the position of defensive works,
+(and thereby of the <i>troops</i> who occupy them,)&mdash;to indicate the manner
+and points of attack of fortified positions. To give him the proper
+weight with those with whom he is associated, he should have, as <i>they</i>
+have, adequate rank.</p>
+
+<p>"The campaign on the Peninsula called for great labor on the part of the
+engineers. The country, notwithstanding its early settlement, was a
+<i>terra incognita</i>. We knew the York River and the James River, and we
+had heard of the Chickahominy; and this was about the extent of our
+knowledge. Our maps were so incorrect that they were found to be
+worthless before we reached Yorktown. New ones had to be prepared, based
+on reconnoissances made by officers of engineers.</p>
+
+<p>"The siege of Yorktown involved great responsibility, besides exposure
+and toil. The movements of the whole army were determined by the
+engineers. The Chickahominy again arrested us, where, if possible, the
+responsibility and labor of the engineer officers were increased. In
+fact, everywhere, and on every occasion, even to our last position at
+Harrison's Landing, this responsibility and labor on the part of the
+engineers was incessant.</p>
+
+<p>"I have stated above in what manner the officers of engineers performed
+their duties. Yet thus far their services are ignored and unrecognized,
+while distinctions have been bestowed upon those who have had the good
+fortune to command troops. Under such circumstances it can hardly be
+expected that the few engineer officers yet remaining will willingly
+continue their services in this unrequited branch of the military
+profession. We have no sufficient officers of engineers at this time
+with any of our armies to commence another siege, nor can they be
+obtained. In another war, if their services are thus neglected in this,
+we shall have none."</p>
+
+<p>It is to be hoped that the General's appeal for additional rank to the
+officers of engineers will not be overlooked. The officers of this corps
+have demonstrated not only their skill as engineers, but also their
+ability to command troops and even armies. On the side of our country's
+cause we have McClellan, Halleck, Rosecrans, Meade, Gillmore, and
+Barnard, besides a score of others, all generals; and in the ranks of
+the Rebels we find Lee, Joe Johnston, Beauregard, Gilmer, and Smith, all
+generals, too, and all formerly officers of engineers. Nobly have they
+all vindicated the scale of proficiency which placed them among the
+distinguished of their respective classes at their common Alma Mater.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may have been the services of other men during our present
+struggle for nationality, and whatever may be their services in the
+future, to General Barry, the Chief of Artillery of the Army of the
+Potomac, from the organization of that army to the close of the
+Peninsular campaign, more than to any other person, belongs the credit
+of organizing our admirable system of field-artillery.</p>
+
+<p>We have two reports from General Barry: one, on "The Organization of the
+Artillery of the Army of the Potomac"; the other, a "Report of the
+Operations of the Artillery at the Siege of Yorktown." Of the services
+of the artillery during the remainder of the campaign we have no record
+from its chief; but they were conspicuous on every battle-field, and
+will not be forgotten until Malvern Hill shall have passed into
+oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>After the first Battle of Bull Run, the efforts of the nation were
+directed to organizing an army for the defence of the national capital.
+Of men and money we had plenty; but men and money, however necessary
+they may be, do not make an army. Cannon, muskets, rifles, pistols,
+sabres, horses, mules, wagons, harness, bridges, tools, food, clothing,
+and numberless other things, are required; but men and money, with all
+this added <i>mat&eacute;riel</i> of war, still will not make an <i>efficient</i> army.
+Organization, discipline, and instruction are necessary to accomplish
+this. At the time of which we speak the people of this country did not
+comprehend what an army consisted of, or, if they did, they comprehended
+it as children,&mdash;by its trappings, its men and horses, its drums and
+fifes, its "pomp and circumstance."</p>
+
+<p>Few even of our best officers who had honestly studied their profession
+had ever seen an army, or fully realized the amount of labor that was
+necessary, even with our unbounded resources, to organize an efficient
+army ready for the field. Happily for our country, there were some who
+in garrison had learned the science and theory of war, and in Mexico, or
+in expeditions against our Western Indians, had acquired some knowledge
+of its practice. Of these General McClellan was selected to be the
+chief. He had seen armies in Europe, and it was believed that he could
+bring to his aid more of the right kind of experience for organization
+than any other man. If there is any one thing more than another for
+which General McClellan is distinguished, it is his ability to <i>make an
+army</i>. Men may have their opinions as to his genius or his courage, his
+politics or his generalship; they may think he is too slow or too
+cautious, or they may say he is not equal to great emergencies; but of
+his ability to organize an army there is a concurrent opinion in his
+favor.</p>
+
+<p>By himself, however, he would have been helpless. He required
+assistance. He was obliged to have chiefs of the several arms about
+him,&mdash;a chief of engineers, of artillery, of cavalry, and chiefs of the
+several divisions of infantry.</p>
+
+<p>General Barry was his chief of artillery. To him was assigned the duty
+of organizing this arm of the service. We learn from his Report, that,
+"when Major-General McClellan was appointed to the command of the
+'Division of the Potomac,' July 25th, 1861, a few days after the first
+Battle of Bull Run, the whole field-artillery of his command consisted
+of no more than parts of nine batteries, or thirty pieces of various,
+and, in some instances, unusual and unserviceable calibres. Most of
+these batteries were also of mixed calibres. My calculations were based
+upon the expected immediate expansion of the 'Division of the Potomac'
+into the 'Army of the Potomac,' to consist of at least one hundred
+thousand infantry. Considerations involving the peculiar character and
+extent of the force to be employed, the probable field and character of
+operations, the utmost efficiency of the arm, and the limits imposed by
+the as yet undeveloped resources of the nation, led to the following
+general propositions, offered by me to Major-General McClellan, and
+which received his full approval."</p>
+
+<p>These propositions in brief were,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1st. "That the proportion of artillery should be in the ratio of at
+least two and a half pieces to one thousand men."</p>
+
+<p>2d. "That the proportion of rifled guns should be one-third, and of
+smooth bores two-thirds."</p>
+
+<p>3d. "That each field-battery should, if practicable, be composed of six
+guns."</p>
+
+<p>4th. "That the field-batteries were to be assigned to 'divisions,' and
+not to brigades."</p>
+
+<p>5th. "That the artillery reserve of the whole army should consist of one
+hundred guns."</p>
+
+<p>6th. "That the amount of ammunition to accompany the field-batteries was
+not to be less than four hundred rounds per gun."</p>
+
+<p>7th. That there should be "a siege-train of fifty pieces."</p>
+
+<p>8th. "That instruction in the theory and practice of gunnery, as well as
+in the tactics of the arm, was to be given to the officers and
+non-commissioned officers of the volunteer batteries, by the study of
+suitable text-books, and by actual recitations in each division, under
+the direction of the regular officer commanding the divisional
+artillery."</p>
+
+<p>9th. That inspections should be made.</p>
+
+<p>Such, with trifling modifications, were the propositions upon which the
+artillery of the Army of the Potomac was organized; and this
+organization finds its highest recommendation in the fact that it
+remains unchanged, (except very immaterially,) and has been adopted by
+all other armies in the field. The sudden and extensive expansion of the
+artillery of the Army of the Potomac, that occurred from July 25, 1861,
+to March, 1862, is unparalleled in the history of war. Tabulated, it
+stands thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>Batteries, parts of</td><td align='left'>Guns</td><td align='left'>Men</td><td align='left'>Horses</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>July 25, 1861</td><td align='left'>9</td><td align='left'>30</td><td align='left'>650</td><td align='left'>400</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>imperfectly equipped.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>March, 1862</td><td align='left'>92</td><td align='left'>520</td><td align='left'>12,500</td><td align='left'>11,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>fully equipped and in readiness for actual field-service.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>Well may General Barry and the officers of the Ordnance Department, who
+had, as it were, to create the means of meeting the heavy requisitions
+upon them, be proud of such a record. It is one of the most striking
+exponents of the resources of the nation which the war has produced.</p>
+
+<p>Of this force thirty batteries were <i>regulars</i> and sixty-two
+<i>volunteers</i>. The latter had to be instructed not only in the duties of
+a soldier, but in the theory and practice of their special arm.
+Defective guns and <i>mat&eacute;riel</i> furnished by the States had to be
+withdrawn, and replaced by the more serviceable ordnance with which the
+regular batteries were being armed. Boards of examination were
+organized, and the officers thoroughly examined. Incompetency was set
+aside, zeal and efficiency rewarded by promotion.</p>
+
+<p>"Although," says General Barry, "there was much to be improved," yet
+"many of the volunteer batteries evinced such zeal and intelligence, and
+availed themselves so industriously of the instructions of the regular
+officers, their commanders, and of the example of the regular battery,
+their associate, that they made rapid progress, and finally attained a
+degree of proficiency highly creditable."</p>
+
+<p>At the siege of Yorktown, as has already been stated, only one of the
+fifteen batteries was permitted to open fire on the enemy's works. This
+was armed with one hundred- and two hundred-pounder rifled guns, and it
+is remarkable that this is the first time the practicability of placing,
+handling, and serving these guns in siege-operations, and their value at
+the long range of two and a half to three miles, were fully
+demonstrated. These guns, as also the thirteen-inch sea-coast mortars,
+which were placed in position ready for use, were giants when compared
+with the French and English pigmies which were used at Sebastopol.</p>
+
+<p>General Barry, as well as General Barnard, complains of the want of rank
+of his officers. With the immense artillery force that accompanied the
+Army of the Potomac to the Peninsula, consisting of sixty batteries of
+three hundred and forty-three guns, he had only ten field-officers, "a
+number obviously insufficient, and which impaired to a great degree the
+efficiency of the arm, in consequence of the want of rank and official
+influence of the commanders of corps and divisional artillery. As this
+faulty organization can only be suitably corrected by legislative
+action, it is earnestly hoped that the attention of the proper
+authorities may be at an early day invited to it."</p>
+
+<p>When the report of General McClellan is published, the services of the
+artillery of the Army of the Potomac will doubtless fill a conspicuous
+place. These services were rendered to the commanders of divisions and
+corps, giving them an historic name, and in their reports we may expect
+the artillery to be honorably mentioned. General Barry says, in
+conclusion,&mdash;"Special detailed reports have been made and transmitted by
+me of the general artillery operations at the siege of Yorktown,&mdash;and by
+their immediate commanders, of the services of the field-batteries at
+the Battles of Williamsburg, Hanover Court-House, and those severely
+contested ones comprised in the operations before Richmond. To those
+several reports I respectfully refer the Commanding General for details
+of services as creditable to the artillery of the United States as they
+are honorable to the gallant officers and brave and patient enlisted
+men, who, (with but few exceptions,) struggling through difficulties,
+overcoming obstacles, and bearing themselves nobly on the field of
+battle, stood faithfully to their guns, performing their various duties
+with a steadiness, a devotion, and a gallantry worthy the highest
+commendation."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES" id="REVIEWS_AND_LITERARY_NOTICES"></a>REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.</h2>
+
+
+<p><i>Mental Hygiene</i>. By <span class="smcap">I. Ray</span>, M. D. Boston: Ticknor &amp; Fields.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Ray, as many of our readers may know, is a physician eminent in the
+speciality of mental disorders. He is at present the head of the Butler
+Hospital for the Insane in Providence, Rhode Island. The four first
+chapters of his book, chiefly relating to matters which may be observed
+outside of a hospital, come under our notice. The fifth and last
+division, addressed to the limited number of persons who are conscious
+of tendencies to insanity, has no place in an unprofessional review.</p>
+
+<p>This little treatise upon "Mental Hygiene" carries its own evidence as
+the work of a disciplined mind, content to labor patiently among the
+materials of exact knowledge, and gradually to approximate laws in the
+spirit of scientific investigation. Mental phenomena are analyzed by Dr.
+Ray as material substances are analyzed by the chemist,&mdash;though, from
+the nature of the case, with far less certainty in results. Yet there is
+scarcely anything of practical moment in the book which may not be found
+in the popular writings of other prominent men,&mdash;such, for example, as
+Brodie, Holland, Moore, Marcel, and Herbert Spencer. We say this in no
+disparagement; there is no second-hand flavor about these cautious
+sentences. Dr. Ray has investigated for himself, and his conclusions are
+all the more valuable from coinciding with those of other accurate
+observers. It is agreeable to chronicle a contrast to that flux of
+quasi-medical literature put forth by men who have no title (save,
+perhaps, a legal one) to affix the M. D. so pertinaciously displayed.
+For there has lately been no lack of books of quotations, clumsily put
+together and without inverted commas, designed to puff some patent
+panacea, the exclusive property of the compiler, or of volumes whose
+claim to originality lay in the bold attempt to work off a life-stock of
+irrelevant anecdotes, the miscellaneous accumulations of a
+country-practitioner. Such authors&mdash;by courtesy so called&mdash;are possibly
+well-meaning amateurs, but can never be mistaken for scientists. We
+thank Dr. Ray for a book which, as a popular medical treatise, is really
+creditable to our literature.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, mixed with much admirable counsel hereafter to be noticed, there
+are impressions given in this volume to which we cannot assent. And our
+chief objection might be translated into vulgar, but expressive
+parlance, by saying, that, in generalizing about society, the writer
+does not always seem able to sink the influences of the shop. We have
+been faintly reminded of the professional bias of Mr. Bob Sawyer, when
+he persuaded himself that the company in general would be better for a
+blood-letting. We respectfully submit that we are not quite so mad
+as&mdash;for the interests of science, no doubt&mdash;Dr. Ray would have us. The
+doctrine, that, do what he will, the spiritual welfare of man is in
+fearful jeopardy, is held by many religionists: we are loath to believe
+that his mental soundness is in no less peril. Yet a susceptible person
+will find it hard to put aside this book without an uncomfortable
+consciousness, that, if not already beside himself, the chances of his
+becoming so are desperately against him. For what practicable escape is
+offered from this impending doom? Shall we leave off work and devote
+ourselves to health? Idleness is a potent cause of derangement. Shall we
+engage in the hard and monotonous duties of an active calling? Paralysis
+and other organic lesions use up professional brains with a frequency
+which is positively startling. Shall we cultivate our imagination and
+make statues or verses? The frenzy of artists and poets is proverbial.
+At least, then, we may give our life-effort to some grand principle
+which shall redeem society from its misery and sin? Quite impossible!
+The contemplation of one idea, however noble, is sure to produce a
+morbid condition of the mind and distort its healthy proportions. Still
+there is a last refuge. By fresh air and vigorous exercise a man may
+surely keep his wits. We will labor steadily upon the soil, and never
+raise our thoughts from the clod we are turning! Even here the Doctor is
+too quick for us, and cries, "Checkmate!" with the fact that the Hodges
+of England and the agriculturists of Berkshire have a great and special
+gift at lunacy.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, the preceding paragraph is very loosely written. We
+cheerfully admit that it might be impossible to quote from the book any
+single proposition to which, taken in a certain sense, a reasonable man
+would object. Nevertheless, there is a total impression derived from it
+which we cannot feel to be true. There is no sufficient allowance for
+the fact that what is most spirited and beautiful and worthy in modern
+society comes from that diversity of human pursuits which necessitates
+the concentration of individual energy into narrow channels. Neither to
+balance his mind in perfect equilibrium, nor to keep his body in highest
+condition, is the first duty of man upon earth. The Christian
+requirement of self-sacrifice often commands him to risk both in service
+to his neighbor. Besides, as we shall presently show, men of equal
+capacity in other branches of human inquiry do not agree with what seems
+to be Dr. Ray's estimate of the highest sanity. When we are warned to
+avoid "men of striking mental peculiarities," (our author advancing the
+proposition that such association is not entirely harmless to the most
+hardy intellect,)&mdash;when we are called upon to ostracize those who think
+that their short lives on earth can be most useful to others by
+exclusive devotion to some great principle or regenerating idea,&mdash;the
+thoughtful reader will question the instruction. The adjectives
+"extreme" and "fanatical" have, during the last twenty years, been
+applied to most valuable men of various parties and beliefs; they have
+been so applied by masses of conventionally respectable and not
+insincere citizens. But that the persons thus stigmatized have, on the
+whole, advanced the interests of civilization, freedom, and morality, we
+fervently believe.</p>
+
+<p>It is in a very different direction that keenest observers have seen the
+real peril of modern society. De Tocqueville has solemnly warned our
+Democracy of that over-faith in public opinion which tends to become a
+species of religion of which the Majority is the prophet. John Stuart
+Mill has emphasized his conviction that the boldest individuality is of
+the utmost importance to social well-being, and has urged its direct
+encouragement as peculiarly the duty of the present time. Herbert
+Spencer has written most eloquent warnings on the danger of perverting
+certain generalizations upon society into a law for the private citizen.
+He has declared that the wise man will regard the truth that is in him
+not as adventitious, not as something that may be made subordinate to
+the calculations of policy, but as the supreme authority to which all
+his actions should bend. He has shown us that the most useful citizens
+play their appointed part in the world by endeavoring to get embodied in
+fact their present idealisms: knowing that if they can get done the
+things aimed at, well; if not, well also, though not so well. Now our
+complaint is, that Dr. Ray generalizes upon the limited class of facts
+which has come under his professional observation. There may be a feeble
+folk who have gone mad over Mr. Phillips's speeches or Mrs. Dall's
+lectures. This is not the place to discuss the methods or ends of either
+of these conspicuous persons. But shall we make nothing of the possible
+numbers of young men, plunging headlong at the prizes of society after
+the manner which Dr. Ray so intelligently deprecates, who have waked to
+a new standard of success by seeing one with talents which could gain
+their coveted distinctions passing them by to pursue, in uncompromising
+honesty of conviction, his solitary way? Shall we not consider the
+city-bred girls, confined in circles where the vulgar glitter of wealth
+was mitigated only by the feeblest dilettanteism,&mdash;spirited young women,
+falling into a morbid condition, whose pitiableness Dr. Ray has well
+illustrated,&mdash;who have yet been strengthened to possess their souls in
+health and steadiness by a voice without pleading in their behalf the
+right to choose their own work and command their own lives? When we are
+warned against those who come to regard it "as a sacred duty to
+vindicate the claims of abstract benevolence at all hazards, even though
+it lead through seas of blood and fire," our adviser is either basing
+his counsel upon the very flattest truism, or else intends to indorse a
+popular cry against men who claim to have founded their convictions on
+investigation the most thorough and conscientious. Take the vote of the
+wealth and education of Europe to-day, and Abraham Lincoln will be
+pronounced a fanatic vindicating the claims of abstract benevolence
+"through seas of blood and fire." Go back into the past, and consult one
+Festus, a highly respectable Roman governor, and we shall learn that
+Paul was beside himself, nay, positively mad, with his much learning. We
+repeat that it is for the infinite advantage of society that exceptional
+men are impelled to precipitate their power into very narrow channels.
+The most eminent helpers of civilization have been penetrated by their
+single mission,&mdash;they have known that in concentration and courage lay
+their highest usefulness. Let us not judge men who are other than these.
+We will not question the importance of a Goethe, with his scientific
+amusements, stage-plays, ducal companionships, and art of taking good
+care of himself; but we cannot deny at least an equal sanity to the
+"fanatic" Milton, who deemed it disgraceful to pursue his own
+gratification while his countrymen were contending against oppression,
+who was content to sacrifice sight in Liberty's defence, and to live an
+"extreme" protester against the profligacies of power and place.</p>
+
+<p>But we linger too long from the solid instruction of this book. Dr. Ray
+considers the existence of insanity or remarkable eccentricity in a
+previous generation a prolific source of mental unsoundness. He
+addresses words of most solemn warning to those who have not yet formed
+the most important connection in life. A brain free from all congenital
+tendencies to disease results from a rigid compliance with the laws of
+parentage. The intermarriage of those related by blood is no uncommon
+cause of mental deterioration. Dr. Ray thinks that the facts collected
+in France and America upon this point are much more conclusive than a
+recent Westminster reviewer will allow. We are told that in this country
+the mingling of common blood in marriage is more frequent than is
+generally supposed, and that, of all agencies which have to do with the
+prevalence of insanity and idiocy, this is probably the most potent. A
+vigorous body is of course an important condition to high mental health,
+and what is said upon this head is tersely written and very sensible. We
+are told that "those much-enduring men and women who encountered the
+privations of the colonial times have been succeeded by a race incapable
+of toil and exposure, whom the winds of heaven cannot visit too roughly
+without leaving behind the seeds of dissolution." Here and elsewhere Dr.
+Ray cites the passion for light and emotional literature as a proof of
+our degeneracy. We have certainly nothing to say in behalf of that
+quality of modern character produced by the indolent reading of
+sensational writing. Still it may be questioned whether the enormous
+supply of bad books has not increased the demand for good ones,&mdash;just as
+quacks make practice for physicians. The readers of the Ledger stories
+have learned to demand a weekly instalment of the good sense and
+sobriety of Mr. Everett. And we are disposed to accept the view of a
+late American publisher, who declared that as a business-transaction he
+could not do better than subscribe to the diffusion of spasmodic
+literature, since it directly promoted the sale of the best authors in
+whose works he dealt. The craving for an intense and exciting literature
+Dr. Ray attributes to "feverish pulse, disturbed digestion, and
+irritable nerves." No doubt he is right,&mdash;within limits. But may not a
+<i>healthy</i> laborer find in the startling effects of the younger Cobb
+refreshment as precisely adapted to idealize his life, and divert his
+thoughts from a hard day's work, as that for which the college-professor
+seeks a tragedy of Sophocles or a romance of Hawthorne?</p>
+
+<p>The chapter treating of "Mental Hygiene as affected by Physical
+Influences" begins with such warnings against vitiated air as all
+intelligent people read and believe,&mdash;yet not so vitally as to compel
+corporations to reform their halls and conveyances. The remarks upon
+diet have a very practical tendency. Dr. Ray, while declining to commit
+himself to any theory, is very emphatic in his leanings towards what is
+called vegetarianism. He questions the popular impression that
+hard-working men require much larger quantities of animal food than
+those whose employments are of a sedentary character. Although
+confessing that we lack statistics from which to establish the relative
+working-powers of animal and vegetable substances, Dr. Ray declares that
+the few observations which have met his notice are in favor of a diet
+chiefly vegetable. The late Henry Colman was satisfied that no men did
+more work or showed better health than the Scotch farm-laborers, whose
+diet was almost entirely oatmeal. In the California mines no class of
+persons better endure hardships or accomplish greater results than the
+Chinese, who live principally on vegetable food. It is also noticed, as
+pertinent to the point, that the standard of health is probably much
+higher among the people just named than among our New-England laborers.
+Dr. Ray sums up by saying that "there is no necessity for believing that
+the supply required by the waste of material which physical exercise
+produces cannot be as effectually furnished by vegetable as by animal
+substances." This is strong testimony from a physician of standing and
+authority. Not otherwise have asserted various reform-doctors who are
+not supposed to move in the first medical circles. The value of any
+approximate decision of the vegetarian question can hardly be
+overestimated. There are thousands of families of very moderate means
+who strain every nerve to feed their children upon beef and mutton,&mdash;and
+this with the tacit approval, or by the positive advice, of physicians
+in good repute. Can our children be brought up equally well upon
+potatoes and hasty-pudding? May the two or three hundred dollars thus
+annually saved be better spent in a trip to the country or a visit to
+the sea-side? He would be a benefactor to his countrymen who could
+affirmatively answer these questions from observations, statistics, and
+arguments which commanded the assent of all intelligent men.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Ray forcibly exhibits the radical faults of our common systems of
+education. He exposes the vulgar fallacy, that the growth and discipline
+of the mind are tested by the amount of task-work it can be made to
+accomplish. The efficiency of a given course of training is indicated by
+the power and endurance which it imparts,&mdash;not by such pyrotechny as may
+be let off before an examining committee. The amount of labor in the
+shape of school-exercises habitually imposed on the young strains the
+mind far beyond the highest degree of healthy endurance. This is shown
+by illustrations which our limits compel us to omit: they are worthy to
+be pondered by every conscientious parent and teacher in the land. Our
+national neglect of a right home-education brings Dr. Ray to a train of
+remarks which sustains what we were led to say in noticing Jean Paul's
+"Levana" a few months ago. "How many of this generation," writes our
+author, "complete their childhood, scarcely feeling the dominion of any
+will but their own, and obeying no higher law than the caprice of the
+moment! Instead of the firm, but gentle sway that quietly represses or
+moderates every outbreak of temper, that checks the impatience of
+desire, that requires and encourages self-denial, and turns the
+performance of duty into pleasure,&mdash;they experience only the feeble and
+fitful rule that yields to the slightest opposition, and rather
+stimulates than represses the selfish manifestations of our nature." The
+criticism is just. It is to parents, rather than to children, that our
+educational energies should now address themselves. For what
+school-polish can imitate the lustre of a youth home-reared under the
+authority of a wise and commanding love? But our adult-instruction must
+go deeper than a recommendation of the best scheme of household
+discipline the wit of man can devise. Be the government as rigid as it
+may, the children will imitate the worst portions of the characters
+disclosed in the family. The selfish and worldly at heart will find it
+wellnigh impossible to endow their children with high motives of action.</p>
+
+<p>We cordially indorse what is said of those harpy-defilers of knowledge
+known as juvenile books. A limited use of the works of Abbott,
+Edgeworth, Sedgwick, and a very few others may certainly be permitted.
+But the common practice of removing every occasion for effort from the
+path of the young&mdash;of boning and spicing the mental aliment of our
+fathers for the palates of our sons&mdash;would be a ridiculous folly, if it
+were not a grievous one. Suitable reading for an average boy of ten
+years may be found in the best authors. For it is well observed by Dr.
+Ray, that, if the lad does not perceive the full significance of
+Shakspeare's thoughts or the deepest harmony of Spenser's verse, if he
+does not wholly appreciate the keen sagacity of Gibbon or the quiet
+charm of Prescott, he will, nevertheless, catch glimpses of the higher
+upper sphere in which a poet moves, and fix in his mind lasting images
+of purity and loveliness, or he will learn on good authority the facts
+of history, and feel somewhat of its grandeur and dignity. To the sort
+of reading which naturally succeeds the Peter-Parley dilutions of
+wisdom we can only allude to thank Dr. Ray for speaking so clearly and
+to the point.</p>
+
+<p>But it becomes necessary to pass over many pages which we had marked for
+approving comment. In conclusion it may be said that this treatise on
+Mental Hygiene is full of wholesome rebukes and valuable suggestions.
+Yet the impression of New-England, or even of American life, which a
+stranger might receive from it, would be lamentably false. In a special
+department, Dr. Ray is an able scientist. To a wide-embracing philosophy
+he does not always show claims. There has been heart-sickening
+corruption in all prosperous societies,&mdash;especially in such as have been
+debauched by complicity with Slavery. It is the duty of some men of
+science and benevolence to be ever probing among the defilements of our
+fallen nature, to breathe the tainted air of the lazar-house, to consort
+with madness and crime. Few men deserve our respect and gratitude like
+these. But let them be cheered by remembering that in the great world
+outside the hospital there are still elements of worthiness and
+nobility. Wealth was never more wisely liberal, talents were never held
+to stricter accountability, genius has never been more united with pure
+and high aims, than in the Loyal States to-day. The descendants of
+"those much-enduring men and women of colonial times" have not shown
+themselves altogether "incapable of toil and exposure." From offices and
+counting-rooms, from libraries and laboratories, our young men have gone
+forth to service as arduous as that which tried their fore-fathers. How
+many of them have borne every hardship and privation of war, every
+cruelty of filthy prisons and carrion-food, yet have breasted the
+slave-masters' treason till its bullet struck the pulse of life! Let us
+remember that the most divergent tendencies of character, even such as
+we cannot associate with an ideal poise of mind, may work to worthiest
+ends in this ill-balanced world of humanity. The saying of Novalis, that
+health is interesting only in a scientific point of view, disease being
+necessary to individualization, shows one side of the shield of which
+Dr. Ray presents the other.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="RECENT_AMERICAN_PUBLICATIONS" id="RECENT_AMERICAN_PUBLICATIONS"></a>RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS</h2>
+
+<h3>RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Life of Philidor, Musician and Chess-Player. By George Allen, Greek
+Professor in the University of Pennsylvania. With a Supplementary Essay
+on Philidor as Chess-Author and Chess-Player, by Tassilo von Heydebrand
+und der Lasa, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the
+King of Prussia at the Court of Saxe-Weimar. Philadelphia. E. H. Butler
+&amp; Co. 12mo. pp. xii., 156. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>Spots on the Sun; or, The Plumb-Line Papers. Being a Series of Essays,
+or Critical Examinations of Difficult Passages of Scripture; together
+with a Careful Inquiry into Certain Dogmas of the Church. By Rev. T. M.
+Hopkins, A. M., Geneva, N. Y. Auburn. William J. Moses. 16mo. pp. 367.
+$1.00.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Warrington. By the Author of "Rutledge." New York. G. W. Carleton.
+12mo. pp. 478. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>Husband and Wife; or, The Science of Human Development through Inherited
+Tendencies. By the Author of "The Parent's Guide," etc. New York. G. W.
+Carleton. 12mo. pp. 259. $1.25.</p>
+
+<p>Sermons preached before His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, during
+his Tour in the East, in the Spring of 1862, with Notices of some of the
+Localities visited. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Regius Professor
+of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, Honorary Chaplain
+in Ordinary to the Queen, etc., etc. New York. C. Scribner. 12mo. pp.
+272. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>Palmoni; or, The Numerals of Scripture a Proof of Inspiration. A Free
+Inquiry. By M. Mahan, D. D., St. Marks-in-the-Bowery Professor of
+Ecclesiastical History in the General Theological Seminary. New York. D.
+Appleton &amp; Co. 12mo. pp. 176. 75 cts.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> When Columbus sailed on his fourth voyage, in which he
+hoped to pass through what we now know as the Isthmus of Panama, and
+sail northwestward, he wrote to his king and queen that thus he should
+come as near as men could come to "the Terrestrial Paradise."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Norandel was the half-brother of Amadis, both of them being
+sons of Lisuarte, King of England.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Maneli was son of Cildadan, King of Ireland.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Quadragante was a distinguished giant, who had been
+conquered by Amadis, and was now his sure friend.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The "Spectators" 414 and 477, which urge particularly a
+better taste in gardening, are dated 1712; and the first volume of the
+"Ichnographia" (under a different name, indeed) appeared in 1715.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> This is averred of the translation of the "&#338;conomics" of
+Xenophon, before cited in these papers, and published under Professor
+Bradley's name.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Joseph Andrews</i>, Bk. III. Ch. 4, where Fielding, thief
+that he was, appropriates the story that Xenophon tells of Cyrus.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Works of Earl of Orford</i>, Vol. III. p. 490.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Chap. IX. p. 136, Cobbett's edition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> It is to be remarked, however, that the Rev. Mr. Smith,
+(farmer of Lois-Weedon,) by the distribution of his crop, avails himself
+virtually of a clean fallow, every alternate year.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Transactions</i>, Vol. XXX p. 140.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Detached Thoughts on Men and Manners:</i> Wm. Shenstone.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Completing the two volumes of collected poems.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> A taste for this had been early indicated, especially in
+the essays on Bunyan and Robert Dinsmore, in "Old Portraits and Modern
+Sketches," and in passages of "Literary Recreations." Whittier's prose,
+by the way, is all worth reading.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat des Convulsionnaires</i>,
+p. 104.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., p. 104.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Vains Efforts des Discernans</i>, p. 36.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., p. 66.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., p. 67. The
+latter part of the quotation alludes to crucifixion and other symbolical
+representations, to which the convulsionists were much given.
+</p><p>
+This state of ecstasy is one which has existed, probably, in occasional
+instances, through all past time, especially among religious
+enthusiasts. The writings of the ancient fathers contain constant
+allusions to it. St. Augustine, for example, speaks of it as a
+phenomenon which he has personally witnessed. Referring to persons thus
+impressed, he says,&mdash;"I have seen some who addressed their discourse
+sometimes to the persons around them, sometimes to other beings, as if
+they were actually present; and when they came to themselves, some could
+report what they had seen, others preserved no recollection of it
+whatever."&mdash;<i>De Gen. ad Litter.</i> Lib. XII. c. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., p. 77.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>Lettre de M. Colbert</i>, du 8 F&eacute;vrier, 1733, &agrave; Madame de
+Coetquen.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&#338;uvre</i>, etc., p. 123.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc. p. 82.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., p. 77.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> In proof of this opinion, Montg&eacute;ron gives numerous
+quotations from St. Augustine, St. Thomas, St. Gregory, and various
+theologians and ecclesiastics of high reputation, to the effect that "it
+often happens that errors and defects are mixed in with holy and divine
+revelations, (of saints and others, in ecstasy,) either by some vice of
+nature, or by the deception of the Devil, in the same way that our minds
+often draw false conclusions from true premises."&mdash;<i>Ibid.</i> pp. 88-96.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 94.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 95.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., pp. 102, 103.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 73.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Vains Efforts des Discernans</i>, pp. 39, 40.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Lettres de M. Poncet</i>, Let. VII. p. 129.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., p. 76.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Recherche de la V&eacute;rit&eacute;</i>, p. 25.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., p. 76.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., p. 73.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> <i>Philosophy of Mysterious Agents, Human and Mundane</i>, by
+E. C. Rogers, Boston, 1853, p. 321, and elsewhere. He argues, "that, in
+as far as persons become 'mediums,' they are mere automatons,"
+surrendering all mental control, and resigning their manhood.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. II. <i>Id&eacute;e de l'&Eacute;tat</i>, etc., pp. 34, 35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Hume's <i>Essays</i>, Vol. II. sect. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Diderot's <i>Pens&eacute;es Philosophiques</i>. The original edition
+appeared in 1746, published in Paris.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> Dom La Taste's <i>Lettres Th&eacute;ologiques</i>, Tom. II. p. 878.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron expressly tells us, that, in the case of
+Marguerite Catherine Turpin, her limbs were drawn, by means of strong
+bands, "with such, extreme violence that the bones of her knees and
+thighs cracked with a loud noise."&mdash;Tom. III. p. 553.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron supplies evidence that the expression <i>clubs</i>,
+here used, is not misapplied. He furnishes quotations from a petition
+addressed to the Parliament of Paris by the mother of the girl Turpin,
+praying for a legal investigation of her daughter's case by the
+attorney-general, and offering to furnish him with the names, station in
+life, and addresses of the witnesses to the wonderful cure, in this
+case, of a monstrous deformity that was almost congenital; in which
+petition it is stated,&mdash;"Little by little the force with which she was
+struck was augmented, and at last the blows were given with billets of
+oak-wood, one end of which was reduced in diameter so as to form a
+handle, while the other end, with which the strokes were dealt, was from
+seven to eight inches in circumference, so that these billets were in
+fact small clubs." (Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. III. p. 552.) This would give from
+eight to nine inches, English measure, or nearly three inches in
+diameter, and of <i>oak</i>!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Dissertation Th&eacute;ologique sur les Convulsions</i>, pp. 70,
+71.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>De la Folie</i>, Tom. II. p. 373.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Tympany is defined by Johnson, "A kind of obstructed
+flatulence that swells the body like a drum."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>The Epidemics of the Middle Ages</i>, pp. 89-91. The same
+work supplies other points of analogy between this epidemic and that of
+St. M&eacute;dard; for example: "Where the disease was completely developed,
+the attack commenced with epileptic convulsions."&mdash;p. 88.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Trait&eacute; du Somnambulisme</i>, pp. 384, 385.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Dictionnaire des Sciences M&eacute;dicales</i>, Art.
+<i>Convulsions</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>De la Folie, consid&eacute;r&eacute;e, sous la Point de Vue
+Pathologique, Philosophique, Historique, et Judiciaire</i>, par le Dr.
+Calmeil, Paris, 1845, Tom. II. pp. 386, 387.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> See, in Calmeil's work cited above, the Chapter entitled
+<i>Th&eacute;omanie Extato-Convulsive parmi les Jansenistes</i>, Tom. II. pp.
+313-400.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> <i>Du Surnaturel en G&eacute;n&eacute;ral</i>, Tom. II. pp. 94, 95.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> I translate literally the words of the original: "<i>avec
+des convulsionnaires en gomme &eacute;lastique</i>," p. 90.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Du Surnaturel en G&eacute;n&eacute;ral</i>, Tom. II. pp. 90, 91.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> See note in De Gasparin's "Experiments in Table-Moving."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. III. p. 703.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Montg&eacute;ron, Tom. III. pp. 712, 713.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Carpenter's <i>Principles of Human Physiology</i>, p. 647.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Carpenter's <i>Principles of Human Physiology</i>, p. 561. The
+story, incredible if it appear, is indorsed by Carpenter as vouched for
+by Mr. Richard Smith, late Senior Surgeon of the Bristol Infirmary,
+under whose care the sufferer had been. The case resulted, after a
+fortnight, in death.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Such will be found throughout Hecquet's "Le Naturalisme
+des Convulsions dans les Maladies," Paris, 1733. Dr. Philippe Hecquet,
+born in 1661, acquired great reputation in Paris as a physician, being
+elected in 1712 President of the Faculty of Medicine in that city. He is
+the author of numerous works on medical subjects. In his "Naturalisme
+des Convulsions," published at the very time when the St.-M&eacute;dard
+excitement was at the highest, he admits the main facts, but denies
+their miraculous character.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> "The eye, contrary to the usual notions, is a very
+insensible part of the body, unless affected with inflammation; for,
+though the mucous membrane which covers its surface, and which is
+prolonged from the skin, is acutely sensible to tactile impressions, the
+interior is by no means so, as is well known to those who have operated
+much on this organ."&mdash;Carpenter's <i>Principles of Human Physiology</i>, p.
+682.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Hume's <i>Essays</i>, Vol. II. p. 133.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No.
+77, March, 1864, by Various
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77,
+March, 1864, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #19492]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by Cornell University Digital Collections)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+VOL. XIII.--MARCH, 1864.--NO. LXXVII.
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Minor typos corrected, and footnotes have been
+moved to the end of the text.]
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR
+AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
+District of Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
+
+
+I can see the excitement which this title arouses as it is flashed
+across the sierras, down the valleys, and into the various reading-rooms
+and parlors of the Golden City of the Golden State. As the San Francisco
+"Bulletin" announces some day, that in the "Atlantic Monthly," issued in
+Boston the day before, one of the articles is on "The Queen of
+California," what contest, in every favored circle of the most favored
+of lands, who the Queen may be! Is it the blond maiden who took a string
+of hearts with her in a leash, when she left us one sad morning? is it
+the hardy, brown adventuress, who, in her bark-roofed lodge, serves us
+out our boiled dog daily, as we come home from our water-gullies, and
+sews on for us weekly the few buttons which we still find indispensable
+in that toil? is it some Jessie of the lion-heart, heroine of a hundred
+days or of a thousand? is it that witch with gray eyes, cunningly
+hidden,--were they puzzled last night, or were they all wisdom
+crowded?--as she welcomed me, and as she bade me good-bye? Good Heavens!
+how many Queens of California are regnant this day! and of any one of
+them this article might be written.
+
+No, _Senores!_ No, _Caballeros!_ Throng down to the wharves to see the
+Golden Era or the Cornelius's Coffin, or whatever other mail-steamer may
+bring these words to your longing eyes. Open to the right and left as
+Adams's express-messenger carries the earliest copy of the "Atlantic
+Monthly," sealed with the reddest wax, tied with the reddest tape, from
+the Corner Store direct to him who was once the life and light of the
+Corner Store, who now studies eschscholtzias through a telescope
+thirty-eight miles away on Monte Diablo! Rush upon the newsboy who then
+brings forth the bale of this Journal for the Multitude, to find that
+the Queen of California of whom we write is no modern queen, but that
+she reigned some five hundred and fifty-five years ago. Her precise
+contemporaries were Amadis of Gaul, the Emperor Esplandian, and the
+Sultan Radiaro. And she _flourished_, as the books say, at the time when
+this Sultan made his unsuccessful attack on the city of
+Constantinople,--all of which she saw, part of which she was.
+
+She was not _petite_, nor blond, nor golden-haired. She was large and
+black as the ace of clubs. But the prejudice of color did not then exist
+even among the most brazen-faced or the most copper-headed. For, as you
+shall learn, she was reputed the most beautiful of women; and it was
+she, O Californians, who wedded the gallant prince Talanque,--your
+first-known king. The supporters of the arms of the beautiful shield of
+the State of California should be, on the right, a knight armed
+_cap-a-pie_, and, on the left, an Amazon sable, clothed in skins, as you
+shall now see.
+
+Mr. E. E. Hale, of Boston, sent to the Antiquarian Society last year a
+paper which shows that the name of California was known to literature
+before it was given to our peninsula by Cortes. Cortes discovered the
+peninsula in 1535, and seems to have called it California then. But Mr.
+Hale shows that twenty-five years before that time, in a romance called
+the "Deeds of Esplandian," the name of California was given to an island
+"on the right hand of the Indies." This romance was a sequel, or fifth
+book, to the celebrated romance of "Amadis of Gaul." Such books made the
+principal reading of the young blades of that day who could read at all.
+It seems clear enough, that Cortes and his friends, coming to the point
+farthest to the west then known,--which all of them, from Columbus down,
+supposed to be in the East Indies,--gave to their discovery the name,
+familiar to romantic adventurers, of _California_, to indicate their
+belief that it was on the "right hand of the Indies." Just so Columbus
+called his discoveries "the Indies,"--just so was the name "El Dorado"
+given to regions which it was hoped would prove to be golden. The
+romance had said, that in the whole of the romance-island of California
+there was no metal but gold. Cortes, who did not find a pennyweight of
+dust in the real California, still had no objection to giving so golden
+a name to his discovery.
+
+Mr. Hale, with that brevity which becomes antiquarians, does not go into
+any of the details of the life and adventures of the Queen of California
+as the romance describes them. We propose, in this paper, to supply from
+it this reticency of his essay.
+
+The reader must understand, then, that, in this romance, printed in
+1510, sixty years or less after Constantinople really fell into the
+hands of the Turks, the author describes a pretended assault made upon
+it by the Infidel powers, and the rallying for its rescue of Amadis and
+Perion and Lisuarte, and all the princes of chivalry with whom the novel
+of "Amadis of Gaul" has dealt. They succeed in driving away the Pagans,
+"as you shall hear." In the midst of this great crusade, every word of
+which, of course, is the most fictitious of fiction, appear the episodes
+which describe California and its Queen.
+
+First, of California itself here is the description:--
+
+"Now you are to hear the most extraordinary thing that ever was heard of
+in any chronicles or in the memory of man, by which the city would have
+been lost on the next day, but that where the danger came, there the
+safety came also. Know, then, that, on the right hand of the Indies,
+there is an island called California, very close to the side of the
+Terrestrial Paradise,[1] and it was peopled by black women, without any
+man among them, for they lived in the fashion of Amazons. They were of
+strong and hardy bodies, of ardent courage and great force. Their island
+was the strongest in all the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky
+shores. Their arms were all of gold, and so was the harness of the wild
+beasts which they tamed and rode. For, in the whole island, there was no
+metal but gold. They lived in caves wrought out of the rock with much
+labor. They had many ships with which they sailed out to other countries
+to obtain booty.
+
+"In this island, called California, there were many griffins, on account
+of the great ruggedness of the country, and its infinite host of wild
+beasts, such as never were seen in any other part of the world. And when
+these griffins were yet small, the women went out with traps to take
+them. They covered themselves over with very thick hides, and when they
+had caught the little griffins, they took them to their caves, and
+brought them up there. And being themselves quite a match for the
+griffins, they fed them with the men whom they took prisoners, and with
+the boys to whom they gave birth, and brought them up with such arts
+that they got much good from them, and no harm. Every man who landed on
+the island was immediately devoured by these griffins; and although they
+had had enough, none the less would they seize them and carry them high
+up in the air, in their flight, and when they were tired of carrying
+them, would let them fall anywhere as soon as they died."
+
+These griffins are the Monitors of the story, or, if the reader pleases,
+the Merrimacs. After this description, the author goes on to introduce
+us to our Queen. Observe, O reader, that, although very black, and very
+large, she is very beautiful. Why did not Powers carve his statue of
+California out of the blackest of Egyptian marbles? Try once more, Mr.
+Powers! We have found her now. [Greek: Ehyrhekamen]!
+
+"Now at the time when those great men of the Pagans sailed with their
+great fleets, as the history has told you, there reigned in this island
+of California a Queen, very large in person, the most beautiful of all
+of them, of blooming years, and in her thoughts desirous of achieving
+great things, strong of limb and of great courage, more than any of
+those who had filled her throne before her. She heard tell that all the
+greater part of the world was moving in this onslaught against the
+Christians. She did not know what Christians were, for she had no
+knowledge of any parts of the world excepting those which were close to
+her. But she desired to see the world and its various people; and
+thinking, that, with the great strength of herself and of her women, she
+should have the greater part of their plunder, either from her rank or
+from her prowess, she began to talk with all of those who were most
+skilled in war, and told them that it would be well, if, sailing in
+their great fleets, they also entered on this expedition, in which all
+these great princes and lords were embarking. She animated and excited
+them, showing them the great profits and honors which they would gain in
+this enterprise,--above all, the great fame which would be theirs in all
+the world; while, if they stayed in their island, doing nothing but what
+their grandmothers did, they were really buried alive,--they were dead
+while they lived, passing their days without fame and without glory, as
+did the very brutes."
+
+Now the people of California were as willing then to embark in distant
+expeditions of honor as they are now. And the first battalion that ever
+sailed from the ports of that country was thus provided:--
+
+"So much did this mighty Queen, Calafia, say to her people, that she not
+only moved them to consent to this enterprise, but they were so eager to
+extend their fame through other lands that they begged her to hasten to
+sea, so that they might earn all these honors, in alliance with such
+great men. The Queen, seeing the readiness of her subjects, without any
+delay gave order that her great fleet should be provided with food, and
+with arms all of gold,--more of everything than was needed. Then she
+commanded that her largest vessel should be prepared with gratings of
+the stoutest timber; and she bade place in it as many as five hundred of
+these griffins, of which I tell you, that, from the time they were born,
+they were trained to feed on men. And she ordered that the beasts on
+which she and her people rode should be embarked, and all the
+best-armed women and those most skilled in war whom she had in her
+island. And then, leaving such force in the island that it should be
+secure, with the others she went to sea. And they made such haste that
+they arrived at the fleets of the Pagans the night after the battle of
+which I have told you; so that they were received with great joy, and
+the fleet was visited at once by many great lords, and they were
+welcomed with great acceptance. She wished to know at once in what
+condition affairs were, asking many questions, which they answered
+fully. Then she said,--
+
+"'You have fought this city with your great forces, and you cannot take
+it; now, if you are willing, I wish to try what my forces are worth
+to-morrow, if you will give orders accordingly.'
+
+"All these great lords said that they would give such commands as she
+should bid them.
+
+"'Then send word to all your other captains that they shall to-morrow on
+no account leave their camps, they nor their people, until I command
+them; and you shall see a combat more remarkable than you have ever seen
+or heard of.'
+
+"Word was sent at once to the great Sultan of Liquia, and the Sultan of
+Halapa, who had command of all the men who were there; and they gave
+these orders to all their people, wondering much what was the thought of
+this Queen."
+
+Up to this moment, it may be remarked, these Monitors, as we have called
+the griffins, had never been fairly tried in any attack on fortified
+towns. The Dupont of the fleet, whatever her name may have been, may
+well have looked with some curiosity on the issue. The experiment was
+not wholly successful, as will be seen.
+
+"When the night had passed and the morning came, the Queen Calafia
+sallied on shore, she and her women, armed with that armor of gold, all
+adorned with the most precious stones,--which are to be found in the
+island of California like stones of the field for their abundance. And
+they mounted on their fierce beasts, caparisoned as I have told you; and
+then she ordered that a door should be opened in the vessel where the
+griffins were. They, when they saw the field, rushed forward with great
+haste, showing great pleasure in flying through the air, and at once
+caught sight of the host of men who were close at hand. As they were
+famished, and knew no fear, each griffin pounced upon his man, seized
+him in his claws, carried him high into the air, and began to devour
+him. They shot many arrows at them, and gave them many great blows with
+lances and with swords. But their feathers were so tight joined and so
+stout, that no one could strike through to their flesh." (This is
+Armstrong _versus_ Monitor.) "For their own party, this was the most
+lovely chase and the most agreeable that they had ever seen till then;
+and as the Turks saw them flying on high with their enemies, they gave
+such loud and clear shouts of joy as pierced the heavens. And it was the
+most sad and bitter thing for those in the city, when the father saw the
+son lifted in the air, and the son his father, and the brother his
+brother; so that they all wept and raved, as was sad indeed to see.
+
+"When the griffins had flown through the air for a while, and had
+dropped their prizes, some on the earth and some on the sea, they
+turned, as at first, and, without any fear, seized up as many more; at
+which their masters had so much the more joy, and the Christians so much
+the more misery. What shall I tell you? The terror was so great among
+them all, that, while some hid themselves away under the vaults of the
+towers for safety, all the others disappeared from the ramparts, so that
+there were none left for the defence. Queen Calafia saw this, and, with
+a loud voice, she bade the two Sultans, who commanded the troops, send
+for the ladders, for the city was taken. At once they all rushed
+forward, placed the ladders, and mounted upon the wall. But the
+griffins, who had already dropped those whom they had seized before, as
+soon as they saw the Turks, having no knowledge of them, seized upon
+them just as they had seized upon the Christians, and, flying through
+the air, carried them up also, when, letting them fall, no one of them
+escaped death. Thus were exchanged the pleasure and the pain. For those
+on the outside now were those who mourned in great sorrow for those who
+were so handled; and those who were within, who, seeing their enemies
+advance on every side, had thought they were beaten, now took great
+comfort. So, at this moment, as those on the ramparts stopped,
+panic-struck, fearing that they should die as their comrades did, the
+Christians leaped forth from the vaults where they were hiding, and
+quickly slew many of the Turks who were gathered on the walls, and
+compelled the rest to leap down, and then sprang back to their
+hiding-places, as they saw the griffins return.
+
+"When Queen Calafia saw this, she was very sad, and she said, 'O ye
+idols in whom I believe and whom I worship, what is this which has
+happened as favorably to my enemies as to my friends? I believed that
+with your aid and with my strong forces and great munition I should be
+able to destroy them. But it has not so proved.' And she gave orders to
+her women that they should mount the ladders and struggle to gain the
+towers and put to the sword all those who took refuge in them to be
+secure from the griffins. They obeyed their Queen's commands, dismounted
+at once, placing before their breasts such breastplates as no weapon
+could pierce, and, as I told you, with the armor all of gold which
+covered their legs and their arms. Quickly they crossed the plain, and
+mounted the ladders lightly, and possessed themselves of the whole
+circuit of the walls, and began to fight fiercely with those who had
+taken refuge in the vaults of the towers. But they defended themselves
+bravely, being indeed in quarters well protected, with but narrow doors.
+And those of the city, who were in the streets below, shot at the women
+with arrows and darts, which pierced them through the sides, so that
+they received many wounds, because their golden armor was so weak."
+(This is Keokuk _versus_ Armstrong.) "And the griffins returned, flying
+above them, and would not leave them.
+
+"When Queen Calafia saw this, she cried to the Sultans, 'Make your
+troops mount, that they may defend mine against these fowls of mine who
+have dared attack them.' At once the Sultans commanded their people to
+ascend the ladders and gain the circle and the towers, in order that by
+night the whole host might join them, and they might gain the city. The
+soldiers rushed from their camps, and mounted on the wall where the
+women were fighting,--but when the griffins saw them, at once they
+seized on them as ravenously as if all that day they had not caught
+anybody. And when the women threatened them with their knives, they were
+only the more enraged, so that, although they took shelter for
+themselves, the griffins dragged them out by main strength, lifted them
+up into the air, and then let them fall,--so that they all died. The
+fear and panic of the Pagans were so great, that, much more quickly than
+they had mounted, did they descend and take refuge in their camp. The
+Queen, seeing this rout without remedy, sent at once to command those
+who held watch and guard on the griffins, that they should recall them
+and shut them up in the vessel. They, then, hearing the Queen's command,
+mounted on top of the mast, and called them with loud voices in their
+language; and they, as if they had been human beings, all obeyed, and
+obediently returned into their cages."
+
+The first day's attack of these flying Monitors on the beleaguered city
+was not, therefore, a distinguished success. The author derives a lesson
+from it, which we do not translate, but recommend to the students of
+present history. It fills a whole chapter, of which the title is,
+"Exhortation addressed by the author to the Christians, setting before
+their eyes the great obedience which these griffins, brute animals,
+rendered to those who had instructed them."
+
+The Sultans may have well doubted whether their new ally was quite what
+she had claimed to be. She felt this herself, and said to them,--
+
+"'Since my coming has caused you so much injury, I wish that it may
+cause you equal pleasure. Command your people that they shall sally out,
+and we will go to the city against those knights who dare to appear
+before us, and we will let them press on the most severe combat that
+they can, and I, with my people, will take the front of the battle.'
+
+"The Sultans gave command at once to all of their soldiers who had
+armor, that they should rush forth immediately, and should join in
+mounting upon the rampart, now that these birds were encaged again. And
+they, with the horsemen, followed close upon Queen Calafia, and
+immediately the army rushed forth and pressed upon the wall; but not so
+prosperously as they had expected, because the people of the town were
+already there in their harness, and as the Pagans mounted upon their
+ladders, the Christians threw them back, whence very many of them were
+killed and wounded. Others pressed forward with their iron picks and
+other tools, and dug fiercely in the circuit of the wall. These were
+very much distressed and put in danger by the oil and other things which
+were thrown upon them, but not so much but that they succeeded in making
+many breaches and openings. But when this came to the ears of the
+Emperor, who always kept command of ten thousand horsemen, he commanded
+all of them to defend these places as well as they could. So that, to
+the grief of the Pagans, the people repaired the breaches with many
+timbers and stones and piles of earth.
+
+"When the Queen saw this repulse, she rushed with her own attendants
+with great speed to the gate Aquilena, which was guarded by Norandel.[2]
+She herself went in advance of the others, wholly covered with one of
+those shields which we have told you they wore, and with her lance held
+strongly in her hand. Norandel, when he saw her coming, went forth to
+meet her, and they met so vehemently that their lances were broken in
+pieces, and yet neither of them fell. Norandel at once put hand upon his
+sword, and the Queen upon her great knife, of which the blade was more
+than a palm broad, and they gave each other great blows. At once they
+all joined in a _melee_, one against another, all so confused and with
+such terrible blows that it was a great marvel to see it, and if some of
+the women fell upon the ground, so did some of the cavaliers. And if
+this history does not tell in extent which of them fell, and by what
+blow of each, showing the great force and courage of the combatants, it
+is because their number was so great, and they fell so thick, one upon
+another, that that great master, Helisabat, who saw and described the
+scene, could not determine what in particular passed in these exploits,
+except in a few very rare affairs, like this of the Queen and Norandel,
+who both joined fight as you have heard."
+
+It is to the great master Helisabat that a grateful posterity owes all
+these narratives and the uncounted host of romances which grew from
+them. For, in the first place, he was the skilful leech who cured all
+the wounds of all the parties of distinction who were not intended to
+die; and in the second place, his notes furnish the _memoires pour
+servir_, of which all the writers say they availed themselves. The
+originals, alas! are lost.
+
+"The tumult was so great, that at once the battle between these two was
+ended, those on each side coming to the aid of their chief. Then, I tell
+you, that the things that this Queen did in arms, like slaying knights,
+or throwing them wounded from their horses, as she pressed audaciously
+forward among her enemies, were such, that it cannot be told nor
+believed that any woman has ever shown such prowess.
+
+"And as she dealt with so many noble knights, and no one of them left
+her without giving her many and heavy blows, yet she received them all
+upon her very strong and hard shield.
+
+"When Talanque and Maneli[3] saw what this woman was doing, and the
+great loss which those of their own party were receiving from her, they
+rushed out upon her, and struck her with such blows as if they
+considered her possessed. And her sister, who was named Liota, who saw
+this, rushed in, like a mad lioness, to her succor, and pressed the
+knights so mortally, that, to the loss of their honor, she drew Calafia
+from their power, and placed her among her own troops again. And at this
+time you would have said that the people of the fleets had the
+advantage, so that, if it had not been for the mercy of God and the
+great force of the Count Frandalo and his companions, the city would
+have been wholly lost. Many fell dead on both sides, but many more of
+the Pagans, because they had the weaker armor.
+
+"Thus," continues the romance, "as you have heard, went on this attack
+and cruel battle till nearly night. At this time there was no one of the
+gates open, excepting that which Norandel guarded. As to the others, the
+knights, having been withdrawn from them, ought, of course, to have
+bolted them; yet it was very different, as I will tell you. For, as the
+two Sultans greatly desired to see these women fight, they had bidden
+their own people not to enter into the lists. But when they saw how the
+day was going, they pressed upon the Christians so fiercely that
+gradually they might all enter into the city, and, as it was, more than
+a hundred men and women did enter. And God, who guided the Emperor,
+having directed him to keep the other gates shut, knowing in what way
+the battle fared, he pressed them so hardly with his knights, that,
+killing some, he drove the others out. Then the Pagans lost many of
+their people, as they slew them from the towers,--more than two hundred
+of the women being slain. And those within also were not without great
+loss, since ten of the _cruzados_ were killed, which gave great grief to
+their companions. These were Ledaderin de Fajarque, Trion and Imosil de
+Borgona, and the two sons of Isanjo. All the people of the city having
+returned, as I tell you, the Pagans also retired to their camps, and the
+Queen Calafia to her fleet, since she had not yet taken quarters on
+shore. And the other people entered into their ships; so that there was
+no more fighting that day."
+
+I have translated this passage at length, because it gives the reader an
+idea of the romantic literature of that day,--literally its only
+literature, excepting books of theology or of devotion. Over acres of
+such reading, served out in large folios,--the yellow-covered novels of
+their time,--did the Pizarros and Balboas and Corteses and other young
+blades while away the weary hours of their camp-life. Glad enough was
+Cortes out of such a tale to get the noble name of his great discovery.
+
+The romance now proceeds to bring the different princes of chivalry from
+the West, as it has brought Calafia from the East. As soon as Amadis
+arrives at Constantinople, he sends for his son Esplandian, who was
+already in alliance with the Emperor of Greece. The Pagan Sultan of
+Liquia, and the Queen Calafia, hearing of their arrival, send them the
+following challenge:--
+
+"Radiaro, Sultan of Liquia, shield and rampart of the Pagan Law,
+destroyer of Christians, cruel enemy of the enemies of the Gods, and the
+very Mighty Queen Calafia, Lady of the great island of California,
+famous for its great abundance of gold and precious stones: we have to
+announce to you, Amadis of Gaul, King of Great Britain, and you his son,
+Knight of the Great Serpent, that we are come into these parts with the
+intention of destroying this city of Constantinople, on account of the
+injury and loss which the much honored King Amato of Persia, our cousin
+and friend, has received from this bad Emperor, giving him favor and
+aid, because a part of his territory has been taken away from him by
+fraud. And as our desire in this thing is also to gain glory and fame in
+it, so also has fortune treated us favorably in that regard, for we know
+the great news, which has gone through all the world, of your great
+chivalry. We have agreed, therefore, if it is agreeable to you, or if
+your might is sufficient for it, to attempt a battle of our persons
+against yours in presence of this great company of the nations, the
+conquered to submit to the will of the conquerors, or to go to any place
+where they may order. And if you refuse this, we shall be able, with
+much cause, to join all your past glories to our own, counting them as
+being gained by us, whence it will clearly be seen in the future how the
+victory will be on our side."
+
+This challenge was taken to the Christian camp by a black and beautiful
+damsel, richly attired, and was discussed there in council. Amadis put
+an end to the discussion by saying,--
+
+"'My good lords, as the affairs of men, like those of nations, are in
+the hands and will of God, whence no one can escape but as He wills, if
+we should in any way withdraw from this demand, it would give great
+courage to our enemies, and, more than this, great injury to our honor;
+especially so in this country, where we are strangers, and no one has
+seen what our power is, which in our own land is notorious, so that,
+while there we may be esteemed for courage, here we should be judged the
+greatest of cowards. Thus, placing confidence in the mercy of the Lord,
+I determine that the battle shall take place without delay.'
+
+"'If this is your wish,' said King Lisuarte and King Perion, 'so may it
+be, and may God help you with His grace!'
+
+"Then the King Amadis said to the damsel,--
+
+"'Friend, tell your lord and the Queen Calafia that we desire the battle
+with those arms that are most agreeable to them; that the field shall be
+this field, divided in the middle,--I giving my word that for nothing
+which may happen will we be succored by our own. And let them give the
+same order to their own; and if they wish the battle now, now it shall
+be.'
+
+"The damsel departed with this reply, which she repeated to those two
+princes. And the Queen Calafia asked her how the Christians appeared.
+
+"'Very nobly,' replied she, 'for they are all handsome and well armed.
+Yet I tell you, Queen, that, among them, this Knight of the Serpent
+[Esplandian, son of Amadis] is such as neither the past nor the present,
+nor, I believe, any who are to come, have ever seen one so handsome and
+so elegant, nor will see in the days which are to be. O Queen, what
+shall I say to you, but that, if he were of our faith, we might believe
+that our Gods had made him with their own hands, with all their power
+and wisdom, so that he lacks in nothing?'
+
+"The Queen, who heard her, said,--
+
+"'Damsel, my friend, your words are too great.'
+
+"'It is not so,' said she; 'for, excepting the sight of him, there is
+nothing else which can give account of his great excellence.'
+
+"'Then I say to you,' said the Queen, 'that I will not fight with such a
+man until I have first seen and talked with him; and I make this request
+to the Sultan, that he will gratify me in this thing, and arrange that I
+may see him.'
+
+"The Sultan said,--
+
+"'I will do everything, O Queen, agreeably to your wish.'
+
+"'Then,' said the damsel, 'I will go and obtain that which you ask for,
+according to your desire.'
+
+"And turning her horse, she approached the camp again, so that all
+thought that she brought the agreement for the battle. But as she
+approached, she called the Kings to the door of the tent, and said,--
+
+"'King Amadis, the Queen Calafia demands of you that you give order for
+her safe conduct, that she may come to-morrow morning and see your son.'
+
+"Amadis began to laugh, and said to the Kings,--
+
+"'How does this demand seem to you?'
+
+"'I say, let her come,' said King Lisuarte; 'it is a very good thing to
+see the most distinguished woman in the world.'
+
+"'Take this for your reply,' said Amadis to the damsel; 'and say that
+she shall be treated with all truth and honor.'
+
+"The damsel, having received this message, returned with great pleasure
+to the Queen, and told her what it was. The Queen said to the Sultan,--
+
+"'Wait and prosper, then, till I have seen him; and charge your people
+that in the mean time there may be no outbreak.'
+
+"'Of that,' he said, 'you may be secure.'
+
+"At once she returned to her ships; and she spent the whole night
+thinking whether she would go with arms or without them. But at last she
+determined that it would be more dignified to go in the dress of a
+woman. And when the morning came, she rose and directed them to bring
+one of her dresses, all of gold, with many precious stones, and a turban
+wrought with great art. It had a volume of many folds, in the manner of
+a _toca_, and she placed it upon her head as if it had been a hood
+[_capellina_]; it was all of gold, embroidered with stones of great
+value. They brought out an animal which she rode, the strangest that
+ever was seen. It had ears as large as two shields; a broad forehead
+which had but one eye, like a mirror; the openings of its nostrils were
+very large, but its nose was short and blunt. From its mouth turned up
+two tusks, each of them two palms long. Its color was yellow, and it had
+many violet spots upon its skin, like an ounce. It was larger than a
+dromedary, had its feet cleft like those of an ox, and ran as swiftly as
+the wind, and skipped over the rocks as lightly, and held itself erect
+on any part of them, as do the mountain-goats. Its food was dates and
+figs and peas, and nothing else. Its flank and haunches and breast were
+very beautiful. On this animal, of which you have thus heard, mounted
+this beautiful Queen, and there rode behind her two thousand women of
+her train, dressed in the very richest clothes. There brought up the
+rear twenty damsels clothed in uniform, the trains of whose dresses
+extended so far, that, falling from each beast, they dragged four
+fathoms on the ground.
+
+"With this equipment and ornament the Queen proceeded to the Emperor's
+camp, where she saw all the Kings, who had come out upon the plain. They
+had seated themselves on very rich chairs, upon cloth of gold, and they
+themselves were armed, because they had not much confidence in the
+promises of the Pagans. So they sallied out to receive her at the door
+of the tent, where she was dismounted into the arms of Don
+Quadragante;[4] and the two Kings, Lisuarte and Perion, took her by the
+hands, and placed her between them in a chair. When she was seated,
+looking from one side to the other, she saw Esplandian next to King
+Lisuarte, who held him by the hand; and from the superiority of his
+beauty to that of all the others, she knew at once who he was, and said
+to herself, 'Oh, my Gods! what is this? I declare to you, I have never
+seen any one who can be compared to him, nor shall I ever see any one.'
+And he turning his beautiful eyes upon her beautiful face, she perceived
+that the rays which leaped out from his resplendent beauty, entering in
+at her eyes, penetrated to her heart in such a way, that, if she were
+not conquered yet by the great force of arms, or by the great attacks of
+her enemies, she was softened and broken by that sight and by her
+amorous passion, as if she had passed between mallets of iron. And as
+she saw this, she reflected, that, if she stayed longer, the great fame
+which she had acquired as a manly cavalier, by so many dangers and
+labors, would be greatly hazarded. She saw that by any delay she should
+expose herself to the risk of dishonor, by being turned to that native
+softness which women of nature consider to be an ornament; and therefore
+resisting, with great pain, the feelings which she had subjected to her
+will, she rose from her seat and said,--
+
+"'Knight of the Great Serpent, for two excellences which distinguish you
+above all mortals I have made inquiry. The first, that of your great
+beauty, which, if one has not seen, no relation is enough to tell the
+greatness of; the other, the valor and force of your brave heart. The
+one of these I have seen, which is such as I have never seen nor could
+hope to see, though many years of searching should be granted me. The
+other shall be made manifest on the field, against this valiant Radiaro,
+Sultan of Liquia. Mine shall be shown against this mighty king your
+father; and if fortune grant that we come alive from this battle, as we
+hope to come from other battles, then I will talk with you, before I
+return to my home, of some things of my own affairs.'
+
+"Then, turning towards the Kings, she said to them,--
+
+"'Kings, rest in good health. I go hence to that place where you shall
+see me with very different dress from this which I now wear, hoping that
+in that field the King Amadis, who trusts in fickle fortune that he may
+never be conquered by any knight, however valiant, nor by any beast,
+however terrible, may there be conquered by a woman.'
+
+"Then taking the two older Kings by the hand, she permitted them to help
+her mount upon her strange steed."
+
+At this point the novel assumes a tone of high virtue (_virtus_,
+mannishness, prejudice of the more brutal sex) on the subject of woman's
+rights, in especial of woman's right to fight in the field with gold
+armor, lance in rest, and casque closed. We will show the reader, as she
+follows us, how careful she must be, if, in any island of the sea which
+has been slipped by unknown by the last five centuries, she ever happen
+to meet a cavalier of the true school of chivalry.
+
+Esplandian himself would not in any way salute the Queen Calafia, as she
+left him. Nor was this a copperhead prejudice of color; for that
+prejudice was not yet known.
+
+"He made no reply to her, both because he looked at her as something
+strange, however beautiful she appeared to him, and because he saw her
+come thus in arms, so different from the style in which a woman should
+have come. For he considered it as very dishonorable that she should
+attempt anything so different from what the word of God commanded her,
+that the woman should be in subjection to the man, but rather should
+prefer to be the ruler of all men, not by her courtesy, but by force of
+arms, and, above all, because he hated to place himself in relations
+with her, because she was one of the infidels, whom he mortally despised
+and had taken a vow to destroy."
+
+The romance then goes into an account of the preparations for the
+contest on both sides.
+
+After all the preliminaries were arranged, "they separated for a little
+and rode together furiously in full career. The Sultan struck Esplandian
+in the shield with so hard a blow that a part of the lance passed
+through it for as much as an ell, so that all who saw it thought that it
+had passed through the body. But it was not so, but the lance passed
+under the arm next the body, and went out on the other side without
+touching him. But Esplandian, who knew that his much-loved lady was
+looking on, [Leonorina, the daughter of the Emperor of Constantinople,]
+so struck the Sultan's shield, that the iron passed through it and
+struck him on some of the strongest plates of his armor, upon which the
+spear turned. But, with the force of the encounter, it shook him so
+roughly from the saddle that it rolled him upon the ground, and so
+shook the helmet as to tear it off from his head, and thus Esplandian
+passed by him very handsomely, without receiving any stroke himself. The
+Queen rushed upon Amadis, and he upon her, and, before they met, each
+pointed lance at the other, and they received the blows upon their
+shields in such guise, that her spear flew in pieces, while that of
+Amadis slipped off and was thrown on one side. Then they both met,
+shield to shield, with such force that the Queen was thrown upon the
+ground, and the horse of Amadis was so wounded that he fell with his
+head cut in two, and held Amadis with one leg under him. When Esplandian
+saw this, he leaped from his horse and saved him from that peril.
+Meanwhile, the Queen, being put to her defence, put hand to her sword,
+and joined herself to the Sultan, who had raised himself with great
+difficulty, because his fall was very heavy, and stood there with his
+sword and helmet in his hand. They came on to fight very bravely, but
+Esplandian, standing, as I told you, in presence of the Infanta, whom he
+prized so much, gave the Sultan such hard pressure with such heavy
+blows, that, although he was one of the bravest knights of the Pagans,
+and by his own prowess had won many dangerous battles, and was very
+dexterous in that art, yet all this served him for nothing; he could
+neither give nor parry blows, and constantly lost ground. The Queen, who
+had joined fight with Amadis, began giving him many fierce blows, some
+of which he received upon his shield, while he let others be lost; yet
+he would not put his hand upon his sword, but, instead of that, took a
+fragment of the lance which she had driven through his shield, and
+struck her on the top of the helmet with it, so that in a little while
+he had knocked the crest away."
+
+We warned those of our fair readers who may have occasion to defend
+their rights at the point of the lance, that the days of chivalry or the
+cavaliers of chivalry will be very unhandsome in applying to them the
+rules of the tourney. Amadis, it will be observed here, does not
+condescend to use his sword against a woman. And this is not from
+tenderness, but from contempt. For when the Queen saw that he only took
+the broken truncheon of his lance to her, she fairly asked him why.
+
+"'How is this, Amadis?' she said; 'do you consider my force so slight
+that you think to conquer me with sticks?'
+
+"And he said to her,--
+
+"'Queen, I have always been in the habit of serving women and aiding
+them; and as you are a woman, if I should use any weapon against you, I
+should deserve to lose all the honors I have ever gained.'
+
+"'What, then!' said the Queen, 'do you rank me among them? You shall
+see!'
+
+"And taking her sword in both her hands, she struck him with great rage.
+Amadis raised his shield and received the blow upon it, which was so
+brave and strong that the shield was cut in two. Then, seeing her joined
+to him so closely, he passed the stick into his left hand, seized her by
+the rim of her shield, and pulled her so forcibly, that, breaking the
+great thongs by which she held upon it, he took it from her, lifting it
+up in one hand, and forced her to kneel with one knee on the ground; and
+when she lightly sprang up, Amadis threw away his own shield, and,
+seizing the other, took the stick and sprang to her, saying,--
+
+"'Queen, yield yourself my prisoner, now that your Sultan is conquered.'
+
+"She turned her head, and saw that Esplandian had the Sultan already
+surrendered as his prize. But she said, 'Let me try fortune yet one more
+turn'; and then, raising her sword with both her hands, she struck upon
+the crest of his helmet, thinking she could cut it and his head in two.
+But Amadis warded the blow very lightly and turned it off, and struck
+her so heavy a stroke with that fragment of the lance upon the crest of
+her helmet, that he stunned her and made her sword fall from her hands.
+Amadis seized the sword, and, when she was thus disarmed, caught at her
+helmet so strongly that he dragged it from her head, and said,--
+
+"'Now are you my prisoner?'
+
+"'Yes,' replied she; 'for there is nothing left for me to do.'
+
+"At this moment Esplandian came to them with the Sultan, who had
+surrendered himself, and, in sight of all the army, they repaired to the
+royal encampment, where they were received with great pleasure, not only
+on account of the great victory in battle, which, after the great deeds
+in arms which they had wrought before, as this history has shown, they
+did not regard as very remarkable, but because they took this success as
+a good omen for the future. The King Amadis asked the Count Gandalin to
+lead their prisoners to the Infanta Leonorina, in his behalf and that of
+his son Esplandian, and to say to her that he begged her to do honor to
+the Sultan, because he was so great a prince and so strong a knight,
+and, withal, very noble; and to do honor to the Queen, _because she was
+a woman_; and to say that he trusted in God that thus they should send
+to her all those whom they took captive alive in the battles which
+awaited them.
+
+"The Count took them in charge, and, as the city was very near, they
+soon arrived at the palace. Then, coming into the presence of the
+Infanta, he delivered to her the prisoners, and gave the message with
+which he was intrusted. The Infanta replied to him,--
+
+"'Tell King Amadis that I thank him greatly for this present which he
+sends me,--that I am sure that the good fortune and great courage which
+appear in this adventure will appear in those which await us,--and that
+we are very desirous to see him here, that, when we discharge our
+obligation to his son, we may have him as a judge between us.'
+
+"The Count kissed her hand, and returned to the royal camp. Then the
+Infanta sent to the Empress, her mother, for a rich robe and head-dress,
+and, having disarmed the Queen, made her array herself in them; and she
+did the same for the Sultan, having sent for other robes from the
+Emperor, her father, and having dressed their wounds with certain
+preparations made by Master Helisabat. Then the Queen, though of so
+great fortune, was much astonished to see the great beauty of Leonorina,
+and said,--
+
+"'I tell you, Infanta, that in the same measure in which I was
+astonished to see the beauty of your cavalier, Esplandian, am I now
+overwhelmed, beholding yours. If your deeds correspond to your
+appearance, I hold it no dishonor to be your prisoner.'
+
+"'Queen,' said the Infanta, 'I hope the God in whom I trust will so
+direct events that I shall be able to fulfil every obligation which
+conquerors acknowledge toward those who submit to them.'"
+
+With this chivalrous little conversation the Queen of California
+disappears from the romance, and consequently from all written history,
+till the very _denouement_ of the whole story, where, when the rest is
+"wound up," she is wound up also, to be set a-going again in her own
+land of California. And if the chroniclers of California find no records
+of her in any of the griffin caves of the Black Canon, it is not our
+fault, but theirs. Or, possibly, did she and her party suffer shipwreck
+on the return passage from Constantinople to the Golden Gate? Their
+probable route must have been through the AEgean, over Lebanon and
+Anti-Lebanon to the Euphrates, ("I will sail a fleet over the Alps,"
+said Cromwell,) down Chesney's route to the Persian Gulf, and so home.
+
+After the Sultan and the Queen are taken prisoners, there are reams of
+terrific fighting, in which King Lisuarte and King Perion and a great
+many other people are killed; but finally the "Pagans" are all routed,
+and the Emperor of Greece retires into a monastery, having united
+Esplandian with his daughter Leonorina, and abdicated the throne in
+their favor. Among the first acts of their new administration is the
+disposal of Calafia.
+
+"As soon as the Queen Calafia saw these nuptials, having no more hope of
+him whom she so much loved, [Esplandian,] for a moment her courage left
+her; and coming before the new Emperor and these great lords, she thus
+spoke to them:--
+
+"'I am a queen of a great kingdom, in which there is the greatest
+abundance of all that is most valued in the world, such as gold and
+precious stones. My lineage is very old,--for it comes from royal blood
+so far back that there is no memory of the beginnings of it,--and my
+honor is as perfect as it was at my birth. My fortune has brought me
+into these countries, whence I hoped to bring away many captives, but
+where I am myself a captive. I do not say of this captivity in which you
+see me, that, after all the great experiences of my life, favorable and
+adverse, I had believed that I was strong enough to parry the thrusts of
+fortune; but I have found that my heart was tried and afflicted in my
+imprisonment, because the great beauty of this new Emperor overwhelmed
+me in the moment that my eyes looked upon him. I trusted in my
+greatness, and that immense wealth which excites and unites so many,
+that, if I would turn to your religion, I might gain him for a husband;
+but when I came into the presence of this lovely Empress, I regarded it
+as certain that they belonged to each other by their equal rank; and
+that argument, which showed the vanity of my thoughts, brought me to the
+determination in which I now stand. And since Eternal Fortune has taken
+the direction of my passion, I, throwing all my own strength into
+oblivion, as the wise do in those affairs which have no remedy, seek, if
+it please you, to take for my husband some other man, who may be the son
+of a king, to be of such power as a good knight ought to have; and I
+will become a Christian. For, as I have seen the ordered order of your
+religion, and the great disorder of all others, I have seen that it is
+clear that the law which you follow must be the truth, while that which
+we follow is lying and falsehood.'
+
+"When the Emperor had heard all this, embracing her with a smile, he
+said, 'Queen Calafia, my good friend, till now you have had from me
+neither word nor argument; for my condition is such that I cannot permit
+my eyes to look, without terrible hatred, upon any but those who are in
+the holy law of truth, nor wish well to such as are out of it. But now
+that the Omnipotent Lord has had such mercy on you as to give you such
+knowledge that you become His servant, you excite in me at once the same
+love as if the King, my father, had begotten us both. And as for this
+you ask, I will give you, by my troth, a knight who is even more
+complete in valor and in lineage than you have demanded.'
+
+"Then, taking by the hand Talanque, his cousin, the son of the King of
+Sobradisa,--very large he was of person, and very handsome withal,--he
+said,--
+
+"'Queen, here you see one of my cousins, son of the King whom you here
+see,--the brother of the King my father,--take him to yourself, that I
+may secure to you the good fortune which you will bring to him.'
+
+"The Queen looked at him, and finding his appearance good, said,--
+
+"'I am content with his presence, and well satisfied with his lineage
+and person, since you assure me of them. Be pleased to summon for me
+Liota, my sister, who is with my fleet in the harbor, that I may send
+orders to her that there shall be no movement among my people.'
+
+"The Emperor sent the Admiral Tartarie for her immediately, and he,
+having found her, brought her with him, and placed her before the
+Emperor. The Queen Calafia told her all her wish, commanding her and
+entreating her to confirm it. Her sister, Liota, kneeling upon the
+ground, kissed her hands, and said that there was no reason why she
+should make any explanation of her will to those who were in her
+service. The Queen raised her and embraced her, with the tears in her
+eyes, and led her by the hand to Talanque, saying,--
+
+"'Thou shalt be my lord, and the lord of my land, which is a very great
+kingdom; and, for thy sake, this island shall change the custom which
+for a very long time it has preserved, so that the natural generations
+of men and women shall succeed henceforth, in place of the order in
+which the men have been separated so long. And if you have here any
+friend whom you greatly love, who is of the same rank with you, let him
+be betrothed to my sister here, and no long time shall pass, before,
+with thy help, she shall be queen of a great land.'
+
+"Talanque greatly loved Maneli the Prudent, both because they were
+brothers by birth and because they held the same faith. He led him
+forth, and said to her,--
+
+"'My Queen, since the Emperor, my lord, loves this knight as much as he
+loves me, and as much as I love thee, take him, and do with him as you
+would do by me.'
+
+"'Then, I ask,' said she, 'that we, accepting your religion, may become
+your wives.'
+
+"Then the Emperor Esplandian and the several Kings, seeing their wishes
+thus confirmed, took the Queen and her sister to the chapel, turned them
+into Christians, and espoused them to those two so famous knights,--and
+thus they converted all who were in the fleet. And immediately they gave
+order, so that Talanque, taking the fleet of Don Galaor, his father, and
+Maneli that of King Cildadan, with all their people, garnished and
+furnished with all things necessary, set sail with their wives,
+plighting their faith to the Emperor, that, if he should need any help
+from them, they would give it as to their own brother.
+
+"What happened to them afterwards, I must be excused from telling; for
+they passed through many very strange achievements of the greatest
+valor, they fought many battles, and gained many kingdoms, of which if
+we should give the story, there would be danger that we should never
+have done."
+
+With this tantalizing statement, California and the Queen of California
+pass from romance and from history. But, some twenty-five years after
+these words were written and published by Garcia Ordonez de Montalvo,
+Cortes and his braves happened upon the peninsula, which they thought an
+island, which stretches down between the Gulf of California and the sea.
+This romance of Esplandian was the yellow-covered novel of their day;
+Talanque and Maneli were their Aramis and Athos. "Come," said some one,
+"let us name the new island California: perhaps some one will find gold
+here yet, and precious stones." And so, from the romance, the peninsula,
+and the gulf, and afterwards the State, got their name. And they have
+rewarded the romance by giving to it in these later days the fame of
+being godmother of a great republic.
+
+The antiquarians of California have universally, we believe, recognized
+this as the origin of her name, since Mr. Hale called attention to this
+rare romance. As, even now, there are not perhaps half a dozen copies of
+it in America, we have transferred to our pages every word which belongs
+to that primeval history of California and her Queen.
+
+
+
+
+THE BROTHER OF MERCY.
+
+
+    Piero Luca, known of all the town
+    As the gray porter by the Pitti wall
+    Where the noon shadows of the gardens fall,
+    Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down
+    His last sad burden, and beside his mat
+    The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat.
+
+    Unseen, in square and blossoming garden drifted,
+    Soft sunset lights through green Val d'Arno sifted;
+    Unheard, below the living shuttles shifted
+    Backward and forth, and wove, in love or strife,
+    In mirth or pain, the mottled web of life:
+    But when at last came upward from the street
+    Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet,
+    The sick man started, strove to rise in vain,
+    Sinking back heavily with a moan of pain.
+    And the monk said, "'T is but the Brotherhood
+    Of Mercy going on some errand good:
+    Their black masks by the palace-wall I see."--
+    Piero answered faintly, "Woe is me!
+    This day for the first time in forty years
+    In vain the bell hath sounded in my ears,
+    Calling me with my brethren of the mask,
+    Beggar and prince alike, to some new task
+    Of love or pity,--haply from the street
+    To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, with feet
+    Hushed to the quickened ear and feverish brain,
+    To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors,
+    Down the long twilight of the corridors,
+    'Midst tossing arms and faces full of pain.
+    I loved the work: it was its own reward.
+    I never counted on it to offset
+    My sins, which are many, or make less my debt
+    To the free grace and mercy of our Lord;
+    But somehow, father, it has come to be
+    In these long years so much a part of me,
+    I should not know myself, if lacking it,
+    But with the work the worker too would die,
+    And in my place some other self would sit
+    Joyful or sad,--what matters, if not I?
+    And now all's over. Woe is me!"--"My son,"
+    The monk said soothingly, "thy work is done;
+    And no more as a servant, but the guest
+    Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest.
+    No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost
+    Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt sit down
+    Clad in white robes, and wear a golden crown
+    Forever and forever."--Piero tossed
+    On his sick pillow: "Miserable me!
+    I am too poor for such grand company;
+    The crown would be too heavy for this gray
+    Old head; and God forgive me, if I say
+    It would be hard to sit there night and day,
+    Like an image in the Tribune, doing nought
+    With these hard hands, that all my life have wrought,
+    Not for bread only, but for pity's sake.
+    I'm dull at prayers: I could not keep awake,
+    Counting my beads. Mine's but a crazy head,
+    Scarce worth the saving, if all else be dead.
+    And if one goes to heaven without a heart,
+    God knows he leaves behind his better part.
+    I love my fellow-men; the worst I know
+    I would do good to. Will death change me so
+    That I shall sit among the lazy saints,
+    Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints
+    Of souls that suffer? Why, I never yet
+    Left a poor dog in the _strada_ hard beset,
+    Or ass o'erladen! Must I rate man less
+    Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness?
+    Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought be sin!)
+    The world of pain were better, if therein
+    One's heart might still be human, and desires
+    Of natural pity drop upon its fires
+    Some cooling tears."
+                         Thereat the pale monk crossed
+    His brow, and muttering, "Madman! thou art lost!"
+    Took up his pyx and fled; and, left alone,
+    The sick man closed his eyes with a great groan
+    That sank into a prayer, "Thy will be done!"
+
+    Then was he made aware, by soul or ear,
+    Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er him,
+    And of a voice like that of her who bore him,
+    Tender and most compassionate: "Be of cheer!
+    For heaven is love, as God himself is love;
+    Thy work below shall be thy work above."
+    And when he looked, lo! in the stern monk's place
+    He saw the shining of an angel's face!
+
+
+
+
+AMBASSADORS IN BONDS.
+
+
+Mr. Deane walked into church on Easter Sunday, followed by a trophy.
+This trophy had once been a chattel, but was now, as Mr. Deane assured
+him, a man. Scarcely a shade darker than Mr. Deane himself as to
+complexion, in figure quite as prepossessing, in bearing not less erect,
+he passed up the north aisle of St. Peter's to the square pew of the
+most influential of the wardens, who was also the first man of the
+Church Musical Committee.
+
+The old church was beautiful with its floral decorations on this
+festival. The altar shone with sacramental silver, and rare was the
+music that quickened the hearts of the great congregation to harmonious
+tunefulness. The boys in their choral, Miss Ives in her solos, above
+all, the organist, in voluntary, prelude, and accompaniment, how
+glorious! If a soul in the church escaped thankfulness in presence of
+those flowers, in hearing of that music, I know not by what force it
+could have been conducted that bright morning to the feet of Love. It
+was "a day of days."
+
+To the trophy of Deane this scene must have been strangely new. No
+doubt, he had before now sat in a church, a decorated church, a church
+where music had much to do with the service. But never under such
+circumstances had he stood, sat, knelt, taking part in the worship, a
+man among men. Of this Mr. Deane was thinking; and his brain, not very
+imaginative, was taxed to conceive the conception of freedom a man must
+obtain under precisely these circumstances.
+
+But the man in question was thinking thoughts as widely diverse from
+these attributed to him as one could easily imagine. Of himself, and his
+position, scarcely at all. And when he thought, he smiled; but the
+gravity, the abstraction into which he repeatedly lapsed, seemed to say
+for him that freedom was to him more than he knew what to do with. No
+volubility of joy, no laughter, no manifested exultation in deliverance
+from bondage: 't was a rare case; must one believe his eyes?
+
+Probably the constraint of habit was upon the fugitive, the contraband.
+Homesickness in spite of him, it might be. Oh, surely freedom was not
+bare to him as a winter-rifled tree? Not a bud of promise swelling along
+the dreary waste of tortuous branches? Possibly some ties had been
+ruptured in making his escape, which must be knit again before he could
+enter into the joy he had so fairly won. For you and me it would hardly
+be perfect happiness to feast at great men's tables, while the faces we
+love best, the dear, the sacred faces, grow gaunt from starvation.
+
+Mr. Deane took to himself some glory in consequence of his late
+achievements. He was a practical man, and his theories were now being
+put to a test that gave him some proud satisfaction. The attitude he
+assumed not many hours ago in reference to the organist has added to his
+consciousness of weight, and to-day he has taken as little pleasure as
+became him in the choir's performance. Now and then a strain besieged
+him, but none could carry that stout heart, or overthrow that nature,
+the wonder of pachydermata. Generally through the choral service he
+retained his seat; a significant glance now and then, that involved the
+man beside him, was the only evidence he gave that the music much
+impressed him; but this evidence, to one who should understand, was
+all-sufficient.
+
+Meanwhile the object of these glances sat apparently lost in vacuity, or
+patiently waiting the end of the services,--when all at once, during the
+hymn, he sprang to his feet; at the same moment two or three beside him
+felt as if they had experienced an electric shock. What was it? A voice
+joined the soprano singer in one single strain, brief as the best joy,
+but also as decisive. Ninety-nine hundredths of the congregation never
+heard it, and the majority of those that did could hardly have felt
+assured of the hearing; there were, in fact, but three persons among
+them all who were absolutely certain of their ears. One was this
+contraband; another an artist who stood at the foot of one of the
+aisles, leaning against a great stone pillar; the third was, of course,
+Sybella Ives.
+
+She, the soprano, sang from that moment in a seeming rapture. The artist
+listened in a sort of maze,--interpreting aright what he had heard,
+disappointed at its brevity, but waiting on in a kind of wonder through
+canticle, hymn, and gloria, in a deep abasement that had struck the
+singer dumb, could she above there have known what was going on here
+below.
+
+When the singing was over he went away as he had purposed, but it was
+only to the steps of the church. There he sat until he heard a stir
+within announcing that the services were ended, when he walked away. But
+the first person who had heard and understood that voice heard nothing
+after. He was continually waiting for it, but he had no further sign.
+Once his attention was for a moment turned towards the preacher, who was
+dwelling on St. Paul's allusion to himself as an ambassador in bonds; he
+looked at that instant towards Mr. Deane, who, it happened, was at the
+same moment gazing uneasily at him. After that his eyes did not wander
+any more, and from his impassive face it was impossible to discover what
+his thoughts might be.
+
+To go back now a day or two.
+
+
+II.
+
+A pleasant sound of young voices, that became subdued as the children
+passed from street to church-yard, rose from the shadowy elm-walk and
+floated up through the branches towards the window of the organist, who
+seemed to have been waiting some such summons, for she now threw aside
+the manuscript music she had been studying, arrayed herself in her
+shawl, threw a scarf around her head, and looked at the clock. Straight
+she gazed at it, a moment full, before she seemed instructed in the fact
+represented on the dial-plate, thinking still, most likely, of the score
+she had been revising. Some thought at least as profound, as
+unfathomable, and as immeasurable as was thereon represented, possessed
+her, as she now, with a glance around the room, retired from it.
+
+With herself in the apartment it was another sort of place from what it
+looked when she had left it.
+
+There were three pictures on the wall,--three, and no more. One was a
+copy of the lovely portraiture of Milton's musical inspired youth; the
+wonderful eyes, the "breezy hair," the impassioned purity of the
+countenance, looked down on the place where the musician might be found
+three-fourths of her waking hours, at her piano. In other parts of the
+room, opposite each other, were pictures of the Virgin ever-blessed!
+conquering, crowned.
+
+In the first she stood with foot upon the Serpent, that lay coiled on
+the apex of the globe. She had crushed the Destroyer; the world was free
+of its monster. Beneath her shone the crescent moon, whose horns were
+sharp as swords. Rays of blessing, streaming from her hands, revealed
+the Mother of grace and of all benefaction.
+
+Opposite, her apotheosis. A chariot of clouds was bearing her to her
+throne in heaven; the loving head was shining with a light that paled
+the stars above her; far down were the crags of earth, the fearful
+precipices that lead the weary and adventurous toiler to at last but
+narrow prospects. Far away now the conquered Devil, and the conquered
+world,--the foot was withdrawn from destructions,--the writhing of the
+Enemy was felt now no more.
+
+The organist had bought these pictures for her wall when she had paid
+her first month's board in this her present abiding-place.
+
+Towards the centre of the room stood her piano, an instrument of finest
+tone, whose incasing you would not be likely to admire or observe.
+
+White matting covered the floor. Heaps of music were upon the table and
+the piano. There were few books to indicate the taste or studies of the
+owner beside these sheets and volumes of music, and they were
+everywhere. All that ever was written for organ or piano seemed to have
+found its way in at the door of that chamber.
+
+On a pedestal in the window stood an orange-tree, whose blossoms filled
+the room with their bright, soft sweetness; a Parian vase held a bouquet
+of flowers, gathered, none could question whether for the woman whose
+room they decorated.
+
+One window of this room looked out on a busy street, another into the
+church-yard, a third upon the sea: not so remote the sea but one could
+hear the breaking of its waves, and watch its changing glory.
+
+Thus she had for "influences" the loneliness of the grave,--for the
+church-yard was filled with monuments of a past generation,--the
+solitude of the ocean, and the busy street. Was she so involved in
+duties, or in cares, as to be unmindful of all these diverse tongues
+that told their various story in that lofty and lonely apartment of the
+old stone house?
+
+Into the church, equally old and gray, covered with ivy, shadowed even
+to the roof by the vast branching and venerable trees, she now
+went,--and was not too early. The boys were growing restless, though it
+needed but the sound of her coming to reduce them all to silence: when
+they saw her enter the church-door, they all went down quietly to their
+places, opened their books, and no one could mistake their aspect for
+constraint. Here was the bright, beautiful, enthusiasm and blissful
+confidence of youth.
+
+A few words, and all were in working order. The organist touched the
+keys. Then a solemn softness, beautiful to see, overspread the young
+faces. It had never been otherwise since she began to teach them. If she
+controlled, it was not by exhibition of authority.
+
+"Begin."
+
+At that word, with one consent, the voices struck the first notes of the
+carol,--
+
+    "Let the merry church-bells ring,
+      Hence with tears and sighing;
+    Frost and cold have fled from spring,
+      Life hath conquered dying;
+    Flowers are smiling, fields are gay,
+      Sunny is the weather;
+    With our rising Lord to-day
+      All things rise together."
+
+From strain to strain they bore it along till the old church was glad.
+How must the birds in the nests of the great elm-branches have rejoiced!
+And the ivy-vines, did they not cling more closely to the gray stone
+walls, as if they, too, had something at stake in the music? for they
+were the children of the church who sang those strains. Among the
+wonder-working little company within there was no loitering, no
+laughing, no twitching of coat-sleeves on the sly, no malicious
+interruptions: all were alert, earnest, conscientious. They sang with a
+zeal that brought smiles to the face of the organist.
+
+Two or three songs, carols, anthems, and the lesson was over. Now for
+the reward. It came promptly, and was worth more than the gifts of
+others.
+
+"You have all done excellently well. I knew you would. If I had found
+myself mistaken, it would have been a great disappointment. 'T is a
+great thing to be able to sing such verses as if you were eye-witnesses
+of what you repeat. That is precisely what you do. Now you may go. Go
+quietly."
+
+She looked at them all as she spoke; it was a broad, comprehensive
+glance, but they all felt individualized by it. Then they came, the six
+lads, with their bright, handsome faces, pride of a mother's heart every
+one, and took her hand, and carried away, each one, her kiss upon his
+forehead. Not one of them but had been blest beyond expression in the
+few half-hours they had been gathered under the instruction of the
+organist. So they went off, carrying her precious praise with them.
+
+They had scarcely gone, and the organist was yet searching for a sheet
+of music, when a step was in the aisle, noiseless, rapid, and a young
+girl came into the singers' seat.
+
+"Am I too early?" she asked,--for her welcome was not immediate, and her
+courtesy was not just now of the quality that overlooked a seeming lack
+of it in others. Miss Ives was slightly out of tune.
+
+"Not at all," was the answer. Still it was spoken in a very preoccupied
+way that might have been provoking,--that would depend on the mood of
+the person addressed; and that mood, as we know, was not sun-clear or
+marble-smooth. The organist had now found the music she was looking for,
+and proceeded to play it from the first page to the last, without
+vouchsafing an instant's recognition of the singer's presence.
+
+When she had finished, she sat a moment silent; then she turned straight
+toward Miss Ives, and smiled, and it was a smile that could atone for
+any amount of seeming incivility.
+
+But not even David, by mere sweep of harp-string, soothed
+self-beleaguered Saul.
+
+Teacher and pupil did not seem to understand each other as it was best
+such women should. For, let the swaying, surging hosts throughout the
+valley deliver themselves as they can from the confusion of tongues, the
+wanderers among the mountains _ought_ to understand the signals _they_
+see flaring from crag and gorge and pinnacle.
+
+Too many shadowy folds were in the mystery that hung about each of these
+women to satisfy the other: reticence too cold, independence too
+extreme, self-possession too entire. Why was neither summoned, in a
+frank, impulsive way, to take up the burden of the other? Was nothing
+ever to penetrate the seven-walled solitude in which the organist chose
+to intrench herself? Was nobody ever to bid roses bloom on the colorless
+face of the singer, and bring smiles, the veritable smiles of youth, and
+of happiness, into those large, steady, joyless eyes?
+
+But now, while the organist played, and Sybella sat down, supposing she
+was not wanted yet, she found herself not withdrawn into the
+indifference she supposed. Presently far more was given than she either
+looked for or desired.
+
+The music that was being played was indeed wonderful. This was not for
+the delight of children: no happy sprite with dancing feet could
+maintain this measure. It was music for the most advanced, enlightened
+intelligence,--for the soul that music had quickened to far depths,--for
+the heart that had suffered, triumphed, and gained the kingdom of
+calm,--for a wisdom riper even than Sybella's.
+
+An audience of a hundred souls would infallibly have gabbled their way
+through the silence that would _naturally_ gather round those tones. Put
+Sybella in the midst of such an audience, and you would understand her
+better than I hope now to make her understood; for the torture of the
+moment would have been of the quality that has demonstration.
+
+As it was, she now sat silently, as silently as the organist sat in her
+place; but when all was over, she turned to look at the magician.
+Sybella had passed through fearful agitation in the beginning and
+throughout the greater part of the performance, but now she quietly
+said,--
+
+"That is the one sole composition of its author."
+
+"Why do you say so?" asked the organist, whom people in general called
+Miss Edgar.
+
+"Because, of course, everything is in it,--I mean the best of everything
+that could be in one soul. If the composer wrote more, it was
+fragmentary and repetitious. If you played it, Miss Edgar, to put me in
+a better voice for singing than I had when I came in, I think you have
+succeeded. I can almost imagine how Jenny Lind felt, when her voice came
+back to her."
+
+"We shall soon see that. I don't know that the music has ever been
+played on an organ before. But you see it is a rare production,--little
+known,--a book of the Law not read out of the sacred place. Let us try
+that prayer again. You will sing it differently to-day,--I see it in
+your face."
+
+_"Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us!"_
+
+Something _had_ happened to the voice that sang. Never had the organist
+heard such tones from it before; there was volume, depth, purity, such
+as had been unheard by those who thought they knew the quality and
+compass of Sybella's voice.
+
+The organist could not forbear turning and looking at her as she sang.
+Great, evidently, was her emotion. This nature that had been in bonds
+manifestly had eschewed the bondage. Was the organist glad thereat?
+Whose praise would be on everybody's lips on Sunday, if Sybella sang
+like this? Are women and men generally pleased to hear the praises of a
+rival? You have had full hearing, generous, more than patient; do you
+feel a thrill of the old rapture, a kindling of the old enthusiasm, when
+you hear the praises of the young new-comer, who has reached you with a
+stride, and will pass you at a bound? Since this may be in human nature,
+say "Yes" to the catechist. For the organist returned to her duties with
+a brightened face, she touched the keys with new power. Then, again,--
+
+_"Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father!"_
+
+Had this girl the vision--"Not far from any one of us"?
+
+"I thought so," said the organist. "You come forth at last. This is what
+I expected, when I overheard you instructing the children in the
+Sunday-school. Now all that is justified, but you have been a long while
+about it,--or I have. It seems the right chord wasn't struck. I made
+these adaptations on purpose for the voice I expected of you."
+
+"Is not the arrangement a new one, Mrs. Edgar?" asked a voice from one
+of the aisles. "It is perfect."
+
+"It is a new adaptation, Mr. Muir, and I think Miss Ives will hardly
+improve on her first rendering. It is getting late also. It is time to
+look at the hymn."
+
+Mr. Muir, who was the rector of the church, now passed along the aisle
+until he was beyond the voices of the ladies in the choir, and then he
+stood, during the rehearsal of the Easter hymn,--
+
+    "Christ the Lord is risen to-day."
+
+One repetition of these verses, and the rehearsal was at an end. Never
+was such before in that place. Never before in reality had organist of
+St. Peter's attempted so much. When the choir came together for an
+hour's practice, this would be understood. Miss Ives already understood
+it.
+
+"Now indulge _me_," she said, "if I have been so fortunate as to
+satisfy--satisfy you."
+
+In consequence of this request the organist kept her place till night
+had actually descended. Out of all oratorios, and from many an opera,
+she brought the immortal graces, and all conceivable renderings of
+passions, fears, and aspirations of men. At last, and as it seemed quite
+suddenly, she broke off, closed the organ-doors and locked them, then
+rose from her place.
+
+A dark figure at the same moment passed up the aisle from the church to
+the vestry-room in the rear, and organist and singer left the church.
+
+
+III.
+
+"I believe," said Sybella, as they went, venturing now, while aglow with
+the music, on what heretofore had been forbidden ground to her,--"I
+believe, if you would sing, I should be struck dumb, just as now, when
+you play, I feel as if I could do anything in song. Why do you never
+show me how a thing should be done by singing it? I've had teachers with
+voices hoarse as crows', who did it; and I profited, for I understood
+better what they meant. It seems to me to be the natural impulse, and I
+don't know how you control it; for of course you do control it."
+
+That was a venture, felt in all its venturesomeness, answered not with
+encouragement.
+
+"It is all nonsense," said Miss Edgar.
+
+"I expected you to say so; but 't is a scant covering for the truth. For
+_have_ I never heard you sing? When I was a little girl, my brothers and
+I were sent to some springs in the mountains. While we were there, one
+day a party of people came on horseback. They were very gay, and one of
+them sang. It has come back to me so often, that day! So still, bright,
+and cool! Did you ever hear singing in the Highland solitudes? When I
+sing my best, I always seem to hear that voice again. Do you think I
+never shall?"
+
+"Do _you_ think it possible that such an effect as you describe should
+be repeated? Evidently the outcome of some high-wrought, rapt state of
+your own, rather than the result of any singer's skill. It may happen
+you will never hear a voice like that again. But you may make far better
+melody yourself. If you like my organ-music, don't ask me for better. A
+little instrumental performance is all I have to give."
+
+"But," said Sybella, holding to the point with a persistence that showed
+she would not be lightly baffled, "her face haunted me, too. And I have
+seen it since then,--engraved, I am sure. Sometimes, when I look at you
+suddenly, I seem to take hold upon my childhood again."
+
+They had passed from the yard, and walked, neither of them knew exactly
+whither; but now said the organist abruptly,--
+
+"Why have you never shown me where you live?"
+
+A light that had warmth in it flashed over the pale face of Sybella.
+
+"I will show you now," she said.
+
+And so they walked on together, with a distinct aim,--Sybella the guide.
+She seemed tranquilly happy at this moment, and fain would she lay her
+heart in the hand of the organist; for a great trust had composed the
+heart that long since withdrew its riches from the world, and hid them
+for the coming of one who should take usury. How long he was in coming!
+how strangely long! rare worldliness! almost it seemed that now she
+would wait no longer, for the gold must be given away.
+
+"Why do you sing, Sybella?" asked Miss Edgar, as they went.
+
+"Why did I stop singing?" asked the young lady in turn; this stiff, shy,
+proud creature, what flame might one soon see flaring out of those blue
+eyes!
+
+"I knew there had been a break,--that there must have been."
+
+"For two years I did nothing but wait in silence."
+
+"What,--for the voice to come back? overwork? paying a penalty?"
+
+"No,--not the penalty of overwork, at least. I lost everything in a
+moment. That was penalty, perhaps, for having risked everything. I have
+only recently been getting back a little: no, getting _back_
+nothing,--but some new life, out of a new world, I think. A different
+world from what I ever thought to inhabit. New to me as the earth was to
+Noah after the Flood. He couldn't turn a spade but he laid open graves,
+nor pull a flower but it broke his heart. I should never have been in
+the church-choir but for you. Of that I am satisfied. When you came and
+asked me, you saw, perhaps, that I was excited more than so slight a
+matter warranted. It was, indeed, a simple enough request. Not
+surprising that you should discover, one way or another, I could sing.
+And there was need enough of a singer with such an organist. But you
+never could guess what I went through after I had promised, till the
+Sunday came. You remember how astonished you were when I came into the
+choir. I was afraid you were going to excuse me from my part. But you at
+least understood something of it; you did not even ask if I were not
+ill. It seems a long time since then."
+
+A little to the organist's surprise, it was into a broad and handsome
+street that Sybella now led the way, and before the door of a very
+handsome house she stopped.
+
+"Will you not come in and discover where I live, and how? It will be too
+late in a moment for you to go back alone. I shall find somebody to
+attend you."
+
+"In the ten months I have played the organ of St. Peter's Church I have
+not entered another person's dwelling than my own. I set aside a purpose
+that must still be rigidly held, for you. Possibly you may incur some
+danger in receiving me."
+
+"Come in," said Sybella; and she led the way into the house. For one
+instant she had looked her surprise at Miss Edgar's last words, but not
+for half an instant did she look the hesitation such words might have
+occasioned.
+
+The house into which they passed did not, in truth, look like one to
+suffer in. Walls lined with pictures, ceilings hung with costly
+chandeliers, floors covered with softest, finest carpets of most
+brilliant patterns, this seemed like a place for enjoyment, designed by
+happy hearts. It was: all this wealth, and elaboration of its
+evidences,--this covering of what might have looked like display by the
+careful veil of taste. But the house was the home of orphaned
+children,--of this girl, and three brothers, who were united in their
+love for Sybella, but on few other points. And curious was the
+revelation their love had. For they were worldly men, absorbed in
+various ways by the world, and Sybella lived alone here, as she said,
+though the house was the home of all; for one was now abroad, and one
+was in the army, and one was--who knew where?
+
+In the drawing-room it was about the piano that the evidences of real
+life and actual enjoyment were gathered. Flowers filled a dozen vases
+grouped on tables, ornamenting brackets, flower-stands, and pedestals of
+various kinds. The grand piano seemed the base of a glowing and fragrant
+pyramid; and there, it was easy to see, musical studies by day and by
+night went on.
+
+Straight toward the piano both ladies went.
+
+"Now, for once," said the organist.
+
+Sybella stood a moment doubting, then she turned to a book-rack and
+began to look over some loose sheets of music. Presently desisting, she
+came back. One steady purpose had been in her mind all the while. She
+now sat down and produced from the piano what the organist had
+astonished her by executing in the church. But it seemed a variation.
+
+The work of a moment? an effort of memory? a wonderful recall of what
+she had just now heard? The organist did not imagine such a thing. There
+was, there could be, only one solution to anything so mysterious. She
+came nearer to Sybella; invisible arms of succor seemed flung about the
+girl, who played as she had never played before,--as weeping mortals
+smile, when they are safe in heaven.
+
+When she had finished, many minutes passed before either spoke a word.
+At last Sybella said,--
+
+"He told me there was no written copy of this thing he could secure for
+me, but that I must have it; so he wrote it from memory, and I
+elaborated the idea I had from his description, making some mistakes, I
+find. I am speaking," she added, with a resolution so determined that it
+had almost the sound of defiance,--"I am speaking of Adam von Gelhorn."
+
+"When was this?"
+
+"In our last days."
+
+"He is dead, then?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long?"
+
+"Three years."
+
+Whether the organist remained here after this, or if other words were
+added to these by the hostess or the guest, there is no report. But I
+can imagine that in such an hour, even between these two, little could
+be said. Yesterday I saw on a monument a little bird perched, quite
+content, and still, so far as song went, as the dead beneath him and
+around me. He was throbbing from far flight; silence and rest were all
+he could now endure. But by-and-by he shook his wings and was off again,
+and nobody that saw him could tell where in the sea of air the voyager
+found his last island of refreshment.
+
+
+IV.
+
+On Miss Edgar's return to her room, as she opened the door, a flood of
+fragrance rolled upon her. She put up her hand in hasty gesture, as if
+to rebuke or resist it, while a shade of displeasure crossed her face.
+On the piano lay a bouquet of flowers, richest in hue and fragrance that
+garden or hot-house knows. All the season's splendor seemed concentrated
+within those narrow bounds.
+
+The gas was already burning from a single jet, which she approached
+without observing the unusual fact, for the organist was accustomed in
+this room herself to control light and darkness.
+
+One glance only was needed to convince her through what avenue this
+flowery gift had come.
+
+Such gifts were offerings of more than common significance. Their
+renewal at this day seemed to disturb the organist as she turned the
+bouquet slowly in her hand and perceived how the old arrangement had
+been adhered to, from passion-flower to camellia, whitest white lily,
+and most delicate of roses; moss and vine-tendril, jessamine,
+heliotrope, violet, ivy: it was a work of Art consummating that of
+Nature, and complete.
+
+With the bouquet in her hand, she went and sat down at the window. It
+was easy to see, by the changes of countenance, that she was fast
+assuming the reins of a resolution. Would the door of the organist of
+St. Peter's never open but to guests ethereal as these? The question was
+somehow asked, and she could not choose but hear it.
+
+If he who sent the gift had pondered it, no less did she. And for
+result, at an early hour the next morning, the lady who had lived her
+life in sovereign independence and an almost absolute solitude, week
+after week these many months here in H----, was on her way to the studio
+of Adam von Gelhorn.
+
+As to the lady, what image has the reader conjured up to fancy? Any
+vision? She was the shadow of a woman. Rachel, in her last days, not
+_more_ ethereal. Two pale-faced, blue-eyed women could not be more
+dissimilar than the organist and her soprano. For the organist plainly
+was herself, with merely an abatement, that might have risen from
+anxiety, work, or study; whatever her disturbance, she made no
+exhibition of it; it was always a tranquil face, and no storms or wrecks
+were discoverable in those deep blue eyes. What those few faint lines on
+her countenance might mean she does not choose you shall interpret;
+therefore attempt it not. But when you look at Sybella, it is sorrow you
+see; and she says as plainly as if you heard her voice,--
+
+"I have come to the great state where I expect nothing and am content."
+
+Yet _content_! _Is_ it content you read in her face, in her smile? Is it
+satisfaction that can gaze out thus upon the world?
+
+It is sorrow rather,--and sorrow, with a questioning thereat, that seems
+prophetic of an answer that shall yet overthrow all the grim deductions,
+and restore the early imaginings, pure hopes, desires, and loving aims.
+
+You will choose to gaze rather after this shadowy vision of the fair,
+golden hair that lies tranquilly on the high and beautiful forehead; the
+face, pale as pallor itself, which seems to have no color, except in
+eyes and lips: the eyes so large and blue; the lips with their story of
+firm courage and true genius, so grand in calm. A figure, however, not
+likely to attract the many, but whom it held for once it held forever.
+
+So the organist came to the room of Adam von Gelhorn.
+
+She knew his working hours and habits, it seemed; at least, she did not
+fail to find him, and at work.
+
+As she stepped forward into the apartment, before whose door she had
+paused a moment, no trace of embarrassment or of irresolution was to be
+seen in face, eye, or movement.
+
+But the artist, who arose from his work, _was_ taken by surprise.
+
+The armor of the world did not suffice to protect him at this moment. He
+was at the mercy of the woman who was here.
+
+"Mrs. Edgar!"
+
+"Adam."
+
+"Here!"
+
+"To thank you for the flowers, and to warn you that setting them in
+deserts is neither safe nor providential."
+
+And now her eyes ran round the room,--a flash in which was sheathed a
+smile of satisfaction and of friendly pride. She had come here full of
+reproaches, but surely there was some enchantment against her.
+
+"You will order a picture, perhaps?" said the artist, restored to at
+least an appearance of ease.
+
+But his eyes did not follow hers. They stopped with her: with some
+misgiving, some doubt, some perplexity, for he knew not perfectly the
+ground on which he stood.
+
+"You have been twice to see me, and both times have missed me," she
+said. "I was sorry for that. I did not know until then that you were
+living here."
+
+"But what does it mean, that nobody in H---- has heard the voice yet? It
+has distracted me to think, perhaps, some harm has come to it."
+
+"Let that fear rest. The voice has had its day. I left it behind me at
+Havre. Any repetition of what we used to imagine were triumphs in the
+wonderful Duesseldorf days would now seem absurd, to the painter of these
+pictures, as to me."
+
+"They were triumphs! Besides, have you forgotten? Was it not in New
+York, in '58, that you imported the voice from Havre, left behind by
+mistake? What more could be asked than to inspire a town with
+enthusiasm, so that the dullest should feel the contagion? They were
+triumphs such as women have seldom achieved. If _you_ disdain them,
+recollect that human nature is still the same, and all that I have done
+is under the inspiration of a voice that broke on me in Duesseldorf, and
+opened heaven. And people find some pleasure in my pictures."
+
+"Well may they! You, also. You have kept that power separate from
+sinners, unless I mistake. If it be my music, or the face yonder, that
+has helped you, or something else, unconfessed, perhaps unknown, you
+can, I perceive, at least love Art worthily, and be constant. As for St.
+Peter's, and myself, I find the fine organ there quite enough, with the
+boys to train and Miss Sybella Ives to instruct. It isn't much I can do
+for her, though; she is already a great and wonderful artist."
+
+"Is it possible you think so!"
+
+Was it really wonder at the judgment she heard in that exclamation? The
+voice sounded void of all except wonder,--yet wonder, perhaps, least of
+all was paramount in the pavilion of his secret thoughts.
+
+"Decidedly. But I only engaged there as organist. I find sufficient
+pleasure instructing the young lady, without feeling ambitious to appear
+there as her rival."
+
+"But you know she is not a professional singer": these words escaped the
+artist in spite of him. "She is an heiress of one of the wealthiest old
+families of this old town."
+
+"Nevertheless, she is growing so rarely in these days I would not for
+the world check that growth, as I see I might. Besides, I am selfish;
+it's best for _me_ to keep to my engagement, and not volunteer
+anything."
+
+"And so we who have memories must rest content with them. I am glad you
+tell me, if it must be so. I have not haunted you, and I feel as if I
+almost deserved your thanks on that account. I've haunted the church,
+though, but"----
+
+"Well."
+
+"Miss Ives sings better than she did,--too well for such a girl in such
+a place."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because, as I said before, neither Art nor fortune justifies her, and
+what she gets will spoil her."
+
+He ended in confusion; some thought unexpressed overthrew him just here,
+and he could not instantly gather himself up again.
+
+"Do not fear," was the calm answer. "She is sacredly safe from that,--as
+safe as I am. For so young a person, she is rich in safeguards, though
+she seems to be alone; and she is brave enough to use them. If you come
+to the church to-morrow, you will be converted from the error of some of
+your worst thoughts."
+
+"I told you in secret once, Heaven knows under what insane infatuation,
+what I could tell you now with husband or child for audience,--there is,
+there has ever been, but one voice for me."
+
+For answer the organist lifted the lid of the artist's piano, touched a
+few notes, and sang.
+
+Was that the voice that once brought out the applause of the people,
+rushing and roaring like the waves of the sea?
+
+The same, etherealized, strengthened,--meeting the desire of the trained
+and cultured man, as once it had the impassioned aspiration of youth.
+
+He stood there, as of old, completely subject to her will; and of old
+she had worked for good, as one of God's accredited angels. Every evil
+passion in those days had stood rebuked before the charmed circle of her
+influences: a voice to long for as the hart longs for the water-brooks;
+a spirit to trust for work, or for love, or for truth,--"truest truth,"
+and stanchest loyalty, as one might trust those who are delivered
+forever from the power of temptation.
+
+When she had ended the song, she had indeed ended. Not one note more.
+Closing the piano, she walked about the room, looking at his pictures
+one after another, pausing long before some, but the silence in which
+she made the circuit was unbroken.
+
+At last she came to the last-painted picture, where a soldier lay dying,
+with glory on his face, victory in his eyes. Beside this she remained.
+
+"There's many a realization of that dream," she said.
+
+The words seemed to sting the artist as though she had said instead,
+"Here's one who is in no danger of realizing it."
+
+"I thought," said he, "I might one day prove for myself the emotions
+attributed to that soldier."
+
+She hesitated before answering. A vision rose before her,--a vision of
+fields covered with the slain, unburied dead. Here the paths of honor
+were cut short by the grave. She looked at Adam von Gelhorn. Here was no
+warrior except for courage, no knight but for chivalry. Yet how proudly
+his eyes met hers! What was this glance that seemed suddenly to fall
+upon her from some unbroken, awful height? It was a great thing to say,
+with the knowledge that came with that glance,--
+
+"Do you no longer think so? Patriotism has its tests. This war will be
+long enough to sift enthusiasms."
+
+Humbly he answered,--
+
+"I wait my time."
+
+Then, urged on by two motives, distinct, yet confluent, and so
+all-powerful,--
+
+"Strange army, Adam, if all the soldiers waited for it."
+
+He answered her as mildly as before, but with quite as deep assurance,--
+
+"Not a man of them but has heard his name called. The time of a man is
+his own. The trumpet sounds, and though he were dead, yet shall he
+live."
+
+"And do you wait that sound? Then verily you may remain here safely, and
+paint fine pictures of wounded men on awful battle-fields."
+
+The artist looked at the woman. Did she speak to test his patience, or
+his courage, or his loyalty? Gravely he answered, true to himself,
+though baffled in his endeavor to read what she chose to conceal,--
+
+"Once I took everything you said as if you were inspired, for I believed
+you were. For years I have been accustomed to think of your approval,
+and wait for it, and long for it; for I always knew you would finally
+stand here in the midst of my work as the one thing that should prove to
+me it was good. If you could only know what sort of value I have set on
+the praise of critics while waiting for yours, you would deem me
+ungrateful. But I knew you would come. You are here, then,--and I
+perceive, though you do not say so, that I have not wasted time; often,
+while I was painting that hero yonder, I said to myself, 'Better die
+than hold on to life or self a moment after the voice calls!' Julia, it
+has called!"
+
+This was spoken quietly enough, but with the deep feeling that seeks
+neither outlet nor consolation in sound. Having spoken, he went up to
+his easel, cut away the canvas with long, even knife-strokes, set aside
+the frame. He was ready. And now he waited further orders,--looking at
+the woman who had accomplished so much.
+
+She did not, by gesture or word, interrupt him; but when he stood
+absolutely motionless and silent, as if more were to be said, and by
+her, she evidently faltered.
+
+"Give me the canvas," she said.
+
+"Your trophy."
+
+He gave it her with a smile.
+
+"No; but if a trophy, worth more than could be told.
+There's nobler work for you to do than painting pictures.
+Atonement,--reconciliation,--sacrifice."
+
+"Where? when? how?"
+
+He put these questions with a distinctness that required answer.
+
+"Your heart will tell you."
+
+He _had_ his answer.
+
+"And the portrait yonder, that will tell you. It is not hers, you will
+say. But it is not mine, nor a vision, except as you have glorified her.
+In spite of yourself, you are true. And in spite of herself, Sybella
+believes in you."
+
+"Such a collection of incoherent fragments from the lips of an artist
+accustomed to treat of unities,--it is incomprehensible."
+
+So the painter began; but he ended,--
+
+"When I come back from battle, I will think of what you say. I do
+believe in my own integrity as firmly as I trust my loyalty."
+
+There was a rare gentleness in the man's voice that seemed to say that
+mists were rising to envelop the summits of the mountains, and he looked
+forth, not to the bald heights, but along the purple heather-reaches,
+where any human feet might walk, finding pleasant paths, fair flowers,
+cool shades, and blessed reflections of heaven.
+
+
+V.
+
+The rector of St. Peter's sat in the vestry-room, which he used for his
+study, when there came an interruption to the even tenor of his orthodox
+thinking.
+
+Whoever sought him did so with a determination that carried the various
+doors between him and the study, and at last came the knock, of which he
+sat in momentary dread. It expressed the outsider so imperatively, that
+the minister at once laid aside his pen, and opened the door. And, alas!
+it was Saturday, P. M.,--Easter at hand!
+
+He should have been glad, of course, of the cordial hand-grasp with
+which his stanch supporter, Gerald Deane, saluted him; but he had been
+interrupted in necessary work, and his face betrayed him. It told
+unqualified surprise, that, at such an hour, he had the honor of a visit
+from the warden.
+
+The warden, however, was absorbed in his own business to an extent that
+prevented him from seeing what the minister's mood might be. He began to
+speak the moment he had thrown himself into the arm-chair opposite Mr.
+Muir.
+
+"Do you know," said he, "what sort of person we've got here in our
+organist?"
+
+Indignant was the speaker's voice, and indignant were his eyes; he spoke
+quick, breathed hard, showed all the signs of violent emotion.
+
+The minister's bland face had a puzzled expression, as he answered,--
+
+"A first-rate musician, Deane,--and a lady. That's about the extent of
+my information."
+
+"A Rebel! and the wife of a Rebel!" was Deane's wrathful answer.
+
+Hitherto, what had he not said or done in the way of supporting the
+organist?
+
+"A Rebel?" exclaimed the minister, thrown suddenly off his guard.
+
+He might have heard calumny uttered against one under his tender care by
+the way that single word burst from him.
+
+"The wife of a Rebel general, and a spy!"
+
+Deane's voice made one think of the Inquisition, and of inevitable
+forfeitures, unfailing executions of unrelenting judgments.
+
+"For a spy, she makes poor use of her advantages," said the minister.
+"She's never anywhere, that I can learn, except in the church and her
+own room."
+
+"I dare say anybody will believe that whom she chooses to _have_ believe
+it. How do you or I know what she is? or where? or what she does? We're
+not the kind of men for her to take into confidence. She is evidently
+shrewd enough to see that it wouldn't be safe to tamper with _us_! But
+we must get rid of her, or we shall have the organ demolished and the
+church about our ears. Let the mob once suspect that we employ a spy
+here to do our music for us, and see what our chance would be! There's
+no use asking for proof. There's a young man in my storehouse, a
+contraband, who recognized her somewhere in the street this morning, and
+_he_ says she is the wife of the Rebel General Edgar; and if it's true,
+and there's no question about that, _I_ say she ought to be arrested."
+
+"Pooh! pooh!"--the minister was thrown off his guard, and failed to
+estimate aright the kind of patriotism he bluffed off with so little
+ceremony;--"the negro"----
+
+"Negro! face as white as mine, Sir! Well, yes, negro, I suppose,--slave,
+any way,--do you want him summoned in here? Do you want to see him? He
+gives his testimony intelligently enough. Or shall we send for Mrs.
+Edgar? For it's high time _she_ were thrown on her own resources,
+instead of being maintained at our expense for the benefit of the
+enemy."
+
+Precisely as he finished speaking sounded a peal from the great organ,
+and Mr. Deane just half understood the look on the minister's face as he
+turned from him to listen.
+
+A better understanding would have kept him silent longer; but, unable to
+control himself, he said,--
+
+"We're buying that at too high a price. Better go back to drunken
+Mallard,--a great sight better. McClellan would tell us so; so would
+Jeff Davis."
+
+"What can be done?" asked the minister.
+
+Never had that good man looked and felt so helpless as at this moment.
+His words, and still more his look, vexed and surprised the ever-ready
+Deane.
+
+"Exactly what would be done, if the woman played fifty times worse, and
+looked like a beggar. A medium performer with an ugly visage would not
+find us stumbling against duty. No respect should be shown to persons,
+when such a charge is brought up. The facts must be tested, and Miss
+Edgar--What's the reason she never owned she was a Mrs.?"
+
+"Why, Deane, did you ever hear me address her or speak of her in any
+other way? I knew she was a married woman."
+
+"Did you know she had a husband living, too?"
+
+"No."
+
+Mr. Muir spoke as if it were beneath him to suppose that use was to be
+made, to the damage of the woman, of such acknowledgment.
+
+"It don't look well that people in general are ignorant of the fact. I
+tell you it's suspicious. It strikes me I never heard _anybody_ call
+her anything but Miss Edgar. Excuse me; of course you knew better."
+
+"Yes, and some beside myself. She told me she was a married woman. But
+really, Deane, we couldn't expect, especially of a woman who has been
+living for months, as it seems to me, in absolute retirement, that she
+should go about making explanations in regard to her private affairs. I
+have inferred, I confess, that she had in some unfortunate manner
+terminated her union with her husband; and I have always hoped that her
+coming here might prove a providential, happy thing,--that somehow she
+might find her way out of trouble, and resume, what has evidently been
+broken off, a peaceful and happy life. She is familiar with happiness."
+
+"Well, Sir!" Deane exploded on the preacher's mildness, of which he had
+grown in the last few seconds terribly impatient, "I don't know how far
+Christian charity may go,--a great way farther, it seems, than it need
+to, if it will submit to the impertinence of a traitor's coming among us
+and accepting our support, at the same time that she takes advantage of
+her sex and position to betray us. For _that_ business stands just where
+it did before. There isn't the slightest doubt that she will find
+abettors enough who are as false and daring and impudent as herself.
+Whether we shall suffer them is a question, it seems. Excuse my plain
+speaking, but I am surprised all round."
+
+"No more than I am, Mr. Deane. It is, as you say, our duty immediately
+to examine into this business; but we cannot, look at it as you will, we
+cannot do so with too much caution. It is a disagreeable errand for a
+man to undertake. Let us at least defer judgment for the present. I will
+speak to Mrs. Edgar about it myself, and communicate the result
+immediately to you. Do you prefer to remain here till I return?"
+
+He arose as he spoke, but Deane rose also. It had at last penetrated the
+brain of this most shrewd, but also very dull man, that the business
+might be conducted with courtesy, and that a little skill might manage
+it as effectually as a good deal of courage.
+
+"No, no," he said; "he could trust the business to the minister. Liked
+to do so, of course. If there was any shame or remorse in the woman, Mr.
+Muir was the proper person to deal with it."
+
+And so Deane retired.
+
+But when he was gone, the minister stood listening to his departing
+steps as long as they could be heard; then he sat down in his
+study-chair, and seemed in no haste to go about the business with which
+he stood commissioned.
+
+Still the organ-music wandered through the church. Prayer of Moses,
+Miserere, De Profundis, the Voice of One crying in the Wilderness, a
+Song in the Night, the darkness of desolation rifted only by the cry for
+deliverance, tragic human experience, exhausted human hope, and dying
+faith,--he seemed to interpret the sounds as they swept from the
+organ-loft and wandered darkly down the nave among the great stone
+pillars, till they stood, a dismal congregation, at the low door of the
+vestry-room, pleading with him for her who sent them thither, and
+astounding him by the hot calumniation that preceded them.
+
+At last, for he was a man to _do_ his duty, in spite of whatsoever
+shrinking,--and if this accusation were true, it would be indeed hard to
+forgive, impossible to overlook the offence,--the minister walked out
+from the vestry into the church.
+
+The organist must have heard him coming, for she broke off suddenly, and
+dismissed the boy who worked the bellows, at the same moment herself
+rising to depart.
+
+Just then the minister ascended the steps that led into the choir.
+
+She had no purpose to remain a moment, and merely paused for civil
+speech, choosing, however, that he should see she was detained.
+
+He did not accept the signs, and, with his usual grave deference to the
+will of others in things trivial, allow her to pass. He said,
+instead,--
+
+"Mrs. Edgar, I wish you might give me a moment, though I do not see how
+what I have undertaken can be said in that length of time. I choose that
+you should hear from one who wishes you nothing but good the strange
+story that troubles me."
+
+"I remain, Mr. Muir," was the answer; and she sat down.
+
+The subject was too disagreeable for him to dally with it. If the charge
+were a true one, no consideration was due; if untrue, the sooner that
+was made apparent, the better.
+
+"It is said that the organist of St. Peter's is not as loyal a citizen
+of the United States as might be hoped by those who admire and trust her
+most; and not only so, but that she is the wife of a Rebel leader, and
+in communication with Rebels. It sounds harsh, but I speak as a friend.
+I do not credit these things; but they're said, and I repeat them to
+relieve others of what they might deem a duty."
+
+Swiftly on his words came her answer.
+
+"You have not believed it, Sir?"
+
+Looking at her, it was the easiest thing for the minister to feel and
+say,--and, oh, how he wished for Deane!--
+
+"Not one word of it, Madam."
+
+"That is sufficient,--sufficient, at least, for me. But do they, does
+any one, desire that I should take the oath of fealty to the
+Constitution and to the Government? I am ready to do either, or both. I
+hardly reverence the Constitution more than I do the man who is at the
+head of our affairs. To me he is the hero of this age."
+
+The minister smiled,--a cordial smile, right trustful, cordial, glad.
+
+"It may be well," said he. "These are strange days to live in, and we
+all abhor suspicion of our loyalty. Besides, it may be necessary; for
+suspicion of this character is an ungovernable passion now. For myself,
+I should never have asked these questions; but it is merely right that
+you should know the whole truth. A person who reports of himself that he
+has escaped from Charleston avers that he has recognized in the organist
+of St. Peter's the wife of General Edgar. I don't know the man's name.
+But his statement has reached me directly. I give you information I
+might have withheld, because I perfectly trust both the citizen and the
+lady who has rendered us such noble service here."
+
+"And such trust, I may say, is my right. I shall not forfeit it," said
+the organist, rising. "I am ready, at any time, to take the oath, and to
+bear my own responsibilities, Mr. Muir. I have neither fellowship nor
+communication with Rebels, and I deem it a strange insult to be called a
+spy. 'T is a great pity one should stay here to vex himself with puerile
+gossip."
+
+She pointed to the stained windows emblazoned with sacred symbols,
+glorious now with sunlight, bowed, and was gone.
+
+
+VI.
+
+There came, on Easter night, to the door of the organist's apartment,
+the "contraband" who at present was sojourning under the protection of
+Mr. Gerald Deane.
+
+The hour was not early. Evening service was over, and Julius had waited
+a reasonable length of time, that his errand might be delivered when she
+should be at leisure. He might safely have gone at once; for guests
+never came at night, and rarely by day,--the organist's wish being
+perfectly understood among the very few with whom she came in contact,
+and she being consequently "let alone" with what some might have deemed
+"a vengeance." But it satisfied her, and no other dealing would.
+
+Either this man--Julius Hopkins was his name--had not so recently come
+to H---- as to be a stranger in any quarter of the town, or he had made
+use of his time here; for he seemed familiar with the streets and alleys
+as an old resident.
+
+To find the organist was not difficult, when one had come within sight
+of the lofty spire of the church, for it was under its shadow she
+lived; but if he had been accustomed to carry messages to her door for
+years, he could not now have presented himself with fuller confidence as
+to what he should find.
+
+When Mrs. Edgar opened the door, not a word was needed, as if these were
+strangers who stood face to face. In her countenance, indeed, was
+emotion,--unmeasured surprise; in her manner, momentary indecision. But
+the surprise passed into a lofty kindliness of manner, and the
+indecision gave place to the most entire freedom from embarrassment. She
+cut short the words he began to speak with an authoritative, though most
+quiet,--
+
+"Julius, come in."
+
+It was not as one addresses the servant of a friend, but spoken with an
+authority which the man instantly acknowledged by obedience. He came
+into the room, closed the door, and waited till she should speak. She
+asked,--
+
+"Why are you here?"
+
+He answered as if unaware that any great change had taken place in their
+relations.
+
+"My master sent me. At last I have found my mistress. It took me a great
+while."
+
+"Is your master still in arms?"
+
+The man bowed.
+
+"Against the Government?"
+
+"_He_ says, _for_ the Government."
+
+"Of Rebels?"
+
+He bowed again.
+
+"Then, there is no answer,--can be none. Did he not foresee it?"
+
+The slave did not answer. What words that he came commissioned to speak
+could respond to the anguish her voice betrayed? She spoke again; she
+had recovered from the surprise of her distress, and, looking now at
+Julius, said,--
+
+"You are excused from replying; but--you do not, in any event, propose
+to return home?"
+
+"Yes, Madam, yes,--immediately, immediately."
+
+It was the first time he had discovered this purpose, and he did so with
+a vehemence expressive of desire to vindicate himself where he should be
+understood. She answered slowly, but she did not seem amazed, as Deane
+would infallibly have been, as you and I had been,--such doubting
+worshippers, after all, of the great heroic.
+
+"Do you not hear, Julius, everywhere, that you are a freeman? Is it
+possible no one has told you so? Do you not know it for yourself? It is
+likely."
+
+"It don't signify. I tended him through one course,--he got a bad cut,
+Master did,--and I'll take care of him again. I a'n't through till he
+is."
+
+"Is he well?"
+
+"Thanks to me, and the Lord, he _is_ well of the wound again, and gone
+to work."
+
+At the pause that now ensued, as if he had only been waiting for this,
+the slave approached nearer to his mistress; but he did not lift his
+eyes,--he desired but to serve. She was so proud, he thought,--always
+was; if he could only get _himself_ out of the way, and let this ugly,
+cruel business right itself without a witness! Master knew how to plead
+better than any one could for him. He produced a tiny case of
+chamois-leather.
+
+"Master sent you this," he said; and it seemed as if he would have given
+it into her very hands; but they were folded; so he laid it on the edge
+of the piano, and stepped back a pace. He knew there was no need for him
+to explain.
+
+Well she understood. Her husband had done his utmost to secure a
+reconciliation. Love had its rights, its sacrifices; with these she had
+to do, and not with his official conduct and public acts.
+
+She knew well what that trifle of a chamois case contained. It was the
+miniature of their child, the little one of earth no more, but
+heaven-born: the winged child, with the flame above its head,--symbols
+with which, of old, they loved to represent Genius. This miniature was
+set in diamonds; it was the mother's gift to the father of the child:
+this woman's gift to the man whom loyal men to-day call traitor, rebel,
+alien, enemy.
+
+And thus he appealed to her. Oh, tender was the voice! This love that
+called had in its utterances proof that it held by its immortality. The
+love that pleaded with her appealed to recollections the most sacred,
+the most dear, the perpetual,--knowing what was in her heart, knowing
+how _it_ would respond.
+
+But there, where Julius left the miniature, it lay; a letter beside it
+now, and a purse of gold,--pure gold,--not a Confederate note among it.
+
+Poor Julia Edgar! she need not open the case that shone with such starry
+splendor. Never could be hidden from her eyes the face of the child. How
+should she not see again, in all its beauty, the garden where her
+darling had played, little hands filled full of blooms, little face
+whose smiling was as that of angels, butterflies sporting around her as
+the wonderful one of old flitted about St. Rose,--alas! with as sure a
+prophecy as that black and golden one? How clearly she saw again,
+through heavy clouds of tears that never broke, the garden's glory, all
+its peace, its happiness, its pride, and love!
+
+No argument, no word, could have pleaded for the father of the child
+like this. But it was love pleading against love,--Earth's beseeching
+and need, against Heaven's warning and sufficience.
+
+At last she spoke again.
+
+"What is your reward, Julius, for all this danger you've incurred for
+him, and for me?"
+
+"He said it should be my liberty."
+
+How he spoke those words! LIBERTY! it was the golden dream of
+the man's life, yet he named it with a self-control that commanded her
+admiration and reverence.
+
+"I give it to you at this moment, here!" she said.
+
+For an instant the slave seemed to hesitate; but the hesitation was of
+utterance merely, not of will.
+
+"My errand isn't half done, Madam. I never broke my word yet. I'll go
+back."
+
+"Tell him, then, that I gave you your freedom, and you would not accept
+it. And--_go_ back! 't is a noble resolve, worthy of you. Take the
+purse. I do not need it. Say that I have no need of it. And you will,
+perhaps."
+
+No other message for him? Not one word from herself to him! For she knew
+where safety lay.
+
+The slave looked at her, helpless, hopeless, with indecision. The woman
+was incomprehensible. He had set out on his errand, had persevered
+through difficulties, and had withstood temptations too many to be
+written here, with not a doubt as to the success that would attend him.
+He remembered the wife of General Edgar in her home; to that home of
+happy love and noble hospitality, and of all social dignities, he had no
+doubt he should restore her. But now, humbled by defeat, he said,--
+
+"I've looked a great while for you, Madam. I would never 'a' give up,
+though, if I'd gone to Maine or Labrador, and round by the Rocky
+Mountains, hunting for you. I heard you singing in the church this
+morning, and I knew your voice. Though it didn't sound natural
+right,--but I knew it was nobody else's voice,--as if the North mostly
+hadn't agreed with it. And I heard it yesterday somewhere,--that's what
+'sured me. I was going along the street, when I heard it; but it was not
+this house you were in."
+
+"And it was you, then, Julius, who betrayed me to the person who
+supposes himself to be your protector,--and this because you thought
+surely I must be glad to return, when I had lost my friends here through
+ill report! Is that the way your war is carried on?"
+
+"My war, Madam?"
+
+But Julius did not look at his mistress; he looked away, and shrugged
+his shoulders. The device of which he was convicted had seemed to him so
+good, so sure, nevertheless had failed.
+
+She had scarcely finished speaking, when a note was brought to the door.
+It was from Adam von Gelhorn.
+
+     "I am making my preparations to go at nine to-morrow," said the
+     note. "Will you come to the church before? I would like to
+     remember having seen you there last, at the organ. There's a
+     bit of news just reached me, said to be a secret. General
+     Edgar's command aims at preventing the junction of our forces
+     before Y----. He is strong enough, numerically, to overthrow
+     either division in separate conflict, and this is his
+     Napoleonic strategy. But he will be outwitted. There's no doubt
+     of it. Do not despair of our cause, whatever you hear during
+     the coming fortnight. I shall report myself immediately to
+     McClellan, and he may make a drummer-boy of me, if he will.
+     Henceforth I am at his service till the war ends.
+
+    "VON G----."
+
+Thrice she read this note; when her eyes lifted at last, Julius was
+still standing where she had left him. She started, seeing him, as if
+his presence there at the moment took a new significance; her heart
+fainted within her.
+
+Had _he_ heard this secret of which Von Gelhorn spoke? It was her
+husband's _life_ that was in jeopardy!
+
+"When are you going, Julius?" she asked.
+
+"To-morrow. Oh, Madam, give me some word for him!"
+
+Red horror of death, how it rises before her sight! She shuddered,
+cowered, sank before the blackness of darkness that followed fast on
+that terrific spectacle of carnage, before which a whirlwind seemed to
+have planted her. She heard the cries and yells, the groans and curses
+of bleeding, dying men; saw banners in the dust, horsemen and horses
+crushed under the great guns, mortality in fragments, heaps upon heaps
+of ruin on the field Aceldama.
+
+Where was he? Who would search among the slain for him? Who from among
+the dying would rescue him? Who will stanch his bleeding wounds? Who
+will moisten his parched lips? Whose voice sound in the ears that have
+heard the roar of guns amid the crash of battle? What hand shall bathe
+and fan that brow? What eyes shall watch till those eyelids unlock, and
+catch the whisper of those lips? Nay, who will save his life from the
+needless sacrifice? tell him that his plans are known, warn him back,
+warn _him_ of spies and of treachery? Has Julius betrayed him?
+
+She looked at the slave. But before she looked, her heart reproached her
+for having doubted him.
+
+"You will need this gold," she said. "Take it. Restore the miniature to
+your master. And go,--go at once. If success be in store for _him_, I
+share not the shame of it. If defeat, adversity, sickness,--your master
+knows his wife fears but one thing, has fled but from one thing. Her
+heart is with him, but she abhors the cause to which he has given
+himself. She will not share his crime."
+
+Difficult as these words were to speak, she spoke them without
+faltering, and they admitted no discussion.
+
+The slave lingered yet longer, but there was no more that she would say.
+Assured at last of that, he said,--
+
+"I obey you," and was gone.
+
+He was gone,--gone! and she had betrayed nothing,--had given no
+warning,--had uttered not a word by which the life that was of all lives
+most precious to her might have been saved!
+
+
+VII.
+
+By eight o'clock next morning Mrs. Edgar was in the church. Von Gelhorn
+preceded her by five minutes; he was walking up the aisle when she
+entered, impatient for her appearing, eager to be gone,--wondering,
+boy-like, that she came not.
+
+He has performed a prodigious amount of labor since they last met. His
+pictures were all removed to the Odeon, he said. His studio, haunt of
+dreams, beloved of fame so long, stripped and barren, looked like any
+other four-walled room,--and he, a freeman, stood equipped for service.
+
+Yes, an hour would see him speeding to the capital. In less time than it
+had taken him to perfect his arrangements he should be at the
+head-quarters of the commander-in-chief,--to be made a drummer-boy of,
+as he said before, or serve wherever there should be room for him.
+
+He stood there so bright, so ready, eager, daring, was capable of so
+much! What had _she_ done to usurp the functions of conscience, and
+assume the voice of duty? She had done what she could not revoke, and
+yet could not contemplate without a sort of terror,--as if to atone, to
+make amends for disloyalty, which, coming even as from herself, a crime
+in which she had chief concernment, was not to be atoned for by
+repentance merely, nor by any sacrifices less than the costliest. She
+had sought her husband's peer,--deemed that she had found
+him,--therefore would despatch him to the battle-field, by valor to meet
+the valiant. But now the light by which she had hurried forward to that
+deed was gone, and she stood as a prophetess may, who, deserted of the
+divinity, doubts the testimony of her hour of exaltation.
+
+While they talked,--both apparently standing at an elevation of serene
+courage above the level of even warring men and heroic women, but one
+causing such misgiving in her heart as to fix her in that mood, and
+forbid an extrication,--Fate led a lady down the street, who, passing by
+the church and seeing the door ajar, went in. She should find in the
+choir some written music, used in yesterday's services, which she had
+forgotten to bring away. Out of the pure, bright sunshine she stepped
+into the dark, cold shadows, and had come to the choir before she heard
+the voices speaking there. Shrined saints that hold your throne-like
+niches in the old stone walls! gilded cherubim that hover round the
+organ's burnished pipes! what sight do you look down upon? She walked up
+quietly,--it was her way, a noiseless, gliding way,--there stood the
+organist and Adam von Gelhorn! As if hell had made a revelation, she
+stood looking at those two. And both saw her, and neither of the three
+uttered one word, or essayed a motion, till she, quietly, it seemed,
+though it was with utmost violence, turned to go again.
+
+Then--soft the voice sounded, but to her who spoke there was thunder in
+it--the organist called after her, "Sybella!"
+
+She, however, did not turn to answer, neither did she falter in going.
+Departure was the one thing of which she was capable,--and what could
+have hindered her going? What checks Vesuvius, when the flood says, "Lo,
+I come!"? Or shall the little bird that perches and sings on a post in
+the Dismal Swamp prevent the message that sweeps along the wire for a
+thousand miles?
+
+Von Gelhorn, disturbed by her coming and departure, in that so slight
+vibration of air caused by her advance and her retreat, swayed as a reed
+in the wind, stood for a moment seeking equipoise. Vain endeavor!
+
+Not with inquiry, neither for direction, his eyes fell on Julia Edgar.
+
+"Go," she said.
+
+She said it aloud; no utterance could have been more distinct. He strode
+after Sybella.
+
+She heard him come, but did not pause, or turn, or falter. He came
+faster, gained upon, and overtook her. It was just there by the
+church-door. And then he spoke. But not like a warrior. It was a hoarse
+whisper she heard, and her name in it. At _that_ call she turned. When
+she saw his face, she stood.
+
+Why avert her face, indeed, or why go on?
+
+"I am going away,--in search of death, perhaps. I don't know. But to
+battle. Will you not come back and listen one moment?"
+
+She stood as if she could stand. Why did he plead but for one moment?
+Battle! before that word she laid down her weapons. Under that glare of
+awful fire the walls of ice melted, as never iceberg under tropic sun.
+
+Battle! One out of the world who had been so long out of _her_ world!
+Out of her world? So is beauty dead and past all resurrection of a
+surety, when the dismal winds of March howl over land and sea!
+
+"Yesterday," he said, "I came to church. Not to hear you, but I heard
+you. You conquered me. I was giving a word for you to your friend and
+mine, when God led you in here. Do not try to thwart Him. We have tried
+it long enough. If you should go into my studio,--no, there's no such
+place now, but if you went into the Odeon, you would see some faces
+there that would tell you who has haunted my dreams and my heart these
+years. Forgive me now that I'm going away. Let me hear you speak the
+very word, Sybella."
+
+How long must sinner call on God before he sees the smile of Love making
+bright the heavens, glad the earth, possible all holiness, probable all
+blessing? For He has built no walls, fastened no bars and bolts, blasted
+no present, cursed no future. If Love be large, rich, free, strong
+enough, it brings itself with one swift bound into the Heavenly Kingdom
+where the Powers of Darkness have almost prevailed.
+
+When Mrs. Edgar saw these two coming up the aisle together, she
+understood, and, turning full towards them, sang a song such as was
+never heard before within those old gray walls.
+
+
+VIII.
+
+Mr. Muir was but a man. Powerful indeed in his way, but it was behind
+his pulpit-desk, with a sermon in his hands, his congregation before
+him,--or in carrying out any charitable project, or in managing the
+business specially devolving on him. He was nobody when he emerged from
+his own distinct path,--at least, such was his opinion; and being so, he
+would not be likely to attempt the enforcement of another view of his
+power on other men. He was afraid of himself now,--afraid that his own
+preferences had made him obtuse where loyalty would have given him a
+clearer vision.
+
+Pity him, therefore, when Mr. Deane learned that the son of bondage in
+whose deliverance he took such proud delight, as surely became a good
+man who greatly valued freedom, aye, valued it as the pearl beyond all
+price,--when he learned that the slave had been seen going to the
+organist's room, and returning from it, and had not since been seen in
+H----.
+
+Mr. Muir reflected on these tidings with perplexity, constrained, in
+spite of him, to believe that the slave had actually come on a secret
+errand, which he had fulfilled, and that not without enlightenment he
+had returned to his master.
+
+The indignation a man feels, a man of the Deane order especially, when
+he finds that he has been imposed upon, though the deception has been in
+this instance of his own furtherance and establishment,--this kind and
+degree of indignation brought Mr. Deane like a firebrand into the next
+vestry-meeting. An end must be made of this matter at once. It was no
+longer a question whether anything had best be done. Something _must_ be
+done; the public demanded, and he, as a good citizen, demanded, that the
+church should free herself of suspicion.
+
+Mr. Muir felt, from the moment his eyes fell on Deane, that _he_ played
+a losing game. Vain to help a woman who had fallen under that man's
+suspicion, useless to defend her! What should he do, then? Let her go?
+let her fall? Allow that she was a spy? Permit her disgrace, dismissal,
+arrest possibly? When War takes hold of women, the touch is not tender.
+Mr. Muir, it was obvious, was not a man of war. And he had to
+acknowledge to the Musical Committee, that, as to the result of his
+conversation with Mrs. Edgar, he had learned merely what was sufficient,
+indeed, to satisfy _him_ of her loyalty, and that she would scorn to do
+a spy's work; but he had no proof to offer that might satisfy minds less
+"prejudiced" in her favor.
+
+It was impossible not to perceive the dissatisfaction with which this
+testimony was received.
+
+The Committee, however favorably disposed toward the organist, had their
+own suspicions to quiet, and a growing rumor among the people to quell.
+Positive proof must be adduced that the organist was not the wife of a
+Rebel general, or she must be removed from her place.
+
+At a time when riot was rife, and street-tumult so common that the
+citizens, loyal or disloyal, had no real security, it was venturesome,
+dangerous, foolhardy, to allow a suspicion to fix, even by implication,
+on the church. If the organist, already sufficiently noted and popular
+in the town to attract within the church-walls scores of people who came
+merely for the music,--if she were suspected of collision with Southern
+traitors, she must pay the price. It was the proper tax on loyalty. The
+church must be free of blame.
+
+So Mr. Muir, a second time on such business, went to Mrs. Edgar.
+
+Various intimations as to what brave men might do in precisely his
+situation distracted him as he went. The fascinations of her power were
+strongly upon him. If he was a hero, here, surely, was a heroine. And in
+distress! Had Christian chivalry no demand to make, no claim on him?
+
+All the way, as he went, he was counting the cost of his opposition to
+the vestry's will. If he only stood alone! If neither wife nor child had
+rights to be considered in advance of other mortals, and which, for the
+necessities of others, must surely not be waived! If Nature had not
+planted in him prudence, if he had only not that vexatious habit of
+surveying duties in their wholeness, and balancing consequences, he
+might, at the moment, enter into Don Quixote's joy. But,--and here he
+was at the head of the flight of stairs that led to her chamber, face to
+face with her.
+
+Advance now, Christian minister! He comes slowly, weighed down by his
+burden of consequences, and, as at one glance, the organist perceives
+the "situation." He has come with her dismissal from the church. She
+sees it in the dejected face, the troubled eyes, the weariness with
+which he throws himself into the nearest chair. The duty he has in hand
+he feels in all its irksomeness, and makes no concealment
+thereof,--indeed, some display perhaps.
+
+From a little desultory talk about church-music, through which words ran
+at random, Mrs. Edgar broke at last, somewhat impatiently.
+
+"What is it, Mr. Muir? Must your organist take the oath?"
+
+The question caught him by surprise; it was uppermost in his thoughts,
+this hateful theme; but then how should she know it? He lost the
+self-possession he had been trying to maintain, the dignity of his
+judicial character broke down completely; he was now merely a
+kind-hearted man, a husband and father it is true, but for the moment
+those domestic ties were not like a fetter on him.
+
+"I require no such evidence of your loyalty, Mrs. Edgar," he said,--"no
+evidence whatever."
+
+"But--does not the church?"
+
+This question was asked with a little faltering, asked for his sake; for
+evidently some knowledge he had, and had to communicate, that
+embarrassed him almost to the making of speech impossible.
+
+"The church! No,--it is too late for that!"
+
+And now he had thrown down the hateful truth. There it lay at the feet
+of the woman who at this moment assumed to the preacher's imagination a
+more than saint's virtue, a more than angel's beauty.
+
+"What then?" she said. "What next, Mr. Muir? Do they want my
+resignation?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mr. Muir said this with a humbled, deprecating gesture of the hand. At
+the same time bowed his head.
+
+"I commission you to carry it," she said.
+
+"I will not," he answered, almost ferociously.
+
+"Mr. Muir!"
+
+"I consider it an outrage."
+
+"No,--a misunderstanding."
+
+That mild magnanimity of speech completed the overthrow of his
+prudence.
+
+"A misunderstanding, then, that shall be rectified to your honor," he
+exclaimed, "in the very place where it has gained ground to your
+dishonor. If you resign, Mrs. Edgar, it must be to come at once to my
+house as a guest. If the people are infatuated, the minister need not be
+of necessity. My wife will welcome you there; if the law of the gospel
+cannot protect you from suspicion, it can at least from harm."
+
+So all in a moment the man got the better of Mr. Muir. What a
+deliverance was there! This was the man who had preached and prayed for
+the Government till more than once he had been invited to march out with
+the soldiers as their chaplain to battle, opening his doors to one whom
+the loyal church rejected,--opening them merely because she was a woman
+on whom suspicion he believed to be unjust had fallen.
+
+Her face lighted, her eyes flashed, she smiled. These were precious
+words to hear from any good man's lips. They broke on the air like balm
+on a wound.
+
+"Not for all the world would I allow it," she answered. "This is no time
+to complicate affairs. I thank you, and I confess you have surprised me.
+I did not expect this even of you. It is needless for me to say that I
+feel this disgrace as you would feel it; but I understand the position
+of the church, and cannot complain. If I were guilty, this treatment
+would be only too lenient. And it is almost guilt to have incurred
+suspicion."
+
+"I will never be the bearer of your resignation, then,--never, Mrs.
+Edgar! I wash my hands of this business!"
+
+She smiled again. The man in his wrath seemed to have seized on a
+child's weapon. He interpreted her smile, and said,--
+
+"My position will be well understood, if another is the bearer. And I
+wish it to be. I wish men to know that I have no hand in this business.
+The church is a persecutor. I, her son, am ashamed of her."
+
+"It has given me my opportunity to make a defence. And I can make none,
+Mr. Muir. My great mistake was in remaining here. Ruin, however, is not
+so rare a thing in these days that I should be surprised by it, even if
+it overtake me."
+
+"Ruin! Aye. What curses thicken for their heads who have brought this
+upon us! Unborn millions will repeat them, and God Almighty sanction and
+enforce them."
+
+Mr. Muir paused. What arrested him? Merely the countenance of the woman
+before him. If all those curses had gathered into legions of devils,
+crowding, swarming, furious, armed with lash and brand, about the form
+of one who represented love, joy, beauty, all preciousness to her, the
+terror and the anguish looking from her face could not have been
+intensified. But she said no word.
+
+How should she speak?
+
+As if in spite of him, and of all he had been wont to hold most sacred
+and potential, in spite of church and congregation, Constitution and
+country, the minister had spoken simply for humanity under oppression;
+had he not earned her confidence? Did he not deserve to know at least
+what real ground there was for the suspicions roused against her?
+
+Nay, nay! When did ever Love seek deliverance at the cost of the
+beloved? What woman ever betrayed to secret friend the sin of him she
+loves? Let all creation read the patent facts, behind them still remains
+the inviolate, sacred _arcanum_, and before it stands sentinel Silence,
+and around it are walls of fire.
+
+Not from this woman's lips should mortal ever learn she was a Rebel's
+wife!
+
+For Mr. Muir, in his present mood, it was only torture to prolong this
+interview. He felt himself unfit for counsel or argument,--unfit even
+for confidence, had it been vouchsafed. But he held, with a tenacity
+that could not but have its influence on his future acts and life, to
+the purpose that had broken from him so suddenly, and not less to his
+own surprise than to the organist's. From this day she was at liberty to
+seek protection under his roof from threatened mobs and hot-headed
+church-wardens. Mr. Deane was one man, he himself was another; and if a
+day was ever coming to the world when Christian magnanimity must rise in
+its majesty and its strength, that day had surely dawned; if the
+Christian ministry was ever to know a period when the greatness of its
+prerogatives was to be made manifest, that period had certainly begun.
+
+
+IX.
+
+From this interview Mrs. Edgar went to make her preparations for the
+flitting she had already determined upon. She resolved to lose no time,
+and consoled Mr. Muir by making known her resolution, and seeking his
+assistance, when he was in a condition adapted to the bestowal.
+
+But scarcely were her rooms bared, her trunks packed, and the day and
+mode of her departure determined upon, when an order came to H---- from
+a high official source, so authoritative as to allow no hesitation or
+demur.
+
+"Arrest the organist of St. Peter's Church, Mrs. Julia Edgar."
+
+And, behold, she was a prisoner in the house where she had lodged!
+
+Opposition was out of the question, protest hardly thought of. One
+glance was broad enough to cover this business from end to end, and of
+resistance there was no demonstration. Her work now was to restore the
+room, denuded and desolate, to its late aspect of refinement and cheer.
+
+Well, but is it the same thing to urge others on to sacrifice, and
+yourself to bring an offering? to gird another for warfare, and yourself
+endure hardness? to incite another to active service, and yourself serve
+by passive obedience? to place a sword in the right hand of the valiant,
+and bare your heart to the smiting of a sword in the same cause of
+glory?
+
+To have urged out of beautiful and studious retirement the painter of
+precious pictures, that he may lift the soldier's burden and gird
+himself for fasting through long, toilsome marches over mountains,
+through wilderness, swamp, and desert, and for encountering Death at
+every pass in one of his manifold disguises,--that he may lie on a field
+of blood, perchance, at last, the fragment of himself, for what? that he
+may say, finally, if speech be left him, he has fought under the flag,
+that at Memphis its buried glory may have resurrection, that at Sumter
+it may float again from the battlements, that at Richmond it may be
+unfurled above Rebellion's grave,--is it the same thing to have
+accomplished this by way of atonement, and in your own body to atone, by
+your humiliation, by suspicion endured? She deemed it a small thing that
+she was called to suffer,--that, when honor was won, she must bear
+disgrace instead. What, indeed, was a year's or a lifetime's
+imprisonment, looked on in the light of privation or sacrifice? Yet _so_
+to atone, since thus it was written, for the sin of one who was in arms
+against the nation's government! Oh, if anywhere, of any loyal citizen,
+it might be looked upon, accepted, _as_ atonement!
+
+In one thing she was happy, and of right. Music never failed her. Art
+keeps her great rewards for such as serve her for her sacred self.
+Therefore let her arise day after day to the same prospect of sky, and
+sea, and busy street, and silent, shadowy church-yard. I bless the birds
+that built their nests in the elm and willow branches for her sake. The
+little creatures flitting here and there, in all their home-ways and
+domestic management, were dear as their song to her.
+
+But in this life, though there might be growth, it was the growth that
+comes through pain endured with patience, through self-control
+maintained in the suspense and the anguish of death.
+
+For what, then, did she long in his behalf whose fate was shrouded in
+thick darkness from her? For victory? or for defeat? A prison?
+mutilation? disablement? burial on the battle-field? or a disgraceful
+safety? Constantly this question urged itself upon her, and the heroic
+love, that in its great disclosures could not fail, shrank shuddering
+back in silence.
+
+Thanks to God, she need not choose. The Omniscient is alone the
+Almighty!
+
+
+X.
+
+Three months after this order of arrest came another of release,--as
+brief and as peremptory.
+
+Deane's patriotism, that really had endangered the church with a mob and
+the organ with demolishment, was the cause of the first despatch.
+Colonel Von Gelhorn, who had routed General Edgar and driven him and his
+forces at the point of the bayonet from an "impregnable position," was
+in the secret of the second.
+
+Close following this order of release, so closely that one must believe
+he but waited for it before he again presented himself to his mistress,
+came Julius, the bearer of a message in whose persuasive power he
+himself had little hope. Defeated, wounded, dying, her husband called
+this second time to her.
+
+The slave, this day a freeman by all writs and rights, ascended again to
+her apartment when the order of release had been received.
+
+Surprise awaited him. Alas, what it says for us! our heroes, who have
+surely the right of unlimited expectations, are as likely to be
+surprised by heroic demonstrations as the dullest soul that never strove
+for aught except its paltry starving self. But the hero surprised is not
+surprised into uncomprehending wonder, but rather into smiles, or tears,
+or heartrending, out of which comes thankfulness.
+
+Yet a bitter word escaped him; he could deem even Liberty guilty of an
+injustice, when she was involved in the judgment that awaits the guilty.
+As if never before under the government of God it was known that the
+overthrow of evil involved sorrow, aye, and temporal ruin, aye, and
+sometimes death, to God's very angels! But to that word she answered,--
+
+"Hush! I have been among friends,--even though some believed I was their
+enemy in disguise. I have nothing to complain of. Duties must be done.
+But, Julius, you have come to tell me of your master. Tell me, then."
+
+"Such news, Madam, as you will not like to hear, though I have travelled
+with it night and day. Colonel Von Gelhorn sent me. He said I would be
+in time. I didn't wait to hear him say that twice."
+
+"_He_ sent you? Where, then, is my husband?"
+
+"He is a prisoner, Madam."
+
+"A prisoner! Whose?"
+
+"Colonel Von Gelhorn's."
+
+Was it satisfaction that filled the silence following this question?
+
+"But safe? but well, Julius?"
+
+"No, Madam, not safe nor well."
+
+"Wounded? Julius, speak! Why must I ask these dreadful questions? Tell
+what you came to tell."
+
+"He is wounded, Madam. He has never been taken away from the church
+where I carried him first after he fell. He had three horses shot under
+him. Oh, Madam, if it hadn't been for him, his whole army would have
+been lost! He wants you now."
+
+"Let us go, then. Guide me. The shortest way. You're a free man, Julius.
+Act like one, freely. Wounded,--Von Gelhorn's prisoner. Then at last
+he's mine again!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hers again! In the church she found him. In her arms he died.
+
+And he said,--nor let us think it was with coward weakness blenching
+before the presence of Death, shaming the day he died by a late
+repentance,--
+
+"I have been deceived. But I deceived others. Who will forgive that? It
+is so hard for me to forgive! You have fought your fight like a hero,
+loyal to the core, but I"----
+
+Nevertheless, her kiss was on his dying lips. _She_ forgave him. Must
+he, then, go out from her presence into everlasting darkness?
+
+
+
+
+WET-WEATHER WORK.
+
+BY A FARMER.
+
+
+V.
+
+It is a pelting November rain. No leaves are left upon the branches but
+a few yellow flutterers on the tips of the willows and poplars, and the
+bleached company that will be clinging to the beeches and the white oaks
+for a month to come. All others are whipped away by the night-winds into
+the angles of old walls, or are packed under low-limbed shrubberies,
+there to swelter and keep warm the rootlets of the newly planted
+weigelias and spruces, until the snows and February suns and April mists
+and May heats shall have transmuted them into fat and unctuous mould. A
+close, pelting, unceasing rain, trying all the leaks of the mossy roof,
+testing all the newly laid drains, pressing the fountain at my door to
+an exuberant gush,--a rain that makes outside work an impossibility; and
+as I sit turning over the leaves of an old book of engravings, wondering
+what drift my rainy-day's task shall take, I come upon a pleasant view
+of Dovedale in Derbyshire, a little exaggerated, perhaps, in the
+luxuriance of its trees and the depth of its shadows, but recalling
+vividly the cloudy April morning on which, fifteen years agone, I left
+the inn of the "Green Man and Black Head," in the pretty town of
+Ashbourne, and strolled away by the same road on which Mr. Charles
+Cotton opens his discourse of fishing with Master "Viator," and plunged
+down the steep valley-side near to Thorpe, and wandered for three miles
+and more, under towering crags, and on soft, spongy bits of meadow,
+beside the blithe river where Walton had cast, in other days, a gray
+palmer-fly, past the hospitable hall of the worshipful Mr. Cotton, and
+the wreck of the old fishing-house, over whose lintel was graven in the
+stone the interlaced initials of "Piscator, Junior," and his great
+master of the rod. As the rain began to patter on the sedges and the
+pools, I climbed out of the valley, on the northward or Derbyshire side,
+and striding away through the heather, which belongs to the rolling
+heights of this region, I presently found myself upon the great London
+and Manchester highway. A broad and stately thoroughfare it had been in
+the old days of coaching, but now a close, fine turf invested it all,
+save one narrow strip of Macadam in the middle. The mile-stones, which
+had been showy, painted affairs of iron, were now deeply bitten and
+blotched with rust. Two of them I had passed, without sight of house, or
+of other traveller, save one belated drover, who was hurrying to the
+fair at Ashbourne; as I neared the third, a great hulk of building
+appeared upon my left, with a crowd of aspiring chimneys, from which
+only one timid little pennant of smoke coiled into the harsh sky.
+
+The gray, inhospitable-looking pile proved to be one of the old
+coach-inns, which, with its score of vacant chambers and huge
+stable-court, was left stranded upon the deserted highway of travel. It
+stood a little space back from the road, so that a coach and four, or,
+indeed, a half-dozen together, might have come up to the door-way in
+dashing style. But it must have been many years since such a demand had
+been made upon the resources of bustling landlord and of attendant
+grooms and waiters. The doors were tightly closed; even the sign-board
+creaked uneasily in the wind, and a rampant growth of ivy that clambered
+over the porch so covered it with leaves and berries that I could not at
+all make out its burden. I gave a sharp ring to the bell, and heard the
+echo repeated from the deserted stable-court; there was the yelp of a
+hound somewhere within, and presently a slatternly-dressed woman
+received me, and, conducting me down a bare hall, showed me into a great
+dingy parlor, where a murky fire was struggling in the grate. A score of
+roistering travellers might have made the stately parlor gay; and I dare
+say they did, in years gone; but now I had only for company their heavy
+old arm-chairs, a few prints of "fast coaches" upon the wall, and a
+superannuated greyhound, who seemed to scent the little meal I had
+ordered, and presently stalked in and laid his thin nose, with an
+appealing look, in my hands. His days of coursing--if he ever had
+them--were fairly over; and I took a charitable pride in bestowing upon
+him certain tough morsels of the rump-steak, garnished with
+horse-radish, with which I was favored for dinner.
+
+I had intended to push on to Buxton the same afternoon; but the
+deliberate sprinkling of the morning by two o'clock had quickened into a
+swift, pelting rain, the very counterpart of that which is beating on my
+windows to-day. There was nothing to be done but to make my home of the
+old coach-inn for the night; and for my amusement--besides the
+slumberous hound, who, after dinner, had taken up position upon the
+faded rug lying before the grate--there was a "Bell's Messenger" of the
+month past, and, as good luck would have it, a much-bethumbed copy of a
+work on horticulture and kindred subjects, first printed somewhere about
+the beginning of the eighteenth century, and entitled "The Clergyman's
+Recreation, showing the Pleasure and Profit of the Art of Gardening," by
+the Reverend John Laurence.
+
+It was a queer book to be found in this pretentious old coach-inn, with
+its silken bell-pulls and stately parlors; and I thought how the
+roisterers who came thundering over the road years ago, and chucked the
+bar-maids under the chin, must have turned up their noses, after their
+pint of crusted Port, at the "Clergyman's Recreation." Yet, for all
+that, the book had a rare interest for me, detailing, as it did, the
+methods of fruit-culture in England a hundred and forty years ago, and
+showing with nice particularity how the espaliers could be best trained,
+and how a strong infusion of walnut-leaf tea will destroy all noxious
+worms.
+
+And now, when, upon this other wet day, and in the quietude of my own
+library, I come to measure the claims of this ancient horticulturist to
+consideration, I find that he was the author of some six or seven
+distinct works on kindred subjects, showing good knowledge of the best
+current practice; and although he incurred the sneers of Mr. Tull, who
+hoped "he preached better than he ploughed," there is abundant evidence
+that his books were held in esteem.
+
+Contemporary with the Rev. Mr. Laurence were London and Wise, the famous
+horticulturists of Brompton, (whose nursery, says Evelyn, "was the
+greatest work of the kind ever seen or heard of, either in books or
+travels,") also Switzer, a pupil of the latter, and Professor Richard
+Bradley.
+
+Mr. London was the director of the royal gardens under William and Mary,
+and at one time had in his charge some three or four hundred of the most
+considerable landed estates in England. He was in the habit of riding
+some fifty miles a day to confer with his subordinate gardeners, and at
+least two or three times in a season traversed the whole length and
+breadth of England,--and this at a period, it must be remembered, when
+travelling was no holiday-affair, as is evident from the mishaps which
+befell those well-known contemporaneous travellers of Fielding, Joseph
+Andrews and Parson Adams. Traces of the work of Mr. London are to be
+seen even now in the older parts of the grounds of Blenheim and of
+Castle Howard in Yorkshire.
+
+Stephen Switzer was an accomplished gardener, well known by a great many
+horticultural and agricultural works, which in his day were "on sale at
+his seed-shop in Westminster Hall." Chiefest among these was the
+"Ichnographia Rustica," which gave general directions for the
+management of country-estates, while it indulged in some prefatory
+magniloquence upon the dignity and antiquity of the art of gardening. It
+is the first of all arts, he claims; for "tho' Chirurgery may plead
+high, inasmuch as in the second chapter of Genesis that _operation_ is
+recorded of taking the rib from Adam, wherewith woman was made, yet the
+very current of the Scriptures determines in favor of Gardening." It
+surprises us to find that so radical an investigator should entertain
+the belief, as he clearly did, that certain plants were produced without
+seed by the vegetative power of the sun acting upon the earth. He is
+particularly severe upon those Scotch gardeners, "Northern lads," who,
+with "a little learning and a great deal of impudence, know, or pretend
+to know, more in one twelvemonth than a laborious, honest South-country
+man does in seven years."
+
+His agricultural observations are of no special value, nor do they
+indicate any advance from the practice of Worlidge. He deprecates paring
+and burning as exhaustive of the vegetable juices, advises winter
+fallowing and marling, and affirms that "there is no superficies of
+earth, how poor soever it may be, but has in its own bowels something or
+other for its own improvement."
+
+In gardening, he expresses great contempt for the clipped trees and
+other excesses of the Dutch school, yet advises the construction of
+terraces, lays out his ponds by geometric formulae, and is so far devoted
+to out-of-door sculpture as to urge the establishment of a royal
+institution for the instruction of ingenious young men, who, on being
+taken into the service of noblemen and gentlemen, would straightway
+people their grounds with statues. And this notwithstanding Addison had
+published his famous papers on the "Pleasures of the Imagination" three
+years before.[5]
+
+Richard Bradley was the Dr. Lardner of his day,--a man of general
+scientific acquirement, an indefatigable worker, venturing hazardous
+predictions, writing some fifteen or twenty volumes upon subjects
+connected with agriculture, foisting himself into the chair of Botany at
+Cambridge by noisy reclamation, selling his name to the booksellers for
+attachment to other men's wares,[6] and, finally, only escaping the
+indignity of a removal from his professor's chair by sudden death, in
+1732. Yet this gentleman's botanical dictionary ("Historia Plantarum,"
+etc.) was quoted respectfully by Linnaeus, and his account of British
+cattle, their races, proper treatment, etc., was, by all odds, the best
+which had appeared up to his time. The same gentleman, in his "New
+Improvements of Planting and Gardening," lays great stress upon a novel
+"invention for the more speedy designing of garden-plats," which is
+nothing more than an adaptation of the principle of the kaleidoscope.
+The latter book is the sole representative of this author's voluminous
+agricultural works in the Astor collection; and, strange to say, there
+are only two in the library of the British Museum.
+
+I take, on this dreary November day, (with my Catawbas blighted,) a
+rather ill-natured pleasure in reading how the Duke of Rutland, in the
+beginning of the last century, was compelled to "keep up fires from
+Lady-day to Michaelmas behind his sloped walls," in order to insure the
+ripening of his grapes; yet winter grapes he had, and it was a great
+boast in that time. The quiet country squires--such as Sir Roger de
+Coverley--had to content themselves with those old-fashioned fruits
+which would struggle successfully with out-of-door fogs. Fielding tells
+us that the garden of Mr. Wilson, where Parson Adams and the divine
+Fanny were guests, showed nothing more rare than an alley bordered with
+filbert-bushes.[7]
+
+In London and its neighborhood the gourmands fared better. Cucumbers,
+which in Charles's time never came in till the close of May, were ready
+in the shops of Westminster (in the time of George I.) in early March.
+Melons were on sale, for those who could pay roundly, at the end of
+April; and the season of cauliflowers, which used to be limited to a
+single month, now reached over a term of six months.
+
+Mr. Pope, writing to Dr. Swift, somewhere about 1730, says,--"I have
+more fruit-trees and kitchen-garden than you have any thought of; nay, I
+have good melons and pine-apples of my own growth." Nor was this a small
+boast; for Lady Wortley Montague, describing her entertainment at the
+table of the Elector of Hanover, in 1716, speaks of "pines" as a fruit
+she had never seen before.
+
+Ornamental gardening, too, was now changing its complexion. Dutch
+William was dead and buried. Addison had written in praise of the
+natural disposition of the gardens of Fontainebleau, and, at his place
+near Rugby, was carrying out, so far as a citizen might, the suggestions
+of those papers to which I have already alluded. Milton was in better
+odor than he had been, and people had begun to realize that an
+arch-Puritan might have exquisite taste. Possibly, too, cultivated
+landholders had seen that charming garden-picture where the luxurious
+Tasso makes the pretty sorceress Armida spread her nets.
+
+Pope affected a respect for the views of Addison; but his Twickenham
+garden was a very stiff affair. Bridgman was the first practical
+landscape-gardener who ventured to ignore old rules; and he was followed
+closely by William Kent, a broken-down and unsuccessful
+landscape-painter, who came into such vogue as a man of taste, that he
+was employed to fashion the furniture of scores of country-villas; and
+Walpole[8] tells us that he was even beset by certain fine ladies to
+design Birthday gowns for them:--"The one he dressed in a petticoat
+decorated with columns of the five orders; the other, like a bronze, in
+a copper-colored satin, with ornaments of gold."
+
+Clermont, the charming home of the exiled Orleans family, shows vestiges
+of the taste of Kent, who always accredited very much of his love for
+the picturesque to the reading of Spenser. It is not often that the poet
+of the "Faerie Queene" is mentioned as an educator.
+
+And now let us leave gardens for a while, to discuss Mr. Jethro Tull,
+the great English cultivator of the early half of the eighteenth
+century. I suspect that most of the gentry of his time, and cultivated
+people, ignored Mr. Tull, he was so rash and so headstrong and so noisy.
+It is certain, too, that the educated farmers, or, more strictly, the
+writing farmers, opened battle upon him, and used all their art to ward
+off his radical tilts upon their old methods of culture. And he fought
+back bravely; I really do not think that an editor of a partisan paper
+to-day could improve upon him,--in vigor, in personality, or in
+coarseness.
+
+Unfortunately, the biographers and encyclopaedists who followed upon his
+period have treated his name with a neglect that leaves but scanty
+gleanings for his personal history. His father owned landed property in
+Oxfordshire, and Jethro was a University-man; he studied for the law,
+(which will account for his address in a wordy quarrel,) made the tour
+of Europe, returned to Oxfordshire, married, took the paternal
+homestead, and proceeded to carry out the new notions which he had
+gained in his Southern travels. Ill health drove him to France a second
+time, from which he returned once more, to occupy the famous "Prosperous
+Farm" in Berkshire; and here he opened his batteries afresh upon the
+existing methods of farming. The gist of his proposed reform is
+expressed in the title of his book, "The Horse-hoeing Husbandry." He
+believed in the thorough tillage, at frequent intervals, of all
+field-crops, from wheat to turnips. To make this feasible, drilling was,
+of course, essential; and to make it economical, horse labor was
+requisite: the drill and the horse-hoe were only subsidiary to the main
+end of THOROUGH TILLAGE.
+
+Sir Hugh Platt, as we have seen, had before suggested dibbling, and
+Worlidge had contrived a drill; but Tull gave force and point and
+practical efficacy to their suggestions. He gives no credit, indeed, to
+these old gentlemen; and it is quite possible that his theory may have
+been worked out from his own observations. He certainly gives a clear
+account of the growth of his belief, and sustains it by a great many
+droll notions about the physiology of plants, which would hardly be
+admissible in the botanies of to-day.
+
+Shall I give a sample?
+
+"Leaves," he says, "are the parts, or bowels of a plant, which perform
+the same office to sap as the lungs of an animal do to blood; that is,
+they purify or cleanse it of the recrements, or fuliginous steams,
+received in the circulation, being the unfit parts of the food, and
+perhaps some decayed particles which fly off the vessels through which
+blood and sap do pass respectively."
+
+It does not appear that the success of Tull upon "Prosperous Farm" was
+such as to give a large warrant for its name. His enemies, indeed,
+alleged that he came near to sinking two estates on his system; this,
+however, he stoutly denies, and says, "I propose no more than to keep
+out of debt, and leave my estate behind me better than I found it. Yet,
+owned it must be, that, had I, when I first began to make trials, known
+as much of the system as I do now, the practice of it would have been
+more profitable to me." Farmers in other parts of England, with lands
+better adapted to the new husbandry, certainly availed themselves of it,
+very much to their advantage. Tull, like a great many earnest reformers,
+was almost always in difficulty with those immediately dependent on him;
+over and over he insists upon the "inconveniency and slavery attending
+the exorbitant power of husbandry servants and laborers over their
+masters." He quarrels with their wages, and with the short period of
+their labor. Pray, what would Mr. Tull have thought, if he had dealt
+with the Drogheda gentlemen in black satin waistcoats, who are to be
+conciliated by the farmers of to-day?
+
+I think I can fancy such an encounter for the querulous old reformer.
+"Mike! blast you, you booby, you've broken my drill!" And Mike, (putting
+his thumb deliberately in the armlet of his waistcoat,) "Meester Tull,
+it's not the loikes o' me'll be leestening to insoolting worrds. I'll
+take me money, if ye plase." And with what a fury "Meester" Tull would
+have slashed away, after this, at "Equivocus," and all his
+newspaper-antagonists!
+
+I wish I could believe that Tull always told the exact truth; but he
+gives some accounts of the perfection to which he had brought his drill
+to which I can lend only a most meagre trust; and it is unquestionable
+that his theory so fevered his brain at last as to make him utterly
+contemptuous of all old-fashioned methods of procedure. In this respect
+he was not alone among reformers. He stoutly affirmed that tillage would
+supply the lack of manure, and his neighbors currently reported that he
+was in the habit of dumping his manure carts in the river. This charge
+Mr. Tull firmly denied, and I dare say justly. But I can readily believe
+that the rumors were current; country-neighborhoods offer good
+starting-points for such lively scandal. The writer of this paper has
+heard, on the best possible authority, that he is in the habit of
+planting shrubs with their roots in the air.
+
+In his loose, disputative way, and to magnify the importance of his own
+special doctrine, Tull affirms that the ancients, and Virgil
+particularly, urged tillage for the simple purpose of destroying
+weeds.[9] In this it seems to me that he does great injustice to our old
+friend Maro. Will the reader excuse a moment's dalliance with the
+Georgics again?
+
+    "Multum adeo, rastris glebas qui frangit _inertes_,
+    Vimineasque trahit crates, juvat arva;...
+    Et qui proscisso quae suscitat aequore terga
+    Rursus in obliquum verso perrumpit aratro,
+    Exercetque frequens tellurem, atque imperat arvis."
+
+That "_imperat_" looks like something more than weed-killing; it looks
+like subjugation; it looks like pulverization at the hands of an
+imperious master.
+
+But behind all of Tull's exaggerated pretension, and unaffected by the
+noisy exacerbation of his speech, there lay a sterling good sense, and a
+clear comprehension of the existing shortcomings in agriculture, which
+gave to his teachings prodigious force, and an influence measured only
+by half a century of years. There were few, indeed, who adopted
+literally and fully his plans, or who had the hardihood to acknowledge
+the irate Jethro as a teacher; yet his hints and his example gave a
+stimulus to root-culture, and an attention to the benefits arising from
+thorough and repeated tillage, that added vastly to the annual harvests
+of England. Bating the exaggerations I have alluded to, his views are
+still reckoned sound; and though a hoed crop of wheat is somewhat
+exceptional, the drill is now almost universal in the best cultivated
+districts; and a large share of the forage-crops owe their extraordinary
+burden to horse-hoeing husbandry.
+
+Even the exaggerated claims of Tull have had their advocates in these
+last days; and the energetic farmer of Lois-Weedon, in Northamptonshire,
+is reported to be growing heavy crops of wheat for a succession of
+years, without any supply of outside fertilizers, and relying wholly
+upon repeated and perfect pulverization of the soil.[10] And Mr. Way,
+the distinguished chemist of the Royal Society, in a paper on "The Power
+of Soils to absorb Manure,"[11] propounds the question as follows:--"Is
+it likely, on theoretical considerations, that the air and the soil
+together can by any means be made to yield, without the application of
+manure, and year after year continuously, a crop of wheat of from thirty
+to thirty-five bushels per acre?" And his reply is this:--"I confess I
+do not see why they should not do so." A practical farmer, however, (who
+spends only his wet days in-doors,) would be very apt to suggest here,
+that the validity of this _dictum_ must depend very much on the original
+constituents of the soil.
+
+Under the lee of the Coombe Hills, on the extreme southern edge of
+Berkshire, and not far removed from the great highway leading from Bath
+to London, lies the farmery where this restless, petulant, suffering,
+earnest, clear-sighted Tull put down the burden of life, a hundred and
+twenty years ago. The house is unfortunately largely modernized, but
+many of the out-buildings remain unchanged; and not a man thereabout, or
+in any other quarter, could tell me where the former occupant, who
+fought so bravely his fierce battle of the drill, lies buried.
+
+About the middle of the last century, there lived in the south of
+Leicestershire, in the parish of Church-Langton, an eccentric and
+benevolent clergyman by the name of William Hanbury, who conceived the
+idea of establishing a great charity which was to be supported by a vast
+plantation of trees. To this end, he imported a great variety of seeds
+and plants from the Continent and America, established a nursery of
+fifty acres in extent, and published "An Essay on Planting, and a Scheme
+to make it Conducive to the Glory of God and the Advantage of Society."
+
+But the Reverend Hanbury was beset by aggressive and cold-hearted
+neighbors, among them two strange old "gentlewomen," Mistress Pickering
+and Mistress Byrd, who malevolently ordered their cattle to be turned
+loose into his first plantation of twenty thousand young and thrifty
+trees. And not content with this, they served twenty-seven different
+copies of writs upon him in one day, for trespass. Of all this he gives
+detailed account in his curious history of the "Charitable Foundations
+at Church-Langton." He tells us that the "venomous rage" of these old
+ladies (who died shortly after, worth a million of dollars) did not even
+spare his dogs; but that his pet spaniel and greyhound were cruelly
+killed by a table-fork thrust into their entrails. Nay, their
+game-keeper even buried two dogs alive, which belonged to his neighbor,
+Mr. Wade, a substantial grazier. His story of it is very Defoe-like and
+pitiful:--"I myself heard them," he says, "_ten days_ after they had
+been buried, and, seeing some people at a distance, inquired what dogs
+they were. '_They are some dogs that are lost, Sir_,' said they; '_they
+have been lost some time_.' I concluded only some poachers had been
+there early in the morning, and by a precipitate flight had left their
+dogs behind them. In short, the howling and barking of these dogs was
+heard for near three weeks, when it ceased. Mr. Wade's dogs were
+missing, but he could not suspect those dogs to be his; and the noise
+ceasing, the thoughts, wonder, and talking about them soon also ceased.
+Some time after, a person, being amongst the bushes where the howling
+was heard, discovered some disturbed earth, and the print of men's heels
+ramming it down again very close, and, seeing Mr. Wade's servant, told
+him he thought something had been buried there. '_Then_,' said the man,
+'_it is our dogs, and they have been buried alive. I will go and fetch a
+spade, and will find them, if I dig all Caudle over_.' He soon brought a
+spade, and, upon removing the top earth, came to the blackthorns, and
+then to the dogs, the biggest of which had eat the loins, and greatest
+share of the hind parts, of the little one."
+
+The strange ladies who were guilty of this slaughter of innocents showed
+"a dying blaze of goodness" by bequeathing twelve thousand pounds to
+charitable societies; and "thus ended," says Hanbury, "these two poor,
+unhappy, uncharitable, charitable old gentlewomen."
+
+The good old man describes the beauty of plants and trees with the same
+delightful particularity which he spent on his neighbors and the buried
+dogs.
+
+I cannot anywhere learn whether or not the charity-plantation of
+Church-Langton is still thriving.
+
+About this very time, Lancelot Brown, who was for a long period the
+kitchen-gardener at Stowe, came into sudden notoriety by his disposition
+of the waters in Blenheim Park, where, in the short period of one week,
+he created perhaps the finest artificial lake in the world. Its
+indentations of shore, its bordering declivities of wood, and the
+graceful swells of land dipping to its margin, remain now in very nearly
+the same condition in which Brown left them more than a hundred years
+ago. All over England the new man was sent for; all over England he
+rooted out the mossy avenues, and the sharp rectangularities, and laid
+down his flowing lines of walks, and of trees. He (wisely) never
+contracted to execute his own designs, and--from lack of facility,
+perhaps--he always employed assistants to draw his plans. But the quick
+eye which at first sight recognized the "capabilities" of a place, and
+which leaped to the recognition of its matured graces, was all his own.
+He was accused of sameness; but the man who at one time held a thousand
+lovely landscapes unfolding in his thought could hardly give a series of
+contrasts without startling affectations.
+
+I mention the name of Lancelot Brown, however, not to discuss his
+merits, but as the principal and largest illustrator of that taste in
+landscape-gardening which just now grew up in England, out of a new
+reading of Milton, out of the admirable essays of Addison, out of the
+hints of Pope, out of the designs of Kent, and which was stimulated by
+Gilpin, by Horace Walpole, and, still more, by the delightful little
+landscapes of Gainsborough.
+
+Enough will be found of Mr. Brown, and of his style, in the professional
+treatises, upon whose province I do not now infringe. I choose rather,
+for the entertainment of my readers, if they will kindly find it, to
+speak of that sad, exceptional man, William Shenstone, who, by the
+beauties which he made to appear on his paternal farm of Leasowes,
+fairly rivalled the best of the landscape-gardeners,--and who, by the
+graces and the tenderness which he lavished on his verse, made no mean
+rank for himself at a time when people were reading the "Elegy" of Gray,
+the Homer of Pope, and the "Cato" of Addison.
+
+I think there can hardly be any doubt, however, that poor Shenstone was
+a wretched farmer; yet the Leasowes was a capital grazing farm, when he
+took it in charge, within fair marketable distance of both Worcester and
+Birmingham. I suspect that he never put his fine hands to the
+plough-tail; and his plaintive elegy, that dates from an April day of
+1743, tells, I am sure, only the unmitigated truth:--
+
+    "Again the laboring hind inverts the soil;
+       Again the merchant ploughs the tumid wave;
+    Another spring renews the soldier's toil,
+       _And finds me vacant in the rural cave_."
+
+Shenstone, like many another of the lesser poets, was unfortunate in
+having Dr. Johnson for his biographer. It is hard to conceive of a man
+who would show less of tenderness for an elaborate parterre of flowers,
+or for a poet who affectedly parted his gray locks on one side of his
+head, wore a crimson waistcoat, and warbled in anapaestics about kids and
+shepherds' crooks. Only fancy the great, snuffy, wheezing Doctor, with
+his hair-powder whitening half his shoulders, led up before some
+charming little extravaganza of Boucher, wherein all the nymphs are
+simpering marchionesses, with rosettes on their high-heeled slippers
+that out-color the sky! With what a "Faugh!" the great gerund-grinder
+would thump his cane upon the floor, and go lumbering away! And
+Shenstone, or rather his memory, caught the besom of just such a sneer.
+
+But other critics were more kindly and appreciative; among them, Dodsley
+the bookselling author, who wrote "The Economy of Human Life," (the
+"Proverbial Philosophy" of its day,) and Whately, who gave to the public
+the most elegant and tasteful discussion of artificial scenery that was
+perhaps ever written.
+
+Shenstone studied, as much as so indolent a man ever could, at Pembroke
+College, Oxford. His parents died when he was young, leaving to him a
+very considerable estate, which fortunately some relative administered
+for him, until, owing to this supervisor's death, it lapsed into the
+poet's improvident hands. Even then a sensible tenant of his own name,
+and a distant relative, managed very snugly the farm of Leasowes; but
+when Shenstone came to live with him, neither house nor grounds were
+large enough for the joint occupancy of the poet, who was trailing his
+walks through the middle of the mowing, and of the tenant, who had his
+beeves to fatten and his rental to pay.
+
+So Shenstone became a farmer on his own account; and, according to all
+reports, a very sorry account he made of it. The good soul had none of
+Mr. Tull's petulance and audacity with his servants; if the ploughman
+broke his gear, I suspect the kind ballad-master allowed him a holiday
+for the mending. The herdsman stared in astonishment to find the
+"beasts" ordered away from their accustomed grazing-fields. A new
+thicket had been planted, which must not be disturbed; the orchard was
+uprooted to give place to some parterre; a fine bit of meadow was flowed
+with a miniature lake; hedges were shorn away without mercy; arbors,
+grottos, rustic seats, Arcadian temples, sprang up in all outlying
+nooks; so that the annual product of the land came presently to be
+limited, almost entirely, to the beauty of its disposition.
+
+I think that the poet, unlike most, was never very thoroughly satisfied
+with his poems, and that, therefore, the vanity possessed him to vest
+the sense of beauty which he felt tingling in his blood in something
+more palpable than language. Hence came the charming walks and woods and
+waters of Leasowes. With this ambition holding him and mastering him,
+what mattered a mouldy grain-crop, or a debt? If he had only an ardent
+admirer of his walks, his wilderness, his grottos,--this was his
+customer. He longed for such, in troops,--as a poet longs for readers,
+and as a farmer longs for sun and rain.
+
+And he had them. I fancy there was hardly a cultivated person in
+England, but, before the death of Shenstone, had heard of the rare
+beauty of his home of Leasowes. Lord Lyttleton, who lived near by, at
+the elegant seat of Hagley, brought over his guests to see what miracles
+the hare-brained, sensitive poet had wrought upon his farm. And I can
+fancy the proud, shy creature watching from his lattice the company of
+distinguished guests,--maddened, if they look at his alcove from the
+wrong direction,--wondering if that shout that comes booming to his
+sensitive ear means admiration, or only an unappreciative
+surprise,--dwelling on the memory of the visit, as a poet dwells on the
+first public mention of his poem. In his "Egotisms," (well named,) he
+writes,--"Why repine? I have seen mansions on the verge of Wales that
+convert my farm-house into a Hampton Court, and where they speak of a
+glazed window as a great piece of magnificence. All things figure by
+comparison."
+
+And this reflection, with its flavor of philosophy, was, I dare say, a
+sweet morsel to him. He saw very little of the world in his later years,
+save that part of it which at odd intervals found its way to the
+delights of Leasowes; indeed, he was not of a temper to meet the world
+upon fair terms. "The generality of mankind," he cynically says, "are
+seldom in good humor but whilst they are imposing upon you in some shape
+or other."[12]
+
+Our farmer of Leasowes published a pastoral that was no way equal to the
+pastoral he wrote with trees, walks, and water upon his land; yet there
+are few cultivated readers who have not some day met with it, and been
+beguiled by its mellifluous seesaw. How its jingling resonance comes
+back to me to-day from the "Reader" book of the High School!
+
+    "I have found out a gift for my fair;
+      I have found where the wood-pigeons breed:
+    But let me that plunder forbear;
+      She will say 'twas a barbarous deed.
+    For he ne'er could be true, she averred,
+      Who could rob a poor bird of its young:
+    And I loved her the more, when I heard
+      Such tenderness fall from her tongue."
+
+And what a killing look over at the girl in the corner, in check
+gingham, with blue bows in her hair, as I read (always on the old
+school-benches),--
+
+    "I have heard her with sweetness unfold
+      How that pity was due to--a dove:
+    That it ever attended the bold;
+      And she called it _the sister of love_.
+    But her words such a pleasure convey,
+      So much I her accents adore,
+    Let her speak, and whatever she say,
+      Methinks I should love her the more."
+
+There is a rhythmic prettiness in this; but it is the prettiness of a
+lover in his teens, and not the kind we look for from a man who stood
+five feet eleven in his stockings, and wore his own gray hair. Strangely
+enough, Shenstone had the _physique_ of a ploughman or a prize-fighter,
+and with it the fine, sensitive brain of a woman; a Greek in his
+refinements, and a Greek in indolence. I hope he gets on better in the
+other world than he ever did in this.
+
+
+
+
+ON THE RELATION OF ART TO NATURE.
+
+IN TWO PARTS.
+
+
+PART II.
+
+The repulsive ugliness of the early Christian paintings was not the
+consequence of any break in the tradition. There was no reason why the
+graceful drawing of the human figure should not have been transmitted,
+as well as the technical procedures and the pigments. Nor was effort
+wanting: these pictures were often very elaborate and splendid in
+execution. But it is clear that grace and resemblance to anything
+existing, so far from being aimed at, were intentionally avoided. Even
+as late as the thirteenth century we find figures with blue legs and red
+bodies,--the horses in a procession blue, red, and yellow. Any whim of
+association, or fanciful color-pattern, was preferred to beauty or
+correctness. Likeness to actual things seemed to be regarded, indeed, as
+an unavoidable evil, to be restricted as far as possible. The problem
+was, to show God's omnipresence in the world, especially His appearance
+on the earth as man, and His abiding presence in holy men and women as
+an inspiration obliterating their humanity. But so long as the divine
+and the human are looked upon as essentially opposed, their union can be
+by miracle only, and the first thought must be to keep prominent this
+miraculousness, and guard against confusion of this angelic existence
+with every-day reality. The result is this realm of ghosts, at home
+neither in heaven nor on earth, neither presuming to be spirit nor
+condescending to be body, but hovering intermediate. But the more
+strongly the antithesis is felt, the nearer the thought to end this
+remaining tenderness for the gross and unspiritual,--to drop this
+ballast of earth, and rise into the region of heavenly realities. Upon a
+window of Canterbury Cathedral, beneath a representation of the miracle
+of Cana, is the legend,--_"Lympha dat historiam, vinum notat
+allegoriam."_ But if the earthly is there only for the sake of this
+heavenly transmutation,--if the miracle, and the miracle alone, shows
+God's purpose accomplished,--then all things must be miraculous, for all
+else may be safely ignored. Henceforth, nothing is of itself profane,
+for the profane is only that wherein the higher and truer sense has not
+yet been recognized. What is demanded is not an exceptional
+transmutation, but a translation,--that all Nature should be interpreted
+of the spirit.
+
+The result is, on the one hand, a greater license in dealing with actual
+forms, since Art sees all things on one level of dignity,--respects one
+no more than another, but only its own purpose,--is careless of material
+qualities, and of moral qualities, too, as far as they are bound to
+particular shapes. Why dwell tediously upon one particle, when the value
+of it consists not in its particularity, but in its harmony with the
+rest of the universe? Giotto seems to make short work with the human
+form divine by wrapping all his figures from head to foot in flowing
+draperies. But these figures have more humanity in them, stand closer to
+us, because the meaning is no longer petrified in the shape, but speaks
+to us freely and directly, in a look, a gesture, a sweep of the garment.
+The Greek said,--"With these superhuman lineaments you are to conceive
+the presence of Jove; these are the appropriate forms of the immortals."
+Giotto said,--"See what divine meanings in every-day faces and actions;
+with these eyes you are to look upon the people in the street." The one
+is a remote and incredible perfection,--the other, the intimate reality
+of the actual and present. It is, in truth, therefore, a closer approach
+to Nature than was before possible. The artist no longer shuns full
+actuality for his conception, for he fears no confusion with the actual.
+For instance, from the earliest times the celestial nature of angels had
+been naively intimated by appending wings to them. There was no attempt
+to carry out the suggestion, or to show the mechanical possibility of
+it, for that would be only to make winged men. The painters of the
+sixteenth century, on the other hand, from a nervous dread lest wings
+should prove insufficient, establish a sure basis of clouds for their
+angels, with more and more emphasis of buoyancy and extent, until at
+last, no longer trusting their own statement, they settle the question
+by showing them from below, already risen, and so choke off the doubt
+whether they can rise. But Orcagna's angels float without assistance or
+effort, by their own inherent lightness, as naturally as we walk. They
+are not out of their element, but bring their element with them. These
+are not men caught up into the skies, and do not need to be sustained
+there. The world they inhabit is not earth in heaven, but heaven on
+earth,--the earth seen in accordance with the purpose of its existence.
+
+Giotto's fellow-citizens were struck with the new interest which the
+language of attitude and gesture and all the familiar details of life
+acquired in his representation of them. Looking around them, they saw
+what they had been taught to see, and concluded it was only an
+unexampled closeness of copying. No doubt Giotto thought so, too,--but
+had that been all, we should not have heard of it. It is this new
+interest that has to be accounted for. The charm did not lie in the
+fact, nor in the reproduction of it in the picture, but in a sudden
+sense of its value as expression, resting on a still obscurer feeling
+that herein lay its whole value,--that the actual _is_ not what it
+seems, still less a pure delusion, but that it is pure _seeming_, so
+that its phenomenal character is no reproach, but the bond that connects
+it with reality. Just because it is only "the outward show," and does
+not pretend to be anything more, what it shows is not "the things that
+only seem," but the things that are. The attractiveness of beauty is due
+to the sense of higher affinities in the object; it is finality felt,
+but not comprehended, so that the form shines with the splendor of a
+purpose that belongs not to it, but to the whole whereof it is a part.
+Aristotle makes wonder the forerunner of science. So our admiration of
+beauty is a tribute paid in advance to the fresh insight it promises.
+Whether it be called miracle or inspiration, the artist must see his
+theme as something excellent and singular. This is perhaps that
+"strangeness" which Lord Bacon requires in all "excellent beauty," the
+new significance coming direct, and not through reflection, and
+therefore ineffable and incomparable. That Giotto and his successors
+went on for two hundred years painting saints and miracles was not
+because the Church so ordained, nor from any extraordinary devoutness of
+the artists, but because they still needed an outward assurance that
+what they did was not the petty triviality it seemed. There must always
+remain the sense of an ulterior, undeveloped meaning; when that is laid
+bare, Art has become superfluous, and makes haste to withdraw into
+obscure regions. For it is only as language that the picture or the
+statue avails anything, and this circumstantiality of expression is
+tolerable only so long as it is the only expression. Beauty is an honor
+to matter; but spirit, the source of beauty, is impatient of such
+measure of it as Art can give. As, in the legend, Eurydice, the dawn,
+sinks back into night at the look of the arisen sun, so this lovely
+flush of the dawning intelligence wanes before the eye of the intellect.
+The picture is a help so long as it transcends previous conception; but
+when the mind comes up with these sallies, and the picture is compared
+with the idea, it sinks back into a thing. Thenceforth it takes rank
+with Nature, and falls victim to the natural laws. It is only an aspect
+and an instant,--not eternal, but a petty persistence,--not God, but an
+idol,--not the saint, but his flesh and integuments.
+
+Shall we say, then, that beauty is an illusion? Certainly it is no
+falsity; we may call it provisional truth,--truth at a certain stage, as
+appearance, not yet as idea. It is _appearance_ seen as final, as the
+highest the mind has reached. Hence its miraculousness. It is in advance
+of consciousness; we cannot account for it any more than the savage
+could account for his fetich,--why this bunch of rags and feathers
+should be more venerable to him than other rags and feathers. But to
+deny that the impressiveness it adds to matter comes from a deeper sense
+of the truth would be as unwise as for him to deny his fetich. The
+fetich is false, not as compared with other rags and feathers, but as
+compared with a higher conception of God. The falsity is not that he
+sees God in this rubbish, but that he does not see Him elsewhere.
+Coleridge said that a picture is something between a thought and a
+thing. It must keep the mean; either extreme is fatal. Plato makes Eros
+intermediate between wisdom and ignorance, born of unequal parentage,
+neither mortal nor immortal, forever needy, forever seeking the Psyche
+whom he can never meet face to face.
+
+The history of Art has a certain analogy to the growth of the corals.
+Like them, it seeks the light which it cannot endure. A certain depth
+beneath the surface is most favorable to it,--a dim, midway region of
+twilight and calm, remote alike from the stagnant obscurity of mere
+sensation and from the agitated surface of day, the dry light of the
+intellect. When it is laid bare, it dies,--its substance, indeed,
+enduring as the basis of new continents, but the life gone, and only the
+traces of its action left in the stony relics of the past. Greek Art
+perished when its secret was translated into clearer language by Plato
+and Aristotle; and Duccio and Cimabue and Giotto must go the same way as
+soon as St. Francis of Assisi or Luther or Calvin puts into words what
+they meant. It is its own success that is fatal to Art; for just in
+proportion as the expressiveness it insists upon is shown to be
+pervading, universal, and not the property of this or that shape, the
+particular manifestation is degraded. Color and form are due to partial
+opacity; the light must penetrate to a certain depth, but not
+throughout.
+
+The name of Giotto has come to stand for Devotional Art, for an
+earnestness that subordinates all display to the sacredness of the
+theme. But his fellow-citizens knew him for a man of quick worldly wit,
+who despised asceticism, and was ready with the most audacious jokes,
+even at sacred things. Ghiberti and Cennini do not praise him for piety,
+but for having "brought Art back to Nature" and "translated it from
+Greek into Latin,"--that is, from the language of clerks into the
+vernacular. It is not anything special in the intention that gives
+Giotto his fame, but the freedom, directness, and variety of the
+language with which it is expressed. The effort to escape from
+traditional formulas and conventional shapes often makes itself felt at
+the expense even of beauty. Instead of the statuesque forms of the
+earlier time, it is the dramatic interest that is now prominent,--the
+composition, the convergent action of numerous figures, separately,
+perhaps, insignificant, but pervaded by a common emotion that
+subordinates all distinctions and leaves itself alone visible. Even in
+the traditional groups, as, for instance, the Holy Families, etc., the
+aim is more complete realization, in draperies, gestures, postures,
+rather than beauty of form. We miss in Giotto much that had been
+attained before him. What Madonna of his can rank with Giovanni
+Pisano's? The Northern cathedral-sculptures, even some of the Byzantine
+carvings, have a dignity that is at least uncommon in his pictures.
+Especially the faces are generally wooden,--destitute alike of
+individuality and of the loveliness of Duccio's and even of some of
+Cimabue's. On the other hand, in the picture wherein the school
+attained, perhaps, its highest success as to beauty of the faces,
+Orcagna's "Paradise" at Santa Maria Novella, the blessed are ranged in
+row above row, with mostly no relation to each other but juxtaposition.
+We see here two directions,--one in continuation of the antique, seeking
+beauty as the property of certain privileged forms, the other as the
+hidden possibility that pervades all things. One or the other must abate
+something: either the image must become less sacred, or the meaning
+narrower; for the language of painting is not figurative, like the
+language of poetry, but figure, and unless the form bear on its face
+that it is not all that is meant, its inherent limitations are
+transferred to the thought itself. When Dante tells us that Brunetto
+Latini and his companions looked at him,--
+
+    "Come vecchio sartor fa nella cruna,"
+
+it is the intensity of the gaze that is present with us, not the old
+tailor and his needle. But in Painting the image is usurping and
+exclusive.
+
+Of these divergent tendencies it is easy to see which must conquer. The
+gifts of the spirit are more truly honored as the birthright of humanity
+than as the property of this or that saint. The worship of the Madonna
+is better than the worship of Athene just so far as the homage is paid
+to a sentiment and not to a person. Now the Madonna, too, must come down
+from her throne. The painters grew tired of painting saints and angels.
+Giotto already had diverged from the traditional heads and draperies,
+and begun to put his figures into the Florentine dress. Masaccio and
+Filippino Lippi brought their fellow-citizens into their pictures. Soon
+the Holy Family is only a Florentine matron with her baby. The sacred
+histories are no longer the end, but only the excuse; everything else is
+insisted on rather than the pretended theme. The second Nicene Council
+had declared that "the designing of the holy images was not to be left
+to the invention of artists, but to the approved legislation and
+tradition of the Catholic Church." But now the Church had to take a
+great deal that it had not bargained for. Perspective, chiaroscuro,
+picturesque contrast and variety, and all that belongs to the show of
+things, without regard to what they are,--this is now the religion of
+Art.
+
+These things may seem to us rather superficial, and Art to have declined
+from its ancient dignity. But see how they took hold of men, and what
+men they took hold of. In the midst of that bloody and shameless
+fifteenth century, when only force seems sacred, men hunted these
+shadows as if they were wealth and power. Paolo Uccello could not be got
+away from his drawing to his meals or his rest, and only replied to his
+wife's remonstrances, "Ah, this perspective is so delightful!" With what
+ardor Mantegna and Luca Signorelli seized upon a new trait or action!
+Leonardo da Vinci, "the first name of the fifteenth century," a man to
+whom any career was open, and who seemed almost equally fit for any,
+never walked the streets without a sketch-book in his hand, and was all
+his life long immersed in the study of Appearance, with a persistent
+scrutiny that is revealed by his endless caricatures and studies, but
+perhaps by nothing more clearly than by his incidental discovery of the
+principle of the stereoscope, which he describes in his treatise on
+Painting. This was no learned curiosity, nor the whim of seeing the
+universe under drill, but only a clearer instinct of what the purpose of
+Art is, namely, to see the reality of the actual world in and as the
+appearance, instead of groping for some ulterior reality hidden behind
+it. Leonardo has been called the precursor of Bacon. Certainly the
+conviction that underlies this passion for the outside of things is the
+same in both,--the firm belief that the truth is not to be sought in
+some remote seventh heaven, but in a truer view of the universe about
+us.
+
+Donatello told Paolo Uccello that he was leaving the substance for the
+show. But the painter doubtless felt that the show was more real than
+any such "substance." For it is the finite taken as what it truly is,
+nothing in itself, but only the show of the infinite. If it seem shadowy
+and abstract, it is to be considered with what it is compared. What an
+abstraction is depends on what is taken away and what left behind. For
+instance, the Slavery question in our politics is sometimes termed an
+abstraction. Yes, surely, if the dollar _is_ almighty, is the final
+reality,--if peace and comfort are alone worth living for,--then the
+Slavery question and several other things are abstractions. So in the
+world of matter, if the chemical results are the reality of it, the
+appearance may well be considered as an abstraction. But this is not the
+view of Art; Art has never magnified the materiality of the finite; on
+the contrary, its history is only the record of successive attempts to
+dispose of matter, the failure always lying in the hasty effort to
+abolish it altogether in favor of an immaterial principle outside of it,
+something behind the phenomena, like Kant's _noumenon_,--too fine to
+exist, yet unable to dispense with existence, and so, after all, not
+spirit, but only a superfine kind of matter; or as in a picture in the
+Campo Santo at Pisa, where the world is figured as a series of
+concentric circles, held up like a shield by God standing behind it.
+
+It may be asked, Was not the appearance, and this alone, from all time,
+the object of Art? But so long as the figment of a separate reality of
+the finite is kept up, an antagonism subsists between this and truth,
+and the appearance cannot be frankly made the end, but has only an
+indirect, derivative value. In the classic it was the human form in
+superhuman perfection; in the early Christian Art, God condescending to
+inhabit human shape; in each case, what is given is felt to be negative
+to the reality,--a fiction, not the truth.
+
+But now the antagonism falls away, and the truth of Art is felt to be a
+higher power of the truth of Nature. Perspective puts the mind in the
+place of gravitation as the centre, thus naively declaring mind and not
+matter to be the substance of the universe. It will see only this,
+feeling well that there is no other reality. It may be said that
+Perspective is as much an outward material fact as any other. So it is,
+as soon as the point of sight is fixed. The mind alters nothing, but
+gives to the objects that coherency that makes them into a world. The
+universe has no existence for the idiot, not because it is not _there_,
+but because he makes no image of it, or, as we say, does not _mind_ it.
+The point of sight is the mark of a foregone action of the mind; what is
+embraced in it is seen together, because it belongs to one conception.
+The effect can be simulated to a certain extent by mechanical
+contrivance; but before the rules of perspective were systematized, the
+perspective of a picture betrays its history, tells how much of it was
+seen together, and what was added. Even late in the fifteenth century
+pictures are still more or less mosaics,--their piecemeal origin
+confessed by slight indications in the midst even of very advanced
+technical skill. Thus, in Antonio Pollaiuolo's "Three Archangels," in
+the Florence Academy,--three admirably drawn figures, abreast, and about
+equally distant from the frame, the line of the right wing touches the
+head at the same point in each, with no allowance for their different
+relations to the centre of the picture.
+
+But there is a deeper kind of perspective, not so easily manufactured,
+though the manufacture of this, too, is often attempted, namely,
+Composition. The true ground of perspective in a picture is not a
+mechanical arrangement of lines, but a definite vision,--an affection of
+the painter by the subject, the net result of it in his mind,
+instantaneous and complete. It is a mistake to suppose that Composition
+is anything arbitrary,--that in the landscape out-of-doors we see the
+world as God made it, but in the picture as the painter makes it.
+Composition is nothing but the logic of vision; an uncomposed view is
+no more possible than an unlogical sentence. The eyes convey in each
+case what the mind is able to grasp,--no less, no more. As to any
+particular work, it is always a question of fact what it amounts to; the
+composition may be shallow, it may be bad,--the work of the
+understanding, not of the imagination,--put together, instead of seen
+together. But a picture _without_ composition would be the mathematical
+point. Mr. Ruskin thinks any sensible person would exchange his
+pictures, however good, for windows through which he could see the
+scenes themselves. This does not quite meet the point, for it may be
+only a preference of quantity to quality. The window gives an infinitude
+of pictures; the painter, whatever his merit, but one. A fair comparison
+would be to place by the side of the Turner drawing a photograph of the
+scene, which we will suppose taken at the most favorable moment, and
+complete in color as well as light and shade. Whoever should then prefer
+the photograph must be either more of a naturalist than an artist, or
+else a better artist than Turner. The photograph, supposing it to be
+perfect in its way, gives what is seen at a first glance, only with the
+optical part of the process expanded over the whole field, instead of
+being confined to one point, as the eye is. The picture in it is the
+first glance of the operator, as he selected it; whatever delicacy of
+detail told in the impression on his mind tells in the impression on the
+plate; whatever is more than that does not go to increase the richness
+of the result, _as picture_, but belongs to another sphere. The
+landscape-photographs that we have lately had in such admirable
+perfection, however they may overpower our judgment at first sight,
+will, I believe, be found not to _wear_ well; they have really less in
+them than even second-rate drawings, and therefore are sooner exhausted.
+The most satisfactory results of the photograph are where the subject is
+professedly a fragment, as in near foliage, tree-trunks, stone-texture;
+or where the mind's work is already done, and needs only to be
+reflected, as in buildings, sculpture, and, to a certain extent,
+portrait,--as far as the character has wrought itself into the clothes,
+habitual attitude, etc. Is not the popularity of the small full-length
+portrait-photographs owing to the predominance they give to this passive
+imprint of the mind's past action upon externals over its momentary and
+elusive presence? It is to the fillip received from the startling
+likeness of trivial details, exciting us to supply what is deficient in
+more important points, that is to be ascribed the leniency to the
+photograph on the part of near relatives and friends, who are usually
+hard to please with a painted likeness.
+
+But all comparisons between the photograph and the hand-drawn picture
+are apt to be vitiated by the confusion of various extraneous interests
+with a purely artistic satisfaction resting in the thing itself. It is
+the old fallacy, involved in all the comparisons of Art with Nature. Of
+course, at bottom the interest is always that of the indwelling idea.
+But the question is, whether we stop at the outside, the material
+texture, or pass at once to the other extreme, the thought conveyed, or
+whether the two sides remain undistinguished. In the latter case only is
+our enjoyment strictly aesthetic, that is, attached to the bare
+perception of this particular thing; in the others, it is not this thing
+that prevails, but the physical or moral qualities, the class to which
+it belongs. It is true all these qualities play in and influence or even
+constitute the impression that particular works of Art make upon us. One
+man admires a picture for its _handling_, its surface, the way in which
+the paint is laid on; another, for its illustration of the laws of
+physiognomy; another, because it reminds him of the spring he spent in
+Rome, the pleasant people he met there, etc. We do not always care to
+distinguish the sources of the pleasure we feel; but for any _criticism_
+we must quit these accidents and personalities, and attend solely to
+that in the work which is unique, peculiar to it, that in which it
+suggests nothing, and associates itself with nothing, but refuses to be
+classed or distributed. This may not be the most important aspect of the
+thing represented, nor the deepest interest that a picture can have; but
+here, strictly speaking, lies all the _beauty_ of it. The photograph has
+or may have a certain value of this kind, but a little time is needful
+before we discriminate what is general and what is special. Its
+extraneous interest, as specimen, as _instance_ only, tends at once to
+abate from the first view, as the mind classifies and disposes of it.
+What remains, not thus to be disposed of, is its value as picture. Under
+this test, the photograph, compared with works of Art of a high order,
+will prove wanting in substance, thin and spotty, faulty in both ways,
+too full and too empty. For the result in each case must be
+proportionate to the impression that it echoes; but this, in the work of
+the artist, is reinforced by all his previous study and experience, as
+well as by the force and delicacy which his perception has over that of
+other men. It is thus really more concrete, has more in it, than the
+actual scene.
+
+But when Composition is decried as _artificial_, what is meant is that
+it is _artifice_. It must be artificial, in the sense that all is there
+for the sake of the picture. But it is not to be the _contrivance_ of
+the painter; the purpose must be in the work, not in his head. Diotima,
+in Plato's "Banquet," tells Socrates that Eros desires not the
+beautiful, but to bring forth in the beautiful; the creative impulse
+itself must be the motive, not anything ulterior. We require of the
+artist that he shall build better than he knows,--that his work shall
+not be the statement of his opinions, however correct or respectable,
+but an infinity, inexhaustible like Nature. He is to paint, as Turner
+said, only his impressions, and this precisely because they are not
+_his_, but stand outside of his will. To further this, to get the direct
+action of the artist's instinct, clear of the meddling and patching of
+forethought and afterthought, is no doubt the aim of the seemingly
+careless, formless handling now in vogue,--the dash which Harding says
+makes all the difference between what is good and what is intolerable in
+water-colors,--and the palette-knife-and-finger procedure of the French
+painters.
+
+The sin of premeditated composition is that it is premeditated; the why
+and wherefore is of less consequence. If the motive be extraneous to the
+work, a theory, not an instinct, it does not matter much how _high_ it
+is. It is fatal to beauty to see in the thing only its uses,--in the
+tree only the planks, in Niagara only the water-power; but a reverence
+for the facts themselves, or even for the moral meaning of them, so far
+as it is consciously present in the artist's mind, is just so far from
+the true intent of Art. This is the bane of the modern German school,
+both in landscape and history. They are laborious, learned, accurate,
+elevated in sentiment; Kaulbach's pictures, for instance, are complete
+treatises upon the theme, both as to the conception and the drawing,
+grouping, etc.; but it is mostly as treatises that they have interest.
+So the allegories in Albert Duerer's "Melancholia" are obstructive to it
+as a work of Art, and just in proportion to their value as thoughts.
+
+The moral meaning in a picture, and its fidelity to fact, may each serve
+as measure of its merit _after it is done_. They must each be there, for
+its aim is to express after its own fashion the reality that lurks in
+every particle of matter. But it is for the spectator to see them, not
+the artist, and it is talking at cross-purposes to make either the
+motive,--to preach morality to Art, or to require from the artist an
+inventory of the landscape. That five or ten million pines grow in a
+Swiss valley is no reason why every one of them should be drawn. No
+doubt every one of them has its reason for being there, and it is
+conceivable that an exhaustive final statement might require them all
+to be shown. But there are no final statements in this world, least of
+all in Art. There are many things besides pines in the valley, and more
+important, and they can be drawn meanwhile. Besides, if all the pines,
+why not every pebble and blade of grass?
+
+The earnestness that attracts us in mediaeval Art, the devout fervor of
+the earlier time and the veracity of the later, the deference of the
+painter to his theme, is profoundly interesting as _history_, but it was
+conditioned also by the limitations of that age. The mediaeval mind was
+oppressed by a sense of the foreignness and profaneness of Nature. The
+world is God's work, and ruled by Him; but it is not His dwelling-place,
+but only His foot-stool. The Divine spirit penetrates into the world of
+matter at certain points and to a certain depth, does not possess and
+inhabit it now and here, but only elsewhere and at a future time, in
+heaven, and at the final Judgment; and meantime the Church and the State
+are to maintain His jurisdiction over this outlying province as well as
+they can. The actual presence of God in the world would seem to drag Him
+down into questionable limitations, not to be assumed without express
+warrant, as exception, miracle, and in things consecrated and set apart.
+Hence the patchwork composition of the early painters; we see in it an
+extreme diversity of value ascribed to the things about them. It is a
+world partly divine and partly rubbish; not a universe, but a collection
+of fragments from various worlds. The figures in their landscapes do not
+tread the earth as if they belonged there, but like actors upon a stage,
+tricked up for the occasion. The earth is a desert upon which stones
+have been laid and herbs stuck into the crevices. The trees are put
+together out of separate leaves and twigs, and the rocks and mountains
+inserted like posts. In the earliest specimens the figures themselves
+have the same piecemeal look: their members are not born together, but
+put together. We see just how far the soul extends into them,--sometimes
+only to the eyes, then to the rest of the features, afterwards to the
+limbs and extremities. Evidently the artist's conception left much
+outside of it, to be added by way of label or explanation. In the trees,
+the care is to give the well-known fruit, the acorn or the apple, not
+the character of the tree; for what is wanted is only an indication what
+tree is meant. The only tie between man and the material world is the
+_use_ he makes of it, elaborating and turning it into something it was
+not. Hence the trim _orderliness_ of the mediaeval landscape. Dante shows
+no love of the woods or the mountains, but only dread and dislike, and
+draws his tropes from engineering, from shipyards, moats, embankments.
+
+The mediaeval conception is higher than the antique; it recognizes a
+reality beyond the immediate, but not yet that it is the reality of the
+immediate and present also. But Art must dislodge this phantom of a
+lower, profane reality, and accept its own visions as authentic and
+sufficient. The modern mind is in this sense less religious than the
+mediaeval, that the antithesis of phenomenal and real is less present to
+it. But the pungency of this antithesis comes from an imperfect
+realization of its meaning. Just so far as the subjection of the finite
+remains no longer a postulate or an aspiration, but is carried into
+effect,--its finiteness no longer resisted or deplored, but
+accepted,--just so far it ceases to be opaque and inert. The present
+seems trivial and squalid, because it is clutched and held fast,--the
+fugitive image petrified into an idol or a clod. But taken as it is, it
+becomes transparent, and reveals the fair lines of the ideal.
+
+The complaints of want of earnestness, devoutness, in modern Art, are as
+short-sighted as Schiller's lament over the prosaic present, as a world
+bereft of the gods. It is a loss to which we can well resign ourselves,
+that we no longer see God throned on Olympus, or anywhere else outside
+of the world. It is no misfortune that the mind has recognized under
+these alien forms a spirit akin to itself, and therefore no longer
+gives bribes to Fate by setting up images to it. The deity it worships
+is thenceforth no longer powerless to exist, nor is there any existence
+out of him; it needs not, then, to provide a limbo for him in some
+sphere of abstraction. What has fled is not the divinity, but its false
+isolation, its delegation to a corner of the universe. Instead of the
+god with his whims, we have law universal, the rule of mind, to which
+matter is not hostile, but allied and affirmative. That the sun is no
+longer the chariot of Helios, but a gravitating fireball, is only the
+other side of the perception that it is mind embodied, not some
+unrelated entity for which a charioteer must be deputed.
+
+We no longer worship groves and fountains, nor Madonnas and saints, and
+our Art accordingly can no longer have the fervency, since its objects
+have not the concreteness, that belonged to former times. But it is to
+be noticed that Art can be devout only in proportion as Religion is
+artistic,--that is, as matter, and not spirit, is the immediate object
+of worship. Art and Religion spring from the same root, but coincide
+only at the outset, as in fetichism, the worship of the Black Stone of
+the Caaba, or the wonder-working Madonnas of Italy. The fetich is at
+once image and god; the interest in the appearance is not distinct from
+the interest in the meaning. It needs neither to be beautiful nor to be
+understood. But as the sense springs up of a related _mind_ in the idol,
+the two sides are separated. It is no longer _this thing_ merely, but,
+on the one hand, spirit, above and beyond matter, and, on the other, the
+appearance, equally self-sufficing and supreme among earthly things,
+just because its reality is not here, but elsewhere,--appearance,
+therefore, as transcendent, or Beauty.
+
+To every age the religion of the foregoing seems artificial, incumbered
+with forms, and its Art superstitious, over-scrupulous, biased by
+considerations that have nothing to do with Art. Hence religious
+reformers are mystics, enthusiasts: this is the look of Luther, even of
+the hard-headed Calvin, as seen from the Roman-Catholic side. Hence,
+also, every epoch of revolution in Art seems to the preceding like an
+irruption of frivolity and profanity. Christian Art would have seemed so
+to the ancients; the Realism of the fourteenth century must have seemed
+so to the Giotteschi and the Renaissance, to both. The term
+Pre-Raphaelitism, though it seems an odd collocation to bring together
+such men as Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, and Luca Signorelli, has so far
+an intelligible basis, that all this period, from Giotto to Raphael,
+amidst all diversities, is characterized throughout by a deference of
+Art to something extraneous. It is not beauty that Fra Angelico looks
+for, but holiness, or beauty as expressing this; it is not beauty that
+draws Filippo Lippi, but homely actuality. It is from this point of view
+that the Renaissance has been attacked as wanting in faith, earnestness,
+humility. The Renaissance had swallowed all formulas. Nothing was in
+itself sacred, but all other considerations were sacrificed to the
+appeal to the eye. But this, so far from proving any "faithlessness,"
+shows, on the contrary, an entire faith in their Art, that it was able
+to accomplish what was required of it, and needed not to be bolstered up
+by anything external. Mr. Ruskin wants language to express his contempt
+for Claude, because, in a picture entitled "Moses at the Burning Bush,"
+he paints only a graceful landscape, in which the Bush is rather
+inconspicuous. But Claude might well reply, that what he intended was
+not a history, nor a homily, but a picture; that the name was added for
+convenience' sake, as he might name his son, John, without meaning any
+comparisons with the Evangelist. It is no defect, but a merit, that it
+requires nothing else than itself to explain it.
+
+Claude depicts "an unutilized earth," whence all traces of care, labor,
+sorrow, rapine, and want,--all that can suggest the perils and trials of
+life,--is removed. The buildings are palaces or picturesque ruins; the
+personages promenade at leisure, or only pretend to be doing something.
+All action and story, all individuality of persons, objects, and events,
+is merged in a pervading atmosphere of tranquil, sunny repose,--as of a
+holiday-afternoon. It may seem to us an idle lubberland, a paradise of
+do-nothings;--Mr. Ruskin sees in it only a "dim, stupid, serene,
+leguminous enjoyment." But whoever knows Rome will at least recognize in
+Claude's pictures some reflex of that enchantment that still hangs over
+the wondrous city, and draws to it generation after generation of
+pilgrims. In what does the mysterious charm consist? Is it not that the
+place seems set apart from the working-day world of selfish and warring
+interests? that here all manner of men, for once, lay aside their sordid
+occupations and their vulgar standards, to come together on the ground
+of a common humanity? It is easy to sneer at the Renaissance, but to
+understand it we must take it in its connection. The matters that
+interested that age seem now superfluous, the recreations of a holiday
+rather than the business of life. But coming from the dust and din of
+the fifteenth century, it looks differently. It was, in whatever dim or
+fantastic shape, a recognition of universal brotherhood,--of a common
+ground whereon all mankind could meet in peace and even sympathy, were
+it only for a picnic. In this _villeggiatura_ of the human race the
+immediate aim is no very lofty one,--not truth, not duty, but to please
+or be pleased. But who is it that is to be pleased? Not the great of the
+earth, not the consecrated of the Church, not the men merely of this
+guild or this nation, but Man. It is the festival of the new saint,
+Humanus,--a joyful announcement that the ancient antagonism is not
+fundamental, but destined to be overcome.
+
+This dreamy, half-sad, but friendly and soothing influence, that
+breathes from Claude's landscapes, is not the highest that Nature can
+inspire, but it is far better than to see in the earth only food,
+lodging, and a place to fight in, or even mere background and
+filling-in.
+
+The builders of the Rhine-castles looked down the reaches of the river
+only to spy out their prey or their enemy; the monks in their quiet
+valleys looked out for their trout-stream and kitchen-garden, but any
+interest beyond that would have been heathenish and dangerous. Whilst to
+the ancients the earth had value only as enjoyable, inhabitable, the
+earlier Christian ages valued it only as uninhabitable, as a wilderness
+repelling society. In the earliest mediaeval landscapes, the effort to
+represent a wilderness that is there only for the sake of the hermits
+leads to the curious contradiction of a populous hermitage, every part
+of it occupied by figures resolutely bent on being alone, and sedulously
+ignoring the others. Humboldt quotes from the early Fathers some glowing
+descriptions of natural scenery, but they turn always upon the seclusion
+from mankind, and upon the contrast between the grandeur of God's works
+and the littleness of ours. But in Claude we have the hint, however
+crude, of a relation as unsordid as this, but positive and direct,--the
+soul of the landscape speaking at once to the soul of man,--showing
+itself cognate, already friendly, and needing only to throw off the husk
+of opposition. The defect is not that he defers too much to the purely
+pictorial, that he postpones the facts or the story to beauty, but that
+he does not defer enough, that he does not sufficiently trust his own
+eyes, but by way of further assurance drags in architecture, ships,
+mythological or Scripture stories, not caring for them himself, but
+supposing the spectator cares, so that they remain unassimilated, a scum
+floating on the surface and obscuring the work. Here is the "want of
+faith" with which, if any, he is justly chargeable,--that beauty is not
+enough for him, but he must make it pleasing. Pleasingness implies a
+languid acceptance, in which the mind is spared the shock of fresh
+suggestion or incitement. We call the Venus de' Medici, for instance, a
+pleasing statue, but the Venus of Milo beautiful; because in the one we
+find in fuller measure only what was already accepted and agreeable,
+whilst in the other we feel the presence of an unexplored and formidable
+personality, provoking the endeavor to follow it out and guess at its
+range and extent.
+
+This deference to the spectator marks the decline of Art from the
+supremacy of its position as the interpreter of religion to mankind. The
+work is no longer a revelation devoutly received by the artist and
+piously transmitted to a believing world; but he is a cultivated man,
+who gives what is agreeable to a cultivated society, where the Bible is
+treated with decorum, but all enthusiasm is reserved for Plato and
+Cicero. The earlier and greater men brought much of what they were from
+the fifteenth century, but even Raphael is too academic. It is not a
+Chinese deference to tradition, nor conformity to a fixed national
+taste, such as ruled Greek Art as by an organic necessity. One knows not
+whether to wonder most at the fancied need to attach to the work the
+stamp of classic authority, or at the levity with which the venerable
+forms of antiquity are treated. Nothing can be more superficial than
+this varnish of classicality. The names of Cicero, Brutus, Augustus were
+in all mouths; but the real character of these men, or of any others, or
+of the times they lived in, was very slightly realized. The classic
+architecture, with its cogent adaptation and sequence of parts, is cut
+up into theatre-scenery: its "members" are members no longer, but scraps
+to be stuck about at will. The gods and heroes of the ancient world have
+become the pageant of a holiday; even the sacred legends of the Church
+receive only an outward respect, and at last not even that. Claude wants
+a foreground-figure and puts in AEneas, Diana, or Moses, he cares little
+which, and he would hear, unmoved, Mr. Ruskin's eloquent denunciation of
+their utter unfitness for the assumed character, and the absurdity of
+the whole action of the piece.
+
+But the Renaissance had its religion, too,--namely, Culture. The one
+"virtue," acknowledged on all hands, alike by busy merchants, soldiers,
+despots, women, the acquaintance with Greek and Roman literature and
+art, was not quite the idle dilettanteism it seems. Lorenzo de' Medici
+said, that, without the knowledge of the Platonic philosophy, it was
+hard to be a good citizen and Christian. Leo X. thought, "Nothing more
+excellent or more useful has been given by the Creator to mankind, if we
+except only the knowledge and true worship of Himself, than these
+studies, which not only lead to the ornament and guidance of human life,
+but are applicable and useful to every particular situation." That this
+culture was superficial, that it regarded only show and outside, is no
+reproach, but means only that it was not a mere galvanizing of dead
+bones, that a new spirit was masquerading in these garments. Had it been
+in earnest in its revival of the past, it would have been insignificant;
+its disregard of the substance, and care for the form alone, showed that
+the form was used only as a protest against the old forms. A provincial
+narrowness, even a slight air of vulgarity, was felt to attach to the
+teachings of the Church. Gentility had come to imply not only
+heathendom, ("_gentilis est qui in Christum non credit_,") but liberal
+breeding. The attraction of the classic culture, "the humanities," as it
+was well called, was just this cosmopolitan largeness, that it had no
+prejudices and prescribed no test, but was open to all kinds of merit
+and every manner of man. Goethe, who belongs in good part to the
+Renaissance, frequently exemplifies this feeling, perhaps nowhere more
+strikingly than in the account of his pilgrimage to the temple of
+Minerva at Assisi, which he lovingly describes, remarking, at the same
+time, that he passed with only aversion the Church of St. Francis, with
+its frescos by Cimabue, Giotto, and their followers, which no traveller
+of our day willingly misses or soon forgets, though the temple may
+probably occupy but a small space in his memory. "I made no doubt,"
+says Goethe, "that all the heads there bore the same stamp as my
+Captain's,"--an Italian officer, more orthodox than enlightened, with
+whom he had been travelling.
+
+In truth, however diverse in its first appearance, the Italian
+Renaissance was the counterpart of the German Reformation, and, like
+that, a declaration that God is not shut up in a corner of the universe,
+nor His revelation restricted in regard of time, place, or persons. The
+day was long past when the Church was synonymous with civilization. The
+Church-ideal of holiness had long since been laid aside; a new world had
+grown up, in which other aims and another spirit prevailed. Macchiavelli
+thought the Church had nothing to do with worldly affairs, could do
+nothing for the State or for freedom. And the Church thought so, too. If
+it was left out of the new order of things, it was because it had left
+itself out. "The world" was godless, _pompa Diaboli_; devotion to God
+implied devotion (of the world) to the Devil. But the world, thus cut
+adrift, found itself yet alive and vigorous, and began thenceforth to
+live its own life, leaving the "other world" to take care of itself.
+Salvation, whether for the State or the individual, it was felt must
+come from individual effort, and not be conferred as a stamp or _visa_
+from the Pope and the College of Cardinals. It was not Religion that was
+dead, but only the Church. The Church being petrified into a negation,
+Culture, the religion of the world, was necessarily negative to that,
+and for a time absorbed in the mere getting rid of obstructions.
+Sainthood had never been proposed even as an ideal for all mankind, but
+only as _fuga saeculi_, the avoidance of all connection with human
+affairs. Logically, it must lead to the completest isolation, and find
+its best exponent in Simeon Stylites. The new ideal of Culture must
+involve first of all the getting rid of isolation, natural and
+artificial. Its representatives are such men as Leonardo da Vinci and
+Leon-Battista Alberti, masters of all arts and sciences, travelled,
+well-bred, at home in the universe,--thoroughly accomplished men of the
+world, with senses and faculties in complete harmonious development. It
+is an age full of splendid figures; whatever growth there was in any
+country came now to its flowering-time.
+
+The drawback is want of purpose. This splendor looks only to show; there
+is no universal aim, no motive except whim,--the whims of men of talent,
+or the whim of the crowd. For the approbation of the Church is
+substituted the applause of cultivated society, a wider convention, but
+conventional still. This is the frivolous side of the Renaissance, not
+its holding light the old traditions, but that for the traditions it
+rejected it had nothing but tradition to substitute. But if this
+declaration of independence was at first only a claim for license, not
+for liberty, this is only what was natural, and may be said of
+Protestantism as well. Protestantism, too, had its orthodoxy, and has
+not even yet quite realized that the _private judgment_ whose rights it
+vindicated does not mean personal whim, and therefore is not fortified
+by the assent of any man or body of men, nor weakened by their dissent,
+but belongs alone to thought, which is necessarily individual, and at
+the same time of universal validity; whereas, personality is partial,
+belongs to the crowd, and to that part of the man which confounds him
+with the crowd. Were the private judgment indeed private, it would have
+no rights. Of what consequence the private judgments of a tribe of apes,
+or of Bushmen? This reference to the bystanders means only an appeal
+from the Church; it is at bottom a declaration that the truth is not a
+miraculous exception, a falsehood which for this particular occasion is
+called truth, but the substance of the universe, apparent everywhere,
+and to all that seek it. The perception must be its own evidence, it
+must be true for us, now and here. We have no right to blame the
+Renaissance painters for their love of show, for Art exists for show,
+and the due fulfilment of its purpose, bringing to the surface what was
+dimly indicated, must engage it the more thoroughly in the superficial
+aspect, and make all reference to a hidden ulterior meaning more and
+more a mere pretence. What was once Thought has now become form, color,
+surface; to make a mystery of it would be thoughtlessness or hypocrisy.
+
+The shortcoming is not in the artists, but in Art. Painting shares the
+same fate as Sculpture: not only is the soul not a thing, it is not
+wholly an appearance, but combines with its appearing a constant protest
+against the finality of it. Not only is the body an inadequate
+manifestation, but what it manifests is itself progressive, and any
+conception of it restrictive and partial. Henceforth any representation
+of the human form must either pretend a mystery that is not felt, or, if
+inspired by a genuine interest, it must be of a lower kind, and must
+avoid of set purpose any undue exaltation of one part over another, as
+of the face over the limbs, and dwell rather upon harmony of lines and
+colors, wherein nothing shall be prominent at the expense of the rest,
+seeking to make up what is wanting in intensity, in inward meaning, by
+allusion, by an interest reflected from without, instead of the
+immediate and intuitive. We often feel, even in Raphael's pictures, that
+the aim is lower than, for instance, Fra Angelico's. But it is at least
+genuine, and what that saves us from we may see in some of Perugino's
+and Pinturicchio's altar-pieces, where spirituality means kicking heels,
+hollow cheeks, and a deadly-sweet smile. That Raphael, among all his
+Holy Families, painted only one Madonna di San Sisto, and that hastily,
+on trifling occasion, shows that it was a chance-hit rather than the
+normal fruit of his genius. The beauty that shines like celestial flame
+from the face of the divine child, and the transfigured humanity of the
+mother, are no denizens of earth, but fugitive radiances that tinge it
+for a moment and are gone. For once, the impossible is achieved; the
+figures hover, dreamlike, disconnected from all around, as if the canvas
+opened and showed, not what is upon it, but beyond it. But it is a
+casual success, not to be sought or expected. A wise instinct made the
+painter in general shun such direct, explicit statement, and rather
+treat the subject somewhat cavalierly than allow it to confront and
+confound him. The greater he is, and the more complete his development,
+the more he must dread whatever makes his Art secondary or superfluous.
+Whatever force we give to the reproach of want of elevation, etc., the
+only impossible theme is the unartistic.
+
+But before we give heed to any such reproach we must beware of
+confounding the personality of the artist or the fashion of the time
+with the moving spirit in both. He works always--as Michel Angelo
+complained that he was painting the ceiling of the Sistine--over his own
+head, and blinded by his own paint. The _purpose_ that we speak of is
+not his petty doings and intentions, but what he unintentionally
+accomplishes. It is the spiritual alone that interests; and if later Art
+seem, by comparison, wanting in spirituality, this is partly the effect
+of its juster appreciation, that rendered direct expression hopeless,
+but at the same time superfluous, by discovering the same import more
+accessible elsewhere, as the higher indirect meaning of all material
+things. Critics tell us that the charm of landscape is incomplete
+without the presence of man,--that there must always be some hint, at
+least, of human habitation or influence. Certainly it is always a human
+interest, it is not the timber and the water, that moves us, but the
+echo of a kindred mind. But in the "landscape and figures" it is hardly
+a human interest that we take in the figures. The "dull victims of pipe
+and mug" serve our turn perhaps better than the noblest mountaineers. It
+is not to them that we look for the spirit of the landscape,--rather
+anywhere else. It is the security of the perception that allows it to
+dispense with pointed demonstration, and to delight rather in obscurer
+intimations of its meaning.
+
+The modern ideal is the Picturesque,--a beauty not detachable, belonging
+to the picture, to the composition, not to the component parts. It has
+no favorites; it is violated alike by the systematic glorification and
+the systematic depreciation of particular forms. The Apollo Belvedere
+would make as poor a figure in the foreground of a modern landscape as a
+fisherman in jack-boots and red nightcap on a pedestal in the Vatican.
+Claude's or Turner's figures may be absurd, when taken by themselves;
+but the absurdity consists in taking them by themselves. Turner, it is
+said, could draw figures well; Claude probably could not; (he is more
+likely to have tried;) but each must have felt that anything that should
+call attention to the figures would be worse than any bad drawing.
+Nicolas Poussin was well called "the learned"; for it is his learning,
+his study of the antique, of Raphael, of drapery and anatomy, that most
+appears in his landscapes and gives his figures their plastic emphasis.
+But this is no praise for a painter.
+
+Of course the boundary-lines cannot be very exactly drawn; the genius of
+a Delaroche or a Millais will give interest to a figure-piece at
+whatever epoch. But such pictures as Etty's, or Page's Venus, where the
+beauty of the human body is the point of attraction, are flat
+anachronisms, and for this reason, not from any prudishness of the
+public, can never excite a hearty enthusiasm. From the sixteenth century
+downwards all pictures become more and more _tableaux de genre_,--the
+piece is not described by the nominal subject, but only the class to
+which it belongs, leaving its special character wholly undetermined. And
+in proportion as the action and the detail are dwelt upon, the more
+evident is it that the theme is only a pretence. Martyrdoms, when there
+was any fervency of faith in the martyrs, were very abstract. A hint of
+sword or wheel sufficed. The saints and the angels, as long as men
+believed in them, carried their witness in their faces, with only some
+conventional indication of their history. As soon as direct
+representation is aimed at and the event portrayed as an historical
+fact, it is proof enough that all direct interest is gone and nothing
+left but the technical problem. The martyrdoms are vulgar
+execution-scenes,--the angels, men sprawling upon clouds. Michel Angelo
+was a noble, devout man, but it is clear that the God he prayed to was
+not the God he painted.
+
+This essential disparity between idea and representation is the weak
+side of Art, plastic and pictorial; but because it is essential it is
+not felt by the artist as defect. His genius urges him to all advance
+that is possible within the limits of his Art, but not to transcend it.
+It will be in vain to exhort him to unite the ancient piety to the
+modern knowledge. If he listen to the exhortation, he may be a good
+critic, but he is no painter. He must be absorbed in what he sees to the
+exclusion of everything else; impartiality is a virtue to all the world
+except him. There will always be a onesidedness; either the conception
+or the embodying of it halts, is only partially realized; some
+incompleteness, some mystery, some apparent want of coincidence between
+form and meaning is a necessity to the artist, and if he does not find
+it, he will invent it. Hence the embarrassment of some of the English
+Pre-Raphaelitists, particularly in dealing with the human form. They
+have no hesitation in pursuing into still further minuteness the literal
+delineation of inanimate objects, draperies, etc.; but they shrink from
+giving full life to their figures, not from a slavish adherence to their
+exemplars, but from a dread lest it should seem that what is shown is
+all that is meant. The early painters were thus _naive_ and distinct
+because of their limitations; they knew very well what they meant,--as,
+that the event took place out-of-doors, with the sun shining, the grass
+under-foot, an oak-tree here, a strawberry-vine there,--mere adjunct and
+by-play, not to be questioned as to the import of the piece: _that_ the
+Church took care of. But who can say what a modern landscape means? The
+significance that in the older picture was as it were outside of it,
+presupposed, assured elsewhere, has now to be incorporated, verily
+present in every atom of soil and film of vapor. The realism of the
+modern picture must be infinitely more extended, for the meaning of it
+is that _nothing_ is superfluous or insignificant. But with the reality
+that it lends to every particle of matter, it must introduce, at the
+same time, the protest that spirit makes against matter,--most distinct,
+indeed, in the human form and countenance, but nowhere absent. In its
+utmost explication there must be felt that there is yet more behind; its
+utmost distinctness must be everywhere indefinable, evanescent,--must
+proclaim that this parade of surface-appearance is not there for its own
+sake. This is what Mr. Ruskin calls "the pathetic fallacy": but there is
+nothing fallacious in it; it is solid truth, only under the guise of
+mystery. Turner said that Mr. Ruskin had put all sorts of meanings into
+his pictures that he knew nothing about. Of course, else they would
+never have got into the pictures. But this does not affect their
+validity, but means only that it is the imagination, not the intellect,
+that must apprehend them.
+
+It is not an outward, arbitrary incompleteness that is demanded, but a
+visible dependence of each part, by its partiality declaring the
+completeness of the whole. It is often said that the picture must "leave
+room for the imagination." Yes, and for nothing else; but this does not
+imply that it should be unfinished, but that, when the painter has set
+down what the imagination grasped in one view, he shall stop, no matter
+where, and not attempt to eke out the deficiency by formula or by knack
+of fingers. Wherever the inspiration leaves him, there is an end of the
+picture. Beyond that we get only his personalities; no skill, no
+earnestness of intention, etc., can avail him; he is only mystifying
+himself or us. At these points we sooner or later come up with him, are
+as good as he, and the work forthwith begins to tire. What is tiresome
+is to have thrust upon us the dead surface of matter: this is the prose
+of the world, which we come to Art to escape. It is prosaic, because it
+is seen as the understanding sees it, as an aggregate only, apart from
+its vital connection; it matters little whose the understanding is. The
+artist must be alive only to the totality of the impression, blind and
+deaf to all outside of that. He must believe that the idyl he sees in
+the landscape is there because he sees it, and will appear in the
+picture without the help of demonstration. The danger is, that from
+weakness of faith he will fancy or pretend that he sees something else,
+which may be there, but formed no part of the impression. It is simply a
+question of natural attraction, magnetism, how much he can take up and
+carry; all beyond that is hindrance, and any conscious endeavor of his
+cannot help, but can only thwart.
+
+The picturesque has its root in the mind's craving for totality. It is
+Nature seen as a whole; all the characteristics and prerequisites of it
+come back to this,--such as roughness, wildness, ruin, obscurity, the
+gloom of night or of storm; whatever the outward discrepancy, wherever
+the effect is produced, it is because in some way there is a gain in
+completeness. On this condition everything is welcome,--without it,
+nothing. Thus, a broken, weedy bank is more picturesque than the velvet
+slope,--the decayed oak than the symmetry of the sapling,--the squalid
+shanty by the railroad, with its base of dirt, its windows stuffed with
+old hats, and the red shirts dependent from its eaves, than the neatest
+brick cottage. They strike a richer accord, while the others drone on a
+single note. Moonlight is always picturesque, because it substitutes
+mass and breadth for the obtrusiveness of petty particulars. It is not
+the pettiness, but the particularity, that makes them unpicturesque. No
+impressiveness in the object can atone for exclusiveness. Niagara cannot
+be painted, not because it is too difficult, but because it is no
+landscape, but like a vast illuminated capital letter filling the whole
+page, or the sublime monotony of the mosque-inscriptions, declaring in
+thousandfold repetition that God is great. The soaring sublimity of the
+Moslem monotheism comes partly from its narrowness and abstractness. Is
+it because we are a little hard of hearing that it takes such
+reiteration to move us?
+
+The wholeness which the imagination demands is not quantitative, but
+qualitative; it has nothing to do with size or with number, except so
+far as, by confusing the sense, they obscurely intimate infinity, with
+which all quantities are incommensurable. Mr. Ruskin's encyclopedic
+anatomizing of the landscape, to the end of showing the closeness of
+Turner's perception, has great interest, but not the interest merely of
+a longer list, for it is to be remembered that the longest list would be
+no nearer to an exhaustive analysis than the shortest. It is not a
+specious completeness, but a sense of infinity that can never be
+completed,--greater intensity, not greater extension,--that
+distinguishes modern landscape-art. Hence there is no incongruity in the
+seeming license that it takes with the firm order of Nature. It is in no
+spirit of levity or profanity that the substantial distinctions of
+things are thus disregarded,--that all absolute rank is denied, and the
+value of each made contingent and floating. It is only that the mind is
+somewhat nearer apprehending the sense, and dwells less on the
+characters.
+
+If Art suffers in its relative rank among human interests by this
+democratic levelling, it is to the gain of what Art intends. It is true,
+no picture can henceforth move us as men were once moved by pictures. No
+Borgo Allegro will ever turn out again in triumph for a Madonna of
+Cimabue or of any one else; whatever feeling Turner or another may
+excite comes far short of that. But the splendor that clothed the poor,
+pale, formal image belonged very little to it, but expressed rather the
+previous need of utterance, and could reach that pitch only when the age
+had not yet learned to think and to write, but must put up with these
+hieroglyphics. Art has no more grown un-religious than Religion has, but
+only less idolatrous. As fast as religion passes into life,--as the
+spiritual nature of man begins to be recognized as the ground of
+legislation and society, and not merely in the miracle of
+sainthood,--the apparatus and imagery of the Church, its dogmas and
+ceremonies, grow superfluous, as what they stand for is itself present.
+It is the dawn that makes these stars grow pale. So in Art, as fast as
+the dream of the imagination becomes the common sense of mankind, and
+only so fast, the awe that surrounded the earlier glimpses is lost. Its
+influence is not lessened, but diffused and domesticated as Culture.
+
+Art is the truly popular philosophy. Our picture-gazing and view-hunting
+only express the feeling that our science is too abstract, that it does
+not attach us, but isolates us in the universe. What we are thus
+inwardly drawn to explore is not the chaff and _exuviae_ of things, not
+their differences only, but their central connection, in spite of
+apparent diversity. This, stated, is the Ideal, the abrupt contradiction
+of the actual, and the creation of a world extraordinary, in which all
+defect is removed. But the defect cannot be cured by correction, for
+that admits its right to exist; it is not by exclusion that limitation
+is overcome,--this is only to establish a new limitation,--but by
+inclusion, by reaching the point where the superficial antagonism
+vanishes. Then the ideal is seen no longer in opposition, but everywhere
+and alone existent. As this point is approached, the impulse to
+reconstruct the actual--as if the triumph of truth were staked on that
+venture--dies out. The elaborate contradiction loses interest, earliest
+where it is most elaborate and circumstantial, and latest where the
+image has least materiality and fixity, where it is only a reminder of
+what the actual is securely felt to be, in spite of its stubborn
+exterior.
+
+The modern mind is therefore less demonstrative; our civilization seeks
+less to declare and typify itself outwardly in works of Art, manners,
+dress, etc. Hence it is, perhaps, that the beauty of the race has not
+kept pace with its culture. It is less beautiful, because it cares less
+for beauty, since this is no longer the only reconcilement of the actual
+with the inward demands. The vice of the imagination is its inevitable
+exaggeration. It is our own weakness and dulness that we try to hide
+from ourselves by this partiality. Therefore it was said that the images
+were the Bible of the laity. Bishop Durandus already in the thirteenth
+century declared that it is only where the truth is not yet revealed
+that this "Judaizing" is permissible.
+
+The highest of all arts is the art of life. In this the superficial
+antagonisms of use and beauty, of fact and reality, disappear. A little
+gain here, or the hint of it, richly repays all the lost magnificence.
+We need not concern ourselves lest these latter ages should be left
+bankrupt of the sense of beauty, for that is but a phase of a force that
+is never absent; nothing can supersede it but itself in a higher power.
+What we lament as decay only shows its demands fulfilled, and the arts
+it has left behind are but the landmarks of its accomplished purpose.
+
+
+
+
+OUR CLASSMATE.
+
+F. W. C.
+
+
+    Fast as the rolling seasons bring
+      The hour of fate to those we love,
+    Each pearl that leaves the broken string
+      Is set in Friendship's crown above.
+    As narrower grows the earthly chain,
+      The circle widens in the sky;
+    These are our treasures that remain,
+      But those are stars that beam on high.
+
+    We miss--oh, how we miss!--_his_ face,--
+      With trembling accents speak his name.
+    Earth cannot fill his shadowed place
+      From all her rolls of pride and fame.
+    Our song has lost the silvery thread
+      That carolled through his jocund lips;
+    Our laugh is mute, our smile is fled,
+      And all our sunshine in eclipse.
+
+    And what and whence the wondrous charm
+      That kept his manhood boy-like still,--
+    That life's hard censors could disarm
+      And lead them captive at his will?
+    His heart was shaped of rosier clay,--
+      His veins were filled with ruddier fire,--
+    Time could not chill him, fortune sway,
+      Nor toil with all its burdens tire.
+
+    His speech burst throbbing from its fount
+      And set our colder thoughts aglow,
+    As the hot leaping geysers mount
+      And falling melt the Iceland snow.
+    Some word, perchance, we counted rash,--
+      Some phrase our calmness might disclaim;
+    Yet 't was the sunset lightning's flash,
+      No angry bolt, but harmless flame.
+
+    Man judges all, God knoweth each;
+      We read the rule, He sees the law;
+    How oft His laughing children teach
+      The truths His prophets never saw!
+    O friend, whose wisdom flowered in mirth!
+      Our hearts are sad, our eyes are dim;
+    He gave thy smiles to brighten earth,--
+      We trust thy joyous soul to Him!
+
+    Alas!--our weakness Heaven forgive!
+      We murmur, even while we trust,
+    "How long earth's breathing burdens live,
+      Whose hearts, before they die, are dust!"
+    But thou!--through grief's untimely tears
+      We ask with half-reproachful sigh,
+    "Couldst thou not watch a few brief years
+      Till Friendship faltered, 'Thou mayst die'?"
+
+    Who loved our boyish years so well?
+      Who knew so well their pleasant tales,
+    And all those livelier freaks could tell
+      Whose oft-told story never fails?
+    In vain we turn our aching eyes,--
+      In vain we stretch our eager hands,--
+    Cold in his wintry shroud he lies
+      Beneath the dreary drifting sands!
+
+    Ah, speak not thus! _He_ lies not there!
+      We see him, hear him as of old!
+    He comes! he claims his wonted chair;
+      His beaming face we still behold!
+    His voice rings clear in all our songs,
+      And loud his mirthful accents rise;
+    To us our brother's life belongs,--
+      Dear boys, a classmate never dies!
+
+
+
+
+WHITTIER.
+
+
+It was some ten years ago that we first met John Greenleaf Whittier, the
+poet of the moral sentiment and of the heart and faith of the people of
+America. It chanced that we had then been making notes, with much
+interest, upon the genius of the Semitic nations. That peculiar
+simplicity, centrality, and intensity which caused them to originate
+Monotheism from two independent centres, the only systems of pure
+Monotheism which have had power in history,--while the same
+characteristics made their poetry always lyrical, never epic or
+dramatic, and their most vigorous thought a perpetual sacrifice on the
+altars of the will,--this had strongly impressed us; and we seemed to
+find in it a striking contrast to the characteristic genius of the Aryan
+or Indo-Germanic nations, with their imaginative interpretations of the
+religious sentiment, with their epic and dramatic expansions, and their
+taste for breadth and variety. Somewhat warm with these notions, we came
+to a meeting with our poet, and the first thought, on seeing him, was,
+"The head of a Hebrew prophet!" It is not Hebrew,--Saracen rather; the
+Jewish type is heavier, more material; but it corresponded strikingly to
+the conceptions we had formed of the Southern Semitic crania, and the
+whole make of the man was of the same character. The high cranium, so
+lofty especially in the dome,--the slight and symmetrical backward slope
+of the _whole_ head,--the powerful level brows, and beneath these the
+dark, deep eyes, so full of shadowed fire,--the Arabian complexion,--the
+sharp-cut, intense lines of the face,--the light, tall, erect
+stature,--the quick axial poise of the movement,--all these answered
+with singular accuracy to the picture of those preacher-races which had
+been shaping itself in our imagination. Indeed, the impression was so
+strong as to induce some little feeling of embarrassment. It seemed
+slightly awkward and insipid to be meeting a prophet here in a parlor
+and in a spruce masquerade of modern costume, shaking hands, and saying,
+"Happy to meet you," after the fashion of our feeble civilities.
+
+All this came vividly to remembrance, on taking up, the other day,
+Whittier's last book of poems, "In War-Time,"--a volume that has been
+welcomed all over the land with enthusiastic delight. Had it been no
+more, however, than a mere private reminiscence, it should, at present,
+have remained private. But have we not here a key to Whittier's genius?
+Is not this Semitic centrality and simplicity, this prophetic depth,
+reality, and vigor, without great lateral and intellectual range, its
+especial characteristic? He has not the liberated, light-winged Greek
+imagination,--imagination not involved and included in the religious
+sentiment, but playing in epic freedom and with various interpretation
+between religion and intellect; he has not the flowing, Protean,
+imaginative sympathy, the power of instant self-identification with all
+forms of character and life, which culminated in Shakspeare; but that
+imaginative vitality which lurks in faith and conscience, producing what
+we may call _ideal force of heart_, this he has eminently; and it is
+this central, invisible, Semitic heat which makes him a poet.
+
+Imagination exists in him, not as a separable faculty, but as a pure
+vital suffusion. Hence he is an _inevitable_ poet. There is no drop of
+his blood, there is no fibre of his brain, which does not crave poetic
+expression. Mr. Carlyle desires to postpone poetry; but as Providence
+did not postpone Whittier, his wishes can hardly be gratified. Ours is,
+indeed, one of the plainest of poets. He is intelligible and acceptable
+to those who have little either of poetic culture or of fancy and
+imagination. Whoever has common sense and a sound heart has the powers
+by which he may be appreciated. And yet he is not only a real poet, but
+he is _all_ poet. The Muses have not merely sprinkled his brow; he was
+baptized by immersion. His notes are not many; but in them Nature
+herself sings. He is a sparrow that half sings, half chirps, on a bush,
+not a lark that floods with orient hilarity the skies of morning; but
+the bush burns, like that which Moses saw, and the sparrow herself is
+part of the divine flame.
+
+This, then, is the general statement about Whittier. His genius is
+Hebrew, Biblical,--more so than that of any other poet now using the
+English language. In other words, he is organically a poem of the Will.
+He is a flower of the moral sentiment,--and of the moral sentiment, not
+in its flexible, feminine, vine-like dependence and play, but in its
+masculine rigor, climbing in direct, vertical affirmation, like a
+forest-pine. In this respect he affiliates with Wordsworth, and, going
+farther back, with Milton, whose tap-root was Hebrew, though in the vast
+epic flowering of his genius he passed beyond the imaginative range of
+Semitic mind.
+
+In thus identifying our bard, spiritually, with a broad form of the
+genius of mankind, we already say with emphasis that his is indeed a
+Life. Yes, once more, a real Life. He is a nature. He was _born_, not
+manufactured. Here, once again, the old, mysterious, miraculous
+processes of spiritual assimilation. Here, a genuine root-clutch upon
+the elements of man's experience, and an inevitable, indomitable
+working-up of them into human shape. To look at him without discerning
+this vital depth and reality were as good as no looking at all.
+
+Moreover, the man and the poet are one and the same. His verse is no
+literary Beau-Brummelism, but a _re_-presentation of that which is
+presented in his consciousness. First, there is inward vital conversion
+of the elements of his experience, then verse, or version,--first the
+soul, then the body. His voice, as such, has little range, nor is it any
+marvel of organic perfection; on the contrary, there is many a voice
+with nothing at all in it which far surpasses his in mere vocal
+excellence; only in this you can hear the deep refrain of Nature, and of
+Nature chanting her moral ideal.
+
+We shall consider Whittier's poetry in this light,--as a vital
+effluence, as a product of his being; and citations will be made, not by
+way of culling "beauties,"--a mode of criticism to which there are grave
+objections,--but of illustrating total growth, quality, and power. Our
+endeavor will be to get at, so far as possible, the processes of vital
+action, of spiritual assimilation, which go on in the poet, and then to
+trace these in his poetry.
+
+God gave Whittier a deep, hot, simple, strenuous, and yet ripe and
+spherical, nature, whose twin necessities were, first, that it _must_
+lay an intense grasp upon the elements of its experience, and, secondly,
+that it _must_ work these up into some form of melodious completeness.
+History and the world gave him Quakerism, America, and Rural Solitude;
+and through this solitude went winding the sweet, old Merrimac stream,
+the river that we would not wish to forget, even by the waters of the
+river of life! And it is into these elements that his genius, with its
+peculiar vital simplicity and intensity, strikes root. Historic reality,
+the great _facts_ of his time, are the soil in which he grows, as they
+are with all natures of depth and energy. "We did not wish," said
+Goethe, "to learn, but to live."
+
+Quakerism and America--America ideally true to herself--quickly became,
+in his mind, one and the same. Quakerism means _divine democracy_.
+George Fox was the first forerunner, the John Baptist, of the new
+time,--leather-aproned in the British wilderness. Seeing the whole world
+dissolving into individualism, he did not try to tie it together, after
+the fashion of great old Hooker, with new cords of ecclesiasticism; but
+he did this,--he affirmed a Mount Sinai in the heart of the individual,
+and gave to the word _person_ an INFINITE depth. To sound that
+word thus was his function in history. No wonder that England trembled
+with terror, and then blazed with rage. No wonder that many an ardent
+James Naylor was crazed with the new wine.
+
+Puritanism meant the same thing at bottom; but, accepting the more legal
+and learned interpretations of Calvin, it was, to a great degree,
+involved in the past, and also turned its eye more to political
+mechanisms. For this very reason it kept up more of fellowship with the
+broad world, and had the benefit of this in a larger measure of social
+fructification. Whatever is separated dies. Quakerism uttered a word so
+profound that the utterance made it insular; and, left to itself, it
+began to be lost in itself. Nevertheless, Quakerism and Puritanism are
+the two richest historic soils of modern time.
+
+Our young poet got at the heart of the matter. He learned to utter the
+word _Man_ so believingly that it sounded down into depths of the divine
+and infinite. He learned to say, with Novalis, "He touches heaven who
+touches a human body." And when he uttered this word, "Man," in full,
+_social_ breadth, lo! it changed, and became AMERICA.
+
+There begins the genesis of the conscious poet. All the depths of his
+heart rang with the resonance of these imaginations,--Man, America;
+meaning divine depth of manhood, divine spontaneity and rectitude of
+social relationship.
+
+But what! what is this? Just as he would raise his voice to chant the
+new destinies of man, a harsh, heartless, human bark, and therewith a
+low, despairing stifle of sobbing, came to his ear! It is the bark of
+the auctioneer, "Going! going!"--it is the sobbing of the slave on the
+auction-block! And _this_, too, O Poet, this, too, is America! So you
+are not secure of your grand believing imaginations yet, but must fight
+for them. The faith of your heart would perish, if it did not put on
+armor.
+
+Whittier's poetic life has three principal epochs. The first opens and
+closes with the "Voices of Freedom." We may use Darwin's phrase, and
+call it the period of Struggle for Life. His ideal itself is endangered;
+the atmosphere he would inhale is filled with poison; a desolating moral
+prosaicism springs up to justify a great social ugliness, and spreads in
+the air where his young hopes would try their wings; and in the
+imperfect strength of youth he has so much of dependence upon actual
+surroundings, that he must either war with their evil or succumb to it.
+Of surrender his daring and unselfish soul never for a moment thought.
+Never did a trained falcon stoop upon her quarry with more fearlessness,
+or a spirit of less question, than that which bore our young hero to the
+moral fray; yet the choice was such as we have indicated.
+
+The faith for which he fought is uttered with spirit in a stanza from
+"The Branded Hand."
+
+    "In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below,
+    Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know:
+    God's stars and silence taught thee, as His angels only can,
+    That the one, sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man."
+
+Our poet, too, conversing with God's stars and silence, has come to an
+understanding with himself, and made up his mind. That Man's being has
+an ideal or infinite value, and that all consecrated institutions are
+shams, and their formal consecration a blasphemous mockery, save as they
+look to that fact,--this in his Merrimac solitudes has come forth
+clearly to his soul, and, like old Hebrew David, he has said, "My heart
+is fixed." Make other selections who will, he has concluded to face life
+and death on this basis.
+
+Did he not choose as a poet MUST? Between a low moral
+prosaicism and a generous moral ideal was it possible for him to
+hesitate? Are there those whose real thought is, that man, beyond his
+estimation as an animal, represents only a civil value,--that he is but
+the tailor's "dummy" and clothes-horse of institutions? Do they tell our
+poet that his notion of man as a divine revelation, as a pure spiritual
+or absolute value, is a mere dream, discountenanced by the truth of the
+universe? He might answer, "Let the universe look to it, then! In that
+case, I stand upon my dream as the only worthy reality." What were a
+mere pot-and-pudding universe to him? Does Mr. Holyoke complain that
+these hot idealisms make the culinary kettles of the world boil over?
+Kitchen-prudences are good for kitchens; but the sun kindles his great
+heart without special regard to them.
+
+These "Voices of Freedom" are no bad reading at the present day. They
+are of that strenuous quality, that the light of battle brings to view a
+finer print, which lay unseen between the lines. They are themselves
+battles, and stir the blood like the blast of a trumpet. What a beat in
+them of fiery pulses! What a heat, as of molten metal, or coal-mines
+burning underground! What anger! What desire! And yet we have in vain
+searched these poems to find one trace of base wrath, or of any
+degenerate and selfish passion. He is angry, and sins not. The sun goes
+down and again rises upon his wrath; and neither sets nor rises upon
+aught freer from meanness and egoism. All the fires of his heart burn
+for justice and mercy, for God and humanity; and they who are most
+scathed by them _owe_ him no hatred in return, whether they _pay_ him
+any or not.
+
+Not a few of these verses seem written for the present day. Take the
+following from the poem entitled, "Texas"; they might be deemed a call
+for volunteers.
+
+    "Up the hill-side, down the glen,
+    Rouse the sleeping citizen,
+    Summon forth the might of men!
+
+     *   *   *   *   *
+
+    "Oh! for God and duty stand,
+    Heart to heart and hand to hand,
+    Round the old graves of the land.
+
+    "Whoso shrinks or falters now,
+    Whoso to the yoke would bow,--
+    Brand the craven on his brow!
+
+    "Perish party, perish clan!
+    Strike together, while ye can,
+    Like the arm of one strong man."
+
+The Administration might have gone to these poems for a policy: he had
+fought the battle before them.
+
+    "Have they wronged us? Let us, then,
+      Render back nor threats nor prayers;
+    Have they chained our freeborn men?
+      LET US UNCHAIN THEIRS!"
+
+Or look at these concluding stanzas of "The Crisis," which is the last
+of the "Voices." Has not our prophet written them for this very day?
+
+    "The crisis presses on us; face to face with us it stands,
+    With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands!
+    This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin;
+    This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin;
+    Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy crown,
+    We call the dews of blessing or the bolts of cursing down.
+
+    "By all for which the Martyrs bore their agony and shame,
+    By all the warning words of truth with which the Prophets came,
+    By the Future which awaits us, by all the hopes which cast
+    Their faint and trembling beams across the darkness of the Past,
+    And by the blessed thought of Him who for Earth's freedom died,
+    O my people! O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side.
+
+    "So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his way,
+    To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's bay,
+    To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain,
+    And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train;
+    The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea,
+    And mountain unto mountain call, 'PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE!'"
+
+These are less to be named poems than pieces of rhythmic
+oratory,--oratory crystallized into poetic form, and carrying that
+deeper significance and force which from all vitalized form are
+inseparable. A poem, every work of Art, must rest in itself; oratory is
+a means toward a specific effect. The man who writes poems may have aims
+which underlie and suffuse his work; but they must not be partial, they
+must be coextensive with the whole spirit of man, and must enter his
+work as the air enters his nostrils. The moment a definite, partial
+effect is sought, the attitude of poetry begins to be lost. These
+battle-pieces are therefore a warfare for the possession of the poet's
+ideal, not the joyous life-breath of that ideal already victorious in
+him. And the other poems of this first great epoch in his poetical life,
+though always powerful, often beautiful, yet never, we think, show a
+_perfect_ resting upon his own poetic heart.
+
+In the year 1850 appeared the "Songs of Labor, and other Poems"; and in
+these we reach the transition to his second epoch. Here he has already
+recognized the pure ground of the poem,--
+
+    "Art's perfect forms no moral need,
+      And beauty is its own excuse,"--
+
+but his modesty declines attempting that perfection, and assigns him a
+lower place. He must still seek definite uses, though this use be to
+lend imagination or poetic depth to daily labor:--
+
+      "But for the dull and flowerless weed
+       Some healing virtue still must plead,
+    And the rough ore must find its honors in its use.
+
+      "So haply these my simple lays
+         Of homely toil may serve to show
+       The orchard-bloom and tasselled maize
+       That skirt and gladden duty's ways,
+    The unsung beauty hid life's common things below."
+
+Not pure gold as yet, but genuine silver. The aim at a definite use is
+still apparent, as he himself perceives; but there is nevertheless a
+constant native play into them of ideal feeling. It is no longer a
+struggle for room to draw poetic breath in, but only the absence of a
+perfectly free and unconscious poetic respiration. Yet they are sterling
+poems, with the stamp of the mint upon them. And some of the strains are
+such as no living man but Whittier has proven his power to produce.
+"Ichabod," for example, is the purest and profoundest _moral_ lament, to
+the best of our knowledge, in modern literature, whether American or
+European. It is the grief of angels in arms over a traitor brother slain
+on the battle-fields of heaven.
+
+Two years later comes the "Chapel of the Hermits," and with it the
+second epoch in Whittier's poetic career. The epoch of Culture we name
+it. The poet has now passed the period of outward warfare. All the
+arrows in the quiver of his noble wrath are spent. Now on the wrong and
+shame of the land he looks down with deep, calm, superior eyes,
+sorrowful, indeed, and reproving, but no longer perturbed. His hot,
+eloquent, prophetic spirit now breathes freely, lurk in the winds of the
+moment what poison may; for he has attained to those finer airs of
+eternity which hide ever, like the luminiferous ether, in this
+atmosphere of time; so that, like the scholar-hero of Schiller, he is
+indeed "in the time, but not of it." Still his chant of high
+encouragement shall fly forth on wings of music to foster the nobilities
+of the land; still over the graves of the faithful dead he shall murmur
+a requiem, whose chastened depth and truth relate it to other and better
+worlds than this; still his lips utter brave rebuke, but it is a rebuke
+that falls, like the song of an unseen bird, out of the sky, so purely
+moral, so remote from earthly and egoistic passion, so sure and
+reposeful, that verse is its natural embodiment. The home-elements of
+his intellectual and moral life he has fairly assimilated; and his verse
+in its mellowness and rhythmical excellence reflects this achievement of
+his spirit.
+
+But now, after the warfare, begins questioning. For modern culture has
+come to him, as it comes to all, with its criticism, its science, its
+wide conversation through books, its intellectual unrest; it has
+looked him in the eye, and said, "_Are you sure?_ The dear old
+traditions,--they are indeed _traditions_. The sweet customs which have
+housed our spiritual and social life,--these are _customs_. Of what are
+you SURE?" Matthew Arnold has recently said well (we cannot
+quote the words) that the opening of the modern epoch consists in the
+discovery that institutions and habitudes of the earlier centuries, in
+which we have grown, are not absolute, and do not adjust themselves
+perfectly to our mental wants. Thus are we thrown back upon our own
+souls. We have to ask the first questions, and get such answer as we
+may. The meaning of the modern world is this,--an epoch which, in the
+midst of established institutions, of old consecrated habitudes of
+thought and feeling, of populous nations which cannot cast loose from
+ancient anchorage without peril of horrible wreck and disaster, has got
+to take up man's life again from the beginning. Of modern life this is
+the immediate key.
+
+Our poet's is one of those deep and clinging natures which hold hard by
+the heart of bygone times; but also he is of a nature so deep and
+sensitive that the spiritual endeavor of the period must needs utter
+itself in him. "ART THOU SURE?"--the voice went sounding
+keenly, terribly, through the profound of his soul. And to this his
+spirit, not without struggle and agony, but at length clearly, made
+the faithful Hebrew response, "I TRUST." Bravely said, O
+deep-hearted poet! Rest there! Rest there and thus on your own believing
+filial heart, and on the Eternal, who in it accomplishes the miracle of
+that confiding!
+
+Not eminently endowed with discursive intellect,--not gifted with that
+power, Homeric in kind and more than Homeric in degree, which might meet
+the old mythic imaginations on, or rather above, their own level, and
+out of them, together with the material which modern time supplies,
+build in the skies new architectures, wherein not only the feeling, but
+the _imagination_ also, of future ages might house,--our poet comes with
+Semitic directness to the heart of the matter: he takes the divine
+_Yea_, though it be but a simple _Yea_, and no syllable more, in his own
+soul, and holds childlike by that. And he who has asked the questions of
+the time and reached this conclusion,--he who has stood alone with his
+unclothed soul, and out of that nakedness before the Eternities said,
+"_I trust_,"--he is victorious; he has entered the modern epoch, and has
+not lost the spiritual crown from his brows.
+
+The central poem of this epoch is "Questions of Life."
+
+    "I am: how little more I know!
+    Whence came I? Whither do I go?
+    A centred self, which feels and is;
+    _A cry between the silences;_
+    A shadow-birth of clouds at strife
+    With sunshine on the hills of life;
+    A shaft from Nature's quiver cast
+    Into the Future from the Past;
+    Between the cradle and the shroud
+    A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud."
+
+Then to outward Nature, to mythic tradition, to the thought, faith,
+sanctity of old time he goes in quest of certitude, but returns to God
+in the heart, and to the simple heroic act by which he that believes
+BELIEVES.
+
+    "To Him, from wanderings long and wild,
+    I come, an over-wearied child,
+    In cool and shade His peace to find,
+    Like dew-fall settling on the mind.
+    Assured that all I know is best,
+    And humbly trusting for the rest,
+    I turn....
+    From Nature and her mockery, Art,
+    And book and speech of men apart,
+    To the still witness in my heart;
+    With reverence waiting to behold
+    His Avatar of love unfold,
+    The Eternal Beauty new and old!"
+
+"The Panorama and other Poems," together with "Later Poems,"[13] having
+the dates of 1856 and 1857, constitute the transition to his third and
+consummate epoch. Much in them deserves notice, but we must hasten. And
+yet, instead of hastening, we will pause, and take this opportunity to
+pick a small critical quarrel with Mr. Whittier. We charge him, in the
+first place, with sundry felonious assaults upon the good letter _r_. In
+the "Panorama," for example, we find _law_ rhyming with _for_! You, Mr.
+Poet, you, who indulge fastidious objections to the whipping of women,
+to outrage that innocent preposition thus! And to select the word _law_
+itself, with which to force it into this lawless connection! Secondly,
+_romance_ and _allies_ are constantly written by him with the accent on
+the first syllable. These be heinous offences! A poet, of all men,
+should cherish the liquid consonants, and should resist the tendency of
+the populace to make trochees of all dissyllables. In a graver tone we
+might complain that he sometimes--rarely--writes, not by vocation of the
+ancient Muses, who were daughters of Memory and immortal Zeus, but of
+those Muses in drab and scoop-bonnets who are daughters of Memory and
+George Fox. Some lines of the "Brown of Ossawatomie" we are thinking of
+now. We can regard them only as a reminiscence of his special Quaker
+culture.
+
+With the "Home Ballads," published in 1863, dawns fully his final
+period,--long may it last! This is the epoch of Poetic Realism. Not that
+he abandons or falls away from his moral ideal. The fact is quite
+contrary. He has so entirely established himself in that ideal that he
+no longer needs strivingly to assert it,--any more than Nature needs to
+pin upon oak-trees an affirmation that the idea of an oak dwells in her
+formative thought. Nature affirms the oak-idea by oaks; the consummate
+poet exhibits the same realism. He embodies. He lends a soul to forms.
+The real and ideal in Art are indeed often opposed to each other as
+contraries, but it is a false opposition. Let the artist represent
+reality, and all that is in him, though it were the faith of seraphs,
+will go into the representation. The sole condition is that he shall
+_select his subject from native, spontaneous choice_,--that is, leave
+his genius to make its own elections. Let one, whose genius so invites
+him, paint but a thistle, and paint it as faithfully as Nature grows it;
+yet, if the Ten Commandments are meantime uttering themselves in his
+thought, he will make the thistle-top a Sinai.
+
+It is this poetic realism that Whittier has now, in a high
+degree, attained. Calm and sure, lofty in humility, strong in
+childlikeness,--renewing the play-instinct of the true poet in his
+heart,--younger now than when he sat on his mother's knee,--chastened,
+not darkened, by trial, and toil, and time,--illumined, poet-like, even
+by sorrow,--he lives and loves, and chants the deep, homely beauty of
+his lays. He is as genuine, as wholesome and real as sweet-flag and
+clover. Even when he utters pure sentiment, as in that perfect lyric,
+"My Psalm," or in the intrepid, exquisite humility--healthful and sound
+as the odor of new-mown hay or balsam-firs--of "Andrew Rykman's Prayer,"
+he maintains the same attitude of realism. He states God and inward
+experience as he would state sunshine and the growth of grass. This,
+with the devout depth of his nature, makes the rare beauty of his hymns
+and poems of piety and trust. He does not try to _make_ the facts by
+stating them; he does not try to embellish them; he only seeks to utter,
+to state them; and even in his most perfect verse they are not half so
+melodious as they were in his soul.
+
+All perfect poetry is simple statement of facts,--facts of history or of
+imagination. Whoever thinks to create poetry by words, and inclose in
+the verse a beauty which did not exist in his consciousness, has got
+hopelessly astray.
+
+This attitude of simple divine abiding in the present is beautifully
+expressed in the opening stanzas of "My Psalm."
+
+    "I mourn no more my vanished years:
+       Beneath a tender rain,
+    An April rain of smiles and tears,
+       My heart is young again.
+
+    "The west winds blow, and, singing low,
+       I hear the glad streams run;
+    The windows of my soul I throw
+       Wide open to the sun.
+
+    "No longer forward nor behind
+       I look in hope and fear;
+    But, grateful, take the good I find,
+       The best of now and here.
+
+    "I plough no more a desert land,
+       To harvest weed and tare;
+    The manna dropping from God's hand
+       Rebukes my painful care.
+
+    "I break my pilgrim-staff, I lay
+      Aside the toiling oar;
+    The angel sought so far away
+      I welcome at the door."
+
+It is, however, in his ballads that Whittier exhibits, not, perhaps, a
+higher, yet a rarer, power than elsewhere,--a power, in truth, which is
+very rare indeed. Already in the "Panorama" volume he had brought forth
+three of these,--all good, and the tender pathos of that fine ballad of
+sentiment, "Maud Muller," went to the heart of the nation. In how many
+an imagination does the innocent maiden, with her delicate brown ankles,
+
+    "Rake the meadow sweet with hay,"
+
+and
+
+    "The judge ride slowly down the lane"!
+
+But though sentiment so simple and unconscious is rare, our poet has yet
+better in store for us. He has developed of late years the precious
+power of creating _homely beauty_,[14]--one of the rarest powers shown
+in modern literature. Homely life-scenes, homely old sanctities and
+heroisms, he takes up, delineates them with intrepid fidelity to their
+homeliness, and, lo! there they are, beautiful as Indian corn, or as
+ploughed land under an October sun! He has thus opened an inexhaustible
+mine right here under our New-England feet. What will come of it no one
+knows.
+
+These poems of his are natural growths; they have their own circulation
+of vital juices, their own peculiar properties; they smack of the soil,
+are racy and strong and aromatic, like ground-juniper, sweet-fern, and
+the _arbor vitae_. Set them out in the earth, and would they not sprout
+and grow?--nor would need vine-shields to shelter them from the weather!
+They are living and local, and lean toward the west from the pressure of
+east winds that blow on our coast. "Skipper Ireson's Ride,"--can any one
+tell what makes that poetry? This uncertainty is the highest praise.
+This power of telling a plain matter in a plain way, and leaving it
+there a symbol and harmony forever,--it is the power of Nature herself.
+And again we repeat, that almost anything may be found in literature
+more frequently than this pure creative simplicity. As a special
+instance of it, take three lines which occur in an exquisite picture of
+natural scenery,--and which we quote the more readily as it affords
+opportunity for saying that Whittier's landscape-pictures alone make his
+books worthy of study,--not so much those which he sets himself
+deliberately to draw as those that are incidental to some other purpose
+or effect.
+
+    "I see far southward, this quiet day,
+    The hills of Newbury rolling away,
+    With the many tints of the season gay,
+    Dreamily blending in autumn mist
+    Crimson and gold and amethyst.
+    Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned,
+    Plum Island lies, like a whale aground,
+    A stone's toss over the narrow sound.
+    Inland, as far as the eye can go,
+    The hills curve round, like a bended bow;
+    A silver arrow from out them sprung,
+    I see the shine of the Quasycung;
+    _And, round and round, over valley and hill,
+    Old roads winding, as old roads will,
+    Here to a ferry, and there to a mill._"
+
+Can any one tell what magic it is that is in these concluding lines, so
+that they even eclipse the rhetorical brilliancy of those immediately
+preceding?
+
+Our deep-hearted poet has fairly arrived at his poetic youth. Never was
+he so strong, so ruddy and rich as to-day. Time has treated him as,
+according to Swedenborg, she does the angels,--chastened indeed, but
+vivified. Let him hold steadily to his true vocation as a poet, and
+never fear to be thought idle, or untrue to his land. To give
+imaginative and ideal depth to the life of the people,--what truer
+service than that? And as for war-time,--does he know that "Barbara
+Frietche" is the true sequel to the Battle of Gettysburg, is that other
+victory which the nation _asked_ of Meade the soldier and obtained from
+Whittier the poet?
+
+
+
+
+THE CONVULSIONISTS OF ST. MEDARD.
+
+SECOND PAPER.
+
+
+Having, in a previous number, furnished a brief sketch of the phenomena,
+purely physical, which characterized the epidemic of St. Medard, it
+remains to notice those of a mental and psychological character.
+
+One of the most common incidents connected with the convulsions of that
+period was the appearance of a mental condition, called, in the language
+of the day, a state of _ecstasy_, bearing unmistakable analogy to the
+artificial somnambulism produced by magnetic influence, and to the
+_trance_ of modern spiritualism.
+
+During this condition, there was a sudden exaltation of the mental
+faculties, often a wonderful command of language, sometimes the power of
+thought-reading, at other times, as was alleged, the gift of prophecy.
+While it lasted, the insensibility of the patients was occasionally so
+complete, that, as Montgeron says, "they have been pierced in an inhuman
+manner, without evincing the slightest sensation";[15] and when it
+passed off, they frequently did not recollect anything they had said or
+done during its continuance.
+
+At times, like somnambulism, it seemed to assume something of a
+cataleptic character, though I cannot find any record of that most
+characteristic symptom of catalepsy, the rigid persistence of a limb in
+any position in which it may be placed. What was called the "state of
+death," is thus described by Montgeron:--
+
+"The state of death is a species of ecstasy, in which the convulsionist,
+whose soul seems entirely absorbed by some vision, loses the use of his
+senses, wholly or in part. Some convulsionists have remained in this
+state two or even three days at a time, the eyes open, without any
+movement, the face very pale, the whole body insensible, immovable, and
+stiff as a corpse. During all this time, they give little sign of life,
+other than a feeble, scarcely perceptible respiration. Most of the
+convulsionists, however, have not these ecstasies so strongly marked.
+Some, though remaining immovable an entire day or longer, do not
+continue during all that time deprived of sight and hearing, nor are
+they totally devoid of sensibility; though their members, at certain
+intervals, become so stiff that they lose almost entirely the use of
+them."[16]
+
+The "state of death," however, was much more rare than other forms of
+this abnormal condition. The Abbe d'Asfeld, in his work against the
+convulsionists, alluding to the state of ecstasy, defines it as a state
+"in which the soul, carried away by a superior force, and, as it were,
+out of itself, becomes unconscious of surrounding objects, and occupies
+itself with those which imagination presents"; and he adds,--"It is
+marked by alienation of the senses, proceeding, however, from some cause
+other than sleep. This alienation of the senses is sometimes complete,
+sometimes incomplete."[17]
+
+Montgeron, commenting on the above, says,--"This last phase, during
+which the alienation of the senses is imperfect, is precisely the
+condition of most of the convulsionists, when in the state of ecstasy.
+They usually see the persons present; they speak to them; sometimes they
+hear what is said to them; but as to the rest, their souls seem absorbed
+in the contemplation of objects which a superior power discloses to
+their vision."[18]
+
+And a little farther on he adds,--"In these ecstasies the convulsionists
+are struck all of a sudden with the unexpected aspect of some object,
+the sight of which enchants them with joy. Their eyes beam; their heads
+are raised toward heaven; they appear as if they would fly thither. To
+see them afterwards absorbed in profound contemplation, with an air of
+inexpressible satisfaction, one would say that they are admiring the
+divine beauty. Their countenances are animated with a lively and
+brilliant fire; and their eyes, which cannot be made to close during the
+entire duration of the ecstasy, remain completely motionless, open, and
+fixed, as on the object which seems to interest them. They are in some
+sort transfigured; they appear quite changed. Even those who, out of
+this state, have in their physiognomy something mean or repulsive, alter
+so that they can scarcely be recognized.... It is during these ecstasies
+that many of the convulsionists deliver their finest discourses and
+their chief predictions,--that they speak in unknown tongues,--that they
+read the secret thoughts of others,--and even sometimes that they give
+their representations."[19]
+
+A provincial ecclesiastic, quoted by Montgeron, and who, it should be
+remarked, found fault with many of the doings of the convulsionists,
+admits the exalted character of these declamations. He says,--"Their
+discourses on religion are spirited, touching, profound,--delivered with
+an eloquence and a dignity which our greatest masters cannot approach,
+and with a grace and appropriateness of gesture rivalling that of our
+best actors.... One of the girls who pronounced such discourses was but
+thirteen years and a half old; and most of them were utterly
+incompetent, in their natural state, thus to treat subjects far beyond
+their capacity."[20]
+
+Colbert, already quoted, bears testimony to the same effect. Writing to
+Madame de Coetquen, he says,--"I have read extracts from these
+discourses, and have been greatly struck with them. The expressions are
+noble, the views grand, the theology exact. It is impossible that the
+imagination, and especially the imagination of a child, should originate
+such beautiful things. Sublimity full of eloquence reigns throughout
+these productions."[21]
+
+To judge fairly of this phenomenon, we must consider the previous
+condition and acquirements of those who pronounced such discourses.
+Montgeron, while declaring that among the convulsionists there were
+occasionally to be found persons of respectable standing, adds,--"But it
+must be confessed that in general God has chosen the convulsionists
+among the common people; that they were chiefly young children,
+especially girls; that almost all of them had lived till then in
+ignorance and obscurity; that several of them were deformed, and some,
+in their natural state, even exhibited imbecility. Of such, for the most
+part, it was that God made choice, to show forth to us His power."[22]
+
+The staple of these discourses--wild and fantastic enough--may be
+gathered from the following:--
+
+"The Almighty thus raised up all of a sudden a number of persons, the
+greater part without any instruction; He opened the mouths of a number
+of young girls, some of whom could not read; and He caused them to
+announce, in terms the most magnificent, that the times had now
+arrived,--that in a few years the Prophet Elias would appear,--that he
+would be despised and treated with outrage by the Catholics,--that he
+would even be put to death, together with several of those who had
+expected his coming and had become his disciples and followers,--that
+God would employ this Prophet to convert all the Jews,--that they, when
+thus converted, would immediately carry the light unto all
+nations,--that they would reestablish Christianity throughout the
+world,--and that they would preach the morality of the gospel in all its
+purity, and cause it to spread over the whole earth."[23]
+
+Montgeron, commenting (as he expresses it) upon "the manner in which the
+convulsionists are supernaturally enlightened, and in which they deliver
+their discourses and their predictions," says,--
+
+"Ordinarily, the words are not dictated to them; it is only the ideas
+that are presented to their minds by a supernatural instinct, and they
+are left to express these thoughts in terms of their own selection.
+Hence it happens that occasionally their most beautiful discourses are
+marred by ill-chosen and incorrect expressions, and by phrases obscure
+and badly turned; so that the beauty of some of these consists rather in
+the depth of thought, the grandeur of the subjects treated, and the
+magnificence of the images presented, than in the language in which the
+whole is rendered.
+
+"It is evident, that, when they are thus left to clothe in their own
+language the ideas given them, they are also at liberty to add to them,
+if they will. And, in fact, most of them declare that they perceive
+within themselves the power to mix in their own ideas with those
+supernaturally communicated, which suddenly seize their minds; and they
+are obliged to be extremely careful not to confound their own thoughts
+with those which they receive from a superior intelligence. This is
+sometimes the more difficult, inasmuch as the ideas thus coming to them
+do not always come with equal clearness.
+
+"Sometimes, however, the terms are dictated to them internally, but
+without their being forced to pronounce them, nor hindered from adding
+to them, if they choose to do so.
+
+"Finally, in regard to certain subjects,--for example, the lights which
+illumine their minds, and oblige them to announce the second coming of
+the Prophet Elias, and all that has reference to that great
+event,--their lips pronounce a succession of words wholly independently
+of their will; so that they themselves listen like the auditors, having
+no knowledge of what they say, except only as, word for word, it is
+pronounced."[24]
+
+Montgeron appears, however, to admit that the exaltation of intelligence
+which is apparent during the state of ecstasy may, to some extent, be
+accounted for on natural principles. Starting from the fact, that,
+during the convulsions, external objects produce much less effect upon
+the senses than in the natural state, he argues that "the more the soul
+is disembarrassed of external impressions, the greater is its activity,
+the greater its power to frame thoughts, and the greater its
+lucidity."[25] He admits, further,--"Although most of the convulsionists
+have, when in convulsion, much more intelligence than in their ordinary
+state, that intelligence is not always supernatural, but may be the mere
+effect of the mental activity which results when soul is disengaged from
+sense. Nay, there are examples of convulsionists availing themselves of
+the superior intelligence which they have in convulsion to make out
+dissertations on mere temporal affairs. This intelligence, also, may at
+times fail to subjugate their passions; and I am convinced that they may
+occasionally make a bad use of it."[26]
+
+In another place, Montgeron says plainly, that "persons accustomed to
+receive revelations, but not raised to the state of the Prophets, may
+readily imagine things to be revealed to them which are but the
+promptings of their own minds,"[27]--and that this has happened, not
+only to the convulsionists, but (by the confession of many of the
+ancient fathers[28]) also to the greatest saints. But he protests
+against the conclusion, as illogical, that the convulsionists never
+speak by the spirit of God, because they do not always do so.
+
+He admits, however,[29] that it is extremely difficult to distinguish
+between what ought to be received as divinely revealed and what ought to
+be rejected as originating in the convulsionist's own mind; nor does he
+give any rule by which this may be done. The knowledge necessary to the
+"discerning of spirits" he thinks can be obtained only by humble
+prayer.[30]
+
+The power of prophecy is one of the gifts claimed by Montgeron as having
+been bestowed on various convulsionists during their ecstatic state. Yet
+he gives no detailed proofs of prophecies touching temporal matters
+having been literally fulfilled, unless it be prophecies by
+convulsionist-patients in regard to the future crises of their diseases.
+And he admits that false predictions were not infrequent, and that false
+interpretations of visions touching the future were of common
+occurrence. He says,--
+
+"It is sometimes revealed to a convulsionist, for example, that there is
+to happen to some person not named a certain accident, every detail of
+which is minutely given; and the convulsionist is ordered to declare
+what has been communicated to him, that the hand of God may be
+recognized in its fulfilment.... But, at the same time, the
+convulsionist receiving this vision believes it to apply to a certain
+person, whom he designates by name. The prediction, however, is not
+verified in the case of the person named, so that those who heard it
+delivered conclude that it is false; but it _is_ verified in the case of
+another person, to whom the accident happens, attended by all the
+minutely detailed particulars."[31]
+
+If this be correctly given, it is what animal magnetizers would call a
+case of imperfect lucidity.
+
+The case as to the gift of tongues is still less satisfactorily made
+out. A few, Montgeron says, translate, after the ecstasy, what they have
+declaimed, during its continuance, in an unknown tongue; but for this,
+of course, we have their word only. The greater part know nothing of
+what they have said, when the ecstasy has passed. As to these, he
+admits,--
+
+"The only proof we have that they understand the words at the time they
+pronounce them is that they often express, in the most lively manner,
+the various sentiments contained in their discourse, not only by their
+gestures, but also by the attitudes the body assumes, and by the
+expression of the countenance, on which the different sentiments are
+painted, by turns, in a manner the most expressive, so that one is able,
+up to a certain point, to detect the feelings by which they are moved;
+and it has been easy for the attentive observer to perceive that most of
+these discourses were detailed predictions as to the coming of the
+Prophet Elias," etc.[32]
+
+If it be presumptuous, considering the marvels which modern observations
+disclose, to pronounce that the alleged unknown languages were unmeaning
+sounds only, it is evident, at least, that the above is inconclusive as
+to their true character.
+
+Much more trustworthy appears to be the evidence touching the phenomenon
+of thought-reading.
+
+The fact that many of the convulsionists were able "to discover the
+secrets of the heart" is admitted by their principal opponents. The Abbe
+d'Asfeld himself adduces examples of it.[33] M. Poncet admits its
+reality.[34] The provincial ecclesiastic whom I have already quoted says
+that he "found examples without number of convulsionists who discovered
+the secrets of the heart in the most minute detail: for example, to
+disclose to a person that at such a period of his life he did such or
+such a thing; to another, that he had done so and so before coming
+hither," etc.[35] The author of the "Recherche de la Verite," a pamphlet
+on the phenomena of the convulsions, which seems very candidly written,
+acknowledges as one of these "the manifestation of the thoughts and the
+discovery of secret things."[36]
+
+Montgeron testifies to the fact, from repeated personal observation,
+that they revealed to him things known to himself alone; and after
+adducing the admissions above alluded to, and some others, he
+adds,--"But it would be superfluous further to multiply testimony in
+proof of a fact admitted by all the world, even by the avowed
+adversaries of the convulsions, who have found no other method of
+explaining it than by doing Satan the honor to proclaim him the author
+of these revelations."[37]
+
+Besides these gifts, real or alleged, there was occasionally observed,
+during ecstasy, an extraordinary development of the musical faculty.
+Montgeron tells us,--"Mademoiselle Dancogne, who, as was well known, had
+no voice whatever in her natural state, sings in the most perfect manner
+canticles in an unknown tongue, and that to the admiration of all those
+who hear her."[38]
+
+As to the general character of these psychological phenomena, the
+theologians of that day were, with few exceptions, agreed that they were
+of a supernatural character,--the usual question mooted between them
+being, whether they were due to a Divine or to a Satanic influence. The
+medical opponents of the movement sometimes took the ground that the
+state of ecstasy was allied to delirium or insanity,--and that it was a
+degraded condition, inasmuch as the patient abandoned the exercise of
+his free will: an argument similar to that which has been made in our
+day against somewhat analogous phenomena, by a Bostonian.[39]
+
+In concluding a sketch, in which, though it be necessarily a brief one,
+I have taken pains to set forth with strict accuracy all the essential
+features which mark the character of this extraordinary epidemic, it is
+proper I should state that the opponents of Jansenism concur in bringing
+against the convulsionists the charge that many of them were not only
+ignorant and illiterate girls, but persons of bad character,
+occasionally of notoriously immoral habits; nay, that some of them
+justified the vicious courses in which they indulged by declaring these
+to be a representation of a religious tendency, emblematic of that
+degradation through which the Church must pass, before, recalled by the
+voice of Elias, it regained its pristine purity.
+
+Montgeron, while admitting that such charges may justly be brought
+against some of the convulsionists, denies the general truth of the
+allegation, yet after such a fashion that one sees plainly he considers
+it necessary, in establishing the character and divine source of the
+discourses and predictions delivered in the state of ecstasy, to do so
+without reference to the moral standing of the ecstatics. When one of
+his opponents (the physician who addressed to him the satirical letter
+already referred to) ascribes to him the position, that one must decide
+the divine or diabolical state of a person alleged to be inspired by
+reference to that person's morals and conduct, he replies,--"God forbid
+that I should advance so false a proposition!" And he proceeds to argue
+that the Deity often avails Himself, as a medium for expressing His
+will, of unworthy subjects. He says,--
+
+"Who does not know that the Holy Spirit, whose divine rays are never
+stained, let them shine where they will, 'bloweth where it listeth,' and
+distributes its gifts to whom best it seems, without always causing
+these to be accompanied by internal virtues? Does not Scripture inform
+us that God caused miracles to be wrought and great prophecies to be
+delivered by very vicious persons, as Judas, Caiaphas, Balaam, and
+others? Jesus Christ himself teaches us that there will be workers of
+iniquity among the number of those who prophesy and of those who will
+work miracles in his name, declaring that on the Day of Judgment many
+will say unto him, 'Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy
+name done many wonderful works?' and that he will reply to them, 'Depart
+from me, ye that work iniquity.'"
+
+And he proceeds thus:--"If, therefore, all that our enemies allege
+against the character of the convulsionists were true, it does not
+follow that God would not employ such persons as the ministers of His
+miracles and His prophecies, provided, always, that these miracles and
+these prophecies have a worthy object, and tend to a knowledge of the
+truth, to the spread of charity, and to the reformation of the morals of
+mankind."[40]
+
+These accusations of immorality are, probably, greatly exaggerated by
+the enemies of the Jansenists; yet one may gather, even from the tenor
+of Montgeron's defence, that there was more or less truth in the charges
+brought against the conduct of some of the convulsionists, and that the
+state of ecstasy, whatever its true nature, was by no means confined to
+persons of good moral character.
+
+Such are the alleged facts, physical and mental, connected with this
+extraordinary episode in the history of mental epidemics.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the perusal of such a narrative as the above, the questions which
+naturally suggest themselves are,--To what extent can we rationally
+attach credit to it? And, if true, what is the explanation of phenomena
+apparently so incredible?
+
+As to the first, the admission of a distinguished contemporary
+historian, noted for his skeptical tendencies, in regard to the evidence
+for these alleged miracles, is noteworthy. It is in these words:--"Many
+of them were immediately proved on the spot before judges of
+unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction,
+in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the
+world; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the
+civil magistrate, and determined enemies to those opinions in whose
+favor the miracles were supposed to have been wrought, ever able
+distinctly to refute or detect them."[41]
+
+Similar is the admission of another celebrated author, at least as
+skeptical as Hume, and writing at the very time, and on the very spot
+where these marvellous events were occurring. Diderot, speaking of the
+St.-Medard manifestations, says,--"We have of these pretended miracles a
+vast collection, which may brave the most determined incredulity. Its
+author, Carre de Montgeron, is a magistrate, a man of gravity, who up to
+that time had been a professed materialist,--on insufficient grounds,
+it is true, but yet a man who certainly had no expectation of making his
+fortune by becoming a Jansenist. An eye-witness of the facts he relates,
+and of which he had an opportunity of judging dispassionately and
+disinterestedly, his testimony is indorsed by that of a thousand others.
+All relate what they have seen; and their depositions have every
+possible mark of authenticity; the originals being recorded and
+preserved in the public archives."[42]
+
+Even in the very denunciations of opponents we find corroboratory
+evidence of the main facts in question. Witness the terms in which the
+Bishop of Bethleem declaims against the scenes of St. Medard:--"What! we
+find ecclesiastics, priests, in the midst of numerous assemblies
+composed of persons of every rank and of both sexes, doffing their
+cassocks, habiting themselves in shirt and trousers, the better to be
+able to act the part of executioners, casting on the ground young girls,
+dragging them face-downward along the earth, and then discharging on
+their bodies innumerable blows, till they themselves, the dealers of
+these blows, are reduced to such a state of exhaustion that they are
+obliged to have water poured on their heads! What! we find men
+pretending to sentiments of religion and humanity dealing, with the full
+swing of their arms, thirty or forty thousand blows with heavy clubs on
+the arms, on the legs, on the heads of young girls, and making other
+desperate efforts capable of crushing the skulls of the sufferers! What!
+we find cultivated ladies, pious and of high rank, doctors of law, civil
+and canonical, laymen of character, even curates, daily witnessing this
+spectacle of fanaticism and horror in silence, instead of opposing it
+with all their force; nay, they applaud it by their presence, even by
+their countenance and their conversation! Was ever, throughout all
+history, such another example of excesses thus scandalous, thus
+multiplied?"[43]
+
+De Lan, another opponent, thus sketches the same scenes:--"Young girls,
+bareheaded, dashed their heads against a wall or against a marble slab;
+they caused their limbs to be drawn by strong men, even to the extent of
+dislocation;[44] they caused blows to be given them that would kill the
+most robust, and in such numbers that one is terrified. I know one
+person who counted four thousand at a single sitting; they were given
+sometimes with the palm of the hand, sometimes with the fist; sometimes
+on the back, sometimes on the stomach. Occasionally, heavy cudgels or
+clubs were employed instead[45].... Some convulsionists ran pins into
+their heads, without suffering any pain; others would have thrown
+themselves from the windows, had they not been prevented. Others, again,
+carried their zeal so far as to cause themselves to be hanged up by a
+hook," etc.[46]
+
+Modern medical writers of reputation usually admit the main facts, and
+seek a natural explanation of them. In the article, "Convulsions," in
+the great "Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales," (published in 1812-22,)
+which article is from the pen of an able physiologist, Dr. Montegre, we
+find the following, in regard to the St.-Medard phenomena:--"Carre de
+Montgeron surrounded these prodigies with depositions so numerous and so
+authentic, that, after having examined them, no doubt can remain....
+However great my reluctance to admit such facts, it is impossible for me
+to refuse to receive them." As to the _succors_, so-called, he frankly
+confesses that they seem to him as fully proved as the rest. He
+says,--"There are the same witnesses, and the incidents themselves are
+still more clear and precise. It is not so much of cures that there is
+question in this case, as of apparent and external facts, in regard to
+which there can be no misconception."
+
+Dr. Calmeil, in his well-known work on Insanity, while regarding this
+epidemic as one of the most striking examples of religious mania,
+accepts the relation of Montgeron as in the main true. "From various
+motives," says he, "these theomaniacs sought out the most frightful
+bodily tortures. Would it be credible, if it were not that the entire
+population of Paris concurred in testifying to the fact, that more than
+five hundred women pushed the rage of fanaticism or the perversion of
+sensibility to such a point, that they exposed themselves to burning
+fires, that they had their heads compressed between boards, that they
+caused to be administered on the abdomen, on the breast, on the stomach,
+on every part of the body, blows of clubs, stampings of the feet, blows
+with weapons of stone, with bars of iron? Yet the theomaniacs of St.
+Medard braved all these tests, sometimes as proofs that God had rendered
+them invulnerable, sometimes to demonstrate that God could cure them by
+means calculated to kill them, had they not been the objects of His
+special protection, sometimes to show that blows usually painful only
+caused to them pleasant relief. The picture of the punishments to which
+the convulsionists submitted, as if by inspiration, so that no one might
+doubt, as Montgeron has it, that it was easy for the Almighty to render
+invulnerable and insensible bodies the most frail and delicate, would
+induce us to believe, if the contrary were not so conclusively
+established, that a rage for homicide and suicide had taken possession
+of the greater part of the sect of the Appellants."[47]
+
+Though I am acquainted with no class of phenomena occurring elsewhere
+that will match the "Great Succors" of St. Medard, yet we find
+occasional glimpses of instincts somewhat analogous to those claimed for
+the convulsionists, in other examples.
+
+In Hecker's "Epidemics of the Middle Ages" there is a chapter devoted to
+what he calls the "Dancing Mania," the account of which he thus
+introduces:--"So early as the year 1374, assemblages of men and women
+were seen at Aix-la-Chapelle, who had come out of Germany, and who,
+united by one common delusion, exhibited to the public, both in the
+streets and in the churches, the following strange spectacle. They
+formed circles hand in hand, and, appearing to have lost all control
+over their senses, continued dancing, regardless of the bystanders, for
+hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the
+ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme
+oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death, until they were
+swathed in cloths bound tightly round their waists; upon which they
+recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This
+practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany[48] which
+followed these spasmodic ravings; but the bystanders frequently relieved
+patients in a less artificial manner, _by thumping and trampling upon
+the parts affected_. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being
+insensible to external impressions through the senses, but were haunted
+by visions." And again,--"In Liege, Utrecht, Tongres, and many other
+towns of Belgium, the dancers appeared with garlands in their hair, and
+their waists girt with cloths, that they might, as soon as the paroxysm
+was over, receive immediate relief from the attack of tympany. This
+bandage, by the insertion of a stick, was easily twisted tight; _many,
+however, obtained more relief from kicks and blows_, which they found
+numbers of persons ready to administer."[49]
+
+Physicians of our own day, while magnetizing, have occasionally
+encountered not dissimilar phenomena. Dr. Bertrand tells us that the
+first patient he ever magnetized, being attacked by a disease of an
+hysterical character, became subject to convulsions of so long duration
+and so violent in character, that he had never, in all his practice,
+seen the like; and that she suffered horribly. He adds,--"Here is what
+happened during her first convulsion-fits. This unhappy girl, whose
+instinct was perverted by intensity of pain, earnestly entreated the
+persons present to press upon her with such force as at any other time
+would have produced the most serious injury. I had the greatest
+difficulty to prevent those around her from acceding to her urgent
+requests that they would kneel upon her with all their weight, that they
+would exert with their hands the utmost pressure on the pit of her
+stomach, even on her throat, with the view of driving off the imaginary
+hysterical _ball_ of which she complained. Though at any other time such
+treatment would have produced severe pain, she declared that it relieved
+her; and when the fit passed off, she did not seem to suffer the least
+inconvenience from it."[50]
+
+The above, connecting as it does the phenomena exhibited during the
+St.-Medard epidemic with those observed by animal magnetizers, brings us
+to the second query, namely, as to the cause of these phenomena.
+
+And here we find physicians, not mesmerists, comparing these phenomena,
+and others of the same class, with the effects observed by animal
+magnetizers. Dr. Montegre, already quoted, says,--"The phenomena of
+magnetism, and those presented by cases of possession and of
+fascination, connect themselves with those observed among the
+convulsionists, not only by the most complete resemblance, but also by
+the cause which determines them. There is not a single phenomenon
+observed in the one case that has not its counterpart in the
+others."[51]
+
+Calmeil, while admitting that the "nervous effects produced by animal
+magnetizers bear a close resemblance to those which have been observed
+at Loudun, at Louviers, and during other convulsive epidemics," offers
+the following, in explanation of the physical phenomena connected with
+the "Great Succors":--
+
+"The energetic resistance, which, in the case of the convulsionists, the
+skin, the cellular tissue, and the surface of the body and limbs offered
+to the shock of blows, is certainly calculated to excite surprise. But
+many of these fanatics greatly deceived themselves, when they imagined
+that they were invulnerable; for it has been repeatedly proved that
+several of them, as a consequent of the cruel trials they solicited,
+suffered from large ecchymoses on the integuments, and numerous
+contusions on those portions of the surface which were exposed to the
+rudest attacks. For the rest, the blows were never administered except
+during the torments of convulsion; and at that time the tympany
+(_meteorisme_) of the abdomen, the state of spasm of the uterus in women
+and of the alimentary canal in both sexes, the state of contraction, of
+orgasm, of turgescence in the fleshy envelopes, in the muscular layers
+which protect and inclose the abdomen, the thorax, the principal
+vascular trunks, and the bony surfaces, must essentially contribute to
+weaken, to deaden, to nullify, the effect of the blows. Is it not by
+means of an analogous state of orgasm, which an over-excited will
+produces, that boxers and athletes find themselves in a condition to
+brave, to a certain point, the dangers of their profession? In fine, it
+is to be remarked, that, when dealing blows on the bodies of the
+convulsionists, the assistants employed weapons of considerable volume,
+having flat or rounded surfaces, cylindrical or blunted. But the action
+of such physical agents is not to be compared, as regards its danger,
+with that of thongs, switches, or other supple and flexible instruments
+with distinct edges. Finally, the contact and the repeated impression of
+the blows produced on the convulsionists the effect of a sort of
+salutary pounding, and rendered less poignant and less sensible the
+tortures of hysteria. It would have been preferable, doubtless, to make
+use of less murderous succors; the rage for distinction as the possessor
+of a miraculous gift, even more perhaps than the instinctive need of
+immediate relief, prompting these convulsionary theomaniacs to make
+choice of means calculated to act on the imagination of a populace,
+whose interest could be kept awake only by a constant repetition of
+wonders."[52]
+
+Calmeil, of all the medical authors I have consulted, appears to have
+the most closely studied the various phases of the St.-Medard
+epidemic.[53] Yet the explanations above given seem to me quite
+incommensurate with the phenomena admitted.
+
+Some of the patients, he says, suffered from ecchymosis and contusions.
+In plain, unprofessional language, they were beaten black and blue. That
+is such a result as usually follows a few blows from a boxer's fist or
+from an ordinary walking-stick. But when the weapon employed is a rough
+iron bar weighing upwards of twenty-nine pounds, when the number of
+blows dealt in succession on the pit of the stomach of a young girl
+exceeds a hundred and fifty, and when these are delivered with the
+utmost force of an athletic man, is it bruises and contusions we look
+for as the only consequence? Or does it explain the immunity with which
+this frightful infliction was received, to call it a salutary pounding?
+The argument drawn from the turgescence of the viscera and other organs,
+from the spasmodic contraction of the muscles and the general state of
+orgasm of the system, has doubtless great weight; but does it reach far
+enough to explain to us the fact, (if it be a fact, and as such Calmeil
+accepts it,) that a girl, bent back so that her head and feet touched
+the floor, the centre of the vertebral column being supported on a
+sharp-pointed stake, received, day after day, with impunity, directly on
+her stomach and bowels, one hundred times in succession, a flint stone
+weighing fifty pounds, dropped suddenly from a height of twelve or
+fifteen feet? Boxers, it is true, in the excited state in which they
+enter the ring, receive, unmoved, from their opponents blows which would
+prostrate a man not prepared, by hard training, for the trial. But even
+such blows, in the end, sometimes prove mortal; and what should we say
+of substituting for the human fist a sharp-pointed rapier, and expecting
+that the tension of the nervous system would render impenetrable the
+skin of the combatant? Finally, it is to be admitted, that flexible
+weapons, especially if loaded, as the cat-o'-nine-tails, still used in
+some countries as an instrument of military punishment, occasionally is,
+with hard, angular substances, are among the most severe that can be
+employed to inflict punishment or destroy life. But what would even the
+poor condemned soldier, shrinking from that terrible instrument of
+torture which modern civilization has not yet been shamed into
+discarding, think of the proposal to substitute for it the andiron with
+which Montgeron, at the twenty-fifth blow, broke an opening through a
+stone wall,--the executioner-drummer being commanded to deal, with his
+utmost strength, one hundred and sixty blows in succession, with that
+ponderous bar, (a bar with rough edges, no cylindrical rod,) not on the
+back of the culprit, but on his unprotected breast?
+
+No wonder that De Gasparin, with all his aversion for the supernatural,
+and all his disinclination to admit anything which he cannot explain,
+after quoting from Calmeil the above explanation, feels its
+insufficiency, and seeks another. These are his words:--
+
+"How does it happen, that, after being struck with the justice of these
+observations, one still retains a sort of intellectual uneasiness, a
+certain suspicion of the disproportion between the explanation and the
+phenomena it seeks to explain? How does it happen, that, under the
+influence of such an impression, many suffer themselves to be seduced
+into an admission of diabolical or miraculous agency? It happens,
+because Dr. Calmeil, faithful to the countersign of all learned bodies
+in England and France, refuses to admit fluidic action, or to make a
+single step in advance of the ordinary theory of nervous excitement. Now
+it is in vain to talk of contractions, of spasms, of turgescence; all
+this evidently fails to reach the case of the St.-Medard _succors_. To
+reach it we need the intervention of a peculiar force,--of a fluid which
+is disengaged, sometimes by the effect of certain crises, sometimes by
+the power of magnetism itself. Those who systematically keep up this
+hiatus in the study of human physiology are the best allies of the
+superstitions they profess to combat.... Suppose that study seriously
+undertaken, with what precision should we resolve the problem of which
+now we can but indicate the solution! Habituated to the wonders of the
+nervous fluid, knowing that it can raise, at a distance, inert objects,
+that it can biologize, that it can communicate suppleness or rigidity,
+the highest development of the senses or absolute insensibility, we
+should not be greatly surprised to discover that it communicates also,
+in certain cases, elasticity and that degree of impenetrability which
+characterizes gum-elastic."[54]
+
+De Gasparin further explains his theory in the following passage:--"The
+great difficulty is not to explain the perversion of sensibility
+exhibited by the convulsionists. Aside from that question, does it not
+remain incomprehensible that feeble women should have received, without
+being a hundred times crushed to pieces, the frightful blows of which we
+have spoken? How can we explain such a power of resistance? A very small
+change, operated by the nervous fluid, would suffice to render the
+matter very simple. Let us suppose the skin and fibres of the
+convulsionists to acquire, in virtue of their peculiar state of
+excitement, a consistency analogous to that of gum-elastic; then all the
+facts that astonish us would become as natural as possible. With
+convulsionists of gum-elastic,[55] or, rather, whose bony framework was
+covered with muscles and tissues of gum-elastic, what would happen?"
+
+He then proceeds to admit that "a vigorous thrust with a rapier, or
+stroke with a sabre, as such thrusts and strokes are usually dealt,
+would doubtless penetrate such an envelope"; but, he alleges, the
+St.-Medard convulsionists never, in a single instance, permitted such
+thrusts or strokes, with rapier or sabre, to be given; prudently
+restricting themselves to pressure only, exerted after the sword-point
+had been placed against the body. He reminds us, further, that neither
+razors nor pistol-balls, both of which would penetrate gum-elastic, were
+ever tried on the convulsionists; and he adds,--"Neither flint stones
+nor andirons nor clubs nor swords and spits, pressed against it, would
+have broken the surface of the gum-elastic envelope. They would have
+produced no visible injury. At the most, they might have caused a
+certain degree of internal friction, more or less serious, according to
+the thickness of the gum-elastic cuirass which covered the bones and the
+various organs."[56]
+
+I am fain to confess, that this imagining of men and women of
+gum-elastic, all but the skeleton, does not seem to me so simple a
+matter as it appears to have been regarded by M. de Gasparin. Let us
+take it for granted that his theory of a nervous fluid, which is the
+agent in table-moving,[57] is the true one. How is the mere disengaging
+of such a fluid to work a sudden transmutation of muscular and tendinous
+fibre and cellular tissue into a substance possessing the essential
+properties of a vegetable gum? And what becomes of the skin, ordinarily
+so delicate, so easily abraded or pierced, so readily injured? Is that
+transmuted also? Let us concede it. But the concession does not suffice.
+There remain the bones and cartilages, naturally so brittle, so liable
+to fracture. Let us even suppose the breast and stomach of a
+convulsionist protected by an artificial coating of actual gum-elastic,
+would it be a safe experiment to drop upon it, from a height of twelve
+feet, a flint stone weighing fifty pounds? We are expressly told that
+the ribs bent under the terrible shock, and sank, flattened, even to the
+backbone. Is it not certain, that human ribs and cartilages, in their
+normal state, would have snapped off, in spite of the interposed
+protection? Must we not, then, imagine osseous and cartilaginous fibre,
+too, transmuted? Indeed, while we are about it, I do not see why we
+should stop short of the skeleton. Since we understand nothing of the
+manner of transmutation, it is as easy to imagine bone turned to
+gum-elastic, as skin and muscle and tendon.
+
+In truth, if we look at it narrowly, this theory of De Gasparin is
+little more than a virtual admission, that, during convulsion, by some
+sudden change, the bodies of the patients did, as they themselves
+declared, become, to a marvellous extent, invulnerable,--with the
+suggestion added, that the nervous fluid may, after some unexplained
+fashion, have been the agent of that change.
+
+For the rest, though the alleged analogy between the properties of
+gum-elastic and those which, in this abnormal state, the human body
+seems to acquire, is, to a certain extent, sustained by many of the
+observations above recorded,--for example, when a sharp-pointed rapier,
+violently pushed against Gabrielle Moler's throat, sank to the depth of
+four finger-breadths, and, when drawn back, seeming to attach itself to
+the skin, drew it back also, causing a trifling injury,--yet others seem
+to prove that there is little strictness in that analogy. The King's
+Chaplain and the Advocate of Parliament, whose testimony I have cited,
+both certify that the flesh occasionally reacted under the sword,
+swelling up, so as to thrust back the weapons, and even push back the
+assistants. There is no corresponding property in gum-elastic. And
+Montgeron expressly tells us, that, at the close of a terrible succor
+called for by Gabrielle Moler, when she caused four sharpened shovels,
+placed, one above, one below, and one on each side, of one of her
+breasts, to be pushed by the main force of four assistants, a committee
+of ladies present "had the curiosity to examine her breast immediately
+after this operation, and unanimously certified that they found it as
+hard as a stone."[58] If this observation can be depended on, the
+gum-elastic theory, even as an analogically approximating explanation of
+this entire class of phenomena, is untenable.
+
+It is further to be remarked, that one of the positions assumed by M. de
+Gasparin, as the basis of his hypothesis, does not tally with some of
+the facts detailed by Montgeron. It was _pushes_ with swords, the former
+alleges, never _thrusts_, to which the convulsionists were exposed. I
+have already stated that this was _usually_ the fact; but there seem to
+have been striking exceptions. On the authority of a priest and of an
+officer of the royal household, Montgeron gives us the details of a
+symbolical combat of the most desperate character, with rapiers, between
+Sisters Madeleine and Felicite, occurring in May, 1744, in the presence
+of thirty persons. One of the witnesses says,--"I know not if I ever saw
+enemies attack each other with more fury or less circumspection. They
+fell upon one another without the slightest precaution, thrusting
+against each other with the points of their rapiers at hap-hazard,
+wherever the thrust happened to take effect. And this they did again and
+again, and with all the force of which, in convulsion, they were
+capable,--which, as all the world knows, is a force far greater than the
+same persons possess in their ordinary state."
+
+And the officer thus further certifies:--"After the combat, Madeleine
+took two short swords, resembling daggers, and, holding one in each
+hand, dealt seven or eight blows, pushed home with all her strength, on
+the breast of Felicite, raising her hands and then stabbing with the
+utmost eagerness, just as an assassin who wished to murder some one
+would plunge two daggers repeatedly into his breast. Felicite received
+the strokes with perfect tranquillity, and without evincing the
+slightest emotion. Then, taking two similar daggers, she did the very
+same to Madeleine, who, with her arms crossed, received the thrusts as
+tranquilly as the other had done. Immediately afterwards, these two
+convulsionists attacked one another with daggers, as with the fury of
+two maniacs, who, having resolved on mutual destruction, were solely
+bent each on poniarding the other."[59]
+
+It is added, that "neither the one nor the other received the least
+appearance of a wound, nor did either seem at all fatigued by so long
+and furious an exercise."
+
+It is not stated, in this particular instance, as it is in others, that
+these girls were examined by a committee of their sex, before or after
+the combat, to ascertain that they had under their dresses no concealed
+means of protection; so that the possibility of trickery must be
+admitted. If, as the officer who certifies appears convinced, all was
+fair, then M. de Gasparin's admission that a vigorous sword-thrust would
+penetrate the gum-elastic envelope is fatal to the theory he propounds.
+
+Yet, withal, we may reasonably assent to the probability that M. de
+Gasparin, in seeking an explanation of these marvellous phenomena, may
+have proceeded in the right direction. Modern physicians admit, that, at
+times, during somnambulism, complete insensibility, resembling hysteric
+coma, prevails.[60] But if, as is commonly believed, this insensibility
+is caused by some modification or abnormal condition of the nervous
+fluid, then to some other modification or changed condition of the same
+fluid comparative invulnerability may be due. For there is connection,
+to a certain extent, between insensibility and invulnerability. A
+patient rendered unconscious of pain, by chloroform or otherwise,
+throughout the duration of a severe and prolonged surgical operation,
+escapes a perilous shock to the nervous system, and may survive an
+ordeal which, if he had felt the agony usually induced, would have
+proved fatal. Pain is not only a warning monitor, it becomes also,
+sometimes, the agent of punishment, if the warning be disregarded.
+
+But, on the other hand, we must not forget that insensibility and
+invulnerability, though to a certain extent allied, are two distinct
+things. Injury the most serious may occur without the premonitory
+warning, even without immediate subsequent suffering. A person in a
+perfect state of insensibility might doubtless receive, without
+experiencing any pain whatever, a blow that would shatter the bones of a
+limb, and render it powerless for life. Indeed, there is on record a
+well-attested case of a poor pedestrian, who, having laid himself down
+on the platform of a lime-kiln, and dropping asleep, and the fire having
+increased and burnt off one foot to the ankle, rose in the morning to
+depart, and knew nothing of his misfortune, until, putting his burnt
+limb to the ground, to support his body in rising, the extremity of his
+leg-bone, calcined into lime, crumbled to fragments beneath him.[61]
+
+Contemporary medical authorities, even when they have the rare courage
+to deny to the convulsions either a divine or a diabolical character,
+furnish no explanation of them more satisfactory than the citing of
+similar cases, more or less strongly attested, in the past.[62] This may
+confirm our faith in the reality of the phenomena, but does not resolve
+our difficulties as to the causes of them.
+
+It does not fall within my purpose to hazard any opinion as to these
+causes, nor, if it did, am I prepared to offer any. Some considerations
+might be adduced, calculated to lessen our wonder as to an occasional
+phenomenon on this marvellous record. Physiologists, for example, are
+agreed that the common opinion as to the sensibility of the interior of
+the eye is an incorrect one;[63] and that consideration might be put
+forth, when we read that Sisters Madeleine and Felicite suffered with
+impunity swords to be pressed against that delicate organ, until the
+point sank an inch beneath its surface. But all such isolated
+considerations are partial, inconclusive, and, as regards any general
+satisfactory explanation, far short of the requirements of the case.
+
+More weight may justly be given to another consideration: to the
+exaggerations inseparable from enthusiasm, and the inaccuracies into
+which inexperienced observers must ever fall. As to the necessity of
+making large allowance for these, I entirely agree with Calmeil and De
+Gasparin. But let the allowance made for such errors be more or less, it
+cannot extend to an absolute denial of the chief phenomena, unless we
+are prepared to follow Hume in his assertion that what is contrary to
+our experience can be proved by no evidence of testimony whatever,--and
+that, though we have here nothing, save the marvellous character of the
+events, to oppose to the cloud of witnesses who attest them, that alone,
+in the eyes of reasonable people, should be regarded as a sufficient
+refutation.[64]
+
+The mental and psychological phenomena, only less marvellous than the
+physical because we have seen more of their like, will, on that account,
+be more readily received.
+
+
+
+
+HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
+
+BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.
+
+
+III.
+
+It is among the sibylline secrets which lie mysteriously between you and
+me, O reader, that these papers, besides their public aspect, have a
+private one proper to the bosom of mine own particular family.
+
+They are not merely an _ex post facto_ protest in regard to that carpet
+and parlor of celebrated memory, but they are forth-looking towards
+other homes that may yet arise near us.
+
+For, among my other confidences, you may recollect I stated to you that
+our Marianne was busy in those interesting cares and details which
+relate to the preparing and ordering of another dwelling.
+
+Now, when any such matter is going on in a family, I have observed that
+every feminine instinct is in a state of fluttering vitality,--every
+woman, old or young, is alive with womanliness to the tips of her
+fingers; and it becomes us of the other sex, however consciously
+respected, to walk softly, and put forth our sentiments discreetly and
+with due reverence for the mysterious powers that reign in the feminine
+breast.
+
+I had been too well advised to offer one word of direct counsel on a
+subject where there were such charming voices, so able to convict me of
+absurdity at every turn. I had merely so arranged my affairs as to put
+into the hands of my bankers, subject to my wife's order, the very
+modest marriage-portion which I could place at my girl's disposal; and
+Marianne and Jennie, unused to the handling of money, were incessant in
+their discussions with ever-patient mamma as to what was to be done with
+it. I say Marianne and Jennie, for, though the case undoubtedly is
+Marianne's, yet, like everything else in our domestic proceedings, it
+seems to fall, somehow or other, into Jennie's hands, through the
+intensity and liveliness of her domesticity of nature. Little Jennie is
+so bright and wide-awake, and with so many active plans and fancies
+touching anything in the housekeeping world, that, though the youngest
+sister, and second party in this affair, a stranger, hearkening to the
+daily discussions, might listen a half-hour at a time without finding
+out that it was not Jennie's future establishment that was in question.
+Marianne is a soft, thoughtful, quiet girl, not given to many words; and
+though, when you come fairly at it, you will find, that, like most quiet
+girls, she has a will five times as inflexible as one who talks more,
+yet, in all family-counsels, it is Jennie and mamma that do the
+discussion, and her own little well-considered "Yes," or "No," that
+finally settles each case.
+
+I must add to this family-_tableau_ the portrait of the excellent Bob
+Stephens, who figured as future proprietor and householder in these
+consultations. So far as the question of financial possibilities is
+concerned, it is important to remark that Bob belongs to the class of
+young Edmunds celebrated by the poet:--
+
+    "Wisdom and worth were all he had."
+
+He is, in fact, an excellent-hearted and clever fellow, with a world of
+agreeable talents, a good tenor in a parlor-duet, a good actor at a
+charade, a lively, off-hand conversationist, well up in all the current
+literature of the day, and what is more, in my eyes, a well-read lawyer,
+just admitted to the bar, and with as fair business-prospects as usually
+fall to the lot of young aspirants in that profession.
+
+Of course, he and my girl are duly and truly in love, in all the proper
+moods and tenses; but as to this work they have in hand of being
+householders, managing fuel, rent, provision, taxes, gas- and
+water-rates, they seem to my older eyes about as sagacious as a pair of
+this year's robins. Nevertheless, as the robins of each year do somehow
+learn to build nests as well as their ancestors, there is reason to hope
+as much for each new pair of human creatures. But it is one of the
+fatalities of our ill-jointed life that houses are usually furnished for
+future homes by young people in just this state of blissful ignorance of
+what they are really wanted for, or what is likely to be done with the
+things in them.
+
+Now, to people of large incomes, with ready wealth for the rectification
+of mistakes, it doesn't much matter how the _menage_ is arranged at
+first; they will, if they have good sense, soon rid themselves of the
+little infelicities and absurdities of their first arrangements, and
+bring their establishment to meet their more instructed tastes.
+
+But to that greater class who have only a modest investment for this
+first start in domestic life mistakes are far more serious. I have known
+people go on for years groaning under the weight of domestic possessions
+they did not want, and pining in vain for others which they did, simply
+from the fact that all their first purchases were made in this time of
+blissful ignorance.
+
+I had been a quiet auditor to many animated discussions among the young
+people as to what they wanted, and were to get, in which the subject of
+prudence and economy was discussed, with quotations of advice thereon
+given in serious good-faith by various friends and relations who lived
+easily on incomes four or five times larger than our own. Who can show
+the ways of elegant economy more perfectly than people thus at ease in
+their possessions? From what serene heights do they instruct the
+inexperienced beginners! Ten thousand a year gives one leisure for
+reflection, and elegant leisure enables one to view household economies
+dispassionately; hence the unction with which these gifted daughters of
+upper-air delight to exhort young neophytes.
+
+"Depend upon it, my dear," Aunt Sophia Easygo had said, "it's always the
+best economy to get the best things. They cost more in the beginning,
+but see how they last! These velvet carpets on my floor have been in
+constant wear for ten years, and look how they wear! I never have an
+ingrain carpet in my house,--not even on the chambers. Velvet and
+Brussels cost more to begin with, but then they last. Then I cannot
+recommend the fashion that is creeping in, of having plate instead of
+solid silver. Plate wears off, and has to be renewed, which comes to
+about the same thing in the end as if you bought all solid at first. If
+I were beginning as Marianne is, I should just set aside a thousand
+dollars for my silver, and be content with a few plain articles. She
+should buy all her furniture at Messrs. David and Saul's. People call
+them dear, but their work will prove cheapest in the end, and there is
+an air and style about their things that can be told anywhere. Of
+course, you won't go to any extravagant lengths,--simplicity is a grace
+of itself."
+
+The waters of the family-council were troubled, when Jennie, flaming
+with enthusiasm, brought home the report of this conversation. When my
+wife proceeded, with her well-trained business-knowledge, to compare the
+prices of the simplest elegancies recommended by Aunt Easygo with the
+sum-total to be drawn on, faces lengthened perceptibly.
+
+"How _are_ people to go to housekeeping," said Jennie, "if everything
+costs so much?"
+
+My wife quietly remarked, that we had had great comfort in our own
+home,--had entertained unnumbered friends, and had only ingrain carpets
+on our chambers and a three-ply on our parlor, and she doubted if any
+guest had ever thought of it,--if the rooms had been a shade less
+pleasant; and as to durability, Aunt Easygo had renewed her carpets
+oftener than we. Such as ours were, they had worn longer than hers.
+
+"But, mamma, you know everything has gone on since your day. Everybody
+must at least approach a certain style nowadays. One can't furnish so
+far behind other people."
+
+My wife answered in her quiet way, setting forth her doctrine of a plain
+average to go through the whole establishment, placing parlors,
+chambers, kitchen, pantries, and the unseen depths of linen-closets in
+harmonious relations of just proportion, and showed by calm estimates
+how far the sum given could go towards this result. _There_ the limits
+were inexorable. There is nothing so damping to the ardor of youthful
+economies as the hard, positive logic of figures. It is so delightful to
+think in some airy way that the things we _like_ best are the cheapest,
+and that a sort of rigorous duty compels us to get them at any
+sacrifice. There is no remedy for this illusion but to show by the
+multiplication and addition tables what things are and are not possible.
+My wife's figures met Aunt Easygo's assertions, and there was a lull
+among the high contracting parties for a season; nevertheless, I could
+see Jennie was secretly uneasy. I began to hear of journeys made to far
+places, here and there, where expensive articles of luxury were selling
+at reduced prices. Now a gilded mirror was discussed, and now a velvet
+carpet which chance had brought down temptingly near the sphere of
+financial possibility. I thought of our parlor, and prayed the good
+fairies to avert the advent of ill-assorted articles.
+
+"Pray keep common sense uppermost in the girls' heads, if you can," said
+I to Mrs. Crowfield, "and don't let the poor little puss spend her money
+for what she won't care a button about by-and-by."
+
+"I shall try," she said; "but you know Marianne is inexperienced, and
+Jennie is so ardent and active, and so confident, too. Then they both, I
+think, have the impression that we are a little behind the age. To say
+the truth, my dear, I think your papers afford a good opportunity of
+dropping a thought now and then in their minds. Jennie was asking last
+night when you were going to write your next paper. The girl has a
+bright, active mind, and thinks of what she hears."
+
+So flattered, by the best of flatterers, I sat down to write on my
+theme; and that evening, at fire-light time, I read to my little senate
+as follows:--
+
+
+WHAT IS A HOME, AND HOW TO KEEP IT.
+
+I have shown that a dwelling, rented or owned by a man, in which his own
+wife keeps house, is not always, or of course, a home. What is it, then,
+that makes a home? All men and women have the indefinite knowledge of
+what they want and long for when that word is spoken. "Home!" sighs the
+disconsolate bachelor, tired of boarding-house fare and buttonless
+shirts. "Home!" says the wanderer in foreign lands, and thinks of
+mother's love, of wife and sister and child. Nay, the word has in it a
+higher meaning, hallowed by religion; and when the Christian would
+express the highest of his hopes for a better life, he speaks of his
+_home_ beyond the grave. The word home has in it the elements of love,
+rest, permanency, and liberty; but besides these it has in it the idea
+of an education by which all that is purest within us is developed into
+nobler forms, fit for a higher life. The little child by the
+home-fireside was taken on the Master's knee when he would explain to
+his disciples the mysteries of the kingdom.
+
+Of so great dignity and worth is this holy and sacred thing, that the
+power to create a HOME ought to be ranked above all creative
+faculties. The sculptor who brings out the breathing statue from cold
+marble, the painter who warms the canvas into a deathless glow of
+beauty, the architect who built cathedrals and hung the world-like dome
+of St. Peter's in mid-air, is not to be compared, in sanctity and
+worthiness, to the humblest artist, who, out of the poor materials
+afforded by this shifting, changing, selfish world, creates the secure
+Eden of a _home_.
+
+A true home should be called the noblest work of art possible to human
+creatures, inasmuch as it is the very image chosen to represent the last
+and highest rest of the soul, the consummation of man's blessedness.
+
+Not without reason does the oldest Christian church require of those
+entering on marriage the most solemn review of all the past life, the
+confession and repentance of every sin of thought, word, and deed, and
+the reception of the holy sacrament; for thus the man and woman who
+approach the august duty of creating a home are reminded of the sanctity
+and beauty of what they undertake.
+
+In this art of home-making I have set down in my mind certain first
+principles, like the axioms of Euclid, and the first is,--
+
+_No home is possible without love._
+
+All business-marriages and marriages of convenience, all mere culinary
+marriages and marriages of mere animal passion, make the creation of a
+true home impossible in the outset. Love is the jewelled foundation of
+this New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven, and takes as many
+bright forms as the amethyst, topaz, and sapphire of that mysterious
+vision. In this range of creative art all things are possible to him
+that loveth, but without love nothing is possible.
+
+We hear of most convenient marriages in foreign lands, which may better
+be described as commercial partnerships. The money on each side is
+counted; there is enough between the parties to carry on the firm, each
+having the appropriate sum allotted to each. No love is pretended, but
+there is great politeness. All is so legally and thoroughly arranged,
+that there seems to be nothing left for future quarrels to fasten on.
+Monsieur and Madame have each their apartments, their carriages, their
+servants, their income, their friends, their pursuits,--understand the
+solemn vows of marriage to mean simply that they are to treat each other
+with urbanity in those few situations where the path of life must
+necessarily bring them together.
+
+We are sorry that such an idea of marriage should be gaining foothold in
+America. It has its root in an ignoble view of life,--an utter and pagan
+darkness as to all that man and woman are called to do in that highest
+relation where they act as one. It is a mean and low contrivance on both
+sides, by which all the grand work of home-building, all the noble pains
+and heroic toils of home-education,--that education where the parents
+learn more than they teach,--shall be (let us use the expressive Yankee
+idiom) _shirked_.
+
+It is a curious fact that in those countries where this system of
+marriages is the general rule there is no word corresponding to our
+English word _home_. In many polite languages of Europe it would be
+impossible neatly to translate the sentiment with which we began this
+essay, that a man's _house_ is not always his _home_.
+
+Let any one try to render the song, "Sweet Home," into French, and one
+finds how Anglo-Saxon is the very genius of the word. The structure of
+life, in all its relations, in countries where marriages are matter of
+arrangement, and not of love, excludes the idea of home.
+
+How does life run in such countries? The girl is recalled from her
+convent or boarding-school, and told that her father has found a husband
+for her. No objection on her part is contemplated or provided for; none
+generally occurs, for the child is only too happy to obtain the fine
+clothes and the liberty which she has been taught come only with
+marriage. Be the man handsome or homely, interesting or stupid, still he
+brings these.
+
+How intolerable such a marriage! we say, with the close intimacies of
+Anglo-Saxon life in our minds. They are not intolerable, because they
+are provided for by arrangements which make it possible for each to go
+his or her several way, seeing very little of the other. The son or
+daughter, which in due time makes its appearance in this _menage_, is
+sent out to nurse in infancy, sent to boarding-school in youth, and in
+maturity portioned and married, to repeat the same process for another
+generation. Meanwhile, father and mother keep a quiet establishment, and
+pursue their several pleasures. Such is the system.
+
+Houses built for this kind of life become mere sets of reception-rooms,
+such as are the greater proportion of apartments to let in Paris, where
+a hearty English or American family, with their children about them,
+could scarcely find room to establish themselves. Individual character,
+it is true, does something to modify this programme. There are charming
+homes in France and Italy, where warm and noble natures, thrown
+together, perhaps, by accident, or mated by wise paternal choice, infuse
+warmth into the coldness of the system under which they live. There are
+in all states of society some of such domesticity of nature that they
+will create a home around themselves under any circumstances, however
+barren. Besides, so kindly is human nature, that Love, uninvited before
+marriage, often becomes a guest after, and with Love always comes a
+home.
+
+My next axiom is,--
+
+_There can be no true home without liberty._
+
+The very idea of home is of a retreat where we shall be free to act out
+personal and individual tastes and peculiarities, as we cannot do before
+the wide world. We are to have our meals at what hour we will, served in
+what style suits us. Our hours of going and coming are to be as we
+please. Our favorite haunts are to be here or there, our pictures and
+books so disposed as seems to us good, and our whole arrangements the
+expression, so far as our means can compass it, of our own personal
+ideas of what is pleasant and desirable in life. This element of
+liberty, if we think of it, is the chief charm of home. "Here I can do
+as I please," is the thought with which the tempest-tossed earth-pilgrim
+blesses himself or herself, turning inward from the crowded ways of the
+world. This thought blesses the man of business, as he turns from his
+day's care, and crosses the sacred threshold. It is as restful to him as
+the slippers and gown and easy-chair by the fireside. Everybody
+understands him here. Everybody is well content that he should take his
+ease in his own way. Such is the case in the _ideal_ home. That such is
+not always the case in the real home comes often from the mistakes in
+the house-furnishing. Much house-furnishing is _too fine_ for liberty.
+
+In America there is no such thing as rank and station which impose a
+sort of prescriptive style on people of certain income. The consequence
+is that all sorts of furniture and belongings, which in the Old World
+have a recognized relation to certain possibilities of income, and which
+require certain other accessories to make them in good keeping, are
+thrown in the way of all sorts of people.
+
+Young people who cannot expect by any reasonable possibility to keep
+more than two or three servants, if they happen to have the means in the
+outset, furnish a house with just such articles as in England would suit
+an establishment of sixteen. We have seen houses in England having two
+or three housemaids, and tables served by a butler and two waiters,
+where the furniture, carpets, china, crystal, and silver were in one and
+the same style with some establishments in America where the family was
+hard pressed to keep three Irish servants.
+
+This want of servants is the one thing that must modify everything in
+American life; it is, and will long continue to be, a leading feature in
+the life of a country so rich in openings for man and woman that
+domestic service can be only the stepping-stone to something higher.
+Nevertheless, we Americans are great travellers; we are sensitive,
+appreciative, fond of novelty, apt to receive and incorporate into our
+own life what seems fair and graceful in that of other people. Our
+women's wardrobes are made elaborate with the thousand elegancies of
+French toilet,--our houses filled with a thousand knick-knacks of which
+our plain ancestors never dreamed. Cleopatra did not set sail on the
+Nile in more state and beauty than that in which our young American
+bride is often ushered into her new home. Her wardrobe all gossamer lace
+and quaint frill and crimp and embroidery, her house a museum of elegant
+and costly gewgaws; and amid the whole collection of elegancies and
+fragilities, she, perhaps, the frailest.
+
+Then comes the tug of war. The young wife becomes a mother, and while
+she is retired to her chamber, blundering Biddy rusts the elegant
+knives, or takes off the ivory handles by soaking in hot water,--the
+silver is washed in greasy soap-suds, and refreshed now and then with a
+thump, which cocks the nose of the teapot awry, or makes the handle
+assume an air of drunken defiance. The fragile China is chipped here and
+there around its edges with those minute gaps so vexatious to a woman's
+soul; the handles fly hither and thither in the wild confusion of
+Biddy's washing-day hurry, when cook wants her to help hang out the
+clothes. Meanwhile, Bridget sweeps the parlor with a hard broom, and
+shakes out showers of ashes from the grate, forgetting to cover the
+damask lounges, and they directly look as rusty and time-worn as if they
+had come from an auction-store; and all together unite in making such
+havoc of the delicate ruffles and laces of the bridal outfit and
+baby-_layette_, that, when the poor young wife comes out of her chamber
+after her nurse has left her, and, weakened and embarrassed with the
+demands of the new-comer, begins to look once more into the affairs of
+her little world, she is ready to sink with vexation and discouragement.
+Poor little princess! Her clothes are made as princesses wear them, her
+baby's clothes like a young duke's, her house furnished like a lord's,
+and only Bridget and Biddy and Polly to do the work of cook,
+scullery-maid, butler, footman, laundress, nursery-maid, house-maid, and
+lady's maid. Such is the array that in the Old Country would be deemed
+necessary to take care of an establishment got up like hers. Everything
+in it is _too fine_,--not too fine to be pretty, not in bad taste in
+itself, but too fine for the situation, too fine for comfort or liberty.
+
+What ensues in a house so furnished? Too often, ceaseless fretting of
+the nerves, in the wife's despairing, conscientious efforts to keep
+things as they should be. There is no freedom in a house where things
+are too expensive and choice to be freely handled and easily replaced.
+Life becomes a series of petty embarrassments and restrictions,
+something is always going wrong, and the man finds his fireside
+oppressive,--the various articles of his parlor and table seem like so
+many temper-traps and spring-guns, menacing explosion and disaster.
+
+There may be, indeed, the most perfect home-feeling, the utmost coziness
+and restfulness, in apartments crusted with gilding, carpeted with
+velvet, and upholstered with satin. I have seen such, where the
+home-like look and air of free use was as genuine as in a Western
+log-cabin; but this was in a range of princely income that made all
+these things as easy to be obtained or replaced as the most ordinary of
+our domestic furniture. But so long as articles must be shrouded from
+use, or used with fear and trembling, because their cost is above the
+general level of our means, we had better be without them, even though
+the most lucky of accidents may put their possession in our power.
+
+But it is not merely by the effort to maintain too much elegance that
+the sense of home-liberty is banished from a house. It is sometimes
+expelled in another way, with all painstaking and conscientious
+strictness, by the worthiest and best of human beings, the blessed
+followers of Saint Martha. Have we not known them, the dear, worthy
+creatures, up before daylight, causing most scrupulous lustrations of
+every pane of glass and inch of paint in our parlors, in consequence
+whereof every shutter and blind must be kept closed for days to come,
+lest the flies should speck the freshly washed windows and wainscoting?
+Dear shade of Aunt Mehitabel, forgive our boldness! Have we not been
+driven for days, in our youth, to read our newspaper in the front
+veranda, in the kitchen, out in the barn,--anywhere, in fact, where
+sunshine could be found, because there was not a room in the house that
+was not cleaned, shut up, and darkened? Have we not shivered with cold,
+all the glowering, gloomy month of May, because, the august front-parlor
+having undergone the spring cleaning, the andirons were snugly tied up
+in tissue-paper, and an elegant frill of the same material was trembling
+before the mouth of the once glowing fireplace? Even so, dear soul, full
+of loving-kindness and hospitality as thou wast, yet ever making our
+house seem like a tomb! And with what patience wouldst thou sit sewing
+by a crack in the shutters, an inch wide, rejoicing in thy immaculate
+paint and clear glass! But was there ever a thing of thy spotless and
+unsullied belongings which a boy might use? How I trembled to touch thy
+scoured tins, that hung in appalling brightness! with what awe I asked
+for a basket to pick strawberries! and where in the house could I find a
+place to eat a piece of gingerbread? How like a ruffian, a Tartar, a
+pirate, I always felt, when I entered thy domains! and how, from day to
+day, I wondered at the immeasurable depths of depravity which were
+always leading me to upset something, or break or tear or derange
+something, in thy exquisitely kept premises! Somehow, the impression was
+burned with overpowering force into my mind, that houses and furniture,
+scrubbed floors, white curtains, bright tins and brasses were the great,
+awful, permanent facts of existence,--and that men and women, and
+particularly children, were the meddlesome intruders upon this divine
+order, every trace of whose intermeddling must be scrubbed out and
+obliterated in the quickest way possible. It seemed evident to me that
+houses would be far more perfect, if nobody lived in them at all; but
+that, as men had really and absurdly taken to living in them, they must
+live as little as possible. My only idea of a house was a place full of
+traps and pitfalls for boys, a deadly temptation to sins which beset one
+every moment; and when I read about a sailor's free life on the ocean, I
+felt an untold longing to go forth and be free in like manner.
+
+But a truce to these fancies, and back again to our essay.
+
+If liberty in a house is a comfort to a husband, it is a necessity to
+children. When we say liberty, we do not mean license. We do not mean
+that Master Johnny be allowed to handle elegant volumes with
+bread-and-butter fingers, or that little Miss be suffered to drum on the
+piano, or practise line-drawing with a pin on varnished furniture. Still
+it is essential that the family-parlors be not too fine for the family
+to sit in,--too fine for the ordinary accidents, haps and mishaps, of
+reasonably well-trained children. The elegance of the parlor where papa
+and mamma sit and receive their friends should wear an inviting, not a
+hostile and bristling, aspect to little people. Its beauty and its order
+gradually form in the little mind a love of beauty and order, and the
+insensible carefulness of regard.
+
+Nothing is worse for a child than to shut him up in a room which he
+understands is his, _because_ he is disorderly,--where he is expected,
+of course, to maintain and keep disorder. We have sometimes pitied the
+poor little victims who show their faces longingly at the doors of
+elegant parlors, and are forthwith collared by the domestic police and
+consigned to some attic-apartment, called a play-room, where chaos
+continually reigns. It is a mistake to suppose, because children derange
+a well-furnished apartment, that they like confusion. Order and beauty
+are always pleasant to them as to grown people, and disorder and
+defacement are painful; but they know neither how to create the one nor
+to prevent the other,--their little lives are a series of experiments,
+often making disorder by aiming at some new form of order. Yet, for all
+this, I am not one of those who feel that in a family everything should
+bend to the sway of these little people. They are the worst of tyrants
+in such houses,--still, where children are, though the fact must not
+appear to them, _nothing must be done without a wise thought of them_.
+
+Here, as in all high art, the old motto is in force, "_Ars est celare
+artem_." Children who are taught too plainly by every anxious look and
+word of their parents, by every family-arrangement, by the impressment
+of every chance guest into the service, that their parents consider
+their education as the one important matter in creation, are apt to grow
+up fantastical, artificial, and hopelessly self-conscious. The stars
+cannot stop in their courses, even for our personal improvement, and the
+sooner children learn this, the better. The great art is to organize a
+home which shall move on with a strong, wide, generous movement, where
+the little people shall act themselves out as freely and impulsively as
+can consist with the comfort of the whole, and where the anxious
+watching and planning for them shall be kept as secret from them as
+possible.
+
+It is well that one of the sunniest and airiest rooms in the house be
+the children's nursery. It is good philosophy, too, to furnish it
+attractively, even if the sum expended lower the standard of
+parlor-luxuries. It is well that the children's chamber, which is to act
+constantly on their impressible natures for years, should command a
+better prospect, a sunnier aspect, than one which serves for a day's
+occupancy of the transient guest. It is well that journeys should be
+made or put off in view of the interests of the children,--that guests
+should be invited with a view to their improvement,--that some
+intimacies should be chosen and some rejected on their account. But it
+is _not_ well that all this should, from infancy, be daily talked out
+before the child, and he grow up in egotism from moving in a sphere
+where everything from first to last is calculated and arranged with
+reference to himself. A little appearance of wholesome neglect combined
+with real care and never-ceasing watchfulness has often seemed to do
+wonders in this work of setting human beings on their own feet for the
+life-journey.
+
+Education is the highest object of home, but education in the widest
+sense,--education of the parents no less than of the children. In a true
+home the man and the woman receive, through their cares, their
+watchings, their hospitality, their charity, the last and highest finish
+that earth can put upon them. From that they must pass upward, for earth
+can teach them no more.
+
+The home-education is incomplete, unless it include the idea of
+hospitality and charity. Hospitality is a biblical and apostolic virtue,
+and not so often recommended in Holy Writ without reason. Hospitality is
+much neglected in America for the very reasons touched upon above. We
+have received our ideas of propriety and elegance of living from old
+countries, where labor is cheap, where domestic service is a
+well-understood, permanent occupation, adopted cheerfully for life, and
+where of course there is such a subdivision of labor as insures great
+thoroughness in all its branches. We are ashamed or afraid to conform
+honestly and hardily to a state of things purely American. We have not
+yet accomplished what our friend the Doctor calls "our weaning," and
+learned that dinners with circuitous courses and divers other
+Continental and English refinements, well enough in their way, cannot be
+accomplished in families with two or three untrained servants, without
+an expense of care and anxiety which makes them heart-withering to the
+delicate wife, and too severe a trial to occur often. America is the
+land of subdivided fortunes, of a general average of wealth and comfort,
+and there ought to be, therefore, an understanding in the social basis
+far more simple than in the Old World.
+
+Many families of small fortunes know this,--they are quietly living
+so,--but they have not the steadiness to share their daily average
+living with a friend, a traveller, or guest, just as the Arab shares his
+tent and the Indian his bowl of succotash. They cannot have company,
+they say. Why? Because it is such a fuss to get out the best things, and
+then to put them back again. But why get out the best things? Why not
+give your friend, what he would like a thousand times better, a bit of
+your average home-life, a seat at any time at your board, a seat at your
+fire? If he sees that there is a handle off your tea-cup, and that there
+is a crack across one of your plates, he only thinks, with a sigh of
+relief, "Well, mine a'n't the only things that meet with accidents," and
+he feels nearer to you ever after; he will let you come to his table and
+see the cracks in his tea-cups, and you will condole with each other on
+the transient nature of earthly possessions. If it become apparent in
+these entirely undressed rehearsals that your children are sometimes
+disorderly, and that your cook sometimes overdoes the meat, and that
+your second girl sometimes is awkward in waiting, or has forgotten a
+table-propriety, your friend only feels, "Ah, well, other people have
+trials as well as I," and he thinks, if you come to see him, he shall
+feel easy with you.
+
+"_Having company_" is an expense that may always be felt; but easy daily
+hospitality, the plate always on your table for a friend, is an expense
+that appears on no account-book, and a pleasure that is daily and
+constant.
+
+Under this head of hospitality, let us suppose a case. A traveller comes
+from England; he comes in good faith and good feeling to see how
+Americans live. He merely wants to penetrate into the interior of
+domestic life, to see what there is genuinely and peculiarly American
+about it. Now here is Smilax, who is living, in a small, neat way, on
+his salary from the daily press. He remembers hospitalities received
+from our traveller in England, and wants to return them. He remembers,
+too, with dismay, a well-kept establishment, the well-served table, the
+punctilious, orderly servants. Smilax keeps two, a cook and chambermaid,
+who divide the functions of his establishment between them. What shall
+he do? Let him say, in a fair, manly way, "My dear fellow, I'm delighted
+to see you. I live in a small way, but I'll do my best for you, and Mrs.
+Smilax will be delighted. Come and dine with us, so and so, and we'll
+bring in one or two friends." So the man comes, and Mrs. Smilax serves
+up such a dinner as lies within the limits of her knowledge and the
+capacities of her servants. All plain, good of its kind, unpretending,
+without an attempt to do anything English or French,--to do anything
+more than if she were furnishing a gala-dinner for her father or
+returned brother. Show him your house freely, just as it is, talk to him
+freely of it, just as he in England showed you his finer things. If the
+man is a true man, he will thank you for such unpretending, sincere
+welcome; if he is a man of straw, then he is not worth wasting Mrs.
+Smilax's health and spirits for, in unavailing efforts to get up a
+foreign dinner-party.
+
+A man who has any heart in him values a genuine little bit of home more
+than anything else you can give him. He can get French cooking at a
+restaurant; he can buy expensive wines at first-class hotels, if he
+wants them; but the traveller, though ever so rich and ever so
+well-served at home, is, after all, nothing but a man as you are, and he
+is craving something that doesn't seem like a hotel,--some bit of real,
+genuine heart-life. Perhaps he would like better than anything to show
+you the last photograph of his wife, or to read to you the great,
+round-hand letter of his ten-year-old which he has got to-day. He is
+ready to cry when he thinks of it. In this mood he goes to see you,
+hoping for something like home, and you first receive him in a parlor
+opened only on state occasions, and that has been circumstantially and
+exactly furnished, as the upholsterer assures you, as every other parlor
+of the kind in the city is furnished. You treat him to a dinner got up
+for the occasion, with hired waiters,--a dinner which it has taken Mrs.
+Smilax a week to prepare for, and will take her a week to recover
+from,--for which the baby has been snubbed and turned off, to his loud
+indignation, and your young four-year-old sent to his aunts. Your
+traveller eats your dinner, and finds it inferior, as a work of art, to
+other dinners,--a poor imitation. He goes away and criticizes; you hear
+of it, and resolve never to invite a foreigner again. But if you had
+given him a little of your heart, a little home-warmth and feeling,--if
+you had shown him your baby, and let him romp with your four-year-old,
+and eat a genuine dinner with you,--would he have been false to that?
+Not so likely. He wanted something real and human,--you gave him a bad
+dress-rehearsal, and dress-rehearsals always provoke criticism.
+
+Besides hospitality, there is, in a true home, a mission of charity. It
+is a just law which regulates the possession of great or beautiful works
+of art in the Old World, that they shall in some sense be considered the
+property of all who can appreciate. Fine grounds have hours when the
+public may be admitted,--pictures and statues may be shown to visitors;
+and this is a noble charity. In the same manner the fortunate
+individuals who have achieved the greatest of all human works of art
+should employ it as a sacred charity. How many, morally wearied,
+wandering, disabled, are healed and comforted by the warmth of a true
+home! When a mother has sent her son to the temptations of a distant
+city, what news is so glad to her heart as that he has found some quiet
+family where he visits often and is made to feel AT HOME? How
+many young men have good women saved from temptation and shipwreck by
+drawing them often to the sheltered corner by the fireside! The poor
+artist,--the wandering genius who has lost his way in this world, and
+stumbles like a child among hard realities,--the many men and women who,
+while they have houses, have no homes,--see from afar, in their distant,
+bleak life-journey, the light of a true home-fire, and, if made welcome
+there, warm their stiffened limbs, and go forth stronger to their
+pilgrimage. Let those who have accomplished this beautiful and perfect
+work of divine art be liberal of its influence. Let them not seek to
+bolt the doors and draw the curtains; for they know not, and will never
+know till the future life, of the good they may do by the ministration
+of this great charity of home.
+
+We have heard much lately of the restricted sphere of woman. We have
+been told how many spirits among women are of a wider, stronger, more
+heroic mould than befits the mere routine of housekeeping. It may be
+true that there are many women far too great, too wise, too high, for
+mere housekeeping. But where is the woman in any way too great, or too
+high, or too wise, to spend herself in creating a home? What can any
+woman make diviner, higher, better? From such homes go forth all
+heroisms, all inspirations, all great deeds. Such mothers and such homes
+have made the heroes and martyrs, faithful unto death, who have given
+their precious lives to us during these three years of our agony!
+
+Homes are the work of art peculiar to the genius of woman. Man _helps_
+in this work, but woman leads; the hive is always in confusion without
+the _queen_-bee. But what a woman must she be who does this work
+perfectly! She comprehends all, she balances and arranges all; all
+different tastes and temperaments find in her their rest, and she can
+unite at one hearthstone the most discordant elements. In her is order,
+yet an order ever veiled and concealed by indulgence. None are checked,
+reproved, abridged of privileges by her love of system; for she knows
+that order was made for the family, and not the family for order.
+Quietly she takes on herself what all others refuse or overlook. What
+the unwary disarrange she silently rectifies. Everybody in her sphere
+breathes easy, feels free; and the driest twig begins in her sunshine to
+put out buds and blossoms. So quiet are her operations and movements,
+that none sees that it is she who holds all things in harmony; only,
+alas, when she is gone, how many things suddenly appear disordered,
+inharmonious, neglected! All these threads have been smilingly held in
+her weak hand. Alas, if that is no longer there!
+
+Can any woman be such a housekeeper without inspiration? No. In the
+words of the old church-service, "Her soul must ever have affiance in
+God." The New Jerusalem of a perfect home cometh down from God out of
+heaven. But to make such a home is ambition high and worthy enough for
+_any_ woman, be she what she may.
+
+One thing more. Right on the threshold of all perfection lies _the
+cross_ to be taken up. No one can go over or around that cross in
+science or in art. Without labor and self-denial neither Raphael nor
+Michel Angelo nor Newton was made perfect. Nor can man or woman create a
+true home who is not willing in the outset to embrace life heroically,
+to encounter labor and sacrifice. Only to such shall this divinest power
+be given to create on earth that which is the nearest image of heaven.
+
+
+
+
+SONG.
+
+
+    We have been lovers now, my dear,
+      It matters nothing to say how long,
+    But still at the coming round o' th' year
+      I make for my pleasure a little song;
+    And thus of my love I sing, my dear,--
+    So much the more by a year, by a year.
+
+    And still as I see the day depart,
+      And hear the bat at my window flit,
+    I sing the little song to my heart,
+      With just a change at the close of it;
+    And thus of my love I sing alway,--
+    So much the more by a day, by a day.
+
+    When in the morning I see the skies
+      Breaking into a gracious glow,
+    I say you are not my sweetheart's eyes,
+      Your brightness cannot mislead me so;
+    And I sing of my love in the rising light,--
+    So much the more by a night, by a night.
+
+    Both at the year's sweet dawn and close,
+      When the moon is filling, or fading away,
+    Every day, as it comes and goes,
+      And every hour of every day,
+    My little song I repeat and repeat,--
+    So much the more by an hour, my sweet!
+
+
+
+
+OUR SOLDIERS.
+
+
+We entered gayly on our great contest. At the first sound from Sumter,
+enthusiasm blazed high and bright. Bells rang out, flags waved, the
+people rose as one man to cheer on our troops, and the practical
+American nation, surveying itself with astonishment, pronounced
+itself--finger on pulse--enthusiastic; and though, in the light of the
+present steadily burning determination, it has been the fashion gently
+to smile at that quick upspringing blaze, and at the times when it was
+gravely noted how the privates of our army took daily baths and wore
+Colt's revolvers, and pet regiments succumbed under showers of
+Havelocks, in contrast with the grim official reports of to-day, I
+cannot but think that enthusiasm healthful, and in itself a lesson, if
+only that it proves beyond question that our patriotism was not simply a
+dweller on the American tongue, but a thing of the American heart, so
+vitalizing us, so woven every day into the most minute ramifications of
+our living, so inner and recognized a part of our thinking, that there
+have been found some to doubt its existence, just as we half forget the
+gracious air, because no labored gasps, in place of our sure and even
+breathing, ever by any chance announce to us that somewhere there have
+been error and confusion in its vast workings.
+
+Bitterer texts were ready all too soon. When we heard how one had
+fallen, bayoneted at the guns, and another was struck, charging on the
+foe, and a third had died after long lingering in hospital,--when we saw
+our brave boys, whom we had sent out with huzzas, coming back to us with
+the blood and grime of battle upon them, maimed, ghastly, dying,
+dead,--we knew that we, whom God had hitherto so blessed that we were
+compelled to look into the annals of other nations for misery and
+strife, had now commenced a record of our own. Henceforth there was for
+us a new literature, new grooves of thought, new interests. By all the
+love of father, brother, husband, and children, we must learn more of
+this tragic and tender lore; and our soldiers have been a thought not
+far from the heart and lips of any one of us, and what is done, or
+doing, or possible for them, held worthiest of our thought and time.
+
+Respecting these, we have had all to learn. True, with us, satisfaction
+has at all times followed close upon the announcement of a need; but
+wisdom in planning and administering is not a marketable commodity, and
+so we are educating ourselves up to the emergency,--the whole mighty
+nation at school, and learning, we are bound to say, with Yankee
+quickness. Love has been for us, also, a marvellous brain-prompter. Some
+of our grandest charities--I mean charities in the broadest and sweetest
+sense, for it is we who owe, not our soldiers--have been the inspiration
+of a moment's need,--thoughts of the people, who, in crises and at
+instance of the heart, think well and swiftly. Take this one example.
+
+When New England's sons seized their arms, the first to answer the
+trumpet-call that rang out over the land, and went in the spirit of
+their fathers to the battle,--when these men passed through
+Philadelphia, hungry and weary, the great heart of the city went out to
+meet them. Citizens brought them into their houses, the neighboring
+shops gave gladly what they could, women came running with food snatched
+from their own tables, and even little squalid children toddled out of
+by-lanes and alleys with loaves and half-loaves, all that they had to
+give, so did the whole people yearn over their defenders; and then it
+was seen how other regiments would come to them, ready for the fray, but
+dusty and way-worn, and how the ambulances would bring them back parched
+and fainting, and--it was hardly known how, only that, as in the old
+times, "the people were of one mind and one accord," and brought of such
+things as they had; but on that sad, yet proud day, that brought back to
+them those who fell in Baltimore on the memorable nineteenth of
+April,--the heroes in whom all claim a share, and the right to say, not
+only Massachusetts's dead and wounded, but ours--there was ready for
+them a shelter in the unpretending building famous since as the Cooper
+Shop. There the people crowded about them, weeping, blessing, consoling;
+and from that day there has no regiment from New England, New York, or
+any other State, been suffered to pass through Philadelphia unrefreshed.
+Water was supplied them, and tables ready spread, by the Volunteer Corps
+always in attendance, within five minutes after the firing of the gun
+that announced their arrival. There was shortly added, also, a volunteer
+hospital for the more dangerously wounded when first brought from the
+battle-field, and of it is told a story that Americans will like to
+hear.
+
+It is of a Wisconsin soldier, who, taken prisoner, effected his escape
+from Richmond. Hiding by day, he forced his way at night through morass
+and forest, snatched such sleep as he dared on the damp and sodden
+earth, went without food whole days, reached our lines bruised, torn,
+shivering, starving, and his wounds, which had never been properly cared
+for, opened afresh. Let him tell the rest, straight from his heart.
+
+"When I had my rubber blanket to wrap about me, I was comfortable, and,
+snug and warm in the cars, I thought myself happy; and when I heard them
+talk of the 'Cooper Shop,' I said to myself, 'A cooper's shop! that will
+be the very place of all the earth, for there I shall have a roof over
+me, and the shavings will be so warm and dry to lie upon!' but when they
+carried me in, and I opened my eyes and saw what was the Cooper Shop,
+and the long tables all loaded for the poor soldiers, and when they took
+me to the hospital up-stairs, and placed me in a bed, and real ladies
+and gentlemen, with tears in their eyes, came and waited on me, my
+manliness left me."
+
+A want of manliness, O honest heart, for which there need be no shame!
+Precious tribute to our country's great love for her sons! For this is
+no sectional charity, only one example culled from thousands; for the
+land must, of a necessity, be overshadowed by the tree that has a root
+under almost every Northern hearth-stone; and then see how we are all
+bound together by the heart-strings!
+
+Forty thousand men-at-arms are looking gravely at the height towering
+above the valley in which they stand. "Impregnable" military science
+pronounced it; but the men scaling it know nothing of this word
+"impregnable." They have heard nothing of an order for retreat,--they
+are filled with a divine wrath of battle, and each man is as mad as his
+neighbor, and the officers are powerless to hold them back, and catch
+the infection and are swept on with them, and climbing, jumping,
+slipping, toiling on hands and knees, swinging from tree and bush, any
+way, any how, but always onward, never backward, they surge up over the
+mountain-top, deadly volleys crashing right in among them, and set on
+the Rebels with a wild hurrah! and the hearts below beat faster, and
+rough lips curse the blinding smoke and fog that veil all the crest, and
+on a sudden a shout,--such a one as the children of Israel gave, when
+the high-piled walls of water bent and swayed and came waving and
+thundering down on Pharaoh's hopeless hosts,--for there, high up in
+heaven, streaming out through parting smoke, is the flag, torn,
+blood-stained, ball-riddled, but the dear old red, white, and blue,
+waving over the enemy's works; and then the telegraph flashed out the
+brave news over the exulting country, and the press took up the story,
+and women said, with kindling faces, "My son, or my brother, or my
+husband may be dead, but, oh, our boys have done glorious things at
+Lookout Mountain!"--and History will tell how a grander charge was never
+made, and calmly note the loss in dead and wounded,--so many
+thousands,--and pass on.
+
+But we are not History, and our dead,--well, we will give them graves
+that shall be ever green with laurels, and their swords shall be our
+most precious legacy to our children, and their memories shall be a part
+of our household; but our wounded, for whom there is yet hope, who may
+yet live,--the cry goes up from Wisconsin, and Maine, and Iowa, and New
+York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts, Where are they, and how cared
+for? We are all, as I said, bound by the heartstrings in a common
+interest. The Boston woman with her boy in the Army of the Cumberland,
+and the Maine mother with one in New Orleans or Texas, and the Kansas
+father with a son in the Army of the Potomac, all clamor, "Is mine among
+the wounded, and do care and science for him all that care and science
+should?"
+
+The Field Relief Corps of the Sanitary Commission are prompt on the
+battle-field, reaching the groaning sufferers even before their own
+surgeons. Said one man, lying there badly wounded,--
+
+"And what do they pay yez for this? What do you get?"
+
+"Pay! We ask nothing, only the soldier's 'God bless you.'"
+
+"And is that all? Then sure here's plenty of the coin, fresh minted! God
+bless you! God bless you! and the good Lord be good to you, and remember
+yez as you have remembered us, and love yez and your children after you;
+and sure, if that is all, it's plenty of that sort of pay the poor
+soldier has for you!"
+
+God bless such men! we echo; but after that, what then? Our beloved are
+taken to the hospitals, and we know, in a general way, that hospitals
+are buildings containing long rows of beds, and that science is doing
+its utmost in their behalf; but when our friends write us from across
+seas, they tell us, not only how they are, but where,--jotting down
+little pen-and-ink pictures to show us how stands the writing-table, and
+how hangs the picture, and where is the _fauteuil_, that we may see them
+as they are daily; so we crave something more, we feel shut out, we want
+to get at their daily living, to know something of hospital-life.
+
+Hospitals have sprung up as if sown broadcast, and these, too, of no
+mean order. True, in our first haste and inexperience, viciously planned
+hospitals were erected; but these and the Crimean blunders have served
+us as beacons, and the anxious care of the Government has been untiring,
+the outlay of money and things more precious unbounded; and those who
+have had this weighty matter in charge have no reason to fear an account
+of their stewardship. The Boston Free Hospital in excellence of plan and
+beauty of design can be excelled by none. Philadelphia boasts the two
+largest military hospitals in the world. Of the twenty-three in and
+about Washington many are worthy of all praise. The general hospital at
+Fort Schuyler is admirable in plan and _locale_, and this latter
+condition is found to be of vast importance. A Rebel battery, with an
+incurable habit of using the hospital as a target, would scarcely be so
+dangerous as a low, water-sogged, clayey soil, with its inevitable
+results of fever, rheumatism, and bowel-complaints.
+
+Spotless cleanliness is another indispensable characteristic,--not only
+urged, but enforced; for there is no such notable housewife as the
+Government. The vast "Mower" Hospital at Chestnut Hill, the largest in
+the world, is as well kept as a lady's boudoir should be. It is built
+around a square of seven acres, in which stand the surgeon's
+lecture-room, the chapel, the platform for the band, etc. A long
+corridor goes about this square, rounded at the corners, and lighted on
+one side by numerous large windows, which, if removed in summer, must
+leave it almost wholly open. From the opposite side radiate the
+sick-wards, fifty in number, one story in height, one hundred and
+seventy-five feet in length, and twenty feet farther apart at the
+extremity than at the corridor, thus completely isolating them from each
+other. A railway runs the length of the corridor, on which small cars
+convey meals to the mess-rooms attached to each of the wards for those
+who are unable to leave them, stores, and even the sick themselves; and
+the corridor, closed in winter and warmed by stoves, forms a huge and
+airy exercise-hall for the convalescent patients. As for the
+cooking-facilities, they are something prodigious, at least in the sight
+of ordinary kitchens, leaving nothing to be desired, unless it were that
+discriminating kettle of the Erse king, that could cook for any given
+number of men and apportion the share of each to his rank and needs.
+Such a kettle might make the "extra-diet" kitchen unnecessary;
+otherwise, I can hardly tell where improvement would be possible.
+
+But though, with the exception of the West Philadelphia, none can
+compare in hugeness with this Skrymir of hospitals, the
+hospital-buildings, as a rule, have everywhere a strong family-likeness.
+The pavilion-system, which isolates each of the sick-wards, allowing it
+free circulation of air about three of its sides, is conceded to be the
+only one worthy of attention, and is introduced in all such buildings of
+modern date. Ridge-ventilation, obtained by means of openings on either
+side of the ridge, is also very generally used, and advocated even in
+permanent hospitals of stone and brick. Science and Common Sense at last
+have fraternized, and work together hand in hand. The good old-fashioned
+plan of slowly stewing the patient to death, or at least to a fever, in
+confined air and stale odors, equal parts, is almost abandoned; and to
+speak after the manner of Charles Reade, "Nature gets now a pat on the
+back, instead of a kick under the bed." Proper ventilation begins, ends,
+and forms the gist of almost every chapter in our hospital-manuals; and
+I think they should be excellent summer-reading, for a pleasant breeze
+seems to rustle every page, so earnestly is, first, pure air, second,
+pure air, and third, pure air, impressed upon the student, "line upon
+line and precept upon precept."
+
+The Mower Hospital, which employs ten hundred and fifty gas-burners,
+uses daily one hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water, and can
+receive between five and six thousand patients, is free even from a
+suspicion of the "hospital-smell." The Campbell and Harewood, at
+Washington, are models in this respect, and can rank with many a
+handsome drawing-room. The last-named institution is also delightfully
+situated on grounds once belonging to the Rebel Corcoran, comprising
+some two hundred acres, laid out with shaded walks, and adorned with
+rustic bridges and summer-houses,--a fashion of deriving aid and comfort
+from the enemy which doesn't come under the head of treason.
+
+On hygienic grounds, all possible traps are set to catch sunbeams. One
+hospital has a theatre in the mess-room, of which the scenery is painted
+by a convalescent, and the stage, foot-lights, etc., are the work of the
+soldiers. The performers are amateurs, taken from among the patients;
+and the poor fellows who can be moved, but are unable to walk, are
+carried down in the dumb-waiter to share in the entertainment. Another
+has a library, reading-room, and a printing-press, which strikes off a
+weekly newspaper, in which are a serial story, poetry, and many profound
+and moral reflections. The men play cards and backgammon, read, write,
+smoke, and tell marvellous stories, commencing, "It wasn't fairly day,
+and we were hardly wide enough awake to tell a tree-stump from a gray
+coat,"--or, "When we saw them coming, we first formed in square, corner
+towards them you know, and waited till they were close on us, and then,
+Sir, we opened and gave them our cannon, grape-shot, right slap into
+them,"--or good-humoredly rally each other, as in the case of that
+unlucky regiment perfectly cut up in its first battle, and known as
+"six-weeks' soldiers and six-months' hospital-men."
+
+But these are mere surface-facts. Hospital-life is woven in a different
+pattern from our own, the shades deeper, the gold brighter, and we find
+in it very much of heroism in plain colors, and self-sacrifice of rough
+texture.
+
+One poor fellow, yet dim-eyed and faint from long battling for his
+ebbing life, will motion away the offered delicacy, pointing to some
+other bed:--"Give it to him; he needs it more than I"; or sometimes, if
+money is offered, "I have just been paid off; let that man have it; he
+has nothing." Then some of the convalescents furnish our best and
+tenderest nurses. A soldier was brought from Richmond badly wounded in
+the leg. While in the prison his wounds had received no attention, and
+he was in such enfeebled condition, that, when amputation became
+inevitable, it was feared he would die of the operation. Hardly
+breathing, made over apparently unto death, one of these soldier-nurses
+took him in charge, for five days and nights kept close by his bed,
+scarcely leaving him an instant, watching his faltering, flickering
+breath, as his mother might have done, wresting him by force of
+vigilance and tenderest care from the very clutch of the Destroyer,
+rejoicing over his recovery as for that of a dear and only brother.
+Another, likewise brought from Richmond, won the pity of a lady, a
+chance visitor. She came to him every day, a distance of five miles,
+washed his wounds, dressed them, nursed him back into the confines of
+life, obtained for him a furlough, took him to her own house to complete
+the cure, and sent him back to his regiment--well.
+
+Over a third, a ruddy-faced New-England boy hardly yet into manhood,
+hung the shadow of death, and quivering lips and swimming eyes--for they
+come, there, to love our poor boys most tenderly--had spoken his
+death-warrant. He was silent a moment. Even a brave soul stops and
+catches breath, at the unexpected nearness of the Great Revelation; then
+he asked to be baptized,--"because his mother was a Christian, and he
+had promised her, if he died, and not on battle-field, to have this rite
+performed, that she might know that he shared this Holy Faith with her,
+and was not forgetful of her wishes"; and so he was baptized, and died.
+
+There are cheerier phases. Side by side lay a New-Yorker, a
+Pennsylvanian, and a Scotch boy, all terribly wounded. By the by, it is
+a curious fact that there are few sabre-wounds, and almost literally
+none from the bayonet; the work of destruction being, in almost all
+cases, that of the rending Minie ball. The fathers of the New-Yorker and
+Pennsylvanian had just visited them, and they were chatting cheerily of
+their homes. The Scotch boy, who had lost a leg, looked up, brightly
+smiling also.
+
+"My mother will be here on Wednesday, from Scotland. When she knew that
+I had enlisted, she sent me word that I had done well to take up arms
+for a country that had been so good to me; and when she heard that I was
+wounded, she wrote that she should take the next steamer for the United
+States."
+
+And, as might have been expected from such a woman, on Wednesday she
+_was_ by his bedside, redeeming her word to the very day.
+
+Sometimes the men grumble a little. One poor fellow, with a bullet
+through his lungs, took high and strong ground against the meat:--"Oh!
+God love ye! how could a body eat it, swimming in fat? but the eggs,
+they was beautiful; and the toast is good; ye'll send me some of that
+for me supper?" But as a rule they are cheery and contented, grow
+strongly attached to their nurses and the visitors, and, when back in
+camp, write letters of fond remembrance to their hospital-homes.
+
+No one has ever suspected ledgers of a latent angelic principle,--and
+yet, if unpaid benevolence, consolation poured on wounded hearts, hope
+given to despair, and help to poverty and misery, have in them anything
+heavenly, then have our soldiers a guardian angel in the Hospital
+Directory. There has been a battle, and three or four days of maddening
+suspense, and then the cold, hopeless newspaper-list; and your son,
+mother, who played about your knee only a little time ago, and went out
+in his youthful pride to battle, is there, wounded,--or your lover,
+girl, who has taught you the deeper meaning of a woman's life,--or your
+husband, sad woman, whose children stand at your knee scared by your
+tears.
+
+"The regiment stood like a rock against the enemy's furious onset, and
+its blood-stained colors are forever glorious"; but it went out nine
+hundred strong, and it comes back with two hundred, and what do you care
+now for laurel-wreaths? He is not with them. There are railroads,--you
+can near the battle-field, but you cannot reach it; you can inquire, but
+the officers must care for the living,--"let the dead bury their dead";
+and while you are frantically asking and searching, he is dying,
+suffering, calling for you; and then you find that the Hospital
+Directory has trace of him, and the kindly, patient members of the
+Sanitary Commission are ready with time, and money, if needed, to put
+you on it; and if ever you have had that horror of uncertainty strong
+upon you, you will not think that I have strained the language, when I
+call this most pitiful and Christian charity a guardian angel. Hear the
+inquiries:--"By the love you bear your own mother, tell me where my boy
+is! only give me some tidings!" "I pray you, tell me of these two
+nephews for whom I am seeking: I have had fourteen nephews in the
+service, and these two are the only ones left." Words like these put
+soul and meaning into the following statistics, given by Mr. Brown,
+Superintendent of the Hospital Directory at Washington.
+
+"The Washington Bureau of the Hospital Directory of the United States
+Sanitary Commission was opened to the public on the twenty-seventh of
+November, 1862. In the month of December following I was ordered to
+Louisville, Ky., to organize a Directory Bureau for the Western
+Department of the Sanitary Commission, and in January ended my labor in
+that department. Returning to Washington, and thence proceeding to
+Philadelphia and New York upon the same duty performed at the West, I
+completed the entire organization of the four bureaus by the fifth of
+March, 1863. Since the first of June, at these several bureaus, the
+returns from every United States General Hospital of the army, 233 in
+number, have been regularly received.
+
+"The total number of names on record is 513,437. The total number of
+inquiries for information has been 12,884, and the number of successful
+answers rendered 9,203, being seventy-two per cent. on the number
+received. The remaining twenty-eight per cent., of whom no information
+could be obtained, are of those who perished in the Peninsula campaign,
+before Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, etc."
+
+In the Sanitary Commission, mentioned here, our soldiers have yet
+another friend, for whom even our copious Anglo-Saxon can find no word
+of description at once strong, wise, tender, and far-reaching; but
+perhaps a simple story, taken from the Sanitary Commission Bulletin,
+will speak more clearly, and better to the heart, than pages of dry
+records.
+
+"Away up in the fourth story of Hospital No. 3, and in a far corner of
+the ward, was seen, one day, an old lady sitting by the side of a mere
+lad, who was reduced to the verge of death by chronic diarrhoea. She
+was a plain, honest-hearted farmer's wife, her face all aglow with
+motherly love, and who, to judge from appearances, had likely never
+before travelled beyond the limits of her neighborhood, but now had come
+many a long mile to do what might be done for her boy. In the course of
+a conversation she informed her questioner, that, 'if she could only get
+something that tasted like home,--some good tea, for instance, which she
+could make herself, and which would be better than that of the
+hospital,--she thought it might save her son's life.' Of course it was
+sent to her, and on a subsequent visit she expressed her thanks in a
+simple, hearty way, quite in keeping with her appearance. Still she
+seemed sad; something was on her mind that evidently troubled her, and,
+like Banquo's ghost, 'would not down.' At length it came out in a
+confiding, innocent way,--more, evidently, because it was uppermost in
+her thoughts than for the purpose of receiving sympathy,--that her
+means were about exhausted. 'I didn't think that it would take so much
+money; it is so much farther away from home than I had thought, and
+board here is so very high, that I have hardly enough left to take me
+back; and by another week I will have to leave him. I have been around
+to the stores to buy some little things that he would eat,--for he can't
+eat this strong food,--but the prices are so high that I can't buy them,
+and I am afraid, that, if I go away, and if he doesn't get something
+different to eat, that maybe,' and the tears trickled down her cheeks,
+'he won't--be so well.'
+
+"Her listener thought that difficulty might be overcome, and, if she
+would put on her bonnet, they would go to a store where articles were
+cheap. Accordingly they arrived in front of the large three-story
+building which Government has assigned to the Commission, and the old
+lady was soon running her eyes over the long rows of boxes, bales, and
+barrels that stretched for a hundred feet down the room, but was most
+fascinated by the bottles and cans on the shelves. He ordered a supply
+of sugar, tea, soft crackers, and canned fruit, then chicken and
+oysters, then jelly and wine, brandy, milk, and under-clothing, till the
+basket was full. As the earlier articles nestled under its lids, her
+face was glowing with satisfaction; but as the later lots arrived, she
+would draw him aside to whisper that 'it was too much,'--'really she
+hadn't enough money'; and when the more expensive items came from the
+shelves, the shadow of earnestness which gloomed her countenance grew
+into one of perplexity, her soul vibrating between motherly yearning for
+the lad on his bed and the scant purse in her pocket, till, slowly, and
+with great reluctance, she began to return the costliest.
+
+"'Hadn't you better ask the price?' said her guide.
+
+"'How much is it?'
+
+"'Nothing,' replied the store-keeper.
+
+"'Sir!' queried she, in the utmost amazement, '_nothing_ for all this?'
+
+"'My good woman,' asked the guide, 'have you a Soldiers' Aid Society in
+your neighborhood?'
+
+"Yes, they had; she belonged to it herself.
+
+"'Well, what do you suppose becomes of the garments you make, and the
+fruit have you put up?'
+
+"She hadn't thought,--she supposed they went to the army,--but was
+evidently bothered to know what connection there could be between their
+Aid Society and that basket.
+
+"'These garments that you see came from your society, or other societies
+just like yours; so did these boxes and barrels; that milk came from New
+York; those fruits from Boston; that wine was likely purchased with gold
+from California; and it is all for sick soldiers, your son as much as
+for any one else. This is the United States Sanitary Commission
+storehouse; you must come here whenever you wish, and call for
+everything you want; and you must stay with your son until he is able to
+go home: never mind the money's giving out; you shall have more, which,
+when you get back, you can refund for the use of other mothers and sons;
+when you are ready to go, I will put him in a berth where he can lie
+down, and you shall save his life yet.'
+
+"She did,--God bless her innocent, motherly heart!--when nothing but
+motherly care could have achieved it; and when last seen, on a dismal,
+drizzly morning, was, with her face beaming out the radiance of hope,
+making a cup of tea on the stove of a caboose-car for the convalescent,
+who was snugly tucked away in the caboose-berth, waiting the final
+whistle of the locomotive that would speed them both homeward."
+
+But for many of our soldiers there is yet another phase in store,--that
+sad time when the clangor and fierce joy and wild, exulting hurrah of
+the battle are over forever; and so, too, is over tender
+hospital-nursing, and they are sent out by hundreds, cured of their
+wounds, but maimed, the sources of life half drained, vigor gone, hope
+all spent, to limp through the blind alleys and by-ways of life,
+dropped out of the remembrance of a country that has used and forgotten
+them. They have given for her, not life, but all that makes life
+pleasant, hopeful, or even possible. It seems to me, that, in common
+decency, if she has no laurels to spare, she should at least give them
+in return--a daily dinner. Already, however, has the idea been set
+forth, after a better fashion than I can hope to do,--in wood and stone,
+and by the aid of a charter.
+
+In Philadelphia stands the first chartered "Home" for disabled soldiers,
+a cheery old house, dating back to the occupation of the city by the
+British army in 1777-8, founded and supported by private citizens, open
+to all, of whatever State, and fully looking its title, a "Home"; and as
+the want is more widely felt, and presses closer upon us, I cannot but
+think that everywhere we shall find such "Homes," and as we grow graver,
+sadder, and wiser, under the hard teaching of our war, and more awake to
+the thought that we have done with our splendid unclouded youth, and
+must now take upon us the sterner responsibilities of our manhood, that
+a new spirit will spring up among us,--the spirit of that woman who,
+with a bedridden mother, an ailing sister, and a shop to tend, as their
+only means of support, yet finds time to visit our sick soldiers, and
+carry to them the little that she can spare, and that which she has
+begged of her wealthier neighbors,--the spirit of that poor seamstress
+who snatches an hour daily from her exhausting toil to sew for the
+soldiers,--the spirit of that mechanic, who, having nothing to give,
+makes boxes in his evening leisure, and sells them for the
+soldiers,--the spirit of the brooks, that never hesitate between up-hill
+and down, because "all the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is never
+full,"--the spirit of all who do with love and zeal whatever their hands
+find to do, and sigh, not because it is so little, but because it is not
+better.
+
+God grant that this spirit may obtain among us,--that our soldiers, and
+their helpless families, may be to us a national trust, for which we are
+bound individually, even the very humblest and meanest of us, to care.
+The field is vast, and white for the harvest. Now, for the love of
+Christ, in the name of honor, for very shame's sake, where we counted
+our laborers by tens, let us number them by fifties,--where there were
+hundreds, let there be thousands.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.
+
+BY ONE WHO KNEW HIM.
+
+
+The great master of English prose has left us suddenly, but to himself
+not unexpectedly. In the maturity of his powers, with his enduring
+position in literature fairly won and recognized, with the provision
+which spurred him to constant work secured to those he loved, his death
+saddens us rather through the sense of our own loss than from the tragic
+regret which is associated with an unaccomplished destiny. More
+fortunate than Fielding, he was allowed to take the measure of his
+permanent fame. The niche wherein he shall henceforth stand was
+chiselled while he lived. One by one the doubters confessed their
+reluctant faith, unfriendly critics dropped their blunted steel, and no
+man dared to deny him the place which was his, and his only, by right of
+genius.
+
+In one sense, however, he was misunderstood by the world, and he has
+died before that profounder recognition which he craved had time to
+mature. All the breadth and certainty of his fame failed to compensate
+him for the lack of this: the man's heart coveted that justice which was
+accorded only to the author's brain. Other pens may sum up the literary
+record he has left behind: I claim the right of a friend who knew and
+loved him to speak of him as a man. The testimony, which, while living,
+he was too proud to have desired, may now be laid reverently upon his
+grave.
+
+There is a delicacy to be observed in describing one's intercourse with
+a departed great man, since death does not wholly remove that privacy
+which it is our duty to respect in life. Yet the veil which we
+charitably drop upon weakness or dishonor may surely be lifted to
+disclose the opposite qualities. I shall repeat no word of Thackeray's
+which he would have wished unsaid or suppressed: I shall say no more
+than he would himself have said of a contemporary to whom the world had
+not done full justice. During a friendship of nearly seven years, he
+permitted me to see that one true side of an author's nature which is
+never so far revealed to the public that the malignant may avail
+themselves of his candor to assail or the fools to annoy him. He is now
+beyond the reach of malice, obtrusive sentiment, or vain curiosity; and
+the "late remorse of love," which a better knowledge of the man may here
+and there provoke, can atone for past wrong only by that considerate,
+tender judgment of the living of which he was an example.
+
+I made Thackeray's acquaintance in New York towards the close of the
+year 1855. With the first grasp of his broad hand, and the first look of
+his large, serious gray eyes, I received an impression of the essential
+manliness of his nature,--of his honesty, his proud, almost defiant
+candor, his ever-present, yet shrinking tenderness, and that sadness of
+the moral sentiment which the world persisted in regarding as cynicism.
+This impression deepened with my further acquaintance, and was never
+modified. Although he belonged to the sensitive, irritable genus, his
+only manifestations of impatience which I remember were when that which
+he had written with a sigh was interpreted as a sneer. When so
+misunderstood, he scorned to set himself right. "I have no brain above
+the eyes," he was accustomed to say; "I describe what I see." He was
+quick and unerring in detecting the weaknesses of his friends, and spoke
+of them with a tone of disappointment sometimes bordering on
+exasperation; but he was equally severe upon his own shortcomings. He
+allowed no friend to think him better than his own deliberate estimate
+made him. I have never known a man whose nature was so immovably based
+on truth.
+
+In a conversation upon the United States, shortly after we first met, he
+said,--
+
+"There is one thing in this country which astonishes me. You have a
+capacity for culture which contradicts all my experience. There are
+----" (mentioning two or three names well known in New York) "who I know
+have arisen from nothing, yet they are fit for any society in the world.
+They would be just as self-possessed and entertaining in the presence of
+stars and garters as they are here to-night. Now, in England, a man who
+has made his way up, as they have, doesn't seem able to feel his social
+dignity. A little bit of the flunky sticks in him somewhere. I am,
+perhaps, as independent in this respect as any one I know, yet I'm not
+entirely sure of myself."
+
+"Do you remember," I asked him, "what Goethe says of the boys in Venice?
+He explains their cleverness, grace, and self-possession as children by
+the possibility of any one of them becoming Doge."
+
+"That may be the secret, after all," said Thackeray. "There is no
+country like yours for a young man who is obliged to work for his own
+place and fortune. If I had sons, I should send them here."
+
+Afterwards, in London, I visited with him the studio of Baron
+Marochetti, the sculptor, who was then his next-door neighbor in Onslow
+Square, Brompton. The Baron, it appeared, had promised him an original
+wood-cut of Albert Duerer's, for whom Thackeray had a special admiration.
+Soon after our entrance, the sculptor took down a small engraving from
+the wall, saying,--
+
+"Now you have it, at last."
+
+The subject was St. George and the Dragon.
+
+Thackeray inspected it with great delight for a few minutes: then,
+suddenly becoming grave, he turned to me and said,--
+
+"I shall hang it near the head of my bed, where I can see it every
+morning. We all have our dragons to fight. Do you know yours? I know
+mine: I have not one, but two."
+
+"What are they?" I asked.
+
+"Indolence and Luxury!"
+
+I could not help smiling, as I thought of the prodigious amount of
+literary labor he had performed, and at the same time remembered the
+simple comfort of his dwelling, next door.
+
+"I am serious," he continued; "I never take up the pen without an
+effort; I work only from necessity. I never walk out without seeing some
+pretty, useless thing which I want to buy. Sometimes I pass the same
+shop-window every day for months, and resist the temptation, and think
+I'm safe; then comes the day of weakness, and I yield. My physician
+tells me I must live very simply, and not dine out so much; but I cannot
+break off the agreeable habit. I shall look at this picture and think of
+my dragons, though I don't expect ever to overcome them."
+
+After his four lectures on the Georges had been delivered in New York, a
+storm of angry abuse was let loose upon him in Canada and the other
+British Provinces. The British-Americans, snubbed both by Government and
+society when they go to England, repay the slight, like true Christians,
+by a rampant loyalty unknown in the mother-country. Many of their
+newspapers accused Thackeray of pandering to the prejudices of the
+American public, affirming that he would not dare to repeat the same
+lectures in England, after his return. Of course, the papers containing
+the articles, duly marked to attract attention, were sent to him. He
+merely remarked, as he threw them contemptuously aside,--"These fellows
+will see that I shall not only repeat the lectures at home, but I shall
+make them more severe, just because the auditors will be Englishmen." He
+was true to his promise. The lecture on George IV. excited, not, indeed,
+the same amount of newspaper-abuse as he had received from Canada, but a
+very angry feeling in the English aristocracy, some members of which
+attempted to punish him by a social ostracism. When I visited him in
+London, in July, 1856, he related this to me, with great good-humor.
+"There, for instance," said he, "is Lord ----" (a prominent English
+statesman) "who has dropped me from his dinner-parties for three months
+past. Well, he will find that I can do without his society better than
+he can do without mine." A few days afterwards Lord ---- resumed his
+invitations.
+
+About the same time I witnessed an amusing interview, which explained to
+me the great personal respect in which Thackeray was held by the
+aristocratic class. He never hesitated to mention and comment upon the
+censure aimed against him in the presence of him who had uttered it. His
+fearless frankness must have seemed phenomenal. In the present instance,
+Lord ----, who had dabbled in literature, and held a position at Court,
+had expressed himself (I forget whether orally or in print) very
+energetically against Thackeray's picture of George IV. We had occasion
+to enter the shop of a fashionable tailor, and there found Lord ----.
+Thackeray immediately stepped up to him, bent his strong frame over the
+disconcerted champion of the Royal George, and said, in his full, clear,
+mellow voice,--"I know what you have said. Of course, you are quite
+right, and I am wrong. I only regret that I did not think of consulting
+you before my lecture was written." The person addressed evidently did
+not know whether to take this for irony or truth: he stammered out an
+incoherent reply, and seemed greatly relieved when the giant turned to
+leave the shop.
+
+At other times, however, he was kind and considerate. Reaching London
+one day in June, 1857, I found him at home, grave and sad, having that
+moment returned from the funeral of Douglas Jerrold. He spoke of the
+periodical attacks by which his own life was threatened, and repeated
+what he had often said to me before,--"I shall go some day,--perhaps in
+a year or two. I am an old man already." He proposed visiting a lady
+whom we both knew, but whom he had not seen for some time. The lady
+reminded him of this fact, and expressed her dissatisfaction at some
+length. He heard her in silence, and then, taking hold of the crape on
+his left arm, said, in a grave, quiet voice,--"I must remove this,--I
+have just come from poor Jerrold's grave."
+
+Although, from his experience of life, he was completely
+_desillusionne_, the well of natural tenderness was never dried in his
+heart. He rejoiced, with a fresh, boyish delight, in every evidence of
+an unspoiled nature in others,--in every utterance which denoted what
+may have seemed to him over-faith in the good. The more he was saddened
+by his knowledge of human weakness and folly, the more gratefully he
+welcomed strength, virtue, sincerity. His eyes never unlearned the habit
+of that quick moisture which honors the true word and the noble deed.
+
+His mind was always occupied with some scheme of quiet benevolence. Both
+in America and in England, I have known him to plan ways by which he
+could give pecuniary assistance to some needy acquaintance or countryman
+without wounding his sensitive pride. He made many attempts to procure a
+good situation in New York for a well-known English author, who was at
+that time in straitened circumstances. The latter, probably, never knew
+of this effort to help him. In November, 1857, when the financial crisis
+in America was at its height, I happened to say to him, playfully, that
+I hoped my remittances would not be stopped. He instantly picked up a
+note-book, ran over the leaves, and said to me, "I find I have three
+hundred pounds at my banker's. Take the money now, if you are in want of
+it; or shall I keep it for you, in case you may need it?" Fortunately, I
+had no occasion to avail myself of his generous offer; but I shall never
+forget the impulsive, open-hearted kindness with which it was made.
+
+I have had personal experience of Thackeray's sense of justice, as well
+as his generosity. And here let me say that he was that rarest of men, a
+cosmopolitan Englishman,--loving his own land with a sturdy, enduring
+love, yet blind neither to its faults nor to the virtues of other lands.
+In fact, for the very reason that he was unsparing in dealing with his
+countrymen, he considered himself justified in freely criticizing other
+nations. Yet he never joined in the popular depreciation of everything
+American: his principal reason for not writing a book, as every other
+English author does who visits us, was that it would be superficial, and
+might be unjust. I have seen him, in America, indignantly resent an
+ill-natured sneer at "John Bull,"--and, on the other hand, I have known
+him to take _our_ part, at home. Shortly after Emerson's "English
+Traits" appeared, I was one of a dinner-party at his house, and the book
+was the principal topic of conversation. A member of Parliament took the
+opportunity of expressing his views to the only American present.
+
+"What does Emerson know of England?" he asked. "He spends a few weeks
+here, and thinks he understands us. His work is false and prejudiced and
+shallow."
+
+Thackeray happening to pass at the moment, the member arrested him
+with--
+
+"What do _you_ think of the book, Mr. Thackeray?"
+
+"I don't agree with Emerson."
+
+"I was sure you would not!" the member triumphantly exclaimed; "I was
+sure you would think as I do."
+
+"I think," said Thackeray, quietly, "that he is altogether too
+laudatory. He admires our best qualities so greatly that he does not
+scourge us for our faults as we deserve."
+
+Towards the end of May, 1861, I saw Thackeray again in London. During
+our first interview, we talked of little but the war, which had then but
+just begun. His chief feeling on the subject was a profound regret, not
+only for the nation itself, whose fate seemed thus to be placed in
+jeopardy, but also, he said, because he had many dear friends, both
+North and South, who must now fight as enemies. I soon found that his
+ideas concerning the cause of the war were as incorrect as were those of
+most Englishmen at that time. He understood neither the real nature nor
+the extent of the conspiracy, supposing that Free Trade was the chief
+object of the South, and that the right of Secession was tacitly
+admitted by the Constitution. I thereupon endeavored to place
+the facts of the case before him in their true light, saying, in
+conclusion,--"Even if you should not believe this statement, you must
+admit, that, if _we_ believe it, we are justified in suppressing the
+Rebellion by force."
+
+He said,--"Come, all this is exceedingly interesting. It is quite new to
+me, and I am sure it will be new to most of us. Take your pen and make
+an article out of what you have told me, and I will put it into the next
+number of the 'Cornhill Magazine.' It is just what we want."
+
+I had made preparations to leave London for the Continent on the
+following day, but he was so urgent that I should stay two days longer
+and write the article that I finally consented to do so. I was the more
+desirous of complying, since Mr. Clay's ill-advised letter to the London
+"Times" had recently been published, and was accepted by Englishmen as
+the substance of all that could be said on the side of the Union.
+Thackeray appeared sincerely gratified by my compliance with his wishes,
+and immediately sent for a cab, saying,--"Now we will go down to the
+publishers, and have the matter settled at once. I am bound to consult
+them, but I am sure they will see the advantage of such an article."
+
+We found the managing publisher in his office. He looked upon the
+matter, however, in a very different light. He admitted the interest
+which a statement of the character, growth, and extent of the Southern
+Conspiracy would possess for the readers of the "Cornhill," but objected
+to its publication, on the ground that it would call forth a
+counter-statement, which he could not justly exclude, and thus introduce
+a political controversy into the magazine. I insisted that my object was
+not to take notice of any statements published in England up to that
+time, but to represent the crisis as it was understood in the Loyal
+States and by the National Government; that I should do this simply to
+explain and justify the action of the latter; and that, having once
+placed the loyal view of the subject fairly before the English people, I
+should decline any controversy. The events of the war, I added, would
+soon draw the public attention away from its origin, and the "Cornhill,"
+before the close of the struggle, would probably be obliged to admit
+articles of a more strongly partisan character than that which I
+proposed to write. The publisher, nevertheless, was firm in his refusal,
+not less to Thackeray's disappointment than my own. He decided upon what
+then seemed to him to be good business-reasons; and the same
+consideration, doubtless, has since led him to accept statements
+favorable to the side of the Rebellion.
+
+As we were walking away, Thackeray said to me,--
+
+"I am anxious that these things should be made public: suppose you write
+a brief article, and send it to the 'Times'?"
+
+"I would do so," I answered, "if there were any probability that it
+would be published."
+
+"I will try to arrange that," said he. "I know Mr. ----," (one of the
+editors,) "and will call upon him at once. I will ask for the
+publication of your letter as a personal favor to myself."
+
+We parted at the door of a club-house, to meet again the same afternoon,
+when Thackeray hoped to have the matter settled as he desired. He did
+not, however, succeed in finding Mr. ----, but sent him a letter. I
+thereupon went to work the next day, and prepared a careful, cold,
+dispassionate statement, so condensed that it would have made less than
+half a column of the "Times." I sent it to the editor, referring him to
+Mr. Thackeray's letter in my behalf, and that is the last I ever heard
+of it.
+
+All of Thackeray's American friends will remember the feelings of pain
+and regret with which they read his "Roundabout Paper" in the "Cornhill
+Magazine," in (February, I think) 1862,--wherein he reproaches our
+entire people as being willing to confiscate the stocks and other
+property owned in this country by Englishmen, out of spite for their
+disappointment in relation to the Trent affair, and directs his New-York
+bankers to sell out all his investments, and remit the proceeds to
+London, without delay. It was not his fierce denunciation of such
+national dishonesty that we deprecated, but his apparent belief in its
+possibility. We felt that he, of all Englishmen, should have understood
+us better. We regretted, for Thackeray's own sake, that he had permitted
+himself, in some spleenful moment, to commit an injustice, which would
+sooner or later be apparent to his own mind.
+
+Three months afterwards, (in May, 1862,) I was again in London. I had
+not heard from Thackeray since the publication of the "Roundabout"
+letter to his bankers, and was uncertain how far his evident ill-temper
+on that occasion had subsided; but I owed him too much kindness, I
+honored him too profoundly, not to pardon him, unasked, my share of the
+offence. I found him installed in the new house he had built in Palace
+Gardens, Kensington. He received me with the frank welcome of old, and
+when we were alone, in the privacy of his library, made an opportunity
+(intentionally, I am sure) of approaching the subject, which, he knew, I
+could not have forgotten. I asked him why he wrote the article.
+
+"I was unwell," he answered,--"you know what the moral effects of my
+attacks are,--and I was indignant that such a shameful proposition
+should be made in your American newspapers, and not a single voice be
+raised to rebuke it."
+
+"But you certainly knew," said I, "that the ---- ---- does not represent
+American opinion. I assure you, that no honest, respectable man in the
+United States ever entertained the idea of cheating an English
+stockholder."
+
+"I should hope so, too," he answered; "but when I saw the same thing in
+the ---- ----, which, you will admit, is a paper of character and
+influence, I lost all confidence. I know how impulsive and excitable
+your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be
+madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a
+blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was getting eight per cent.
+from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is
+lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate
+than four per cent."
+
+I said to him, playfully, that he must not expect me, as an American, to
+feel much sympathy with this loss: I, in common with his other friends
+beyond the Atlantic, expected from him a juster recognition of the
+national character.
+
+"Well," said he, "let us say no more about it. I admit that I have made
+a mistake."
+
+Those who knew the physical torments to which Thackeray was periodically
+subject--spasms which not only racked his strong frame, but temporarily
+darkened his views of men and things--must wonder, that, with the
+obligation to write permanently hanging over him, he was not more
+frequently betrayed into impatient or petulant expressions. In his clear
+brain, he judged himself no less severely, and watched his own nature no
+less warily, than he regarded other men. His strong sense of justice was
+always alert and active. He sometimes tore away the protecting drapery
+from the world's pet heroes and heroines, but, on the other hand, he
+desired no one to set him beside them. He never betrayed the least
+sensitiveness in regard to his place in literature. The comparisons
+which critics sometimes instituted between himself and other prominent
+authors simply amused him. In 1856, he told me that he had written a
+play which the managers had ignominiously rejected. "I thought I could
+write for the stage," said he; "but it seems I can't. I have a mind to
+have the piece privately performed, here at home. I'll take the big
+footman's part." This plan, however, was given up, and the material of
+the play was afterwards used, I believe, in "Lovel, the Widower."
+
+I have just read a notice of Thackeray, which asserts, as an evidence of
+his weakness in certain respects, that he imagined himself to be an
+artist, and persisted in supplying bad illustrations to his own works.
+This statement does injustice to his self-knowledge. He delighted in the
+use of the pencil, and often spoke to me of his illustrations being a
+pleasant relief to hand and brain, after the fatigue of writing. He had
+a very imperfect sense of color, and confessed that his forte lay in
+caricature. Some of his sketches were charmingly drawn upon the block,
+but he was often unfortunate in his engraver. The original MS. of "The
+Rose and the Ring," with the illustrations, is admirable. He was fond of
+making groups of costumes and figures of the last century, and I have
+heard English artists speak of his talent in this _genre_: but he never
+professed to be more than an amateur, or to exercise the art for any
+other reason than the pleasure it gave him.
+
+He enjoyed the popularity of his lectures, because they were out of his
+natural line of work. Although he made several very clever after-dinner
+speeches, he always assured me that it was accidental,--that he had no
+talent whatever for thinking on his feet.
+
+"Even when I am reading my lectures," he said, "I often think to myself,
+'What a humbug you are, and I wonder the people don't find it out!'"
+
+When in New-York, he confessed to me that he should like immensely to
+find some town where the people imagined that all Englishmen transposed
+their _h_s, and give one of his lectures in that style. He was very fond
+of relating an incident which occurred during his visit to St. Louis. He
+was dining one day in the hotel, when he overheard one Irish waiter say
+to another,--
+
+"Do you know who that is?"
+
+"No," was the answer.
+
+"That," said the first, "is the celebrated Thacker!"
+
+"What's _he_ done?"
+
+"D----d if I know!"
+
+Of Thackeray's private relations I would speak with a cautious
+reverence. An author's heart is a sanctuary into which, except so far as
+he voluntarily reveals it, the public has no right to enter. The shadow
+of a domestic affliction which darkened all his life seemed only to have
+increased his paternal care and tenderness. To his fond solicitude for
+his daughters we owe a part of the writings wherewith he has enriched
+our literature. While in America, he often said to me that his chief
+desire was to secure a certain sum for them, and I shall never forget
+the joyous satisfaction with which he afterwards informed me, in London,
+that the work was done. "Now," he said, "the dear girls are provided
+for. The great anxiety is taken from my life, and I can breathe freely
+for the little time that is left me to be with them." I knew that he had
+denied himself many "luxuries" (as he called them) to accomplish this
+object. For six years after he had redeemed the losses of a reckless
+youthful expenditure, he was allowed to live and to employ an income,
+princely for an author, in the gratification of tastes which had been so
+long repressed.
+
+He thereupon commenced building a new house, after his own designs. It
+was of red brick, in the style of Queen Anne's time, but the internal
+arrangement was rather American than English. It was so much admired,
+that, although the cost much exceeded his estimate, he could have sold
+it for an advance of a thousand pounds. To me the most interesting
+feature was the library, which occupied the northern end of the first
+floor, with a triple window opening toward the street, and another upon
+a warm little garden-plot shut in by high walls.
+
+"Here," he said to me, when I saw him for the last time, "here I am
+going to write my greatest work,--a History of the Reign of Queen Anne.
+There are my materials,"--pointing to a collection of volumes in various
+bindings which occupied a separate place on the shelves.
+
+"When shall you begin it?" I asked.
+
+"Probably as soon as I am done with 'Philip,'" was his answer; "but I am
+not sure. I may have to write another novel first. But the History will
+mature all the better for the delay. I want to _absorb_ the authorities
+gradually, so that, when I come to write, I shall be filled with the
+subject, and can sit down to a continuous narrative, without jumping up
+every moment to consult somebody. The History has been a pet idea of
+mine for years past. I am slowly working up to the level of it, and know
+that when I once begin I shall do it well."
+
+It is not likely that any part of this history was ever written. What it
+might have been we can only regretfully conjecture: it has perished with
+the uncompleted novel, and all the other dreams of that principle of the
+creative intellect which the world calls Ambition, but which the artist
+recognizes as Conscience.
+
+That hour of the sunny May-day returns to memory as I write. The quiet
+of the library, a little withdrawn from the ceaseless roar of London;
+the soft grass of the bit of garden, moist from a recent shower, seen
+through the open window; the smoke-strained sunshine, stealing gently
+along the wall; and before me the square, massive head, the prematurely
+gray hair, the large, clear, sad eyes, the frank, winning mouth, with
+its smile of boyish sweetness, of the man whom I honored as a master,
+while he gave me the right to love him as a friend. I was to leave the
+next day for a temporary home on the Continent, and he was planning how
+he could visit me, with his daughters. The proper season, the time, and
+the expense were carefully calculated: he described the visit in
+advance, with a gay, excursive fancy; and his last words, as he gave me
+the warm, strong hand I was never again to press, were, "_Auf
+wiedersehen_!"
+
+What little I have ventured to relate gives but a fragmentary image of
+the man whom I knew. I cannot describe him as the faithful son, the
+tender father, the true friend, the man of large humanity and lofty
+honesty he really was, without stepping too far within the sacred circle
+of his domestic life. To me, there was no inconsistency in his nature.
+Where the careless reader may see only the cynic and the relentless
+satirist, I recognize his unquenchable scorn of human meanness and
+duplicity,--the impatient wrath of a soul too frequently disappointed in
+its search for good. I have heard him lash the faults of others with an
+indignant sorrow which brought the tears to his eyes. For this reason he
+could not bear that ignorant homage should be given to men really
+unworthy of it. He said to me, once, speaking of a critic who blamed the
+scarcity of noble and lovable character in his novels,--"Other men can
+do that. I know what I can do best; and if I do good, it must be in my
+own way."
+
+The fate which took him from us was one which he had anticipated. He
+often said that his time was short, that he could not certainly reckon
+on many more years of life, and that his end would probably be sudden.
+He once spoke of Irving's death as fortunate in its character. The
+subject was evidently familiar to his thoughts, and his voice had
+always a tone of solemn resignation which told that he had conquered its
+bitterness. He was ready at any moment to answer the call; and when, at
+last, it was given and answered,--when the dawn of the first Christmas
+holiday lighted his pale, moveless features, and the large heart
+throbbed no more forever in its grand scorn and still grander
+tenderness,--his released spirit could have chosen no fitter words of
+farewell than the gentle benediction his own lips have breathed:--
+
+      "I lay the weary pen aside,
+    And wish you health and love and mirth,
+      As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.
+    As fits the holy Christmas birth,
+      Be this, good friends, our carol still,--
+    Be peace on earth, be peace on earth,
+      To men of gentle will!"
+
+
+
+
+THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.
+
+
+It has been said that "the history of war is a magnificent lie," and
+from what we know in our times, particularly of the history of the
+Mexican War and of the present Rebellion, if the despatches from the
+battle-fields are to be received as history, we are inclined to believe
+the saying is true; and it is natural that it should be so. A general
+writes his despatches under the highest mental excitement. His troops
+have won a great victory, or sustained a crushing defeat; in either
+event, his mind is riveted to the transactions that have led to the
+result; in the one case, his ambition will prompt him to aspire to a
+name in history; in the other, he will try to save himself from
+disgrace. He describes his battles; he gives an account of his marches
+and counter-marches, of the hardships he has endured, the
+disappointments he has experienced, and the difficulties he has had to
+overcome. The principal events may be truthfully narrated; but his hopes
+of rising a hero from the field of victory, or of appearing a martyr
+from one of defeat, will mould his narrative to his wishes.
+
+If it be frequently the misfortune of our generals, in writing their
+reports, not to content themselves with the materials at hand, but to
+draw on their imaginations, not for gross falsehoods, but for that
+coloring which, diffused through their despatches, makes the narrative
+affecting, while it leaves us in doubt where to draw the line between
+fiction and fact, it is not always so, particularly when their
+despatches are not written amidst the excitement of the battle-field,
+but are deferred until the events which they describe have passed into
+history.
+
+Such, we may suppose, to be the case in respect to the Reports of
+Brigadier-Generals Barnard and Barry on the Engineer and Artillery
+Operations of the Army of the Potomac. Written, as these Reports were,
+after the organization of that army had been completed and the
+Peninsular campaign had terminated, by men who, though playing an
+important part in its organization and throughout this its first
+campaign, yet never aspired to be its heroes, we may reasonably hope,
+that, if they have not told the "whole truth," they have told us
+"nothing but the truth."
+
+The points of particular interest in these Reports, so far as relates to
+organization, are the inauguration of a great system of
+field-fortifications for the defence of the national capital, and the
+preparation of engineer-equipments, particularly bridge-equipage for
+crossing rivers. These are only sketched, but the outline is drawn by an
+artist who is master of the subject. The professional engineer, when he
+examines the immense fortifications of Washington and sees their
+skilful construction, can appreciate the labor and thought which must
+have been bestowed on them. He alone could complete the picture. To
+appreciate these works, they must be seen. No field-works on so
+extensive a scale have been undertaken in modern times. The nearest
+approach to them were the lines of Torres Vedras, in Portugal,
+constructed by the British army in 1809-10; but the works constructed by
+General Barnard for the defence of Washington are larger, more numerous,
+more carefully built, and much more heavily armed than were those justly
+celebrated lines of Wellington.
+
+And it should not be forgotten, that, after the Battle of Bull Run, we
+were thrown on the defensive, and the fortifications of our capital were
+called for in a hurry. There were no models, in this country, from which
+to copy,--and few, if any, in Europe. Luckily, however, the art of
+fortification is not imitative; it is based on scientific principles;
+and we found in General Barnard and his assistants the science to
+comprehend the problem before them, and the experience and skill to
+grasp its solution.
+
+Only the citizens of Washington and those who happened to be there after
+the two disastrous defeats at Bull Run can appreciate the value of these
+fortifications. They have twice saved the capital,--perhaps the nation;
+yet forts are passive,--they never speak, unless assailed. But let
+Washington be attacked by a powerful army and successfully defended, and
+they would proclaim General Barnard one of the heroes of the war.
+
+As has already been said, the engineer-equipage is only sketched; but
+enough is said to show its value. Speaking of the bridges, General
+Barnard says,--"They were used by the Quartermaster's department in
+discharging transports, were precisely what was needed for the
+disembarkation of General Franklin's division, constituted a portion of
+the numerous bridges that were built over Wormley Creek during the siege
+of Yorktown, and were of the highest use in the Chickahominy; while over
+the Lower Chickahominy, some seventy-five thousand men, some three
+hundred pieces of artillery, and the enormous baggage-trains of the
+army, passed over a bridge of the extraordinary length of nearly six
+hundred and fifty yards,--a feat scarcely surpassed in military
+history." Pontoons, like forts, cannot talk; but every soldier of the
+Army of the Potomac knows that these same bridges, which were prepared
+when that army was first organized, have since carried it in safety four
+times over the Rappahannock, twice at the Battle of Fredericksburg and
+twice again at the Battle of Chancellorsville, and three times over the
+Upper Potomac, once after the Battle of Antietam, and again both before
+and after the Battle of Gettysburg.
+
+Of the Peninsular campaign General Barnard does not profess to give a
+history. He mentions only the operations which came under his
+supervision as the Chief Engineer of the Army of the Potomac. The siege
+of Yorktown was a matter of engineering skill. General Barnard gives us
+his report to General Totten, the Chief Engineer of the Army, on the
+engineering operations of the siege,--also his journal, showing the
+progress of the siege from day to day. These, with the maps, convey a
+very clear idea of the place to be taken, and the way it was to have
+been reduced, had the enemy continued his defence until our batteries
+were opened; but they do not convey to the mind of any except the
+professional engineer the magnitude of the works which were constructed.
+General Barnard says that fifteen batteries and four redoubts were built
+during the siege, and he gives the armament of each battery. On
+comparing this armament with that used in other sieges, we find the
+amount of metal ready to be hurled on Yorktown when the enemy evacuated
+that place second only to that of the Allies at Sebastopol, the greatest
+siege of modern times.
+
+But these batteries, with a single exception, never spoke. Like their
+predecessors around Washington, they conquered by their mere presence.
+After all the skill and labor that had been bestowed on their
+construction, the enemy evacuated Yorktown just as our batteries were
+about to open. He was at our mercy. General Barnard says that "the
+enemy's position had become untenable,--that he could not have endured
+our fire for six hours." We can readily understand how mortifying it
+must have been to the Commanding General, and particularly to the
+officers of engineers and artillery who had planned, built, and armed
+these siege-works, to hear that the enemy had evacuated his
+fortifications just at the moment when we were prepared to drive him
+from them by force; and we can appreciate the regrets of General
+Barnard, when he says, in reviewing the campaign, and pointing out the
+mistakes that had been committed, that "we should have opened our
+batteries on the place as fast as they were completed. The effect on the
+troops would have been inspiring. It would have lightened the siege and
+shortened our labors; and, besides, we would have had the credit of
+driving the enemy from Yorktown by force of arms; whereas, as it was, we
+only induced him to evacuate for prudential considerations." And General
+Barry says, in his report of the artillery operations at the siege,--"It
+will always be a source of great professional disappointment to me, that
+the enemy, by his premature and hasty abandonment of his defensive line,
+deprived the artillery of the Army of the Potomac of the opportunity of
+exhibiting the superior power and efficiency of the unusually heavy
+metal used in this siege, and of reaping the honor and just reward of
+their unceasing labors, day and night, for nearly one month."
+
+The next serious obstacle to be overcome, after the siege of Yorktown,
+was the passage of the Chickahominy. Here, says General Barnard, "if
+possible, the responsibility and labor of the engineer officers were
+increased." The difficulties of that river, considered as a military
+obstacle, are given in a few touches; but in the sketch of the opposing
+heights, and of the intermediate valley, filled up with the stream, the
+heavily timbered swamp, and the overflowed bottom-lands, we have the
+Chickahominy brought before us so vividly that we can almost _feel_ the
+difficulty of crossing it. Well may General Barnard say that "it was one
+of the most formidable obstacles that could be opposed to the advance of
+an army,--an obstacle to which an ordinary _river_, though it be of
+considerable magnitude, is comparatively slight."
+
+The labors of the engineers in bridging this formidable swamp are
+detailed with considerable minuteness. Ten bridges, of different
+characters, were constructed, though some of them were never used,
+because the enemy held the approaches on his side of the river.
+
+We are glad that General Barnard has elaborated this part of his Report.
+There is a melancholy interest attaching to the Chickahominy. To it, and
+to the events connected with it, history will refer the defeat of
+General McClellan's magnificent army, and the failure of the Peninsular
+campaign. And what a lesson is here to be learned! The fate of the
+contending armies was suspended in a balance. The hour when a particular
+bridge was to be completed, or rendered impassable by the rising floods,
+was to turn the scales!
+
+That mistakes were committed on the Chickahominy the country is prepared
+to believe. Our army was placed astride of that stream, and in this
+situation we fought two battles, each time with only a part of our
+force; thus violating, not only the maxims of war, but the plainest
+principles of common sense.
+
+The Battle of Fair Oaks began on the thirty-first of May. At that time
+our army was divided by the Chickahominy. Of the five corps constituting
+the Army of the Potomac, two were on its right bank, or on the side
+nearest to Richmond, while the other three were on the left bank. There
+had been heavy rains, the river was rising, and the swamps and
+bottom-lands were fast becoming impassable. None of the upper bridges
+had yet been built. We had then only Bottom's Bridge, the
+railroad-bridge, and the two bridges built by General Sumner some miles
+higher up the river. Bottom's Bridge and the railroad-bridge were too
+distant to be of any service in an emergency such as a battle demands.
+At the time of the enemy's attack, which was sudden and unexpected,
+completely overwhelming General Casey's division, our sole reliance to
+reinforce the left wing was by Sumner's corps, and over his two bridges.
+It happened to be the fortune of the writer to see "Sumner's upper
+bridge,"--the only one then passable,--at the moment the head of General
+Sumner's column reached it. The possibility of crossing was doubted by
+all present, including General Sumner himself.
+
+The bridge was of rough logs, and mostly afloat, held together and kept
+from drifting off by the stumps of trees to which it was fastened; the
+portion over the thread of the stream being suspended from the trunks of
+large trees, which had been felled across it, by ropes which a single
+blow with a hatchet would have severed. On this bridge and on these
+ropes hung the fate of the day at Fair Oaks, and, probably, the fate of
+the Army of the Potomac too; for, if Sumner had not crossed in time to
+check the movement of the enemy down the river, the corps of Heintzelman
+and Keyes would have been taken in flank, and it is fair to suppose that
+they must have been driven into an impassable river, or captured.
+
+But Sumner crossed, and saved the day. Forever honored be his name!
+
+As the solid column of infantry entered upon the bridge, it swayed to
+and fro to the angry flood below or the living freight above, settling
+down and grasping the solid stumps, by which it was made secure as the
+line advanced. Once filled with men, it was safe until the corps had
+crossed. It then soon became impassable, and the "railroad-bridge," says
+General Barnard, "for several days was the only communication between
+the two wings of the army." Never was an army in a more precarious
+situation. Fortunately, however, whatever mistakes we made in allowing
+ourselves to be attacked when the two wings of the army were almost
+separated, the enemy also committed serious blunders, both as to the
+point of his attack and the time when his blow was delivered. His true
+point of attack was on the right flank of our left wing. Had the attack
+which Sumner met and repulsed been made simultaneously with the assault
+in front, a single battalion, nay, even a single company, could have
+seized and destroyed "Sumner's upper bridge," the only one, as before
+remarked, then passable, Sumner would consequently have been unable to
+take part in the battle, and our left wing would have been taken in
+flank, and, in all probability, defeated; or, had the attack been
+deferred until the next day, or even for several days, as the bridges
+became impassable during the night of the thirty-first, it would
+probably have been successful.
+
+It is easy to make such criticisms after the events have happened; their
+mere statement will carry conviction to the minds of all who were in a
+position, during these memorable days, to know the facts that decided
+the movements; and it is right that they should be made, for it is only
+by pointing out the causes of success or failure in military affairs,
+as, indeed, in every human undertaking, that we can hope to be
+successful. But, in doing so, we need not confine ourselves to one side
+of the question; we may look at our enemies as well as at ourselves. Nor
+need they be made in a spirit of censoriousness; for the importance of
+individuals, in speaking of such great events, may safely be overlooked
+without affecting the lesson we would learn. Neither should it be
+forgotten that the general who has always fought his battles at the
+right time, in the right place, with the proper arms, and pursued his
+victories to their utmost attainable results, has yet to appear. He
+would, indeed, be an intellectual prodigy.
+
+Such we may suppose to be the reflections of General Barnard, when he
+points out the mistakes which were made in the Army of the Potomac while
+on the Chickahominy. He does not, indeed, bring to our view the mistakes
+of the enemy. That would have been travelling outside of the record in
+the report of the operations falling under his supervision, and such
+criticism is wisely left for some of the enemy's engineers, or for a
+more general history. In speaking of the difficulties of crossing the
+Chickahominy immediately after the battle of the thirty-first of May,
+General Barnard says,--"There was one way, however, to unite the army on
+the other side; it was to take advantage of a victory at Fair Oaks, to
+sweep at once the enemy from his position opposite New Bridge, and,
+simultaneously, to bring over by the New Bridge our troops of the right
+wing, which would then have met with little or no resistance"; and
+again, in a more general criticism of the campaign, he says,--"The
+repulse of the Rebels at Fair Oaks should have been taken advantage of.
+It was one of those 'occasions' which, if not seized, do not repeat
+themselves. We now _know_ the state of disorganization and dismay in
+which the Rebel army retreated. We now _know_ that it could have been
+followed into Richmond. Had it been so, there would have been no
+resistance to overcome to bring over our right wing."
+
+But the "occasion" which the morning of the first of June presented of
+uniting the two wings of the army, and thus achieving a great victory,
+was not seized, because, as General Barnard says, "we did not then know
+all that we now do." At the moment when the New Bridge became passable,
+8.15, A. M., it is not probable the Commanding General knew it.
+Nor did he know, that, at this very moment, the enemy was retreating to
+Richmond in a "state of disorganization and dismay." Besides, the troops
+of the left wing had fought a hard battle the preceding afternoon, and
+they had been up all night, throwing up works of defence, and making
+dispositions to resist another assault by the enemy. They were not in a
+condition to assume the offensive against an enemy who was supposed to
+be in force and in position, himself preparing to resume the attack of
+the previous day, however competent they may have been to pursue a
+demoralized foe flying from the field. The propitious moment was lost,
+not to return,--for, during the day, the rising flood rendered all the
+bridges, except the railroad-bridge, impassable.
+
+The necessity for more substantial bridges to connect the two wings of
+the army had now been made manifest, and two fine structures, available
+for all arms, were completed by the nineteenth. At the same time two
+foot-bridges were made, the other bridges repaired, and their approaches
+made secure, though the enemy still held the approaches of the three
+upper bridges on the right bank.
+
+While these bridges were being made, mostly by the right wing of the
+army, the left wing was engaged in constructing a strong line of
+defence, stretching from the White-Oak Swamp to the Chickahominy,
+consisting of six redoubts connected by rifle-pits or barricades.
+General Barnard says,--"The object of these lines (over three miles
+long) was to hold our position of the left wing against the concentrated
+force of the enemy, until communications across the Chickahominy could
+be established; or, if necessary, to maintain our position on this side,
+while the bulk of the army was thrown upon the other, should occasion
+require it; or, finally, to hold one part of our line and communication
+by a small force, while our principal offensive effort was made upon
+another." At the same time, several batteries were constructed on the
+left bank of the river in the neighborhood of the upper bridges, either
+to operate on the enemy's positions in their front, or to defend these
+bridges.
+
+All these preparations were made with the understood purpose of driving
+the enemy from his positions in front of New Bridge; and they appear to
+have been about completed, for on the night of the twenty-sixth "an
+epaulement for putting our guns in position" to effect this object was
+thrown up. But it was too late. Lee's guns had been heard in the
+afternoon, in the neighborhood of Mechanicsville, attacking the advance
+of our right wing, and Jackson was within supporting distance. The
+battle of the twenty-seventh of June, on which "hinged the fate of the
+campaign," was to be fought to-morrow. This battle, or rather the policy
+of fighting it, or suffering it to be fought, has been more criticized
+than any other battle of the campaign. We fought a battle which was
+decisive against us with less than one-third of our force.
+
+General Barnard is severe in his criticisms. In his "retrospect,
+pointing out the mistakes that were made," he says,--
+
+"At last a moment came when action was imperative. The enemy assumed the
+initiative, and we had warning of when and where he was to strike. Had
+Porter been withdrawn the night of the twenty-sixth, our army would have
+been _concentrated_ on the right bank, while two corps at least of the
+enemy's force were on the _left_ bank. Whatever course we then took,
+whether to strike at Richmond and the portion of the enemy on the right
+bank, or move at once for the James, we would have had a concentrated
+army, and a fair chance of a brilliant result, in the first place; and
+in the second, if we accomplished nothing, we would have been in the
+same case on the morning of the twenty-seventh as we were on that of the
+twenty-eighth,--_minus_ a lost battle and a compulsory retreat; or, had
+the fortified lines (thrown up _expressly_ for the object) been held by
+twenty thousand men, (as they could have been,) we could have fought on
+the other side with eighty thousand men instead of twenty-seven
+thousand; or, finally, had the lines been abandoned, with our hold on
+the right bank of the Chickahominy, we might have fought and crushed the
+enemy on the left bank, reopened our communications, and then returned
+and taken Richmond.
+
+"As it was, the enemy fought with his _whole force_, (except enough left
+before our lines to keep up an appearance,) and we fought with
+twenty-seven thousand men, losing the battle and nine thousand men.
+
+"By this defeat we were driven from our position, our advance of
+conquest turned into a retreat for safety, by a force probably not
+greatly superior to our own."
+
+It is to be hoped that the forthcoming report of General McClellan will
+give us the reasons which induced him to risk such a battle with such a
+force, and modify, to some extent at least, the justice of such
+outspoken censure.
+
+The services of the engineers in passing the army over White-Oak Swamp,
+in reconnoitring the line of retreat to James River, in posting troops,
+and in defending the final position of the army at Harrison's Landing,
+are detailed with great clearness. Of his officers the General speaks in
+the highest terms. It appears, that, with a single exception, they were
+all _lieutenants_, whereas "in a European service the chief engineer
+serving with an army-corps would be a field-officer, generally a
+colonel." In this want of rank in the corps of engineers the General
+says there is a twofold evil.
+
+"_First_, the great hardships and injustice to the officers themselves:
+for they have, almost without exception, refused or _been_ refused high
+positions in the volunteer service, (to which they have seen their
+contemporaries of the other branches elevated,) on the ground that their
+services as _engineers_ were absolutely necessary. _Second_, it is an
+evil to the service: since an adequate rank is almost as necessary to an
+officer for the efficient discharge of his duties as professional
+knowledge. The engineer's duty is a responsible one. He is called upon
+to decide important questions,--to fix the position of defensive works,
+(and thereby of the _troops_ who occupy them,)--to indicate the manner
+and points of attack of fortified positions. To give him the proper
+weight with those with whom he is associated, he should have, as _they_
+have, adequate rank.
+
+"The campaign on the Peninsula called for great labor on the part of the
+engineers. The country, notwithstanding its early settlement, was a
+_terra incognita_. We knew the York River and the James River, and we
+had heard of the Chickahominy; and this was about the extent of our
+knowledge. Our maps were so incorrect that they were found to be
+worthless before we reached Yorktown. New ones had to be prepared, based
+on reconnoissances made by officers of engineers.
+
+"The siege of Yorktown involved great responsibility, besides exposure
+and toil. The movements of the whole army were determined by the
+engineers. The Chickahominy again arrested us, where, if possible, the
+responsibility and labor of the engineer officers were increased. In
+fact, everywhere, and on every occasion, even to our last position at
+Harrison's Landing, this responsibility and labor on the part of the
+engineers was incessant.
+
+"I have stated above in what manner the officers of engineers performed
+their duties. Yet thus far their services are ignored and unrecognized,
+while distinctions have been bestowed upon those who have had the good
+fortune to command troops. Under such circumstances it can hardly be
+expected that the few engineer officers yet remaining will willingly
+continue their services in this unrequited branch of the military
+profession. We have no sufficient officers of engineers at this time
+with any of our armies to commence another siege, nor can they be
+obtained. In another war, if their services are thus neglected in this,
+we shall have none."
+
+It is to be hoped that the General's appeal for additional rank to the
+officers of engineers will not be overlooked. The officers of this corps
+have demonstrated not only their skill as engineers, but also their
+ability to command troops and even armies. On the side of our country's
+cause we have McClellan, Halleck, Rosecrans, Meade, Gillmore, and
+Barnard, besides a score of others, all generals; and in the ranks of
+the Rebels we find Lee, Joe Johnston, Beauregard, Gilmer, and Smith, all
+generals, too, and all formerly officers of engineers. Nobly have they
+all vindicated the scale of proficiency which placed them among the
+distinguished of their respective classes at their common Alma Mater.
+
+Whatever may have been the services of other men during our present
+struggle for nationality, and whatever may be their services in the
+future, to General Barry, the Chief of Artillery of the Army of the
+Potomac, from the organization of that army to the close of the
+Peninsular campaign, more than to any other person, belongs the credit
+of organizing our admirable system of field-artillery.
+
+We have two reports from General Barry: one, on "The Organization of the
+Artillery of the Army of the Potomac"; the other, a "Report of the
+Operations of the Artillery at the Siege of Yorktown." Of the services
+of the artillery during the remainder of the campaign we have no record
+from its chief; but they were conspicuous on every battle-field, and
+will not be forgotten until Malvern Hill shall have passed into
+oblivion.
+
+After the first Battle of Bull Run, the efforts of the nation were
+directed to organizing an army for the defence of the national capital.
+Of men and money we had plenty; but men and money, however necessary
+they may be, do not make an army. Cannon, muskets, rifles, pistols,
+sabres, horses, mules, wagons, harness, bridges, tools, food, clothing,
+and numberless other things, are required; but men and money, with all
+this added _materiel_ of war, still will not make an _efficient_ army.
+Organization, discipline, and instruction are necessary to accomplish
+this. At the time of which we speak the people of this country did not
+comprehend what an army consisted of, or, if they did, they comprehended
+it as children,--by its trappings, its men and horses, its drums and
+fifes, its "pomp and circumstance."
+
+Few even of our best officers who had honestly studied their profession
+had ever seen an army, or fully realized the amount of labor that was
+necessary, even with our unbounded resources, to organize an efficient
+army ready for the field. Happily for our country, there were some who
+in garrison had learned the science and theory of war, and in Mexico, or
+in expeditions against our Western Indians, had acquired some knowledge
+of its practice. Of these General McClellan was selected to be the
+chief. He had seen armies in Europe, and it was believed that he could
+bring to his aid more of the right kind of experience for organization
+than any other man. If there is any one thing more than another for
+which General McClellan is distinguished, it is his ability to _make an
+army_. Men may have their opinions as to his genius or his courage, his
+politics or his generalship; they may think he is too slow or too
+cautious, or they may say he is not equal to great emergencies; but of
+his ability to organize an army there is a concurrent opinion in his
+favor.
+
+By himself, however, he would have been helpless. He required
+assistance. He was obliged to have chiefs of the several arms about
+him,--a chief of engineers, of artillery, of cavalry, and chiefs of the
+several divisions of infantry.
+
+General Barry was his chief of artillery. To him was assigned the duty
+of organizing this arm of the service. We learn from his Report, that,
+"when Major-General McClellan was appointed to the command of the
+'Division of the Potomac,' July 25th, 1861, a few days after the first
+Battle of Bull Run, the whole field-artillery of his command consisted
+of no more than parts of nine batteries, or thirty pieces of various,
+and, in some instances, unusual and unserviceable calibres. Most of
+these batteries were also of mixed calibres. My calculations were based
+upon the expected immediate expansion of the 'Division of the Potomac'
+into the 'Army of the Potomac,' to consist of at least one hundred
+thousand infantry. Considerations involving the peculiar character and
+extent of the force to be employed, the probable field and character of
+operations, the utmost efficiency of the arm, and the limits imposed by
+the as yet undeveloped resources of the nation, led to the following
+general propositions, offered by me to Major-General McClellan, and
+which received his full approval."
+
+These propositions in brief were,--
+
+1st. "That the proportion of artillery should be in the ratio of at
+least two and a half pieces to one thousand men."
+
+2d. "That the proportion of rifled guns should be one-third, and of
+smooth bores two-thirds."
+
+3d. "That each field-battery should, if practicable, be composed of six
+guns."
+
+4th. "That the field-batteries were to be assigned to 'divisions,' and
+not to brigades."
+
+5th. "That the artillery reserve of the whole army should consist of one
+hundred guns."
+
+6th. "That the amount of ammunition to accompany the field-batteries was
+not to be less than four hundred rounds per gun."
+
+7th. That there should be "a siege-train of fifty pieces."
+
+8th. "That instruction in the theory and practice of gunnery, as well as
+in the tactics of the arm, was to be given to the officers and
+non-commissioned officers of the volunteer batteries, by the study of
+suitable text-books, and by actual recitations in each division, under
+the direction of the regular officer commanding the divisional
+artillery."
+
+9th. That inspections should be made.
+
+Such, with trifling modifications, were the propositions upon which the
+artillery of the Army of the Potomac was organized; and this
+organization finds its highest recommendation in the fact that it
+remains unchanged, (except very immaterially,) and has been adopted by
+all other armies in the field. The sudden and extensive expansion of the
+artillery of the Army of the Potomac, that occurred from July 25, 1861,
+to March, 1862, is unparalleled in the history of war. Tabulated, it
+stands thus:--
+
+                              Batteries,   Guns      Men    Horses
+                              parts of
+
+July 25, 1861                   9            30       650       400
+  imperfectly equipped.
+
+March, 1862                    92           520    12,500    11,000
+  fully equipped and in readiness for actual field-service.
+
+
+Well may General Barry and the officers of the Ordnance Department, who
+had, as it were, to create the means of meeting the heavy requisitions
+upon them, be proud of such a record. It is one of the most striking
+exponents of the resources of the nation which the war has produced.
+
+Of this force thirty batteries were _regulars_ and sixty-two
+_volunteers_. The latter had to be instructed not only in the duties of
+a soldier, but in the theory and practice of their special arm.
+Defective guns and _materiel_ furnished by the States had to be
+withdrawn, and replaced by the more serviceable ordnance with which the
+regular batteries were being armed. Boards of examination were
+organized, and the officers thoroughly examined. Incompetency was set
+aside, zeal and efficiency rewarded by promotion.
+
+"Although," says General Barry, "there was much to be improved," yet
+"many of the volunteer batteries evinced such zeal and intelligence, and
+availed themselves so industriously of the instructions of the regular
+officers, their commanders, and of the example of the regular battery,
+their associate, that they made rapid progress, and finally attained a
+degree of proficiency highly creditable."
+
+At the siege of Yorktown, as has already been stated, only one of the
+fifteen batteries was permitted to open fire on the enemy's works. This
+was armed with one hundred- and two hundred-pounder rifled guns, and it
+is remarkable that this is the first time the practicability of placing,
+handling, and serving these guns in siege-operations, and their value at
+the long range of two and a half to three miles, were fully
+demonstrated. These guns, as also the thirteen-inch sea-coast mortars,
+which were placed in position ready for use, were giants when compared
+with the French and English pigmies which were used at Sebastopol.
+
+General Barry, as well as General Barnard, complains of the want of rank
+of his officers. With the immense artillery force that accompanied the
+Army of the Potomac to the Peninsula, consisting of sixty batteries of
+three hundred and forty-three guns, he had only ten field-officers, "a
+number obviously insufficient, and which impaired to a great degree the
+efficiency of the arm, in consequence of the want of rank and official
+influence of the commanders of corps and divisional artillery. As this
+faulty organization can only be suitably corrected by legislative
+action, it is earnestly hoped that the attention of the proper
+authorities may be at an early day invited to it."
+
+When the report of General McClellan is published, the services of the
+artillery of the Army of the Potomac will doubtless fill a conspicuous
+place. These services were rendered to the commanders of divisions and
+corps, giving them an historic name, and in their reports we may expect
+the artillery to be honorably mentioned. General Barry says, in
+conclusion,--"Special detailed reports have been made and transmitted by
+me of the general artillery operations at the siege of Yorktown,--and by
+their immediate commanders, of the services of the field-batteries at
+the Battles of Williamsburg, Hanover Court-House, and those severely
+contested ones comprised in the operations before Richmond. To those
+several reports I respectfully refer the Commanding General for details
+of services as creditable to the artillery of the United States as they
+are honorable to the gallant officers and brave and patient enlisted
+men, who, (with but few exceptions,) struggling through difficulties,
+overcoming obstacles, and bearing themselves nobly on the field of
+battle, stood faithfully to their guns, performing their various duties
+with a steadiness, a devotion, and a gallantry worthy the highest
+commendation."
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Mental Hygiene_. By I. RAY, M. D. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
+
+Dr. Ray, as many of our readers may know, is a physician eminent in the
+speciality of mental disorders. He is at present the head of the Butler
+Hospital for the Insane in Providence, Rhode Island. The four first
+chapters of his book, chiefly relating to matters which may be observed
+outside of a hospital, come under our notice. The fifth and last
+division, addressed to the limited number of persons who are conscious
+of tendencies to insanity, has no place in an unprofessional review.
+
+This little treatise upon "Mental Hygiene" carries its own evidence as
+the work of a disciplined mind, content to labor patiently among the
+materials of exact knowledge, and gradually to approximate laws in the
+spirit of scientific investigation. Mental phenomena are analyzed by Dr.
+Ray as material substances are analyzed by the chemist,--though, from
+the nature of the case, with far less certainty in results. Yet there is
+scarcely anything of practical moment in the book which may not be found
+in the popular writings of other prominent men,--such, for example, as
+Brodie, Holland, Moore, Marcel, and Herbert Spencer. We say this in no
+disparagement; there is no second-hand flavor about these cautious
+sentences. Dr. Ray has investigated for himself, and his conclusions are
+all the more valuable from coinciding with those of other accurate
+observers. It is agreeable to chronicle a contrast to that flux of
+quasi-medical literature put forth by men who have no title (save,
+perhaps, a legal one) to affix the M. D. so pertinaciously displayed.
+For there has lately been no lack of books of quotations, clumsily put
+together and without inverted commas, designed to puff some patent
+panacea, the exclusive property of the compiler, or of volumes whose
+claim to originality lay in the bold attempt to work off a life-stock of
+irrelevant anecdotes, the miscellaneous accumulations of a
+country-practitioner. Such authors--by courtesy so called--are possibly
+well-meaning amateurs, but can never be mistaken for scientists. We
+thank Dr. Ray for a book which, as a popular medical treatise, is really
+creditable to our literature.
+
+Yet, mixed with much admirable counsel hereafter to be noticed, there
+are impressions given in this volume to which we cannot assent. And our
+chief objection might be translated into vulgar, but expressive
+parlance, by saying, that, in generalizing about society, the writer
+does not always seem able to sink the influences of the shop. We have
+been faintly reminded of the professional bias of Mr. Bob Sawyer, when
+he persuaded himself that the company in general would be better for a
+blood-letting. We respectfully submit that we are not quite so mad
+as--for the interests of science, no doubt--Dr. Ray would have us. The
+doctrine, that, do what he will, the spiritual welfare of man is in
+fearful jeopardy, is held by many religionists: we are loath to believe
+that his mental soundness is in no less peril. Yet a susceptible person
+will find it hard to put aside this book without an uncomfortable
+consciousness, that, if not already beside himself, the chances of his
+becoming so are desperately against him. For what practicable escape is
+offered from this impending doom? Shall we leave off work and devote
+ourselves to health? Idleness is a potent cause of derangement. Shall we
+engage in the hard and monotonous duties of an active calling? Paralysis
+and other organic lesions use up professional brains with a frequency
+which is positively startling. Shall we cultivate our imagination and
+make statues or verses? The frenzy of artists and poets is proverbial.
+At least, then, we may give our life-effort to some grand principle
+which shall redeem society from its misery and sin? Quite impossible!
+The contemplation of one idea, however noble, is sure to produce a
+morbid condition of the mind and distort its healthy proportions. Still
+there is a last refuge. By fresh air and vigorous exercise a man may
+surely keep his wits. We will labor steadily upon the soil, and never
+raise our thoughts from the clod we are turning! Even here the Doctor is
+too quick for us, and cries, "Checkmate!" with the fact that the Hodges
+of England and the agriculturists of Berkshire have a great and special
+gift at lunacy.
+
+Of course, the preceding paragraph is very loosely written. We
+cheerfully admit that it might be impossible to quote from the book any
+single proposition to which, taken in a certain sense, a reasonable man
+would object. Nevertheless, there is a total impression derived from it
+which we cannot feel to be true. There is no sufficient allowance for
+the fact that what is most spirited and beautiful and worthy in modern
+society comes from that diversity of human pursuits which necessitates
+the concentration of individual energy into narrow channels. Neither to
+balance his mind in perfect equilibrium, nor to keep his body in highest
+condition, is the first duty of man upon earth. The Christian
+requirement of self-sacrifice often commands him to risk both in service
+to his neighbor. Besides, as we shall presently show, men of equal
+capacity in other branches of human inquiry do not agree with what seems
+to be Dr. Ray's estimate of the highest sanity. When we are warned to
+avoid "men of striking mental peculiarities," (our author advancing the
+proposition that such association is not entirely harmless to the most
+hardy intellect,)--when we are called upon to ostracize those who think
+that their short lives on earth can be most useful to others by
+exclusive devotion to some great principle or regenerating idea,--the
+thoughtful reader will question the instruction. The adjectives
+"extreme" and "fanatical" have, during the last twenty years, been
+applied to most valuable men of various parties and beliefs; they have
+been so applied by masses of conventionally respectable and not
+insincere citizens. But that the persons thus stigmatized have, on the
+whole, advanced the interests of civilization, freedom, and morality, we
+fervently believe.
+
+It is in a very different direction that keenest observers have seen the
+real peril of modern society. De Tocqueville has solemnly warned our
+Democracy of that over-faith in public opinion which tends to become a
+species of religion of which the Majority is the prophet. John Stuart
+Mill has emphasized his conviction that the boldest individuality is of
+the utmost importance to social well-being, and has urged its direct
+encouragement as peculiarly the duty of the present time. Herbert
+Spencer has written most eloquent warnings on the danger of perverting
+certain generalizations upon society into a law for the private citizen.
+He has declared that the wise man will regard the truth that is in him
+not as adventitious, not as something that may be made subordinate to
+the calculations of policy, but as the supreme authority to which all
+his actions should bend. He has shown us that the most useful citizens
+play their appointed part in the world by endeavoring to get embodied in
+fact their present idealisms: knowing that if they can get done the
+things aimed at, well; if not, well also, though not so well. Now our
+complaint is, that Dr. Ray generalizes upon the limited class of facts
+which has come under his professional observation. There may be a feeble
+folk who have gone mad over Mr. Phillips's speeches or Mrs. Dall's
+lectures. This is not the place to discuss the methods or ends of either
+of these conspicuous persons. But shall we make nothing of the possible
+numbers of young men, plunging headlong at the prizes of society after
+the manner which Dr. Ray so intelligently deprecates, who have waked to
+a new standard of success by seeing one with talents which could gain
+their coveted distinctions passing them by to pursue, in uncompromising
+honesty of conviction, his solitary way? Shall we not consider the
+city-bred girls, confined in circles where the vulgar glitter of wealth
+was mitigated only by the feeblest dilettanteism,--spirited young women,
+falling into a morbid condition, whose pitiableness Dr. Ray has well
+illustrated,--who have yet been strengthened to possess their souls in
+health and steadiness by a voice without pleading in their behalf the
+right to choose their own work and command their own lives? When we are
+warned against those who come to regard it "as a sacred duty to
+vindicate the claims of abstract benevolence at all hazards, even though
+it lead through seas of blood and fire," our adviser is either basing
+his counsel upon the very flattest truism, or else intends to indorse a
+popular cry against men who claim to have founded their convictions on
+investigation the most thorough and conscientious. Take the vote of the
+wealth and education of Europe to-day, and Abraham Lincoln will be
+pronounced a fanatic vindicating the claims of abstract benevolence
+"through seas of blood and fire." Go back into the past, and consult one
+Festus, a highly respectable Roman governor, and we shall learn that
+Paul was beside himself, nay, positively mad, with his much learning. We
+repeat that it is for the infinite advantage of society that exceptional
+men are impelled to precipitate their power into very narrow channels.
+The most eminent helpers of civilization have been penetrated by their
+single mission,--they have known that in concentration and courage lay
+their highest usefulness. Let us not judge men who are other than these.
+We will not question the importance of a Goethe, with his scientific
+amusements, stage-plays, ducal companionships, and art of taking good
+care of himself; but we cannot deny at least an equal sanity to the
+"fanatic" Milton, who deemed it disgraceful to pursue his own
+gratification while his countrymen were contending against oppression,
+who was content to sacrifice sight in Liberty's defence, and to live an
+"extreme" protester against the profligacies of power and place.
+
+But we linger too long from the solid instruction of this book. Dr. Ray
+considers the existence of insanity or remarkable eccentricity in a
+previous generation a prolific source of mental unsoundness. He
+addresses words of most solemn warning to those who have not yet formed
+the most important connection in life. A brain free from all congenital
+tendencies to disease results from a rigid compliance with the laws of
+parentage. The intermarriage of those related by blood is no uncommon
+cause of mental deterioration. Dr. Ray thinks that the facts collected
+in France and America upon this point are much more conclusive than a
+recent Westminster reviewer will allow. We are told that in this country
+the mingling of common blood in marriage is more frequent than is
+generally supposed, and that, of all agencies which have to do with the
+prevalence of insanity and idiocy, this is probably the most potent. A
+vigorous body is of course an important condition to high mental health,
+and what is said upon this head is tersely written and very sensible. We
+are told that "those much-enduring men and women who encountered the
+privations of the colonial times have been succeeded by a race incapable
+of toil and exposure, whom the winds of heaven cannot visit too roughly
+without leaving behind the seeds of dissolution." Here and elsewhere Dr.
+Ray cites the passion for light and emotional literature as a proof of
+our degeneracy. We have certainly nothing to say in behalf of that
+quality of modern character produced by the indolent reading of
+sensational writing. Still it may be questioned whether the enormous
+supply of bad books has not increased the demand for good ones,--just as
+quacks make practice for physicians. The readers of the Ledger stories
+have learned to demand a weekly instalment of the good sense and
+sobriety of Mr. Everett. And we are disposed to accept the view of a
+late American publisher, who declared that as a business-transaction he
+could not do better than subscribe to the diffusion of spasmodic
+literature, since it directly promoted the sale of the best authors in
+whose works he dealt. The craving for an intense and exciting literature
+Dr. Ray attributes to "feverish pulse, disturbed digestion, and
+irritable nerves." No doubt he is right,--within limits. But may not a
+_healthy_ laborer find in the startling effects of the younger Cobb
+refreshment as precisely adapted to idealize his life, and divert his
+thoughts from a hard day's work, as that for which the college-professor
+seeks a tragedy of Sophocles or a romance of Hawthorne?
+
+The chapter treating of "Mental Hygiene as affected by Physical
+Influences" begins with such warnings against vitiated air as all
+intelligent people read and believe,--yet not so vitally as to compel
+corporations to reform their halls and conveyances. The remarks upon
+diet have a very practical tendency. Dr. Ray, while declining to commit
+himself to any theory, is very emphatic in his leanings towards what is
+called vegetarianism. He questions the popular impression that
+hard-working men require much larger quantities of animal food than
+those whose employments are of a sedentary character. Although
+confessing that we lack statistics from which to establish the relative
+working-powers of animal and vegetable substances, Dr. Ray declares that
+the few observations which have met his notice are in favor of a diet
+chiefly vegetable. The late Henry Colman was satisfied that no men did
+more work or showed better health than the Scotch farm-laborers, whose
+diet was almost entirely oatmeal. In the California mines no class of
+persons better endure hardships or accomplish greater results than the
+Chinese, who live principally on vegetable food. It is also noticed, as
+pertinent to the point, that the standard of health is probably much
+higher among the people just named than among our New-England laborers.
+Dr. Ray sums up by saying that "there is no necessity for believing that
+the supply required by the waste of material which physical exercise
+produces cannot be as effectually furnished by vegetable as by animal
+substances." This is strong testimony from a physician of standing and
+authority. Not otherwise have asserted various reform-doctors who are
+not supposed to move in the first medical circles. The value of any
+approximate decision of the vegetarian question can hardly be
+overestimated. There are thousands of families of very moderate means
+who strain every nerve to feed their children upon beef and mutton,--and
+this with the tacit approval, or by the positive advice, of physicians
+in good repute. Can our children be brought up equally well upon
+potatoes and hasty-pudding? May the two or three hundred dollars thus
+annually saved be better spent in a trip to the country or a visit to
+the sea-side? He would be a benefactor to his countrymen who could
+affirmatively answer these questions from observations, statistics, and
+arguments which commanded the assent of all intelligent men.
+
+Dr. Ray forcibly exhibits the radical faults of our common systems of
+education. He exposes the vulgar fallacy, that the growth and discipline
+of the mind are tested by the amount of task-work it can be made to
+accomplish. The efficiency of a given course of training is indicated by
+the power and endurance which it imparts,--not by such pyrotechny as may
+be let off before an examining committee. The amount of labor in the
+shape of school-exercises habitually imposed on the young strains the
+mind far beyond the highest degree of healthy endurance. This is shown
+by illustrations which our limits compel us to omit: they are worthy to
+be pondered by every conscientious parent and teacher in the land. Our
+national neglect of a right home-education brings Dr. Ray to a train of
+remarks which sustains what we were led to say in noticing Jean Paul's
+"Levana" a few months ago. "How many of this generation," writes our
+author, "complete their childhood, scarcely feeling the dominion of any
+will but their own, and obeying no higher law than the caprice of the
+moment! Instead of the firm, but gentle sway that quietly represses or
+moderates every outbreak of temper, that checks the impatience of
+desire, that requires and encourages self-denial, and turns the
+performance of duty into pleasure,--they experience only the feeble and
+fitful rule that yields to the slightest opposition, and rather
+stimulates than represses the selfish manifestations of our nature." The
+criticism is just. It is to parents, rather than to children, that our
+educational energies should now address themselves. For what
+school-polish can imitate the lustre of a youth home-reared under the
+authority of a wise and commanding love? But our adult-instruction must
+go deeper than a recommendation of the best scheme of household
+discipline the wit of man can devise. Be the government as rigid as it
+may, the children will imitate the worst portions of the characters
+disclosed in the family. The selfish and worldly at heart will find it
+wellnigh impossible to endow their children with high motives of action.
+
+We cordially indorse what is said of those harpy-defilers of knowledge
+known as juvenile books. A limited use of the works of Abbott,
+Edgeworth, Sedgwick, and a very few others may certainly be permitted.
+But the common practice of removing every occasion for effort from the
+path of the young--of boning and spicing the mental aliment of our
+fathers for the palates of our sons--would be a ridiculous folly, if it
+were not a grievous one. Suitable reading for an average boy of ten
+years may be found in the best authors. For it is well observed by Dr.
+Ray, that, if the lad does not perceive the full significance of
+Shakspeare's thoughts or the deepest harmony of Spenser's verse, if he
+does not wholly appreciate the keen sagacity of Gibbon or the quiet
+charm of Prescott, he will, nevertheless, catch glimpses of the higher
+upper sphere in which a poet moves, and fix in his mind lasting images
+of purity and loveliness, or he will learn on good authority the facts
+of history, and feel somewhat of its grandeur and dignity. To the sort
+of reading which naturally succeeds the Peter-Parley dilutions of
+wisdom we can only allude to thank Dr. Ray for speaking so clearly and
+to the point.
+
+But it becomes necessary to pass over many pages which we had marked for
+approving comment. In conclusion it may be said that this treatise on
+Mental Hygiene is full of wholesome rebukes and valuable suggestions.
+Yet the impression of New-England, or even of American life, which a
+stranger might receive from it, would be lamentably false. In a special
+department, Dr. Ray is an able scientist. To a wide-embracing philosophy
+he does not always show claims. There has been heart-sickening
+corruption in all prosperous societies,--especially in such as have been
+debauched by complicity with Slavery. It is the duty of some men of
+science and benevolence to be ever probing among the defilements of our
+fallen nature, to breathe the tainted air of the lazar-house, to consort
+with madness and crime. Few men deserve our respect and gratitude like
+these. But let them be cheered by remembering that in the great world
+outside the hospital there are still elements of worthiness and
+nobility. Wealth was never more wisely liberal, talents were never held
+to stricter accountability, genius has never been more united with pure
+and high aims, than in the Loyal States to-day. The descendants of
+"those much-enduring men and women of colonial times" have not shown
+themselves altogether "incapable of toil and exposure." From offices and
+counting-rooms, from libraries and laboratories, our young men have gone
+forth to service as arduous as that which tried their fore-fathers. How
+many of them have borne every hardship and privation of war, every
+cruelty of filthy prisons and carrion-food, yet have breasted the
+slave-masters' treason till its bullet struck the pulse of life! Let us
+remember that the most divergent tendencies of character, even such as
+we cannot associate with an ideal poise of mind, may work to worthiest
+ends in this ill-balanced world of humanity. The saying of Novalis, that
+health is interesting only in a scientific point of view, disease being
+necessary to individualization, shows one side of the shield of which
+Dr. Ray presents the other.
+
+
+
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS
+
+RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+
+The Life of Philidor, Musician and Chess-Player. By George Allen, Greek
+Professor in the University of Pennsylvania. With a Supplementary Essay
+on Philidor as Chess-Author and Chess-Player, by Tassilo von Heydebrand
+und der Lasa, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the
+King of Prussia at the Court of Saxe-Weimar. Philadelphia. E. H. Butler
+& Co. 12mo. pp. xii., 156. $1.50.
+
+Spots on the Sun; or, The Plumb-Line Papers. Being a Series of Essays,
+or Critical Examinations of Difficult Passages of Scripture; together
+with a Careful Inquiry into Certain Dogmas of the Church. By Rev. T. M.
+Hopkins, A. M., Geneva, N. Y. Auburn. William J. Moses. 16mo. pp. 367.
+$1.00.
+
+Frank Warrington. By the Author of "Rutledge." New York. G. W. Carleton.
+12mo. pp. 478. $1.50.
+
+Husband and Wife; or, The Science of Human Development through Inherited
+Tendencies. By the Author of "The Parent's Guide," etc. New York. G. W.
+Carleton. 12mo. pp. 259. $1.25.
+
+Sermons preached before His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, during
+his Tour in the East, in the Spring of 1862, with Notices of some of the
+Localities visited. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Regius Professor
+of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, Honorary Chaplain
+in Ordinary to the Queen, etc., etc. New York. C. Scribner. 12mo. pp.
+272. $1.50.
+
+Palmoni; or, The Numerals of Scripture a Proof of Inspiration. A Free
+Inquiry. By M. Mahan, D. D., St. Marks-in-the-Bowery Professor of
+Ecclesiastical History in the General Theological Seminary. New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 176. 75 cts.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] When Columbus sailed on his fourth voyage, in which he hoped to pass
+through what we now know as the Isthmus of Panama, and sail
+northwestward, he wrote to his king and queen that thus he should come
+as near as men could come to "the Terrestrial Paradise."
+
+[2] Norandel was the half-brother of Amadis, both of them being sons of
+Lisuarte, King of England.
+
+[3] Maneli was son of Cildadan, King of Ireland.
+
+[4] Quadragante was a distinguished giant, who had been conquered by
+Amadis, and was now his sure friend.
+
+[5] The "Spectators" 414 and 477, which urge particularly a better taste
+in gardening, are dated 1712; and the first volume of the "Ichnographia"
+(under a different name, indeed) appeared in 1715.
+
+[6] This is averred of the translation of the "Oeconomics" of Xenophon,
+before cited in these papers, and published under Professor Bradley's
+name.
+
+[7] _Joseph Andrews_, Bk. III. Ch. 4, where Fielding, thief that he was,
+appropriates the story that Xenophon tells of Cyrus.
+
+[8] _Works of Earl of Orford_, Vol. III. p. 490.
+
+[9] Chap. IX. p. 136, Cobbett's edition.
+
+[10] It is to be remarked, however, that the Rev. Mr. Smith, (farmer of
+Lois-Weedon,) by the distribution of his crop, avails himself virtually
+of a clean fallow, every alternate year.
+
+[11] _Transactions_, Vol. XXX p. 140.
+
+[12] _Detached Thoughts on Men and Manners:_ Wm. Shenstone.
+
+[13] Completing the two volumes of collected poems.
+
+[14] A taste for this had been early indicated, especially in the essays
+on Bunyan and Robert Dinsmore, in "Old Portraits and Modern Sketches,"
+and in passages of "Literary Recreations." Whittier's prose, by the way,
+is all worth reading.
+
+[15] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat des Convulsionnaires_, p. 104.
+
+[16] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., p. 104.
+
+[17] _Vains Efforts des Discernans_, p. 36.
+
+[18] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., p. 66.
+
+[19] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., p. 67. The latter part
+of the quotation alludes to crucifixion and other symbolical
+representations, to which the convulsionists were much given.
+
+This state of ecstasy is one which has existed, probably, in occasional
+instances, through all past time, especially among religious
+enthusiasts. The writings of the ancient fathers contain constant
+allusions to it. St. Augustine, for example, speaks of it as a
+phenomenon which he has personally witnessed. Referring to persons thus
+impressed, he says,--"I have seen some who addressed their discourse
+sometimes to the persons around them, sometimes to other beings, as if
+they were actually present; and when they came to themselves, some could
+report what they had seen, others preserved no recollection of it
+whatever."--_De Gen. ad Litter._ Lib. XII. c. 13.
+
+[20] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., p. 77.
+
+[21] _Lettre de M. Colbert_, du 8 Fevrier, 1733, a Madame de Coetquen.
+
+[22] Montgeron, Tom. II.
+
+[23] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Oeuvre_, etc., p. 123.
+
+[24] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc. p. 82.
+
+[25] _Ibid._ p. 17.
+
+[26] _Ibid._ p. 19.
+
+[27] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., p. 77.
+
+[28] In proof of this opinion, Montgeron gives numerous quotations from
+St. Augustine, St. Thomas, St. Gregory, and various theologians and
+ecclesiastics of high reputation, to the effect that "it often happens
+that errors and defects are mixed in with holy and divine revelations,
+(of saints and others, in ecstasy,) either by some vice of nature, or by
+the deception of the Devil, in the same way that our minds often draw
+false conclusions from true premises."--_Ibid._ pp. 88-96.
+
+[29] _Ibid._ p. 94.
+
+[30] _Ibid._ p. 95.
+
+[31] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., pp. 102, 103.
+
+[32] _Ibid._ p. 73.
+
+[33] _Vains Efforts des Discernans_, pp. 39, 40.
+
+[34] _Lettres de M. Poncet_, Let. VII. p. 129.
+
+[35] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., p. 76.
+
+[36] _Recherche de la Verite_, p. 25.
+
+[37] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., p. 76.
+
+[38] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., p. 73.
+
+[39] _Philosophy of Mysterious Agents, Human and Mundane_, by E. C.
+Rogers, Boston, 1853, p. 321, and elsewhere. He argues, "that, in as far
+as persons become 'mediums,' they are mere automatons," surrendering all
+mental control, and resigning their manhood.
+
+[40] Montgeron, Tom. II. _Idee de l'Etat_, etc., pp. 34, 35.
+
+[41] Hume's _Essays_, Vol. II. sect. 10.
+
+[42] Diderot's _Pensees Philosophiques_. The original edition appeared
+in 1746, published in Paris.
+
+[43] Dom La Taste's _Lettres Theologiques_, Tom. II. p. 878.
+
+[44] Montgeron expressly tells us, that, in the case of Marguerite
+Catherine Turpin, her limbs were drawn, by means of strong bands, "with
+such, extreme violence that the bones of her knees and thighs cracked
+with a loud noise."--Tom. III. p. 553.
+
+[45] Montgeron supplies evidence that the expression _clubs_, here used,
+is not misapplied. He furnishes quotations from a petition addressed to
+the Parliament of Paris by the mother of the girl Turpin, praying for a
+legal investigation of her daughter's case by the attorney-general, and
+offering to furnish him with the names, station in life, and addresses
+of the witnesses to the wonderful cure, in this case, of a monstrous
+deformity that was almost congenital; in which petition it is
+stated,--"Little by little the force with which she was struck was
+augmented, and at last the blows were given with billets of oak-wood,
+one end of which was reduced in diameter so as to form a handle, while
+the other end, with which the strokes were dealt, was from seven to
+eight inches in circumference, so that these billets were in fact small
+clubs." (Montgeron, Tom. III. p. 552.) This would give from eight to
+nine inches, English measure, or nearly three inches in diameter, and of
+_oak_!
+
+[46] _Dissertation Theologique sur les Convulsions_, pp. 70, 71.
+
+[47] _De la Folie_, Tom. II. p. 373.
+
+[48] Tympany is defined by Johnson, "A kind of obstructed flatulence
+that swells the body like a drum."
+
+[49] _The Epidemics of the Middle Ages_, pp. 89-91. The same work
+supplies other points of analogy between this epidemic and that of St.
+Medard; for example: "Where the disease was completely developed, the
+attack commenced with epileptic convulsions."--p. 88.
+
+[50] _Traite du Somnambulisme_, pp. 384, 385.
+
+[51] _Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales_, Art. _Convulsions_.
+
+[52] _De la Folie, consideree, sous la Point de Vue Pathologique,
+Philosophique, Historique, et Judiciaire_, par le Dr. Calmeil, Paris,
+1845, Tom. II. pp. 386, 387.
+
+[53] See, in Calmeil's work cited above, the Chapter entitled _Theomanie
+Extato-Convulsive parmi les Jansenistes_, Tom. II. pp. 313-400.
+
+[54] _Du Surnaturel en General_, Tom. II. pp. 94, 95.
+
+[55] I translate literally the words of the original: "_avec des
+convulsionnaires en gomme elastique_," p. 90.
+
+[56] _Du Surnaturel en General_, Tom. II. pp. 90, 91.
+
+[57] See note in De Gasparin's "Experiments in Table-Moving."
+
+[58] Montgeron, Tom. III. p. 703.
+
+[59] Montgeron, Tom. III. pp. 712, 713.
+
+[60] Carpenter's _Principles of Human Physiology_, p. 647.
+
+[61] Carpenter's _Principles of Human Physiology_, p. 561. The story,
+incredible if it appear, is indorsed by Carpenter as vouched for by Mr.
+Richard Smith, late Senior Surgeon of the Bristol Infirmary, under whose
+care the sufferer had been. The case resulted, after a fortnight, in
+death.
+
+[62] Such will be found throughout Hecquet's "Le Naturalisme des
+Convulsions dans les Maladies," Paris, 1733. Dr. Philippe Hecquet, born
+in 1661, acquired great reputation in Paris as a physician, being
+elected in 1712 President of the Faculty of Medicine in that city. He is
+the author of numerous works on medical subjects. In his "Naturalisme
+des Convulsions," published at the very time when the St.-Medard
+excitement was at the highest, he admits the main facts, but denies
+their miraculous character.
+
+[63] "The eye, contrary to the usual notions, is a very insensible part
+of the body, unless affected with inflammation; for, though the mucous
+membrane which covers its surface, and which is prolonged from the skin,
+is acutely sensible to tactile impressions, the interior is by no means
+so, as is well known to those who have operated much on this
+organ."--Carpenter's _Principles of Human Physiology_, p. 682.
+
+[64] Hume's _Essays_, Vol. II. p. 133.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No.
+77, March, 1864, by Various
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